The Thomist 69 (2005): 497-534 THE VOLUNTARY ACTION OF THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE NECESSITY OF THE BEATIFIC VISION THO:tviAS JOSEPH WHITE Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. T HAT CHRIST in his earthly existence possessed the beatific vision (or immediate knowledge of God) is a traditional affirmation of Christian theology. 1 However, this Christological theory is increasingly questioned by theologians deeply committed to the Catholic tradition, precisely on the grounds that they believe the theory in fact endangers more essential, traditional doctrines of Catholic belief. The latter include the patristic affirmations of the complete reality of Christ's historical human nature and the unity of subject in Christ's human actions. In this essay, I would like to present briefly two common objections against the classical theory, and offer a response inspired by the Thomistic tradition. Both Jean Galot and Thomas Weinandy have argued that the doctrine of the beatific vision in the earthly life of Christ compromises the reality of the humanity 1 Medieval authors are mentioned below. For the recent Magisterium, see especially Pius XII, Mystici Corporis (DS 3812); The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 473; and John Paul II, Novo Millennia Ineunte, nn. 25-27. For recent Thomistic theological arguments in favor of the traditional teaching, see Romanus Cessario, "Incarnate Wisdom and the Immediacy of Christ's Salvific Knowledge," inProblemi teologici alla luce dell'Aquinate, Studi Tomistici 44:5 (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991): 334-40; Jean Miguel Garrigues, "La conscience de soi telle qu'elle etait exercee par le Fils de Dieu fait homme," Nova et Vetera (French Edition) 79, n. 1 (2004): 39-51; Matthew Levering, Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation According to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002): 32-33; 39; 59-63; 73-7'5; Guy Mansini, "Understanding St. Thomas on Christ's Immediate Knowledge of God," The Thomist 59 (1995): 91-124. 497 498 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE of Jesus, on the one hand, and the unity of his filial personhood, on the other. Having presented these claims, I will argue (against this perspective) that the affirmation of the beatific vision of the historical Christ was and is essential for maintaining the unity of his person in and through the duality of his natures, and most particularly in safeguarding the unity of his personal agency in and through the duality of his two wills (human and divine). This is not an argument Aquinas makes explicitly. 2 However, it is a conclusion that can be derived from his Christological principles. I will show this by referring to the studies of Herman Diepen, Jacques Maritain, and more recently Jean Miguel Garrigues. They argue that in order for the created will of Jesus to be the instrument of his transcendent person, it must have a filial mode of being: it is expressive of the person who directs the human action of Christ, the Incarnate Son of God. However, so that the exercise of the human will of Christ might be specified by the directives of his transcendent (divine) personhood and will, a higher knowledge concerning the divine will of the Son of God is necessary. This ultimately requires not only an "infused science" but also immediate knowledge of God present in the soul of Christ in and through all of his human actions. Having appropriated arguments from these thinkers on these points I will conclude (with reference to Galot and Weinandy) that if the human action of Jesus is to be the personal action of the Son of God, it must be immediately subject to the activity of the divine will which it expresses. This requires that the human intellect of Jesus possess the vision of God. Finally, I will show that only with this classical analysis of Christ's human vision of God can one understand the mystery of Christ's obedience and prayer without falling into either a confusion of the natures or a denial of the unity of his person. I will examine briefly Aquinas's treatment of both the obedience and the prayer of Christ as human manifestations of his divine 2 Aquinas's explicit arguments for the beatific vision of Christ are soteriological: Christ must have the vision so that he can communicate it to others. See STh III, q. 9, a. 2; Comp. Theo. c .. 216. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 499 identity, that is, as expressions of his intra-Trinitarian, filial relationship with the Father. Through both of these activities, which are proper to his created human nature, the man Jesus manifests in his human acts his personal, hypostatic mode of being as the eternal Son of God. As I will show, this is not possible without the presence in Christ of an immediate knowledge of his own filial nature and divine will. Therefore, without this traditional theological teaching one cannot make adequate sense of the obedience and prayer of Jesus as revelatory of the Trinitarian persons. This being the case, the central objections to Aquinas's theory offered by Galot and Weinandy are unfounded. On the contrary, the classical theory of the immediate vision is necessary to safeguard the traditional Christology they wish to defend, as it is exemplified in the action of the earthly life of Christ. L CHALLENGES TO THE TRADITION 3 Jean Galot, in an article in 1986, offered foundational contemporary criticisms to the traditional theory of the beatific vision in the earthly life of Christ. 4 This essay remains the most comprehensive and forceful criticism of the tradition in question, and has since found favor with other authors. 5 More recently, Thomas Weinandy has developed criticisms that echo some of 3 In this essay I offer no defense of the use of traditional Christo logical terms and conciliar definitions as applied to Jesus of Nazareth. All of the authors discussed below take their validity for granted (in differing ways) and employ them freely in this dispute. The presupposition here, then, is in favor of a certain kind of "Christology from above" that interprets Christ from within the classical Catholic tradition. Nevertheless, a complete treatment of the relationship between the historical Jesus, the early Church, New Testament literature, and the Hellenistic world of early Catholic dogma is essential to a coherent modern Christo logy. Excellent theological reflections on such issues are found in Walter Kasper,Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1976); and Gerald O'Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 4 Jean Galot, "Le Christ terrestre et la vision," Gregorianum 67 (1986) : 429-50; Other related works include La conscience de fesus (Paris: Duculot-Lethielleux, 1971); and Vers une nouvelle christologie (Paris: Duculot-Lethielleux, 1971). 5 See in particular Jean-Pierre Torrell, "S. Thomas d'Aquin et la science du Christ," in Saint Thomas au XX.e siecle, ed. S. Bonino (Paris: Editions St. Paul, 1994), 394-409. 500 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE Galot's initial viewpoints. 6 In assessing the most pertinent challenges to the traditional teaching on this subject, I will briefly consider two of their criticisms, the first from Galot and the second from Weinandy. The accord between them on this subject gives a fair sense of the contemporary challenges to the tradition. A) Jean Galot: Beatific Vision as Latent Monophysitism Galot begins his argument with the claim that the doctrine of the immediate vision of God in the earthly life of Christ stems from an a priori, purely deductive reflection derived from the reasoning of medieval Scholastic theology without sufficient reference to the evidences of Scripture or the patristic theological heritage. He traces the teaching's historical origins from Candide (ninth century) to Hugh of St. Victor, and from the latter to the Sentences of Lombard, from which it was developed into its classical form by Aquinas and other influential theologians of the High Scholastic period. 7 What all of these thinkers have in common is the appeal to an argument based upon the necessary perfection of the human nature of Jesus. Because of the dignity of the hypostatic union, the humanity of Christ should be accorded the perfection of all human attributes from the time of his conception, excluding those which may act in some way as a hindrance to the realization of his soteriological mission, such as being subject to emotional and physical suffering, as well as death. The vision of God must be included among such privileges. Therefore, Christ possessed the perfection of all human knowledge, and this would include, of course, not only the vision of Thomas Weinandy, "Jesus' Filial Vision of the Father," Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004): 189-201. Galot, "Le Christ terrestre," 429-31; cf. Candide, Epistola 6 (PL 106:106); Opusculum de Passione Domini 17 (PL 106:95AB); Hugues of St. Victor, De sapientia animae Christi (PL 176:853AB); De sacramentis christianae fidei 2.1.6 (PL 176:388D-89B); Peter Lombard, III Sent., d. 14, n. 2(PL192:783-84); St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III, q. 9, a. 4; III, q.12, aa. 1 and 3. Galot writes ("Le Christ terrestre," 429 n. 3): "The patristic sources furnish no explicit testimony in favor of a beatific vision in the earthly life of Christ." However he does admit that the doctrine is evidently implicit in the affirmations of St. Fulgence (468-533), Epist. 14, q. 3, 25-34 (PL 65:415-24). (All translations from French sources into English are mine unless otherwise noted.) 6 7 THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 501 God, but also the infused science of prophetic species, by which he might know all that man could possibly come to know. 8 Galot argues that, besides lacking sufficient reference to scriptural evidence of the earthly Christ, such a perspective in fact leads to an implicit deniai of the real humanity of the earthly Christ, who was in his created humanity (like all intellectual creatures) subject to certain natural intellectual limitations. Among these would be the historically and culturally conditioned mode of his self-understanding, as well as social interdependencies for the exercise of his learning. The affirmation of this terrestrial vision in fact divinizes the earthly man Jesus in an unrealistic way. It is tantamount to a certain kind of Monophysitism in the epistemological realm: First of all, instead of referring to the testimony of the Gospels in order to discover the forms of knowledge which were manifest in the words and gestures of Jesus, the theological method proceeds in this case by positing an ideal of perfection from which is deduced all of the human knowledge of Christ. This a priori deduction leads to a maximum of perfection which itself impedes one from accurately taking account of the concrete conditions in which the human thought of Jesus developed. This perfection attributed to Christ's knowledge is such that one no longer respects sufficiently the distinction between the divine nature and the human nature .... Human understanding is clothed with divine properties as regards the entire domain of knowledge. One can see immediately the risk of Monophysitism, and more precisely the difficulty in acknowledging the inherent limitations of human knowledge, a necessary recognition for avoiding all confusion with the perfection of divine knowledge. 9 8 Aquinas, STh III, q. 9, a. 1: "Now what is in potentiality is imperfect unless reduced to act. But it was fitting that the Son of God should assume, not an imperfect, but a perfect human nature, since the whole human race was to be brought back to perfection by its means. Hence it behooved the soul of Christ to be perfected by a knowledge, which would be its proper perfection ... [namely, the beatific vision and the plenitude of infused science]." (All quotations from Aquinas's Summa Theologiae are taken from Summa Theologica [New York: Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 194 7].) For further evidence of this "principle of perfection" see also STh III, q. 9, aa. 2 and 4; III, q. 11, a. 1; III, q. 12, aa. 1and3. I will argue below that Galot's treatment of Aquinas's thought is selective on this point, and fails to take sufficiently into account the '"economic" character of Christ's extraordinary knowledge as St. Thomas understands it. 9 Galot, "Le Christ terrestre," 431-32. 502 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE Furthermore, this affirmation has soteriological consequences. Galot argues: if the earthly Christ possesses the vision of God and the consequent joy that follows from it (even if confined to the "heights" of the spiritual soul as Aquinas affirms), then the true sufferings of his human life are attenuated in their salvific reality. They can no longer be true acts of human self-emptying (kenosis) in loving solidarity with our human condition, as portrayed by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians. 10 The agony of the crucifixion and the cry of dereliction are not permitted their reality, and thus revelation is muted. In fact, the affirmation of such a vision of God obscures something of the epiphany of selfemptying love that God manifested through the event of the crucifixion, and which the gospel writers wished to relate to us. A Jesus whose soul would have been continually immersed in the beatific vision would have only assumed the exterior appearances of our human life .... His resemblance to us would only have been a fa<;;ade.... What would become of the sufferings of the passion? ... Not only does [the doctrine of the vision] put at risk the reality of the incarnation, but also that of the redemptive sacrifice. How can we attribute to a Savior who is filled with heavenly beatitude these words: "My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?" ... The cry of Jesus on the cross makes manifest the depths of a suffering that is incompatible with the beatitude of the vision. 11 In place of these theological motifs, then, Galot proposes the existence in the historical Christ of a form of prophetic insight (infused science), by which he was endowed with a human awareness (albeit, extraordinary) of his divine identity and soteriological mission. Certainly, Galot concedes, Christ did not know of his own identity by the theological virtue of faith. Yet his inspired conscious awareness of his own divine, filial identity was properly human, respecting the limitations of his created nature. 12 10 Phil 2:7-8: "He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." 11 Galot, "Le Christ terrestre," 4 34 "It is certainly true that Jesus [as portrayed in the Scriptures] did not live in faith .... He knows the Father and he is conscious of being the Son. He does not believe in himself. He possesses the certitude of his own identity, by way of his personal 12 Ibid., 439-40: THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 503 This more "sober" recognition of an extraordinary form of knowledge in the earthly Christ can account sufficiently for his privileged knowledge of his Father and his own filial identity, as well as his prophetic insights into salvation history, scriptural meaning, and the hidden thoughts of men's hearts. No recourse to the beatific vision is necessary. B) Thomas Weinandy: The Vision of God in Jesus as a Nestorian Division of Subjects Thomas W einandy has published a great deal on the consciousness of Christ, and is in part influenced by Galot. He has attempted to rethink the traditional understanding of the vision of God in Christ to emphasize the unity of the person of Christ and the Trinitarian character of Jesus' human knowledge of and relation to the Father.13 Weinandy, following Galot, claims that in one respect the affirmation of the vision of God in the earthly life of Christ denies Jesus his natural, human manner of knowing, and therefore implies a kind of semi-Monophysitism as regards Christ's consciousness. 14 However, the central criticism of the Franciscan theologian is that the theory of the beatific vision falls in a different respect into the opposite Christological heresy of Nestorianism. Precisely in order to render Christ invulnerable to the limits of a human form of knowledge, traditional theology has claimed that he knows the divine essence immediately. But this seems to suggest that the man Jesus knows the divinity as a transcendent object, distinct from himself as subject. The soul of consciousness. Others are invited to believe in him .... This consciousness implies an illumination received from above, an infused knowledge. . . . However, this infused knowledge that makes possible the conscious awareness of a divine 'I', does not transform Jesus' human self-awareness into a vision. It implies neither a human vision of God, nor a heavenly beatitude. It respects the ordinary conditions of human consciousness, and accords with the historical development of the latter." See also Jean Galot, "Problemes de la conscience du Christ," part 2, "La conscience du Christ etla foi," Esprit et vie 92 (1982): 14552. 13 See especially Weinandy, "Jesus' Filial Vision of the Father," but also Thomas Weinandy, Does God Change? (Still River, Mass.: St. Bede's Press, 1985); and idem, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000). 14 Weinandy, "Jesus' Filial Vision," 189-90. 504 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE Christ is conceived in terms similar to that of any other creaturely person, who in this case during his earthly life knows his transcendent Creator immediately by a special privilege. The latter idea of the man Jesus receiving a special knowledge of God implicitly imposes upon Christology a duality of personal subjects, or Nestorianism. 15 W einandy argues that if Christ is to stand personally in relation to God intellectually, it must be as the Son who is humanly aware of the Father. Christ's filial awareness need not imply the beatific vision as classically conceived, but could be understood instead in terms of a grace of filial insight (unique to Christ alone), unfolding in Jesus' consciousness progressively through the ordinary processes of human self-reflexivity. 16 He goes on to argue that an authentic admission of the unity of personhood in Christ entails only one center of consciousness in his earthly existence. This would be the self-awareness of Christ that is Ibid., 192: "the subject (the 'who') of any vision of the Father is not a subject (a 'who') different from that of the divine Son, but the divine Son himself since it is actually the Son who is man. Since it is the Son who must be the subject of any such vision of the Father, his vision of the Father cannot be a vision of the divine essence as an object ontologically distinct from and over against himself. As traditionally asked and answered, the question concerning Jesus' beatific vision, by the very nature of the question, always necessarily posited another subject (another 'who') distinct from that of the Son who possessed an objective vision of God who was other than 'himself', and it is this positing of another subject (or 'who') which is why this question of Jesus' beatific vision was necessarily asked and answered in a Nestorian manner." For a similar consideration, see also Galot, "Le Christ terrestre," 440. Weinandy and Galot claim that Aquinas falls into precisely such a Nestorian manner of conceiving of the earthly Christ in relation to God in STh III q. 10, aa. 2 ("Whether the soul of Christ knew all things in the Word?") and 4 ("Whether the soul of Christ sees the Word more clearly than any other creature?"). 16 Weinandy, "Jesus' Filial Vision," 193: "While traditionally Jesus is said to have possessed the beatific vision, I would want to argue, in keeping with the above, that it is more properly correct, in accordance with the hypostatic union, to speak of a human 'hypostatic vision': the person (hypostasis) of the Son possessed as man, a personal human vision of the Father by which he came to know the Father as the Father truly exists ... in coming to know the Father as truly Father, the Son equally became humanly conscious of himself as Son"; see also ibid., 197: "As Jesus, as a young boy, studied the Scriptures and prayed the Spirit illumined his human consciousness and intellect with the vision of the Father such that he became hypostatically aware of the Father's glory and love, and within such an awareness he became conscious of his divine identity and so came to know that he was indeed the Father's eternal and only begotten Son." 15 THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 505 proper to his human nature alone. The man Jesus has a human awareness of being a divine person, and this reality cannot be abridged or obscured by appeal to a grace such as the beatific vision, which would make God an object of knowledge extrinsic to his person. 17 C) Summary For the purposes of this essay, two central criticisms can be culled from the arguments examined above. Galot and W einandy claim, in effect, that the affirmation of the beatific vision in the earthly life of Christ implicitly denies the reality of the human nature of Christ in its historical mode of functioning, and instead stems from an a priori deductive argumentation concerning the perfection of the humanity of Jesus. The latter idea lacks a sufficient grounding in Scripture and the most profound principles of patristic theology. Furthermore, this theology carries with it the danger of conceiving of Christ as a creaturely subject distinct from the Trinity of persons who are the object of such beatifying knowledge. In response, I would like to examine the different but related question of the cooperation of wills (human and divine) in the earthly Christ. Both Scripture and the patristic tradition insist on the distinction and cooperation of the two wills in the one subject of the Son of God. I will argue that this cooperation can only take place in one unified activity due to the presence in the created soul of Christ of an immediate knowledge of his own personal, 17 Ibid., 195-96: "the Son as divine is conscious of himself as God within his divine 'I'. However, within his incarnate stare I would not want to posit two 'I's'-one divine and one human-for within his incarnate state the one divine Son is only conscious of himself as man, within a human manner (as man he cannot be conscious of himself in a divine manner), and thus there is, as man, only one 'I' and that human. Therefore, I think it is better, for clarity's sake, to speak of a human 'I' of a divine person or subject (a divine 'who'), rather than confuse the issue by positing a second 'I' that is divine" (emphasis added). The question this raises (which I will return to below) is: what correspondence exists between this human knowledge Christ has of the Father and his own properly divine lmowledge of himself as the Son? What rapport exists between the Son's eternal self-knowledge and will and his human knowledge, if any? Do they relate to each other in the human action of Jesus, and if so, in what way? 506 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE divine will and divine essence. Referring to studies of Aquinas by Diepen, Garrigues, and Maritain, I will argue that it follows from Thomistic Christological principles, then, that only this immediate vision permits the human will and intellect of Christ to take on a particular hypostatic mode: that of the Son of God. In other words, only this vision safeguards the unity of the personal actions of Christ in and through his two distinct natures and operations. It is after examining these points that I will respond to Galot's and Weinandy's respective concerns about the reality of Jesus' humanity on the one hand and the unity of his person on the other. I will show that the beatific vision of Christ, if correctly understood, is filial in mode and thus is essential for there to be personal unity in the voluntary acts of the man Jesus (contrary to claims of Nestorianism). However, in its nature, this vision is accorded to the created intellect and will of the humanity of Christ, which it respects, even in their historical and human mode of functioning (contrary to claims of Monophysitism). After this, the examples of the obedience and prayer of Christ can be studied as concrete illustrations of this doctrine. II. AQUINAS ON THE VOLUNTARY ACTION OF CHRIST In what follows I will make three brief points, relying in part on the insights of recent Thomistic commentors. First of all, as Aquinas rightly points out, due to the Incarnation, the human nature of Jesus must be understood first and foremost in instrumental terms, as subsisting in his divine person, and as expressive of the latter. Second, if Christ's humanity is the instrument of his divinity, then this intimately affects the way his human will cooperates with his divine will. As Jean Miguel Garrigues has shown, Aquinas follows Maximus the Confessor and John Damascene in distinguishing between the specifically human character of the natural will of Christ and its hypostatic mode. This helps explain how the man Jesus can manifest his identity as the Son of God through his human actions, from within the unity of his person. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 507 Finally, this very unity of personal action in Jesus requires a perfect cooperation between the human will of Christ and his divine will. In effect, Christ's will and consciousness must act as the instruments of his divine subject, being directly specified at each instant by his divine will. For this, knowledge of his own filial nature and will is necessary. The virtue of faith, or a uniquely prophetic knowledge (by infused species), is not sufficient. The unity of activity of the Incarnate Word requires, therefore, the beatific vision in the intellect of Christ, so that his human will and his divine will may cooperate within one subject. A) The Integrity of Christ's Human Nature and Its Filial Mode of Subsistence At stake in this debate is the capacity of "beatific-vision" theology to make sense of the Incarnation as it is presented in Scripture and patristic tradition. A central concern of Galot is to recognize the human integrity of Christ's intellectual life in its historical setting. Ordinary human knowledge is subject to limits and the conventional understandings and modes of expression of a cultural context. For Aquinas, however, the integrity of the human nature of Christ is first understood not in epistemological but in ontological terms, and is seen as guaranteed by a classical scriptural principle: revelation teaches that God assumed in Christ a true and complete human nature. 18 Herman Diepen showed in 18 Cf. John 1: 14; Phil 2:7-8; Heb 4:15. The ontological Christologies of the patristic and medieval authors can be contrasted in approach with the subject-oriented Christologies of Schleiermacher and Harnack, who sought to circumvent the formulae of the traditional dogma of the Church. Should Christology begin from a reflection on the consciousness of Christ, or from the revealed principles of the New Testament authors such as John and Paul concerning the identity and nature of the Son of God? A treatment of this question exceeds the goals of this essay. Speaking in summary fashion, one can say that the consciousness and ontology of Christ, when rightly understood, are mutually self-interpreting. Christ was certainly deeply psychologically integrated within his culture and historical epoch, but his self-awareness and discourse were also extraordinary. The consciousness of Christ manifests who he is (the Son of God), and the ontological mystery of Christ as the Incarnate Word is the source and root of his action and self-awareness. Neither pole (ontology/consciousness) can be abandoned without the risk of a reductive, one-sided Christology. However, in the very structure of personal being, ontology is more fundamental than consciousness. Self-awareness is only one 508 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE an important series of articles that in this respect Aquinas's Christology is directly inspired by the Greek patristic tradition (especially Cyril of Alexandria; the councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople III; and John Damascene) and that Aquinas purposefully appropriated this tradition in continuity with his own metaphysics of esse.19 In his critique of the Scotist Christologist Paul Galtier, Diepen notes that the former argues from the autonomous human psychological consciousness of Christ to the necessity of a human subject in Christ distinct from that of the Word. 20 Gal tier claimed that only the beatific vision could permit the human subject Gesus) to be continually aware of the divine subject (the Word), so as to assure a unity of action on the part of these two component natures within the Incarnation. 21 This dualistic conception in fact closely approximates the kind of position that Galot and Weinandy are criticizing, and so Diepen's Thomistic response is significant. Noting the poignantly Nestorian dimension of human being, and ultimately needs to be explained in terms of the latter. Consequently, in Christology, a hypostatic ontology is primary because it explains the principles of Jesus' filial consciousness. (If it fails to do so, it is insufficient.) The classical patristic and medieval approach therefore has more explanatory power, because it begins from more fundamental starting points, and can encompass the modern insistence on Jesus as a historical, existential subject without obscuring the realism of the dogmatic truths articulated by the Church's tradition. 19 Herman Diepen, "La critique du baslisme selon saint Thomas d' Aquin," Revue Thomiste 50 (1950): 82-118 and 290-329; "La psychologie humaine du Christ selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," Revue Thomiste 50 (1950): 515-62. In addition to the Latin translation of Damascene' s The Orthodox Faith, Aquinas was familiar with these other sources from various medieval florilegia of the Greek fathers, such as the Collectio Casinensis. He probably consulted conciliar documents in the papal achieves during his stay in Orvieto (1261-65). (See I. Backes, Die Christologie des hl. Thomas van Aquin und die greischischen K.irchenviiter [Paterborn, 1931], 192-212; Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. I The Person and His Work, trans. R. Royal (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996): 136-41). For Aquinas, creedal and conciliar formulations of faith act as "first principles" of theological reflection insofar as they denote explicitly and authoritatively the revelation transmitted by the apostolic deposit of faith. On the unity of the person in Christ as a first principle of Christological reflection (with explicit reference to both Cyril and certain of the above-mentioned conciliar decrees), see STh III q. 2, aa. 3 and 6; III, q. 3, a. 1, ad 1; III, q. 16, a. 4. 20 Diepen, "La psychologie humaine du Christ selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," 531. 21 See Paul Gal tier, "Unite ontologique et unite psychologique clans le Christ," Bulletin de litterature ecclesiatique (Toulouse) 42 (1941): 161-75 and 216-32. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 509 tendency of this thought, Diepen points out that the unity of Christ's person for Aquinas follows first and foremost from the ontological subsistence of his humanity in the existent Word, the Son of God, and not from his intellectual assent to the will of God: Being (esse) pertains to both the nature and the hypostasis; to the hypostasis as that which has being, and to the nature as that whereby it has being .... Now it must be borne in mind that if there is a form or nature which does not pertain to the personal being of the subsisting hypostasis, this being is said to belong to the person not simply but relatively .... [But] since the human nature is united to the Son of God hypostatically or personally, and not accidentally, it follows that by the human nature there accrued to Him no new personal being, but only a new relation of the pre-existing personal being to the human nature, in such a way that the person is said to subsist not merely in the Divine, but also in the human nature. 22 In effect, subsistence in the ontology of Aquinas pertains to a property of esse. It denotes both a separateness of existence and a certain mode or manner of being. That which has its own subsistence exists apart from others and has its own mode of being different from others. 23 For our purposes here, the central point of importance is that Aquinas's theology of the Incarnation (following John Damascene) distinguishes between the specific determinations of the complete human nature of Jesus and the unique hypostatic mode in which this nature subsists. 24 This 22 Aquinas, STh III, q. 17, a. 2. See also STh III, q. 2, aa. 2 and 3 and a. 6, ad 3; III, q. 16, aa. 7, 10, and 12; III, q. 18, aa. 1 and 2. Aquinas shows a tendency in these articles to distinguish between the human nature in Christ and his suppositum or subject. Ontologically the former denotes the essence of his created humanity, while the latter is related to his concrete existence (esse). This existence is communicated to his human nature from his person (hypostasis) and consequently causes his human nature to subsist in his divine person. In STh III, q. 2, aa. 3 and 4 Aquinas equates 'subsistence' with the Greek hypostasis. The one being of the person of Christ subsists in two natures. Subsistence thus pertains to the concrete person. A similar doctrine is found in John Damascene, De Fide Orth. III, cc. 5-7. 23 Thus Aquinas claims that the unique subsistence of each concrete personal subject gives his natural acts a particular manner of being, proper to that subject. See STh III, q. 2, aa. 2 and 3. 24 See for example John Damascene, De Fide Orth. III, cc. 15-17, 21. Damascene's distinction between the specifically human nature (logos) of Christ and its filial mode (tropos) was originally developed by Maximus the Confessor. See the study by]. M. Garrigues, "Le 510 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE human nature, by the mystery of the Incarnation, subsists in the Word and thereby acquires a unique mode: it has the person of the Son as its unique subject. 25 As a consequence of this fact, as Diepen notes, there is not an autonomous "personality" in the humanity of Jesus, other than that of the hypostasis of the Son: There is certainly a human consciousness in Christ, but not the consciousness of a human self, either metaphysical or psychological .... To say that the humanity knows, acts, is aware, these are different expressions which are certainly improper, because it is always the Word to whom these acts belong. It is he who is the proper and exclusive subject of their attribution. . . . He alone who possesses and exercises existence, the existant properly speaking, that is to say, the subject [suppot] exerts operations .... The Son of God, by his human intelligence, is conscious of his human activity ... [but these acts] are perceived as the acts of someone who is not simply a subsistent human nature on its own . . . . These acts are perceived as acts that are not autonomous but dependent [on the subsistent Word]. 26 Consequently, the human nature of Jesus acts as an "assumed instrument" of his divinity. Because it subsists in the Word, Christ's humanity bears the mark of his divine identity and makes it manifest in and through all of his human activities. 27 dessein d'adoption du createur clans son rapport au fils d'apres S. Maxime le Confesseur," in Maximus Confessor, ed. Felix Heinzer and Christoph Schonborn (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1982), 173-92. 25 STh III, q. 2. a. 3: "to the hypostasis alone are attributed the operations and the natural properties, and whatever belongs to the nature in the concrete . ... Therefore, if there is any hypostasis in Christ besides the hypostasis of the Word, it follows that whatever pertains to man is verified of some other than the Word, e.g. that He was born of a Virgin, suffered, was crucified, was buried. And this ... was condemned with the approval of the Council of Ephesus (can. 4)" (emphasis added). 26 Diepen, "La psychologie humaine," 531-32. Aquinas writes on the same subject: ''Yet we must bear in mind that not every individual in the genus of substance, even in rational nature, is a person, but that alone which exists by itself, and not that which exists in some more perfect thing .... Therefore, although this human nature [of Christ] is a kind of individual in the genus of substance, it has not its own personality, because it does not exist separately, but in something more perfect, viz., in the person of the Word" (STh III, q. 2, a. 2,, ad 3; emphasis added). 27 Aquinas, STh III, q. 2, a. 6, ad. 4: "Not everything that is assumed as an instrument pertains to the hypostasis of the one who assumes, as is plain in the case of a saw or a sword; yet nothing prevents what is assumed into the unity of the hypostasis from being as an instrument, even as the body of man or his members. Hence Nestorius held that the human nature was assumed by the Word merely as an instrument, and not into the unity of the THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 511 Speaking in broader terms than that of consciousness, then, Aquinas's theory of the Incarnation responds reasonably to the concerns of Galot and Weinandy. The integrity of human nature is preserved with respect to its specific determinations (vis-a-vis Galot). Yet through its manner of subsisting in the Word, this human nature assumed in Christ acquires a new mode, such that nothing in it falls outside of the divine subject of the Son (as Weinandy insists must be the case). 28 Thus on this more fundamental, ontological level, we can see how the mode/nature distinction safeguards both the reality of the humanity of Christ and the unity of his person. B) The Nature/Mode Distinction and the Two Wills of Christ Having begun on the ontological level, I will now consider the personal actions of Christ. These too acquire a unique mode of being, due to the fact that they subsist in the person of the Word. If the human will of Christ is the instrument of his person, it must express this hypostatic mode in its operations. This can only occur if its movements correspond perfectly to the divine will and operations of the Son of God in each instant. Only in this way can the unity of Christ's person be manifest in and through his human action. As Garrigues has recently shown, Aquinas's Christology in the Summa adopts such a perspective by applying the nature/mode distinction discussed above directly to the particular spiritual hypostasis .... But Damascene held that the human nature in Christ is an instrument belonging to the unity of the hypostasis." As Theophil Tschipke and Diepen after him pointed out, Aquinas purposefully revived this Cyrillian insistence on the humanity of Christ as organon of the divinity, and used this to explain the way that his intellect and will, especially, could be the subservient instruments of his divinity. See Theophil Tschipke, Die Menschheit Christi als Heilsorgan der Gottheit (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1939), recently republished in French as L'humanite du Christ comme instrument de salut de la divinite (Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2003); and H. Diepen, Theologie d'Emmanuel (Bruges, 1960), 275-93 on this point with respect to the nonautonomy of the psychological subject in Christ. 28 On this point Weinandy is in complete accord with Aquinas (i.e., it is actually the Son who is man), understanding the latter's metaphysics of the Incarnation as a true and careful expression of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. See Weinandy, Does God Change?, 82-8 8; Does God Suffer?, 206-8. 512 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE faculties of intellect and will in the Incarnate Word. 29 In doing so, Aquinas is following the understanding of the "theandric acts" of Christ developed by Ma:ximus the Confessor, which was transmitted to him through the writings of John Damascene. 30 This theology was developed in confrontation with Monothelitism precisely to affirm the Chalcedonian confession of the complete and real human nature of Christ (including his human will), while safeguarding (against the charge of Nestorianism) the Cyrillian confession of the singularity and unity of the person of the Incarnate Word. The distinction safeguards the fact that these operations are both fully human (in their nature) and expressive of Jesus' unique filial personhood (in their mode). The nature assumed by Christ may be viewed in two ways. First, in its specific nature, and thus Damascene calls it "ignorant and enslaved" (De Fide Orth. III, 21) .... Secondly, it may be considered with regard to what it has from its union with the Divine hypostasis, from which it has the fullness of knowledge and grace. 31 In effect, as Garrigues shows in detail, the Greek fathers developed an understanding of the personal mode of the human will of Christ by distinguishing between the logos of this will and its tropos. 'Logos' here signifies a distinct essence common to many who share a determinate nature, while 'tropos' signifies a 'manner of existing' particular to an individual hypostasis. In essence Christ's human will and intellect are identical with those of other men, but they acquire a unique mode because of the hypostatic union, through which they are appropriated instrumentally as the 29 See Garrigues, "La conscience de soi telle qu' elle etait exercee par le Fils de Dieu fait homme," 39-51; and idem, "L'instrumentalite redemptrice du libre arbitre du Christ chez saintMaxime le Confesseur," RevueThomiste 104 (2004): 531-50. As will become clear, this section of my essay in particular is greatly indebted to the argument and perspective of these articles. 30 The notion of "theandric acts" originated with Dionysius (Div. Nom. 2), and was appropriated by Maximus and Damascene in a sense consistent with Chalcedon, against Monothelitism. Aquinas follows Damascene, denoting by the term the cooperation of the divine and human wills in Christ such that they form together the actions of a unique person; see STh III q. 19, a. 1, ad 1. 31 STh III, q. 15, a. 3, ad 1. See also STh III, q. 18, a. 1, obj. 4 and ad 4. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 513 human expression of the person of God the Son. 32 Because they subsist in God the Son, the human will and intellect of Christ are necessarily rendered relative to his divine intellect and will as the primary source of their personal operation. 33 This insight leads to a significant conclusion: there can only be a unity of person expressed in and through the human acts of Jesus if there is a concrete realization of cooperation between his divine and human wills, such that the latter expresses indefectibly his divine personal will, intentions, choices, etc., in a distinctly human way. 34 32 Maximus, Disputatio cum Pyrrho (PG 91:293A): "The fact of willing and the determined mode of willing are not identical, just as the fact of seeing and the determined mode of seeing are not either. For the fact of willing, like that of seeing, concerns the nature of a thing. It is common to all those who have the same nature and belong to the same kind. The determined mode of willing, however, like that of seeing, that is to say, to will to walk or not will to walk, to see what is at the right or at the left or high or below, or to look by sensual desire or in order to understand the essential principles in beings, all this concerns a mode of exercise [tropos] of willing or seeing. It concerns only him who exercises [these faculties of nature] and in so doing separates him from others according to particular differences" (translation mine). See Garrigues's analysis of this text and others in "L'instrumentalite," 542-50. As he points out, Aquinas also uses these same examples (eyesight, voluntary action) to denote the distinction between specification and exercise in De Malo, q. 6. Damascene reproduced this identical doctrine in De Fide Orth. III, c. 14. 33 Damascene, De Fide Orth. III, cc. 14-18. See for example, c. 17: "Wherefore the same flesh was mortal by reason of its own nature and life-giving through its union with the Word in subsistence. And we hold that it is just the same with the deification of the will; for its natural activity was not changed but united with His divine and omnipotent will, and became the will of God, made man. And so it was that, though He wished, He could not of Himself escape (Mk. 7: 24), because it pleased God the Word that the weakness of the human will, which was in truth in Him, should be made manifest. But He was able to cause at His will the cleansing of the leper, because of the union with the divine will" (trans. S. D. F. Salmond; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 9 [Oxford: James Parker, 1899]). 34 Garrigues, "La conscience," 40, writes: "Certainly, in becoming man, [Christ] assumes in his human nature the same rational desire for the Good that is proper to spiritual creatures. But since his human soul exists within the very person of Him who, as God, is the Good as such, the rational desire of Christ need not search in and through a deliberation how to attain the ultimate Good by a moral progression transpiring through the choice of particular goods. The human will of Christ itself, while endowed naturally with the same free-will as us, nevertheless does not have an autonomous deliberation !gnome) characteristic of the mode of exercise found in created persons .... Fixed forever from the first instant of the Incarnation, by the hypostatic union, upon the supreme Good which is One of the Trinity, and by the plenitude of habitual grace which follows from this, the rational desire of the humanity assumed by the Son exists and is exercised in a unique mode, of perfect docility with respect to the divine will of the Trinitarian person who exercises this will as its subject." 514 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE Aquinas follows this theological motif with preclSlon and insight, developing it in light of the metaphysics of the Incarnation mentioned above. Because the personal existence of the Word gives the subsistent humanity of Christ its unique mode of being, the will of Christ also receives a unique mode of being. It is the human will of the divine person of the Son of God. Damascene says (De Fide Orth. III, c. 14) that "to will this or that way belongs not to our nature but to our intellect, i.e., our personal intellect" .... When we say, "to will in a certain way," we signify a determinate mode of willing. Now a determinate mode regards the thing of which it is the mode. Hence since the will pertains to the nature, "to will in a certain way" belongs to the nature, not indeed considered absolutely, but as it is in the hypostasis. Hence the human will of Christ has a determinate mode from the fact of being in a Divine hypostasis, i.e. it was always moved in accordance with the bidding of the Divine will. 35 Although the divine agency must always take the initiative in the human acts of Christ, Jesus is not therefore any less human than us. On the contrary, his human nature is an "instrument" that moves itself in accordance with its own divine identity. Therefore, precisely because he has in his human intellect an immediate knowledge of his own personal divine goodness at all times, the judgments and practical choices of Christ are more and not less human than ours. Whatever was in the human nature of Christ was moved at the bidding of the divine will; yet it does not follow that in Christ there was no movement of the will proper to human nature .... It is proper to an instrument to be moved by the principal agent, yet diversely, according to the property of its nature .... And an instrument animated with a rational soul is moved by its will, the servant being like an animate instrument. And hence it was in this manner that the human nature of Christ was the instrument of the Godhead and was moved by its own will. 36 35 STh III, q. 18, a. 1, obj. 4 and ad 4 (emphasis added). III, q. 18, a. 1, ad 1 and 2. As Garrigues notes ("L'instrumentalite," 545-47), Aquinas differs from Maximus and Damascene insofar as these Greek Fathers denied the existence of an autonomous human moral deliberation and judgment in Christ, due to his superior knowledge of the good. Aquinas argues that moral deliberation and judgment are necessary to any human nature, and therefore existed in Christ, but were always inspired by a sense of the higher good of the divine will, which made the human choices of Christ freer and more pure. Colman O'Neill comments: "Christ was unique in that he had no choice 36 STh THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 515 The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that in at least one very important respect (i.e., with regard to the divine will), Christ's human actions must not be characterized by ignorance, or defectibility. What is at stake is not a principle of ideal humanity, but the very unity of the operations of Christ in his practical actions. In order for Christ to be fully human, his psychological choices must be rational and natural (against Monophysitism), but for them to be the choices of his divine person, they must be unified with his divine will on the level of his personal action (against N estorianism). The nature/mode distinction as applied by Aquinas to the will of Christ makes it possible to negotiate this theological challenge. The nature is respected but takes on a hypostatic mode, by which it accords always (instrumentally) with the divine, filial will of the Son. Thus a perfect and continual correlation between the divine and human wills is essential for surmounting the dual Christological errors that Galot and Weinandy wish to combat. But how can this occur? C) The Necessity of the Son's Immediate Human Knowledge of the Divine Will The conclusion of the previous section is significant: in at least one important way, the absence of ignorance in the mind of Christ is not immediately related, for Aquinas, to the a-scriptural "principle of perfection" that Galot refers to, but rather, must exist for reasons essential to the divine economy. If Jesus is truly the Son of God, and therefore a divine person, then his divine will is present in his person as the primary agent of his personal [concerning the possible final end of man]; for with his human mind he saw God and his will was necessarily held by this Supreme Good (cf. STh III, q. 9, a. 2; q. 10). But anything less than God was powerless to compel his will. With respect to all created things he was supremely free for he could measure their value against his vision and possession of the divine good (III, q. 18, a. 4) .... His obedience dedicated him to the will of his Father; far from restricting his liberty, it set him free from attachment to any created thing so that he could rise to the summit of human liberty and renounce his life for the sake of what his will held dearest." See "The Problem of Christ's Human Autonomy," appendix 3 in Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars edition, vol. 50, translation, notes, and appendices by C. O'Neill (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1965), 233-34. 516 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE choices. This means that, necessarily, his human will must be continually subordinated to, informed by, and indefectibly expressive of his personal divine will in its human, rational deliberation and choice making. But of course movements of human choice follow upon knowledge (apprehension of the good, and deliberative judgments) informing the human intellect. 37 Here, then, I will introduce an argument that moves beyond Aquinas's explicit statements, to one which is homogeneous with his principles as they have been presented above. I will show that it is only if Christ's human intellect is continuously and immediately aware of his own divine will (by the beatific vision, and not merely by infused knowledge and by faith), that his human will can act in immediate subordination to his divine will as the "assumed instrument" of his divine subject. Only such knowledge will assure the operative unity (in and through two distinct natures) of Christ's personal actions because it alone gives the mind of the man Jesus an evidential certitude of the will he shares eternally with the Father. In order to present this argument, it is first necessary to present an important clarification. I have suggested above that only the immediate knowledge of God in the soul of Christ permits him to exert his divine will in a human way, through the activities of his human consciousness. However, the vision of God is not conceptual or notional, but immediate and intuitive. 38 Consequently, it cannot be "assimilated" by Christ's habitual, conceptual manner of knowing and willing in any direct fashion. As Aquinas and many Thomists after him have rightly insisted, then, the knowledge of Christ's vision is "communicated" to his ordinary human consciousness through the medium of a so-called infused, prophetic science. 39 The judgments and choices that inform the 37 De Malo, q. 6; STh I-II, q. 8, a. 1; I-II, q. 9, a. 1; I-II, q. 11, a. 1; I-II, q. 12, a. 1; I-II, q. 13, a. 1; I-II, q. 14, a. 1. On the intellect's role with respect to the exercise of the will as regards practical action, see the excellent study of Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), especially 18-62. 38 STh I, q. 12, aa. 4, 5, and 9. 39 The basis for this position is found in STh III, q. 11, a. 5, ad 1. See its development by John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, vol. 8 (Paris: Vives, 1886), d. 11, a. 2, especially n. 15, where he argues cogently that Christ had to possess infused science in order to receive the THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 517 will of Jesus depend above all upon this "habitual" prophetic consciousness (which is conceptual), rather than his immediate vision. Because of this, his knowing and obeying the Father "in a human way" (i.e., in his human consciousness) would seem to depend essentially upon his prophetic science (or infused species). Why, then, might such a "prophetic light" in Christ not suffice alone without recourse to the vision of God? The latter does not add anything necessary to the human way of thinking and willing that characterizes the activity of the earthly Christ, and therefore seems unnecessary for the purposes of his economic mission. 40 In order to answer this objection, two things need to be kept in mind. First of all, in the absence of the immediate knowledge of vision, Christ would necessarily have to exercise the theological virtue of faith. The presence of a prophetic, infused knowledge cannot act as a substitute for faith, in the way Galot proposes. The Jesuit theologian claims that there is no faith in Christ, nor vision, but only a higher knowledge attained by prophecy. Yet as JeanPierre Torrell has shown, prophetic or infused knowledge alone is only a mediate, indirect knowledge of God attained through the effects of God. 41 Necessarily, outside of the vision, all knowledge knowledge of the vision into his consciousness in a way that was connatural with his human nature. 40 The above paragraph contains an approximation of the argument presented by Torrell in "S. Thomas d'Aquin et la science du Christ," 394-409, influenced by Galot's perspective. 41 Ibid., 403-4: "If one renounces the beatific vision and if one follows the logic of the Thomistic perspective, it must be said that Christ had faith .... the [bearer of prophecy] does not attain God in his experience [of infused science] but only expressive signs of the divine. He knows that God speaks to him, but what God says he can only believe.... The grace of faith is another kind of supernatural gift ... a created participation in the life of God, it conforms the believer ... to the mystery itself. (II-II, q. a. 2, ad 2.) In other words, with faith we are in the order of the supernatural quoad essentiam, while with prophetic knowledge we remain in the order of the supernatural quoad modum (acquisitionis). The two orders do not exclude one another, certainly, but the second is ordered to the first, and because the two are different kinds of realities, they must not be confused or made to play the role of one another. Concerning Jesus, then ... if we accord to him infused illuminations characteristic of the charismatic knowledge of revelation, he will be enabled for his role as a divine messenger, but he will still not have direct access to God, since these illuminations do not suffice as a replacement of faith." Aquinas makes related claims, denying that Christ is a prophet in the usual theological sense of the word, since he does not believe through an "obscure knowledge" the things he is given to reveal, but knows them in a more perfect, immediate way: see In Joan., N, lect. 6 (Marietti ed., n. 667). 518 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE of God is through effects, and only faith permits a quasiimmediate contact with God, through love. Therefore even infused knowledge requires faith in order to orient it toward God. This latter contact, however, is obscure (nonevidential) and is therefore supported by a voluntary act of the will that believes God by a free act of love. Without the vision, then, the intellect of Christ would not have "direct access to God," but would believe in his divinity and divine will through faith, and in a free adherence of love. Second, as Jacques Maritain has argued convincingly, the presumed presence or absence of this vision must alter profoundly the character of this infused knowledge in the consciousness of Christ. 42 Only if the vision is present in Christ's soul can such infused knowledge participate in the evidence of Christ's divine identity and will which are immediately known by the vision. This [infused] knowledge was ... immediately ruled by the Beatific Vision which existed in the heaven of the soul of Christ. What does this mean? ... His vision of God,-the actuation of His intellect by the divine essence itself in the light of glory,-is the rule which God used as instrument in order to produce the infused science, its habitus and its species. . . . The effect proper to the use of this instrument: the divine Vision illuminating the intellect of Christ . . . was therefore,-not indeed to cause to pass into the infused science of Christ the objective content itself, indivisibly and ineffably seized, of the Beatific Vision . . . but ... to cause to see the objective content of the species in question with an evidence which is a participation of the divine evidence of the Vision,-and with a divinely absolute certitude as invincible as that of which the intellect is possessed in the Vision .... It is this participated evidence of the Vision which gave to the infused science of the Son of God viator a divinely sovereign certitude with regard to all that which it knew, and especially with regard to the divinity of Jesus. 43 In other words, because of the vision of God in the heights of Christ's soul, his intellect adheres immediately to his divine identity and his human will is "informed" immediately by the knowledge of his divine will. The prophetic knowledge that 42 See Jacques Maritain, On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 54-61, 98-125. 43 Ibid., 101-2, 107. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 519 informs his consciousness then acts in subordination to the immediate knowledge he has as man of his own identity and will as God, expressing this in and through his ordinary human consciousness. 44 By contrast, in the absence of the vision, the infused science of Christ would lack such immediate evidence, and would have to be accompanied by faith. In this case, the prophetic awareness Christ had of his own divinity and will would have to be continuously accompanied by an autonomous decision of faith in the human heart of Christ and a repeated choice to welcome in trust this revelation from his own divine self. This would create, in effect, a kind of psychological autonomy in the man Jesus distinct from the willing of his divine subject, resulting in a schism between the two operations of the Incarnate Word. Jesus as man would have to will to believe in his divine activity as God. He would not perceive it directly. If we return to the theandric activity of Christ, then, we can see that this point has significant consequences. Only due to the immediate knowledge of the vision can the human will of Christ be directly moved (or specified) by his divine will so as irremediably to correspond to its inclinations. 45 Because of the beatific vision, the prophetic knowledge in Christ's consciousness is suffused by the evidence Christ has of the will he shares eternally with the Father. Thus, the human will of Christ acts "instrumentally," that is to say, through an immediate subordination to his divine will. 46 The infused science of Christ permits his ordinary consciousness to cooperate with this knowledge which the vision alone provides. By it Christ always 44 For reflections on the relationship between this "supra-conscious" character of the vision, and its manifestation in consciousness, see ibid., 114-20. 45 In STh I-II, q. 4, a. 4 Aquinas shows that the permanent and necessary rectitude of the creaturely will in relation to the eternal goodness of God is dependent for man upon the immediate knowledge of the final end (the vision of the essence of God). John Damascene in De Fide Orth. III, c. 14 suggests that the movement of the human will of the Word occurs by a direct specification of it by the divine will. 46 I am employing the notion of "instrumentality" differently from Maritain here, so as to emphasize not only the instrumentality of the vision with regard to his infused knowledge, but the instrumentality of his entire human consciousness (with all of its forms of knowledge) as an expression of his divine personhood and will. Yet I follow him in holding that such a state of affairs depends upon the vision as a mediating principle. 520 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE knows immediately and with certitude who he is and what he wills in unity with the Father. His human will cooperates indefectibly with his divine will in the unity of one personal subject. In the absence of the vision, by contrast, the infused knowledge of Christ would still be the medium by which the man Jesus would be conscious of his own divine will, but it would no longer participate in any evidential knowledge of that will. Consequently, the human mind of Christ could no longer be moved immediately by the will of his divine person. Instead the man Christ would continually need to make acts of faith in what he believed obscurely to be the divine will he shared (as God) with his Father. He would have to hope (as a man) that he was doing what his own transcendent identity (which he also believed in) willed for him. Christ would not know with certitude, therefore, who he was and what he willed (as God) in each instant. Thus his human operations of willing might subsist in the person of the Word, but in their operative exercise they would work on a separated, "parallel track" to the operations of the Word, without immediate influence in their mode of exercise. Both operations could subsist in one person, but they would not be immediately related to each other as the operations of one person. In this case, no true unity of subject is manifest in the actions of Jesus, and a kind of implicit Nestorianism results. The actions of Christ as man do not reveal the will of God the Son, but only what Jesus as man hopes is the will he shares eternally with the Father. Such an idea is clearly dualistic since it prohibits the earthly Christ from being epistemologically proportioned so as to know immediately his own identity and will. Theologians who wish to affirm uniquely an indirect knowledge of God (and therefore, also the existence of faith) in the historical Christ and the real existence in him of a divine will and identity must consider the question: how are these two phenomena capable of producing a unity of subjective action that belongs to the Son of God as its principal source? 47 47 Evidently, I don't believe that this dilemma is capable of positive resolution. One option I can see for avoiding a Nestorian-like dilemma is to assert that the Son of God, in his Incarnate state, does not know or will in his divine nature, but only in his human nature. (See for example the proposals of Bernard Sesboiie inNdagogie du Christ [Paris: Cerf, 1994], 160- THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFICVISION 521 Contrary to Weinandy's claim, then, Aquinas's discussion of the grace of the beatific vision in the soul of Christ-which has the Word (and the "divine essence") as its object-is important for a Chalcedonian theology of the hypostatic union. Aquinas recognizes that the human intellect of Christ is created and as such is infinitely removed from his divine essence. Due to this natural limitation, the humanity of Christ must be subject to an extraordinary grace so that his human spiritual operations adequately attain to his divine life, and consequently bear its impressions in their own activity. So in fact it is the immediate vision that safeguards the unity of activity in the person of Jesus. This particular grace is the condition of possibility of an authentically unified filial consciousness, through which Christ expresses his intra-Trinitarian relationship with the Father, and his true identity, in his human actions. W einandy, however, is no doubt correct to insist on the unique character of this vision: it is indeed "filial." As Garrigues points out, not only the human nature but also the graces of the humanity of Christ subsist in the Word, and thus have a filial mode as well. This grace of the vision of Christ, then, while analogous to that grace received in a human person or angel who sees God, is different insofar as it does not give the soul of Christ an awareness of the Trinity as an ontologically distinct subject from himself, but rather permits the Son to know himself "objectively" and to understand his own filial personhood in a certain and evidential way. 48 161, following the ideas of Joseph Moingt.) Such a kenotic theory of the person of Christ does surely safeguard the unity of his personhood (since he is aware of himself uniquely in a human way, without recourse to his own divine will), but this is attained at the expense of the duality of his natures. Christ seemingly cedes the privileges of his divine nature and will for the interim of his temporal mission, and regains these at the resurrection. Such a kenotic theory implicitly breaks with the confession of faith of Chalcedon concerning the two natures of Christ, and with Ephesus on the inalterability of the divine identity of the Son. Moreover, it requires the direct negation of the divine aseity, and therefore renders itself metaphysically irrational, or "nontheistic." 48 Garrigues, "La conscience," 43-46. By "objectively" I do not mean "notionally" (since the vision is an intuitive, immediate knowledge), but "pertaining to true knowledge of reality." 522 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE III. THE OBEDIENCE AND PRAYER LIFE OF THE SON OF GOD AS EXPRESSIONS OF HIS FILIAL CONSCIOUSNESS A) The Intra-Trinitarian Mode of the Human Acts of Christ Having considered above the principles of theandric cooperation in the action of Jesus, I will now move on to reflect on concrete examples. The analysis can now be applied to actions characteristic of the human nature of the Incarnate Word in order to illustrate how these actions reveal his divine person. This is particularly evident with respect to Jesus' obedience and his prayer, two activities that do not occur between the uncreated persons of the Trinity per se, and that are proper to created nature, yet that in Christ express something of his filial identity through distinctly human acts. 49 This is only possible due to the correspondence between the human and divine wills of Christ within his unified personal action, effectuated by means of the beatific vision. Because the human will of Christ participates in the evidential certitude that he has of his own divine will, shared with the Father, his human acts of obedience and prayer express this certitude in gestures and words. The classical theory of the immediate vision, then, can be seen to be necessary in order to safeguard the personal unity of Christ's obedience and prayer as instrumental, filial actions, even while respecting the distinctly human character of these actions. By way of contrast, without this traditional theological teaching, one cannot make adequate sense of the obedience and prayer of Jesus as revelatory of the Trinitarian persons. This being the case, the central objections offered by Galot and W einandy to the presence of the vision in Christ are unfounded. The Chalcedonian Christology they wish to defend is exemplified in the life and action of the historical Jesus, who obeys the Father, and prays to the Father, because he knows immediately the Father, and acts, even in his human nature, as the Son who proceeds from the Father. 49 STh III, q. 20, preface. Aquinas notes here that the obedience, prayer, and priesthood of Christ, while being activities of his human nature, express his filial relation with respect to the Father. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 523 B) The Obedience of Christ To refer briefly to this dimension of the Incarnation, I will first mention certain aspects of Aquinas's treatment of the divine will of Christ in relation to the Father. As can be shown, obedience in Christ, for Aquinas, is the human expression of the divine will that he receives eternally from the Father. Consequently, his prayer life is also a tangible manifestation of the same relation of origination from the Father, expressed in a specifically human way. On the one hand, as has been noted, Christ's human nature (including his intellect and will) takes on a particular mode because it subsists in the Incarnate Word. However, this nature/mode distinction is also applied by Aquinas in a different but related way to the subsistent hypostasis of the God the Son as regards the divine nature. 50 In a wholly different and higher way, the divine nature that God the Son receives eternally from the Father through the procession of begetting takes on a particular mode of being (of subsistence) in the person of the Son. Therefore, the divine attributes that the Father and Son share in common (such as wisdom, goodness, eternity, etc.) are present in a unique way in each of the persons of the Trinity. In Jesus this mode of being of the divine nature is that of the subsistent hypostasis of the Son and, consequently, is the same filial subsistence that informs the human nature of Christ assumed in the Incarnation. In other words, the mode of being of Christ's humanity is the very same as the mode of being of his divine nature (even though these two natures are utterly distinct). 51 So 50 STh I, q. 29, aa. 2 and 4. Aquinas's treatment of subsistence in the Trinity is complex and exceeds the scope of this study. Gilles Emery in Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, Mich.: Ave Maria Press, 2002), 142-44 and 198-206 has examined this aspect of Aquinas's thought in detail. In "Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in St. Thomas Aquinas?," The Thomist 64 (2000): 534, he comments: "One cannot conceive of the person without the substance or without the nature belonging to the very ratio of the divine person, this latter being defined as 'distinct subsisting in the divine nature'." 51 STh I, q. 39, aa. 1-3. STh III q. 2, a. 2, obj. 1 and 3, ad 1 and 3; III, q. 3, a. 3. This doctrine is also found in Damascene, and originates with Maximus the Confessor. See the study of Garrigues, "Le dessein d'adoption du createur clans son rapport au fils d'apres S. 524 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE for example, the divine eternity of God subsists in the Son in a filial way (as eternally begotten of the Father), even as the human historical development of man subsists in the Son in a filial way (due to the Incarnation). 52 But if this is the case for attributes such as the divine eternity, then it is also the case for the divine will, which is an attribute of God's nature common to the three persons of the Trinity. The will of God is present in the person of the Son in a unique way. It subsists in him as a filial will, received eternally through the begetting of the Father and standing in relation to the Father as its principle and source. Commenting on John 5 :30 ("I am not seeking my own will, but the will of him who sent me"), Aquinas applies the saying to Christ's divinity: But do not the Father and the Son have the same will? I answer that the Father and the Son do have the same will, but the Father does not have his will from another whereas the Son does have his will from another, i.e., from the Father. Thus the Son accomplishes his own will as from another, i.e., as having it from another; but the Father accomplishes his own will as his own, i.e., not having it from another. 53 Because Christ's human nature is united hypostatically to this divine will in its filial mode, the latter must exact upon this nature the expression of its own hypostatic identity: that of God the Son. Because of the union in one subsistent person, the created desires, intentions, and choices of Christ's human will must express the filial character of the divine will that is present in him personally. 54 Certainly, his obedience is proper to his created nature, and does not reflect the uncreated relations of the Trinity Maxime le Confesseur"; and the remarks of C. Sch6nborn, The Human Face of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994): 113-16. 52 See STh I, q. 42, a. 4, ad. 2, concerning the divine attribute of dignity that the Son receives from the Father: "the same essence which in the Father is paternity, in the Son is filiation, so the same dignity which, in the Father is paternity, in the Son is filiation. It is thus true to say that the Son possesses whatever dignity the Father has." Similarly, ITh I, q. 39, a. 5, ad 1 (wisdom); I, q. 42, aa. 1, 2, and 6 (power, perfection, greatness, and eternity). 53 In Joan., V, lect. 5 (Marietti ed., n. 798). All English quotations from this work are taken from Aquinas, Commentary on The Gospel of St. John, trans. J. Weisheipl (Albany: Magi Press, 1980). 54 STh III, q. 18, a. 1, ad 1 and 2. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 525 per se55 • Nevertheless, due to the hypostatic mode in which this obedience is exercised in the person of Christ, it can express through his specifically human acts his filial relativity toward the Father. This is only the case due to the fact that an absolute correspondence exists between the human and divine wills of Christ, a point Aquinas makes implicitly in his commentary on John 5:30: For there are two wills in our Lord Jesus Christ: one is a divine will, which is the same as the will of the Father; the other is a human will which is proper to himself, just as it is proper to him to be a man. A human will is borne to its own good; but in Christ it was ruled and regulated by right reason, so that it would always be conformed in all things to the divine will. Accordingly he says: "I am not seeking my own will," which as such is inclined to its own good, "but the will of him who sent me," that is, the Father. ... If this is carefully considered, the Lord is assigning the true nature of a just judgment, saying: "because I am not seeking my own will." For one's judgment is just when it is passed according to the norm of law. But the divine will is the norm and the law of the created will. And so, the created will and the reason, which is regulated according to the norm of the divine will, is just, and its judgment is just. Secondly, this saying is explained as referring it to the Son of God .... Christ as the Divine Word showing the origin of his power. And because judgment in any intellectual nature comes from knowledge, he says significantly, "I judge only as I hear it," i.e., as I have acquired knowledge together with being from the Father, so I judge: "Everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you (Jn. 15 :5). 56 The judgments of Christ's ordinary decisions are specified by his prophetic knowledge, such that he is mentally conscious of the will of God for him in a conceptual way. Yet as I have discussed above, the judgment of Christ concerning the will he shares with the Father acquires its evidential certitude only through the beatific vision. This knowledge is an essential component, then, of ss Aquinas insists on the irreducible distinction of natures in Christ. This is why, following Augustine (De Trin. 1. 7), he claims that in a sense it is necessary to say that Christ "is subject to himself," i.e., subordinates his created will to his divine will (STh III, q. 20, a. 2). He does so, however, in invoking Cyril of Alexandria as a witness to the nonsubordination of the hypostasis of Christ with respect to the Father. In STh III, q. 20, a. 1, ad 1 and 2 he notes that obedience as such pertains to Christ's human nature, but is not in him the act of a creature. Rather, it is an act of the hypostasis of the Son in his human nature. 56 In Joan., V, lect. 5 (Marietti ed., nn. 796-97) (emphasis added). 526 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE the filial mode of the acts of Christ, because it alone permits the Lord as man to know immediately his own divine will, being moved by it and cooperating with it at each instant. This in turn permits his human intellect and will to function instrumentally with his divine, personal will as the two wills of one subject. By the vision, the man Jesus knows immediately that he receives his divine will from the Father, and his human acts of obedience bear the imprint of this unique filial certitude. Nor can the human obedience of Christ have this same "instrumental mode" without recourse to this knowledge. Without the vision, the man Jesus-moved by faith-could only obey what he believed and hoped was his own divine will, but his acts would not stem from an evidential knowledge of this will. Consequently, the human obedience of Christ would function with a kind of independence, moved by the decision of faith. It would not manifest Christ's certitude of his own divine will received eternally from the Father, but would instead reflect an autonomous human desire to act in accordance with the unknown operative will of God (perceived obscurely and indirectly through the medium of prophecy). The human obedience and the divine will of Christ would therefore run on parallel tracks but never touch directly. His human operations could not be immediately moved by his divine operations in the unified cooperation of one subject. It follows that even though Christ as man would subsist in the Word, in his acts of obedience he would seek in faith to obey himself in his divine nature. We must conclude, then, that a Chalcedonian Christology, which wishes (following Cyril, Maximus, and John of Damascene) to affirm the instrumental unity of Christ's human actions with those of his divine will, should affirm the presence in his humanity of the beatific vision as well. The actions of his distinct, created nature are subordinate to and expressive of his divine personhood through the medium of his immediate knowledge of his divine filial will. In this way his identity as the Son of God who is doing the work of the Father at all times Gohn 5:18-19) can be expressed in a filial mode through human voluntary submission to the paternal will. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 527 C) The Prayer of Jesus to the Father Analogous things can be said about the prayer life of Christ. Why does Christ pray if he already has the vision of God and knows that he and the Father will be "victorious over the world"? 57 First, as Aquinas makes clear, Christ's prayer is an expression of his created, dependent nature, and does not pertain to his divine nature. 58 Consequently, it does not imply an eternal subordination or obedience within the uncreated Trinity. Yet this prayer is expressive of an inner-Trinitarian relation. It reveals to us the relation that the person of the Son has with respect to the Father: Jesus receives all that he is and has, both as God and man, from the Father as his origin. [B]eing both God and man [Christ] wished to offer prayers to the Father, not as though He were incompetent, but for our instruction ... that He might show Himself to be from the Father, hence he says (Jn. 11 :42: "Because of the people who stand about I have said it [i.e., the words of the prayer], that they may believe that Thou has sent Me") .... Christ wished to pray to His Father in order to give us an example of praying; and also to show that His Father is the author [auctor] both of His eternal procession in the Divine nature, and of all the good that He possesses in the human nature. 59 Significant in this respect is the fact that, in praying, Christ does not regard himself (the Word) as an object to whom he offers petitions. He does not adore the Trinity. 60 Rather, the scriptural 57 Cf. John 16:33 58 STh III, q. 21, a. 1: "Prayer is the unfolding of our will to God, that He may fulfill it. If, therefore, there had been but one will in Christ, viz. the Divine, it would nowise belong to Him to pray, since the Divine will of itself is effective of whatever He wishes by it .... But because the Divine and the human wills are distinct in Christ, and the human will of itself is not efficacious enough to do what it wishes, except by Divine power, hence to pray belongs to Christ as man and as having a human will." 59 STh III, q. 21, a. 1, and a. 3, respectively (emphasis added). 60 I differ on this point from Matthew Levering (Christ's Fulfillment of Temple and Torah, 92-93, 143), who attributes to Aquinas the idea that Jesus adores the three persons of the Trinity in his human soul. To the best of my knowledge there are not texts to support this view (which resembles Scotus's doctrine) in Aquinas's writings. Aquinas never ascribes either adoratio or !atria to Christ as a subject, in relation to the Father as object or to himself as object. It seems, rather, that devotion in Christ receives a peculiar mode that is hypostatic. It 528 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE evidence suggests that his prayer is directed to the Father: it is primarily, therefore, a human mode of expression of his intraTrinitarian filial identity. It can only be this because of the perfection of the prayer of Christ: it mirrors the will of the Father, due to the fact that Christ's heart is always "in the Father. " 61 For Aquinas, then, Christ's exemplarity in prayer is not a kind of docetic play-acting, but a human expression and enactment of his eternal relation to the Father, meant to reveal to us that all things are received from the Father. His prayer initiates us into an analogous "Trinitarian" relationship as sons of the Father adopted by grace. In light of what has been said above, however, it is clear that Christ as man could not prayerfully recognize his origin from the Father with evidential certitude without the beatific vision. Even though his prayer is conceptual, this conceptuality participates in the immediate knowledge of the Father's will imparted by the vision. This in turn permits his human intellect and will to cooperate instrumentally with his divine, personal will as the two wills of one subject. By the vision, the man Jesus knows who he is and what he wills as God, and his human acts of prayer bear the immediate imprint of this knowledge. As such the prayer of Christ attains a unique, filial mode. It reflects through specifically human acts his personal recognition as the Son of God that he receives all things from the Father. This is why, even in praying for those things that his intercession would merit, Christ was acting in is a recognition by the Son in his human nature of having the Father as the origin of his divine and human natures. As with obedience and prayer, therefore, it designates the procession of the Son from the Father in human terms, and demonstrates that Christ receives the impetus of all acts of providence from the Father's will. H. Diepen ("La psychologie humaine du Christ selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," 540), also envisages the prayer of Christ as directed to all of the three persons as objects, citing as his authority Thomassin, De Verbo Incarnato, I. 9, c. 11, and in this respect resembles Levering. Diepen's inconsistency on this point with regard to his own teaching that there is no "psychological autonomy" (535-56) of a unique human subject in Christ is evident. In my opinion the positions of both Levering and Diepen justly incur the objections of Weinandy concerning an implicit Nestorianism by attributing to the human Christ an adoration of the Word. 61 John 14: 8-11. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFICVISION 529 accordance with the plan he foresaw in light of the Father's will, a will he shared in his divine nature. 62 Could this form of "instrumental" revelatory prayer be possible uniquely by means of prophetic knowledge in the soul of Christ, lived out in faith? In this case the man Jesus would lack evidential knowledge of the will he receives eternally from the Father. His prayer would therefore not be moved immediately by his filial will as the Son of God, but would express instead the desire in his human heart to do the will of God which he only believed that he shared eternally with the Father. Therefore, his prayer would operate on a parallel track to his divine will, without direct contact. It could no longer manifest to us an immediate awareness that he receives all things from the Father as Son. Instead of taking on this "Trinitarian form," then, the prayer of Christ would seemingly acquire a kind of human autonomy of operation, imploring in faith the divine activity of the Trinity that transcended the scope of its knowledge. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Christ in his divine nature and activity would become an object of prayer for Christ in his human nature and activity. Here again, then, the need for the vision of the divine will in the human soul of the Son is manifest: only this can bring into perfect accord the cooperation of the human and divine wills of Christ in his concrete agency as the Son of God. The unity of the person of Jesus is manifest in his prayer because this action 62 STh III, q. 21, a. l, ad 3. Aquinas cites Damascene's De Fide Orth., III, c. 24, agreeing with the latter that Christ did not "raise his mind to God" in the sense of progressively acquiring knowledge of God through prayer because he possessed the "blessed vision" of God. However, because of this grace, Christ's mind was always raised up to the contemplation of the divine nature, and was moved in accordance with the divine will. Christ therefore prayed for things that he knew would be merited by his prayer: STh III, q. 21, a. 1, ad 2. This does not mean, however, that his natural will and his human psychology (i.e., sensuality) were not revolted by the immanence of torture and death. On the contrary, Christ could overcome these natural reactions only by his "deliberate will," under the movement of the divine initiative in the heights of his soul (STh III, q. 21, a. 2; III, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1). The fact that his rational will was naturally repulsed by the prospect of death at Gethsemene does not imply a struggle of faith concerning the divine will, but a rational desire to overcome the natural fears of death that are proper to being human in order to obey the divine will. (Cf. STh III, q. 18, a. 5, especially corp. and ad 3.) 530 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE reveals his immediate awareness that "all things come from the Father" (cf. John 13:3). This can lead to a final objection: true prayer implies desire. But could Christ really have desired anything in his earthly state if he possessed the vision of God? Desire suggests an incompleteness, an absence, and therefore also broaches upon the problem of Jesus' true suffering, and the privations imposed by his historical condition. As Galot poignantly objects, could a Jesus who possessed the immediate vision of God have suffered in reality, in the ways that the Gospels themselves suggest? Could he truly have desired some state of affairs other than that to which he was immediately subject? Could a Jesus with the vision of God have implored the Father during his crucifixion? As Jean-Pierre Torrell has demonstrated, Aquinas was innovative in rendering a theological account of the fully human character of the experiential knowledge of Christ even against the tendencies of his theological age and environment. 63 This perspective was present in a particular way in his understanding of the existence of the beatific vision of the historical Christ. This vision, according to Aquinas, was a grace accorded to the humanity of Christ for the purposes of his soteriological mission. Consequently, it was regulated by a particular economy of grace, or dispensatio, proper to the earthly life of the Incarnate Son of God. 64 As Torrell shows, Aquinas explicitly applies this notion to the way in which the vision of God existed in the soul of Christ in his earthly life (cf. STh III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2; III, q. 15, a. 5, ad 3; III, q. 45, a. 2; III, q. 46, a. 8): 65 63 Jean-Pierre Torrell, "Le savoir acquis du Christ selon !es theologiens medievaux," Revue Thomiste 101 (2001): 355-408. 64 Aquinas uses the term dispensatio as a Latin expression of the Greek concept of oikonomia (divine government). As is well known, Aquinas understands the redemption of fallen man as the teleological purpose of the Incarnation (see STh III q. 1, a. 1). This "redemptive" logic of divine government therefore effects not only why the Incarnation took place, but also how. For example, so that he could merit for humanity through the crucifixion, Christ assumed a human nature without sin but simultaneously capable of physical, emotional and spiritual suffering as well as corporeal death (see STh III qq. 14 and 15). 65 Cf. Torrell, "St. Thomas d'Aquin et la science du Christ,"400-401. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 531 From the natural relationship which flows between the soul and the body, glory flows into the body from the soul's glory. Yet the natural relationship in Christ was subject to the will of His Godhead, and thereby it came to pass that the beatitude remained in the soul, and did not flow into the body; but the flesh suffered what belongs to a passible nature. 66 Far from deriving uniquely from a nonscriptural principle of perfection, then, this dimension of Aquinas's thought takes into consideration precisely the spiritual needs of the human Christ for the purposes of his saving mission. Among these is the need of the Son to know indefectibly in his human nature the will of the Father (which the Son receives eternally from him) so as to express it in a human way. 67 Yet this grace also coexists simultaneously with the natural possibility of experiential learning, as well as terrible physical and mental suffering. 68 This STh III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2. Throughout this essay I have emphasized the teachings of Johannine theology of Christ. However, a number of texts from the Synoptic tradition also describe Christ referring (implicitly but evidently) to his divine will in his concrete human actions. See, for example, Matt 11:25-27 ("Yes Father such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father"); Luke 10:18-20 ("I have given you the power to tread on scorpions"); Luke 13:34-5 ("Jerusalem, I yearned to gather your children together"). In all of these cases Jesus expresses in his human desires his divine identity and will. He does not have to ponder the nature of this will through a consideration of prophetic revelation. This can only be the case because, in the unity of his subjective action, he knows in an immediate human way his own divine power, identity, and will. The Synoptic miracle tradition is particularly eloquent in this regard: Matt 8: 2-3: "And then a leper approached, did him homage, and said, 'Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.' He stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, 'I will do it. Be made clean'. His leprosy was cleansed immediately.'' See also Matt 9:27-29; Mark 2:5-12; Luke 8:22-24. 68 STh III, q. 19, a. 1. In STh III, q. 46, aa. 7 and 8, Aquinas follows Damascene (De Fide Orth., III, c. 19) in underscoring the economic mode of Christ's experience of the passion. Spiritual and physical agony were permitted to coexist with the pacifying beatitude of immediate knowledge of the Father and of the divine will. In counter-distinction from the beatific vision in the life of the glorified Christ, and of the blessed, the mode of the beatific vision in the earthly life of Christ is such that it affects only the "heights of the soul," that is to say, uniquely the operations of intellect and will in their direct relation to the divine nature. This extraordinary knowledge presupposes, respects, and integrates the natural order of Christ's human thinking, feeling, and sensing, without changing its essential structure. An excellent analysis of this point is made by Colman O'Neill ("The Problem of Christ's Human Autonomy," 234-3 7). See also E. Weber, Le Christ selon saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Desclee, 1988), 179-98. J. M. Garrigues has extended this principle, showing how it applies for Aquinas to the "infused science" of Christ, which is "habitual" and in potency to know all that 66 67 532 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE means that for Aquinas, what is denoted in contemporary parlance by the "psychology of Christ" (his imagination, emotions, ideas etc.) is not structurally changed by Christ's extraordinary knowledge of his own divine identity, will, and mission. Once again, the human faculties of Christ are not affected in their natural specification, but only in their mode of exercise. 69 They are fully natural but in their concrete exercise they are organized from within by a higher spiritual awareness that Christ has of his transcendent identity, will, and mission. This means that they retain all of their natural vulnerability. Consequently, for Aquinas, the prayer of Christ in a very real sense is a genuine expression of the historical character of his consciousness, and of his real submission to the contingent circumstances of providence. Christ could and did hope for his own deliverance (through resurrection) from the terrible spiritual and sensible experiences of suffering and death. He also hoped for the future establishment of the Church among his followers, and for their eventual earthly mission and heavenly glorification. 70 The fact that he foresaw these realities in the heights of his soul was not a substitute for his more ordinary human way of thinking and feeling about them: the latter coexisted with this higher knowledge. 71 Thus, his vision was not a consolation for the absence of the human experience of these specific objects of desire. In fact, it could be the source of an existential dissatisfaction: the desire for something known to be in the future can be known (STh III, q. 9, a. 3), but in act uniquely with respect to those things Christ must know for the sake of his mission (STh III q. 11, a. 5, obj. 2, corp. and ad 2). See Garrigues, "La conscience," 47-51. As Garrigues points out, this teaching is mirrored in the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 473-74, with reference to Mark 13:32 and Acts 1:7. 69 STh III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3. 70 A point Aquinas makes clearly in analyzing the desires of Christ: STh III, q. 21, a. 3, corp., ad 2 and 3. See also III, q. 7, a. 4. 71 This is Aquinas's point in insisting on the simultaneous existence in Christ of both an immediate knowledge of God and an "experiential, acquired knowledge" of his human surroundings. Cf. STh III, q. 12, a. 2, where he notes his change of mind on this issue with respect to the earlier position of III Sent., d. 14, a. 3. THE EARTHLY CHRIST AND THE BEATIFIC VISION 533 but as yet unattained. This was particularly acute with respect to Christ's hope for the reconciliation of human persons with God. 72 What conclusion is to be drawn from these reflections concerning the claims of Galot and Weinandy? On the one hand, we see that St. Thomas's treatment of the human will of Christ permits us to take seriously the specifically human character of the willing of Jesus manifest in his obedience and prayer. On the other hand, it also accounts for the filial mode of this same voluntary activity in the human Christ. Therefore, it allows us to take seriously the historical contingency of the man Jesus in the limitations of his human historical state even while simultaneously insisting on the way in which this same human nature reveals intra-Trinitarian relations between Jesus and the Father. Only because of Aquinas's key distinction between the nature and mode of Christ's human activity is this insight available. At the same time, this operational correlation in Jesus between his human will and the will of the Father with whom he is in relation in his personal acts can itself only occur through the medium of an immediate knowledge of his own identity and divine will. Because this is the case, the Trinitarian intelligibility of the obedience and prayer of Christ requires that the immediate vision of God be present in Christ. Only this grace can effectuate the personal unity of the action of Jesus in and through a differentiation of natures, so that the divine will of the Son of God is revealed to us instrumentally, through Christ's human action. Only because of this grace do these activities in the consciousness of Christ appear in all of their "Chalcedonian" integrity. If we deny the existence of this grace, in light of what has been said above, then we make the filial and instrumental character of the obedience and prayer of Christ unintelligible. 72 Cf. Luke 13:34; 23:34; John 17:1, 5, 15-24. This principle is illustrated most acutely by John 17:24: "Father, I desire that they also, whom thou hast given me, may be with me where I am, to behold my glory which thou hast given me in thy love for me before the foundation of the world." The clear indication is that Christ actually beholds in his human nature the glory he has eternally from the Father, and that he simultaneously desires this glory to be shared in by his disciples. This prayer therefore both expresses a filial awareness of an identity received from the Father and an unfulfilled desire on behalf of the disciples, which motivates Christ to suffer the forthcoming passion. 534 THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE CONCLUSION In these brief observations I have argued (following a host of recent commentators) that Aquinas's theology of Christ bears within it significant resources for treating the contemporary challenge of a theological reflection on "the consciousness of Christ." Contrary to the claims of Galot and Weinandy, I do not believe that a Thomistic account of the presence of the beatific vision in Christ falls into the extremes of either Monophysitism or Nestorianism. On the contrary, the Thomistic understanding of this grace is central to an integral Christology that avoids either of these errors. The inner life of Jes us, as this essay has suggested following Herman Diepen, is to some extent irreducibly different from our own. There is no pure similitude between his selfawareness and ours due to the fact that his human self-awareness is that of the Incarnate Word. However, all that is human in Christ flourishes under the influence of grace, and his human actions are more perfect than our own precisely because of the presence in this humanity of the transcendent personhood of God. The immediate knowledge of God (or the beatific vision) is a necessary element of his humanity, due to the duality of natures that are present in the life of the Son of God, and their simultaneous cooperation in one personal subject. Only through this vision can the human actions of Jesus acquire their particular filial character as "instrumental" actions of the Son of God. Theologians who wish to reconsider this classical teaching of the Church must face the real challenge of explaining how, in the absence of this vision, the unity of the theandric acts of Christ may properly be maintained. 73 73 I am grateful to Nicanor Austriaco, Jean Miguel Garrigues, and Thomas Weinandy for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay, which helped greatly to improve its content. The Thomist 69 (2005): 535-55 PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE ANGELA MCKAY The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. I T IS WELL KNOWN that Aquinas holds that the acquired moral virtues can exist apart from charity. 1 Several Thomist scholars, however, have argued that we are to understand Aquinas's repeated assertions that the acquired moral virtues can exist apart from grace only in the following highly qualified sense: although an individual can acquire disconnected dispositions to various good actions apart from charity, he cannot possess connected acquired moral virtue. 2 In this paper I wish to address a defense of the above claim recently put forward by Thomas Osborne. 3 Osborne questions 1 Aquinas makes this claim explicitly in STh I-II q. 65, a. 2; and STh II-II q. 23, a. 7. Aquinas's remarks in other texts, such as his assertion in Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 9, ad 5 that the acquired virtues are not destroyed by mortal sin, imply the same thesis. 2 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange holds that the acquired virtues cannot be connected apart from grace; see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. Sr. Timothea Doyle (New York: Herder Book Co., 1947), 59. Jacques Maritain also argues in favor of this position (Jacques Maritain, Science and Wisdom, trans. Bernard Wall [London: The Centenary Press, 1940], 145-52). Robert Miner has recently defended the same thesis on the basis of his reading of STh I-II q. 61, a. 5; and STh I-II q. 62, a. 4. Miner believes that the "purgative virtue" Aquinas describes in the fifth article of question 61 is a description of the highest form of acquired virtue, and concludes on the basis of this that acquired prudence cannot exist without charity. Due to length constraints, I will not address Miner's argument in this paper. However, I should note that a comparison of De virtutibus cardinalibus, a. 2; and STh I-II q. 61, a. 5 indicates that what Miner takes as a description of acquired virtue is in fact a reference to infused virtue. See Robert Miner, "Non-Aristotelian Prudence in the Prima Secundae," The Thomist 64 (2000): 401-22. 3 Thomas Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," The Thomist 67 (2003): 279-305. Osborne is responding to Brian Shanley, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue," The Thomist 63 (1999): 553-77. 535 536 ANGELA McKAY whether the pagan can possess connected moral virtue. Specifically, he argues that because there can be no acquired prudence without charity, neither can there be any connected acquired moral virtue without charity, but only disconnected inclinations to good actions. 4 Definitive proof for this conclusion, he believes, can be found in the first and second articles of question 65 of the Prima Secundae. He argues that these articles establish that (1) without prudence the acquired moral virtues can be no more than isolated dispositions to good actions, and that (2) prudence cannot exist without charity. Consequently, we cannot but conclude that (3) without charity there can be no prudence and hence no connected acquired moral virtue. 5 If such an argument can be found in question 65, it certainly seems to prove Osborne's point. However, as I shall argue in this paper, it is by no means clear that we ought to interpret the second article of question 65 as Osborne and others do. I shall argue that a careful reading of the relevant textsespecially question 65 of the Prima Secundae-indicates that Aquinas does believe that the acquired moral virtues, connected by acquired prudence, can exist apart from grace. If scholars believe the texts indicate otherwise, it is most likely because they overlook Aquinas's distinction between acquired and infused moral virtue in general, and his distinction between acquired and infused prudence in particular. My argument will have three parts. First, I will examine Aquinas's treatment of the connection of the virtues in his Quaestio disputata De virtutibus cardinalibus. This text reveals that Aquinas recognizes three separate levels of virtuous habits: (1) disconnected inclinations towards good actions; (2) the acquired moral virtues, which are connected by prudence but which nonetheless do not order man towards the 4 Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Aquinas's Moral Theory," 294. Osborne does qualify this claim slightly, saying that "perfect acquired prudence" cannot exist without grace. However, Aquinas does not refer to "perfect acquired prudence" in the texts Osborne examines (or, to my knowledge, anywhere else) and Osborne does not define what he means by this term. It is possible that he intends this as a reference to what Aquinas calls prudence simpliciter, but, as we shall show in the third section of this paper, only infused prudence is prudence simpliciter. 5 Ibid. Maritain offers much the same reading of these articles (see above, note 2). PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 537 end "totius vitae"; and (3) the infused moral virtues, which are connected by both prudence and charity, and which do order man to the end "totius vitae." In the second part of this article, I will turn to Aquinas's discussion of the connection of the virtues in the Prima Secundae. When we read this text in light of the divisions established in De virtutibus cardinalibus we see that Aquinas clearly holds that virtues of type (2) can exist apart from charity. Finally, in the third part of this article, I will turn to Aquinas's examination of prudence in the Secunda Secundae, and show how his remarks there demonstrate that the acquired prudence necessary to connect the acquired moral virtues can indeed exist apart from charity. Before beginning my discussion, I wish to make two comments about the texts used in this article. First, the Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus, the Prima Secundae, and the Secunda Secundae were all written between 1271 and 1272. 6 Because of the proximity of the texts, I shall not address the unlikely possibility that Aquinas altered his theory of virtue between the writing of one text and another. Second, although it is possible that Aquinas authored the Prima Secundae text slightly earlier than the text of De virtutibus (the former appeared in 12 71, while the latter appeared between 1271 and 1272), I shall address the latter text first because it offers a more systematic discussion of the connection of the virtues. As such it provides a good framework in which to examine the Prima Secundae text. I. DE VIRTUTIBUS CARDINALIBUS Aquinas addresses the connection of the virtues in the question De virtutibus cardinalibus. The second article of this question asks whether the virtues are connected, so that to possess one virtue is 6 Torrell dates these works as appearing between 1271 and 1272. The Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus (comprised of De virtutibus in communi, De caritate, De correctione fraterna, De spe, and De virtutibus cardinalibus) and the Secunda Secundae appeared between 1271 and 1272, while the Prima Secundae appeared in 1271. See Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (rev. ed.; Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 329. 538 ANGELA McKAY to possess all of them. Aquinas responds by distinguishing three different levels of virtue: (1) virtuous inclinations, (2) connected acquired virtue, and (3) infused virtue. Within each of the two higher levels, Aquinas argues, the virtues are connected to each other, so that to possess one virtue is to possess all the others, and within each of these two higher levels prudence connects the other moral virtues. In addition, as we shall see, Aquinas states that at the level of infused virtue (and only at that level) charity is a necessary prerequisite of prudence and hence of all the other infused moral virtues. Aquinas locates the three different levels of virtue listed above by employing two distinctions. The first is a distinction between perfect and imperfect moral virtue: It should be said that we can speak of virtues in two ways: in one way regarding perfect virtues; and in another way regarding imperfect virtues. Perfect virtues are connected to each other; but imperfect virtues are not necessarily connected. For since virtue makes man and his work good, a perfect virtue makes man and his work perfectly good; an imperfect virtue does not render man and his work good simpliciter, but in some respect.7 Aquinas then proceeds to explain that a virtue is good in the former sense when it brings man into conformity with a rule or standard of action. A virtue is simply a good habit, and a habit is said to be good or bad insofar as it brings its possessor into conformity with the rule, or standard, of human action. 8 A habit be truly good and hence cannot truly merit the title of virtue, then, unless it succeeds in this. 9 The "rule" of human action, however, can be understood in two ways, and this leads Aquinas to make a second distinction. 7 De virtut. card., a. 2: "Dicendum, quod de virtutibus dupliciter possumus loqui: uno modo de virtutibus perfectis; alio modo de virtutibus imperfectis. Perfectae quidem virtutes connexae sibi sunt; imperfectae autem virtutes non sunt ex necessitate connexae. Ad cuius evidentiam sciendum est, quod cum virtus sit quae hominem bonum facit, et opus eius bonum reddit, ilia estvirtus perfecta quae perfecte opus hominus bonum reddit, et ipsum bonum facit; ilia autem est imperfecta, quae hominem et opus eius reddit bonum non simpliciter, sed quantum ad aliquid." All translations are my own. 8 Ibid.; see also STh I-II q. 49, a. 3 9 De virtut. card., a. 2. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 539 Whereas Aquinas's first distinction has to do with whether or not a virtue brings man into conformity with a rule, his second concerns with which standard of action the virtue brings man into conformity. Virtue can either bring man into conformity with the rule of action "homogenea et propria homini"-namely, into conformity with right reason-or it can bring man into conformity with a higher rule, "prima mensura transcendens, quod est Deus. " 10 The two "rules" correspond to the distinction between infused and acquired virtue. Aquinas consistently bases the distinction between infused and acquired virtue on the fact that man needs different virtues insofar as he is brought into conformity with different "rules" or standards of action. In articles 9 and 10 of De virtutibus in communi, Aquinas notes that the standard of human action can be considered in more than one way. The virtues that perfect man in a manner commensurate with his created nature are acquired virtues, while those that bring man into conformity with the "prima mensura transcendens quod est Deus" must be infused by God. 11 Only the latter, Aquinas states, are virtues simpliciter perfectae. The former are perfect only in a sense, insofar as they bring man into conformity with the good commensurate to his nature. 12 Aquinas offers the same explanation when he distinguishes infused and acquired moral virtue in the Prima Secundae. 13 His second distinction, then, is a distinction between infused and acquired virtue. In the ensuing discussion, Aquinas uses the above distinctions to posit three levels of virtue: (1) virtues omnino imperfectae, (2) virtues aliqualiter perfectae, and (3) virtues simpliciter perfectae. The lowest level of virtue consists of those habits which perfect man in some respect, but incompletely. Aquinas's favorite example of habits that fall into this category is the dispositions 10 Ibid. It is important to note that Aquinas's assertion that there are two "rules" of human action should not be read as a claim that man has two ends. For a helpful discussion of this, see Shanley, "Pagan Virtue," 555. 11 Aquinas, De virtut. comm., a. 9; see also a. 10. 12 De virtut. comm., a. 9, ad 7. 13 STh 1-11 q. 63, a. 2. 540 ANGELA McKAY towards various kinds of action that exist in man from birth. 14 Some people have, from birth, inclinations towards fortitude, temperance, or mercy. Habits such as these give one an aptitude for performing certain kinds of actions, but they do not make one good in an unqualified sense because they are not guided by prudence. Hence, unlike genuine virtues, these dispositions can as easily be put to the service of bad ends as of good. 15 It is precisely because these dispositions are unaccompanied by prudence that Aquinas designates them as omnino imperfectae: There are therefore three levels of virtue. For certain virtues are omnino imperfectae, which exist without prudence, not attaining right reason, such as the inclinations that some have toward certain works of virtue even from their birth. 16 The defining mark of the habits at this lowest level of virtue, then, is that they lack the direction of right reason. Such dispositions are not connected to each other, but even more importantly, they cannot even really be called virtues: Inclinations of this kind are not in all people at once, but some have an inclination to one, some to another. These inclinations do not have the character of virtue, because no one can use virtue badly, according to Augustine; but one can use these inclinations badly and harmfully, if he uses them without discretion. 17 14 It is important to note, however, that Aquinas does not limit this level of virtue to the inclinations one is born with, but merely mentions these inclinations as one example of this kind of virtue. His statements elsewhere show that this lowest level of virtue is by no means limited to the dispositions one is born with. In his parallel discussion in STh I-II q. 65, a. 1, Aquinas says that this category might also include dispositions acquired by custom. 15 De virtut. card., a. 2. 16 Ibid.: "Sic igitur est triplex gradus virtutum. Sunt enim quaedam virtutes omnino imperfectae, quae sine prudentia existunt, non attingentes rationem rectam, sicut sunt inclinations quas aliqui habent ad aliqua virtutum opera etiam ab ipsa nativitate." 17 Ibid.: "Huiusmodi autem inclinations non simul insunt omnibus, sed quidam habent inclinationem ad unum, quidam ad aliud. Hae autem inclinationes non habent rationem virtutis, quia virtute nullus male utitur, secundum Augustinum; huiusmodi autem inclinationibus potest aliquis male uti et nocive, si sine discretione utatur." Aquinas makes this same point earlier, in article 8 of De virtutibus in communis. An inclination that lacks the guidance of reason, he states there, may be a beginning of virtue, but it is not a perfect virtue. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 541 Above the virtues that are omnino imperfectae, Aquinas posits a second level of virtue, those that are aliqualiter perfectae. These virtues are directed by right reason, and hence do bring man into conformity with a rule. However, they fall short of true perfection because they do not unite man to God in charity and thus fail to bring man into conformity with his true end: The second level of virtues is those which attain right reason, but nevertheless do not attain God himself through charity. These are aliqualiter perfectae through comparison to the human good, but nevertheless they are not simpliciter perfectae, because they do not attain the first rule, which is the ultimate end. 18 As noted above, Aquinas's description here matches the definition of acquired virtue offered in several parallel texts. We can thus safely assume that when he speaks of the virtues that are aliqualiter perfectae, he is speaking of the acquired virtues. Aquinas then proceeds to assert that the virtues that attain right reason but do not attain God in charity are connected to each other, and that they are connected by prudence: If we consider perfect virtues at the second level, with respect to the human good, they are connected through prudence; because there can be no moral virtue without prudence, nor can there be prudence, if moral virtue is lacking. 19 On Aquinas's own account, then, the virtues that are aliqualiter perfectae do not "attain God in charity" and yet are connected by prudence. The virtues at the third and highest level, those that are simpliciter perfectae, are the only virtues that perfect man unqualifiedly. While the virtues at the second level bring man into conformity with right reason, the virtues at the third and highest level bring man into conformity with the ultimate end: "The 18 De virtut. card., a. 2: "Secundus autem gradus virtutum est illarum quae attingunt rationem rectam, non tamen attingunt ad ipsum Deum per caritatem. Hae quidem aliqualiter suntperfectae per comparationem ad bonum humanum, non tamen suntsimpliciter perfectae, quia non attingunt ad primam regulam, quae est ultimas finis." 19 Ibid.: "Si autem accipiamus virtutes perfectas in secundo gradu, respectu boni humani, sic connectuntur per prudentiam; quia sine prudentia nulla virtus moralis esse potest, nee prudentia haberi po test, si cui deficiat moralis virtus." 542 ANGELA McKAY virtues at the third level, which are simultaneous with charity, are perfect simpliciter. These virtues make the act of man good simpliciter, as attaining the ultimate end." 20 Aquinas explains that when man is united to God in charity he is infused with habits disposing him towards those actions to which charity inclines. Since charity inclines to the acts of all the virtues, all the virtues are infused along with charity. These virtues, says Aquinas, are connected through charity, since if charity is present, all the other virtues are present as well, and none of these virtues can exist without charity: "Therefore, if we consider the virtues that are perfect simpliciter, they are connected because of charity; because no such virtue can be had without charity, and if charity is had, all are had. " 21 This last remark indicates that the virtues at the third level are infused virtues. For only of infused virtues is it true that "no such virtue can be had without charity, and if charity is had, all are had. " 22 This distinction of three levels of virtue appears to contradict Osborne's thesis that the acquired virtues, apart from charity, can be no more than isolated inclinations to good actions. For in this text, Aquinas appears to move in a clear progression from (1) dispositions that exist apart from both charity and right reason to (2) dispositions that exist together with prudence but apart from charity to (3) the virtues that exist together with charity. He clearly states that the virtues at the second level are connected, 20 Ibid.: "Tertius grad us est virtuturn simpliciter perfectarum, quae sunt simul cum caritate; haec enim virtutes faciunt acturn hominis simpliciter bonum, quasi attingentem usque ad ultimum finem." 21 Ibid.: "Sic ergo, si accipiamus virtutes simpliciter perfectas, connectuntur propter caritatem; quia nulla virtus talis sine caritate haberi potest, et caritate habita omnes habentur." We should note that by citing charity as the reason for the connection of the infused virtues, Aquinas does not exclude prudence as a cause of the connection; however, because charity is the source of infused prudence, it is the primary cause of the connection of the infused virtues. Hence in STh I-II, q. 65, a. 3 Aquinas will say that the infused virtues are connected by both charity and prudence. 22 This is true for two reasons. First, as we shall see in what follows, Aquinas repeatedly asserts that the acquired virtues can exist apart from charity. Second, only of the infused virtues is it true that "if charity is had, all are had." This is certainly not true of the acquired virtues, since an infused virtue can coexist with dispositions to the acquired vices. PRUDENCE AND ACQIBRED MORAL VIRTUE 543 that they are connected by prudence, and that unlike the moral virtues that are simpliciter perfectae, they do not "attain God in charity." The natural conclusion is that-contrary to Osborne's interpretation-the acquired virtues can exist as connected virtues apart from charity. Osborne however, takes a somewhat different view of this text. Noting that others, such as Brian Shanley, view it as evidence that connected acquired virtue can exist apart from grace, Osborne denies that such a conclusion is warranted: According to Shanley, this threefold distinction shows that pagans can have those virtues which belong to the second grade even though they cannot have charity and the infused moral virtues. He seems to infer the position that the acquired virtues can fully exist without charity from the fact that the acquired virtues are connected through acquired prudence. To the best of my knowledge, neither John of St. Thomas nor Maritain denies that the acquired moral virtues are connected through prudence. The real issue is whether the virtue of prudence can exist in someone who lacks charity .... For Shanley's interpretation to be correct, Thomas would have to be arguing not only that the acquired virtues are connected through prudence but also that someone who does not have charity can have prudence. 23 Thus, although Osborne concedes that the acquired virtues are connected by prudence, and must-if he accepts the statements of the article discussed above-accept that the acquired virtues, connected by acquired prudence, do not order man to God in charity, he denies (on the basis of his reading of STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2) that the acquired prudence necessary to connect them can exist apart from charity. In the following sections I will argue that (1) the text in question from the Prima Secundae (STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2) does not show that charity is a prerequisite of acquired prudence but rather indicates that it is not, and further that (2) Aquinas's treatment of prudence in the Secunda Secundae shows that acquired prudence can exist apart from grace. 23 Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," 299-300 ANGELA McKAY 544 II. PRIMA SECUNDAE I now wish to examine the first and second articles of question 65 of the Prima Secundae, which Osborne cites as the primary evidence for his interpretation, against the background of the text from De virtutibus cardinalibus. According to Osborne, these articles show that the acquired prudence necessary to connect the acquired virtues cannot exist apart from charity. 24 In what follows, I shall argue the two following points. First, these articles support the thesis that the acquired virtues, connected by prudence, can exist apart from grace. Second, while Aquinas does assert in these articles that the virtues are not connected without prudence, he never asserts that charity is a prerequisite of all prudence. To the contrary, he only insists that charity is a prerequisite of infused prudence, and he consistently makes this claim in the context of contrasting infused and acquired virtue. Nothing in this latter text, then, supports Osborne's claim that charity is a prerequisite of all prudence and hence of connected acquired virtue. A) Article 1 The first article of question 65 is devoted to the question of whether the virtues are connected, so that to have one virtue is to have all the virtues. Aquinas's response here, while not identical to that in the De virtutibus cardinalibus, is very similar. As in the above text, Aquinas's first move is to distinguish perfect from imperfect moral virtue. He again cites natural dispositions as a paradigmatic instance of imperfect virtue, along with various dispositions we acquire through custom: moral virtue can be considered as either perfect or imperfect. An imperfect moral virtue, such as temperance or fortitude, is nothing more than an inclination in 24 Ibid., 293. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 545 us towards doing some kind of good work, whether such inclination is in us by nature or custom. 25 Such inclinations are not connected, as is evidenced by experience-many people have inclinations towards some acts of virtue but not others. 26 As in De virtutibus cardinalibus, Aquinas then proceeds to distinguish perfect from imperfect moral virtue on the basis of what virtue is supposed to do. Dispositions that truly deserve the title of "virtue" do not merely dispose one towards the performance of good acts, but rather dispose one to perform good acts in the right way. This latter sort of action requires that all the virtues exist together, for to perform a good act in the right way requires not merely an inclination towards that act, but that the individual in question make the right choice. This requires prudence, which in turn requires all the other moral virtues. 27 Just as in the former text, then, Aquinas makes an initial division between perfect and imperfect moral virtue on the basis of the presence or absence of prudence. Only those moral virtues that exist together with prudence truly merit the title of "virtue," and hence only those virtues can be termed "perfect" virtues. The difference is that Aquinas does not, in this first article, distinguish between kinds of perfect virtue. He merely distinguishes perfect from imperfect moral virtue, and the only tool he needs for this is a reflection on the presence or absence of prudence. B) Article 2 The first article of question 65 thus reiterates the first distinction Aquinas makes in De virtutibus cardinalibus: there can be no perfect moral virtue apart from prudence. If Osborne is correct, the second article offers a further stipulation, namely, 25 STh I-II, q. 65, a. 1: "virtus moralis potest accipi vel perfecta or imperfecta. Imperfecta quidem moralis virtus, ut temperantia ver fortitudo, nihil aliud est quam inclinatio in nobis existens ad opus aliquod de genere bonorum faciendum, sive talis inclinatio sit in nobis a natura sive ex assuetudine." 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 546 ANGELA McKAY that the prudence needed to connect the moral virtues cannot exist without charity. However, when we examine the second article of question 65 closely, we see it actually makes a rather different claim. The second article does indeed ask whether the moral virtues can exist without charity, but in order to answer this question Aquinas-just as in De virtutibus cardinalibusintroduces a further distinction, one that differentiates two kinds of perfect virtue. Aquinas frames his entire response in terms of a contrast between the acquired moral virtues, which are perfect only secundum quid, and the infused moral virtues, which are perfect simpliciter. In the context of this distinction, Aquinas replies that infused prudence cannot exist without charity, and hence that the infused moral virtues, which in turn cannot exist without infused prudence, cannot exist without charity. He asserts, on the other hand, that the acquired moral virtues can exist without charity. His discussion here thus appears to follow the same course as that of the De virtutibus cardinalibus in distinguishing three levels of virtue, with this difference: whereas in the De virtutibus cardinalibus text Aquinas clearly states that the acquired virtues are connected by prudence but only implies-by stating that they do not attain God in charity-that they can exist apart from charity, in this text Aquinas definitively states that the acquired virtues can exist apart from charity. After distinguishing between perfect and imperfect moral virtue on the basis of the presence or absence of prudence, Aquinas then proceeds in the second article to a discussion of whether and how moral virtue can exist without charity. Aquinas's first move is to distinguish between the acquired moral virtues, which can exist without charity, and the infused moral virtues, which cannot. Since the acquired moral virtues are ordered to an end that does not exceed human nature, they can exist without charity: As said above, the moral virtues can be acquired through human acts insofar as they produce good works ordered to an end that does not exceed the natural PRUDENCEAND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 547 capacity of man. When acquired in this way they can exist without charity, as was the case for many pagans. 28 The moral virtues that order man to the end "totius vitae," however, must be infused by God. These, Aquinas asserts, cannot exist apart from charity: Insofar as they produce good works ordered to the ultimate supernatural end, they truly and perfectly have the character of virtue and cannot be acquired by human actions, but are infused by God. Moral virtues of this kind cannot exist without charity. 29 Aquinas makes it clear from the outset, then, that the question of whether the moral virtues can exist without charity can only be answered so long as the distinction between infused and acquired moral virtue is kept firmly in mind. Aquinas will continue to appeal to this distinction throughout the remainder of the article. Immediately after stating that the infused moral virtues cannot exist apart from charity, Aquinas explains why it is that moral virtues "of this kind" -that is, infused moral virtues-cannot exist without charity. 30 Again, Aquinas frames his reply in terms of the contrast between infused and acquired virtue. The infused moral virtues cannot exist apart from charity, he explains, because the moral virtues cannot exist without prudence, nor prudence without the moral virtues. But the infused virtues order man to the end "totius vitae," and man cannot reason correctly about those things ordered to this end unless he is first appropriately ordered to it through charity. Aquinas thus concludes that neither 28 STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2: "sicut supra dictum est, virtutes morales, prout sunt operativae boni in ordine ad finem qui non excedit facultatem naturalem hominis, possunt per opera humana acquiri. Et sic acquisitae sine caritate esse possunt, sicut fuerunt in multis gentilibus." 29 Ibid.: "Secundum autem quod sunt operativae boni in ordine ad ultimum finem supernaturalem, sic perfecte et vere habent rationem virtutes, et non possunt humanis actibus acquiri, sed infunduntur a Deo. Et hujusmodi virtutes morales sine caritate esse non possunt" (emphasis added). 30 The stipulation "of this kind" is crucial, because it indicates that the immediately following discussion of why "moral virtue" cannot exist without infused prudence and hence without charity refers to infused moral virtue. 548 ANGELA McKAY infused prudence nor, consequently, the other infused moral virtues can exist without charity. 31 We should note that nothing in this text implies the conclusion that the acquired moral virtues cannot exist without charity, or that acquired prudence cannot exist without charity. Certainly, those virtues that order us correctly with respect to the end "totius vitae" cannot, but Aquinas has just gone to great lengths to make it clear that such virtues are infused virtues. This reading is borne out by the immediately following text, in which Aquinas continues to discuss the contrast between infused and acquired virtue. Because only the infused virtues order man to the end "totius vitae," only these truly merit the title of virtue, while the others are virtues only in a certain sense: Therefore it is clear from what has been said that only the infused virtues are perfect, and are to be called virtues simpliciter, because they order man well towards his ultimate end simply speaking. The other virtues, namely the acquired, are virtues secundum quid, but not simpliciter. For they order man well with respect to the ultimate end in some genus, but not with respect to the ultimate end simply speaking. 32 This final description, we should note, is virtually identical with the division between two kinds of perfect virtue that Aquinas makes in De virtutibus cardinalibus. Aquinas thus frames his entire response to the question of whether the moral virtues can exist without charity in terms of a contrast between the infused and acquired moral virtues. His main concern seems to be to demonstrate that, unlike the acquired moral virtues, the infused moral virtues cannot exist apart from charity. Nowhere does he make the assertion that Osborne and others claim to find in this text, namely, that the prudence that 31 Ibid. Again, we should note that although Aquinas merely says "nee aliae virtutes morales" he has already indicated with "of this kind" that further references to moral virtue will be references to infused moral virtue. 32 Ibid.: "Patet igitur ex dictis quod solae virtutes infusae sunt perfectae, et simpliciter dicendae virtutes, quia bene ordinant hominem ad finem ultimum simpliciter. Aliae vero virtutes, scilicet acquisitae, sunt secundum quid virtutes, non autem simpliciter. Ordinant enim hominem bene respectu finis ultimi in aliquo genere, non autem respectu finis ultimi simpliciter." PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 549 connects the acquired moral virtues cannot exist without charity. Aquinas's only reference to charity as a prerequisite of prudence is made in the context of establishing the necessity of charity as a prerequisite of infused prudence. 33 Ill. SECUNDA SECUNDAE: ACQUIRED PRUDENCE The combined texts of De virtutibus and the Prima Secundae thus show that Aquinas holds that (a) the acquired virtues are connected by acquired prudence and (b) the acquired virtues can exist apart from charity. Together, this yields the conclusion that charity is not a prerequisite of acquired prudence. This very claim, however, may strike many as problematic. How can there be prudence in one who is not rightly ordered with respect to the end of all human life? The description of acquired prudence found in Aquinas's treatise on prudence in the Secunda Secundae can help to shed some light on this question. In the Secunda Secundae text, Aquinas describes three different forms of prudence: false prudence, prudence secundum quid, and prudence simpliciter. The second of these, which emerges from the discussion as acquired prudence, can exist without grace. It is this form of prudence-prudence secundum quid-that, I shall argue, connects the virtues that are perfect secundum quid. The sixteen articles of question 4 7 of the Secunda Secundae are devoted to a general discussion of prudence. After demonstrating that prudence is a virtue that belongs not merely to the cognitive faculty but specifically to the practical reason, Aquinas provides a detailed analysis of the parts of prudence and defines the subject matter of prudence. Having considered what prudence is, he then raises the question of who can properly be said to possess prudence. It is here that Aquinas distinguishes three different kinds of prudence. While true prudence, or prudence simpliciter, is present in all who have grace (and only in them), the other two forms of prudence can exist independently of grace. 33 Although I have not addressed it here, it is worth noting that in the third article of question 65, which asks whether charity can exist without the moral virtues, Aquinas again responds by appealing to the distinction between infused and acquired moral virtue. 550 ANGELA McKAY A) Article 13 The first statements relevant to this point occur in article 13. In the context of a response to the question of whether sinners can be prudent, Aquinas distinguishes three different kinds of prudence. The first and lowest form is a certain shrewdness, an ability to achieve one's purposes, that is possessed by some of those who seek bad ends. The sinner who is adept at achieving evil ends is called prudent, not because he has genuine prudence, but because his ability has a certain resemblance to prudence. Such prudence is not true prudence, however, and is possessed only by sinners. 34 The second form of prudence is present when an individual has the ability to order himself towards genuinely good ends, but incompletely. Aquinas says that this ability may be incomplete for one of two reasons. First, it may happen that an individual can take good counsel, judge, and command rightly with respect to certain genuinely good ends, but that the genuinely good end "is not the common end of the entire human life, but of some special activity." 35 This form of prudence seeks and achieves a genuinely good human end, and hence can be possessed by either the sinner or the just man. However, because it does not order man to the end "totius vitae," it is still not prudence simpliciter, but only prudence secundum quid. Prudence can be true but incomplete in a second way insofar as an individual is prudent enough to know the appropriate course of action, but lacks the principal act of prudence, command. 36 This latter, says Aquinas, can only exist in sinners. 37 Finally, Aquinas defines the third and highest form of prudence, prudence simpliciter, which cannot exist in sinners. This form of prudence is the prudence that takes counsel, judges, and commands rightly with respect to the "bonum finem totius 34 SI'h II-II, q. 47, a. 13. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 551 vitae. "38 To possess this sort of prudence is to possess precisely what the sinner lacks: the rightly ordered affection for God, or charity, which is only bestowed with grace. Aquinas thus concludes that this last and highest form of prudence cannot exist 1n sinners. Though Aquinas does not use the vocabulary of "infused" and "acquired" in this article, the categories of infused and acquired virtue are clearly operative in article 13. Specifically, it is clear that prudence simpliciter must be closely tied to, if not identical with, infused prudence. The sinner is prevented from the possession of this kind of prudence precisely because, notwithstanding the ability he may have to order himself well with regard to assorted truly good ends, he does not have that ability with regard to the end "totius vitae." He cannot do so because his affections are disordered, and his affections are disordered because he is not united to God in charity. The parallels between this statement and Aquinas's distinction between infused and acquired virtue are obvious, for the acquired virtues can exist in sinners and remain with the loss of grace; the infused virtues, however, do not. If we concede that Aquinas's definition of prudence simpliciter does indeed correspond to infused prudence, then Aquinas's distinction between complete and incomplete prudence provides the first indication that there is a real and important gap between acquired and infused prudence (which he will treat more fully in a. 14). Acquired virtues, we recall, are dispositions man can achieve through his own powers, through which he is well ordered with respect to a genuinely good end. They can exist without grace and are not lost with mortal sin. All of this has striking similarities to Aquinas's discussion of "true but incomplete" prudence, the type of prudence that can exist in the sinner and the just man alike. The sort of prudence that orders man well with regard to specialized ends but not with regard to the end "totius vitae" seems very similar to what prudence might look like in the individual who lacks grace. 38 Ibid. 552 ANGELA McKAY There 1s one further point in article 13 that is especially relevant to the distinction between infused and acquired prudence. Aquinas's definition of prudence simpliciter as prudence with respect to the end "totius vitae" leaves room for it to be disassociated, in an interesting way, from the other forms of prudence. Prudence simpliciter may coexist with prudence secundum quid, but prudence secundum quid can exist in sinners as well. The immediate question, of course, is whether prudence simpliciter can exist without incomplete prudence, and if so, what prudence simpliciter looks like. For an answer to these questions, we must turn to article 14. B) Article 14 The above implies that for Aquinas true prudence is the prudence that exists in all who have grace, and that this prudence must be infused prudence. 39 However, although article 13 seems to anticipate some distinctions between infused and acquired prudence, it raises as many questions as it answers. We still lack an understanding of what prudence simpliciter does and whether it can exist without the lesser, incomplete form of prudence, prudence secundum quid. Both of these questions are answered in article 14. Article 14 asks whether prudence is in all who have grace. Aquinas responds to this question with a brief affirmative. The readiness with which he affirms that prudence is in fact in all who have grace should serve to remove any residual doubt over the question of whether or not prudence simpliciter can be identified with infused prudence. While Aquinas responded to the question of whether prudence could exist in sinners by making distinctions between perfect and imperfect forms of prudence, he needs no distinctions to argue that prudence is indeed in all who have 39 Note that it does not necessarily follow, from the fact that prudence simpliciter cannot be in sinners, that it is in fact present in all who have grace. For this latter possibility to hold, it would have to be the case that even those with dispositions to bad actions-newly repentant sinners, for instance-would possess prudence simpliciter. That this is indeed the case is precisely what Aquinas shows in this article. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 553 grace. The virtues are united, so that one cannot have one virtue unless he has all the others. But to have grace is to have charity and hence all the virtues. Since prudence is a virtue, it necessarily follows that anyone who has grace has prudence as well. 40 The entire body of Aquinas's reply to article 14 comprises no more than three sentences, and this in itself is significant, for it indicates that no distinctions-at least with regard to the completeness or incompleteness of the prudence possessed-need be made about the kind of prudence that is possessed by all who have grace. The prudence possessed by all who have grace simply is true prudence, because through it one is ordered correctly with respect to the end "totius vitae." In the replies to the objections, Aquinas offers helpful insights about how the prudence referred to in the body of the article differs from other forms of prudence, and these insights serve to answer the questions that article 13 raises. First and most importantly, we are provided with a definition of what infused prudence does. Infused prudence, Aquinas tells us, gives us the ability to take counsel, judge, and command in "matters necessary for salvation." This characterization of infused prudence arises in reply to the objection that many of those who have grace lack the industry that the acquisition of prudence requires. Because such people lack the necessary prerequisite for prudence, it seems that they cannot possess prudence, even if they do have grace. 41 In his reply, Aquinas returns once again to the idea of having prudence with respect to the end "totius vitae." What is especially interesting is that it seems possible to have such prudence without 40 It is clear thatthese assertions have to do with prudence simpliciter, or infused prudence, since, given Aquinas's discussion in the preceding article, these comments cannot apply to prudence secundum quid. Even stronger evidence for this point can be found in Aquinas's reply to the third objection. In reply to the objection that the young lack prudence, Aquinas responds that this is true of acquired prudence, but not of infused prudence (STh II-II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 3). Indeed, some of those who comment on this article (cf. Thomas Gilby, for instance) readily acknowledge that this article is about prudence simpliciter, or infused prudence. What they do not seem to consider is the location of this article, and the parallel discussion in article 13, which indicates that infused prudence is not an isolated or tangential consideration, but in fact the only true form of prudence and the real subject of the treatise. 41 STh II-II, q. 47, a. 14, obj. 1. 554 ANGELA McKAY having prudence with respect to some genuinely good, but incomplete ends. To the objection that some of those who have grace lack the diligence that prudence requires, Aquinas replies that if one who has grace lacks the requisite industry in many aspects of his life, grace which "teaches all things" provides man with the diligence he needs in matters necessary for salvation: Industry is twofold. There is one kind which is sufficient for those things that are necessary for salvation; and such industry is given to all who have grace, whom anointing teaches all things, as is said in 1 John [2.27]. But there is another fuller industry, through which someone is able to provide for himself and others, not only those things that are necessary for salvation, but also anything whatsoever pertaining to human life; and such industry is not in all who have grace. 42 What is bestowed through infused prudence, then, is not prudence in all things, but prudence in matters necessary for salvation-or prudence with regard to the end of all human life. Aquinas's reply to this objection is important insofar as it serves to drive a wedge between infused and acquired prudence. Even a man who lacks prudence in other areas of life, if he has grace, has at least the prudence required to act rightly in matters necessary for salvation. Such a man might not even be able to deliberate well and hence not himself be of good counsel, but if he has grace he at least knows that he must seek help in his deliberations, and he can discern good from bad. 43 Prudence simpliciter, then, which is in all who have grace, is very different from the true but incomplete prudence that is acquired through time and effort and that can be in the sinner and the just man alike. Infused prudence does not give man the skills required for deciding and acting rightly in all areas of life. It does, however, no matter what his intellectual capacities, and whether or not he possesses acquired prudence, give him prudence in matters 42 STh II-II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 1: "Duplex est industria. Una quidem est sufficiens ad ea quae sunt de necessitate salutis; et talis industria datur omnibus habentibus gratiam, quos unction docet de omnibus, ut dicitur 1 Jon. Est autem alia industria plenior, per quam aliquis sibi et aliis potest providere, non solum de his quae sunt necessary ad salutem, sed etiam de quibuscumque pertinentibus ad human vitam; et talis industria non est in omnibus habentibus gratiam." 43 STh II-II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 2. PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE 555 necessary for salvation. And this means that anyone who has grace is able to take counsel, judge, and command rightly in matters involving the "finis totius humanae vitae." When we consider these divisions of prudence in light of the texts examined above, we are better able to make sense of the claim that connected acquired virtue can exist apart from grace. These virtues are connected, and they are connected by acquired prudence, but they, like the prudence that connects them, are only virtues secundum quid, because they do not order man well with respect to the end "totius vitae," but only in some specific endeavor. For, as Aquinas repeatedly insists, only the infused virtues are capable of ordering man to his true end. 44 If I am correct, Aquinas clearly indicates that acquired moral virtue, connected by prudence, can exist apart from grace. This analysis also shows, however, that the acquired moral virtues, precisely because they are virtues secundum quid, do not order man to the end "totius vitae." This in turn indicates why one might search for evidence that, when they exist together with grace, the acquired virtues are virtues simpliciter: for if so, then grace would somehow "elevate" the acquired virtues into virtues that order man to the end "totius vitae." What is fascinating about Aquinas's discussion of the virtues, however, is that we find there no such claim. To the contrary, virtue simpliciter appears to be a designation that Aquinas reserves for the infused virtues. 44 I wish to thanks Michael Gorman, Tobias Hoffman, Joe McCoy, Andrew Rosato, and Matthias Vorwerk for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper. The Thomist 69 (2005): 557-92 LONERGAN AND GILSON ON THE PROBLEM OF CRITICAL REALISM PAUL ST. AMOUR Saint Joseph's University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania W HEN THO MISTS have occasion to enumerate the many assets of the Thomistic tradition, especially vis-a-vis perceived skeptical and constructivist extremes of modern and postmodern thought, one attribute inevitably extolled is realism. Although generally parsimonious in circumscribing the limitations of human reason, Aquinas did affirm the capacity of the embodied human knower to know corporeal things beneath itself, to acquire self-knowledge, to affirm rationally the existence of God, and to speak some truth about the nature of God by way of negative and analogical predication. With the proviso that the proportionate object of the intellect in this life remains the quiddity of a material thing, Aquinas deemed the human intellect capable of knowing what really is, albeit partially and imperfectly. 1 Aquinas was always mindful of the fact that understanding and being are perfectly identified only in God, yet he affirmed that human inquiry could successfully attain a limited but veridical familiarity with being. While a commitment to realism is, and must remain, an indispensable feature of Thomism, establishing theoretical underpinnings for such a commitment has proven problematic in the modern philosophical context. To specify what justifies a commitment to Thomistic realism, or even to clarify precisely what realism entails, is to become involved in epistemological 1 Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 84, a. 7; I, q. 85, a. 8; I, q. 87, a. 2, ad 2; I, q. 88, a. 3. 557 558 PAUL ST. AMOUR controversy. Bernard Lonergan once hinted that the doctrine of Thomistic realism is not as straightforward as it seems by making the somewhat unsettling observation that"Georg van Riet needed over six hundred pages [in L'epistemologie Thomiste (1946)] to outline the various types of Thomist epistemology that have been put forward in the last century and a half. " 2 Such an overview, if brought up to date, would of course be even more scandalously voluminous today. There are both philosophical and historical reasons for lack of a consensus regarding Thomistic realism. Lonergan has suggested that the issue is philosophically problematic because it is not possible adequately to determine the precise meaning and rational justification of realism without first resolving certain prior and more fundamental issues: What constitutes human knowing? 3 What is being? 4 How is being objectively known? 5 It is a fact, however, that realists, even those sincere in their commitment to the realism of Aquinas, continue to differ on questions of cognition, being, and objectivity. The basic historical reason for a lack of doctrinal unanimity stems from the stubborn fact that Thomism has moved beyond the thirteenth century, not as some neatly arranged set of immutable propositions, but rather as a living philosophical tradition. The Thomistic tradition subsists and is mediated by the understandings and priorities of thinkers who are intellectually indebted to Aquinas, but who also happen to philosophize in cultural and intellectual contexts quite different from that of Aquinas himself. With regard to the issue of realism, some contemporary Thomists considered it worthwhile to bring Thomism into vital contact with the methods and difficulties of modern philosophy. While acknowledging the value of an historical retrieval of Aquinas's metaphysics of knowledge, they found it difficult simply 2 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, vol. 3 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1992), 433. 3 Ibid., 27-371. 4 Ibid., 372-78; 410-617. 5 Ibid., 399-409. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 559 to ignore the modern inversion of the medieval priority of metaphysics to epistemology, or to dismiss as mere subjectivism the modern turn to the conscious subject. They were bothered by the fact that the Cartesian methodic doubt and the Kantian critique of knowledge tended to render precritical Thomistic realism vulnerable to the charge of na!ve realism. They took seriously the objection that it may be inadequate and dogmatic simply to present a Scholastic metaphysics of knowledge and posit its validity as realism in the absence of any further critical justification. Hence the renaissance of Thomism followingAeterni Patris engendered numerous attempts to clarify and rationally justify the realism of Aquinas. It was hoped that by establishing Thomistic realism as a critical realism, Thomism could not only defend itself against charges of naivete and dogmatism, but could also refute and reverse modern philosophical tendencies of skepticism, subjectivism, relativism, and immanentism. The decades followingAeterni Patris saw a variety of ambitious efforts along these lines, by Thomists such as Cardinal D. Mercier, Monsignor L. Noel, Fr. G. Picard, Fr. M. Roland-Gosselin, and Fr. J. The intent of these early critical realists was not to renounce realism for the newer idealisms, but to place realism on a firmer foundation by submitting it to the critique of knowledge that modern philosophy seemed to demand. Between 1931 and 1935, Etienne Gilson published a series of five articles (later gathered into a book, Le realisme methodique) which raised fundamental objections to the critical realist project and argued that it was incoherent in principle. It is impossible, Gilson argued, for realists to carry out the critique of knowledge without thereby undermining the very realism they are attempting to validate. These initial articles addressed the efforts of Mercier and Noel at Louvain's Institut Superieur de Philosophie. A decade of controversy led Gilson to publish in 1939 a more extensive book, Realisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, which reiterated and clarified his opposition to critical realism and also challenged the projects of Picard, Roland-Gosselin, and MarechaL 560 PAUL ST. AMOUR Gilson's oppos1t10n was thorough and well-reasoned, and many Thomists, perhaps a majority, have come to accept his rejection of critical realism as a tenet of traditional Thomism. The concern of this article is to revisit the controversy concerning the possibility of critical realism, not especially as a matter of historical interest, but rather in light of Bernard Lonergan's more recent claim that a critical realism is possible on the basis of a philosophical method he termed "self-appropriation." While Gilson maintained that there is little value "in attempting to analyze each individual variety of neo-scholastic critical Thomism" because "a dogmatic discussion is generally exhausted, as far as the essentials go, when one or two examples of the thesis in question have been considered," such a policy presupposes that there exist no relevant differences among various approaches to critical realism. 6 I would submit that the approach of Bernard Lonergan is distinctive, that it would be facile to dismiss this approach as simply another instance of transcendental Thomism, and that it would be interesting to subject Lonergan's critical realism to some specific objections Gilson raised against other critical realists two decades prior to the publication of Insight. 7 It is likely that Gilson himself would have welcomed such a dialogue, for in the preface to his Thomist Realism he writes: "Philosophy deals with necessities of thought that cannot be compromised. No matter how painful it may be, a dispute is respectable if it is honest. It is impossible to tolerate, in all honesty, the least confusion if one truly believes that the principles of knowledge itself are at stake. " 8 6 Etienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge, trans. M.A. Wauck (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 23-24; see also 149. 7 Lonergan has not infrequently been pigeonholed as a Transcendental Thomist, although the characterization is somewhat misleading. When asked whether he accepted the label, Lonergan replied: "'Transcendental Thomism' was a hold-all invented by an Austrian named Muck. He didn't know much about Insight-he just quoted it-and he put me in the basket. I didn't mind being associated with Rahner, Coreth, and Marechal, so I didn't object. But my own thinking is generalized empirical method" (quoted in P. Lambert, C. Tansey, and C. Going, eds., Caring about Meaning: Patterns in the Life of Bernard Lonergan (Montreal: Thomas More Institute, 1982), 68. 8 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 25. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 561 I. GILSON ON REALISM AND IDEALISM Few scholars have contributed more than Gilson to the validation of medieval thought as legitimately philosophical, to the clarification of the distinctiveness of medieval philosophy visa-vis modern philosophy, and to the exposition of the riches of Thomism, especially Aquinas's metaphysics of esse. While Gilson was understandably disturbed by the fact that Kantian critical idealism had denied the possibility of realist metaphysics, he considered even more troublesome the attendant assumption that all precritical realism amounts to nothing more than nai've realism. Yet Gilson challenged the notion that realism must attempt to validate itself, and he questioned whether a realist philosophy could coherently carry out the critique of knowledge and still maintain its realism. He argued, in brief, that any realist who attempted to make realism acceptable to modern critical philosophy by uncritically adopting the alien methods of idealism was in fact engaging in "a na:ive criticism" that would inevitably undermine realism itself. The project of critical realism is selfcontradictory and amounts, as Stanley Jaki put it, to "bringing the Trojan horse of Kantianism into the citadel of Thomism." 9 Gilson considered the project of critical realism to be radically incoherent because it attempted to subject realism to the fundamentally incompatible assumptions and methods of idealism. Idealism, in Gilson's assessment, amounts to an historical and methodological inversion of realism. This inversion of realism had its historical origins in the hyperbolic doubt of Descartes. Descartes had postulated that the self-evident foundation of all knowledge was to be based on thought alone. While the existence of the external world had passed "twenty centuries as the very model of those self-evident facts that only a madman would ever dream of doubting," this was suddenly in need of a demonstration.10 To demonstrate the existence of the external world Descartes applied the principle of causality to an analysis of Quoted in Etienne Gilson, Methodical Realism, trans. P. Trower (Front Royal, Va.: Christendom Press, 1990), 14. 10 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 27. 9 562 PAUL ST. AMOUR sensation. Sensations, like everything else, must have a cause. This cause did not seem to be Descartes's own mind, as there could be discerned a dear difference between the images he created in his mind at will and the sensations imposed upon his mind from without. Nor did the cause of sensation seem to be any direct agency on the part of God; indeed God would be a deceiver if this were so. Descartes concluded that the cause of sensations was an external world that existed independently of his mind. The existence of the external world, therefore, was not selfevident for Descartes, but rather a rational inference. As such, the affirmation of the external world remained only as compelling as its demonstration. Gilson persuasively suggested, however, that Descartes's realism was bought at the price of various methodical inconsistencies. 11 As Cartesians such as Regius and Malebranche were more faithful to Descartes's methodical principles than Descartes himself had been, these inconsistencies were eventually identified and remedied, and the road was paved to the idealism of Berkeley. Although Descartes had intended to remain a metaphysical realist, this intention was betrayed by his method. Descartes inadvertently had become the founder of modern idealism. Complementing his historical account of idealism as the inversion of realism, Gilson differentiated realism and idealism by contrasting their methods. While the history of modern philosophy culminating in Berkeley disclosed Descartes' metaphysical realism to be tacitly dogmatic, Kant's critical idealism expressed the fully consistent fulfillment of the Cartesian methodological decision to ground all knowledge upon thought alone. "If one regards Cartesianism as a metaphysics, it ends in Berkeley's idealism; but when one regards it as a purely methodological idealism, it results in the critical idealism of Kant. " 12 The Kantian critique of knowledge would emphasize the a priori contribution of the knower; the known would be reduced to mere appearances; and the real, the thing-in-itself, would recede into 11 12 Ibid., 27-31. Gilson, Methodical Realism, 116. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 563 the entirely unknowable. Idealism, in short, is a method that insists on taking its point of departure in thought alone, and that proceeds by making "knowing the condition of being. " 13 Diametrically opposed to the method of idealism is that of realism. "While Descartes finds being in thought, St. Thomas finds thought in being. " 14 Realism does not infer being from thought but rather presupposes that being is already given. Its point of departure is the fact that things are. 15 Being is the prior and basic condition for the possibility of knowledge. The external world already exists, and this reality maintains a primacy over all human cognition. Van Riet succinctly expresses the essence of Gilson's realism: "According to Gilson, the necessary and sufficient condition for calling oneself a realist is to admit the existence of the external world. Truth or the accord between the mind and the real is, for him, the adequation of knowledge and the thing outside of us." 16 Gilson did not believe the opposition of realism and idealism could be reconciled in any kind of higher integrative synthesis. What is required is a choice between two incompatible methods. Realism "starts with an acknowledgement by the intellect that it will remain dependent on a reality which causes its knowledge. Idealism owes its origin to the impatience of a reason which wants to reduce reality to knowledge so as to be sure that its knowledge lets none of reality escape." 17 Gilson framed the either/or in these terms: "Shall we judge reality as a function of knowledge or knowledge as a function of reality? That is the whole question." 18 The issue, Gilson suggested, is fundamentally a matter of first principles. It is not possible critically to justify either idealism or realism by providing a critique that would remain impartial to both. Any such critique, simply by virtue of its point of departure 13 Ibid., 19. 14 Ibid., 73. 15 Ibid., 133. 16 Georges Van Riet, Thomistic Epistemology: Studies concerning the Problem of Cognition in the Contemporary Thomistic School, trans. D. G. McCarthy and G. E. Hertrich (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1965), 2:154. 17 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 136. 18 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 169. 564 PAUL ST. AMOUR and its way of proceeding, would in effect prejudge the validity of realism or idealism. If the premises of the critique affirmed any being, in any way, then realism is already presupposed. "If, on the other hand, a distinct science can be established without positing being, then thought, not being, will be the first principle and the problem will be immediately resolved in favor of idealism. Either way, a definite position will have been taken." 19 Nor did Gilson believe that idealism can be rationally eliminated on grounds of some logical inconsistency. Although as a realist he was committed to taking being, rather than thought, as his first principle, Gilson granted that once thought has been adopted as the alternative point of departure, idealism is, in itself, "an intelligible philosophical position," which can, if it is faithful to its principles, remain "perfectly coherent. " 20 "Idealism derives its whole strength from the consistency with which it develops the consequences of its initial error. One is, therefore, mistaken in trying to refute it by accusing it of not being logical enough. On the contrary, it is a doctrine which lives by logic, and only by logic, because in it the order and connection of ideas replaces the order and connection between things. " 21 Gilson knew his Aristotelian logic well enough to recognize the futility of debating first principles. Yet as an historian of philosophy he was keenly aware that philosophical principles contain virtually within themselves implications that unfold through the development of philosophical traditions. "Every philosophical doctrine is ruled by the intrinsic necessity of its own position and by the consequences which flow from it in virtue of the universal law of reason. " 22 Hence while Gilson regarded the realism/idealism controversy to be a matter of indisputable first principles, he did attempt to argue in opposition to idealism both by clarifying its immanentist consequences and by suggesting that the act of adopting idealist methodological principles amounts to an arbitrary act. Ibid., 113. Ibid., 209. 21 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 135. 22 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 149-50. 19 20 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICALREALISM 565 Gilson's primary criticism of idealism is quite simply that it results in immanentism. By taking a supposedly presuppositionless beginning in thought alone, the idealist creates an unbridgeable gap between thought and being. "If the being I grasp is only through and in my thought, how by this means shall I ever succeed in grasping a being which is anything other than thought. " 23 The reflections of Malebranche and Hume have overturned Descartes's quick and easy transition from Cogito ergo sum to Cogito ergo res sunt. They have allowed us to "feel more keenly the difficulty of getting outside the knowing subject to the object known." 24 To begin with thought alone is to end with thought alone because the idealist "cannot know whether what he starts from corresponds with an object or not." 25 Employing an idiom that sounds as if it could have been lifted straight out of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Gilson intimated the groundlessness of idealism: How can the thought of the thinking subject, even if in possession of the subject's being, grasp the being of anything other than itself? ... The difficulty remains the same: to get reflexive thought to leap beyond itself and land gracefully in the middle of the world of existing beings. It helps to crouch before jumping, but in order to jump there must be something to push off against, and in this case there is no such firm foundation. 26 Citing an analogy Leon Noel had originated, Gilson expressed the undesirability of immanentism this way: "If you have a hook painted on a wall, the only thing you will ever be able to hang from it is a chain also painted on the wall. " 27 In short, the idealist has reduced the being of the universe to mere thought, and has degraded himself into a prisoner confined within his own mind. 28 "Critical thought has imprisoned itself and can find no way to be reunited with reality. " 29 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 22-3. Ibid., 19. 25 Ibid., 128. 26 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 116. 27 Quoted in Gilson, Methodical Realism, 2. 28 Ibid., 112. 29 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 142. 23 24 566 PAUL ST. AMOUR Gilson's second criticism of idealism was that the act of choosing to adopt its point of departure is a somewhat arbitrary act. "Idealism is a pure and simple postulate which nothing justifies, and whose consequences are such that very few who posit it at the start remain faithful to it later. ... Idealism's starting point has neither the evidence of an axiom nor the value of a principle. There is no reason why we should not start by making knowledge an aspect of being rather than being an aspect of knowledge. " 30 The metaphysical realist, by contrast, who refuses to adopt the idealist point of departure, and who affirms the existence the external world, is not setting up an arbitrary postulate. Nor is such a realist to be called na"ive for refusing critically to justify the existence of the external world-for this happens to be something that is self-evident to the realist. What is self-evident has the epistemic status of a principle and does not need to be postulated. "If you start with thought alone, you will never get beyond it, but if you do not start with thought alone, you will not have to do anything further in order to grasp existing beings since you will already be in contact with them." 31 The fact that the existence of the external world is not self-evident to the idealist is simply due to the fact that the idealist has made a choice to remain incredulous with respect to sensation as a principle of knowledge. "This problem is posed only by philosophies which, having denied the self-evidence of the external world, have attempted the impossible task of proving its existence. "32 The idealist will accuse the realist of postulating the existence of the external world; but this is merely the projection of the idealist's own point of departure, and the imposition of the idealist's own methodological choices upon the realist. "The fact that it is a postulate for the idealist does not at all mean that it is so for the realist. " 33 The existence of the external world is legitimately a non-problem for the realist because the realist has neither chosen to reject the testimony of the senses nor to disregard the selfGilson, Methodical Realism, 117. Realism, 126. 32 Ibid., 212. 33 Ibid., 180. 30 31 Gilson, Thomist LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICALREALISM 567 evidence of the world. Idealists demand a demonstration but, Gilson replied, "all one can do for them is prove that everything can not be proven. "34 II. GILSON'S OPPOSITION TO THE CRITICAL REALIST PROJECT As an historian Gilson sought to situate the contemporary Thomistic critical realist project within the broad context of the history of philosophy. Medieval Scholasticism was a realism that never had to call itself a realism because it never doubted the existence of real things distinct from the knowing subject. Modern idealists, however, had effected a methodical inversion of Scholastic realism by attempting "to define reality in terms of thought," rather than vice versa. 35 As the evolution of modern idealism made evident the impossibility of thought rejoining a reality independent of thought, idealism gave up any intent of grasping the real and proclaimed thought sufficient unto itself. "Only then did there come on the scene a realism which, determined to undo the work of idealism, did not realize that it itself only existed through and thanks to its adversary, that it was consequently one with it, and that in borrowing from it its very method of presenting the problem, had committed itself in advance, sooner or later, to giving its adversary the victory." 36 The very notion of a critical realism, Gilson argued, is "selfcontradictory like the notion of squaring a circle. " 37 He maintained that "realism is an all-or-nothing proposition" and that there is no middle ground. 38 "You can start with thought or with being, but you cannot do both at the same time. " 39 "You must either begin as a realist with being, in which case you will have a knowledge of being, or begin as a critical idealist with knowledge, in which case you will never come in contact with 34 Ibid., 183. 35 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 29. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 28. 38 Gilson, Thomist 39 Ibid., 84. Realism, 204. PAUL ST. AMOUR 568 being. "40 The critical realist simply fails to take seriously this methodical disjunction. Once it is clarified that it is methodologically impossible to mediate realism and idealism, it becomes "necessary to choose between Aristotle and St. Thomas (truth is the conformity of the intelligence with what is) and Kant in his logic (truth is the accord of reason with itself). "41 The critical realist naively attempts to have it both ways, attempts to undo idealism, and vindicate realism, by turning the method of idealism against idealism. Gilson considered critical realist projects to be incoherent in either of two ways: they either failed to take seriously the internal coherence of the idealism that they sought to undo, or they failed to recognize how adopting the alien method of idealism compromised the very realism they sought to vindicate. We briefly consider each of these criticisms. Gilson took seriously the logical coherence of the idealist position, and he rebuked the critical realist for failing to do likewise. Once idealism's methodical point of departure has been accepted, its anti-realist consequences follow inevitably. The critical realist claims to know how to beat the idealist at his own game. Gilson countered by suggesting that the critical realist has only pretended to adopt critical method, but has not done so sincerely. Cartesian Thomists, as Gilson called them, "have to load the dice by pretending to discover the existence of the external world, a fact they never doubted. "42 Gerald McCool summarizes the objection this way. Thomists who think they can adopt the idealist starting point in consciousness and forge a bridge to extramental reality, when the history of idealism has itself shown this to be impossible, are relying on philosophical moves whose legitimacy no Kantian would admit. Either they are relying implicitly on St. Thomas's grasp of real being as the starting point of their epistemology, although Kant's transcendental method explicitly forbids them to do so. Or failing this, they are confusing Kant's 40 Ibid., 149. 41 Ibid., 169. 42 Ibid., 214. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 569 unifying functions of consciousness with the ontological causes that structure St. Thomas' metaphysical unification of knowledge. Idealists would spot the confusion immediately and rightfully reject the conclusions that rest on it. 43 If, rather than starting from thought alone, as critical philosophy demands, a principle of being is tacitly presupposed as cofoundational to thought, realism is never truly subjected to the critique, and the critical realist has actually failed to take seriously the critical program. If, on the other hand, the critical program is taken seriously, then the transition from thought to being will be recognized as the impossible leap that it is. "To accept the critique with the intention of going beyond it is not to accept it at all, for it is of the essence of the critique to forbid all attempts to go s beyond it. " 44 While, for instance, Gilson did commend probity in rigorously attempting to adhere to the transcendental program of Kant, he also criticized Marechal with the accusation that he had "domesticated" Kant's critique by tacitly introducing a "parallel metaphysical program. " 45 "The very idea of deriving a metaphysics from the critique is self-contradictory and, critically speaking, impossible. Whoever becomes involved in this undertaking, as Fichte and Fr. Marechal did, betrays the critique. " 46 Kant, at least, remained true to his principles. Critical realism is incoherent, not only in its claim that it submits itself to the critical program, but also in its essential claim that it constitutes a viable defense of realism. On both historical and methodological grounds Gilson argued that critical realists who attempt to demonstrate the existence of the external world-which is actually self-evident-compromise the very realism they seek to vindicate. Medieval Scholastic realism never doubted the existence of the external world, never maligned the senses, never radically doubted the capacity of the embodied human knower to apprehend the real immediately. Those who 43 Gerald A. McCool, From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989), 162. 44 Gilson, Thomist Realism, 162. 45 Ibid., 143. 46 Ibid., 148. PAUL ST. AMOUR 570 would attempt to make realism respectable to modern philosophers by adopting the inverted method of idealism do not bolster the integrity of realism but undermine it entirely. "For a realist to try to work with an idealist's tools is to renounce his own." 47 Gilson accused the Cartesian Thomists of forgetting that Descartes himself had intended to be a realist. "Nobody has tried as hard as Descartes to build a bridge from thought to things. . . . Every scholastic who thinks himself a realist because he accepts this way of stating the problem, is in fact a Cartesian. " 48 One is free, of course, to be a Cartesian, but one is not free simply to ignore the logical consequences of Cartesianism as its principles inevitably unfold in a manner unfriendly to realism. "Whoever sticks a finger into the machinery of the Cartesian method must expect to be dragged along its whole course." 49 Realism is an "all-ornothing" commitment. 50 "He who begins as an idealist ends as an idealist; one cannot safely make a concession or two to idealism here and there. "51 III. LONERGAN: THE HORIZON OF SELF-APPROPRIATION Having outlined Gilson's opposition to the critical realist project, I intend now to clarify Bernard Lonergan's distinctive approach to the problem of critical realism. I also hope to address plausible concerns Thomists may have regarding Lonergan's relation to idealism, and to attenuate the perhaps not uncommon misconception that Lonergan's method compromises Thomistic realism by adopting a subjective rather than a metaphysical point of departure. Gilson maintained that the realism/idealism controversy could not be definitively resolved by logical argumentation. Realism can not be critically justified because realism is not the conclusion of any possible argument, but is fundamentally a matter of first 47 Ibid., 214. Gilson, Methodical Realism, 21-22. Gilson, Thomist Realism, 48. 50 Ibid., 204. 51 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 21. 48 49 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 571 principles. Nor can one logically refute idealism, for once the methodical principle of idealism has been adopted-once it is resolved, albeit arbitrarily, to begin with thought alone-idealism unfolds as an internally coherent position. If realism and idealism are not the conclusions of any possible argument, but fundamentally a matter of first principles, then it is impossible logically to adjudicate between them, or even to specify the precise nature of the controversy in a manner not already prejudiced toward one position or the other. There is something of a consensus between Lonergan and Gilson on this point. Lonergan suggested that the respective understandings and discourse of realists and idealists constitute separate philosophical horizons. The fact of horizon explains why realism and, generally, a philosophy can not be proved deductively. The reason is that horizon is prior to the meaning of statements: every statement made by a realist denotes an object in a realist's world; every statement made by an idealist denotes an object in an idealist world; the two sets of objects are disparate; and neither of the two sets of statements can prove the horizon within which each set has its meaning, simply because the statements can have their meaning only by presupposing their proper horizon. Further, what is true of statements is equally true of problems and of the statement of solutions; problems and solutions are what they are only in virtue of the horizon in which they arise; they cannot be transported intact into a different horizon. 52 While Gilson framed the realism/idealism controversy in terms of logical first principles, and called for the choice of realist principles and the rejection of idealist principles, Lonergan's way of framing the issue in terms of a notion of horizons did not preclude the possibility that there may exist a method, more fundamental than the horizons themselves, that could clarify, assess, and appropriate epistemological horizons in a nonarbitrary manner. Although Lonergan would agree with Gilson that there can be no deductive logical demonstrations justifying basic epistemological positions, he would not agree that epistemological 52 Bernard Lonergan, "Metaphysics as Horizon" in Collection, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 199. 572 PAUL ST. AMOUR foundations are to be appropriated simply by choosing one set of indemonstrable first principles over another. While Gilson assumed that what is most basic is logical first principles, Lonergan attempted to clarify a distinction between logic and method, and he argued that the latter is more basic. 53 Logic promotes clarity, coherence, and rigor within an established horizon. But method is what originates horizons, and effects transitions from already established horizons to new horizons that more adequately satisfy the human desire to know. Lonergan defined method as "a normative pattern of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results. "54 Methods typically incorporate both logical and nonlogical operations. The methods of the empirical sciences, for example, certainly require the performance of logical operations. Yet progress in science is not due to logical operations alone; additional operations not within the scope of formal logic per se, such as observing, hypothesizing, experimenting, and verifying, are indispensable. Of particular concern to us is Lonergan's contention that philosophical horizons can be clarified, assessed, and rationally adopted or rejected on the basis of a method called "selfappropriation." Self-appropriation is a matter not of clarifying logical first principles, but rather of clarifying precisely what one is doing when one is knowing. It involves attending to one's performance of cognitional operations and attempting to understand these correctly. The method of self-appropriation yields a type self-knowledge, a differentiated apprehension of oneself as a dynamism of conscious intentionality. 55 It is my contention that such self-knowledge could offer a verifiable resolution to the realism/idealism controversy. By setting the conflicting claims of realism and idealism against what one has personally verified 53 Bernard Lonergan, "The Future of Thomism" inA Second Collection, ed. William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 50. 54 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972; repr., Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1979), 5. 55 See Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," in Collection, 205-21; Method in Theology, 325. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 573 regarding the structure of conscious intentionality, it becomes possible to adjudicate conflicting epistemological claims in a rational manner. The groundwork for Lonergan's elaboration of the philosophical significance of self-appropriation in Insight was set forth in his Verbum articles, which appeared in Theological Studies between 1946 and 1949. The intent of these articles was to interpret Aquinas's analogy for the Trinity as set forth in questions 27 and 93 of the Prima Pars. In De Trinitate, Augustine had suggested that the most perfect created analogue for the Trinity is to be found in the operations of the human mind. Introspective reflection upon the procession of the inner word (verbum interius) could provide data for an analogical understanding of the procession of distinct persons within the Trinity. Aquinas sought to situate this original Augustinian innovation into a more comprehensive and differentiated Aristotelian framework. In doing so, Lonergan argued, Aquinas was "attempting, however remotely and implicitly, to fuse together what to us may seem so disparate: a phenomenology of the subject with a psychology of the soul." 56 The psychology at hand was a faculty psychology. It utilized a metaphysical account of cognition and was not explicitly phenomenological. Yet Lonergan was convinced that Aquinas's account of understanding and judgment did actually turn upon "a core of psychological fact," that Aquinas was pinning down the meanings of the metaphysical terms he employed in his faculty psychology by correlating these to a phenomenological understanding of his own cognitional activities. 57 "Aquinas did practice psychological introspection and through that experimental knowledge of his own soul arrived at his highly nuanced, deeply penetrating, firmly outlined theory of the nature of human intellect. "58 56 Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, vol. 2 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 3. 57 Ibid., 10. 58 Ibid., 104. 574 PAUL ST. AMOUR Convinced that self-knowledge is indispensable for epistemology, Lonergan wrote that the aim of Insight was "not to set forth a list of the abstract properties of human knowledge but to assist the reader in effecting a personal appropriation of the concrete dynamic structure immanent and recurrently operative in his own cognitional activities. "59 Lonergan's purpose in writing Insight was methodically to facilitate a particular kind of selfknowledge; the book would serve as "an invitation to a personal, decisive act. " 60 This act would "consist in one's own rational selfconsciousness dearly and distinctly taking possession of itself as rational and self-conscious. Up to that decisive achievement all leads. From it all follows. " 61 Relevant to the issue at hand, part of what may follow from self-appropriation is a nuanced understanding of realism, and the possibility of a rational affirmation of its validity. IV. THREE PLAUSIBLE GILSONIAN OBJECTIONS TO LONERGAN'S METHOD I have suggested that self-appropriation could provide a method for the critical validation of realism. It may be supposed however, that many Thomists (especially those for whom Gilson's two books are a definitive statement of Thomistic realism) are likely to consider Lonergan's appeal to self-appropriation as problematic. It would be salutary therefore to raise some plausible Gilsonian objections to Lonergan' s method, and briefly respond to each, further elucidating self-appropriation in the process. First, self-appropriation makes self-knowledge foundational; it involves, as Lonergan put it, "rational self-consciousness clearly and distinctly taking possession of itself. " 62 It is not implausible that this method might seem to involve something like an appeal to the Cartesian cogito. Yet Gilson argued that once the Cartesian cogito is adopted as the philosophical point of departure, realism Lonergan, Insight, 11. Ibid., 13. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 59 60 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 575 is excluded in principle. 63 The history of modern idealism began with the cogito because it was the cogito that initially placed the existence of the external world into doubt. When post-Cartesian idealists eventually discovered they could not get this world back, they declared the real-in-itself unknowable and proclaimed realism to be nothing more than a transcendental illusion. While it will not be possible here to clarify at length how Lonergan's method differs from that of Descartes, it can be emphasized that self-appropriation does not yield a critical realism by way of any a priori skepticism concerning the fundamental possibility of knowledge. 64 The introduction to Insight, for instance, states, "the question is not whether knowledge exists but what precisely is its nature. " 65 Lonergan was well aware of the impossibility of attempting to justify the validity of human knowing without employing any human knowing to do so. His procedure in Insight therefore was not to doubt that knowing occurs, but to attend to intentional operations performed in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences, and practical affairs. While Lonergan did not presuppose a priori the validity of realism as a verified epistemological position, his reflection on noetic praxis (i.e., his account of self-appropriation and of objectivity) retrospectively confirmed that human cognitional acts can apprehend what is truly the case. Given the fulfillment of relevant epistemic conditions human knowers do more or less regularly come to apprehend the real. At no point did Lonergan doubt the existence of the so-called external world-although he did challenge various nonphilosophic assumptions that would preinterpret this world on the analogy of ocular vision, rather than as something to be known discursively, through questioning and acts of direct and reflective understanding. Second, Thomists maintain that in some sense Thomism stands or falls with the affirmation of realist metaphysics. Given that Kantian critical idealism has dismissed the possibility of realist See Gilson, Thomist Realism, 61-62. For Lonergan's critical assessment of Descartes's method of universal doubt see Insight, 433-36. 65 Ibid., 11. 63 64 576 PAUL ST. AMOUR metaphysics as transcendental illusion, there has arisen something of a consensus among Thomists regarding the need to counter critical idealism by reaffirming a methodological priority of metaphysics to epistemology. Gilson, for instance, proposed that we "free ourselves from the obsession with epistemology as the necessary pre-condition for philosophy. " 66 The prevailing opinion seems to be that it is not possible to arrive at a realist metaphysics by adopting epistemology as one's philosophical point of departure. Realists standardly invoke the immanentist consequences of modern idealism as justification for this opinion. Lonergan's procedure in Insight, it may be objected, was not to uphold any primacy of metaphysics, but to ground metaphysics upon epistemology. Being is defined operationally, as "the objective of the pure desire to know," as that which is to be grasped by experience, intelligent understanding, and reasonable judgment. 67 The science of metaphysics is intrinsically dependent upon epistemology and is defined as "the conception, affirmation, and implementation of the integral heuristic structure of proportionate being." 68 Nevertheless, to suppose that it is epistemology that is most basic for Lonergan would involve a gross oversight-namely, of the first eleven chapters of Insight. What is methodologically primary is neither metaphysics nor epistemology, but rather cognitional theory, that is, the articulation of cognitive performance, of what we are doing when we are knowing. It is precisely this performance that is disclosed by self-appropriation. Lonergan did not interpret the immanentist legacy of modern idealism as something that justified retreat into a less problematic era of precritical philosophy. Nor did he suppose that immanentism could effectively be undone by any more or less dogmatic assertion of the primacy of metaphysics. To Lonergan the immanentist legacy of idealism merely suggested that basic epistemological issues could not be adequately resolved in the absence of self-appropriation. The project of self-appropriation involves a sustained effort to understand correctly one's actual Gilson, Methodical Realism, 34. Lonergan, Insight, 372. See ibid., 372-75. 68 Ibid., 416. See ibid., 415-21. 66 67 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 577 cognitional performance. To forgo self-appropriation is typically to underestimate the centrality of questioning, to risk oversight of the occurrence of insights, to fail to grasp the significance of judgment. Cognitional theory, for Lonergan, is simply the objectification of what one discovers in the process of self-appropriation. Cognitional theory is therefore indispensable for determining adequate positions on knowing, objectivity, and being-all of which are clearly relevant to any possible resolution of the realism/idealism controversy. Fred Lawrence notes that Lonergan's cognitional-theoretic emphasis challenged both the realist primacy of metaphysics and the idealist primacy of epistemology. Insight into insight: it is an empirically verifiable grasp of psychological fact. Lonergan's discovery that both Aquinas and Aristotle-neither of whom were bothered by the critical or epistemological question as to how we know what we know-had insight into insight as the grounding for the theories they expressed in terms of metaphysical causes delivered him from two temptations: the primacy of metaphysics (the questions about the first causes of being) and modernity's vaunted primacy of epistemology (the post-Cartesian question about knowledge) along with its correlative assumption of the primacy of the subject/object split. Lonergan's question about what we are doing when we are knowing-what he names the cognitional-theoretic question-is a practical question about practice as human, i.e., as intelligent, reasonable, responsible, loving. That is the method question. Such things as epistemology and metaphysics or any kind of theory are therefore secondary. 69 To take metaphysics, or even epistemology, as one's philosophical point of departure is to begin with unobjectified assumptions regarding what one is doing when one is knowing. Such assumptions generate problematic notions of objectivity and being. These in turn may at least partially account for a history of philosophy that has witnessed centuries of interminable controversy regarding the most basic metaphysical and epistemological issues. By emphasizing self-appropriation and the primacy of cognitional theory, Lonergan sought to provide an explicitly philosophical basis for questioning prior assumptions, 69 Fredrick G. Lawrence, "Lonergan As Political Theologian," in Religion in Context: Recent Studies in Lonergan, ed. Timothy P. Fallon and Philip Boo Riley (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988), 15. 578 PAUL ST. AMOUR and for rationally verifying a normative structure of human knowing. Yet Lonergan's transition from the modern philosophical primacy of epistemology to a primacy of cognitional theory itself gives rise to a third plausible objection. Cognitional theory prescinds from epistemological questions concerning objectivity to advert to a dynamic structure of cognitional operations. Such operations are to be apprehended not by observation of external behavior, nor by neurophysiologic measurements, nor by any inferences from such data. The data relevant to cognitional theory are data experienced in one's own consciousness as one actually performs those intentional acts that are constitutive of human knowing. Self-appropriation is possible because knowing is a conscious activity and one can learn to attend to one's own cognitional acts as these are performed. So the third objection is this: Lonergan's manner of proceeding seems inherently subjectivistic. How could any method like self-appropriation, with a starting point in consciousness, ever possibly get beyond consciousness to ground a realism? Gilson suggested that any philosophy that begins not with being but with thought will never be able to make contact with real things in the external world, but will become imprisoned within thought. It is difficult to fathom how one could begin as Lonergan did and avoid the immanentist consequences that plague the adoption of any idealist method: perspectivism, constructivism, relativism, solipsism. In response, we may notice that the objection is itself not without presuppositions regarding the nature of consciousness. The objection might perhaps be valid if consciousness were merely a container that holds representations, something like a museum for ideas. The objection might be valid if by consciousness Lonergan were to mean merely the contents of consciousness (e.g., sense images, memories, concepts) rather than conscious operations guided by questioning. The objection might be valid if consciousness were in fact static, rather than dynamically intentional. But none of these notions are to be confirmed, either LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 579 in Lonergan's texts or, more importantly, in what is disclosed through self-appropriation. Human consciousness is intentional consciousness. Selfappropriation reveals not merely the presence of the subject to itself, but the intentionality of a subject who is dynamically oriented, by questioning, to the real. Questioning intends being. Human beings are not satisfied with raw experience. We seek to understand, to interpret, to grasp the pattern, the relation, the intelligible point; we ask "what?" and "why?" with respect to our experience. Nor are we completely satisfied when we attain insights into our experience. Recognizing that any act of understanding is merely hypothetically relevant to what may actually be the case, we feel compelled to raise further relevant questions, to gather and weigh evidence, critically to judge the correctness of our understandings. The dynamism of conscious intentionality is normative because what it intends is the intelligible, the true, the real. What promotes the subject from experiential to intellectual consciousness is the desire to understand, the intention of intelligibility. What next promotes him from intellectual to rational consciousness, is a fuller unfolding of the same intention: for the desire to understand, once understanding is reached, becomes the desire to understand correctly; in other words, the intention of intelligibility, once an intelligible is reached, becomes the intention of the right intelligible, of the true and, through truth, of reality. 70 V. OBJECTIVITY: A KEY ISSUE The objection that taking consciousness as a philosophical point of departure will undermine realism and imprison us in immanentism also involves presuppositions regarding the nature of objectivity. Roughly, the assumption seems to be that if one takes an introspective approach, if one "looks inward" at consciousness, one will not be looking outward at real beings that exist outside of consciousness. Or perhaps worse, one might project some content of inward consciousness upon external 70 Lonergan, "The Subject," in Second Collection, 81. 580 PAUL ST. AMOUR reality and see what is not there to be seen. The problem with presuppositions of this sort is that objectivity cannot be correctly understood on the analogy of ocular vision. Nor is it helpful to imagine that objectivity can be achieved by passive extroversion, or the preservation of a suitably empty head. It will be salutary therefore, to sketch the position on objectivity that Lonergan set forth in Insight and to clarify the vital implications this account has for the problem of critical realism. Self-appropriation discloses that human knowing is constituted, not by a single operation, but by a structure of functionally related conscious and intentional operations. Any adequate account of the objectivity of human knowing will therefore require a complexity that parallels the complex structure of knowing itself. Lonergan's account of objectivity distinguishes three partial aspects of objectivity-objectivity has an absolute, a normative, and an experiential component. We briefly discuss each, with reference to legitimate concerns raised by the realist critique of idealism. First, Gilson's critique of idealism rejects any notion that the world of our experience is a world freely constructed by human thought. He wrote: It is a characteristic of thought to be faced by what is opaque; as soon as that wall of opaqueness becomes translucent, there is always a similar one behind it; and this barrier, which thought strikes against with such a beneficial and fruitful impact, appears to it as the very opposite of a free decree or law of the spirit. The way things actually occur suggests that, by means of science, thought progressively assimilates what is intelligible in a world given to it from without, not that it creates both the intelligibility and existence of that world. 71 While it is true that Lonergan regarded the world beyond the nursery as a world mediated by human understanding and language, to suggest that this makes him an idealist would be to disregard his emphasis on the role of judgment, and his claim that there is an absolute component to objectivity. Judgment affirms or denies that in a particular instance one has understood correctly. An affirmative judgment posits that what 71 Gilson, Methodical Realism, 112. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICALREALISM 581 has been understood is actually what is the case. Judgment is no arbitrary act, but the fruit of rational reflection. Rational reflection critically raises the question "Is it so?" with respect to that which has been understood. It recognizes that any act of direct understanding as such is merely potentially relevant to what is actually the case. Rational reflection recognizes that the truth of any particular understanding is not necessary but conditional, and so it marshals and weighs evidence to determine whether the relevant conditions de facto have been fulfilled. Rational reflection encourages the emergence of all relevant questions, refuses to pass judgment until these have been answered, and insists that any hasty judgments be reconsidered in light of further relevant questions. When we judge, "we distinguish sharply between what we feel, what we imagine, what we think, what seems to be so and, on the other hand, what is so. "72 Because judgment is a grasp of a virtually unconditioned, of a conditioned whose conditions happen to be fulfilled, judgment attains a truth that is de facto absolute. Although the act of judging requires some degree of intellectual probity, the judgment itself is relative neither to the subject who utters it, nor to the time or place in which it is uttered. Judging is an achievement of intentional self-transcendence. If this were not so, if judgments were merely a function of the subjects who uttered them, it would not be possible for one and the same truth to be rationally known by many different subjects. Second, the realist critique of idealism is typically critical of claims that suggest the knower makes any kind of a priori contribution to the known. Such impositions of subjectivity are purported to compromise a fidelity to the real and to render truths into mere biases. Lonergan's a priori, however, is not that of Kant; it is rather the anthropological fact of the human desire to know. If this desire were not present in human beings (as it seems not to be in nonhuman animals) we would ask no questions, have no insights, formulate no concepts, achieve no fully human knowing. Objectivity therefore, has a normative 72 Lonergan, "The Subject," 76. 582 PAUL ST. AMOUR component. There is an exigence to remain fully open to the desire to know: to question, to be creative in seeking answers, to exclude obscurantism, to challenge subjectivity taken in the pejorative sense "of wishful thinking, of rash or excessively cautious judgments, of allowing joy or sadness, hope or fear, love or detestation, to interfere with the proper march of cognitional process. " 73 Third, realists are often of an empiricist bent. They are apt to criticize the idealist for rationalistically attempting to reduce being to mere thought, or at least for failing to appreciate the need for cognitive passivity in the face of beings that are so obviously and immediately given to sensation. As it was Lonergan' s position that being comes to be known through the grasp of the virtually unconditioned in judgment, and also that understanding has a constitutive function in human knowing, it might be supposed that Lonergan had little need for the experientially given. This is not the case, however. Lonergan insisted that if there were nothing given, there would be no materials for intelligence to inquire about, and there would be no data in which rational reflection could find the fulfillment of conditions needed for the affirmation of the virtually unconditioned in judgment. Hence Lonergan did affirm an experiential component of objectivity, and he described this as nothing more and nothing less than "the given as given. " 74 Furthermore, he claimed that the given as such remains "unquestionable" and "indubitable" because it is "prior to questioning and independent of any answers. " 75 The given as given is not constituted by intentional subjectivity, but is rather an underlying condition of its possibility. In summary, far from plunging us into a solipsism of selfconsciousness, self-appropriation clarifies how human understanding and reasonableness provide a criterion for objectively knowing the real. Self-appropriation moves beyond the horizon of idealist immanentism by clarifying precisely how intentionality is intrinsically related to being. Objectivity, whose components 73 Lonergan, Insight, 404. 74 Ibid., 405-6. 75 Ibid., 406. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 583 parallel the threefold structure of human knowing, is discovered to be not some polar opposite of subjectivity, but rather the very fruit of authentic subjectivity. 76 While authentic subjectivity remains a precarious achievement, and while the pejorative meaning of subjectivity is all too familiar, Lonergan's cognitional theory does provide grounds for affirming that cognitional selftranscendence (i.e., realism) remains a human possibility. VI. "Two QUITE DIFFERENT REALISMS" We have been discussing realism as if this were a univocal epistemological position. Lonergan's major contribution to contemporary philosophy, however, Thomistic or otherwise, has been to clarify that there exists not one but "two quite different realisms," 77 that failure to differentiate between these two realisms leads philosophy into an "epistemological bog," 78 and that it is difficult to differentiate between the two realisms (and so get out of the bog) in the absence of self-appropriation. That realism is philosophically problematic stems not from the emergence of modern idealism, but rather from the anthropological fact that we begin neither our ordinary living, nor perhaps even our philosophical careers, with a rationally verifiable understanding of what we are doing when we are knowing. Rather, we begin with prereflective notions of what it means to know, and what it means for something to be real. When selfappropriation is not forthcoming, and philosophers uncritically carry these prereflective notions into their philosophizing, there occur performative contradictions between the accounts philosophers give of knowing, objectivity, and being, and their actual performance of intending to know being objectively by raising questions, by getting insights, by critically reflecting and making judgments. Lonergan suggested that both nai:Ve realism and idealism stem from a failure to differentiate the "two quite different realisms" inherent in our being. Lonergan, Method in Theology, 265, 292. Lonergan, Insight, 22. 78 Lonergan, Verbum, 20. 76 77 584 PAUL ST. AMOUR The appropriation of one's own rational self-consciousness ... is not an end in itself but rather a beginning. It is a necessary beginning, for unless one breaks the duality in one's knowing, one doubts that understanding correctly is knowing. Under the pressure of that doubt, either one will sink into the bog of a knowing that is without understanding, or else one will cling to understanding but sacrifice knowing on the altar of an immanentism, an idealism, a relativism. From the horns of this dilemma one escapes only through the discovery-and one has not made it yet if one has no clear memory of its startling strangeness-that there are two quite different realisms, that there is an incoherent realism, half animal and half human, that poses as a halfway house between materialism and idealism, and on the other hand that there is an intelligent and reasonable realism between which and materialism the halfway house is idealism. 79 To be human is to be an embodied spirit-neither pure spirit, nor merely an animal. Like Aquinas, Lonergan attempted to clarify the epistemological implications of this most basic anthropological fact. Human experience is patterned by both biological and intellectual exigencies, and each maintains its own distinct criterion of the real. The biological pattern of experience is extroverted and imagines that the real is simply that which is "already out there," immediately accessible to the senses. 80 While this primitive notion of the real undeniably has survival value, its practical utility does not negate the fact that there is another quite different, properly intellectual, properly human criterion of the real that would insist that the real is not simply that which can be sensed, but is that which is experienced, understood, and rationally verified to be the case. Unlike Hegel, Lonergan did not seek to dismiss biological immediacy as illusory. 81 But he did argue that the criterion of the real specified by biological extroversion, while legitimate for its own purposes, is "confusing and philosophically irrelevant" with respect to the finality of the intellectual pattern of experience. 82 The intellectual pattern of experience is oriented by the desire to know and, with respect to Lonergan, Insight, 22. See ibid., 275-79. 81 See ibid., 447-48. 82 Ibid., 448. 79 80 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 585 this, the real is that which is apprehended by intelligent inquiry, by understanding, by reasonable judgment. Lonergan negotiated the apparent incompatibility of these two realisms, not by attempting to eliminate one or the other, nor by attempting to consolidate the two into a single unified realism, but by differentiating and validating distinct biological and intellectual patterns of experience. Failure to differentiate, he argued, has introduced endless confusion into the history of philosophy. In the absence of differentiation, biological extroversion tacitly claims for itself something like the status of an axiom. It will seem obvious that my thinking is in here, and real things are out there. The subject-object distinction will be considered basic and unquestionable-as obvious as the boundary marked by my own skin. When this philosophically important distinction devolves into a mere projection of biologically extroverted consciousness, it spawns mistaken positions on knowing, being, and objectivity. Knowing is construed as the confrontation of a subject with an object. Being is assumed to be that which is "already out there now" to be confronted. 83 The confrontation itself is effected through cognitional acts that tend to be considered objective only insofar as they can be imagined as functioning in a manner analogous to ocular vision. If the ocular paradigm of objectivity (shared by both nai"ve realists and critical idealists) is not challenged, the problem of objectivity degenerates into the infamous and unsolvable problem of the bridge. How can I know that my thoughts, in here, correspond to extramental things, out there? Or how can I be sure that the extramental things, out there, are accurately getting into my mind, in here? The idealist knows that such a bridge cannot be crossed, gives up trying, and eventually "sacrifice[s] knowing on the altar of an immanentism. " 84 Hence Gilson was not alone in tracing the origins of modern idealism to a miscarriage of Descartes's realist intentions. Lonergan suggested that Descartes's dualism of res cogitans and res extensa adumbrated the tension of two distinct criteria of the 83 See ibid., 178, 181, 184, 260, 276-77, 408, 413, 414, 437-40, 449-50, 523-24, 529. 22. 84 Ibid., 586 PAUL ST. AMOUR real, but without clarifying the anthropological ground of their distinctiveness, and the respective horizons of their validity. Whereas Lonergan sought to do this by providing an account of the polymorphism of human consciousness, modern rationalists simply interpreted the tension as logically illegitimate and sought one homogeneous criterion of the real. The result was a series of philosophies that destroyed realism by blurring the biological and intellectual exigencies. In the course of modern philosophy "the attempt to fuse disparate forms of knowing into a single whole ended in the destruction of each by the other; and the destruction of both forms implied the rejection of both types of realism. " 85 Whereas the modern rejection of realism has fostered among realists a tendency simply to reproach idealists for having raised the critical question in the first place, and for thereby needlessly creating the modern epistemological impasse, Lonergan's approach suggests that the problem of realism is actually more deep-seated, and stems from pervasive prephilosophical assumptions regarding the nature and primacy of the subjectobject distinction itself. While he granted that some subject-object distinction is necessary for any viable account of objectivity, he insists that the distinction between subjects and objects be grounded rationally and philosophically, as the product of a particular pattern of judgments-not by uncritically adopting imaginal presuppositions tacitly dictated by biologically extroverted consciousness. 86 VIL RETHINKING REALISM During the twentieth century, a number of Thomists made considerable efforts to resuscitate realism in the modern philosophical context. Those who took up this problematic understood well that Thomism could not perdure for long, let alone flourish, within the horizon of idealist immanentism. Now, in the heyday of postmodernity, much has been set adrift, and it seems obvious 85 86 Ibid., 439. See ibid., 399-402. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 587 to many that the moorings of realism have been lost, if indeed they ever existed. Hence it has been a premise of this article that it may be timely to reassess the possibility of a critical realism, especially in light of Gilson's critique and Lonergan's claims. However valid Gilson's critique of the early critical realists may have been, I have argued that Lonergan's method of selfappropriation presents a distinctive approach, that it withstands a series of Gilsonian objections, that it purports to clarify how objectivity is attained, and that it elucidates two distinct criteria of the real. This final section will further articulate the notion that it is viable to found a critical realism upon self-appropriation, and it will discuss how such a critical realism distinguishes itself by rejecting certain assumptions common to both naive realism and idealism. Gilson attempted to demonstrate that the project of critical realism is an "impossibility. " 87 One is free to choose the principles of idealism or those of realism-but one is not free to choose both at once. 88 Realism begins with being, and does not question the existence of the external world. Idealism begins with thought, doubts the existence of the external world, and attempts to deduce being from thought. One procedure is the inversion of the other. Gilson concluded that because the method of idealism is far from being the presuppositionless point of departure that it claims to be, a "dogmatic realism" is not to be deemed any less justifiable than a dogmatic idealism. 89 The rational legitimacy of realism can be affirmed as the legitimacy of a first principle. Lonergan would deny that critical realism must necessarily be framed in these terms, and he would also deny that his own brand of critical realism is an impossibility. Self-appropriation elucidates the exigencies of human knowing and the operational norms that constitute objectivity. By doing so self-appropriation yields positions on knowing, objectivity, and being that integrally constitute a coherent and personally verifiable critical realism. Furthermore, Lonergan also would deny that idealism can be See Gilson, Thomist Realism, 149-70. Ibid., 214. 89 Ibid., 152. 87 88 588 PAUL ST. AMOUR undone by falling back on any appeal to first principles, or by tenaciously affirming the existence of the external world. First principles are merely what is logically prior within a given horizon. The truly fundamental issue is whether a realist horizon can be rationally appropriated. Furthermore, given the differentiation of a biological and an intellectual criterion of the real, any attempt to ground realism in the existence of the external world only raises the question: Which realism does this demonstrate? The existence of the external world need not entail anything more than the reality of what Descartes termed res extensa and Lonergan termed "bodies." Such a minimal realism disregards what is truly interesting and significant, namely, the ongoing task of understanding correctly the intelligibility of "things. " 90 The realism championed by advocates of the external world amounts to no more than the realism of biologically extroverted consciousness. Finally, affirming the existence of the external world actually can do little or nothing to bolster the case even for this minimal realism, for, if Lonergan's position on the experiential component of objectivity is correct, the "given as given" happens to be indubitable in principle. Hence while Gilson maintained that idealism remains a logically coherent position once its principles are arbitrarily adopted, Lonergan would point out that the adoption of idealist principles (a completely universal doubt or a presuppositionless beginning) happens not to be coherent with respect to what selfappropriation discloses regarding our unavoidable dependence upon the experientially given as such. If self-appropriation is in fact capable of grounding a viable critical realism, Gilson's position regarding the acceptability of a "dogmatic realism" would be both philosophically unsatisfactory and unnecessary. It would be unsatisfactory precisely because it is dogmatic. A dogmatic appeal to realism in the manner of a first principle does nothing to address modern skepticism, relativism, and constructivism in terms acceptable to the actual proponents of these positions. As a consequence, Thomistic realism has all too 90 See Lonergan, Insight, 270-79. LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICAL REALISM 589 commonly been regarded as a mere episode within medieval philosophical history, and has not emerged as the viable contemporary epistemology that it could be. A critical realism, on the other hand-precisely because it is critical and not dogmaticattempts to meet the exigencies of the modern philosophical context. This indicates an important difference in the respective positions of Gilson and Lonergan vis-a-vis modern philosophy. Whereas Gilson had argued that meeting idealism on its own terms would require acceptance of logically coherent idealist first principles, the inevitable consequences of which could never find their way back to realism, Lonergan appropriated the modern turn to the subject and explicated a method of self-appropriation which disclosed idealism to be performatively incoherent with respect to what occurs in each and every act of judgment, an act that can itself be rationally verified as grasping the real. 91 Hence a dogmatic realism is not only unsatisfactory but also unnecessary. Self-appropriation discloses idealist immanentism to be incoherent because it involves a denial of the grasp of the unconditioned that occurs in every act of judgment. As no person who has attained this self-knowledge can self-consistently remain an idealist, the need to respond to idealism in a dogmatic manner is obviated. The idealist, on the other hand, has a tendency to view any realism as dogmatic and naive, and so we may ask how Lonergan's critical realism differs from naive realism. While the terms "naive" and "critical" have been notoriously unhelpful in the realism/ idealism controversy, as well as intramurally in the debate concerning Thomistic realism, Lonergan's cognitional theory and epistemology do suggest a way to define these terms meaningfully vis-a-vis self-appropriation. A realism is naive if it attempts to validate the objectivity of human knowing by appeal to only one or two of the three partial components of objectivity discussed above. In reaction to the idealist tendency to attribute constitutive powers to mere thought, Thomist realists have attempted definitively to reject idealism by setting their philosophical 91 See ibid., 296-340; 399-409. 590 PAUL ST. AMOUR foundations upon being, rather than upon consciousness, by taking metaphysics rather than epistemology as their point of departure, by grounding their epistemologies not rationalistically in mere thought, but realistically in the empirical givenness of things, and the immediacy of the senses. Yet insofar as Thomistic epistemology constitutes an appeal merely to the experiential component of objectivity, and neglects the normative and absolute components, it tends to reduce itself to an empiricism. As such it can be no more satisfactory than the idealist appeal to the normative component of objectivity while neglecting the absolute component of objectivity attainable in judgment. Critical realism is to be achieved only by the rational affirmation of all three partial components of objectivity. Thomist realists who argue that a critical realism is possible, and those who argue it is not, both assume that they have adequately differentiated their respective positions from idealism. It may be the case, however, that some forms of Thomistic realism have more in common with idealism than they would care to realize. Lonergan argued that nai"ve realism and idealism both stem from the assumption that knowing must be an activity analogous to ocular vision. He was critical of a kind of "picture thinking" evidenced by the fact that "it is in looking that the naive realist finds revealed the essence of objectivity, and it is in Anschauung that the critical idealist places the immediate relation of cognitional activity to objects." 92 Both the na"ive realist and the idealist assume that objective knowing requires something analogous to taking a good look. 93 They differ only on the question of whether this criterion of the real can be satisfied. The realist maintains that it can, whereas the idealist maintains that it can not. 94 Lonergan challenged the adequacy of the ocular Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," 218. For a disconcerting analysis of similarities between Kant and Gilson, see Lonergan, "Metaphysics as Horizon," 193-97. 94 "The naive realist correctly asserts the validity of human knowing, but mistakenly attributes the objectivity of human knowing, not to human knowing, but to some component in human knowing. The idealist, on the other hand, correctly refutes the naive-realist claim that the whole objectivity of human knowing is found in some component of human knowing, but mistakenly concludes that human knowing does not yield valid knowledge of reality" 92 93 LONERGAN, GILSON, AND CRITICALREALISM 591 criterion of the real, and argues that "intellectual operations are related to sensitive operations, not by similarity, but by functional complementarily" in a conscious and intentional dynamism that intends being. 95 It is by questioning that human knowers are immediately related to being. "Other activities such as sense and consciousness, understanding and judgment, are related mediately to the object, being, inasmuch as they are the means of answering questions, of reaching the goal intended by questioning. " 96 Epistemological reflection grounded in self-appropriation would disclose that "it is not true that it is from sense that our cognitional activities derive their immediate relationship to real objects; that relationship is immediate in the intention of being. " 97 I conclude by reiterating the importance of self-appropriation. It is not the case that one cannot be a knower without selfappropriation, for "cognitional analysis is needed not to know being but to know knowledge." 98 However, the fact that human beings are knowers spontaneously oriented to being by a normative series of conscious and intentional operations happens to be nothing more than a natural tendency. It always remains possible for any given person to remain inattentive, noninquisitive, dull-minded, careless in the conceptual articulation of insights, uncritical in accepting the first bright idea that comes along, quick to leap to judgment even in the absence of sufficient evidence, etc. Self-appropriation yields a self-knowledge, a knowing of knowing, that elucidates what is cognitionally normative. Knowing what is normative presents us with the liberating possibility of consciously and deliberately cooperating with the kind of being that we metaphysically happen to be. Knowing what constitutes knowing also discloses the noetic standard to which we are accountable in our quest for truth, and against which our flights from truth might be detected and checked. Self-appropriation is especially important for one who (Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," 214). 95 Ibid., 217-18. 96 Lonergan, "The Subject," 78-79. 97 Lonergan, "Cognitional Structure," 218. 98 Lonergan, Insight, 365. 592 PAUL ST. AMOUR would philosophize. I have argued that self-appropriation holds the key to a viable critical realism. If the philosophical validity of realism is ever to be nondogmatically justified, if the specter of idealist immanentism is ever to be overcome, what is most needed is adequate self-knowledge. "The subject is within but he does not remain totally within. His knowing involves an intentional selftranscendence. But while his knowing does so, he has to know his knowing to know that it does so. " 99 99 Lonergan, "The Subject," 75-76. The Thomist 69 (2005): 593-620 EPHEMERIDES THOMISTICAE ANALYTICAE: METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS DENIS J. M. BRADLEY Georgetown University Washington, D.C. E LEONORE STUMP has written what is likely to be her magnum opus. Her book, Aquinas, 1 is magnus in at least two obvious ways: it is very long (631 pages) and, by the standards that she sets for herself as a "senior scholar" (ix), a benchmark for like-minded "Analytic Thomists." Stump paints on a big canvas: she essays, even if she does not achieve, a comprehensive representation of Aquinas from the standpoint of Analytic Thomism, a movement in which Professor Stump now stands, quite on her own merits-although she continues to acknowledge the debt she owes to her "teacher, mentor and friend" (xii), the late Norman Kretzmann-among the most widely known and eminent practitioners thereof. But Stump's Aquinas, despite its length and breadth and, in many places, depth, is not a Summa philosophiae ad mentem divi Thomae. The topics that it explores do, indeed, reflect more the present-day "vagaries of academic interests and trends " (x)-hence, the title of this review article-than they follow "largely (but not entirely) ... the order of Aquinas's Summa theologiae" (xi). The author has chosen topics where she discerns a "special confluence of Aquinas's views and current philosophical debate" (x), those, 1 Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Pp. xx+ 611. $135.00 (cloth), $43.00 (paper). ISBN 0-415-02960-0 (cloth), ISBN 0-415-37898-2 (paper). Parenthetical page references hereafter, unless otherwise noted, are to this book. 593 594 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY anyway, that have stimulated her "bridge-building efforts" (ibid.) to connect Aquinas with contemporary analytic philosophy. Stump's "Herculean task" (ix) occupies an introduction and sixteen subsequent chapters, some of which are extensively reworked versions of earlier papers. This reworking has required admirable diligence and scholarly responsiveness. But since "each chapter [can be read] on its own" (xi), probably most readers will peruse Aquinas, given its size and density, piecemeal. Stump, happily, groups the chapters into four parts, each of which could provide ample subject matter for a graduate seminar, which would be a suitable, perhaps the best, context in which to read and, in commensurately detailed fashion, deconstruct the complex arguments which thicken this book. The four parts of Aquinas stretch over an impressive range of topics: (Part I) The Ultimate Foundation of Reality: ch. 1, "Metaphysics: A Theory of Things"; ch. 2, "Goodness"; ch. 3, "God's Simplicity"; ch. 4, "God's Eternity"; ch. 5, "God's Knowledge"; (Part II) The Nature of Human Beings: ch. 6, "For ms and Bodies: The Soul"; ch. 7, "The Foundations of Knowledge"; ch. 8, "The Mechanisms of Cognition"; ch. 9, "Freedom: Action, Intellect and Will"; (Part HI) The Nature of Human Excellence: ch. 10, "A Representative Moral Virtue: Justice; ch. 11, "A Representative Intellectual Virtue: Wisdom"; ch. 12, "A Representative Theological Virtue: Faith; ch. 13, "Grace and Free Will"; (Part IV) God's Relationship to Human Beings: ch. 14, "The Metaphysics of the Incarnation"; ch. 15, "Atonement"; ch. 16, "Providence and Suffering." In the Introduction to these four parts, Stump provides a twenty-page, six-section "overview of Aquinas's thought": metaphysics; philosophy of mind; theory of knowledge; will and action; ethics, law and politics; theology: natural, revealed, and philosophical. Stump's "fat volume" (x), then, covers multa-far too many for this reader to find a clear narrative or conceptual thread. The sequence of book chapters-"following roughly Aquinas's imitates the categorization and ordering" (ibid.)-externally Neoplatonic exitus-reditus theme that structures and holds METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 595 together Aquinas's two theological summae. However, I can discern no comparable doctrinal theme that internally unifies the author's own portrait of Thomas Aquinas as philosophus redivivus, or conceptually focuses her bridge-building, analytic excurses. Pleading that some economizing omissions are necessary, and surely they are, Stump assures us that hers do not prevent the reader from seeing "Aquinas's whole worldview in broad outline" (ibid.), even though the outline omits topics "regularly discussed in standard reference works on Aquinas" (ibid.). These assurances will not assuage the suspicions of textually focused or historically minded students of Aquinas: some of the topics that Stump omits-in particular, the "real distinction" between essence and existence in creatures and the divine unity thereof-are absolutely indispensable, the sine qua non, for understanding Aquinas in his own metaphysical setting and, consequently, for discerning whether there is any "special confluence" between Aquinas's metaphysics and views that have emerged in twentieth-century analytic philosophy. An even greater necessity for economizing omissions dictates that, in reviewing her book, I follow Stump's precedent: from her first and second chapters, I shall pick out and briefly remark on aspects of three topics that, according to my own vagarious interests, have caught my attention: the nature of metaphysics, the systematic primacy of the metaphysical principle actus essendi and its role in guaranteeing the immortality of the human soul, and the relationship of metaphysics to ethics. On all three topics, Stump's presentation of Aquinas is dubious in parts and deficient as a whole, needing, at the least, considerable textual amplification before she can engage in historically sound "bridge-building." Hermeneutical questions are grist for every reviewer: mine are preoccupied with Aquinas's doctrinal twists and less attentive to the details of the often ingenious arguments that Stump uses to contemporize Aquinas. Mea culpa: most of what is philosophically au courant in Stump's book I leave to others, especially those who also might wish to put Friar Thomas to work in the analytic 596 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY vineyard, to praise or pick over. 2 In either case, one side of the Thomistic-analytic bridge requires understanding as deeply and accurately as possible the ipsissima verba doctoris angelici, a task that Stump herself recognizes to be of considerable (but not, it would seem, paramount) importance to her own project. How Aquinas or any historically distant figure can really function as a "living interlocutor[s] still able to influence philosophical thought" (ix), in this case analytic philosophy, is a difficult philosophical as well as a convoluted historical question, and especially the latter in regard to Aquinas. Stump is concerned with the question en passant, but mostly she is eager to turn Aquinas directly-too directly for my comfort-into a philosopher capable of speaking in a contemporary idiom. Now there is a metaphysics and epistemology in Thomistic theology. On the basis of that incontrovertible fact, Stump cursorily makes two important claims that should arrest any reader even casually familiar with the theological motivation, theological orientation, and theological development of the metaphysical and epistemological doctrine contained in Aquinas's systematic works. Her claims initially and perhaps instinctively provoke what are, let me admit, "Gilsonian" caveats. First of all, is it "possible to extract" (x) from his own worksat least as easily as Stump suggests-Aquinas's own metaphysics and epistemology in a form "familiar to contemporary philosophy" (ibid.), if "what we now would clearly count as philosophy" (xi) should be counted, indeed, even more insistently, as integral to Aquinas's theology? There are innumerable rational demonstrations to be found in any theological work of Aquinas. But a catena of Aquinas's rational demonstrations a systematic philosophy does not make. 3 Aquinas did not write-in either 2 See Thomas Williams, "Aquinas in Dialogue with Contemporary Philosophy: Eleonore Stump's Aquinas," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 79 (2005): 483-91; Anthony Kenny, "Stump's Aquinas," The Philosophical Quarterly 54, no. 216 (2004): 457-62; Robert Pasnau, review of Aquinas, by Eleonore Stump, in Mind (forthcoming), available on his web page at the University of Colorado (http://spot.colorado.edu/-pasnau/). 3 Cf. ScG II, c. 4 (ed. Ceslaus Pera, Petrus Marc, and Petrus Carmello [Turin: Marietti, 1961], 2:117b, nn. 873-75): "If any things are considered in common by the Philosopher and the Believer, they are conveyed through different things and different principles. For the METAPHYSICSAND ETHICS IN STUMP'SAQUINAS 597 Summa 4-a systematic philosophy nor should we assume that we can write one for him. So, secondly, it might seem that in recasting Aquinas in a contemporaneously "familiar philosophical form" Stump is not referring to, as McKeon spelled out, the dense complex of "principles, methods, interpretations, and selections" that internally specify and irreducibly differentiate one philosophy from another,5 but, less substantively, to arguments that retain, as it were independently of any consideration of their original context, the outward shape of strictly rational demonstrations, namely, those that employ no premiss incorporating or resting on faith in a revealed truth. In fact, however, Stump's aspirations are higher: she wants to articulate a contemporary Thomist philosophy using the principles of Aquinas. She is not merely repeating the exercise of the Scholastic manuals, which pretended to extract a pre-made one from him. I. AQUINAS'S METAPHYSICS The "dense and technical" (xi) first part of Aquinas deals with metaphysics, whose subject is ens inquantum ens or, equivalently, ens commune, which Stump correctly identifies but then appears to conflate with, or at least not carefully distinguish from, God. 6 Aquinas, echoing Avicenna, explicitly denies that God or the separate substances are the proper subject matter of metaphysics; knowledge of God as the first cause of ens commune is the end or Philosopher takes his argument from the proper causes of things; the Believer, from the first cause .... Hence, also [the doctrine of the faith] ought to be called highest wisdom, since it treats of the supremely highest cause ... And, because of this, human philosophy serves her as the first wisdom. Accordingly, divine wisdom sometimes argues from principles of human philosophy" (Summa contra Gentiles, trans. James F. Anderson [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975], 2:35 [revised]). 4 On the difference between a philosophical and a theological order of investigation, and Aquinas's clear identification of the order of his own two Summae as theological, see ScG II, c. 4 (ed. Pera-Marc-Carmello, 2:117b, n. 876). 5 See Richard McKean, "Philosophic Semantics and Philosophic Inquiry," in "Freedom and History" and Other Essays: An Introduction to the Thought of Richard McKean, ed. Zahava K. McKean (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 242-56. 6 Cf. Stump, Aquinas, 12-13, especially the last paragraph on 12 which carries over to 13. 598 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY goal of metaphysics. 7 Stump's remark that in investigating "Godin-himself" the two Summae "begin with metaphysics" (13) is imprecise. Both the Summa theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles are works of theology that begin with "sacred doctrine." Especially here precision is necessary if we are to distinguish the theology that can be found in a metaphysics focused on ens commune (that only reasons to God as the principle of the subject of the science) from a revealed theology whose subject is, from the beginning, God in Himself, as revealed by Himself. 8 Finally, it is erroneous to claim that "Aquinas's philosophy does begin with metaphysics" (ibid.) and offer as evidence for that claim the order of the two Summae. The two Summae begin with God because they are following the order of sacra doctrina. 9 Moreover, Aquinas states that philosophy-the philosophy that he knew and was being taught in the Faculty of Arts- begins, in the ordo docendi, with logic, mathematics, and physics. 10 Now, if he had written a systematic philosophy, replete in all of its sciences, is there any reason to think that Aquinas's own order of exposition of that philosophy would have had a radically different starting point? Perhaps not; the point can be argued but it needs, in fact, to be argued not presumed. 11 As Stump labels it in the title of her first chapter, one of "the parts of Aquinas's metaphysics" is "a theory of things" (35)-not 7 See In Metaphys., prooemium S. Thomae (ed. M.-R. Cathala, O.P., and Raymundus Spiazzi, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1950], 1-2). Cf. John F. Wippel, "Aquinas on the Nature of Metaphysics," chap. 1 in The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 322; idem, "Our Discovery of the Subject of Metaphysics," chap 2 in The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 23-62. 8 See Expos. Boet. de Trin., q. 5, a. 4 (Expositio super Librum Boethii De Trinitate, ed. Bruno Decker [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959], 195, §4, 6-27). 9 See n. 4 supra. 10 See Expos. Boet. de Trin., q. 5, a. 1, ad 9 (ed. Decker, 172-73); VI Nie. Ethic., lect. 7 (ed. Raymundus Spiazzi, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1949], 330b-3 la, n. 1211). Cf. John Wippel, "Aquinas and Avicenna on the Relationship between First Philosophy and the Other Theoretical Sciences (In De Trin., q. 5, a. 1, ad 9)," chap 2 in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 37-53. 11 For arguments that Aquinas's (unlike Aristotle's) metaphysics is not conceptually dependent on physics, see Lawrence Dewan, O.P., "St. Thomas Aquinas, Physics, and the Principles of Metaphysics," The Thomist 61(1997):549-66; Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., "A Note on the Approach to Thomistic Metaphysics," New Scholasticism 28 (1954): 454-76. METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 599 the res which is trans-categorial, but "thing" in the sense of a "this" or hoc aliquid (48 n. 2). The latter term refers to substances, artifacts, and the parts of substances, whether the parts are integral (human hands) or metaphysical (matter and form). This description leads to Stump's anachronistic distinction (35) between Aquinas's metaphysics (the part thereof that is a "theory of things") and ontology ("what there is in the world" = being), a distinction that has no Thomistic justification. Used in contrast to "metaphysics," the freighted term "ontology," which comes to the fore in the period between Suarez and Wolff, 12 risks fragmenting Aristotle's and Aquinas's unitary conception of metaphysics as the science of being to which neither difference nor accident can be added. 13 On Stump's reading, the "theory of things"-indeed, "Aquinas's basic worldview" (ibid.)-turns on the problem of how something can be one thing. However, if unity rather than existence is the fundamental metaphysical problem for Aquinas, then Stump has advanced an historical and systematic claim that is remarkably at odds with the deeply argued conclusion of several generations of acute scholarship. 14 But Stump does not tarry over the claim, nor shall I. What she wishes to confirm is the Aristotelian doctrine that the unity of a thing is consequent upon its form, 15 which Stump understands to be the principle 12 On the historical and doctrinal novelty ofontology (a term apparently first used in 1647, by the Cartesian J. Clauberg) to connote "la science de l'etre integralement deexistentialise," see Etienne Gilson, L'etre et /'essence (2d ed. rev.; Paris: J. Vrin, 1987), 171-72. 13 See De Verit., q. 1, a. 1, resp. (ed. Raymundus Spiazzi, 0.P., in Quaest. disp., 2 vols. [Turin: Marietti, 1949], 1:2b): "But something is not able to be added to being [enti] as though it were an extraneous nature-in the way that a difference is added to a genus or an accident to a subject-for every nature is essentially a being [ens]" (Truth, trans. Robert W. Mulligan [Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952], 1:5 [revised]). 14 Cf. Anton C. Pegis, "The Dilemma of Being and Unity," in Essays in Thomism, ed. Robert E. Brennan, O.P. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942; repr. Freeport, N.Y.: Essay Index Reprint Series, 1972), 149-83: "In this doctrine of God as Being, and in the meaning of His unity as an infinite Being, we must see the radical basis of the answer to Platonism which St. Thomas proposes" (174). 15 Aquinas, however, attributes the unity of an essence, when considered absolutely, solely to its act of existence: I Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1 (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, books 1 and 2, ed. R. P. Mandonnet, O.P. [Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929), 1:461): "an essence is not able to be said absolutely one except where it is one being; and this where it is numerically the same essence" ("non potest dici una essentia absolute, nisi ubi est 600 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY actualizing the "dynamic configuration or organization" (36) of the thing. Configuration can either be accidental, as in the case of the parts of an artifact, or substantial, as in the case of an organism. Composite substances are constituted from two principles, prime matter and form. Prime matter, although really and not just conceptually a distinct principle of composite substances, cannot exist by itself apart from form. Each single substance has only one substantial form. The parts of a unitary substance, unlike those of a mixture or an artifact, are only potential parts. But when uncombined and taken in separation, the elements composing a material substance are themselves actual and distinct substantial unities of prime matter and form: earth, water, air, and fire. Stump thinks that it is "difficult to give a non-circular analysis of Aquinas's concept of substance or substantial form" (42). But is this not what one would expect if substance is a primitive category of being? Still, Stump finds Aquinas's appeal to the criterion of subsistence per se and in se for identifying substances inadequate. But one of her many rapid-fire questions-Why cannot this criterion, if it is taken to be a sufficient condition for identifying a "substance," 16 be applied to a severed hand? (43)-seems to have a ready answer, which Stump herself, later on, perfectly elaborates (194-95): once severed, a human hand is really no longer a "hand" but a particular something "hand-like" that quickly begins to decompose into its elements. 17 Stump's own unum esse; et hoc est ubi est eadem essentia secundum numerum"). But for other texts that refer to unity as consequent upon the essence itself, when considered not absolutely but concretely (i.e., as already existent), see Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., "Unity and Essence in St. Thomas Aquinas,'' Mediaeval Studies 23 (1961): 240-59. 16 Stump, Aquinas, 42: "for Aquinas, the ability to exist on its own is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for something's being a substance." Cf. De Pot., q. 9, a. 1 (ed. P. M. Pession, in Quaest. disp., 2:226a): "Two things are proper to the substance which is a subject. The first is that it needs no external foundation [extrinseco fundamento] in which it is sustained but is sustained by itself: wherefore it is said to subsist, as existing not in another but in itself'; De unione verbi incamati, q. un., a. 2 (ed. M. Calcaterra and T. S. Centi, in Quaest. disp., 2:427b) : "It is proper to a substance that it subsists through itself and in itself; however, the being [esse] of an accident is in another." 17 Cf. De unione verbi, a. 2 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, Quaest. disp., 2:427b): "It is not able to be said that this hand is a person or a hypostasis or a suppositum; nonetheless, it is able to be said that it is something particular, a singular, or an individual. For although a hand pertains METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 601 suggestion that substance be considered an "emergent thing with respect to its parts" (43) is a dubious ontological radicalization of the notion of emergent properties, one that, if it does not jeopardize the conceptual and actual priority of the substance's form, 18 seemingly confuses the potential with the integral parts of a substance: the only actual parts of a substance are integral parts (the attached hand of a living body) which presuppose the one form actualizing the complete substance. 19 A minor point: one can agree with Stump that contemporary technology makes it more difficult for us to distinguish artifacts and inanimate substances, but may not philosophers leave it to chemists to debate whether styrofoam is a mixture or a unitary compound? Unitary organisms, in keeping with the basic Aristotelian biological approach, still seem easier for philosophers, who are usually amateurs in the physical sciences, to identity as substances. So far as it goes, Stump's treatment of the principle of individuation is valuable: materia signata, "designated matter" with the important but variant qualifications, depending on context, that the quantity of the designated matter is either of definite (determinatae) or specifically undefined (interminatae) dimensions 20-functions throughout the Thomistic corpus as the principle whereby we first understand the individuation of bodies. 21 But, from his earliest to last works, Aquinas also appeals to the genus of substance, it is not called a hypostasis or a suppositum or a person, because it is not a complete substance subsisting in itself." 18 Cf. Aristotle,Metaphys. 7.17.104lb11-33; Aquinas, VIIMetaphys., lect. 17 (ed. CathalaSpiazzi, 398-99, nn. 1672-80). 19 See VII Metaphys., lect. 13 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 380b-81a, n. 1588): "It is impossible that a substance should be composed of many substances actually present in it; for two actual things are never one actual thing, but nvo which are in potentiality are one actually .... Hence in order that many things may become one actual thing, it is necessary that all should be included under one form, and that each single thing should not have its own single form by which it would be in act." 2° For a masterful presentation of the complex historical and conceptual issues attendant on Aquinas's variant use of dimensiones terminatae I dimensiones interminatae I dimensiones determinatae, see Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., "Thomas Aquinas: Dimensive Quantity as Individuating Principle," Mediaeval Studies 50 (1988): 279-310. 21 See N Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3 (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi, books 3 and 4, ed. Maria Fabianus Moos, O.P. [Paris: Lethielleux, 1947], 4:520, n. 137): "The substantial form of a material thing has in some way an ordination to dimensions, since [specifically] undefined dimensions [interminatae dimensiones] are 602 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY to another, more fundamental, indeed, ultimate principle of individuation in the real or existential order: "For everything in accordance with the way it has being [esse] has unity and individuation. " 22 Stump makes no reference to the actus essendi when explaining how Aquinas understands a thing's unity and individuation. Yet it is precisely this principle that Owens has called "the 'basic cause of individuality' in [Aquinas's] philosophical thinking. " 23 Is the actus essendi principle overarching in Thomistic metaphysics, as so many major studies have concluded, or is it, as Stump seems to suggest, just another rival "candidate" for possible inclusion among "the most important parts of Aquinas's metaphysics" (59)? There are numerous texts, not to mention a library of secondary literature, that one could adduce in support of an existential interpretation, 24 but question 2 7 of De Veritate (a. 1, ad 8) highlights and summarizes in exemplary fashion the transformative role (vis-a-vis the Aristotelian metaphysics of ousia) that the actus essendi principle plays in Aquinas's metaphysics: Everything that is in the genus of substance is composite with a real composition, because whatever is in the category of substance is subsistent in its own being [suo esse], and its own being [suum esse] must be other [aliud] than the thing itself; otherwise it is not able to differ in being from the other things with which it agrees in the formal character of its quiddity; for such agreement is required in all things that are directly in a category. Consequently everything that is directly in the category of substance is composed at least from being and the quiddity that is [ex esse et quad est]. 25 preconceived fpraeintelligantur] in matter before substantial form." 22 Responsio ad Fr. Joannem Vercellensem de articulis XLII, q. 108 (ed. Raymundus A. Verardo, Opuscula theologica 1:240, n. 935). Cf. IV Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2 (ed. Moos, 4:503, n. 48): "Dimensive quantity in regard to its notion does not depend on sensible matter, although it depends [on matter] in regard to its being [esse]." 23 Joseph Owens, "Thomas Aquinas," in Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later Middle Ages and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650, ed. Jorge J.E. Gracia (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994), 175. 24 Among recent works, see Battista Mondin, La metafisica di S. Tommaso d'Aquino e i suoi interpreti (Bologna: Edizioni studio Domenicano, 2002). 25 De Verit., q. 27, a. 1, ad 8 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disp., 1:513a). METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 603 One can reasonably ask, then, how deeply Stump lays the Thomistic metaphysical foundations for her bridge-building effort. Stump's Aquinas hardly goes beyond Aristotle's notion of form, although Aquinas over and again identifies esse as the act of all acts even of forms. 26 Perhaps this odd laucuna in Stump's presentation-her studied Vergessenheit 27 of the Thomistic doctrine of actus essendi as the most perfect actuality of all acts-can be explained by the fact that in analytic philosophy the theme of existential actuality is hardly dominant or even congenial. 28 Typically, analytic philosophers treat questions about existence under the rubric of the logical quantification of propositions. In this regard, it is instructive to read Quine's commentary on a paper of Owens, 29 who argues valiantly for what he takes to be the authentic Thomistic standpoint: that from the judgmental affirmation of "the existence of sensible things ... emerge the criteria for existence in regard to other objects. " 30 Quine, undeterred by Owens's armada of heavily footnoted historical references, merely counters that ontological theory, when pursuing explanatory simplicity, can legitimately drop the "observable bodies" 31 so beloved of commonsense and naive philosophic realism. Hence, Quine remains imperturbably 26 See STh I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3: "Being [esse] is the most perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that which is act; for nothing has actuality except so far as it is. Hence, being itself [ipsum esse] is the actuality of all things, even of forms themselves" (Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Anton C. Pegis [New York: Random House, 1945], 1:38). 27 Cf. Stump, Aquinas, x (first paragraph). 28 One "analytic Thomist," or so he has been called (see n. 93 infra), Anthony Kenny, opines that Aquinas on "the subject of Being ... was "thoroughly confused" and made "one of the least admirable of his contributions to philosophy" (Aquinas on Being [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002], v, viii). In defending the metaphysical perspicacity of Aquinas, Gyula Klima argues that the "root of all errors on Kenny's part" is to subjugate Aquinas's notion of existence to Frege's, a methodological "straightjacket" whereby the Thomistic doctrine of being becomes "absolutely inexplicable, and indeed becomes totally misinterpreted" ("On Kenny on Aquinas on Being," International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2004 ): 567, 569). 29 See Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., "The Range of Existence," in Proceedings of the Seventh Inter-American Congress of Philosophy, 1967 (Quebec: Les presses de l'universite Laval, 1967), 44-59; W. Quine, "Thoughts on Reading Father Owens," in idem., 60-63. 30 Owens, "The Range of Existence," 47. 31 Quine, "Thoughts on Reading Father Owens," 61. 604 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY convinced that "quantification is the [clearest] way of schematizing the existence concept. " 32 Behind Quine is the logical tradition of Frege, which regards existence as a higher or second-level property predicated only of general concepts and not of the objects of those concepts. The Fregean property of existence is the fact that a first-level concept is not empty-that is, that it applies or has at least one instance. So, a true atomic sentence, say, "Socrates is wise," entails the following true general quantified sentence: "There is at least one individual who is wise," or, equivalently, "The predicate 'wise' has at least one instantiation. " 33 Stump stirs, somewhat insouciantly, these Fregean logical waters: "Considered absolutely, being is the instantiation of a thing" (67; emphasis added). True: it is a thing, not a concept, that Stump wants being (existence?) "to instantiate." Even so, "instantiation" hardly conveys-rather obscures, I would say-the Thomistic doctrine that the actus essendi is the principle imminently albeit participatively actualizing every ens. Moreover, in the Scholastic historical context, especially post-Suarez, it is not things but essences that are existentially instantiated, an instantiation that in turn seems impossible to disengage from some prior esse essentiae, a notion more contra-Thomistic than which one cannot conceive. 34 In her first chapter on metaphysics, Stump tackles the problem of identity: she is primarily concerned to show that the identity of a material thing is conceptually and really distinguishable from its constituents. Stump argues that substances-and even artifacts which are only accidental unities-cannot be reduced to their elements or integral parts. The unity and identity of a composite substance results from the "configuration" (36) of its matter by its form. A human being in this life can lose at least some of his material parts-the appendix, even a hand or a foot-without thereby losing his identity as a human hypostasis or suppositum, that is, without ceasing to be the person that he was before the 32 Ibid., 62. 33 Cf. Milton K. Munitz, Existence and Logic (New York: New York University Press, 1974), 78. 34 See Gilson, L'etre et !'essence, 144-58. METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 605 loss. 35 Does a person survive his own death? Presumably so, if the person can be identified with what, if anything, survives. Aquinas thinks that at death, the rational soul-form separates from the body, or, more precisely, no longer actuates the matter of the body-soul compound. Stump wants to assure us that this loss of a constitutive bodily part does not amount to the total annihilation of the premortem supposit or person: "the [postmortem] existence of the soul is sufficient for the existence of a person" (53) or, as she also puts it, "sufficient for the [continued] existence of a human being" (52). Her assurances rest on adopting and attributing to Aquinas (51) the view that "constitution is not identity," that is, the human being or person need not be identical to the usual set of his or her constituent parts. The problem is that Aquinas does seem to think that "constitution is identity" in the case of the human person. In his commentary on First Corinthians, and elsewhere, Aquinas denies that the postmortem soul is identical with the person: "My soul is not l." 36 The premortem human person is, in fact, constituted by two "parts" soul-form and matter. 37 The postmortem soul, although it remains a part of a human nature, is not "a human being," or a person or hypostasis. 38 Stump points out, however, that Aquinas frequently enough treats the disembodied human soul as having properties "characteristic of human persons" (53). Understandably so: what would be the point, not to say justice, of promising immediate postmortem divine rewards or punishments for one's disembodied immortal soul if that soul were not 35 Cf. ScG IV, c. 41 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 3:330a, n. 3789c): "An individual in the genus of substance is called a hypostasis; in [regard to] rational substances, however, it is called a person." 36 See Super I Cor., ch. 15, 1 ect. 2 (Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, 8'h ed. rev., 2 vols., ed. Raphaelis Cai, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1953], 1: 411b, n. 924): "The soul since it is a part of the body of man, is not the whole man, and my soul is not I. So, although the soul obtains salvation in another life, however, not I or any man." 37 Cf. De unione verbi, a. 2, ad 17 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, Quaest. disp., 2:428b-29a) : "Soul and body united constitute a suppositum or hypostasis, if what is composed from each exists through itself [per se existat]." 38 See De Pot., q. 9, a. 2, ad 14 (ed. Pession, Quaest. disp., 2:229b): "The separated soul is a part of rational nature and not a whole rational human nature; therefore, it is not a person." 606 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY somehow identical with one's premortem, "two-part" hylomorphic person? 39 Here one might question whether Aquinas himself fully overcame the Platonic identification of a person with his immortal soul-substance. Throughout his works, the Thomistic human soul is an intellectual substance in its own right-quaedam res per se subsistens40-even though Aquinas insists, with increasing awareness of its implications, that it is also the form of the living human body. The separated soul, though not a hypostasis or person, is hoc aliquid, 41 which permits Aquinas to treat that soul, where there is a theological need to do so, as though it were identical with the premortem person. Apparently, Stump follows suit: the surviving postmortem human being is constituted with one less "metaphysical part" and hence is not strictly identical to the two-part premortem human person.42 But this nonidentity turns out to be a distinction without a clear difference. Stump acknowledges that "for Aquinas, there is no difference between a human person and a human being" (486 n. 73); 43 so, the separated human soul, speaking strictly, is 39 See STh suppl., q. 69, a. 7: "The soul united to a mortal body is in the state of meriting, while the soul separated from the body is in the state of receiving good or evil for its merits; so that after death it is either in the state of receiving its final reward, or in the state of being hindered from receiving it." 40 De spirit. creat., q. un., a. 2 (ed. Calcaterra- Centi, Quaest. disp., 2:375a). 41 See ibid., ad 16 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, Quaest. disp., 2: 2:378a): "Now the soul, although it is incorruptible, is nevertheless in no other genus than the body because, since it is a part of a human nature, to be in a genus or in a species or to be a person or hypostasis is not characteristic of the soul, but of the composite. And hence, also, it cannot be called 'this something,' if by this phrase is meant an hypostasis or person, or an individual situated in a genus or in a species. But if 'this something' means every thing which is able to be self-subsistent, in this sense the soul is 'this something' [hoc aliquidj" (On Spiritual Creatures, trans. Mary C. Fitzpatrick and John J. Wellmuth [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1949], 40). 42 Cf. Stump, Aquinas, 53: "A human person is not identical to his soul; rather, a human person is identical to a particular in the species rational animal"; "a human being can exist when he is composed of nothing more than one of his metaphysical constituents, namely his form or soul." 43 There can be, of course, persons who are not human persons, i.e., persons who are not rational animals. See De unione verbi, q. un., a. 2 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, 427a): "For a hypostasis is nothing other than an individual substance, which also is signified by the term 'suppositum.' Moreover, Boethius says, in the book On Two Natures, that a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Therefore it is clear that there is not able to be a hypostasis of a rational nature, which is not a person.'' METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 607 neither. But Stump's view is less settled: is or is not a "human being" always a "human person" and can a disembodied soul be either or both? Whereas Aquinas says that the disembodied human soul is merely "a part of human nature," Stump says ambiguously that "the existence of a [separated] human soul is sufficient for the existence of a human being" (52) and "sufficient for the existence of a person" (53). Which human being and which person? The same one hypostasis that was both a human being and an embodied person? If not, then is a human being a part of a human person? It is unclear what notion of human personal identity Stump is putting to work on behalf of Aquinas. 44 Her exegesis falls into explaining the obscurum per obscurius. Throughout its historical development, Aquinas's doctrine of the separated human soul is beset by identity issues. Pegis argues that question 89, article 1 of the Prima Pars marks a turning point in Aquinas's developing "naturalism": 45 then and afterwards, Aquinas firmly and consistently held to "the notion that embodiment is by nature the permanently proper condition of the [human] soul." 46 Such, according to Pegis, was the elimination of any residual Platonism in Aquinas. Nonetheless, the indestructible and separable soul-form is the only continuous and subsistent being that allows Aquinas to identify, thereby meeting all interim theological exigencies, the pre- and post-resurrection "human being. "47 Yet appeal to the standard Aristotelian conception of an Cf. the similar complaints of the three reviewers cited in note 2 supra. On Aquinas's increasing awareness that the disembodied human soul exists praeter naturam, see Anton C. Pegis, "The Separated Soul and its Nature in St. Thomas," in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 1:131-58. 46 Ibid., 1:158. 47 See IV Sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. lb, ad 1 (ed. Roberto Busa, S.J., S. ThomaeAquinatis Opera Omnia [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980], 1: 635c): "[unlike the celestial bodies] the form of other things that are generable and corruptible is not subsistent through itself, so that it would be able to continue after the corruption of the composite, as is the case with the rational soul, which retains the being [esse] that is acquired for itself in the body, even after the [corruption of the] body. Through the resurrection the body is brought to participate in that being, since the being of the body is not other than [the being] of the soul in the body; otherwise, the union of the soul and body would be accidental. Thus no interruption is made in the substantial being of man such that it would be impossible for the numerically same man to return on account of the interruption [of his] being, as happens in all other corruptible things. Their being is totally interrupted; [their] form does not endure, although [their] matter 44 45 608 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY embodied substantial form explains nothing about the soul's indestructibility and subsistence; rather it creates, as the medieval controversy with the Augustinians showed, insurmountable conceptual obstacles to the notion of the soul's separability. At least in her second chapter, Stump blunts the acuteness of Aquinas's metaphysical problem-perhaps because she ignores the history of his efforts to resolve it. Aquinas understood that his doctrine of the embodied human soul-form was difficult and that its separability, as he conceived it, contradicts both Plato and Aristotle. The Thomistic notion hinges on the novel and revolutionary claim that it is not "contrary to the character of a spiritual substance that it should be the form of a body. " 48 Just at this juncture, Aquinas refers to esse: the soul communicates its esse, which surpasses matter, to matter and thereby is the form of the body. 49 This doctrine requires an expatiation that we cannot attempt here; it requires showing that in order to know, the human soul, because it is the least among spiritual substances, needs to be embodied. 5° For present purposes, we need only note that Aquinas's argument for the indestructibility of the soul, viewed in its development from early to late works, eventually runs on a different metaphysical track and towards an eminently theological end that lies entirely outside the compass of either ancient philosopher. In his later works (after 1265), Aquinas begins to acknowledge the cognitive diminishment and unnatural state of the disembodied soul in comparison with its premortem embodiment. 51 He continues to endures under another being [esse]." 48 De spirit. creat., a. 2 (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, Quaest. disp., 2:375a). 49 See ibid. (ed. Calcaterra-Centi, Quaest. disp., 2:376b): "Inasmuch, then, as it surpasses the being [esse] of corporeal matter, being able through itself to subsist and to act, the human soul is a spiritual substance; but inasmuch as it is brought in contact with matter and confers its own being [esse] on matter, it is the form of the body." so See Anton C. Pegis, At the Origins of the Thomistic Notion of Man, The Saint Augustine Lecture 1962 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963). 51 See Quaest. de an., q. 18 (ed. James H. Robb [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968], 240): "the strength of its [the separated soul's] intellective power is still not sufficient so that through this kind of [received] intelligible species it is able to achieve perfect knowledge, that is, by understanding each thing in a special and determinate way; but rather the soul knows them in a kind of confused universality" (Questions on the Soul, trans. James H. Robb [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984], 217). METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 609 maintain that because the soul is a spiritual or subsistent form (proven to be such from its matter-transcending cognitive activities), it has an inseparable actus essendi that guarantees its indestructibility. 52 But indestructibility is not quite full-blown immortality. Postmortem survival puts the soul into a highly paradoxical state. Are the paradoxes resolvable philosophically? Aquinas aligns the proof of the indestructibility of the soul with an apologetic argument on behalf of the resurrection of the body. 53 Without the latter, "it is difficult to sustain the immortality of the soul": an eternally existent but disembodied human soul is "impossible" because the soul would forever endure in an accidental state that is "against nature. "54 II. METAPHYSICS AND META-ETHICS In the second chapter, as its unadorned title indicates, Stump takes up the topic of "Goodness" -which turns out to be largely an argument about moral goodness. The lack of initial qualification in the title, however, is indicative of her procedure and point of view: Stump begins by discussing what is usually labeled "ontological goodness"-in Aquinas, "good" as one of the transcendentia-to which she unhesitatingly assimilates moral goodness. Stump is by no means alone in viewing moral goodness from the perspective of (what the later Scholastics call) transcendental goodness. Nonetheless, Aquinas explicitly does not equate moral and transcendental goodness. Moral goodness, unlike transcendental goodness, is not unconditionally (simpliciter) convertible with being: 52 See Joseph Owens, C.Ss.R., "The Inseparability of the Soul from Existence," The New Schoalsticism 61 (1987): 249-70. 53 See ScG IV, c. 79 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 3:391b, n. 4135): "The immortality of souls, therefore, is seen to require [exigere] the future resurrection of bodies." 54 See Super I Car., ch. 15, lect. 2 (ed. Cai, Super Epistolas S. Pauli, 1 :41 lb, n. 924): "It is impossible that what is natural and through itself [per se], be finite and, as it were, nothing; but, if the soul endures without the body, that which is contrary to nature and accidental [per accidens] would be infinite." 610 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY A thing can be called good both from its being [esse] and from some added property or state. Thus a man is said to be good both as existing and as being just and chaste or destined for beatitude. By reason of the first goodness being [ens] is interchanged with good, and conversely. But by reason of the second good being [ens] is divided. 55 Being [ens]and good are convertible simply and in every genus; hence the Philosopher distinguishes good according to the genera of beings or things. But it is true that being [ens] is not absolutely convertible with the moral good [bona moris] just as neither is it [the moral good] absolutely convertible with the natural good [bona naturae]. But the moral good is in certain manner a greater good than the natural good, namely inasmuch as it is an act and perfection of a natural good, although also in a certain manner the natural good is better, as a substance is better than an accident i.e. an attribute. But it is evident that not even the natural good and evil are opposed without and intermediary, because not every non-being is evil as indeed every being [ens] is good. 56 These texts, to which others may be aggregated, stand, in my opinion, as a decisive reason for not attributing to Aquinas Stump's assimilation of moral to ontological goodness. But I shall not attempt in this paper to repeat or to develop further what may be considered an important Thomistic objection to the transcendental point of view on moral goodness. 57 Continuing, then, with Stump: there is a "metaphysics of goodness that underlies all of Aquinas's ethics" (62). That metaphysics she equates with Aquinas's "meta-ethics" (ibid.), extending the latter term to signify an ontological grounding of normative principles rather than, as in pristine analytic usage, a more narrowly focused 55 De Verit., q. 21, a. 2, ad 6 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disp., 1:379a):"[A]liquid potest dici bonum et ex suo esse, et ex sua proprietate, vel habitudine superaddita; sicut dicitur aliquis homo bonus et in quantum est iustus et castus, vel ordinatus ad beatitudinem. Ratione igitur primae bonitatis ens convertitur cum bono, et e converso; sed ratione secundae bonum dividit ens" (Mulligan, trans., 3:12 [revised]). 56 De Malo, q. 2, a. 5, ad 2 (ed. P. Bazzi and P. M. Pession, inQuaest. disp., 2:478a): "Ens et bonum convertuntur simpliciter et in quolibet genere .... Sed verum est quod ens simpliciter non convertitur cum bono moris, sicut nee etiam cum bono naturae. Bonum autem moris est quodammodo maius bonum quam bonum naturae; in quantum scilicet est actus et perfectio naturalis boni: licet aliquo modo bono naturalis sit maius, sicut substantia accidente. Patet autem quod nee etiam bonum naturae et malum immediate oppununtur, quia non omne non ens est malum, sicut omne ens est bonum" (On Evil, trans. Jean Oesterle [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995], 67-68). 57 See Denis J.M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Science (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), 263-65, 275-88. METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 611 examination of the use or meaning of ethical concepts. "Underlying," in any case, is a vague though powerfully suggestive notion. Does Stump think that Aquinas grounds ethics on the principles of metaphysics? Certainly she says that he does. 58 But did he? Let me pursue the question in greater textual detail, as one might do yet more exhaustively in a graduate seminar-at least one focused primarily on the historical rather than the analytically recast Aquinas-utilizing this chapter of Stump's book. "The central thesis of Aquinas's meta-ethics," as I have already mentioned, is none other than the familiar tag identifying the transcendentals ens with bonum: "Bonum et ens sunt idem secundum rem, sed diff erunt secundum rationem tantum" (STh I, q. 5, a. 1), which I would translate woodenly as "Good and being as found in the thing are the same, but they differ merely according to their concept." Stump, more elegantly, translates Aquinas's Latin sentence as "'Being' and 'goodness' are the same in reference, but differ only in sense" (62). I do not wish to pair, by implication, Stump with Anthony Kenny. Nonetheless, her Fregean translation summons a philosophical spectre or two which should be, as quickly as possible, dispelled. First, by implicitly introducing the logical act of referring to or naming an entity, does the translation subtly alter the focus of Aquinas's unabashed-or as it is sometimes called, prejudicially, "naive" realism which presupposes the priority of the thing external to the human soul that is first named ens?59 No translation should obscure the Thomistic principle that ens is conceptually as well as ontologically prior to our knowing and to our knowing that we know, that is, knowing that we refer to or name things. 60 58 See Stump, Aquinas, 90: "Aquinas's central meta-ethical thesis, worked out in the context of his general metaphysics, provides a sophisticated metaphysica.l grounding for his virtue-based ethics." 59 Cf. I Sent., d. 2, q. 1 (ed. Mandonnet, 1:67): "For sometimes what the intellect conceives is the likeness [similitudo] of the thing existing outside of the soul, as, for example, which is what is conceived about it by the name 'man'; and such a conception of the intellect has a foundation ifundamentum] immediately in the thing ... and that name signifying that conception [intellectum] is properly said of the thing." 60 See STh I, q. 16, a. 4, ad 2: "The intellect first understands being itself [ipsum ens]; and secondly, it apprehends that it understands being [ens]." 612 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY "Reference," however, in contemporary and in Frege's own peculiar usage (of Bedeutung), can mean "referent," and certainly the latter, less ambiguous term would better reflect the Thomistic priority of ens over verbum and ratio. 61 Aquinas does make, in the text under scrutiny (STh I, q. 5, a. 1), a firm res-ratio distinction. Accordingly, it would seem a permissible, even requisite, anachronism to superimpose, here and perhaps with respect to certain other texts, the reference-sense distinction on Aquinas's sometimes ambiguous term significare.62 The Fregean distinction seems called for when dealing with the transcendentals: "These three [terms]-res, ens, unum-indicate/refer to [significant] entirely the same thing but under different conceptions. " 63 But other texts, where significare is used as an expression of the meaning of a term, do not lend themselves to a Fregean realignment. 64 Indeed, finding in them any clear anticipation of today's reference-sense distinction would be imaginative eisegesis.65 Secondly, then, the Fregean distinction should be used gingerly. 61 See STh I, q. 5, a. 2: "For the meaning [ratio] signified by the name [pernomen], is that which the intellect conceives of the thing, and that which it signifies through the word [per vocem]." 62 Cf. STh I, q. 13, a. 4: "The names attributed to God, although they signify [significant] one thing, because they signify it under many and diverse intelligibilities [rationibus], are not synonyms." 63 IV Metaphys., lect. 2 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 155a, n. 553). On the meaning of the names res, ens, unum, see ibid. 64 Cf. STh I, q. 13, a. 2, ad 3: "In this life ... we know it [the essence of God] according to what is represented in the perfections of creatures. And in this fashion the names imposed by us signify it." 65 I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 3 (ed. Mandonnet, 1:200) dearly notes that ens is "unconditionally and absolutely prior to the all the other [transendentals]" because "being [ens] is included in the understanding of them, but not conversely." Stump's assertion, undoubtedly true, that "the reference of both 'being' and 'goodness' is being" (68)-"any nature whatsoever is essentially being [ens]" (De Verit., q. 1, a. 1 [ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disp., 1:2b])-veils a greater puzzle: under what intelligibility of being [ratio entis], since "ens is said in many ways" (II Sent., d. 34, q. 1, a. 1 [ed. Mandonnet, 2:872]), does "being" first refer to being-under the ratio of "substance" or "actus essendi" or "thing"? Cf. IV Metaphys., lect. 1 (ed. Spiazzi, 152b, n. 544); "And all other things are referred to this [substance] as to what is first and primary"; IV Metaphys., lect. 2 (ed. Spiazzi, 155b, n. 558): "Being [ens] which is imposed from 'to be' itself [ab ipso esse], refers [significat] to the same [referent] as the name 'thing' [res] which is imposed from the essence itself." In regard to the latter text, if we assume that significat = "refer," presumably the referent (idem) is to be identified with the suppositum in which the transcendentals "are converted to one another, and are the same" (I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 3 [ed. Mandonnet, 1:199]). METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 613 To return to Aquinas: we name the same thing ens and bonum. Are there two correspondingly different actualities in the thing? We might think so from our naming. The two terms are not synonyms: ens means "being in act" (esse in actu) and bonum means "desirable" (appetibile). The inference, however, would be mistaken; in the thing, being and goodness are the same actuality. A being is good/desirable only to the extent that it is a more perfectly actualized token of its type. The correct inference leads to the metaphysical formula: there is an identity in the thing of the convertible transcendentals good and being. Stump correctly stresses that, in accordance with its own specifying substantial form, a thing is more actual and, thus, better to the extent that it exercises its defining active potencies: a horse that performs characteristically equine activities well ("virtuously") is a "good horse." The same principle applies to any other thing, including man.66 Man's specifying active potencies are reason and will: a man who makes reasonable choices is a "good man" inasmuch as he uses both faculties well. So much, although the account calls for further important qualifications, is standard fare which Stump uses to licence, far more controversially, her claim that, for Aquinas, "normative ethics is ... a matter of applying the general metaphysics of goodness to human beings" (68). 67 Applying these general metaphysical principles to human beings allows Stump to assert that the more rational are the choices an agent makes, the more actualized is the agent, and, to the same degree, the morally better person he or she is. Stump infers from the transcendental equation of ens and bonum that "Human moral goodness is coextensive with actualized rationality" (72). However, the latter identification of 66 See De Virtu. in comm., q. un., a. 1 (ed. E. Odetto, in Quaest. disp., 2:708b}: "For the virtue of a horse is what makes him and his activity good ... similarly ... with every any other thing." 67 Cf. Jan A. Aertsen, "Thomas Aquinas on the Good: The Relation between Metaphysics and Ethics," in Aquinas's Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1998), 235-53. Aertsen seeks, with more attention to nuances than Stump, to preserve both the autonomy of ethics and its "connection" with metaphysics: so, for Aertsen, metaphysics does not found ethics, but it does provide a "reflection on the foundation of praxis" (253). 614 DENIS ]. M. BRADLEY moral goodness fails to distinguish clearly enough between the mere use of a psychological faculty (reason) and the normatively justified use of that faculty. The mere exercise of the powers of intellect and will does not produce virtue. In the normative term of the Aristotelian tradition, there is an essential difference, morally speaking, between exercising reason and right reason. 68 Stump, in seeking to ground ethics on metaphysics, invokes truisms that no student of St. Thomas can responsibly deny. Eighty years ago Eitenne Gilson observed, albeit rather cautiously, that "the study of ethics is not able to be isolated from that of metaphysics in the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. " 69 This is the undeniable truism: Aquinas's entire theology-including his moral evaluation of human agents and actions-is "imbued with metaphysical principles" (12) in the sense that it continuously draws upon and incorporates metaphysical principles and doctrines. It does pertain to metaphysics, to take an example pertinent to the present discussion, to discuss ens and its relationship to bonum morale, as the latter can be described as an ultimum actum that Aquinas says (rather obscurely) supervenes upon the esse substantiale in genere naturae of human agents, that is, it supervenes as a "moral quality" of their intentions, decisions, and actions. 70 But what precisely the relationship is between the sciences of metaphysics and ethics has been a controverted question for past and presentday Thomists. 71 The question itself needs to be made more precise 68 See II Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 3 (ed. Mandonnet, 2:624): "The rule of human acts is not any sort of reason, but right reason [ratio recta ]";De Virtu. in comm., q. un., a. 8 (ed. Odetta, Quaest. disp., 2: 728a): "In the definition of virtue is posited that it is elective of the means according to right reason." Cf. Stump, Aquinas, 69: "The actualization or perfection of these powers [intellect and will] produces human virtues." 69 Etienne Gilson, Saint Thomas moraliste (2d ed. rev; Paris: J. Vrin, 1974), 17. 70 See STh I, q. 5, a. 1, esp. ad 3. 71 I leave aside the subsidiary question of how goodness as a "non-natural" moral quality ("non-natural" because not convertible with transcendental goodness) may yet be thought to fall within the entitative category of the same name. On this issue, which so exercised the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Tho mists, see F. C. [arolus ]- R. [enatus] Billuart, dissertatio 4, "De actibus humanis in esse moris," a. 1, in Summa sancti Thomae: Hodiemis Academiarum MoribusAccommodata, editio nova (Paris: Victor Palme, 1872-77), 2: 136: "In the human act, two distinctions ought to be made: the being of nature or physical being, and the being of morality. The being of nature is the very entity of the physical act. What is moral being [esse morale] is not so easily said." METAPHYSICSAND ETHICS IN STUMP'SAQUINAS 615 but even then the ingredients of the answer can only be assembled from what Aquinas says here and there. Gilson did not nor does Stump adequately untangle the many strands of Aquinas's doctrine. Pull on these strands, and two big issues come quickly to the fore. First, what does it mean to say-within a historical and systematic context that can be identified as properly Thomistic-that one science "underlies," "provides a foundation," or "grounds" (62) another? As Stump uses them, all these terms are equivalent. But within a Thomistic context and phrased in Aquinas's terminology, the only equivalent question is whether one science is subalternate to another. So phrased, this Thomistic question is easy to answer in regard to ethics: Aquinas explicitly denies that metaphysics encompasses or reaches down to the proper first principles of ethics or physics. Metaphysics, which considers all things insofar as they are beings, does not descend to the proper knowledge of moral or physical things. For the common conception of being, since it is diversified in diverse things, is not sufficient [for attaining] specific knowledge of things. 72 By "proper knowledge," Aquinas means the knowledge of the proper principles of physics and ethics. The proper principles of a particular science are the definitions of its subject and the per se attributes of the subject. Metaphysics, so Cajetan clearly noted, does not provide the proper principles of physics. 73 The proper, self-evident principles of physics are derived inductively from the experience of sensible things. 74 As "first philosophy," metaphysics 72 I Sent., pro!., q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Mandonnet, 1:10). de Vio Caietanus, De subiecto naturalis philosophiae, tom us 3, tractatus 4 (Venice, 1612), 159b, fourth par.: "Science [natural philosophy] is evident from itself without metaphysics. For it has a subject and self-evident or immediate [per se nota] principles from the senses." 74 See VIII Phys., lect. 3 (ed. P. M. Maggiolo, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1965], 515b, n. 994). Physics deals with the principles of ens mobile in communi, notably matter and form. That there is mobile being-i.e., that many beings move-is a self-evident (per se manifestum) sense judgment (VIII Phys., lect. 6 [ed. Maggiolo, 531a-b, n. 1018]). No science proves its own subject matter: physics, accordingly, takes ens mobile as given. That all mobile being is a body is proved in physics, and taken as given in the immediately subalternated science of moving heavenly bodies (De caelo). 73 See Thomas 616 DENISJ.M.BRADLEY gives the common principles attendant upon being and its per se properties -the immediate or self-evident dignitates or maximae propositiones known by everyone to be true-to all of the other sciences, practical as well as theoretical. 75 Yet, even these common first principles are not received in their full generality as applied in metaphysics to ens commune, but as proportioned to the subject of the particular science. 76 Furthermore, Aristotle stresses that demonstration in any science must proceed from proper as well as common principles. 77 However, a subalternated science is one that receives its proper first principles from another higher science. 78 Thus demonstration in a subalternated science proceeds from proper principles known to be true only in the higher science. 79 For that reason, it is called a demonstratio quia, a demonstration that gives knowledge of the fact as distinguished from the demonstratio proper quid provided in the subalternating science which gives knowledge of the cause explaining "why" something happens. 80 As examples of higher subalternating and lower subalternated sciences, Aquinas mentions in descending order: arithmetic---+ music /harmonics (In Phys., I, lect. 2 [ed. Maggiolo, 10a, n. 15]); geometry ---+ optics (perspective) ---+ "rainbow science" (Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 25 [ed. Leon., P2, 91b, 148-53); astronomy ---+ nautical weather forecasting (ibid., 90b, 64-67); stereometry/measuring bodies ---+ mechanical engineering/machine-making (ibid., 90a, 52-55). 75 Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 5 (Opera omnia iussu Leonis P,M. edita, vol. 1 *2 [Rome and Paris, 1989], 25a, 123-30): "it is necessary that propositions of this kind [i.e., communes dignitates or maximae propositiones] be held as known in virtue of themselves not only as they stand but also in reference to us. Examples of these are the propositions that 'It does not occur that the same thing is and is not' and that 'The whole is greater than its part,' and others like these. Hence all the sciences take principles of this kind from metaphysics whose task it is to consider being absolutely and the characteristics of being" (Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, trans. F. R. Larcher, 0. P. [Albany: Magi Books, 1970], 21-22). 76 For example, the principle "Equals subtracted from equals are equal": arithmetic is concerned with the equality of numbers, geometry of quantities. See Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 18, nn. 6-7 (ed. Leon., 1 *2, 68a, 102-4). 77 See Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 18, 43. 78 See ScG III, c. 79 (ed. Pera-Marc-Caramello, 3:111a, n. 2543): "A speculative science which receives from another science the principles from which it demonstrates, is said to be subalternated to that science." 79 See Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 5, 15, 17. 80 See Expos. Post Anal., I, lect. 17, n. 3. METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 617 How, then, should one reconcile Aquinas's unambiguous statements with Stump's claim about metaphysics grounding-in some unspecified sense-ethics? That claim, if it means that Aquinas holds that metaphysics supplies ethics with its proper first principles, is certainly wrong: Thomistic metaphysics-and the same contention would apply to the relationship between Aristotelian metaphysics and ethics-does not ground Thomistic moral science because the latter has its own immediate or selfevident proper first principles. 81 Consider Aquinas's Aristotelian notion of hierarchically subordinated theoretical sciences which gives us a precise notion of the grounding relationship between sciences. 82 The hierarchy is constituted by one science, the superior, grounding another, the subordinate, by providing the latter's proper first principles which are accepted "on faith"-that is, whose truth can only be known through reduction to the selfevident principles found in the higher or subalternating science. Conversely, if a science can resolve its conclusions into its own proper self-evident principles then that science is not a subalternated science. 83 Accordingly, Aquinas, unlike some of the later Thomists, does not subalternate physics to metaphysics. Physics, however, stands at the top of a hierarchy of grounding or subalternating theoretical sciences wherein the highest science (physics) provides the self-evident principles necessary for the ultimate resolution of the conclusions of the lower sciences (for example, psychology). 84 81 See Joseph Owens, "The Grounds of Ethical Universality in Aristotle," in Aristotle: The Collected Papers of]oseph Owens, ed. John R. Catan (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981), 148-64. 82 See I Phys., lect. 1 (ed. Maggiolo, 3-5, nn. 2-4); II Phys., lect. 3 (84, nn. 163-65); I Metaphys., lect. 2 (ed. Cathala-Spiazzi, 14, n. 47); IIIMetaphys., lect. 6 (111-12, n. 396 ); VI Metaphys., lect. 1 (295a, n. 1145; 295b-96a, n. 1149; 296b, n. 1155; 297a, n. 1159); SIA, I, c. 2; ed. Leon., 45/1: 9a, 8-10 [In de An., I, lect. 2 (ed. Angelus M. Pirotta, O.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1959], 6a-b, n. 16)]; De Verit., q. 9, a. 1, ad 3 (ed. Spiazzi, Quaest. disp., 1:180b81a); In Boet. de Trin., q. 2, a. 2, ad 5; q. 5, a. 1, ad 5. Cf. Expos. Post. Anal., I, lect. 25, 43. 83 Cf. John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises, trans. Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, and G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 511. 84 I Phys., lect. 1 (ed Maggiolo, 3b-4a, n. 4) lists in descending order of generality the following particular sciences, subalternated to physics, which are focused on some species of motion: physics: mobile being in general-+ De caelo: local motions of the heavenly bodies-+ De generatione: motion to form and common motion of the elements -+ Meteororum: special 618 DENIS]. M. BRADLEY Aquinas regularly contrasts the principles, subject matters, and ends of the theoretical and practical sciences. 85 The theoretical sciences originate in the principles that reason observes in things; practical sciences originate in the human reason and will, in those orders made by reason, wherein reason directs the choices of the human producer or agent. The moral order is what reason produces by ordering the acts of the human will. 86 From this perspective, Thomistic ethics incorporates what Wolfgang Kluxen calls a "metaphysics of action" 87-more precisely, a metaphysical psychology that thematizes intellect and will as the causes of a human action. But it is not, despite what some Thomist epigones continue to say, subalternated to the psychology that it incorporates;88 while it utilizes, it does not receive, its proper first principles from psychology. Ethics as such is not a theoretical but a practical science which has its own underived and self-evident (per se nota) first principles inherent in practical reason itself. 89 It does not need metaphysics or psychology to provide-nor could metaphysics or psychology provide solely from the innate resources of theoretical reason-those prescriptive principles that move men to act. 90 Ethics is directive; its end is good action. 91 Its first principles must be preceptive; in fact, they are the quasiaspects of the motion of the elements -->De mineralibus: motion of non-living mixed bodies -->De anima: living bodies-->more specialized biological sciences. Physics considers the human soul as existing in matter or embodied; metaphysics considers it insofar as it can exist disembodied or apart from matter: see II Phys., lect. 4 (88b, n. 175). 85 See, for example, STh I, q. 86, a. 3, sed contra. 86 See STh II-II, q. 26, a. 1, ad 3: "ordo pertinet ad rationem sicut ad ordinantem, sed ad vim appetitivam pertinet sicut ad ordinatam." 87 See Wolfgang Kluxen, "Metaphysik und praktische Vernunft: Uber ihre Zuordnung bei Thomas vonAquin," in ThomasvonAquin 1274/1974 (Munich: Kosel-Verlag, 1974), 87-88. 88 Cf. Jacobus M. Ramirez, O.P., Opera Omnia, vol. 4, De actibus humanis: In I-II Summa theologiae divi Thomae Expositio (QQ. VI-XXI), ed. Victorino Rodiguez, O.P. (Madrid: C. S. I. C., 1972), 502, n. 660. 89 See De Malo, q. 3, a. 12, ad 13 (ed. Bazzi-Pession, 516): "The universal principles of the natural law, about which no one errs, pertain to synderesis." 90 See VI Nie. Ethic., lect. 2 (ed. Spiazzi, 311a-b, n. 1135): "Speculative reason moves nothing, because it says nothing about pursuing or fleeing." 91 See De Malo, q. 3, a. 6 (ed. Bazzi-Pession, Quaest. disp., 2:505b): "Practical reason directs in moral acts"; II Nie. Ethic., lect. 9 (ed. Spiazzi, lOOa, n. 351): "The end of this science is not the manifestation of truth but a good work." METAPHYSICS AND ETHICS IN STUMP'S AQUINAS 619 innate precepts of practical reason that enjoin pursuit of the basic human goods and avoidance of the basic human evils III. ANALYTIC THOMISM Leonard Kennedy's A Catalogue ofThomists, 1270-1900 92 runs to 240 pages without including any of the twentieth-century Thomists! In the twenty-first century, there will doubtless be more to count and add to that long honor roll. Enter the Analytic Thomists: the burgeoning school of Analytic Thomism, elevated as such in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 93 is the most recent, Anglophone arriviste within the long history of Thomisms that have attempted to bring Aquinas into line with "current philosophical debate." Its arrival signifies the senility or perhaps demise of its immediate Continental predecessor, "Transcendental Thomism." Over more than seven hundred years, Thomism has included "primitive Tho mists" (12 7 4-135 O); "golden-age" or "classical Thomists" (the great commentators: Capreolus, Cajetan, and Sylvester of Ferrar, 1400-1540); late or "silver-age," sixteenth and seventeenth-century Thomists (Banez, John of St. Thomas, the Carmelite Salmanticenses, Billuart, not to mention the eclectic "Scotist-Thomist" Suarez); innumerable nineteenth-century Thomists; and, after the appearance of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical, Aeterni Patris (1879), twentieth-century "neo-Thomists" of many and, often, far from harmonious stripes. 94 Most if not all the proponents of these doctrinally and methodologically variant Thomisms claimed to be disciples of the historical Aquinas, even when they clearly deviated from, as Fabro and especially Gilson and his students were wont to point out and criticize, Aquinas's 92 Leonard Kennedy, A Catalogue ofThomists, 1270-1900 (Houston, Tex.: Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas, 1987). 93 See John Haldane, "Thomism, Analytical,'' in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honerich (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 875. 94 See A. Krempel, La doctrine de la relation chez Saint Thomas: Expose historique et systematique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1952), ch. 3, "Les commentateurs de Saint Thomas," 20-53; Romola Comandini, et al., Saggi sulla rinascita del Tomismo nel secolo XIX, Pontificia Accademia Teologica Romana (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1974). 620 DENIS J. M. BRADLEY own principles and method. 95 The truly Herculean task, it would seem, is not relating Aquinas to whomsoever's philosophical contemporaries but to think through one's own current philosophical problems using Aquinas's own principles. Against the background of modern European philosophy, perhaps Maritain came as close as anyone to writing, albeit with considerable and contestable help from Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, such a Thomist philosophy in the twentieth century. 96 Against the quite different background of Anglophone philosophy, will the Analytic Thomists, collectively or singly, do so in the coming decades of the twenty-first century? No a priori answer need be proffered or accepted: the pudding, in each case, must first be made before it can be eaten. To her credit, this is what Stump has attempted to do, although it would be premature to identify what she or other Analytic Thomists have so far accomplished with "handing on Aquinas's thought in all of its richness and power" (x). The history of "Thomisms" shows how elusive that goal is. Still, I salute Stump's latest intellectually earnest and substantive contribution, which is bound to be provocative among her analytic coworkers, to what she recognizes as a collective and "on-going process" (ibid.). Even textual nitpickers sitting on the historical sidelines will have much to learn from this book. 95 Cf. Gery Prouvost, Thomas d'Aquin et les thomismes (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1996), 9: "In the course of history, almost all the essential theses of Thomas were either contested or ignored by one or the other 'Thornist. "' 96 Cf. Prouvost, Thomas d'Aquin et les thomismes, 14: "Gilson used to say of Maritain that he was a much more original thinker than it would have been possible for a true historian to be. He [Gilson] would add, 'I do not know what Thomas himself would have thought of this kind of disciple."' BOOK REVIEWS The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, 0.P. By RICHARD PEDDICORD, 0.P. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2005. Pp. 250. $25.00 (cloth). ISBN 158731-752-4. The purpose of this book is to make known several aspects of Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's teaching for the good of philosophy, theology, and spirituality at the beginning of the third millenium. This study is laid out in nine chapters. The first chapter is a brief introduction (1-4) and the last chapter is an expanded conclusion (211-32). The bulk of the book is divided into two parts: from chapter 2 to chapter 5, the author presents Garrigou-Lagrange in his Dominican and intellectual contexts; from chapter 6 to chapter 8, he presents the philosophical, theological, and spiritual choices of Garrigou-Lagrange. This division of the topics is clear, but not entirely suitable, as we will show further. The presentation of Garrigou-Lagrange's life (chapters 2 and 3) is well done. The author. has well noted the restoration of the Dominican charism following the impulse of Lacordaire, and the amazing renewal of Thomism following Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris. For readers not familiar with this religious and intellectual world, this presentation is clear and accurate. Concerning GarrigouLagrange's great intellectual relationships (chapters 4 and 5), the author focuses on Blonde! and Bergson in the field of philosophy, and on Maritain and Chenu with respect to politics and history. Against the philosophers-well situated in the context of the crisis of Modernism (66-73)-Garrigou-Lagrange was principally the advocate of the definition of speculative truth (adequatio rei et intellectu). Blonde! proposed a new approach (adequatio realis mentis et vitae) (74-78) that Garrigou-Lagrange interpreted as knowledge by connaturality, and consequently subordinate to speculative truth. This subordination was, for him, the only way to avoid the separation, in the field of the revealed truths, between the {ides qua and the {ides quae, which would leave only internal adhesion (trust by confidence) without the intellectual objectivity of knowledge (172-73). The author's presentation here is very well done, and the nonspecialist will find this a helpful guide to understanding this aspect of modernity. The conflicts with Maritain and Chenu pertained to the question of history. The author carefully recalls the contexts of the Action franqaise (Charles 621 622 BOOK REVIEWS Maurras), of the civil war in Spain, and of the German occupation of France during the Second World War (88-100). The cause of the clash betwwen Garrigou-Lagrange and Maritain was not philosophical or directly theological, but concerned rather the appreciation of political contingences with a certain sense of history. One wishes that the author would have supported his presentation by appeal to the edited correspondence between ]. Maritain and Ch. Journet. Some letters show very well the form of Garrigou-Lagrange's mind, unable to accept a certain sense of history. The same thing appears clearly in the presentation of the relationship between Chenu and Garrigou-Lagrange (100112). Concerning the history of Christian doctrines, the opposition of both was without resolution. With chapter 6, we enter the second part of the book, focused on GarrigouLagrange's choices in philosophy, theology, and spirituality. For the presentation of Garrigou-Lagrange's Thomism, the author recalls his two main mentors: Fr. Ambroise Gardeil (115-18), who gave his student the strongest metaphysical convictions; and Fr. Benoit Schwalm (118-19), from whom he learned to regard Blondel's philosophy of knowledge as one of the most dangerous propositions against Scholastic teaching. The author thinks that Thomism is, first, a metaphysic correctly connectedby its realism-to the fact of public revelation. The metaphysical basics are shown (124-35) after a short mention of the theory of knowledge. The author is right when he presents the "structure" of this metaphysic that is based on the principle of contradiction (sometimes called noncontradiction) immediately perceived by common sense. It would have been good to have a more consistent development on this topic. It was the purpose of Garrigou-Lagrange's first book Le sens commun: La philosophie de l'etre et les formules dogmatiques (Paris, 1908) published at the height of the Modernist crisis. The presentation of analogy of being as the unique means to avoid pantheism and agnosticism also proceeds too quickly, but the whole chapter gives a good introduction to the reader not especially knowledgeable concerning the fundamental choices of Garrigou-Lagrange. Chapter 7, entitled "Garrigou-Lagrange: What is Theology?" (136-77), has two main parts: inside Thomism, the author situates Garrigou-Lagrange's conception between those of Marin-Sola and Charlier; outside Thomism, the author focuses on the affair called "the new theology." The discussion in the Thomistic school had to do principally with the question of the value of theological conclusions. Marin-Sola was in favor of a maximum value, and Charlier defended a minimum value. Garrigou-Lagrange, from the commentary on the first question of the Summa Theologiae, wanted to show how, exactly, theology is a science, though demonstration-in the strict sense-is not acceptable in this discipline. The conception of theology that emerges from this point of view is ambivalent, and the author could have developed this part much more. On the one hand, Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that the most important function of theology is to sustain, and if need be to defend, the revealed truths. Such a conception can obscure the aspect of theology that is also a research into BOOK REVIEWS 623 a deeper knowledge of revelation. That can explain the fact that GarrigouLagrange was principally interested in reestablishing what is already known in its purity form, and defending it against innovations that he regarded as incompatible. On the other hand, he sustains the goal of theology to provide a doctrinal synthesis, for which the distinction between positive theology and speculative theology is essential. It seems to me that his thinking is, on this point, deeper and always valid. The event of "the new theology" reveals another aspect of GarrigouLagrange's mind. The author seems to agree with Garrigou-Lagrange when he says that "the new theology," because it was very historical, veered toward Modernism in triple principal theses: a denial of the supernatural as an object of certain knowledge; an exclusive immanence of the divine and of revelation; a total emancipation of scientific research from Church dogma (146-48). This formulation may not be the best. In fact, the concern in this matter was the compatibility of positive theology and speculative theology. When H. Bouillard wrote, "a theology that does not belong to the present moment, is false" (148), he seemed, to the Thomists of strict observance, to be saying that positive theology-principally patristic-should be the whole of theology, putting speculative theology and its firm conclusions aside. Concerning this disputatio the author would have done well to use the article of Mgr. Bruno de Solages, "Pour l'honneur de la theologie; Jes contresens du P. Garrigou-Lagrange," Bulletin de litterature ecclesiastique (Toulouse, 194 7). This article shows that Garrigou-Lagrange could read the books he disapproved very imperfectly. In fact, thinking to be himself the def ens or fidei, he could be ardent and deeply prejudiced against the "adversaries." We see here the sort of character flaw that led him into some important errors of judgments (concerning the Spanish civil war and the French government of Marechal Petain, for example). Certainly, it is in chapter 8 that the author manifests Garrigou-Lagrange's greatest contribution: spirituality (178-210). The book shows very well the triple effort of the Master: the study of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas together with St. John of the Cross, the correction of the spirituality of the Counter Reform, and, as the result of both, the reopening of the fullness of Christian life to all people, in every state of life. This triple effort is Garrigou-Lagrange's true claim to fame. The author presents very clearly the main lines of his doctrine-the three ages of spiritual life, the universal call to holiness, the ethic of virtues and not of precepts, the nature of supernatural grace, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, contemplation acquired and contemplation infused, etc. This part of the book deserves particular commendation. Taking into account that spirituality is the main part of Garrigou-Lagrange's work, and that this doctrine had a real and deep influence at Vatican II (in particular for chapter 5 of Lumen gentium), it seems that the author's purpose would have been better accomplished if he had proceeded differently in the second part of the book. The valorization of Garrigou-Lagrange's work could be presented first in spirituality, with all the speculative points (philosophy and theology) that were the fundamental basis of this spirituality displayed as it 624 BOOK REVIEWS unfolds. In others words, to proceed regressively would have been, perhaps, more illuminating. That would have avoided too-trenchant appreciations such as, "If his form of dogmatic theology failed to win the day at the Second Vatican Council, we will see that his most passionately held spiritual propositions were incorporated into official Catholic teaching by the Council Fathers" (179). On the contrary, Vatican H discretely but really, for important dogmatic points, supposes and uses the proper wisdom of speculative scholastic theology. For example, the order of the two first chapters of Lumen gentium-Church as mystery and Church as people of God-presents the Christian community first from the point of view of its essence, and then from the point of view of history: the reality which is developing in history is exactly the reality given at Pentecost. A speculative theology founded upon a metaphysic is necessary to explain this teaching. For another example: the conclusion of the first chapter of Lumen gentium (8) first presents the constitutive being of the Church ("one" [§1] and "unique" [§2]), and then mentions the moral aspect of this being (Church without sin but with sinners [§3]). The one who wants to understand this teaching apart from the scientific Scholastic notions runs the risk-realized after Vatican II by some theologians-of misunderstanding the Church's supernatural self-consciousness, a datum of faith. Criticisms aside, I fully agree with the author's basic conviction. Although I would have presented this matter differently, nonetheless we may be grateful to him for the contribution he makes toward identifying a better knowledge of the necessary or useful conditions for an actual speculative theology. For this effort, Garrigou-Lagrange remains one of the Masters (and not "Monster") to whom we must be able to appeal. BENOIT-DOMINIQUEDE LA SOUJEOLE, 0.P. University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. By JOHN T. NOONAN, JR. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Pp. 297 + xiv. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-26803603-9. John Noonan wants to do for the commandments what John Newman did for the creed. Just as Newman showed there have been developments in the Church's understanding of the creed, so Noonan wants to show there have been developments in the Church's understanding of morals. As Newman had his test cases, things like Nicea and devotion to the saints and the papacy, so Noonan has his test cases. He treats Church teaching on slavery, usury, religious freedom, BOOK REVIEWS 625 and divorce. One of Newman's criteria for a true development was that it did not contradict past teaching. Noonan, however, claims to discover that this test does not hold for development in morals. Later teaching, he thinks, has flatly contradicted prior teaching.Newman discerned several tests for the development of doctrine (just one of which was logical consistency with prior teaching). Noonan ends up with but one test for the development of moral doctrine; namely, that it be true to the "rule of faith," by which he means, not the creed, but the commandments of love, and according as love proceeds in such a way that we are attentive to our collective moral experience and careful to cultivate empathy with our fellow man. Nature, or insight into nature, especially human nature, is discarded as a criterion, except insofar as it tells us of the inviolability of the human person. Past that, love is left to discover its own way, by experience and empathy. To some, this will seem less like a description of the progress of Catholic moral wisdom than an embrace of modern liberalism. Evidently, if true, Noonan's conclusion is important, suggesting as it does an entire (if slimmed-down) program of moral discovery and teaching, giving us to anticipate the most astonishing developments and preparing us to accept them with equanimity. Is it true? Everything depends on whether or not present Catholic moral teaching really does contradict past teaching (for if it does, then indeed there will be love alone and by itself, blindly groping its way). Noonan says it does. The Church once condemned usury but now grants the legitimacy of interest-bearing loans. The Church used not to countenance divorce, but now the pope regularly divorces couples in nonsacramental marriages. Once it was thought just and necessary to burn heretics, but now it is taught that their freedom of conscience must be respected. Especially, since half the book is devoted to this one issue, it once was held that slavery could be morally permissible, but now slavery is condemned as intrinsically evil, such that it was never, is not now, nor ever can be under any circumstances whatsoever morally permissible. It will be enough to treat two of the four test cases. First, slavery. Noonan reports in some detail the acceptance of slavery by New Testament Christians, the Fathers of the Church, popes, bishops, priests, Christian people, and theologians. The tradition, however and as he shows, came to distinguish ever more carefully between just and unjust title to slavery. Just title comprised things like capture in a just war and punishment for crime. Congruent with this, we find papal condemnation of the arbitrary enslavement of peoples of the new world. In the nineteenth century, and at the instigation of the British government, there is condemnation of the slave trade. Condemnation of the slave trade or of unjust enslavement is by no means, of course, the condemnation of slavery itself in all forms and under all circumstances. Come the Second Vatican Council, however, slavery (servitus) is characterized without qualification as something "offensive to human dignity," in a passage (Gaudium et spes 27) that encompasses a dozen other things, all described as "shameful," ranging from abortion, euthanasia, and torture, to "subhuman living conditions" and "deportation," also without qualification. Clearly, this is not a 626 BOOK REVIEWS very finely grained judgment. No one will think every deportation however defined something shameful because offensive to human dignity. But then, this same passage from Gaudium et spes is to be found in Veritatis splendor (80) sutured together with a discussion of intrinsically evil acts and as containing illustrations thereof. Noonan concludes that the pope has declared slavery to be always and everywhere and of itself "intrinsically evil," flatly contradicting the entire previous moral tradition from the apostles to the manuals of the twentieth century. It is hard to conceive that Noonan's reading of Veritatis splendor here is correct. In the first place, it is acts that are or are not said to be intrinsically evil. But "slavery" (servitus) does not name an act; it is not the designation of an action. "Slaving," on the other hand and to be sure, names an action. If I debark off the coast of West Africa, descend on a village, snatch twenty children, return to the ship and subsequently sell them to a planter in Haiti, have I done something intrinsically evil? Yes. Slaving-that can very well comprise an intrinsically evil act. But "slavery," as the name of an institution or arrangement, encompasses many acts. If I feed one of my slaves, have I done something intrinsically evil? Probably not. If I beat my slave within an inch of his life for malingering, have I done something intrinsically evil? Probably. And what of "owning slaves" just as such? Noonan says this is in itself evil. But it is hard to see how. Suppose I find myself by gift or grant the legal owner of slaves in Mississippi in the 1850s; am I by that fact in a state of sin? What action have I performed? Is my sm the failure to manumit the slaves immediately and post haste? Obviously, that will not do. Slavery is not an act. We might say it is an economic and legal arrangement according to which one person has a right in law and an unimpeded opportunity in social reality to treat another person badly and even contrary to the moral law. That does not mean the person has acquired that right and opportunity by doing anything immoral, or that the right will be exercised so as to obliterate the human dignity of the slave. The fact that the state gives me the legal right to treat enslaved persons very badly indeed does not mean that I avail myself of it. The state now gives every pregnant woman in America the legal right to kill her unborn child, and abortion is intrinsically evil. But her legal possession of that right makes her guilty of nothing. It is a bad thing for her to have that right. It is a bad thing to do anything so as to acquire that right or endow others with it. But just having the right can be innocent. Just having the right does not mean it will be exercised. The evocation of abortion introduces a second reason why Noonan's reading of Veritatis splendor is questionable. In Evangelium vitae, John Paul II condemns abortion. But no-he condemns direct abortion, willed either as an end or a means. That is, he is careful to define his terms. He is careful also to review at length the entire previous tradition before he pronounces judgment. When he does, it is rather solemnly phrased, and he makes his warrants express: "This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal BOOK REVIEWS 627 Magisterium" (62). He takes similar care to define euthanasia when he condemns it in similarly solemn words (65). What is there remotely like this in the supposed condemnation of slavery as intrinsically evil? The answer is "nothing," and the upshot is that the we can by no means imagine the same pope meaning to make the same kind of judgment on the list of the fifteen or so things listed in the quotation from Gaudium et spes included in Veritatis splendor. Noonan appeals to another text from John Paul II, an allocution given on the island of Goree, Senegal, in 1992. However, neither does this text pronounce slavery intrinsically evil. The pope certainly condemns the kind of slavery that was supported by the trade from Goree, and he certainly condemns the slave trade, recalling its condemnation by Pope Pius II. He takes it for granted that in general, slavery destroys human life, is oppressive, invites a failure to recognize our brothers as in the image of God, and conduces to disobeying the commandment of love. He takes it for granted that in general, almost always and perhaps in every case we know of, slavery results from a moral failure, or is connected with moral failure, and has terrible consequences of further moral evil and human suffering and diminishment. It could be that for fallen men slavery is always bound up with moral wrong and bad moral attitudes, breeds further moral evil, and entails destruction and suffering. But this does not say, nor did John Paul II say, that it is intrinsically evil. Noonan also thinks that the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom marks a clean reversal of previous Church teaching in no longer countenancing the coercion of heretics. The distinction formerly in play between the infidel, who was not to be coerced, and the heretic, who could be, is abandoned inDignitatis humanae. Every human being by reason of his human dignity is declared to possess the right of immunity from coercion of any kind, from any group, individual, or state, in matters of religion. This means, for Noonan, that it was always wrong to restrict the religious freedom of persons, and so he finds himself in agreement with Marcel Lefebvre, whom he quotes, "If what is being taught [in Dignitatis humanae] is true, what the Church has taught is false." Noonan and Lefebvre disagree on the truth of the condition, the "if" clause; but they are in perfect agreement on the truth of the conditional as a whole. This should give us pause. Just as Lefebvre could not imagine that the modern state and society required a new solution to the problem of the relation of Church and state, so Noonan cannot imagine that ancient state and society, in which to be a citizen was also to be a Catholic Christian, could demand of the state a discharge of responsibility for the common good different from what is called for today. It would be a miracle if the reader were not often thankful for the information contained in Noonan's narrative and did not sometimes share his judgment as to the lack of moral insight of this, that, or the other Father, pope, theologian, or canonist. It would be a greater miracle if everyone were to agree with him on what has changed and what has stayed the same in the moral teaching of the Church. One may find his constant invitation to marvel at the difference of sensibility, ancient and modern, medieval and contemporary as the 628 BOOK REVIEWS case may be, a little wearisome, but that is difficult matter of taste. To his credit, Noonan tries energetically not to patronize the past and not to hold our ancestors accountable to standards of which they were ignorant. But as to the standards themselves, and quite remarkably given the historical erudition he displays with grace and wit throughout the book, he remains as intransigent with regard to the universality of proximate principles of conduct as any seventeenthcentury classicist may be supposed to be. On that score, if Owen Chadwick were to write some volume, From Bossuet to Noonan, the path would be long, but we should arrive where we began. GUY MANSINI, 0.S.B. Saint Meinrad School of Theology Saint Meinrad, Indiana Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes. By PATRICKBURKE. Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 2002. Pp. 320. $20.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8232-2219-5. It is refreshing to read a recent study about Karl Rahner that understands him. The current state of Rahner studies has brought this irony upon us. Excessive energy has been misguidedly directed toward revising Rahner into one or other of the various schools of thought with which his erudition enters into dialogue. This revisionism includes efforts to align Rahner with Wittgenstein and postmodernism. It also includes efforts to turn Rahner into a Heidegger-manque, despite Rahner's explicit criticism that his onetime teacher's notion of being is tantamount to nothingness. This is not to say that sustaining Rahner's dialogue with diverse intellectual currents is bootless. Quite the contrary. The whole thrust of his project of retrieval is to do precisely this: to disclose deeper levels of meaning in Thomism by reading it in light of the tradition of Kant to Heidegger. What peril these efforts court, however, is overlooking the fact that Rahner remained unapologetically a Thomist. In the face of modernity, he was eager to reground the analogy of being that undergirds and informs his entire theological endeavor. Analogy opens the contingent human mind to affirm the eternal in the world of historical experience. It infuses vitality into truth claims about God, ecclesially mediated doctrines, and a morality of the natural law. At the core of Patrick Burke's reinterpretation of Rahner is Rahner's interpretation of Thomism. As an Aristotelian realist, Rahner affirms that all judgments made about the world are grounded in the empirical datum of sensuous assimilation as a necessary cause. In order for this datum (or phantasm) to be consciously articulated as knowledge, the intelligibility it implicitly contains must be liberated by the human mind, explicitly thematized as a concept, and BOOK REVIEWS 629 affirmed as the intelligibility precisely of the particular object initially confronted by sensibility. Traditionally called abstraction, conceptualization, and conversion or judgment, this threefold process is creatively recast by Rahner as "dialectical analogy." As Burke explains, this means that knowing is to be understood first and foremost as a dynamism, in which the human mind reaches out, or emanates, from itself through its corporeal faculties to the objective world. Assimilating this world, the mind returns to itself, where it consciously constructs this world under the governing aegis of absolute being. Although the absolute can never be objectified by finite intelligence, nonetheless, insofar as the mind yearns for it as its final cause, Rahner claims that the mind intends it-even implicitly affirms it-in everything known by mind. Within this broad dialectic of mind's emanation and return, "a dynamic oscillation or Schwebe" obtains that coalesces the threefold process into a unity (viii). Knowledge terminates in a judgment of truth precisely because of the contrast in the mind between the internalized phantasm and the horizon of absolute being implicitly intended. At no point in the process is the particular datum of sense obviated, sublated, or transcended. Abstraction occurs because the mind knows the universal by sandwiched contrast between the particular and the intended absolute. For its part, conversion obtains only because the universal, once liberated, is immediately grasped as the universal in and of the intuited particular. As Burke trenchantly observes, within Rahner's dynamic noesis, "there is always and simultaneously a static conceptualizing moment" (ibid.). Hence, the judgment of truth for Rahner is analogous. It explicitly affirms the particular object against the absolute, whose existence it thereby implicitly affirms. As Burke points out, Rahner earns heavy dividends from capitalizing his theology in the metaphysics of dialectical analogy. It affords him the luxury of a convenient shift of emphasis grounded in the oscillation that constitutes knowledge. On this point, Rahner's method, in my view, might be imagined as an ellipse: it is constituted by two foci that, through dynamic tension, create a unity. The ellipse is human knowing, whereas the foci are specific definition (the categorical) and unlimited openness (the transcendence intended by absolute being). Burke offers amply convincing theological examples of this epistemic ellipse, but his analysis of Rahner's theory of doctrinal development most incisively pinpoints its advantages and problems. On the one hand, Rahner unequivocally asserts the necessity of dogmatic propositions. These progressively thematize the primordial experience of transcendence, revealed as the incarnate Word, who is sustained in the Church as the paradigm of history by the Spirit. On the other hand, Rahner is sensitive to the inescapable exigency of contemporary hermeneutics. Propositions demand interpretation, even more so if they obtain, as he avers, as a dynamic moment within the unlimited intentionality of intelligence. What then can be said about the efficacy of magisterial authority? Confronted for instance by an uncomfortable moral norm, a Christian might justifiably swing from the 630 BOOK REVIEWS categorical to the transcendent, ignoring the norm "while waiting for a new and better formulation" (225). Burke proposes that this theological impasse precipitated by dialectical analogy is due to a weak grounding of the second moment of knowledge's threefold process, conceptualization. On the one hand, Rahner innovatively retrieves from traditional Thomism both the agent intellect responsible for abstraction and the conversion responsible for judgment. On the other hand, he awkwardly imposes on his method the passive intellect. Traditionally, this intellect bears responsibility for the formal articulation of the abstracted universal prior to its reunion with the particular datum. Lacking a clear function, the passive intellect, now noetically relativized, fails to execute a full followthrough, leaving concepts vaguely defined. As a presumable result of their translucence, religious propositions consequently require the ceaseless reinterpretation that can undermine precisely what Rahner ostensibly wishes to buttress: true statements about God, doctrine, and morality. This is a provocative, subtle, and penetrating criticism. I do not, however, find it convincing. In my view, Rahner's creative recasting of knowledge's threefold process has neatly shaved the passive intellect with Ockham's razor. While refusing to pull it out by its root, he has effectively redistributed its function between abstraction and conversion. The passive intellect traditionally serves as the bridge between these two epistemic moments. It operates on the assumption that the universal, once liberated, is somehow disjoined from the intuited particular and needs explicit thematizing before conversion rejoins it. Conceptualization thus obtains as moment of spiritual suspension. Whatever reasons the tradition may offer for the transitional role of the passive intellect, once Rahner understands the threefold process as always and everywhere grounded in the particular datum, it is the datum itself, as regulated by mind, that serves as the bridge connecting the process. Conceptualization does not and cannot obtain in spiritual suspension. It obtains simultaneously both in and through the particular and in and through abstraction and conversion. In his book on Rahner's philosophical foundations, Thomas Sheehan aptly insists on this point. The upshot is that the passive intellect, for all intents and purposes, becomes redundant. The concept therefore retains its full force because no function has been lost, only an empty name, whose disembodied service to Thomism's hylomorphic anthropology remains highly questionable in any case. Furthermore, even if it were needed, no shoring up of Rahner's already nuanced understanding of conceptualization will spare religious propositions from interpretation. If the Church has legitimated the historical-critical method for the study of the inspired word of God, surely this is no less requisite for the full understanding of its own pronouncements. The problem lies, therefore, not in Rahner's method, but in the intellectual culture of modernity. If interpretation is inescapable, then we need to probe more deeply into the plight of the Christian who would use the openness of interpretation as an escape from an inconvenient categorical norm. Under what warrant does (and should) a BOOK REVIEWS 631 Christian exercise the asceticism of ecclesial obedience? Surely it is not under the consistently patent persuasiveness of the propositions themselves. As Cardinal Newman observed, to the extent that any believer locates the source of the truth of these propositions anywhere other than in the moral authority of the Church to make them, he is misguided. A Christian assents to the truth of magisterial statements because he trusts the Spirit acting in and through the Church as the prime sacrament of grace. Trust does not make them true; but it does create the context within which their truth can be seen. Once the source of truth is embraced in moral certitude, then the teaching it enunciates will be believed. Once believed, doctrinal and moral propositions are not easily vaporized under interpretation's pressure. On the contrary, they become internalized as authentic guides for action. In short, the problem of the reception of authoritative norms will not be resolved even if categorical clarity could discount interpretation. At root, because this problem is morally mediated, it remains more volitional than epistemic. It centers on whether the Church's living witness can compellingly allure the modern person, solipsistic and wounded, to trust what it efficaciously signifies. In the second chapter, Burke discusses what, in my view, is the central tension in Rahner's theology, the relation between nature and grace. As is well known, Rahner's concept of nature has no concrete subsistence. It obtains as a "remainder concept" whose hypothetical value preserves the gratuity of grace. The Incarnation means that history is categorically shot through with an "experience of grace" (71-72). As a "supernatural existential," this experience implicitly elevates a purely natural human transcendence. It endows all persons with an "obediential potency" capable of rendering their sincere religious aspirations "anonymously Christian." If this is the case, then Burke rightly asks whether the Church retains any salvific efficacy. Rahner's relation between nature and grace seems to reduce the proclamation of the gospel to a mere metaphor whose purpose is to make grace's implicit ubiquity explicitly patent. Consistent with his thesis, Burke maintains that Rahner's failure adequately to specify the meaning of nature as a remainder concept is owing to the Schwebe's eclipse of the passive intellect. Skeptical of this thesis, my view finds it owing to Rahner's failure more potently to tease out the implications of dialectical analogy. It is to be accepted that, as a remainder concept, nature will resist a clear distinction from grace. Precisely because Scholasticism too facilely envisaged a separable world of grace superadded onto nature, the subtler doctrine of the Greek Fathers required a salutary retrieving. As onetime collaborators, Rahner and Balthasar effected this in the early 1960s. Asserting that "no slice of 'pure nature' [exists] in this world," Balthasar refused independently to hypostatize nature. On the contrary, indebted to Przywara, he developed it as an analogous concept. Prelapsarian, postlapsarian, and redeemed nature are all shot through with grace, although in different ways. However charged with the divine life, redeemed nature still retains the effects of the fall. Where sin ceases and "grace abounds all the more" (Rom 5 :20) may be impossible to specify. But precisely because nature asserts its remains in more 632 BOOK REVIEWS than a hypothetical sense, Balthasar's analogy supports the Church's concrete efficacy as the sacrament of salvation. This is a move that Rahner's system, grounded in analogy, could easily have exploited, perhaps more effectively than did Balthasar. As a tribute to its competence, each chapter of Burke's book is a tour de force inviting Rahner's enduring legacy to interpret issues of immediate concern. May it serve as a vade mecum for all who, like Rahner, share the conviction that metaphysics is the only adequate hermeneutic of the Christian religion. STEPHENM. FIELDS, S.J. Georgetown University Washington, D.C. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. Edited by A. S. MCGRADE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 405. $60.00 (cloth), $24.00 (paper). ISBN 0-521-80603-8 (cloth), 0-521-00063-7 (paper). Seldom has a scholar had a more productive retirement. Professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, Arthur Stephen McGrade has produced several substantive scholarly works in the years since he left the classroom, the latest being one of the celebrated Cambridge Companion series, namely, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. McGrade has assembled for his volume an array of authorities from both sides of the Atlantic and issued his assignments according to a combination of historical and thematic approaches. Far from approaching medieval philosophical texts as discussions to be gotten through, it is McGrade's aim in this volume to stimulate readers to get into the discussions. While he avoids weighing the solutions, the editor aims instead at a presentation of the range and freshness of medieval thought; at the same time, he allows that some have found and still find timeless truth in the amazing insights of those pre-Enlightenment thinkers. The distinguishing feature of philosophy in the medieval period, however, is that most often it served the ends of religious belief; in fact, the paradox is that the best philosophy was done by theologians and within a theological context. While acknowledging the distinctiveness of the disciplines, McGrade sagely confronts the historical situation and invites his authors to attend to the mutual relationships of faith and reason as they arise in the different contexts discussed in their respective chapters. In an elegantly written introductory chapter, Steven Marrone provides the context for what will follow, giving due attention to societal, ecclesiastical, and economic factors. As an organizing principle, Marrone's division of medieval philosophy into three phases (the patristic, monastic, and high medieval) makes BOOK REVIEWS 633 good sense. Sketched also is the rise of political philosophy, spurred by the bitter conflicts between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire, a struggle that left both sides depleted and prey to the rising national states of the fourteenth century. Marrone, moreover, restores a semblance of balance to scholarly assessment of that troubled century; the revised view, prompted in large measure by the preoccupations of analytic philosophers, sees the period as one of creative and vibrant philosophical activity, unlike the Gilson school of an earlier generation that saw it as one of disintegration and decline, the rupture of the Scholastic synthesis. Helpful is the table of Greek and Arabic works and the dates of their translation into Latin. Also helpful is a concluding section on the various genres of philosophical writing, With respect to the enigmatic Peter of Spain, Marrone correctly disassociates him from Pope John XXI; it is, however, not certain that he was a Dominican, as Marrone asserts. There follows a chapter on "two medieval ideas," as they are labeled: namely, eternity and hierarchy, which at first glance sound like so many History of Ideas sessions at medieval-studies conferences. But the authors, John Marenbon and David Luscombe, have found a connection: "eternity and hierarchy can be regarded as something like the temporal and ontological coordinates of medieval thought." The studies on both counts are useful. As complements to Marrone's overview, which focuses principally on philosophy by Christians, are lucid appraisals on philosophy in Islam (as author Therese-Anne Druart appropriately calls it) and the philosophy of Diaspora Jews, by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein. The latter has the courage to confront the painful fact that at certain times and places in Christian realms Jewish philosophers were subject to the same kind of discrimination suffered by their coreligionists and thus hindered in the practice of their discipline; such an adverse political climate also negatively affected the reciprocity of intellectual influences. Notwithstanding, there were fruitful points of contact not only between Christians and Muslims but also between Christians and Jews at translation centers like Toledo and Palermo, which proved to be enormously enriching for Christian philosophers and theologians; not for nothing was Averroes commonly referred to as the Commentator (as if there were no other) and Maimonides as Rabbi, the teacher. A chapter on language and logic is offered by Elizabeth Ashworth, a worldclass scholar on the subject. There is no question that her exposition represents the state of the art; the problem is that it makes for a dense read and is inaccessible to all but those who have a background in this subset of medieval philosophy. My one quibble is the claim that Peter Helias's Summa super Priscianum represents the "first full summa on any subject," a claim that Eriugena scholars would dispute. Similarly dense is Stephen Menn's chapter on metaphysics, subtitled "God and Being." His jumping back and forth (as he puts it) between Muslim and Christian sources, while impressive as a display of his wide learning, often does not pause long enough for the reader to catch his breath. He distinguishes for 634 BOOK REVIEWS example between physical and metaphysical proofs for God's existence in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, failing to account for (a) the empirical starting point for all the arguments (including the so-called ontological third and fourth ways) and (b) the conclusion to a single God, even in the "physical" proofs, something Aristotle's metaphysics lacked the sophistication to do. In a section entitled "Challenges about God and Esse," Menn discusses a position that must be maintained by every believing Christian (and Jew and Muslim)-namely, that God is both present to the world and at the same time totally other than the world-but misses the key topos: STh I, q. 8, a. 1. God is present to the world in a way analogous to the way the sun acts on the bodies in the solar system, always conferring being without ever becoming a part of the essences thus actualized. The place of natural philosophy in the curricula of medieval universities is Edith Dudley Sylla's topic. Often overlooked is the fact, as Edward Grant has pointed out, that it was the most widely taught discipline, yet (permit me to add) too often neglected by scholars. Even angelology had its place in such analyses, as Sylla points out, if only at times as presenting a test case for the viability of this or that physical theory-as indeed the Fourth Lateran Council's teaching on transubstantiation would be. I would have liked to have seen in this chapter some brief mention of the River Forest School of Thomism, the foundational principle of which was that Aquinas's philosophy as opposed to his theology is best gathered from his extracurricular commentaries on Aristotle. Some mention of the pioneers scholars Pierre Duhem and Anneliese Meier would also have been welcome. No account of medieval philosophy would be complete without a discussion of universals, the problem that dominated debate at the schools of the twelfth century. Gyula Klima's contribution traces the origin of the problem in Aristotle and its framing in the thought of Augustine and Boethius. The usual cast of characters is reviewed-Abelard, Aquinas, Ockham-but some prominence is also accorded to Henry of Ghent's interesting answer to the question. Klima argues that while the nominalists' semantic innovations succeeded in avoiding the ontological problems voiced by the realists, they led directly to a host of new epistemological problems; thus the moderni, he concludes, "helped push the interests of philosophers in a direction which became their major preoccupation in the modern period." Occupying a middle ground between corporeal natures (the province of the natural philosopher) and spiritual natures (the separate substances) was human nature and not surprisingly it was also the most fiercely contested. Robert Pasnau, author of this chapter, claims that the two views of the human composite, the Augustinian and the Aristotelian, could not have been more different: the introspective penchant of an Augustine as opposed to the essentially biological approach of an Aristotle. Within these parameters, moreover, lies a wide range of opinions. Perceptively portrayed are the many aspects of the problem: the mechanics of sensation (here giving due acknowledgment to the contribution of Alhacen), the complexities of cognitive BOOK REVIEWS 635 theory (including various interpretations of the brief but eminently puzzling passage in Aristotle's De anima respecting the active and passive intellects), the plurality versus the unicity of form in the human person (with the claim that Aquinas's position that the soul was the sole substantial form was his "most original and most divisive contribution"), the issue of free choice, and finally kinds of immortality. Pasnau sagely leaves details on the moral life and the life of the polis to other contributors. Bonnie Kent supplies the aforementioned chapter on the epistemology and psychology of moral philosophy, again with the claim that Augustine and his latter-day disciple Anselm on the one hand and Aristotle on the other supply the two poles of the Scholastic debate in the universities of the High Middle Ages. The problems engendered by the "eudaimonist principle," as the author dubs it, are forthrightly discussed. If the motivation for our every deed is the desire for happiness, how account for acts chosen out of a sense of duty or even altruistic love for another? Is the eudaimonist principle ultimately a threat to true morality? Moreover, how does the system of merit and reward square with grace? Can a pagan perform a meritorious act absent grace? Kent rounds out her review with a succinct examination of vice and sin on the one hand and various species of virtue on the other. Contributing on what has long been a topic of interest for him, James McEvoy reflects on the meaning of love-friendship and its relationship to beatitude. Cicero, Augustine, Boethius, Eriugena, Boethius of Dacia, Aquinas, Scotus, and-intriguingly-Joachim of Fiore are all mined for their views on the matter. For the most part, McEvoy concludes, medieval thinking on the ultimate good of beatitude can be described as "realistically otherworldly and theocentric in character." Finally, Annabel Brett argues that the medievals were heirs to the political discourse of the ancient thinkers, but their explorations of what constitutes the best political situation for human beings could not in their minds be separated from questions of value. Apart from the move of the Latin Averroists that claimed an autonomous sphere for their speculations, the theologians from Augustine onwards subordinated the temporal realm to the transcendent. Brett, however, accepts the De regno as being the work of Aquinas with no acknowledgment of the controverted nature of that work; the late Ignatius Eschmann spent much of his academic life puzzling over the question but in the end (literally the day before he died) determined that Aquinas had not been the author. The story would not be complete without some discussion of the continuity of medieval thought into modern philosophy, the subject of a recent SIEPM (Societe internationale pour l'etude de la philosophie medievale) conference in Boston. P. J. Fitzpatick and John Haldane offer an insightful chapter on the topic, canvassing the Renaissance and seventeenth century as well as "current engagements" (as Haldane puts it). Their conclusions stand as an another challenge to the traditional periodization of the history of philosophy. 636 BOOK REVIEWS Since medieval philosophical texts remain in large part unedited, Thomas Williams provides for the layman a very useful chapter on the process required for critically editing such texts and the pitfalls attendant upon relying on earlier printed editions. He includes, again for the nonspecialist, an exemplum from one of the Scotus manuscripts along with a transcription thereof, although I would not have characterized the hand as "semicursive." The ideal case, as Williams rightly notes, is when we possess the author's autograph, especially when the handwriting is dearly legible. Even here, however, the occasional problem presents itself: in Aquinas's autograph of his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, for example, the master writes "peccatum Christi," where he clearly intended to write "peccatum diaboli." Does the responsible critic correct the master or allow the error to stand? To be added to the list of editions in progress is the work of one of the commissions of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, which has undertaken editions of the Sentences commentaries of Richard Fishacre and, more recently, Robert Cowton. The bibliography is extensive, and the reader would have been better served had it been indexed. Inevitably in such works, given publishing deadlines and human fallibility, items are omitted that deserve inclusion: Medieval Philosophers, edited by Jeremiah Hackett, which is one of the volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography; and Armand Maurer's The Philosophy of William of Ockham in the Light of its Principles (1999), in many ways a corrective to the views of Marilyn Adams. Important for the documentation of the chapter by Fitzpatrick and Haldane is the collection of studies edited by Stephen Brown, Meeting of the Minds: The Relations between Medieval and Classical Modern European Philosophy (1999). The biographically arranged collection A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge Gracia and Timothy Noone, probably appeared too late to be considered, but would also have merited inclusion, as would the two-volume study by Steven Marrone on illumination theory and the critical edition of Alhacen's Perspectiva. R. JAMES LONG Fairfield University Fairfield, Connecticut Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium. By POPE JOHN PAUL II. NewYork: Rizzoli, 2005. Pp. xi+ 172. $19.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8478-2761-5. On any topic John Paul Il addresses at length, it is no easy task for his reader to draw the varied, deep insights into a simplified vision. I found this especially BOOK REVIEWS 637 true of the late pope's last published book, Memory and Identity. Here he interweaves his reflections born of experience under Nazism and Communism with his philosophical and theological ponderings about European history and culture. John Paul constructs a Christian world view for interpreting this experience and history. In doing so, he treats the nature and power of culture as such, the promotion or destruction of culture by governments throughout European history, and the corrective and ennobling effects the gospel had on European culture. He focuses lessons learned from history on contemporary and future politics and human welfare not only in Europe but also in the world at large. The pope's casual style in this work makes it difficult to capture his multilayered wisdom. The Holy Father himself edited Memory and Identity for publication, but it originated in a summer series of conversations with two Polish philosopher friends in 1993. In the book these friends ask leading questions to which John Paul responds in his usual style-experiential, phenomenological, anthropological, and faith-filled. As always, this pope's writings are permeated with valuable insights. He presents past discoveries of truth in fresh expressions and connections, and he provides stimulating glimpses and in-depth explorations of new truths. In an effort to draw together the flash points of the pontiff's wisdom in Memory and Identity I will make use of two main themes. The first theme is his tracing throughout European history both human cooperation with God and human independence from God. The second theme is God's providential response of mercy throughout that history. Always respecting human freedom, even when abused, God intervenes to draw from recurring evil ever greater good. All human history, for the Holy Father, is but a tale of cooperation with God and of independence from God. This interplay, evident from the beginning of European history, stands out sharply toward the end of the second millennium. The lesson to be learned, especially by today's Europeans, is that human freedom is "not only a gift but a task." Freedom self-destructs when choice divorces itself from the truth because "only the truth will make us free." But true freedom is achieved when truth guides free choice to pursue personal virtue and the common good. Human cooperation with God became dominant in Europe from the tenth to the seventeenth century through a positive response to evangelization. By and large, European thought, culture, and laws reached the heights of judging good and evil by God, by natural law, and by respect for nature. Thus a Europe-wide identity grew amid many rich subcultures. During this period, individuals and even some heads of state confronted evils through the perspective of Jesus Christ and his salvific cross. In the main, Europeans believed that, in his mercy, "God the Father had treated his Son as sin," to provide the sacrifice and obedience needed to satisfy justice between God and man. Jesus' death and resurrection enabled the sacrifices of his followers to draw from the evils they confronted in faith much greater good, such as forgiveness, justification, and eternal life. 638 BOOK REVIEWS Europe embraced this gospel truth that evil no longer had the last word to the extent of missionizing the known world. At its very best, European culture produced many saints who grew through three stages to experiential union with the Most Holy Trinity. They followed the Christian path in its purgative stage, choosing to ban evil from their lives by adhering to the commandments of God. An evil-free life led them progressively, in the illuminative stage, to discoveries of insight about human existence and the gospel that guided them in the cultivation of Christ-like virtues. This growth in character led them progressively into an awareness of the divine light that pervades all of creation. It is by this light that human choice can so align itself with God's will that the believer experiences true contemplation. He or she comes to see God in all things and experiences communion with God in every event. The cooperation with God that had defined Europe was replaced by independence from God through the Enlightenment's rejection of Christ and of God as the supreme reality, truth, and goodness. This independence came about largely through Descartes' shift to subjective thinking that allowed Europeans to decide for themselves standards of judgment about good and evil. This subjective shift set European life more and more outside of what is truly good for humans, fueling the dynamic of personal and social sin, that is, free choices serving selflove at the expense of love of God and of love of neighbor as oneself. Moreover, the Enlightenment guided free choice by utility or pleasure, overturning Aristotle's and Aquinas's long-held teaching that if the full truth of what is good for us guides choice, a matchless, ennobling joy results. The accumulation of sin in Europe led eventually to the social devastations of Nazism and communism and later to a new totalitarianism of unbridled capitalism, hedonism, and secularization. This latter oppression of human beings is visible graphically today in the widespread acceptance of "free" love, abortion, contraception, divorce, scientific manipulation and sacrifice of human life, homosexuality, and euthanasia. John Paul opines that, in recent history, God's mercy permitted the Eastern European countries, especially Poland, to overcome communism because they had not fully rejected God. By returning, under duress, to their roots they could still both defend themselves from this new evil and recover the deepest human and Christian values that had founded and formed Europe originally. Resisting oppression helped them take steps of spiritual maturation. God's mercy seemed to spare the Western countries from communism because, having secularized themselves through living as though God did not exist (evident, for example, in scientism) and, therefore, as though our very humanness were negotiable (encouraged through the mass media), they no longer had the spiritual wherewithal to defend themselves against such evil. In the face of all-out evil, as in Nazism and communism, it is only through Christ and his Cross that human beings can turn from sinful self-love to authentic love of God, self, and neighbor and find victory. The deepest reason the pope gives for this assertion is that only God and those like God are good enough to draw greater good from evil. Such BOOK REVIEWS 639 good radiates, for example, in the astonishing forgiveness of their enemies of believers like Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein. The twentieth-century epic dramas of human independence from God again show that the ultimate limit God imposes on evil is divine mercy whereby goodness, love, and life overcome selfishness, hatred, and death. History also shows that cooperation with God can come from unexpected quarters. An example is the movement from feudalism into the modern era of rights of individuals and nations that arose from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Democracy came from a new striving for liberty, equality, and fraternity. New nations formed to preserve and foster their people's heritage, and many nations began to develop fraternal, not just political, relations. Concurrently, however, independence from God and evil arose in new forms which continue today in two liberal, secularized views. The first assumes that humans are "free" to act solely by private judgment and not by objective ethical truth. The second asserts that the "world" belongs exclusively to the State and not also to religion. The lesson to be learned for both views is that individuals and the world need genuine religious inspiration and correction. Even democracies will become totalitarian if they do not serve the common good. The corruption of democracy will be avoided only if leaders and legislatures cultivate civic virtues and make laws honoring natural law. Only in this way can they defend the true good of individuals and of the natural human societies of the family and nation. Religion propounds natural law as God's view of human creation. This includes an anthropology that points to the human need and desire for unlimited fulfillment, and hence redemption. Foremost among the natural human rights democracies must protect, therefore, is freedom of religion. The providential response of God's mercy to man's modern independence became apparent near the middle of the twentieth century. Through the Church and the Second Vatican Council, God began a nonpolemical dialogue with the modern world, urging it to a new era of cooperation. As a divinizing yeast leavening history, the Holy Spirit will make the entire world aware of Jesus' vision and values. However, it is principally lay, not clerical, believers, whom Vatican II charges with Christianizing the world, that will be the instruments for carrying out this evangelical dialogue. The main feature of the new evangelization is that lay persons in the so-called first world are to live out and proclaim the gospel within and to secularized cultures. Lay persons in the second world of cultural, religious, and political oppression are to struggle for human rights. Lay persons in the developing third world are to work for a just distribution of God's material blessings. Though social justice is a hoped-for result, the evangelization of the modern world must bring about more than justice between individuals and nations. Because they are persons, human beings need and deserve relationships that are genuine friendships. Because they are images of God, human beings also need and deserve unlimited love. Modern Europe, therefore, needs Christ who elevated the ten commands of natural law to the level of divine living and loving. 640 BOOK REVIEWS John Paul proposes that the meaning of history is beyond history since both humans and God write history. Because Christ gives history meaning and value beyond itself, a leap of faith into the center of Catholicism-to Christ in the Eucharist-will enable all individuals and nations to find their true identity. Christ takes believers beyond death and time to immortal communion with the Holy Trinity. Only Christ in his Paschal mystery explains man to himself, raising man to divine meaning and value, without which "man is only a dramatic question with no adequate answer." Moreover, Christ is now inseparable from history. Through the mystery of his Cross he is always drawing good from evil, bringing even the harshest events in every age to the threshold of hope. Human beings, therefore, are not just subject to history. Christ has brought a new order and dynamism to history that transform suffering into paths to God. Hence, evils beyond the control of believers cannot overcome them. In regard to events within their control, believers can remember history, learn from it, and develop a true understanding of good and evil. They can also develop true responsibility and courageously oppose choices that devastated culture and peoples in the past. They can foster choices whereby human beings are helped to become fully what they are and what they are for. In Christ we can now reclaim our full identity and destiny. But, as history has shown, without Christ human beings cut themselves off from complete, unending fulfillment and "become drastically less than they could be." Because the human sense of social identity is formed largely by the memory of our culture and its origins, it is vital to Europe's refounding that its peoples find their true identity in the memory of what gave Europe its original identity. Christ is central to Europe's origins and cultural development. Without Christianity there is nothing to give "Europe" a single meaning or unified reality. There are only self-serving individuals and states. Those responsible for Europe's future need to turn to God's mercy. They need to offer God willing cooperation. Through this remembering of origins the Holy Spirit will bring to mind the truth of what Europe was and can be. Through Mary and the Church the Holy Spirit will bring to memory the way: Christ Jesus. For the Holy Spirit, Mary, and the Church never cease remembering all about Christ's way, especially that suffering evil in faith and hope is transformed by Christ's Paschal mystery into paths to eternity with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The above synopsis of Memory and Identity may or may not surprise the reader. Many of the truths about human and Christian life that this learned pope explores are truths most of us recognize yet rarely express or tie together. Hence Memory and Identity can confirm what the reader already knows but also offer new awareness. Nevertheless, in this reader's judgment, a greater tying together of the pope's wealth of insights would have helped. For instance, key terms, such as human dignity, identity, origins, nature, destiny, and vocation need at least a brief exposition in this presentation, even though Pope John Paul has treated these topics in other places. Memory and Identity has been criticized sharply by some thinkers in Europe and the United States. I do not find its message, as do these critics, a polemical BOOK REVIEWS 641 or political affirmation of a "conservative" ideology. Rather, I see it as an objective presentation about personal and social reality set within the framework of Catholic belief. John Paul II offers a penetrating analysis of European history to those currently reinventing Europe. He warns that if the framers of the European Union do not honor the memory of what gave Europe its identity, a new totalitarianism worse than those of Hitler and Stalin will ensue. The outcome of freedom independent of truth, uncontrolled market forces, unjust distribution of the world's goods, unlimited pursuit of wealth and passions, absolute autonomy, and democracy that does not serve the common good will oppress peoples as never before. Memory and Identity is yet another encounter with the great mind of John Paul II. More than that, it reveals a depth of thinking aided by the graces of matured faith and of the papal ministry. The Holy Father gleans an uncanny wisdom from the past two millennia. By it contemporaries can avoid the irresponsibilities that led to the European disasters of the twentieth century as well as fulfill the task of freedom used for excellence in the third millennium. The true identity of Europe must be remembered so that, in a new springtime, it can rise to the next stage of greatness. PAUL CONNER, 0.P. Providence College Providence, Rhode Island The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas: Happiness, Natural Law and the Virtues. By LEO ELDERS. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Pp 314. $49.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8204-7713-3. For Aquinas, the Christian theologian, man's only ultimate end is the supernatural vision of God. This reality influences the entire moral life. The New Law, the grace of the Holy Spirit which transforms and strengthens the soul, not only indicates what should be done but also helps to accomplish it. The gifts of the Holy Spirit and the beatitudes are, as Servais Pinckaers, Romanus Cessario, and others have argued forcefully, fundamental in the sense that they direct the moral life to its mystical and contemplative elements, which is in fact a communion with the interpersonal life of the divine Trinity. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas therefore closely ties the moral and dogmatic parts together to form a unified theology. Not surprisingly, then, Aquinas himself on various occasions needed to correct Aristotle's ethics. These considerations, and others, have been put forward by the current trend to renew Thomistic moral theology. I introduce these observations in order to indicate the difficulties that a book dealing with Aquinas's philosophical ethics currently faces. This latest work by 642 BOOK REVIEWS the Dutch Thomist Leo Elders, dedicated to Ralph Mdnerny, aims at presenting "as faithfully as possible" Aquinas's main teachings, which "have lost none of their truth and surprising actuality" (8), mainly by way of a commentary to the Secunda Pars of his Summa Theologiae, In this way, this volume stands in close relationship with Eider's previous books on Aquinas's metaphysics (The Metaphysics of St, Thomas Aquinas in a Historical Perspective [Leiden, 1992]), philosophical theology (The Philosophical Theology of St, Thomas Aquinas [Leiden, 1990]), and philosophy of nature and anthropology (The Philosophy of Nature of St, Thomas Aquinas: Nature, the Universe, Man [Frankfurt am Main, 1997]), It completes his project of providing a set of textbooks that exposes the philosophy of Aquinas from within a historical perspective in order to bring to light the singular philosophical and historical importance of his thought, Obviously, Aquinas never wrote a separate treatise on ethics, The author however is convinced that such a philosophical ethics existed in the mind of Aquinas and that it can be recovered by a careful analysis of the relevant questions and articles from the Secunda Pars as elaborated by natural reason, Elders argues that the philosophical arguments, even when used within theological expositions, are philosophically self-contained, Moreover, Aquinas considered the Nicomachean Ethics not as a summary of Aristotle's views, but simply as the moral philosophy par excellence, However, to have an expose of the science of morals according to the correct order of themes, as Thomas himself would write it, we must go beyond the commentary and turn to the Secunda Pars (13-34), While fully acknowledging the theological orientation of Aquinas's ethics and emphasizing its integration with the study of man as the image of God, Elders argues that "the texts of the Secunda Pars which consist of philosophical arguments constitute a coherent whole and, in their explanations, remain at the level of natural reason" (23), Moreover, the divine law based on God's grace does not do away with the human law as formulated by our reason (cf, STh II-II, q, 10, a, 10), A first, important merit of this book therefore is the fact that it undertakes a well-documented defense of the existence of a philosophical ethics in the thought of Aquinas, something that tends to be minimized by the renewed interest in his moral theology, As becomes clear by the many references to Elders's previous books, such a philosophical ethics stands in close relationship with Aquinas' anthropology and metaphysics, The comprehensiveness of the book is exemplified by the titles of the fourteen chapters: "Man's Quest for Happiness" (I-II, qq, 1-5), "Human Acts" (qq, 6-17), "The Moral Goodness and Badness of Our Acts" (qq, 18-21), "Passions and Emotions in General" (qq, 22-25), "The Individual Passions" (qq, 26-48), "Habitus" (qq, 49-54), "Virtues in General" (qq, 55-67), "Sins and Vices" (qq, 71-89), "Laws and the Natural Law" (qq, 90-108), "Prudence" (II-II, qq,47-5 6), "Justice" (qq, 57-120), "Fortitude" (qq, 123-38), "Temperance" (qq, 141-69), "Love and Friendship,'' In these dense chapters, the author unfolds article by article the main content of the relevant questions of the Summa, supplementing them by insights from other works, Much attention is given to communicating the coherent structure of the various treatises, demonstrating the inner logic of BOOK REVIEWS 643 Aquinas's integrated account of the relationships among happiness, virtue, and law. In developing the main themes of Aquinas's ethics, the sources, especially Aristotle and the Stoa, are treated as well as later developments or rival interpretations. Where needed, some of them are refuted, as for instance the New Natural Law Theory. One of the special merits of the book is that throughout his commentary Elders brings the intellectual nature of Aquinas's ethics to the fore. He stresses throughout that the entire treatise of the moral virtues is dominated by the thesis that we ourselves must determine what, in the different fields of human activity, is according to right reason and that the actual practice of the virtues must be accompanied by reason. This rule of reason, which lies at the center of Aquinas's ethics, flows from the normative ordering of ends and inclinations that defines his doctrine of natural law. The rejection of this point constitutes the fundamental flaw of the new natural law theorists and their affinity with Kantian rationalism. It is not surprising therefore that Aquinas makes an innovation by placing conscience not in the practical but in the speculative intellect. Another element, which continuously comes to the fore, is the metaphysical foundation of his ethics. The universal directedness of all things towards the good as convertible with being finds an expression in human nature and more particularly in the natural inclination of the will towards the good. "This is the matrix in which all other inclinations take form" (54), and thus a denial of this natural order of the will to the good in general (and to certain goods of our human nature) results in a view that moral life is a mere "series of unrelated acts." These are only a few of the guiding principles of the book by which the author unites the wealth of material into a reliable exposition of Aquinas's ethical thought that can serve as an excellent help to undergraduate students. Its detail and breadth of learning also make it valuable reading for graduate students. Father Elders has done a great favor in reminding us that a commentary on the moral section of the Summa Theologiae for those "who restrict themselves to a purely philosophical approach" can indeed assist us in seeking "the beauty of a life according to the virtues" (3 3). JORGEN VIJGEN Major Seminary Willibrordhuis Vogelenzang, The Netherlands GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST VOLUME 69 (2005) ARTICLES Bradley, Denis ]. M., "Ephemerides Thomisticae Analyticae: Metaphysics and Ethics in Stump's Aquinas" ............................ 593 Brock, Stephen L., "Is Uniqueness at the Root of Personal Dignity? John Crosby and Thomas Aquinas" .......................... 173 Brugger, E. Christian, and William E. May, "John Paul II's Moral Theology on Trial: A Reply to Charles E. Curran" .................. 279 Emery, Gilles, O.P., "The Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action in Saint Thomas Aquinas" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., "The Field of Moral Action according to Thomas Aquinas" ............................................ 1 Flores, Daniel E., "Thomas on the Problem of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Exegete" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Jones, John D., "An Absolutely Simple God? Frameworks for Reading 371 Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite" ......................... Keating, James F., "The Natural Sciences as an ancilla theologia nova: Alister E. McGrath's A Scientific Theology" ..................... 127 Levering, Matthew, "Ecclesial Exegesis and Ecclesial Authority: Childs, Fowl, and Aquinas" ....................................... 407 May, William E., and E. Christian Brugger, "John Paul II's Moral Theology on Trial: A Reply to Charles E. Curran" .................. 279 McKay, Angela, "Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue" ............ 535 Reichberg, Gregory M., "Aquinas on Defensive Killing: A Case of Double Effect?" ........................................... 341 St. Amour, Paul, "Lonergan and Gilson on the Problem of Critical Realism" 557 Twetten, David B., "Aquinas's Aristotelian and Dionysian Definition of 'God"' ............................................ 203 Toner, Christopher, "Angelic Sin in Aquinas and Scotus and the Genesis of Some Central Objections to Contemporary Virtue Ethics" ..... 79 White, Thomas Joseph, "The Voluntary Action of the Earthly Christ and the 497 Necessity of the Beatific Vision" ........................ REVIEWS Burke, Patrick, Reinterpreting Rahner: A Critical Study of His Major Themes 628 (Stephen M. Fields, S.J.) .............................. Centore, F. F., Theism or Atheism: The Eternal Debate (Michael]. Dodds, O.P.) ............................................. 335 Coda, Piero, fl Logos e il nulla: Trinita, religioni, mistica (Robert P. Imbelli) 472 __ ,Teo-logia: La Parola di Dia nelle parole dell'uomo (Robert P. Imbelli) 472 Elders, Leo, The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas: Happiness, Natural Law and 641 the Virtues (Jorgen Vijgen) ............................. Emery, Gilles, O.P., Trinity in Aquinas (Gregory P. Rocca, O.P.) ....... 313 Grabowski, John S., Sex and Virtue: An Introduction to Sexual Ethics (Michael Sherwin, O.P.) ...................................... 157 Guevin, Benedict M., Christian Anthropology and Sexual Ethics (John S. Grabowski) ........................................ 492 Hart, James G., and Guy Mansini, O.S.B., eds., Ethics and Theological 161 Disclosure: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski (Philip Blosser) Hartle, Ann, Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (John C. McCarthy) ........................................ 317 John Paul II, Pope, Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a 636 Millennium (Paul Conner, O.P.) ........................ Macswain, Robert, and Jeffrey Stout, eds., Grammar and Grace: Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein (Terrance Klein) .. 479 Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., and James G. Hart, eds., Ethics and Theological Disclosure: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski (Philip Blosser) . 161 McGrade, A. S., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy (R. James Long) ....................................... 632 Milbank, John, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (Michael L. Raposa) 322 Miner, Robert C., Truth in the Making: Knowledge and Creation in Modern Philosophy and Theology (Grant Kaplan) .................. 165 Murphy, Francesca Aran, Art and Intellect in the Philosophy of Etienne Gilson 484 (Peter A. Redpath) ................................... Noonan, John T., Jr., A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) 624 Peddicord, Richard, O.P., The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (BenoitDominique de la Soujeole, O.P.) ........................ 621 INDEX OF REVIEWS (con.) Perler, Dominik, Theories de l'intentionnalite au moyen age Qack Zupko) 469 Schockenhoff, Eberhard, Natural Law and Human Dignity: Universal Ethics 153 in an Historical World (Mary C. Sommers) ................ Shanley, Brian]., O.P., ed., One Hundred Years of Philosophy Qames Ross) 488 Stout, Jeffrey, and Robert Macswain, eds., Grammar and Grace: Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein (Terrance Klein) 479 Theron, Stephen, Natural Law Reconsidered: The Ethics of Human Liberation (Christopher Kaczor) ................................. 169 Veto, Miklos, La naissance de la volonte (D. C. Schindler) ........... 329 Wiercinski, Andrzej, Inspired Metaphysics? Gustav Siewerth's Hermeneutic Reading of the Onto-Theological Tradition (Sean McGrath) .... 332 Williams, Thomas D., Who Is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.) ................. 4 76 Wisnovsky, Robert, Avicenna's Metaphysics in Context (Therese-Anne Druart) 326