The Thomist 66 (2002): 499-517

KARL RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN
ORIGINS
KEvIN A. MCMAHON
St. Anselm College
Manchester, New Hampshire

0

NE OF THE MOST STRIKINGdevelopments in Karl Rahner's
thought concerns the issue of original sin, a topic he came
back to repeatedly over his long career. After having for
many years defended the traditional view that all humanity is
descended from a single couple, into the grip of whose sin we are
born (monogenism), Rahner, it seemed, quite suddenly adopted
the opposing idea that both our biological history and the history
of sin must be traced back to a primordial community (polygenism). When he addressed the matter in 1954, writing in the
wake of Humani Generis, the question for Rahner was not
whether monogenism was true but how certain one may be of its
truth. He concluded that although it had never been the subject,
either expressly or implicitly, of an infallible pronouncement by
the magisterium, still, given its close connection with the doctrine
of original sin, it "must be affirmed with inner (but not in itself
irreformable) assent. " 1 Thirteen years later, Rahner denied that
the doctrine of original sin even favored monogenism. There is
"no reason," he wrote, "for the magisterium to intervene" against
polygenism, for if anything, it is polygenism that marks the
1 Karl Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," Theological Investigations, vol.
1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961; New York: The Seabury Press, 1974), 234.
Rahner observed that the argument in Humani generis considers monogenism to be "logically
presupposed by the dogma of original sin" (236), but without appealing to either scriptural
texts or statements of the magisterium to declare its certainty. Rahner saw this reserve as an
indication that the letter did not intend absolutely to exclude the viability of polygenism.

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superior approach, resting as it does on the insight of both
theology and science that the individual must be understood in
terms of the larger group. 2
The course of Rahner's change in thought reflected that of
many theologians, and educated laity too, during this period, with
the conviction coming to be widely held that the Church's
position, stubbornly monogenist, is simply untenable. 3 Yet this
article will suggest that there are elements even in Rahner's later
work, consistent and systematic as he was in its construction, that
support the monogenist position.
I

"The remarkable aspect," George Vandervelde writes, "of this
change of position on the question of origins is that, theologically,
very little changes" 4-meaning that very little changed in Rahner's
understanding of original sin. Certainly at first glance this seems
to have been so. As seriously as Rahner took the teaching that
there was a personal sin committed at the beginning of human
history, by which, in the words of Trent, we were "changed for
the worse in body and soul, " 5 there were many points on which
Rahner differed from the tradition. He seems from early on, for
example, to have regarded human suffering and moral concupiscence as "natural" to our condition. 6 It is not the fact of
2 Karl Rabner, "Evolution and Original Sin," Consilium, vol. 26, ed. Johannes Metz (New
York: Paulist Press, 1967), 73. See also Rahner's "Exkurs: Erbsiinde und Monogenismus," in
Karl-Heinz Weger, Theologieder Erbsiinde(Freiburg: Herder, 1970), 196-99.
3 Jerry D. Korsmeyer writes on behalf of those anxious for a revision of this and other
aspects of the teaching on original sin in Evolution and Eden: BalancingOriginal Sin and
Contemporary Science (New York: Paulist Press, 1998).
4 George Vandervelde, OriginalSin: Two MajorTrends in ContemporaryRoman Catholic
Reinterpretation(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 197 5; Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,
1981), 235.
5 "[f]otumque Adam per illam praevaricationis offensam secundum corpus et animam in
deterius commutatum fuisse," Deer. de peccatoorig. 1(DS1511), quoting from the Second
Council of Orange, can. 1 (DS 371).
6 Trent (Deer. de peccato orig. 5) had spoken of concupiscence as an inclination to sin,
arising with the first transgression, which remains even after baptism ("Manere autem in
baptizatis concupiscentiam vel fomitem" [DS 1515]). Rahner, in "The Theological Concept

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death but the manner in which we experience it that must be
attributed to the first sin. 7 The idea that we each have a share in
the primal guilt he took as meaning that the human community
never became a medium of grace. 8 In fact, the aspect of the
doctrine of original sin, and monogenism in particular, that most
commended itself to Rabner was its correspondence to our
universal, existential experience of personal weakness and, in that
weakness, of dragging each other down. "[Y]ou, I, all of us here
below," Rahner wrote in 1954, "begin as the lost, so much so that
we know from the start that everyone we come across in the
course of our history, with whom we have to do as 'neighbor,' is
of this kind. " 9 The freedom and integrity of our decisions, already
restricted by our individual sinfulness, is further compromised by
the decisions of others, at times in ways that make their influence,
for all practical purposes, inescapable. Years later, in Foundations
of Christian Faith, Rabner would give this example:
when someone buys a banana, he does not reflect upon the fact that its price is
tied to many presuppositions. To them belongs, under certain circumstances, the
pitiful lot of banana pickers, which in turn is co-determined by social injustice,
of Concupiscentia," Theological Investigations, vol. 1, p. 375, offered a definition at once
more nuanced and more broad: "concupiscence is the inertia and impenetrability, in itself
bivalent, of that 'nature' (in the earlier sense) which precedes the person's free decision, which
inertia does not permit the person as freedom totally to integrate this 'nature' into his deeds."
By "bivalent" Rahner meant that this inability (characteristic of any finite creature) to act with
one's entire self in a given decision precludes the whole self from being engaged whether the
decision is for good or for evil. Sanctifying grace overcame the distance between nature and
freedom, and further between matter and spirit, in the first man, and salvation looks to their
regained interpenetration, a full integration of our impulses and desires with our intellect and
will, the lack of which now afflicts us like a plague.
7 For the view that sin brought about the manner in which we experience death rather than
death itself, see "Original Sin," in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, 6 vols.,
ed. Karl Rahner et al. (London: Burnes and Oates; New York: The Seabury Press, 19681970), 4:332; Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of
Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: The Seabury Press, A Crossroad Book,
1978), 115; Karl Rahner, "Natural Science and Reasonable Faith," Theological Investigations,
vol. 21 (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1988), 46-48.
8 Rahner, "Original Sin," 331; Karl Rahner, "The Sin Of Adam," Theological
Investigations, vol. 11 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974; New York: The Seabury
Press, 1974), 257-58.
9 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 284.

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KEVIN A. MCMAHON

exploitation, or a centuries-old commercial policy. This person himself now
participates in this situation of guilt to his own advantage. Where does this
person's personal responsibility in taking advantage of such a situation codetermined by guilt end, and where does it begin? 10

This experience of belonging to an absolutely single history in
which human mutuality works again and again to destroy rather
than to build up human community is what drove Rahner's
thought in his 1954 article. And to his mind, what justified our
sense of belonging to a radically single moral history was an
absolutely single biological history-hence the repeated reference
in this article to the Augustinian idea of our derivation from a
"common stock." 11 Rahner understood by this nothing less than
our lineal descent from a single individual. Only if one posits that
the entire race may be traced back to a first couple, and even the
first woman back to her man (though Rahner does not describe
the event), can it be said that each and every decision of every
person has been made under the shadow of sin. "Is it possible,"
Rahner asked, "to conceive of and to maintain this universally
pre-personal and yet historically realized situation of damnation
proper to the stock as such, if its historical origin did not lie in a
single real individual in the beginning and in his act? The answer
is in the negative. " 12 Carrying the logic through, Rahner wrote a
few years later that the first man determined this situation for
humanity in his initial act of freedom. 13
Evidently it was the pressure of scientific research that led
Rahner by 1967 to shift his support to polygenism. He referred
at that time to «the fact that scientific anthropologists of today
think in terms of polygenism," and continued, "It is a general
10

Rahner, Foundations, 110-11.

11 Augustine himself drew the image from Romans 11: 17-24. For an example of his usage,

see De nupt. et concup. 1.21, 37; De civitate dei 15.1; Enchiridion 26-27.
12 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenisrn," 281. For this reason, Rahner took
the ti; £voe; of Hebrews 2: 11 as arguing for strict rnonogenism (ibid., 266).
13 "Original sin can only be thought of as the first act of man's real, authentic freedom"
(Karl Rahner, Hominisation: The Evolutionary Origin of Man as a Theological Problem [New
York: Herder and Herder, 1968], originally published as "Die Hominisation als theologische
Frage," in Karl Rabner and Paul Overhage, Das Problem der Hominisation [Freiburg: Herder,
1958], 103).

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503

principle of biology that true concretegenetic unity is not found
in the individual but in the population within which alone many
individuals can exist." 14 Even in 1954, Rahner had spoken of
human community as lying at the core of human existence. 15 But
now he took the point further by rooting the primordial condition
of rectitude, called "original justice," in the relation that human
beings bore to God through one another. It was God's intention,
Rahner said, that our paradisal state of graced union with him be
sustained by our union with each other: we were to be reciprocal
mediators of grace. 16 The moment sin was committed, the first
violation of God's will, this web of holy influence was torn, the
pall was cast, and our universal condition was changed. This
approach certainly saved Rahner from what, in terms of biology,
seemed the indefensible idea that the race had its beginning in a
single man. Our experience of unity in sin could be explained
even with the supposition that the human species, like all others,
arose within a single interbreeding genetic pool (though it would
have to be a single pool, in a single location). Furthermore, the
explanation worked whether one supposed that only a single
individual sinned, or that some, or every living person, shared in
one collective act; and whether the sin occurred at the very
beginning of human freedom, or some time later, so long as it fell
within the first generation. 17
The adoption of polygenism did carry a price. As a monogenist
Rahner had been able to attribute our single fallen history to the
agency of the first man, the originator of that history, by whose
freedom it had been shaped. Now he was forced to appeal to the
mere decree of God. The stipulation that grace be received within
the community as a whole, such that the personal sin of any one
individual would forfeit grace for all, is located simply in the will
14

Rahner, "Evolution and Original Sin," 64.

15 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 287.
16 Rahner, "Evolution and Original Sin," 70. Even this original grace may be regarded as
gratia Christi, Rahner wrote in "The Sin of Adam" (255-56), if, like the Scotists, one considers
the Incarnation to be the eternally proposed goal of creation, and not simply the Father's
response to sin.
17 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 107; "The Sin of Adam," 261.

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of God. "'Since God owes grace to no one," Rahner said, "'he
could link it to any meaningful condition, and therefore to the
steadfastness of the first man, " 18 or the first group. 19 There is no
intrinsic reason why the sin of one member of the group should
cost everyone the inner order established by grace, nor why the
sin of one or more within the group could not be overcome by the
others who remained firm, bringing their fellows to conversion.
In any case, the approach seems better suited to describe a
situation, generation after generation, of mixed saints and sinners,
rather than what Rahner himself understood to be the condition
of original sin.
Morever, Rahner's previous commitment to examining the
doctrine of original sin within the framework of monogenism had
been motivated by such considerations as the parallel drawn
repeatedly in the Pauline letters between the first man and the
second, Adam and Christ. In other words, it was an effort made
on scriptural and ecdesial grounds to deal with a teaching that is
a scriptural and ecdesial affair. It is a little ironic that Rahner's
turn to polygenism, which only multiplied his theological
problems, was prompted by what were then widely held opinions
in science. As noted above, Rahner's revised approach required
that the race proceed from a single community within a specific
region. Excluded at the outset was any model that proposed the
local and separate development of population groups that
eventually came together to form our present species, a theory
commonly referred to as polyphylism. Rahner may well have
summed up the general view in 1967 when he said that
polyphylism is "rejected by most anthropologists on scientific
grounds, " 20 but thirty years later that is hardly the case. 21
One of the greatest problems to confront Rahn er, and one that
followed him from monogenism to polygenism, was his understanding of the Falt He spoke in 1954 of the consequence of
Rahner, "Original Sin," 331.
and Original Sin," 70-71.
20 Ibid., 67.
21 Henry Harpending reviews the ongoing debate concerning multiregional evolution in
"Gene Frequencies, DNA Sequences, and Human Origins," Perspectives in Biology and
Medicine 37 (Spring 1994): 384-94.
18

19 Rahner, "Evolution

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crediting our fragmented, conflicted condition to our nature as
physical beings. "If the origin of this universal situation," he said,
"were not historically human, what we should have would be
Manicheism {as Augustine would say) or a conception which saw
inevitable sinfulness in the very fact of being creaturely. " 22 Yet,
certain though he always was that there had indeed been a Fall, he
had an increasingly minimalist view of its effects. This was due to
his analysis of matter.
Rahner spoke of matter in two ways: as a metaphysical
principle and as referring to the collection of physical beings that
make up the universe. As a metaphysical principle, which together
with form constitutes the finite existent, matter was considered by
Rahner as pure "negativity," as the limiting principle within a
creature that determines the degree to which the creature is able
to participate in the fullness of Absolute Being.23 It is the principle
of individuation, accounting for the fact that there can be many
instances of the same sort of being. It is the principle of a thing's
facticity, of its givenness which we as knowing subjects experience
as otherness, even of being alien to us. It also underlies our
experience of ourselves as other. "Matter means the condition for
that otherness which estranges man from himself and precisely in
doing so brings him to himself. "24 The material existent, as a
limited instance of being, Rahner rather strikingly described as
"frozen spirit." "What we call material," he wrote in 1963,
has always been seen, at least in thomistic philosophy, as a limited and in a sense
"frozen" spirit, as limited being whose being as such, i.e. prescinding from the
real negativity and limitation of this being (commonly called materia prima,
which of itself does not signify any positive reality), is exactly the same being
which outside such a limitation means being-conscious-of-itself, knowledge,
freedom and transcendence towards God. 25
22 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 281.

23 Karl Rahner, "The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding of Faith,"

Theolvgical Investigations, vol. 6 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969; Baltimore:
Helicon Press, 1969), 168-69.
24 Rahner, Foundations, 183.
25 Rahner, "The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding of Faith," 168.
Rahner would take the same view in "Natural Science and Reasonable Faith" (34-35): "The
postulate of an ultimate unity of the whole world which cannot be resolved into a definitive,
ultimately unthinkable disparity of several worlds, and of an ultimate spiritual nature which

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Hence the material existent has within itself the possibility of
being something more, in the sense of giving greater expression
to the range of being. This possibility is realized under the power
of Absolute Being in the process that science knows as evolutionary development When this development reaches the point
of true self-transcendence, there arises personal spirit, the human
person, Rahner called this the "unlimiting of the limited,"' and
wrote later in Foundations,
we have to try to understand man as the existent in whom the basic tendency of
matter to discover itself in spirit through self-transcendence reaches its definitive
breakthrough, so that from this perspective the essence of man himself can be
seen within a fundamental and total conception of the world, 26

In 1954 Rahner described man as a spirit who belongs to the
world as the world belongs to him, He is spiritual in and through
his bodiliness, and his body is one with the entire spatio-temporal
order, 27 Hence the history of material being and the history of

manifests itself in intelligibility, and of a being present to itself even though it admits of the
highest degrees of differentiation, is implicit in the belief in creation. Materiality must be
understood as the lowest stage of this spirit (even when this may perhaps be irrelevant to the
pure natural scientist). Otherwise materiality cannot be conceived as originating from an
absolute spirit, since this spirit cannot create something that is absolutely disparate from
itself."
26 Rabner, Foundations, 181. Concerning the divine-evolutionary causality of the human,
Raimer states in "Natural Science and Reasonable Faith" (45): "if we further consider that the
divine causality which we have postulated above, not as an individual phenomenon of natural
science but as the dynamic ground and bearer of all evolution, specifies itself according to the
respective goal of a transcendence from below to above, this causality being the ontological
ground for this goal, then one can say that the divine causality which bears the evolution in
general, in the way that it must be operating here can be identified with the 'creation of the
soul' in the way in which Pius XII teaches [in Humani generis3 6]." There are dear similarities
between Rahner's approach to biological development and the rise of consciousness and the
theory proposed by Teilhard de Chardin, whose censuring Rahner pointed to in this article
(25) as one of the more recent mistakes the Church has made in coming to terms with the
discoveries of science. Michael Barnes offers a comparison of Teilhard and Rahner in "The
Evolution of the Soul from Matter and the Role of Science in Karl Rahner's Theology,"
Horizons 21 (1994): 85-104.
27 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 287,

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507

corporeal spirit is one history: one in origin, one in destiny, and
one in its center, who is Christ. 28
Yet even though there was for Rahner an intrinsic relation
between the material and the spiritual in this world, an affinity of
matter for spirit, one also has the sense that matter is resistant to
spirit, that with the first sin we were abandoned by the Spirit29 to
the impulses and desires of our physical being that impede the
fulfillment of our nature. Rahner would speak of matter as a
principle of multiple, dispersed, and conflictual being, drawn
together, "recapitulated," in the human spirit, and definitively
united with the Absolute in Christ. 3°Following his departure from
the monogenist position, Rahner placed even more emphasis on
Christ as the source of human unity. In 1954 he declared that
Christ became the exclusive goal of humanity by making our
history his own; the son of God is also the son of Mary, born of
our history into our history. Christ took into himself our common
life, which is a single existence because it is physically single, one
community having one physical source, just as it now has one
resurrected end. 31 Twenty years later, Rahner remarked that
Christ did not just presuppose the unity of the race, he
"constituted" it.32 Even with the offer of grace, human beings had
not been able to form themselves into a true community until the
coming of Christ. All of this seems to indicate that, although a
believer may take historical experience as corroboration of a Fall,
it will remain an event known by faith alone: unable to be
deduced from history and unable to be defined by history.
II

When in 1954 Rahner stated that all humanity descended from
a single person, he was dearly trying to locate the origin and
28 Rahner, "The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding of Faith," 177;
Foundations, 181, 186-88.
29 This is the language Rahner uses in "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 279.
30 Rahner, Foundations,189.
31 Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 275-79; 282-85.
32 Rahner, "The Sin of Adam," 260.

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structure of human history in an antecedent order whose own
nature, like that of history, was determined by human freedom.
Our history, he was saying, in which absolutely every decision is
preceded by the decision of another to whom we are intrinsically
connected, is grounded in a human biological, moral, and spiritual
order that was shaped by the first sin-an order that Rahner,
following St. Paul, called an order of flesh. With the change to
polygenism, Rahner could no longer speak in the same manner of
an absolutely single human history, since in theory there might
have been many whose personal histories had continued for some
time before the first sin was committed. It was now the somewhat
disparate history of matter, informed by grace which was
eventually lost in sin, that was understood to develop into ours.
But if Rahner was willing to accept the idea that matter and spirit
are so closely united in the world that they share a single history,
he was not at all comfortable with the suggestion that the order of
existence in the world is essentially the order of matter. Spirit, he
maintained, is both "logically and ontologically prior" to matter. 33
This meant for Rahner not just that it could only have been by the
transcendent causality of the spiritual fullness of Being that matter
was able to give rise to corporeal spirit, but that spirit, created
spirit, must have been immanent and at work in the world from
its beginning. Since matter "was created by God from the very
start for the sake of and in view of the spirit," it is "meaningless"
and "ontologically impossible" that God might "create a material
world on its own," apart from spirit. 34
At this point Rahner appealed to the angelic. Far from
describing angels as "pure spirits" who are completely above and
detached from this inferior world, Rahner believed that Scripture
and tradition justify considering angels as "powers of the one and
hence also material world to whose material nature they are
genuinely and essentially related. " 35 Arguably, the "creation of the
33 Rabner, "The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding

of Faith," 166.

34 Ibid., 168.
35 Ibid., 159. Rabner appears even to have been willing to entertain

the possibility of a kind
of angelic corporeality. Hence he wrote in the same article: "[W]ith regard to the angels, we
have already said that it is an absolutely open question whether they too are not of their very

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spiritual world of the angels" coincided with that of the "material
cosmos." Both have the same end, both receive the same grace,
both are perfected by one faith in Christ as Lord of all creation
and redeemer of the physical world. It is legitimate, therefore, "to
urge the inclusion of the angels and their history with the history
of the cosmos," and on this basis, to conclude that there never has
been "a spiritless and merely material world. "36
One might add to these another consideration, which Rabner
did not propose. The motion that is characteristic of material
beings, their potency for change which, at its most fundamental
level, is random, unstable, and spontaneous, but at higher levels
is coherent, more stable, novel, and developmental, is, as Rabner
would put it, a more limited expression of the motion characteristic of material beings who are personal, of self-aware, selfdirecting freedom. It is not just that the lower implies the higher,
that the possibility of physical motion implies the possibility of
personal freedom. The two belong to a single order which the
higher defines. It is an order of distinct natures, each of which
governs the capacity of particular individuals to exercise the
motion that is displayed fully by personal subjects. This is in fact
the world as we observe it to be: structured, but not determined;
the opposite of a necessary, even if active, reflection of eternal
essences. Our experience is of a range of phenomena belonging to
an integrated order which, from the standpoint of metaphysics,
has as the condition for its possibility the operation of personal
freedom.
As so described, however, the freedom at work in this world,
shaping its structure, cannot belong to the angelic. As closely
nature necessarily related to matter, without their having to be bodily beings on this account
in the same way as human beings" (ibid., 169). It calls to mind Augustine's speculation on the
same point. See Eugene Portalie, A Guide to the Thought of Saint Augustine, trans. Ralph J.
Bastian (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1960), 143.
36 Rahner, "The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding of Faith," 158,
172. In "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism" (294), Rahner had described the angels as
"created origins (dpxai) and principles of the unity of order of the material world." Later in
Foundations (189) he would speak of the angels as the medium through whom there can be
"a recapitulation of a world which is dispersed in time and space, a recapitulation into itself
and into its ground."

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KEVIN A. MCMAHON

related to the world as the angels may be in Scripture-depicted
as messengers to humanity; even cosmic powers, to use Rahner's
language--still, it is not the angels who live in the world, it is we.
It is not the story of the angels that the Scriptures tell in speaking
of creation, it is ours. We are the ones created on the sixth day,
to whom God speaks directly for the first time (Gen 1:28). We
are the ones given dominion, the first of all living things created
by God in the second account of creation. To us is given the role
of carrying through the physical creation begun by God,
represented by the first man's commission to cultivate the garden
(Gen 2: 15). Once again it is to the first man that God speaks
directly in Genesis 2, and that first word is a command, engaging
his freedom. The man, the only creature able to hear the word, is
called upon to assign the word appropriate to each of the other
creatures, to name them, and so complete their being. When the
man, and the woman to whom he had been joined as one flesh,
betray the word, and so each other, not only are they cursed, but
the ground itself is cursed. Creation, bereft of the word that it was
the mission of the first man and woman to declare and embed,
falls into a chaotic swid of bloody violence (Gen. 6: 11-13) which
the scriptural author describes as welling up and covering the
earth like the waters of a universal flood. 37
Earlier we referred to Rahner's opinion that God simultaneously created the angelic order and the physical world. This
had been the position of Thomas Aquinas, too. 38 Since Thomas
presumed that humans were present at the outset of world
history, it is reasonable to say that he believed that angels and the
37 Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna understands the description of man and woman as having
been made in the image of God to mean not only that they "witness to the activity of God in
the life of the world," but that they have been assigned a share in that activity, namely, to
establish God's creative word in the world, and the world in his word, for it is as rooted in the
word that the divinely constituted order of things is made complete and sustained. Hence the
importance of God's declaration in Genesis 6: 13 that he will bring judgment upon all creation,
since in consequence of the first couple's sin, the repudiation of their role, creation is now
without law, lawless, bereft of God's word. See The JPS Torah Commentary, vol. 1, Genesis,
commentary by Nahum M. Sama (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 12-13,
51.
38 Aquinas, Sfh I, q. 61, a. 3.

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first humans were created in the same act. But they were created,
of course, as intellectual beings of two entirely different sorts.
Thomas spoke of matter (along with quantity) 39 as the principle
of individuation which makes it possible for many separate things
to share a common essence. Hence he referred to the
immateriality of angels to explain why it is that, although there
may be many kinds of angels, there can be no more than one
angel of each kind. 40 As pure spirit, each angel, from the moment
of his creation, enjoys the fullness of the being proper to his
specific form. In this respect, he may be taken as a created image
of the being of God as pure act. But according to Thomas, not
only is the angel a full actualization of what he is, to a degree it is
he who defines his nature in that initial moment of existence. He
chooses in the very first act of mind and will following his
creation either to turn to or avert himself from the beatifying
God. By this one act he determines his nature as either perfected
in grace or diminished in sin, and since he himself instantiates the
fullness of his nature, simultaneously he determines his species or
kind as well. What is more, he belongs to an order of countless
other angels, each distinguished in species according to the acuity
of his intellectual nature, each bearing a direct relationship to
other angels, and the entire order being intrinsically tied to the
created universe as a whole. Indeed, Thomas follows the opinion
that it was the very highest of the angels who sinned principally,
drawing into pride by his exhortation the other, lower angels,
when it had been his office to direct them to God" 41 Thus, in that
first act following their creation, in a decision concerning both
themselves and each other in relation to God, the angelic order
was determined in the primary manner in which it was in potency,
namely, the hierarchical place and the role each would have in the
providential work carried out by God. Even the demons cannot
39 For Thomas Aquinas, Joseph Bobik writes, it is quantity together with matter that is the
principle of individuation ("Matter and Individuation," in The Concept of Matter in Greek and
Medieval Philosophy, ed. Em:m McMullin [Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press,
1965], 288-92).
40 STh I, q. 50, a. 4.
41 STh I, q. 63, aa. 7-8; q. 106, a. 4.

512

KEVIN A. MCMAHON

escape being used to God's purpose, no matter how energetically
they may set themselves against it.
The case of the human is quite different. The fullness of what
it means to be human cannot be realized in any single human
person, but only in the totality of all the persons whom God will
create, taken together. If the angelic images the being of God as
pure act, the human images the nature of God as diversified
within himself, according to the mutual self-donation between
divine persons. It is, in fact, through a like donation between
human persons that God creates humanity; The generative is an
essential dimension of human nature. Not only are human beings,
as Rahner wrote, necessarily members of community, 42 they with
God are creators of it. This, Rahner had written back in 1954, is
why God first made humanity as one man and one woman, in
order that the race would be self-generative, a cause of its own
life, having its beginning in their freedom. As such, Rahner said,
for God to have created new persons or other couples
independently of the first would have been to transfer his action
into the realm of the miraculous, and the pointlessly miraculous
at that. 43
The human, however, is like the angelic in this: the decision
concerning God has a formative influence on oneself. Since the
human is material, and it is by virtue of their materiality that
humans can be both multiple within the species and generative,
the decision will have its effect on the nature of human materiality
as well. As Rahner, like Thomas, always maintained, the
materiality of human beings is one with that of the physical
world; we share a single corporeality. What I am proposing here
is that, granted the analogy between the human and the angelic,
the most consistent position is to regard the decision of the first
two human beings, which would determine the structure of the
human generative order, as at the same time determining the
structure of our physical world. And if, as Thomas stated, the first
act of any intellectual creature is to dispose oneself in relation to
42 "Where there is man, there is necessarily-not only in fact-human community, i.e.,
bodily, personal, community" (Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 287).
43 Ibid., 292-93.

RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN ORIGINS

513

God, 44 the decision that would determine, not definitively nor
irretrievably, but fundamentally nevertheless, the corporeal order
came in the first instant after this couple's creation. The argument
is not that the first couple create their own materiality, since their
material nature is the condition for the possibility of their being
two, and they are not self-creative ex nihilo. But they are selfforming. Rahner once wrote that the transcendentality of human
spirit towards God operates via the movement beyond oneself
into a human thou. 45 In this uniting with himself through the
other, God located the order whereby the human race would
proceed. And this order of human multiplicity and diversity, the
ground of a vastly rich and richly varied participation of beings,
animate and inanimate, of almost boundless genera and species,
in the divine being, was determined in the first act of human
freedom.
The event of that first act is locked in mystery. It is only in
light of Christ, St. Paul tells us, through whom all have life, that
we have come to know of the decision, marking the outset of
history, in consequence of which all die (1 Cor 15 :22). Augustine
conjectured in The City Of God (14.11) that it was out of
attachment to "his only companion," the first woman, that the
first man sinned. That the fruit of this sin was a devastation of
union-between each other in the act of rejecting God-and not
a more deeply formed attachment, is the theme taken up by
Milton in his Paradise Lost. Aquinas takes it a step further when
he intimates that the sin consisted in the decision of the first
couple to make of their union, which would be the root of the
human community, an expression of their own grandeur and
glory.46 This much, however, is clear: the movement within, and
away from God, that characterized that primordial decision was
at the same time a movement in repudiation of the human and
physical order which God nonetheless created, though now in
STh I-II, q. 89, a. 6.
Karl Rahner, "Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God,"
TheologicalInvestigations, vol. 6, trans. Karl-H. and Boniface Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon
Press; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1969), 241, 243, 245-46.
46 STh I-II, q. 81, a. 1; II-II, q. 163, a. 1, ad 1; q. 163, a. 2.
44

45

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KEVIN A. MCMAHON

spite of the couple's freedom which he had intended to be the
medium of his action. It is impossible ever to know how that
order would have looked. Perhaps the range of created being is no
less than it would have been. But the nature and course of its
action must certainly be different. Being, of course, remains being;
and unity, diversity, novelty, complementarity-including, at the
higher levels, gendered reproduction, in reflection of the pattern
established in human nature-continue to be features of this order
despite sin. But now the activity of being is not only unified, it is
also conflictual, and change is not only cumulative, a matter of
continual gain, but involves loss as well.
The ground of this order, in whom and through whom and for
whom all have been made, is named the Christ, the one who
alone can fulfill the covenant, the promise made to overcome sin
(1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16). 47 His is the only headship that the Pauline
epistles know of (1 Cor 11:3; Eph 1:22; 4:15; 5:23; Col 1:18;
2: 9-10, 19), an exclusive source of unity, even though the couple
were to have established a unified and integrative pattern of
activity in the world. Christ is the pattern of activity in the world,
the whole Christ, Christ united with his body, the Church, who
offers himself up for his bride (Eph 5 :25-27), and because of
whose immanent presence the world's history in all its vagaries is
developmental and teleological, moving infallibly toward union
with God. Alienated from the order at whose heart they had been
set, what the couple bequeath is the legacy of their rebellion, an
entropic tendency resisting integrative order on all levels of
activity. Henceforth it is the laws of thermodynamics governing
matter in motion that are the created element at work, affecting
physical existence and finally the rise of life. Cut off from the
primordial couple, the human community intended from the
beginning arises in a time and manner proposed by the evolving
world, even if still under the providence of Christ.
47 For all the advertence to Colossians 1: 16 one comes across in discussions of the doctrine
of creation and redemption, no thinker has used this passage to greater systematic effect than
Donald Keefe in his Covenantal Theology:The EucharisticOrderof History, 2 vols. (Lanham,
Md.: University Press of America, 1991).

RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN ORIGINS

515

III

The doctrine of original sin has always been tied to the idea of
a fall from original integrity, a violation in freedom of freedom,
and the introduction of a principle of dissolution into the order
established by God. The idea has protected the goodness of
creation, avoiding the conclusion that the physical order, where
birth entails death, is inimical to the life awaited in salvation. It
has likewise protected the dignity of the human by protecting its
priority: humanity was placed in its own hand under God's
counsel, despite the fact it now finds itself under the counsel of
the world. Saint Paul maintained that we began as a unity in
Adam, and the doctrinal tradition built upon this by looking to
Adam to explain our common physical vulnerability, our wrestling
with concupiscence, even the universal guilt that underlay the
practice of baptizing infants. The difficulty such architects of the
tradition as Augustine and Aquinas met with came primarily of
their effort to locate the event of the Fall within a world whose
order owed nothing to human freedom. Hence Aquinas averred
that if not for sin, humanity would have subsisted within the
protected field of a kind of supernatural bubble, safe from the
dangers inherent in a physical world. 48 And they both relied upon
a theory that attempted to account for the transmission of Adam's
device, even in his most
sin through intercourse-which
Augustinian moments, Rahner could never accept. 49 But the point
is that the unity with our beginning, which the tradition
commonly presumed, was severed completely. That was part of
the cost of sin. Our only connection with each other is through
the world, defined by the world. The dialectic of unification and
fragmentation that we see all around us is found also within us;
the conversion to self threatens with the first stirrings of selfawareness. Our guilt is that of belonging to a world which the first
parents chose and acted to bring about entirely as an image of

48 SI'h I,
49

q. 97, a. 2, ad 4.
Rahner, "Theological Reflexions on Monogenism," 278-79.

516

KEVIN A. MCMAHON

themselves. Death is ours by right; it is the due of all who are
offspring of the earth.
With this our study of Rahner comes full circle, for his initial
insight concerning monogenism was correct: there can be one
history, of one race, and one world, redeemed by the one Christ,
only if it has its beginning in the free decision of one couple, the
first couple, the primordial instance of the human imago Dei.
Thirty years ago, Rahner observed that the doctrine of original sin
"no longer has any really formative influence in contemporary
man's vital conception of human reality. "50 He noted a multitude
of reasons for this. Certainly, evolutionary theory has only
exacerbated the longstanding difficulty theology has had
explaining how a single man, or a man and woman, who were
merely the first in a generative series within the species, could be
the cause of a universal loss of grace, justice, and integrity. To
some minds the difficulty has matured into a full-scale crisis,
thanks to, among other things, the findings of physics.
"Theology," Christopher Mooney recently wrote, "absorbed as it
must be with the self-transcendence of human persons, is being
forced by science to see these hearers of God's word in their true
physical insignificance in the cosmos. "51 Physically insignificant,
yes; but as the physicist Brandon Carter pointed out, "privileged"
by virtue of our status, perhaps unique in the universe, of being
not just phenomena, but observers of phenomena. 52 And what is
more, according to the approach taken in this paper, not just
observers of phenomena, but authors of the entire order of
phenomena, which was marked in the free decision of the first
couple. This constitutes something of a Copernican Revolution of
its own, taking humanity and its history as the key to
understanding the structure and development of the physical
world. It is a revolution that might expect some support from our
so "Original Sin," 329.
F. Mooney, "Theology and Science: A New Comminnent to Dialogue,"
Theological Studies 52 (1991): 321.
52 Carter made the remark in connection with his formulation in 1974 of the now-famous
Anthropic Principle (quoted in M.A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic
Design Argument [Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 2).
51 Christopher

RAHNER AND THE THEOLOGY OF HUMAN ORIGINS

517

common experience of sin, but that could have had but one
instigator, and that is revelation. For in the end, it is only by
unfolding the event of the Incarnation that one comes to the event
of the Fall, and to an understanding of its true nature.
Rabner, the great apologist, was always concerned that the
preaching of the faith address the experience of modern people.
Yet it is also true that the experience of every time period must be
interpreted with the mind of faith, as every theological inquiry,
including the present one, is subject to the teaching of faith.

The Thomist 66 (2002): 519-33

SUBSTANTIALFORM AND THE RECOVERY OF AN
ARISTOTELIAN NATURAL SCIENCE
JOHN GOYETIE
Thomas Aquinas College
Santa Paula, California

T

HE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to show the continued

validity of
Aristotelian natural science in light of the challenges posed
by modern science. More specifically, I aim to defend the
concept of nature as an intrinsic principle of motion and rest,
especially the notion of substantial form that Aristotle deems to be
"more nature" than matter.
The recovery of Aristotelian natural philosophy must begin
with a defense of the notion of substantial form not only because
this is the foundation of Aristotelian natural science, but also
because it has been systematically rejected by modern science. Of
the Aristotelian four causes, the formal cause has been the subject
of the greatest attack. Modern science has, of course, always made
use of material and efficient causality. And the notion of final
causality, although criticized by the founders of modern science
as well as contemporary scientists, has never been subject to the
same kind of critique as the notion of substantial form. Newton,
for example, endorses the modern rejection of "substantial forms
and occult qualities" in the beginning of the Principia, but defends
the use of final causality in the "General Scholium" that concludes
the work. For Newton the world is a machine, but it is a machine
that exhibits purpose: "it is not to be conceived that mere
mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions ..
. . This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets,
could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an
519

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JOHN GOYETTE

intelligent and powerful Being." 1 He explicitly defends the
indusion of final causes and discourse on divine providence
within the scope of natural philosophy. 2 Substantial form is
abandoned, but final causality is retained. We find something
similar among contemporary design theorists such as Michael
Behe and William Dembski, who argue, contrary to the neoDarwinian orthodoxy, that intelligent design is the only
reasonable explanation of the origin of living organisms. The
design theorists do not dispute that living things are mere
machines, only that their "irreducible complexity" is a product of
blind chance. 3 While scientific reductionism goes unchallenged,
the daim to explain the order of the world by chance has never
gained universal approval among the proponents of modem
science.
1 Sir Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte
and Florian Cajori, vol. 2 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1962), 544.
2 "We know [God] only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final
causes ... and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing else but Fate
and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere,
could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited
to different times and places could arise from nothings but the ideas and will of a Being
necessarily existing .... And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the
appeamnces of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy" (ibid., 546).
3 Michael Behe, who coined the phrase "irreducible complexity," refers to living things as
"biochemical machines."
organisms are made of molecules that act as the nuts and bolts,
gears and pulleys of biological systems" (Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution [New York: The Free Press, 1996], p. x). William Dembski, who has a Ph.D. in
philosophy, has a better sense of the position of Aristotle. In Intelligent Design: The Bridge
Between Science and Theology (Downers Grove, HI.: Inter Varsity Press, 1999), 123, he notes
that modem science, which is predominantly Baconian in character, limits science to material
and efficient causes, thereby exduding design, which for Aristotle is related to formal and final
causality. But Dembski does not advocate a return to Aristotle's four causes: "There are
problems with Aristotle's theory, and it needed to be replaced" (ibid., 124). Although he
believes that Aristotle's theory has been discredited by modem science, he believes that chance
and necessity are not sufficient to explain the phenomena. Thus, while he does not call into
question the mechanistic approach of modem science, he believes that it is necessary to
reintroduce the notion of final causality in t.lie form of a theory of intelligent design in order
to explain the origin of life. In" Are We Spiritual Machines?" First Things 96 (October 1999):
25-31, Dembski argues that we cannot understand intelligent human agency if we think of
human beings as machines and advocates a return to the notion of "substantial form" to
account for the spiritual nature of man; but he seems to posit a substantial form only in the
case of man.

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

521

Reestablishing the credibility of substantial form, then, is the
key to a recovery of an Aristotelian natural science. With a view
to this end, I intend to explain and defend the notion of substantial form as an intrinsic principle of motion and rest. In
defending the notion of substantial form I shall limit myself to the
form of a living being since we ought to begin by raising the
question whether living things have substantial forms and only
later take up the question in regard to the nonliving. This is the
best way to proceed not only because living things are better
known to us (and we ought, as Aristotle notes, to begin with what
is better known to us) but also because the evidence of modern
science seems to indicate that nonliving things ought to be
understood as analogous to those that are living. While Aristotle
held living things to be organized bodies, that is, bodies made up
of heterogeneous parts that form a whole, he regarded the
elements as homeomeric-simple substances made up of homogeneous parts. From what we now know, molecules and atoms are
also organized bodies with a much greater similarity to living
things.
First, I shall briefly outline the typically modem position
according to which living things can be reduced to the sum of
their partso Second, I shall explain the notion of substantial form
by appealing to the distinction between art and nature and by
highlighting what I take to be the evidence in favor of the
distinction between the substantial unity of a living organism and
the accidental unity
an artifact or machine. Third, I shall
address some objections to Aristotle's position that are raised by
modern science,"
I. SCIENTIFIC REDUCTIONISM
The prevailing tendency of modern science is to view the
human body and a fortiori all living organisms as machines, as
4 A further task, beyond the scope of the present essay, would be to show how, and to
what extent, modern science can be incorporated within an Aristotelian understanding of
nature. For this one might profitably consult William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
of America Press, 1996).

522

JOHN GOYETTE

wholes reducible to the sum of their parts. The modern position
is captured by the common description of the human body as
constituted by a certain set of material elements: a human being,
we are told, is composed of 80% water, 10% carbon, 5% nitrogen
and a myriad of other elements such as cakium, phosphorous, and
iron. The unstated assumption is that the chemical analysis of the
human body somehow reveals its true nature. A human being is
mostly water.
The view of man as a complex arrangement of particles is
somewhat distant from ordinary experience, and many people are
therefore somewhat hesitant to endorse this view. The reduction
of a living organism to a complex arrangement of molecules is
rendered more compelling, however, by the feats of modern
medicine that appear to bridge the gap between the science of
physics and chemistry and ordinary experience. We hear from
generic engineers and molecular biologists of the promising new
techniques by which genetic material can be manipulated in the
interest of healing disease or, better, making improvements in our
genetic endowment. On the other end of the spectrum, modem
medicine has discovered new and more ways of remedying the
defects of old age by replacing the failing organs of the body with
transplants and-what is more amazing-artificial organs. These
technological marvels hasten the thought that the human body is
nothing more than a complex machine. This raises the question
whether one can still defend the Aristotelian doctrine of
substantial form"
II. ART AND NATURE
Aristotle defines nature as an intrinsic principle of motion and
rest. According to Aristotle, the difference between natural things
and artificial things is that the former come into being and
function from an intrinsic principle whereas the latter move and
rest the way they do owing to an extrinsic principle, art.
The difference between the natural and the artificial can be
illustrated in a variety of ways, but Aristotle suggests that nature

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

523

as an intrinsic principle is most dearly exhibited by the growth of
living things. He points out in the Physics that the term nature
(phusis) comes from the verb to grow (phuo). If we compare the
growth of a plant with the production of ship we can see the
distinction Aristotle is attempting to convey. When a plant grows,
the various parts of the plant-leaf, root, stalk, flower-are
produced from within the plant. In the production of a ship,
however, we see that its various parts are produced separately and
later added together. In the case of the ship, the whole is
reducible to the sum of its parts. Of course, a ship does not result
merely by piling up iron, wood, and canvas. A ship is not a mere
heap, like a pile of stones. The ship results from a certain kind of
addition, an addition in which the parts are ordered and arranged
in a very precise way-namely, by the art of shipbuilding.
Nonetheless, the various properties and functions of the whole
ship can be sufficiently accounted for by adding together the
properties and functions of the parts. In the case of the plant, by
contrast, the whole is in some sense prior to the parts. Of course,
a plant must have certain very simple parts for it to be at all.
Nonetheless, it starts out with few, if any, of the parts that
characterize the mature organism. These parts must therefore be
produced by the already existing plant.
According to Aristotle, the cause of the growth of an organism
is its form or nature. This form is said to be a substantial form
because it makes the organism to be one thing essentially, rather
than having merely an accidental unity. Artifacts too can, loosely
speaking, be said to have a form. A ship has a certain shape and
its parts are arranged in a certain way, but its source of unity is
extrinsic rather than intrinsic. Thus, one can distinguish between
a substantial form (form in the precise sense) and an accidental
form.
To help flesh out the distinction between substantial form and
accidental form let us tum to a passage where St. Thomas
distinguishes between the form of a living thing-its
the form of an artifact:

524

JOHN GOYETIE

But since the soul is united to the body as its form, it must necessarily be in the
whole body, and in each part thereof. For it is not an accidental form, but the
substantial form of the body. Now the substantial form perfects not only the
whole, but each part of the whole. For since a whole consists of parts, a form of
the whole which does not give existence to each of the parts of the body is a
form consisting in composition and order, such as the form of a house; and such
a form is accidental. But the soul is a substantial form; and therefore it must be
the form and the act, not only of the whole, but also of each part. Therefore, on
the withdrawal of the soul, as we do not speak of an animal or a man unless
equivocally, as we speak of a painted animal or a stone animal; so is it with the
hand, the eye, the flesh and bones, as the Philosopher says (De Anima ii, 1). A
proof of which is, that on the withdrawal of the soul, no part of the body retains
its proper action; although that which retains its species, retains the action of the
species. (STh I, q. 76, a. 8)

According to St. Thomas an artifact can be said to have a form,
but it is a form that belongs to the artifact as a whole and not to
each of the parts. The form of a natural thing, on the other hand,
is not only the form of the whole but also the form of each of the
parts. This is what we should expect from the manner in which an
artifact comes into being; its parts come into being separately and
are only later added together to produce the whole. The form of
an artifact, then, is a result of the fact that the parts are brought
together; it is a form consisting in "composition and order." The
form of a natural thing, however, is the cause of the being of the
parts. Again, this is evident from the fact that its parts come into
being as parts of a larger whole. But St. Thomas adds further
proof: when the soul departs at the time of death, the parts cease
to be what they are. When a man dies, the hand, eye, flesh, and
bones corrupt, they lose their proper function and therefore cease
to be what they were. Thus, the generation and corruption of a
living organism provide proof of the distinction between the
substantial form of a natural being and the accidental form of an
artifact or machine.
III. DNA AND GENETIC SCIENCE

Having briefly spelled out the distinction between art and
nature, and having outlined what I take to be the evidence in

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

525

support of the distinction between an accidental form and a
substantial form, I shall now tum to some objections of modem
science. The first objection comes from genetic science and the
discovery of DNA
One might argue that the appeal to some kind of substantial
form as the explanation of the development of a living thing was
the only plausible explanation until the discovery of genes by
Mendel in 1865. Since that time, biology has moved more and
more in the direction of explaining the growth and development
of a living thing by appealing to an organism's genetic material.
And since the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick
in 1953, scientists have attempted to reduce the growth and
function of living organisms to the mechanics of DNA-the
complex molecule that constitutes a gene. As Crick himself
biology
declares, "The ultimate aim of the modem movement
is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
. . . Eventually one may hope to have the whole of biology
'explained' in terms of the level below it, and so on right down to
the atomic level." 5 Obviously, if a molecule, or set of molecules,
sufficiently explain the process of growth and development, then
we have no need to appeal to substantial form. Indeed, if the
growth of an organism is merely the result of the physical and
chemical properties of the genetic material then there is no
intrinsic principle in the sense meant by Aristotle and St. Thomas.
DNA is found in every cell of the body, but it is not in all of the
parts of the body the way that a substantial form is in every part;
it is in the body the way that one body is contained
another
body, not the way that a form is matter. If
is responsible
for the growth
development
living things, then Aristotle's
notion of nature as an
principle appears superfluous.
The discovery of DNA, however, has not led to the hoped-for
reduction of biological phenomena to physical and chemical
causes. Scientists refer to DNA as a genetic code 5 as information
stored by means of a combination of a set of simple nucleotide
5

10.

Francis Crick, Of Molecules and Men (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966),

526

JOHN GOYETIE

bases-adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine-similar to the
letters of an alphabet. But immediately we run into a difficulty.
Coded information as such cannot be reduced to the medium in
which it is inscribed. As Nancy Pearcey notes, "Encoded messages
are independent of the physical medium used to store and
transmit them. If we know how to translate the message in a DNA
molecule, we could write it out using ink or crayon or electronic
impulses from a keyboard. We could even take a stick and write
it in the sand-aU without affecting its meaning. " 6 The DNA
molecule may be a carrier of information, but the information
itself cannot be reduced to the molecular material any more than
the meaning of the word "dog" can be reduced to the sound
waves produced by my mouth. As Leon Kass points out, "One can
hold DNA molecules in a bottle, but one cannot physically hold
or grasp the messages they carry!' 7 If DNA is responsible for the
growth and development of an organism by functioning as
encoded information, it will not enable us, as Crick had hoped,
"to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry."
Moreover, if DNA is encoded information, or a kind of
blueprint for a living organism, who interprets the code? As Ian
Stewart and jack Cohen argue, the notion of DNA as a blueprint
fails to explain how the information it contains is translated into
a living organism:
[T]he common image of an organism's DNA as a "blueprint" begs the question
of how the information in the blueprint is actually converted into a functioning
organism. We know that some sections of DNA code for proteins, and we have
an excellent understanding of how particular DNA sequences lead to the
construction of particular protein molecules. We have a few inklings that other
sequences of DNA have a more global function, switching other sequences on or
off and thereby coordinating protein production. But what goes on between all
that and a working organism is a total mystery. If we liken an organism to a tencourse banquet, then om current model of how to produce a banquet is that "it's
all in Mrs. Beeton," and about 99% of our effort is going into listing all her
recipes, page by page .... We are convinced that important structures that we
6 Nancy Pearcey, MDNA: The Message in the Message," First Things 64 (June/July 1996):
13-14.
7 Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature (New York: The
Free Press, 1994), 43.

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

527

observe being used in real banquets, such as "eggbeater" or "oven," are specified
somewhere or somehow in the recipe book ... but ... we don't know where or
how. The concept "kitchen" has not yet occurred to any body .... We
collectively remain obsessed with sequencing the recipes, and any speculations
about the need for eggbeaters or kitchens are dismissed with an airy "it's all in
the book," as if they don't matter. 8

If DNA is genetic information, then we must look for a more
fundamental cause of the growth and development of an
organism, the cause responsible for inscribing and interpreting the
coded information.
When we look for a cause of genetic information we are led to
consider that reading and writing coded information appear to
require an intelligent cause, or at least a cause that is analogous to
intelligence. This has led design theorists to propose God as the
author of the message written in the DNA. While I do not wish to
exclude or belittle the role of God in the design and function of
living organisms, I think that the account of the design theorists
is dangerous, and ultimately incoherent, because it removes the
role of secondary causes from the world, turning living organisms
into puppets or, to use a more contemporary analogy, robots. 9 In
explaining the cause or principle responsible for inscribing and
interpreting the message encoded in DNA, I think we would do
well to look for a more proximate cause rather than turn
immediately to God.
'Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, "Why Are There Simple Rules in a Complicated Universe?"
Futures 26 (1994): 656, quoted in Michael J. Dodds, O,P., "Top Down, Bottom Up or Inside
Out? Retrieving Aristotelian Causality in Contemporary Science," lecture delivered at the
1997 Thomistic Summer Institute sponsored by the Jacques Maritain Center, University of
Notre Dame,
9 If a living organism is really just a divinely designed machine, it has no nature, no
intrinsic source of unity, and it therefore cannot properly be said to be or to act. This has
dangerous implications. If God is unable to bring into being creatures that can truly be said
to have their own being and perform their own operations, then we have drastically reduced
the traditional notion of God's creative power. On this account, the divine art is only different
in degree, not in kind, from human art. Moreover, if God produces a world of puppets or
divine automatons, one wonders whether we can give a coherent explanation of why God
creates the world. If God creates a world of things that do not have their own being or their
own goodness, we can no longer explain God's creative act as his communication of being and
goodness,

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JOHN GOYETTE

Msgr. Robert Sokolowski has given what I think is a more
plausible explanation. He suggests that "it is the plant or animal
form that encodes itself in the DNA, and that the form is what the
DNA serves to communicate. The form is both speaker and
message in DNA." 10 On his account, the information contained in
the genetic material is a kind of expression of the form that is
analogous to human speech and serves as a kind of intermediary
betvveen form and matter. This may seem somewhat farfetched,
but it is worth noting that Aristotle frequently refers to a thing's
form as its logos-speech, formula, definition. 11 When Aristotle
calls the form a logos he is not simply referring to the form as it
exists in the mind of the knower; rather, .he is indicating that
human speech is itself a reflection of the intelligibility of the form
that is in the matter. 12 Indeed, Sokolowski suggests that the
discovery of DNA lends greater credibility to Aristotle's notion of
form by showing that it is not merely a projection of the human
mind. When we "give expression to the form in our speech about
the world, we are giving a more elevated spiritual formulation to
something that has already been expressed by nature itself." 13 To
the extent, then, that contemporary science has shown that DNA
is a "genetic code," or "'blueprint/' for a living organism, it reveals
the inadequacy of a purely mechanical explanation of life and
seems to point instead towards the Aristotelian notion of
substantial form.
In addition to the problem of genetic information, there is
another difficulty with viewing DNA as the means of reducing
biology to physics and chemistry. While molecular biology has
provided powerful evidence that DNA contains a genetic code for
10 Robert Sokolowski, "Formal and Material Causality in Science," Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 69 (1995): 64.
11 See Aristotle, De Anima 2.1.403b2 (with 403a24); 2.2.414a9, 13, 28; 2.4.415b15;
Metaphysics 7.15.1039a21; 8.1.1042a28; 12.2.1069b33. See also Parts of Animals
1.1.642a20.
12 For a discussion of human speech as a reflection of the language of nature and its place
in Aristotelian philosophy, see Jacob Klein, "Aristotle, an Introduction," in Jacob Klein:
Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis, Md.: St.
John's College Press, 1985), 175-79.
13 Sokolowski, "Formal and Material Causality in Science," 64.

SUBSTANTIAL FORM

529

protein synthesis, this is insufficient to explain morphogenesis, the
genesis of the overall shape, or form, of the organism. This is
especially dear in multicellular organisms which contain identical
DNA in every ceH of the body. The DNA in the nucleus of a heart
cell is the same as the DNA contained in the nudei of the liver
and lung cells. Thus, although every cell contains the same genes,
not every gene is expressed. In the process of growth and
development cells differentiate and different kinds of cells
produce different proteins. Since each ceH makes use of only a
part of the genetic code, we must appeal to some other principle
to explain the specific shape or form of the whole organism. But
this is precisely where Aristotle's notion of substantial form seems
most readily to apply since he calls it the "shape" (morph§) or
"look" (eidos) of a thing. Aristotle does not mean to reduce a
thing's substantial form to its physical shape or outward
appearance, 14 but a thing's shape, the way it looks, is the most
immediate manifestation of its nature. Hence, although there is
much we do not know about the function of DNA in the growth
and development of a living organism, the little we do know does
not support a mechanistic understanding of life, but points instead
towards the need to posit a substantial form as an intrinsic
principle of motion and rest.
ORGAN TRANSPLANTS

A second objection to the Aristotelian/Thomistic notion of
substantial form comes from
abHity of modern medicine to
transplant organs of the body. Modem medicine
that
many, if not most, of the parts of the
can be kept alive after
the death of the organism and can even retain their various
functions. During heart-transplant
the heart is removed
from the body of the donor and placed in an oxygen-rich solution
that enables it to carry on metabolic functions.
heart is even
able to beat on its own outside the body. But if the heart and
other organs of the body can be kept alive after the departure of
14 See Aristotle, Parts

L11640b27-64fa7.

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JOHN GOYETIE

the soul, this suggeststhat the soul is not the cause of the being of
the heart. The solution to this difficulty is, I believe, relatively
simple: the organs of the body need to be kept alive. Since the
body begins to corrupt almost immediately after the departure of
the soul, the organs of the body only retain their ability to
function if they are artificiallysustained. Indeed, even after an
organ has been transplanted into the body of the recipient, it is
able to stay alive and perform its function only with the help of
drugs that suppress the immune system of the recipient which
tends to reject the transplanted organ as a foreign body. Thus, the
success of organ transplants does not undermine the principle that
the being of the parts of a living body are caused by an intrinsic
principle, namely, the soul, since transplanted organs are only
able to stay alive by means of artificial interventions that aim to
slow down the process of corruption and decay.
One might object that the organs of the body corrupt, and the
cells corrupt, but the material elements of the body do not
corrupt. Water does not chemically alter when it is absorbed by
a living organism and when death ensues it remains unchanged.
What prevents us from saying that we can account for the
structure and function of the body and all of its organs by means
of the material elements, elements whose physical and chemical
propertie$ remain even when the organism corrupts? The
difficulty here is that we cannot explain the unity of the organism
by appealing to the material elements since the material elements
are themselves in a state of constant flux. The cells of the body are
constantly falling apart, only to be replaced by new cells. And this
turnover requires a rather dramatic change in the material
elements of the body, the most obvious being water. Given the
dramatic turnover among the material elements we need some
other source of unity.
There is another difficulty, however, with the materialist
explanation of the body: it supposes that the properties of the
heart measured by the physicist and the chemist are real, but the
properties observed by the biologist can merely be explained
away. But this is to suppose that one has already demonstrated

SUBSTANTIALFORM

531

that living organisms can be reduced to the sum of their parts.
Once we dismiss the heart's pumping of the blood, the seeing of
the eye, and the grasping of the hand, we do away altogether with
the phenomena of life. The materialist explanation explains the
phenomena of life by simply explaining it away.
V. MECHANICAL CAUSES VERSUS THE FORMAL CAUSE

A final objection to the notion of substantial form is the
assumption that a mechanical explanation of the body is somehow
incompatible with an explanation that appeals to the wholeness
of the living body. One might think that an explanation of how
the body works by means of the physical and chemical properties
of the parts is necessarily opposed to an explanation that begins
with a principle that makes the parts to be parts. Thus, as modern
science advances in its explanation of the mechanisms of the body,
an appeal to some kind of holistic explanation seems less and less
tenable.
For Aristotle, however, the mechanical explanation of how the
body works is not opposed to the explanation of why it works the
way it does. Things produced by nature, Aristotle notes, are
produced in the same way as works of art: "Thus if a house, e.g.,
had been a thing made by nature, it would have been made in the
same way as it is now by art; and if things made by nature were
made also by art, they would come to be in the same way as by
nature" (Physics 2.8.199a13-15). In commenting on this passage,
St. Thomas notes that this principle is "dear in regard to health,
which happens to be produced by art and by nature. For as nature
heals by heating and cooling, so also does art" (II Phys., lect. 13,
sect. 257). For Aristotle and St. Thomas, then, the appeal to
nature as an intrinsic principle is not opposed to employing what
we might describe as a mechanical explanation. It is not as if
artifacts operate mechanically and natural things somehow work
in an entirely different way. Indeed, it appears that mechanical
causes need to be supplemented by another kind of cause, one
that complements rather than opposes mechanical causes. If we

532

JOHN GOYEITE

look at an artifact such as a watch, we see that the mechanical
explanation is only half of the story: I can explain how a watch
works, but I still need to appeal to the watchmaker to explain why
the various parts of the watch are found together. Similarly, the
mechanical explanation of the functions of the body may explain
how the parts of the body work together, but it does not explain
why the material elements are found together in such and such an
order in the first place nor how this order is maintained. It seems,
then, that we must appeal to some other principle to account for
the unity of an organism, a principle that makes use of mechanical
causes in a way analogous to the artisan's use of the materials at
his disposal. 15
VI. CONCLUSION

Living things are similar to the organized bodies that are the
product of art in that they need some kind of cause, in addition
to material and mechanical causes9 to explain their unity. Unlike
art, however, an external intelligent agent alone is not enough to
15 Aristotle describes the two forms of explanation I have been describing-the
why and
the how-as working in tandem in Parts of Animals 1.1.642a31-642b2b2, where he asserts
that our explanations of natural things must alternate between two different senses of
necessity, hypothetical necessity which explains why the materials are present in such and such
an order and absolute necessity which refers to a kind of necessity that we would describe as
mechanical:

Of the method itself the following is an example. In dealing with
respirntion we must show that it takes place for such or such a final
object; and we must also show that this and that part of the process is
necessitated by this and that other stage of it. By necessity we shall
sometimes mean hypothetical necessity, the necessity, that is, that the
requisite antecedents shall be there, if the final end is to be reached; and
sometimes absolute necessity, such necessity as that which connects
substances and their inherent properties and characters. For the
alternate discharge and re-entrance of heat and the inflow of air are
necessary if we are to live. Here we have at once a necessity in the
former of the two senses. But the alternation of heat and refrigeration
produces of necessity an alternate admission and discharge of the outer
air, and this is a necessity of the second kind. (Aristotle, De Partibus
Animalium, trans. William Ogle, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed.
Richard McKeon [New York: Random House, 1941], 651)

SUBSTANTIALFORM

533

account for the being of a living organism. The grovvth of a living
organism, the dramatic corruption of the body after death, and
the unity that prevails over the almost startling turnover among
the parts of the body all point to the notion of substantial form,
a form that is not a result of the coming together of the parts of
the body, but their cause. Of course, as we know from St.
Thomas's fifth way, a vigorous defense of the importance of a
thing's nature or substantial form does not preclude us from
asserting that we need God as an intelligent agent guiding
nonintelligent beings to their end. Like the design theorists,
Thomas appeals to nature as the "divine art." For Thomas,
however, God is not an external agent; rather he works from
within the creature, through its nature. 16

16 See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 105, a. 5; De Potentia Dei III, q. 7; and Summa
contra Gentiles In, c. 67.

66 (2002): 535-75

NATURE ACTS FORAN END
ROBERT M. AUGROS
St. Anselm College
Manchester, New Hampshire

THIS ARTICLE I shall explain and defend the principle that
nature acts for an end. When Aristotle and St. Thomas assert
this principle they are speaking of purposefulness apart from
intervention, since it is obvious that man can employ just
about any natural thing for his own purposes. As Aristotle puts it,
"We use everything [in nature] as if it were there for our sake." 1
Thus, the question is whether natural things of themselves have
purposes. Other ways of stating the thesis are: Nature does
nothing in vain; nature acts for what is better; nature does not fail
in necessary things; apart from human influence purpose is a real
cause in natural things. Or as Aristotle says in On the Parts of
Animals, "Everything that nature makes is a means to an end. "2
A sign of the great importance of the purposefulness of nature
is that it has applications in several sciences. Whether nature acts
for an end is important for natural science, since we know a thing
most perfectly when we know its causes. Now purpose is not only
a cause. It commands and illuminates the other kinds of cause:
matter, form, and mover. Therefore, if purpose is found in natural
things it will illuminate these things more than the other causes
will in themselves.

1

Aristotle,Plrysic.s2.2, in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York:

Random House, 1970), 240. All subsequent quotations of Aristotle are from this edition.
2
Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals 1.1 (McKeon, ed., 649).

535

ROBERT M. AUGROS

536

It is also important for ethics. If nature acts for ends then man
has a natural purpose. It belongs to ethics to define the purpose
of human life but the basis for this definition must be found in
natural philosophy. Also, if there were no wisdom in nature, it
would be pointless to use nature as a measure of human acts, as in
the natural moral law. If our ability to eat, or our sexual faculty,
or our power of speech do not have natural purposes, then it will
be impossible to abuse them, since abuse means using a thing in a
way contrary to its natural purpose.
The consequences for political science are equally serious. If
human nature is ordered to a common good, then
some sense
the city will be "a creation of nature," as Aristotle contends. 3 But
if nature does not aim at the common good, then human beings
will have no natural inclination to live together and any
government
have to be imposed artificiaHy on them, as
Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau maintain.
It is important for the arts whether or not nature is wise and
purposeful, especially those arts such as agriculture and medicine
that build on nature and cooperate with it. Emphasizing the
centrality of purpose, St. Thomas observes, "In those cases in
which something is done for an end, as occurs in the realm of
natural things, in moral matters and art, the most forceful
demonstrations are derived from the final cause. " 4
There are consequences for metaphysics. Nature acting for an
end can be used as a minor premise in a proof for God's
existence, as in St. Thomas's fifth way. Further, if wisdom and
goodness are found in nature, this can give us insight into the
wisdom and goodness of God.
If natural things do not act for an end, then no action or
product of nature is the object of an innate inclination or
tendency. If that is true, then there are no innate inclinations or
tendencies. And if that is true, there is no nature. This is why
Aristotle says that those who daim nature does not act for end
entirely do

wm

3 Aristotle, Politics 1.2 (McKeon, ed., 1129).
• Aquinas, V Metaphys., lect. 3, in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's
Metaphysics, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1961), 311 (no. 782).

NATURE ACTS FOR AN END

537

away with nature and what exists by nature. For those things are natural which,
by a continuous movement originated from an internal principle, arrive at some
completion: the same completion is not reached from every principle; nor any
chance completion, but always the tendency in each is towards the same end, if
there is no impediment. 5

That nature acts for an end needs to be shown. In Physics2.3
Aristotle distinguishes four kinds of cause. The first three are
obviously found in natural things. He devotes a whole chapter
(2.8), however, to showing that purpose is also a cause in nature.
The material cause is evident since all natural substances are made
from matter. The material cause explains why a tongue is flexible
but bones are not. The formal cause is also obvious, since form
and matter always go together. Form is what makes an incisor
different from a molar. The moving cause is also obvious in
natural things: the sun warms the earth, a snake kills a rodent.
Purpose, however, though obvious in our own actions, is not as
obvious as the other three causes are in natural things apart from
man" It is easy to find examples of the good in nature, but it is not
easy to see how the good is a cause in natural things. Proof and
explanation are required"
Whether nature acts for an end is a disputed question, as can
be seen from the many arguments raised on both sides"
Consequently, in the tradition of St Thomas, I will follow in this
article the format of an article in the Questiones Disputatae. Such
articles have four main parts: numerous objections, several
probable arguments to the contrary, a corpus that offers more
coercive evidence, and responses to the objections" Hence we
proceed to the objections"
VIDETUR QUOD NON

The scientific investigation of the truth begins with a careful
consideration of the difficulties. 6 There are many reasons that

5
6

Aristotle, Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 251).
Aristotle, Metaplrysics3.1 (McKeon, edo, 715).

538

ROBERT M. AUGROS

might lead someone to think that purpose, apart from our own
ends, is not found in natural things.
1) Nature Has No Mind

Since nature does not have a mind of its own, it is
anthropomorphic to say that nature acts for an end. Without a
mind, nature cannot know which means are required to achieve
a given end, and therefore cannot act for the sake of it.
Embryologist and geneticist C.H. Waddington writes, "Natural
philosophy nowadays rejects teleological ideas because they
appear to demand the existence of some self-aware being who can
formulate purposes and ends. "7
2) The Posterior Cannot Cause the Prior

What comes after cannot be a cause of what comes before.
Thus, the end result, which is the last thing in any sequence,
cannot be the cause of anything prior to it. Therefore, the notion
of an end as a cause is illogical and unscientific. Hence, Spinoza
says the doctrine of final causes overturns nature, "for that which
is really a cause it considers an effect and vice versa." 8
3) Darwin Banished Purpose from Natural Science

Darwinians argue that nature does not act for an end, but
produces things at random and only those organisms with
favorable characteristics survive. So what looks like purpose in
natural things is not intended at all but is the result of survival of
the fittest. Nineteenth-century biologist Thomas Huxley declared
that "teleology ... received its death blow at Mr. Darwin's
hands. " 9
7 C.H. Waddington,

The Nature of Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), 118-19

8 Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics [appendix to Part 1], trans. R. H. M. Elwes, in The

Rationalists (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), 211.
H. Huxley, Lecturesand Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 178-79.

NATURE ACTS FOR AN END

539

4) Simplicity Eliminates Purpose
The principle of simplicity is one of the most respected and
most frequently used principles in all the sciences. It states that
the simpler explanation is better (other things being equal). But
everything in animals and plants can be explained by matter,
structure, mover, and chance. Therefore, purpose is superfluous.
5) The Mover Explains the Entire Effect

If we can assign a cause that accounts for all of an effect, then
any further cause is unnecessary. Growth, for instance, produces
the entire structure of an animal, not just part of it. Therefore,
apart from growth, there is no need to invoke any further cause
such as purpose to explain the structures of animals and plants.
6) Nature Produces What Is Bad

Every day some babies are born with a defective heart, others
with a dub foot, still others with a deft palate, yet others with
cystic fibrosis. Thousands of birth defects occur every year. We
see the same among animals. Two-headed animals and all sorts of
other monstrosities are found in nature. Since in these cases
nature produces what is bad, it cannot be maintained that nature
is aiming at the good.
7) In Living Things Disease Is Common and Death Is Universal

If my body is invaded by a parasite transmitted through a
mosquito bite and I contract malaria, nature is certainly not acting
for my good. Thousands of diseases afflict plants, animals, and
man. Also, since all living things die, and this is their natural end,
we have to conclude either that death is a good thing, or that
nature does not aim at the good.

540

ROBERT M, AUGROS

8) Necessity Explains All
Rain falls to the ground not in order to make the wheat grow
but from the necessity of material and agent causes. The heating
of water by the sun, its consequent evaporation and rising, its
subsequent condensation and falling to earth by gravity-all of
these phenomena are inescapable processes having nothing to do
with purpose. And if heavy rain happens to destroy the wheat, it
did not fall for the sake of that either; this result just followed.
Thus, things occur in nature not for the sake of anything, nor
because it is better for them to happen, but out of necessity.
9) Many Natural Events Have No Purpose
No one can seriously suggest that earthquakes occur in order
to achieve some kind of goal. Eclipses of the sun bring about no
special benefit for the sun, the moon, or the earth. The same
holds for hurricanes, tidal waves, avalanches, and other such
things in nature, which are often very destructive. It is neither
helpful nor illuminating to maintain that these events serve some
kind of purpose.
10) Useless Organs and Waste Refute Purpose
We can point to many useless organs in animals: the wings of
the ostrich, the human appendix, the functionless eyes of blind
cave fish. Wasteful processes are also found in nature. For
example, biologist Peter Farb points out that "only a small
percentage of the water taken in by a tree's roots is retained; most
of it is evaporated from the leaves, serving no use and being lost
in the atmosphere. " 10 The average tree takes in eighteen times the
amount of water it needs to maintain itself and produce wood.
Therefore, the claim that nature does nothing in vain is untenable.

10

Peter Farb, The Forest (New York: Time Life Books, 1969), 99,

NATURE ACTS FOR AN END

541

11) Nonliving Things Exhibit No Purposes
If purpose is found in natural things because they are natural,
then it must be found in nonliving natural things. But it is
impossible even to imagine what a stone's purpose might be, or
what end water could possibly be pursuing. Therefore, purpose is
not in natural things.

12) Mathematics Does Not Use Purpose
Of all the sciences, mathematics has the greatest rigor,
precision, and clarity. But mathematics never makes use of
purpose to prove anything or to explain anything. Therefore,
reference to purpose is not appropriate in any rigorous science.

13) Purpose Presumes God
Proponents of purpose presume a God who created all natural
things and then argue that since God acts with intention and
purpose, natural things must therefore be purposeful. This is an
inappropriate intrusion of theology into natural science. In this
vein Descartes says, "The species of cause which we term final is
not applicable in respect of physical things; for, as it seems to me,
we cannot without foolhardiness inquire into and profess to
discover God's inscrutable ends. " 11

14) Purpose Is a Projectionof the Human Mind
Purpose in natural things is an anthropomorphic projection of
the human mind. Because we ourselves act purposefully, we
unwittingly read purpose into natural phenomena. And because
we use natural things for our own ends we presume that they are
purposeful in themselves. For these reasons Spinoza concludes
that "final causes are mere human fictions." 12
11 Rene Descartes, Meditations N, in Descartes Philosophical Writings, trans. Norman
Kemp Smith (New York: Random House, 1958), 214.
iz Spinoza, The Ethics, 211.

542

ROBERT M. AUGROS

15) Purpose Is Too Easily Abused

If purpose is allowed into natural science there will be no way
to prevent its abuse. Are we to say the purpose of noses is to
support glasses? Or that rabbits have large, fluffy tails to make
them better targets for hunters? This kind of pseudo explanation
is ludicrous and incompatible with the dignity of science.

These are the chief philosophic and scientific arguments
against purpose. Some urge that it is superfluous; others, that it
cannot be a cause at alt They present a formidable case against
nature acting for an end. There are, nevertheless probable
arguments that indicate that there is truth in the contrary position,
implying that the above reasons do not settle the question.
SEDCONTRA

1) Testimony from Biologists

The testimony of eminent biologists on this question is dear
and emphatic. Alexander Oparin states, "The universal
purposiveness of the organization of living beings is an objective
and self-evident fact which cannot be ignored by any thoughtful
student of nature. " 13 Peter Medawar offers examples: "Of course,
birds build nests in order to house their young and, equally
obviously, the enlargement of a second kidney when the first is
removed comes about to allow one kidney to do the work
formerly done by two. " 14 Edmund Sinott says, "Life is not aimless,
nor are its actions at random. They are regulatory and either
maintain a goal already achieved or move toward one which is yet
to be realized. " 15 Francois Jacob: "There is a definite purpose in
13 · A. I. Oparin, "The Nature of Life," in Interrelations: The Biological and Physical
Sciences, ed. Robert T. Blackburn (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1966), 194.
14 P. B. Medawar and J. S. Medawar, The Life Sciences: Current Ideas of Biology (New
York: Harper & Row, 1977), 11, 12.
15 Edmund W. Sinott, Cell and Psyche: The Biology of Purpose (New York: Harper &
Row, 1961), 46.

NATURE ACTS FOR AN END

543

the fact that a hemoglobin molecule changes shape according to
oxygen pressure; in the registration by a frog's eye of the forms
moving in front of it; in the mouse fleeing from the cat; in the
male bird parading in front of the female. " 16 Ernst Mayr
"The occurrence of goal-directed processes is perhaps the most
characteristic feature of the world of living organisms. " 17 Jacques
Monod adds, "One of the fundamental characteristics common to
all living beings without exception is that of being objects
endowed with a purpose. " 18 Further testimony of this same kind
could be cited from Francisco Ayala, Theodosius Dobzhansky, W.
H. Thorpe, George Simpson, Robert Ricklefs, and many others. 19
The agreement of these authorities does not make the conclusion
that there is purpose in nature true, but it does make it probable.

2) Purpose DistinguishesBiology among the Sciences
Purpose is one of the features that distinguishes the life
sciences from physics and chemistry. Biologist Niko Tinbergen
says, "Whereas the physicist or the chemist is not intent on
studying the purpose of the phenomena he studies, the biologist
has to consider it. "20 Physicist Niels Bohr echoes the same
sentiment, "A description of the internal functions of an organism
and its reaction to external stimuli often requires the word
purposeful, which is foreign to physics and chemistry. " 21 Thus,
purpose is an essential part of the method of biology in contrast
to physics. But unique characteristics of a science's method flow

16 Francois Jacob, The Logic of Life: A History of Heredity, trans. Betty E. Spillman (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1973), 8.
17 Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988), 45.
18 Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modem
Biology, trans. Autryn Wainhouse (New York: Knopf, 1971), 9.
19 Robert Augros and George Stanciti, The New Biology (Warner, N.H.: Principle Source
Pub., 2002), 196-99.
20 Niko Tinbergen, Social Behavior in Animals (London & New York: Methuen and Wiley,
1962), 2.
21 Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York & London: Wiley,
1958), 92.

544

ROBERT M. AUGROS

from the science's unique subject matter. The subject of biology
is living things. Therefore, purpose is found in living things.
3) Agency Entails Purpose

If a natural agent were not inclined to produce any definite
effect, then it would not be inclined to act at all. But if it were not
inclined to act at all, it would not be an agent. Thus, in order to
act, every natural agent must be indined to produce some definite
effect. But this is what it means to act for an end. Therefore, every
natural agent acts for an end.
4) Purpose Is a Principle of Discovery

Purpose is so pervasive and so fundamental that it is a principle
of discovery in biology. Biologist Ernst Mayr asserts that "great
advances in biology" have been made by asking what purpose is
being served by an organ, a behavior, or a process. 22 Finding some
unusual structure in a cell, or observing some unusual but
consistent action in an animal, the experienced biologist knows
that it is there for a reason. Biologist Lucien Cuenot remarks,
"'Purpose has shown rare fecundity: it is because we thought that
every instrument must have an end that we have discovered the
roles of organs long considered enigmatic, such as internal
secretory glands. " 23 H purpose were not inherent in living things,
it would never be a helpful guide in making new discoveries in
prediction,
biology. But purpose is a fruitful source of
and explanation in biology. Therefore, living things incorporate
genuine purposes.
5) Purpose in the Universe at Large

Convincing evidence for purpose is also found outside biology.
Physicists and astrophysicists such as Stephen Hawking, Freeman
22 Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, 54.
23 Lucien Cuenot, Invention et finalite en biologie (Paris: Flammarion, 1941), 245, my
translation.

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545

Dyson, and John A. Wheeler,24 among others, point to many
characteristics of our universe, such as its present size, rate of
expansion, and the life cyde of stars, that are inexplicable unless
we assume that the universe is aimed at making life possible. This
kind of reasoning from an end to the means necessary for it has
been named the Anthropic Principle. It argues that orientation to
a goal was dearly observable in the very structure of the universe
itself billions of years before life began on the earth. Astronomer
Hugh Ross documents sixteen physical and astronomical features
of our universe that appear uniquely suited for life.25 Molecular
biologist George Wald asserts, "if any one of a considerable
number of physical properties of the universe ... were other than
it is, ... life ... would become impossible, here or anywhere."
He concludes, "This is a life-breeding universe. " 26 None of
Darwin's theories have any application to these pre-life conditions
of the universe and so are powerless to discredit this evidence for
purpose.

Such are the probable arguments
purposiveness of natural things.

that

support

the

RESPONDEO DICENDUM QUOD

Aristotle, in Physics 2.8, offers cogent reasons by which the
question of whether nature acts for an end can be resolved. I will
review most of Aristotle's arguments, supplementing them with
contemporary examples.

24 In Robert Augros and George Stanciu, The New Story of Sciem;e (Warner, N.H.:
Principle Source Pub., 2002), 65-69.
25 Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God (Orange, Calif.: Promise Pub., 1989), 121-28.
26 George Wald, "Life and Mind in the Universe," in International Journal of Quantum
Chemistry: Quantum Biology Symposium 11 (New York: Wiley, 1984), 26-27.

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1) Evidence From the Frequency of Natural Results
Everything that comes to be, does so either by chance or from
some cause aiming at it, for chance is simply the denial that the
result was intended. For example, if a man, while digging a hole
to make a well, finds a buried treasure, we say that this occurs by
chance, since he did not know about the treasure ahead of time
and did not dig the hole for the sake of finding it. Conversely, if
something occurs not apart from intention, then it was not from
chance and something was aiming at it Thus everything that
comes to be, does so either because something is aiming at it or by
chance. Necessity is not a distinct alternative because if a natural
thing produces a certain result by necessity, then it is aiming at
that result.
But it is impossible that what comes about always or most of
the time in the same way be the result of chance, for chance
events are rare. We do not ascribe subzero weather in January to
chance, but in July we do, because it is so rare. Therefore,
whatever comes about always or most of the time in the same way
comes to be because some cause is aiming at it.
Now the nature of each thing produces what is good for it
either always or most of the time. Therefore, nature aims at the
good, or, in other words, nature acts for an end.
2) Evidence from Growth

Growth is dearly going somewhere. It is aiming at something:
the mature adult of the species. The proof is that it stops when it
gets there, just like a sculptor keeps chipping away at the marble
until the form of the statue is complete. If growth went in random
directions or never stopped, then someone might plausibly daim
that it occurs by chance. Notice that all plants and animals and
their organs are produced by growth. Thus in these cases nature
acts for an end. Growth is not just increase in bulk. It entails the
production of different kinds of parts: brain, bones, lungs,
digestive system, and aH the other organs. An organism makes its

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547

own parts. No machine does this. In growth, the end illuminates
the moving cause. We can understand why the embryo goes
through this or that development, namely, because the final
product requires, for example, sense organs to perceive things, a
heart to pump blood, lungs to breathe.
A special case of growth is healing. Nature heals a wound and
restores the natural tissue as much as possible, often to the point
that the injury leaves no trace. And healing stops there. It does not
continue adding new tissue indefinitely. This is obviously very
good, and it is so natural that we take it for granted. Human
artifacts do not have the power of self repair. Without the body's
ability to heal itself, the art of medicine could not function. After
all, it is not the doctor who knits a broken bone back together.
The doctor only sets the bone in the right position. Nature does
the healing. Healing also occurs in trees, as is seen when the tree's
bark slowly grows over the wound left by a sawn-off limb. In
lower animals and in plants growth can even restore a lost limb.
As Aristotle points out, plants send their roots down, not up, for
stability and nutrition. 27 This is clearly good for the plant. If boat
builders could make the wood itself grow into a boat, they would
do so. This shows the superiority of nature over art: nature grows
her works.
3) Evidence from the Actions of Animals

Without purpose animal actions would be unintelligible. This
is seen both in what animals make and in what they do. When a
robin builds a nest, it does not make what just happens to be a
nest. Nor does the bird build the nest by chance while trying to do
something else. And a nest clearly serves a purpose. The word nest
means a structure formed by a bird for the incubation and rearing
of its young. A beaver builds a dam; a spider spins a web; a fox
digs a burrow. These products are obviously purposeful.
During the spring, summer, and fall, worker bees, upon
returning to the hive after foraging, will frequently move about in
27 Aristotle,

Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 250).

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ROBERT M. AUGROS

a distinctive figure-eight pattern. They do not do this simply
because of what they are made of or because of their structure,
otherwise they would always do it. Nor does an exterior mover
explain the activity. Neither gravity nor the wind explain it, since
it happens on calm days and never in the winter. Why do certain
bees do this only under certain conditions? The classic work by
Karl Von Frisch on this topic established that it is a
communication system. It is very useful if many worker bees can
together exploit an abundant source of nectar and pollen. By the
way it walks in a figure-eight pattern on the wall of the hive,
wagging its bottom, the worker communicates to other bees the
direction of the find and how far away it is. It is impossible to
understand what the waggle dance is unless one sees what it is for:
communication of important information. Matter, form, and
moving causes explain why the bee is able to move in this way but
not why it does so. Purpose cannot be avoided if one is to
understand the actions of animals.
Biologist Ernst Mayr says, "Nothing could be more purposive
... than ... the escape behavior in many prey species." 28 Certain
birds, such as the plover and the killdeer, lay their eggs on open
ground. If a predator comes near, the parent that is incubating the
eggs hurries away from the nest and begins to flop about, beat the
dust, and drag one wing as if it were broken. This leads the
intruder away from the nest, and when it doses in for the kill, the
bird simply flies off. This is called "the broken wing display" and
is very convincing even to human observers. No one is suggesting
that these birds comprehend what they are doing or that they
consciously invented these ingenious techniques. They just carry
them out and benefit from them without verbalization, reflection
or analysis. In all events, the instinct of these birds is dearly
aiming at what is good for them.
Every instinct of every animal is purposeful: getting food,
finding a mate, avoiding an enemy, providing shelter, or pursuing
some other unmistakable end. In fact, Darwin puts purpose into
his definition of instinct:
28 Mayr, Toward a New Philosopby of Biology, 49.

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549

An action, which we ourselves require experience . . . to perform, when
performed by an animal, more especially by a very young one, without
experience, and when performed by many individuals in the same way, without
their knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said to be instinctive. 29

Instinct is found in all animals. Nature enables each species to
pursue what is good for it and avoid what is harmful by
programming into it the right response to each critical stimulus.
This is supremely purposeful. It would be a challenge for a human
being to invent the proper instincts for one hypothetical species
of animal-what it should do, when and how it should do it-so
as to guarantee the best possible outcome in every critical
situation during the entire life of the animal. Nature, however,
has done just that, and not merely for the honey bee and the
plover but for all animal species, from the cricket to the koala,
from the stegosaurus to the blue whale.
Animal actions are clearly purposeful. But animals act by
instinct, that is, by nature, not by understanding. Therefore, in
millions of instances, nature acts for an end.
4) Evidence from the Organs of Animals and Plants

Every tool is defined by its purpose. An axe is for chopping
wood. A hammer is for pounding things. All animals and plants
are made up of tools that are called organs. The human eye, for
instance, is made in such a way that it is perfect for seeing; if it is
altered from its natural disposition, it is no longer suitable for that
purpose.
The organs of animals are so obviously made for definite
purposes that even a nonspecialist can figure out what kind of life
an animal leads simply by looking at the equipment it has been
given by nature. What does the eagle do with its powerful talons?
They are as useless for swimming as the duck's webbed feet are
for grasping prey. The beak of the cockatoo is short, blunt, and
has a fulcrum as powerful as a pair of pliers. The cockatoo uses it
to crack the hard nuts that are its food. Such a bill would be
29 Charles Darwin,

The Origin of Species (New York: Mentor, 1963), 228.

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ROBERT M. AUGROS

worthless for trying to sip the nectar from the bottom of the
nectaries of orchids. The sword-bill humming bird, on the other
hand, has a slim, pencil-shaped beak that is six inches long and
perfect for such a task, though utterly incapable of cracking nuts.
Each animal is magnificently equipped to perform the special
operations necessary for it to make a living. In plants and trees the
roots, leaves, and vascular systems are all clearly purposeful.
Purpose does not stop at the level of the organ. Each of the
tissues composing the organ has its own purpose, as does each cell
in the tissues and so on right down to the biomolecules. For
example, the specific job of hemoglobin is to store oxygen in the
blood. Chlorophyll captures from sunlight the energy plants need
to live and grow. DNA stores the chemical blueprint for building
an organism. Every living thing uses enzymes to facilitate
metabolic reactions in the cell. All of these biomolecules are
manufactured by the organism itself. Nature is shot through with
purpose at every level. Every detail of the sciences of anatomy,
physiology, embryology, histology, cytology, and molecular
biology offers further evidence that nature is purposeful. The
intensity of purpose in the organs of every living thing is nothing
short of astonishing.
Organs and their parts are so purposeful that very often they
serve more than one end at the same time, a rarity in human
products. The slippery coating natural to fish, for example, helps
them to foil predators. It also repels parasites, and this laminar
layer of slime allows the fish to swim through the water with 40%
greater efficiency. Whale blubber provides insulation, food
storage, and buoyancy for the whale. Blood in the higher animals
has six purposes: (1) it carries nutrients from intestines to all parts
of the body, (2) it takes oxygen from lungs to cells and carbon
dioxide back again, (3) it takes the waste products of metabolism
to the excretory organs, (4) it distributes internal secretions such
as hormones, (5) it defends the body against infective agents, (6)
circulation aids in maintaining uniform distribution of body heat.
It is rare to find a human product that serves more than one
purpose well. But it is normal for the parts of living things to

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serve several ends at the same time. All the organs of plants and
animals and their parts, and the parts of their parts, are
purposeful. Everyone agrees that these organs are produced by
nature. Therefore, in these millions of cases nature is
purposeful-much more profoundly so, in fact, than are human
artifacts.

5) The Argument from Art Imitating Nature
Nature is prior to art in six ways. (1) Nature is prior in time.
Several million years ago there were no human beings on the
earth, and consequently no artificial things. But at that time
natural things certainly existed and functioned normally. All the
laws of physics, chemistry, and biology were in place and fully
operative. (2) Art depends on nature for the raw materials it uses.
In this sense art is man added to nature. Artificial materials such
as plastics are made from petroleum which ultimately comes out
of the ground. (3) Art must operate on natural materials according
to the laws of nature. "Nature to be commanded must be
obeyed," 30 writes Francis Bacon. (4) Man himself is a natural
thing; he is an effect before he is a cause. His mind, hands and all
of his faculties are provided by nature. (5) Man has a natural need
to make artificial things. This is not true of other animals. Man is
born naked and must provide himself with clothing of his own
manufacture, invent a language to communicate, make his own
weapons and tools and shelter. Nature provides these for the
other animals by anatomy or by instinct. (6) Man often uses
natural things as models for the artificial things he makes. In this
last way art imitates nature.
Assume for a moment that it is impossible to become a great
writer of epics without following Horner, either deliberately or
unwittingly. If this were true, Homer would have to be the
paradigm of epic writers. If it were impossible for anyone to
compose beautiful music without following in the footsteps of
3°Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, aphorism iii, in The English Philosophers from Bacon
to Mill, ed. Edwin A. Burtt (New York: The Modern Library, 1939), 2!L

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Mozart, then Mozart would have to be an outstanding composer
of beautiful music. If no one could philosophize well without
imitating Socrates, either knowingly or inadvertently, then
Socrates must have been doing very good philosophy. And so
universally, if to do something well we must imitate a certain
model, then that model has the quality in question in a
preeminent manner.
AH of the human arts are purposeful: each is defined by the
goal at which it aims. But no art can achieve its goal without
imitating nature in this: nature puts the right matter into the
appropriate form to achieve the goat For instance, to make an
incisor suitable for biting, nature puts enamel into a chisel-like
shape. None of the practical sciences, and none of the arts, servile
or fine, can achieve their goals without imitating this procedure.
The axe maker cannot make a tool that is able to chop wood
unless he puts metal into a blade shape. A builder cannot
construct a house except by assembling the appropriate building
materials into a suitable form. An orator cannot persuade the
crowd unless he first assembles the materials of the case and then
puts them into an ordered speech with enthymeme and example.
In the foreword to his commentary on Aristotle's Politics, St.
Thomas shows how political wisdom necessarily imitates nature. 31
Therefore, if none of the human arts can act in a purposeful
way without imitating the way nature does it, then nature must be
preeminently purposeful. This is why Aristotle says, "In the works
of nature the good end and the final cause are even more
dominant than in works of art. " 32
Conformity to nature's prototypes occurs in two ways.
Sometimes human art deliberately copies nature, as when military
camouflage imitates the principles of camouflage in animals, as
vaccination builds on and copies the body's natural process of
developing immunity, or as the wings of the first fighter jets were
patterned after the swept-back wings of the fastest flying birds.
31 Aquinas, I Polit., lect. 1., in Vernon J. Bourke, ed., The Pocket Aquinas, trans. Vernon
J. Bourke (New York: Washington Square Press, 1960), 230-32.
32 Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals

1.1 (McKeon, ed., 644).

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There are hundreds of military, medical, and industrial
applications of nature's purposefulness.
In other cases, human ingenuity finds the best way to do
something, only to discover afterwards that nature thought of it
first. For example, the largest seagoing vessel of the 1850s was the
Great Eastern, a huge iron ocean liner. Despite paddle wheels, a
screw propeller, and auxiliary sails, it could not be operated at a
profit because it traveled too slowly. Its hull, designed largely by
guesswork, caused it to move too much water as it traveled. It
could never run efficiently. This engineering blunder provoked a
research program that eventually designed a maximally efficient
hull shape. Only afterwards was it discovered that the dolphin,
the blue whale, the Greenland shark, and the tuna all had this
optimal shape, enabling them to move through the water with the
least amount of energy expended. 33 Nature never produces
fiascoes like the Great Eastern.
Sonar was developed during World War II, and years later
biologist Donald Griffin found the same principle in the echolocation of bats. Helicopter pilots have found that if they fly at
the proper angle behind another helicopter, they can exploit the
updraft caused by the other vehicle and get a more fuel-efficient
ride. Only subsequently was it recognized that this is why
migrating birds fly in V-formation. In human affairs recycling has
only recently come into vogue, but if nature did not recycle all her
raw materials she would have gone out of business millions of
years ago. Omega gray, a paint developed at great cost and labor
during the first world war to camouflage battleships, has the same
optical properties, wave length, absorption and reflection as the
color of an antarctic bird, the petrel. The implication is that
human ingenuity could not have given the petrel a better color for
camouflage than it received from nature. If whenever human
intelligence finds the best way to do something, that way is
already operative in natural things, then nature is supremely
purposeful.

33

See Augros and Stanciu, The New Biology, 146-47.

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The wisdom of nature is very wide and very deep. This is why
nature must be the foundation of all the arts and of all human
actions. We must build on it, imitate it, and cooperate with it for
the best results. For as Aristotle says, "Nothing contrary to nature
is good. "34
6) The Universality of Purpose

Purpose is found everywhere in nature. In fact, we can discern
in every living thing three levels of purpose: organs and activities
that serve the individual, others that serve the whole species, and
yet others that serve other species. In an oak tree the roots serve
the individual good by bringing in nutrients and water from the
soil. The oak's acorns are at the service of perpetuating the
species, and the oak benefits other species by producing oxygen
and preventing erosion. The same is true for animals. The
digestive system of the fox serves the individual. Its reproductive
organs and mating activities serve the species, and the carbon
dioxide that it exhales is useful to plants.
The first two levels illustrate nature acting for an end in the
strictest sense, since each organism directly acts for its own well
being and for the continuance of its kind. The third level may be
said to illustrate a generic sense of purposefulness in natural
things but is not strictly a nature acting for an end. In these cases
the utility is not aimed at by the organism in question. For
example, oxygen is a waste product for the oak tree. The oak's
nature is not striving to provide something for animals. Oxygen
is a by-product of the oak's metabolism, which does strive to
make and maintain wood. Similarly, the honey bee does not
intend to pollinate the flowers it visits. It intends to gather nectar
and pollen, but in so doing it happens to collect pollen on its
body, inadvertently transferring it to the next flower it visits. The
same holds for other cases where one species benefits another.
This shows how powerful purpose is in nature since even byproducts serve some end. In this third, generic sense of purpose,
nonliving things are dearly at the service of living things. Life
34

Aristotle, Politics 7.3 (McKeon, ed., 1282).

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would be impossible without the sun, the elements, the
atmosphere and the laws of physics and chemistry.

AD PRIMUM ERGO ...
Thus, we proceed to answering the objections raised above.
1) Nature Has No Mind
Purpose is most obvious in our own activities. We are capable
of knowing what we are doing and why. We can freely select the
end we pursue, reason about the best way to get there, and finally
execute our plans while being fully aware that we can change our
minds at any time if we wish. This is to act for a purpose in the
fullest, most perfect manner. Only a being endowed with reason
can act for an end in this way. Creatures such as animals and
plants do not possess reason, so they cannot act for ends in this
reflective, free, and fully aware manner. Nevertheless, the animal
acting by instinct, though it has no intellectual understanding of
what it is doing, is still aiming at some definite goal. Growth in
the plant is trying to produce a fully grown mature, adult.
Nonliving natural things strive toward something definite by
means of the laws of physics and chemistry. If lack of a mind were
a valid reason for denying purpose in a thing, then we would have
to say thermostats, washing machines, and mouse traps do not
have purposes.
2) The Posterior Cannot Cause the Prior
Note first that this objection attacks not only purpose in nature
but purpose as a cause anywhere, even in human actions. It would
require us to say that we ourselves cannot act for the sake of a
purpose. It is true that what comes after cannot be a cause of what
comes before-unless what comes after is pre-contained in some
way in what is prior. In the case of ourselves it is easiest to see
how this happens. By intellectual knowledge we understand the

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desirability of a certain thing, decide to pursue it, and then initiate
the means to get it. For example, a foreknowledge of the finished
house already exists in the mind of the carpenter before he starts
to build it. And this pre-existing image of the house directs all the
activities of its construction.
In a less perfect manner, the future goals of an animal pre-exist
in it by means of instinct which merely needs to be triggered by
sense perception. How the animal will act, given certain stimuli,
is predetermined before it actually encounters anything in
experience. And in a similar way the adult oak tree is precontained in the power of growth of the acorn which moves
toward that end until the oak is foll grown.
As St. Thomas writes, "In some things necessity is not from
causes prior in being; namely, matter and mover, but from
posterior causes, which are form and end. " 35 The end does not
precede the matter and the agent as things, but as causes. The
lumber, bricks, cement, and the windows sitting in the lumber
yard are only potentially the material cause of a house. Likewise,
the carpenter is only a potential agent cause until a particular end
motivates him to procure the necessary materials and begin
construction.
3) Darwin Banished Purpose from Natural Science

First, it should be noted that all of the authorities cited above
in the first sed contra argument are committed to evolution and
to natural selection 5 yet they insist that explanations relying on
purpose are unavoidable when dealing with living things.
Francisco Ayala speaks for the majority of eminent evolutionary
biologists when he asserts, "Teleological explanations cannot be
dispensed with in biology, and are therefore distinctive of biology
as a natural science. " 36
35 Aquinas, II Physic., lect. 12, no. 250, in In Octo Libros Physicorum Aristotelis Expositio
(Rome: Marietti, 1954), 122, my translation.
36 Francisco Ayala, "The Autonomy of Biology as a Natural Science," in Biology, History
and Natural Philosophy, ed. Allen D. Breck and Wolfgang Yourgau (New York: Plenum Press,
1972), 7.

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Second, we must also note that Darwin's theories of natural
selection, gradualism, and survival of the fittest have been under
attack for several decades from within biology. For example, fossil
experts are saying that gradualism never did fit the fossil record
and never will. Paleontologist Steven Stanley argues that
Darwinian gradualism would require much more time than the
age of the earth to produce the variety of mammals we see
today. 37 Paleontologist Stephen Gould writes, "The synthetic
theory [of evolution] as a general proposition, is effectively dead,
despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy. " 38 Genetics has
shown that no new species can emerge from point mutations. 39
Ecologists point out that neither geometric increase in populations
nor competition between species can be demonstrated by field
studies.40 Also, 98 percent of all extinctions have occurred in
massive extinction events, probably caused by meteorite impacts,
having nothing to do with fitness or natural selection. 41 Thus if
Darwin's theories themselves are suspect, their authority alone
cannot be invoked to discard purpose from nature. 42
Apart from these critiques by specialists, there are serious
logical difficulties with neo-Darwinism. The character of nature
right now is not to produce things at random but to bring about
what is good, either always or almost always. If the Darwinians
respond that nature was not that way in the remote past, that at
some point it acted blindly and at random, they are postulating an
unobserved and unevidenced state of nature. That is to discount
what is known on the basis of what is unknown, an unscientific
procedure. Also, natural selection presupposes that reproduction
and heredity are in place and operating normally, otherwise
Steven Stanley, "Darwin Done Over," The Sciences 21 (Oct 1981): 21.
Stephen Jay Gould, "Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?",
Paleobiology 6 (1980): 120.
39 Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1970), 67
40 See Augros and Stanciti, The New Biology, ch. 4.
41 Stephen Jay Gould, "The Cosmic Dance of Siva," Natural History 93 (August 1984):
14. Also Luis Alvarez, "Mass Extinctions Caused by Large Bolide Impacts," Physics Today
Uuly 1987): 24-32.
42 For fuller documentation of the biological critiques of Darwin, see Augros and Stanciu,
The New Biology, ch. 6.
37

38

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changes could not be passed on to offspring. But reproduction is
itself purposeful.
Finally, it is not generally recognized how destructive is the
attempt to resolve everything to chance. It is unlikely but not
impossible that all the world's fossils have been formed by chance
forces of wind, erosion, and geological causes. In fact, this is much
more likely than the odds that all animal species and plants were
caused by chance, since living things grow their own organs,
reproduce, and are made of many different kinds of parts,
whereas fossils consist only of lifeless rock and mineral matter.
But if all the world's fossils are mere chance formations and are
not the remains of ancient animals, then there is no fossil evidence
for evolution or for the origin of any species. And if that is
absurd, then it is even more absurd to say that all animal and plant
species were produced by chance. One might just as well destroy
all of science by insisting that it is possible that all the regularities
science observes in nature are mere coincidences.

4) Simplicity Eliminates Purpose
The partial truth in this objection is that a good result can
sometimes come about by chance. But this occurs only rarely. A
man digging a well finds a buried treasure by chance. But this does
not happen with any regularity. One cannot hope to make a living
by finding treasures in this way. The reason chance alone cannot
produce the good always or most of the time is that useless or
harmful possibilities always far outnumber the useful ones. So if
there is not some cause acting for the sake of the good, the useless
or the harmful will win out by sheer force of numbers. Opponents
of purpose must offer an example of chance alone producing the
good either always or most of the time. If they cannot, then their
proposal that all nature is based on chance is not even probable.
Furthermore, simplicity cannot be used to overthrow purpose,
for the principle of simplicity itself is based on the assumption
that nature acts for an end! Isaac Newton writes, "We are to
admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true
and sufficient to explain appearanceso To this purpose the

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philosophers say that Nature does nothing in vain and more is
vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and
affects not the pomp of superfluous causes. " 43 Galileo says,
"Nature ... doth not that by many things, which may be done by
few." 44 This is why the simpler explanation is superior. If one is
aiming at a goal and can achieve it with fewer things, it is better
to do so. If a doctor can cure a patient with two treatments, it is
better than using five (other things being equal). In a football
game, getting a touchdown in one play is better than using seven,
all else being equal. Thus the principle of simplicity cannot be
used to attack purpose in nature.
What if someone protests that it is irrelevant how the principle
of simplicity originated, and that today we do not rely on
Newton's rationale for it, but use it merely because it works?
Something having nothing to do with the operations of nature
would not be a reliable guide for judging hypotheses in all of the
sciences. The simplicity is in nature, not just in our methodology.
Physicist Carl von Weizsacker says, "The often cited principle of
economy of thought explains, at the most, why we look for simple
laws, but not why we find themo"45 Physicist Werner Heisenberg
concurs: "The simplicity of natural laws has an objective character
it is not just the result of thought economyo If nature leads us
to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty ... we cannot
help thinking they are true, that they reveal a genuine feature of
nature. "46
•

0

•

5) The Mover Explains the Entire Effect
As Aristotle says in Physics 2.3, it is possible for an effect to be
produced by more than one cause. For example, the materials of
a house are the cause of the entire house, not just part of it. And
43 Rule I for Reasoning in Philosophy, in Newton's Philosophy of Nature, ed. H. S. Thayer
(New York: Hafner, 1974), 3.
44 Galileo Galilei, quoted in Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern
Physical Science (New York: Doubleday, 1932), 74-75.
45 Carl von Weizsacker, World View of Physics (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1952),
179.
""Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 68-69.

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yet the builder is also the cause of the entire house, not just part
of it. This entails no contradiction because materials and mover
are different kinds of causes. They do not duplicate each other;
they complete each other.
The same holds for the mover and the purpose. The builder's
actions are motivated by a desire for shelter. If he did not want a
dwelling that would protect him from the elements, he would
never begin to act. On the other hand, the desired end, without
the action of the builder, is helpless to bring about anything.
Thus, both mover and end are responsible, in different ways, for
the entire house coming into being.
Why do human beings have a heart? To pump blood to all the
parts of the body. This end explains the heart in its entirety. Yet
in a different manner the processes of growth in the human
embryo also explain the existence of the entire heart. These two
explanations are not contrary but complimentary. One is mover
and the other is purpose.
When the good is present, an explanation from the moving
cause alone is never satisfactory. For example, saying the blade of
a carpenter's hand saw is 22 inches long because the automatic
shear at the factory cut the sheet metal to that length is true but
not complete. We can still say, "But why was the machine set to
precisely that specification?" The ultimate reason for the size has
to be in terms of purpose and the good. For a carpenter's hand
saw, 22 inches is a convenient blade length, while 2 inches long
or 7 feet long are not suitable, even though the metal shear could
easily be set to cut those lengths. The same holds for the useful
structures produced by growth.
6) Nature Produces What Is Bad

One might just as well argue that the art of medicine does not
aim at healing because sometimes after treatment the patient gets
worse, or dies. Such reasoning ignores the predominance of good
results and the intention of the art of medicine. Bad results in
natural processes are rare. Even the most frequent birth defects

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occur in less than 1% of cases. The nature of an organism
produces what is good for it either always or almost always. Bad
results show the interference of some other cause in the natural
process. A defective gene produces cystic fibrosis, for example.
Nature tries to produce a normal, healthy baby and will do so if
not prevented. Abnormality in animals births are caused by
mutations, disease, or some other such interfering cause, not by
the natural growth process itself. If a carpenter finds in a box of
100 normal nails one nail that has no head, he will not conclude
that the manufacturer was not trying to produce nails with heads.
Also, since nature does not have a mind, it cannot take into
account interfering circumstances. This explains why mistakes
occur in the generation of living things. If a cell had a mind of its
own, it might recognize a defective gene, for instance, and work
around it.
Finally, defects and mistakes actually presuppose action toward
an end. We call a thing defective only if something else was
intended, as with the defective nail mentioned above. In Physics
2.8, Aristotle makes this point against Empedodes. In the Summa
Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas uses nature's defects to prove that
nature acts for an end:
There is no fault to be found, except in the case of things that are for the sake
of an end. A fault is never attributed to an agent if the failure is related to
something that is not the agent's end. Thus, the fault of failing to heal is imputed
to the physician, but not to the builder or the grammarian. We do find fault with
things done according to art, for instance, when the grammarian does not speak
correctly, and also in things done according to nature, as is evident in the case
of the birth of monsters. Therefore, it is just as true of the agent that acts in
accord with nature as of the agent who acts in accord with art and as a result of
previous planning that action is for the sake of an end. 47

7) In Living Things Disease ls Common and Death Is Universal
That nature acts for an end does not mean that every natural
thing works for the benefit of every other natural thing. It means
Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles HI, c. 7, in Summa contra Gentiles, trans, Anton C.
Pegis (Notre Dame: Notte Dame University Press, 1975), 37.
47

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ROBERT M. AUGROS

that everything in the nature of a species works to its own benefit.
And the objection fails to show anything either in the nature of
man or of any other organism that acts against its own good.
In any given species, most individuals are healthy most of the
time. No disease is natural to its victim; it has to be contracted.
Malaria is not part of human nature and in fact is contrary to it.
The human body has many mechanisms to prevent and combat
diseases of all kinds. (Notice that the whole immune system is
very purposeful.) On the side of the protozoan parasite (genus
Plasmodium) that causes malaria, we see purpose at work also.
The protozoan has organs, activities, and a life cycle that are
wonderfully suited to perpetuating it. Likewise for the mosquito.
In diseases the evil produced is accidental. It is not as if the
mosquito intends to give us malaria. It intends to procure a blood
meal in order to lay its eggs. If the mosquito happens to be
carrying the protozoan parasite, then malaria ensues as an
accidental by-product of what the insect intends.
As for death, the word end can mean two different things:
termination point, and what a thing is for, that is, its purpose.
Thus the termination point of a rope is not what the rope is for.
Death is the end of life only in the sense of termination point. It
is not the purpose of life. On this topic Aristotle remarks, "Not
every stage that is last claims to be an end, but only that which is
best." 48
Living things do not aim at their own destruction. Quite the
contrary, all their organs and acts work for their preservation in
a clearly purposeful way. Nonetheless, since death happens
always, some cause must be responsible for it. Saint Thomas
explains that the death of an organism is a consequence of the
matter out of which it is made, just as the ability to rust is an
unwanted but unavoidable characteristic of the iron chosen by the
axe maker to make the axe head. The iron is selected because of
its hardness and despite its susceptibility to rust. 49 Likewise, the
materials that make up living things are destructible and dis48
49

Aristotle, Physics 2.2 (McKeon, ed., 240).
STh 11-11, q. 164, a. 1.

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solvable into the elements, not because of what the nature of the
species intends but despite it. And here again, a result not
intended by the nature of a given species serves a larger end. The
corruption of one thing in nature entails the generation of
something else, such that all materials are eventually recycled and
all living things are perpetuated.

8) Necessity ExplainsAll
In Physics2.8, Aristotle himself raises this objection against his
own position. 50 Saint Thomas, in his commentary, answers it as
follows:
Although rain has a necessary cause with respect to matter, nevertheless, it is
ordered to an end; namely, to the preservation of generable and corruptible
things. For the mutual generation and corruption in these inferior things is so
that perpetual being may be preserved in them. Whence, the growth of wheat is
improperly taken in the example; for a universal cause is paired with a particular
effect.
It must also be considered that the growth and preservation of things that
spring from the earth happens for the most part from rain, while corruption
occurs for the least part. Thus, although rain is not for the sake of destruction,
it still does not follow that it is not for the sake of preservation and generation. 51

In these two paragraphs, St. Thomas gives three telling
refutations of the objection. First he points out that even the most
inexorable necessity is not incompatible with purpose. In fact, if
you are aiming at a goal, you will seek out means that will
produce it necessarily,if possible. If I want to cut wood smoothly,
I will not be satisfied with a tool that accomplishes this only some
of the time. I want a tool that will cut smoothly always and
necessarily. This is why I make it out of metal with a flat blade
and sharp teeth, because such a material and structure will always
cut wood smoothly. Purpose explains why the matter and form
are what they are. So necessity is not incompatible with purpose
but can serve it.
50
51

Aristotle, Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 249).
II Physic., lect. 12, no. 254 (Marietti edition, 123), my translation.

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ROBERT M. AUGROS

Second, St. Thomas indicates that cause and effect are wrongly
matched in the example given. Aristotle says in Physics 2.3 that to
avoid error "generic effects should be assigned to generic causes,
particular effects to particular causes. "52 The wheat example
assigns a particular effect to a generic cause, as if someone were
to say that nature has given man a pair of hands so he might be
able to play the piano. The purpose of hands is much more
generic than that.
St. Thomas shows that even if rain is not
for the sake of destroying the wheat, it does not follow that it is
not for the sake of it growing, as can be seen from the great
predominance of this latter result.

9) Many Natural Events Have No Purpose
An earthquake is caused by the friction and slippage of two
tectonic plates pushing against each other. The earthquake itself
is not a natural substance, nor is it the action of an individual
natural substance. Hence, there is no question here of any species
of natural thing trying to produce an earthquake for the sake of
some endo Therefore, there is no necessity to assign a purpose to
earthquakes. The other causes-matter, form, and mover-are
sufficient to account for this phenomenon. The same holds for
tidal waves, which are often caused by earthquakes on the ocean
floor, and for hurricanes and avalancheso Regarding eclipses, there
is no reason to think that the earth, or the sun, or the moon is
striving to cause this temporary darkness. Eclipses are adequately
understood as a by-product of the movements and orbits of these
three bodieso
Chance events occur in nature just as they do in human affairs,
and by definition the outcome of chance is not intended by the
agents involved. So a beaver being crushed by the falling of a tree
that it was gnawing is not intended either by the beaver or by the
tree 9 but is a rare coincidence. Because chance is the accidental
intersection of two or more agents aiming at something, it

52 Aristotle,

Physics 2.3 (McKeon, ed., 242).

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565

presupposes acting for an end, as Aristotle explains. 53 In this
example the beaver was gnawing the tree to make a dam, and it
was not by chance that the gnawed tree felL It was by chance that
it happened this time to hit the beaver.
10) Useless Organs and Waste Refute Purpose
It is worth noting how rare these examples are, a tiny minority
of doubtful cases among hundreds of thousands of organs with
perfectly obvious functions. This ratio makes it dear what the
norm in nature is. Indeed, it is usually precipitous to assert that an
organ is useless. If it does not serve the purpose that first comes
to mind, it will most likely serve another. The wings of the
ostrich, for example, are not used for flight but they have many
other uses. l) Ostriches use them to keep their balance when
running fast and making sharp turns. 2) The wings insulate the
bird's body from the scorching African sun. 3) Ostriches use their
wings in mating rituals and threat displays. Similarly, the human
appendix has been recognized as a part of the human immune
system, so that surgeons no longer routinely remove it. 54 The tiny
eyes of the blind cave fish are considered by all biologists to be
vestigial organs. That is, they are believed to have developed as
folly functional in an ancestor of the cave fish and then atrophied
when not needed.
Concerning water loss in trees, investigation reveals that the
prodigious evaporation is not a waste of water but rather serves
an essential purpose. It permits the tree's leaves to avoid
overheating and drying up in hot weather, operating in a way
similar to evaporative cooling in animals. As temperatures rise,
evaporation increases; as they fall, it decreases. Thus there is no
excess at all, but a rather precise adjustment to the needs of the
tree. Without evaporative cooling, a tree would become as hot as
an automobile parked in the sun. Further, if ground water were
never raised and recycled via evaporation in trees and other
53
54

Aristotle, Physics 2.5 (McKeon, ed., 245).
"What is the appendix?" on www.medicinenet.com

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ROBERT M. AUGROS

plants, huge amounts would become irretrievably locked
underground. So what at first glance seems to be excessive and
useless turns out to be beautifully suited for both the tree and the
whole ecosystem.
11) Nonliving Things Exhibit No Purposes

Purpose is most obvious in living things. Consequently,
purpose is most easily seen in nonliving things if we consider how
they serve living things. The sun, for instance, is necessary for life
on earth, not only for warmth but to supply energy for
photosynthesis in plants. The chemical elements are constituents
of our very bodies. Water has many properties that make it
uniquely suited to making life possible. For example, the water
covering 70% of the earth's surface buffers its temperature.
Compare the waterless moon which goes from 212° F to -238° F
in one day. Evidence for the Anthropic Principle in physics and
astrophysics indicates that the universe itself is aiming at life as
mentioned in the fifth sed contra argument.
If one demands evidence of purposes in nonliving things
themselves, it will necessarily be more obscure, since the good at
that level is so minimal. We can safely say, however, that all
nonliving things strive to preserve themselves as far as possible.
Fire heats things around it and spreads, making other things like
itself. Water's surface tension and high capillarity keep it together.
These remarks are provisional and somewhat conjectural,
however, because it is not at all clear whether a stone, or a fire, or
a body of water is a single substance or a collection of many
substances. All nonliving things resist division. Active chemical
elements have a strong inclination to take on, or give up, or share
an electron so as to gain an electronic configuration similar to that
of the six inert gases, thus achieving more stability, and therefore
better preserving themselves.
Finally, we can always say that nonliving substances have
definite physical inclinations that are in accord with their natures.
In this sense they always act for definite ends, even if the aspect

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of good in them is harder to see. Aristotle's last argument55 in
Physics 2.8 applies well to nonliving things: in them, too, matter
is for the sake of form and ability is for the sake of act.

12) Mathematics Does Not Use Purpose
This objection assumes that any causes not used in mathematics
ought to be discarded from other sciences. Since mathematics
never proves anything by the material cause or by the mover, we
would have to reject explanations by matter and mover from
physics, chemistry, and biology-an absurd suggestion that would
cripple those sciences. The logic of this objection would also force
us to say that since mathematics never uses the authority of
witnesses to prove anything, therefore, history should not do so
either. But that would obliterate the discipline of history which
necessarily argues from the authority of witnesses. Trying to
impose everywhere the method appropriate to mathematical
things would do violence to the widely different subject matters
of each science. We cannot treat animals, human acts, and forms
of government as if they were numbers. In addition to logic, there
are special principles of method in each science, dictated by its
unique subject matter. For example, although experiment is
unnecessary and impossible in geometry, we do not conclude that
it is unnecessary and impossible in the natural sciences. In the
same way, though mathematics does not use purpose to
demonstrate theorems, purpose is unavoidable for understanding
living things, as explained in the body of this article.

13) Purpose Presumes God
The central assumption of this objection is simply false. The
evidence for purpose in nature in no way relies on invoking God.
In Physics 2.8 Aristotle never mentions God, nor does he use any
theological reasons to show that nature acts for an end. He argues
from examples of plants and animals, from the parallels between
ss Aristotle, Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 250).

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568

art and nature, and by contrast with chance. It would be bad order
to do otherwise. For since purpose is a principle in natural
science, it must be presented in the beginning. But according to
the natural order of learning a beginner in natural science knows
only logic and mathematics. 56 He does not yet have philosophic
knowledge of God's existence. So trying to use God to prove
purpose in nature would be using the less known to argue for the
better known, like trying to use the icosahedron to prove the
existence of equilateral triangles. The proper order is the reverse,
since the equilateral triangle is the first thing proven in Euclid's
geometry and the icosahedron is one of the last, and depends on
the first. In the same way, no wise man would ever try to use God
to prove that nature acts for an end. On the contrary, once
established on its own merits, purpose can function as a minor
premise in a metaphysical proof for God, as in St. Thomas' fifth
way in the Summa Theologiae.
Moreover, to establish that purpose is found in natural things
one does not have to prove that all natural things taken together
are aiming at a single goal. This is a much more difficult question
and the resolution of it is in no way needed to prove that natures
act for ends. Aristotle addresses the question of the purpose of the
whole universe in the Metaphysics. 57
We have already distinguished in an organism between those
things that provide for its own welfare and those that serve other
ends beyond the species. In the former category purpose is
obvious; in the latter, it is sometimes less so. God may have as
many inscrutable ends as Descartes likes, but it remains that the
crab's claw is still for pinching, its eye for seeing, and its stomach
for digesting.
14) Purpose Is a Projection of the Human Mind

This objection gives no proof but merely makes an
unsubstantiated assertion. Offering an explanation of why we
56

Aquinas, In Liber de causis, lect. 1, in The Pocket Aquinas, 43-44.
12.10 (McKeon, ed., 885-88).

57 Aristotle, Metapbysics

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mistakenly attribute purpose to natural things is irrelevant if
purpose has not first been refuted with real evidence. Even if
human beings do have an unavoidable tendency to project
purpose onto natural things, that in itself, is not evidence against
purpose in nature. A reason must be given. The fact that a certain
ticket holder wants very much to win the lottery is not itself
evidence that he has not won.
Moreover, if purpose is an inevitable projection of the human
mind, we would find it in every science, not just biology. But we
do not. No use is made of purpose in mathematics. 58 Mathematics
does not ask what prime numbers are for, nor does it argue that
the base angles of an isosceles triangle are equal because it is
better that they be so. Therefore, the unavoidability of purpose in
biology comes not from the human observer but from the subject
matter of biology itself. Life incorporates genuine goals and
purposes.
Finally, there is the claim that we attribute purpose to natural
things because we use them. This allegation would have some
weight if we ascribed purpose only to those natural things useful
to ourselves. But as things are, we recognize what is good for an
animal or plant quite independently of our own interests. We
understand, for example, how ingenious the plasmodia's life cycle
is and how, by taking on different forms in different organisms,
it perpetuates itself. Yet far from being useful to man, the
plasmodiacauses malaria, the most common deadly disease in the
world today.

15) Purpose Is Too Easily Abused
If a thing can be used well, then the potential for its abuse is no
reason to reject it. On that ground we would have to abolish very
good and necessary things: political power, trust, speech,
sex-everything human in fact, except perhaps moral virtue.
Natural selection is notoriously subject to abuse. Biologist Niko

58

Aristotle, Metaphysics3.2 (McKeon, ed., 718).

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Tinbergen speaks of a respected naturalist59 who seriously claimed
that the bright pink color of the roseate spoonbill was favored by
natural selection since it camouflaged the bird at sunrise and
sunset. The naturalist did not explain how the bird managed the
rest of the time, with its neon pink color so conspicuous against
any landscape. Gould and Lewontin complain that "evolutionists
use consistency with natural selection as the sole criterion"' to
judge whether a hypothesis is plausible. 60
Finally, anything can be caricatured. It is childish to think that
noses are made to support glasses, but not childish to think that
noses are for smelling.

We are now in a position to consider the ulterior causes of the
modem rejection of purpose in nature. The reasons advanced
against purpose are weak and faulty, as we have seen, but behind
them looms a mightier force-that of intellectual custom. The
advent of mathematical physics in the seventeenth century
changed Western civilization profoundly and permanently.
Purpose first began to be eliminated from natural science when
the new scientific method was introduced, and the dominance of
mathematics in this method is dear from the start. Galileo, one of
the founders of modern science, insisted that the Book of Nature
is written in mathematical language. 61 Descartes, Galileo's
contemporary, is famous for proposing that the method of
mathematics be used in all the sciences. Descartes's consequent
bias against purpose is very strong. He goes so far as to say, "The
knowledge of a thing's purpose never leads to a knowledge of the
thing itself. "62 He does not seem to realize that anyone who does
not know what an eye is for does not know what an eye is.
Niko Tinbergen, Animal Behavior (New York: Time-Life, 1965), 12.
Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin, "The Spandrels of San Marco and the
Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme," Proceedings of the Royal
Society of London Series B 205 (1979): 587-88.
61 Galileo Galilei, quoted in Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modem Physical
Science, 75.
62 Rene Descartes, Conversations with Berman, trans. John Cottingham (London and New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 19-20.
59

60

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Spinoza, a disciple of Descartes, goes even further, writing a
lengthy attack on purpose as a cause not only in nature at large
but in human actions as well. The influence of the mathematical
habit of mind is evident when he asserts that mankind would have
foolishly believed in the purposefulness of nature "for all eternity,
if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in
considering solely the essence and properties of figures without
regard to their final causes."63 Spinoza tried to apply the method
of geometry to ethics. He was so enamored of the necessity he
found in mathematics that, wanting to impose it everywhere, he
ended up denying free will in man and in God. Like Aristotle says
of the Pythagoreans, these men, having been brought up in
mathematics, "thought its principles were the principles of all
things. "64 Anything that dashes with a deeply ingrained habit of
mind will seem alien and therefore false, even if it is not. To a
mind trained to see nature only through the lens of mathematics,
reference to purpose in science seems unthinkable even if no
reason is given, and weak reasons against purpose will easily pass
for strong. Another less dominant aspect of the intellectual
customs of our age is materialism, the contention that only matter
exists. It, too, is a source for rejecting purpose, and is found in the
ancient world in Empedocles and Lucretius, and in modern times
with Darwin and the resurgence of materialism.
The second major reason why the modern mind tends to reject
purpose is a misunderstanding of what it means to say that nature
acts for an end; or misunderstanding why this principle is held; or
ignorance of the distinction of the four kinds of cause, or of one
of the corollaries that follow from that distinction, such as that
two things can cause each other, or that one and the same effect
can have more than one cause.65 These misunderstandings account
for the above objections 1-4, 13, and 14.
One source of these confusions is the nature of the final cause
itself. It is the most subtle of the four causes. The Pre-Socratics
63 Spinoza, The Ethics, appendix, in The Rationalists, 210.
64 Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.5 (McKeon, ed., 698).

65 Aristotle, Physics 2.3 (McKean, ed., 241).

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never succeeded in disengaging purpose as a cause. 66 These first
philosophers are generally so wholesome and so close to nature
that even their deficiencies are instructive. What they agree on is
probably what is most known. Whatever distinctions they fail to
see are most likely less known. So their failure to recognize
purpose as a cause is a clear sign that it is less known than the
other three causes.
A second sign of the same conclusion is that Aristotle, both in
the Physics67 and in the Metaphysics68 offers a proof that purpose
is a kind of cause: it answers the question why. Aristotle does not
deem it necessary to prove that matter, form, or mover are causes,
thus signifying that it is not clear at first sight that purpose is a
cause at all and that this needs to be manifested by example and
reasoning.
There are two reasons why purpose is the least known kind of
cause. First, it is the most intellectual of the four causes since it
cannot be perceived by the senses. We can see and touch the
wood that is the material cause of a chair. We can see and touch
the structure that is its formal cause. We can watch the carpenter
make the chair. We see these causes in operation. But purpose is
hidden inside the maker. It is not grasped by the senses. Of the
four causes, matter is the most obvious since it is there before the
change, during the change, and after the change. It is hard to miss.
Virtually all the Pre-Socratics recognized matter as a cause of
natural things, but none penetrated as far as purpose.
Second, though purpose is first in the order of intention, it is
last in the order of execution, whence it is named end and final
cause.69 Being last, it is most difficult to recognize as a cause. This
is another reason why the Pre-Socratics overlooked it. 70 If
someone is asked what the causes of a house are, the first things
that will come to his mind are the materials and the construction
workers. Everyone knows that a house is for shelter, but this
Aristotle, Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 249).
Aristotle, Physics 2.3 (McKeon, ed., 241).
68 Aristotle, Metaphysics 5.2 (McKeon, ed., 752).
69 STh 1-11, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1.
70 V Metaphys., lect. 2, no. 771 (Rowan, trans., 307).
66
67

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seems to be merely a result. It is obvious at first sight that shelter
is an effect of the matter and the movers. It is not obvious that
shelter is also a cause of the house coming to be.
Hence the Pre-Socratics saw the other three kinds of cause
more or less clearly, but had only imperfect glimpses of purpose.
Some confuse end with mover while others refer to the good as a
cause but only accidentally. 71 In the Phaedo, Socrates complains
that even though Anaxagoras posits mind as a cause, he never uses
it to show why the things in nature are the way they are because
it is better that they be such. 72 Even the Platonists who referred to
the good as a cause used it in the mode of a formal cause and not
as that for the sake of which. 73
Now since purpose is the least known kind of cause it should
not surprise us if some thinkers fail to see it. Biologist Konrad
Lorenz, for example, almost sees it. Discussing the role of the
question "What is it for?" in biology, he gives the following
example:
I am driving through the countryside in my old car, to give a lecture in a distant
town, and I ponder on the usefulness of my car, the goals or aims which are so
well served by its construction, and it pleases me to think how all this contributes
to achieve the purpose of my journey. Suddenly the motor coughs once or twice
and peters out. At this stage I am painfully aware that the reason for my journey
does not make my car go; I am learning the hard way that aims and goals are not
causes. It will be well for me to concentrate exclusively on the natural causes of
the car's workings, and to find out at what stage the chain of the causation was
so unpleasantly interrupted. 74

Lorenz concludes that his desire to give the lecture is not at all a
cause of his journey. He has seen that the mover is required to
achieve the end, but he has not seen how the end is needed to
orient the mover. Why does his auto not take him to Innsbruck or
Salsburg instead of Linz? Surely it is capable of doing so. It is
because the lecture he wishes to give is to be in Linz, the word
Aristotle, Metaphysics l.7 (McKeon, ed., 703).
W. H. D. Rouse, ed., Great Dialoguesof Plato (New York: Mentor, 1956), 502.
73 I Metaphys., Iect. 2, no. 178 (Rowan, trans., 73 ).
74 Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression(New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), 230.
71

72

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because signaling a cause. So Lorenz's desire to give the lecture
turns out to be a cause of his going there after all, the first cause
in fact, in the order of intention. Without a desired end the mover
is directionless.
For the above reasons it is also common for the end to be
confused with other more known kinds of cause, especially the
mover. Arguing against mechanistic psychologists who reduce all
human actions to "drives," Psychologist Viktor Frankl writes,
"Values ... do not drive a man; they do not push him, but rather
they pull him. " 75 But pulling is just as mechanical as pushing. Both
are moving causes. It is ironic that in trying to counter
mechanism, Frankl inadvertently falls into its vocabulary. Values
act on us as ends do, not as movers do.
Spinoza tries to explain away purpose as merely a kind of
desire, asserting that when we say "having a house to live in was
the final cause of this or that house," we are merely indicating "a
particular desire, which is really an efficient cause, and is
considered as primary, because men are usually ignorant of the
causes of their desires. " 76 Desire falls between knowledge and
action. Knowledge causes desire and desire causes action. But
knowledge causes desire as an end, while desire causes action as
mover. We see the confusion of end and moving cause in the
word motive, which names the end from a likeness to the moving
cause. It is true to say that the end moves the agent and the agent
moves the matter, but the word moves here is equivocal. For the
end does not push or pull the agent, heat him up or cool him off,
shift him from one place to another, or physically modify the
agent with respect to any other species of motion. The end does
nothing to the agent except supply a possible goal for action. If
purpose is the most subtle kind of cause, then it is understandable
that those not trained in philosophy would easily fall into
confusions about it. Those called philosophers like Descartes and
Spinoza have less excuse.
75 Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press, 19 59),

157-58.
76 Benedict de Spinoza, quoted in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert M.
Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1990), 1:124.

NATURE ACTS FOR AN END

575

Being able to answer difficulties is a sign that the truth has
been reached. 77 On the topic of purpose in nature, we have not
only answered the difficulties raised by our predecessors but have
also shown why they held the position that they did. Thus we can
conclude with Aristotle, "It is plain then that nature is a cause, a
cause that operates for a purpose. " 78

77 I Physic., lect. 15, no.
78

121 (Marietti edition, 63).
Aristotle, Physics 2.8 (McKeon, ed., 251).

The Thomist 66 (2002): 577-605

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM
A LEO WHITE
Morgan State University
Baltimore, Maryland

STUDYOF St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of animal perception

is needed in order to help us understand how humans
think. Both speculative and practical reasoning typically
involve many layers of influence of sense and intellect upon each
other, and this mutual influence needs to be sorted out. Practical
reasoning, for example, commences only once one has recognized
a situation as calling for possible action. Reason's initial grasp of
that situation is brought about by perception. But this perception
is determined in part by decisions one has made and deeds one
has performed in previous, similar situations. For that reason,
Aquinas assigns a special role to the cogitative power in
intellectus, the virtue through which one is disposed to form a
good initial estimation of a situation. 1 The cogitative power,
which stands at the pinnacle of human sentient awareness, is the
secondary subject of the virtue of prudence, to which intellectus
belongs as an integral part. 2 As a secondary subject of a virtue, the
cogitative power is capable of being modified and perfected by
past decisions and commands made by reason. In that way, the
very perception that gives rise to the practical intellect's initial

1 See STh H-II, q. 49, a. 2, ad 3 (8:368) and VI Eth., c. 7 (47.2:359). Unless otherwise
noted, all citations of and quotations from Aquinas's texts are from the Leonine edition, Sancti
Thomae de Aquino opera omnia (Rome, 1882-). Parenthetical numbers indicate volume and
page of this edition. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
2 Aquinas says that the cogitative power is the secondary subject of the virtue of prudence,
which contains the virtue of intellectus as one of its integral parts (STh H-H, q. 49, a. 2).

577

578

A.LEOWHITE

understanding of a situation can be shaped by previous acts of
reason.
A similar pattern is found in the intellectual apprehensions that
figure in the formation of propositions, where once again the
cogitative power plays a key, instrumental role in the operation of
reason. As Aquinas says in the Summa contra Gentiles, the
cogitative power prepares the phantasm that serves as the object
of the intellect's abstractive activity. He adds that not all humans
can understand what they imagine, for only those who have had
adequate instruction and practice have a cogitative power wellsuited for preparing the phantasm. 3 This reference to previous
instruction implies that the very perception that plays an
instrumental role in abstraction may be the result of previous
reasoning, inasmuch as reasoning is involved in the taking of
instruction. The same theme arises in the Commentary on the
Posterior Analytics, where Aquinas makes it clear that the
cogitative power's apprehension of "this human" is a necessary
condition for the intellectual apprehension of "human. " 4 This
internal sense power comes to perceive "this human" by
comparing many similar individuals that one has perceived in the
past until it recognizes something common to them. This process
of comparing individuals, says Aquinas in the same work, is a
special form of reasoning called ratiocinatio.5 Hence reasoning of
some sort is involved in the process that leads to the development
of cogitative perception, through which one acquires new
concepts.
In order to be able to sort out the influence of reason and
perception upon each other, we must first identify those
properties that belong to human perception apart from any
influence by reason. The present study attempts to uncover such
properties by looking at those features of perception that seem to
3 See ScG II, c. 76 (13:481), quoted below, inn.

13.
II Post.Anal., lect. 20 (1:402, par.14). InScG II, c. 77 (13:488).Aquinas makes asimilar
remark about the sentient awareness of "this human" being a necessary condition for the
intellectual apprehension of "human."
5 II Post. Anal., lect. 20 (1:410, par. 11; see also par. 10). Ratiocinatio is synonymous with
counsel or deliberation (VI Eth., cc. 1, 6 [47.2:333, 353)).
4

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

579

be common to brutes and humans. This study will look not only
to those passages in Aquinas's writings that are concerned with
perception as such, but also to his discussions of animal actions
and passions. By merging the more standard approach with the
latter, it obtains a more comprehensive view of perception than
could otherwise be obtained.
I. PROBLEM: How DOES ONE INIBRNAL SENSE PERFORM A
MULTIPLICI1YOF ROLES?

Saint Thomas argues that a special internal sense is needed to
guide the actions of animals so that they may pursue goals and
avoid evils that are remote or entirely absent. He illustrates this
need with two examples. The first, borrowed from Avicenna, is of
a sheep that avoids death by fleeing at the sight of a wolf. Since
such behavior is caused by appetite, which in turn is caused by
cognition, it follows that the sheep must in some way have
perceived that the wolf is harmful (nociva) or an enemy. 6 But
neither the external senses nor the common sense of the sheep
perceives harmfulness, and since the imagination can only form
sensible species of the same sort as those found in the common
sense, the imagination is likewise unable to perceive harmfulness.
Therefore, there must be another internal sense, which perceives
enmity or harmfulness. The second example is of a bird that
gathers sticks to build a nest. It does so not merely because of
what it perceives through its external senses at that moment but
because it is in some way cognizant of the usefulness of this
activity. 7 In fact, Aquinas insists in the Sentences that a bird makes
a nest only if it hopes thereby to be able to care for its offspring. 8
Since neither the bird's external senses nor its common sense is
cognizant of utility, there must be another sense that is aware of

6 II Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1; in Scriptum super libros Sententiarium magistri Petri Lombardi,
vol. 2, ed. Pierre F. Mandonnet (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929), 601-2.
7 STh I, q. 78, a. 4 (5:256).
8 III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, r.; in Scriptum super Sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi, vol. 3,
ed. R. P. Maria Fabianus Moos (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1956), 814.

580

A.LEO WHITE

utility (convenientia) as well.9 Using language that he adopts from
Latin translations of Avicenna's writing on this topic, Aquinas
refers both to utility and to its contrary, harmfulness, as
"intentions" (intentiones), which he contrasts with the forms
(formas) apprehended by the external senses, the common sense,
and the imagination.
The internal sense power through which animals perceive
intentions is called the estimative power or vis aestimativa in
brutes. The same type of internal sense power is also found in
humans, where it is instead called the cogitative power or vis
cogitativa. The different name indicates that this sentient power
is able to reach a higher level of awareness thanks to the influence
of reason. 10 This higher level of awareness is reflected in the three
roles that Aquinas attributes to the vis cogitativa in humans. The
first and most obvious role-one that roughly parallels that of the
vis aestimativa in brutes-is to evoke the passions that help
energize our actions. 11 The second role has to do with the way
that the cogitative power enables universal reason to apply its

9 Note that in some texts he says that this power perceives friendship (amicitiam) and
enmity (inimicitiam). He apparently regards these two terms as somewhat interchangeable
with usefulness and harmfulness respectively, for he alternates use of the term "enmity" with
"danger" to name the very same perceptual object, that is, the one that causes the sheep to
avoid the wolf: "[f]he estimative power, through which the animal grasps intentions not
received through the senses (such as friendship and enmity), belongs to the sensitive soul
inasmuch as it participates in reason. Whence, because of this estimative [power], animals are
said to have a certain prudence, as is plain at the beginning of the Metaphysics, [which says]
that the sheep flees the wolf, whose enmity it never senses" (De Veritate, q. 25, a. 2
[22.3:733]); "[f]he sheep that sees an approaching wolf runs away not because of [the wolfs]
unbecoming color or shape, but rather because of natural enmity, as it were .... The animal
therefore needs to perceive such intentions, which the exterior sense does not perceive" (STh
I, q. 78, a. 4 [5:256]); see also ScG II, c. 74 (13:469); and II Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, r.
10 STh I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 5 (5:257).
11 Since humans are endowed with very little instinctive awareness of what is useful and
harmful, they must learn much through a process of comparing intentions, through which the
vis cogitativa comes to form estimations of harmfulness and utility. The cogitative power is
able to perform these comparisons thanks to the influence of reason (STh I, q. 78, a. 4). Note
also that humans, unlike brutes, do not necessarily act whenever they are moved by a passion.
Under normal circumstances, passions yield actions only inasmuch as they concur with the
movement of the will (STh I, q. 81, a. 3).

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

581

judgments to particular individuals during practical reasoning. 12
The third role is the cogitative power's preparation of the
phantasm for abstraction. 13
Upon reviewing the list of roles attributed by Aquinas to the
cogitative and estimative powers, one might fail to discern a
common thread uniting them all. After all, what does instinctive
judgment have to do with the preparation of the phantasm for
abstraction? Anthony Kenny points out that so far no Thomist has
found a common thread linking together the diverse roles

12 Aquinas assigns a cardinal role to the vis cogitativa in each of the phases of practical
reasoning. This role is apparent even before deliberation, for prior to that one must first
apprehend that a concrete end is suitable under the present circumstances (see n. 1). In the
same spirit, he assigns a key role to the vis cogitativa in eubu/ia, the virtue that perfects the
inquiry into the suitability of each means. Aquinas ties eubulia, the virtue that perfects counsel,
to the discursive nature of the cogitative power in VI Eth., c. 9 (47.2:368). The vis cogitativa
is indispensable to counsel or deliberation, says Aquinas, because of that power's ability to
compare the particular variables (VI Eth., c. 1 [47.2:334]). Likewise, the cogitative power is
central to synesis, the virtue that perfects the choice of one means over the others: VI Eth.,
c. 9 (47.2:368). Practical reasoning comes to completion with command, which is perfected
by prudentia. The cogitative sense plays a central role in this virtue as well; in fact, he states
that it is the secondary subject of prudence, while universal reason is the primary (STh IHI,
q. 47, a. 3, ad 3 [8:351]).
13 "[I]t can be said that the agent intellect is, in itself, always acting, but that the phantasms
are not always made actually intelligible, but only when they are disposed to this ... Now, they
are so disposed by the act of the cogitative power, the use of which is in our power. Hence,
to understand is in our power. And this is the reason why not all men understand the things
whose phantasms they have, since not all are possessed of the requisite act of the cogitative
power, but only those who are instructed and habituated" ("Potest autem dici quod intellectus
agens semper agit quantum in se est, sed non semper phantasmata fiunt intelligibilia actu, sed
sol um quando sunt ad hoc disposita. Disponuntur autem ad hoc per actum cogitativae virtutis,
cuius usus est in nostra potestate. Et ideo intelligere actu est in nostra potestate. Et ob hoc
etiam contingit quod non omnes homines intelligunt ea quorum habent phantasmata: quia non
omnes habent actum virtutis cogitativae convenientem, sed solum qui sunt instructi et
consueti" [ScG II, c. 76 (Summa contra gentiles, trans. James F. Anderson, bk. 2, Creation
[Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1956; reprint, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1975], par. 8, p. 241; Leonine ed., 13:481]). Note that this statement is criticized in the
next paragraph as inadequate, because it fails to mention that the agent intellect is not a
separate agent. Hence, says Aquinas, the preceding statement (i.e., the one quoted above) does
not sufficiently distinguish itself from the position held by Averroes, who, like Aquinas, taught
that the cogitative power prepares phantasms for abstraction, but who also taught that the
agent intellect is a separate substance. Aquinas outlines Averroes's explanation of how the
cogitative power prepares phantasms for abstraction in ScG U, c. 60 (13:419).

582

A.LEOWHITE

assigned to the same species of power. 14 It may appear, therefore,
that this attribution is somewhat ad hoc. That is, Aquinas may
seem to have placed all of these perceptual roles in the same
"black box" for the sake of apparent simplicity, but without being
able to give justification for this move. 15 Could it be that his
theory of perception is more a hodgepodge than a coherent
synthesis?
II. jORG TELL.KAMP'$ SOLUTION

In a remarkable study of Aquinas's theory of perception, Jorg
Tellkamp claims to have identified a unity in the multiplicity of
roles played by these powers. He argues that the sensibile per
accidens perceived by these internal senses is a state of affairs
(Sachverhalt).A state of affairs is a complex object; for example,
when a bird sees a little stick as something with which it can build
a nest, it perceives not only the per se sensibiliasuch as the shape
and size, but also the usefulness of the stick.16 Similarly, the sheep
perceives the wolf not only in terms of shape and size but also as
a natural enemy. 17 In both examples, the animal perceives its
object under more than one aspect. 18 This complexity
14 Speaking of the roles played by the vis cogitativa in virtue of the influence of reason,
Kenny says, "I know of no passage where St. Thomas makes clear how the faculty thus defined
is the same as the faculty introduced by reference to the notions of danger and utility"
(Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind [Routledge: New York, 1993), 37).
15 Harry Wolfson, for example, implies that Aquinas's own theory of the cogitative and
estimative powers is based upon a misunderstanding of Avicenna and Averroes ("The Internal
Senses in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew Philosophic Texts," Harvard Theological Review 28
[1935): 121).
16 Jorg Alejandro Tellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstandeund Sensibilia:zur Wahrnebmungslehre
des Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 136. On page 171, he distinguishes the sentient
awareness of sensibiliaper accidensfrom the intellectual awareness of the same: "In any case
there is a kind of complex knowledge that is connected with universal structures but which
does not refer immediately to intellectual knowledge .... The sensibiliaper accidensare, it
seems, propositional in nature" ("[A]llerdings gibt es eine Art des komplexen, mit allgemeinen
Strukntren verbundenen Wissens, das nichtunmittelbar auf die Verstandeserkenntnis verweist .
. . • Die sensibiliaper accidens sind, wie es scheint, propositionaler Art").
17 Ibid., 172.
18 Reviewing both human and animal perception of states of affairs, Tellkamp says, "In one
respect, sheep and humans are alike in forming perceptual awareness: by means of using their
senses they achieve knowledge of a particular object, which is not grasped under a perceptible

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

583

characterizes the objects of distinctively human perception as welL
For example, one who sees the shape and color of Socrates might
perceive "Socrates" or "this man" through the cogitative power. 19
These perceptions may serve as the basis for forming the
intellectual judgment that "Socrates is human. " 20 Hence the
complexity that guides animal behavior also serves as a partial
basis of human opinion. Of course, humans perceive Sachverhalte
differently, for brutes are confined to perceiving states of affairs
in terms of their practically relevant factors, while humans may
also perceive them in terms of their cognitively relevant factors. 21
aspect. This [non-perceptible] aspect is summed up in the concept of intentio, which contains
either practically or cognitively relevant states of affairs" ("In einer Hinsicht sind Schafe und
Menschen bei der Formnng von Wahmehmungswissen gleich: sie gelangen mittels des
Gebrachs ihrer Sinne zur Erkenntnis eines partikularen Gegenstands, der nicht unter eninem
wahmehmbaren Aspekt erfasst wird. Dieser Aspekt wird im Begriff der intentio
zusammengefasst, wekher entweder praktische oder erkennmisrelevante Sachverhalte
beinhaltet" [ibid., 173]).
19 The cogitative power, says St. Thomas, perceives Socrates, for the individual to which
various per se sensibilia belong is itself a sensibile per accidens (N Sent., d. 49, q. 2, a. 2 [S.
Thomae Aquinatis opera omnia ut sunt in indice thomistico additis 61 scriptis ex aliis medii
aevi auctoribus, ed. Roberto Busa, vol. 1 (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann.
Verlag Giinther Holzboog KG, 1980), 685]).
20 Tellkamp's own example is of the proposition, "There is Diares with property y"
(Tellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstiinde und Sensibilia, 177).
21 Tellkamp illustrates this limitation of brutes with the example of a wolf as it is perceived
by a sheep, "The wolf is in any case perceived, not as an individual being under a universal
aspect (sub natura communi), but rather as a terminus or endpoint of a sensible striving."
("Der Wolf wird allerdings nicht als individuelles Wesen unter einem allgemeinen Aspekt [sub
natura communi] wahrgenommen, sondem nur als Ausgangspunkt bzw. Endpunkt eines
sinnlichen Strebens" [ibid., 172]). "The object of human knowledge is exclusively the
universal, and this [universal] comes into play at the level of perception in a sensibile per
accidens in so far as the latter embodies an object under the aspect of a common nature (sub
natura commum). This [fact] suggests, as we have seen, the characteristic [that belongs to]
intellectual activities" ("Das Objekt der menschlichen Erkenntnis ist ausschliebblich das
Universelle, und dieses spiegelt sich auf der Ebene der Wahmehmung in einem sensibile per
accidens insofem wider, als es einen Gegenstand unter dem Aspekt sub natura communi
enthalt. Dies gemahnt, wie gesehen, an die Charakterizierung intellekriver Tatigkeiten" [ibid.,
173]). "Thomas confines the refined perceptual operation of so-called higher animals to
behaviorally relevant states of affairs. The basis for the limitation of perception of animals to
the behaviorally relevant intentiones is [the animal's] inability to seek sensible properties under
the aspect of a cognitive acquisition that is always understood as the grasping of universal
characteristics" ("Thomas schrankt den Vorgang der differenzierten Wahmehmung
sogenannter hoherer Tiere auf verhaltensrelevente Sachverhalte ein. Der Grund fur die
Eingrenzung der Wahmehmung von Tieren auf die verhaltensrelevanten intentiones ist in

584

A. LEO WHITE

In spite of the way in which brutes fall short of human modes
of perception, their ability to cognize complex objects tells us a lot
about the relation between sense and reason in humans. For if
brutes can perceive states of affairs, Tellkamp tells us, it follows
that human perception achieves some degree of complexity and
coherency owing to what it shares in common with that of other
animals. Reason needs not impose order upon sensation according
to a priori structures. 22 Tellkamp makes a related point in terms
of the philosophy of language. Language is not the sole source of
coherency, for animals can perceive a complex yet orderly world
without being able to describe that order through language. 23
Humans can likewise perceive a coherent world without yet
having formulated in linguistic terms what they have perceived
(though, of course, such perceptions may give rise to expressions
of belief). 24 The complexity that characterizes animal perception
therefore provides the basis of a human understanding of the
world.
Tellkamp's claim that particular intentions (i.e., those
perceived by the vis cogitativa and vis aestimativa) are complex
relationships or states of affairs is quite helpful. By noting the
similarities between instinctive awareness and the distinctively
human modes of perception, he lets us see how Aquinas could
rightly claim that the vis cogitativa and the vis aestimativa belong
to the same species of power. By noting the parallels between
human perception and the formation of a proposition he gives us
ihrer mangelnden Fahigkeit, sensible Eigenschaften unter dem Aspekt des Erkenntnisgewinns,
der ja immer in Begriffen der Erfassung universeller Merkmale verstanden wird, zu suchen"
[ibid., 276]).
21
Tellkamp doesn't mention Kant by name but seems to have him in mind in the following
passage. Aquinas's theory of perception "denies any direct dependence of the sensibiliaper
accidens upon intellectual contents, which therefore do not have to be presupposed as
necessary conditions for perception; since it can be established that non-rational beings, as
well as humans, can achieve a correct and differentiated way of relating to the world" ("dies
spricht iibrigens gegen eine direkte Abhiingigkeit der sensibilia per accidensvon intellektiven
Inhalten, miissen deshalb nicht als notwendige Bedingungen fiir Wahrnehmung vorausgesetz
werden, wei! festgestellt werden kann, dass nichtrationale Wesen, ebenso wie Menschen, zu
einem korrekten und differenzierten Weltbezug gelangen" [ibid., 171]).
23
Ibid., 173; 174 n. 116.
24
Ibid., 173.

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

585

a glimpse of how the human perception of intentions mediates
between sense and reason. 25
Although Tellkamp brings us closer to a clear understanding of
Aquinas's theory of perception, he does not bring us all the way
there. He encounters two obstacles along the way. First, by
identifying utility as one of the two elements that make up the
state of affairs perceived by an animal, he gives the impression
that utility itself is simple in nature. Were that so, utility might be
thought of as a quality that inheres in the perceived object but is
not apparent to the external senses. But utility seems instead to
involve a relation, that is, the usefulness of the perceived
individual object to the perceiver. A more complete account of
perception recognizes and explores this relatedness. The second
problem com:erns the animal's awareness of its own actions.
Although Tellkamp repeatedly affirms that animals perceive
circumstances that are relevant to guiding behavior/ 6 he never
examines how or whether an animal is aware of behavior itself.
This problem surfaces in his characterization of the perceptual
object as a state of affairs: when he gives an example of a
Sachverhalt, he leaves behind any mention of the animal's
awareness of its own response to what it perceives. The young
sheep, says Tellkamp, perceives its mother as a source of
nourishment. 27 Aquinas, on the other hand, says that the sheep
perceives its mother as something to be suckled. 28 Other examples
of states of affairs also leave behind any mention of awareness of
the perceiver's own response. 29 The impression that one gets from
reading these passages is that animals interact with their
surroundings through a kind of automatic response, one that
involves no awareness of the perceiver's own acts of pursuit or
avoidance. Such perception could hardly guide an animal's
actions.

25

Ibid., 171.
Ibid., 172, 173, 276, 280.
27
Ibid., 172.
2
s De Anima II, c. 13 (45.1:122). See text at n. 31, below.
29
Tellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstiindeund Sensibilia, 138, 171.
26

586

A.LEO WHITE

III. FURTHER SOLUTIONS PROPOSED

The following sections remedy the above-mentioned
shortcomings by turning to those passages in which Aquinas
describes an animal's awareness of its own actions as well as its
awareness of how it stands in relation to its perceptual object.
Most of these descriptions are to be found in Aquinas's remarks
about the role of perception in the concupiscible and irascible
passions, By merging the latter passages with his remarks about
the estimative awareness of intentions, this study shows that
animal perception involves three kinds of components. They are
the awareness of (1) the individual object presently being sensed,
(2) an imagined conjunction with something that is either good or
bad for the perceiver, and (3) the imagined self-movement
through which the perceiver interacts with (1) and thereby either
achieves or avoids (2).
This study examines not only inborn perceptual dispositions
but acquired ones as well. Here memory plays a key role, for all
but the simplest animals rely upon their memory in order to
engage in any act of pursuit or avoidance. Aquinas gives the name
of "custom" (consuetudo) to the disposition in the memory
through which past perceptions guide present ones. The present
study will argue that custom enhances perception by elaborating
upon the basic structures already found in instinctive judgments.
It does not give rise to the perception of new types of objects.
According to Aquinas, therefore, even the most advanced forms
of animal learning belong within the parameters of instinct.

A) Actions and Passions and the "vis aestimativa"
Aquinas sometimes describes the content of perceptual
intentions in terms of the perceiver's interactions with other
individuals. For example, when contrasting instinct with free
judgment, he says that the sheep, upon seeing the wolf, naturally
judges that the wolf is to be avoided ifugiendum). 30 While
30 STh I, q. 83, a. 1 (5:307); see Q. D. De Anima, a. 13 (ed. James H. Robb [foronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968], 191).

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

587

contrasting the estimative power of brutes with the cogitative
power found in humans, Aquinas says in his Commentary on De
Anima that the estimative power of a lamb regards its mother as
something to be nursed, and the same power in a ewe regards
grass as something to be eaten. A brute regards an object in terms
of the perceiver's own response, be it pursuit or flight. But an
animal seems to be aware of how other individuals might act upon
it as well. Aquinas captures this two-way interaction by saying that
the estimative power regards its object as the principle or terminus
of an action or passion. 31 The wolf regards the sheep as the
terminus of an action inasmuch as it regards its potential prey as
something to be eaten, and the sheep regards the wolf as a
principle of a passion inasmuch as it regards it as the source of
·harm. While the Commentary on De Anima proposes that the
estimative awareness of individuals may be either in terms of
actions or (aut) in terms of passions, the Commentary on the
Metaphysics gets rid of this strict disjunctive and instead combines
these two aspects. The sheep that flees a wolf, says Aquinas in the
latter commentary, is aware that something harmful is to be
avoided. 32 According to the latter text, the estimative power may
combine the awareness of how the wolf will act with the
awareness of how the perceiver is to respond.
Aquinas's theory of the passions confirms the above indications
concerning the complex nature of perceptual awareness. We will
start with an examination of the concupiscible passions and work
our way toward the irascible passions, which have a more obvious
connection with perceptual intentions. The most basic passions,
that is, love and hate, are caused by the perception of something
as respectively suitable or unsuitable to the perceiver. 33 An animal,
c.13 (45.1:122).
I Metaphys., lect. 1, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis doctoris angelici ordinis praedictorum
In Metaphysicam Aristotelis Commentaria (Turin: Marietti, 1915), 8, par. 11.
33 In this essay I shall not offer an account of how one becomes sentiently aware of the
kind of suitability that moves the sense appetite with love. Note, however, that in II Sent., d.
24, q. 2, a. 1, r. (Mandonnet, ed., 602), St. Thomas distinguishes the estimative power's
apprehension of something as suitable (sub ratione convenientis) from the perception of what
is suitable to the external senses. This claim gives the impression that the common sense (as
the terminus of the external senses) and the imagination (as the power that retains and
reproduces sensible species in the common sense) could perceive some forms of suitability.
31 IIDeAnima,
32

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A. LEO WHITE

however, perceives not only suitability and its contrary, but also
whether the object is absent or present. Hence it never merely
loves or hates: it will be moved either with craving
(concupiscentia) or desire (desiderium)34 when it perceives that
something beloved is absent, and it wiH be moved with pleasure
(delectatio) should the same object be perceived as present. 35
Likewise, it will be moved with aversion when an odious object is
perceived as absent and sorrow when the same is perceived as
present.
The irascible appetite could be compared to the concupisdble
as the complex is to the simple. This higher level of complexity is
apparent in Aquinas's descriptions of the two species of sensible
objects. The proper object of the concupiscible passions is what is
"simply" or "absolutely" suitable. 36 Sometimes, however, pursuit
and avoidance are difficult; in these cases, the object of pursuit is
no longer "simply good" but is instead a "difficult good." The
irascible passions, says Aquinas, enable animals to act in such
situations. For example, when aware of a future good as attainable
only with difficulty, an animal is moved by hope to pursue it. 37 If,
however, it perceives this good as so difficult that it seems
unattainable, then the animal will despair. And if an animal
The Summa Theologiae's article on the internal senses (STh I, q. 78, a. 4) implies the same.
There he states that an animal's pursuit of what is present and easily attainable (and the
turning away from what is easily avoidable) can be explained by the perceptions of formas,
which pertain to the common sense and imagination. H we insert his theory of the passions
into this remark, then it becomes apparent that the corresponding appetitive movements are
craving and aversion. In such a case, the apprehensions that pertain to the common sense and
imagination would be sufficient to cause these concupiscible passions. If perceptions by these
internal senses were sufficient to cause craving, then they would likewise be sufficient to cause
love, which is a necessary condition of all concupiscible passions.
34 Humans can be moved not only by craving for bodily well-being but also by desire
(desiderium), owing to the influence of reason upon sentient awareness and appetite. Similarly,
they may be moved not only by delight but also by joy (gaudium) when perceiving that they
are in the presence of what they love. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas speaks of joy and its
contrary as belonging exclusively to rational animals. Similarly desire is the properly rational
inclination toward what gives joy: STh I-II, q. 31, a. 3 (6:217).
35 STh HI, q. 30, a. 2 (6:210).
36 STh HI, q. 23, a. 1 (6:173); q. 25, a. 1, sc (6:183). See also STh I-II, q. 23, a. 2 (6:175);
q. 26, a. 1 (6:188).
37 STh I-II, q. 40, a. 3 (8:267).

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encounters difficulty in avoiding a future evil, then it will be
moved either by courage or by fear, depending upon whether or
not it perceives that it can overcome that difficulty. 38
In each of the above cases, an irascible passion originates from
a concupiscible passion. For example, hope originates from desire,
just as fear does from aversion. 39 It follows that the forms of
awareness that cause the irascible passions presuppose and build
upon the forms of awareness that cause the concupiscible
passions.4° For example, the awareness that causes hope builds
upon the cognition that causes one to desire to attain the same
object, adding to it the awareness of the difficult, perhaps even
painful, activities that one must engage in before obtaining what
one desires. When the perception that causes desire is combined
with this awareness of the difficulty involved in attaining what is
desired, then hope will arise-at least as long as this difficulty is
not regarded as insurmountable.
38 SI'h I-II, q. 41, a. 2 (8:273). Courage or daring follows from hope (SI'h I-II, q. 45, a. 2,
ad 2) when the latter regards a fearful impediment to some good as being able to be overcome.
39 SI'h1-11,q. 41, a. 2, ad 3 (6:273). Anger is even more complex than the other irascible
passions, for it originates from two concupiscible passions directed toward two different
objects, that is, sorrow for a present evil and the desire for future vengeance (see SI'h 1-11, q.
46, a. 1, ad 2 (6:292)). While contrasting anger (which involves a complex appetitive
movement following upon a complex apprehensive act) with hatred (which involves a simple
appetitive movement and cognitive act), Aquinas says, "We must, however, observe a twofold
difference in this respect, between anger on the one side, and hatred and love on the other.
The first difference is that anger always regards two objects: whereas love and hatred
sometimes regard but one object, as when a man is said to love wine or something of the kind,
or to hate it. The second difference is, that both the objects of love are good: since the lover
wishes good to someone, as to something agreeable to himself: while both the objects of
hatred bear the character of evil: for the man who hates, wishes evil to someone, as to
something disagreeable to him. Whereas anger regards one object under the aspect of good,
viz., vengeance, which it desires to have; and the other object under the aspect of evil, viz.,
the noxious person, on whom it seeks to be avenged." (SI'h 1-11, q. 46, a. 2 [Summa
theologica, trans., Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London, 1920; 2d reprint,
Westiminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), vol. 2, p. 779; Leonine ed., 6:293).
Ml Note, however, that although both hope and desire are directed toward a future good,
there is a difference iri the range of objects toward which these two passions can be directed.
Hope is always directed toward what is absent, whereas desire can often be directed toward
what is already being presently enjoyed, albeit in an imperfect manner (SI'h I-II, q. 33, a. 2,
ad 1 [6:232)). And hope is not directed toward trivial things, while desire can sometimes have
trivial objects.

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Although he does not mention the perception of intentiones
when discussing the passions, Aquinas does on occasion contrast
the roles of estimation and imagination in causing the passions.
The imagination, says Aquinas, apprehends the object of the
concupiscible passions, while the estimative power apprehends the
object of the irascible passions.41 In the Sentences he explains that
a purely sensory appetite is directed toward goods according to
how they are apprehended by the senses. Since the senses as such
are aware of the here and now, a purely sensory appetite inclines
toward a particular thing inasmuch as it is good now (ut nunc).
Such an inclination is found in the concupiscible appetite, for this
power seeks union with whatever is pleasant now and avoids
whatever is painful now. And the imagination can direct the
concupiscible appetite by reproducing the form of awareness
found in the common sense. But sometimes a brute must do
something that is painful here and now in order to survive. For
example, a lion must fight off scavengers when eating its prey.
Such behavior requires appetite and apprehension that go beyond
the recognition of and striving after the good ut nunc. For that
reason, brute awareness and appetite in some way participate in
, reason's awareness of order in moving the animal to avoid
pleasure or even do what is painful so as to attain future benefits.
Hence the irascible appetite, which is capable of such passions,
and the estimative power, which apprehends the object of the
irascible appetite, both transcend the purely sensory order. The
concupiscible passions and the imagination, however, are strictly
sensory appetitive and apprehensive powers. 42
B) Anticipation, Interaction and Holism

Two themes come to the surface in our examination of what
Aquinas has to say about animal perception. First, some form of
anticipation is involved in those passions that cause movement in
animals. This involvement is most apparent in the irascible
41 De Verit., q. 25, a. 2 (22.3:733). For the discussion in the same passage of how the
estimative power pertains to the irascible appetite, see above, note 9.
42 III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, r. (Moos ed., 816-17, pars. 25-27).

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passions, all of which are directed toward a future good or evil,43
but it can also be found to a lessor degree in two of the
concupisdble passions, namely, craving and aversion. In each of
these cases, the animal anticipates being united with something
suitable or unsuitable to itself. Of course, this anticipation in
brutes must be distinguished from the way in which humans think
about the future. We thematize the future as such, making
calendars and mapping out sequences of events when engaged in
practical reasoning. Surely, these human activities involve a level
of complexity and precision in our perception that lies beyond the
scope of nonrational animals. Aquinas has this difference in mind
when he insists at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae's
discussion of prudence that only reason is cognizant of the
future. 44 In his article on hope too he insists that brutes are not
cognizant of the future. 45 Nevertheless, a more basic futuredirected awareness seems to be implicit in Aquinas's descriptions
of many of the passions. For example, he mentions the future
when describing the objects of desire and aversion. 46 He also says
that craving and aversion are caused by the perception of their
respective objects as absent. But in this case, "absent" means
something like "coming soon." Aquinas hints at this futural
43 HI Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4 (Moos ed., 815, par. 16). In De Veritate, Aquinas
distinguishes the futural orientation of the irascible passions from desire. At first he objects to
the notion that hope and fear are principal passions, pointing out that their orientation toward
the future ("in irascibili est passio respectu foturi") is something shared in common with
desire. Since desire is not considered one of the four principal passions, neither should hope
and fear. He then replies that future-directed concupiscible passions originate from passions
directed toward the present, and those other passions (i.e., joy and sorrow,) falling under the
same concupiscible power; hence joy and sorrow are the principal concupiscible passions
rather than desire and aversion. But hope and fear are not derived from other irascible
passions; hence they are the two primary irascible passions (De Verit., q. 26, a. 5, obj. 4 and
ad 4 [22.3:763-641).
44 STh H-H, q. 47, a. 1 (8:348).
45 STh I-II, q. 40, a. 3, ad 1 (6:267).
46 STh I-II, q. 59, a. 3 (6:382); q. 40, a. 1 (6:265); q. 36, a. 2, ad 2 (6:251); see also STh
I-H, q. 30, a. 2, ad 3. Note that one may desire or crave what one already really possesses,
provided that one does not possess it fully. For example, one may crave food even while
eating it, providing that one is not yet full. See STh I-II, q. 33, a. 2 (6:232). Hope, on the
other hand, may not be directed toward what is imperfectly or incompletely present. Unlike
craving, hope is directed only toward what is fully absent.

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orientation by saying that the object of craving or desire is
something "not yet possessed" (nondum habitum). 47 "Not yet"
seems to imply that one expects to possess it soon. Otherwise, one
could not distinguish the perceptions that cause desire from those
that cause sorrow. One who perceives that something beloved is
absent may be moved by sorrow instead of desire. 48 In the latter
case, however, "absent" means something more like "not coming
for a long while" or perhaps "not ever coming" rather than
"coming soon." In the second context, the term "absent" signifies
a stable condition, while in the case of craving and aversion,
"absence" refers to one that is in flux. Both cases, however,
involve some sort of anticipation.
The second theme that surfaces in Aquinas's account of the
passions is interaction. In order for an animal to be united with a
future good or avoid a future evil, it must interact with the things
in its environment. Hence the same perceptions that involve
anticipation also involve some awareness of the interactions that
one must engage in while en route to the desired goal. This aspect
of perception is quite apparent in Aquinas's descriptions of the
irascible passions. In order to be moved by hope one must first
perceive something desirable and difficult to attain. But difficulty
has two sides to it, and each of these implies the awareness of
interaction. Aquinas mentions these two facets when discussing
human passions in the Summa Theologiae. One fears because one
regards a harmful object as difficult to avoid. But one regards the
object in this way, Aquinas tells us, either because one regards
oneself as too weak to avoid the evil or because one regards one's
enemy as too strong. 49 Of course, the explicit and thematic
awareness of one's own weakness or one's enemy's strength
occurs only in humans. Thanks to the ability to think abstractly,
a human can grasp the end and means as such, and while doing so
47 STh 1-11, q. 23, a. 4 (6:176).
48 One can be moved

with sorrow by the loss of some good, as Aquinas notes in STh 1-11,

q. 35, a. 6 (6:245); and q. 36, a. 1, ad 2 (6:249). Conversely, as he notes in STb 1-11, q. 32,
a. 3 (6:230), joy can occur when one perceives that one has avoided a great evil. Both sorrow
and joy presuppose that the good or evil will remain absent.
49 STh 1-11, q. 42, a. 5 (6:279); see STh 1-11, q. 43, a. 2 (6:282).

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may consider one's own power or that of others. Such
considerations may exceed the ability of nonrational animals.
Nevertheless, it seems that Aquinas believes that some more basic
estimation of what the perceiver and its object are capable of
doing is contained in brute perceptions as well. When he says in
the Summa Theologiae, for example, that a dog appears to be
moved by hope to pursue its prey, he presupposes that the animal
is aware of difficulty. In fact, he says that when the potential prey
is exceedingly far away, the dog will perceive it without pursuing
it. 50 The difference between the two situations lies in the
estimation of the level of difficulty involved. In order to act
differently in these different situations, the animal must be in
some way aware of the degree of difficulty involved in pursuit or
avoidance. And inasmuch as difficulty itself involves interaction,
animals that are capable of irascible passions (i.e., perfect animals)
are in some obscure way aware of interaction as well.
The level of difficulty that humans associate with their actions
influences their perception of presence and absence as well as how
they anticipate the future. One hopes to possess something that is
difficult to obtain inasmuch as one considers it in one's power to
attain it. 51 In fact, one who considers an object in this manner
already takes a certain delight, as if it were already possessed: the
object of hope is already present in some qualified manner. 52 Yet
if the difficulty involved in attainment were to become too great,
one would regard the same object as fixedly absent and be moved
instead with despair and sorrow. 53 And one who regards a future
evil as unavoidable regards that evil as if it were already present. 54
In each of these cases, the awareness of presence and absence
extends beyond the present moment and into the anticipated
future. These anticipations are a function of our perception of our
so Sfh 1-11, q. 40, a. 3 (6:267).
I-II, q. 40, a. 5 (6:269); see also III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5 (Moos ed., 824).
Note that hope may be based upon the ability of another to act effectively: see Sfh 1-11, q. 40,
a. 2, ad l; q. 40, a. 7.
52 Sfh I-II, q. 36, a. 2, ad 2 (6:251).
53 De Verit., q. 26, a. 4 (22.3:761); Sfh I-II, q. 36, a. 2, ad 3 (6:251).
54 Sfh 1-11, q. 42, a. 2 (6:277).
51 Sfh

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own ability to engage in pursuit or avoidance effectively. That is,
we anticipate differently on the basis of how we perceive our own
actions. The converse is also true: how we perceive our own
ability to act is a function of what we anticipate will happen.
Consider the person who is aware that an evil will occur very
suddenly, so suddenly that he does not expect to be able to deal
with it successfully. As a result of perceiving himself as helpless,
he will be moved by a special form of fear, which we call
anxiety. 55
The perception of difficulty and the perception of presence or
absence are able to affect each other in the manner described
above because of the holistic nature of perception. Consider what
the contrary, that is, atomistic perception, would be like. An
animal would be separately aware of the individual before the
external senses, an anticipated good, and its own self-movement.
In order to perform the sorts of judgments that Aquinas attributes
to the vis aestimativa, the animal would have to discover or
contrive a way of connecting the objects of these three
perceptions with each other. According to Aquinas's description
of perception as it relates to the passions, however, animals are
not separately aware of these various components. On the
contrary, the estimative power sees all of these facets in terms of
each other. An animal imagines its own self-movement not in an
isolated fashion, but as movement toward or away from an
individual before the senses. It perceives that individual in terms
of its own interactions with it. Nor does it imagine and anticipate
some future situation in isolation from the other facets. Rather, it
regards that situation as the terminus of the present interactions.
For these reasons, Aquinas's two accounts of perception (i.e., as
an apprehensive power and vis-a-vis the passions) are decidedly
holistic rather than atomistic.
C) Instinctive Judgment as a Complex Mental Act

The above analyses of instinct and the passions hint at a
substantial overlap between the two ways in which Aquinas
55 STh 1-11,

q. 42, a. 5.

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describes animal cognition. For example, the perception of the
intentio danger or enmity consists of the awareness of the
individual presently acting upon the senses as both a source of
future harm and as something to be avoided through determinate
actions here and now. But these two elements are also found in
the perception of that which causes fear, for an animal fears as the
result of imagining both a possible evil and the difficult actions
involved in the avoidance of that evil. It seems, therefore, that an
animal becomes aware of both the difficult good and the intentio
danger through one and the same perceptual act. Aquinas himself
insinuates this when he remarks in the Summa Theologiae that the
sheep fears the wolf once it has opined, as it were, that the wolf
is its enemy. 56 Enmity, as we have seen, is sensibile per accidens,
but the immediate effect of the perception of enmity is fear. Since
fear is an irascible passion caused by the perception of the difficult
good, it follows that through one and the same perception an
animal is aware of both an intention (i.e., danger) and the difficult
good.
Note, however, that danger and the difficult good are not
entirely synonymous with each other, for these two terms focus
upon different aspects of the same complex perceptual object. In
the examples just noted, the terms "danger" and "enemy" signify
principally the wolf that is presently acting upon the senses, while
the "difficult good" signifies principally what is anticipated.
"Danger" and the "difficult good" are not so much two different
objects as they are two aspects of one multifaceted object.
One can name the same instinctive judgment in different ways
according to the focal point of one's concern. When one is
concerned mainly with the role of the vis aestimativa as an
apprehensive power, one may say that it perceives an enemy or a
friend. When one is principally concerned with how its judgment
precipitates the passions, one may call the same act the
apprehension of the difficult good or (in the case of craving and
aversion) the absolute good. Our adoption of either focal point
56 STh I, q. 81, a. 3; De Verit., q. 24, a. 2 (22.3:686.131). Aquinas likewise ties the bird's
nest-building activity to hope, an irascible passion, in III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2 (Moos, ed.,
814).

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A.LEOWHITE

should not obscure the fact that both names signify a complex
awareness that interrelates the same basic elements.
Although it may be clear that all perceptions of the difficult
good are perceptions of intentions, one must not infer the
converse from this-namely, that all instinctive perceptions of
intentions are likewise perceptions of the difficult good. Aquinas
gives examples of perceptions of intentions that clearly do not
involve the awareness of the object of any of the irascible
passions. For example, when discussing the perception of
sensibiliaper accidens,Aquinas notes that the estimative power of
a lamb regards its mother as something to be nursed, while a
mature sheep regards grass as something to be eaten. 57 If we
assume that consuming such food is a pleasant activity for the
lamb, then we can conclude that such instinctive judgments do not
involve the awareness of a difficult good. Instead, they move the
animal to action through the perception of the absolute or simple
good, that is, the object of the concupiscible appetite. More
precisely, the lamb's perception of the sensibileper accidens (i.e.,
regarding the ewe as something to be nursed) causes the offspring
to suck through the mediation of craving. 58 We can infer that
aversion, the contrary passion, likewise involves the perception of
a sensibile per accidens, that is, that something odious is to be
avoided. Among perfect animals, the perception of a sensibileper
accidens is involved in causing actions motivated not only by the
irascible passions but by craving and aversion as well. 59
57 II De Anima, c. 13 (45.1:122). Note that even humans possess some instinctive
awareness, for Aquinas says in the Commentary on the Sentences that infants instinctively take
to the breast (II Sent., d. 20, q. 20, a. 2, ad 5 [Mandonnet, ed., 515]).
58 Note that craving and its contrary are the only concupiscible appetites that suffice to
cause self-movement. The other concupiscible passions (i.e., love, hate, bodily pleasure and
pain, joy and sorrow) cause movement only inasmuch as they are conjoined with craving or
aversion.
59 Imperfect animals, which lack memory, are incapable of irascible passions: see Sententia
Libri de sensu et sensato, prohemium (45.2:8). They seem to be moved by craving
(concupiscentia), but seem to lack not only memory, but an estimative power as well. Still,
they possess an indeterminate imagination, through which they imagine their own actions
when sensing something suitable (De Anima II, c. 29 (45.1:194]). Note that Aquinas affirms
that even these animals imagine their own actions.

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Instinctive judgment always involves three components: (1) the
estimative power of a brute recognizes something presently acting
upon the senses, 60 (2) the animal imagines a bodily condition that
it regards as suitable or unsuitable to itself, and (3) the brute
imagines its own self-movement. 61 The estimative power's
judgment interrelates these factors. 62 In those cases involving the
difficult good, the judgment is still more complex than it is for the
simple good (i.e., the object of the concupiscible appetite), for the
brute must be cognizant of that self-movement that is associated
not only with enjoyment of something pleasant per se (e.g.,
chewing food), but also with antecedent activities that are either
painful or at least involve turning away from what is pleasant. 63

D) Prudence and Custom
With the above analysis of the operation of the vis aestimativa
in hand, we can now turn to memory to see how it perfects
instinctive judgment. Aquinas joins Aristotle in distinguishing the
animals that lack memory from those that possess it. The former,
called imperfect animals, are capable only of very simple and

60 The very recognition of a multiplicity of sensible features as belonging to the same
individual seems to pertain to the cogitative power. For a discussion of why the cogitative
rather than the common sense performs this synthetic function, see Robert Schmidt, "The
Unifying Sense: Which?" The New Scholasticism 57 (1983): 4-5.
61 If we extrapolate from what Aquinas says we may include more than movement under
(3), for animals sometimes remain still when hunting or avoiding being hunted.
62 Prior to making this judgment, however, a bmte may sometimes undergo a kind of
cognitive process whereby it first relates what it presently senses to some future good or evil,
and soon but not immediately associates the anticipated situation with a fitting response.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Aquinas frequently identifies only some of the three elements
when describing the working of instinct. Note, however, that the judgment that moves the
passions and thereby causes self-movement must interrelate all three of the other elements.
For a brute could not judge that something is to be avoided unless it sustained its regard for
it as unsuitable. Furthermore, such a process, if it does occur, is not to be confused with
deliberation, for a brute inexorably relates a particular end with a particular course of action.
This course is determined, says Aquinas, by instinct and custom, not by a comparison of
alternatives.
63 De Verit,, q. 25, a. 2 (22.3:732).

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indeterminate movements of grasping and retracting. 64 Perfect
animals, on the other hand, are able to move in a determinate
manner toward a remote or even an absent object. 65 In order to
perform the complex instinctive judgments that direct them
toward such objects, perfect animals must rely upon their
memory. 66 Of course, memory is not the sole cause of instinctive
judgment. The very first time that a sheep sees a wolf, it is able to
judge it as harmful without relying upon the memory of past
wolves,67 and a bird instinctively gathers straw for building a nest
without having done so in the past. 68 But even when performing
these activities for the very first time, the perfect animal requires
memory in order to direct its activities toward what is absent. The
64 De Sensu et sensato, prohemium (45.2:13). Earlier in that passage he treats animalia
inmobilia as synonymous with animalia inperfecta.In his commentary on De anima, Aquinas

reviews what Aristotle says about imperfect animals: "[Aristotle] shows what the principles of
motion are in imperfect animals ...• It seems that they have craving, because they seem to
have joy and sorrow (for they retract themselves when they are touched by something harmful
and they open themselves up and stretch themselves out toward something suitable to
themselves, which would not occur unless they had pain and pleasure). If they have these [i.e.,
pain, pleasure and movement], however, they then it is necessary that that they have craving.
But since craving does not occur without imagination, it still must be asked in what way might
they might have imagination. And [Aristotle] responds that that these animals have
imagination and craving in the same manner that they move. But they move indeterminately,
without aiming their movement, as it were, at some determinate place, as happens in animals
that move progressively by imagining something distant, craving it, and moving toward it. But
such imperfect animals do not imagine something distant, for they do not imagine anything
except in the presence of the sensible thing. But when they are harmed, they imagine it as
something harmful and pull themselves back, and when they delight [in something], they
spread themselves over it and attach themselves to it. And thus they have an indeterminate
imagination and craving inasmuch as they imagine and desire something as suitable but not
as this or that thing or as something here or there. Instead, they have a confused imagination
and craving." (DeAnima Ill, c. 10 [45.1:249-50]).
65 De Sensu et sensato, prohemium (45.2:13) The same paragraph goes on to discuss how
smell enables perfect animals to detect suitable food when it is remote, while vision and
hearing enable these animals to deal with whatever is to be avoided or sought after.
66 Aquinas explains the need of perfect animals for memory in De Sensu et sensato,
prohemium (45.2:8.229): "[S]ense according to its proper notion is aware only of what is
present. It is owing to a participation in reason or intellect that a power in the sensitive part
[of the soul] tends toward things that are not present. Whence memory, which is aware of
things past, belongs only to perfect animals, inasmuch as they are a kind of high point of
sensitive cognition."
67 II Post. Anal., lect. 20 (1:399-402, pars. 8-11).
68 STh I, q. 78, a. 4 (5:256).

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sheep depends upon its memory of its surroundings in order to set
upon a path of escape from the wolf, and the bird can build a nest
only if it remembers where the nest is located while gathering
straw.
Memory enables animals to learn how to act more effectively
in two ways. The first way, which is common to all perfect
animals, consists of first encountering what one already regards as
suitable or unsuitable within a broader context, and later letting
one's actions be guided by associating elements of that context
with that good or evil. The second way occurs through
communication with other animals; 69 for example, Aquinas
believes that birds learn to fly by being taught how to do so by
their parents. 7°For this reason, Aquinas distinguishes two grades
of perfect animals: those belonging to the lower have memory but
no hearing; hence they cannot be taught. Those belonging to the
second, higher grade possess hearing and hence can be
instructed. 71 Both of these forms of learning result in a disposition
that is analogous to prudence in humans, for prudence enables
one to deal with things in the present on the basis of the past. 72
Aquinas says, therefore, that perfect animals participate
imperfectly in prudence-imperfectly because they do not form
their judgments about what is useful or harmful by performing
comparisons during deliberation. 73
Aquinas makes a similar comparison between humans and
brutes in his Commentary on the Metaphysics. Custom in brutes,
he says, is a meager participation in experience, which is found in
human beings alone. 74 These statements about prudence and
custom are closely related. Experience, an act of the cogitative
power, is the discovery of what is suitable or unsuitable that takes
place after comparing various individuals that one has perceived
Ill De Anima, c. 12 (45.1:260).
SI'h I, q. 101, a. 2, ad 2 (5:447).
71 I Metaphys., lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 8, par. 12).
72 Sententia Libri De Memoria et Reminiscentia, c. 1 (45.2:104). Aquinas also attributes
prudence exclusively to animals with memory in IMetaphys., lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 8, par. 11).
73 De Verit., q. 24, a. 2 (22.3:686). I Metaphys., lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 8, par. 11) also
contrasts how human prudence involves deliberation, while that of brutes does not.
74 I Metaphys., lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 9, par. 15).
69

70

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A.LEO WHITE

in the past. 75 Since brutes cannot engage in such comparisons,
they must rely instead upon natural judgment and past
perceptions to guide their present actions. Aquinas tells us about
the nature of this guidance by comparing custom in brutes to two
forms of human cognition. Custom, he says, is related to the
memory of brutes just as experience is to particular reason (i.e.,
the cogitative power) and art is related to reason in human
beings. 76 Brutes arrive at a perfect way of life through custom just
as the human way of life is perfected by art. 77 Custom is therefore
an acquired disposition in the memory that helps guide animal
actions to achieve their goal more effectively. Note, however, that
humans are guided by custom as well. When treating the virtues,
Aquinas says that custom makes actions easier and faster. In fact,
he says in one passage that experience makes actions easier on
account of custom. 78 It may be more accurate, therefore, to say
that custom is the component of human experience that humans
and brutes have in common.
In order to understand how custom guides behavior we must
unpack the above analogy with experience in humans. The vis
cogitativa relies upon the memory of the past in forming the
comparisons that yield the discovery of what is suitable or
unsuitable. Once it has acquired such an experience, the cogitative
power is able to perceive individuals as suitable or unsuitable
without repeating the comparative process. Custom likewise relies
upon memory to yield a new way of perceiving things around
one's self. This relation between memory and the perception of
things in the present is apparent in Aquinas's discussion of animal
training. While insisting in the Summa Theologiae that brutes
cannot, strictly speaking, acquire habits (because habit is a
function of choice), he grants that reason can modify the
dispositions found in animals inasmuch as human trainers can
establish custom within them. 79 In De Veritate, Aquinas mentions
Ibid.
Ibid. (Marietti ed., 9, par. 16).
77 Ibid.
78 STh I-II, q. 40, a. 5, ad 1 (6:270).
79 STh I-II, q. 50, a. 3, ad 2 (6:319).

75

76

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601

that a trainer can use the memory of an animal to cause it to fear
and thereby learn to obey its master. 8°Fear, however, involves the
perception of something present as a source of possible harm, and
it pertains to the estimative power to perceive the object of fear.
Hence while custom may first of all affect the memory by
establishing a certain order in the way memory recalls things, 81 it
affects animal behavior only inasmuch as it modifies how the vis
aestimativa perceives things that are presently acting upon the
senses. This modification touches the three components of
instinctive judgment that we have already examined. For the
animal learns to fear something by relating a previously neutral
object or action to an imagined harm as well as the activity of
flight. Custom's modification of the structure of natural judgment
becomes second nature, as Aquinas frequently says,82 precisely by
80 De Verit., q. 24, a. 2, ad 7 (22.3:687).
81 Speaking about

the cause of reminiscence, he says that it is caused by an order that
remains in the soul after receiving an initial impression (De Mem. et Remin., c. 5 [45.2: 120)).
In the following chapter he says that reminiscing is made easy by custom (ibid., c. 6
[45.2:126)). Note that John Ryan gives historical evidence in "Aquinas and Hume on the
Laws of Association" (New Scholasticism 12 [1938): 366-77) that David Hume possessed a
copy of Aquinas's commentary ()n De Memoria et Reminiscentia, in which Aquinas develops
a theory of custom as the basis of reminiscence. In developing his own laws of association,
Hume apparently relied upon Aquinas's analysis of the various modes of reminiscence, but
without giving credit to his Scholastic source. One very significant difference between the two,
however, is that Aquinas's theory of perception is, at the level of the vis cogitativa, thoroughly
holistic, while Hume's analysis of the laws of mind is at its foundation atomistic. Another
difference concerns the relation between cognition and appetite. According to Aquinas, we
take pleasure in something because we perceive that it is good (i.e., that the object is suitable
to ourselves); for Hume, we perceive something as good because it gives pleasure.
82 In STh I-II, q. 58, a. 1, St. Thomas examines the twofold meaning of the term custom:
it may refer either to a practice or to a quasi-natural inclination found in brutes and humans
to act a certain way. This inclination arises from practice; hence Aquinas says that custom
becomes second nature and causes inclination ("consuetudo quodammodo vertitur in naturam,
et facit inclinationem"). Hence the two meanings of custom are interrelated. Aquinas repeats
the claim that habits-which make actions easier and more pleasant-are caused by custom,
which in turn which makes those actions second nature to us (STh 1-11, q. 56, a. 5 [6:360); II
Metaphys., lect. 5 [Marietti ed.,135, par. 332); ill Eth., c. 15 [47.1:165]). The last quotation
relates custom as it pertains to habit and appetite to custom as it is found in the memory. The
Commentary on De Memoria explains that we become better able to reminisce on account of
the customary inclination, which manifests itself in a certain order in which things happen,
and this order is like that of nature (De Mem. et Remin., c. 6 [45.2:126)).

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A. LEO WHITE

elaborating upon the complex structure of natural or instinctive
judgment.
Note that custom as it is found in brutes never departs from
the basic structure found in instinctive awareness. An offspring
may learn hunting techniques from its parent, but such learning
merely refines the preexisting judgment that what is suitable is to
be pursued. After repeated encounters with something painful, an
animal may learn to avoid the source of that harm, but the new
judgment that this thing is to be avoided merely builds upon the
natural judgment that bodily harm is to be avoided. 83

E) Animal Perceptionand Concepts
T ellkamp argues that brutes are incapable of knowing
universally because they are restricted to perceiving things in
practical terms, that is, in terms of their usefulness for bodily well
being. 84 One who is convinced that other animals use concepts
explanation even after
might reasonably object to
granting that these animals are restricted to regarding things in
purely practical terms. After all, when humans are engaged in
practical reasoning about such practical matters as their own
bodily well-being, they seem to rely upon concepts of some sort.
Hence it might seem it might seem to the objector that other
animals likewise rely upon concepts in forming their own
practical judgments.
83 After noting the ability of nonrational animals to modify their behavior on the basis of
the past, John Deely objects rightly to the notion of instinct as something innate and fixed
Uohn Deely, "Animal Intelligence and Concept-Formation," The Thomist 34 [1971]: 58. He
proposes instead that we complement the use of the term instinct to signify something
"species-predictable" with the term animal intelligence (ibid., 62-63). For one who is
concerned about how these terms cohere with the rest of Aquinas's vocabulary, however, it
seems that Aquinas's designations "imperfectly prudent" and "participating in prudence"
better capture the spirit of what Deely is aiming at. For animal learning is inherently practical
and intelligence need not be so. In fact, humans are, properly speaking, rational rather than
intelligent, while angels are, properly speaking, intelligent. Humans merely participate in
intelligence in a manner slightly analogous to the way brutes participate in reason and in
prudence.
84 Tellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstiinde und Sensibilia, 267; 279-80.

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

603

Although the above objection undermines Tellkmp's argument
that other animals do not use concepts, it does not undermine the
explanation offered by Aquinas. Instead of arguing that animals
do not conceptualize because they are restricted to the practical
sphere, he simply points out that the awareness of universals is
not a necessary condition for instinctive judgment. In the Summa
Theologiae, he grants that the sheep hates a wolf not because of
something peculiar to that particular wolf but because of
something common to the nature of all wolves; hence the sheep
hates the wolf generaliter.But this general hatred does not imply
ovine awareness of the universal "enemy" any more than vision's
capacity to perceive color generaliterwould imply cognizance of
the universal "color." 85 The ability to perceive many things in the
same way doesn't require that one distinguish in any way what an
individual possesses in common with others from what belongs
solely to that individual. The sheep, in perceiving danger, does
not perceive the wolf as an example of danger, nor does the sheep
regard danger as something distinct from the wolf itself. Rather
it simply imagines that the wolf that it sees before it will soon
chase it, pull it down, start biting it, etc. 86 Instinctive judgments
regard danger (and its contrary) in utterly concrete and immediate
terms.
In spite of the concrete nature of instinctive judgment, Aquinas
sometimes refers to the object of estimative power as a concept

STh I-II, q. 29, a. 6 (6:207-8).
Tellkamp makes similar points: "The lamb that perceives the mother, does not regard
[the perception itself] as a cognitive gain. Nor, therefore, does it regard the mother sheep as
an individual realization of the universal concept of sheep. It regards this object X only as
presenting a source of nourishment, which stays its hunger and thereby serves survival" ("Dem
Lamm, das das Muttertier wahrnimmt, geht es nicht um Erkenntnisgewinn, also darum, ob
es sich beim wahrgenommen Muttertier um eine individuelle Realisierung des allgemeinen
Begriffs des Schafes handelt; es geht ihm allein darum, dass dieser Gegenstand X eine
Nahrungsquelle darstellt, die den Hunger stlllt und somit dem eigenen Oberleben dient"
[fellkamp, Sinne, Gegenstiinde und Sensibilia, 279)); and, "The sheep, for example,
recognizes its mother not as 'this sheep' under the universal aspect of sheepness, but rather
only insofar as its mother is a source of nourishment" ("Das Schaf z.B. erkennt das Muttertier
nicht als 'dieses Schaf' unter dem allgemeinen Aspekt der Schafheit, sondem nur insofern das
Muttertier eine Nahrungsquelle ist" [ibid., 172)).
85

86

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A.LEOWHITE

(conceptum) or conception (conceptio ). 87 The sheep, says Aquinas,

is naturally endowed with the conception that the wolf is its
enemy.88 This language underscores the parallel between the way
particular intentions guide animal behavior and universal
intentions (which are known through intellection) guide human
action. It also suggests that there is some common ground
between instinctive judgment and the preparation of the phantasm
for abstraction. For this reason, John Deely says that animal
learning, which he calls "animal intelligence," serves as a partial
foundation of human conceptual awareness.89 John Haldane also
suggests that animals possess a kind of sortal awareness that lies
between external sensation and conceptualization. 90
IV. CONCLUSION

This study has shown that animal perception consists of three
facets that are seamlessly interrelated. Since the same species of
sense power plays a cardinal role in the interplay of sense and
intellect in humans, the main conclusion of this paper also opens
the door to many fruitful inquiries into the ways in which
perception is related to reasoning. Consider how practical
reasoning likewise concerns the same three components that have
87 De Verit., q. 9, a. 4, ad 10 (22.2:290); IV Metaphys., c. 9 (Marietti ed., 217, par. 653).
See also III Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, r. (Moos, ed., 1015).
88 De Verit., q. 22, a. 7 (22.3:629).
89 John Deely describes the example of a dog that learns to discriminate between humans
that are hostile and those that are friendly. This process, he says "is the very process which the
birth of conceptual thought in man presupposes and from which the primitive concepts
directly take rise, both those of the theoretical and those of the practical order ..•• So it is true
that there is a communality between the highest attainments of animal intelligence and the
origin of the primitive concepts in man" (Deely, "Animal Intelligence and Concept
Formation," 75).
90 Reviewing an earlier discussion of how animals manifest discriminatory powers, Haldane
says, "[T]he question of abstract conceptualisation does not arise as one contemplates the
actions of animals. However, there is space for further organizational principles between, on
the one hand, patterns of sensation, and on the other, conceptual relations between abstracted
universals. In this space may lie percepts: individuating perceptual sortals constituted out of
sensible and behavioural features of things" (John Haldane, "Rational and Other Animals,"
in "Verstehen"and Humane Understanding,ed. Anthony O'Hear [Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996], 25).

INSTINCT AND CUSTOM

605

already been mentioned: namely, the present situation, the goal,
and the actions through which one might attain that goal. Human
perception of these components may be quite different from brute
perception of the same, for, thanks to reason, we can apprehend
a concrete goal without immediately judging that it is to be
pursued through a particular avenue. We instead compare various
concrete means according to how they promise to be effective in
attaining the proposed end. Surely the perceptual operations that
are instrumental to practical reason's initial apprehension of the
end and subsequent comparisons of means diverge from the basic
structure that we find in instinctive judgment. Nevertheless, it
seems that the three components found in animal perception lie
at the center of the perceptions that undergird practical reasoning.
Aquinas also tells us that the cogitative power is responsible for
preparing phantasms for abstraction. Could it be that the same
three components are also involved in the perceptual processes
that are instrumental to intellectual apprehension? Aquinas
certainly never mentions the awareness of self-movement when
discussing the preparation of the phantasm. Nevertheless, this
suggestion seems quite plausible once one considers how humans
use language whenever they engage in reasoning. Perhaps even the
most advanced forms of speculative reasoning involve phantasms
that have imagined linguistic: activity as one of their components.
Although no final conclusion regarding the veracity of the latter
suggestion is offered here, the present study at least shines a light
on paths well worth traveling by those who would take St.
Thomas as their guide toward a better understanding of the
relation between perception and intellection.

The Thomist 66 (2002): 607-27

THE SCOTIST BACKGROUND IN HERVAEUS NATALIS'S
INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM
ISABEL IRIBARREN
Linacre College, Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom

U

NDERLYING HERVAEUS NATALIS'S work is an intelligent
development of Thomistic theses that, while not altogether
deviating from Thomas Aquinas, prepares the ground for
an elaboration of Thomism along the lines of John Duns Scotus's
theological insights. 1 This is already apparent in Hervaeus's
Sentences commentary, and becomes explicit in his quodlibetal
questions. Thus, as Thomistic enthusiasm develops within the
Dominican order, Hervaeus gradually incorporates (and endorses)
elements alien to Aquinas's theology-an aspect of Hervaeus's
thought worth remarking as it stands in contrast to a meeker
image of the Dominican as the "champion of Thomism." As a
leading Dominican, Hervaeus 2 serves as a good example of the
type of interpretation of Aquinas's thought undertaken by secondgeneration Thomists. An examination of Hervaeus's work will
therefore shed some light on our understanding of the evolution

1 Hester G. Gelber is, to my knowledge, the first to point out this development in
Hervaeus's interpretation of Thomism. See her Logic and the Trinity: A Clash of Values in
Scholastic Thought, 1300-1335 (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 197 4 ), especially 11026.
2 Hervaeus Natalis (d. 1323) became provincial of France in 1309 and General Master in
1318. For a biographical study of Hervaeus, see B. Haureau, "Herve Nedelec, general des
Frl!res Prl!cheurs," in Histoire litterairede la France 34 (1915): 308-51; A. De Guimares,
"Herve Noel (m.1323): Etude biographique," inArchivum Fratrum Praedicatornm 8 (1938):
see esp. 5-77

607

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

of Thomism as a theological authority within the Dominican
order. 3
Hervaeus's view of relations in Trinitarian theology proves to
be a good vantage point from which to appreciate his elaboration
of Aquinas's teaching, since it reveals his willingness to borrow
from sources alien to Thomism if only to update the material
according to the subtleties of the day. In what follows, I shall first
give a brief account of Aquinas's view of relations as the main
sounding board for Hervaeus's own elaboration of this view;
second, I shall present Scotus's notion of 'formality' and the
connected notion of 'formal distinction'; third, I shall give an
account of Hervaeus's Scotist development of the Thomistic
theses in his Sentences commentary and, fourth and finally, in his
quodlibetal questions. The question at hand concerns the type of
distinction between relation and its foundation, especially in its
repercussions on the issue of the distinction between the divine
processions.

L THOMAS AQUINAS ON RELATIONS
With respect to categorical relations, 4 Aquinas holds that for
each of the nine accidental categories there is a distinction
between the accidental being common to all categories and the
3 By 1286 there was already clear evidence that the Dominican order had begun to
recognize itself in the figure and teaching of Thomas Aquinas. In that year, the General
. Chapter in Paris commanded its friars to teach and defend according to Aquinas, thus actively
promoting the Thomistic doctrine within the order. The doctrinal allegiance to Aquinas was
repeatedly emphasized in subsequent Dominican legislations, notably in Saragossa in 1309 and
in Metz in 1313. See B. M. Reichert, Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Fratrum
Praedicatorum I (Rome, 1889), 235. For a standard history of the order and the significance
of Thomism for the shaping of the order's identity, see W. A. Hinnebusch, The History of the
Dominican Order in the Middle Ages, vol. 2 (New York: Alba House, 1966), especially 154ff.
See also M. Mulchahey, "First the Bow Is Bent in Study ... ": Do-minican E.ducation before
1350, Studies and Texts 132 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1998); M.
Grabmann, "Die Kanonisation des hi. Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Bedeutung for die
Ausbreitung und Verteidigung seiner Lehre im 14. Jahrhundert," in Divus Thomas, 1
(Freiburg, 1923), 233-49.
4 For a comprehensive study of Aquinas's theory of relations, see A. Krempel, La doctrine
de la relation chez saint Thomas (Paris, 1952). See also M. Henninger, Relations: Medieval
Theories 1250-1325 (Oxford, 1989), 13-39.

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

609

ratio that defines each particular category. 5 The accidental being
(including that of relation) consists in inhering in a subject, and to
that extent an accident is said to effect composition with its
subject. By contrast, the ratio of absolute accidents such as quality
and quantity is distinct from the ratio of relation. Absolute
accidents can only be understood as existing in a subject (esse in),
that is, as inhering. The ratio of relation, on the other hand, does
not imply inherence, but only signifies a condition towards
another (esse ad aliud).6 In this respect, relation does not add
anything to the being of its subject, and the arrival of a new
relation does not change anything in its subject. 7
According to Aquinas, two terms are really related if (1) the
terms are really distinct extramental things, (2) there is a real
foundation in one of the terms for its relation with the other term,
and (3) there exists a real order between the terms identical in
being but different in ratio from its foundation. 8 That is to say, in
virtue of its identity with the reality of its foundation on an
absolute accident, relation (in creatures) is real, is an accident, and
inheres in a subject. What makes a relation real is then not a
relative character of its own, its ratio, but the absolute accident
that serves as its foundation. 9 The category of relation is then only
different from absolute accidents in that its ratio does not
necessarily consist in inhering in a subject, but in connoting
5 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 3; d. 26, q. 2, a. 1; De Pot., q. 8, a. 4, ad 5; STh I, q. 28,

a. 2.
6 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 3: "Quantitas
enim habet propriam rationem in
comparationem ad subiectum .... Ad aliquid autem ... non importat aliquam dependentiam
ad subiectum, immo refertur ad
extra"; d. 30, q. 1, a. 1: "Ea quae absolute dicuntur,
secundum prnprias rationes ponum in eo aliquid in quo didtur [i.e., in subiecto ], ut quantitas
et qualitas"; m Phys., lect. 1, n. 6: "Relatio ... consisrit tantum in hoc, quod est ad aliud se
habere"; De Pot., q. 7, a. 9, ad 7.
7 Aquinas, De Pot., q. 7, a. 8, ad 5: "Non oportet ad hoc quod de aliquo relatio aliqua de
novo dicatur, quod aliqua mutatio in ipso fiat, sed sufficit quod fiat mutatio in aliquo

8 Aquinas, De Pot., q. 7, a. 11; I Sent.,

d. 26, q. 2, a. 1.
Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3: "Quamvis relationi, ex hoc quod ad alterum
dicitur, non debeatur quod sit res quaedam, est tarnen res aliqua secundum quod habet
fundamentum in eo quod referrur"; d. 27, q. 1, a. 1; d. 29, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4; De Verit., q. 21,
a. 1; STh I, q. 28, a. 2.
9

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

another term. In this respect, Aquinas holds with Aristotle that
relation has "the lowest and most imperfect form of being." 10
In a Trinitarian context, Aquinas maintains that essence and
relations (proprietates) are really identical, and only distinct
according to the ratio of relation. 11 Since the ratio of relation does
not imply inherence in an actual substance, relations can assume
the subsistent reality of the essence without thereby introducing
accidents in the divinity. It was important for Aquinas that
relations assumed the subsistent reality of the essence, for
otherwise the persons would be only distinguished from one
another according to reason. By the same token, only by asserting
the real identity between essence and relations can we avoid
composition in the divinity. 12
Although Aquinas is unequivocal in his assertion of a real
identity between essence and relation, we must not overlook the
implications of his statement that essence and relation
nevertheless differ 13 according to the ratio of relation. 14 For
Aquinas ratio is a term of second imposition, in that it does not
signify the thing itself, but the concept or definition of a thing. 15
However, this is not to say that the plurality of rationes according
10 Aristotle, XIV Metaph., 1.1088a23, b3. For Aquinas, see De Verit., q. 27, a. 4; I Sent.,
d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2: "Ens minimum, sc. relatio"; De Pot., q. 2, a. 5: "Relatio creata habet
esse debilissirnum, quod est eius tantum."
11 Aquinas, STh I, q. 28, a. 1.
12 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1: "Istud ergo esse patemitatis non potest esse aliud esse
quarn esse essenriae; et cum esse essenriae sit ipsa essentia, et esse paternitatis sit ipsa
paternitas; relinquitm de necessitate quod ipsa paternitas secundum rem estipsa essentia; unde
non facit compositionem cum ea."
13 Note that for Aquinas essence and relations Jiff er and are not distinct, since distinction
requires some opposition. See I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1: "omnis autem distinctionis
formalis principium est aliqua oppositio."
14 I owe the following insight to Russell L. Friedman, "Relations, Emanations, and Henry
of Ghent's use of the Verbum Mentis in Trinitarian Theology: The Background in Thomas
Aquinas and Bonaventure," in M. Bertagna and G. Pini, eds., Documenti e studi sulla
tradizione filosofica medievale, vol. 7 (Brepols, 1996), 131-82, esp. 138-41.
15 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3: "Ratio ... nihil aliud est quam id quod apprehendit
intellectus de significatione alicuius nominis: et hoc in his quae habent definitionem, est ipsa
rei definitio .... Nee tamen hoc nomen 'ratio' significat ipsam conceptionem, quia hoc
significatur per nomen rei; sed significat intentionern huius conceptionis, sicut et hoc nomen
'definitio,' et alia nomina secundae impositionis."

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

611

to which we understand divine perfections do not reflect the
reality of the divinity, for according to Aquinas there are really in
God perfections corresponding to the rationes that our intellect
has about him. Thus, goodness, paternity, and filiation are all
conceptions formed by our intellect that nevertheless respond to
something that is really in God's nature, without thereby
compromising its simplicity. 16 In this sense, essence and relation
differ according to the ratio or 'quidditative being' of relation, in
that in being towards another, the ratio of relation differs from
the ratio of the essence as an absolute substance. As we shall see,
Hervaeus will eventually assimilate Aquinas's understanding of
ratio to Scotus's notion of the 'formality' of a thing.
Apart from the ratio of relation, Aquinas also resorts to the
notion of 'relative opposition' in order to explain a trinity in God.
According to Aquinas, the principles of distinction in the divinity
are relations of origin, 17 so that in God only the persons can be
really distinct from one another. Aquinas restricted real
distinction in the divinity to relative opposition, 18 for he saw it as
the only way to safeguard the essential equality of the persons.
The terms of a relation of origin are necessarily equal and
16 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3: "Intellectus enim noster non potest una conceptione
diversos modos perfectiones accipere ... tum quia hoc quod in Deo est unum et simplex,
plurificatur in intellectu nostro .... Unde patet quod pluralitas istarum rationum non tantum
est ex parte intellectus nostri, sed etaim ex parte ipsius dei, inquantum sua perfectio superat
unamquamque coneptionem nostri intellectus. Et ideo pluralitati istarum rationum respondet
aliquid in re quae Deus est: non quidem pluralitas rei, sed plena perfectio, ex qua contingit
ut omnes istae conceptiones ei aptentur." Also d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 3: "ipsa ratio quam dicimus
aliam et aliam in divinis, non est in re; sed est in re aliquid respondens ei in quo fundatur, sc.
veritas illius rei cui talis intentio attribuitur, est enim in Deo; unde possunt rationes diversae
ibi convenire."
17 Relations of origin are also known as "opposite relations." An "opposite relation" is the
relation between two terms that stand at opposite ends of one and the same process of
production. Thus, active generation (or paternity) is related to passive generation (or filiation)
by opposition. They constitute relations of origin because they account for the constitution
of the persons in their being: the opposition active generation and passive generation refers
to the constitution of the Son, just as active spiration and passive spiration refer to the
constitution of the Spirit.
18 Aquinas, Sfh I, q. 36, a. 2: "Non autem possunt esse in divinis aliae relationes [realiter]
oppositae nisi relationes originis"; I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2: "omnis autem distinctio formalis
est secundum aliquam oppositionem"; d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1.

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

simultaneous, and to posit another type of real distinction was
tantamount to introducing an order of priority in the divinity. 19
Furthermore, distinction
opposition also avoids a real
distinction between the persons and the essence. The Father and
the Son are really distinct when referred to each other by origin,
but not
reference to the divine essence. Thus, it is not
contradictory to say that the Father is really identical to the
essence in virtue of its being, and at the same time really distinct
from the Son in virtue of the relation of paternity. 20 Distinction by
relative opposition is, therefore, a distinction according to
supposita. For insofar as relative opposition can only obtain
between the terms of a relation of origin, only the divine
supposita can be really distinct. 21
The principle of real distinction by opposition is intrinsically
connected to the Thomistic emphasis on the unity of the essence
and to the thesis that in the divinity what is not related by
opposition is communicated by real identity. 22 According to
Aquinas, the productive principle in the divinity (that is, the
power that accounts for the processions) signifies primarily the
essence, according to some relation. In this view, active generation
is the communication of the being of the essence from Father to
Son according to paternity. The essence is therefore the principle
of productivity, whereas relation is the immediate agent. 23 And
19 Aquinas, ScG IV, c. 24: "In relationibus vero omnibus super actionem vel passionem
fundatis, semper alterum est ut subiectum et inaequale secundum virtutem, nisi solum in
relationibus originis, in quibus nulla minoratio designatur, eo quod invenitur aliquid producere
sibi simile et aequale secundum naturam et virtutem"; De Pot., q. 2, a. 4; q. 7, a. 9.
20 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3; De Pot., q. 2, a. 5; q. 7, a. 6; STh I, q. 39, a. L
21 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2; STh I, q. 30, a. 2.
22 Aquinas and later Thomists are fond of adducing the authority of Saint Anselm and his
principle, by then a locus classicl'.s, that "Totum est unum in deo, ubi non obviat relationis
oppositio." See Anselm, De processione spiritus sancti, in F. S. Schmitt, ed., S. Anselmi
Cantuarensis archiepiscopi opera omnia (Edinburgh: Nelson and Sons, 1946-61), vol. 2
(1946), p. 181, II. 2-4. Cf. Aquinas, I Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2; De Pot., q. 10, a. 2; STh I, q. 31,
a. 2. See also C. Luna, "Essenza divina e relazioni ttinitarie nella critica di Egidio Romano
a Tommaso d'Aquino," in Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 14 (1988): 369.
23 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 3: "Potentia spirativa <licit aliquid quasi medium inter
essentiam et proprietatem, eo quod <licit essentiam sub ratione proprietatis: sic enim actus
notionalis ab essentia egreditur, non sicut ab agente, sed ab eo quo agirur ... et ita spirativa

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

613

since relation is really identical to the essence, the only reality
the same
involved in the processions is the essence. As acts
24
nature, the processions are essentially equal.
To sum up, central to Aquinas's Trinitarian teaching is the
notion of the essence as principle of production, in virtue of
which, Aquinas believes, divine unity and equality are safeguarded
in the trinity of persons. This essential communicability Aquinas
understands primarily as the power of the essence to transmit its
subsistent nature to the persons and to relations. From this main
principle Aquinas infers three theses: first, that divine relation
assumes the subsistent being of the essence and is thereby identical
to the essence; second, in the divinity only what is a substance can
be distinct, that is, that distinction is restricted to the supposita;
and third and finally, the divine persons are equal in divinity and
are really distinct from one another only if they are constituted by
subsistent properties. As I hope to show in what follows,
Hervaeus manages to make a successful incorporation of Scotist
insights while respecting the essentials of Thomism"
II. JOHN DUNS ScorusAND THE FORMAL DISTINCTION

In attempting to avoid contradictory predicates such as
'communicable' and 'incommunicable' about God, Franciscan
scholars conceived a type of distinction in the divinity prior to any
operation of the intellect, which nonetheless was not a real
distinction as that found between two substances" The main
epistemological assumption behind this argument is that
potentia <licit essenriam sub ratione talis proprietaris"" According to Luna, «Essenza divina,"
11, Aquinas revises his opinion in STh I, q. 41, a. 5, in which he asserts less ambiguously (and
in agreement with Peter Lombard and Giles of Rome's view) that the power of production is
the divine essence: «Potentia generandi significat divinam essentiam."
24 Aquinas, I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1: "Natura communicatur per acturn natw:ae,
communiter loquendo; sed determinata communicatio debet esse per actum naturae sub aliqua
propria ratione acceptae; et ideo communicario quae est per spirationem, est actus divinae
naturae, inquantum habet rationem spirationis. Et hoc intendit Anselmus, quod impossibile
est dicere, quod processionis, quae terminatur in naturam, non sit aliquo modo natura
principium, cum sit ibi quasi communicatio univoca!' For Anselm, see De processione, in
Schmitt, ed., vol. 1, c. 6, p. 296"

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

distinction in concepts must mirror a real distinction in things.
This greater degree of difference existing ex natura rei had its
roots in Bonaventure's theology. 25 Although Duns Scotus was no
exception to this tradition, he elaborated the notion of a middle
distinction into his more comprehensive 'formal distinction'. 26
The question at hand concerns the compatibility of the
simplicity of the divine nature with the plurality of persons. This
is a question Scotus treats in all versions of his Sentences
commentary. 27 On the one hand, he dismisses a distinction of
reason (such as that proposed by Aquinas) between essence and
relations because that would entail that a mere ens rationis-a
diminished being-constitutes the divine persons, thus resulting
in the Sabellian error whereby the divine persons are not actual
beings but mere 'modes' of the divine essence. On the other hand,
Scotus rejects a real distinction, which would imply that essence
and relation are distinct as two separate things. 28 Instead, he
maintains that the distinction between essence and relation is
prior to the operation of the intellect and is secundum quid,
where secundum quid refers to the nature of the distinction
(referriad distinctionem) rather than to the nature of the realities
25 Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 22, a. un., q. 4, in Opera Omnia, vol. 1 (Quaracchi, 1882). See
also Friedman, "Relations, Emanations," 142-45.
26 On the influence of Bonaventure's notion of middle distinction on Scotus's formal
distinction, see B. Jansen, "Beitrage zur geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Distinctio formalis,"
'Zeitschrift {Ur katholische Theologie 53 (1929): esp. 317-44. For an excellent study on the
notion of formal distinction, see T. B. Noone, "Alnwick on the Origin, Nature, and Function
of the Formal Distinction," Franciscan Studies 53 (1993): 231-45.
27 For the chronology of the different recensions of Scotus's commentary, see C. Balic, Les
Commentaires de Jean Duns Scot sur les quatrelivres des Sentences: Etude historique et critique
(Louvain, 1927). Scotus began to read the first Book on the Sentences at Oxford circa 1300
(Lectura), and produced a second recension in Paris around 1302-1303 (Reporata). The
Ordinatio is a later work undertaken when Scotus was back in Oxford at around 1305,
following the intervention of Godfrey of Fontaines in Paris in the year 1302-3. The Lectura
is also sometimes referred to as prima lectura; the Ordinatio or opus oxoniense is a revision
of the Oxford lectures by the author himself; the Reportata consists of Scotus's lecture as
copied down or "reported" by one of his students, and later examined by Scotus. For the
Lectura and the Ordinatio, I will use Opera Omnia, ed. C. Balic (Vatican City, 1950), vols.
2, 4, and 16. For the I Reportata, d. 33, I will use my own transcription of Oxford, Balliol
College, MS 205.
28 Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, q. 2, 146v.

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

615

distinguished. 29 In this sense, essence and relations are two actual
things (res simpliciter), but it is their distinction that is secundum
quid.
Scotus elaborates this idea by contrasting absolute distinction
and less than absolute distinction (distinctio secundum quid).
According to Scotus, an absolute (real) distinction requires four
conditions: (1) that those distinguished are actual and not
diminished beings; (2) that they have a formal and not just a
virtual esse (i.e., unlike an effect which is virtually in its cause); (3)
that they have a distinct and proper being and not "confused"
(confusum) or mixed; (4) that they are absolutely nonidentical
(distinctionis perfectae ... non identitas). 30 The first three
conditions concern the ontological status of the relata, whereas
the last condition concerns the type of non-identity existing
between them. Really distinct things satisfy all four conditions.
Essence and relations are fully actual beings, but they fail to satisfy
the condition of absolute non-identity. It is on account of their
mode of non-identity, therefore, and not on account of a
diminished being, that their difference is less than absolute.
Essence and relations are then distinct secundum quid ex
natura rei. This relative non-identity signals for Scotus a lack of
formal identity. Two things are said not to have formal identity
when one does not pertain per se and primarily to the
understanding of the other-that is, when neither is included in
the formal ratio of the other, though they may be really the same.
According to Scotus, ratio is the result of first intentional
knowledge, as the quiddity of a thing. 31 In this way, a divine
person is formally the same as the divine essence and formally the
same as its personal property because both are included in its
definition according to its reality. But this is not conversely so,
because neither the divine essence nor the personal property is

29 See also Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, q. 3, 149r: "distinctio secundum quid non quod
aliquid distinctorum sit res vel ens secundum quid sed quod distinctio eorum sit secundum
quid quae attenditur penes non identitatem formalem et non identitatem adequata."
30 Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, q. 2, 147v.
31 Scotus, I Ordinatio, d. 2, nn. 400-406.

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

formally the same as the divine person, since the divine person is
not included in either of their definitions (were they definable). 32
This formal non-identity, however, does not entail composition in the divinity, because in virtue of its infinity the essence
is capable of containing everything that is not incompatible with
it (continet omnia quae sibi non repugnant).33 In other words,
when one of the two formal realities involved in the distinction is
infinite, they cannot effect composition. Therefore, a plurality of
formal objects in God does not render his simple being composite.
Scotus's argument on the compatibility between the unity of
essence and the plurality of persons is ultimately founded on the
notion of the infinite nature of the essence, a notion to which
Scotus repeatedly resorts. On account of its infinity, the essence
can include a plurality of supposita without entailing a division in
its nature. For although the essence is endowed with a perfect
being in each suppositum, its being is nevertheless not exhausted
in the supposita. The essence can possess other modi essendi.34 It
is this lack of adequacy between the infinity of the essence and the
persons' being determined over against each other that allows for
a coexistence of simplicity and plurality within God. The infinity
of the essence is sufficient to account for the real identity between
the plurality of the persons and the unity of the essence. Thus,
there is no need to resort to another reality that would be
identical to the essence and the persons and according to which
the unity of the essence could be reconciled to the plurality of the
persons. Rather, the infinity of the essence, of itself, absorbs into
one absolute unity the incompatibility between diverse modes of
32 Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, q. 2, 147v; 148r-v: "distinctio formaliter essentiae et
proprietatis .•. est unitas verissime identitatis; et istam distinctionem potest praecedere aliqua
rationis sed non necessario praeexigitur ad istarum distinctionem quia nunquam distinctio
quae est ex natura rei vel realis necessario preexigit distinctionem rationis sicut nee unitas
realis unitatem rationis."
33 Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, q. 1, 146r; 147v: "Infinitum autem est cuilibet sibi
composibili idem, cui repugnat etiam aliquo alio perfici vel actuari, quia sic esset composibile
cum illo addito et per consequens non esset simpliciter infinitum."
34 Scotus, I Lectura, n. 256: "essentia autem divina haec, licet habeat perfectum esse in uno
supposito, non tamen habet in hoc supposito omnem modum essendi quern potest habere."
I Ordinatio, n. 387.

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION Of THOMISM

617

being. The type of identity that infinity creates is one in which
one term 'virtually includes' the other term. 35
A recent study has suggested 36 that underlying Scotus's
depiction of the essence as an infinite nature is a conception of the
divine essence as a special kind of universal. According to this
type of universal, "numerically one object is really predicable
of-that is, really repeated in-each of its instances, such that the
object is somehow a real component of each of its instances. " 37
Whereas ordinary common natures are numerically divided into
their instances so that the instances are said to be subjective parts
of that common nature, the divine nature is really repeated by
identity in each of its instances (i.e., the divine persons) without
thereby jeopardizing its numerical unity. The essence is really
repeated in the persons while remaining numerically one and the
same. Thus, when it comes to the divinity, Scotus makes a
fundamental distinction between the divisibility of a common
nature into many parts and the predicability of numerically one
nature of its different instances. 38 Scotus's main point is not that
other common natures are not really communicable, but that their
communicability is strictly related to their divisibility, while the
divine nature is communicable without division. He is thus
making a distinction between communicability with divisibility as
found in ordinary universals, and communicability without
division, only possible in an infinite nature such as the divine
essence. 39 Scorns' s main thesis, therefore,
is that the
communicability of the essence obtains between numerically
singular terms.
Scotus, I Ordinatio, d. 8, n. 22L
I refer to Richard Cross, "Divisibility, Communicability, and
in Duns
Scotus's Theories of the Common Nature," in Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001),
forthcoming; and its sequel, "Duns Scotus on Divine Substance and the Trinity," in Medieval
Philosophy and Theology 11 (2002), forthcoming. In what follows I shall be drawing mainly
from Cross's article.
37 Cross takes this definition from Scotus, In Metaph., VII, 18, nn. 17-20, where Scotus in
his turn refers to Bacon's Communia Naturalium, 2.10.
Cross calls this special
kind of universal a "Baconian universal."
38 For Scotus, see H Ord., d. 3, p.1, q. 1, nn. 37 and 39.
39 For Scotus, I Ord., d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1--4, n. 381.
35

36

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

In what follows, we shall see how, already in his Sentences
commentary, Hervaeus Natalis's elaboration of Thomistic ideas is
fundamentally compatible with the Scotist standpoint. Hervaeus
derives from Scotus the notion of formal distinction and the idea
of the essence as an infinite nature that can be predicated of the
persons without division.
III. HERVAEUS'S SENTENCES COMMENTARY

Hervaeus's Sentences commentary (1302) 40 is an interesting
work in its doctrinal eclecticism. On the one hand, the treatment
of some of the questions assumes the character of a commentary
on Aquinas's teaching, indicative of the breadth of Hervaeus's
knowledge of the Thomistic corpus. On the other hand, underlying Hervaeus's main responses is an intelligent development of
Thomistic theses which, not altogether deviating from Aquinas,
prepares the ground for a more frank elaboration along Scotist
lines.
In examining the type of identity between essence and
relation, 41 Hervaeus mainly deals with the opinion, presumably
that of Bonaventure, that essence and relation are not really
identical but differ according to a real mode of being (secundum
modum essendi realem). Hervaeus believes that this opinion is
deficient on two counts. First, in the divinity that which "has"
(habens), namely, the suppositum, and that which "is had"
(habitum ), namely, the essence, are essentially and really the

40 Hervaeus Natalis, In quattuor librosSententiarum Commentaria (Paris, 164 7; reprinted
by New Jersey: The Gregg Press, 1966). F. Stegmiiller, Repertorium in Sententias Petri
Lombardi (Wiirzburg: Schoning, 1947), 164, believes Hervaeus read the Sentences between
1302 and 1303. According to R. L. Friedman, "The Sentences Commentary, 1250-1320:
General Trends, the Impact of the Religious Orders, and the Test Case of Presdestination,"
in G. R. Evans, ed., Medieval Commentaries on Peter Lombard (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 69,
Hervaeus worked the Sentences into its present form as an ordinatio in 1309 or later.
41 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, esp. aa. 3 and 4, 130aff. Worthy of remark is that nowhere
in his commentary does Hervaeus explicitly deal with the issue of relation and its foundation
in the creatures.

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

619

same-except when the suppositum involves relative opposition. 42
That is to say, in the divinity essence and relation are not really
distinct as two distinct natures, but only in respect to another
term. 43 Thus, "the essence is the Father" and "the Father is
paternity" are both true because the essence is really and
essentially the Father just as the Father is really and essentially
paternity. Yet, neither does the essence include paternity in its
definition, nor does paternity include the essence in its definition.
To that extent, the essence and the Father are really identical but
distinct only according to paternity, insofar as paternity is in the
Father, and not the essence.44 Second, two really distinct things
cannot form a unity except by composition. Since divine unity
does not allow composition, essence and relation must be really
identical. Hervaeus believes that real distinction is equivalent to
numerical plurality, so that if a mode of being connotes a different
reality from the essence, then the composition between that mode
and the essence is unavoidable. 45
According to Hervaeus, therefore, the transitivity between
identical things does not necessarily hold when one of them
involves a relative term. 46 That is, he denies that "if the essence is
identical to the Father, and the Father is identical to paternity,
then the essence is identical to paternity." The conclusion is false
because the Father includes a relative term (i.e.:-paternity) which
the essence does not include. However, instead of inferring a real
42 The terminology of "habitum" to denote something abstract, or a common nature, and
"habens" to denote something concrete, or a particular property, was standard for
distinguishing between nature and suppositum. Thus, for example, it was common usage to
define Christ's human nature as that which "is had" or assumed by the suppositum, and the
(divine) suppositum as that which possesses personal properties and is capable of "having" or
assuming a nature.
43 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, 132a: "ilia quorum unum est essentialiter alterum
inter se non habent differentiam realem." This is, in essence, Anselm's message in his principle
that "Totum est unum in deo, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio" (see note 22, above).
44 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, 132a.
45 Ibid.
.
46 Transitivity is a property of real identity in the creatures. It states that "for all x, y, and
z, if xis identical toy, and y is identical to z, then xis identical to z." See M McCord Adams,
"Ockham on Identity and Distinction," in Franciscan Studies 36 (1976): 5-12.

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

distinction, Hervaeus holds that essence and paternity have a type
of non-identity or, as he calls it, a "'non-convertible identity." By
this Hervaeus means that whereas both essence and paternity are
predicated of the Father, neither is the essence predicated of
paternity nor is paternity predicated of the essence. 47
Note, however, that this is not yet Scotus's formal distinction.
At this early stage, Hervaeus still presupposes Aquinas's notion
that the ratio of a thing is the result of second intentional
knowledge, whereas the Scotist formal distinction presupposes a
notion of 'formality' as discerned in first intentional knowledge.
The formal distinction is therefore not equivalent to but stronger
than the Thomistic distinction of reason. Following Aquinas,
Hervaeus holds that this term (viz., paternity), which only the
Father includes, does not entail a real distinction but only a
distinction according to reason. This is because the relative term
of a relation is part of its ratio and does not signify another
thing. 48 By focusing on the non-identity of essence and relation
rather than on their ontological value, however, Hervaeus was
potentially allowing a development into the Scotist formal
distinction. As we shall see, Hervaeus makes this step in his
Quodlibets by introducing the notion of ex natura rei, the notion
underlying the Scotist 'formality'.
According to Hervaeus, that relation only signifies a ratio when
compared to its foundation is not to be understood in the sense
that relation becomes a being of reason, but in the sense that
relation differs from its foundation only according to reason. 49
Hervaeus does not subscribe to the idea that relation has to be
understood as a diminished entity in order to qualify the
distinction between essence and relation as less than absolute.
Again, this makes Hervaeus's position more akin to Scotus's
own,5° whereby even though essence and relation may be fully
actual beings, this does not necessarily entail that their distinction
47 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 3, 132a: "essentia et proprietas non habent differentiam
realem inter se, sed in habitudine ad tertium."
48 Ibid.
49 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 4, 132b-133a.
50 See Scotus, I Reportata, d. 33, qq. 2-3 (1305),

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

621

or identity has to be equally absolute. It is a constant feature of
Hervaeus's position that real things can relate as such without
thereby entailing real distinction or real identity. In this sense, the
formal distinction, as Aquinas's distinction of reason, is
compatible, and indeed presupposes, a real identity. Hervaeus's
principle of non-convertible identity requires this idea that a real
thing does not necessarily entail a real distinction. Paternity is a
real relation in the divinity, and yet is distinct from the essence
only according to its ratio, that is, insofar as it introduces another
term (viz., filiation). 51
Hervaeus believes, with Scotus, that the possibility of a
plurality of relations in the unity of the essence ultimately lies in
the infinity of the essence.52 Finite beings, by contrast, are
metaphysically incapable of induding a plurality without thereby
effecting composition. Only an infinite being can preserve its real
and numerical identity with things that between themselves are
distinct. 53 In this respect, Hervaeus will also say that there is a lack
of adequacy between essence and relations, whereby the essence
surpasses relations in its perfection as an infinite being. Thus, the
essence and, say, the relation of paternity, are "non-adequately
identical" because, even though they are really identical, the
essence in its perfection can indude all relations without division,
whereas the relation of paternity cannot indude, but is rather
opposed to, the relation of filiation.
We can see how Hervaeus's position thus far already contains
Scotist elements without necessarily deviating from the essential
parameters of Thomistic theology. Hervaeus's kinship with the
Scotist outlook has been made evident by two factors. First,
Hervaeus
a non-convertible identity between essence
and relation,
like Scotus's formal distinction, presupposes
a real identity and is based on a comparison to a third (i.e,, the
term of the relation). Second, Hervaeus like Scotus appeals to the

51

HeTVaeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 4, 133b.

51 See Scorns, I Lectura, d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1-4, n. 256.
53

Henraeus, I Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 4, 133b. Cf. d. 32, q. 1, 135a-b.

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

infinity of the essence in order to reconcile its simplicity with a
plurality of relations.
Hervaeus's affinity with the Scotist standpoint is also evident
in his Trinitarian account, otherwise distinctly Thomistic. In
attempting to establish the possibility of a plurality of processions
in the divine unity, Hervaeus makes a distinction between 'thing'
(res) and 'real' (realis). Even though active generation and active
spiration constitute only one reality (res) in the Father, Hervaeus
maintains, they are nevertheless really (realiter) in the Father as
two real relations. 54 In this respect, Hervaeus argues that for two
real things, 'real' can signify either the things (res) that are two, or
the duality itself. 55 Thus, "essence and relation are really in the
divinity" is very different from "essence and relation are a
plurality of things in the divinity."
According to Hervaeus, that active generation and active
spiration end at different terms (Son and Spirit respectively), is
not sufficient for a real distinction. For insofar as active
generation and active spiration coincide in their subject, they
constitute one reality which is not divided by its differences (non
dividuntur differentiis eius)-that is to say, the difference of
relative terms does not make active generation and active
spiration numerically two. Hervaeus, therefore, subscribes to the
Thomistic view of the essence as the principle of production in
the divinity. Underlying this thesis is also the Anselmian principle
whereby what is not opposed is communicated by real identity.
Thus, although active generation and active spiration are real
relations in the Father (for they are founded on a real foundation
and have real correlative terms), they do not constitute a real
plurality because they do not imply opposition. 56
Hervaeus will eventually develop the implications of this
seminal distinction between the reality of a thing and its
numerical identity along the lines of the Scotist notion of formal
distinction. For if res can refer to the numerical identity of a thing
Sent., d. 27, q. 1 ("U. patemitas et spiratio activa sint duae res"), 120b, C-D.
Sent., d. 27, q. 1, 121a, C-D.
56 Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 27, q. 1, 121b, B-D; 122a, B.

54 Hervaeus, I

55 Hervaeus, I

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

623

apart from its ontological status, then the reality of relation does
not necessarily entail its numerical distinction from the essence.
In other words, essence and relation can be really identical and
yet formally distinct. The 'middle distinction' which makes
essence and relations neither really distinct nor absolutely
identical is grounded on this idea that the ontological status of a
thing does not need to determine its numerical identity. The
distinction according to 'modes of being' (which Scotus eventually
criticized in Bonaventure, and Hervaeus in Durandus of St
as an alternative middle distinction becomes
unnecessary and, indeed, problematic. For in Hervaeus's outlook,
such modes, far from explaining the Trinity, can only multiply the
realities in God. 57
Hervaeus's commentary offers valuable material in two
respects. First, it already contains the theological insights that
allow him to draw upon Scotist conceptions in the elaboration of
his Trinitarian account. That Hervaeus's theology was initially
akin to Scotist ideas must not be underestimated, since it compels
us to recognize that the "Thomism" of this generation was not a
simple repeating of received knowledge from Aquinas's works,
but rather consisted in an expositio reverenter which did not
exclude an intelligent use of alien sources. Second, Hervaeus's
commentary nonetheless displays an attitude common among
Dominicans of treating Aquinas as an authoritative source meant
to be expounded rather than criticized. Indicative of this is that,
even though Hervaeus's treatment of the Trinity according to
Scotist insights ultimately led to conclusions potentially alien to
Thomism, it was always motivated by an interpretation of
Aquinas's main theses.
Thus, for example, Hervaeus's account of a non-convertible
identity between essence and relation was initially inspired by a
reinterpretation of Aquinas's distinction of reason according to
the ratio of relation, potentially akin to the Scotist formal
distinction. Like Aquinas, Hervaeus believes that essence and
relation are distinct only according to the opposite term of
57

See Hervaeus, I Sent., d. 32, q. 1, 135a.

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

relation; but whereas in Hervaeus's commentary this meant a
distinction of reason, in his Quodlibets it will develop into a type
of non-identity more explicitly linked the Scotist notion of ex
natura rei. Nevertheless, the attitude of reverence towards the
Thomistic corpus will remain a constant in Hervaeus's work,
evident mainly in Hervaeus's attempt to reconcile rather than
critically evaluate Aquinas's basic tenets.

IV. HERVAEUS'S QUODUBETAL QUESTIONS
In his Quodlibets, 58 Hervaeus again subscribes to the main
Thomistic theses: relation and its foundation constitute the same
reality and differ only according to the ratio of relation, and
distinction in the divinity is explained by relative opposition.
Hervaeus believes that if we call relation a thing (res) distinct from
its foundation, substance and relation in the divinity become two
distinct categories, with the result of composition in God. 59 As in
Aquinas, presupposed in this view is a traditional account of the
categories according to which they mirror an ontological division
between substances and accidents, whereby any real distinction
between essence and relation is tantamount to a classification of
the divinity into categorical realities, thereby introducing
accidentality into God.
Hervaeus's IV Quodlibet (1310) is of particular interest in that
it tackles the compatibility of unity and distinction in God from
an expliddy Scotist standpoint. As Hervaeus presents it, there are
in the divinity diverse modes of identity, on account of which
seemingly contradictory statements can be predicated of the same
For the complete edition of Hervaeus's Quolibets, see Subtilissima 1-Iervei Natalis
Britonis theologi acutissimi quolibeta undecim cum octo ipsius profundissimis tractatibus, ed.
M.A. Zimara (Venice, 1513). For the dates of Hervaeus's Quodlibets, the main sources seem
to agree in general lines. J. Koch, Durandus de S. Pmrciano O.P. Forschungen zum Streit um
Thoinas von Aquin zu Begin des 14. Jahrhunderts, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des
Mittehlters 36 (Milnster: Aschendorff, 1927); Stegrniiller, Reportatio; and Glorieux, La
litterature quodlibetique de 1260 a 1320 (Kain, 1925) assign the following dates: I Quodl.:
1307; H Quodl.: 1308; m and IV Quodl.: between 1309 and 1318 (Stegmiiller suggests ca.
1308-12 for IV Quodl.), during Hervaeus's time as provincial of France.
59 Hervaeus, H Quodl., q. 7, a. 2, 47ra. Cf. Aquinas, Sfh I, q. 28, a. 2, sc.
58

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

625

thing. The question is, therefore, how to explain identity in the
divinity, if communicability and incommunicability are both
found in God ex natura rei,60 that is, according to his reality.
Hervaeus
understands
communicability
according
to
predication, in the sense that numerically one essence is
predicable of the three persons. 61 That is to say, whereas the
essence and the persons are really identical, the essence and not
the Father is predicated of the Son. This is not to say, however,
that the essence and the Father are distinct from each other, but
that they are distinct only in their comparison to a third (the Son),
Hervaeus believes that it is not necessary to affirm a real
distinction between the essence and the Father, but only a nonconverse identity. 62 The difference between 'communicability' and
'incommunicability' in the divinity ought not be explained by
different modes of being, but according to the different ways in
which the essence and the persons are predicable of a third.
Two things are non-conversely identical when what is formaHy
this way,
identical to one is not formally identical to the other.
the essence and the Father are non-conversely identical because
paternity is formally identical to the Father, but paternity is not
formally identical to the essence. Non-converse identity is also a
mode of predicating the lack of adequacy between the essence
(which comprehends all the persons) and the persons (which
obviously do not). 63 On account of its infinity, the essence is
predicated without divisibility a greater plurality than a person
can indude. Convertibility and adequacy, then,
a certain
60 Hervaeus, IV Quodl., q. 7, 95rb. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that Hervaeus
uses the term ex natura rei in a strict Scorist sense.
61 For a similar argument on the predicability of the divine essence, see Scorns, I Ord., d.
2, p. 2, qq. 1-4, esp. nn. 388-415; d. 4, p. 2, q. un.; VU: Metaph., 18.
62 Hervaeus, IV Quodl., q. 7, a. 2, 96ra-rb. By resorting to the notion of non-converse
identity, Hervaeus claims, he avoids a violation of Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction,
whereby "affirmation and negation cannot be predicated at one and the same time of the same
subject." See also Hervaeus, IV Quodl., q. 7, a. 3, 99rb.
63 As we saw, Scotus also understood non-adequate identity and non-converse identity as
two ways of expressing the same type of non-identity. See I Reportata, d. 33, q. 2, 148r. Both
Scotus and Hervaeus establish a metaphysical link between the infinite perfection of the
without entailing
essence and the possibility of its being predicated by

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ISABEL IRIBARREN

comparison, so that we cannot say of the same thing that it is
conversely or adequately identical to itself. Thus, Hervaeus, in a
Scotist elaboration of Aquinas's rational distinction, explains the
connection between essence and relation in terms of a type of
identity, disregarding whether or not essence and relation signify
fully actual beings. The fact that relation signifies another
formality does not necessarily entail that it signifies a distinct
reality.
For Hervaeus the communicability of the essence is ex natura
rei in that it is said of a real unity. By contrast, the
communicability we find in things of the same genus or species is
according to reason, since it is founded on a conceptual unity. The
common nature 'humanity' is thus numerically divided in the
plurality of its individual instances, so that there is not a
community of identity strictly speaking, but only according to the
intellect. 64 By contrast, the essence is really communicable as a
unity when, as numerically one thing, it is repeated in its
individual instances by identity. To be communicable without
divisibility is then to be communicable by identity. 65
Hervaeus's affinity to Scotus is remarkable. Both theologians
believe that the divine essence, as a singular being, is predicated
by identity of the three persons without thereby incurring
division. In this respect, Hervaeus explains the distinction
between essence and relations as a non-converse identity, which,
like the Scotist formal distinction, is based on a fundamental
distinction between the reality and the formality of a thing. The
64 Hervaeus, IV Qoodl., q. 7, a. 1, 95va-vb: "unitas communis dicitur esse realis quando
sc. ilia unitas convenit illi communi in esse reali circunscripto tali esse obiectivo: sicut si ego
dicerem quod unum et idem subiectum est commune pluribus formis adinvicem succedentibus,
unitas enim talis subiecti non convenit sibi secundum esse obiective [sic] in intellectu tantum,
sed secundum esse reale est enim unum subiectum numero plurium formarum succedentium
subinvicem."
65 Hervaeus, IV Quodl., q. 7, a. 2, 96ra-rb: "potest praedicabile commune accipi quod
unum et idem numero ens convenit pluribus: sicut in divinis una et eadem essentia numero
est plures personae. Et istud est in divinis singule.... In creaturis .•. commune non est idem
realiter in pluribus partibus subiectivis. ..• In divinis vero eadem numero essentia est quod est
plures personae." Again, the Scotist resonances are evident: I Ord., d. 2, p. 2, qq. 1-4, nn. 367,
381; Il Ord., d. 3, p. 1, q. 1, nn. 37, 39; VIIMetaph., 18, nn. 17-20.

HERVAEUS'S INTERPRETATION OF THOMISM

627

main insight is that non-identity is explained in terms of a
qualified distinction (referatur ad distinctionem) rather than in
terms of a qualified reality (referatur ad realitatem). 66 Thus, both
theologians find their media via by focusing on the relation of
identity between two things, rather than on their corresponding
ontological status.
Although on the surface deviating from Aquinas's view on the
matter, Hervaeus was still respectful of the fundamentals of
Thomism. Hervaeus inherited a Thomistic distinction between the
ratio and the esse of an accident, which made it comparatively
easier to adopt a parallel distinction between the formality of a
thing and its reality, the core of the Scotist notion of formal
distinction. Moreover, the Scotist formal distinction, like
Aquinas's distinction of reason, always presupposes a real identity.
Likewise, the notion of the essence as an infinite common nature
ultimately abided by the principle, dear to Thomists, of
communicability by identity. In this way, Hervaeus's successful
adoption of Scotist insights had the curious result of making them
a Thomistic yardstick. 67

66 See Scotus, I Reportata,

d. 33, q. 2, 147r-v.
evident in the conflict between Durandus and St Poun;ain and the
Dominican order, a conflict that yielded two censure lists against Durandus, both led by
Hervaeus. As an examination of the censorship reveals, the criteria used by Dominican
authorities are based on Hervaeus's Scotist elaboration of the Thomistic theses. It is this
accepted interpretation of Aquinas, rather than a verbatim repetition of Aquinas's writings,
against which Durandus had to reckon. For an edition of the censure lists, see J. Koch, ed.,
"Articuli nonaginta tres extracti ex Durando S.-Porciano O,P. primo scripto super Sententias
et examinati per magistros et baccalarios Ordinis," and "Articuli in qui bus magister Durand us
deviat a doctrina venerabilis doctoris fratris Thomae," in Kleine Schriften 2 (Rome, 1973).
67 This is particularly

BOOK REVIEWS
Introduction to Moral Theology. By ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P. Catholic Moral
Thought Series 1. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2001. Pp. 288. $44.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). ISBN
0-8132-1069-0 (cloth), 0-8132-1070-4 (paper).
Romanus Cessario's new book, Introduction to Moral Theology (the first in
a series of publications from CUA Press on the topic of Catholic moral thought)
is a splendid book. It is lucid, accessible to the beginner, firmly rooted in patristic
and medieval sources, particularly Aquinas, and it nicely incorporates official
Church teaching on ethics since Vatican II. The publication of this book and
others like it signals an end to the tired and sterile debates that afflicted and
paralyzed Catholic moral thought throughout much of the twentieth century.
In some ways, Cessario's book is most profitably read by beginning with the
appendix, "Flight from Virtue: The Outlook of the Casuist Systems." The
practice of moral casuistry, a term which arises from the penchant for examining
specific moral situations or cases (casus), has always had a role in Catholic ethics.
But it takes on a new shape and gains a kind of ascendancy in moral theology
during the modern period, especially from Trent to Vatican II. In his appendix,
Cessario offers a concise description of the casuist systems of the modern period
and of their severe deficiencies. Following the work of his fellow Dominican,
Servais Pinckaers, Cessario traces the roots of casuistry to the late medieval
repudiation of teleology and of freedom as ensconced within the natural
orientation of the human person toward happiness, understood as the true good
of human nature. Thus a liberty of indifference replaces a liberty for perfection.
The dominant terms of the moral life become law and liberty, with conscience
as mediator. In a misunderstanding of the scriptural contrast between law and
liberty, the casuists depict the two in a "dramatic conflict, rather than as
complementary expressions of God's saving providence" (231). Given this
opposition, the key pastoral problem concerns private morality, the individual's
ability through conscience to resolve individual cases of moral doubt. The
pastoral response oscillates between, on the one hand, a "rigorism" that
eliminates personal initiative and makes obedience the sole virtue and, on the
other hand, a "probabilism" that allows quite a bit of leeway for individual
initiative so long as one can establish some sort of likely consensus of authorities
in support of a course of action. Whether one adopts a lax or rigorous tone, the
modern approach involves serious distortions of the patristic and medieval
conception of moral theology. The casuists place undue emphasis upon private

629

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BOOK REVIEWS

morality, upon abstract laws in relation to isolated, specific acts, and upon the
language of guilt and permissibility.
As Cessario aptly points out, the very structure of moral theology alters in the
transition from Aquinas to the casuists. Law, liberty, and conscience replace the
foundational investigations of man as imago Dei and of beatitude as the telos or
goal of human life. No longer is moral theology organized around the virtues,
acquired and infused, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit: "Acting in order to respect
a law replaces acting for a purpose, for an end." Since "no end draws the human
soul, obedience to law becomes the key virtue." Without a "prudential
movement through the ea quae sunt ad finem toward an ultimate and specifying
good end, there is not hierarchy of divine things that provides structure for or
gives context to the moral life" (237). The natural law is viewed as a law
extrinsic to the individual, separate from and in tension with human freedom.
By contrast, in Aquinas's teleological view, natural law is a participation of the
rational creature in the eternal, the imprint of the creator on and in the creature,
constituting, rather than opposing, the freedom of the human person. And the
New Law, the Law of Christ, is poured out through the Spirit and constitutes the
indwelling of the Spirit in the hearts of believers. Law is always seen as pointing,
indeed inclining, the human person toward beatitude, which is ultimately
realized in union with God and proximately realized through the practice of the
virtues. The blessed life is also thoroughly communal, involving a participation
in the interpersonal life of the Trinity and in the body of Christ. Thus, the core
of moral theology, as of the moral life itself, is ecclesial, liturgical, and
sacramental.
Cessario's task is to recover a moral realism anchored in a "highly refined
teleology," which "explains and evaluates human behavior on the basis of
whether or not a given human action properly and opportunely attains a good
which conduces to the complete perfection of the agent" (44). The first and
ultimate theological teaching is that, as Thomas puts it, "God alone satisfies." In
the context of such a teleology, freedom is not an aloof indifference, but is
ordered to excellence, happiness, and joy. For Cessario, Pinckaers says it best:
"The natural root of freedom develops in us principally through a sense of the
true and the good, of uprightness and love, and through a desire for knowledge
and happiness" (123). Moral education engages the natural, human inclination
to the good in order, as the Catechism puts it, to foster the "right disposition
toward goodness," a disposition that enables us to "grasp the beauty and
attraction" of the good. By contrast to the post-Scotistic conception of prudence
as "merely intellectual" and not as presupposing and contributing to "the
formation of the powers of the soul," prudence for Aquinas is the central virtue
of the moral life. Judging in light of the ends decreed by the natural law or, to
put it in a complementary way, in light of ends of the virtues, prudence
commands what must be done in a particular case. Presupposing the ends of
human life woven into our natural inclinations and the right formation of the
appetites through the moral virtues, prudence involves much more than what is
captured in the manualist conception of conscience as a merely cognitive skill of
reasoning.

BOOK REVIEWS

631

Cessario shows how Thomas avoids in advance the two great modern
temptations with regard to prudence. First, he avoids the deontological or
Kantian temptation to reduce prudence to, at best, a skill of applying rules to
circumstances, or, at worst, a sort of cleverness in calculating one's self-interest.
Second, he rejects the utilitarian or consequentialist or proportionalist
temptation to see prudence as the capacity of weighing goods and evils and
selecting which means will maximize value and minimize disvalue. As Thomas
puts it, one can "never justify a bad act by a good intention" (175).
Among the many strengths of Cessario's book is the balance it strikes in the
discussion of the natural law. On the one hand, he stresses that the availability
of basic moral precepts to all human beings is a presupposition of the Church's
evangelization, since what it teaches is not "foreign to human beings." Moreover,
theology needs a "philosophically sound way of identifying the goods of the
moral life," goods that are initially apprehended in terms of the natural law and
the natural virtues. Following Gaudium et spes, Cessario holds that the natural
law supplies "objective criteria" for morality, rooted in the "nature of the person
and of human acts" (170). On the other hand, Cessario never loses sight of the
distinctively theological root of the very notion of a natural law, which Thomas
defines as a participation in the eternal law and whose precepts Cessario
describes as "concrete revelation of divine providence."
The last description renders impossible any attempt to construct a selfcontained natural-law ethic. As a participation in the eternal law, natural law is
but one portion of, one moment in, the providential orchestration of the order
of created things (58-59). Moral theology situates natural law within the full
scope of divine pedagogy, whose centerpiece is the incarnation of the "Word,
breathing love." As Gaudium et spes puts it, "only in the mystery of the incarnate
Word does the mystery of man take on light" (30). Indeed, natural law itself is
"not a complete collection of innate jurisprudence" (91). Instead, Thomas
identifies the precepts of the natural law with natural inclinations, whose
"fruition and fulfillment occurs through the moral virtues" (95).
Although Cessario's book certainly stands on its merits as a splendid
introduction to moral theology, it is hard not to think of it as part of a new and
vibrant movement in Catholic moral theology, one that may finally fulfill the
calling of Vatican II. One thinks of course of the recently translated works of
Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics (also from CUA Press) and Morality:
The Catholic View (from St. Augustine's Press). One also thinks of the work of
promising young scholars like Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering,whose
co-authored introduction to the theology of Aquinas, Knowing the Love of
Christ, will soon be published by Notre Dame Press. These texts are blazing a
new path in moral theology, even as they show us how eccentric, fruitless, and
boring were the debates between proportionalists and absolutists.
One final observation. By placing moral theology within the full scope of
theological discourse and practice, Cessario helps to revive the Trinitarian,
ecclesial, and sacramental foundations of Aquinas's ethics. In so doing, he
underscores the Eastern sources of Thomas's moral teaching. The numerous
references (in both Aquinas and Cessario) to Damascene, Gregory of Nyssa, and

632

BOOK REVIEWS

Maximus provide suggestions for how we might begin to rethink the relationship
of Thomas's moral theology to the thought and practice of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Cessario (who goes so far as to speak of divinization) has implicitly opened up
a line of research and dialogue with Eastern Orthodoxy that is likely to prove
much more fertile thm the internecine battles that have plagued Catholic moral
theology in the recent past.
THOMAS HIBBS

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Truth in Aquinas. By JOHN MILBANK and CATHERINE PICKSTOCK. New York:
Routledge, 2001. Pp. xiv+ 144. $55.00 (doth), $15.95 (paper). ISBN 0415-23334-8 (doth), 0-415-23335-6 (paper).
Despite its tide, this book deals only briefly with the concept of truth in
Aquinas-that is, with Thomas's notion of the adequation or correspondence of
mind and reality. Save for one chapter it consists of previously published papers
on Aquinas by its two authors, in which a great many matters come up for
consideration: knowledge (especially the importance of intuition), the soul's
nature, the senses (especially touch), being, participation, creation, theology and
philosophy, the Trinity, the incarnation's motive and its metaphysics, the
Eucharist, and much else besides. The authors occasionally suggest a connection
between these other issues and the notion of truth. But in brief compass they
evidently intend to give a sweeping account of what, as they see it, Aquinas is up
to, and what lessons contemporary theology and philosophy ought to learn from
him.
The opening chapter is the one most dearly concerned with the concept of
truth. Catherine Pickstock argues that for Aquinas truth is chiefly conformity to
God. Creatures are true by their conformity to God's own k."lowledge of them,
and we apprehend the truth, or truths, by grasping this correspondence of
creatures to God. To apprehend the truth is thus to grasp the participation of
creatures in the divine, and thereby for us as knowers also to participate in the
divine. "Since the tree only transmits treeness ... as imitating the divine, what
we receive in truth is a participation in the divine. To put it another way, in
knowing a tree, we are catching it on its way back to God" (12). Modern
philosophers erroneously suppose that we can "grasp phenomena as they are in
themselves," whereas Aquinas rightly realizes that we can only grasp them "as
they are insofar as they imitate God" (18).
This naturally leads one to wonder how one can teH when what we have
apprehended is the truth-how we know when the tree we've caught is on its
way back to God, and not bound for wherever false trees go. We can, after all,

BOOK REVIEWS

633

be mistaken, so the question of how we can tell when we have truth and when
we don't presumably merits an answer. Pickstock (rightly) eschews any thought
of comparing what is in our minds with the way things are, and shows no
interest in the idea that relations among beliefs, for example, might have a role
in helping us figure out when our minds are true. In fact "truth is not 'tested' in
any way, but sounds itself or shines outwards in beauty" (9); the proportio in
which truth consists "is assumed and experienced, but cannot be observed or
empirically confirmed" (17). Perhaps understandably, not everyone concerned
about how we succeed in telling true from false will find this entirely reassuring.
In any case the position the authors attribute to Aquinas seems to rest on
some elisions that he declines to make. Aquinas indeed holds that things are
"true" by their conformity to God's own mind, while our minds are "true" by
their conformity to things. But he doesn't infer from this that to know a tree just
is to grasp it as imitating God. The connatural object of our intellect, Aquinas
supposes, is the quiddity or nature of the material thing, not the material thing's
imitation of, or participation in, God. On this seems to depend the possibility
that people who don't know God-in particular, who don't know God as the
Trinity, in whom all creation participates in at least a vestigial way-can
nonetheless know the truth about the created world. Aquinas clearly thinks they
can. Those without the distinctive grace of Christian faith are able to know all
manner of truths (cf. STh 1-11, q. 109, a. 1). Pickstock and Milbank seem to think
otherwise. To know anything at all, it appears, one has to know its divine source
and goal; failing that, one forces things themselves to "dissemble" (18). Aquinas,
though, is at some pains to keep straight issues about being and about knowing.
Created things exist only by participation in their eternal exemplars, lodged in
the divine Word, and we can know them only by the participation of our own
intellect, through the creator Spirit's gift, in the uncreated light. But we don't
have to know about the exemplars and the light, the Word and the Spirit, in
order to have this knowledge of creatures. The eternal rationes of created things,
as Aquinas puts a cognate point, are an indispensable cause (principium) of our
knowledge, but they are not what we know (cf. STh I, q. 84, a. 5).
Subsequent chapters consider faith and reason, the incarnation, and the
Eucharist. In the second chapter John Milbank argues that Aquinas sees no clear
boundaries between faith and reason, theology and philosophy (21), or nature
and grace (38), and seeks to show how Aquinas's thought subverts these
distinctions even where it seems to rely on them. By his descent into our flesh,
the authors argue in chapter 3, God brings about "the instruction of our intellect
in divine matters by the senses" (64). For Aquinas, they propose, this not only
reverses the intellect's sinful attachment to sense, but brings about an
"ontological revision" (71) in which touch, not sight, becomes the highest sense.
The ontological consequences of the incarnation extend, the authors stress, far
beyond the remediation of sin, and indeed these consequences rate so highly that
we have to regard God as "aesthetically compelled" to become incarnate (63),
notwithstanding Aquinas's teaching that God could have redeemed us in other
ways. In the final chapter, Pickstock presents Aquinas on the Eucharist as
deliverance-indeed the only hope of deliverance-from the nihilism of Derrida.

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If for Derrida the inescapability of language dooms us to the endless absence of
being and truth, Thomas's teaching on transubstantiation sees infinite divine
presence precisely at the linguistic moment of greatest absence-"This is my
body," spoken of a piece of bread (97). In ways like these, the authors regularly
suggest, contemporary philosophy and theology (not least that of many
Thomists) need to be instructed by Aquinas.
A recurrent interpretive pattern emerges in these chapters. One or another
passage in Aquinas is taken to show that his real view on the matter at hand is
not to be found in any statement he actually makes, or is actually the opposite
of the position he explicitly holds. So, to take one example, Milbank suggests
that Thomas doesn't really see the Trinity as beyond the reach of speculative
reason. "Despite his explicit disavowal of the possibility of natural reason
discerning the Trinity, he in fact argues for the Trinity in much the same way
that he argues for the divine attributes," namely, by reasoning from created to
creative perfection (52). Thus we can say that Aquinas has "speculatively
established" the Trinity, by carrying the intellectual and volitional emanations
that go with personal existence to their highest pitch (53).
Aquinas surely holds that our concept of God's unity is no less analogical than
our concepts of the propria of the divine persons. But he declines to infer from
this that the unity and the triunity of God are on the same epistemic footing. In
order to be "the source of all beings," God needs to be one, but he doesn't need
to be the Trinity. So we can't infer from whatever grasp we have of "all beings,"
including intelligent beings, that God is triune (STh I, q. 32, a. 1, corpus and ad
2). To suppose otherwise isn't just wrong, it's laughable, though not amusing-it
invites the irrisio infidelium, the mockery of unbelievers, who may be led by our
speculative struggles to suppose that we believe the highest truths of the faith for
such unconvincing reasons. The arguments about emanations that remain within
the subject are designed to establish the intelligibility, not the truth, of belief in
the Trinity-they "suffice to show that what the faith teaches is not impossible"
(STh I, q. 32, a. 1).
These authors have labeled their writings "Radical Orthodoxy," and have put
this forward as a new school of theology under their guidance (d. Radical
Orthodoxy: A New Theology [Routledge, 1999]). They are quite open about
their intention to enlist Thomas in support of their own project (see 21). Of
course, there is nothing wrong with trying to recruit Thomas for current
theological and philosophical purposes. Thomists do it all the time; I have done
it myself. There is also nothing wrong with the suggestion that Thomas's real
view on one point or another differs, perhaps dramatically, from what seems to
be his official view, or from the position conventionally attributed to him.
Thomists have been making this sort of argument, often against one another,
since the fourteenth century. But if one is going to claim that Thomas's real view
supports one's current project, one must engage in the kind of close textual work
that is the daily bread of Thomistic scholarship: analyzing passages from across
the corpus of his writings that may bear on the matter at hand, showing, if
possible, how texts which seem to conflict with one's interpretation of Thomas
can be consistent with it, and so forth. Milbank and Pickstock do very little of

BOOK REVIEWS

635

this. Indeed they dismiss such work as mere "exegesis," while they are engaged
in the loftier and more difficult project of "interpretation" ("exegesis is easy; it
is interpretation that is difficult" [20]). What Thomas actually says turns out to
be little more than an occasion for their own speculation-a prominent peg on
which to hang Radical Orthodoxy's hat.
Of course that Thomas didn't say it, or indeed that he denied it, doesn't make
it wrong. The authors make some suggestions that are striking, whatever their
merits as interpretations of Thomas. There is surely something stirring about a
statement like, "Outside the Eucharist, it is true, as postmodern theory holds,
that there is no stable signification, no anchoring reference, no fixable meaning,
and so no 'truth'" (109). But it is a bit hard to know what to make of it, or why
one would think it true, especially if one doesn't think that the decisive issues in
the philosophy of language have been posed most effectively by Derrida. Does
it mean that a world without a Eucharist in it would be a world in which no
statement was true? What about the statement "There's no Eucharist in this
world"? Or does it mean that people who don't believe in the real presence, or
perhaps just don't know about it, are doomed to be nihilists or skeptics? But this
looks plainly counterfactual. What of the many people who hold lots of true
beliefs, and cheerfully grant that they do-who are neither nihilists nor
skeptics-but who don't count belief in the real presence among them? The
authors don't provide many dues about how to answer such questions. It does
not help that the book is composed in a style thick with affectations of
profundity, by turns excruciating ("a superessential reach to the other as goal is
superadded even to the superessential superaddition of operation to substance"
[54]) and simply curious (the Eucharistic entrance rites are "a liturgical liturgy"
[100]).
In spite of its shortcomings as an interpretation of Aquinas, this book may
attract readers of Thomas. Those especially who like Thomas, but aren't drawn
to any of the established Thomistic interpretations of the master, may find it
impressive for what it tries to do, even if it doesn't entirely succeed.
One feature of the book that some Thomists-not least quite traditional
ones-may find appealing is the authors' sweeping repudiation of analytic
philosophy. Lonergan, Burrell, Geach, and I all draw fire for supposing that
analytic philosophy has anything useful to contribute to the interpretation and
evaluation of Aquinas's views, and Tarski, Davidson, Dennett, and Searle for
supposing that analytic philosophy has anything true to say about matters of
philosophical interest in the first place. But Milbank and Pickstock are quite
confused about the views and arguments of the analytic thinkers they discuss, so
much so that it is difficult to tell what targets, real or imagined, they may be
aiming at, let alone whether they manage to hit them. Thus Davidson, for
example, actually rejects the thought that "disquotationalism" has anything to
do with the concept of truth, denies that we could hope, or should want, to "get
rid of" the concept of truth (see 2-3; perhaps they have him confused with F. P.
Ramsey), and grants no epistemic privilege to statements in natural science
(perhaps they have him confused with A. J. Ayer). As for me, I do not argue that
there are two concepts of truth, one for "the secular realm" and one for "the

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theological realm," but that there can only be one concept of truth for all
statements-a theological one (see 4). Milbank and Pickstock seem to think that
in general analytic philosophers are committed, whether they like it or not, to
some sort of reductive scientific materialism, and that simply mentioning such
a hideous bogeyman is enough to drive any Thomist off analytic philosophy
altogether.
Analytic interpretation and assessment of Aquinas is, however, considerably
on the rise, now often at the hands of people deeply knowledgeable about the
text of Aquinas and the history of its interpretation. This is one result of the
explosive growth in analytic philosophy of religion and philosophical theology
since (to give a rough terminus a quo) Allvin Plantinga published God and Other
Minds in 1967. Non-analytic Thomists thus find themselves faced with an
increasingly large body of sophisticated interpretation of Thomas which they
lack adequate means to evaluate. This may tempt them simply to look, in the
manner of our authors, for the quickest way to repudiate it. For Thomists, at
least, this would be an odd reaction. To many of Thomas's contemporaries
Aristode seemed pretty much like a reductive scientific materialist, and they
thought it better to keep their distance from such a threatening presence.
Thomas was not deterred, and we who want to be his heirs shouldn't be either.
Another feature that may attract Thomists is the authors' conviction that
hero of medieval philosophy and
Aquinas is the unambiguous
theology-perhaps, indeed, of the Western intellectual tradition between
Augustine and the present. The medieval scholastic tradition before Aquinas, to
the extent that the authors discuss it, is mainly a series of blind alleys. After him
it is mainly the story of various failures to appreciate his insights, especially on
the part of Duns Scorns, who singlehandedly initiates the decline of the West (on
Milbank and Pickstock's misapprehensions about Scorns, see Richard Cross,
'"Where Angels Fear to Tread': Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy,"
Antonianum 76 [2001]: 7-41). Here the authors do not attempt to tell much of
this story themselves. But they apparently take for granted a narrative of the
medieval tradition of the kind that became standard in the mid-twentieth
century, perhaps above aH in the version proposed by Etienne Gilson. Naturally
Thomists have not been reluctant to endorse narratives of this sort.
Subsequent scholarship on medieval philosophy and theology has widely
concluded that this narrative, for all the learning with which a scholar like Gilson
works it out, is implausible. The period from about 1100 to 1400 sees too many
issues under debate, and too many original and sophisticated positions defended,
for us even to make much sense of the claim that there is a single high point to
medieval philosophy and theology, let alone the same high point on every
important issue. In particular the growth of scholarship on the fourteenth
century has shown how unconvincing is the suggestion that Aquinas was
followed by one long downhill slide into various forms of skepticism,
irrationalism, and ontotheological domestication of the divine. Those of us
whose first instinct is to defend Aquinas will have to do so without relying on the
assumption that Thomism is the only alternative to such undesirable results.

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Much of the appeal of sweeping historical narratives lies in the promise of
intelligibility: we will understand the part by understanding its place in the
whole. Having largely dropped the idea of a single high point to the intellectual
history of the Middle Ages, medievalists now find it more difficult to write a
grand narrative of the period than they once did. That doesn't make such a
narrative less desirable. Among others John Marenbon, David Luscombe, and
Alain de Libera have made preliminary attempts to tell the story of medieval
philosophy in new ways. An account that also includes a wide range of
theological developments is yet more difficult, though Marcia Colish has
provided one overview that deals with both. But it may be left to a subsequent
generation of medievalists to write a new narrative that combines Gilson's grand
scope with his attention to detail. It is the latter, of course, that slows things
down. But it considerably increases the likelihood that the narrative will be true.
BRUCE D. MARSHALL

Southern Methodist University
Dallas, Texas

The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus, By
RICHARD CROSS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 358.
$90.00. (doth). ISBN 0-19-924436-7.
Richard Cross's book The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to
Duns Scotus, is, on one level, true to its tide. It is an historical study of the way
in which various medieval theologians from Aquinas to Scotus conceived the
metaphysical make-up of the Incarnation. However, this historical study is
predominantly the arrangement within which Cross weaves his own
Christological agenda, one that he believes holds contemporary relevance. Thus
Cross, in surveying assorted metaphysical. issues addressed by the various
medieval theologians, not only critiques them, but also, in so doing, advances his
own metaphysical understanding of the Incarnation. This is by no means
improper, and in actual fact Cross's own Christo!ogical programme is the most
fascinating and challenging aspect of the entire book. His skills pertaining to the
logic and metaphysics of the Incarnation are considerable. However, in this
particular case this format causes the book to lack a coherent presentation.
Theologians, theological and philosophical issues, and Cross's own agenda do
not always fit together smoothly.
On the one hand, Cross is compelled, since this is fundamentally an historical
survey, to treat a large number of theologians: Aquinas, Matthew of Aquasparta,
William of Ware, Godfrey of Fontaines, Bonaventure, Giles of Rome, Henry of
Ghent, Duns Scorns, and so on. This he does with enviable knowledge and
what is important in this book is not the
admirable flair. Yet, on the other

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narrating of what a myriad of theologians had to say on certain topics relevant
to the Incarnation, but the critical themes that Cross wishes to address so as to
further his own Christological thinking. Thus the treatment of many of these
various (and "lesser"} theologians merely clutters up and adds little to the
advancement of what is central to this book. This book would have been much
better served, and would have been immensely more interesting (and .more
clearly and logically written}, if Cross had simply allowed his own agenda to
dictate its structure. Then he could have simply employed the most relevant
theologians (primarily Aquinas and Scotus} for the benefit of his overall
concerns. In this review I wish to focus solely on a few issues that Cross
addresses from within the context of his historical survey that bear upon his own
understanding of the Incarnation.
Cross first maintains that the medievals argued that the human nature of
Christ, in order for it to be real, must be a concrete individual substance (see
chap. 1). However, if Christ's human nature is a concrete, individual substance,
why is it not a person in itself and how is it united to the person of the Son?
Here Cross believes all of the medievals, and particularly Aquinas, are faced with
a dilemma. Aquinas argued that, while the human nature is a real substance, it
is not a person "because it does not exist separately in itself, but rather in some
more perfect thing-viz. the person of the Word" (STh III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3).
Nonetheless, Cross contends that Aquinas, in not allowing the human nature its
own existence, ultimately sacrificed the substantial reality of that nature and so
unwittingly espoused Monophysitism.
This leads Cross into a lengthy and often very complex analytical discussion
on how the various medieval theologians conceived the union between the
divinity and the humanity in Christ. Cross holds that Aquinas employed a
'whole-part' model for the union, that is, that the humanity (the part: human
nature) is united to the divine Son of God (the whole: divine person and nature).
Most other theologians, including Scotus, employed the notion of a
'substance/accident' union, that is, as an accident inheres within a substance so
the humanity inheres within the divinity.
Aquinas argued against the substance/accident model for he wished to uphold
the idea that the Son of God was not accidentally man as a man is accidentally
white. Rather, Aquinas wanted to ensure that the Son of God was substantially
man, that is, that the Son of God actually did exist as a true man. However,
while Cross on a number of occasions insists that Aquinas did not actually
conceive the Incarnation on a 'whole-part' model, yet he consistently speaks of
Aquinas' understanding of the Incarnation as if in actual fact he did employ it
(see for example p. 55 n. 17; 59; 197). This not only causes confusion on
whether or not Aquinas actually did nor did not use this model, but it also
misrepresents Aquinas. Cross argues that Aquinas in employing something like
the 'whole-part' model held that Christ's humanity only existed because, as a
part, it was grafted into and embedded within the whole divinity of the Son. But
this, Cross rightly states, is not possible. "The human nature cannot be an
essential part of the divine suppositum, as Aquinas was well aware. Such a

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Christological claim would amount to some version of the monophysite heresy"
(57; see also 60).
Enmeshed within this discussion is the issue of whether or not Aquinas held
that there were one or two esses in Christ, that is, one divine and one human.
There is much scholarly debate on what Aquinas did hold on this issue, but Cross
maintains that Aquinas's preferred and final understanding is that Christ had
one, divine, esse for Christ is the one divine person of the Son (see 55). As
Aquinas wrote:
Since the human nature is united to the Son of God hypostatically or
personally ... and not accidentally, it follows that no new personal
esse comes to him in virtue of the human nature, but only a relation
of the preexisting personal esse to the human nature, such that the
person can now be said to subsist not only according to the divine
nature, but also according to the human. (STh III, q. 17, a. 2).

Because Aquinas does not uphold a created human esse, and therefore
seemingly the existence of a real humanity, Cross again concludes that Aquinas's
conception of the Incarnation is monophysite. At this point I want briefly to
critique Cross's treatment of Aquinas not merely by way of defending him, but
also that such a defense might set the context for my further critique of Cross's
own position.
Cross's analysis fails to grasp a number of important elements of Aquinas's
conception of the Incarnation. First, Aquinas dearly did not hold a 'whole-part'
model for the Incarnation, as if the humanity were an individual, discrete 'part'
that came to exist as part of and within the larger whole, the divinity. This
indeed would be Monophysitism. Second, what Aquinas did want to uphold was
three truths simultaneously: (1) that it is truly the Son of God who is man, (2)
that it is truly man that the Son of God is, and (3) that the Son of God truly is
man. Third, for Aquinas these truths are upheld when one conceives that the
humanity simultaneously both comes to exist and is hypostatically, and so
ontologically, united to the person of the Son such that the Son actually comes
to exist as man. The terminus of the incarnational becoming must be that the Son
is man. Thus, as Aquinas stated, the Son does not come to be a new person, "no
new personal esse comes to him." The Son remains unchangeably the Son. What
is new is that an authentic humanity does actually come to exist, but it does so
only as it is united to the person of the Son, thus allowing the person of the Son
to exist newly as man. The incarnational act by which the humanity is united
hypostaticaHy to the Son is the very same act that guarantees that the Son is
actually man. Fourth, contrary to Cross, I would argue that Aquinas does allow
for a twofold esse in Christ. For Aquinas, Christ is one being, ens, by the esse
personale of the Son, but he is one ens by the esse personale only because the
created relational esse, that is, the real relational effect in the humanity, is that
it comes to be and is united to the Son in such a manner that the Son actually
subsists as man. Aquinas then did not jeopardize the reality of Christ's humanity.
What he ensured is precisely that the reality of that humanity is so united to the
Son that the Son does actually exist as a genuine man.

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To proceed, Cross maintains that most theologians after Aquinas adopted the
'substance-accident' analogy by way of explicating the relationship between the
divinity and humanity in Christ. This not only allowed them to demonstrate the
manner in which the humanity inheres within the divinity, but also, especially in
Scotus's understanding, to account for a distinctive human esse apart from the
divine esse. It is argued that accidents possess their own distinct mode of being
(esse)-as, for example, being white-apart from the substantial mode of being
(esse)-as, for example, being man. Because this incarnational view permits the
humanity to possess its own esse and so more confidently assures, it would
appear, its reality, Cross finds it more to his liking.
Nonetheless, while Christ's humanity may now possess its own human esse,
it is united to the divinity as an accident to a substance. This being the case
Christ cannot possess contradi-.i:ory attributes/accidents. As a substance, such as
a man, cannot be white and black at the same time in the same manner, so Christ
cannot possess contrary attributes at the same time in the same manner. Cross
thus argues that the medievals, including Scotus, refused, because of their false
philosophical understanding of God, to acknowledge the logic of the
communication of idioms. Christ cannot be immutable and impassible as God
and mutable and passible as man. "The correct strategy ... is to jettison one or
other in any contradictory pair of divine and human attributes. It is this
strategy-or so it seems to me-which allows the doctrine of the Incarnation to
be coherent" (205). For Cross then, Christ's human suffering must be
appropriated by his divinity and so be experienced within the divine nature.
Cross further agrees with Scotus that there is not something positive, such as
Aquinas's act of existence, that accounts for a human being's subsistence. Rather
subsistence is merely accounted for by something (a human nature) not being
assumed by the Son of God. This is designated the "negation theory of
subsistence." All human natures possess the passive potency of being assumed,
but only Christ's actually was. It is only because the others were not assumed
that they exist as who they are. If I understand Cross correctly, and it all does get
rather confusing and complex, such a stance allows the human nature of Christ
to be independent and concrete in that it can exist apart from the Son of God,
and yet is now assumed by the Son of God and so is his humanity. How then
does Cross conceive the incarnational union?
In the conclusion of his book Cross not only summarizes his previous
arguments, he also develops their implications so as to offer his own
metaphysical understanding of the Incarnation. He emphasizes again that
Christ's human nature must be understood to be an individualized substance or
nature, and thus Christ must have a human center of consciousness. This allows
us to account for the Gospel's portrayal of Christ's ignorance and mistaken
knowledge. "We need a subject for this lack of knowledge. It cannot be the
second person of the Trinity on pain of contradiction. So it must be the assumed
nature" (325). For Cross ignorance and error are not essential to being human,
and thus not necessary for the Son's incarnational experience. If they were
essential to being human, it would mean that it would be impossible for God to
become man (see 316). Cross proceeds to argue then that Christ must have a

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human consciousness some of whose experiences are communicable to the
divinity and some of which are not, depending on whether or not they are in
keeping with his divinity. Since change and time, unlike ignorance and error, are
defining properties of created reality and human life, then God, if he is to
become man, must be changeable and temporal (see 317). Equally, God must
have passive liabilities and so suffer (see 317-18).
For Cross then, following Scotus, the human nature has causal control over
its actions and so has "a degree of psychological and causal autonomy" (319).
The Incarnation, on this account, consists of two overlapping
individuals, the Word and his individualhuman nature; the union
between these two individualsis explained by the fact that one of
them is a property of the other. On this view, the Word is the subject
of (most) human properties, whereas the human nature is not the
subjectof any divine properties. (319-20)
Since there are two centers of consciousness, what is directly experienced
within the human consciousness that is compatible with the divine nature can be
attributed, as "a second-order experience" (that is, as an experience once
removed), to the divine consciousness.
Pain is causedin the Word as much as it is in the human nature. But
this is because the human nature directly possesses the relevant
passivepowersor liabilities;the Word possessesthem indirectly. The
only sort of case where this transitivity fails is when the human
nature has a property that is incompatiblewith an essential divine
property. (121)

Cross further argues that, since the human center of consciousness possesses
ontological autonomy, it is possible that "this human nature could be assumed
and fail to know this fact" (322). Cross concludes by stating that all that he
wishes to uphold is best done from, again, within Scotus' negative theory of
subsistence.
[Negation theories] allow a human nature to have a natural
inclinationto subsistence.Equally,on a negationtheory, the assumed
nature lacks nothing had by a non-assumednature. So on the face of
it the assumednature looks in this theory to be a powerful candidate
for being a centre of consciousnessor experiencingsubject in its own
right. (323)
A full critique of Cross obviously cannot be given here. Nonetheless, I would
like to make a few observations in the light of Chalcedon and Aquinas.
Cross wishes to uphold Chalcedon and believes that his understanding of the
Incarnation does so. He is fearful that his Christology, as was Scotus's, might be
thought Nestorian. I believe his fears are not misplaced for, despite his honest
best efforts to wrap himself in a Chalcedonian cloak, in the end it but conceals

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a Nestorian heart. The reason is that Cross does not grasp, as did Aquinas, the
true nature of the incarnational "is"; that the Son of God actually is man.
This can be seen first when Cross speaks of the Son and the human nature as
two "individuals" and his insistence that the human nature is itself a
psychological and causal autonomous subject. He describes the incarnational
union as "two overlapping individuals." It would seem that within this portrayal
of the Incarnation the Son of God is not actually man. While this may sound
Nestorian, some may argue, as Cross does, that it actually is not. However, when
this understanding of the Incarnation is interpreted from within the context of
Cross's rendering of the communication of idioms, its Nestorian pedigree
becomes evident.
Cross is critical of the patristic and medieval tradition which allows the Son
to suffer only as man but not as God. While what the Son of God is and is not
allowed to experience seems a little arbitrary within Cross's view, the real issue
is that Cross's own understanding does not allow the Son to be the actual
principal subject of the human attributes. For Cross the Son only experiences
"indirectly" what is primarily experienced by the "autonomous" conscious
human nature. For the Son of God, according to Cross, such an experience is a
"second order" experience, that is, one that is not primarily his own. The reason
for this is that on the one hand Cross wants the human suffering to be
experienced within the divinity of the Son, but on the other hand he does not
want human ignorance and error to be experienced within the divinity of the
Son. In order to maintain both the Son takes to himself those human experiences
that are compatible with his divinity and stands aloof from those that are not.
But the reason the Son can do this within Cross's Christology is precisely because
the Son is not actually man. Within Cross's Christology there are actually two
"whos", two "subjects"-that of the Son and that of the autonomous conscious
human nature-which merely overlap. There is testimony to this not only in his
understanding of the communication of idioms, but also when he says that it was
possible for the human nature not to know that it has been assumed by the Son.
But who is the "who" who does not know? Human natures as such do not
"know" and "not know." Only persons possess knowledge and ignorance. For
Cross, whether he likes it or not, there is a human "he," a "person" (a "who")
hidden within that "human nature," and therefore his Christology possesses all
the marks of Nestorianism.
It should be noted for the sake of completion that within the true
Chalcedonian tradition the Son could not only actually suffer as man, he could
also be genuinely be ignorant and commit errors as man, since the Son of God
was indeed a man. The fact that the Son did not suffer and become ignorant as
God in no way made the Incarnation inauthentic. What the Incarnation
authenticates is not that the Son of God experienced human life in a divine
manner, but that he experienced human life in a human manner. The Incarnation
authenticates that the Son did actually become man and so all that he did and
experienced as man was truly human.
One final point concerning the "negation theory of subsistence." The reason
I am who I am is not that I was not assumed by the Son, but that God created me

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to be who I am. What Scotus and Cross forget is that there existentially or
ontologically exists no such thing as a "non-assumed" human nature or a human
nature that can or cannot be assumed. Only human beings/persons, who are who
they are, exist, and therefore they could not possibly be assumed and so become
somebody else. The Son could not assume me because before I came to be there
was no "me" to assume. Once I came to be, I am me, and once I am me I cannot
be assumed. The Son of God assumed a humanity that was uniquely his own
(conceived in the womb of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit), making him
Jesus, and it only came to be at the moment of its assumption.
While I have been critical of Cross's book, I would nonetheless stress that it
should not be ignored. The issues that Cross raises are at the heart of the
Incarnation and the answers that he proposes must be taken seriously and given
their proper due.
THOMAS G. WEINANDY, 0.F.M.CAP.

Greyfriars
Oxford, England

Creaturaintellecta:Die Ideen und Possibilienlehrebei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick
auf Franz von Mayronnes,Ponciusund Mastrius. By TOBIAS HOFFMANN.
Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters,
Neue Folge 60. Munster: AschendorffVerlag, 2002. 46.00 EUR. Pp. 356
(paper). ISBN 3-402-04011-5.
Tobias Hoffmann's Creaturaintellectais at present the definitive exposition
and interpretation of Duns Scotus's metaphysics of divine ideas and the possibles
in their relation to God. While the author frames his own questions to Scotus in
terms of recent discussion of the Franciscan doctor's place in the history of
metaphysics, his interpretations are well supported by the texts he cites not only
from the OrdinatioSentence commentary but also from the earlier Lectura and
the later ReportatioIA. (Specialistshave not been in full agreement regarding the
complete authenticity of this latter, a student report, but Hoffmann fully accepts
its authenticity and relies on it extensively.) In accord with his subtitle,
Hoffmann also traces the fundamental divergence within the Scotist school on
divine knowledge and the possibles in the centuries after the Subtle Doctor's
death.
After an introduction that situates Scotus historically and summarizes his
originality, the first part of the work devotes five chapters to the issues of divine
knowledge in general, practical and theoretical knowledge in God and the
contingency of creation, the debate between Scotus and Henry of Ghent on
divine ideas, the distant but vital role played by the divine ideas in human
knowing (Scotus's minimalist appropriation of Augustine), and the divine

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intellect's production of the ideas as possible quiddities or "understood
creatures." For Scotus, there is a sense in which one can say that a divine idea is
an eternally understood creature, possible only, or possible and
to-be-freely-created (hence the tide of the book).
For Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent, the problematic of the divine ideas,
inherited from St. Augustine, served to explain how the one and simple God in
knowing himself could know a plurality of potential creatures other than himself.
Saint Thomas in the Summa first deduced that God knows things other than
himself before going on to treat of the divine ideas as that whereby he knows the
things he can create. The divine ideas are so many relations of imitability of the
divine essence by things other than God and which he can create. God's knowing
himself as imitable in different ways is God's knowing what can imitate him.
For Duns Scotus, God's knowing that his essence is imitable in different ways,
that is, his knowing of a relation, presupposes knowledge of both terms, the
divine essence and the possible essences of creatures. Thus for Scows, the
starting point for the discussion should be the gaze of the divine intellect on
finite essences in their intrinsic non-repugnance to being (their possibility). This
does not imply for Scotus that existence-less but somehow independently
subsisting essences or Platonic ideas actualize the divine intellect as objects of its
act. Rather, the divine intellect, which primarily views the divine essence,
"produces" and contemplates as secondary objects the possible essences it gazes
on as ideas.
It is at this point that questions, objections, and misinterpretations of the
Subtle Doctor's position have abounded, from the fourteenth century to the
twenty-first. If the divine intellect "produces" possible essences, are their mutual
relations of compatibility or contradictoriness (possibility or impossibility),
among themselves and to "being," entirely beholden to God? (For comparison,
Descartes held the truths of mathematics would be different if God so willed.)
If this is to be rejected, are we to conclude that possible essences somehow are
what they are in themselves independently of God, and that God's "producing"
them as ideas means only that a state of being-known is added to their essential
being by God's knowing them?
Hoffmann's control of the texts allows him convincingly to offer the answers
that Scotus's work taken as a whole contains, and he refutes the widely
disseminated interpretations by Simo Knuuttila and others who find in Scotus's
metaphysics a realm of ontological possibilities independent from God. Let us
survey the high points.
From distinctions 35, 36, and 43 of the first book of the Ordinatio, and a few
other passages, it emerges, first, that the divine ideas and the possibles are
identically the finite essences, qua eternally known to God and qua
non-repugnant to actual being. Second-and this is the key text for
Knuuttila-Scotus famously writes in Ordinatio I, d. 43 that even if God did not
exist, a quiddity o.r essence would be non-repugnant to being, that is, possible in
a fundamental sense. This is a consequence of the quiddities having their
possibility formaliter ex se. But Hoffmann demonstrates that none of this implies

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a transcendental domain of quiddities independent of God's producing them as
objects of his knowing. For Scotus also says the quiddities have their possibility
principiativefrom God; although it is from itself that black, for example, cannot
be white and stone can be, nevertheless, the quiddities had to be produced as
simple objects for them to be the subject of possibility and impossibilities. Thus
when Scotus writes that they would be possible even if God did not exist, he is
not denying that quiddity X owes itself to a divine intellectual production.
Rather, focusing on possibility itself as a compatibility of a quiddity X with
being, and keeping the quiddity itself in mind while not adverting to its
intellectual production by God, Scotus simply answers an implied question,
"What would 'happen to' X's possibility(non-repugancebetween X and being)
if God were not around?" Since non-repugnance to being is essential to the
essence, and not added to it by divine power (the position Scotus is refuting), the
answer is that nothing would happen to its possibility per se if God were not
around. But Scotus does not mean that the quiddity or essence itself is
independent of God. To repeat, Scotus says that the quiddity has its possibility
formaliterfrom itself, but also principiativefrom God, and he says elsewhere that
the divine intellect gives the quiddity the very formal ratio that it is. Clearly the
quiddity itself-stone, equinity, rose, humanity etc.-is produced as an
immediately understood object by God's intellect.
One can thus summarize Scotus's utterly radical thought of origin as follows:
God is the source of all beings, not only of their actual existence if he freely
creates them, but also of their essences as intelligible and possible. God's
primordially known, intensively infinite essence is the source and "measure" of
the very content of finite essences as the essences they are, eternally manifest to
the divine intellect contemplating them. The Scotistic schema of "instants of
nature" is crucial here: at the first instant of nature God knows God, and at a
further instant of nature he produces and knows the finite essences as sheer
objects of noetic viewing. "First and second instants of nature" here means not
a temporal order, but an essential order in which God would not be knowing
finite essences as non-repugnant to being were he not knowing necessarily
existing deitas, infinite being, by blessed intuition. Divine intellectualproduction
of the possibles means, first, that the divine intellect produces them all as its
secondary objects having, as objects of intellect, only being-known and not real
being in themselves (the divine will, which can only act toward known objects,
contingently wills known-as-possible creatures at the next instant of nature);
second, the divine-intellect-intuiting-divinity is a kind of artistic imagination of
the simple essential contents as such, the roseness of rose, the stoneness of stone,
the humanity of humanity, etc., and not merely their possible combinations.
There is thus no transcendental domain of possible essences independent of God
in the metaphysics of Scotus.
Necessarily existing and self-known infinite being, deitas, is naturally
productive of the finite possibles as sheer objects to be created or not by the
divine will; since the philosopher does not have quidditative knowledge of
deitas, it is pointless for him to ask why deitas eternally produces known finite

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quiddities, or whether other quiddities could have been produced. As the great
historian Paul Vignaux pointed out, -productivitasis a quasi-attribute of God in
the thought of Duns Scotus, not able to be deduced a priori from our conceptual
knowledge of God which consists in combinations of "being," "infinite," and the
transcendentals. And divinely inspired Scripture alone reveals a production more
primordial than that of the ideas in esse intelligibili:the productions of the Word
and the Spirit in esse reali.
The second part of Hoffmann's book details the full-blown essentialism (cf.
Gilson) of Scotus's pupil Francis of Mayronnes, and the sharp debate between
two seventeenth-century Scotists, the Irishman John Poncius (Punch) and the
northern Italian Bartholomew Mastrius, regarding the status of the possibles in
themselves and as divinely known. Mayronnes, rightly known as the Magister
abstractionum, pushes a hyper-Platonic dialectic of abstraction to the point of
saying that since being-produced is a relational mode, it -presupposesan absolute
foundation, the quiddity itself, so that quiddity as such cannot be produced.
Thus it is not surprising that Mayronnes denies that the formal contents of
possible essences are produced by the divine essence, even though this denial
puts him openly at odds with his venerated teacher Duns Scotus. It is not
perfectly clear whether Mayronnes attributes independence to finite quiddities
as such, for he does obscurely say that (1) divine intellection "precedes" finite
essences (though not qua intellection of those essences), and (2) the finite
essences are contained supereminenterin the divine essence, by which he may
mean that "there are" finite essences as knowable possibles only because there
is infinite essence.
If Mayronnes falls just short of attributing independence to quiddities as such,
John Poncius approximates Knuuttila's interpretation of Scotus by attributing an
esse diminutum to the finite quiddity independently of God, an esse that is
neither real existence nor the quiddity's being-known-to-God. Poncius is sharply
rebuked by his fellow Franciscan Bartholomew Mastrius for whom God is not
truly God if a finite essence does not owe everything to a divine production, not
only its eventual contingent existence, but also its very formal content. Poncius
thinks he does justice to belief in creation by reaffirming that the possibles
cannot exist actually except in dependence on God's contingent will; Mastrius
however is integrally theistic: his understanding of being does not allow a finite
quiddity to "glory" (sic) in the fact of not owing its whatness to something
outside itself. Whereas for Scotus and Mastrius finite quiddities are only "there"
eternally as what they are and as objects to God because God knows his essence,
for Poncius a domain of knowable finite essences stretches out before God's gaze
independently of God.
Hoffmann's conclusion emphasizes the original shift in Duns Scotus's
philosophy of divine ideas, a shift to ideas as themselves objects and as possibles,
and Scotus's deeper reflection on these notions. At the same time, Creatura
intellecta makes it clear that the early modern view of being as an independent
transcendental domain of essences cannot appeal to the texts themselves of Duns
Scotus. In fact, this metaphysics is sometimes clearly opposed to the Subtle

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Doctor. It was more within the pluralistic Franciscan school considered as
"Scotist" that key aspects of early modern metaphysics were first sketched out.
ANSGAR SANTOGROSSI, 0.S.B.

Mt. Angel Seminary
St. Benedict, Oregon

Christian Life and Christian Hope: Raids on the Inarticulate. By ROWAN A.
GREER. New York: Crossroad, 2001. Pp. 288. $24.95 (paper). ISBN
0-8245-1916-7.

Theological reflection on Christian hope, or eschatology, has proven an
abidingly fascinating topic, at once consoling and enigmatic. The desire to know
what ultimately awaits the Christian and the problem of how to discern this
vision in a fallen world capable of providing only glimpses of the age to come
has preoccupied theologians since the time of St. Paul. Accounts of Christian
hope, while varying in detail, all must reckon somehow with complex notions
of anthropology, Christology, soteriology, grace, nature, free will, and original
sin. The spiritual dimension of eschatology, furthermore, inevitably yields a
practical consideration, namely, how that future vision compels Christians to live
in the present.
Rowan Greer has tackled this topic in a most intriguing, thoughtful way in his
study entitled Christian Life and Christian Hope: Raids on the Inarticulate. He
begins, as one might expect, with biblical understandings of Christian hope in
the Gospels and Paul and moves on to the patristic period with Gregory of Nyssa
and Augustine, but then he leaps forward to discuss the two seventeenth-century
Anglicanwriters John Donne and Jeremy Taylor. At first glance this combination
might seem rather odd, even if one is aware that Greer is an Episcopal priest as
well as a patristics and Anglican-studies scholar. However, the grouping makes
sense given Greer's predominant aim, which is to establish lines of continuity
between these three historical periods and today and thus offer models to inform
our contemporary thinking. As such, Greer's work builds on the superb 1991
study by Brian Daley, S.J., The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of
Patristic Eschatology, which carefully traces the roots and development of
Christian eschatology through the entire patristic period.
Greer begins by repudiating what he regards as the misguided lament of
Jiirgen Moltmann that Christianity has long banished the future hope in favor
of a turn inward, a move Moltmann traces all the way back to the
post-Constantinian period (see his 1967 Theology of Hope). Nevertheless, Greer
concedes to Moltmann that many philosophical and theological claims of
Western modernity (especially German idealism and its heirs) internalize hope

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so that it becomes a construct of individual consciousness and thus serves merely
to make sense of one's present reality. Likewise, culture has contributed
immensely to an emphasis of Christianity on the present. While Greer disputes
Moltmann's fundamental claim, he is attracted to the identification by Moltmann
and others of the character of Christian hope as simultaneously continuous and
discontinuous with the present. Here lies the essence of hope. By definition,
"Christian hope in its fullest sense cannot exist apart from its object," which is
other-worldly, and "equally, Christian hope cannot be hope unless it informs our
understanding of life as we experience it" (3), which is this-worldly. An entirely
other-worldly view renders hope meaningless, because detached from our
present reality, while a totally this-worldly perspective reduces Christianity at
best to morality, at worst to moral relativism, and locates salvation solely in the
world of our experience.
Against Moltmann's assertion, then, Greer wants to argue that Christianity
has indeed maintained understandings of the Christian hope that combine these
two perspectives in some way, an integration of what he terms the "here and
now" with the "there and then." Christian hope becomes paired with Christian
life as Gregory, Augustine, Donne, and Taylor demonstrate how only appealing
to the there and then can make sense of the here and now. One might suppose
that Greer could better support his argument had he treated at least one figure
dated later than the seventeenth century, but he explains his choices as partly
based on familiarity and partly "because their thought remains uncluttered by
critical preoccupations with historicity and with how to affirm religious claims
in the context of purely empirical worldviews" (7). In this way, he proposes, they
serve as more helpful, traditional models for us today in a "postcritical phase of
Christian theology" (ibid.).
As the subtitle of Greer's study suggests (in a line borrowed from "East
Coker," the second of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets), by its very nature the
Christian hope remains impossible to articulate fully in this life. In still one of the
most important and succinct scriptural statements on eschatology, Paul captures
this sense with his famous visual metaphor, "For now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then face to face" (1Cor13:12). None of the four writers Greer deals with
ever produced anything approaching a systematic discussion of the Christian
hope, so he is forced to synthesize elements from their respective bodies of work,
expressed variously in poetry and prose, exegesis and meditation, sermon and
biography. Greer navigates through this sea of ideas with evident agility, which
allows him to treat the material in a manageable form, reducing it to an
accessible though not overly simplistic presentation.
Greer begins with a brief review of the New Testament perspectives on
Christian hope and Christian life, which also provides a basis for the ensuing
discussions. Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God builds on the
future-oriented Jewish traditions of prophecy and apocalyptic, yet Jesus radically
emphasizes the hopeful aspect of the kingdom, one to be grasped in the present.
In other words, the there and then is also a here and now. Jesus' miracles,
parables, and teachings, as well as His followers and the Christian community
itself, all offer present insights into the future glory of the kingdom. The promise

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of the gift of the kingdom, moreover, demands a response of repentance,
reliance on God, and appropriate behavior. While the four gospels and Paul each
treat eschatology in varied ways (Paul stresses the "then," John the "there"), they
are unified by their emphasis on Jesus' death and resurrection. This unifying
theme indicates the crux of eschatology. Jesus' death belongs to this world, but
His resurrection is beyond history. Therefore, taken together, Jesus' death and
resurrection represent a passage from the here and now to the there and then,
and thus they provide a perspective by which to assess the character of Christian
life, which so concerns Paul in particular.
The emphasis on practical concerns involved with first the imminent and then
the delayed eschatology found in the New Testament shifts to the more
spiritual/theological discussions of the patristic period. Gregory of Nyssa does
not develop an eschatological doctrine as such but rather, according to Greer,
establishes diverse paths to lead to a truth not fully accessible in this world.
Greer distinguishes three, all of which offer visions of the future and implications
for life in the present. The inherent difficulties of the topic emerge in this
discussion as Greer points out that these paths at times conflict with each other,
and yet Gregory is able to maintain them all. They include the vision of a
transfigured and divinized new creation (the physical dimension of salvation), the
notion of "epectasy" or perpetual progress in the knowledge of God (the
spiritual dimension), and the corporate nature of humanity. All of these
represent ideas drawn from Gregory's work in Christology and Trinitarian
theology, and common to them is Gregory's sense that while hope is located in
the age to come, we can participate in that hope in the present. Indeed, the
monastic life best represents these ideals at work. Gregory, then, is optimistic
about the here and now as it instantiates the there and then.
Augustine expresses a less positive vision of the present and its relation to the
future. Greer begins with Augustine's persistent theme of restlessness, of seeking,
of longing for God. This seeking is couched in negative terms, for Augustine
finds no peace in this life, only anticipation (not participation). The development
of Augustine's views throughout his career are complicated, though ably
explained by Greer, and correlate to the evolution of his doctrines of grace, free
will, original sin, the soul, and redemption, in addition to his contemplation of
time, knowledge, and memory. His early position, essentially Christian
Platonism, held that only an elite few could hope for the possibility of
contemplating God in this life following a period of moral purification. This
position is transformed with Augustine's later radical thinking on original sin and
operative grace. He comes to believe that the vision of God is not possible in this
life, but only in the life to come for those few who have been freed by God from
original sin. This later view reflects the fundamental breach in Augustine's
eschatology between the here and now and the there and then, which can only
be bridged partially through seeking and a life lived in hope, faith, and love.
To demonstrate some continuity, Greer next outlines the influence of
Augustine on the thought of John Donne as well as Donne's distinctiveness.
Donne was best known in his own time for his sermons rather than for what is
now described as his metaphysical poetry. Greer works with both genres, but due

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to the absence of formal theological treatises by Donne, he cites the writings of
Richard Hooker as an expression of the views behind Donne's thinking (at times
this recourse to Hooker seems unnecessary). Donne's main concern is holy
living, and so he is more practical than speculative in his approach to Christian
hope. While grace is first offered gratuitously by God in the forgiveness of
original sin and is rooted in the atonement effected by Christ's death
(justification by faith), what really matters is the proper use of that grace, which
is a continual process of repentance and faith based on God's mercy
(sanctification), as preparation for the completion of election in the age to come.
Christian life becomes a graced yet restless journey through life's afflictions
moving toward God in the beyond. Like Augustine, then, Donne locates hope
in the future, and Christian life in the present anticipates rather than participates
in that hope.
Finally, Greer discussesthe devotional writings of Jeremy Taylor, with a focus
on how they implicitly reflect the influence of patristic theology. Taylor, once
a chaplain to Charles I and later a bishop in Ireland, does not outwardly
acknowledge any debt to the Church fathers, perhaps due to the civil war and
ecclesiastical politics in which he became embroiled to the point of being
imprisoned several times for suspected Roman Catholic sympathies. Still, Greer
argues that Taylor seemingly repudiates Augustine's view of original sin and
operative grace in favor of an earlier view, not unlike that of Gregory of Nyssa,
which stresses two main elements: the potential for universal atonement and the
human capacity for good combined with the need for God's grace. The Christian
life consists of a reciprocity, the union of God and the believer in the present, or
a gift of love that elicits our response. In this way, Taylor, like Gregory, describes
a positive view of hope in the present as well as the future, based on a gradual
process of turning from earth to heaven.
Throughout his analysis, Greer specifies resemblances between these two
pairs, the spatial perspective of Gregory of Nyssa and Jeremy Taylor, and the
more temporal perspective of Augustine and John Donne. It is a helpful reminder
to the reader of Greer's intent to discern lines of continuity not only to make
sense of tradition but also to provide models for the present. Greer more subtly
suggests common threads between all four. In addition to shared theological
themes and concepts, they are linked by similar circumstances, namely, that their
early inclinations toward the spiritual life or clerical aspirations were disrupted
by civil, political, and ecclesiastical forces. Moreover, by relating each
perspective to the writer's own experiences, Greer indicates how one's
eschatological vision is historically shaped. For example, Gregory of Nyssa's view
is determined partly by the reluctant role he played in the Trinitarian
controversies and ecumenical councils and partly by the monastic/spiritual life
he preferred. Greer does not overtly deal with this idea, although other authors
have (e.g., Moltmann in his concern with the sociopolitical aspects of the
theology of hope in order to effect social transformation).
In many ways, ChristianLife and ChristianHope represents an integration of
Greer's impressive scholarship to date on biblical exegesis, patristics, and
Anglicanism. His work in these areas provides both a rich context and a helpful

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methodology to the present volume. Greer is especially adept at showing how
Gregory, Augustine, Donne, and Taylor interpreted key biblical texts to
contribute to their eschatological perspectives, as well as explicating their own
writings. He also offers just enough historical context in each case to provide the
reader with adequate background.
The breadth of material that Greer covers in a relatively brief work results in
a richness that can also be a bit vexing. In several places he entices the reader
with an idea mentioned in the course of a larger point. For example, in his
discussion of time and eternity in Augustine's thought, Greer makes the piquant
observation that "time has become a moral problem for him" (136)-given
Augustine's notion that one's perception of the passage of time relates to one's
desires-and leaves the reader to chew on this thought further. Perhaps this
happy frustration is part of Greer's intention, though, to entice us with a limited
amoqnt of material from these great thinkers in order to spur us on to more
thought, especially in a contemporary perspective. In this way we are drawn into
the engaging if ultimately ineffable endeavor of eschatology. Or to borrow
another line from Eliot, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our
business."
JODY VACCARO LEWIS
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

Metaplrysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial Foundation of
Knowledge. By JORGEJ. E. GRACIA. Albany: The State University of New
York Press, 1999. Pp. xix + 247. $18.95 {paper). ISBN 0-7914-4214-4.

Anyone familiar with the work of Jorge Gracia will come to this book
expecting it to be well-organized, clearly written, and judicious. They will also
expect it to canvass a wide range of views held by ancient, medieval, modern,
analytic, and continental philosophers and to propose a novel approach. They
will, finally, expect not to be given any cheap thrills, because they know that
Gracia never goes for the exciting assertion when a true one is available. In none
of this will they be disappointed.
In Metaplrysicsand Its Task, Gracia's main theme is the nature of metaphysics,
and his secondary theme is its resilience, that is, its ability to withstand the many
attacks that philosophers have made on it. Chapter 1 sets out those two themes
and the proper way of addressing them. Chapter 2 begins to address the first one
(i.e., the question of the nature of metaphysics) by offering a definition of
philosophy and making the point that the genus of metaphysics is "philosophy."
Then Gracia turns to the really hard part, namely, completing the definition by
explaining the differentia of metaphysics. In chapters 3-6, he discusses various

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proposals that have been offered, grouping them according to whether they
consider the distinctive thing about metaphysics to be its object, its method, its
aim, or the types of propositions it deals with. Here Gracia's goal is to clarify
and reject false views of metaphysics; within these four main types I count
twenty-three subtypes of rejected theory, but since many of these have subtypes
of their own it turns out that Gracia is characterizing and rejecting no less than
fifty theories of what metaphysics is. Chapters 7-9 set out his own view. In
chapter 7, he states his theory, namely, that metaphysics is the study that
attempts "(a) to identify the most general categories; (b) to define the most
general categories if at all possible and if not, at least to describe them in ways
which allow us to identify them; (c) to determine the relationships among the
most general categories; (d) to fit less general categories into the most general
ones; and (e) to determine how less general categories are related to aU the most
general categories, including the ones in which they do not fit" (140). In this
chapter he also explains his view of what a category is. In chapter 8, he discusses
reductionism, which he takes to be at the root of many false conceptions of
metaphysics, and in chapter 9 he expands on his understanding of categories
with the goal of arriving at a non-reductionistic understanding of metaphysics:
metaphysics deals with categories of things, categories of concepts, and
categories of words without reducing any of these to any of the others. In the
final, brief chapter, Gracia summarizes what has gone before and then offers an
explanation of why metaphysics can never be destroyed: as the study of the most
general categories and the relationships of less general categories to the most
general ones, it is logically prior to any other study and therefore cannot be done
away with: "All our knowledge depends on metaphysical views whether we are
aware of it or not, and aH our thinking involves metaphysical thinking ....
Metaphysics is inescapable" (221).
It should be dear that this book covers a lot of territory. Here l will discuss
just two points, one of them having to do with a certain aspect of Gracia's
definition of metaphysics, and one of them having to do with his overall
approach. First, as we have seen, Gracia formulates his definition of metaphysics
in terms of more general and less general categories: metaphysics is, in a nutshell,
the study of the most general categories and of the relationships of less general
categories to them. But consider his explanation of what a category is: "whatever
is expressed by a term or expression, simple or complex, which can be
predicated of some other term or expression" (134). Together these imply that
"thinkable by Jorge Gracia" is not only a category but also-since pretty much
anything is thinkable by Jorge Gracia-one of the categories that the
metaphysician explains and to which he relates other categories. This cannot be
right. One way to avoid it would be to revise the definition of metaphysics to say
that metaphysics is concerned with the most basic or fundamental categories and
with the relations of less basic categories to these; however general it might be,
"thinkable by Jorge Gracia" is dearly not a fundamental category. But Gracia
holds (154) that the study of what is fundamental is merely one instance of the
study of general categories, which makes it seem unlikely that he would agree to
substitute "basic" or "fundamental" for "general" in his definition of

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metaphysics. Perhaps the best strategy from his perspective would be to modify
the definition to make it say that metaphysics studies not all general categories
but only some of them. The idea here would be to find a way of explaining why
"thinkable by Jorge Gracia" is not the right kind of category (as, indeed, it clearly
is not). But since Gracia is, as we have seen, anxious to avoid "reductionistic"
views of metaphysics according to which metaphysics is concerned only with
some categories and not with others, it is unclear how his definition could be
modified in a way that he would accept. Presumably there is a way; the book
would be stronger if it explained what it was.
Now for a remark on the book's overall approach. Gracia is aiming at a
definition of metaphysics that is broad enough to encompass all or at any rate
most of the metaphysical thinking that has been done throughout the history of
philosophy. "[A] satisfactory conception of metaphysics should do justice to
those aspects of our experience of the discipline and of generally accepted
practice" (137-38); "I hope I have made a convincing case that my conception
of metaphysics accommodates most of the studies in which metaphysicians have
engaged throughout the history of the discipline" (158). His conclusion is that
what metaphysicians have been doing all these years is studying categories in the
way he describes. But how does he know who the real metaphysicians are, and
which of their thoughts are really metaphysical? He proceeds as if we already
have an adequate grasp of the extension of "metaphysics"; for him, the only
difficulty is coming up with a good analysis of its intension. But in truth the
extension of metaphysics is itself a matter of controversy. Serious philosophers
point to inquiries that other serious philosophers consider metaphysical and say,
"That's not metaphysics!"
Of course Gracia knows this. He regards such assertions as forms of
unwarranted reductionism, and his own strategy is to cast the net as widely as
possible, including within the extension of "metaphysics" everything that has
gone by that name and more as well. But one might wonder about the
justification for this strategy. Gracia holds that Aristotle and Kant, for example,
were both metaphysicians and that a definition of metaphysics that includes what
Aristotle did but not what Kant did is ipso facto mistaken. But why not hold
instead, for example, that what Aristotle did is really metaphysics and that what
Kant did is not, or else that what Kant did is metaphysics but only insofar as it
is similar to what Aristotle did? (Indeed, one could hold such views even while
agreeing that Aristotle's work and Kant's work are both instances of the Gracian
science of categories). Gracia rejects such narrower definitions on the grounds
that they leave out inquiries that we know to be metaphysical, but this claim
would be stronger if he made it clear how we know which inquiries count as
instances of metaphysics.
To be sure, the most common use of the word "metaphysics" in contemporary
philosophical writing is at least as broad as Gracia's, and Thomists or other
traditional metaphysicians who want to talk to their less traditionally minded
colleagues have to be aware of this fact. At the same time, however, there is
something to be said for keeping in mind the word's older senses. This is so not
only for historical reasons but also out of a worry that philosophers might

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neglect the more focused enquiries that the word used to stand for. For example,
metaphysics in Gracia's broad sense is alive and well in analytic philosophy, but
the study of being qua being is much less widely practiced. Acting as if it is just
a reductionistic mistake to think that metaphysics is the study of being qua being
increases the chances that that inquiry will be forgotten. If that were to happen,
we would have fallen prey to another kind of reductionism.
There is much more that could be said about this book. Its wealth of detail
and breadth of learning, as well as the model of clarity and organization that it
provides, make it a valuable contribution. Practitioners of current styles of
metaphysics will find it widening, and practitioners of traditional metaphysics
will find it helpful in seeing what current discussions have to do with traditional
ones. It would also make useful reading for graduate students or advanced
undergraduates.
MICHAEL GoRMAN

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II.
By CHRISTOPHERM. BELLITTO. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 2001. Pp.
256. $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8091-4028-4.

"Reform" is a loaded word. It implies "improvement," and not merely
"change." C. S. Lewis warned that one cannot have progress without a fixed
point toward which one is heading. He might have added that one cannot have
reform without a fixed point to which one is returning. G. K. Chesterton
ridiculed the "Reformation" in his Autobiography: "I remember when rJohnston
Stephen] was asked whether the Church was not corrupt and crying out for the
Reformation, he answered with disconcerting warmth, 'Who can doubt it? How
horrible must have been the corruption which could have tolerated for so long
three Catholic priests like John Knox and John Calvin and Martin Luther.'"
Christopher Bellino wades into these dangerous waters by trying to describe
the reforms of the Christian Church in one readable volume. He has attempted
to show that the reforms of Vatican II come in a long line of Church reforms,
generated through the centuries both from above (through the hierarchy) and
from below (through the Church's rank and file). The result is, I believe,
commendable but unsatisfactory.
The book is divided into five main chapters: the Patristic Period and the
Carolingian Renaissance, the High Middle Ages, the period from Avignon to
Trent, the modern age, and Vatican II. Such a division betrays the author's
obvious enthusiasm for Vatican II, but he does not let this enthusiasm get the
best of him. The book is also a reflection of the author's debt to his mentor (once

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removed), Gerhart Ladner, whose definition of reform guides the author through
the ages. Ladner held that reform was "the idea of free, intentional and ever
perfectible, multiple, prolonged and ever repeated efforts by man to reassert and
augment values pre-existent in the spiritual-material compound of the world."
The author tries to put this definition into English and apply it to the Church.
He does this in two ways. First, he situates reform in the context of general
reforming movements, much as Herbert Grundmann did in his groundbreaking
work, Religi.ousMovements in the Middle Ages, a book that Bellino curiously
does not cite. This has the advantage of seeing an entire age as a whole, then
seeing the details (be they heretical or orthodox movements) as expressions of
the whole. Bellino puts this technique to good use in the chapters on the High
Middle Ages and on the Reformation.
Second, Bellino sees reform as personal and spiritual, with all of the reforms
attempting to return to the original sources: Christ, the Scriptures, and the
Fathers. He does not pass judgment on these reform movements, but is satisfied
to describe them dispassionately, and he does this in a balanced way (except
when generalizing about the Modernists), using the very latest sources. By design
this method tends to place all "reform" movements-regardless of their merits
and demerits--on the same level. Waldenses, friars, mystics, Protestants,
Puritans, High-Church Tractarians, and Modernists are all presented as if they
are pieces of the same pie. Authentic reform is not distinguished from
inauthentic reform. Ladner had not included those values in his definition of
reform.
In achieving these ends, Bellino continually highlights the difference between
reform in membris and reform in capite, with a clear preference for the former.
The rank-and-file of the Church are ever looking forward, searching for reform,
occasionally slipping into error only because of their honest enthusiasm, while
the hierarchy looks backward, suspicious of change, controls excessively,slowing
the process, but occasionally stumbling into genuine reform. It is a dichotomy
that does not take sufficient note of the interaction between head and members,
and certainly not of the proper role of the hierarchy within the Church. The
Gregorian Reform began with monastic reform at the bottom, affected the
papacy (monks were suddenly everywhere), and filtered back down again to the
parish level.
The strict division of in capite from in membris also does not take into
account the vital role played by the official Church in discerning authentic
reforms from other movements, in directing nascent reform movements to good
ends, or even in risking the continuation of dubious reform movements. Pope
Innocent III far-sightedly allowed Francis and Clare to continue, with a
minimum of regulation, despite the strong hesitance of the curia.
As a result of this emphasis on reform from the bottom up, theology as a
reforming feature of Christianity is also given short shrift. The Christological
councils of the fourth and fifth centuries-and the clarifying role they
played-are not mentioned, nor are Scholastic theologians singled out, even
though the revolutionary use of Aristotle by St. Thomas Aquinas had a profound
affect on the average Christian's view of life, the world, and good and evil.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Bonaventure's theology laid the groundwork for what would become mysticism
and eventually the movement known as devotio moderna.
Finally, several "reform" movements are omitted from the book-especially
movements that fell within the purview of the Fathers: Montanism, Donatism,
Pelagianism, and Manicheanism (and its later cousin, Albigensianism). These
"reforms" are clearly in line with the theme of the book, so it is puzzling that
they do not appear. One suspects that their condemnation by the Fathers raises
a dilemma for the historian of reform who is trying to show that reform
movements were returns to the fontes. Even in the early Church, reform
movements were condemned because of their theological errors and their
subsequent danger to the faithful. To claim to return to the sources of Christ, the
Scriptures, and the Fathers is not enough for reform movements. They actually
have to do it.
Bellitto makes a few unfortunate remarks, one citing Newman's use of "men"
in an essay as a possible exclusion of laywomen (189), and one repeating the
misunderstood phrase in the Syllabusof Errors condemning "progress" (190), a
phrase that Bishop Dupanloup explained satisfactorily 150 years ago.
Overall, there is a lot of useful information in this book for the interested
layperson, but as a guide to genuine reform movements in the Church it is
lacking.
JOHN VIDMAR, 0.P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washington,D.C.

GENERAL INDEX TO THE 1HOMIST
VOLUME 66 (2002)
ARTICLES
Augros, Robert M. , "Nature Acts for an End" ....................
535
Cahalan, John C., "Natural Obligation: How Naturally Known Truth
101
Determines Ethical Good and Evil" ..........•...........
Cole, Basil, O.P., "Catholic Bioethics: Three Recent Studies" ......... 133
Dewan, Lawrence, O.P., "Jean Porter on Natural Law: Thomistic Notes" 275
Goyette, John, "Substantial Form and the Recovery of an Aristotelian Natural
519
Science" ..........................................
Grygiel, Wojciech P. , F.S.S.P., "The Metaphysics of Chaos: A Thomistic View
of Entropy and Evolution" ............................
251
Guevin, Benedict M., O.S.B., "When a Lie Is Not a Lie: The Importance of
Ethical Context" . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
Hill, William]., O.P., "St. Thomas Aquinas: Teacher" ................
9
Iribarren, Isabel, "The Scotist Background in Hervaeus Natalis's Interpretation
of Thomism" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Jones, John D., "Aquinas on Human Well-Being and the Necessities of
Levering, Matthew, "Beyond the Jamesian Impasse in Trinitarian Theologi.395
Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., "Episcopal Munera and the Character of Episcopal
Orders" ..........................................•
369
McCluskey, Colleen, "Intellective Appetite and the Freedom of Human Action"
.................................................
421
McMahon, Kevin A., "The Christological Turn in Recent Literature on Original
201
Sin" ..............................................
"Karl Rabner and the Theology of Human Origins" ....... 499
O'Callaghan, John P., "Aquinas's Rejection of Mind, contra Kenny" .... 15
Reichberg, Gregory M., "Is There a 'Presumption against War' in Aquinas's
337
Ethics?" ...........................................
Shanley, Brian J., O.P., "Funeral Homily for William J. Hill, O.P." ....... 1
Upton, Thomas V., "The Law of Non-Contradiction and Aristotle's
Epistemological Realism" .............................
457
Vall, Gregory, "Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?" .... 175
West, J. L. A. , "Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Esse in Christ" ........ 231
White, A. Leo, "Instinct and Custom" ...........................
577

INDEX OF REVIEWS

REVIEWS
Bellino, Christopher M., Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform
from Day One to Vatican II Uohn Vidmar, O.P.) .....•...... 654
Boyle, Leonard E., O.P., Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Brian J.
Shanley, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., Introduction to Moral Theology (Thomas Hibbs)
....•........•................................•..
629
Cross, Richard, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns
Scotus (Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap.) ......•........
637
Dahlstrom, Daniel 0., Heidegger's Concept of Truth (Richard L. Velkley) 488
Doig, James C., Aquinas's Philosophical Commentary on the "Ethics": A
485
Historical Perspective (Tobias Hoffmann) .................
Fowler, C. F., O.P., Descartes on the Human Soul (Desmond]. FitzGerald)163
Gracia, Jorge J. E., Metaphysics and Its Task: The Search for the Categorial
Foundation of Knowledge (Michael Gorman) . . . . . . . • . . . . . . 651
Greer, Rowan A., Christian Life and Christian Hope: Raids on the Inarticulate
UodyVaccaro Lewis) .................................
647
Hare, John E., God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands, and Human
Autonomy (Thomas Williams) ..........................
477
Hoffmann, Tobias, Creatura intellecta: Die Ideen und Possibilienlehre bei Duns
Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronnes, Poncius und Mastrius
643
(Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B.) .........•.................
Kupczak, Jaroslaw, O.P., Destined for Liberty: The Human Person in the
Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla!]ohn Paul II Uean Butler) ........ 493
Milbank, John, and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (Bruce D. Marshall)
.......•.....•...................................
632
Nash-Marshall, Siobhan, Participation and the Good: A Study in Boethian
481
M.etaphysics Uohn Marenbon) ..........................
Nichols, Aidan, O.P., Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide through Balthasar's Logic (D.
C. Schindler) .................•.....................
325
Noriega, Jose, "Guiados por el Espiritu": El Espiritu Santo y el conocimiento
moral en Tomds de Aquino (Abelardo Lobato, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . 170
O'Callaghan, John P., and Thomas S. Hibbs, eds., Recovering Nature: Essays in
Natural Philosophy, Ethics, and Metaphysics in Honor of Ralph
Mcinerny (Steven Baldner) ............................
320
Pinckaers, Servais, O.P., Morality: The Catholic View Uohn Corbett, O.P.) 166
Radcliffe, Timothy, O.P., I Call You Friends (Basil Cole, O.P.) ........ 333

INDEX OF REVIEWS (Continued)

Rhonheimer, Martin, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of
Moral Autonomy (Stephen L. Brock) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Ryan, Thomas F., Thomas Aquinas as Reader of the Psalms (Theresa Gross-Diaz)
.................................................
329
Simpson, Peter Phillips, Vices, Virtues, and Consequences: Essays in Moral and
473
Political Philosophy (Bruce Williams, O.P.) ................
Sokolowski, Robert, Introduction to Phenomenology (Richard Cobb-Stevens)
.................................................
159
van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel, The Shaping of Rationality: Toward
Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science (James Keating) . . . . 315
Wippel, John F., The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite
Being to Uncreated Being (W. Norris Clarke, S.J.) ........... 149