The Thomist 65 (2001): 1-44

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT":
A REPLY TO CRITICS OF OUR ACTION THEORY
jOHNFINNIS

GERMAIN GRISEZ

University of Oxford
Oxford, England

Mount St. Mary's College
St. Michael's College
Emmitsburg, Maryland Toronto, Ontario, Canada

JOSEPH BOYLE

I

T

he adjectives "direct" and "indirect" have been used in
some documents of the Magisterium to qualify nouns
that refer to certain ways in which one brings about bad
outcomes. Those adjectives are used to distinguish cases in
which an acting person intends the bad outcome either as an
end or as a means ("direct abortion") 1 from cases in which the
moral agent, in doing some other, morally upright action, only
accepts the bad outcome as its side effect. Rather than using
"direct" and "indirect," it seems to us preferable to speak of
what is intended and what is accepted as a side effect, 2 and we
shall usually do so here.
To understand this distinction, one should begin by considering free choices and the actions that carry them out.
Those are good or bad-in the first instance good or bad for
the human persons who shape themselves by making such
choices and carrying them out. Groups of persons also
deliberate and act, and their actions affect and shape them too.
1 See, e.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church (hereafter CCC) 2271; John Paul II,
Evangelium vitae (25 March 1995) 62. A primary source for these and other recent
documents, on this point, is the set of statements of Pius XII cited in Evangelium vitae
62 at n. 66.
2 See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life
(Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Herald Press, 1993), 473-74.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

Of course, each individual who participates in the communal
action will in so doing make his own free choices.
Moral good and evil are a matter of whether and how fully
or deficiently these choices are reasonable, that is to say, in
accord with fully reasonable judgments about what is to be
done or avoided. 3
Before children can make free choices, emotional motivations attract them to, or avert them from, certain possibilities,
and motivations of this sort are still operative in one's adult
life. As one becomes capable of being motivated by reasons,
one enters the moral domain by reasoning about what to do,
by more or less integrating one's emotional motivations with
each other and with reasons, and by more or less reasonably
making free choices. But what is it to have a reason for action
by which one might thus be motivated and guided towards
choice? Essentially, it is to understand the intelligible con3 Of course, this statement must be qualified. People's capacities to judge correctly
what to do and to exercise their freedom in acting on their judgment can be more or
less limited in various ways. So, a person's moral quality depends on his selfdetermination in relation to his capacity to act reasonably. Thus a person whose
capacity to act reasonably is limited may be a good person even while determining
himself to an act of a kind that is wrong and would never be done by a good person
free of those limitations. For that reason, Catholic moral theology and pastoral practice
have recognized the difference between the "subjective" good and evil of persons and
their choices, on the one hand, and, on the other, the "objective" good and evil of
actions measured by unqualified practical reasonableness. This distinction can also be
marked-though we do not recommend this way of speaking-by reserving the
adjectives good and evil to qualify persons and choices, and the adjectives right and
wrong to qualify choices and actions. Of course, the good and the right, the evil and
the wrong, are sometimes distinguished in ways that we regard as inconsistent with
sound morality and pastoral practice. For example, James F. Keenan, S.J., Goodness
and Rjghtness in Thomas Aquinas's "Summa Theologiae" (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University, 1992), 173-174, holds that acts commanded by charity or
"benevolence" "are good, though not necessarily right"-indeed, are good even if
wrong-and that "the defect in rightness does not affect" the description of the act as
morally good. Again, some Christian theologians maintain that practical reasonableness
sometimes requires an upright person in this fallen world to commit a sin-that is, to
do what is truly wrong. Such ways of distinguishing good from right and evil from
wrong separate right and wrong from the basic human good of practical reasonableness
and the moral virtue of prudentia-something traditional Catholic moral theology and
pastoral practice never allowed.

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3

nection between some benefit by which one and/or others
could be fulfilled and some action(s) that one anticipates could
involve or bring about that benefit.
Choice is between alternatives. Both emotional and rational
motives suggest possible purposes that seem to be within one's
power to achieve in a certain way or ways. In one's
deliberating about what to do, one considers both the proposal
to pursue a purpose in a certain way for the sake of a benefit,
and the alternative proposal to pursue the same purpose in a
different way, or to pursue an alternative purpose for the same
or some other benefit. One has to choose because of these
options-including
the
alternative proposals-alternative
proposal to do nothing.
The ideas introduced and linked with one another in the
preceding three paragraphs make possible the understanding
of actions as morally significant. In making that understanding
possible, they also make possible a proper understanding of
the words, concepts, and realities with which moral and legal
analysis is centrally concerned, not only in Judaeo-Christian
but also (as we will show) in widely different cultural contexts:
intention, choice, and foresight; ends, means, and side effects.
The most perspicuous way of getting clear about these
words, concepts, and realities is to consider some examples of
proposals (options), choices adopting them, and actions
carrying out those choices.
Case A. A boy with money to buy Friday lunch sees a
beautiful airplane in a shop window. He thinks about the
alternatives: buy lunch to satisfy his hunger or buy the plane
to play with on the weekend. He foresees that if he buys the
plane he will be hungry that afternoon, and that if he buys
lunch he will have to do without the weekend fun. He chooses
to buy the plane for the sake of the weekend fun; the intended
end (purpose) is the weekend fun, the chosen means is buying
the plane. Being hungry follows inevitably; it is a foreseen side
effect. It is a side effect precisely because it was not part of the
proposal he adopted, to buy the plane for the sake of weekend

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

fun, just as going without the weekend fun was no part of the
proposal he did not adopt, to buy lunch to avoid hunger.
Case B. A man with high blood pressure is offered a drug to
lower it. Taking this drug has what everyone calls side effects;
some of these are very rare but lethal. He knows about these
side effects, but chooses to take the drug, realizing that he is
incurring some risk of earlier death; and, as it happens, he dies
from one of the drug's rare side effects. In choosing to take the
medication, he adopted the proposal of using it to lower his
blood pressure for the purpose of living longer, but accepted
the side effect: the (low) probability of dying from the drug.
Though he foresaw and brought about the risk he accepted,
running that risk was no part of his intention: the purpose he
was trying to achieve and the means he chose for achieving it.
Case C. A man at a party considers three proposals: to stay
over and (uncomfortably) sleep on the sofa, to call a (costly)
cab, or to drive (woozily) home. To get home cheaply he
drives; risking running someone down is a side effect of his
choice, and as it happens he runs someone down. This disaster
is a further side effect of his choice. He is responsible for that
side effect. That is to say, he should have taken such an effect
into account and made the reasonable choice of one or other
of the alternatives. But if his hostess has had a heart attack
and, to get her to hospital, he accepts the same risk by driving
in the same condition, his choice to drive may well be
reasonable.
Case D. A woman has decided to give testimony at her
brother's trial, although she is acutely conscious of her
uncontrollable stutter. Her purpose is to help her brother get
justice, her means of helping is giving evidence, and a side
effect is publicly stuttering. This side effect is an inseparable
part of the woman's performance; her speech is always
stuttering. But that side effect is unwanted in itself; indeed, it
is a side effect that obstructs her purpose in testifying (because
it distracts and perhaps annoys the jury). Stuttering is not
included in her intentions. She chooses and tries to speak as

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5

best she can. She does not choose to stutter; indeed, she does
her best not to.
Case E. A farmer castrates male calves in order to change
their hormonal constitution and thereby make them fat and
manageable. He accepts that this will make them sterile, and
if he did not find it more profitable to fatten and calm them all
he would keep some unsterilized for breeding (instead of
hiring bulls for breeding in season). Nothing in the behavior
he does perform differentiates sterilizing the calves by
castrating them from fattening and calming them by castrating
them. But the proposal to fatten is quite distinct from any
proposal to sterilize. So, although the performance is sterilizing (as anyone would say who looks just at the performance
and its physical effects), any question as to what is included in
the farmer's proposal is not settled by reference to his
behavior. Indeed, since sterilizing (achieving a state of infertility) is for the farmer neither end (purpose) nor means, it
is not included in the proposal he adopts, is not what he
chooses, and for the purposes of an account of human action
is pot what he is doing.
The analysis of choice and action applies, as we have said,
to groups' acts as well as individuals'. (Indeed, talk of
"proposals" is adapted from the realm of deliberative assemblies.) So the next two cases we shall consider happen to be
group acts but could equally have been the acts of a powerful
individual.
Case F. A majority of the members of a club vote for a
motion to commend an outgoing president, unpopular with
some. In doing so, they accept the side effect of antagonizing
the minority. In voting-choosing to commend the presidentthey carry out the behavior that constitutes the act of
commending her and achieve their purpose in doing so.
Case G. A company's directors deliberate about a proposal
to shut down the production line for January and an
alternative proposal to shut it down in May. Production must
be halted for a month, for retooling. For production purposes,

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May would be much the best month; for short-term financial
purposes, January would be marginally better. But closing in
January would also have the effect of nipping unionization in
the bud, whereas closing in May would have the effect of
giving the unions time to organize and impose unwelcome
demands on the company. If the directors choose to shut down
the line in January with a view to nipping unionization in the
bud, their intention is not only to shut· down the line and to
retool but also to nip unionization in the bud-preventing
unionization is no mere side effect. If short-term financial gain
was not part of the directors' reasons for their decision, they
do not intend it. Though they foresee it and will welcome it,
it remains a side effect. That being so, if they learn that this
time there will be no short-term financial gain, they will see no
reason to reconsider their decision. If the directors choose to
close for retooling in May for production purposes, the
enhanced unionization is an unwelcome side effect.
Case H. A spy, horrified that his house guest has become
aware of his treason, deliberates about what is necessary to
ensure her silence. Though wanting her continuing companionship, he very reluctantly decides to kill her. He takes
her to a lovely rural spot and with feelings of great regret
pushes her over a cliff. Retching with disgust at himself, he
checks to make sure she is dead and then, as planned, reports
the "accident." While his intention, in the sense of the purpose
for the sake of which he acts, is to ensure her silence, that is
not all he intends. He also intends precisely what he chooses:
to kill his companion. Her death cannot be regarded as a side
effect. His repugnance, regret, and remorse do not make it any
less the case that he intends to kill her.
Though the preceding examples could be multiplied
indefinitely, even these eight alone provide enough data to
show that the theory of action discussed in this paper is sound,
and is applicable across the whole range of choices and actions
quite independently of moral judgments about their goodness
or badness, rightness or wrongness.

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Case A makes it dear that an action carries out a proposal
adopted by choice, and that one intends 4 both to carry out
that proposal and to achieve the purpose for the sake of which
one adopts it. This case also makes it dear that one's actions
have unintended side effects, inasmuch as some of the foreseen
and inevitable consequences of one's intentional behavior are
nevertheless not intended.
Case B reinforces the point that, when one knowingly
brings about bad effects in carrying out some choice, one need
not intend them. Even though one both foresees and causes
them, one does not choose them; one only accepts themindeed freely accepts them.
Case C makes it clear that when one's action has foreseen
but unintended side effects, one has moral responsibility in
respect to accepting them. But since not all the moral criteria
applicable to intending to do something apply to accepting
bad side effects, one sometimes can reasonably accept
something that it would be wrong to bring about intentionally.
Case D makes it dear that a side effect need not be causally
consequent upon the performance that carries out one's
choice. Even an integral part of the behavior by which one
carries out a choice can be a side effect, and such a side effect
can even precede the part of the behavior that constitutes
one's intended act, and all the more so can precede the effects
for the sake of which one is acting.
Case E makes it clear that, depending on what one proposes
to do and what one only accepts as a side effect, one can be
doing either of two acts different in kind even though
everything about one's behavior and the observable context is
the same.
Case F makes it clear that the structure of actions
articulated by our analysis is found even in a case where one
and the same behavior is at once the choosing of the act, the
4 Common parlance (like Aquinas: see n. 22 below) talks of "intention" in two
different ways: (1) that for the sake of which one does X; or (2) doing X-for-the-sakeof-that. See John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford and New
York: Oxford University, 1998), 166.

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doing of the act, and the realizing of the purpose for which it
is done. Despite the unity of all the analytically distinct factors
that constitute it, this moral act has a side effect really distinct
from itself.
Case G makes it clear that foreseen and welcome effects of
what one is doing, effects that could have been reasons for
acting, need not be intended even if one chooses precisely as
one would if one did intend them. Foreseen effects of what
one does are intended only if they actually are among one's
reasons for acting. If they are not, they are part of neither the
proposal one adopts in choosing nor the purpose(s) for the
sake of which one chooses: they are part of neither the means
nor the end(s).
Case H makes it clear that intentions are constituted by
acting persons' reasons for making their choices and by
precisely what they choose to do, not by what they feel, or
would like, or are reluctant or eager to do, or regret the
"necessity" of doing.
The preceding cases also illustrate some of the many ways
employed in common speech to refer to intentions and the
intentional. These ways include not only the cognates of
"intend," but such phrases as "for the sake of," "for the
purpose of," "with the object/purpose/aim/goal of," "in order
to," "so as to," "with a view to," and often enough plain
"to" -as well as other terms. The fact that in this sort of
context people easily and accurately communicate, using so
many different expressions synonymously, at least suggests
that the concepts of intention and side effects are sound and
precise, and that what all these terms signify are indeed
realities. Moreover, the many formal and informal words and
phrases we have just listed-like their counterparts in the
idioms of other languages-all refer one to the relations we
have been outlining, relations whose terms are captured in the
more static-seeming idiom of philosophy: "end(s)," "means,"
effects" or
"intentions,"
"choices," and "unintended
(synonymously) "side effects."

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Realities, even the human realities of deliberation and
action, need not be reflectively understood by those who
engage in them. The understanding and analysis of intention,
choice, and action has undoubtedly reached its greatest clarity
in Christian reflection guided by the firm Judaeo-Christian
recognition of free choice. But even cultures not shaped by
that recognition have more or less clearly acknowledged the
reality of intention, its distinction from certain other realities,
and its significance for the moral and therefore the legal
assessment of conduct.
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many
scholars claimed that the ancients had little or no
understanding of, or interest in, the distinctions between the
intended and the unintended (whether negligent, truly
accidental, or foreseen and reluctantly accepted). This
common view about ancient thought exaggerates the distance
between the later, Christian clarity and earlier, less
differentiated thought. The exaggerated form of this modern
view about ancient thought has been plausibly contested,
notably by David Daube, Jewish biblicist and historian of
Roman law. A few quotations from Daube's review of the
evidence 5 suggest its force:
There is not a single case in the whole of Greek literature-myth, saga,
history-or, for that matter, in the Bible, of a man who killed without
intent being put to death, be it in the course of self-help, blood-vengeance,
be it by public authority; and this although there are laws that (as I just
remarked) 6 objectivize dolus [wrongful intent] and impose the deathSee especially David Daube, Roman Law: Linguistic, Social and Philosophical
Aspects (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 1969) 157-75.
6 See ibid., 164: "It is a dogma that, in dealing with homicide, not only does early
law equate the unwitting doer with the witting, but this course is taken from blindness
or indifference to what separates the two. In reality, full equation occurs much more
rarely than the prevalent view has it, and where it does occur it is a pis aller, resorted
to because of the insurmountable practical obstacles in the way of determining on
which side of the line a given case falls: by treating as a murderer, say, anyone who kills
by a direct blow or anyone who kills with a piece of iron, justice is done in the vast
majority of incidents though, now and then, an innocent person gets trapped. The
alternative would be for the law to abdicate altogether. In the Pentateuch both
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penalty, say, on killing by a direct blow. Not a single case: let that fact
sink in. 7
I repeat: the sources-Oriental, Greek, Roman-offer not one example
of an unintentional killer being killed. I do not, of course, count the cases
where the prevalent doctrine says, Ah yes, but he would have been killed
were it not for such-and-such special circumstances. I want to be shown
one instance where he is killed: surely a modest request. If the prevalent
view is right, there ought to be hundreds. 8

So ancient thought and practice did attend to intent, and
distinguished among the effects of actions--,-for example, death
brought about intentionally or not intentionally. The latter, of
course, includes death brought about accidentally or carelessly,
but also includes death brought about as a foreseen side effect
in carrying out a choice to do something else.
A similar understanding can be observed in modern, secular
legal thought. Legal thinkers influenced by utilitarianism's
characteristic denial of free choice often argue that the law's
typical concern with externally observable performances and
their consequences is justified by the purpose of reducing
overall net social harm. A notable element in this outlook is
the claim, launched by Bentham and vigorously defended by
some recent legal theorists, that consequences foreseen as
certain or highly probable are intended. But even the leading
proponents of this view have found themselves obliged to
accept that intention is a reality quite distinguishable, as a
specific kind of fact, from the "intent" which may, by a legal
fiction, be imputed to someone who acts or omits while being
aware-or in a position to be aware-that harm will very
probably be caused by the action or omission. And there are
stages-death to whoever kills by a direct blow and death to whoever kills with a piece
of iron-are preserved [footnote: 'Exodus, 21.12, Numbers, 35.16-in their original
setting, as yet unprovided with the reservations which in the text before us modify
them.']. The latter statute is part of a legislation avowedly concerned with confining
the rigor of the law to those who deserve it. But the former too is designed to get at
dolus [wrongful intent]-the dolus being objectivized, established by the external
situation."
7 Ibid., 165.
8 Ibid., 174.

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today important areas of law in which the fiction that
consequences foreseen as very probable are intended is simply
rejected or strictly contained. As the United States Supreme
Court noted in 1980 and reaffirmed in 1997, "The ...
common law of homicide often distinguishes ... between a
person who knows that another person will be killed as the
result of his conduct and a person who acts with the specific
purpose of taking another's life. " 9
To be sure, neither present-day law nor Christian teaching
and reflection deny or overlook that one is morally responsible
for outcomes of one's action that are outside one's intention.
The case of the drunk driver (case C) illustrates one way in
which side effects that are foreseen or should be foreseen and
have an impact on human well-being are morally significant
and not outside the acting person's responsibility. But that case
also indicates how accepting such outcomes, or the risk of such
outcomes, precisely as side effects, is subject to moral (or legal)
norms different from the moral (or legal) norms that bear on
intended outcomes. The woozy driver is not responsible for
the death in the way he would be if he chose (intended) to kill
the victim. His accepting, however knowingly and willingly,
of the risk to the victim is assessed under the moral and legal
norms of "negligence," not the moral and legal norms
forbidding intentional homicide.
To say that not all the moral criteria applicable to what one
chooses to do are applicable to accepting side effects is not to
say that the latter are always less serious or culpable. When a
9 United States v. Bailey 444 United States Reports

394 at 405 (1980) (judgment of
the Court) (emphasis added); the quoted proposition is reaffirmed in the more
extensive review in Vacco v. Quill 117 Supreme Court Reporter 2293 at 2299 ( 1997)
(judgment of the Court), which concludes with a quotation from an earlier judicial
opinion in a lower federal court: "When General Eisenhower ordered American
soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy, he knew that he was sending many American
soldiers to certain death .... His purpose, though, was to ... liberate Europe from the
Nazis." So he had no intent to kill Allied soldiers. The death of his soldiers was only
a foreseen side effect, reasonably accepted in accord with what Catholic theologians
have often called the principle of double effect (a "principle" to which the Supreme
Court's judgment in Vacca v. Quill alludes with apparent assent at 2301 n. 11).

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hospital doctor knows he must give a certain patient medication by midnight or she will die, but chooses to go out and
complete an extremely profitable business deal that must be
done by midnight (reasoning that no one will know he gave
the medication later provided he gives it before the patient
dies), he is guilty of manslaughter by very gross negligence.
And that homicide may well be a graver sin than (say) a storekeeper's killing a mobster who is subjecting her to extortion. 10
II
In describing and analyzing the cases set out in the
preceding section, we adopted the perspective of the acting
person or body. In morally evaluating human actions, one
must identify the action to be evaluated from that perspective
rather than from the perspective of an observer. Indeed, the
perspective of the acting person or body is to be taken even in
those contexts (such as case C) where the focus of analysis and
assessment is not intention to harm but rather some failure to
meet a standard such as the standard of due care or some
similar moral requirement.
Many theorists, even when discussing actions in the context
of moral assessment, do not adopt and steadily maintain the
perspective of the acting person, and many do not adopt it at
all. They consider actions, behavior, and outcomes from, so to
speak, the outside-from the perspective of a spectator-in
which primary or exclusive attention is given to causal
relationships. Such displacement or abandonment of the acting
person's deliberative perspective was common among Catholic
manualists of moral theology (see section III below). The
observer's perspective can be adopted in other ways, for
instance by trying to understand action by reference to "a

10 The moral evaluation of side effects is important and difficult, and not yet
sufficiently studied in Catholic moral theology. An effort to do some of the necessary
work is made in Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 3, Difficult Moral
Questions (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Herald Press, 1997), appendices 1 and 2.

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13

variety of factors," 11 or to various "contexts of meaning, " 12 or
to outcomes thought to be assessable by comparing the
proportions of human good and bad in them. This last
displacement of the perspective of the acting person is
characteristic of moralists referred to as "proportionalists" in
the encyclical Veritatis splendor. 13
It was appropriate for that encyclical, in the course of
rejecting proportionalism 14 as incompatible with Catholic
11 See John Finnis, "The Rights and Wrongs of Abortion" in The Rjghts and Wrongs
of Abortion, ed. Marshall Cohen, Thomas Nagel, and Thomas Scanlon (Princeton:
Princeton University, 1974), 105: "A variety of factors are appealed to explicitly or
implicitly in making a judgment that the bad effect is to count as intended-as-a-means."
In this article, written in 1972, Finnis's understanding of intention and action had not
reached the precision of, for example, his "The Act of the Person," in Persona verita
e morale: Atti del congresso internazionale di teologia morale (Roma, 7-12 aprile 1986)
(Rome: Citta Nuova, 1987), 159-75.
12 See, e.g., Jean Porter, "'Direct' and 'Indirect'
in Grisez's Moral Theory,"
Theological Studies 57 (1996): 631: "we think of them [scil. our actions] in terms of
wider contexts of meaning, some of which reflect the normal causal relationships
among different primitive acts, some of which are cultural constructs, and many of
which combine both kinds of considerations." Porter is right in thinking that societies
develop action concepts and language to pick out any human behavior that is
interesting for any of a wide variety of reasons. But those reasons often have little or
nothing to do with moral evaluation, and often focus upon observable units of behavior
picked out with little or no regard for the perspective of the acting person.
13 In previous writings we have criticized the accounts of action found among
proportionalists. See, e.g. , Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1,
Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 240 with 248-49
(nn. 5 and 13); John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth
(Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991 ), 77-78: "Christian
reflection on God and his holy will, and Christian reflection on the morality of human
choosing and doing" advance "decisively beyond the undifferentiated concept of
'cause,' replacing it with the act-analytical distinctions between choosing or intending
and permitting or accepting. As one reads through the writings of sophisticated
proportionalist moralists of the late twentieth century, one sees with amazement that
they everywhere lose their grip on the distinction. They have fallen back into the
undifferentiated problematic of 'causing' evils (including, of course, the Enlightenment
extension of 'cause' to include whatever one could have prevented but did not, a
concept incompatible with Christian understanding of divine holiness)."
14 The rejection of proportionalism in John Paul H's encyclical Veritatis splendor
does not depend upon the encyclical's description of it in nos. 74-76, but is found
rather in its formal (and repeated) condemnation of "the thesis, characteristic of
teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as

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faith, 15 to affirm the primacy of the internal perspective in the
understanding of action for the purposes of moral assessment.
Immediately following its formal statement of "the thesis,
characteristic of ... proportionalist theories," that is to be
rejected by Catholics, the encyclical says, "The primary and
decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human
act." 16 This statement recalls what was said in the previous
section of the encyclical:
The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the
"object" rationally chosen by the deliberate will . ... In order to be able to
grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore
necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person. 17

That last sentence is of decisive importance. It is
philosophically sound, 18 even if its roots, for the purposes of
morally evil according to its species-its 'object' -the deliberate choice of certain kinds
of behavior or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the
choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons
concerned" (no. 79; verbatim in no. 82). Notice that in this sentence "intention" is
used in the sense in which the acting person's end is distinguished from his or her
chosen means-the act's object, also described (indeed, defined) in no. 78 as the acting
person's "proximate end." In a wider sense of "intention," which we generally use,
both what one does and all the ends for the sake of which one does it are intended.
15 See Veritatis splendor no. 29 ("some trends of theological thinking and certain
philosophical affirmations are incompatible with revealed truth"). The pope's grounds
for his judgment that the theories dealt with in the encyclical, including
proportionalism, are incompatible with Catholic faith are to be found, e.g., at the end
of no. 52 and in the places where he repeatedly uses Scripture (see nos. 48, 78-81
quoting Romans 3:8 and 1 Cor. 6:9-10) to verify teachings with which dissenting
theories are incompatible. See also Germain Grisez, "Revelation versus Dissent," The
Tablet ( 16 Oct. 199 3): 1329-31, reprinted in John Wilkins, ed., Understanding Veritatis
Splendor (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1994), 1-8.
16 Veritatis splendor no. 79; likewise no. 82; seen. 14 above.
17 Veritatis splendor no. 78. The phrases omitted in this quotation
refer to the
"insightful analysis, still valid" in Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 18, a. 6.
18 See John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and Germain Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality
and Realism (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 292-93; Joseph
Boyle, "Who Is Entitled to Double Effect?" journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16
(1991): 486-92; John Finnis, "Intention and Side Effects," in Liability and
Responsibility: Essays in Law and Morals, ed. R. G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 32-64; idem, "Intention in Tort Law,"

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

15

its affirmation in an encyclical, are firmly embedded in
revelation's confirmation of the centrality of conscience, of the
heart, the "within" 19 from which come forth actions good and
bad.
The importance of the perspective of the acting person was
vividly emphasized in Aquinas's refutation, in one telling
paragraph, of two twelfth-century currents in moral theology
that, in different ways, failed to recognize the proper
significance of the object of the act understood from the
perspective of the acting person. The issues are so clearly
framed in that debate that it is worth summarizing. 20
In the second quarter of the twelfth century, Peter Abelard
had argued, ambiguously, that behavior is morally indifferent
and the morality of acts depends entirely on intention. He was
widely understood as denying that there are exceptionless,
non-tautologous negative norms. Representatives of the
in David Owen, ed., Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 229-48.
Some people say that the authors of this article, or at least one or two of them, are
significantly responsible for the content of Veritatis splendor (see, e.g., Richard A.
McCormick, S.j., "Some Early Reactions to Veritatis Splendor," Theological Studies 55
(1994): 486: "I (along with others) see [Finnis's] hands at work in Chapter 2 [of the
encyclical]"). We take the opportunity here to say: (1) None of us was at any stage
asked to draft anything for the document; (2) Grisez (but not Finnis) was among those
asked for suggestions in November 1987, and was asked to comment on the whole first
draft in April 1989 and on the second draft of part 2 in January 1990, and Finnis
assisted him in preparing his comments, but after his response dated 6 February 1990
Grisez was not asked to do anything more, and (like Finnis) had no communication
about the work with anyone involved in it during the subsequent 42 months before its
signing on 6 August 1993; (3) in making suggestions and comments, we very firmly
adhered to our view that nothing peculiar to our thought should appear in an
encyclical; (4) Grisez did propose language on a number of points, but virtually none
of this language and few of his substantive suggestions-and of these none involved in
our disputes with dissenting Catholic moralists-appear in the encyclical; (5) while
there are some important points in the encyclical that more or less coincide with views
defended by Grisez (notably the treatment of faith as the fundamental option) or by all
of us (notably the teaching about fundamental goods), we did not propose that the
encyclical make these points and were pleasantly surprised to find them when the
encyclical appeared.
19 See Mark 7:20-23
20 See also Finnis, Moral Absolutes, 65-67; Aquinas, 165-66.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

tradition responded. Within a decade or two, Peter Lombard's
Sentences attacked Abelard's position by contrasting it with
passages from Augustine's treatises against lying, interpreted
by Lombard as teaching that the acts specified in the
exceptionless negative norms of Jewish and Christian tradition
are called wrong "in themselves" (mala in se) precisely
because-Lombard contended-their wrongfulness does not
come from the purpose, will, intention, or motivation of the
person who does them.
In a single paragraph Aquinas refutes both Abelard (as
widely understood) and Peter Lombard. There are indeed, he
says, acts each of which is wrong in itself and cannot in any
way be rightly done (de se malus, qui nullo modo bene fieri
potest). But such acts are wrongful precisely by reason of the
acting person's will, intention, purpose. When I do such an
act, there may be nothing wrong with my further intentions,
my voluntas intendens, my ultimate purpose (finis ultimus), for
example, to give money to the poor. What is wrongful (and
what is picked out for exclusion by the relevant negative
norm) is, rather, my choice, my electio or voluntas eligens, my
immediate purpose (obiectum proximum; finis proximus), for
example, to forge this document. The goodness or badness,
rightness or wrongness, of my "exterior act" (i.e., everything
I do to carry out my choice) depends on the goodness or
badness, rightness or wrongness, of all my relevant willing:
intending ends, choosing means, and accepting side effects. 21
Aquinas's references to "proximate" and "further" objects
clarify the issue, both substantially and terminologically (and
are echoed in Veritatis splendor). Terminologically one
can-and Aquinas not rarely does-call both proximate and
21 II Sent., d. 40, a. 2, c and ad 2-3; see De Malo, q. 2, a. 2, ad 8. Note Aquinas's
thesis that "because the exterior act stands to the will as obiect, the interior act of will
has its goodness from the exterior-though not, of course, from the exterior act as a
performance but from the exterior act precisely as intended and willed" ("quia actus
exterior comparatur ad voluntatem sicut objectum, inde est quod hanc bonitatem
voluntatis actus interior ab exteriori habet, non quidem ex eo secundum quod est
exercitus sed secundum quod est intentus et volitus").

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

17

remote objects "intended" or "the intention(s). " 22 But equally
one can mark-and Aquinas more often does mark-the
distinction between proximate and further objects by calling
the former the "chosen object" (or simply the "object") and the
latter the "intended end" (or simply the "intention"). The
reason why both the broader and the narrower senses of
"intention" are appropriate is that the distinction between
proximate and further objectives is highly relative. Every
means one adopts in the pursuit of some end will also be an
end whenever there is a prior means-one closer in to the
agent. Take Aquinas's standard example: in the sequence going
to the cupboard, to get herbs, to mix a potion, to slim, to stay
healthy, etc., each element is both an end relative to any
preceding element and a means relative to any further
element. 23 Speaking of "intention" in a broader sense, one can
say that each element or phase in the sequence is intended (or
an intention of the acting person). Or one can speak of
"intention" in a narrower sense, and distinguish closer-in from
further-out ends, reserving the term "intention" for the latter.
Veritatis splendor uses "intention" in the narrower way to
signify purposes beyond that object which "is the proximate
end of a deliberate act of willing on the part of the acting
person." 24
In a brief passage (not unlike that in which Aquinas deals at
once with Abelard and Lombard), the encyclical rejects both
E.g., STh 11-11, q. 64, a. 7; In Matt. c. 7 ad v. 17 [no. 661]. The distinction
between the two senses of "intention" is clearly articulated in De Malo, q. 2, a. 2, ad
8, as is the applicability of the broader sense in which means qua chosen are included,
along with end(s), in "my intention."
23 V Metaphys., lect. 2, n. 9 [no. 77l]:"lt is not only the ultimate end, for the sake
of which the agent acts, that is called end in relation to what precedes it: each of the
intermediate means which are between the primary agent and the ultimate end is called
an end in relation to what precedes it" (omnia intermedia quae sunt inter primum agens
et ultimum finem dicuntur finis respectu praecedentium). See also II Phys., lect. 5, n.
6 [no. 181]; STh 1-11, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3; John Finnis, "Object and Intention in Moral
Judgments according to St Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist 55 (1991): 10-14 (revised
in Finalite et intentionnalite: Doctrine Thomiste et perspectives modernes, ed. Jacques
Follon and James McEvoy [Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1992], 134-38).
24 Veritatis splendor, no. 78.
22

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

proportionalist overlooking of the specifying significance of
object and a misunderstanding rather like Lombard's of the
actions prohibited by the tradition's exceptionless moral
norms:
By the object of a given moral act, then, one cannot mean a process or an
event of the merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability
to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. Rather, that
object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision which determines the
act of willing on the part of the acting person. 25

Employing the contrast between a "proximate" end (object)
and a further end (intention)-the same contrast Aquinas
employs in his critique of Abelard and Lombard-the
encyclical then articulates its central affirmation: it is possible,
as revelation and tradition teach, "to qualify as morally evil
according to its species-its 'object' -the deliberate choice of
certain kinds of behavior or specific acts, apart from a
consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or
the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all
persons concerned. " 26
Here, as we said, the encyclical uses the term "intention" in
its narrower sense, as contrasted with "object" (as end is
contrasted with means). But since almost every means can be
at the same time an end relative to means still more proximate
to the acting person's behavior, the broader use of "intention"
to include both means and end is also well established in the
tradition. This broader sense is particularly common, and
apposite, when the issue for moral analysis is not whether
something good is being done for bad motives (or, as in
Veritatis splendor, no. 79, something bad for good motives),
but whether an outcome is intended-is part of the chosen
(adopted) proposal-or rather is a side effect. Since that is the
main issue in questions about the permissibility of using force,
even lethal force, to defend oneself or others, it is not
25 Ibid.
26

Ibid., no. 79; verbatim in no. 82.

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

19

surprising to find Aquinas framing his solution to that problem
in terms of "intention" rather than "object:"
Nothing prevents a single act having two effects, only one of which is
intended [in intentione] while the other is a side effect [praeter
intentionem: outside the intention]. Now: morally significant acts get their
species [recipiunt speciem] according to what is intended, not what is a
side effect (since the latter is incidental/collateral [per accidens]) . ... 27 So,
from the act of one who is engaged in self-defense there can follow two
effects: one, the preservation of the person's own life, and the other the
killing of the attacker. 28

But the point is in no way limited to questions of defense of
self or others. Quite generally: "morally significant acts get
their species [species] not from what happens as a side effect
[praeter intentionem ], but from precisely what it is that one
intends [per se in ten tum]. " 29

III
Moral theologians in recent centuries intensively discussed
the legitimacy of bringing about effects that it would be wrong
to intend. They tried to identify conditions under which an
act's bad effects would not be part of the act considered as a
chosen means. But in trying to do thii;, they unfortunately
failed to adopt and consistently maintain the perspective of the
acting person. Rather than focusing on the precise object of
the acting person's choice, they focused on cause-effect
relationships identifiable by outside observers. So, in trying to
explicate the requirement that one's chosen means include
nothing bad, they reduced means to cause and said that any
27

Here there is a back reference, apparently

to STh I-II, q. 72, a. 1 and II-II, q. 43,

a. 3.
28 STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7. The fundamental importance of this article is suggested by
CCC 2263. See further n. 66 below.
29 STh II-II, q. 150, a. 2. Even more generally, "what is per se in human acts and
conduct is what is intended [secundum intentionem]," and what is incidental (per
accidens) is what is a side effect (praeter intentionem) (STh II-II, q. 37, a. 1; II-II, q. 38,
a. 1; cf. II-II, q. 73, a. 8).

20

JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

bad effect of an act must not be a cause of the good effect(s)
for the sake of which it is done. For example, in his treatment
of double effect, Henry Davis, S.J., at the outset of his manual,
says:
It is permissible to set a cause in motion, in spite of its foreseen evil effect,

provided ... secondly ... that a good effect also issues from the act, at
least as immediately and directly as the evil effect, that is to say, provided
that the evil effect does not first arise, and from it, the good effect. " 30

This was a mistake. That a bad effect issues from an act more
immediately and directly than a good effect, or precedes and
causes a good effect, does not by itself make the bad effect a
means to the good. A heroic soldier who throws himself on a
grenade chooses to use his body as a shield so that the
shrapnel will not kill his fellows. Yet he does not choose his
own destruction as a means, even though the effect of
throwing himself on the grenade-his body's being destroyed
as it absorbs or slows down the shrapnel-is more immediate
and direct than, and indeed causes, the good effect of the
grenade's doing little or no injury to his fellows. More
humdrum examples of the distinction between what one
intends (and chooses as a means) and what one causes but only
accepts as a side effect are given above, as cases A and B, with
further refinements in cases C through G. The contemporary
magisterium relies upon the distinction in a number of its
teachings. In Evangelium vitae, for example, it is the basis for
distinguishing euthanasia from (1) refusal or forgoing of
extraordinary or disproportionate means of treatment, and (2)
the use of painkillers "even when the result is ... a shortening
of life," on the basis that "in such a case, death is not willed or
sought." 31
30 Henry Davis, S.J., Moral and Pastoral Theology 1 (4'h ed.; London: Longman,
1946), 13-14.
31 Evangelium vitae, no. 65, citing inter alia Pius XII, "Address to an International
Group of Physicians" (24 Feb. 1957) Ill, AAS 49 (1957): 147. Likewise CCC 2279.
Similarly Vacca v. Quill 117 Supreme Court Reporter 2293 at 2301 n. 11, approving
New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, When Death Is Sought: Assisted

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

21

It will be helpful to consider closely the emergency
obstetrical procedure usually referred to as craniotomy. Taken
by itself, the word "craniotomy" strictly means cutting the
cranium. 32 But the procedure in question is an operation that,
at least at some times in the past, was thought to be medically
indicated when a baby's head was too large to allow normal
delivery: instruments could be used to crush the baby's head
(perhaps after emptying its skull) so as to allow the child's
removal from the birth canal and the survival of the mother
who would otherwise perish in childbirth along with her child.
In 1884, the Holy Office stated with papal approval that one
cannot safely teach in Catholic educational institutions that
this procedure is morally permissible; in 1889 it restated this,
adding that one cannot safely teach that "any surgical
operation directly lethal to the fetus or to the pregnant
mother" is morally permissible. 33
That craniotomy is often thought to be direct killing and to
be morally unacceptable is readily understandable. A number
of points can be made to express or reinforce this thought: (1)
Doing a craniotomy surely just is killing the baby. Anyone can
see what is going on: the baby's destruction and death is
observed, not merely foreseen. And (2) killing the baby by
crushing its skull does not, itself, help the mother. Saving her
Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context (1994) at 163: "It is widely recognized
that the provision of pain medication is ethically and professionally acceptable even
when the treatment may hasten the patient's death, if the medication is intended to
alleviate pain and severe discomfort, not to cause death."
32 "Craniotomy" can refer to very different kinds of act. At least since 1945, in
medically advanced environments, the only obstetrical craniotomies are those
commonly called "partial-birth abortion," where the operation's purpose is precisely
to kill the unborn or partially born child. Those are not the operations discussed as
problem cases for Catholic moral theology or doctrine, though reflection on the
differences between partial-birth abortion and the obstetrical crises discussed in
Catholic theology would shed some light on the proper description, understanding, and
moral assessment of the crisis cases under discussion here.
33 DS 3258/1889-90. In 1895 the Holy Office stated, with the pope's approval, that
"in accordance with the rulings of 1884 and 1889" one "cannot safely undertake"
procedures which, to save the life of the mother, seek the premature expulsion of the
fetus even if the intention is that the fetus be delivered if possible alive although too
premature to survive (DS 3298/1890a).

22

JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

depends on the further procedure of removing the baby's
corpse from the birth canal. Nor (3) can the killing be said to
be unintentional. If someone says to the surgeon "You're
killing the baby," the surgeon cannot credibly reply "I don't
mean to be doing that" or "I'm not doing it on purpose," as he
can say credibly if removing a gravid cancerous uterus.
Moreover (4) in any other context than this obstetrical crisis,
the same kind of behavior would be intentionally killing the
baby-what is nowadays called "partial-birth abortion." (5)
This kind of behavior never is done to help the baby. (6) It is
repugnant, horrible, and (7) contrary to Church teaching.
Though plausible, these arguments are not sound, and each
of them can be refuted.
(1) Considering the behavior and its results as an event, or
sequence of events, or set of causes and effects in the natural
world, observers can readily see craniotomy to be killing the
baby and rightly describe it as doing so directly. But Veritatis
splendor teaches that it is wrong to consider behavior and its
results in that way when carrying out moral reflection and
seeking to determine what kind of human act is or was being
deliberated about, chosen, and done. "By the object of a given
moral act, one cannot mean a process or an event of the
merely physical order, to be assessed on the basis of its ability
to bring about a given state of affairs in the outside world. " 34
34 Veritatis splendor, no. 78. As no. 79 makes clear, the morally relevant species of
the act is determined by-indeed, is essentially equivalent to-its object. There is no
morally relevant "nature" of the act other than the species so determined. So William
E. May, "The Management of Ectopic Pregnancies: A Moral Analysis," in The Fetal
Tissue Issue: Medical and Ethical Aspects, ed. Peter J. Cataldo and Albert S.
Moraczewski, O.P. (Braintree, Mass.: The Pope John Center, 1994), 141, is mistaken
in thinking that an act-as distinct from a piece of behavior considered as a physical
event-can be "one which of its very nature kills a person" if killing is not included
within the proposal adopted by the acting person and so within that person's object.
May's assertion that "if I adopt by choice the proposal to crush the skull and brain of
an infant I simply can not ... not intend the baby's death" (ibid.) is simply unsupported
by argument and, in context, a mere petitio principii. His equivalent assertion that
when my proposal is to blow out someone's brains "I can not reasonably claim that I
did not intend, i.e., choose, to kill that person ... [or] that I was adopting by choice
a proposal to stop an unprovoked attack, i.e. to defend myself by an act of measured

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

23

As Aquinas regularly puts it, the species of a human act, which
(when measured by reason's requirements) settles the moral
character of the act as good or bad, right or wrong, is not its
species in genere naturae (in the order of nature) but its species
in genere moris (in the order of human deliberating and
choosing). 35 To be faithful to the tradition and to the contemporary magisterium, it is necessary to get beyond one-sided
"common-sense" accounts of "what is being done"-accounts
in which what can be seen, and factors such as causal
sequences, are given an unreflective priority over the realities
illustrated in section I above, realities that are also, as we saw
there, recognizable by common-sense, when matters are
viewed from the perspective of the acting person. In the wider
secular debate, one-sided appeals to common-sense are
regularly made to deride the position, affirmed by Popes Pius
XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, that distinguishes between
administering analgesics in order to suppress pain while
accepting the hastening of death as a side effect, and
administering perhaps the very same dose to suppress pain by
terminating life. The rejection of this and other similar
intention-focused distinctions frequently appears in arguments
for euthanasia and assisting suicide.
(2) It is true that crushing the baby's skull does not of itself
help the mother, and that to help her the surgeon must carry
out additional further procedures (remove the baby's body
from the birth canal). But many surgical procedures provide
no immediate benefit and by themselves are simply destructive:
removing the top of someone's skull, stopping someone's
heart, and so forth. Proportionalist critics of the tradition
frequently claim that all these are cases in which doing evil is
obviously justifiable as the means to a good end. But when any
force" (ibid.) is contrary to the clear sense of STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7 and to the
implications of Veritatis splendor, nos. 78 and 79, as well as of CCC (rev. ed.) nos.
2263-67 (seen. 66 below).
35 See e.g. II Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 2; II Sent., d. 40, q. 1, a. 1, corp. and ad 4; II
Sent., d. 40, q. 1, a. 4, ad 2; II Sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 1; STh I-II, q. 20, a. 3, ad 1; STh
I-II, q. 20, a. 6; De Malo, q. 2, a. 4, ad 7; De Malo, q. 7, a. 3. See further Finnis,
"Object and Intention," 16-24; Finalite et intentionnalite, 140-46.

24

JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

such surgical procedure, including the obstetrical-crisis
craniotomy, is considered not as a mere sequence of
movements but as a human act formed by the adoption of a
proposal, its moral species becomes clear. (We will say more
about this in section IV below.)
(3) It is true that a surgeon removing a gravid cancerous
uterus might credibly say "I don't mean to be killing the baby"
or "I'm not killing the baby on purpose." Because craniotomy
immediately causes the destruction of the baby with impressive
physical directness, a surgeon performing a craniotomy would
not be likely to say the same things. Still, a surgeon who
performed a craniotomy and could soundly analyze the action,
resisting the undue influence of physical and causal factors that
would dominate the perception of observers, could rightly say
"No way do I intend to kill the baby" and "It is no part of my
purpose to kill the baby." Of course, the lethal damage done
to the baby by a craniotomy, being foreseen and voluntarily
accepted, can be called "deliberate" and/or "intentional" in
various uses of those words. But when the question is whether
bringing about that lethal damage violates the commandment
and moral norm that exceptionlessly excludes killing the
innocent, the fact that bringing it about can in those senses be
called intentional and deliberate is irrelevant. What matters is
whether the killing is brought about as an end sought
(obviously not) or as a chosen means-in other words, whether
it is the object, in the sense defined in Veritatis splendor, of the
act of the surgeon who performs the craniotomy. 36
(4) Craniotomy might well be physically indistinguishable
from "partial-birth abortion." But the proposals adopted by
the two kinds of choices, and thus the objects of the two
procedures, are entirely different. In partial-birth abortion
36 That

the relevant question concerns what is intended as an end or chosen as a
means is clear from the Church's teaching about a kind of act that clearly does violate
the norm excluding all killing of the innocent, namely direct abortion; see Evangelium
vitae no. 62 ("Pius XII excludes all direct abortion, i.e., every act tending directly to
destroy human life in the womb 'whether such destruction is intended as an end or only
as a means to an end'."); likewise CCC 2271.

"DIRECr AND "INDIRECT"

25

done for any of the purposes for which elective abortions are
done, the object of the act is to kill the baby before the killing
would be classed as infanticide. In craniotomy done for the
purpose of saving at least the mother's life, the object of the
act is to reduce the size of the baby's head so that the baby or
its corpse can be removed from the birth canal. No partialbirth abortion would ever be performed if the baby were
already dead. If the baby stuck in the birth canal were already
dead, craniotomy would always be performed. This difference
is an important sign of the difference between the two kinds of
operations considered as human acts in the morally significant
sense of that term.
(5) Though a craniotomy of the kind we have been
discussing, in which the contents of the skull are emptied so
that it can be crushed, is not a procedure that could be done
to help the baby, there could be a form of craniotomy in
which, though the usual outcome is the death of the baby, the
surgeon nevertheless hopes that cutting and squeezing the skull
without emptying its contents will not result in the baby's
death. This, too, is a sign that the fact that craniotomy
normally results in the baby's death does not suffice to settle
what is or is not the object and therefore the moral species of
the act. 37
(6) That craniotomy is repugnant and horrible is unquestionable. It is also unquestionably horrible and repugnant for
doctors and nurses to stand by as both a mother and her baby
die while they might be doing a craniotomy to increase the
probability that at least one would survive. But in neither case
can their repugnance and horror help them judge what they
truly ought to do. If they correctly analyze the two options,
they will see that the norm exceptionlessly excluding
37 That fact is relevant in a consideration
of another important question: even if a
craniotomy can be done without violating the commandment and moral norm that
exceptionlessly excludes intentional killing, isn't it unfair to the baby, and as such
wrongful, and therefore homicidal? We do not consider that question in this paper,
since it is not settled by what the acting person intends as an end or chooses as a means.
The question is briefly considered in Grisez, Living a Christian Life, 503.

26

JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

intentional killing does not exclude the option of performing
a craniotomy, and that their judgment should accordingly be
determined by considerations of fairness to both the mother
and the baby. 38
(7) Interpreting the Church's documents with precision, one
finds that the Church has never taught that craniotomy is
intentional killing or that performing a craniotomy is morally
wrong. The three documents referring to craniotomy were
responses published by the Holy Office, two of them with
explicit papal approval, to questions raised by individual
bishops. The first two questions (1884 and 1889) concerned
craniotomy, but the response asserted only that it could not be
safely taught in Catholic educational institutions to be licit.
The third question (1895) concerned only premature
expulsion of a nonviable fetus, and the response asserted only
that such operations could not be safely done; and indicated
that this response was in accordance with the earlier decrees
that did refer to craniotomy.
To say that something cannot be safely taught or even that
it cannot be safely done is not to assert that it is immoral.
Rather, it is to provide pastoral guidance for the faithful
38 Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Aquinas and the Theory of Action
(Edinburgh: T & T. Clark, 1998), 204-5 n. 17, says: "Thomas's view would allow us
to suppose that the surgeon is not aiming at the fetus's death, not crushing the skull in
order that the fetus die. But-also on Thomas's view-regardless of his further aim, his
act is aimed at producing the crushed skull of an innocent person; and surely it is to
that extent
How unjust is it? Well, what is the value of an intact skull? The
person's life depends on it." But Brock fails to show that the object of the surgeon's
chosen act is better described as "producing the crushed skull of an innocent person"
than as "cranium-narrowing for the purposes of removal from the birth-canal"-a
description he set aside as "a merely abstract description" or "redescribing." (See below
n. 47 and text at n. 63.) Still, Brock seems to be perhaps conceding, sub silentio, that
the craniotomy need not be excluded by the exceptionless moral norm against killing
the innocent, and therefore letting the assessment of its moral character rest on an
assessment of its fairness, its justice. To support his view that it is unjust he quotes
Aquinas STh 1-11, q. 73, a. 8; but this quotation is not to the point, since it deals only
with the way in which consequences, even though unintended, can aggravate the
gravity of what is already judged to be wrongful. Note that whether and to what extent
the life of the unborn child "depends on" not being subjected to the craniotomy is far
from clear in the obstetric emergency we are considering-a situation in which the
child is expected to die no matter what is done.

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

27

fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a teacher, and for the
formation of one's conscience. Receiving this advice, faithful
and prudent teachers and doctors would have realized that,
though craniotomy might possibly be morally acceptable, their
moral responsibility was to proceed on the assumption that it
was not. But a good deal of pastoral guidance wisely given in
the nineteenth century could not be rightly followed today.
These responses of the Holy Office effectively closed the
debate among theologians of those days. However, since the
Holy Office did not assert that craniotomy is immoral, its
responses cannot ground a sound argument against a position
such as ours, 39 based as it is upon an understanding of action
thoroughly in line with the tradition and the contemporary
magisterium-an understanding not articulated with sufficient
clarity by nineteenth-century theologians. 40
Still, although those Holy Office responses refrain from
asserting the immorality of the procedures in question, the
Church's teaching elsewhere, especially in the twentieth
century, makes it perfectly clear that direct killing of the
unborn, even to save the life of the mother, is always wrong.
We regard this teaching as a truth of faith. 41 Our position is
that a doctor could do a craniotomy, even one involving
emptying the baby's skull, without intending to kill the
baby-that is, without the craniotomy being a direct killing. 42
39 Our position is shared by some theologians completely faithful to the Church's
teaching; see, e.g., Marcellino Zalba, "'Nihil prohibet unius actus esse duos effectus'
(Summa theologiae 2-2, q. 64, a. 7) Numquid applicari potest principium in abortu
therapeutico?" inAtti del Congresso Internazionale (Roma-Napoli-17124 Aprile 1974)
Tommaso D'Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, vol. 5, L 'Agire Morale (Napoli: Edizioni
Domenicane ltaliane, 1977), 567-68.
40 See, e.g., J. Waffelaert,
"De Abortu et Embryotomia," Nouvelle Revue
16 (1884): 160-79, especially the exegesis attempted at 165-71 of STh 1111, q. 64 a. 7.
41 See Germain Grisez, "The Definability of the Proposition: The Intentional Killing
of an Innocent Human Being is Always Grave Matter," in Persona Verita e Morale, 291313.
42 Of course, even when bringing about a person's death is not direct killing, doing
so is often gravely wrong. We do not deny that there might be reasons for condemning
the practice of craniotomy other than that it is direct killing. Faithful Catholics who
reject our account of intention and judge that craniotomy, or any other action, is direct

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

Besides the seven points we have now considered, an
argument has recently been proposed by Kevin L. Flannery,
S.J., that "there is positive reason not to separate off" the
death of the baby from "the compass of the means" in the
craniotomy. 43 Flannery, like virtually all Catholic moralists,
holds that there is no direct killing in a case where, to save the
life of the pregnant mother, her cancerous uterus is removed
(hysterectomy) along with the unborn baby within it, with the
inevitable result that the baby promptly dies (perhaps many
weeks earlier than it otherwise would). He also accepts that
"the bringing about of the death of the fetus is not conceptually related to the performance of the craniotomy" and
that "there is logical independence of this sort between the
crushing of a skull and the fetus's death. " 44 But he contends
that "the two cases, craniotomy and hysterectomy, have
different logical structures. "45 He points to two ways in which
the cases differ "logically."
First, the hysterectomy is performed "upon the woman,"
the craniotomy "upon the fetus." We reply: this difference
does not show that craniotomy is direct killing. A counterexample makes this clear. All those acts of self-defense of the
kind that Aquinas shows need involve no intent to kill and no
direct killing are nonetheless performed "upon" the person
killed. 46 And in general, the fact that an act is done to (or
"upon") X for the sake ofY, or to Y for the sake of Y, provides
killing certainly ought to form their consciences, in relation to such actions, by the
Church's teaching that all direct killing of the innocent is gravely wrong. And, even if
certain that a possible action would not be a direct killing, all faithful Catholics should
form their consciences in the light of faith with regard to the requirements of both
justice and mercy.
43 K. Flannery, "What is Included in a Means to an End?," Gregorianum 74 (1993):

510££.
Ibid., 506.
Ibid., 511.
46 In saying this we in no way suggest that the baby in the craniotomy is an unjust
aggressor or any other kind of aggressor. (Indeed, we deny that the unborn baby is ever
an aggressor.) Aquinas's analysis of the intention in self-defense does not depend upon
there being an unjust aggression.
44

45

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

29

no criterion for distinguishing between what is intended and
what is accepted as a side effect.
Flannery's second "logical" distinction: whereas in the
hysterectomy "the death of the fetus stands outside [the]
description" of the act as "a hysterectomy on a pregnant
woman in order that she might regain her health," in the
craniotomy, "in order to separate off from the compass of the
means the killing of the fetus, it is necessary to redescribe the
act of craniotomy, calling it a cranium-narrowing operation."
Such separating off or redescription is, he says, "artificial. " 47
This argument also fails. What counts for moral analysis is not
what may or may not be included in various descriptions that
might be given by observers, or even by acting persons
reflecting on what they have done, but what is or is not
included within a proposal developed in deliberation for
possible adoption by choice. Only the truthful articulation of
that proposal can be a description that specifies an act for the
purposes of moral analysis. Our contention, which Flannery
fails to discuss, much less refute, is that when someone chooses
to do a craniotomy on a baby to save his or her mother's life
in an obstetrical predicament, the morally relevant description
of the act would not include killing the baby.
As we have shown in section II above, the act analysis we
have just employed in refuting Flannery's argument is not
simply a philosophical and anthropological view peculiar to
us, but is rooted in the tradition, employed by the
magisterium, and explicitly taught in Veritatis splendor.
Flannery's insufficient grip on that act analysis is indicated by
47 Flannery, "What is Included in a Means to an End?," 511-12. May, "The
Management of Ectopic Pregnancies," 142, expresses his agreement with Flannery's
article and expresses the thought that "Grisez and Boyle are really redescribingthe act
in terms of its intended (in the sense of future, as distinct from present intentions}
consequences" (ibid., 140). In both contexts, the talk of "redescription" amounts to no
more than a rhetorical means of asserting, without argument, that the description of
the act for which Grisez and Boyle have argued, rearticulated with further argument
in the present article, is unacceptable. Pace May, it is not true that "Grisez and Boyle
prefer to call [craniotomy] a 'cranium-narrowing' operation." Its physical character as
a lethal crushing and emptying is not evaded or softened in our discussions.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

his claim, in a subsequent article, that if a hysterectomy on the
cancerous womb is performed needlessly early, it "becomes not
merely performing a hysterectomy but also a direct killing. " 48
This is a significant confusion. 49 Performing a hysterectomy to
save a woman from a slow-growing cancer, when her baby
could have been saved by waiting a few weeks without much
greater risk to her, is seriously wrongful killing inasmuch as it
is unjust to the baby, and so can be called homicidal. But the
injustice does not transform that homicide into direct killing;
the baby's death is a side effect just as it would be if the
operation were being done later and were justified.
It is worth adding another example of confusion about
intention, object, proposals, and directness in Flannery's
recent writings: Where someone puts a bomb on an aircraft in
order to collect insurance on the aircraft itself (not life
insurance on its passengers or crew), Flannery rightly holds
that "it is not part of this proposal that anyone be killed," and
that, unlike Mr. G who walks into a restaurant and shoots
down Mr. H "because he wants him dead," "the aircraft
bomber's intentions ... extend only as far as destruction of
the aircraft. " 50 But at the same time he says that "both the
aircraft bomber and Mr. G. intend death" and both of them
"intend to violate" the basic human good of life, because
"destruction of the aircraft ... in fact means death for the
passengers." 51 The two sets of statements contradict each
other. What is true is that the passengers' death, being outside
the proposal, is not intended by the bomber; and that the
48 Kevin L. Flannery, "Natural Law mens rea versus the Benthamite Tradition,"
American Journal of Jurisprudence 40 (1995): 395.
49 Flannery is also inaccurate in stating (ibid.) that "in Thomistic terms, the end
(which a person intends) specifies the act, but it is not part of the substance of the act
[Summa Theologiae, 1-11, q. 7, a. 3]: it is not part of what the person is doing. It is 'a
sort of adjunct end.' [aliquis finis adiunctus- ... 1-11, q. 7 a. 3]." But in STh 1-11, q. 7,
a. 3, ad 3, Aquinas does not say that an act's specifying end is "adjunct" (what Flannery
calls "not part of the act's substance"); rather he says that adjunct ends are to be
contrasted with specifying ends.
so Flannery, "Natural Law mens rea versus the Benthamite Tradition," 393, 392,
396.
51 Ibid., 396.

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

31

bomber's willingness to cause their deaths, and his doing so,
is nevertheless gravely wrong. A soldier who leaps on a handgrenade to save his buddy also expects that this "in fact
means" death for himself, but does not on that account intend
to violate the basic good of human life, for (as we noted at the
beginning of section III) he is not choosing to bring about his
death.

IV
Jean Porter has recently devoted an article to arguing that
the account of action and intention developed by Grisez (and
the other authors of the present article) fails to provide a
cogent account of "the distinction between direct and indirect
action." "His applications of the distinction," she says,
"apparently reflect prior moral judgments which the
distinction serves to justify after the fact. "52
Porter gives an apparently detailed and careful statement of
Grisez's account of what is a means (i.e., what is "directly"
chosen and intended) rather than a side effect (i.e., what is
only "indirectly" willed and done) or an end (i.e., the further
intention[s] of the chooser). But she considers that his account
"is spelled out most fully" in an article published in 1970, 53
and that a key to his understanding of means is a concept
important in that article, "indivisibility of performance." The
bulk of her article is devoted, in one way or another, to
arguments that attempt to show the unsatisfactoriness of
indivisibility of performance as a "criterion" of the unity of a
human act to be morally evaluated (618) and/or a "criterion
for distinguishing between direct and indirect harms" (627).
But "indivisibility of performance" has not been used by Grisez
52 Jean Porter, '"Direct' and 'Indirect' in Grisez's Moral Theory," Theological
Studies 57 (1996): 612. (Parenthetical numbers in the text below signify page numbers
in her article.) In n. 4 she states that the views expressed in the writings of Boyle and
Finnis on these matters are not significantly different from Grisez's.
53 Germain Grisez, "Toward a Consistent Natural-Law Ethics of Killing," American
Journal of Jurisprudence 15 (1970): 88, 85.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

in any of his writings on action since 1970, and it plays no
part whatever in any of the work on act analysis on which we
have collaborated. Though its irrelevance to our understanding of intention and action will have been evident to many
careful readers of our work since 1970, it would have been
helpful had we stated explicitly, somewhere, that the appeal to
"indivisibility of performance" in the 1970 article was a false
step caused by failure to appreciate the decisive significance of
"the perspective of the acting person" and of the proposal an
acting person develops in deliberation as a possibility for
choice.
Porter says something true and important in her critique of
indivisibility of performance. In the 1970 article Grisez said
that "The very act of crushing and removing the baby, an act
in fact destructive of its life, saves the mother from otherwise
perhaps inevitable death. " 54 But as Porter rightly notes, the
performance of the craniotomy is divisible: "if the doctor were
to walk away immediately after crushing the head of the child,
the woman would almost certainly still die"(629). 55 This
divisibility-and its irrelevance-is implicit in our discussion
of craniotomy in section III above: the baby's death is a side
effect of changing the dimensions of its skull, which is the
means to the further actions that save the mother's life; and no
side effect of a means is part of the means. 56
What should be said about Porter's central claim, that our
analysis of action lacks objectivity, and is controlled by prior
moral judgments derived from "other considerations" (631)?
Her position is that the analysis common among postIbid., 94.
ss Joseph Lombardi, "Obstetrical Dilemmas and the Principle of Double Effect,"
American journal of jurisprudence 3 7 ( 1992): 205-9, also notes that doing a craniotomy
does not by itself save the mother's life and that further actions are required, and infers
that killing the baby necessarily is a bad means to the good end of saving the mother.
But Lombardi refers not to Grisez's mistake about indivisibility of performance but to
Boyle's mistake of denying that further actions are needed to save the mother: see
Joseph Boyle, "Double Effect and a Certain Type of Embryotomy," Irish Theological
Quarterly 44 (1977): 307.
s6 See also Grisez, Living a Christian Life (1993), 502-3.
-'4

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

33

Tridentine moralists (see sec. III above) has an advantage over
ours, and that their assimilation of cause-effect with meansend "provided an objective basis for assessing the intention of
the agent" (620).
There is a sense of "objective" that lends plausibility to her
claim. Cause and effect in the physical world are observable.
So, if killing is understood simply as bringing about death, one
can observe John killing Mary just as one can observe a cat
killing a mouse. But, as we have explained above, unless one
adopts and steadily maintains the perspective of the acting
person, one cannot provide or even recognize the only
description of a moral act that is morally relevant and true,
and so morally objective. Therefore, the objectivity Porter
considers appropriate is not even morally relevant.
It is easy to understand why this irrelevant objectivity is
invoked by Porter and many others. Though observers can
often infer in some respects the morally objective description
of another's act, his or her proposal never can be an
observable object. So people with what Bernard Lonergan calls
a naive extroverted consciousness are always likely to think
that the authentic objectivity of human acts is not really
objective, and that the objectivity required for act analysis
must be derived from external observations of causes and
effects, or other factors entirely accessible to any and every
observer.
Accordingly, Porter thinks that our distinction between
means and side effects is merely subjective because it is not
based on the sequence of cause and effects ("the causal
structure of the act"):
Without some such basis, the agent's intention could be described in terms
of whatever could be said to be the agent's purpose or motive in acting. In
that case it would be difficult to see how the doctrine of double effect
would rule anything out, since any act can be said to be directed to some
good or other, in terms of which the agent's intention could be described .
. . . The question that arises is: Does Grisez's interpretation of the
direct/indirect [scil. means/side effect] distinction similarly provide an
objective criterion for determining what the agent's intention is? Or does

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

it leave open the possibility of describing the agent's intention in terms of
whatever good purposes motivate the act in question. 57

Porter maintains that Grisez's account-which we have
expounded in section I of this article, and whose roots in the
tradition we have shown in section II-provides no ground for
an objective identification of what someone is doing, and thus
leaves the moral evaluation of action at the mercy of
arbitrariness or manipulation.
We have emphasized in the foregoing quotation the phrases
that indicate the core of Porter's view. What "could be said"
about an action by people who observe its performance, and
who speak about it for their multifarious purposes, is indeed,
as Porter indicates, indefinitely various. Indeed, what "can be
said" about an action and its intentions by the very person
whose act and intent they are is various, indefinite, and
unstable, if that person is reflecting, as a kind of observer, on
his or her purposes and motivations. And acting persons so
reflecting on their actions and intentions, and representing
them to others, are indeed likely to shape their account by
reference to "whatever good purposes" they have, and to
suppress or misstate-perhaps even to themselves-both any
other purposes that may be motivating them and any means
they have adopted but would rather not think about and/or be
known to have adopted. But none of this should obscure the
fact that the truth about what is intended and being done is
available, primarily if not exclusively to the acting person in
that acting-in that deliberating, choosing, and carrying out
the choice-which constitutes the reality to which all accounts
of intention and action must conform if they are to be true.
Each clear-headed and honest person knows what he or she
is truly or objectively doing. Such persons know what end(s)
they have in view, and what means they have reason, in view
of such end(s), to choose, and are actually choosing in
preference to alternatives. Roe knows, for example, that he
saw an assailant's attack as an opportunity to kill a long-hated
-17 Porter,

"'Direct' and 'Indirect' in Grisez's Moral Theory," 620 (emphases added).

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

35

enemy (or: a person he had contracted for money to kill), and
knows that in taking steps that any observer would reasonably
judge to be intended only as self-defensive measures to stop
the assailant's attack, he was really and trulyobjectively-trying
to kill in revenge (or: to fulfill the
contract). Roe's self-knowledge is objective. So too in the
converse case. Doe, a shopkeeper robbed many times may
acquire a gun and-as a bluff-announce to the neighborhood
that she will kill the next robber in her store. When she sees a
young tough move something suspiciously in his coat, she
judges that she is about to be robbed at gunpoint, tries to
shoot him in the shoulder, but hits his heart. To a jury, what
happened may well seem to have been a straightforward
intentional killing, carrying out her deterrent threat. But in
truth and reality it was no more than a self-defensive act,
chosen, without any intent to kill, to stop what she mistakenly
believed was an assault.
The morally significant acts a person does are, objectively,
what that person chooses to do for the reasons he or she has
for making those choices. A true and morally objective description of such acts is the description they have, prospectively (as
acts still to be done), in the proposals the acting person shapes
in deliberation and adopts by choice(s). What an act
objectively is, and can be known objectively to be, is not
affected by what the acting person or others may say about it,
or by what others may reasonably (though mistakenly) infer it
to be. Nor is the reality of what an acting person is doing
described adequately or objectively by describing it only in
terms of the purposes that motivated it, omitting what the acting person chose to do as means of pursuing those purposes.
Failing to attend to the perspective of the acting person,
Porter systematically fails to attend to chosen means (to what
the tradition, retrieved and restated in Veritatis splendor, calls
the "objects" of acts). Her accounts of actions reduce them to
intended ends and outward behavior-the "immediate bodily
movements" she calls "primitive acts." Even the accounts she
offers of ends or motivations for action tend to overlook

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

reasons for choosing means. We shall point out the oversight
when commenting on her examples of types of act.
For now we illustrate Porter's misunderstanding of action
by pointing simply to a notable instance that occurs when she
is stating her position at the level of general theory. This
instance occurs at the very moment when she acknowledges
that "Grisez could admit that there are indefinitely many
correct descriptions for every act, and yet still hold that only
one of these is morally relevant, namely, that which describes
the act in terms of what the agent does in fact intend" (622).
She remarks at this point that "this argument does not resolve
the difficulty" that she thinks faces Grisez in trying to
distinguish means from side effects.
If one accepts the Thomistic principle that every action is directed
knowingly towards the attainment of some good (as Grisez does), then it
follows that every action can be described in terms of some good which the
agent is voluntarily seeking. Why should the agent not describe his
intention in terms of that good, relegating the harms which he brings
about to foreseen but not chosen aspects of the act? (Ibid.)

The answer to her question is clear. If a young woman chooses
to have her embryonic child suctioned from her uterus as a
means to forestalling the unwelcome choice between giving her
baby up for adoption and raising him or her, then a
description-such as "having the pregnancy terminated"-of
this human action that omits her choice to have that done as
a means to her end is objectively incomplete in an essential
respect.
But instead of attending to the answer that our theory of
action gives to her question, Porter imagines that Grisez would
respond to it "by claiming that the intention in question must
be understood psychologically as well as logically" (623). By
"psychologically" she refers not to rational but to emotional
motives: "no amount of redescription can change the reality of
what the agent desires" when "desires" is understood (as she
takes for granted) to refer to, for example, "hatred," "desire

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

37

for revenge," "malice," "envy," "cruelty," "or some similar
motive" (620).
However, even though some such emotional factors do help
motivate adult children to decide to bring about the death of
their aged parent before the insurance moneys run out and the
estate is consumed, still neither the emotional motives nor the
prospect of financial gain specify what it is that the children
choose and do. If those emotions and reasons motivate the
children to think of a way to hasten their parent's death, and
the children adopt that proposal, what they choose and do is
hasten their parent's death. Even if the means they use cannot
be recognized by outside observers as means of hastening
death, the children's practical reasoning shaped their choice to
hasten her death as a means to their ends, ends arising from
emotional motives and/or rational considerations. Similarly,
the parents of a newly born baby afflicted with Down's
syndrome may consider terminating their child's life by
withholding an easy, effective, and inexpensive operation,
whatever emotional motivations drive that deliberation. If they
decide to withhold the operation as a way of (means to) killing
the child, then, whatever they tell themselves or others, they
really ("objectively") intend to kill the baby. There is little or
nothing to be gained by asking whether this truth about their
intentions and actions is "psychological" or "logical. "58 And it
is entirely beside the point to ask (as Porter repeatedly does)
whether, in cases such as these, "the agent's will must
58 If the question were pressed, we could point out that the structure of actions
considered as the subject-matter of moral evaluation pertains to the third of the four
types of order identified by Aquinas in the opening paragraphs of his Commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics-the kind of order that one brings into one's own behavior by
deliberation and choice, as irreducibly distinct from (1) the order of nature (which
includes much of what is called "psychological"), (2) the order of logic, and (4) the
order of arts and techniques. See, e.g., Germain Grisez,Beyond the New Theism (Notre
Dame & London: University of Notre Dame, 1975), ch. 14; Finnis,Aquinas, 20-23, 52
and index s.v. "four orders." So far forth, then, the structures considered in moral
evaluation are neither "psychological" nor "logical," though there are psychological
and logical, as well as ontological and technical, elements both in moral life and in
reflection upon it.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

necessarily 59 be focused on the killing, and not on the good
which is sought" (623). An agent choosing to kill someone, for
whatever good, necessarily and really focuses both on the end
sought and the killing chosen as a means to it.
Striving to press her claim that Grisez has no good way of
distinguishing means from side effects, Porter takes up various
kinds of cases. She asks, first, "how Grisez can distinguish
morally between killing in self-defense and euthanasia" (624).
After trying to show that the two kinds of act cannot be
distinguished in various ways, she at last notices that Grisez
would say, and has everywhere said, that (to use her
rendering) "in the case of euthanasia, as opposed to killing in
self-defense, the agent's act is aimed precisely at the death of
the individual who is killed" (624 ). But instead of addressing
this response, which provides precisely what she claims Grisez
cannot provide, Porter changes the subject. She notices that
Grisez has sometimes called attention to one sign or
manifestation of the difference between engaging in lethal
behavior with intent to stop an attack (accepting the attacker's
death as a side effect) and engaging in the same behavior with
intent to kill the attacker: that in the first case the acting
person will desist from the lethal behavior if the attack is
broken off by the wounding or flight of the attacker, whereas
in the second the acting person will or may well press on with
the lethal behavior, seizing the opportunity to finish off the
attacker. Not attending to Grisez's analysis of the difference as
chosen means between self-defense and euthanasia, she argues
that that sign or manifestation of the difference is not an
adequate criterion of it. Of course, we agree that it is not an
adequate criterion, since it is no criterion at all.

59 Porter (at 621) had introduced "necessarily" into her lead-in to a quotation from
Grisez in which "necessarily" nowhere appears. She then went on to say: "When Grisez
says that an action with both good and bad effects is not defined by the bad effect
unless it is necessarily included in the agent's intention ... " and proceeded to speculate
about what kind of necessity that might be, thus constructing a dialectic irrelevant to
Grisez's moral theory.

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

39

In irrelevantly challenging the adequacy as a criterion of the
sign, Porter considers the possibility that a woman using lethal
force in self-defense against rape does not at once succeed in
stopping her attacker, and says: "then presumably she would
try again to kill him" (625). By saying "try again to kill,"
Porter inadvertently makes clear the irrelevance of her
argument, for Grisez's analysis of morally acceptable lethal
self-defense precisely is that it is not trying to kill. It would be
logically impossible for a victim to "try again" to kill an
attacker if that victim's prior behavior were genuine selfdefense. Porter also considers the possibility that a doctor
trying to euthanase a patient might desist if the first attempt
unexpectedly "somehow relieves the patient's suffering
without killing him" (625). In this case she soundly points out
that what usually is a sign of nonhomicidal intent cannot be a
criterion. But she overlooks the physician's first choice: having
tried to kill her patient, the doctor has done an act of
homicide whether or not she herself, in subsequent reflection,
Porter, or anyone else recognizes that.
Another of Porter's sample cases, put forth to show that
Grisez's account of action cannot (without covertly drawing
upon prior moral judgments) distinguish means from side
effects, is craniotomy. We have discussed this in the preceding
section, but it is important now to see precisely how Grisez's
view of craniotomy is handled by Porter. She invites the reader
to "Consider the case of the doctor who saves the life of a
woman in labor by performing a craniotomy on her child.
Such an act is justified, in Grisez's view, because it is
inseparably an act of killing and an act of saving the woman's
life" (629). Porter obviously is referring to Grisez's 1970
formulation of his view. 60 His more recent view is set out in
Living a Christian Life (1993 ), which Porter cites elsewhere in
her article. On the specific question being considered by
60 Even so, she misstates that position, which was
not that inseparability justifies
craniotomy but only that it is a necessary condition for its moral acceptability. Even in
1970, Grisez pointed out that it is not the only necessary condition for the act's
uprightness.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

Porter-the question whether ending the baby's life is intended
("direct") or rather accepted as a side effect ("indirect")Grisez states his view without reference to inseparability:
The baby's death need not be included in the proposal adopted in choosing
to do a craniotomy. The proposal can be simply to alter the child's physical
dimensions and remove him or her, because, as a physical object, this body
cannot remain where it is without ending in both the baby's and the
mother's deaths. To understand this proposal, it helps to notice that the
baby's death contributes nothing to the objective sought; indeed, the
procedure is exactly the same if the baby has already died. In adopting this
proposal, the baby's death need only be accepted as a side effect. 61

Ignoring this articulation of the doctor's proposal, Porter
addresses Grisez's former idea about inseparability, and argues
that the "primitive acts" (immediate bodily movements)
involved in craniotomy are in fact separable, since the doctor
might walk away after crushing the baby's skull, omitting the
further primitive acts needed to save the mother (pulling out
the child, etc.). Since the same could be said of any surgical
operation, "it is hard to see how he [Grisez] could allow any
medical procedure that requires a series of primitive actions,
some of which are destructive in their immediate effects"
(629). That reductio ad absurdum would follow if Porter's
interpretation of Grisez's position were sound. But it is not
sound, and she concedes that "perhaps what this example
shows is that we are mistaken in assuming that the
Davidsonian primitive act is Grisez's unit of moral analysis"
(ibid.). Her "assuming" that the "Davidsonian" or any other
kind of "primitive act" (immediate bodily movement) is or
ever has been Grisez's unit of moral analysis is groundless and
plainly contrary to his account of acts in all the texts of his
which she considers. 62
61 Ibid.

502 (emphasis added).

62 In the 1970 article to which Porter

gives (inappropriate) prominence, Grisez says:
"A means in the order of human action must be a single, complete human act •••. Now
a human action derives its unity from two sources. One source is the unity of one's
intention. ('Intention' here refers not merely to intention of the end, but also to the
meaning one understands his act to have when he chooses it as a means to an intended

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

41

Porter considers the possibility that "primitive acts" are not
Grisez's unit of analysis. But she does not abandon her
attempts to attribute to Grisez an account of action that fails
to adopt the perspective of the acting person and looks only
to primitive movements plus overall intention, ignoring chosen
means: "Perhaps the explanation of the craniotomy example
lies in the fact that the primitive act of crushing, taken
together with a series of other acts, is informed by the agent's
overall life-saving intention, especially since Grisez insists that
what is morally significant is the will of the agent, as
determined by the proposal he adopts" (ibid.). Porter's
reference to "the proposal he adopts" might suggest that she
has grasped the central element of Grisez's analysis. However,
she still fails to notice that proposals are not of primitive
movements informed by an overall intention, but of actions
understood as possible means. The act of craniotomy,
whatever immediate physical movements it may involve, is the
act accurately described by Grisez in the passage already
quoted from his book: to alter the child's physical dimensions
and remove him or her. Earlier on the same page of that book
he had given another, equivalent description of the
proposal/act: "a craniotomy (an operation in which instruments are used to empty and crush the head of the child so
that it can be removed from the birth canal)." These
formulations describe the same kind of act, and do so by
identifying the "object" of that act. 63 Both correspond to the
ways the choice and act might be conceptualized in the
deliberations of a doctor considering whether or not to
perform the act, and in the deliberations of the child's parents
or anyone else concerned in the decision-making.
Instead of giving her own moral evaluation of craniotomyas she imagines Grisez understands it-Porter proceeds
end')" (Grisez, "Toward a Consistent Natural-Law Ethics of Killing," 88 [emphasis
added]). Or again: "both means and end have a behavioral aspect (Aquinas's external
act) and an aspect of human meaning (Aquinas's interior act)" (ibid., 85 [emphasis
added]).
63 Cf. response to Brock in n. 38 above.

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JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

immediately to assert that the account of action she
(mistakenly) attributes to Grisez would justify contraception by
"uniting the primitive actions of employing some contraceptive
and engaging in sexual intercourse into one intention, say, an
intention of expressing marital intimacy in a responsible
fashion" (ibid.). Here Porter unwittingly testifies to the ease
with which people can identify means for the purpose of
morally significaht deliberation and choice. For "employing a
contraceptive" is not the sort of thing she had been calling a
"primitive act"; it does not pick out any immediate bodily
movement or set of such movements. The relevant bodily
movements, after all, might be those involved in putting on a
condom, taking a pill, and so forth. Rather, "employing a
contraceptive" is a kind of human act specified as a means to
an end-that is, using something, anything whatever, to make
an act of intercourse less likely than it otherwise would be to
result in conception. In short, the very term "contraception"
which Porter uses here refers to a means as it would usually be
identified in deliberating and shaping proposals to act for an
end: to prevent conception.
Moreover, Porter's suggestion that our view allows an
argument for contraception is incorrect. On our view, one
cannot engage in what Porter calls "expressing marital
intimacy in a responsible fashion" without at some time or
other having adopted two proposals by making two choices:
(1) to employ a contraceptive, (2) to engage here and now in
marital intercourse. Each is the choice and carrying out of a
means to an end; each is identifiable as a distinct kind of act
(however many bodily movements it may involve); and neither
can be assessed morally without reference, in the first instance,
to its characteristics as an act of that kind.
As noted at the beginning of this section, Porter's primary
thesis is that Grisez is guilty of the same thing with which he
charged Richard McCormick: 64 taking positions on moral
issues and then finding reasons for them (631-32). Her article
is an elaborate attempt to prove that charge against Grisez. We
64

See Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, 15 7.

"DIRECT" AND "INDIRECT"

43

have shown that her account of his action theory, and her
attempts to criticize it, fail radically. She also contends that
our account of action is out of line with the tradition, but we
have shown both here and elsewhere that the main lines of our
account are entirely traditional.
Porter is right in saying that our analysis of craniotomy is
not defending a teaching of the Church. But that fact by itself
is sufficient to falsify her primary thesis. Grisez's work has not
been an effort to "provide a systematic philosophical justification for the tenets of traditional Catholic morality" (611).
If that had been his purpose, he surely would not have said
what he consistently has about craniotomy, and capital punishment, and killing in war. He would never have taken the
position that it is wrong to try to kill a human being. He
would have been satisfied instead to defend the thesis that he
has argued is a truth of faith: the intentional killing of the
innocent is always grave matter. But as it is, he has criticized
traditional views of capital punishment and killing in warfare,
and argued that capital punishment always is wrongful killing
and that even the killing of enemy combatants can be justified
only if the action that brings about their death is done without
any intention to kill them. 65
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, most plainly in its
revised edition-in relation to killing in capital punishment,
and war, and in general if not on craniotomy (which is not
mentioned)-has adopted a position like the one defended for
thirty years by Grisez. Killing of human beings is justifiable
only insofar as it is not intended. 66 This underlines the
importance, for a sound understanding of the faith as well as
6 .s See, e.g., ibid. 220; Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and
Realism, 309-19.
66 The revised CCC's entire treatment of cases of justifiable killing is put under the
aegis of Aquinas's distinction between the "double effect" of lethal self-defensive
actions that do not intend the killing of the aggressor (no. 2263; seen. 28 above).
Accordingly, punishment can only be lethal "if this is the only way of effectively
defending human lives against the unjust aggressor" (no. 2267). And killing in war can
be justifiable only as "legitimate defense," that is, where "the defense of the common
good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm," and the right
to use arms is the right only "to repel aggressors."

44

JOHN FINNIS, GERMAIN GRISEZ, JOSEPH BOYLE

for a sound philosophy, of understanding with precision and
consistency just what it is to intend, to choose, and to act.

The Thomist 65 (2001): 45-65

SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMAN
AND ANIMAL EMOTION IN AQUINAS'S THOUGHT
STEPHEN LOUGHLIN
De Sales University
Allentown, Pennsylvania

0

ne of the striking features of Aquinas's thought concerning
the emotions 1 is his attribution of them to the animal
lacking reason. 2 His argument in this respect is direct and
simple: since the emotions constitute the various actualizations of
the sensitive appetite in relation to some sensible thing considered
as good or bad, whatever possesses a sensitive appetite will
likewise experience the emotions. Since the animals lacking
1 The translation of the term passio as "emotion" acts here as a placeholder, so to speak,
and does not intend to cover the broad usage it has in modern thought. In fact, no word in
English properly signifies Aquinas's understanding of passio. In this regard, see Amelie 0.
Rorty, "Aristotle on the Metaphysical Status of Pathe," Review of Metaphysics 38 (1984):
521-22, 539-46, which outlines the many problems facing the modern philosopher's
approach to ancient theories concerning the pathe, particularly his "abandonment" of the
metaphysical basis upon which these theories are based, a problem which is compounded by
the fact that contemporary discussions of the emotions "have retained the distinctions and
preoccupations which were embedded in that metaphysical setting" (522). Furthermore, as
B. Inwood states: "No translation of the term is adequate, for pathos is a technical term
whose meaning is determined by the theory in which it functions" (Ethicsand Human Action
in Early Stoicism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 127). Although these comments
are directed specifically at the Aristotelian and Stoic understanding of pathos, they apply
equally well to Aquinas's doctrine of passio, given the similarity of his metaphysics with
respect to the former, and his clearly technical use of passio with respect to the latter. For a
discussion concerning the difficulties of translatingpassio into an equivalent English term, see
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae,vol. 19, The Emotions (1a2te. 22-30), ed. and trans.
Eric D'Arcy (Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1967), xix-xxvi.
2 This attribution is striking given the predominant view among contemporary
philosophers that the emotions are essentially rational in nature.

45

46

STEPHEN LOUGHLIN

reason possess a sensitive appetite, the emotions are not peculiar
to human beings.3
This position raises a number of questions. Aquinas holds that
every emotion of the sensitive appetite is preceded by some kind
of assessment of the sensible thing with respect to its suitability
(or lack thereof) for the being apprehending it. In animals lacking
reason, this assessment is performed by the estimative power,
while in human beings it is accomplished by the cogitative or
particular reason. This assessment is vital for emotion, for by it
the sensible thing is brought under the ratio of the conveniensor
inconveniens and thereby becomes the proper object of the
sensitive appetite itself. Without this assessment, the sensitive
appetite lacks its proper or formal object, and is thus not moved,
which is to say that there is no experience of the emotions in such
a situation; the simple presentation of an object apart from
evaluation does not move the appetite. 4
3 For the definition of passio as a movement or actualization of the sensitive appetite, see
STh 1-11, q. 22; that they are shared in common with animals lacking reason, see STh 1-11, q.

24, a. 1, ad 1; 1-11, q. 6, prol.; that the emotions are experienced by human and animal alike
by reason of the sensitive appetite, see STh I, q. 80, a. 1.
4 The clearest presentation of this point is found at De anima III, leer. 4, §§634-35. The
basic argument is this: the sensitive appetite is a passive power in that it is immediately moved
or actualized in the presence of its proper object. This object is not the simple appearance of
the sensible thing as such, but rather this as it has been assessed as conveniensor not to the
being as such. This estimation is performed not by the imagination (or for that matter by the
external senses, the sensuscommunis, or memory, although the latter could store previously
made assessments), but rather by the estimative power in animals lacking reason, and the
cogitative power in human beings (also see STh I-II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 2. Although Aquinas does
not mention the particular power which performs this opinio mentioned at §635, it is clear
from the context, from the corpores of STh I, q. 78, a. 4; and I, q. 81, a. 3; the principle
stated at I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 2; and the discussion concerning emotion's definition at 1-11, q. 22,
that the cogitative power is that which is concerned with the sensitive appetite's proper
object. Opinio refers to the operation of the cogitative, but is a general enough term to
indicate also that the cogitative is not alone in its activities, but that it relies upon reason,
experience, and the teachings of others for its determinations of the conveniens and the
inconveniens;aestimatio, on the other hand, refers specifically to the estimative power in
animals, which power naturally and necessarily determines what is conveniens or
inconveniens).Without this assessment, that is, without the operation of the estimative or
cogitative powers, the formal object of the sensitive appetite is not obtained, and the sensitive
appetite is not under any necessity to be moved or actualized with respect to it. This is one
of the characteristics that distinguishes the sensitive appetite from the natural appetite, where

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMOTION

47

From Aquinas's definitions and descriptions of the irascible
emotions it is clear that they all require some degree of rationality
in their arousal, operation, and completion. For example, hope
and despair require the capacity to consider something in future
terms, that is, whether some arduous good can be obtained or
not. Again, anger requires three things, namely, the abilities to
understand that one has been insulted or slighted in some fashion,
to recognize that one suffers presently from this evil, and to react
against it, that is, to hope for and plan revenge in the future.
These and other characteristics, essential to the irascible emotions,
belong only to beings possessing reason. 5
In this light, then, it is asked, how could an animal lacking
reason plausibly be said to experience the range of emotions
enjoyed by the human being? Is not the assessment or judgment
of something as suitable (or not) a rational operation, and not
merely an instinctive one? Would it not be more appropriate to
limit the irrational animal's experience of the sensitive appetite's
movements to perhaps only the most basic movements of the
concupiscible aspect, those which seem less rational in their
operations, than to extend the irascible to them as well? But
surely the animal lacking reason demonstrates at least the irascible
emotion of anger. How, then, does one overcome the requirement of rationality necessitated for anger? Perhaps the emotions
of the sensitive appetite in a rational being are qualitatively
different from those of the animal lacking reason, and animals, in
this respect, only exhibit an appearance of anger and the other
irascible emotions. But how could this be affirmed when the
prologue to question 6 of the Prima secundaestates that the emotions are shared in common between human beings and animals,
and that the usage of passio, with respect to both animal and
human, does not appear to be equivocal? Nevertheless, is there
the former is not completely passive (as the latter is) with respect to its object as such, but
requires that it be apprehended under the ratio of the conveniensif the sensitive appetite is
to be moved, or rather, actualized; as above, simple apprehension alone is not enough to
move the appetite (see De Verit., q. 22, a. 4).
5 See the objections to STh 1-11, q. 40, a. 3. For further comments concerning the necessity
of reason for the consideration of future and past events, particularly as they relate to a
being's present condition and welfare, see De anima III, lect. 15, §829.

STEPHEN LOUGHLIN

48

not some sense in which the human being is said, because of his
rationality, to experience the emotions in a qualitatively different
way from the animal lacking reason? 6 It is the purpose of this
article to clarify and defend Thomas's attribution of the emotions
to the animal lacking reason, proceeding in light of these
questions.
I

We begin with a central characteristic common to both animal
and human emotion, namely, that the movement or actualization
of their sensitive appetites is immediate and necessary in the
presence of the appetite's proper object. This characteristic
constitutes the general description of emotion, and is indicative
of the sensitive appetite's natural functioning. 7 Differences
between human and animal emotion arise when one considers the
events that lie on both sides of this immediate and necessary
movement of the sensitive appetite, that is, the cognitive events
that come before it, and the actions taken by the being subsequent
6 Some of these concerns have been voiced in a recent article by R. Roberts, "Thomas
Aquinas on the Morality of Emotions," History of Philosophy Quarterly 9 (1992): 287-305.
He argues that since reason is intrinsically involved in the essence of emotion, "most of the
emotions that humans experience are never experienced by animals, and do not, therefore,
belong to a non-rational appetite" (292). Thus, an emotion, like anger, considered just in
itself, shared in common with animals lacking reason, is a "fiction." For the object of anger
is "accessible only through reason," a power lacking to the animal. To describe an animal as
angry is thus to use the word equivocally or metaphorically (293-94). With respect to hope
and despair, Roberts states:

maybe dogs do have some rudimentary concept of the future, which
enables them to have genuine expectations and thus perhaps an
emotion a bit like human hope. But if they do have this, it is in virtue
of having something like human reason. As it stands, it seems quite
clear that Aquinas' account does not justify saying that non-rational
creatures have hope. For hope is not a pattern of behavioral response
to sense-impressions, but an intentional state with a logic something
like that which Aquinas ascribes to it in lala:: 40, 1. And that is a state
which, "intrinsically considered," is intrinsically (basically) rational.
(294; emphasis added)
7

See STh I-II, q. 22.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMOTION

49

to and urged by it. With respect to the animal lacking reason,
Aquinas argues that the assessment of the sensible thing as suitable
or unsuitable for it, as well as its actions to obtain or resist it, is
a matter of instinct, something guided wholly by its nature, with
no deliberation or choice on its part. The events on either side of
the necessary movement of its sensitive appetite are thus also of
an immediate and necessary nature. 8 However, human beings do
not have this same degree of immediacy and necessity with respect to these cognitive precedents and those actions urged by the
emotion aroused. The former and the latter are permeated by,
and consequently come under the influence of, the reason and
will of the human being. It is this very fact that prevents the total
determinism observed with respect to animal assessment prior to
the emotions, as well as that activity consequent to them, from
occurring in the human being. 9
8 See SI'h I-II, q. 13, a. 2, c. and ad 2; I-II, q. 15, a. 2, ad 1; I-II, q. 16, a. 2; and I-II, q. 17,
a. 2, c. and ad 3.
9 See the articles concerning culpability and the sensitive appetite at SI'h I-II, q. 77, as well
as the questions concerning the voluntary and the sensitive appetite at SI'h I-II, qq. 9-10. See
also STh 1, q. 81, a. 3; and De Verit., q. 22, a. 4.
The degree to which the human being experiences instinctual assessment prior to, and
activity consequent upon, the movement of the sensitive appetite itself is a complex matter
warranting a separate discussion. In lieu of such, note that in the human being, the cogitative
power and its operations are, for the most part, indeterminate, a situation contrary to the
estimative power in animals lacking reason. Although the animals lacking reason are said to
pass judgment upon the suitability or unsuitability of a sensible thing by virtue of their
estimative sense, nevertheless this judgment is not a free one; it is determined by the animal's
nature, so that upon the presentation of a sensible thing the assessment that follows is natural,
automatic, and not subject to any important variation (see the texts cited in n. 8). G.
Klubertanz (The Philosophyof Human Nature (New York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1953),
134-39) describes this well. He characterizes animal activity as exhibiting a uniformity within
its species, a certain specificitywith respect to each species, and a relativeindependencefrom
learning or experience. Thus all members of a species perform their activities in much the
same way, all species have activities that are proper to each of them and serve to distinguish
them as such from each other, and all the activities that go into a specific behavior are often
performed immediately without some period of learning or experience. This behavior
depends directly upon the guidance offered by the estimative sense, which, when presented
with various objects and situations, makes the appropriate assessment of them and sets the
behavior of the animal with respect to them. Thus, the estimative sense is specifically
determined in its assessment abilities, and this, in accordance with the nature of the animal,
as this determination provides for the continued existence of the animal and the preservation
of its own life and that of its species.

50

STEPHEN LOUGHLIN

Clearly, the influence of the rational powers on the sensitive
appetite makes a significant difference to the phenomenon of
emotion itself. It should be noted that Aquinas's concept of
emotion is quite broad when applied to the human being;
although said primarily of his sensitive appetite, it is nevertheless
not restricted solely to this aspect of his nature. This is quite clear
in Thomas's extension of the language of emotion to encompass
the movements or realizations of the rational appetite, the will. 10
With respect to human beings, one must be careful in the ascription of this kind of
determinacy. First, there is an aspect of human activity that is determined, namely, the
operations of the soul's powers, as they are specified by their respective forms in the manner
in which they operate. In this sense, they do not vary; the eye sees, the ear hears, the will
desires good universally, and likewise with respect to the other powers and their natural
operations, as these are determined by the first actus, the soul, itself. However, when one
considers that kind of determined instinctual activity proper to the animals lacking reason,
one finds that its quality and extent is much different in human beings. Instead of the
uniformity, specificity, and relative independence from learning that characterize animal
instinctual behavior, this in human beings is characterized, states Klubertanz, by
indeterminacy,complexity, and variabilityand is essentiallyconnectedwith experienceand
reason. If we were to seek out in human beings that kind of instinctual behavior which is
characteristic of the animals lacking reason, Klubertanz argues that we would find this only
in the child. However, even this is quite different from what is observed in the animals
lacking reason, in that the behaviors of the former are vague or indeterminate: the fear
exhibited at sudden or loud noises, or at heights, and the rage or anger displayed when
restrained (crying, shrinking back, the flailing of arms, legs, and body) are all quite far from
the very specific, involved instinctual behavior displayed by animals lacking reason (see ibid.,
142-45). These cannot be compared, for example, to the instincts of, or the estimations
required for, nest building or mating rituals, which exhibit the characteristics of complexity,
regularity, and independence from experience and learning. For these natural actions and
reactions in the human being to amount to anything definite and important, the guiding
powers of the rational aspect must be developed, knowledge acquired, habits established, and
all of these over time, through guided study and experience itself. The point here, then, is that
while human activity exhibits a certain amount of determinateness, that is, with respect both
to the nature of the activities that characterize the powers themselves according to their
respective forms or natures, and to some general behaviors natural to the human being,
nevertheless, there is not present in human beings the same kind or quality of determination
of assessment and consequent activity as is found in the animals lacking reason. Consequently,
both the assessment prior to an emotion and the activity urged upon one subsequent to an
emotion are not importantly instinctual, but require determination by the formation received
from the reason and will of others (rearing, society, schooling, religion, friends, etc.) and by
one's own reason and will. Until this occurs, all that is present is the natural inclinations
consequent upon the forms or natures of these powers as made possible by the soul itself.
10 See STh 1-11, q. 22, a. 3, ad 3.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMOTION

51

On the face of it, one could say that this extension arises from the
need for an explanation for Holy Scripture's attribution of the
emotions to God, the angels, and the dead. However, it is more
likely that Aquinas extends language properly denoting a sensitive
phenomenon to intellectual phenomena for two reasons: (1)
emotion is appetitive in nature and (2) the fullness of any activity
of the soul is best understood in reference to the whole being in
which it occurs. Consequently, although emotion is primarily of
the sensitive appetite, nevertheless, with respect to its nature as
appetitive, this phenomenon can be extended to the other
appetitive aspects of the person, namely, the natural and, more
importantly, the rational. When these facts are viewed in light of
the unity of the person's nature, the experience of emotion is
broadened extensively, not only by the appearance of its rational
kinds, but also by their intermingling with the sensitive and
natural kinds.
The emotions attributable to, or having their genesis in, the
rational appetite are described by Thomas as they show a likeness
to a central characteristic of sensitive emotion, namely, the approach to and withdrawal from the conveniens and inconveniens
respectively. 11 In this regard, he assigns names either identical to
their counterparts in the sensitive appetite or particular to them.
Examples of the latter include dilectio, gaudium, and tristitia.
Dilectio is distinguished from the general sensitive sense of amor
as the former adds the notion of an electio made beforehand,
something of which only a rational nature is capable. 12 Gaudium
is that specific form of delectatio which follows from the attainment of something that is desired on account of reason, and is
recognized and known by it when present. 13 And finally tristitia,
as it is the contrary of gaudium and as it is the result of an interior
apprehension of the intellect, is experienced only by the rational
11 See SI'h I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 1; I, q. 59, a. 4, ad 2; I, q. 64, a. 3; I, q. 82, a. 5, ad 1; I-II, q.
22, a. 3, ad 3; II-II, q. 18, a. 1; De Verit., q. 25, a. 3; q. 26, a. 3, ad 3 and 7; q. 26, a. 7, ad 5;
and ScG I, qq. 89-91. Marcel Sarot, in "God, Emotion and Corporeality: A Thomist
Perspective," The Thomist 58 (1994): 61-92 discusses several of these texts. See also Daniel
Westberg, "Emotion and God: A Reply to Marcel Sarot," The Thomist 60 (1996): 109-21.
12 See SI'h I-II, q. 26, a. 3; see also the response to the sed contra of the same question.
13 See STh I-II, q. 31, a. 3.

52

STEPHEN LOUGHLIN

being. 14 The main difference between these intellectual emotions
and their sensitive counterparts (besides the lack of a transmutatio
corpora/is, something not required for an operation of the rational
appetite, but vital to the operation of the sensitive appetite) is that
their respective objects are distinct. The lower can only regard the
sensible object as it comes under the notion of the conveniens or
the inconveniens, as a particular instance of suitability or unsuitability, while the higher can regard this, as well as a more
universal good or evil, but both with respect to the very reasons
for the appetibility of something. 15
Now, emotions of this kind clearly belong only to rational
beings. Can it thus be said that the irascible emotions are also
specific to the human being, since these emotions demonstrate a
heavy dependence upon rational powers and operations? Take,
for example, the emotion of hope, which by definition is of a
future arduous possible good. Only a rational nature can consider
matters of time, contingency, and truth and falsity, all of which
are implied in hope's definition. 16 And yet Aquinas holds that the
animal lacking reason experiences hope. He argues, first, as
before, that the animal experiences hope as a consequence of its
possession of a sensitive appetite, which power, for Aquinas,
constitutes the "seat" of the emotions. 17 Second, he refers to a
seemingly common empirical observation to support his first
point, namely, that the nearness or farness of prey makes a
difference to the dog's or eagle's pursuit. This demonstrates for
him the occurrence of the emotions of hope and despair in the
animal lacking reason, on the principle that external behavior is
the means whereby one discerns the existence and operation of
internal phenomena and the powers responsible for them. 18
See STh I-II, q. 35, a. 2, c., ad 2, and ad 3.
Aquinas recognizes, but does not discuss at great length, the various interminglings of
sensitive and intellectual emotions. The same is said with respect to the effect (he calls it an
"overflowing") that the intellectual emotions can have upon both the sensitive emotions and
a person's physiology.
16 See note 5 above.
17 See STh I-II, q. 22.
18 This principle highlights an important aspect of Aquinas's psychology, namely, that
when the various powers of the soul are discussed, one must be careful not to understand or
interpret these as 'faculties' in the pejorative sense of the term. A power of the soul is not that
14

15

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMOTION

53

Nevertheless, Aquinas is acutely aware of the rational
requirements involved in this emotion, as the three objections to
STh 1-11, q. 40, a. 3 demonstrate. He states that animal hope does
indeed follow from the "apprehension of an intellect," but one
that is separate,so to speak, from the animal, namely, that which
belongs to the Author of the animal's being, who has established
the animal's nature so that it might act specifically and
immediately in this fashion. Consequently, the judgment required
for the emotion of hope has, in a sense, already been made
according to the mind of the Creator of the animal's nature, as
the instinctual behaviors of the animal represent the judgments of
God in the determination of its nature. It is by reason of this
determination that the animal is able to make the assessments
required for the arousal of hope or despair, and exhibit that
activity which follows upon it, but only in the presence of the
appropriate sensible external factors. 19 The human being, on the
other hand, has this judgment within his control because of his
rational powers whereby this apprehension and determination of
a future arduous possible good can be effected through his own
efforts, in addition to that which is made possible by the natural
determination of his sensitive appetite. In a word, the difference
here is between being determined and being capable of
determining. 20
which acts, but that by which the person acts, a potency rooted in the very essence of the
soul. The principle of discovery is operatio sequitur esse, from activity, to power, to the soul
itself, wherein power is ultimately defined as a proximate principle by which the person
performs an activity: cf. STh l, q. 77; F. Copleston,Aquinas (London: Penguin, 1955), 163££.;
and Klubertanz, The Philosophy of Human Nature, 86££.
19 See STh l, q. 83, a. 1; 1-11, q. 11, a. 2; I-II, q. 15, a. 2; and esp. I-II, q. 17, a. 2, ad 3; and
I-II, q. 46, a. 4, ad 2. It is by reason of this divine determination that a certain practical
wisdom or prudence is attributed to the animal lacking reason {see STh I-II, q. 13, a. 2, ad 3).
See also Robert E. Brennan, Thomistic Psychology:A PhilosophicalAnalysis of the Nature of
Man (New York: MacMillan, 1941), 131-33.
20 See STh I-II, q. 40, a. 3:
interiores passiones animalium ex exterioribus motibus deprehendi
possunt. Ex quibus apparet quod in animalibus brutis est spes. Si enim
canis videat leporem, aut accipiter avem, nimis distantem, non movetur
ad ipsam, quasi non sperans se earn posse adipisci: si autem sit in
propinquo, movetur, quasi sub spe adipiscendi. Ut enim supra dictum

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Although Aquinas does not explicitly address the irascible
emotions of fear and daring, he does extend this argument to the
experience of anger in the animal lacking reason. 21 On the basis
of these three applications, it seems reasonable to suppose that
this kind of argument would also apply to fear and daring, and,
consequently, that the irascible emotions are not specific to
human beings, but are also experienced by the animals lacking
reason. Therefore, animals experience all eleven emotions.
II

This having been argued, the question of quality remains: to
what degree is the experience of these eleven emotions in the
animal lacking reason the same as in the human being? We will
begin by examining the natural movement to which the sensitive
appetite is subject.
In general terms, appetitus denotes an inclination that arises
from form. Three inclinations are thus distinguished, namely, that
which follows upon the very form or nature of a thing or power
(natural appetite), and those which follow upon the reception of
a sensitive or intellectual form by the sensitive and intellectual
powers respectively (sensitive and intellectual appetite). Aquinas
est [STh I-II, q. 1, a. 2; I-II, q. 26, a. l; I-II, q. 35, a. l], appetitus
sensitivus brutorum animalium, et etiam appetitus naturalis rerum
insensibilium, sequuntur apprehensionem alicuius intellectus, sicut et
appetitus naturae intellectivae, qui dicitur voluntas. Sed in hoc est
differentia, quod voluntas movetur ex apprehensione intellectus
coniuncti: sed motus appetitus naturalis sequitur apprehensionem
intellectus separati, qui naturam instituit; et similiter appetitus
sensitivus brutorum animalium, quae etiam quodam instinctu naturali
agunt. Uncle in operibus brutorum animalium, et aliarum rerum
naturalium, apparet similis processus sicut et in operibus artis. Et per
hunc modum in animalibus brutis et spes et desperatio.
Thus, with respect to the matters of time, contingency, and truth and falsity, Aquinas answers
(at ad 1) in the context of the determination of instinct: "quamvis bruta animalia non
cognoscant futurum, tamen ex instinctu naturali movetur animal ad aliquid in futurum, ac
si futurum praevideret. Huiusmodi enim instinctus est eis inditus ab intellectu divino
praevidente futura." See also III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, c. and ad 4.
21 See STh I-II, q. 46, a. 7, ad 1.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL EMOTION

55

discusses this distinction specifically in reference to the emotions
at STh 1-11, q. 41, a. 3, an article that deals with the question
whether there is such an emotion as natural fear. An inclination
or movement is said to be natural as nature so inclines, and this
occurs in two ways. First, as this movement is entirely accomplished by nature without any operation of an apprehensive
power, or second, as this movement, to which nature inclines, is
accomplished only by means of an apprehensive operation.
Examples of the former are the upward movements natural to fire
and the growth of animals and plants, while the latter includes the
very operations of the apprehensive and appetitive powers, as
these are considered in themselves according to their natures. 22 In
the latter sense, natural emotions do occur. Aquinas thus describes
natural fear as that which is of a corruptive evil, wherein one's
nature shrinks naturally, or rather instinctively, from something
on account of one's natural desire to exist. This is to be distingui!>:1edfrom nonnatural fear which arises as it concerns an evil
repugnant, not to one's nature, but rather to some desire of the
appetite that goes beyond the appetite's basic or natural
determination. This is the basis upon which love, desire, and
delight are divided into natural and nonnatural emotions. 23 In the
22 STh

1-11, q. 41, a. 3:
aliquis motus dicitur naturalis, quia ad ipsum inclinat natura. Sed hoc
contingit dupliciter. Uno modo, quod totum perficitur anatura, absque
aliqua operatione apprehensivae virtutis: sicut moveri sursum estmotus
naturalis ignis, et augeri est motus. naturalis animalium et plantarum.
Alio modo dicitur motus naturalis, ad quern natura inclinat, licet non
perficiatur nisi per apprehensionem: quia, sicut supra dictum est, motus
cognitivae et appetitivae virtutis reducuntur in naturam, sicut in
principium primum. Et per hunc modum, etiam ipsi actus
apprehensivae virtutis, ut intelligere, sentire et memorari, et etiam
motus appetitus animalis, quandoque dicuntur naturales.

The internal references are to STh 1-11, q. 10, a. 1; and 1-11, q. 17, a. 9, ad 2.
23 See STh 1-11, q. 26, a. 1; 1-11, q. 30, a. 3; and 1-Il, q. 31, a. 7. STh 1-11, q. 30, a. 3 states
that desires common to man and beast are akin to that of natural fear. Things suitable to
nature and thus desired are food and drink, while human beings alone have the ability
(rational) to determine suitability for themselves beyond the basic requirements of nature.
"Natural" and "nonnatural" give way to "irrational" and "rational," following Aristotle at

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STEPHEN LOUGHLIN

first sense of natural, however, only some of the emotions can be
called natural, like love, desire, and hope, while the rest cannot.
The reason is that the ones just mentioned
include a certain inclination to pursue what is good or to avoid what is evil,
which inclination belongs even to the natural appetite. Consequently, there is
a natural love, and even desire and hope can be spoken of as being in natural
things lacking knowledge to a certain extent. However, the other emotions of
the soul include certain movements concerning which the natural inclination
is not sufficient. This is due either to the fact that perception or knowledge is
essential to these emotions; thus it has been said [STh 1-11, q. 31, aa. 1 and 3;
I-II, q. 35, a. 1] that apprehension is required by the very nature of delight and
sorrow, wherefore things devoid of knowledge cannot be said to take delight
or to be sorrowful: or else it is because such like movements are contrary to the
very nature of natural inclination-for instance, despair flies from good on
account of some difficulty, and fear shrinks from repelling a contrary evil, both
of which are contrary to natural inclination. Therefore these emotions are in
no way attributed to inanimate beings.24
Rhetoric 1.11, or again to "common/necessary" and "peculiar/acquired." STh I-II, q. 30, a.
3, ad 2 states that the irrational or natural emotions come about by an absolute apprehension
of the suitability or nonsuitability of something, while the rational or nonnatural emotions
occur by apprehension together with some sort of deliberation. SI'h I-II, q. 31, a. 7 adds to
the objects of the natural emotions: food and drink, rest and all other things which act to
preserve the body, and sexual intercourse and whatever naturally promotes the preservation
of the species.
24

STh 1-11, q. 41, a. 3:
Et per hunc modum potest dici timor naturalis. Et distinguitur a timore
non naturali, secundum diversitatem obiecti. Est enim, ut Philosophus
dicit in II Rhetorica (5. 1382a22), timor de malo corruptivo, quod
natura refugit propter naturale desiderium essendi: et talis timor dicitur
naturalis. Est iterum de malo contristativo, quod non repugnat naturae,
sed desiderio appetitus: et talis timor non est naturalis. Sicut etiam
supra (I-II, q. 26. 1, 30. 3, et 31. 7) amor, concupiscentia et delectatio
distincta sunt per naturale et non naturale. Sed secundum primam
acceptionem naturalis, sciendum est quod quaedam de passionibus
animae quandoque dicuntur naturales, ut amor, desiderium et spes:
aliae vero naturales dici non possunt. Et hoc ideo, quia amor et odium,
desiderium et fuga, important inclinationem quandam prosequendum
bonum et fugiendum malum; quae quidem inclinatio pertinet etiam ad
appetitum naturalem. Et ideo est amor quidam naturalis: et desiderium
vel spes potest quodammodo dici etiam in rebus naturalibus cognitione
carentibus. Sed aliae passiones animae important quosdam motus ad
quos nullo modo sufficit inclinatio naturalis. Ve! quia de ratione harum

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57

The natural emotions in the first sense of "natural" are not of
any great concern in Aquinas's discussion of the eleven emotions
in the Summa Theologiae. Instead, his discussion there concerns
both the natural emotions in the second sense of "natural" and
especially the nonnatural emotions. With respect, then, to our
question concerning quality, it seems clear from the preceding
that the natural passions in the second sense of "natural" are the
same in both human and animal. This encompasses all eleven of
the emotions, which describe, as it were, the "architecture" of the
sensitive appetite, and thus constitute a more detailed definition
of it as possessed by animal and human alike. What, then, of the
nonnatural emotions?
Note first that with respect to the human being, "the same
thing which is desired by the natural appetite, can be desired by
the animal appetite, once it is apprehended. And in this way there
may be an animal appetite for food, drink and the like, which are
desired by the natural appetite. "25 This describes what has been
called a "reduplication "26 of the natural emotions according to the
second sense of "natural" in the nonnatural emotions, a situation
peculiar to the human being thanks to the rational powers by
which he can have a nonnatural emotion for objects that elicit the
natural emotions. In this respect, then, although the human is
determined by his nature to desire food instinctively, this object
can become the object of a nonnatural desire, and this in a
passionum est sensus seu cognitio, sicut dictum est (I-II, q. 31. 1et3,
35. 1) quod apprehensiorequiritur ad rationem delectationiset doloris:
unde quae carent cognitione, non possunt dici delectari vel dolere. Aut
quia huiusmodi motus sunt contra rationem inclinationis naturalis: puta
quod desperatio refugit bonum propter aliquam difficultatem; et timor
refugit impugnationem mali contrarii, ad quod est inclinatio naturalis.
Et ideo huiusmodi passiones mullo modo attribuuntur rebus inanimatis.
2-l SI'h I-II, q. 30, a. 3, ad 1: "illud idem quod appetitur appetitu naturali, potest appeti
appetitu animali cum fuerit apprehensum. Et secundum hoc cibi et potus et huiusmodi, quae
appetuntur naturaliter, potest esse concupiscentia naturalis."
26 For this language of "reduplication," cf. j. Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1939), 71; and Richard R. Baker, The Thomistic Theory of the
Emotions and Their Infl,uence upon the Will (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1941),
15-16, 35.

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qualitatively and quantitatively different way, particularly as the
nonnatural desire refines the basic instinctual urge, going beyond
the general or indeterminant requirements of nature. 27 And yet,
these reduplicated emotions in themselves still appear to be the
same as those natural ones experienced by the animals lacking
reason, the difference being that of motive and determining
forces.
What, then, of those nonnatural emotions which in themselves
concern sensible things beyond the basic requirements of nature,
particularly those which are sought for the sake of human
happiness? It seems that the difference between this kind of
emotion and those experienced by the animal lacking reason
(besides motive and determining forces) lies precisely with the
object with which the emotion is concerned rather than with the
emotion itself. Although a person can have a love and a desire for
money and the animal cannot, it still remains the case that the
movement of the appetite itself, apart from the object to which it
tends, is the same in person and animal. Nevertheless, nonnatural
emotions, considered as a whole (i.e., as they include references
to their objects and rational causes), are quite beyond the
experience of the animal. In the end, the only clear distinction to
be noted between human and animal emotion is with respect to
those which constitute the movements of the rational appetite. 28
27 Thus, one is naturally determined to desire food, but can develop a passion for a specific
kind or quality or amount of food. For the language of indeterminacy as they apply to this
point, see note 9 above.
28 This division of the emotions into their natural and nonnatural kinds also accounts for
the way in which Thomas occasionally speaks as if the simple presentation of some sensible
thing is sufficient of itself to give rise to an emotion. At the very least, with respect to the
natural emotions in the second sense of "natural," this highlights the natural workings of the
cogitative power, as it judges those things which are suitable or not to those most basic goods
of the individual. At most, we see the latter combined with the habits one would develop with
respect to these most basic goods over time and experience, as well as one's memory of prior
evaluations. Except in the child, the natural passions (in the second sense of natural) are
rarely encountered in their pure form, since the nature of the human being requires that these
be transformed into nonnatural passions if one is to live and grow in one's humanity. Finally,
although Aquinas states that imagination can supply the sensitive appetite with its proper
object, this occurs, as noted above in note 4, through the cogitative, or through the memory
of a prior evaluation.

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59

In summary, although the animal does not possess the rational
powers by which it can make the assessments required for the
arousal of the irascible emotions, it still experiences these as it is
so constituted in its nature to regard matters of the future, the
contingent, and the true and the false, in an instinctual manner.
This determination of its nature represents the judgments of its
Creator, without which it could not experience the irascible
emotions and perform in accordance with them. The rational
requirements of the irascible emotions are thus recognized and
accounted for. All eleven movements of the sensitive appetitive
power are shared by human and animal alike, as these constitute
the natural movements of the sensitive appetite, those which
follow upon its form or nature, indicative, as it were, of the
appetite's structure or "architecture."
III

The differences between animal and human emotion deal not
so much with the basic movement of the sensitive appetite itself,
but rather with the cognitive precedents to emotion, and the
subsequent actions urged by them. Important differences thus
arise when one's focus is broadened to include the being that
experiences the emotions by means of its sensitive appetite. In this
respect, there are four differences to be observed between animal
and human emotion. First, the objects with which human
emotions deal are of greater quantity and quality than those
available to the animal lacking reason. This is due to man's
rational nature which broadens his experience of the emotions to
include their reduplicated and nonrational kinds. Second, the
human being, again because of his rationality, experiences those
emotions which denote the various movements of the intellectual
appetite. Third, because of the unity of the human being, natural,
nonnatural, and rational emotions are experienced together in
varying degrees and mixtures, thus offering to human beings a
richer experience of the emotions than that available to the
animal lacking reason. And fourth, since the emotions of the
sensitive aspect come under the influence of the rational aspect,

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they do not determine a human's activity, as they do with respect
to the animal lacking reason. As such, they become the matter of
the moral sciences, as they play an important role in that proper
human activity by which the human being attains his perfect good
and end. 29
The main argument against the attribution of the emotions to
the irrational animals derives from the fact that they do not
possess the rational powers by which they can fully understand a
situation and make those judgments necessary for the arousal of
emotion; only human beings, who possess such powers, are
capable of making such judgments. Given how integral the
judgment of reason is to the emotions, and furthermore that the
nature of the latter is thus guided and even permeated by the
former, it is not unreasonable to see emotion not so much as a
sensitive appetitive event but rather as more of a rational one.
Does this mean that Aquinas was mistaken in his identification of
the "seat" of the emotions in the sensitive appetite? I do not think
so.
Consider, first, one of the assumptions of this view, namely
that the notion of judgment be restricted to the rational powers.
Aquinas's understanding of iudicium, or judgment, is much
broader than this, extending to sensitive and even natural
operations, without becoming an equivocal notion. Thomas
29 This constitutes the main reason why Aquinas postponed the psychological treatment
of the emotions from the Prima pars to what he considered to be its more appropriate place,
namely, the Prima secundae, which deals with general moral principles and theory. As the
emotions can be considered with respect to the controlling and guiding influence of reason
and will, they become one of the intrinsic principles of proper human activity (the other being
habitus; see SI'h 1-11, q. 6, pro!.; and 1-11, q. 49, pro!.); considered in themselves and apart
from this context, the emotions are that activity common to the animal lacking reason and
the human being (SI'h 1-11, q. 6, pro!.; and SI'h 1-11, q. 24, a. 1). As they constitute a proper
human activity, the emotions must be ordered, along with the other operations of the human
being, to the attainment of his highest good and perfection, namely, happiness or beatitude
(SI'h 1-11, qq. 1-5). In this context, the emotions become the material of habits, specifically
in the virtues and vices, where habitus constitutes the principium appetitivi motus, a
determining principle of the appetitive movement (SI'h 1-11, q. 59, a. 1) by which human
beings are directed well or badly in reference to the passions (SI'h 1-11, q. 49, a. 2). As the
animals lacking reason are determined fully in their activities with respect to their perfect
end, this aspect of the emotions is something outside their nature (SI'h 1-11, q. 24).

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61

understands judgment as "a correct [right, accurate-rectal
determination in any field. " 30 This "correct determination" is
represented in two ways. First, it can be taken "actively and
elicitively, and in this sense belongs to reason or intellect alone,"
or it can be taken as "the disposition according to which the one
making the judgment is apt to judge correctly." 31 In this latter
respect, "disposition" is taken to include not only that which is
acquired, namely, the habits, and specifically the virtues and vices,
but also that which is natural to the form or nature of a thing or
power, whence flows its natural activity. Thus, judgment may be
attributed to an activity of the rational powers, to the virtue of
justice as it disposes one to judge correctly, to the other habits as
they judge rightly concerning their proper objects and operations,
and finally to the powers of the soul as these, in their natural
operations, judge accurately concerning their proper objects. So,
for example, a sheep, in the presence of the wolf, judges it to be
a threat to its well-being, and thus its enemy. This judgment
"proceeds from an inborn disposition of [the] determinate
impulse [instinctus]" 32 of its estimative power which gives rise to
the experience of the irascible emotion of fear. With respect, then,
to the natural emotions in the second sense of "natural,"
suitability and unsuitability are determined by the judgment
effected by the nature of the estimative (or cogitative) power, in
accordance with the being's nature, as it has been so determined
by its Author. 33 With respect to the nonnatural emotions, it is the
30 See STh 11-11, q. 60, a. 1, obj. 1, c., and ad 1, and an extensive discussion concerning

iudicium in George P. Klubertanz, S.J., The DiscursivePower: Sourcesand Doctrineof the Vis
Cogitativaaccordingto St. Thomas Aquinas(St. Louis: St. Louis University Press, 1952), 235.
31 Klubertanz, The DiscursivePower, 235.
32 Ibid. This extended meaning of judgment, according to Klubertanz, "is confirmed by
what St. Thomas has to say about the iudicium sensus. The proper sense judges its proper
sensible, in that it accurately knows and can discern one of its proper sensibles from another.
This does not mean that the eye, for example, institutes a formal comparison between its
various objects, nor that it knows what color is. It means only that the eye determinately and
accurately knows a particular sensible appearance" (ibid., 235-36). He quotes STh I, q. 78,
a. 4, ad 2 in support of his point.
33 In this respect, the criticism leveled against Aquinas by R. Roberts (see note 6, above)
would seem also to apply to the very nature of any of the powers of the human soul, namely,
that the power's natural descriptions and operations are nothing more than a pattern of

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person, rather than his powers or nature, that judges or
determines the suitability or unsuitability of a thing, specifically
in relation to that which he considers as good or evil for himself.
This, as we saw, includes the objects of the natural appetite (the
"reduplication" of this appetite on a higher level), but more
importantly goes beyond these to encompass other things,
specifically those which are required for a person's happiness.
With this broad understanding of iudicium, the basic
conditions are fulfilled for the occurrence of even the irascible
emotions in an animal lacking reason; an "accurate determination," or judgment, is performed by a specific power (the
estimative) upon an intentionally received sensible thing, which
judgment determines whether the thing is suitable or not to the
animal as such, which subsequently supplies the sensitive appetite
with its proper object, thus eliciting the appropriate emotion.
It should be clear, in light of the preceding discussion, that this
experience of the irascible emotions differs significantly from that
of the human being. Take the experience of hope. First of all, the
animal is not truly free to perform the judgment required for such
an emotion; this has been determined for it beforehand by its
Creator. Nor does it possess the rational ability to grasp fully the
concepts necessary for freely considered choice; the animal is
purely a being of the moment. Nor is there the "coloring," so to
speak, of the sensitive emotion by those experienced through the
intellectual appetite, a complexity available only to the human
being. Consequently, the animal's overall experience of hope is
behavioral or instinctual (automatic) responses to their respective objects. I doubt, however,
that Roberts would want to extend this conclusion to every potentiality of the soul. The
nature of the powers of the soul is determined by the kind of soul that exhibits these, as this
soul has been determined to exhibit such by reason of its Author's decision and activity; the
nature of the human soul precedes, in the mind of God, its actualization in this or that
specific instance. Thus, just as the determination of the animal's estimative power by the
Author of its being accounts for both its experience of the emotions and the rational
requirements of the irascible emotions, so too does the determination of human nature by the
Creator account for those activities peculiar to the human being himself, namely, discursive
thought and free choice. To deny the former explanation is also to deny the latter. Thus,
Thomas is well justified in his extension of the emotions to the animal lacking reason, not to
mention his identification of the emotions with the various actualizations of the sensitive
appetite.

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63

not the fullness of hope of which the rational animal is capable;
the animal is clearly not able to experience all that characterizes
the emotions in their nonnatural forms.
Nevertheless, the emotion that it does experience is not thus
to be reduced to the status of an equivocal. As argued above,
humans and animals share a common experience of the emotions,
namely, as appetitive movements consequent upon the judgment
of the suitability or unsuitability of an object for the one possessing appetite. More importantly, however, is Aquinas's manner of
discussing the irascible passions. For example, with respect to
hope, he does not strictly define it according to the fullness of its
occurrence in the rational being. Nor does he assume that the
human experience of hope constitutes the phenomenon's most
basic or primitive description. Hope, like judgment, is a broadly
defined phenomenon that includeswhat Roberts calls "a pattern
of behavioral response to sense-impressions," namely, the
automatic, instinctive movement of the sensitive appetite towards
some future obtainable arduous good, but only as this movement
embodies "an intentional state with a logic," namely, the judgment of God as expressed in the determination of the animal's
nature which renders it capable of the basic interpretation in
question, and the subsequent movement of the sensitive appetite.
Accordingly, hope (as well as the other irascible emotions)
experienced by the animal lacking reason is the most basic or
primitive form of this phenomenon, and is related analogously 34
to the fullness and richness of hope in the human being. This
determination of the animal's nature by God is the basis not only
for the experience of the emotions by the animal, but also for the
specificity and uniformity of animal behavior in general, as well
34 Emotion's most generic description is that of an appetitive movement consequent upon
some sort of judgment of a thing as being good or evil for the one possessing appetite. It is
only when one defines the kind of appetite and judgment involved in emotions (that is,
natural, sensitive, or intellectual), and this with respect to the being in which they are found,
that one arrives at specific definitions of emotion. Since this generic description is found
intrinsically in a definite way and degree in both animals and humans, the kind of analogy at
work here in emotion is that of proper proportionality. It is only in the restriction of the
phenomena of appetite and judgment to the human or rational being that emotion becomes
an equivocal or metaphorical term.

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as its independence from learning and experience. 35 For the
principle at work here is simply that an inclination follows upon
every form. As the essence depends upon and reflects the mind of
that which has fashioned it, so too do the essence of the animal,
and all the activity that derives from it, depend upon and exhibit
the rationality and judgments of its Creator. This, for Aquinas, is
a solid basis for the attribution of the irascible emotions, in their
most basic forms, to the animals lacking reason.
It seems, then, that the essence of the distinction between the
emotions experienced by both human beings and animals lies in
a consideration of the nature of the being that experiences them.
If our view is restricted to the movements of the sensitive appetite
as such, the sensitive emotions experienced by the animal lacking
reason and the human being do not differ qualitatively; they are
shared in common by both. But when we view these movements
in the context of their respective beings, their quality in the
human being is transformed by their presence to the rational
powers. Nevertheless, these sensitive emotions do not lose their
basic or primitive characteristics; their transformation is an
accidental, not a substantial, one. The emotions still describe the
very essence of the sensitive appetite in its various relations to the
external sensible thing, present to it under the interpretation of
suitability or unsuitability. Thus animal and human emotions do
not become equivocals, but remain analogously related to each
other.
That this accurately represents Aquinas's position can be seen
with respect to another power of the sensitive soul that is
accidentally transformed by its presence to the rational powers,
namely, memory. The memorative power in the animal lacking
reason becomes the power of reminiscence in the human being as
it is guided by and partakes in reason, remaining all the while a
memorative power in essence, but one whose operations are
qualitatively affected to such an extent that they are now beyond

35 See note 9 above.

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65

those of which the animal lacking reason is capable, particularly
the syllogistic manner in which one is able to recall things past. 36
Just as Aquinas does not say that the animal is incapable of
memory simply because it is unable to attain to the perfection of
its operation in the human being, so too does he not say that the
animal is incapable of the emotions in their most basic or
primitive form because they do not attain to their perfect
expression as displayed in their nonnatural forms in the human
being. In the rational being, the powers operate naturally as they
do in the animal lacking reason, that is, as these follow upon their
form. However, in view of the whole being, these function within
a rational soul, and, consequently, are heavily influenced,
directed, helped, and even transformed in their own operations
to the extent that the rational being determines. 37 At bottom, this
transformation of the emotions reflects a development natural to
a psychology that is not dualistic, but rather hylomorphic.

36 See Aristotle's De memoria et reminiscentia,and Aquinas's commentary on it. For the
extent to which memory's presence to reason actually transforms memory's very operation,
see the interpretative essays in Richard Sorabji's translation of Aristotle's On Memory
(Providence: Brown University Press, 1972), as well as Francis A. Yates, The Art of Memory
(London: Pimlico, 1966, 1992); and Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of
Memory in MedievalCulture (London: Cambridge University Press, 1990). The last work has
the virtue of illustrating medieval views on memory in the rational being by means of recent
studies concerning the capacities of memory when assisted by the rational powers; see the
particularly remarkable study on pp. 75-79.
37 Cf. STh 1-11, q. 74, a. 3, ad 1.

The Thomist 65 (2001): 67-92

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH
GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.
New Collegeof the Universityof South Florida
Sarasota, Florida

A

t one point in his recent history of modern moral
philosophy, J.B. Schneewind refers to Immanuel Kant's
"astonishing claim" that "God and we can share membership in a single moral community only if we all equally legislate
the law we are to obey. " 1 Schneewind's remark is intended to
illuminate his wider story about what he calls the Kantian
"invention" of autonomy. In Schneewind's telling of this story,
Kant's claim is "astonishing" because of the clear suggestion that
autonomy has replaced obedience as the basis of the moral life, a
transition that marks a decisive moment in the secularization of
ethics in the modern period. Considered theologically, however,
Schneewind's remark is simultaneously suggestive of a fundamental alteration of the traditional view of divine transcendence,
an alteration implicit in the modern effort to ground morality in
something other than the will of God.
The vision of a moral community in which God and finite
moral agents equally legislate the law probably implies that God
is subject to a moral principle that can be understood apart from
reference to the divine will alone. The leveling process at work in
the notion of a "shared membership" in the moral community is
at the same time an erosion of the distance separating heaven and
earth, the transcendent and the immanent. This subterranean
linkage between Kant's ideal moral community and an implicit
1 J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modem Moral Philosophy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 512.

67

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

loss of divine transcendence is in fact one of the most powerful
and least understood aspects of Kant's philosophy.
The moral community in question is what Kant will ultimately
refer to as the "ethical commonwealth," which is the refined
version of what he had earlier referred to in the Founda.tionsof
the Metaphysicsof Morals as the "kingdom of ends. "2 Kant defines
the ethical commonwealth as a union of rational agents living
under moral laws, which is to say, "laws of virtue." 3 As the
contrast case to a political or what Kant calls a "juridico-civil
state," the ethical commonwealth depends upon self-legislation
rather than on external coercion for its maintenance and
regulation. The point of the distinction is amply conveyed by
Kant's admonition to all who would attempt to legislate morality:
"But woe to the legislator who wishes to establish through force
a polity directed to ethical ends," as it "would be a contradiction," Kant warns, "for the political commonwealth to compel
its citizens to enter into an ethical commonwealth, since the very
concept of the latter involves freedom from coercion. "4 The main
reason Kant's position holds such theological interest is that his
notion of "freedom from coercion" includes freedom from any
conception of a divine will that is not itself subject to the same
legislative principle that governs all members of the ethical
commonwealth. What Schneewind refers to as Kant's "astonishing claim" is in fact Kant's effort to envision a kind of moral
partnership between God and humanity, a project that leaves
traditional conceptions of divine transcendence in a complex
transitional zone.
My aim in what follows is to examine further the nature of the
divine-human partnership involved in Kant's conception of the
ethical commonwealth, with a view to clarifying the status of
divine transcendence within his position. A primary textual clue
for this clarification will be a series of important shifts in Kant's
2 Immanuel Kant, Foundationsof the Metaphysicsof Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck
(Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 55. Hereafter Foundations.
3 Immanuel Kant, Religionwithin the Limits of ReasonAlone, trans. Theodore M. Green
and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), 87. Hereafter Religion.
4 Ibid.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

69

thinking occurring between the Critique of PracticalReason and
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, works separated by
five years. These shifts reveal the connection between the
increasing importance of the moral community and the decreasing
importance of a divine role in the realization of our moral
destiny. In addition, I intend to clarify the important issue of how
progress toward the moral community "appears" from both the
human and the divine standpoints. Given the radical divergence
of these two perspectives, Kant puts in jeopardy the very
partnership he otherwise seems eager to endorse. That is, the
difference in perspective is so fundamental that the notion of
shared moral effort informing the idea of a partnership is strained
beyond recognition.
Ultimately at stake in this discussion is Kant's effort to replace
an outmoded speculative theology with his own moral theism.
Given his harsh treatment of the metaphysical and argumentative
underpinnings of the natural theology of his day, a great deal
rides on his ability to maintain a content for language about God,
subsequent to the moral turn that sustains his religious thought.
My suggestion here will be that, in his efforts to depict in fuller
terms the social dimensions of his conception of human
autonomy, Kant so compromises traditional conceptions of divine
transcendence as to jeopardize the strictly theological side of his
effort to mediate between tradition and modernity. Simultaneously, his dualistic account of the way actual moral progress
"appears" raises serious questions, not only about the nature of
the presumed partnership that generates the ethical commonwealth, but also about the sheer coherence of Kant's account of
humanity's moral struggle.
I

A helpful way to understand Kant's conception of God's
relation to the ethical commonwealth is to survey the several
related yet separate tracks along which his thinking about God
travels. One track-perhaps the most familiar-is basically
negative in effect, since it involves a rigorously argued embargo

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

against all theoretical knowledge of God's existence. This famous
result of the Critique of Pure Reason's demolition of the traditional proofs for the existence of God yields a deep skepticism
toward natural theology and drives a thick wedge between
metaphysics and theology. This track carries forward Kant's views
toward God in a way that has earned him the label of "great
destroyer. " 5
A second track results from Kant's effort to generate a
theologically positive result from his own epistemological
strictures. By investigating reason in its "practical" aspect, the
Critiqueof PracticalReason moves from theoretical skepticism to
moral certainty. Since this investigation is supplemented by the
idea of the "highest good" as the proper proportioning of
happiness to virtue-a state of affairs that, for Kant, ultimately
requires divine agency for its implementation-moral certainty
turns out to be quite specific with respect to its potential content.
In short, proper reflection on practical reason and its total aim
produces moral certainty of the existence of God, grounded in an
apodictic awareness of moral obligation: because my sense of
moral obligation is "real," God is real as well. For Kant, this
"interior" moral certainty is unquestionably superior to the
traditional theoretical proofs, for these are always subject to
argumentive rebuttal while one's sense of moral obligation is
beyond all argument. By construing the structure of reason itself
in a way that entails a consciousness of the moral law, Kant thus
recovers a theological content seemingly jeopardized by
theoretical reason's austere results. 6 Far from being a concession
to wishful thinking, "moral faith" for Kant "does not here choose
but rather obeys an inexorable command of reason," one that
"has its ground objectively in the character of things. "7 The
5 The expression was originally Heinrich Heine's, quoted in Allen W. Wood, Kant's
Rational Theology (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), 17.
6 An excellent summary of how Kant arrived at the view that the moral sensibility is the

result of reason's own structure is Dieter Henrich, "The Concept of Moral Insight and Kant's
Doctrine of the Fact of Reason," in Henrich, AestheticJudgment and the Moral Image of the
World: Studies in Kant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 55-87.
7 Immanuel Kant, Critiqueof PracticalReason, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis and
New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 148. Hereafter referred to as PracticalReason.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

71

rational person does not choose to believe in God's existence but
rather discoversthat such belief follows necessarily from the sheer
fact of taking moral obligation seriously.
There is yet a third track associated with Kant's reflection on
the problem of God, one that is more complex in character as it
builds on the idea of moral faith in connection with sustained
reflection on the total product of humanity's moral effort. This
track concerns the role played by God as Kant elaborates on what
Yirmiahu Yovel has called the "historical imperative" in Kant's
philosophy. 8 Due to the intrinsically teleological nature of
reason's restless activity, reason is driven to consider the unconditioned totality of human endeavor. Applied to the issue of
moral endeavor, this insight enables Kant to transcend the
personal and individualistic conception of autonomy most
familiar to readers of his ethical theory and to concentrate on the
collective result of moral action. 9 Kant's mature philosophy in
fact involves an ongoing development of the idea of the
totalization of moral action, reflected in various strands in his
thinking that beg for further systematization: for example, the
"realm of ends" (Foundationsof the Metaphysicsof Morals), the
"highest good" (Critique of Practical Reason), the teleological
plot-lines revealed in his several essays on history, and the
Critique of Judgment's attempted teleological reconciliation of
freedom and nature.
While it is difficult to depict these diverse strands in a coherent
synthesis, it is reasonably clear where Kant is going as he reflects
on the total product of moral action. 10 In effect, he is proposing
8 Yirmiahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1980), 138.
9 This point is implicit in, and helps to make sense of, the seemingly odd decision of Roger
Sullivan to begin his recent and admirable introduction to Kant's ethics with an account of
his political theory; Roger Sullivan, An Introduction to Kant's Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994).
10 Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, is perhaps the most successful effort to relate
these various strands in Kant. See the general account offered in Gordon E. Michalson, Jr.,
Kant and the Problem of God (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999). A useful recent effort
to frame these matters in terms of a unified account of Kant's theory of reason itself is Susan
Neiman, The Unity of Reason (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

that the very point of reality is the progressive realization of a
community of rational beings for whom the moral law alone will
be a sufficient incentive. This is to say that the goal of human
history is the idealized community that is conveyed by Kant's
notion of the ethical commonwealth. One finds in this idea
something like a historicizing of the very idea of the highest good
itself. The perennial question of whether this idealized ethical
community will in fact be historically realized-or simply forever
approximated-is less important than the fact that the drive
toward this ideal constitutes humanity's moral vocation. 11 My
main point for now is that Kant's insights into the role God plays
in the realization of this moral goal constitute the third track of
his thinking about God. Here, Kant's God has been released from
the argumentative confinement characteristic of the first track as
well as from the important but limited role he plays in connection
with the second track, where he simply insures the correct
proportioning of happiness and virtue. In this third context, God
has now become a full-fledged partner and actor in the creation
of what Kant will sometimes refer to as the "kingdom of heaven
on earth," where all wills freely conform to the universalizability
principle. In short, God is a member of the ethical
commonwealth.
II

The point I wish to explore further concerns the implicit
erosion of divine transcendence in the course of Kant's depiction
of the partnership that brings about the ethical commonwealth.
My point effectively amounts to the suggestion that there is an
ironic side to the image of a divine partnership involved in the
God of "track three." The initial appearance of an enhanced role
11 Yovel, Kant and the Philosophyof History, 72 argues that "from the third Critique on,
Kant's conception [of the highest good] changes. The highest good becomes the 'final end of
creation' itself, i.e., the consummate state of this world. Its realization is conceived as 'the
kingdom of God on earth'; and despite its infinite remoteness, it involves a concrete synthesis,
to be realized in time, between the moral will and empirical reality .... In other words, the
highest good becomes a historical goal." For an opposing view, see Roger Sullivan, Immanuel
Kant's Moral Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 361-62 n. 3.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

73

for God to play in achieving a moral universe is in fact deceptive
since, upon inspection, God's role thins out in ways that raise
provocative questions about the actual status of language about
God in Kant's vision of humanity's moral goal. Some further
elaboration of the train of thought leading to Kant's ideal of the
ethical commonwealth should provide additional clarifying
context.
Early in the critical period, at the time of the publication of the
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant depicts "a moral world, in so far as
it may be in accordance with all moral laws; and this is what by
means of the freedom of rational beings it can be, and what
according to the necessary laws of morality it ought to be." 12
Much of Kant's philosophical labor in the following two decades
would be devoted to filling out this picture of a moral world,
beginning with the third version of his own categorical
imperative: "[E]very rational being must act as if he, by his
maxims, were at all times a legislative member in the universal
realm of ends. " 13 With this version, Kant deepens the social
dimension already implicit in the second version of his
imperative, which enjoins us to "treat humanity, whether in your
own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as
a means only. " 14 Whereas the universality principle highlighted
in the first and most familiar form of the categorical imperative
("Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to
become a universal law of nature") 15 is the appropriate form for
a truly rational principle, "humanity" is the appropriate
material. 16 This deepening sense of a social dimension as Kant
moves through his three versions of the categorical imperative
culminates in the very notion of a realm of ends itself. We can
12 Immanuel Kant, Critiqueof Pure Reason, trans. Norman

Kemp Smith (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1965), A808/B836, p. 637. Hereafter Pure Reason.
13 Kant, Foundations,57.
l4 Ibid., 4 7.
15 Ibid., 39.
16 Christine Korsgaard, Creatingthe Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), 106££. There is a clear survey of the interaction of the three formulas of the
categorical imperative, with a view to the ultimate ideal of a moral community, in Sullivan,

Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory, 212££.

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

thus see that the social dimension of Kant's moral outlook is not
an artificial addendum or contrived attachment to a basically
individualist, rights-oriented moral posture. In Kant's own words,
the three versions of the categorical imperative are "fundamentally only so many formulas of the very same law, and each
of them unites the others in itself. " 17 An imperative that is
categorically binding includes within itself the idea of a
"systematic union of rational beings through common objective
laws," where the "law-like" feature is imposed autonomously
through each member's act of will. The social dimension is
present in Kant's thinking from the very outset of his effort to
ground morality in its foundational principle.
By the time this originally skeletal idea of a moral community
grows into the richer concept of the ethical commonwealth in
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant has placed his
own moral theism on a presumably secure footing with his
Critique of Practical Reason. At the same time, he has severely
compromised his ability to tell a neat, linear story about human
and divine cooperation in the production of the moral
community with his doctrine of "radical evil," also in the
Religion. Somewhat oddly, Kant continues to envision a moral
telos for humanity even as he creates powerful reasons for
doubting our capacity to achieve the desired and seemingly
mandated moral goal. The idea of an evil that is
"radical" -defined as the freely willed corruption of the
underlying moral "disposition" that serves as the source of
individual maxims 18-seems initially to stand in a peculiar
17 Kant, Foundations,54. The presence of a social dimension in Kant's initial formulation
of morality's fundamental principle should be kept in mind in connection with contemporary
discussions of liberalism and communitarianism. Too often, Kant is held up as the exemplary
"liberal" who has a preoccupation with "rights" that leaves problematic any effort to justify
notions of "community" and community obligations on Kantian grounds. A reading of Kant
that both appreciates the social dimension present in his initial formulation of morality's
fundamental principle, and then draws a line between this formulation and his later account
of the ethical commonwealth, suggests the oversimplifications attending this common
depiction of Kant as a purely rights-oriented liberal.
18 Kant, Religion, 20-21, 27-28. There is no simple explanation for Kant's view of the
origins of radical evil, since any such explanation would, on his terms, amount to an
"explanation" of an act of "freedom" (thereby robbing freedom of its point). See Gordon E.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

75

juxtaposition with our vocation as community-builders. In fact,
however, it is through his own deepened reflection on the nature
of the moral community that Kant finally charts a path toward
the resolution of the problem of radical evil. While it is perhaps
too simplistic to say that the appeal to community resolves the
problems disclosed by the doctrine of radical evil, it is fair to say
that the social element plays a major role in Kant's effort to
overcome those problems.
More to the point, it is in connection with Kant's turn to the
social dimension as a possible solution to the problem of radical
evil that God's role comes into view. Midway through the
Religion, Kant speaks of a moral "duty which is sui generis, not of
men toward men, but of the human race toward itself." This duty
resides in the fact that the human race is
destined for a social goal, namely, the promotion of the highest as a social
good .... [T]he highest moral good cannot be achieved merely by the exertions
of the single individual toward his own perfection, but rather requires a union
of such individuals into a whole toward the same goal-into a system of welldisposed men, in which and through whose unity alone the highest moral good
can come to pass.19

Clearly, the reality of radical evil stands between us and the easy
attainment of this goal. Yet this obstacle does not invalidate the
goal itself, for, as Kant goes on to explain, the "idea" of this
"universal republic based on laws of virtue" is "completely
distinguished from all moral laws (which concern what we know
to lie in our power). "20 In other words, the objective validity of
the idea of an ethical commonwealth is not undermined by the
harsh things Kant has simultaneously said in the Religion about
humanity's "natural propensity" to radical evil.
Having secured the objective validity of the idea of the ethical
commonwealth-despite the devastating problems posed to its
realization by radical evil-Kant goes on to establish its real
possibility through appeal to God. In other words, Kant's appeal
Michalson,Jr., "The Inscrutability of Moral Evil in Kant," The Thomist 51 (1987): 246-69.
19 Kant, Religion, 89.
20 Ibid.

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

76

to God resolves the appearance of an impasse between demand
and debility. As Kant tells us, we "can already foresee" that the
duty to bring about an ethical commonwealth "will require the
presupposition [Voraussetzung] of another idea, namely, that of
a higher moral Being through whose universal dispensation the
forces of separate individuals, insufficient in themselves, are
united for a common end. " 21 This comment conveys what we
might call the strong sense in which God will play the role of
partner in the drive toward a moral end. Interestingly, God's
chief role is to offset a presumed shortcoming on humanity's part,
thus recapitulating at the social level what Kant had previously
worked out at the level of the individual's recovery from radical
evil. In that earlier context, the individual who is locked in the
self-made grip of an evil disposition faces a seemingly impossible
command: make yourself "good" again, even though the only
route to virtue is the production of morally good maxims. But of
course the very definition of an evil that is "radical" is that the
source of one's maxims-the disposition-has been given over to
the regular subordination of the incentive of moral duty to the
incentive of sensuous inclination. 22 Kant's dilemma is dear: he
must depict our recovery from radical evil in a way that leaves
human autonomy intact; yet the problem from which we must
recover has been produced by that very same autonomy which, in
the choice of an evil disposition, has shown itself incapable of
saving itself. The deep ambivalence of this position is openly
conveyed by Kant's comment that moral recovery "must be within
our power, even though what we are able to do is in itself
inadequate and though we thereby only render ourselves
susceptible of higher and, for us, inscrutable assistance."23
In short, the individual moral agent seems no more capable of
overcoming radical evil than a community of moral agents
appears capable of bringing about the ethical commonwealth.
Kant's supposition of a "higher moral Being" who will somehow
compensate for the "insufficient" efforts of individuals to gather
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 31.
23 Ibid., 40-41.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

77

themselves into a moral collective finds a parallel in his claim
that, though an individual's moral efforts may be inadequate in
themselves, they may find a divine supplement if the individual
strives to do his or her moral best.
[It] is a basic principle that each must do as much as lies in his power to
become a better man, and that only when he has not buried his inborn talent
but has made use of his original predisposition to good in order to become a
better man, can he hope that what is not within his power will be supplied
through cooperation from above. . . . "It is not essential, and hence not
necessary, for everyone to know what God does or has done for his salvation";
but it is essential to know what man himself must do in order to become
worthy of this assistance.24

In what ironically amounts to a camouflaged appeal to a
traditional notion of grace in order to preserve the integrity of his
concept of autonomy, Kant thus invokes the idea of a hidden,
divine supplement to the fallen moral agent's own good-faith
effort to overcome the problem of radical evil. The moral agent's
attitude toward the possibility of this supplement is always one of
"hope" and never one of "knowledge," which insures the
epistemological integrity of Kant's speculations. The significant
point is that this solution to the problem of radical evil at the
individual level has an analogue in Kant's account of how the
ethical commonwealth can possibly come about: in both cases,
divine help is needed. A rational goal threatened by a human
debility is rendered attainable through the hidden cooperation of
God. Robust moral agency depends on the rational hope that this
cooperation will be forthcoming, however frustrating the
inevitable setbacks in the moral life may be.
III

The fact that Kant's discussion of the creation of the ethical
commonwealth is the occasion for fresh commentary about God
is interesting in part because of the way it repeats in a more social
context the same moves evident in the moral proof in the second
24 Ibid., 47.

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

Critique.In both cases, a teleological totalizing process is depicted
as the result of reason's natural drive toward a final end. In the
Critiqueof PracticalReason, this totalizing process culminates in
the proper proportioning of virtue and happiness, which clearly
does not occur in this life. As the agency responsible for this
proportioning process, God effectively becomes the metaphysical
underwriting insuring that we do in fact live in a rational
universe, worldly appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
In the terms suggested by Dieter Henrich, God's role in the
proportioning of happiness and virtue eliminates the element of
"luck" that appears to attend the distribution of happiness in this
world. 25 In turn, God's role as "proportioner" is transformed in
the Religion into his role as the hidden source of aid in
community-building whose help must be "presupposed" if
humanity's moral goal is to seem achievable. In the cases of both
the second Critique and the Religion,the appeal to divine agency
is occasioned by the need to insure the satisfaction of a need of
reason.
The common denominator linking these two cases is of course
the idea of the highest good itself. The fact that the highest good
could be put to such distinct uses reflects transitions that have
occurred in Kant's thinking between these two major works. The
second Critique's conception of the highest good as the
proportioning of virtue and happiness is both highly abstract and
associated with the postulate of the immortality of the soul, which
provides the duration necessary for the required perfection of
virtue. By the time of the Religion, Kant has shifted to the more
historically grounded idea of "the promotion of the highest as the
social good," which is to say, the ethical commonwealth. 26 The
individual's perfection of virtue that is at stake in the noumenal
realm of the immortality of the soul has become the community's
25 Henrich, "The Moral Image of the World," in Henrich, AestheticJudgment and the
Moral Image of the World, 3-28. Henrich notes the strong influence of Rousseau at this point

in Kant's moral theory.
26 Kant, Religion, 89. See Sharon Anderson-Gold, "Kant's Ethical Commonwealth: The
Highest Good as a Social Goal," InternationalPhilosophicalQuarterly26 (1986): 23-32; and
Philip J. Rossi, S.J., "Autonomy and Community: The Social Character of Kant's 'Moral
Faith,'" The Modern Schoolman 61 (1984): 169-86.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

79

realization of itself as fashioned according to laws of virtue alone.
It is presumably in light of this transformation that one
commentator has suggested that, in the Religion, the "highest
good and the given world no longer signify two different worlds
but two states, present and ideal, of the same world. In other
words, the highest good becomes a historical goal. "27
Gradually coming into focus here is a three-part shift between
the Critiqueof PracticalReason and Religion within the Limits of
ReasonAlone: (1) the moral task of the perfection of virtue is now
rendered in terms of overcoming the problem of radical evil, (2)
the relevant venue for the achievement of this moral task shifts
from the immortality of the soul to the building of a moral
community, and (3) God's role goes from being the "proportioner" of virtue and happiness to being the hidden source of aid
in overcoming the obstacles to creating the moral community.
Clearly, the increasing emphasis here on the social dimensions of
moral agency involves a modification of the very idea of divine
transcendence. For to the extent that God is more and more a
partner in the process of community-building, God is less "other,"
in the sense of being less restricted to the timeless noumenal realm
that frames Kant's account of the immortality of the soul in the
second Critique. The infinitely distant noumenal agent who
proportions virtue and happiness is now viewed, not simply as an
accomplice in a common moral task, but-to return to Schneewind' s observation-as a fellow member of the same community.
The threefold set of transitions that characterize the shift in
perspective between the second Critiqueand the Religionis at the
same time an implicit humanizing of divine activity, rendered
now in terms of a common moral task rather than in terms of a
task suitable only for a "God." In the Critique, God is clearly set
apart as the transcendent agent who alone enjoys the
27 Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, 72. Sarah Gibbons has suggested that Kant
actually has two views of the highest good, a "narrow" and a "wide" view: the narrow view
"focuses on the relation of the highest good to the moral law and the good will," while the
wide view emphasizes "the social and historical nature of this good and the role of culture in
its possible realization" (Sarah Gibbons, Kant's Theory of Imagination [Oxford: Oxford
University Press,1994), 153). The difference between the two can of course be readily seen
in the shift I am tracing from the second Critique to the Religion.

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GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

metaphysical weight necessary for the prodigious task of
proportioning virtue and happiness. In the Religion,by contrast,
God joins finite moral agents in promoting a dearly defined
social good, the outlines of which have been sketched by the
categorical imperative itself. The task at stake is a common task.
One striking aspect of this transition is that, from the
standpoint of the individual moral agent struggling to achieve
virtue, there is no longer a fundamental difference between one's
fellow finite moral agents and God. The individual moral agent
stands to benefit as much from the one as from the other, insofar
as "the exertions of the single individual toward his own
perfection . . . requires . . . a union of such individuals into a
whole toward the same goal." 28 The individual's moral vocation
cannot be achieved apart from community-building, which makes
other moral agents decisive for the full and authentic exercise of
the individual's autonomy. 29 While God may fill the specific role
of the hidden agent making up for a perceived shortfall in moral
effort by the entire body of finite agents, the fact remains that
other finite moral agents are now the major source of one's own
moral fulfillment.
In short, one's moral fulfillment depends upon the collaborative activity of community-building, suggesting an important
sense in which the wider community begins to offset the
individual's moral limitations. In contrast to the apparently
profound isolation of the finite agent in the second Critique, the
Religion offers a vision of a strengthened connection between
other moral agents and the individual's personal moral progress.
Indeed, the whole point of the idea of the ethical commonwealth
is that moral progress can no longer be viewed in purely
individual terms. The individual's moral fate is bound up with the
fate of the community in ways that necessarily redirect the
28 Kant, Religion, 89.
29 Allen Wood's characterization is apt: for Kant, "our nature as sociable beings gives us
a profound need" for a community involving "the collective pursuit of ends set in common
with others," and "our vocation as moral beings cannot be fulfilled" without such a
community (Allen Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999], 315-16).

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

81

individual's interest and concern toward the shared social task.
The fulfillment of the individual's very autonomy resides in
treating other rational beings as ends in themselves and entering
into a relation of universalizing legislation with them. To the
extent that I place my hope increasingly in such involvements, I
recognize that the immanent zone of social activity is the locus of
my individual salvation. Yet this, of course, is another way of
saying that my individual salvation is inseparable from that of the
group. By Kant's own terms, in fact, the group now mediates my
personal relationship to God.
From this point of view, we might say that any accompanying
alterations in God's transcendence are the spin-off effects of
God's growing redundancy or even irrelevance. The appearance
of God as having a robust role to play in the task of building an
ethical commonwealth is the deceptive appearance often made by
a "presupposition" playing a role in a transcendental argument.
The presupposition that "the forces of separate individuals,
insufficient in themselves, are united for a common end" 30 with
divine help may be necessary for moral encouragement, but it
does not displace the agent's primary focus on other moral
agents. This element of redundancy is particularly evident in
Kant's efforts to preserve a special role for God to play as the socalled law-giver of the ethical commonwealth. At first glance,
Kant's account of the law-giver appears to reinvigorate his
conception of God with a unique and decisive role to play in the
creation of a moral universe, a role that goes beyond that played
by finite moral agents. Kant explains that "if the commonwealth
is to be ethical, the people, as a people, cannot itself be regarded
as the law-giver."
Hence only he can be thought of as highest law-giver of an ethical
commonwealth with respect to whom all true duties, hence also the ethical,
must be represented as at the same time his commands; he must therefore also
be "one who knows the heart," in order to see into the innermost parts of the
disposition of each individual and, as is necessary in every commonwealth, to
bring it about that each receives whatever his actions are worth. But this is the
concept of God as moral ruler of the world. Hence an ethical commonwealth

°Kant, Religion, 89.

3

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

82

can be thought of only as a people under divine commands, i.e., as a people of
God, and indeed under laws of virtue.31

Kant here runs together a point about the source of the laws
defining an ethical commonwealth with a point about how one
might judge who is being truly virtuous and who is not. With
respect to divine agency, the emphasis clearly falls on the latter
point: only God possesses the intellectual intuition capable of
grasping the moral status of a finite moral agent. But this point
has nothing whatsoever to do with the more foundational issue
of what gives the ethical commonwealth its special character in
the first place, nor does Kant ever claim that the ethical
commonwealth originally receives its mandate from God.
In other words, Kant's invocation of God's name in the course
of speaking of the law-giver of the ethical commonwealth simply
turns out to be a way of distinguishing between "public" and
"inner" laws. Far from reintroducing a robust conception of
God's transcendence and indispensable role, such an insight
merely recycles in a fresh way Kant's previous distinction between
a political community and a community of virtue. Indeed, Kant
reminds us that in an ethical commonwealth
all the laws are expressly designed to promote the morality of actions (which
is something inner, and hence cannot be subject to public human laws) whereas,
in contrast, these public laws-and this would go to constitute a juridical
commonwealth-are directed only toward the legalityof actions, which meets
the eye, and not toward (inner) morality, which alone is in question here. 32

What is noteworthy here is that Kant makes the connection
between God and this "public/inner" distinction when he claims
that there "must therefore be someone other than the populace
capable of being specified as the public law-giver for an ethical
commonwealth." Yet, Kant goes on, we should not think of the
ethical laws themselves "as emanating originallymerely from the
will of this superior being. "33 In fact, the ethical laws at stake arise
31 Ibid., 90-91.

32 Ibid., 90.
33 Ibid.

GOD AND KANf'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

83

out of our very own rational sense of duty and are not revealed
or arbitrary statutes rendered from above or imposed from the
outside.
In other words, the sense in which God is viewed as the "lawgiver" of the ethical community has nothing whatever to do with
the rational source of the laws governing and defining such a
community. Instead, God's status as law-giver is a function of his
ability to pass judgment on the inner, moral state of individual
members of the community, which is a kind of carry-over from
the divine activity described in the postulation of God's existence
in the second Critique. The issue at stake is the integrity of the
moral agent's private moral disposition and not a potentially
heteronomous source of the laws governing the ethical
commonwealth. The question of whether a member of the ethical
commonwealth is obeying the moral law is not a matter for public
debate or enforcement; instead, it is only a matter for God to
apprehend and judge. But this point of course has nothing to do
with the question of the rational source of moral obligation itself,
which is accessible to all rational agents and not generated in
some special way only by God.
Indeed, Kant himself indicates in the opening pages of the
Religion that the "bare idea" of a law-giver is "identical with the
general moral concept of duty," even suggesting that the two are
analytically equivalent. 34 Such an insight clarifies what it means
to say that we share with God our membership in the ethical
commonwealth. The roots of this vision of a shared membership
in a moral community in fact go back to Kant's initial account of
a realm or kingdom of ends in the Foundationsof the Metaphysics
of Morals. In that context, as one commentator has reminded us,
Kant claims we enjoy "the right to regard ourselves as sharing the
headship of the kingdom of ends with God insofar as we are
legislators in that world," 35 a point bearing once again on the
source of moral obligation characteristic of the ethical
commonwealth. In an important (and neglected)36 passage in the
34 Ibid., 6 n.

Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory, 217.
The Invention of Autonomy, 510-11, attempts to rescue the relevant
passage in the Foundations from its traditional neglect.
35 Sullivan,

36 Schneewind,

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

84

Founda.tions,Kant provides further reason for his incorporation
of God into the moral community when he argues that everyone
"must admit that a law, if it is to hold morally, i.e., as a ground
of obligation ... does not apply to men only, as if other rational
beings had no need to observe it. "37 Applied to the subsequent
idea of the ethical commonwealth, this claim becomes a reminder
that God, too, is obligated to obey the universalizing legislation
of the moral community and is not somehow superior to it.
Morality is not grounded in a contingent act of the divine will
that could be exercised in isolation from the universalizability
principle. Rather, morality has a rational source that is binding
even on the will of God. God's "partnership" with finite moral
agents in the creation of the ethical commonwealth thus shrinks
the distance between God and humanity precisely because it turns
out to be genuine.
IV

God's relationship to the ethical commonwealth has one
further feature, involving the divine perspective on the ultimate
realization of the authentic moral community. This aspect of
God's connection to the ethical commonwealth is implicit in
Kant's remarks on the conversion of the individual moral agent
from radical evil to a virtuous disposition, no doubt the most
challenging moral problem disclosed in the Religion.In grappling
with the problem of explaining how the finite moral agent freely
changes itself, Kant distinguishes between the noumenal (and
therefore timeless) "revolution in his cast of mind" and the
phenomenal (and therefore time-bound) "gradual reform in [the
agent's] sensuous nature. "38 This distinction does not explain or
in any way account for the moral recovery itself. Rather, Kant is
apparently making the point that even the most sincere and
genuine conversion in the underlying disposition does not
automatically produce a saintly life. Within the world of
appearances, the moral convert is launched on a "path of
37 Kant,

Foundations, 5.

38 Kant, Religion, 43.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

85

continual progress from bad to better," a path sustained by the
hope that there really has been moral renewal. 39 At the
epistemological level, the matter remains one of hope, for the
agent can have no sure knowledge of a noumenal state of affairs
such as the status of the moral disposition, even his own. 40
But God can.
For Him who penetrates to the intelligible ground of the heart (the ground of
all maxims of the will) and for whom this unending progress is a unity, i.e., for
God, this amounts to his actually being a good man (pleasing to Him); and,
thus viewed, this change can be regarded as a revolution. 41

In keeping with his systematic unwillingness ever to "explain" an
act of freedom for fear of showing what "caused" it,42 Kant makes
no effort in this context to account for how the change in moral
disposition actually occurs. His reference to the divine perspective
effectively assumes that the change has occurred, leaving us with
a certain amount of insight into the divine perspective even as we
have none at all into the process of moral regeneration itself.
Similarly, when attempting to reconcile the notion of a
renewed disposition with the fact that "conduct itself, as a
continual and endless advance from a deficient to a better good,
ever remains defective," Kant reminds us of what God already
knows, but without any clear guidance as to how we are to
understand this "already." What Kant does tell us is that,
although the agent very likely experiences moral progress in fits39 Ibid.
40 "[F]or outer experience does not disclose the inner nature of the disposition but merely
allows of an inference about it though not one of strict certainty. (For the matter of that, not
even does a man's inner experience with regard to himself enable him so to fathom the depths
of his own heart as to obtain, through self-observation, quite certain knowledge of the basis
of the maxims which he professes, or of their purity and stability)" (ibid., 56-57).
41 Ibid., 43, emphasis added.
42 Roger Sullivan nicely captures the oxymoronic character of any effort to speak of
"causality" in connection with freedom: "The concept of a noumenal efficient cause specifies
a will free from prior causal determination and able to act only on its own Law of Autonomy"
(Sullivan, Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory, 92). See Allen Wood's helpful discussion of the
limited though important sense in which Kant speaks of the special kind of "causality"
associated with freedom. Wood, Kant's Ethical Thought, 172ff.

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

86

and-starts and as a deeply challenging endless struggle, we can
imagine this evolution
as being judged by Him who knows the heart, through a pure intellectual
intuition, as a completed whole, because of the disposition,supersensible in its
nature, from which this progress is derived. Thus may man, notwithstanding
his permanent deficiency, yet expect to be essentiallywell-pleasing to God, at
whatever instant his existence be terminated. 43

The renewed disposition, Kant remarks in his own note to this
interesting comment, "stands in the place of the totality of this
series of approximations carried on without end. "44 But only God
can "see" this. By contrast, we see "only that failure which is
inseparable from the existence of a temporal being as such, the
failure, namely, ever wholly to be what we have in mind to
become. "45
Once again, the subject under discussion is not really how
moral regeneration occurs but what the process looks like, in both
human and divine terms. Obviously, Kant's account evokes a
long-standing tradition of debate over the relation of God to time
as well as over the relation between divine omniscience and
human freedom. While Kant could hardly be unaware of this
heritage, he does not locate his own position in terms of it. Here
as elsewhere, his theological concerns are primarily shaped by the
more strictly cognitive issues driving the Leibnizian-Wolffian
tradition, which Kant is attempting to reshape through his
emphasis on the practical over the theoretical route to theological
claims. His aim throughout is "to distinguish as dearly as possible
between an impersonal speculative proof and a moral certainty
about God, "46 with a view to replacing his received rationalist
tradition's emphasis on the former with his own broadly pietist

43 Kant, Religion, 60-61.
44

Ibid., 61 n.

45 Ibid.

46 James Collins,

The Emergenceof Philosophyof Religion (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1967), 100-101.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

87

emphasis on the latter. 47 In the process, he invariably makes
claims that appear to implicate his position in other thorny
aspects of the Western theological tradition as well, such as the
relationship between God and time. Yet his overarching concern
to rectify our view of our cognitive relationship to God-with his
characteristic insistence that we have no rational, theoretical
knowledge of God's existence or attributes-leaves these other
issues largely unaddressed. 48
Ultimately at issue in Kant's "two perspectives" approach to
moral regeneration is the deeper distinction between a "sensible"
and an "intellectual" intuition. A cardinal feature of the critical
philosophy as a whole is Kant's claim that, as rational yet
sensuous beings, we are limited by our possession of a mere
sensible intuition, reflecting the receptive or passive aspect of our
cognitive faculties that works together with the spontaneous or
active aspect contributed by the understanding. This cognitive
limitation effectively rules out any privileged insight into
speculative or metaphysical truths. 49 In the context of Kant's
epistemology, this limitation finally amounts to the claim that we
can have experience only in terms structured by the pure
intuitions of space and time. Space and time are constitutive of
the way objects "appear" to us. Thus, to experience the world in
a manner conditioned by a sensible intuition is to experience
appearances only. While this familiar feature of Kant's philosophy
47 John H. Zarnmito, The Genesisof Kant's "CritiqueofJudgment" (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 17-21; Richard L. Velkley, Freedom and the End of
Reason: On the Moral Foundationof Kant's CriticalPhilosophy (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Press, 1989), 21-22.
48 A rare exception to this rule is Kant's Lectureson PhilosophicalTheology, trans. Allen
W. Wood and Gertrude M. Clark (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978)
which, though they evidently postdate the publication of the Critiqueof Pure Reason, have
to be handled with some care. In addition to the obvious problems associated with a text
reconstructed from lectures and lecture notes, there is, in this case, the fact that Kant was
lecturing on a required set text, in accordance with the university customs of the day.
49 The implications of this position are conveniently summarized in a remark by Kant in
the first Critique: "Since, however, such a type of intuition, intellectual intuition, forms no
part whatsoever of our faculty of knowledge, it follows that the employment of the categories
can never extend further than to the objects of experience." The consequences for all forms
of natural theology are obvious; Kant, Pure Reason, B308, p. 270.

88

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

may in some sense reflect serious cognitive limitations, they are
limitations that flow quite naturally from his effort to secure the
epistemological integrity of a Newtonian account of the universe,
particularly in light of Humean challenges to that account. This
fundamental aim of the Critiqueof Pure Reason helps to produce
the austere epistemology that will inform Kant's devastating
attack on speculative metaphysics at the same time that it
underwrites Newtonianism.
The contrast case to a sensuous intuition is an "intellectual"
intuition, which involves the capacity to experience things-inthemselves, the noumenal as opposed to the phenomenal. Just as
only God-in contrast to ourselves-possesses a "Holy will,"50
God-again in contrast to ourselves-possesses an intellectual
intuition. Within this Kantian framework, apprehending reality
as such, things-in-themselves as opposed to mere appearances, is
simply constitutive of what it means to be God. In the current
context, this difference in the divine point of view insures God's
ability to appreciate the revolution in the (noumenal) disposition.
For God, the change of heart is a completed reality, while for the
moral agent "this change must be regarded as nothing but an
ever-during struggle toward the better, hence as a gradual
reformation. "51 Curiously, then, this most modern of
philosophers effectively reverts at this point to certain medieval
traditions that posit a God who is "outside" of time. But since
Kant's frame of theological reference is provided more directly by
the Leibnizian-Wolffian inheritance, his recycling of familiar
medieval debates is never addressed in its original terms. The
closest Kant comes to shedding light on this point is framed (in
another context) largely as a cautionary remark that simply
so Kant, PracticalReason, 84-85. The odd implications of God's "holy will" are suggested
by Beck's comment that, for "a holy will, the concept of duty would have no application,
since duty presupposes that there are other grounds of choice, different from and in conflict
with the legislation of reason. For it, the difference between what is willed and what ought
to be willed would not arise" (Lewis White Beck, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of
PracticalReason [Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1960], 50 n). See
the discussion of the implicitly radical implications of this sort of Kantian limitation on God
in Michalson, Kant and the Problem of God, ch. 2.
51 Kant, Religion, 43.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

89

reinforces his primary interest in the proper understanding of our
cognitive relationship to God:
If we ... want to exclude time from the concept of God, then little remains of
eternity except a representation of the necessity of his existence. But we have
to make do with this on account of the weakness of our reason. For it would
be impertinent for us to want to lift the curtain which veils in holy darkness
him who is invariably and forever. We must eliminate every sensible
representation of time from the concept of God, because such representations
can easily corrupt a concept which is supposed to be free from all limitation. 52

Still, the absence of a more thorough account of unresolved
issues implicitly raised by Kant's outlook should not distract us
from the genuinely provocative implications of the position he is
staking out. What is finally interesting to consider here is that
Kant's depiction of a dual perspective on the moral regeneration
of the individual must apply as well to his remarks on progress
toward the ethical commonwealth. While Kant himself does not
make the connection between the "two perspectives" account and
his discussion of the ethical commonwealth, all of the same
ground rules remain in place: the shift from an account of
individual moral progress to a more social conception of moral
progress does not affect the issue of how this progress "appears"
to both God and finite moral agents. As we have seen, the very
idea of the ethical commonwealth involves the realization, in
time, of a community of moral agents who increasingly bring
about a "universal republic based on laws of virtue," where the
coercion characteristic of the civil state is replaced by the wholly
voluntary legislation of laws that could be universalized. It is not
altogether dear if Kant intends the moral community to be fully
realizable in history, or if he views it as an infinitely distant ideal,
not realizable in time but serving as a regulative ideal toward
which rational beings ought to strive.53 But there is no such
question mark for God. By the very ground rules Kant lays out in
relation to his account of personal moral regeneration, a dual
perspective on the attainment of the ethical commonwealth is
52 Kant,

Lectureson PhilosophicalTheology, 78. See note 48, above.

53 Regarding these alternative views of Kant's position, see note 11, above.

90

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

simply not available to God, since God possesses only an
intellectual intuition. Just as God's holy will means that the
difference between what is willed and what ought to be willed can
never arise, God's intellectual intuition means that "the
distinction between the actual and the necessary" does not arise.54
In this context, the clear implication is that God "sees" the ethical
commonwealth perfected and complete, just as God "sees" the
individual's disposition as completely revolutionized. The fact
that humanity may have to embark on a time-bound progression
toward the achievement of the ethical commonwealth is, in
principle, no more relevant to the divine standpoint than the fact
that the individual moral agent must undergo a seemingly endless
path of moral improvement. Just as personal history drops out for
God when we view moral progress at the level of the individual,
history as a whole is irrelevant when we consider humanity's total
moral vocation. Once again, "time" simply does not enter into
the divine perspective as a morally relevant factor. God's relation
to time is the flip side of the harsh reality associated with the fate
of finite beings, which (as we have seen) Kant characterizes in
terms of a "failure which is inseparable from the existence of a
temporal being as such, the failure, namely, ever wholly to be
what we have in mind to become. " 55 God's freedom from a
similar tragic flaw is grounded in the divine aloofness from time.
From the divine standpoint, then, Kant's ethical commonwealth implies something like a realized eschatology. The
"kingdom" is indeed at hand for the one (and only one) who has
the eyes to see through the possession of an intellectual intuition.
Kant in fact alludes to the ethical commonwealth as both the
"kingdom of heaven" and as the "kingdom of God on earth,"
expressions that he explicitly associates with the "victory of the
good principle over evil."56 Much of the latter half of the Religion
is devoted to arguing that the "visible church" is the "vehicle" for
the progressive manifestation of an "invisible church" which
Commentary, 50 n.
Kant, Religion, 61 n.

54 Beck,
55

56

Ibid., 87££.

GOD AND KANT'S ETHICAL COMMONWEALTH

91

already consists of all those who live virtuous lives.57 But, once
again, the time-bound, historically progressive character of this
journey toward virtue's perfection has utterly no purchase on the
divine perspective. There is no reason in principle for Kant to
have a different view of this point simply because we have
switched from the personal and individual level to the social or
community level, for surely God's own nature remains the same.

v
We thus have a peculiar tension affecting Kant's account of
God's relation to the ethical commonwealth. On the one hand,
Kant's efforts to characterize God as a partner in the task of
building the moral community appear to shrink the distance
between God and finite rational beings, raising questions about
God's transcendence, or the sense in which God is truly "other"
than humanity. These questions are important ones, for it is Kant
himself who has undermined the metaphysically based natural
theology that has traditionally informed accounts of God's mode
of relating to the finite world. Consequently, the issue here is
whether Kant's moral theism-with its deepened interest in
human autonomy and the associated emphasis on the human
frame of reference-can sustain an account of transcendence
adequate to ward off the possibility that language about God
finally dissolves into language about the total collection of
rational but finite moral agents. Such a Feuerbachian result is at
least one possible implication of Kant's view of the human/divine
partnership in the construction of the moral community, given
both the growing role of other finite moral agents in the
individual's hope for moral progress and Kant's own deep
suspicions toward traditional ways of talking about divine action.
On the other hand, however, Kant's account of the way moral
progress "appears" suggests a latent rupture in the very idea of a
"partnership" in the creation of a good universe. Certainly the
effect of the dual perspective on moral progress puts in question
57

Ibid., 122, 139££., 180.

92

GORDON E. MICHALSON, JR.

the notion of a shared membership in the ethical commonwealth,
for it is simply not clear what is "shared" if finite moral agents
view the ethical commonwealth as an ideal yet to be attained,
while God views it as already realized outside of time. By being
outside of time, God may recover an important element of the
transcendence jeopardized by the leveling process generated by
the idea of a moral partnership, but the cost of this recovery
would appear to be a high one. At the most, the lingering shared
element in the partnership would seem simply to involve an area
of overlap between God's noumenal vision and a finite
humanity's rational hope. God and humanity are truly living in
two different "worlds," suggesting that the immanentizing motifs
in the Religion do not override the standpoint of the second
Critique so much as they remain unreconciled with it.
The resulting ambivalence embedded in Kant's view of God's
relation to the ethical commonwealth is thus a telling one. To the
extent that God is relevant to humanity's moral struggle and is
understood to be in partnership with it, divine transcendence
appears to be severely compromised. But to the extent that God's
differentness or otherness is emphasized, God no longer fully
shares in a common moral struggle. Since Kant has himself
enforced a rigorous embargo against metaphysically grounded
natural theology, he has no means of generating meaningful
references to God other than those provided by the moral route.
Yet this moral route apparently culminates in instability, with the
marginalization of God-language poised opposite the potential
irrelevance of God-language to our actual moral struggle. Either
way, the notion of a "moral theism" would seem to be seriously
compromised.

The Thomist 65 (2001): 93-120

THE NATURE OF JUSTIFYING GRACE: A LACUNA IN
THE JOINT DECLARATION
CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY
The Catholic Universityof America
Washington,D.C.

I

n obedience to the Father's will to unite all things in Christ,
the Catholic and Lutheran communions are engaging in
dialogue about various issues, most notably justification. This
charitable collaboration and the renunciation of the destructive
animosities of the past offer grounds for rejoicing and hope. A
recent fruit of this dialogue, the joint Declarationon the Doctrine
of ]ustification1 (hereafter,JD), claims to present a description of
the fundamental truths about justification that conflicts with
neither the Lutheran nor the Catholic anathemas from the
Reformation era. Among those truths are the sinner's absolute
need for God's prevenient mercy, a gradual transformation of the
sinner, and a recognition of some form of merit.
Despite its noteworthy accomplishments, the JD appears not
to have resolved an important and contentious issue, the identity
of the "formal cause" of justification or that by which a man
stands just before God. The Council of Trent carefully defined
this formal cause and surely counted it as one of the fundamental
truths of justification. Nevertheless, none of the relevant
documents even mentions the phrase "formal cause." 2 While the
Origins 28:8 (1998): 120-27.
Origins 29:6 (1999): 87-88; "Official Common Statement," Origins 29:6
(1999): 85-87; "Official Catholic Response," Origins28:8 (1998): 130-32. The national and
I

2 "Annex,"

preparatory dialogues have also not faced this issue in all its rigor. Often, the Lutheran and
Catholic positions are simply juxtaposed as two inseparable poles or images of redemption:
Catholics emphasizing the transformative element and Lutherans emphasizing the gratuitous
93

94

CHRISTOPHER j. MALLOY

phrase itself is expendable, what it signifies is of paramount
importance.
There has long been dispute about what constitutes that by
which a man stands just before God. Catholics confess that
justifying grace formally causes justification because it is an
infused grace that expels all damnable sins by inhering in a man.
The Lutheran confessional documents, on the other hand, teach
that, since the sanctifying gifts imparted together with justification
do not expel all damnable sin, the sinner cannot thereby stand
just before God. 3 Thus, they hold that justifying grace itself
consists in Christ's own righteousness which God attributes to the
believing sinner. 4 These incompatible notions of justifying grace
stand as two sides of a doctrinal chasm that divides Lutherans and
Catholics. The chasm's breadth is more palpable when seen in
light of "double justice," a compromise theory so named because
it attempts to combine the formal causes from each communion's
doctrine. The confessions reject double justice for mutually
opposed reasons: Catholics, because it includes Christ's
righteousness as a formal cause; Lutherans, because it includes
infused righteousness.
Hence, short of doctrinal change, an agreement on basic truths
can be reached only through an equivocation on the term
"justifying grace." Because this term serves as a focal point of
reference, such an equivocation would have manifold conseelement. See, e.g., Condemnationsof the ReformationEra, ed. Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart
Pannenberg (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 47-48. See also the various essays in the
second volume of this project: W. Pannenberg and K. Lehmann, eds., Justificationby Faith:
Do the Sixteenth-CenturyCondemnationsStill Apply?, trans. Michael Root and William G.
Rusch (New York: The Continuum Publishing Company, 1997), esp. 36-3 7, 78-79, 115-18,
13 7-38, 156-59. See also Justificationby Faith, vol. 7 of Lutheransand Catholicsin Dialogue,
ed. H. George Anderson, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Publishing House, 1985), pars. 46-48, 90-99.
3 See The Book of Concord: The Confessionsof the EvangelicalLutheran Church, trans.
and ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959). Although various
traditions, interpretations, and emphases have arisen among Lutherans, this collection serves
as a basic point of reference, and it is reaffirmed as such by the JD's and the Annex's citations
of it.
4 See Apology 4:116 in The Book of Concord. See below for the variety of Lutheran
theologies with regard to the attributive or declarative nature of justification.

JUSTIFYINGGRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

95

quences. Both communions, for instance, could agree that God
forgives sin by arresting its damning effect while He also renews
the inner man. Nevertheless, they would interpret this diversely.
Catholics understand forgiveness as the gratuitous remission of
sins through a divine rectification and elevation of a disordered
and fallen will. Lutherans see forgiveness as the nonimputation of
damnable sin which, although incipiently purged, still remains.
The sin is damnable but not damning because it is ruled by Christ
through a faith whose justifying power is not dependent upon
charity.
In light of the importance of the formal cause of justification,
I contend first that Catholicism and traditional Lutheranism hold
incompatible understandings of justifying grace, and second that
the JD does not reconcile this conflict. The common and Lutheran
sections of the JD offer abundant evidence for reading justifying
grace as God's acquitting favor in Christ. These same sections
exhibit the logical consequences of such a position. This reading
of justifying grace, however, does not accord with Catholic faith.
It thus appears that a doctrinal chasm, obscured by equivocal
readings of the same document, still divides these partners in
dialogue. Granted, the JD faithfully gathers a host of commonly
accepted truths-some of which are listed above-that bridge the
chasm like so many olive branches. But upon this foundation the
JD further claims to resolve all that was once thought to be
Church-dividing about the "basic truths" of justification (JD 5, 14,
and 41 ). This weight the branches that straddle the chasm cannot
bear.
I. AN ORIGINAL AND SUBSTANTIAL CONFLICT

The ]D's claim to reconcile Catholic and Lutheran doctrines
without contradicting either of their official teachings can be valid
only if no contradiction ever truly obtained. Careful
consideration, however, reveals an original and substantial
conflict.

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CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

A) TraditionalLutheranism
Catholics and Lutherans have always officially taught that God
alone can forgive sinful man and that, when He does so, He
works some change in the sinner. But, as Martin Luther and
Martin Chemnitz insist, the parties do not agree on what this
means. 5 The doctrinal conflict can be summed up in four logically
related points.
(1) Since Lutherans deny that infused gifts (charity, and even
faith itself)6 expel all damnable sins, (2) the formal cause of
justification cannot be these gifts but only Christ's own righteousness, on account of which still-present sins are simply not
imputed. (3) Therefore, justifying righteousness, unlike interior
sanctification, remains perfect and cannot be increased through
good works. (4) Much less can any man merit beatitude itself,
which is tied exclusively to the promise and received through
faith alone. These points should be elaborated.
First, Lutherans do accept that, in the overall process of
redemption, there is a "real sanctification" of man. Unfortunately,
cheap Catholic polemics fail to admit this. Nevertheless,
Lutherans consider this transformation, which is God-enabled, to
be too weak to destroy sin and merit heaven. Philip Melanchthon
writes, "The incipient keeping of the law pleases God because of
faith; because of faith our failure to keep it is not imputed to us,
although the sight of our impurity thoroughly frightens us. "7
Since this impurity perdures, "no one can therewith and thereby
stand before the tribunal of God. " 8
5 D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883££.) 8:112,

16-21;
hereafter, WA. Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I, trans. Fred
Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971), 467-68 and 517-18. See also Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, Church, F.cumenism and Politics, trans. Robert Nowell (New York:
Crossroad, 1988), 104-5.
6 "This is not because [faith] is a work worthy in itself, but because it receives God's
promise" (Apology 4:86).
7 Apology 4: 177. See also 4: 179 and 308.
8 Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration) 3:32 in The Book of Concord. See also ibid.,
3:23 and 33-36.

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97

Second, this perceived deficiency of sanctification offers two
alternatives. Either salvation is not possible, or justifying
righteousness must be distinct from what Catholics refer to as
"sanctifying grace," which of its nature purges away all damnable
sins. Since the former alternative is unseemly, Lutherans opt for
the latter, describing justifying righteousness as extrinsic to the
sinner. Sanctification is certainly not denied, but it is clearly
distinguished from the formal cause of justification, which is
Christ's own righteousness:
[Christ] himself is their propitiation, for whose sake they are now accounted
righteous. But when they are accounted righteous, the law cannot accuse or
condemn them, even though they have not really satisfied the law.9
Neither renewal, sanctification, virtues, nor other good works are our
righteousness before God, nor are they to be made and posited to be a [form
or a] part or a cause of our justification, nor under any kind of pretense, title,
or name are they to be mingled with the article of justification as pertinent or
necessary to it....
Faith apprehends the grace of God in Christ whereby the person is
justified.10
Because the righteousness of Christ is given to us through faith, therefore faith
is righteousness in us by imputation. 11

Justification is defined as the forensic forgiveness or nonimputation of sins, even though it is always accompanied by
effects which purify, but do not expel, damnable sin. 12
It should be noted that different Lutheran schools portray
justification and its relation to sanctification in different ways.
Melanchthon 'sApologyseems to favor the language of declarative
attribution: God's declaration "synthesizes" two terms (the sinner
is just) but does not regard a man's actual status. The Formula of
Concord draws a strict distinction between forensic justification
and interior sanctification, partly in reaction to Andreas
9

Apology 4:179. See also 4:304-8.

10 Solid Declaration3:39 and 41; see also 3:23.
II

Apology 4:307.

12 The "forgiveness of sins is the same as justification"

(.Apology 4:76).

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CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

Osiander's theory that justification occurs through the indwelling
of Christ's divine nature. The Formula takes issue with Osiander' s
obvious Christological problems as well as with his apparent
reversal or confusion of imputation and indwelling. 13 Recent
Finnish research on Luther has discovered a middle ground
between these two extremes. 14 For Luther and for St. Paul, faith
brings a man outside of himself and places him in an ecstatic
fellowship with Christ who thereby dwells within him;
accordingly, God's "declaration" of justice is an analytic, not a
synthetic, statement: God pronounces righteous the man who
truly is righteous in Christ. The Finnish reading, although rich,
poses further questions. Wolfhart Pannenberg, a proponent of
this theory, notes that the relation between the in se and extra se
identity of the believer is a difficult matter. His "empirical"
identity only begins to be purified but remains ever tainted by
sin. 15 Is this damnable sin or simply the existential sense of
sinfulness, whether it be damnable or not? It would be difficult to
contend that the distinction between the believer's in se and extra
se identity simply parallels the Thomistic insistence that the
presence of charity can be perceived only indirectly. In fact,
Pannenberg disputes Trent's teaching that faith's justifying power
depends upon infused charity. 16 Accordingly, justifying faith
could coexist with damnable sin. Finally, the Finnish theory
entails the need for considerable modification of some official
Lutheran, not to mention Catholic, expressions. But the JD
intends to avoid such modifications.
Formula of Concord (Epitome), 3:1-3 in The Book of Concord.
Wolfhart Pannenberg concisely formulates the fruits of this research. See his
SystematischeTheologie,Band 3 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 263ff. For
the work of the pioneering author, see Tuomo Mannermaa, Luther und Theosis, trans.
Norman M. Watt (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft, 1990); ibid., "Theosis as a Subject
of Finnish Luther Research," Pro Ecclesia4 (1995): 37-48; and Carl E. Braaten and Robert
W.Jenson, eds., Union with Christ:The New FinnishInterpretationofLuther (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998).
15 Pannenberg, SystematischeIII, 245. The issue is raised on p. 247 but is never adequately
addressed.
16 See ibid., 250; see also 252f. and 265.
13 See

14

JUSTIFYINGGRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

99

Third, from the first two points there logically follows a
distinction between the formal cause of sanctification and that of
justification, whether or not such distinction is explicitly stated.
The former consists in infused gifts that inhere in the believer and
make him "so far" holy. The latter consists in the righteousness
of Christ which is attributed to or grasped by faith. The fact that
such a distinction is made manifests itself most notably in
discussions about growth in holiness. Justification, which is the
same as forgiveness of sins, cannot increase but "is the same and
equal to all, as Christ is one. " 17 So, justifying righteousness, which
consists formally in Christ's perfect righteousness, cannot
increase. Sanctification is said to increase since it consists in
imparted gifts and good works by which there is growth in the
effects of God's eternal love. However, good works neither
increase nor preserve justifying grace:
We rightly reject the decree of the Council of Trent and anything else that
tends toward the same opinion, namely, that our good works preserve
salvation, or that our works either entirely or in part sustain and preserve
either the righteousness of faith that we have received or even faith itself.18

Fourth, because salvation is granted together with justification,
good works are equally excluded from the article of salvation,
though these works are commendable and encouraged:
We receive both our righteousness and our salvation in one and the same way;
in fact . . . when we are justified through faith we simultaneously receive
adoption and the inheritance of eternal life and salvation. For this reason Paul
uses and urges exclusive terms (that is, terms that wholly exclude works and
our own merit, such as "by grace" and "without works") just as emphatically
in the article of salvation as he does in the article of justification.19

Like Catholics, Lutherans believe that justification cannot be
merited, but unlike Catholics they believe also that eternal life
itself cannot be merited, even on the basis of infused, sanctifying
Apology 4:195-96.
Solid Declaration4:34-35. See also Apology 4:160-61.
19 Solid Declaration3:53.

17

18

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CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

gifts. When they speak of reward, they always distinguish it from
eternal life itself: "Good works are meritorious . . . for other
physical and spiritual rewards. " 20
B) Double Justice and Its Condemnation

It will be beneficial, before considering Catholic doctrine, to
examine the compromise theory of double justice, which is
rejected by the Lutheran and Catholic communions for mutually
opposed reasons. This mutual condemnation highlights the
contrast between the two communions.
Girolamo Cardinal Seripando was the chief proponent of
double justice at the Council of Trent. 21 Seripando's theory
combines the Lutheran and Catholic notions of justification,
resulting in two formal causes: inhering righteousness and
Christ's righteousness. Since the former cannot satisfy God's
wrath, even one who dies "justified" stands in need of a final
imputation of Christ's righteousness in order to escape hell. The
word "final" can be misleading. It is tempting to think that, since
the formal cause is described as twofold, inhering righteousness
must precede imputation, which is expressly dubbed "final. " 22 In
fact, however, the phrase "final imputation" is intended, not to

20 Apology 3:194 and 4:355-62. For Luther's own formulations, see WA 2:584.7-9; and
8:115.
21 For Seripando's early formulation at the Council, see Concilii Tridentini actorum: Pars
altera, ed. Stephen Ehses, vol. 5, Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, actorum, epistularum,
tractatuum, ed. Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg: B. Herder, 1911), 332-36. Hereafter, CT;
all references are to volume 5. The translations are mine. For a thorough treatment, see
Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine ofJustification (2d ed.;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 250-72. See also P. Pas, "La doctrine de la
double justice au Concile de Trente" Ephemerides theologicae Lovaniensis 30 (1954): 5-53;
Carl E. Maxcey, "Double Justice, Diego Laynez, and the Council of Trent," Church History
48 (1979): 269-78. For more background on Trent, see Hubert Jedin, Die erste Trienter
Tagungsperiode (1545-47), vol. 2, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient (Freiburg: Herder,
1957), 139-268.
22 See Hans Kung, Rechtfertigung: Die Lehre Karl Barths und eine Katholische Besinnung
(Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1957), 217. See also McGrath, Iustitia, 246.

JUSTIFYINGGRACE IN THE JOINI' DECLARATION

101

exclude a prior imputation, but only to accentuate the perpetual
inadequacy of inhering grace. 23
The council fathers criticized double justice for its novelty, but
its subtlety instigated lengthy discussions and many revisions
before a precise condemnation could be formulated. The first
draft of the Decree on justification (24 July 1546) rejects only an
exclusively forensic conception of justification. 24 The next two
drafts, penned by Seripando, explicitly propose his theory.
Justifying grace is "in addition to the most pure and most perfect
justice of Christ ... , [also] the grace and charity poured into the
hearts of those who are justified.... " A corresponding canon
leaves room for double justice.25
The first decisive response to this theory appears in the 23
September draft, which reads:
So there are not two justices which are given to us, that of God and that of
Christ. There is one justice of God through Jesus Christ (this is charity itself or
grace), by which we are not merely considered, but truly are named and are
just.26

The phrase "not two justices . . . [but] one" was directed at
Seripando's expressions. 27 Still, debates continued as the fathers
strove for precision. 28 While one could truly say that a man is
justified both by Christ's righteousness and by inhering
righteousness, causal distinctions needed to be made. Christ alone
merited redemption and God alone justifies. Yet the key issue was
not the sinner's absolute need for Christ's merits and God's mercy
23 See CT 225 :25-26, 39-41; 335: 14-16; 824:4-8. According to Seripando, even our first.
movements toward God arise only because of God's prevenient grace.
24 CT 386:25-26 and 34-36.
25 "Praeter purissimam illam et integerrimam Christi servatoris et capitis nostri iustitiam
... gratia seu caritas diffunditur in cordibus eorum, qui iustificantur per Spiritum Sanctum,
qui datur eis" (CT 829:41-45). For the canon, see CT 832:27-32.
26 "lta non sunt duae iustitiae, quae nobis dantur, Dei et Christi, sed una iustitia Dei per
Iesum Christum, (hoc est caritas ipsa vel gratia), qua iustificati non modo reputamur, sed vere
iusti nominamur et sumus" (CT 423:34-36).
27 CT 505:26-27. See also the alternate form of the canons, which comes closer to
excluding double justice (CT 428-430, esp. 429:9-11).
28 See, e.g., CT 550:37-40; 615:9-14.

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CHRISTOPHER}. MALLOY

but the identity of the reality by which a man stands just before
God. The 31 October draft, therefore, introduced a precision in
technical terminology: "The formal cause is the one justice of
God." 29 Claude Le Jay later suggested that the "one" in "the one
justice of God" should modify "formal cause." The council fathers
followed Le Jay's suggestion 30 and even changed "una" (one) to
"unica" (one and only) on 11 December:
Finally, the one and only formal cause is that justice of God, not by which He
Himself is just, but by which He makes us just in His sight. This justice is given
by God, and by it we are renewed in the spirit of our minds. We are not merely
considered but are named and truly are just, each one of us receiving his own
justice according to the measure that the Holy Spirit wills to impart to each and
according to the distinct dispositions and cooperation of each. 31

This passage, retained practically word for word in chapter 7 of
the final decree, makes it unequivocally clear that the single
formal cause of justification is created, supernatural justice.
Canon 10 of the final decree condemns the errors opposed to
this definition in chapter 7. 32 It reads, "If anyone says that men
are justified without the justice of Christ by which he merited [our
justification] or that they are formally just by that very justice: let
him be anathema. " 33 Canon 10 maintains both that Christ is the
meritorious cause of justification and also that He is not the
formal cause. The initial formulation of this canon was a source
of confusion because Christ's own righteousness is both the
29

"formalis iustitia una Dei" (CT 512:19-20).

° CT 700:25. For Le Jay's contribution, see CT 658:24-25 and McGrath, Iustitia, 264.

3

lI "Demum unica formalis causa est iustitia ilia Dei, non qua ipse iustus est, sed qua nos
coram ipso iustos facit, qua videlicet ab eo donati renovamur spiritu mentis nostrae, et non
modo reputamur, sed vere iusti nominamur et sumus, iustitiam in nobis recipientes
unusquisque suam, secundum mensuram, quam Spiritus sanctus partitur singulis prout vult,
et secundum propriam cuiusque dispositionem et cooperationem" (CT 700:25-32).
31 See CT 687:3-4 for the question to which it responds.
u "Si quis dixerit, homines sine Christi iustitia, per quam nobis meruit, iustificari, aut per
eam ipsam forrnaliter iustos esse: anathema sit," Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2,
Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (Washington: Georgetown University Press,
1990), 679:3.5-36 (emphasis added). Hereafter, DE; all translations are mine. For discussion
of this canon, see CT 691:5-6; 714; 718:9-12, 25-42; 719:8-9, 14-20; 720:23-25, 50-51;
722:37-43; 759:39-44; and 760:1-21.

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103

exemplar and meritorious cause of justifying righteousness. The
following statement, added to chapter 16 in discussions related to
canon 10, resolves that confusion and further emphasizes the
inhering nature of justifying grace: "[This justice] is called ours
because we are justified by it inhering in us; it is that same justice
of God because it is infused into us by God through the merits of
Christ. " 34 Christ is neither the sole formal cause (as per
Lutheranism) nor one of two formal causes (as per double justice).
The formal cause is none other than inhering grace. Christ and
the Trinity indeed dwell within the just through sanctifying grace,
but this indwelling must be seen, not as a change in God, but as
a man's new relation, worked by this grace, to God.
Many scholars do not attend to canon 10 but focus on canon
11. They claim that the latter does not touch the essence of
Lutheran doctrine because, as Seripando's contribution, canon 11
condemns only an exclusively forensic notion of justification.35
But it could be argued that canon 11, which includes renewal in
the definition of justification proper, also condemns those
Lutheran formulations that exclude sanctification from
justification itself, while acknowledging a logically subsequent
sanctification. The Fomzula, for example, rejects expressions
34 "Quae enim iustitia nostra dicitur, quia per earn nobis inhaerentem iustificamur, ilia
eadem Dei est, quia a Deo nobis infunditur per Christi meritum" (CT 758:28-29, 31-33).
This refinement of an earlier draft (CT 710:15-16) obviously relates to canon 10 (see CT
759:39-760: 21).
3·1 McGrath attends not to canon 10, but only to canon 11; see Iustitia, 272. Also,
Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations of the Reformation Era, 46-48, refers to the
former only dismissingly, while focusing on canon 11. Otto Hermann Pesch considers the
formulas in canons 10 and 11 not to touch the genuine substance of Lutheran doctrine.
Different conceptual frameworks, tending to obscure an adequate reception of the other
communion's positions, must be surmounted in order to evaluate the real significance of the
apparent conflict. See Otto Hermann Pesch, The Canons of the Tridentine Decree on
Justification: To Whom Did They Apply? To Whom Do They Apply Today?, in Justification
l7y Faith, 183-85 and 194-95. Kiing likewise addresses only canon 11 and dismisses its
relevance (Rechtfertigung, 215-16). Jaroslav Pelikan emends canon 10, claiming that it
anathematizes "both the idea 'that men are justified without the righteousness of Christ, by
which he merited for us,' and the teaching (attributed to Luther) that the righteousness of
Christ alone could make them 'actually [formaliter] righteous'" (Reformation of Church and
Dogma [1300-1700), vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of
Doctrine [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 285; emphasis added).

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CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

similar to Seripando's. 36 In any case, canon 10 and the definition
of the formal cause in chapter 7, in proscribing double justice,
highlight the contrast between Catholic and Lutheran doctrine.
C) CatholicDoctrine

In light of the preceding discussion, the four key points in
which Catholic teaching diverges from Lutheranism should be
expounded. First, the Catholic Church teaches that justification's
singular formal cause is the grace which, infused by God on
account of Christ's merits, sanctifies a man by inhering within
him. 37 That is, the repentant sinner is justified precisely by an
infusion of the grace or charity that constitutes justification, the
culmination of the instantaneous process whereby "there is a
transition from that state in which a man is born a son of the first
Adam to the state of grace and of adoption of the sons of God,
through the second Adam, Jesus Christ our Savior. "38
Second, forgiveness of sins-as one element of justification-is
formally caused by infused, sanctifying grace. This grace, together
with a man's hatred of past sins, expunges all mortal sin. The
initial infusion of sanctifying grace marks the moment of
justification, which includes
not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the
inner man through the voluntary acceptance of grace and gifts. Thus, a man is
made just from having been unjust and is made a friend from having been an
enemy. 39

36 See Epitome 3:20-21 and Solid Declaration 3:49 and 50. Luther himself described a
similar compromise at Regensburg in 1541 as a "scissors and paste job" (McGrath, Iustitia,·
247-48).
37 DE 673:26-32.
38 "sit translatio ab eo statu, in quo homo nascitur filius primi Adae, in statum gratiae et
adoptionis filiorum Dei, per secundum Adam lesum Christum salvatorem nostrum" (DE
672:14-16).
39 "non est sola peccatorum remissio, sed et sanctificatio et renovatio interioris hominis
per voluntariam susceptionem gratiae et donorum, unde homo ex iniusto fit iustus et ex
inimico amicus" (DE 673:14-17).

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

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This conciliar expression ("not only remission . . but also
sanctification") should not be misunderstood as bifurcating the
formal aspect of the process of justification into forensic and
intrinsic elements (double justice). Such a reading would
erroneously imply that the Catholic Church simply uses one term,
justification, to signify two realities whose formal causes are
distinct: forensic forgiveness and interior transformation. This is
not so. Both forgiveness and transformation are elements of
justification, which has a singular formal cause: inhering grace.
The conciliar expression is directed against those who assert
justification to be "only" forgiveness, thus defining forgiveness as
formally forensic. Since justification consists in a translation from
an evil state to a holy state, the justified man retains no damnable
sins which might or might not be imputed. 40 Baptism, for
example, so purifies men that they "are made innocent, spotless,
pure, blameless and beloved sons of God. "41 What distinguishes
forgiveness through infusion from the infusion of grace simpliciter
is the guilty person's willful renunciation of past, damnable sins.
Forgiveness is not possible without such renunciation: "For the
attainment of grace and justice ... it has always been necessary
that, together with the rejection of what is base and an
emendation of so great an offense against God, sins be detested
with a hatred and a tender sorrow of spirit. "42
Third, the Church teaches that one can be more and more
justified through sanctification. 43 There can be such increase
because justification and sanctification share the same formal
cause. An increase in sanctification is, therefore, an increase in
justification. The latter first occurs when God freely infuses
sanctifying grace into the man who willingly and actively accepts
it, aroused by God's special and prevenient help. Sanctifying
grace remains in the just man as a stable disposition, dependent,
See CT 700:25-32.
immaculati, puri, innoxii ac Deo dilecti filii effecti sunt" (DE 667:6-7).
42 "ad gratiam et iustitiam assequendam necessaria ..• ut perversitate abiecta et emendata
tantam Dei offensionem cum peccati odio et pio animi dolore detestarentur" (DE 703:22-25;
see also 673:3 and 705:11-13.
43 See DE 675:2-7 and 673:26-27.
40

41 "innocentes,

CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

106

like any creature, upon God's creative power. Endowed with
justifying grace, a man can merit its increase through good works.
Fourth, with God's help, the just man can merit an attainment
and an increase of eternal life, provided he does not obstruct the
continual influx of this grace by committing mortal sin.44 This
fourth point provides an eschatological perspective from which
the fittingness of the Catholic teaching can be more readily
discerned. Mortal sin entails a habitual, willful disorder that per
se ruptures a man's friendship with God. As a beatific communion
of friends, heavenly life is in part constituted by the saint's
supernatural love of God. Since God never changes, the movement from sin to salvation must consist formally in created
changes, all of which achieve their end by uniting the human
spirit to God. Paradise is not a return to the flesh-pots of Egypt,
juridical admission to which could be granted to sinners and
saints alike. Instead, paradise is a nuptial bliss which of its nature
demands self-giving love. Justification, the key to paradise,
establishes the conditions that render heavenly life possible and
that determine the significance of earthly life as a preparation.
Granted, the sinner cannot attract God to himself; hence, God
can only mercifully or "extrinsically" decide to remit sin. But the
absolution itself consists in the eradication of the offense. If, on
the contrary, justification were to consist formally in the
attribution of justice, the just man would die God's mortal enemy,
only partly lovable in that he is only partly purged of sin. In what
sense, then, could he be saved? In what sense could he-a hostile
sinner-enjoy God's nuptial friendship? If, as is hypothetically
possible, he could be suddenly purified of his enmity with God
after death, of what dramatic relevance would his earthly life
be?45 In any case, Catholics believe that God has not chosen this
possibility, for those who die without charity stand condemned,
and charity cannot coexist with damnable sin.46
DE 681:22-24. Cf. Epitome 4:15.
See "Annex," 2-E; Solid Declaration3:32; and Greater Catechism 2.3:57-59, in The
Book of Concord. Cf. William of Ockham, Quodlibet VI, 4.1: 26-33 in Opera theologica9
44

45

{St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Saint Bonaventure University, 1980).
46 DS1970.

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

107

Catholic and Lutheran doctrines indeed conflict on more than
one of the basic truths of justification. But attention must now be
turned to the joint Declaration itself.
II. ANALYSIS OF THE JOINT DECLARATION

Although the JD emphasizes renewal and merit more than do
many of the Lutheran confessional documents, its common and
Lutheran sections nevertheless imply a problematic distinction
between the formal cause of forgiveness-justifying grace-and
that of sanctification. The names employed vary-justification
and sanctification, forgiveness and renewal, complete righteousness and good works, etc.-but the realities signified are usually
the same: forensic forgiveness of sins and the incipient renewal of
life. For the sake of clarity, I will use the first pair of terms to
refer to these two aspects of redemption, thus distinguished.
A) Basic Problem with Common and Lutheran Sections: justifying
Grace as God's Favor

The validity of the JD depends upon the sense in which it
reads the following Pauline statement: "Justification thus means
that Christ himself is our righteousness, in which we share
through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father" (JD
15). The precise question at stake is the following: in what way
is Christ Himself our righteousness? If He is understood as the
meritorious basis for justification or as the exemplar on which
infused righteousness depends, then the JD is harmonious with
Catholic dogma. If, however, His righteousness is understood as
that by which the sinner stands just before God, then the JD
contradicts a substantial piece of Catholic faith. The ]D's common
and Lutheran sections offer much evidence that they hold the
latter to be the case. The following passage distinguishes two
aspects of God's act of forgiveness and renewal:
When persons come by faith to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them
their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love. These two

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CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

aspects of God's gracious action are not to be separated, for persons are by
faith united with Christ, who in his person is our righteousness. CJD 22}

Forgiveness and renewal are, the JD elsewhere repeats, granted
simultaneously. But declaring the simultaneity of these two
aspects is not tantamount to affirming their unity in a singular
formal cause. It must be determined, then, whether or not the
nature of the distinction of these two aspects of God's act is
indicative of two really distinct formal causes, one of which is
justifying righteousness and the other of which is inhering,
sanctifying righteousness. The following text points more directly
toward this distinction:
In the doctrine of "justification by faith alone," a distinction but not a
separation is made between justification itself and the renewal of one's way of
life that necessarily follows from justification and without which faith does not
exist. CJD 26}

A distinction between inhering righteousness and justifying
grace entails that the latter consists in (or at least formally
includes) Christ's own righteousness. The above citation from
paragraph 22 suggests as much: "Christ, who in his person is our
righteousness." Whether interpreted as referring to Christ's
indwelling presence through faith (Finnish school) or forensically
imputed righteousness, this statement inhibits one from naming
sanctifying grace as the single formal cause of justification. A key
passage, to which the sources cited for section 4.2 refer, baldly
affirms Christ's own righteousness, imputed to faith, as that by
which a man stands just:
Uustification is] a single, total (though continually new} divine act: [consisting]
in the forgiving pardon, in the non-imputation of sin, in the imputation of the
righteousness of Christ-all of which are words for the same thing, namely,
that the human person is again standing in a proper relationship to God. 47

This line of thought leads one, inexorably, to hold that sins are
forgiven, not by being destroyed, but by being "no longer
47 Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations

of the Reformation Era, 47.

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

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imputed." Instead of one's own sins, it is Christ's righteousness
that is attributed to the sinner.
Paragraph 23 explains the imputation language of paragraph
22 as follows:
When Lutherans emphasize that the righteousness of Christ is our
righteousness, their intention is above all to insist that the sinner is granted
righteousness before God in Christ through the declaration of forgiveness and
that only in union with Christ is one's life renewed. When they stress that
God's grace is forgiving love ("the favor of God" [WA 8:106; American ed.,
32:227 ]), they do not thereby deny the renewal of the Christian's life. They
intend rather to express that justification remains free from human cooperation
and is not dependent on the life-renewing effects of grace in human beings.
(Emphasis added)

For Catholics, justifying grace consists in the infused grace or
charity by which all damnable sins are expelled. In traditional
Lutheranism, justifying grace is God's forgiving decision no
longer to take such still-extant sins into account. This citation
from the JD is faithful to the traditional Lutheran position.
Forgiving or justifying grace, of whose effects justification is
independent, is not sanctifying grace but God's extrinsic favor.
This interpretation of paragraph 23 is confirmed by its citation of
Luther's Confutation of Latomus. Luther denies therein that
infused gifts expel all damnable sin and affirms that God's
extrinsic grace in Christ is that by which a man stands just.
Can it be maintained, then, that the ]D's Lutheran and
common sections comport with Catholic teaching? Do they not,
rather, teach that men are just by Christ's righteousness itself (JD
15, 22, 23, and 29)?

B) ConsequentManifestationsof This Basic Problem
The affirmation that Christ is the sinner's righteousness is
correlative with other problematic notions. These include the
coexistence of damnable sin and infused grace, the impossibility
of an increase in justifying grace, and the exclusion of eternal life
from the proper scope of meritorious works. The appearance of

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these correlative notions would confirm my fundamental critique
of the JD.
1. Simultaneously Just and Sinner

If damnable sin can exist within a "justified" man, the formal
cause of justification cannot be simply sanctifying grace but must
be (or at least include) something extrinsic, such as the imputed
righteousness of Christ. Paragraph 29 asserts the antecedent and
thus implies the consequent:
Looking at themselves through the law, however, they recognize that they
remain also totally sinners. Sin still lives in them (1Jn.1:8; Rom. 7:17, 20), for
they repeatedly turn to false gods and do not love God with that undivided
love which God requires as their Creator (Dt. 6:5; Mt. 22:36-40 pr.). This
contradiction to God is as such truly sin. Nevertheless, the enslaving power of
sin is broken .... It no longer is a sin that "rules" the Christian for it is itself
"ruled" by Christ with whom the justified are bound in faith .... Despite sin,
the Christian is no longer separated from God, because in the daily return to
baptism, the person who has been born anew by baptism and the Holy Spirit
has this sin forgiven. Thus this sin no longer brings damnation and eternal
death [cf. Apology 2:38-45; Book of Concord, 105£.].

The justified are "totally sinners" in themselves because there lives
within them sin which, of its nature, can bring damnation and
eternal death. The most troubling element in this passage is the
damnable nature of the sin that remains. A passage noted in
sources cited for section 4.4 also affirms that concupiscence is in
itself damnable, although not damning: "In Lutheran
phraseology, [concupiscence] is peccatum regnatum, 'controlled
sin,' which is only damnable hypothetically, as it were-that is,
only if God were not to forgive. "48
To maintain that still-extant, damnable sin is not mortal in its
effect one must understand justification as the nonimputation of
sin and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. The following
sentences from paragraph 29 should be interpreted accordingly:
"Believers are totally righteous in that God forgives their sins
through word and sacrament and grants the righteousness of
48 Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations

of the Reformation Era, 46.

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

111

Christ, which they appropriate in faith. In Christ, they are made
just before God." The section in the Apology referred to in
paragraph 29 ratifies this interpretation: "For [the fathers and
Paul] clearly call lust sin, by nature worthy of death if it is not
forgiven, though it is not imputed to those who are in Christ. " 49
Paragraph 2-B of the "Annex" does not resolve this problem,
defining voluntary sin as follows: "Sin has a personal character
and as such leads to separation from God. It is the selfish desire
of the old person and the lack of trust and love toward God." In
the same paragraph, the Lutherans define concupiscence as "the
self-seeking desire of the human being, which in light of the law,
spiritually understood, is regarded as sin." The elements of the
"Annex"'s definition of voluntary sin-selfish desire and lack of
love-are indistinguishable from those of the Lutheran
conception of concupiscence-selfish desire, lack of love, and
repeated idolatry. The textual evidence indicates that Lutherans
still maintain the truly sinful and damnable nature of
concupiscence.
The Catholic Church recognizes the existence of venial sins
and concupiscence within the justified person. Yet she dearly
describes concupiscence as merely a tendency towards sin which
deserves no punishment whatsoever. 50 Moreover, the Church
teaches that venial sins can coexist with justifying grace not
because they are "not imputed" but because sanctifying grace
remains, although its effects are hindered in ways that do not
render men interiorly unjust. 51 Just as with human friendships,
everyday slights do not destroy the relationship of love. When
God forgives mortal or venial sins He does so not by ignoring
them but precisely by washing them away. 52
2. Growth in Grace
Infused, sanctifying grace can always increase since it is a
spiritual, creaturely perfection of the human person. As
Apology 2:40.
so See DE 680:38-41. Cf. WA, 2:584.39-585.1.
SI DE 675:22-23.
sz See DE 667:9-11.

49

CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

112

something created, it can always increase. As a spiritual
perfection, its increase does not destroy its bearer's nature. If,
therefore, justifying righteousness cannot increase, then the
formal cause of justification cannot be sanctifying grace.
Paragraph 39 accepts the antecedent and thus implies the
consequent:
Righteousness as acceptance by God and sharing in the righteousness of Christ
is always complete. At the same time •.. there can be growth in its effects in
Christian living ... [which are] the fruits and signs of justification. l]D 39)

According to this paragraph, justification is God's acceptance of
the sinner who shares in Christ's own righteousness precisely
through faith. Since this acceptance and sharing are always
complete, they consist formally not in infused grace but in
something extrinsic, either attributed to, or ecstatically grasped
by, faith.
Important source dialogues share this conception. A work cited
in the sources for section 4. 7 reads:
If righteousness [iustitia] in Canon 24 is understood in the sense that it [a]ffects
human beings, then it does not apply to us. But if righteousness in Canon 24
refers to the Christian's acceptance by God, it applies to us; because this
righteousness is always perfect; compared with it the works of Christians are
only "fruits and signs." 53

This passage acknowledges a growth in the sanctifying effects of
God's eternal love, but clearly distinguishes this from the
righteousness by which a man is accepted as just before God.
53 From "Comments

of the Joint Committee of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church
of Germany and the Lutheran World Federation German National Committee regarding the
document The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide," in
Lehrverurteilungen im Gespriich (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 94:2-14.
Canon 24 reads: "If anyone says, that the justice received is neither conserved nor increased
in the presence of God through good works, but that the works themselves are only fruits and
signs of the justification received and not also a cause of its increase: let him be anathema"
("Si quis dixerit, iustitiam acceptam non conservari atque etiam non augeri coram Deo per
bona opera, sed opera ipsa fructus solummodo et signa esse iustificationis adeptae, non etiam
ipsius augendae causam: a. s.") (DE 680:35-37).

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

113

Similarly, in the American dialogue, Lutherans "describe
justification as the imputation to sinners of a righteousness which
is that of Christ himself (iustitiaaliena). ... Lutherans also affirm
the reality of sanctification and good works, but they regard these
effects as fruits rather than parts of justification itself."54 Christ's
righteousness is regarded as the formal cause of justification.
3. Cooperation and Merit
The elect who are admitted into eternal life consist solely in
those who die justified, since justifying righteousness is the key
that opens paradise to each man. If this righteousness is formally
caused by sanctifying grace, the man who dies in grace can be
worthy, not of damnation, but only of eternal life, a post-mortem
purification of venial sins notwithstanding.
If, however, the man who dies "justified" is worthy of
damnation but receives eternal life simply because of his faith in
the promise, his justifying righteousness must be extrinsic, even if
it is accompanied by an incipient renewal. The ]D's Lutheran
sections accept the antecedent and thus imply the consequent:
"[Lutherans also understand] eternal life ... as an unmerited
'reward' in the sense of the fulfillment of God's promise to the
believer" (ID 39). As a Reformation idiom, "promise" is tied
exclusively to faith that, in accepting the promise, has saving
power apart from obedience to the commandments. 55 Thus,
although damnable sin remains within him, the justified man is
promised salvation through faith. A Lutheran preparatory
document, cited in the sources for section 4.7, states, "We grant
that eternal life is a reward because it is something that is
owed-not because of our merits but because of the promise."56
This statement is taken from Apology4:362, a paragraph located
in the midst of a discourse in which the reward of eternal life is
unequivocally excluded from works, even those based upon
s• Anderson, Murphy, and Burgess, eds., Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue, par. 98,
referred to in the sources cited for section 4.2.
ss See below, pp. 118-19. See also Apology 4:113.
s6 "Comments of the Joint Committee," 94 (emphasis added).

CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

114

infused grace. The Apology connects eternal life exclusively with
faith and forensic justification, although it affirms that "good
works merit other rewards, both bodily and spiritual, in various
degrees. "57 According to the textual evidence, Lutherans still do
not admit what Catholics confess: that the justified truly merit
eternal life.
The "Annex" does not correct this problem. Paragraph 2-E
offers a notably inadequate statement: "In the final judgment, the
justified will be judged also on their works" (emphasis added).
This claim, while not contrary to Catholic faith, remains open to
the Apology's deficient notion of merit. A few sentences later,
paragraph 2-E confirms the traditional Lutheran view of merit by
citing Solid Declaration4:38 as an authority on cooperation: "It
is God's will and express command that believers should do good
works." This passage concludes a section that rejects both
Catholic and "Epicurean" theories of salvation. 58 The latter led to
a denial of the importance of works. But the rejection of this
Epicurean delusion does not imply an affirmation of Catholic
truth. On the contrary, the Solid Declaration takes great pains
also to reject the Catholic notion of meritorious works, as
betrayed in the following: "[Paul] attributes to faith alone the
beginning, the middle and the end of everything .... It is evident
from the Word of God that faith is the proper and the only
means whereby righteousness and salvation are not only received
but also preserved by God. "59
C) Inadequacyof the Catholic Sections

The Catholic sections of the JD contain many distinctively
Tridentine expressions and are not explicitly problematic. Still,
they suffer from some deficiencies. Two can be mentioned here.
57

Apology 4:366 (emphasis added).

The term "Epicurean," as used in Lutheran confessional documents, refers to certain
enthusiasts for whom good works were seen not only as unnecessary for salvation but even
as a positive hindrance thereto.
59 Solid Declaration4:34-35; see also 3:53.
58

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

115

First, the description of the effects of baptismal grace in
paragraph 30 does not fully express the Catholic faith. Whereas
the JD rightly declares that the sin that is "worthy of death" is
destroyed in baptism, Catholic faith holds, further, that all venial
sins are destroyed. Unfortunately, there seems to be no real
discussion of the distinction between mortal and venial sins,
which distinction indeed hinges upon the presence or absence of
inhering grace. Correlatively, it is an understatement to affirm
that concupiscence "does not merit the punishment of eternal
death" (par. 30). It merits no punishment whatsoever. It should
be noted, however, that the two references to DS 1515, notes 16
and 17, can guide the reader to a more adequate interpretation.
Second, there is no unambiguous definition of the formal cause
of justification. This omission is notably problematic. However,
one might attempt to detect the claim that justifying grace is
inhering grace in the following key passage:
When Catholics emphasize the renewal of the interior person through the
reception of grace imparted as a gift to the believer [cf. DS 1528], they wish
to insist that God's forgiving grace always brings with it a gift of new life,
which in the Holy Spirit becomes effective in active love. (/D 24)

As noted above the JD usually presents a merely twofold
distinction between justifying grace (God's mercy in Christ) and
sanctifying grace (renewal). The above passage could be read as
introducing a more precise threefold distinction: God's mercy
(called "justification" by Lutherans and "efficient and meritorious
cause" by Catholics), imparted or infused grace (called "formal
cause" by Catholics but often unexpressed by Lutherans), and
renewal of life (called "fruits" by Lutherans and "good works" by
Catholics). Accordingly, the ]D's descriptions of justification as
distinct from the sanctifying effects of God's love could be seen as
affirmations of meritorious and efficient causality. The term
signify good
usually paired with justification-renewal-would
works. A hidden, third factor would then lie between these:
imparted or justifying grace. This grace, understood as inhering
righteousness, could be seen as the formal cause of justification.

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There is contextual support for this interpretation. The note
attached to this passage (DS 1528) and another note in a parallel
passage from paragraph 27 (DS 1530) refer respectively to the
paragraphs in Trent that precede and follow the definition of the
formal cause (DS 1529). In addition, the first sentence of "Annex"
paragraph 2-D might be read as an implicit description of the
inhering quality of justifying grace: "Grace, as fellowship of the
justified with God in faith, hope and love, is always received from
the salvific and creative work of God."
Such a reading would preserve Catholic doctrine, but it would
conflict with official Lutheran teaching, perhaps giving cause for
some Lutherans to urge the parties to delay signing the JD. On the
other hand, a case can be made for a contrary reading, which may
well be the sense in which the Lutheran signatories understand
the text. The validity of the above exegesis depends upon the real
meaning of "imparted grace." Only if imparted grace is identified
with inhering righteousness can this exegesis stand. It is useful, in
analyzing this text, to restate the passage more simply:
When Catholics emphasize inner renewal through imparted grace, they insist
God's forgiving grace brings new life.

There are four terms in this statement: "inner renewal,"
"imparted grace," "God's forgiving grace," and "new life."
Logically transposed, it reads as follows:
A comes through B; that is, C brings D.

So far so good. But "inner renewal" (A) and "new life" (D) are
synonymous. 60 This raises a difficulty, as may be discerned
through a further simplification:
Renewal comes through imparted grace; that is God's forgiving grace brings
renewal.
60 A parallel passage uses the term "renewal" twice: "While Catholic teaching emphasizes
the renewalof life by justifying grace, this renewalin faith, hope and love is always dependent
upon God's unfathomable grace" (JD 27; emphasis added).

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE JOINT DECLARATION

117

A comes through B; that is, C brings A.

From this latter statement, one could generate a sentence such as
the following: "Tim 3rd comes through Tim Jr.; that is, Tim Sr.
brings about Tim 3rd." This sentence is intelligible and, if
understood correctly, true. Nevertheless, it is bizarre and not
informative, for it leaves one wondering why the second term was
introduced and what its relation is to the third term.
The passage in paragraph 24 invites similar questions
regarding its second and third terms: what is imparted grace and
how is it related to forgiving grace? The one way to avoid these
questions is to conflate the second and third terms. The latter,
God's forgiving grace, is clearly the uncreated grace.61 A
conflation of the terms, then, identifies imparted grace with God's
mercy through Christ. Accordingly, the independent clause in the
passage merely explicates the dependent clause:
Though Catholics emphasize renewal through grace, what they mean is that
this grace (i.e., God's forgiving grace) always has some effect on man.

As such a reading makes dear, when imparted or justifying grace
is conflated with God's mercy, the distinctively Catholic doctrine
is obscured.
In short, the citation from paragraph 24 can be rendered in
three ways: as uniquely Catholic, as uninformative and awkward,
or as uniquely Lutheran. The third alternative is the most
plausible, in light of the common and Lutheran sections and in
light of the ]D's rejection of a caricature of the Tridentine
definition of the formal cause: "Thus justifying grace never
becomes a human possession to which one could appeal over
against God" (fD 27). 62
61 For further evidence, see JD 23 and 27, and Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds.,
Condemnations of the Reformation Era, 52, cited in the sources for section 4.3.
62 The same kind of caricature appears in a passage in the sources for section 4.2: "nor
does [Catholic doctrine] maintain .•• grace as an objective 'possession' (even if a conferred
possession) on the part of the human being-something over which he can dispose"
(Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations of the Reformation Era, 49).

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D) Possible Objections to This Critique
Three objections, based on texts in the JD, might be mounted
against my critique. They can be noted here with brief mention of
the flaws associated with each objection. First, forensic
forgiveness and interior renewal are connected by qualifying
phrases, such as "without separation" (JD 22, 24, 26, and 27).
However, these connectors, which astute Catholics have always
perceived in Lutheranism, 63 are mere conjunctions that fail to
achieve the requisite unity (viz., infused justice as the single
formal cause). Second, justification and renewal "are joined in
Christ who is present in faith" and who "in his person is our
righteousness" (JD 26 and 22). Though such expressions maintain
a unity between these two aspects of justification, they also imply
that Christ's righteousness itself is that by which a man stands just
before God-which, Trent teaches, cannot be the formal cause of
justification.
The third objection is the most weighty: justifying faith is said
to include "hope in God and love for him" (JD 26), thus
apparently linking this faith to the full panoply of inhering,
sanctifying grace. 64 However, in both traditional Lutheranism and
the JD the nature of this inclusion falls short of Trent's
declaration: "Faith, unless hope be added to it, and also charity,
neither perfectly unites one with Christ, nor makes one a living
member of his body. " 65 Granted, Luther himself insisted that love
always accompanies faith, but even as early as 1519 he admitted
that this infused charity coexists with damnable sin. 66 Hence,
faith's justifying power does not depend upon charity's capacity
or incapacity to expel such sin (see Solid Declaration3:43). The
JD itself explains the nature of faith's "inclusion" of love: "Such
a faith is active in love" (par. 25). Traditional Lutheranism has
always maintained this, while carefully distinguishing faith's
Symbolik (Cologne: Jakob Hegner, 1958), 136-42.
and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations of the Reformation Era, 52.
65 "fides, nisi ad earn spes accedat et charitas, neque unit perfecte cum Christo, neque
corporis eius vivum membrum efficit" (DE 673:38-40).
66 WA 2:584.7-9. See also, WA 40/11:79.31-80.21.
63 See, e.g., J. A. Mohler,

64 See also Lehmann

JUSTIFYING GRACE IN THE ]OINI' DECLARATION

119

justifying power from the love by which it is active. The ]D's
explanation invites no correction to this perspective, but instead
employs strictly Lutheran expressions: "justification in faith
alone" CJD 26) and the more emphatic "by faith alone" ("Annex,"
2-C). One dialogue distinguishes faith's justifying power from the
renewal that necessarily accompanies it. 67 Another reads: "if
however Canon 20 affirms that faith has salvific power only on
condition of keeping the commandments, this applies to us."68 Is
it surprising that so eminent a theologian as Wolfhart Pannenberg
could ascribe to Catholics a substantial modification of dogma:
"The Catholic side no longer calls faith-as at the Council of
Trent (DS 1532)-the mere 'beginning' of justification"? 69
CONCLUSION

If, as I contend, traditional Lutheran doctrine and Catholic
faith offer incompatible understandings of justifying grace, are
there not a priori grounds to question the substantive nature of
any reconciliation that truly evades the Reformation-era
condemnations of both communions? Would not an
unacknowledged disagreement about justifying grace, with all its
consequent difficulties, render fundamental elements of the joint
Declaration unstable? 70
But since the call to unity must issue in hope, some points
whose discussion might foster a doctrinal rapprochement should
be noted. First, the distinctions between sanctifying grace and
virtue and between virtue and works resonate with the salutary
Lutheran desire to emphasize the total person over individual
deeds. Second, consideration of the participatory relation of
67 Lehmann and Pannenberg, eds., Condemnations of the Reformation Era, 50-52, cited
in the sources for section 4.3.
68 "Comments of the Joint Committee," 89, cited in the sources for section 4.5. Cf. DE
680:24-25 and 685:36-37.
69 Wolfhart Pannenberg, "Theses to the 'Joint Declaration' about Justification," Pro
&clesia 7 (1998): 136. Seen in light of his critique of Trent, the thrust of this statement can
be discerned more easily (see above, p. 98).
7 For another critique, see Ansgar Santogrossi, "Un accord oecumenique en fauxsemblant," Catholica 66 (1999): 51-68.

°

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CHRISTOPHERJ. MALLOY

justifying grace to Christ's own righteousness should dispel a false
dialectic between the Giver and the gift. The image, after all,
strives of its very nature towards the Archetype. An existential
approach, as long as it carefully avoided attributing damnable sin
to the justified, could situate itself within the relationship of being
from and being towards the Archetype. Third, inhering grace
justifies, not as some object-less item in man, but as the power for
relation to the Divine Friend-a kind of ecstatic fellowship. What
Catholics insist is that this fellowship with Christ can subsist only
with the love of charity, by which a man, who is ever loved by the
Father, offers his whole being to the Trinity. Fourth, Catholics
must emphasize the distinctions between formal, meritorious, and
efficient causality: infused grace is only that by which (formal
cause), not that on account of which (meritorious cause), God
freely justifies (efficient cause) a man.
In the end, the eschatological implications of justification
highlight the intelligibility of the Catholic position. If heaven is
an eternal espousal, should not justifying righteousness, which
grants entrance to the wedding chamber, be the very holiness that
God pours out upon His bride, cleansing her of sins, fitting her
for nuptial bliss, and equipping her for the drama of earthly
preparation?

The Thomist 65 (2001): 121-36

THE SYMBOLIC THEOLOGY OF ROGER HAIGHT
THOMAS WEINANDY,0.F.M.CAP.
Greyfriars
Oxford, England

R

oger Haight, S.J., of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology,
in his approximately 5 00-page book, Jesus Symbol of God, 1
follows closely the conclusions first offered in his article
"The Case for Spirit Christology. " 2 He has not substantially
advanced his arguments, but he has expanded them and so has
attempted to substantiate further his theological and Christological position. For this reason his book deserves a careful
reading and a judicious assessment. 3
I. IN SEARCH OF A HERMENEUTIC

Within each successive chapter of his book Haight cyclically
advances a herrneneutical principle located in his understanding
of the symbolic nature of religious knowledge and language. This,
he argues, is not only in accord with postmodernity with its
1

New York: Or bis Books, 1999.

2 Theological Studies 53 (1992): 257-87.

3 I responded to Haight's article in "The Case for Spirit Christology: Some Reflections,"
The Thomist 59 (1995): 173-88. There I critically addressed his historical and systematic
arguments and doctrinal conclusions. Because Haight has not substantially changed his
thinking (nor taken account of my criticism), I will, for the most part, not address these same
issues here. Thus, this present review article should be read in conjunction with my previous
article. Here I will focus my analysis on Haight's understanding of symbolic religious
knowledge and language and its ramifications, since these form the basis of his theological and
Christological stance. It should also be noted that Haight has not addressed or even noted in
his book J. Wright's critical but insightful article, "Roger Haight's Spirit Christology,"
Theological Studies 53 (1992): 729-35.

121

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THOMAS WEINANDY,O.F.M.CAP.

rightful emphasis on historical consciousness, but also the only
means for making Christianity credible today. 4
God's transcendence necessitates, for Haight, that theological
language be symbolic. As transcendent God is beyond the confines
of this world and its history, and therefore he cannot be an object
that is directly experienced and known. Human beings can only
directly experience, know, and express as objectively factual that
which exists within the this-worldly historical order. However,
symbols and symbolic language provide an opening, Haight
maintains, to the transcendent God, for "a symbol mediates
awareness of something else" (8 ). More specifically "religious
symbols . . . point to and mediate transcendent realities in
response to religious questioning." For Haight the knowledge that
is obtained through religious symbols "is not an attenuated form
of cognition, but an extension of the range of human awareness,"
that is, it is not a different way of knowing from that of normal
human knowing, but rather "symbols may be called engaged
participatory knowledge. This means that it is the product of
becoming conscious existentially and experientially of that which
is mediated by the symbol." Haight draws two very critical
"axioms" from this understanding of religious symbols, "which
interact dialectically." The first is negative: "because theology is
symbolic, its assertions are not direct statements of information
about God. Information here connotes a kind of objectified
datum that is asserted about God the way information about
other things of this world are known." This is in accordance with
4 For Haight's understanding of postrnodernity see pp. 24-26 and 330-34. Historical
consciousness, for Haight, is that contemporary intellectual mindset that founds scholarly
assessment solely upon historical and factual data; thus he places all Christology under the
normative eye and the final arbitration of contemporary "Jesus research" (see pp. 30-40). It
also represents the intellectual posture that all scholarly analysis of past beliefs must be
measured from within their relative historical and cultural settings and judged in the light of
their current existing intellectual, educated, historical, and cultural surroundings. Moreover,
all new theological proposals must harmonize with these same criteria. This accounts for
Haight's uncritical partiality to what postmodernity, with its historical consciousness, will or
will not tolerate and permit concerning Christian doctrine and religious belief. See pp. 21,
26, 39, 48-51, 120, 126, 217, 221-22, 237, 242, 249, 273-74, 278, 280-81, 290-97, 319,
331-35, 339, 342-45, 348-52, 364, 369, 384, 396, 404-5, 422, 431, 433-35, 439, 445, 447,
458,461,465-66,468,470,474,477-78,490.

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the transcendent nature of faith and revelation and thus "theology
communicates no immediate information about God." The
second axiom is positive: "the symbolic assertions of theology
communicate through the engaged participatory experience which
they invite and actively engender. The symbolic assertions of
theology draw one into the mystery of the transcendent" (all
above quotations are from p. 9). Haight holds that even though
symbolic statements do not give us factual and objective
knowledge of God, yet this "does not lessen their epistemological
value," for they (and this is the dialectic) draw one into "a
participatory encounter with its object ... the meaning and truth"
of which "have to be found in the present-day experience of the
community" (9-10). Haight summarizes his position as follows.
The idea of a symbol is essentially tensive, dynamic, and dialectical; a symbol
mediates something other than itself by drawing or leading beyond itself to a
deeper or higher truth. By conceiving theology as a symbolic discipline and by
consistently using the language of symbol, one is able to ensure respect for its
elementary character. Symbols do not provide objective information about
God; but symbols draw human consciousness and life into a deeper world of
encounter with transcendent reality. This represents epistemologically a
symbolic realism. (11; see 12). 5

II. A CLEAR HERMENEUTIC OF DENIAL
The negative axiom concerning religious symbolic language
allows Haight not only to deny the validity and truth of the
central doctrines of Christianity as they have been defined and
traditionally understood, but it also permits him to eradicate the
premise upon which they were founded. To reduce religious
knowledge to symbols that are generated from within the thisHaight distinguishes "concrete symbols" such as Jesus, who in his person and life
"concretely" symbolizes God, and "conceptual symbols" such as scripture, which are the
words or concepts that symbolically mediate a transcendent reality (see 13-14). He sometimes
speaks of symbols as metaphorical, "metaphor" being a conceptual symbol. While he holds
that "symbolic predication preserves the realism of the analogy of being" it only does so in
the sense that the symbolic predication mediates the transcendent reality symbolized and not
that one actually possesses objective and factual knowledge of the transcendent reality itself
(see 11-13).

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worldly order prohibits what has now come to be termed as an
"interventionist" view of God acting, that is, God acting in time
and history in a manner that is peculiar and singular to himself.
Such divine action could not be accounted for solely by the laws
of nature nor merely from within the created order, and
traditionally was designated as "supernatural. "6
By employing his negative axiom Haight is able to deny that
Scripture, and particularly the New Testament, provides any
specific objective knowledge about the nature of God and of his
actions. Scripture must not be read simply from within its original
meaning, but must be read from within the confines of
postmodernity where the prevailing hermeneutic is that of
"symbol" (7).
From a doctrinal perspective, Scripture is essentially a book of religious
symbols, and thus the mere citation of Scripture, as testimony to past belief, by
itself bears little weight for belief today; the dynamic process by which
scriptural testimony can win authority is one of disclosure and elaboration, that
is, symbolic mediation and argument. (12)7

Thus Haight can deny the traditional interpretation of the
New Testament that gave rise to the defined doctrine of the
Incarnation, and so deny the doctrine itself. The Fathers and even
the early councils "used scripture in a way that implied that it
communicated what amounted to representative knowledge about
transcendent reality" (279; see 247, 261, and 270). They did not
apprehend the symbolic nature of scriptural affirmations and so
objectified the knowledge of God which led them, falsely, to
6 Haight explicitly disallows a "supernatural" or "interventionist" view of God acting (see
66 and434).
7 Scripture does, undoubtedly, employ symbolic language. It speaks symbolically, for
example, of God's "Word" or "Wisdom," or "Spirit." Such language is not to be taken
literally as if God had a mouth, or possesses wisdom in the same manner as humans, or acts
precisely like the wind. Nonetheless, these scriptural metaphors were understood to articulate
something that is objective and factual (and in this sense literal) about God. This Haight's
understanding of religious symbolic language will not allow, for it is devoid of the authentic
traditional understanding of the analogy of being whereby what is predicated of God actually
corresponds, in an analogous manner, to something that is objectively true about God and his
actions.

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hypostatize "the Son/Word" as a distinct "being" (Haight' sword),
rather than recognize that such terms were symbolic personifications. More specifically Haight can deny that the Son of God
is an eternal divine subject, equal to and one in being with the
Father, who came to exist as a man. By not taking into account
the symbolic nature of God's presence in Jesus, such a Christo logy
"from above" is viewed today as "fantastic" and "anthropomorphic," for it "depicts a mythological fable" (273; see 177). 8
Equally Haight can deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus as it
has been traditionally understood within the New Testament and
articulated within classic theology. Neither the empty tomb, nor
the bodily appearances, nor even the resurrection itself should be
taken as historical objective fact, as has been done in the past, but
must now be interpreted as symbols of Christ's new life within
"the sphere of God" (see 119-51). 9
8 Haight interprets all interventionist views of God acting in a supernatural manner as
mythological; see 177, 240, and 352. The reason for this is that, in accordance with his
notion of religious symbolic knowledge, all theological knowing is initiated from within and
confined to this world. Moreover, Haight insists that historical consciousness, as found within
contemporary "Jesus research," demands that all Christology be "from below" (see 29-30).
This requires for him that the historical Jesus not be a divine person but solely a human
person (see 288-97). In his discussion of Christology "from above" and "from below" Haight
makes a fundamental error. All Christology, even traditional Christology, begins
epistemologically "from below." There is nowhere else to begin than from coming to know
the historical human Jesus. Haight draws the false conclusion, though within his symbolic
system it is the only conclusion he can draw, that this epistemology "from below" demands
an ontology "from below," that is, that coming to know Jesus though his humanity demands
that he ontologically only be a man. The New Testament and the Christo logical tradition it
spawned, however, concluded that this man Jesus was none other than the eternal Son of
God, and thus that this Son of God became man ('from above"). Epistemologically,
Christology is always "from below." Ontologically, Christology is always "from above."
9 Because the symbol of the resurrection pertains to God's unknowable transcendent
reality, Haight insists that the resurrection "is not an historical fact" (124). He is correct in
that the resurrection was not brought about historically through human or natural causality.
However, he conflates divine causality with historical effects. Jesus' resurrection may be
regarded as an historical fact if one holds, which Haight does not, that God acted in such a
manner that on a given day within history a man, who actually died, was glorious raised from
the dead, and that one of the bits of evidence.is that on a given day his tomb was found
empty. The cause of the resurrection may require an act of God who exists apart from time
and history but the effect of such an act took place within time and history, and in this sense
it is an historical fact.

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Similarly Haight can deny a great portion of traditional
soteriology, particularly the interpretation of Jesus' death on the
cross as sacrificial, atoning or reparational, substitutionary, and
reconciling. BecauseJesus' redemptive work on the cross was not,
in the past, interpreted symbolically but understood literally,
traditional soteriology became "bizarre, extravagant, and at times
grotesque" (237). The language of "Jesus suffering for us, of being
a sacrifice to God, of absorbing punishment for sin in our place,
of being required to die to render satisfaction to God, hardly
communicates meaningfully in our age" (241). Such a literalist
and nonsymbolic use of language is offensive and even repulsive
to "postmodern sensibility" (241). 10
Haight's negative axiom also authorizes him to deny that Jesus
is the sole definitive revelation of God and the sole indispensable
means of humankind's salvation, and so unique among the
founders of religions. The early church and its subsequent
tradition read the New Testament in a "literalist manner" that
constituted a "lapse into a propositional view of revelation and
fundamentalism" when asserting the uniqueness of Jesus and his
work of salvation (404 ). Instead of rightfully conceding that Jesus
is a symbol of what God has always been doing and continues to
do throughout the whole of history and within all religions, the
Christian tradition has falsely, and often arrogantly, insisted that
Jesus be the unique definitive revelation of God and the sole and
singular cause of humankind's salvation (see 395-423). 11
10 For a critique of Haight's own "revelational" and "exemplarist" view of salvation see
my article cited in note 3.
11 Haight argues that while Jesus is normative for Christianity, God can also reveal himself
normatively in other religions. Moreover, Jesus is not the universal cause of salvation, but
merely reveals and exemplifies, within a Christian symbolic context, what God is doing
always and everywhere, and thus within other religions as well (see 350 and 422). As to the
different religious symbolic expressions "of ultimate reality, these are always generated
historically through particular, individual, specific historical media. The attachment of all
knowing to the sensible historical world accounts for the pluralism of religious experiences"
(401; see 402). While Haight affirms a plurality of religions and the need to respect such
plurality, what he has actually done, in confining "all religious knowing to the sensible
historical world," is to relegate all religions to differing symbolic expressions of some one
deeper and all encompassing philosophical truth. Thus all religions lose their integrity, for no
deference is given to their own unique religious character and theological distinctiveness.

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Haight can similarly deny that the Holy Spirit is a distinct
subject within the Trinity. As with the Son, the early church and
the subsequent Christian tradition hypostatized the New
Testament understanding of Spirit as if it possessed an objective
knowledge of God's inner being. Rather, "the metaphorical
symbol of God as Spirit expresses the experience of God's power
and energy in creation .... God's Spirit is not so much a distinct
agent of creation but the creative power itself of God" (448).
Lastly, Haight can deny the entire doctrine of the Trinity as
defined by the early councils and developed and taught within the
Christian tradition, because they were again not sensitive to the
symbolic nature of religious language. They falsely believed that
they were actually speaking about how God truly exists, and were
unaware that, because of God's transcendence, "such language,
therefore, is not objectively representational, or immediately
referential, or propositionally descriptive, or ostensive in its
reference" (471). The one God is not then the ontological
communion of three distinct subjects, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit; rather, "Father/Mother," "Son/Word," and "Spirit"
are symbols of God's immanence within the world (see 467-91). 12
I have delineated Haight's denials in some detail for if his use
of his negative hermeneutical axiom concerning the symbolic
nature of religious language is correct it strikes a death blow to
Christianity as it has been proclaimed, understood, professed, and
12 Haight argues that his understanding of the Trinity is a form of modalism, though now
properly and legitimately set within a symbolic context. This means that "God as Word" and
"God as Spirit" are symbolic expressions of the manner in which God is experienced within
the world (see 4 76-79, 488). Haight is correct that his conception of the Trinity does possess
a modalistic flavor, but because he has placed it within a symbolic framework it is not
modalistic at all. Traditional modalism had the one God actually acting in time and history
under various modes. But Haight's God is not actually acting in time and history under
various modes. The "modes" are merely our symbolic expressions of how we perceive God's
presence and not how he is in fact acting. Moreover, for Haight, because religious symbolic
language does not convey objective knowledge of God, "there is no logical connection that
demands a correlation of an internal differentiation within God and God's actual selfcommunication to human existence" (488). The immanent expression of God, as humanly
conceived symbolically, bears no correspondence to his transcendent reality. This would
appear to be a major quandary within Haight's whole theological enterprise, and it will be
examined shortly.

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lived since its conception. So thorough is Haight's denial of
traditional Christian doctrine that whatever he may propose as its
replacement it will not be a fine-tuning or development of
doctrine but a mutation into an entirely new and different
religion. The meaning of the "Christian" words will now assume
an utterly disparate definition. For Haight though such a
mutation is not impossible or even undesirable. Since religious
symbolic language does not lock one into objective or factual
truth about God, it not only sanctions one to reinterpret religious
symbols but also actively encourages one to create new symbols
in a manner that best accords with the prevailing intellectual and
cultural milieu.
At this point I also want to make a more specific and
substantive criticism. Haight believes that, in insisting that one
cannot possess objective and factual knowledge of God, he is but
protecting the very mystery of God's transcendence. He is merely
preserving the venerable tradition concerning the apophatic
character of theology, whereby God can never be fully
comprehended. As seen above, those who formulated the classic
doctrines of the Christian faith labored under the misconception
that one could obtain factual and objective knowledge of God; in
so doing they shattered the very mystery of God. "God is a
mystery, doctrines are not" (480).
Now God is indeed a mystery and all that pertains to him
shares in that mystery, but the doctrines of the Christian faith,
though considered to be true, were never thought to be
comprehensive statements about God and his actions. The
doctrines were definitions of what the mystery of God is and
what he has done, and they were historically formulated precisely
to protect the mystery of God from those who would make God
and his revelation comprehensible. The conciliar doctrines
concerning the persons of the Trinity state precisely what the
mystery of the Trinity is and are not statements that make the
Trinity comprehensible. The Chalcedonian definition that Jesus
is the eternal Son of God existing as an authentic man is a
statement that articulates the very mystery of the Incarnation.
What it definitely does not do is make the mystery of the

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Incarnation comprehensible. Ironically, while Haight remains,
throughout his book, scrupulously agnostic about the "mystery"
of who God is, his symbolic understanding of "Christianity"
becomes very comprehensible, for no longer do disconcerting and
embarrassing mysteries loiter within his symbolic understanding
of Jesus and the gospel.
Ill. AN AMBIGUOUS HERMENEUTIC OF AFFIRMATION

In tandem with his denials Haight presents his symbolic
affirmation of the Christian gospel. He argues that his reconstruction is in conformity with Scripture and even with the
Christian tradition if such are understood according to their
proper intent and authentic purpose, that is, symbolically, though
his symbolic interpretation may not concur with their actual
former reading or belief.
What is ultimately decisive in assessing Haight's book is not
merely a critique of the specifics of what he wants to affirm about
God, Jesus, salvation and Christianity's relationship with other
religions, etc., but an evaluation of the premises upon which he
wants to affirm such assertions. If the premises are flawed, then
the affirmations become utterly problematic. It is these premises
that I want now critically to examine.
Haight is correct when he states that, since God is wholly
transcendent and thus not a member of the this-worldly order, we
cannot have any direct experience and knowledge of him. Because
of this, as is evident from the above, Haight reduces all
theological language to the symbolic. He insists that this symbolic
language does not arise from a manner of knowing that differs in
kind from all other human knowing. It arises out of "religious
questioning," that is, from such human experiences as the
presence of evil and death and the desire for happiness and
wellbeing (see 192-93, 254-55). But from where do the answers
for such questions come? At this point one encounters much
ambiguity and even a dilemma within Haight's presentation.
He consistently states, as seen above, that "religious symbols
. . . point to and mediate transcendent realities." We become

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"existentially and experientially" conscious "of that which is
mediated by the symbol." Symbols "draw" and "lead" us to
"deeper and higher truth." Religious symbols "draw human
consciousness and life into a deeper world of encounter with
transcendent reality" and so symbols allow us to be "engaged in
participatory knowledge" with the transcendent object. As Haight
states in his second positive axiom: "the symbolic assertions of
theology communicate through the engaged participatory experience which they invite and actively engender."
Notice that, for Haight, it is not the case that some religious
experience of a transcendent reality gives rise to its being
expressed in a symbolic manner. Rather, it is the religious symbol
itself, such as Jesus, or the symbolic expression itself, such as
Scripture, that "draws," "engenders," "leads," or "invites" one
into a symbolic experience of the transcendent reality. As he
states: "The world of religious symbolism, the world of language
about God, is not one of facts and digital information; it is a
world of religious experience; it is based on a narrative of a
symbolic encounter with God in history" (472). Haight is not
talking about a religious experience that is expressed symbolically,
but is rather saying that "the religious experience" itself, the
encounter with God, is symbolic for it is "based on a narrative of
a symbolic encounter with God in history."
The question and problem that now arises is: If religious
symbolic language solely and completely emerges from within
historical and cultural experiences of the this-worldly order, what
founds the truth and validity of the symbol and its symbolic
expression? Religious experience does not found the truth of the
symbol because it is the symbol itself or its symbolic expression
that gives rise to the symbolic experience. Even if one did allow
an experience of something that transcended worldly historical
reality, it would mean that one's experience and knowledge
exceeded the normal manner of human knowing. Equally, one
would then possess, in some sense, a factual or objective
knowledge of the transcendent reality. Both of these possibilities
Haight intentionally and repeatedly rejects. Moreover, the symbol

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and its symbolic expression cannot, obviously, be due to a specific
"interventionist" action on the part of God within history and the
world by which he reveals something about himself and so is
responsible for its meaning. Haight's negative hermeneutic
concerning symbolic knowledge is purposely designed to
eliminate such a view.
Thus within Haight's account there appears to be no epistemological connection between the symbol or the symbolic language
and the transcendent reality that is meant to be experienced
symbolically. For Haight the symbol arises exclusively from
within the culture in which it was formed, or from within "the
present-day experience of the community." In so arising it thus
fosters a symbolic experience of "the transcendent" in keeping
with that culture or community, but this merely informs one as to
how a particular culture or community conceives and symbolically experiences the transcendent reality (God). It does not
validate as true that cultural or communal religious symbol or
symbolic experience. The symbol is purely the seemingly arbitrary
conception of a particular culture or community within its
historical setting-what it holds to be of transcendent value.
Within a Christian culture it may be that God is symbolized as
personal and loving. Within another religious culture God may
be symbolized in a pantheistic manner. However, there is no way,
within Haight's theory, for religious symbols and their symbolic
expression to leap beyond their historical and cultural bounds
from which they were engendered and so make contact with a
transcendent reality that exceeds these bounds. Thus, while
Haight wishes to hold a "symbolic realism," there is actually no
realism to the symbol, for there is no authentic epistemological
basis upon which this realism is founded. Its referent is not
actually the "real" God, but only the real historical culture or
community from which it arises. Moreover, while Haight
continually argues that religious symbolic knowledge does put
one in contact with transcendent reality, there is no basis for such
a claim since one's symbolic religious knowledge arises out of and

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is completely confined within the this-worldly order. 13 The truth
of this objection is seen in Haight's own insistence that religious
symbolic knowledge, by its very symbolic nature, is not an
objective or factual knowledge of the transcendent reality.
Thus Haight's book is fraught with ambiguity. On one level
Haight makes numerous affirmations founded upon his understanding of symbol and symbolic language that give the impression that one is actually saying something that is meaningful,
objective, factual, and true about God. For example, he constantly
states that Christian religious symbolism "reveals," especially
through Jesus, and so allows one to encounter a personal God
who is loving, kind, compassionate, just, and forgiving (see 11318).14 Or, most importantly, he argues that Jesus is the Christian
symbol of God, that is, in his concrete historical human
personhood, he was "the parable of God" (112-13). 15 He not
only symbolized what God is like, but through his words and
actions manifested symbolically what God has always been doing
and continues to do throughout the world to ensure humankind's
salvation. This includes what God is salvifically doing within
13 In defence of his "symbolic realism" Haight argues that it would be erroneous to
relegate his understanding of symbol to that of being "merely a symbol," "for a symbol as it
is understood here truly reveals and makes present what it symbolizes" (197). Even if this
were true, it would still mean that what is revealed and made present is only present in a
symbolic manner, and not present as it actually is, and thus its presence would still be merely
symbolic.
14 The term "revelation," for Haight, does not refer to some specific action of God, but
arises out of a human engagement with the world and is "a form of human experience"
whereby "God works within human subjects in a way that corresponds to the structure of
human experience itself" (194). But the way "God works" which "corresponds to the
structure of human experience" is not actually a work of God at all. Rather, revelation simply
"occurs in human experience through symbolic mediation" (198-99), namely, through
humanly manufactured symbols and symbolic language that are symbolically termed
"revelation" and "the works of God."
15 Haight is very selective in his use of the New Testament. He limits his Christology
almost entirely to the Synoptic Gospels, for the obvious reason that they seem to uphold
more unmistakably Jesus' humanity with little or no reference to his possible divine status.
Haight omits almost the whole of the Johannine literature (all references are by way of
critique) and the Pauline corpus. There is no mention of any of the other New Testament
documents. Moreover, while Haight emphasizes the plurality of New Testament
Christologies (see 425-31), once these Christologies are filtered through his symbolic prism
they lose their uniquely vibrant Christological hue and are all homogenized.

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other religions, though such religions may symbolize God's
salvific action in a manner that is in conformity with its own
historical and cultural milieu. He tirelessly argues that the
religious symbol of "God as Spirit" is the symbolic expression of
God's "work, as activity, and as power, energy or force that
accomplishes something" (447). 16 "God as Spirit," for Haight, is
thus the symbol of God's continual activity and power within the
world since creation and is manifested in Jesus in a supreme
manner.
The symbol of the Spirit more forthrightly makes the claim that God, God's
very self, acted in and through Jesus ... the symbol of God as Spirit is not a
personification of God, but refers more directly to God so that it is clear from
the beginning that nothing less than God was at work in Jesus .... This should
also be construed as more than a thin functional or "adverbial" presence of
God to Jesus, and truly an ontological presence, because where God acts, God
is. In this empowerment christology Jesus is the reality of God. (451, 455) 17

At another level, one must always bear in mind that such and
similar affirmations, despite the impression they may initially
give, are not making objective or factual statements about the true
nature of God and his manner of acting. They are but symbolic
statements that draw one into symbolic experiences founded upon
one's historical, religious, and cultural milieu, and have no
objective reference to God and his actions at all. They are entirely
culturally, historically, and religiously relative.
16 To speak of "God as Spirit" as "indicating God's work, as activity, and as power, energy
or force that accomplishes something" is to mislead the reader at best, for such terms do not
refer to the way God actually is and acts. Again, they are merely symbolic expressions arising
out of a particular historical, religious culture that symbolically designate the symbolic
presence of the transcendent. Their frame of reference is contained solely within the
historical worldly order.
17 In "The Case for Spirit Christology," Haight speaks of God being "adverbially" present
within Jesus. Within his book he strengthens his claim by saying that God is "ontologically"
present in Jesus-though how we would know this, given that we are laboring within the
constraints of symbolic knowledge, remains ambiguous at best. In any case, this ontology of
"presence" is far removed from saying, as Nicaea and Chalcedon do, that, objectively and
factually, Jesus is ontologically the eternal Son of God, one in being with the Father. For a
full critique of Haight's interpretation of the councils and the validity of his "Spirit
Christology," see my article cited in note 3.

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In the end, as Haight would ultimately agree, despite all of his
affirmations, we do not actually know God and thus we do not
know whether or not God is actually "loving, kind, compassionate and forgiving," for such words do not convey any
objective or factual knowledge of God. 18 While Haight wants us,
through religious symbols and their linguistic expression, to be in
touch with the incomprehensible transcendent reality of God, yet
neither the symbols nor their expression allow us anything more
than to be in touch with the mystery and transcendent reality that
resides solely and exclusively within this cosmic order.
Haight does argue that the epistemological connection is
founded upon the Creator/creature relationship. "Among other
things, the doctrine of creation out of nothing means that God is
immediately present to all finite reality and thus to human beings"
(392 n. 52). This Creator/creature relationship is the exclusive
relationship upon which Haight founds his symbolic knowledge
and language. All religious symbols, including Jesus and salvation,
are but the various and diverse symbols through which the
religious implications of this relationship are manifested. 19 Thus,
the ontological Creator/creature relationship provides the
epistemological window by which religious symbols, such as
Jesus, and religious symbolic language, such as Scripture, acquire
their meaning and validity. However, for Haight, while this
relationship allows one to be led and drawn into the incomprehensible mystery of transcendent reality through these valid
symbols and meaningful symbolic language, yet one never actually
knows, objectively and factually, the transcendent reality itself.
The obvious question remains, how is it possible for symbols to
be valid and for symbolic language to be meaningful, if the
18 What Haight has in effect attempted to do in his symbolic reinterpretation of the gospel
is to affirm such of its parts as that God is personal, loving, and kind. However, he would
have no basis for affirming these, as the Scriptures make unmistakably evident, if God had
not actually intervened in the world and so historically revealed that he is indeed a personal
God who is kind and loving.
19 For the relationship between creation and salvation, see pp. 350-54; between creation
and Christology and eschatology seep. 392 n. 52; and between creation and revelation and
grace, seep. 453.

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symbols do not convey valid truth and the symbolic language
does not articulate meaningful knowledge.
In the light of the book as a whole, the above argument is
nonetheless fascinating. Haight is adamant that all religious
knowledge and language is symbolic, but here we now profess
that God-the wholly mysterious, incomprehensible, and
transcendent God-is indeed factually and objectively the
Creator. The term "Creator" is not symbolic.20 Moreover, having
ruled out of court an "interventionist" view of God acting within
history and the world, we have here the literally primordial
intervention. If there ever was a "supernatural" act, one that only
God can perform and for which neither history, nor culture, nor
the this-worldly order's causality can give account, since they
exist not, it is the act of creatio ex nihilo.
Here we see dearly the ambiguity and the dilemma within
Haight's position. Religious symbols and their symbolic expression are entirely embedded within this world of history and
culture, but he wants them nonetheless to have some ontological
and so epistemological connection with transcendent reality,
though not an epistemologically objective and factual connection.
He calls into play the notion that God is Creator in order to
establish such an ontological and so epistemological connection.
However, if the term "Creator" becomes a symbol and if
"creation out of nothing" becomes symbolic, which they rightly
should be so as to conform to Haight's own premises, then the
whole religious symbolic system becomes ensnared within this
historical, cultural world order. Religious symbols, such as Jesus,
and their symbolic expression, such as the sacred texts of all
religions, merely provide symbolic knowledge of a transcendence
that refers not to a wholly transcendent other called "God" but
only to the "mystery" that lies completely within this cosmic
order. Moreover, the term "God," for Haight, must now be
construed symbolically as well, for it does not refer to an existing
being distinct from the historical, cosmic order, but is merely the
20 On one occasion Haight does speak of "the symbol of creation," but that hardly accords
with his notion of "creation out of nothing" (453).

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symbolic expression of the "mystery" that lies within the historical, cosmic order. One wonders whether Haight himself is not
unaware of this. When speaking more philosophically rather than
theologically, he often seems to prefer the phrase "transcendent
reality" over the term "God," for "God" implies a being distinct
from the historical cosmic order, whereas "transcendent reality"
does not necessarily do so. The reality that is transcendent could
very well be within the historic cosmic order. If such be the case,
then one would have, in Haight's account, a form of atheism that
is merely couched in religious symbolism.
IV. CONCLUSION

I have not assessed to any great degree the specifics of Haight's
theological program, having done so in my previous article. What
I have done here is address what I consider to be the important
issues and critical ramifications that ensue from Haight's
philosophical and theological premises-his understanding of
religious symbols, religious symbolic knowledge with its religious
symbolic language and the religious symbolic experiences to
which they give rise. Haight argues that a radical redefinition of
Christianity is necessary in order to make it credible to the
contemporary educated person of postmodernity, and he has
offered his version of what that redefinition should be.21 It must
be forthrightly acknowledged that Haight's reinterpretative
enterprise is a form of philosophical and theological colonialism,
for it does not arise from within the gospel itself but is the
importation of a foreign hermeneutic.

21 While some have hailed Haight's book as theologically "innovative" and "pioneering,"
it is but one more example of a theological genre that goes back, at least, to the
Enlightenment. Haight himself affiliates his Christological enterprise with that of
Schleiermacher (see 304-9 and 445-46). Moreover, anyone who has kept abreast with
contemporary Christology will recognize that Haight's book bears a striking resemblance to
such books as The Myth of God Incarnate (ed. John Hick}, The Metaphor of God Incarnate
Uohn Hick), The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus Uohn Knox), Jesus Christ in Modem
Christian Thought Uohn Macquarrie), Christology Revisited Uohn Macquarrie), The Human
Face of God U.A.T. Robinson), and many more contemporary works.

BOOK REVIEWS
Le thomisme et /es thomistes. By ROMANUSCESSARIO,O.P. Trans. Simone Wyn
Griffith-Meister. Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1999. Pp. 125. 120 F. ISBN
2-204-06252-9 (paper).
In this French translation of a book originally written in English, Fr.
Romanus Cessario, O.P., provides a brief, but impressive, survey of the
formation of Thomism and its development over the more than seven centuries
since Aquinas's death. Relying on some of the most recent historical and critical
work done over the past decade, Fr. Cessario's book is not aimed at making a
contribution to be read by specialists, something that the volume on Jean
Capreolus (Jean Capreolus en son temps [Paris, 1997]) by himself, Guy
Bedouelle, and Kevin White already accomplishes. Rather the present work is
aimed at giving the general reader a thumbnail sketch of the history of
Thomism, which history is overlooked by Thomists more often than not. In this
regard, Cessario's book is a marked success and should be extremely useful to
those just beginning to take an interest in exploring the career of Thomism
after 1274.
The work is divided into two unequal parts: the first, entitled Le Thomisme,
gives an overview of Aquinas's life and writings drawn from the extraordinarily
fine historical scholarship of Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., and discusses the
exclusion/inclusion criteria for identifying Thomists over the course of the
centuries; the second, entitled Les Thomistes, recounts briefly the history of
Thomistic thought from the thirteenth century to the twentieth century,
emphasizing the relationship between Thomism and the wider context of
European political and social history.
In the first part, Cessario sketches out Aquinas's life, noting in the process
that Aquinas's relationship to his predecessors may rightly be considered, as
noted by Alasdair Macintyre, both a theoretical articulation of the rationality
of tradition and a concrete living instance of the continuity of the rationality
of tradition. Such a dear example of setting one's own thinking within a dearly
defined and consciously recognized ongoing tradition is something that could
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be well imitated, Cessario hints, by those claiming adherence to Aquinas's
tenets. Among the works of outstanding importance for understanding
Thomas's own Thomism are the two Summae as well as the Scriptum on the
Sentences (20-21).
Before launching into the history of Thomism, Cessario considers the
various ways that the historians of Thomism have organized the school's
history. The most common approach is to divide Thomism into first Thomism
(roughly from the thirteenth to the fifteenth, though in some cases to the
sixteenth, centuries), second Thomism (the Thomism of the later Spanish
Scholastics and the Catholic Reformers), and neo-Thomism (the Thomism of
the nineteenth and twentienth centuries). Since the precise points of
chronological division are by no means agreed upon by the specialists who have
written on the history of Thomism, Cessario elects to organize his treatment
(46-53) not by neatly dividing the school's history into periods but by narrating
the history of the school continuously and by relating the ebb and flow of the
school's prominence to the general course of European history.
As to the identity of those called Thomists, Cessario proposes, following Fr.
James Weisheipl's classification, a distinction between Thomism in a broad
sense and eclectic Thomism (26-27). The latter is characterized by the desire
on a given thinker's part to include elements of a distinctively non-Thomistic
philosophical or theological system within a framework inspired by, or
dominated by, the teaching of St. Thomas. Eclectic Thomism would number
among its members historical figures such as Molina, Vasquez, and Suarez,
while some of its more recent representatives would include Marechal, Rabner,
and Lonergan. In the main, Cessario focuses on narrating the history of the
Thomism of the Thomists in the broad sense, though he does occasionally
mention the more distinguished eclectic Thomists.
The primitive origins of Thomism lie, according to the narrative developed
in this book, in the debates of the 1270s and early 1280s concerning a cluster
of doctrinal issues, chief among which was Thomas's doctrine of the unicity of
substantial form. Among the earliest defenders of Aquinas are included such
figures as Giles of Lessines and Peter of Conflans, the latter of whom explicitly
called into question the reasoning of critics such as Robert Kilwardby-under
whose aegis, as archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas's views on substantial forms
were condemned at Oxford in 1277. The Thomistic school at Oxford,
however, flourished despite the condemnation, resulting in the thought of such
early English Thomists as Richard Knapwell, Robert Orford, and Thomas
Sutton (62-63). Meanwhile, the French school of Thomism was developing
under the leadership of such figures as Bernard de Trilla, Peter of Auvergne,

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Bernard of Auvergne, Jean Quidort, and Hervaeus Natalis. As Cessario notes,
these Thomists were often engaged in opposing the key theses of the leading
Parisian theologian of the late thirteenth century, Henry of Ghent, whose
work, notwithstanding their opposition, left marks on their manner of
presentation and argumentation (67).
Turning his attention to Italy and Germany, Cessario discusses such early
Thomists of the Italian school as Romanos de Roma and John of Naples, while
early figures of Germany included are Ioannes and Gerard of Sterngassen.
Curiously enough, also mentioned as belonging to the early German Thomistic
school, albeit as Thomists of the eclectic type, are figures such as Ulrich of
Strasbourg, Dietrich of Frei burg, Berthold of Moosburg, and Meister Eckhart.
Clearly Ulrich, Dietrich, and Berthold belong to the quite distinct school of
Albertism, though, equally clearly, they exercised considerable independence
of mind even in regard to Albert's teaching. As for Meister Eckhart, though he
certainly borrows from Thomas and is in accord with him regarding many
doctrinal points, his genius should probably, as Cessario hints, earn him a status
all his own (72).
The linkage between the figures of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries within the Thomistic school and those of the fifteenth century, such
as Capreolus, is provided by the thinkers associated with the Avignon Papacy.
Prominent among such Thomists were those who functioned as advisors and
experts to Pope John XXII during the Poverty Controversy: Armand de Bello
Visu, Petrus de Palude, and especially William Peter Godinus. Godinus's
unpublished Lectura Thomasina on the Sentences was doubtless one of the
standard presentations of Thomistic thought until the advent of Capreolus and
its publication remains one of the great desideratafor scholarship devoted to
the history of fourteenth-century philosophy.
Naturally, a place of pride is assigned to Jean Capreolus whose Defensiones
marks a highpoint in late medieval Thomism (77-81 ), but some attention is also
given to the little remembered Byzantine Thomism, which developed out of
Greek translations of the Summa Theologiaeand Summa contra Gentiles (75).
Cessario emphasizes the effect that the Black Death had upon European life
during the late fourteenth century and the growth of humanism as a distinct
intellectual current providing some of the setting for the work of Capreolus.
Renaissance Thomism was something of a syncretic affair, often drawing
upon the philosophical ideas of Aquinas but synthesizing those ideas with
materials drawn from elsewhere. If Renaissance Thomism could be charged
with unevenly appropriating some of Thomas's philosophical insights without
any recognition or interest in the theological framework into which they were

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meant to fit, the opposite point could be made, Cessario rightly remarks (9293), about Thomism during the Reformation. Thomism during this period
became increasingly focused on the theology of grace and merit and less and
less concerned to buttress the philosophical positions upon which much of the
theology of the sacraments was based.
The Thomism that flourished after the Council of Trent did return to
philosophical speculation in such figures from the Iberian peninsula as
Melchior Cano, Dominic de Soto, and Dominic Banes. But undoubtedly the
most innovative and creative of the Thomists of this golden age of late
Scholasticism was Jean Poinsot whose reflections on signs are probably the
most enduring legacy of this period.
The period of modern philosophy saw a decline in the number of Thomists
and a tendency for their studies to remain confined to the area of moral
theology. The outcome of this tendency was the gradual drift toward replacing
Thomistic philosophy with Cartesian manuals in Catholic universities and
seminaries. As Cessario remarks, elimination of such manuals and their
replacement with genuinely Thomistic guides to philosophy was among the
first acts of Leo XIII upon assuming the papal office (108).
Cessario does not attempt to enter into the controversial history of
Thomism in the twentieth century nor into its internecine conflicts. Rather he
prefers to mention briefly some of its leading proponents in Europe such as
Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, M-D. Chenu, and R. Garrigou-Lagrange,
while apropos of American Thomistic circles, he cites the River Forest School
Thomists as a distinctive group with their characteristic emphasis on the
importance of the study of natural philosophy for understanding Thomistic
metaphysics and theology.
On balance, the book is as accurate as such a brief survey and introduction
could hope to be, compressing as it does some 700 years of doctrinal history
into such a short space. Still, one might wish for a little more sophistication
regarding the distinction between Thomists and non-Thomists. To account
figures such as Ulrich of Strasbourg as Thomists seems to stretch the term
"Thomist" beyond its proper bounds and to fail to recognize the legitimacy and
independence of Albertism, a distinctive school of philosophical and theological
thought both within and outside of the Dominican order. Of course, my
quarrel here is not so much with Cessario's work as with the historians upon
whom he depends and, in particular, their penchant for classifying later
Dominican thought as Thomistic whether it genuinely is or is not. And, while
the importance of non-Thomistic currents of Catholic thought is recognized by
Cessario as at least that of alternative expressions of the philosophiaperennis
(47-48), he could have placed greater emphasis upon the point that earnest

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dialogue with such alternative expressions, especially ones that attempt to use
philosophy with a view to engaging the problems of Catholic theology, is a
steady feature of Thomistic thought through the centuries and one that
Thomists would find to be worth emulating in the contemporary pluralistic
context.
TIMOTiiYB. NOONE

The Catholic Univeristy of America
Washington, D.C.

Measure of a Different Greatness: The Intensive Infinite, 1250-1650. By ANNE
ASHLEY DAVENPORT. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999. Pp. 435 ISBN 90-0411481-5 (cloth).

The purpose of Anne Ashley Davenport's Measure of a Different Greatness:
The Intensive Infinite, 1250-1650 is threefold: to analyze medieval texts
pertaining to the concept of the intensive infinite; to identify the cultural and
political factors that shaped the Scholastic discussion of this concept; and to
explore the synergy between medieval spirituality and early modern science
(xii). The book's title may be slightly misleading in that the study focuses on
the concept of divine infinity and only peripherally considers the more general
concept of intensive infinity. The study is encyclopedic in the range and variety
of its material, if not always in the command of it. Extensive footnotes provide
the subtexts of Davenport's commentary.
In chapter 1, Davenport presents the sudden interest of such thirteenthcentury Catholics as Alexander Nequam and Robert Fishacre in the intensive
infinite as a response to the dualism advocated by the Cathars to explain the
existence of evil. Both men sought to combat the rational arguments of the
Cathars, "to wield Reason in support of Catholic doctrine," so as to obtain a
universal consensus in matters of faith which Scripture alone does not seem to
provide (18). Davenport credits Nequam with having identified three
important properties of divine infinity: that it cannot be increased, cannot be
reached by finite means, and cannot be expressed in ordinary quantificational
terms. Fishacre goes on to develop the notion in terms of "a state of maximal
reduction that corresponds to universal relatedness" (40). Davenport credits
Fishacre with capitalizing on Augustine's distinction between an extensive and

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an intensive measure of greatness, quantitas molis and quantitas virtutis. She
herself gives no independent consideration to the Augustinian, scriptural, and
philosophical sources she alludes to in the chapter, although she acknowledges
in a footnote that the whole Greco-Arabic Neoplatonic tradition must be taken
into account to study the evolution and transmission of the concept of
"spiritual quantity." Instead, for an introductory discussion of the infinite
Davenport refers the reader several times to Bertrand Russell's Our Knowledge

of the External World.
Chapter 2 pits the Aristotelian scientific "theodicy" of Thomas Aquinas
against the Augustinian/Anselmian mystical "theodicy" of Bonaventure. Why
Davenport speaks of "theodicy" rather than "theology" is unclear. In any case,
her contrast between the theodicies of Aquinas and Bonaventure is done in
broad and unpersuasive strokes. She seems unaware of the twentieth-century
studies on Aquinas's Neoplatonic heritage. Even though she states that all the
Scholastics acknowledge that Aristotle restricted the sense of "infinite" to
extensive quantity, she nevertheless attributes Aquinas's concept of intensive
infinity to his commitment to Aristotelian natural science. The heart of her
argument is quickly sketched in footnote 33 of page 60, in which she traces
Aquinas's argument for God's infinity in question 7 of the Prima Pars back to
his proof in question 2 for a First Mover.
Davenport also attributes to Aquinas the position that natural investigation
culminates with the discovery that God is infinite and therefore beyond human
knowledge, leaving man dependent on Scripture and the magisterium's "cadres
of professional exegetes" for positive quidditative knowledge of God (56). On
the one hand, Davenport is apparently unaware that Thomas argues that no
knowledge of God in this life can be quidditative, either natural or revealed.
On the other hand, she attributes to Aquinas an "apophatic" doctrine that all
natural knowledge of God is negative, apparently unaware of his polemic
against Maimonides. She moreover ascribes to Aristotle the primacy that
Thomas assigns to existence (64), and later in the book suggests that latent in
Thomas was the intellectualist notion that intelligereis in fact prior to esse in
God. In a word, a command of Thomistic sources is not in evidence here.
Davenport argues that whereas Aquinas looks outward to cosmic
phenomena to demonstrate the necessary existence of a first cause that is
unrestricted being, Augustine turns inward to ascend by degrees to a necessary
first truth that is spiritually infinite. "Augustine's spiritual theodicy, conducted
as a private communion between the soul and its Creator, precludes
discovering infinite Being without a conversion of the heart. In contrast,
Thomas' supremely objective scientific theodicy inspires public consensus and

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awe-precisely what is needed to maintain Peter's ship in the high sea" (69).
Davenport argues that Bonaventure's discussion of divine infinity is
distinguished from Aquinas's by two Augustinian features: first, that the human
soul is constitutionally suited to find its rest only in infinite being; and second,
that theological truth is not grasped when the mind is convinced, but rather
when the will is moved, so that "Francis of Assisi, praying like Josaphat, 'in
forests and solitary places,' grasped the truth of divine infinity better than
professional theologians" (75). Davenport goes on to analyze Bonaventure's
description in his ltinerarium of the Holy Spirit's mystical purgation and
illumination of the soul that culminates in its "contuition" of God's infinite
being. In notable contrast to her lyrical descriptions of Bonaventure's
Franciscan mysticism is her quotation of the following passage from the
ltinerarium: "Since non-being is the privation of being ... non-being cannot
be grasped except through being, and if being in potency cannot be understood
except through being in act, and if being signifies the pure act of being, then
being is what first comes into the intellect and this being is what is pure act.
But this being is not particular being, which is a limited being because mixed
with potentiality; nor is it analogous being, for that has the least of act because
it least exists. It remains that the being in question must be divine being" (82).
With all due respect to St. Francis, this passage suggests a far greater debt to
Greek metaphysics in general and to Aristotle in particular than to Christian
scriptures or saints.
In chapter 3, Davenport offers a close reading of Henry of Ghent's
arguments for "infinite totality" as the supreme metaphysical description of
God's quiddity and the supreme metaphysical reduction philosophy seeks but
fails to achieve. Special divine illumination is necessary to grasp the infinity of
God, completing natural knowledge with certainty rather than supplanting or
invalidating it. Davenport offers in particular a translation of article 44 of
Henry's De infinitate Dei followed by the Latin text.
Moving on to Peter John Olivi's assault on Aristotle's "militant pagan
theodicy," Davenport sees as the centerpiece of the "crisp 'user-friendly'
theodicy" that Olivi offers a notion of superexcessive abstractions that
positively exclude all imperfection through negations and rise above creatures
to supreme superexcessivenss. Assimilating both Cathar and Provem;al motifs,
Olivi finds in the concept of superexcessive being a way both to discredit the
immutable divine nature of pagan philosophy and a means to convert the will
to a Franciscan imitatio Christi: "Just as the mind, by quodam superexcessu
intellectualis operationis rationally grasps the existence of God as summe
abstractum and summe infinitum, so the will voluntarily pledges itself to the

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practice of evangelical poverty, by a symmetric act of 'superexcessive' love"
(237).
Chapter 5 is devoted to John Duns Scotus. In his metaphysical proof for the
intensive infinity of the divine essence, Scotus treats essential Being as a pure
perfection and creatures as metaphysical quanta univocal with God (248). He
proffers an Anselmian scheme in which a univocal intensive magnitude is
increased continuously to an inaugmentably intense term. Scotus holds that the
being that divides into finite and infinite before dividing into the ten categories
is indeterminate and susceptible to quantification, the divine mode of "infinity"
being such a metaphysical quantity. This quantitative metaphysics embraces
God and creatures in a single latitude of perfection. Davenport suggests that
an achievement of Scotus's "homogenized, quantitative ontology" is that it
provides a positive scheme to admit infinite elements.
In chapter 6, Davenport celebrates Ockham's semiotic treatment of divine
infinity for disentangling all semiotic entities from the extramental things they
denote (356). Davenport prefaces her study of Ockham with a semiotic analysis
of the illusionistic methods of Giotto's art and the spiritual treatise of
Marguerite Porete on the love of an absent God (308). Perhaps more helpful
for analyzing Ockham is Davenport's only analysis in the book of an
Augustinian source, De trinitate 13.1, employed by Ockham to disentangle
semiotics from metaphysics. "[R]ecognizing that to know something 'in a
concept' is simply to have a distinct sign for it, Ockham provides both a
coherent and theologically safe way to extend finite domains of discourse by
instituting signs to stand for infinite elements that are and remain essentially
inaccessible" (359). To think and speak of an actual infinite is not to know it,
but simply to have a semiotic device with which to designate it. This semiotic
designation suffices for loving the thing because it is possible to love something
more distinctly than it is comprehended. Although man's intellect in this life
can only contemplate signs of the divine, his will is able to transcend the signs
and rest in God. "What he proves, based on a 'modern' analysis of signs, is that
the soul is 'irreducibly' better able in this lifetime to love God than to know
God" (363).
In the final chapter, Davenport seeks to show how Ockham's nominalist
treatment of the infinite opened the way for a deontologized and secularized
notion of the infinite in early modern science. She considers how the notion of
inaccessible ideal elements at infinity was appropriated by men like John
Buridan, Nicole Oresme, Piero della Francesca, Johannes Kepler, Girard
Desargues, Blaise Pascal, and Rene Descartes. The thirst for God becomes a
taste for geometry: "Descartes inherited from scholastic theology the axiom

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that rational souls are capaces Dei, which means, equivalently, that they are
capacesinfiniti. Already in this lifetime, there is therefore something uniquely
satisfying and uniquely rational about imagining absolute domains endowed
with infinite endpoints" (411).
In this final chapter, Davenport cites Ockham's opinion that only through
faith is a supreme actual infinite admitted into metaphysics, a concept never
claimed, proved, or even suspected by philosophers. It is all well and good that
Ockham and others thought so, but it belongs to the intellectual historian to
test such claims and in general I do not find Davenport's evaluations
philosophically astute. For example, she notes in passing that the term
"infinite" does not appear in Scripture, but she seems unfamiliar with such
research as that of Norris Clarke which indicates that the term is first applied
to God by the Jewish Neoplatonist Philo of Alexandria, that early Fathers of
the Church took the Platonic position that "infinite" signified a lack of
perfection and should not be said of God, and that the first Christian text to
call God infinite is apparently a liturgical text ca. A.D. 300. Plotinus seems to
be the first architect of a full-blown concept of intensive infinity. To attribute
this technical philosophical concept to the Psalmist when he says that "God is
great" or to St. Francis when he strips himself naked in the square of Assisi is
a bit of a stretch. Likewise, granted that both Aristotle and Aquinas conclude
to a prime mover who is pure act, the former means by this name pure form
and the latter infinite being. Such a difference at the very least merits notice,
if not analysis. Although Davenport notes that Augustine's distinction between
material and spiritual quantity is decisive, when she compares the joys claimed
by the modern geometer to those claimed by the medieval mystic (411), or
appeals to David Hilbert's remark to a congregation of mathematicians that no
concept "has stirred men's emotions more than the infinite" (417), one
wonders whether she effectively loses sight of the pivotal distinction of her
own study.
JOHN TO MARCHIO

Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania

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Augustine's "City of God": A Reader's Guide. By GERARD O'DALY. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. 323. $85.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-826354-6.

Gerard O'Daly, professor of Latin at University College London and a
member of the editorial board of the Augustinus Lexicon, has written a brief
and thoughtful introduction to Augustine's magnum opus et arduum. Aptly
subtitled, in just under three hundred pages this book not only offers a helpful
overview of the lengthy work, but (perhaps more importantly) also defines the
context within which the text is to be understood.
The first several chapters are helpful in establishing context, and the first
and third could stand alone as essays in their own right. The first treats the
theme of the "city" of Rome in late antiquity, as a means of gauging
Augustine's use of this idea. This chapter serves incidentally as a bibliographical
essay on more recent trends and approaches in the field of late antique history.
In particular, O'Daly examines the topos of city in four writers: Ammianus,
Symmachus, Claudian, and Prudentius. He demonstrates both how each
exploited the understanding of Rome shared among members of late antique
culture and how each author shaped the contours of this topos for his own
literary, political, or theological purposes. While this endeavor involves some
"reconstruction," O'Daly is convincing, at least insofar as he offers a glimpse
at how the sensibilities of the age operated; it is out of this common set of
assumptions about the "city" that Augustine would offer his own vision.
O'Daly's analysis (24-26) of Augustine's correspondence with Nectarius, which
antedates the writing of De civitate Dei by several years, shows the degree to
which Augustine could engage these assumptions-and, at the same time,
transform them.
The second chapter offers a brief overview of the circumstances that elicited
a work such as De civitate Dei from Augustine, noting that it is undeniable that
the sack of Rome by Alaric in 410 provided the impetus for its composition
(31). However, as O'Daly points out, as psychologically arresting as the sack
of 410 was, the stability of Roma aeterna was in question prior to that date.
Alaric had been in Italy since around 400, and there were calls to renew the
pagan cult prior to the fall of Rome. Christians like Jerome were terrified by
the events of 410, largely, O'Daly contends, due to their Eusebian sensibilities.
They had so tied the spread of Christianity to the success of the Empire that
the fall of Rome itself raised fears about the continued stability of the faith.
Thus O'Daly wisely asserts that "Augustine's overriding aim is to dissociate
Rome's historical destiny from that of Christianity, or any religion" (29). He
does a fine job of demonstrating how Augustine's sermons of 410-11 reflect
these and similar concerns, and equally how Augustine himself was in the

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process of modifying his earlier optimism about the possibilities of a Christian
Empire. Further, in terms of the intended audience, O'Daly is careful to point
out that, while the work is certainly apologetic, its scope was not simply the
refutation of pagan opponents of Christianity. In fact, its principal audience
seems to have been Christians-and those on the fringes of Christianity (such
as Volusianus)-who might have found themselves somewhat "unhinged" by
recent events and the response these events elicited from their pagan
contemporaries. Thus, there is more to the work than simply apology contra
paganos. De civitate Dei was written as much to bolster Augustine's fellow
Christians as to challenge their pagan critics. O'Daly notes that the depth and
range of topics treated in the work reveal its hortatory and catechetical
dimensions, though he later suggests the perils of trying to separate the
catechetical and apologetic purposes of the work (271). The range and
theological vision are what distinguish De civitate Dei and signal its lasting
importance. O'Daly concludes his second chapter by addressing the possibility
(based on an inference from one of the Divjak letters) that Augustine had
revised the text, perhaps repeatedly. He concludes that the evidence renders
such a conclusion speculative.
The third chapter offers a summary of the Latin Apologetic tradition in
Christian North Africa. O'Daly's summary of the principal authors-Tertullian,
Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius-is concise and informative,
reflecting the best in recent scholarship. He characterizes the apologetic project
of each of these authors, noting shared emphases as well as differences. He
observes that while Augustine may have known and utilized the work of his
apologetic forebears, his own contribution is, nonetheless, quite original,
particularly in terms of its scope. This may simply reflect differences
theologically between Augustine and his predecessors (certainly true in the case
of Lactantius), but it is more probable that Augustine is up to something quite
different from them. In short, O'Daly can conclude that "no one of his
precursors has either a dominant or a profound influence on his apologetic
concerns and strategies" (52).
Chapter 4 deals with the notion of the "two cities" and seeks to locate
Augustine's use of this idiom within the history of ideas. After probing
similarities in Jewish apocalyptic, the Greek philosophical tradition, and other
possible Christian influences, O'Daly locates in Tyconius "a likely major
source" of Augustine's views (57). However, he concludes that while Tyconius
anticipates Augustine, particularly in his use of the language of the corpus
bipertitum (Augustine, of course, preferring the term corpus permixtum) in
reference to the Church and in his insistence that the corpus diaboli is not the
reflection of an evil nature but of an evil will, one must be circumspect in

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drawing significant conclusions about this influence. This reticence is due
largely to the fact that the fragmentary evidence found in Beatus of Liebana
may in fact have been subtly shaped by his own Augustinian sensibilities.
Further, following]. Van Oort, O'Daly is chary of the view that the two cities
simply reflect a dependence upon Manichean dualism; it is more likely that
Augustine's dualism is biblical in origin. Again, he sees Augustine as
undertaking something quite original, particularly in utilizing language of the
two cities within the context of salvation history.
Chapter 5 treats the structure of the work. Rather than viewing De civitate
Dei as an occasional work that, over a dozen or so years, took on a life of its
own, becoming longer and more unwieldy as Augustine pounded it out, O'Daly
sees in preface to book 1 Augustine's plan for the work as a whole; there is a
reprise of this plan, with greater detail, at 1.35-36. The central themes,
antitheses, and characteristic language of the later books are found in nuce at
the very beginning. While O'Daly acknowledges that the work's digressions
and "often distracting wealth of detail" (71) might obfuscate the plan or
direction of the work as a whole, he marks clearly the signposts Augustine
himself placed along the way, concurring with J. J. O'Donnell that "the
conception of the work was unified and complete before Augustine set pen to
paper."
The following five chapters offer O'Daly's reading of the text itself. In about
160 pages, he discusses the work and its elements and, with careful attention
to the subtleties of the text, helps one to appreciate the structural unity he had
presented in chapter 5.
Chapter 11 discusses the "influences and sources" upon which Augustine
drew in composing De civitate Dei. O'Daly treats three categories of authors:
secular Latin writers, Greek writers, whom Augustine would have encountered
in Latin translation, and the Jewish and Christian writers who exercised at least
a probable (though not undisputed) influence on him. In the case of each
possible influence, O'Daly's notes reflect the various positions in scholarly
debate, and he is judicious in his assessment of the possibilities.
The final chapter tries to place De civitate Dei in the context of Augustine's
literary enterprise as a whole. O'Daly shrewdly observes that "Augustine does
not, for the most part, write works on self-contained topics" (265), reminding
us of the dangers inherent in trying to read Augustine as a systematic
theologian in the modern sense. O'Daly singles out and discusses two earlier
works that anticipate what Augustine accomplishes in De civitate Dei, De vera
religione (390-91), and De catecheumdis rudibus (400/404-5) (266-72).
The book contains several short appendices, dealing with (a) the original
title of the work (contra paganos is a later accretion); (b) the manuscript

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tradition as well as the genealogy of printed editions; {c) the distinction
between the breviculus appended to the letter to Firmus {authentic, but not
intended as chapter headings) and the canon found in the Corbie MS (probably
inauthentic), which offered chapter headings; and {d) a problem with the
chronology in 18.54.
Augustine's "City of God": A Reader's Guide is a helpful and thoughtful
introduction to one of Augustine's greatest and most complex works. It is
important contribution to the vast sea of secondary literature on Augustine, not
least because it offers in one volume the information and insight which will
enable readers to approach De civitate Dei with intelligence and sensitivity. It
is to be hoped that this volume will be made available in a much less expensive
paperback, since it would serve well as a secondary text at the graduate level.
MICHAEL HEINTZ

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Kant's Ethical Thought. By ALLENB.WOOD. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1999. Pp. 436. $54.95 {cloth), $19.95 {paper). ISBN 0-52164056-3 {cloth), 0-521-64836-X (paper).

Allen Wood's book presents a comprehensive account of Kant's ethics. At
the origin of the project was the realization "that Hegel's criticisms of the
Kantian principle of morality do not entirely succeed because, like most of
Kant's readers, Hegel attended exclusively to the Formula of Universal Law,
ignoring the other formulations, which are more adequate statements of the
principle" {xiii). Wood also understood that on the deeper issues that separate
Kant and Hegel the former's position is grounded on a distinctive theory of
human nature and history, whose importance for Kant's ethics has seldom been
appreciated (ibid.). Kant's theory of human nature anticipates, according to
Wood, Hegel's philosophy of history, "but it also provides a compelling
explanation for Kant's notorious view that natural inclinations are a
'counterweight' to moral reason ... rather than being (as Hegel thinks) an
expression of reason" (ibid.).
Wood begins his investigation by recognizing a deep affinity between Kant
and the Enlightenment. He goes as far as to call Kant's ethical thought "both

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the finest and the most characteristic product of the Enlightenment" (1). He
invites the reader to keep in mind that the Enlightenment "still exists today,
since many people throughout the world still struggle for the expansion of
liberty in human thought and action, equality in the social, politic, and
economic spheres, tolerance regarding religious and cultural diversity" (ibid.).
This tribute to Kant as an Enlightenment philosopher is contrasted, however,
by Wood's almost complete lack of interest in Kant's most strikingly
"enlightened" writings, namely his precritical ethical writings, which are dealt
with in less than a page of the introduction (l lf.).
The book is structured in two parts. There is first an exposition of Kant's
"metaphysical foundations," followed by an exposition of Kant's
"anthropological applications." One might as well speak of Kant's "first ethics"
and then of his "second ethics," the former constituted by the Groundwork and
the Critique of Practical Reason, the latter by all his other ethical writings-but
apparently Wood does not like this way of talking about Kant's ethics.
The first chapter investigates reciprocally equivalent versions of the formula
of morality by means of which Kant appealed to moral common sense for
motivating a more rigorous account of the commitments of common sense in
terms of philosophic moral cognition (17). The concepts of good will, acting
from duty, moral worth, and respect for the law are briefly introduced in the
pages that follow. An entire chapter is dedicated to the various kinds of moral
imperatives (50-75), while the formula of universal law, "Act only in
accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that
it becomes a universal law," together with Kant's famous case-studies (suicide,
lying, working hard, being charitable) are the object of the following chapter
(75-110). Wood gives the same kind of treatment to the formula of humanity
as end in itself, "So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or
that of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means"
(111-55), and to the formula of autonomy, "Choose only in such a way that the
maxims of your choice are also included as universal law in the same volition"
(156-90). Whatever we may or may not hold about the compatibility of
freedom and natural causality, Wood says, we must presuppose our own
freedom, as the capacity to act under norms of reason, in order to represent
ourselves as competent to decide on rational grounds whether fatalism or
compatibilism is true (178). In an endnote to this problem, which could also be
seen as interpretation of the antithesis of the third antinomy of pure reason
(viz., "There is no freedom; everything in the world takes place solely
according to laws of nature" and there is no such thing as another causality
besides that of nature [Critique of Pure Reason, A445/B473]), Wood makes
clear that

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it is not necessary to assert that we ate free .... merely in order to
consider theoretical questions or to make judgments according to
normative laws of thinking and judging. Nothing in the process of
raising the question of freedom and coming to a fatalist conclusion
about it would necessatily require us to assert the contradictory of
fatalism ... then fatalism itself, once its implications ate understood,
won't appeal to anyone who is faint-hearted about adopting desperate
measures. (381)

Wood remarks further (ibid.) that he is defending Kant's defense of freedom
in a way that is very close to the conceptions of "pragmatism" and "ultimate
grounding" (Letztbegriindung) advocated by Karl-Otto Apel and his followers
(see especially Karl-Otto Apel, "The a priori of the Communication Community
and the Foundation of Ethics: The Problem of the Rational Foundation of
Ethics in the Scientific Age," in idem, Selected Essays, vol. 2 [Totowa, N.J.:
Humanities Press, 1996], 1-67). It is appropriate to repeat, says Wood, that to
represent freedom as a presupposition of rational judgment is by no means to
provide a theoretical proof that we are free. For all such arguments show, there
might even be strong evidence or arguments that we are not free and that
freedom is an illusion. What Kant shows is that we would face an insuperable
difficulty if we were confronted with such proofs or evidence. For even to
represent ourselves as considering such proofs on their merits is to presuppose
that we have the capacity to judge according to norms of reasoning, hence to
presuppose that what such proofs are trying to show is false (178). Concluding
this argument, Wood points out that Kant's argument on fatalism attacks
skepticism about morality by showing that the skeptical doubts undermine the
very conditions of their own intelligibility (ibid.).
Kant's thought, argues Wood, is grounded on the typically Enlightenment
appeal to critical self-confidence in reason without which it would be
impossible even to acknowledge on good grounds the limits and fallibility of
reason (ibid.). This remark enables us to shift to the second part of Wood's
book, the one dedicated to Kant's anthropological applications. Wood concedes
that in the Groundwork (where Kant first spoke of the distinction between
metaphysics of morals and practical anthropology) it remains extremely unclear
what either a metaphysics of morals or a practical anthropology would look
like. Kant seems to want to have little to do in the Groundwork with practical
anthropology, since he appears to cast himself for the purpose of that work as
someone better suited to the metaphysical side of moral philosophy than the
empirical or anthropological side (193). In fact, it is difficult to see how on
Kantian principles empirical anthropology might play an indispensable role in
practical philosophy. However, it obviously requires empirical knowledge of

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human nature to determine which ends suitably honor the rational nature of
human beings and which ends are contrary to the respect we owe to human
dignity. Besides, no attempt to determine the laws that unite the ends of
rational beings into a realm can afford to ignore what ends such beings are
empirically disposed to adopt (195).
By shifting the content of a metaphysics of morals toward the empirical,
Kant, says Wood, is in no way abandoning or modifying his fundamental thesis
that the supreme principle of morality is wholly a priori and borrows nothing
from the empirical nature of human beings. Kant is rather simply withdrawing
his earlier claim that a metaphysics of morals can concern only the idea and the
principle of a possible pure will and not the actions and conditions of human
volition generally. In other words, Kant no longer regards a metaphysics of
morals as constituted solely by a set of pure moral principles. It is instead the
system of duties that results when the pure moral principle is applied to the
empirical nature of human beings in general (196).
In what follows, Wood delves into Kant's presentation of empirical
psychology, pragmatic anthropology, human history, natural teleology, natural
and social passions, sympathy, love, charity, friendship, and eventually into the
idea of an ethical community. His conclusion is that Kant's moral principles
and his theory of human nature are designed only to add to our discontent with
ourselves. Kant thinks that
as rational creatures our condition must be one of dissatisfaction, selfalienation, and endless striving. Philosophy should not try to transcend
that condition, but only to help us live with its inevitability, and more
important, to make progress in the painful tasks it sets us. To some this
aim may seem unhealthy, perhaps even dangerous. From a Kantian
standpoint, however, any other way of representing our condition
appears complacent, cowardly, and dishonest. (334)

This is a very well balanced book that adds significantly to the
understanding of Kant's philosophy. Wood's arguments are sound and the goals
he sets to himself are legitimate. He presents us with a new and important
interpretation of Kant's ethical thought.
RICCARDO Pozzo

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

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Feminist Reconstructions of Christian Doctrine: Narrative Analysis and
Appraisal. By KATHRYN GREENE-MCCREIGHT. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000. Pp. 175. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-512862-1.
In this book Kathryn Greene-McCreight undertakes to evaluate the truth
and adequacy of certain feminist reconstructions of Christian doctrine. It
concerns her that feminist theologians wield so much influence today in
seminaries and churches when the reconstructions they propose often seem
novel and even alien. She worries that the backlash they invite will destroy the
gains that women have made in the Church's life. She recognizes that her
evaluation must take into account more than feminist reformulations of the
"primary" Christian doctrines; she must first stake out a position from which
to assess their "governing" doctrines, namely, the principles and rules that
characterize feminist theology. The latter is the really daunting task. The
strength of the book lies in the careful attention Greene-McCreight gives to
setting out such a position. She identifies a standard of evaluation, and then
uses this standard (1) to examine feminist biblical hermeneutics and (2) to
analyze and appraise selected feminist reconstructions of the doctrines of sin,
Christ, and the Trinity.
In chapter 1 Greene-McCreight brings the resources of the "Yale School"
(the work of William A. Christian, in addition to that of Hans Frei, and George
Lindbeck) to bear on the questions before her. She takes from this school her
standard of orthodoxy, "the biblical narrative identification of God," and a
series of important distinctions related to method (e.g., between the narrative
and nonnarrative interpretations of Scripture, between dogmatics and
apologetics, and between authentic doctrines and alien claims). By means of
these tools, she lays out for comparison two different (and opposed) patterns
by which religious communities respond to novel claims. For GreeneMcCreight, feminist claims can be properly assessedonly by a narrative reading
of Scripture (i.e., one that incorporates the present reality into the biblical
world) that gives primacy to dogmatics (the logic of belief) and uses the
community's authentic doctrine as a test of what is true and right. She points
out that in feminist theologies, by contrast, the interpretive flow is
"nonnarrative," primacy is given to apologetics (the logic of coming to belief),
and an "alien claim" regarding what is true and right is used to judge the
authenticity of the community's doctrine. By noticing the way theological
inquiry proceeds according to these two patterns, she develops a helpful
scheme to use in her analysis.
Greene-McCreight recognizes the strategic importance of clarifying not only
what a religious community holds to be true ("primary doctrines") but also

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how it determines what counts as true and who has the authority to decide
("governing doctrines"). In chapter 2 she discusses the "governing doctrines"
of feminist theology: its intellectual families of origin (modern theology and
the feminist movements), its explicit and implicit commitments and principles
of interpretation, and its implicit commitments borne out in practice. "The full
humanity of women" is a governing doctrine because it functions as the norm.
"Women's interpreted experience" (interpreted, that is, by their "feminist
consciousness,"their experience of and stance toward oppression) functions as
the authority, or ultimate court of appeal when it comes to determining what
is true and right in Christian doctrine and practice. This authority takes
precedence over text, tradition, or reason. In mainline feminist theology, then,
feminist claims supplant biblical authority and are "elevated to the status ...
of governing doctrines" (55). The feminist critique of Christian doctrine serves
as a critical principle for rendering judgments on primary doctrines and even
on their biblical source.
Like Francis Martin's pioneering work, The Feminist Question: Feminist
Theologyin the Light of ChristianTradition (1994), Greene-McCreight' s study
spends considerable time examining feminist biblical hermeneutics. In this
analysis-perhaps the highlight of the book-she cites telling examples to
challenge those feminists who regard the biblical text itself as an enemy, a
dangerous "vehicle for the furtherance of patriarchy." Those who take this
view, she asserts, reverse the proper "flow" of interpretation, judging the
revelatory value of the text by the "authority" of their own experience; they
"pull the rug out from under the classical hermeneutic" (68). Their
"nonnarrative" reading allows alien claims to trump the authority of the
biblical text. The fundamental criterion of Christian orthodoxy, the biblicalnarrative identification of God, is then replaced by feminist reconstructions.
The author asks whether all the claims of feminism are indeed "authentic
doctrines," and whether they cohere with the authentic doctrine of the
community. In her opinion, feminist reconstructions must be tested to
determine their coherence with the biblical-narrative identification of God.
When they do not meet this standard, and, by the force of their own logic,
begin to reshape "the web of belief," they constitute a serious threat to
doctrinal orthodoxy.
On the basis of this analysis, Greene-McCreight proceeds in the subsequent
chapters to apply her standard to selected feminist reconstructions of three
primary doctrines: sin, Christ, and the Trinity. Of these chapters, the one on
sin and victimization is the most successful. The analysis is carefully
constructed. The author identifies the hermeneutical problem (the canon is
already infected by sin) and names the standard feminist "doctrines" regarding
original sin (patriarchy, or sexism) and women's sin (self-denial and sub-

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155

missiveness). Then she points out two difficulties that arise from this
nonnarrative reading of Scripture. The philosophical difficulty lies in their
totalizing assumptions about women. (I regret that she chose not to examine
the question of "essentialism.") The theological difficulty arises from the fact
that some feminists use an anthropology constructed without reference to the
biblical drama to critique the biblical doctrines. In a very insightful next step,
Greene-McCreight presents an alternative interpretation. Drawing on Barth,
she illuminates the relationship between pride (the male sin) and sloth (the
female sin), showing that both are forms of rebellion, opposed to Christ whose
humble obedience is the source of his exaltation. It seems to her that the
feminist reconstruction makes self-assertion the goal in a way that contradicts
the Reformed doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone.
The first of two chapters on feminist Christologies deals with the
Incarnation (and the theological significance of maleness), the Cross, and the
Resurrection. These complex topics are difficult to negotiate on any terms, so
it is not surprising that Greene-McCreight's analysis here is less successful. Her
identification of three models of feminist reconstruction of the doctrine of
Christ-internal apology, doctrinal relocation, and allegorical reconstructionhas considerable merit, and many specific judgments and comments are
judicious and insightful. The chapter as a whole, however, is marred by the fact
that she accepts at face value the feminist arguments in favor of the ordination
of women to the priesthood (71£., 107-10). For lack of acquaintance with the
terms of the intra-Catholic debate, she is unable to evaluate it correctly. The
chapter also reveals the deficiency (from a Roman Catholic point of view) of
her criterion, the biblical narrative identification of God, for the adjudication
of these questions.
Let me offer some further comment on these two deficiencies. As to the
first, my complaint is that feminist theologians often misrepresent Catholic
teaching as asserting that women are excluded from the ministerial priesthood
because they cannot image Jesus Christ who is male. From this, they move to
an exploration of the significance (or lack of it) of maleness in his case and in
relation to the Godhead and of its relevance to the salvation of women. The
feminist critique, at this point, is built on a mistake. The Catholic Church, in
fact, gives as its reason for this exclusion the choice made by the Lord when he
called the Twelve and carefully maintained by the apostolic Church and in
subsequent tradition. Feminist failure to consider this rationale often reveals
ambivalence around Catholic teaching regarding the sacrament of holy orders
and its difference (in kind, not just in degree) from the sacrament of baptism
(the point at which salvation is relevant). It also represents and even generates
an unwillingness to grant sacramental significance to sexuality. As to the
second, the "biblical narrative identification of God" does not suffice as a

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criterion to answer questions of Church order in a communion that
understands the Church and its essential structures to have been given by
Christ. (Could Greene-McCreight acknowledge in the "biblical narrative" the
significance of Jesus' choice of twelve men? Not, it seems, apart from the
tradition which interprets this choice as normative for ordained ministry [see
161 n. 90], and not on the basis of a Reformed view of that ministry.) Avery
Dulles recently proposed fifteen criteria of Catholic theology (see Communio
22 [1995]: 303-15). Clearly, Roman Catholics have been in the business of
articulating their governing doctrines longer than Protestants.
The second chapter on feminist Christologies is superior to the first. The
author's critique of Sophia Christology is often very cogent, and she offers
some suggestive leads for further inquiry into feminist uses of the dichotomy
between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. Overall, however, she is
unable at times to spot the flaws in Christological doctrine manifest in many
feminist reconstructions-for example, the failure to distinguish nature from
person in Christ, to affirm the personal preexistence of the Word, or to find
a redemptive value in the sacrifice of the Cross. On balance, she is perhaps too
ambitious to attempt in such brief compass an evaluation of feminist
Christologies as diverse as those of Mary Grey and Anita Nakashima Brock.
The chapter on feminist Trinitarian reconstructions focuses on the problem of
naming God; here Greene-McCreight's standard serves very well. Her
comments on and judgment of feminist reconstructions of the baptismal
formula are very astute. She suggests that popular misunderstandings be
corrected by catechesis rather than by altering the biblical language and thereby
the story it tells about God.
In her conclusion, Greene-McCreight weighs up feminist reconstructions in
terms of her original scheme and finds many of them erroneous. She urges
others to join her in a scholarly critique of these constructions, lest the gains
made by the feminist movement be rejected wholesale. While she acknowledges
the validity of many feminist claims, she warns that "if we do not respect the
holistic narratival depiction of the biblical God, there is no compelling reason
for us to claim as true or even as noteworthy any of the remnant details
presented to us in that depiction" (133). Anyone who grasps the urgent
necessity of engaging Christian feminist theology in a serious dialogue will be
grateful to the author for providing this helpful and provocative study.
SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T.
Mundelein Seminary
Mundelein, Illinois

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Liberty, Dominion, and the Two Swords: On the Origins of Western Political
Theology (180-398). By LFSTERL. FIELD, JR. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press. 1998. Pp. 542. $95.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-268-01304-7.

Perhaps the best way to introduce this book on early Christian political
theology would be to cite a passage from Aidan Nichols's recent book,
Christendom Awake! (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), in which he
remarks:
I have said so far that the embodiment of the shared aims of a
Christendom society cannot be separated from the need to enact the
fundamental norms of such a society in the civil law, for the re-creation
of Christendom as State. Whereas in traditionally republican polities,
a supreme court might be regarded as the appropriate institution for
testing proposed legislation against the public criterion of the JudaeoChristian revelation, I wish to concentrate in conclusion on the possible
role of a revived (national and also international) monarchical
institution in this regard. (83-84)

The plausibility of Nichols's "revived monarchical institution" cannot be
understood without some reference to that long history of politics and theology
in the West wherein politics, while being politics, still did not exempt itself
from the sources of revelation and its effect on the public order.
Professor Field's erudite study of late-second-to-fourth-century efforts to
understand the relation between the emperor and the God of revelation
provides some of the historic background of the relation between political
structures and theological principles. This learned book contains 264 pages of
text, with almost the same amount of space devoted to endnotes, bibliography,
and index. The book is divided into three general parts: "The Church of the
Martyrs" (180-312), "The 'ConstantinianRevolution'" (312-74), and "The Age
of Ambrose" (374-98). The first part is divided into three chapters that discuss,
in order, "Liberty," "Ecclesiastical Dominion," and "Imperial Dominion and
the Two Swords: Images and Reflections." The second part contains six
chapters: "Freedom of Religion," "The Emergence of a Christian Empire,"
"Donatism: The Church in Africa or Heretical Conventicle?" "After Nicea:
Western Reactions to Arianism," "Lucifer of Cagliari and the Luciferians," and
"Hilary of Poitiers." The third part has four chapters: "Freedom by Birth,
Faith, and Priestly Right," "How Was an Empire Christian," "The Christian
Empire," and "The Papacy: Ancient Denouement or Medieval Prelude?" This
content outline alone gives some indication of the scope of this fine study.
The book begins and ends as a study of liberty in its many nuances. Field is
aware that Christianity introduced itself into the world not under the rubric of

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necessity or coercion but of liberty. "Ancient Christians regarded liberty as
humanity's greatest gift and highest goal," Field writes in his introduction.
This view survived antiquity. Yet it survived differently in the East,
where Christians continued to express themselves in Greek, and in the
West, where after the second century they increasingly or generally
expressed themselves in Latin. Hence the designation "Eastern" and
"Western"came to indicate considerably more and less than a location
in the Roman empire. From a historical and theological standpoint,
these regional labels gradually signaled two distinct self-understandings.
(xiii)

No doubt, Field notes, with some irony, liberty is not considered to be
antithetical to revelation, but is precisely a "gift" and a "goal." It is something
we do not yet possess; it is not something acquired solely by our own powers.
He does not think that, at bottom, there is a difference of principle between
Eastern and Western Christianity on this point, however different their
external political manifestation may be.
Liberty, no doubt, needs to be ordered for it to be what it is. The classical
enemy to liberty, as Aristotle had already implied in his definition of
democracy, was liberty itself, that is, a form of liberty that had no end or
purpose. This is the liberty that is identified with license, doing whatever one
wants, whatever it is one wants, a principle that has reappeared as near, if not
at, the heart of "modern" political philosophy since Machiavelli. Freedom
rather was to be a result of the virtues, not of their lack. Will depended on
intelligence to specify its end and hence the status in good or evil of what is
chosen or rejected. But Christians came to learn more about will from the first
books of Genesis than from Aristotle, however insightful the latter was.
We can catch some of the importance of this understanding in Field's
discussion of the antecedents of the expression "freedom of religion":
As used by the Fathers and Constantine, the "freedom" to choose a
religion falls nowhere within these modern, or early modern,
boundaries. It meant neither "disapproval" nor "forbearance." Nor did
it legitimate, or prompt respect for other religion. For Tertullian who
coined the expression, libertasreligioniswas simply a theological and
psychological fact. God bestowed such freedom when He bestowed
freedom of choice, that is, when He made humans according to His
own image. . . . This argument was aprioristic: it argued a "fact"
concerning human nature from theological first principles. Put
differently, the very validity of "freedom of religion" resided in the
superiority of the Christian truth over pagan error .... Free choice

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pertained to the simplicitasof human substance, of which no one could
deprive another. (67-68)

The theological grounding of free will, allied as it was later in Aquinas to
Aristotle's discussion of the double syllogism, of the examination of how we do
good or how we err, does not by itself determine the social and political sorts
of institutions conducive to the flourishing of this freedom. But it does
emphasize that man's relation to God, from the side of revelation itself, does
depend on this metaphysical and theological grounding of freedom.
In his chapter on "Hilary of Poitiers," Field writes, "Nicenes drew from
ancient and common font. Although Hilary coined the politically pregnant
formula libertasecclesiae,Christian freedom had always uniquely pertained to
the Church" (164). The martyrs themselves were killed after all in the name of
their freedom from their persecutors. The freedom of the Church was precisely
its being what it was within the saeculum; within it was the true circle of
freedom to be what we are. Nothing could stand against it; hence it was free.
It is the primary concern of this book to trace out the ways, granted the
legal and economic structure of the Roman Empire in the light of traditions
and philosophies from the Greeks, in which freedom is manifested within the
Church in the relation of clergy to bishops, and bishops to the pope, with this
broad freedom of the Church seen as accepting of and stimulating to a proper
and limited political freedom within the public order.
In the Church, however, as Ambrose saw it, they (David and Nathan,
pope and emperor) were to one another accountable, all the more so
through Peter and his successors of Rome. "Freedom" remained
eschatological. Temporarily, however, papal decree, confirmation, and
anathema circumscribed it-at least by papal self-understanding-for
"all the churche!'." By a primacy-at once martyrological,
christological, and petrine-the spiritual sword belonged preeminently
to Rome. The lack of "freedom to be silent," which Ambrose claimed
with respect to the emperor, Pope Siricius had already claimed with
respect to the episcopacy. (252)

The famous language of the "two swords" developed through Gelasius and
worked to establish what came to be the medieval problematic. The one society
had two proper authorities, one spiritual and one political or secular. This
understanding was already foreshadowed by St. Ambrose's confrontation with
Theodosius. Whenever there was a problem of doctrine or living that
jeopardized the authenticity of the freedom of revelation in the public world,
the bishop and the pope were not allowed simply to remain silent. Their duty
to speak, to stand for what the tradition held, was the basis of a limitation of

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the emperor's own power, as well as a definition of the rightful but limited
authority of bishops within the Church itself.
Field's book, though restricted in time frame to 180-398, does recognize
that the theological reflections of the early Church did have political
consequences, oftentimes tending to heretical consequences. Thus, the intricate
argumentation of some of the greatest of the early Church bishops and fathers,
against these positions, would have lasting effects on the precise form of
political order in the West during medieval and indeed in modern times. Fields
concludes with these perceptive sentences:
Whatever its institutional consequences, Gregory VII's libertasecclesiae
still meant libertas christiana, libertas christianae fidei-in short,
libertas aeterna. Formally, that is, theologically, the "freedom of the
Church" still entailed the single "political" agendum of preserving the
catholic faith. For all its other political implications, even in the minds
of the eleventh century reformers, the "freedom of the Church"
retained its eschatological meaning. (264)

This "freedom of the Church" is Field's way of accounting for a continuity of
principle throughout the early centuries of the Church in its dealings with the
political power and with its own organs designed to preserve what it was. One
can look on this negatively, say, from the point of view of the martyrs (of
which we have more in the twentieth century than they did during these years
of which Field writes). That is, certain demands of the state, whatever its form
(democratic, totalitarian, or in between), cannot be accepted in this world, and
the martyr stands for something that is rejected in the public order. Or it can
be looked on positively, that is to say, that just as the individual soul can be
redirected, even healed by grace, so there are public orders more conducive to
encouraging the eschatological purpose of the Church in its wayfaring in the
world. In either case, as Field's conclusion implies, what concerns the
"freedom" of the Church is that eschatological purpose or end according to
which it finds itself in this world. That purpose or end is that what is "given"
for our freedom remain in the world, under all its political configurations.
JAMES V. SCHALL, S. J.

Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.