The Thomist 71 (2007): 1-38

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITY OF CHRIST
ACCORDING TO ALEXANDER OF HALES
BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

T

HE THIRTEENTH-CENTURY flowering of Christological
devotion, the roots of which extend back through the
twelfth-century theological renewal 1 and into the rich
monastic culture of the late eleventh century, is oft-noted. 2 This
trend ripened into fruit as diverse as Francis of Assisi's Jesuscentered piety, 3 Thomas Aquinas's Scholastic analysis of the whole
of Christ's earthly life, 4 and Mechthild of Magdeburg's erotically
1 On developments in twelfth-century theology, as part of the much larger epochal shift
of the "twelfth-century renaissance," see especially Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth
Century, ed. Robert Benson and Giles Constable, with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1982); Giles G. Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1996); Marcia Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols. (New York:
E. J. Brill, 1994); and R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe
(Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1995).
2 See R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1953), 231: "The theme of tenderness and compassion for the sufferings and helplessness of
the Saviour of the world was one which had a new birth in the monasteries of the eleventh
century, and every century since then has paid tribute to the monastic inspiration of this
century by some new development of this theme." See also Ellen M. Ross, The Grief of God:
Images of the Suffering Jesus in Late Medieval England (New York: Oxford University, 1997).
3 See Lawrence S. Cunningham, Francis of Assisi: Performing the Gospel Life (Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004); and Kenneth Baxter Wolf, The Poverty of Riches: St.
Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University, 2003).
4 See Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas,
Beitriige zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, n.f., 61 (Munster:
Aschendorff, 2002). As Gondreau demonstrates in his study, and Jean-Pierre Torrell
underscores in his preface to the same, Thomas distinguished himself from his Scholastic
contemporaries in the Tertia Pars of his Summa Theologiae by lavishing a great deal of

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

mystical encounters with Christ crucified. 5 One aspect of Christ's
humanity that attracted both devotional piety and theological
scrutiny was the nature of his soul, prompting questions regarding
the "movements" or passiones of Jesus' psyche. 6 Medieval
thinkers began to speculate on Christ's affectivity or the passibility
of Christ's soul, his ability to experience such emotions as fear,
jey, sadness, and anger.7 To be sure, interest in Christ's affectivity
was not a medieval innovation. Earlier writers, including Hilary, 8
Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and John of Damascus,9 had
proffered various (and variously influential) opinions on the
matter. But scholars have noted a certain reserve toward Christ's
attention on the whole of Christ's earthly life and ministry. For the profound significance of
Christ in the life and the thought of the medieval Dominicans, see Kent Emery, Jr., and Joseph
P. Wawrykow, eds., Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the
Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1998).
5 See Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New
Mysticism, 1200-1350 (New York: Crossroad, 1998).
6 A 'passion,' in the words of Torrell, "begins with the slightest sense-impression and
manifests itself as any kind of affective movement or as a feeling or emotion" Gean-Pierre
Torrell, "Preface," in Goudreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 7).
7 This investigation attempts to be a piece of historical theology: theological, in that it
focuses directly on a set of explicitly Christological discussions that are judged to retain
perduring theological interest; historical, in that it confines itself to a particular part of the
Middle Ages in hopes of contributing to our understanding of this historical period, since "the
way any particular age has depicted Jesus is often the key to the genius of that age" Oaroslav
Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture [New Haven: Yale
University, 1985]).
8 As Goudreau notes, Hilary of Poi tiers (315-67) gives Christ's suffering "a glorified twist
by refusing to acknowledge the psychical impact of such suffering. For Hilary, Christ suffered
in a purely physical or somatic manner, without even the psychical perception of the pain his
body was enduring, as if Christ's body was entirely anesthetized-he endured the physical
injury but felt nothing" (The Passions of Christ's Soul, 49). Hilary himself: "He [the Lord] felt
the force of passion, but without its pain [dolorem]" (De Trinitate 10.23 [CCSL 62A:477]);
"He had not a nature that could feel pain [ad dolendum]" (De Trinitate 10.23 [CCSL
62A:478]). Most medieval authors (including Alexander of Hales and Thomas Aquinas), while
demurring on Hilary's position, offer him a benigna interpretatio. Hilary is also responsible
for narrowing the subsequent discussion of Christ's passion to the disagreeable or suffering
side of Jesus' human affectivity (Goudreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 50-51 n. 44).
9 "In what will become standard for the scholastic discussion,'' John of Damascus "restricts
the scope of inquiry to only those passions in Christ that ensue upon the sense perception of
some evil, such as fear, agony, sorrow, and the like, and hence, to those passions that bring
about suffering, or those passions that emerge as consequences of sin" (Goudreau, The
Passions of Christ's Soul, 66).

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3

emotions among patristic theologians. 10 By contrast, many
medievals pursued the matter with vigor. 11
This study sheds light on one particularly influential figure in
this regard, the early thirteenth-century Scholastic theologian and
late-in-life Franciscan, Alexander of Hales (1180/85-1245). 12
10 Patristic reflection on the human nature of Christ, while affirming the reality and
fullness thereof and establishing basic parameters for Christological orthodoxy, did not
approach an exhaustive treatment of the matter. Moreover, especially in regard to Christ's
suffering, patristic thinkers evinced a certain hesitation regarding what might appear to be the
straightforward implications of affirming an integral human nature in Jesus. Torrell observes
that "the general influence of Stoic philosophy, with its estimation of the passions as sicknesses
of the soul, offered little encouragement to Christian thinkers to pause and reflect on Christ's
human feelings." In contrast to this general view, however, "Augustine reverses this course"
and "adopts a decidedly pro-peripatetic attitude" and thereby lays the foundation for further
medieval investigation of the topic (Torrell, "Preface," 8). For a relevant and interesting
discussion of Christ's affectivity in Augustine, see John Cavadini, "Feeling Right: Augustine
on the Passions and Sexual Desire," Augustinian Studies 3 6 (2005): 19 5-217, especially 202-3,
211-15.
11 Their speculation, moreover, was no merely curious investigation, but was linked with
the desire of many to identify personally and experientially with Christ's humanity. For many,
Jesus' affectivity was paradigmatic of human affectivity generally.
12 Alexander of Hales is so-called either due to the place of his birth, the village of Hales
in the county of Shropshire, England (now Hales Owen in Worcestershire), ca. 1186, or
perhaps from his purported place of early education, the monastery of Hales in
Gloucestershire. Son of a wealthy (though not noble) rural family, the young Alexander went
to study at the University of Paris, where (after 1200-1201 and before 1210, as Roger Bacon
mentions that Alexander was regent master in arts before the prohibition against lectures on
the physical books of Aristotle in 1210) he became regent master in the faculty of arts. Having
left the arts faculty, Alexander seems to have passed over directly to the faculty of theology
in 1212-13, where he became successively student, bachelor, and regent master in 1220 or
1221. It was Alexander who first made Peter Lombard's Sentences the ordinary text of reading
in the theology faculty. Before 1229, apparently while continuing to teach at Paris, he was
made canon of St. Paul's Church in London and received a prebend from the parish of St.
Andrew Holborn, a London suburb. In 1229, displaced from Paris by the great dissension of
the scholars and masters, Alexander joined in the removal of the university to Angers. Then,
in the month of August 1230, he was sent, along with William of Auxerre (who was already
in Rome), Godfrey of Pictaviens, and John Pago, to negotiate with the Roman Curia regarding
the place of Aristotle in the curriculum. He remained in Rome until May 1231, acting as the
procurator of the masters and scholars who had gone to Angers. Upon his departure from
Rome, he returned to England, where he is found before 1231 as a canon of Lichfield and,
after that, archdeacon of Coventry in 1235. In 1235, again while retaining his position at the
University of Paris, he was one of Henry Ill's deputies (along with Simon Langton, archdeacon
of Canterbury and brother of Stephen Langton, and Fulk Basset, provost of Beverly Minster
and future bishop of London), charged with renewing the peace treaty between England and
France. In 1236, near the beginning of the 1236-37 academic year, he entered the Franciscan

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

Alexander's general importance in the development of Scholastic
theology from the uncertain haze of the late twelfth century to the
midday clarity of the late thirteenth is often noted, but seldom
analyzed in depth. High-profile convert to the Franciscan Order
and Bonaventure's revered teacher, Alexander was "the first not
only to publicly lecture on the Sentences but also to divide
Lombard's text into distinctions, a division retained by Albert,
Bonaventure, and Thomas. " 13 On a variety of theological fronts,
Alexander often sets the table, and even chooses the menu, for the
Scholastic repast that follows. 14
Such is the case with the topic of Christ's affectivity. Alexander's interest in the topic is already visible in his commentary
(1223-27) on Peter Lombard's Sentences (Glossa in quatuor libros
sententiarum, hereafter, Glossa), 15 in book 3, especially distinction
15, where Lombard treats the issue of Christ's human defects. 16
order. Yet he remained a master of theology and continued teaching as regent master in the
Franciscan friary in Paris, which was an integral part of the university. He took part in the
condemnations of Paris in 1241 and 1244, and the Council of Lyons in 1245. He died on 21
August 1245, presumably around the age of 60. Pope Alexander IV, in a bull, De fontibus
paradisi (1255/1256) characterized him as "Doctor Irrefragabilis" (the Irrefutable Doctor).
(See V. Doucet, in Alexander of Hales [1223-7] Glossa in quatuor libros sententiarum Petri
Lombardi, Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi 12-15 [Quaracchi: Collegium S.
Bonaventurae, 1951-57], 1.7*-75*).
13 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 88-89. Soon after Alexander made Peter
Lombard's Sentences his standard lecture material, it became an academic requirement to write
a commentary on it, as a kind of medieval dissertation, in order to become a master of
theology. See also Ignatius Brady, "The Distinctions of Lombard's Book of Sentences and
Alexander of Hales," Franciscan Studies 25 (1965): 90-116.
14 On Alexander's Christology, in relation to both his contemporaries and his successors,
see Walter H. Principe, Alexander of Hales' Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967); F. Fresneda Martinez, "La doctrina de la
plenitud de la gracia de Cristo en la 'Summa Halensis'," Antonianum 54 (1979): 31-59; idem,
La gracia y la ciencia de Jesu cristo: Historia de la cuesti6n en Alejandro de Hales, Od6n
Riga/do, "Summa Halensis" e Buenaventura, praef. J. G. Bougerol (Murcia: Espigas y
Azucenas, 1997); and Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to
Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 190 n. 42, and 244.
15 Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quatuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Bibliotheca
Franciscana Scholastica MediiAevi 12-15 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1951-57).
16 See Peter Lombard, Magistri Lombardi Sententiae in N libris distinctae, 2 vols.,
Spicilegium Bonaventurianum 4-5 (Grottaferrata [Rome]: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae
ad Claras Aquas, 1971-81). In bk. III, dd. 13-17, Lombard considers the following topics: d.
13, "De sapientia et gratia Christi"; d. 14, "De scientia et potentia animae eius"; d. 15, "De

THE SALVIFICAFFECTMTY

OF CHRIST

5

Within a decade of the Glossa, though, in his Quaestiones
disputatae 'antequam esset Frater' (written before 1236), 17
Alexander devotes an entire quaestio (q. 16) to the topic of the
passibility of Christ's soul. In so doing, he "becomes the first of
the thirteenth-century authors to move beyond the commentary
on Lombard's Sentences in presenting a systematic treatment of
Jesus' passions." 18 And, in the next decade (before 1245), in the
Summa theologiae or Summa fratriAlexandri 19 (hereafter, Summa
halensis), "he" (noting the authorial ambiguity) 20 becomes the first
to include an analysis of Christ's human affectivity within a
comprehensive overview of theology. 21 In fact, among the
thirteenth-century Schoolmen, only Aquinas exceeds Alexander
"in the amount of attention ascribed to the subject of Christ's
human affectivity." Moreover, the "treatise on the passions in
[Alexander's] Summa theologiae clearly represents the prototype
for Thomas' treatise on the same in his own Summa theologiae. " 22
hominis defectibus quos assurnpsit Christus in hurnana natura"; d. 16, "Utrurn necessitas
patiendi et moriendi in Christo fuerit"; d. 17, "De voluntatibus Christi."
17 Alexander of Hales, Quaestiones disputatae 'antequam esset (rater,' Bibliotheca
Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi 19-21 (Quaracchi: Collegiurn S. Bonaventurae, 1960).
18 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 90.
19 Alexander of Hales, Summa theologiae (Summa halensis), 4 vols. (Quaracchi: Collegium
S. Bonaventurae, 1924-48).
20 As Principe explains, "an important theological work written after 1240, the so-called
Summa Fratris Alexandri, was long thought to be Alexander's own work. In recent decades,
however, scholarly opinion has concluded that, however great the influence of Alexander on
the composition of this Summa, his own authentic teaching must be sought in the Glossa and
in his Quaestiones rather than in the Summa Fratris Alexandri" (Principe, Hypostatic Union,
15). In this study, accordingly, the two undisputed works of Alexander will be the primary
basis for argumentation. Typically, the Summa halensis will only be cited as a confirmation
of, or as additional information regarding claims made on the basis of, the authentic works.
Because, however, in relation to the topic of Christ's affectivity the teaching in the Summa
halensis is quite in line with that found in the Glossa and Quaestiones, occasionally the
Summa will be treated as a source of Alexander's authentic teaching.
21 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 91.
22 In the Summa, Alexander treats the passions under the rubric of coassumpta, those
features of Christ's humanity that do not follow upon the essential elements of human nature,
and, following on Lombard, as part of the incarnated "defects of soul." Separate questions are
allotted to Christ's sorrow, fear, and anger (Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 90). It
is Alexander, not Bonaventure (pace Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 82), who first
introduces the issue of Christ's anger into the discussion.

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

I. POINT OF DEPARTURE: ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

In her recent analysis of various medieval conceptions of the
kind of human nature implicated in the Incarnation, Marilyn
Adams argues that these Christologies were soteriologically
driven. 23 That is, views of the personal constitution of Jesus were
deeply shaped by what he was thought to have accomplished with
respect to human salvation. Adams begins her analysis with
Anselm of Canterbury, whose conception of Christ's affectivity
provides a useful vantage point from which to consider Alexander's, and this for several reasons. Anselm is in the vanguard of
the emerging medieval interest in Christ's humanity, a stream of
Christological speculation in which Alexander stands squarely.
For his part, moreover, Alexander is generally quite taken with
Anselm's soteriology, namely, his so-called satisfaction theory of

23 See Marilyn McCord Adams, What Sort of Human Nature: Medieval Philosophy and the
Systematics of Christology (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1999). Adams takes as her
theme a question that greatly agitated medieval thinkers, especially in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries: "What sort of human nature did Christ assume or take up in the
Incarnation?" Prime facie, the question may sound odd and uninformed. Had not the
ecumenical councils of the fifth through eighth centuries settled the matter? Was not the
answer that Christ assumed everything proper to human nature, namely, a genuine human
body, a rational human soul, including an integral human will? For the medievals, in fact, as
Adams notes, the conciliar pronouncements scarcely exhausted the topic of Christ's human
nature and left unanswered many questions-for them questions of great interest and
considerable moment. As with so many theological topics in the Middle Ages, Peter Lombard
articulated the question succinctly. Lombard noted that, in fact, human nature has existed in
a variety of conditions corresponding to the different stages of salvation history. Which of
these was in Christ? Did the Word assume a human nature like that of Adam and Eve before
the fatal fruit? Or like that of Cain after the fall, but before grace? Or like ours, fallen but
helped by grace? Or, finally, a glorified humanity, impassible, immortal, capable of walking
through doors? In her analysis, Adams treats Anselm, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Aquinas,
Scotus, and Luther, whose answers to this question varied considerably. Perceptively, Adams
notes that, since the Scriptures do not address the question directly, explicitly, or
systematically, other factors significantly shape the answers given. More precisely, she argues
that the answers emerge at the intersection of two coordinates, namely, a thinker's "estimates
of the purpose and proprieties of the Incarnation on the one hand and of the multiple and
contrasting job-descriptions for Christ's saving work on the other." Shaping both of these is
a third issue, namely, a thinker's "pallet of philosophical tastes and commitments" (ibid., 710).

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTMTY OF CHRIST

7

Christ's work. 24 Yet Anselm's conception of Christ's human
affectivity shows a contrast with that of Alexander, for the
Franciscan's view of Christ's satisfaction will find in Christ's
affectivity a soteriological significance far greater than his
Benedictine predecessor had seen. 25
For Anselm, passibility, the capacity to suffer, is central to the
Christological requirements for Christ's humanity. In Adams's
words, the "propriety of reversing the pleasure of sin through the
suffering distress of the passion makes it fitting for the Divine
Word to assume, not an impassible human nature, but one capable
of suffering. " 26 Jesus must have a human nature that is capable of
"suffering unto death for the honor of God." This capacity for
physical suffering and eventually death, however, is for Anselm
soteriologically sufficient. Anselm insists, for example, that Christ
does not experience our unhappiness in addition to physical pain
and suffering. Rather, Christ fully and freely willed to endure the
passion, and thus cannot feel unhappy about it. 27 Adams notes
further that Anselm's human psychology "does not furnish
resources for any extensive explanation of how voluntariness
would be sufficient to turn pain and suffering into a happy
experience. " 28 Adams offers this fitting summary:
Notice, Anselm does not understand it as part of Christ's job to empathize with
us in our sin and suffering. His identification with us is metaphysical (by taking
on a human nature) and biological (by becoming a descendant of Adam). His
identification with us is for legal purposes-to make satisfaction without being
a middle man. Christ's purpose in suffering is not for Him to experience what

24 Alexander in fact plays a crucial role in the early thirteenth-century rehabilitation of
Anselm's theology in the schools. See M. Robson, "Anselm's Influence on the Soteriology of
Alexander of Hales: The Cur Deus Homo in the Commentary on the Sentences," in Cur Deus
Homo: Atti del congresso Anselmiano internazionale Roma, 21-23 maggfo 1998, ed. P. Gilbert,
H. Kohlenberger and E. Salmann (Rome: Pontifico Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1999), 191-219.
25 For another helpful and relevant discussion of Anselm's conception of Christ's human
affectivity, see Thomas Weinandy O.F.M.Cap., In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on
the Humanity of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 39-46.
26 Adams, What Sort of Human Nature?, 15.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., 17.

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

8

it is like for us, but rather to enable us to identify with Him as a model and
mentor of how to pass through our suffering. 29

In short, for Anselm, Jesus' suffering does not significantly exceed
this physical dimension, nor does it need to in order for him to
accomplish his salvific mission.
In her study, Adams does not consider Alexander of Hales. As
is clear, though, from Paul Gondreau's recent, extensive study of
Christ's human affectivity in Aquinas and his medieval
predecessors, 30 she might well have. Alexander's Christology
affords a distinctive confirmation of her thesis. Alexander is
influenced by Anselm's conception of salvation. For Alexander, as
for Anselm, the central task in Christ's soteriological work is to
render full satisfaction for human sin through his passion.
Diverging markedly from Anselm, however, Alexander insists that
such satisfaction is rendered not merely by Christ's voluntary
passion and death (though that is a necessary condition), but by
Christ's affective (i.e., his psychological or emotive) experience of
that event. More precisely, for Alexander, fitting satisfaction
requires that Christ experience in his soul simultaneously both
supreme sorrow (dolor) and supreme joy (gaudium). Determining
how and why this is so will highlight some of the most distinctive
and influential aspects of Alexander's Christology. 31

29 Ibid., 16.
30 See n. 4 above.
31 Alexander's theology is understudied generally, and this is also the case with his
Christology, despite the foundational work of Walter Principe (seen. 14 above). Also to be
noted in this regard are Alexander's substantial Gospel commentaries, which remain unedited.
Abigail Ann Young has published an edition of the preface to his commentary on John's
Gospel (AbigailAnn Young, "Accessus adAlexandrum: The Prefatio to the Postilla in Iohannis
Euangelium of Alexanderof Hales [1186?-1245]," Mediaeval Studies 52 [1990]: 1-24), which
offers a tantalizing glimpse of his approach to the Gospels. Even here a distinctive
characteristic emerges, as Alexander applies what will become known as the triplex munus
(threefold office) framework to the different evangelists. Each of the evangelists emphasizes
one of the three central roles or offices of Christ: prophet, priest, and king. For more
information on Scholastic exegesis of the Gospels, see Beryl Smalley, "The Gospels in the
Paris Schools in the Late 12th and early 13th Centuries," Franciscan Studies 39 (1979): 23054; and 40 (1982): 298-369; and Margaret Gibson, "The Gospels in the Schools, cll00c1280," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988): 230-32.

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II. THE PASSIBILITYOF CHRIST'S SOUL FOR ALEXANDER
Some preliminary observations regarding Alexander's Christology are in order. 32 Not surprisingly, he affirms both Jesus' full
humanity and, due to Jesus' union with the divine nature, his
fullness of grace and sinless perfection. Yet, following Peter
Lombard, 33 he argues that the Word assumed a human nature
with characteristics from the various historical stages of the
human condition, including the defects that befell human nature
as punishment for sin. 34 Again with Lombard, Alexander
distinguishes between "defects of punishment" (defectus poenae)
and "defects of guilt" (defectus culpae). The Word assumed the
former, not the latter. Adopting another twelfth-century schema,
Alexander also distinguishes between "defects of the body"
(defectus corporis; e.g., hunger, thirst) and "defects of the soul"
(defectus animae; e.g., sorrow/tristitia, fear/timor). 35 The Word
32 According to Gondreau (The Passions of Christ's Soul, 91), Alexander makes some use
of Aristotelian psychology in his discussion, but not as much as Albert or Thomas, and appears
to rely as much on the demands of Christian faith for proving or arguing about various aspects
of Christ's soul as on consistent adherence to philosophical anthropology.
33 Standing between Anselm and Alexander is, of course, Peter Lombard and his influential
Sentences (composed between 1155 and 1157). In book 3, distinctions 15-17, Lombard
devotes considerable attention to the theme of Christ's human affectivity. Lombard's interest
in "Christo-psychological thought" reflects an already robust and well-developed twelfthcentury discussion of the topic, which is visible in Hugh of St. Victor, and also in the Victorine
Summa Sententiarum (written shortly after 113 7) (PL 17 6: 70-8 0) and to a lesser extent in the
Sententiae divinitatis (tr. 4, ch. 3, 2 and 7 [ed. B. Geyer, Die Sententiae divinitatis. Bin
Sentenzenbuch der Gilbertschen Schute, Beitriige zur Geschichte der Philosophie und
Theologie des Mittelalters, 7, 2/3 (Milnster: Achendorff, 1967), pp. 77*-79* and 88*-89*]),
from the school of Gilbert de la Porree (see Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 77-78).
Lombard's treatment of this question is immensely important and influential on subsequent
discussion. He makes extensive use of John of Damascus, thus introducing him into the
Christological speculation of the medieval Latin West. There are obvious structural parallels
between Damascene'sDe fide orthodoxa (available to Lombard in the translation of Burgundio
of Pisa [1153-54]), cc. 20-26; and III Sent., dd. 15-17 (see Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's
Soul, 79).
34 See Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 84; Adams, What Sort of Human Nature?,
18.
35 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m.3, ch. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:67): "It must
be said therefore that through the defects of hunger and thirst is proved the truth of animal
body ... similarly, through pain and sorrow is proved the truth of the soul united to the
animal body" ("Dicendum ergo quod per defectum famis et sitis probatur veritas corporis

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

assumed both kinds, and did so, moreover, freely and voluntarily.
He did not contract them by necessitjr through propagation like
the rest of humanity, but took up only those he chose. 36 More
precisely (Alexander again following Lombard), he assumed only
those that were "expedient to his mission and which did not
derogate from his dignity" and those that demonstrated "his true
humanity. "37 So, for example, ignorance in Christ is ruled out,
since full knowledge is assumed necessary for Christ's saving
mission. 38 In short, then, while in no sense a sinner, and
possessing the fullness of divine grace, Jesus also possesses a "sinenfeebled human nature," including a "sinless-yet passible human
soul." 39
animalis ... similiter per dolorem et tristitiam probatur veritas animae unitae corpori
animali").
36 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:60): "For he
assumed our nature with passibility, neither with a disposition contrary to suffering nor which
would be suffering with necessity, since all things were subject to his will" ("Assumpsit ergo
naturam nostrum cum passibilitate, non cum contraria dispositione ad patiendum vel quae
esset cum necessitate ad patiendum, quia omnia subiecta erant eius voluntati"). On Lombard's
view, see Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 86-87.
37 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 3, q. 2, ch. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:167): "For the Lord
himself assumed certain imperfections from the affective part by way of dispensation and
according to what was fitting for our redemption ... but not from the cognitive part, since
those kinds of defects, namely those that posit ignorance, would be noxious in many ways and
in no way useful" ("quia ipse Domin us dispensative et secundum congruitatem redemptionis
nostrae assumpsit imperfections quasdam ex parte affectivae . . . non autem ex parte
cognitivae, quia huiusmodi defectus, scilicet qui ponunt ignorantiam, noxii essent in multis
et in nullo utiles").
38 Alexander, III Sent., d. 2, n. 4 (Quaracchi ed., 23): "Even though materially Christ
descended from Adam, yet not by desire. Therefore he 'assumed' the penalty, but he did not
'have' [the penalty]; and not all, but only those which God planted in us; hence he did not
have ignorance or sin" ("Uncle, licet materialiter descendit ab Adam, non tamen
concupiscentiali. Ideo 'assumpsit' poenas, et non 'habuit'; et non omnes, sed illas quas Dus
plantavit in nobis; uncle nece ignorantiam habuit, nee peccatum"}. See Gondreau, The Passions
of Christ's Soul, 82-83.
39 Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 84; see also ibid., 80. In particular, Lombard
is keen to resist the approach adopted by Hilary of Poitiers, whose essential denial of the
psychic reality of Christ's suffering and pain seemed an inadmissible "abbreviation" of Jesus'
humanness. Thus, again following Damascene, Lombard hones in on disagreeable passions of
soul, namely, passion that ensues upon the sense perception of evil, such as sorrow or fear
(ibid., 80-81).

THE SALVIFICAFFECTIVITY OF CHRIST

11

Prime facie, it may be difficult to imagine the integration of
fullness of grace, sinless perfection, and defects/passions in
Christ's soul. The difficulty is that ordinarily passions are
appetitive movements that exceed the rule of reason. Such would
seem out of place in a perfect, sinless Jesus. Following patristic
and twelfth-century precedent, Alexander solves the dilemma with
the notion of propassio. Jesus' emotions are propassions, 40
"affective movements that fail to eclipse the rule of reason."
Whatever Jesus' experience of passions, it is perfectly ordered,
negatively in that these affective movements do not exceed the
control of reason, positively in that they are rationally ordered in
accordance with divine will. 41

Ill. THE SOTERIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
CHRIST'S EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

Alexander's overriding interest in the soteriological significance of Christ's affectivity emerges in his discussion of the
Savior's knowledge. Both the Glossa on Lombard's Sentences and
the Summa halensis distinguish five different kinds of knowledge
in Christ. (1) First, as God, Christ had uncreated knowledge of all
40 Lombard uses the notion of propassion (from Jerome: a movement of affectivity, a
passion, that remains within the strict bounds of reasoned control) in Christ to integrate the
apparently conflicting claims about Christ's affectivity. He gives his own definition: a
propassion is an affective movement that "does not disturb the intellectual faculties from
rectitude or from contemplation of God" whereas full-blown passion "stirs [movetur] and
troubles [turbatur] the mind." He distinguishes between rational affectivity (affectus mentis
or affectus rationis) and sensitive affectivity (affectus sensualitatis), and construes Jesus'
affective experience in terms of the latter, not the former. Jesus' aversion to death, for
example, was a function of the latter, not the former. In Lombard's hylemorphic
anthropology, "the soul feels pain through the body as through an instrument" and suffering
is a "psychosomatic affair, as neither the body nor the soul remain unaffected by the
movements of affectivity" (see Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 84-88).
41 Lombard also rules out in Jesus the fames peccati, a notion with a long twelfth-century
history. Hence, Jesus experienced no sudden affective movements that would have collided
with the good of reason, including his experience of agony at Gethsemane. Jesus feared death
with timor naturalis, the spontaneous inclination of nature away from its own harm, not as
a result of rational judgment, timor rationalis (see Gondreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul,
92-93).

12

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

things, equivalent to the divine knowledge of all things. (2)
Second, as united by grace to the uncreated intellect of the person
of the Word, Christ enjoyed in his human intellect an infused
knowledge of all things. 42 In addition to these, however, and
following earlier (patristic and medieval) tradition, the Summa
argues that in his human nature, Christ also assumed a form of
knowledge from each of the three different historical conditions
of human nature: (3) from the state of beatitude, which human
nature would have enjoyed if there had been no Fall, Christ
assumed the "knowledge of a comprehensor" (scientiam comprehensoris); (4) from the state of innocence, which human nature
did enjoy prior to the Fall, Christ assumed the "knowledge of
integral and perfect human nature" (scientiam naturae integrae et
perfectae); and (5) from the postlapsarian state, which human
nature now endures, Christ assumed the "knowledge of experience" (scientiam experientiae). With respect to guilt, this means
that Christ assumed not the experience of guilt (culpae), but the
experience of the punishment (poenae) for guilt. Through this
"experimental knowledge" (scientiam experimentalem), says Alexander, "Christ had knowledge of the punishment for sin through
experience" (scientiam poenae peccati per experientiam). 43 Slightly
42 See Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 2, ch. 1, a. 1 (Quaracchi ed.,
4:62), where, following patristic and medieval tradition, especially Peter Lombard, Alexander
refuses to admit any ignorance in the soul of Christ.
43 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 3, q. 2, ch. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:164): "Christus accepit
aliquid a triplici statu humani generis sive Adae. Unus status fuit, qui debebatur ei si stetisset,
status scilicet beatitudinis, in praemium; alius fuit status, in statu in quo erat, scilicet status
innocentiae, secundum quern statum debebature ei scientia, quae debetur naturae integrae et
perfectae; alius status fuit post lapsum, secundum quern statum habuit scientiam
experimentalem: habuit enim scienitiam poenae peccati per experientiam. A primo ergo statu
habuit Christus scientiam comprehensoris; a secundo scientiam naturae integrae et perfectae;
a tertio statu scientiam experientiae, sed non experientiae culpae, sed tantum poenae." Cf.
Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 10 (Quaracchi ed., 131): "It should be noted thatthe knowledge
in Christ was fivefold, namely, according to the divine nature and the human nature. But
according to the divine nature there is knowledge which is the same as the divine nature. But
according to the human nature, knowledge is fourfold. The first is according to the grace of
union; and so Christ had knowledge of the secrets of the incarnation. The second was
according to the grace of comprehension, since Christ was a comprehensor in this life; and this
is [knowledge] of all things that pertain to beatitude. The third mode was according to the
integrity of the nature which he received from Adam; and just as Adam had knowledge

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTMTY OF CHRIST

13

later, Alexander refers to this experiential knowledge as "the
cognition that is according to his penal nature," in which "he
learned diverse punishments according to experience in the
affective part of the soul, which he already knew according to
another mode, namely according to the grace of cognition which
was given to him through the grace of union." 44 For Alexander,
this learning through experience does not imply ignorance in
Christ, only lack of experience: "knowledge through experience
[per experientiam] is opposed to inexperience [inexperientia],but
not to ignorance; so he foreknew [praescivit]his passion, but not
through experience. "45
This penal knowledge seems to entail as deep and full an
affective, experiential participation in the postlapsarian human
condition as is possible for Christ. The fallen experience that an
ordinary human being contracts by necessity Christ assumed
voluntarily by freely taking up human nature: "he had knowledge
of the experience of our punishments, which he assumed but did
not contract." 46 For Alexander, it is in this kind of "penal
experience which he assumed for us" that Christ "made progress"
concerning all the things that were made for his sake, so also did Christ. But the fifth
knowledge is according to the penal nature which he assumed; and thus he learned things
through experience which he had not learned through experience before" ("Nota quod
quinque modis est scientia in Christo, scilicet secundum divinam naturam et secundum
humanam. Sed secundum divinam naturam est scientia quae eadem est cum divina natura. Sed
secundum humanum naturam quatuor modis est scientia. Primus est secundum gratiam
unionis; et sic habuit scientiam secretorum incarnationis. Secundus fuit secundum gratiam
comprehensoris, quoniam ipse fuit comprehensor in via; et haec est de omnibus pertinentibus
ad beatitudinem. Tertius modus fuit secundum integritatem naturae quam recepit ab Adam;
et sicut Adam cognitionem habuit de omnibus quae facta sunt propter ipsum, sic et Christus.
Quinta vero scientia est secundum naturam poenalem quam suscepit; et sic per experientiam
scivit quae prius non per experientiam scivit").
44 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 3, q. 2, ch. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:166): "Quintus, qui est
cognitionis quae est secundum naturam poenalem, fuit similiter in Christo; in hac didicit
diversas poenalitates secundum experientiam in affectiva, quam tamen cognovit secundum
alium modum, scilicet secundum gratiam cognitionis quae data est sibi per gratiam unionis."
45 Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 35 (Quaracchi ed., 139): "scientiae per experientiam
opponitur inexperientia, non vero ignorantia; praescivit autem passion es, sed non per expertus
est."
46 Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 26 (Quaracchi ed., 137): "habuit scientiam experientiae
poenalitatum nostrarum, quas assumpsit et non traxit."

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

14

in his earthly life.47 Thus, while Christ does not bear human guilt,
he assumes human punishment, and that to a radical extent.
Regarding Hebrews 5 :8, "he learned obedience to the Father
through the things that he suffered," Alexander simply cites
without further comment 2 Corinthians 5 :21: "He made him who
knew no sin to be sin for us. "48 And so he concludes that, in fact,
"Christ knew [cognovit] evil," but this in two ways: being
innocent of guilt, "he knew the evil of guilt through its opposite,"
but having assumed human punishment, "he knew the evil of
penalty" through experience (per experientiam). 49
At this stage, one might well inquire how Alexander conceives
of the relation between these various forms of knowledge in
Christ. In particular, how is the traditional affirmation that Christ
was a comprehensor throughout his life compatible with the claim
that Christ gradually learned the experience of human suffering?
As it turns out, Alexander's answer to this question appears to
have evolved in the decade between his Glossa and the
Quaestiones disputatae. Noting this change and the apparent
reasons for it will prove illuminating.
Commenting on book 3, distinction 15, of Lombard's Sentences, Alexander briefly considers the question of whether there
was sadness or sorrow in Christ. The ample biblical attestation to
this emotion in Jesus would seem to make an affirmative answer
all but unavoidable, and so Alexander concludes. In light of the
foregoing, though, the question is, Where should this experience
be located in Christ's soul? An objection proposes that Christ felt
such sorrow in the rational part of the soul (tristitia rationalis).
Alexander demurs: "It must be said that Christ did not have
sadness with respect to the superior part [superiorem partem] of
Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 35 (Quaracchi ed., 139): "solum profectus erat ex parte
experientiae poenalitatum quas assumpsit pro nobis."
48 Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 35 (Quaracchi ed., 139): "5 ad Hehr., 8, textus: Ex iis
quae passus est didicit obedientiam Patri, Glossa: 'Didicit per experientiam.' II Cor. 5 :21: Bum
qui novit peccatum, fecit pro nobis [peccatum] .''
49 Alexander, III Sent., d. 13, n. 31 (Quaracchi ed., 138-39): "Sed nota quod dupliciter
cognoscitur malum, sive culpae, sive poena: vel per experientiam, vel per suum oppositum.
Christus autem malum culpae per suum oppositum cognovit; malum autem poenae utroque
modo."
47

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTMTY OF CHRIST

15

reason, since in that part he continually contemplated God the
Father." Accordingly, Alexander concludes, Christ "had sadness
with respect to the inferior part [inferiorempartem] of reason. "50
How was Christ able to be sad (tristis), asks Alexander? Citing
Augustine, he answers that "sorrow [dolor] is the feeling of one's
own demise" and since "Christ willed to remove harm from his
own flesh," therefore, "such a will was sorrow [dolor]."51 In his
Glossa, then, Alexander neatly divides Christ's continual beatitude
from his emerging sadness, confining the former to the superior
part of reason, 52 the latter to the inferior part, the sensible soul,
associated directly with the body. Christ's sadness, moreover, is
largely self-referential, pertaining to his own sense of immanent
suffering and death.
Alexander offers different reasons for these different kinds of
knowledge in Christ. Some are simply a function of the union of
the two natures, as with knowledge from the grace of union and
knowledge of a comprehensor. Other kinds of knowledge in
Christ possess specifically soteriological utility, as is the case with
both that proper to human nature in the state of innocence and
that of postlapsarian human experience of punishment. As he puts
it: "since Christ assumed human nature in order as true man to
redeem human nature, this twofold knowledge was necessary for
that end." How do these two kinds of knowledge contribute to
50 Alexander, III Sent., d. 15, n. 4 (Quaracchi ed., 152): "Compassio fuit cum fratribus;
non secundum sensualitatem: ergo secundum rationem; etita in Christo erattristitia rationalis.
- Dicendum quod Christus non habuit tristitiam secundum superiorem partem rationis,
quoniam secundum illam continue contemplabatur Deum Patrum; sed habuit tristitiam
secundum partem rationis inferiorem."
51 Alexander, III Sent., d. 15, n. 4 (Quaracchi ed., 151-52): "Qualiter ergo tristis fieri
potuit? Augustinus: Dolor est sensus propriae corruptionis. Sed propriam corruptionem sensit
Christus; ergo dolorem habuit .... Ergo Christus voluit removere nocivum a propria came.
Sed talis voluntas fuit dolor."
52 See Alexander, III Sent., d. 15, n. 7 (Quaracchi ed., 153): "Regarding my soul is
saddened in Mk 14:34: [the Gloss says] 'by setting aside [semota] the delectation of eternal
divinity, he is affected by the weariness of human infirmity'; and so it would seem that Christ
was not a comprehensor in this life. -It must be said that 'setting aside' [semota] is said, since
[delight] did not hinder sadness" ("Super illud: Tristis est anima, 14 Marc., 34: 'Semota
delectatione aeternae divinitatis, taedio humanae infirmitatis afficitur'; et ita videtur quod
Christus non fuit comprehensor in via. - Dicendum quod 'semota' dicitur, quoniam non
cohibuit tristitiam").

16

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

human redemption? By assuming perfect, prelapsarian human
knowledge Christ demonstrates his true humanity; on the other
hand, Christ assumed experiential knowledge of human
punishment, "so that human nature might be redeemed through
the feeling and experience of punishment [sensum poenae et
experientiam]." 53 For Alexander, then, this experiential knowledge has soteriological utility; that is, "even though the other
[forms of knowledge] ar'e better simpliciter, this knowledge of
experience is "more useful or more fitting for the aforesaid goal
[of human salvation]. "54
IV. A SATISFYING SORROW

What then, for Alexander, is the soteriological utility of
Christ's human affectivity? As noted above, Alexander is a proponent of the Anselmian approach to Christ's death, which understands that death to offer salvific satisfaction to God for human
sin. So, how does Alexander understand Christ's satisfaction?
To begin, Alexander affirms that fitting satisfaction required a
voluntarily acceptance of suffering and death that implicates both
body and soul: "satisfaction was required to be in both body and
soul; hence on the part of the soul there was the willingness to
suffer [voluntas patiendi], and in the body there was that suffering
[passio]." 55 Of the two, though, as will be seen, Alexander (in
contrast to Anselm) lays far greater emphasis on the psychical
dimension. Scattered throughout his corpus are comments that
expose and clarify the role of Christ's psyche in Alexander's
satisfaction theory.
53 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 3, q. 2, ch. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:164): "Sed quia
assumpsit humanam naturam ut genus humanum per verum hominem redimeret, respectu
istius finis necessaria erat duplex in Christo scientia, naturalis scilicet et scientiae experientiae:
scientia naturalis sive naturae integrae et perfectae, ut verus homo probaretur; scientia vero
experientiae, ut genus humanum per sensum poenae et experientiam redimeretur."
54 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 3, q. 2, ch. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:164): "Et huiusmodi
scientiae utiliores sunt sive magis convenientes fini praedicto, quamvis aliae simpliciter
meliores."
55 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset {rater,' q. 15, disp. 2, mem. 2, n. 38 (Quaracchi ed.,
205): "Et si oportuit in satisfaciendo dare maius, oportuit hoc fieri in corpore et in anima;
uncle ex parte animae fuit voluntas patiendi, et in corpore fuit ipsa passio."

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTMTY OF CHRIST

17

Perhaps the best starting place is his Quaestiones disputatae. In
two separate places, Alexander describes the nature of Christ's
satisfaction:
[A] For in contrition, when a man fully satisfies for sin, three things are required:
[first] exterior works of punishment; second, the feeling of such punishment in
the sensible part of the soul; and besides these, it is necessary that there be a will
for sorrowing and suffering in the rational part of the soul [voluntas dolendi et
patiendi in ratione]. These, then, are required for the perfect satisfaction of that
sin which corrupts the whole human race and nature. Therefore it was necessary
in Christ's suffering, which was satisfactory, that there be exterior works of
punishment, a feeling of those in the sensible part, and the will of sorrowing in
the rational part [voluntatem dolendi in ratione]. 56
[BJ In Christ there was a separation of the soul from the flesh, and a compassion
of that separation; and in addition there was also sorrow for the sin [dolor pro
peccato] of the human race, without which there would not be satisfaction, along
with the other two, as is clear in true contrition. For even if he suffered
punishment in his body, and co-suffered that punishment in his soul, unless there
was also sorrow for sin [dolor de peccato], there would not be true satisfaction. 57

In these texts, Alexander appears to base his conception of what
is required of Christ for full satisfaction on what is required of
sinners generally for full satisfaction in the sacrament of penance.
In each text, he identifies three components of such satisfaction,
which can be collated as follows: first [i], corresponding to [A]
"exterior works of punishment" is the [BJ "separation of the soul
from the flesh" that constituted Christ's death; second [ii],
corresponding to [A] "the feeling of such punishment in the
sensible part of the soul" is the [BJ "compassion of that
56 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 5, n. 52 (Quaracchi ed.,
248): "Quia in contritione, quando homo plene satisfacit pro peccato, tria exiguntur: [primo]
enim exiguntur poenalia opera exteriora; praeter hoc etiam exigitur sensus huiusmodi poenae
in sensualitate; et praeter hoc oportet quod sit ibi voluntas dolendi et patiendi in ratione. Ergo
ista requiruntur ad perfectam satisfactionem illius peccati quod corrupit totum genus
humanum vel naturam. Ergo oportuit in passione Christi, quae fuit satisfactoria, esse poenalia
opera exteriora, et sensum horum in sensualitate, et voluntatem dolendi in ratione."
57 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 4, mem. 5, n. 107 (Quaracchi ed.,
273): "Fuit enim in Christo separatio animae a came, et compassio separationis; et praeterea
dolor pro peccato humani generis, sine quo non esset satisfactum etiam cum aliis duobus, sicut
patet in vera contritione. Licet patiar poenam in corpore, et compatiar illi poenae in anima,
nisi adhuc sit dolor de peccato, non est vera satisfactio."

18

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

separation" experienced in Christ's soul; and third [iii],
corresponding to [A] "the will for sorrowing and suffering in the
rational part of the soul" (voluntas dolendi et patiendi in ratione)
is [B] "sorrow [dolor de peccato] for the sin of the human race."
Also readily apparent in these two texts is Alexander's primary
concern with the third aspect of Christ's satisfaction, namely, the
will to sorrow for human sin in the rational part of the soul.
While these three dimensions of Christ's experience correspond
to Alexander's conception of proper penitential satisfaction, they
also correspond to different aspects of Christ's human nature. To
appreciate fully Alexander's teaching here, it is necessary to
correlate this tripartite satisfaction with his view of the
constitution of Christ's psyche.
A) Suffering in the Inferior Part of Reason

At the strictly bodily level, Christ undergoes physical suffering
and death, constituted by separation of body and soul, which
corresponds to the first [i] element of satisfaction. At the same
time, he feels or experiences this suffering psychically, in what
Alexander calls the sensible part of his soul. This is literally a cosuffering or a com-passio on the part of the sensible soul in relation to the body. This psychical experience of physical injury can
also be a response to the anticipation of such. And this, in part, as
noted above, is how Alexander interprets the gospel account of
Christ's sadness on the eve of his death. He experiences sadness
(tristitia) in his soul over his immanent death. 58 This corresponds
to the second [ii] element of satisfaction.
58 Alexander, III Sent., d. 15, n. 29 (Quaracchi ed., 160): "I respond: in Christ there was
a rational power and a sensible power, both with respect to himself and insofar as it was
ordained toward reason. In reason, there was delectation of divinity; and for this reason it is
said 'set aside' since it did not prevent the sadness which was in the sensible part"
("Respondeo: in Christo erat vis rationalis et sensualitas, et secundum se, et secundum quod
ordinata est ad rationem. In ratione fuit delectatio divinitatis; et ideo dicitur 'semota,' quia
non cohibuit tristitiam quae erat in sensualitate"). See Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q.
4, d. 3, m. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:60): "Perturbation is sometimes a movement of the sensible
part .... Inasmuch as it is a movement of the sensible part, thus it was in Christ" ("Perturbatio
quandoque est motus sensualitatis.Prout est motus sensualitatis, sic fuit in Christo").

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

19

B) Spontaneous Suffering in the Superior Part of Reason
But what does Alexander mean by the third [iii] element of
satisfaction, the "will for sorrowing and suffering in the rational
part of the soul" (voluntas dolendi et patiendi in ratione), which,
intriguingly, also entails a "sorrow for the sin [dolor de peccato]
of the human race"? Clearly, it is a voluntary act of willing in the
rational part of the soul, and clearly, it has a double intention,
both for suffering and for sorrowing. Though Alexander does not
elaborate, the voluntas patiendi, perhaps best rendered "the will
to suffer," seems to refer to Christ's rational intent to undergo the
passion. Of apparently greater interest to Alexander here is Jesus'
voluntas dolendi, best rendered "the will to sorrow," more
precisely, a will to sorrow for the sins of fallen humanity. In this
quaestio disputata, then, an experience of sorrow (dolor) or
sadness (tristitia) in Jesus, which in the Glossa Alexander had
confined to Christ's sensible soul and understood as directed at
Christ's own immanent demise, has now also emerged as an act of
the superior part of reason and is directed at the demise of
humanity as a whole, the separation from God wrought by sin. 59
To clarify: Alexander has not jettisoned Jesus' sadness or sorrow
in the sensible part of the soul with regard to his own death;
rather, in contrast to the earlier work, another experience of
sorrow has now been added to Jesus' psyche, one that has a
different "location" (i.e., the rational part of the soul) and a
different object (i.e., the separation from God wrought by human
sin). 60
But how exactly does this sorrow function in Jesus' soul for
Alexander? How, in particular, is it compatible with Christ's
continual experience of the beatific vision, noted above?
Alexander solves this problem by introducing a distinction in the
superior part of reason. Adopting a distinction derived from
59 In the Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 3, ch. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:68),
Alexander makes a similar statement regarding Jesus' compassion for fallen human beings. See
text at note 57 above.
60 By contrast, as Adams notes, for Anselm, "Christ does not experience our unhappiness
in addition to pain and suffering" (What Sort of Human Nature?, 15).

20

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

Maximus the Confessor and transmitted to the West in the twelfth
century through the Latin translation of John of Damascus's De
fide orthodoxa, 61 Alexander distinguishes between reason ut
natura and reason ut ratio.
I respond: the superior part of reason is considered twofold: for it is ut natura,
namely, as it is a certain power of the soul in itself, united to the flesh according
to itself, and apprehending from innate cognition, according to which the
Philosopher said: "every man has a natural desire for knowledge and a sound
mind." 62

For Alexander, reason ut natura, which might best be rendered
the "spontaneous or natural reason," appears to be a mode of the
superior part of reason in which it desires and wills spontaneously
what it perceives immediately to be good and is averse to and
does not will spontaneously what it perceives immediately to be
evil. As he indicates here, the ratio ut natura is oriented not only
toward bodily/sensate goods or evils, but also toward goods or
evils that have no bodily or physical dimension. It is here that
Alexander locates Christ's sorrow for human sin: "in Christ, the
superior part of reason, ut natura, was able to suffer in some

61 As Gondreau notes (The Passions of Christ's Soul, 311), Maxim us the Confessor, following the language of the New Testament, distinguished Christ's 0£7'tjcr1c; (will), as when in the
(will), as when he says
garden Christ prayed "not my will" (0clltjµa), and Christ's
"Father, if you will it
remove this cup from me" (Luke 22:42; cf. Matt 26:39, and
Mark 14:36). Following Maximus, John of Damascus spoke of 8£7'tjcr1c; as a natural and vital
as a rational appetite for some thing (De fide orth., 2.22 [ed.
appetite of nature and
E.M. Buytaert (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.-Louvain-Paderborn: Franciscan Institute-E.
Nauwelaerts-F. Schoningh, 1955, 135-40]). In the twelfth century, Lombard (III Sent., d. 17,
c. 2 [ed. Coll. Bonav., 106-7) followed this lead and affirmed Christ's natural fear (timor
naturalis) of death in the garden, while repudiating any reflective fear (timor cogitationalis).
In his Glossa, Alexander adopts this distinction with respect to Christ's fear, but not with
respect to Christ's sorrow.
62 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "Respondeo: Superior portio rationis consideratur dupliciter: quia utest 'natura,' scilicet
ut est quaedam potentia animae in se, secundum se carni unita, et apprehendens ex cognitione
innata, secundum quod <licit Philosophus quod omnis homo naturalem habet appetitum
disciplinae et sanitatum."

THE SALVIFICAFFECTIVITY OF CHRIST

21

way. " 63 And again: "In the reason of Christ there was compassion
through the mode of nature. " 64 In short, adopting but altering the
received Aristotelian-Damascene Christo-anthropological tradition, Alexander affirms a form of suffering (passio) in the rational
part of Christ's soul. 65
C) Deliberative Suffering in the Superior Part of Reason?

On the other hand, Alexander posits in the superior part of
reason a ratio ut ratio: the superior part of reason "is called
reason as 'ratio,' namely, when it apprehends with election and
deliberation. " 66 According to this mode of the superior part of
reason, which might best be rendered the "deliberative or elective
reason," the soul "does not act toward the body; rather it has its
act apart from the body ... [and] in this second way it is
voluntarily ordered toward God. " 67 In as much as it is capable of
deliberation and rational choice (ut ratio), the rational soul is able
to desire and intend and will what it understands to be ultimately
good, upon reflection and in light of some further consideration.
"Ratio ut ratio estimates [or, perceives] what is appropriate to

63 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "Dico ergo quod ratio superior in Christo, ut natura, fuit possibilis ad quoddam pati."
64 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 4, mem. 2, n. 95 (Quaracchi ed.,
268): "In ratione Christi fuit compassio per modum naturae."
65 In an objection to which Alexander responds by distinguishing between the two parts
of ratio, he explicitly quotes Damascene's definition of passion, which locates it in the sensible
part of the soul (Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 1, mem. 6, n. 55
[Quaracchi ed., 249]): "But was that passion in the superior part of the soul? It seems not. For
Damascene said: 'a passion is a movement of the sensible appetitive power in response to a
perceived good or evil"' ("Sed fuitne haec passio in superiori parte? Videtur quod non. Dicit
enim Damascenus: 'Passio est motus appetitivae virtutis sensibilis in apparitione boni et
mali'").
66 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "Superior portio rationis consideratur dupliciter: ... dicitur ratio ut 'ratio', scilicet
quando apprehendit cum electione et deliberatione."
67 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 2, ch. 1, a. 3 (Quaracchi ed., 4:64):
"et est considerare rationem ut rationem, secundum quod non se habet ad corpus, immo
actum habet extra corpus ... secundo modo est in ordine ad Deum voluntarie.

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

itself, and not harmful." 68 For Alexander, this mode of the
superior part of reason in Christ remained unaffected both by the
sadness stemming from the sensible soul's suffering (i.e., that of
the inferior part of reason) and by the rational soul's spontaneous
(ut natura) experience of sorrow over human sin. There is a form
of sadness (tristitia) "from voluntary dispensation or as a propassion, which extends to the sensible part without a disturbance
of reason, and in this way there was sadness in Christ"; and, if
spontaneous reason (ut natura) is considered, "there was sadness
according to reason"; but if deliberative reason (ut ratio) is
considered "there was no sadness in reason. " 69 The Summa
halensis summarizes:
Perturbation is sometimes a movement ... of the rational part [of the soul] ...
And it can be in the rational part in two ways: either in that part spontaneously
[ut natura], and so was able to be in Christ on account of his assumed infirmity
and disposition; or it is in that part deliberatively [ut ratio sive rationalis], and
thus it was never in Christ. 70

So, "if in other human beings both deliberative reason [ut ratio]
and spontaneous reason [ut natura] are disturbed," in Christ
"aided by grace, deliberative reason was not." 71 Thus, "inasmuch
as ratio was united to the deity, from that ordination it was not

68 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 1, mem. 6, n. 55 (Quaracchi ed.,
249): "ratio ut ratio existimat illud sibi conveniens, et non nocivum."
69 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 2, ch. 1, a. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:63):
"est tristitia ex voluntate dispensationis sive secundum propassionem, quae attenditur in
sensualitate praeter pertubationem rationis, et hoc modo fuit in Christo tristitia. Praeterea,
sicut patebit, est considerare rationem ut naturam et rationem ut rationem. Si ut naturam, sic
etiam fuit tristitia secundum rationem; si ut rationem, sic non fuit in rationem tristitia."
70 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:60): "Perturbatio
quandoque est motus ... partis rationalis. Prout est motus partis rationalis, potest esse duobus
modis: vel in parte prout est natura, et sic potuit esse in Christo ex infirmitate vel dispositione
assumpta; vel prout est ratio sive rationalis, et sic nequaquam."
71 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 4, mem. 2, n. 95 (Quaracchi ed.,
268): "ergo in aliis hominibus turbatur ratio ut natura et ut ratio, et in Christo non turbatur
ratio ut ratio, adiuta per gratiam."

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

23

able to co-suffer the sorrow of death [dolor mortis]." 72 Similarly,
in deliberative reason "there was no compassion [in Christ]
inasmuch as it was united to the deity, namely, in that it was aided
by the grace of union. " 73
Having posited this distinction in the superior part of reason,
Alexander is able to give a more nuanced account of the various
dimensions of Christ's psychological experience than he had given
in the Glossa:
I say that that suffering was in the flesh, and the feeling [sensus] of that was in
the inferior part of reason; but it was partly in the superior [part of reason], since
in the superior part there was cognition of suffering [cognitiopassionis].But that
was not punishment for him, since even though the suffering passed over to the
superior part, yet that part overcame it, because it did not consider that [to be]
suffering, on account of the super-excellence of joy. For there is a twofold
sorrow of compassion [dolor compassionis]: with respect to death and with
respect to the sin of the human race; the one is far removed from the other. 74

Here, then (as in the Glossa), there is suffering in the body and a
co-suffering of that bodily suffering in the inferior, sensible part
of the soul. But, in addition to these, Alexander now (in the
Quaestiones disputatae and in the Summa halensis) also allows an
experience of suffering in the superior part of Christ's reason. 75
72 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "Secundum vero quod ratio unita est deitati, ex ilia ordinatione non est compassibilis
dolore morris."
73 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset {rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 4, mem. 2, n. 95 (Quaracchi ed.,
268): "non fuit compassio in quantum unita deitati, scilicet secundum quod adiuta fuit per
gratiam [unionis]."
74 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 1, mem. 6, n. 56 (Quaracchi ed.,
249-50): "Dico quod passio ilia fuit in came, et sensus illius fuit in inferiori parte rationis; in
parte autem in superiori, quia in superiori parte fuit cognitio passionis. Sed non fuit ei
poenalis, quia etsi pertransiit passio superiorem partem, ita tamen vicit earn pars ilia, quod non
reputavit earn passionem, propter gaudii superexcellentiam. Est tamen duplex dolor
compassionis: [respectu] morris, et respectu peccati humani generis; et unus est magis
elongatus ab alio."
75 Another shift between the Glossa and Alexander's later works has to do with
dependence upon patristic authorities. As Gondreau notes (The Passions of Christ's Soul, 5859 nn. 59-60), "whereas Alexander cites Damascene more than Augustine in his commentary
on the Sentences, he later reversed this when he wrote on Christ's passions in Qu. disp.
'antequam esset (rater'."

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

And also present here (as in the Glossa) is the joy of the beatific
vision in the superior part of Christ's reason. Intriguingly,
Alexander seems to allow the last two-sorrow and joy-an
emergent, though brief, coexistence. Ultimately, rational joy
overcomes rational sorrow (the full soteriological implications of
this will be explored below).
At present, it is Alexander's final comment in this passage that
must be noted. In Jesus, both the sensible soul's co-suffering with
the body and the rational soul's spontaneous experience of
suffering are described as forms of the sorrow (dolor) of compassion. However brief the latter's existence might be in Christ,
it emerges here as quite significant. In Alexander's Jesus, there is
certainly sensible pain and sadness in relation to his bodily
suffering, but there is also a rational compassion for the sins of
fallen humanity, a form of compassion far different from the first.
It seems, that what has changed between the Glossa and the
Quaestiones disputatae is that Alexander has carved out a space in
Jesus' psyche for rational sorrow. Why? Confirming Adams's
above-noted thesis, Alexander appears to be motivated here by
soteriological concerns. "Even though [Christ] suffered punishment in his body, and co-suffered that punishment in his soul,
unless there was also sorrow for sin [dolor de peccato], there
would not be true satisfaction" (emphasis added). What the future
Franciscan seems to imply is that the latter form of compassion is
far more soteriologically significant than the former. For
Alexander, full satisfaction requires not only physical suffering in
the body (as with Anselm) and psychical suffering in the sensible
part of the soul/inferior part of reason (which Aquinas will later
affirm-though he does not explicitly affirm the soteriological
utility of such); it also, and especially, necessitates rational sorrow
or contrition for human sin. From the perspective of soteriological satisfaction, Alexander is most interested not in the
physical suffering of Christ, nor even in the psychical pain cosuffered in the soul, but in Christ's rational capacity to feel sorrow

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

25

for human sin and to compassionate fallen humanity. 76 In the
highest part of his human nature, on behalf of sinners, Christ who
is himself sinless feels contrition for human sin, which is perhaps
especially the sine qua non of full satisfaction. 77
V. EXCURSUS ON CHRIST'S SORROW IN THOMAS AQUINAS

Before completing Alexander's account of Christ's satisfactory
affectivity, a brief comparison with Thomas Aquinas will highlight
the distinctiveness of Alexander's view. 78 In his masterful study,
The Passions of Christ's Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas
Aquinas, Paul Gondreau analyzes the considerable attention that
Thomas devoted to Christ's affectivity in his treatment of the
Incarnation in the Tertia Pars of his Summa Theologica. In
relation to Alexander, four features of that account are
noteworthy.
First, Gondreau discusses Thomas' account of Christ's pain and
sorrow, which Thomas includes among those aspects of human
76 See also Summa halensis, lib. III, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 3, ch. 2 (Quaracchi ed.,
4:68): "since just as in satisfaction on our part is required will and penalty-for it is necessary
that there be sorrow for the sin and that there be joy concerning the punishment-so also in
Christ there was the punishment of passion in the body and the penalty of compassion in
sorrow for the sins of the human race with the maximal will for suffering, in which is the
complete requirement of satisfaction" ("quia sicut in satisfactione ex parte nostra requiritur
voluntas et poena-oportet enim quod sit dolor de peccato et quod sit gaudium de poena-ita
et in Christo fuit poena passionis in corpore et poena etiam compassionis in dolore pro
peccato humani generis cum voluntate maxima patiendi, in quo est complementum
satisfactionis").
77 See also Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 1, ch. 5, a. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:20):
"Therefore, just as for remission of actual sin, which is the sin of man from himself, there is
required with grace sorrow or contrition for it in order that there may be satisfaction for sin,
which is indeed temporal punishment, so for the satisfaction of original sin, which is sin of
man contracted from another, not by his own act, there is required along with grace the
fulfillment of temporal punishment by another or for another, so that divine justice might
have a place" ("Ideo sicut ad remissionem peccati actualis, quod est peccatum hominis ex
seipso, requiritur cum gratia dolor seu contritio ad hoc ut satisfaciat pro peccato, quae quidem
est poena temporalis, ita ad satisfactionem originalis peccati, quod est peccatum hominis ab
alio contractum, non ab actu suo, requiritur cum gratia exsolutio poeanae temporalis ab alio
sive per alium, ut locum habeat divina iustitia").
78 For a brief discussion of Thomas' view of Christ's humanity, see Weinandy, In the
Likeness of Sinful Flesh, 47-53.

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

nature that were coassumed in the Incarnation. After affirming
Christ's passible body in question 14, he turns in question 15 to
Christ's soul. Ruling out the presence of sin (a. 1), the fames of
sin (a. 2), and ignorance in Christ (a. 3), Thomas yet affirms (a. 4)
that Christ assumed a passible soul: "the affections of the sensitive
appetite are most properly called passions of the soul" and these
"were in Christ, even as all else pertaining to man's nature." 79
Thomas then affirms (a. 5) the presence of sensible pain in Christ,
as well as the traditional claim of continual beatific joy in Christ's

79 Thomas affirms (STh III, q. 15, a. 4) that these passions of Christ's soul were present
without undermining his sinless perfection: "Nevertheless we must know that the passions
were in Christ otherwise than in us, in three ways. (1) First, as regards the object, since in us
these passions very often tend towards what is unlawful, but not so in Christ. (2) Secondly,
as regards the principle, since these passions in us frequently forestall the judgment of reason;
but in Christ all movements of the sensitive appetite sprang from the disposition of the reason.
Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9), that 'Christ assumed these movements, in His
human soul, by an unfailing dispensation, when He willed; even as He became man when He
willed.' (3) Thirdly, as regards the effect, because in us these movements, at times, do not
remain in the sensitive appetite, but deflect the reason; but not so in Christ, since by His
disposition the movements that are naturally becoming to human flesh so remained in the
sensitive appetite that the reason was nowise hindered in doing what was right. Hence Jerome
says (on Mt. 26:37) that 'Our Lord, in order to prove the reality of the assumed manhood,
"was sorrowful" in very deed; yet lest a passion should hold sway over His soul, it is by a
propassion that He is said to have "begun to grow sorrowful and to be sad"'; so that it is a
perfect 'passion' when it dominates the soul, i.e. the reason; and a 'propassion' when it has
its beginning in the sensitive appetite, but goes no further" ("Sciendum tamen quad huiusmodi
passiones aliter fuerunt in Christo quam in nobis, quantum ad tria. Primo quidem, quantum
ad obiectum. Quia in nobis plerumque huiusmodi passiones feruntur ad illicita, quad in
Christo non fuit. Secundo, quantum ad principium. Quia huiusmodi passiones frequenter in
nobis praeveniunt iudicium rationis, sed in Christo omnes motus sensitivi appetitus oriebantur
secundum dispositionem rationis. Uncle Augustinus <licit, XN de Civ. Dei, quad hos motus,
certissimae dispensationis gratia, ita cum voluit Christus suscepit animo humano, sicut cum
voluit factus est homo. Terrio, quantum ad effectum. Quia in nobis quandoque huiusmodi
motus non sistunt in appetitu sensitivo, sed trahunt rationem. Quad in Christo non fuit, quia
motus naturaliter humanae carni convenientes sic ex eius dispositione in appetitu sensitivo
manebant quad ratio ex his nullo modo impediebatur facere quae conveniebant. Uncle
Hieronymus <licit, super Matth., quad dominus noster, ut veritatem assumpti probaret
hominis, vere quidem contristatus est, sed, ne passio in animo illius dominaretur, per
propassionem dicitur quad coepit contristari, ut passio perfecta intelligatur quando animo,
idest rationi, dominatur; propassio autem, quando est inchoata in appetitu sensitivo, sed
ulterius non se extendit").

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

27

soul. 80 As Thomas goes on to say, "by Divine dispensation the joy
of contemplation remained in Christ's mind so as not to overflow
into the sensitive powers, and thereby shut out sensible pain. " 81
While Thomas thus affirms that joy in the rational part of Christ's
soul does not suppress sensible sorrow, 82 he also affirms the
inverse, namely, that sensible sorrow does not disturb Christ's
reason. "Sorrow was not in Christ, as a perfect passion; yet it was
inchoatively in Him as a 'propassion."' 83 As a propassion, Christ's
sorrow does not come to the disturbing maturity of a full-fledged
passion, as in other human beings. 84 Thomas also affirms that the
80 STh III, q. 15, a. 5, ad 3: "by the power of the Godhead of Christ the beatitude was
economically kept in the soul, so as not to overflow into the body, lest His passibility and
mortality should be taken away; and for the same reason the delight of contemplation was so
kept in the mind as not to overflow into the sensitive powers, lest sensible pain should thereby
be prevented" ("virtute divinitatis Christi dispensative sic beatitudo in anima continebatur
quod non derivabatur ad corpus, ut eius passibilitas et mortalitas tolleretur. Et, eadem ratione,
delectatio contemplationis sic continebatur in mente quod non derivabatur ad vires sensibiles,
ut per hoc dolor sensibilis excluderetur").
81 STh III, q. 15, a. 6: "delectatio divinae contemplationis ita per dispensationem divinae
virtutis retinebatur in mente Christi quod non derivabatur ad vires sensitivas, ut per hoc dolor
sensibilis excluderetur."
82 See STh III, q. 46, aa. 6-8.
83 Ibid., ad 1: "tristitia removetur a Christo secundum passionem perfectam, fuit tamen in
eo initiata, secundum propassionem."
84 Ibid., ad 2: "As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 8), for the three passions-desire,
joy,
and fear-the Stoics held three eupatheias, i.e., good passions, in the soul of the wise man, viz.
for desire, will-for joy, delight-for fear, caution. But as regards sorrow, they denied it could
be in the soul of the wise man, for sorrow regards evil already present, and they thought that
no evil could befall a wise man; and for this reason, because they believed that only the
virtuous is good, since it makes men good, and that nothing is evil, except what is sinful,
whereby men become wicked. Now although what is virtuous is man's chief good, and what
is sinful is man's chief evil, since these pertain to reason which is supreme in man, yet there
are certain secondary goods of man, which pertain to the body, or to the exterior things that
minister to the body. And hence in the soul of the wise man there may be sorrow in the
sensitive appetite by his apprehending these evils; without this sorrow disturbing the reason.
And in this way are we to understand that 'whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not
make him sad,' because his reason is troubled by no misfortune. And thus Christ's sorrow was
a propassion, and not a passion" ("sicut Augustinus <licit, XIV de Civ. Dei, pro tribus
perturbationibus, scilicet cupiditate, laetitia et timore, Stoici tres eupathias, idest bonas
passiones, in anima sapientis posuerunt, scilicet pro cupiditate voluntatem, pro laetitia
gaudium, pro metu cautionem. Sed pro tristitia negaverunt aliquid posse esse in animo
sapientis, quia tristitia est de malo quad iam accidit; nullum autem malum aestimant posse
accidere sapienti. Et hoc ideo est quia non credebant aliquid esse bonum nisi honestum, quod

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BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

possibility of sorrow in Christ is a function of the fallen human
state that Christ has assumed. Yet in assuming it, Christ incurred
only the punishment, not the guilt of sin: "All sorrow is an evil of
punishment; but it is not always an evil of fault, except only when
it proceeds from an inordinate affection." 85 Thus far, Thomas and
Alexander largely concur in their understanding of Christ's
affectivity.
The comparison becomes more ambiguous, though, in article
6, when Thomas asks whether there was sorrow (tristitia) m
Christ.
Now even as sensible pain is in the sensitive appetite, so also is sorrow. But there
is a difference of motive or object; for the object and motive of pain is hurt
perceived by the sense of touch, as when anyone is wounded; but the object and
motive of sorrow is anything hurtful or evil interiorly, apprehended by the
reason or the imagination [as was said in STh I-II, q. 35, aa. 2, 7], as when
anyone grieves over the loss of grace or money. Now Christ's soul could
apprehend things as hurtful either to himself, as his passion and death-or to
others, as the sin of his disciples, or of the Jews that killed him. And hence, as
there could be true pain in Christ, so too could there be true sorrow. 86
homines bonos facit; nee aliquid esse malum nisi inhonestum, per quad homines mali fiunt.
Quamvis autem honestum sit principale hominis bonum, et inhonestum principale hominis
malum, quia haec pertinent ad ipsam rationem, quae est principalis in homine; sunt tamen
quaedam secundaria hominis bona, quae pertinent ad ipsum corpus, vel ad exteriores res
corpori deservientes. Et secundum hoc, potest in animo sapientis esse tristitia, quantum ad
appetitum sensitivum, secundum apprehensionem huiusmodi malorum, non tamen ita quad
ista tristitia perturbet rationem. Et secundum hoc etiam intelligitur quad non contristabit
iustum quidquid ei acciderit, quia scilicet ex nullo accidente eius ratio perturbatur. Et
secundum hoc tristitia fuit in Christo, secundum propassionem, non secundum passionem").
85 Ibid., ad 3. Thomas continues: "Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9): 'Whenever
these affections follow reason, and are caused when and where needed, who will dare to call
them diseases or vicious passions?"' ("omnis tristitia est malum poenae, non tamen semper est
malum culpae, sed solum quando ex inordinato affectu procedit. Uncle Augustinus <licit, XIV
de Civ. Dei, cum rectam rationem sequantur istae affectiones, et quando et ubi oportet
adhibentur, quis eas tune morbidas aut vitiosas passiones audeat dicere?").
86 STh III, q. 15, a. 6: "Sicut autem dolor sensibilis est in appetitu sensitivo, ita et tristitia,
sed est differentia secundum motivum, sive obiectum. Nam obiectum et motivum doloris est
laesio sensu tactus percepta, sicut cum aliquis vulneratur. Obiectum autem et motivum
tristitiae est nocivum seu malum interius apprehensum, sive per rationem sive per
imaginationem, sicut in secunda parte habitum est, sicut cum aliquis tristatur de amissione
gratiae vel pecuniae. Potuit autem anima Christi interius apprehendere aliquid ut nocivum, et
quantum ad se, sicut passio et mars eius fuit, et quantum ad alias, sicut peccatum

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

29

Here, like Alexander, Thomas distinguishes between sensible pain,
whose object is always tied directly to a bodily injury incurred in
one's own person, and sorrow (tristitia), which has a different set
of objects, those perceived as injurious "by reason or imagination," either to oneself or to another. Thomas's examples of such
sorrow are intriguingly similar to those mentioned by Alexander,
for in addition to loss of money the Dominican mentions the loss
of grace or the sin of others (the disciples' or the Jews'). Where
Thomas is clearly distinct from Alexander, though-adhering far
more strictly and consistently to an Aristotelian-cum-Damascene
anthropology-is in his locating of this sorrow squarely in the
sensible part of the soul, not somehow in the rational part, as
Alexander had done.
One is inclined to ask how well such sorrow "fits" into the
sensible part of the soul. It may be that for Thomas the spiritual
harm (loss of grace or sin) of another is first perceived by the
rational part of the soul (in a manner different from the soul's
sensible perception of its own bodily harm), and this rational or
imaginative estimation then produces a movement of the sensible
soul, that is, a passion (more precisely, in Christ, a propassion). If
so, then perhaps his position is not so very different from
Alexander's. On the other hand, by at least attempting to locate
Christ's sorrow over human sin in the rational part of the soul,
Alexander might be able to give it greater scope and significance.
This leads to the second observation. Strikingly, Thomas does
not consider the compassion of Jesus. 87 Despite ample scriptural
attestation to this emotion-including repeated gospel references
to Christ's compassion, 88 Paul's reference in Philippians 1:8 to the
visceribus Christi lesu ("the tender compassion of Christ Jesus";
New Living translation), and references in the book of Hebrews
discipulorum, vel etiam Iudaeorum occidentium ipsum. Et ideo, sicut in Christo potuit esse
verus dolor, ita in eo potuit esse vera tristitia, alio tamen modo quam in nobis est, secundum
ilia tria quae sunt assignata supra, cum communiter de Christi passione loqueremur."
87 Torrell observes: "Curiously, Aquinas never speaks of compassion or pity with respect
to Christ, even though [fhomas] clearly defines it as a kind of sorrow over an evil that befalls
another" (Torrell, "Preface," 13).
88 See Matt 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; 20:34; Mark 1:40-44; 6:34; 8:2; Luke 7:13; 10:33.

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to Christ's high priestly capacity to co-suffer (conpati in Heb
4: 15) and co-sorrow (condolore in Heb 5 :2) with human
weakness 89-Thomas does not treat this theme. Gondreau offers
this summarizing observation:
Noticeably absent from Thomas' remarks on Christ's sorrow-from the
commentary on the Sentences to the Summa-is mention of the passion of pity
[misericordia];this passion the Dominican theologian again classifies as a species
of sorrow in the Prima Secundae Pars, as it signifies sorrow over another's
misfortune. The Gospels amply attest to such an affective occurrence in the life
of Jesus, with no less than twenty-five such references .... That Aquinas should,
after having explicitly affirmed the inherent relation between pity and sorrow as
between a species and its genus, omit from his account of Christ's sorrow one of
Scripture's most commonly reported emotional experiences in Jesus remains ..
. an undeniable drawback to an otherwise remarkable analysis of the passion of
sorrow in the soul of Christ. 90

Perhaps by locating sorrow squarely in Christ's sensitive appetite,
Thomas is not able to give the kind of scope it would have if it
were located in the intellectual appetite or the rational will. As a
sensible passion, sorrow is perhaps too deeply implicated in
Christ's own bodily pain to be other-directed or to engage fully
89 See the following texts in various translations: (1) Luke 1:78-"Through the bowels of
the mercy of our God" (DV); "per viscera misericordiae" (Vulg.); "By the tender mercy of our
God, the dawn from on high will break upon us" (NRSV); "bowels of the mercy" (AV);
"because of our God's merciful compassion" (Holman Christian Standard); "Our God is
merciful and tender" (Good News). (2) Phil 1:8- "long after you all in the bowels of Jesus
Christ" (DV); "visceribus Christi Iesu" (Vulg.); "For God is my witness, how I long for all of
you with the compassion of Christ Jesus (NRSV); "with the affection of Christ Jesus"
(New AV); "with the tender mercies of Christ Jesus" (American Standard); "in the compassion
of Jesus Christ" (3'd Mill); "with the tender compassion of Christ Jesus" (New Living); "my
deep feeling for you all comes from the heart of Christ Jesus himself" (Good News). (3) Heb
2:17-"Therefore He had to be like His brothers in every way, so that He could become a
merciful [misericors] and faithful high priest" (NRSV). (4) Heb 4:15-"who cannot have
compassion on our infirmities" (DV); "non posit conpati infirmitatibus nostris" (Vulg.); "For
we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses" (NRSV);
"who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities" (AV); "who cannot feel sympathy
for our weaknesses" (Good News);. (5) Heb 5 :2-"Who can have compassion ... he himself
also is compassed with infirmity" (DV); "condo/ore posit . .. circumdatus est infirmitate
(Vulg.); "He is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject
to weakness" (NRSV); "And because he is human, he is able to deal gently with the people .
. . . For he is subject to the same weaknesses they have" (New Living).
90 Goudreau, The Passions of Christ's Soul, 403.

THE SALVIFICAFFECTIVITYOF CHRIST

31

nonphysical kinds of pains in others, which would allow it to
become a full expression of compassion. Perhaps also Christ's
constant experience of the beatific vision in his intellectual
appetite or will "crowds out" for Thomas the possibility of some
form of compassion there as well. Like Alexander in his early
position in the Glossa, Thomas seems to hold to a "cleaner"
distinction between joy in the rational part of soul and sorrow in
the sensible part. 91
A third point of comparison regards the above-noted
distinction between the natural (ut natura) and deliberative (ut
ratio) modes of the superior part of reason, taken over by
Alexander from Damascene. As noted, Alexander adopts the
distinction but alters it, positing both modes in the superior part
of reason. Thus, he distinguishes between ratio (ut natura) and
ratio (ut ratio). For Alexander, the usefulness of the distinction
emerges most prominently in enabling a certain attribution of
sorrow to Christ, not so much over his own suffering and death,
but over human sin and fallen humanity. As Gondreau has
noted, 92 Thomas too takes up this distinction, but applies it
differently. FollowingDamascene more closely, Thomas speaks of
Christ's will (voluntas)-not Christ's ratio-as having these two
modes. For the Dominican, Jesus has a natural will (voluntas ut
natura), which "rejects what is contrary to nature and what is evil
in itself, such as death and the like." Christ also has a rational will
(voluntas ut ratio), which "may at times choose these things
[things repugnant in themselves, e.g., physical pain or death] in
relation to an end. " 93 Thus, Thomas employs the distinction with
a narrower focus than Alexander, to navigate Jesus' agony over
his own immanent passion in the Garden of Gethsemane.
A fourth and final observation is that while, with Anselm and
Alexander, Thomas does see in Christ's death a satisfaction for
human sin, he does not appear to invest Christ's sensible sorrow
91

See STh III, q. 46, a. 8.

92 Ibid., 312-17.
93 STh III, q. 18, a. 5: "Similiter etiam voluntas ut natura repudiat ea quae naturae sunt
contraria, et quae sunt secundum se mala, puta mortem et alia huiusmodi. Haec tamen
quandoque voluntas per modum rationis eligere potest ex ordine ad finem."

32

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

with the soteriological significance that Alexander sees in what for
him is Christ's rational sorrow. 94 Nor, for that matter, does
Thomas see in Christ's experience of joy the soteriological importance that Alexander does. 95
VI. A SATISFYING JOY

Returning to Alexander of Hales, one might be forgiven in
assuming that for him Christ's satisfaction is completed in the way
described above. In fact, it is not. The Franciscan posits another
affective dimension to Christ's saving work, namely, joy
(gaudium). Central to his view of Jesus' human soul and the
salvation achieved through his passion is that Christ experienced
the highest joy in this life. 96 In light of the foregoing, this raises
two questions: How is such joy present in Christ? And why is joy
soteriologically significant?
While Alexander does not allow the suffering that is a function
of punishment for sin to be present in the highest part of Christ's
rational soul, he insists on the presence of another form of
affectivity there:

94 STh III, q. 15, a. 6, ad 4: "There is no reason why a thing may not of itself be contrary
to the will, and yet be willed by reason of the end, to which it is ordained, as bitter medicine
is not of itself desired, but only as it is ordained to health. And thus Christ's death and passion
were of themselves involuntary, and caused sorrow, although they were voluntary as ordained
to the end, which is the redemption of the human race" ("nihil prohibet aliquid esse
contrarium voluntati secundum se quod tamen est volitum ratione finis ad quern ordinatur,
sicut medicina amara non est secundum se volita, sed solum secundum quod ordinatur ad
sanitatem. Et hoc modo mors Christi et eius passio fuit, secundum se considerata, involuntaria
et tristitiam causans, licet fuerit voluntaria in ordine ad finem, qui est redemptio humani
generis").
95 See STh III, q. 46, a. 6, where Thomas simply affirms that Christ felt interior pain over
the sins of the human race, as if those sins were his own and for which sins he made
satisfaction by his death: "The cause of the interior pain was, first of all, all the sins of the
human race, for which He made satisfaction by suffering; hence He ascribes them, so to speak,
to Himself, saying (Psalm 21:2): 'The words of my sins."'
96 Gondreau (The Passions of Christ's Soul, 93) notes without elaboration that a distinctive
feature of Alexander of Hales's discussion is his interest in Christ's experience of the summum
gaudium (in both the Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater' and the Summa halensis). Yet, this did not
lessen the negative side of Christ's experience.

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTIVITY OF CHRIST

33

I respond: suffering [passio] is said variously: In one way, suffering is called joy
[gaudium];in another way inordinate joy [gaudiuminordinatum]; in a third way,
it is called punishment [poenalitas].Inasmuch, therefore, as suffering is called
joy, Christ was able to suffer in every power of the soul. 97

Behind this affirmation is the above-noted distinction between
spontaneous (ut natura) and deliberative (ut ratio) reason:
"deliberative reason was disposed toward that passibility which is
joy; and not only was it disposed, but it had the necessity for joy,
on account of its union with God. " 98 Yet, even while Alexander
distinguishes deliberative reason's joy from spontaneous reason's
sorrow, he relates them intimately, along with the "lower" aspect
of Christ's sadness: "I respond to this: joy [gaudium] from the
presence of the deity, and sorrow [dolor], and the feeling of
punishment [sensus poenae], which was in the flesh, are not
opposed, rather they can stand together simultaneously in the soul
of Christ." Rather-and
this is the main point for
Alexander-"these three things are material with respect to joy. " 99
Alexander's point here is that the three things, which in his view
constitute salvific satisfaction (namely, physical suffering in body,
psychical co-suffering in the sensible part of the soul, and
spontaneous, rational sorrow) are themselves now the object of
Christ's deepest affectivity, namely, deliberative reason's delight
over the salvation achieved through them. Alexander seems to
envision a certain progression or development in Christ's psyche
97 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset [rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 2, mem. 3, n. 47 (Quaracchi ed.,
245-46): "Respondeo: Passio dicitur multipliciter. Uno modo dicitur passio gaudium; alio
modo gaudium inordinatum; tertio modo dicitur poenalitas. Secundum ergo quod passio
gaudium dicitur, possibilis fuit ad passionem secundum omnem vim animae suae Christus."
Alexander concludes the remark with an etymological derivation for this meaning of suffering:
"passio is said from 'patin,' that is, information" ("et sic dicitur passio a 'patin', quod est
informatio") which is not a form of suffering derived from punishment. The other kind of
passibility is derived from "pati" and does entail a penal form of suffering.
98 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset [rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "ratio ut ratio disposita fuit ad passibilitatem quae est gaudium; vel non tantum etiam
disposita, sed habuit necessitatem ad gaudium, propter unionem cum deitate."
99 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset [rater,' q. 16, <lisp. 2, mem. 5, n. 54 (Quaracchi ed.,
249): "Respondeo ad haec: Non opponuntur, immo simul stare possunt in anima Christi de
praesentia deitatis et dolor sive sensus poenae quae fuit in came; immo [tria praedicta] sunt
materialia respectu gaudii."

34

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

as he embraces his suffering and death: "through deliberative
reason punishment was changed into the highest joy." Alexander
suggests that the form of Christ's experience was transformed
from penal suffering to nonpenal affectivity: "Therefore, there
was no suffering [in ratio ut ratio], in as much as suffering implies
punishment, since punishment as punishment was for him
delectable according to that [deliberative] part [of reason], since
it was changed through that into the highest joy." 100 That Christ,
in contrast to all other human beings, was able to do this is,
according to Alexander, a function of the grace bestowed as a
function of the union with the divine nature. 101 In his perfectly
ordered soul, with rightly ordered emotions and passibility, Jesus
feels both sorrow and joy in a perfectly ordered way. 102
But why is joy soteriologically significant for Alexander? The
model and inspiration for his thinking appears to be medieval
teaching on penance. Making an explicit comparison between
general penitential satisfaction and Christ's own, Alexander argues
that "just as in satisfaction on our part ... it is necessary that
there be sorrow [dolor] for the sin and joy [gaudium] concerning
100 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 1, mem. 6, n. 55 (Quaracchi ed.,
249): "Ergo non fuit ibi passio, secundum quod passio sonat in poenam, quia poena ut poena
fuit illi delectabilis secundum illam partem, quia fuit transitus per illam in summum gaudium."
101 See Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 4, mem. 2, n. 95 (Quaracchi
ed., 268): "therefore in other human beings both deliberative reason and spontaneous reason
are disturbed, but in Christ deliberative reason is not disturbed, aided by grace" ("ergo in aliis
hominibus turbatur ratio ut natura et ut ratio, et in Christo non turbatur ratio ut ratio, adiuta
per gratiam").
102 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:61): "but in the
soul of Christ ... the powers possessed perfectly their uses and acts in the body, and therefore
in him there was the feeling of suffering, pain and sorrow" ("In anima vero Christi . . .
perfecte vires habebant usus et actus suos in corpore, et ideo in eo fuit sensus passionis, dolor
et tristitia"). Again, Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 4:61):
"According to this [Augustinian distinction between the spirit and the soul], therefore, it must
be said that the soul of Christ, inasmuch as it was spirit, was in the highest joy [summo gaudio]
from the first condition; but inasmuch as it was united to a passible body, it had passibility,
and so there was in the same the highest joy [summum gaudium] and passibility, yet not in the
same way" ("Secundum hoc ergo dicendum quod anima Christi, secundum quod spiritus, erat
in summo gaudio a prima conditione; in quantum vero unita corpori passibili, habuit
passibilitatem, et erat in eodem summum gaudium et passibilitas, non tamen secundum
idem"). See also Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 2, ch. 1, a. 2 (Quaracchi
ed., 4:63) in note 69 above.

THE SALVIFIC AFFECTMTY OF CHRIST

35

the punishment, so also in Christ." 103 As he explains elsewhere,
"Christ would not have made fitting satisfaction, unless there was
in him the highest joy regarding the highest punishment. " 104 As
with the affective experience of compassion, full satisfaction on
Christ's part requires an affective experience of joy. That is to say,
Christ rejoices precisely over the salvific result of the preceding
experience of penal suffering. As Alexander himself puts it,
"unless those three things were present" -the physical suffering,
the psychical co-suffering, and the rational sorrow for sin-"there
would not have been sufficient satisfaction." 105 In the end,
Alexander seems to imply that the experience of joy is the
consummating condition of all that has preceded in Christ's act of
satisfaction.
CONCLUSION: A FULLY SATISFYINGAFFECTIVITY

Alexander of Hales paints a complex portrait of Jesus' psyche,
of his passible soul and its movements or affections. It is a portrait
that is intended to accommodate the demands of scriptural
testimony, patristic tradition, and orthodox Christology. It tries
to makes sense of a Jesus who, fully divine and fully human,
agonizes with sadness over his immanent death, who weeps with
compassionate sorrow over the city of Jerusalem, and who "for
the joy set before him" endures the cross. Yet Alexander is not
103 Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 3, ch. 2 (Quaracchi ed., 4:68). See
note 76 above for Latin text.
104 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset frater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 3, n. 48 (Quaracchi ed.,
246): "Aliter enim non congrue satisfaceret Christus, nisi esset in eo summum gaudium de
summa poenalitate." See also Summa halensis, lib. 3, inq. 1, tr. 1, q. 4, d. 3, m. 3, ch. 2
(Quaracchi ed., 4:68): "for the will which is in union with God, rejoicing over the separation
of the soul from the body, is condign satisfaction for the separation from God. The passion,
therefore, was not satisfactory by reason of the separation of the soul from the body alone,
but by reason of the will of separation which excelled the punishment of original sin"
("voluntas enim quae est in unione cum Deo, gaudens de separatione animae a corpore, est
condigna satisfactio pro separatione a Deo. Non ergo est satisfactoria passio ratione
separationis animae a corpore tantum, sed ratione voluntatis separationis, quae excellit
poenam originalis peccati").
105 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 16, disp. 2, mem. 5, n. 54 (Quaracchi ed.,
249): "nisi essent ilia tria, quia aliter non esset sufficiens satisfactio."

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

36

interested in Jesus' emotions merely as interesting theological
curiosities that follow from an affirmation of Christ's full humanity. They are, rather, in themselves soteriologically significant.
In order for Jesus to accomplish salfivic satisfaction for human
sin, he must grieve fully over the separation of his soul from his
body that constitutes his death and sorrow over the sin of the
human race that requires it. At the same time, he must rejoice
fully over the human salvation achieved by this death. Together,
these affections in Christ's soul comprise a fully satisfying
affectivity.
In her insightful study of late medieval Christ-devotion in
England, The Grief of God, Ellen Ross notes perceptively that for
many, "the image of the suffering Jesus" was "the primary
scriptural symbol for conveying the depth of a merciful God's
love for human kind," "a vivid narrative of divine mercy," and
"an act of divine mercy dircted toward humans." 106 Ross
continues:
consideration of medieval sources suggests that the concentration on Jesus'
suffering was consistently directed toward and complemented by an
understanding of the divinity of Christ. Far from signaling mere humanity, as it
does for many contemporary viewers, the physicality of the wounded Jesus ...
manifested the reality of divine presence in Jesus Christ and made tangible the
doctrinal claim that the Divine had become human. 107

According to Ross, medieval English men and women perceived
in the suffering humanity of Jesus a profound expression of the
divine nature. Ross, of course, does not treat the Englishman who
is the subject of this study. But something similar seems to be
present in Alexander's reflection on the humanity of Jesus. Yet,
for Alexander, what seems most expressive of the divine nature in
the humanity of Jesus is not his physical suffering (or at least not
that alone), but rather his psychical sorrowing over human sin and
his compassionating of fallen humanity. Apparently reflecting this
intuition, at one point in his Quaestiones disputatae Alexander
106 Ross, Grief of God, 5-6.
107

Ibid., 6.

THE SALVIFICAFFECTIVITY OF CHRIST

37

strongly defends the union of both Christ's soul and body with the
divine nature. His rationale is intriguing, for he asserts that
"unless there was a uniort of the soul with God, it would not be
possible to say 'God willed to suffer'; nor would it be possible to
say 'God suffered', unless the body were united to the deity. " 108
For Alexander, it appears, precisely because of a hypostatic union,
the voluntas dolendi of Jesus' human soul is also the willingness
to suffer of God himself, and the passio of Jesus' body is in very
fact the suffering God's body, thus revealing the divine disposition
and intent toward humans and even making it possible. Such an
intuition is visible in the very earliest of Alexander's extant
writings. In the prologue to the Glossa on Lombard's Sentences,
Alexander uses a passage from Exodus 3 to introduce the material
of each of the four books:
The material of this first book [of the Sentences] can be drawn from what the
Lord said in Exodus 3: 14-15: I am who I am. I am the God of Abraham, the God
of Isaac, the God of]acob, and this is my name into eternity. The material of the
remaining books is taken from that which comes just before this verse in the
same chapter [3:7-8]: The Lord said: "I have seen the affliction of my people,
which is in Egypt and their hardship in their labors. Hearing their cry and
knowing their sorrow, I have descended in order to free them and to lead them
. wit. h mi"lk and honey. " 109
. a land flowing
into

Turning to book 3, which treats Christology, Alexander suggests
that "the material of the third book" is taken from the three verbs
in these verses (7-8): I have seen, I have heard, and knowing, and
he offers this exegesis:

108 Alexander, Q. D. 'antequam esset (rater,' q. 15, <lisp. 2, mem. 2, n. 38 (Quaracchi ed.,
205): "Sed nisi unio esset animae cum Deo, non possem dicere 'Deus vult pati'; neque 'Deus
patitur' nisi corpus uniretur deitati."
109 Alexander, I Sent., prologus, n. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 1): "Materia huius primi libri potest
trahi ab eo quod <licit Dominus in 3 Ex., 14-15: Ego sum qui sum. Ego sum Deus Abraham,
Deus Isaac, Deus Jacob, et hoc nomen mihi in aeternum. Materia subsequentium librorum
sumitur ab eo quod antecedit immediate in eodem capitulo: Dicit Dominus: Vidi afflictionem
populi mei qui est in Aegypto et duritiam eorum qui praesunt in operibus. Audiens eorum
clamorem et sciens dolorem, descendi ut liberem eum et introducam in terram fluentem lacte
et melle."

38

BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

By this is understood that greater and greater compassion [compassio] moves
God to liberate the human race. The depth of compassion follows the depth of
sin, and the depth of liberation follows the depth of compassion. Whence, Job
30:27, and in the Song of Songs [4:9]: You have wounded my heart, my spouse,
you have wounded my heart with one of your eyes, that is, in the affection by
compassion [in affectio compatiendo]. 110

This divine compassion, 111 for Alexander, is the deep motive for
a twofold divine condescension to humanity in the Incarnation, a
descent into the womb of the Virgin and a descent in the
passion. 112 In this remarkable exegesis of the Song of Songs,
suffering humanity wounds the compassionate heart, the affectus,
of God himself. Ultimately, it is this divine affectus that Alexander
espies at work in the satisfactory, human compassion of Christ.

110 Alexander, I Sent., prologus, n. 5 (Quaracchi ed., 3): "Per hoc notatur maior et maior
compassio movens Deum ad liberandum genus humanum. Ad profunditatem enim peccait
sequitur profunditas compassionis, et ad profunditatem compassionis, profunditasliberationis.
Uncle 30 lob, 27: Interiora mea efferbuerunt absque ulla requie. Et in Cantico: Vulnerasti cor
meum, sponsa mea, vulnerasti cor meum in uno oculorum tuorum, id est in affectu
compatiendo. Et in Psalmo: Non obliviscetur misereri Deus.
111 Alexander's exegesis here of Exodus 3 finds a remarkable parallel in recent trends in
theological exegesis of the Bible. Cf. Bruce C. Birch, Walter Brueggemann, Terence E.
Fretheim, and David L. Peterson, A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1999), 110: "God's disclosure to Moses (Exod 3:7-8a) indicates that God has
not only freely taken initiative but has done so in relationship to human suffering and need.
God's 'seeing' and 'hearing' are not generalized expressions of omniscience, but focused divine
regard for oppression and suffering. Divine response is attuned to and mobilized by human
cries of pain. Perhaps the most remarkable self-disclosure in this verse is in the phrase 'I know
their sufferings.' The Hebrew verb used here lyada', 'to know') indicates something broader
than cognitive knowledge. It indicates a participation in and experiencing of that which is
known. Thus, God indicates a divine choice to enter into and experience Israel's sufferings.
It points to a quality of divine character that we might call the vulnerability of God, the
willingness of God to be wounded in solidarity with human woundedness."
112 Ibid., n. 6 (Quaracchi ed., 3).

The Thomist 71 (2007): 39-64

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES IN AQUINAS
THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas

R

ECENT YEARS have seen much criticism of the traditional
Thomistic position that the acquired moral virtues are
connected through prudence and that neither they nor
acquired prudence can exist perfectly in someone who has not
been assisted by grace. This criticism is in large part based on an
oversimplification of Thomas's understanding of the different
grades or states of virtue. 1
One kind of criticism is directed against Thomas's theory that
the virtues are connected. Peter Geach, for instance, chides
Thomas for holding that "all the virtues stand and fall together. " 2
He seems unaware of the Thomistic distinction between imperfect
and perfect acquired virtue and how it is related to arguments for
the connection of the moral virtues.
Another kind of criticism questions whether the traditional
interpretation of Thomas's position on acquired moral virtue
adequately represents his position. For example, Bonnie Kent has
attacked Alasdair Maclntyre's version of the standard Thomistic
view in part by repeating the well-known facts that Thomas holds
that non-Christians can perform good acts and that the acquired
1 I am here relatively loosely using the words "grade," "state," and "level." As I will show
below, some of the distinctions are between kinds of virrues (e.g., between acquired and
infused virrue), and one may be within the same kind of virtue (i.e., between imperfect and
perfect acquired virrue). Thomas does not use a consistent terminology to describe these
distinctions.
2 Peter Geach, The Virtues, The Stanton Lectures 1973-74 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977), 164.

39

40

THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

virtues are not infused directly by God. 3 She confuses the
traditional thesis that even acquired virtue depends on grace for
its full development with the view that there is no natural
acquired virtue without grace. Her failure to make fine-grained
distinctions leads to a misreading of Maclntyre's interpretation of
Thomas's position. 4
Brian Shanley has similarly criticized Jacques Maritain and
John of St. Thomas, who both presented the traditional argument
that rectitude towards the natural and supernatural last end is
necessary for the possession of that perfect acquired prudence
which connects the acquired virtues. 5 Although she does not
defend Shanley's understanding of pagan virtue, Angela McKay
has recently criticized aspects of my argument against Shanley and
Kent by misreading my position as one that denies that there can
be any acquired prudence without grace. 6 This misrepresentation
follows the familiar pattern in that it does not admit the
distinctions between perfect and imperfect acquired virtue which
are necessary for the traditional argument.
McKay's misrepresentation of my view is significant in that it
mischaracterizes the traditional view on the indirect dependence
of perfect acquired virtue on grace as the view that there is no
acquired virtue without grace. This misinterpretation is common
to Shanley, Kent, and Geach. Since it is both widespread and
touches on issues that are central to Thomas's moral thought, I
shall present a brief defense of the traditional view, including a
description of the way in which the virtues are traditionally
distinguished. I shall first look at the relevant texts and then
3 Bonnie Kent, "Moral Provincialism," Religious Studies 30 (1994): 269-85; Virtues of the
Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 27-33.
4 "Maclntyre's answer is clear: I must dismiss all your virtues as merely apparent. Because
true moral virtues must be directed to the ultimate end for human beings-the perfect
happiness of the afterlife-no one lacking the necessary direction can have any virtues at all"
(Kent, "Moral Provincialism," 269).
5 Brian J. Shanley, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue," The Thomist 63 (1999): 553-77.
6 Angela McKay, "PrudenceandAcquiredMoralVirtue,"TheThomist69
(2005): 535-55.
She criticizes my article, "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," The
Thomist 67 (2003): 279-305.

PERFECTAND IMPERFECTVIRTUES

41

discuss five states of virtue that are relevant to the contemporary
debates. Then I shall show how the distinction between perfect
and imperfect acquired prudence is a central feature of Thomas's
moral thought and found in his own texts. I shall conclude with
some remarks on how the distinction between the states of virtue
is important for understanding the connection of the virtues and
their dependence on grace.
I. THREE GROUPS OF TEXTS

Thomas does not exhaustively discuss the different states of
virtue in any one text or question. There are at least three kinds
of texts that are relevant. First, some texts discuss the connection
between the virtues. In these passages Thomas shows that the
answer to the question of whether and how the virtues are
connected differs according to the kind of virtue that is under
consideration. Second, other texts are concerned with the
question of whether there can be true virtue without charity.
Thomas holds that without charity there can be true acquired
virtue and even the theological virtues of faith and hope. There
are related texts that are concerned with whether someone who
loses charity through mortal sin loses acquired virtue immediately.
The third group of texts is concerned with whether someone in
mortal sin or even an infidel can perform good acts. In this
context, Thomas develops the view that even someone who has
a disordered moral life is able to perform good but not
meritorious actions. The infidel's virtue shows how someone can
develop true virtue on a merely natural level.
It is important to keep in mind that Thomas does not use any
of these groups of texts to describe all of the different states of
virtue. These three groups correspond to standard questions that
were asked by his contemporaries and predecessors and do not
constitute a systematic treatise on virtue's states and its
development. Although I believe that Thomas' s descriptions of the
different states in these texts are compatible, the distinctions he
makes are not identical. In this section I shall briefly look at

42

THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

representative texts from these groups to show how the basic
distinctions are developed in the context of particular discussions.
A) The Connection between the Virtues
Although Thomas discusses the connection of the virtues in
many texts, there are two late texts in which he discusses the issue
at length. 7 In the Prima Secundae, question 65 (1271), he divides
the discussion between the first two articles. 8 In the first article he
discusses the connection of the acquired virtues through prudence; in the second he discusses the connection of the infused
virtues through charity. Shanley has correctly recognized a
difference between the "perfect virtue" of the two articles. In the
first article, "perfect" is used to describe acquired moral virtue
that is connected to the other acquired moral virtues through
prudence. This virtue is "perfect" in opposition to that imperfect
moral virtue which is an unconnected inclination to perform a
good action. In the second article, "perfect" is used to describe
infused virtue that is connected to other infused virtues through
charity. This virtue is "perfect" in opposition to that relatively
imperfect virtue which is acquired and does not order acts to the

7 For similar passages, see III Sent., d. 36, aa. 1-2 (Scriptum super libros sententiarum, ed.
Pierre Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 4 vols. [Paris: Lethielleux, 1929-1947], 3:1214-20); IV
Sent., d. 33, q. 3, a. 2, ad 6 (Opera omnia, 25 vols. [Parma: Fiaccadorus, 1852-73], 7.2:979);
Quodl. 12, q. 14 (Opera Omnia [Rome: Leonine Commission, 1882-], 25.2:416-18); VI
Ethic., lect. 11 (Leonine ed., 47.2:375-77). For a history of the debates, see Odon Lottin,
Psychologie et morale aux xii' et xiii' siecles, 6 vols. (Louvain: Abbaye du Mont Cesar;
Gembloux: Duculot, 1942-60), 3.1:197-252; 4.2:551-663. For scholarly discussions of
Thomas, see especially Fridolino M. Utz, De connectione virtutum moralium inter se
secundum doctrinam St. Thomae Aquinatis (Oldenberg: Albertus Magnus, 1937), 97-126;
Renee Mirkes, "Aquinas on the Unity of Perfect Moral Virtue," American Catholic
PhilosophicalQuarterly 71 (1998): 589-605; Bonnie Kent, "Habits and Virtues," in The Ethics
ofAquinas, ed. Stephen]. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 12224.
8 For the dating of texts I follow Jean-Pierre Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The
Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1996). For the text of the Summa Theologiae I rely on the Leonine as reprinted
in Summa Theologiae, 4 vols. (Turin: Marietti, 1948).

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

43

supernatural ultimate end. 9 Although McKay may not follow
Shanley in holding that the perfect virtue of the first article is
acquired virtue, both she and Shanley suggest that this distinction
between acquired and infused virtue has been neglected by those
who adhere to the traditional view. 10 However, many of those
who adhere to the criticized view clearly recognize it. 11 Shanley
and McKay are novel only in their inference from this distinction
to the conclusion that acquired virtue or at least acquired
prudence can be present in its fully developed natural state
without the assistance of grace. This issue will be addressed
below. The important point to recognize here is that Thomas does
not in this question give one scheme of the states of virtue, nor
does he use "imperfect" and "perfect" as technical terms.
Acquired and connected moral virtue can be at the same time
"perfect" as compared with unconnected moral virtue and yet
"imperfect" with respect to infused virtue.
The parallel passage in the disputed question De virtutibus
cardinalibus (1271/1272), article 2, is important because it
contains the distinction between these states of virtue in one
discussion. 12 There is consequently less room for confusion over
the different ways in which a virtue can be imperfect. Here
Thomas distinguishes between entirely imperfect virtue (omnino
9 Shanley, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue," 5 65. See Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Thomas
Aquinas's Moral Theory," 294-95.
10 McKay, "Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue," 544-46.
11 See for example John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, In I-II, <lisp. 17, a. 2 (De
virtutibus, ed. Armand Mathieu and Herve Gagne [Quebec: Laval, 1952], 453-54, 459-60);
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, "L'instabilite clans l'etat de peche mortel des vertus morales
acquises," Revue Thomiste 42 (1937): 259. Cajetan and Vitoria in this context distinguish
between the theological and philosophical uses of the term "perfect." See Thomas de Vio
Cajetan, In I-II, q. 65, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 6:424); Francisco de Vitoria, In II-II, q. 23, a. 7, n.
2 (Comentarios a la Secunda secundae de Santo Tomas, ed. Vincente Beltran de Heredia
[Salamanca, 1932], 2:25-27). It seems to me that on this issue they may veer towards a
separation of the natural and supernatural ends. For a corrective, see Dominic Banez, In II-II,
q. 23, a. 7 (Scholastica commentaria in secundam secundae [Douai: Peter Borremans, 1615],
3:342, col. 1, C-E).
12 For the text of the De virtutibus cardinalibus, I use the edition of P. A. Odetto, in
Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. 2 (Turin: Marietti, 1965). There is an
interesting recent translation and commentary in R. E. Houser, The Cardinal Virtues: Aquinas,
Albert and Philip the Chancellor (Toronto: PIMS, 2004).

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

imperfectae), somewhat perfect virtue (aliqualiter imperfectae),
and virtue that is perfect simply speaking (simpliciter perfectae).
The second level corresponds to the "perfect" virtue of the Prima
Secundae, question 69, article 1, whereas the third level corresponds to the "perfect" virtue of article 2. McKay and I disagree
over whether these distinctions are exhaustive for understanding
every state of acquired virtue. My position is that Thomas here is
discussing primarily the distinction between fully developed
acquired moral virtue, which requires a connection to other
acquired moral virtues through prudence, and infused virtue,
which is connected to the other infused virtues through charity.
He does not mention an acquired virtue that is unconnected in the
agent because such undeveloped virtue is not relevant to the
discussion.
Although in these texts Thomas does not mention that there
can be an unconnected acquired moral virtue, he also does not
deny that there can be individuals who have such virtue. I hold
the traditional position that some individuals have true acquired
virtue even if they do not have it in its perfect and connected
state. Such virtue is imperfect in that it does not exist alongside
and cooperate with the other major virtues, but it usually produces virtuous acts. For example, a normally just but unchaste
person may act unjustly in order to satisfy his lust. Such a person
may have acquired justice, but it is not fully developed because it
is unsupported by the other virtues. The absence of chastity makes
even the justice imperfect. The fact that this imperfect acquired
justice is the same in kind as perfect acquired justice explains why
Thomas does not need to treat such imperfect virtue in his discussion of how different kinds of virtue are connected differently.
If such acquired moral virtue were fully developed, it would be
connected with the other major virtues through prudence. It is the
kind of virtue that is connected to the others through prudence,
although an individual may possess a virtue such as justice in such
an imperfect way that it is not connected through prudence to
another virtue such as temperance.

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

45

B) True Virtue without Charity?
The occasional nature of Thomas's distinction between the
states of virtue in the above texts can be seen by contrasting them
with his texts on whether there can be true virtue (vera virtus)
without charity. The distinction between the states of virtue in
these latter discussions is not focused around the connection of
the virtues but instead on their relationship to different goods or
ends. The central text is Secunda Secundae (1271/1272), question
23, article. 7. 13 The distinction between true and apparent goods
grounds the distinction between true virtue and a false similitude
of virtue. Thomas's concern is with Augustine's argument that a
virtue is false if it is directed toward a bad end. Augustine
describes a miser who is temperate to preserve money. 14 Thomas
agrees with Augustine that the miser does not have the true virtue
of temperance but a mere similitude of it. This distinction
between true and false virtue does not have an obvious analogue
in Thomas's discussion of the connection of the virtues, but is
brought up in the context of his argument to show that there can
be true virtue without charity.
Why does Thomas hold this position? He distinguishes between the proximate good or end and the ultimate good or end.
Someone can have a good habit with respect to a particular or
proximate good and yet not be ordered to the ultimate good by
charity. Thomas contrasts such a person with the miser who is
mentioned by Augustine. Whereas the miser orders his only
apparently temperate act to a bad end, someone without charity
may perform truly good acts. These acts are the kinds of acts that
are capable of being ordered to God as the ultimate end of charity
even though they are not in fact ordered to him. They are
13 See also III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 4, sol. 3 (Scriptum super libros sententiarum, ed. Pierre
Mandonnetand M. F. Moos, 4 vols. [Paris: Lethielleux, 1929-47], 3:888-91). But this passage
is primarily concerned with the dependence of the infused virtues on charity.
14 Augustine, Contra Julianum Pelagianum, 4.3.19 (in Patrologia Latina, ed. J-P. Migne
[Paris: Migne, 1841], 44:478). For a discussion of this work, see Osborne, "The
Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," 282-83.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

directed not toward the goods sought by arts or science, but
toward those which make someone good even if they are
possessed in a diminished degree by someone who is not good.
Thomas describes the corresponding virtue as "true but imperfect"
(vera virtus, sed imperfecta). This "imperfect" virtue is concerned
with particular goods that are orderable to the ultimate good, but
do not by themselves completely constitute the ultimate good.
Such true virtue becomes a kind of perfect virtue when ordered to
God through charity and the infused virtues.
The "true but imperfect" virtue of this text does not clearly
correlate to any one kind of virtue that Thomas discusses in the
context of the connection between the virtues. It seems to me that
here Thomas is more concerned with the way in which the same
kind of virtue and act can be directed only to the proximate end
in someone who lacks charity and yet is directed to the ultimate
end in someone who has charity. In this passage Thomas appears
to discuss the same virtue, which is imperfect when charity is
lacking but perfect when there is charity. This kind of virtue is not
infused virtue because it exists apart from charity. Is this true
virtue that perfect acquired virtue which is connected to the other
moral virtues through prudence? It may be so in the case of
someone who possesses charity, but it would not seem to be so in
the case of someone who lacks charity on account of repeated
vicious acts. An unchaste person might generally perform just
actions and consequently possess true but imperfect acquired
justice. Although this would be the kind of justice that is
connected with other virtues through prudence, the person would
not possess it as a connected virtue. This kind of virtue
consequently does not correspond to that "perfect" virtue which
is discussed in the Prima Secundae, question 65, article 1.
C) Who Can Perform Good Acts?

Support for my interpretation of this "true but imperfect"
virtue can be found in the similarity with Thomas's treatment of
the way in which infidels or those in mortal sin can have true

PERFECTAND IMPERFECTVIRTUES

47

virtues and yet lack charity. Thomas uses the same distinction
between the different ends in this third group of texts and
connects the issues in the response to the first objection of
Secunda Secundae, question 23, article 7. Just as an infidel can
perform good acts so long as they are not ordered to infidelity, so
can someone who lacks charity perform good acts so long as they
are not committed in opposition to charity. It seems to me that
this infidel has a true virtue that lacks even natural perfection
because he is not ordered to the ultimate end.
The texts that discuss the good acts of someone who lacks
charity apply also to the infidel. Thomas explicitly connects the
two issues in his earliest treatment of the subject, which is found
in his Scriptum super libros Sententiarum. 15 The discussion focuses
on those who lack faith, but in this connection also mentions all
those who lack charity. Everyone who lacks faith or hope lacks
charity, although the converse is not true. 16 But the texts on
infidelity are important because they are concerned directly with
someone who operates on a merely natural level. Someone who
lacks faith possesses only the acquired virtues. A key text on such
a person's virtue is Secunda Secundae, question 10, article 4. This
discussion of the infidel isolates the acquired virtues from the
infused and theological and underscores the fact that natural
reason suffices for the intention of connatural good ends. But this
case resembles that of anyone who lacks charity in that the sinner
has turned away from God. The sinner's aversion from the
ultimate end does not cause him to sin in each of his actions. Even
though every individual act is good or bad, there are some
15 II Sent., d. 41, q. 1, a. 1, sol. (Mandonnet,

ed., 2:1038): "the act of those who do not
have grace or charity is not able to be good in this way, and this is the goodness according to
which the act is called meritorious" ("actus illorum qui gratiam et charitatem non habent, hoc
modo bonus non potest, et haec est bonitas secundum quam actus meritorius dicitur"). See
also IV Sent., d. 39, a. 2, ad 5 (Parma ed., 7.2:1025). The Quaestiones disputatae De Malo,
q. 2, a. 5, ad 7, focuses on someone who lacks charity. I use the Leonine edition as reprinted
in Richard Regan and Brian Davies, The "De Malo" of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 168. The following passages focus entirely on someone who lacks
faith in particular: Super epistolam ad Romanos lectura, c. 14, lect. 3 (Super epistolas S. Pauli
lectura, ed. Raphael Cai, 2 vols. [Turin: Marietti, 1953], 1:213); Super epistolam ad Titum
lectura, c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., 2:310).
16 STh I-II, q. 65, aa. 4-5.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

individual acts that are neither meritorious nor demeritorious. 17
The lack or presence of merit in a good act depends not on the act
but on the agent's possession of charity. Thomas emphasizes that
the agent must have mortally sinned at some point in order to lack
charity, which makes good acts meritorious and refers them to
God. Consequently, a good but not meritorious act belongs only
to an agent who has mortally sinned. 18 Nevertheless, someone
without charity can perform acts that are morally good, even
though they are not referred to God as the ultimate end.
Someone who lacks charity and even faith can perform good
acts even though he cannot merit and does not direct these acts to
God as the ultimate end. It is reasonable to conclude that such a
person could have virtuous habits even though he does not have
all of the acquired virtues. Such a virtue would be "true but
imperfect" in the language of the Secunda Secundae (q. 23, a. 7),
but does not correlate to a kind of virtue in the Prima Secundae
(q. 65, aa. 1-2) or in De virtutibus (a. 2). The distinction between
the acquired virtue of someone who lacks charity and the perfect
acquired virtue of someone who has charity rests on the
distinction between virtuous acts that are referable to the ultimate
end but are not so ref erred, and the same acts that are ref erred to
the ultimate end. An "imperfect" virtue in this context is a virtue
according to which a bad agent performs good acts. This virtue is
neither a mere bodily disposition nor a moral virtue that is
connected to all the other virtues through prudence. But it is a
true virtue.
This survey of different texts shows that it is dangerous to use
only one text to delineate the many states of virtue for which
17 For the existence of good acts which are yet neither meritorious nor demeritorious, see,
in addition to the texts in note 15, II Sent., d. 40, q. 1, a. 5, sol. (Mandonnet, ed., 2:1026);
II Sent., d. 41, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2 (Mandonnet, ed., 2:1039); STh II-II, q. 10, a. 4. Consequently,
Thomas frequently and throughout his career maintains that there are such acts. A possible
exception might be STh I-II, q. 21, a. 4, ad 5. But in light of the other texts and the context
it seems to me that here Thomas merely states that every act has merit or demerit on account
of God rather than on account of the political community, and not that every act must be
either meritorious or demeritorious.
18 II Sent., d. 41, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1 (Mandonnet, ed., 2:1038). See also STh II-II, q. 10, a. 4,
ad 1.

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

49

Thomas provides an account. These three groups contain texts
that give descriptions of the virtues which do not at first glance
correspond to each other. Indeed, there are a variety of other
passages that are necessary for grasping Thomas's understanding
of virtue. These three groups provide us with helpful but not
exhaustive distinctions. For example, Thomas's discussion of how
virtues develop and persist as dispositions occurs primarily not in
these texts but in passages discussing habits in general in Prima
Secundae, question 49. In the response to the third objection of
article 1 of this question, he distinguishes between a virtue or
science that is inchoate from one that is complete. In the response
to the third objection in article 2, he distinguishes between
someone who imperfectly has a habit such as a science and
someone who has it perfectly. Someone who has only imperfect
knowledge easily loses it. Thomas applies this distinction to the
virtues as well. Consequently, it would seem that an agent could
have true virtue and yet only as an imperfect disposition that can
easily be lost. This technical language is not clearly used in the
texts I discussed above, although the distinction between a habit
and a disposition is important for understanding the development
and loss of acquired virtue. The commentators make much of this
passage in their description of how acquired virtue can be
possessed only imperfectly. 19 But Thomas does not so clearly
make this connection.
This question on habits is an example of texts that are relevant
for understanding the different states of virtue that are not even
in any of the main groups I have discussed in this section. The
19 "I respond by saying that virtue remains in a sinner as a habit as much as it is from
intrinsic principles in virtue of which it is difficult to move; but per accidens and in virtue of
the subject who is turned away from the ultimate end, it [the virtue] becomes easily moveable,
and has in that respect the mode of a disposition; for this reason it remains essentially a virtue
even though it is an imperfect one" ("Resp. virtutem in peccatore remanere ut habitum
quantum est ex principiis intrinsecis, ratione quorum petit difficile moveri. At per accidens et
ratione subjecti, quod est aversum ab ultimo fine, fit facile mobilis, habetque ex ilia parte
modum dispositionis; uncle remanet essentialiter virtus sed imperfecta" [Carolus Renatus
Billuart, Tractatus de passionibus et virtutibus, De virtutibus, a. 4, n. 3, in Summa S. Thomae
hodiernis academiarum moribus accomodata, 6 vols. (Brixiae: ex tipographia pii instituti D.
Barnabae, 1836-38), 2:152]). See also Garrigou-Lagrange, "L'instabilite clans l'etat de peche
mortel des vertus morales acquises," 261, and the accompanying note.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

relevance and relative isolation of these texts is additional
evidence for my thesis that a systematic presentation of Thomas's
understanding of the states of virtue cannot proceed on the basis
of an analysis of any particular text or group of texts, but must
take several issues into account. I am not arguing that the different passages are contradictory, but that the many passages
make primarily those distinctions which are relevant to a
particular debate.
II. PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUE

Thomas's understanding of the different states of virtue is
nuanced in such a way that it is difficult to provide just one
schema. Commentators give different lists depending upon the
context in which they are writing. In their discussion of the
connection between the virtues, the Carmelites of Salamanca
distinguish, by my count, between four states or grades of virtue. 20
The development of different virtues is described in greater detail
by Cajetan in his defense of the Thomistic doctrine of prudence
against the Scotists. 21 More recently, in his discussion of the
instability of virtues in the state of mortal sin, Reginald GarrigouLagrange lists six different states or grades of virtue. 22 Nevertheless, Garrigou-Lagrange's account does not contradict that of
the Salmanticenses. He adds to their count the distinction between
true and false virtue along with a distinction between a disposition
to perform good acts and the disposition to perform such acts
well. But he argues that even this expanded list is not exhaustive.
For instance, it does not adequately take into account the distance
between someone who has been virtuous and in a state of grace
and one who has committed just one mortal sin. Nor does it
reflect the important distinction between someone who has so
sinned and another who has committed many sins against a
20 Salmanticenses, Cursus Theologicus, tract. 12, disp. 4, dub. 1 (Paris: Palme, 1870-83),
6:374-75.
21 Cajetan, In I, q. 66, a. 3, n 13 (Leonine ed., 6:433-34).
22 Garrigou-Lagrange, "L'instabilite dans l'etat de peche mortel des vertus morales
acquises," 256-59.

PERFECTAND IMPERFECTVIRTUES

51

particular virtue. Thomas's understanding of these issues is
complex in a way that makes it impossible to have a schema that
is exact and complete with respect to every issue that may come
into dispute.
My primary concern is with those acquired moral virtues
which when fully developed are connected to each other through
the intellectual and cardinal virtue of prudence. Along with the
commentators, I am setting aside those virtues which are not an
ordinary part of the moral life, such as heroic virtue, and virtues
such as munificence, which require unusual conditions. Moreover,
although purgative virtue is interesting in its own right, it is not
directly relevant to the delineation of the ways in which the main
virtues can be present in different kinds of agents.
Since my discussion is concerned primarily with the
distinctions necessary to show that perfect acquired virtue is
impossible in someone who lacks grace, I will more or less focus
on the four states of virtue described by the Salmanticenses and
add the distinction between false and true virtue, thus showing
how an acquired virtue can be imperfect on a natural level but
nevertheless a true virtue. I do not deny the validity of the
distinctions made by Cajetan and Garrigou-Lagrange. The basic
distinctions I will discuss are also recognized by such commentators as John of St. Thomas and Billuart. 23 Although my schema
is useful and necessary for recognizing contemporary misinterpretations of Thomas, I do not claim that it gives an
exhaustive account of Thomas' s understanding of the differences
among the virtues.
My account will explain how Thomas distinguishes between
(1) false virtue, (2) altogether imperfect (omnino imperfecta)
virtue, (3) true but imperfect (vera sed imperfecta) acquired virtue,
(4) perfect (aliqualiter perfecta) acquired virtue, and (5) infused
virtue, which is simply speaking perfect (simpliciter perfecta)
virtue. The false virtue or similitude of virtue is that mentioned by
Thomas in Secunda Secundae, question 23, article 7. This false
23 John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, In I-II, disp. 17, a. 2 (De virtutibus, 458-81);
Billuart, Summa hodiernis, De virtutibus, a. 4, nn. 2-3 (2:151-52).

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

virtue concerns apparently good acts that have bad ends. We have
already seen how Thomas uses Augustine's example of the miser's
virtue to illustrate how an apparently temperate act is in fact not
truly virtuous when it is directed to a bad end. It is of course
possible that an infidel can lack this true virtue and possess false
virtue if he performs a seemingly good act for the sake of his
unbelief, but he need not do so. 24 In the discussion of an infidel's
true virtue, Thomas's intent is to show that an infidel can with
some consistency perform good acts that are not ordered to a bad
end. He does not make the claim that such a person might
perfectly develop acquired moral virtues such as temperance.
The second state is virtue that is altogether imperfect (omnino
imperfecta). This language comes from De virtutibus, article 2. 25
In the Prima Secundae Thomas clearly states that such virtue arises
by nature or custom. 26 For example, someone might have a bodily
disposition that is more inclined to temperance, or might simply
be used to acting temperately. Another individual might be so
inclined to liberality but not chastity. These virtues exist without
prudence and consequently can become false virtues. But by
themselves they are altogether imperfect in the sense that they are
not really virtues because they do not follow right reason.
The third state is virtue that follows right reason but is not
completely developed or connected with the other virtues through
24 "Every act which is against the faith or against conscience is a sin, and if it seems to be
good on account of its genus, for instance if a pagan keeps virginity or gives alms in honor of
his gods, he sins in this" ("omne quod est contra fidem vel contra conscientiam, peccatum est,
et si ex genere suo bonum esse videatur, puta si paganus ad honorem suorum deorum
virginitatem servet, vel eleemosynam det, hoc ipso peccat" [Ad Romanos c. 14, lect. 3 (n.
1141) (Marietti ed., 1:213)]).
25 De virtutibus cardinalibus, a. 2 (Marietti ed., 2:818): "There are certain entirely
imperfect virtues which exist without prudence, not belonging to right reason, just as there
are inclinations which some have for some works of virtues even from virth itself" ("Sunt enim
quaedam virtutes omnino imperfectae, quae sine prudentia existent, non attingentes rationem
rectam, sicut sunt inclinationes quas aliqui habent ad aliqua virtutum opera etiam ab ipsa
nativitate").
26 STh I-II, q. 65, a. 1: " ... it is nothing other than some inclination existing in us for
doing some generically good work, whether such an inclination is in us by nature or from
custom" (" ... nihil aliud est aliqua inclinatio in nobis existens ad opus aliquod de genere
bonorum faciendum: sive talis inclinatio sit in nobis a natura sive ex assuetudine").

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

53

the agent's own prudence. The virtue is imperfect not only with
respect to infused virtue, but also with respect to the fourth state,
which is the full development of acquired virtue. This imperfect
acquired virtue lacks the stability of perfect acquired virtue
because of the way in which the matter of the different virtues is
connected. For example, a normally just but unchaste person
more easily commits unjust acts on account of his lack of chastity.
Or someone who is normally chaste might act against chastity to
satisfy his avarice. It is difficult to determine whether for Thomas
such imperfect acquired virtue is of the same species as the same
perfect acquired virtue, or whether it lacks an essential
characteristic of the virtue. Nevertheless, commentators have
generally identified this virtue with that disposition which Thomas
contrasts with a habit in the response to the third objection in
Prima Secundae, question 49, article 2. In this passage Thomas
clearly states that a habit might be imperfectly developed if it does
not have the character of "difficile mobilis." The connection of
the matter of the different virtues makes it impossible fully to
develop a moral habit with respect to the matter of only one
virtue.
Imperfect acquired virtue is not exhaustively discussed in
Thomas's texts on the connection of the virtues, although he does
highlight the way in which perfection in one acquired moral
virtue requires perfection in the others. Commentators have
generally recognized unconnected and consequently imperfect
acquired moral virtue as that which was present without charity
in many pagans (in multis gentilibus). But a misreading of this
passage (STh I-II, q. 65, a. 2) can lead to significant misinterpretations of Thomas's moral thought. For example, McKay
implies that there is no state between imperfect and infused
virtue, and Shanley suggests that without charity one can possess
acquired moral virtue that is perfect because it is connected with
the other moral virtues through prudence. But Thomas's
understanding of the connection of the virtues and his discussion
of moral habits in the above-mentioned passage (STh I-II, q. 49,
a. 2, ad 3) is sufficient to show that there is acquired moral virtue

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

that is true, but imperfect. Moreover, the recognition of such
virtue is helpful for understanding the distinction between
inchoate and complete virtue Thomas makes earlier in the same
question (STh I-II, q. 49, a. 1, ad 3).
There is ample evidence for the existence of such imperfect
acquired virtue in other texts. I believe that this is the true but
imperfect virtue Thomas discusses in the response and reply to the
second objection in Secunda Secundae, question 23, article 7. We
have seen how in this passage he allows for a virtue that produces
good actions even if an individual is directed only to proximate
goods and not to the ultimate good. Thomas's point in this
passage is not merely that this virtue is not by itself directed to the
supernatural ultimate end. Even perfect acquired moral virtue is
not so directed. The point is that an individual who has such true
but imperfect acquired virtue is directed towards some goods and
away from others. Such a virtue would lack a connection to
another virtue through prudence and consequently be identical to
that imperfect acquired moral virtue which we have identified as
the third state of virtue. In general, when Thomas discusses
acquired virtue as it exists in someone who lacks rectitude
towards the ultimate end, he is discussing this third state of true
but imperfect acquired virtue.
The fourth state of virtue is that acquired virtue which is
perfect when compared to unconnected acquired virtue, but
imperfect when compared with the fifth state of virtue, which is
infused virtue. This infused virtue is perfect virtue simply speaking
(simpliciter). In Prima Secundae, question 65, article 1, Thomas
states that such acquired virtue is perfect in its connection with
the other virtues through prudence. In article 2 of the same
question, he describes this virtue as imperfect because it does not
cause good actions that are ordered to the supernatural ultimate
end. Since he established in the previous article that prudence is
required for the entire moral life, he shows the necessity of
infused prudence for charity. Nevertheless, he also mentions that
the other moral virtues cannot exist without prudence, and he
does not set aside the acquired moral virtues, which he had

PERFECTAND IMPERFECTVIRTUES

55

already described as connected through prudence in the first
article. Consequently, it seems unlikely that he is here stating that
the infused virtues are connected whereas the acquired are not.
Instead, he is pointing out that they are connected in different
ways, the first through charity and the second through prudence.
This interpretation is borne out in De virtutibus, article 2, in
which he explains this difference between the ways in which the
virtues are connected. At no point does he suggest that there can
be one perfect acquired virtue without another, or that someone
can lack the infused virtues while at the same time possessing the
acquired virtues in such a way that they are connected through
prudence. Every major commentator from Capreolus to the
Salmanticenses is intimately familiar not only with De virtutibus
as a whole but also with this particular passage, and to the best of
my knowledge none of them draws the conclusions that Shanley
or McKay draw from it. For there to be perfect acquired virtue
without grace, an agent would have to be fully virtuous on a
natural level and yet be turned away from the supernatural
ultimate end. Otherwise some one moral virtue would be
perfectly developed apart from the others, and the moral virtues
would not be connected to each other through prudence.
It is important to recognize that the distinction between perfect
and imperfect acquired virtues is less sharp than the distinction
between these virtues and the infused virtues. Imperfect acquired
justice is the same in kind as perfect acquired justice, whereas
both differ dramatically from that infused justice which is
required for the order to the supernatural end. Moreover, there
is a sharp distinction between both the acquired and infused
virtues and those virtues which are altogether imperfect in that
they do not involve right reason. The close connection between
imperfect and perfect acquired virtues explains why Thomas does
not treat them separately in his discussion of the connection
between the virtues. Imperfect acquired virtue would be connected if it were developed in conjunction with the other virtues.
For this reason imperfect and perfect acquired moral virtues
cannot coexist in the same agent, whereas acquired and infused

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

can. 27 But imperfect acquired virtue and infused virtue can also
exist separately. 28 For example, a drunkard may go to confession
and acquire infused temperance in proportion to his charity, but
he will still lack for a time the acquired virtue of temperance.
Baptized infants have the infused virtues but none of the acquired
virtues. Moreover, someone might have imperfect temperance
and yet lack infused virtue. For example, an ordinarily temperate
person who sins mortally against justice will lose his infused
temperance but can still have imperfect acquired temperance. 29
This acquired virtue of temperance is not lost at once but is only
destroyed through repeated acts that belong to the contrary vice.
This interpretation of Thomas not only makes sense of his
texts but also corresponds to ordinary human experience.
Someone with the acquired virtues who begins to commit
fornication loses all of the infused virtues but does not thereby
begin immediately to rob banks or run away from danger. He
might even perform good acts such as almsgiving. His acquired
habits persist even when he no longer acts virtuously as a whole.
But these acquired virtues are imperfect because they are not
connected with each other through prudence, and the agent does
not achieve that happiness which consists in the exercise of the
connected acquired virtues. He is turned away from his
supernatural and natural ultimate end. Although the two ends can
be distinguished in thought, it would be incorrect to see them as
two ultimate ends that can be independently achieved by actually
existing moral agents. 30
27 Gabriel Bullet, Vertus morales infuses et vertus morales acquises selon Saint Thomas
d'Aquin, Studia Friburgensia n.s. 23 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1958), 145-63;
Romanus Cessario, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 94-125. See also Mirkes, "Aquinas on the Unity of Perfect Moral
Virtue," 589-601. I doubt whether Mirkes stresses enough the distinctness of the infused and
acquired virtues.
28 Bullet, Vertus morales infuses et vertus morales acquises, 135-44. See also Vitoria, In IIII, q. 23, a. 7, n. 4 (Salamanca ed., 2:29). I never make the claim attributed to me by McKay
("Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue," 544) that "charity is a prerequisite of all prudence."
29 Among other passages, see STh I-II, q. 63, a. 2; q. 71, a. 4; q. 73, a. 1; 11-11, q. 24, a. 12.
3° For a discussion and references to the literature, see Thomas M. Osborne, Jr., Love of
Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2005), 70-86; and Steven A. Long, "On the Possibility of a Purely Natural End

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

57

The imperfect/perfect distinction between acquired and infused
virtue is a distinction between clearly demarcated kinds of virtue.
The imperfect/perfect distinction within acquired virtue need not
be between distinct kinds of virtue but rather is in the way in
which the virtue is possessed. There is much justifiable confusion
among the commentators over whether there is some distinction
in kind between perfect and imperfect acquired virtue, or whether
there is merely a distinction in development. 31 However, this
confusion is irrelevant for our purposes because all the
commentators admit the basic outlines of the distinction between
imperfect and perfect acquired moral virtue.
III. IMPERFECT AND PERFECT ACQUIRED PRUDENCE
McKay's argument against my position that perfect acquired
prudence cannot exist without grace depends on her claim that
Thomas does not make a distinction between imperfect and
perfect acquired prudence. Consequently, she reduces my opinion
to the position that there can be no acquired prudence at all
without grace. 32 I have never held or implied this position, but her
remarks do point to an interesting difficulty. The distinction
between perfect and imperfect acquired prudence is a common
one in the commentators. In the three groups of texts I have
discussed, Thomas explicitly makes a distinction between
imperfect and perfect acquired moral virtue, but he less clearly
makes the distinction between imperfect and perfect acquired
for Man," The Thomist 64 (2000): 211-37. I have found helpful Jean-Herve Nicolas, Les
profondeurs de la grace (Paris: Beauchesne, 1969), 331-97. For a discussion of the literature
which may be too uncritical of Cajetan's position, see Ralph Mclnerny, Preambula Fidei:
Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2006), 69-90. It seems to me that for the purpose of distinguishing between
the virtues I only need to make the claim that for Thomas the perfect acquired prudence that
connects the major acquired moral virtues requires rectitude with regard to the matter of all
these virtues and not just a particular created good. My wider argument needs the further
claim that there cannot be rectitude with respect to the natural end apart from rectitude with
respect to the supernatural end.
31 For an attempt to reconcile some of the commentators, see Utz, De connectione virtutum
moralium inter se, 12 7-235.
32 McKay, "Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue," 536 n. 4.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

prudence. Consequently, these texts do not use the term "perfect
acquired prudence." Thus, some burden is on me to show that
imperfect acquired moral virtue requires a kind of acquired
prudence that is imperfect in that it does not cover the matter of
all the virtues. The perfectly prudent individual is prudent
concerning every moral matter. Since someone who lacks a major
virtue also lacks the related prudence, his prudence is not just
partial but also imperfect.
The distinction between imperfect and perfect prudence comes
from the distinction between perfect and imperfect acquired
moral virtue. 33 Just as someone who lacks one acquired virtue
necessarily lacks perfection in the others, so does someone who
lacks prudence in one area have only imperfect acquired
prudence. For example, the just but unchaste person has only
imperfect justice because he may perform an unjust act on account
of his unchastity. This same person will be prudent with respect
to justice. Nevertheless, even this prudence will be imperfect
because it might fail to command just acts on account of the
agent's unchastity. Prudence is not perfect with respect to the
matter of one of the major moral virtues unless it is perfect with
respect to that of every one in its counsel, judgment, and
command.
In Secunda Secundae, question 4 7, article 13, Thomas makes
the distinction between false prudence, imperfect prudence, and
perfect prudence. I interpret this passage as being roughly similar
to Secunda Secundae, question 23, article 7, in that both articles
are concerned not so much with the distinction between infused
and acquired virtue as with the distinction between merely
apparent particular goods, genuine goods, and the ultimate end.
Both passages set out the same division between false virtue,
imperfect virtue, and perfect virtue. In question 47, the "perfect"
prudence must at least include infused prudence, since such
prudence is necessary for a correct order to the supernatural
ultimate end and is present in everyone who has charity.
33 John of St. Thomas, Cursus theologicus, In I-II, disp. 14, a. 2 (De virtutibus, 76-78);
Salmanticenses, Cursus Theologicus, tract. 12, disp. 4, dub. 1, n. 3 (Palme ed., 6:377-81).

PERFECTAND IMPERFECTVIRTIJES

59

Nevertheless, the distinction between particular goods and the
ultimate end is a distinction that also belongs to the natural order
and natural virtue, although Thomas never suggests that in this
life it is possible in fact to separate the natural from the
supernatural end. The "imperfect" of this passage is not meant to
distinguish acquired prudence from infused prudence, but instead
that prudence which is concerned with particular good actions
from that which is concerned with the good life as a whole. Such
imperfect prudence could be possessed by an agent who performs
good acts and yet does not have the acquired moral virtues in a
connected way. A rotten person can perform some good but not
meritorious acts and can possess a true but imperfect acquired
virtue and consequently a true but imperfect prudence. He will be
prudent with respect to his good actions and yet on the whole
imprudent.
This understanding of imperfect acquired prudence is
supported by Thomas's statement that eubulia (i.e., that potential
part of prudence which is concerned with counsel) cannot be
present in sinners insofar as they are sinners. 34 In contrast,
someone in a state of grace has at least infused perfect prudence
and can have perfect acquired prudence which connects his
acquired virtues. McKay errs in tying too closely the
imperfect/perfect distinction of Secunda Secundae, question 47,
article 13, to the distinction between acquired and infused virtue.
Since in the present state there is no purely natural end, she is
correct to note that the perfect prudence of this text involves that
infused prudence which requires rectitude to the supernatural
ultimate end. But this text does not support her further claim that
all acquired prudence is imperfect in the sense that it is concerned
only with particular goods and not the natural moral life as a
whole.
McKay's position that all acquired prudence is imperfect in this
way would make it impossible for the acquired moral virtues to be
connected through acquired prudence. In this same passage (STh
34 STh II-II, q. 51, a. 1, ad 3: "It should be said that eubulia is found in no sinner inasmuch
as he is one" ("dicendum quod in nullo peccatore inquantum huiusmodi, invenitur eubulia").
Note the "inquantum huiusmodi."

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

II-II, q. 47, a. 13), Thomas explicitly states that imperfect
prudence is present in one area. 35 His further remark that such
prudence can be present in the bad implies that at least in some
cases such imperfect prudence is present in one area and not in
others. Consequently, the "imperfect" prudence of this text at
least includes a prudence whose imperfection lies in the fact that
it does not connect the acquired moral virtues. From other texts
we know that there is such a prudence with respect to particular
good actions that are performed by bad agents. Consequently, the
"imperfect" here seems to signify not precisely natural as opposed
to infused prudence, but more generally the imperfection of
acquired prudence as opposed to the perfection of that acquired
prudence whereby which the acquired moral virtues are
connected. This implication follows from the fact that the bad can
have those virtues which are true and yet not connected to the
others through prudence. The words "perfect" and "imperfect"
are used in this passage in a more general way.
Since in its perfect state there is an acquired prudence that
covers each area of the moral life and connects the acquired moral
virtues, such prudence cannot be coextensive with that imperfect
acquired prudence which is discussed in this article of the Secunda
Secundae, especially that imperfect prudence which is possessed
equally by good and bad agents. Thus, McKay errs in her belief
that in this passage the distinction between imperfect and perfect
prudence is the same as the distinction between acquired and
infused prudence. Thomas is not here using the term "imperfect"
with such precision, and this passage must be understood in the
context of passages about the connection of the major virtues. His
main focus is on the distinction between particular goods and the
ultimate end, and not on the states of acquired prudence,
although what he says is relevant to acquired prudence. In
general, McKay does not recognize Thomas' s insistence that there
35 STh II-II, q. 47, a. 13: "it is imperfect for two reasons. In one way, because that good
which it takes as an end is not the common end of a whole human life, but of some special
enterprise" ("estimperfecta duplici ratione. Uno modo, quia illud bonum quod accipit pro fine
non est communis finis totius homanae vitae, sed alicuius specialis negotii").

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

61

is moral virtue that is acquired and yet perfect in the sense that it
is connected to the others through acquired prudence.
McKay's reading of "imperfect" in this passage as implying that
there is no distinction between imperfect and perfect acquired
prudence rests on a confusion over the way in which acquired
prudence is one. Thomas argues that whereas the moral virtues
are many on account of different human appetites, prudence is
one because the one intellect is perfected and the truth concerning
the matter of the different virtues is connected. 36 This
understanding of prudence's unity is based on Aristotle's
Nicomachean Ethics and is clearly explained in Thomas's
commentary on that work. 37 Odon Lattin has shown how Thomas
was original in using this understanding of the unity of prudence
to argue that the acquired moral virtues are connected. 38 If the
perfect acquired moral virtues are connected through acquired
prudence, and acquired prudence is one, then there must be a
distinction between the acquired prudence that is possessed by
someone who has the major acquired moral virtues and that
acquired prudence which is possessed by the agent who does not
have the connected acquired virtues. This imperfect acquired
prudence differs from the perfect because of the way in which
merely particular good acts differ from those acts which constitute
that happiness which is achieved through acquired moral virtue.
There is no other interpretation of Thomas that makes sense of
his beliefs that prudence is one and that the acquired moral
virtues are connected through acquired prudence. Consequently,
although Thomas does not explicitly use the terms "imperfect
acquired prudence" and "perfect acquired prudence," he
frequently discusses and presupposes this distinction.
Thomas makes a clear distinction between imperfect acquired
prudence, perfect acquired prudence, and infused prudence.
Infused prudence is present in all who have charity, even those
36 For the the unity of prudence's object, see especially STh I-II, q. 60, a. 1, ad 1; II-II, q.
47, a. 5, resp. and ad 3. For its relation connection of the matter, see especially STh I-II, q. 65,
a. 1, ad 3; De virtutibus cardinalibus, q. un., a. 2, ad 4 (Marietti ed., 2:819-20).
37 VI Ethic., lect. 4 and 11 (Leonine ed., 47.2:345-47, 375-77).
38 Lattin, Psychologie et morale, 3.2:232-33.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

who have not yet exercised their prudence. Consequently, there
are many who lack acquired prudence not merely because they
have led previously vicious lives but because they do not (at least
yet) have the use of reason. Perfect acquired prudence is possessed
only by those who live a good life as a whole. Baptized infants and
others who have grace but not reason do not have this acquired
prudence. Moreover, a sinner is helped to develop acquired
prudence if he repents and receives the infused virtue of
prudence. It is this perfect acquired prudence that connects the
virtues and is present only in the just. In contrast, imperfect
acquired prudence is common not only to the just but also to
anyone who commits truly good acts. A virtuous agent who sins
gravely loses his order to the ultimate end and consequently his
acquired prudence must be imperfect. 39 Even consistently bad
agents can have such imperfect acquired prudence. In this context,
the distinction between the different states of prudence correlates
exactly to the distinctions between the different. states of moral
.
I
vrrtue.
,
IV. PERFECT ACQUIRED VIRTUE AND CHARIIT

These distinctions are all relevant for understanding why
someone cannot possess the perfect acquired moral virtues and
perfect acquired prudence without the help of grace. In my
previous article I argued against Kent and Shanley that everyone
is bound to perform certain naturally good works that cannot be
accomplished without the help of healing grace, and that grace is
also necessary for the consistent performance of acts that are
required for the acquisition of all the moral virtues. I pointed out
that on account of the connection of the virtues through
39 Billuart, Summa S. Thomae, Tractatus de prudentia, diss. 1, art. 2 (3:216): "Perfect
acquired virtue is not in sinners, since in sinning, even if only once, granted that they do not
lose prudence according to the nature of a habit, however they do lose it according to the
nature of perfect prudence, which requires in every work a judgment conformed to right
appetite" ("Prudentia perfecta acquisita non est in peccatoribus: quia peccando etiamsi in uno
tantum, licet non perdant prudentiam secundum rationem habitus, perdunt tamen secundum
rationem prudentiae perfectae, quae requirit in omni opere judicium conforme appetitui
recto").

PERFECT AND IMPERFECT VIRTUES

63

prudence, a deficiency in one moral virtue causes a deficiency in
the other virtues and in prudence. Although my argument was in
large part textual and polemical on account of the contemporary
context, it did not differ in substance from the traditional Thomist
position that without grace one can possess true but imperfect
acquired virtues, even though one cannot possess perfect acquired
virtues.
McKay has recently criticized the position I share with many
others that Thomas distinguishes between imperfect and perfect
acquired prudence. This distinction depends on the distinction
between imperfect and perfect acquired moral virtue, and is
necessary for my presentation of the traditional argument that
perfect acquired virtue depends indirectly on grace. The
traditional argument works only for perfect acquired virtue and
not for just any acquired virtue. To interpret Thomas as saying
that there is no acquired virtue or acquired prudence without
grace is nonsense. I do not know who might have held this view. 40
McKay's misattribution of this position to me is understandable
because the distinctions that are necessary for understanding these
issues are commonly neglected in the contemporary literature.
Since these distinctions are essential for understanding Thomas's
view of the development of and connection between the virtues,
I have now set out a fairly traditional schema of the states of
virtue and shown how they are found in Thomas's own texts. An
understanding of the distinction between imperfect and perfect
acquired virtue is necessary in order to grasp the issue at stake in
my previous article: "The question is whether without grace
someone can be good by the fact that he has acquired virtues that
are perfect-that is, connected with the other virtues through
prudence. "41
Considered apart from the various polemical contexts, the
argument for the necessity of grace is fairly simple and based
40 There are some who hold this view but do not attribute it to Thomas. For example, see
Gregory of Rimini, II Sent., dd. 38-41, in Lectura super primum et secundum sententiarum,
Spiitmittelalter und Reformation Texte und Untersuchungen 11, 7 vols., ed. A. Damasus
Trapp et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), 6:281-315.
41 Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," 303.

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

directly on Thomas's own words. As I have shown in the article
McKay criticizes, grace is necessary to fulfill the most important
precept of the natural law, which is to love God more than
oneself, and it is also necessary to avoid falling into some grave
error. Since the moral virtues are connected through one
prudence, without grace it is impossible to fully develop all of the
moral virtues and consequently to possess perfect acquired
prudence. In order to interpret Thomas as holding that there can
be perfect acquired virtue without grace, there are only two
options. One might deny that Thomas adheres to the connection
of the acquired moral virtues through acquired prudence. Or, one
could understand him to say that an agent can have the perfect
acquired moral virtues and prudence while being unassisted by
healing grace and turned away from God as the supernatural end.
Thomas clearly rejects both options. 42

42 I would like to thank Brian J. O'Donnell and Mary Elizabeth Osborne for their helpful
comments.

The Thomist 71 (2007): 65-87

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE:
A DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY
University of Dallas
Irving, Texas

O

NE ENCOUNTERS A DIFFICULTY in reading St.
Thomas Aquinas on the relationship between love and
desire. Which is prior in the order of generation, love or
desire? Whereas Thomas in his mature writings clearly ascribes
priority to love, in his early writings he frequently, though not
exclusively, ascribes priority to desire.
The latter opinion is most discernible in certain texts of his
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum. Herein, he is burdened in part
by an inaccurate reception of St. Augustine, whom he takes to say,
"Love is of what is already possessed." Since love is of what is
possessed, it must (in the creature, which begins in a state of
imperfection) follow desire, which is for what is not yet possessed.
Already in the Scriptum, Thomas's mature teaching begins to
appear; nonetheless, he remains indecisive.
A trace of this early opinion finds its way into the disputed
questions De Veritate. In question 23, article 1, Thomas asks
whether God has "will." It is objected that God does not have
will, since imperfection is inherent to the will, which, as an
appetite, is "of what is not possessed, according to Augustine." 1
Thomas responds by distinguishing the sense we give to "appetite," which is named from the act of tending, from the sense we
give to "will," which regards its object indifferently (whether
1 De Veritate, q. 23, a. 1, obj. 8: "Est enim non habiti secundum Augustinum" (Leonine
ed., vol. 22.3 [Rome: Editori di san Tommaso, 1976], 652, 11. 64-65).

65

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CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

possessed or not possessed). Hence, "will" can be predicated of
God properly, but "appetite" can be predicated of him only
improperly. None of this is surprising. What is noteworthy is the
following assertion in the response to the objection:
By the same principle [naturam] something is moved to the end which it does
not yet have and rests in the end which it has already obtained. Therefore, it
belongs to the same power to tend towards the good when it is not had and to
love it and delight in it after it is had. 2

The reader is left wondering: In an imperfect being, does
"tending" precede "loving"? Depending upon how one punctuates
the text (and the editions do not agree), the answer Thomas gives
here is either an affirmative or a curious silence. 3 The affirmative
answer, further, makes more difficult an adequate distinction
between love and delight. This uncharacteristic formulation has
roots in Thomas's earliest attempts to address the order of love
and desire.
The present essay exhibits Thomas's struggle in the Scriptum
to identify the relationship and order between desire and love.
The essay also shows Thomas's struggle to distinguish desire,
delight, and love clearly and consistently.
I. THE MATURE TEACHING: LOVE PRECEDES DESIRE

Thomas in his mature writings argues as follows that love
precedes desire in the order of generation. Love regards the good
simply, whether had or not had, whereas desire regards the good
as not had, and delight regards the good as had. 4 Love is thus
2 Ibid., ad 8: "per eandem naturam aliquid movetur ad terminum quern nondum optinet,
et in termino quiescit quern iam optinuit; uncle eiusdem potentiae est tendere in bonum cum
nondum habetur et diligere ipsum et delectari in eo postquam habetur" (Leonine ed., 654, II.
281-86).
3 The alternative marks off "diligere ipsum" by commas: "tendere in bonum cum nondum
habetur, et diligere ipsum, et delectari in eo postquam habetur" (Robert Busa, ed., S. Thomae
Aquinatis Opera Omnia, vol. 3 [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980], 136b).
4 De Verit., q. 26, a. 4; Summa contra Gentiles I, c. 91; III, c. 26; In De Divinis Nominibus
IV, lect. 9, p. 401-2; Summa Theologiae I, q. 20, a. 1; I-II, q. 28, a. 1, ad 1; I-II, q. 67, a. 6;
etc.

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

67

more universal than desire or delight. Thomas defines love as a
certain appetitive proportion to, or complacency in, some apprehended good. 5 Since the good is the end, the lover is determined
with respect to it as one seeking to be united with it or delighting
in union with it. Thus, love is the principle of desire, by which a
lover tends towards an absent but loved good, and of delight, by
which a lover rests in a loved good already obtained. Consequently, desire always presupposes love and therefore follows
love in the order of generation.
One can better grasp the crisp contours of Thomas's analysis
by looking at his treatment of three unions pertaining to love:
union of similitude, union of affection, and union of possession. 6
5 Complacency here designates an affective "acceptance of" or "conformation to" some
good.
6 Mark Drost rightly shows the dependence of both desire and delight on love.
Unfortunately, he proceeds to argue that for Thomas one can simply love or "appreciate"
good without desiring or delighting in that good: "A consequence of Aquinas's thesis is the
ontological possibility of loving something without taking delight in it or desiring it" (Mark
P. Drost, "In the Realm of the Senses: St. Thomas Aquinas on Sensory Love, Desire, and
Delight," The Thomist 59 [1995]: 48). Although "typically" either delight or desire will follow
love, Drost suggests, this need not be the case (ibid., 58). It is possible that the lover, rather
than delighting in possession of the loved, "can also be complacent in the mere vision of the
beloved" (ibid.; see also 55-56). These claims, though they can be viewed in a positive light
with respect to interpersonal relations, are not tenable. Positively read, Drost's point is that
not all love is love of concupiscence for some good wished for oneself. There is such a thing
as love of friendship for another, whereby one wills a friend's good for the friend's sake.
Much more emphatically, one ought to will God's good for God's sake. A saint's movement
towards contemplating God comes chiefly from charity, whereby he loves God's good for
God's sake and wishes complacently to be in God's presence out of an "ecstatic attraction"
(see Christopher J. Malloy, "Love of God for His Own Sake and Love of Beatitude: Heavenly
Charity according to Aquinas" [Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 2001], 31934). It seems that Drost is attempting to show that Thomas has "space" for this kind of love.
Indeed, he does. Much work might be done with regard to preserving this "space." See, e.g.,
Peter A. Kwasniewski, "St. Thomas, Extasis, and Union with the Beloved," The Thomist 61
(1997): 587-603.
Nevertheless, it must be said that, for Thomas, every single love aims at some union with
the beloved, insofar as this is possible. Love will always manifest itself either as delight or as
desire, depending upon whether the good is had or not. In the case of the passions, this is
beyond question, for there is simply no animal passion that is not aimed at achieving the end
of passionate love, namely, real union with the loved good. Yet the same is true for rational
love. In love of concupiscence for things I direct to myself, it is beyond question that love aims
at real union; hence, rational love of concupiscence will manifest itself as either desire or
delight. Yet even in love of friendship this point remains equally true, since through love of

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CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

Love is the second of these unions-union of affection. Love
depends on the first union, and it impels (through desire) towards
the last union, in which it rests (by delight). 7 The union of
similitude is the fittingness or compatibility of one thing for
another, without which love is not possible. Nevertheless, Aquinas
does not define love as a union of similitude, for the passion of
love (as, likewise, freely chosen love) designates a change in the
lover towards what he loves. That change depends upon cognitive
recognition of the suitability of the thing the lover might come to
love. Since everything loves its like, that suitability is in the form
of "similitude," though of course one must appreciate the
plasticity of this category. So, both union of similitude and
cognitive recognition of that similitude are necessary conditions
for love. Hence, the union of similitude precedes love.
Love itself is a union of affection by which one being takes
another as its good and therefore either desires to be really united
with it or delights in being united with it. 8 In irrational animals
the movement from union of similitude to union of affection
(love) is rooted in instinct. In rational beings, this movement is
friendship I "aim" for my friend's union with his good. The reason is this: To love is to will
some good for someone. If my friend has his good, I delight in his having it; if he does not
have it, I desire that he have it. In short, in any act of volitional love, there are two
hierarchically ordered movements of love (STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4): to the good willed for
someone (love of concupiscence) and to the person to whom I will this good (love of
friendship). Even to the boxer whom I "love" merely with benevolence I still intend some
good, desiring victory for him while he fights and delighting in his victory for him if he does
win. Yet, one will retort, rational love of friendship does not aim at union of the loved person
wi.th the lover. On the contrary! For Thomas, even in honest friendship with another, love of
its very character impels the lover towards a real (not merely affective) union with the beloved
person. This is true from the beginning (III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1) to the end of Thomas's
career (STh II-II, q. 24, a. 9). Charity, a supreme love of friendship, impels the human person
towards the vision of God (STh II-II, q. 180, a. 7) even though God himself and not union
with God is the ultimate end of charity (STh II-II, q. 26, a. 3; II-II, q. 28, aa. 1 and 2). In fact,
I love very little (if at all) those to whom I wish some good but with whom I do not desire to
be united (STh II-II, q. 27, a. 2; De Caritate, a. 11, ad 6). "Convivere" remains the proper act
of true friendship (III Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 2; ScG IV, c. 54; VIII Nie. Ethic., lect. 5; STh II-II,
q. 25, a. 3).
7 See STh I-II, q. 28, a. 1.
8 Apprehensive error remains possible, but discussion of such a topic is not possible within
the parameters of this essay.

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

69

rooted in a cogitative judgment or even in a free judgment. The
affective union that love is "enables" the good loved to act as an
end or final cause with respect to the lover. Clearly, one can
intend the end before being united with the end. Thus, love can
be of what is had or not had, though love's aim is "having" or
union of possession, which of course must be differentiated in
accordance with the differentiation of loves-love of concupiscence and love of friendship. 9 When the loved good is absent,
desire emerges; by it the lover tends toward this union. If the
loved good is present, the lover rests in this union through
delight. The distinction between union of affection and union of
possession opens up the "space" for desire's striving.
Thomas's lucid distinctions between these three unions allow
him to describe love as regarding good either present or absent.
These distinctions also allow him to articulate the priority of love
over desire, for love is the principle of desire. Finally, this analysis
helps him underscore the intentional unity of several actions of a
self-moving thing. Thomas identifies in love the foundation that
connects tendency towards and rest in a particular object. One
tends toward what one takes to be good but which is absent, and
one delights in this good when it is present. This analysis holds
good chiefly for the rational appetite in its relation to spiritual
goods, the attainment of which does not cause a state of
immoderation (as would the attainment of too much sushi), which
in turn would give rise to an appetite for an opposing good. 10
Attainment of spiritual goods "has no bitterness." In the case of
either rational or sensitive appetite, both desire and delight are
united in a more fundamental relation-a sentient being's
affective complacency, called love, in something it recognizes as
good.

9 It ought to go without saying that the character of "having" or of "presence" must be
differentiated in accordance with the object had or possessed: the tactile, the audible, the
visible, and the spiritual. The beauty of human love is that it normally involves all of the
above, in various ways.
10 STh I-II, q. 32, a. 2.

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CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

II. A STRUGGLE IN THE SCRIPTUM

As I have indicated, there is one particularly noteworthy
exception to the foregoing analysis-the Scriptum super libros
Sententiarum. Thomas began to write his four-volume
commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences sometime during his
teaching as a bachelor (1252-54) but did not complete the third
book until 125 6. He finished the entire work sometime during his
teaching as master in Paris (1256-59).11 Although the genre of
commentary would seem to imply a close following of the text,
Thomas' s predecessors had already established the precedent of
going beyond the text. Thomas likewise takes Lombard's work as
an occasion to raise related questions and examine new topics. 12
In distinction 2 7 of Book 3, for example, Thomas begins with a
discussion of love as a passion, although Lombard merely
discusses charity and the love of God. Beginning with the
discussion of love as a passion-something to which most mortals
can relate-is characteristic of Thomas's pedagogical procedure.
What is striking is that in his commentary on the Sentences
Thomas not infrequently refers to desire as the first movement of
the appetite: The appetite begins in desire, which is an imperfect
love, and terminates in love, which is of what is had. Desire is
related to love as the imperfect to the perfect. His repeated
description of the priority of desire in generation is rooted, in
part, in what he took at that time to be a saying from Augustine:
"Desire is of something not possessed, but love is of something is

11 See Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., Introduction al'etude de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 2d
ed. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1954), 226-29; Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint
Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 37-45; and James A. Weisheipl, Friar
Thomas D'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works, 2d ed., with corrigenda and addenda
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 358-59. For an account
of the various sources at play in Aquinas's treatment of the passions, from the Commentary
on the Sentences to the Summa Theologiae, see Mark D. Jordan, "Aquinas's Construction of
a Moral Account of the Passions," Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 33
(1986): 71-97.
12 See Chenu, Introduction, 231-33; Torrell, St. Thomas Aquinas, 1:41.

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

71

possessed. " 13 On the supposition that desire is of what is not
possessed and that love is of what is possessed, desire must
precede love in the order of generation.
Two noteworthy scholars have observed this ordering of desire
and love in the Scriptum, L.-B. Gillon and H.-D. Simonin. 14
Gillon notices that the "Augustinian" saying in the
Scriptum-"love is of what is already possessed"-contrasts with
Thomas's later teachings. Touching upon the difficulty implicit in
13 II Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1: "desiderium enim est rei non habitae; sed amor est rei quae
habetur." Pierre Mandonnet refers the reader to Super psal. 118.8.4 (PL 37:1521); see
Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, vols. 1-2, ed. R. P. Mandonnet (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1929), 2:46. I have not been able to locate this saying of Augustine anywhere. In
any case, the text to which Mandonnet refers does not contain the saying. It does, however,
contain a discussion of the difference between "concupiscere" and "desiderare." The former
is a broader category, though chiefly signifying a desire for that which is had. The latter is a
desire of that which is absent: "Both things possessed and things not possessed are loved
[concupiscuntur]. For, by loving, a man enjoys the things he has, but he loves things in their
absence by desiring them. Thus, what is desire except the love of things absent?"
("Concupiscuntur enim et quae habentur, et quae non habentur; nam concupiscendo, fruitur
homo rebus quas habet; desiderando autem, absentia concupiscit. Desiderium ergo quid est,
nisi rerum absentium concupiscentia?" [CCSL 40:1688, II. 48-52]). If anything, this passage
only contradicts what Aquinas thinks Augustine states, were we to liken "concupiscere" to
"amare," since to the former pertain both "quae habentur" and "quae non habentur."
Perhaps Thomas has something from Gregory the Great in mind. In his Homiliae in
euangelia, Gregory comments on Matt 4:18-20: "Certainly we both possess with love the
things we have, and we seek by desire the things we but slightly have" ("Certe nos et habita
cum amore possidemus, et ea quae minime habemus ex desiderio quaerimus" [Gregory the
Great, Homiliae in euangelia, 1.5.2 (CCSL 141:34, II. 20-21)]). In his Catena, Thomas cites
the sentence immediately preceding this one. He picks up his citation at the second sentence
after this one, perhaps reverently avoiding this sentence (and the completion of the thought
in the sentence immediately following it) (see Thomas Aquinas, Catena in Matt., c. 4, lect. 7
[Busa ed., 5:145b]; for English translation, see Catena aurea: Commentary on the Four
Gospels Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, trans. Mark Pattison [repr.; Albany, N.Y.:
Preserving Christian Publications, Inc., 1993], 136-37).
In a work of doubtful authorship, attributed to Augustine, there appears a passage closer
to Thomas's mature opinion, yet still ambiguous (amor est delectatio): "Love is the delight of
the heart of someone for something on account of something, desire in one tending towards
it, and joy in one enjoying it: chasing it by desire, resting in it by joy" ("Et amor est delectatio
cordis alicujus ad aliquid propter aliquid, desiderium in appetendo, et in perfruendo gaudium,
per desiderium currens, requiescens per gaudium" [De substantia dilectionis 1.2 (PL 40:845);
see also ibid., 1.4 (PL 40:846)]).
14 L.-B. Gillon, "Genese de la theorie thomiste de !'amour," Revue thomiste 46 (1946):
322-29; H.-D. Simonin, "Autour de la solution thomiste du probleme de !'amour,'' Archives
d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 6 (1931): 174-274.

CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

72

this saying, Gillon rightly attempts to resolve it by claiming that
Thomas speaks only of perfect love as "already having" its object.
Gillon further claims that perfect love is the same specific passion
as imperfect love, differing from the latter only by reason of the
possession of the good. 15 This reading enjoys much support in the
Sent., for desire and imperfect love are frequently conflated. Still,
going beyond Gillon, I would argue that the conflation of
imperfect love with desire inhibits an adequate articulation of the
priority of love because it obscures love's relation to desire as
principle thereof. If "perfect love" is of something already had,
and if imperfect love is of something not had, how can imperfect
love differ from desire for what is "not had"? Yet, Thomas in his
mature writings emphatically distinguishes between desire and
love and places love before desire.
H.-D. Simonin also observes the inverted ordering of desire
and love in the Scriptum, and attributes the apparent priority of
desire in terms of generation to the conflation of imperfect love
and desire. Yet he hesitates to conclude that Thomas took a
definitive position about the order of the passions in the
Scriptum. 16 Simonin properly focuses on Thomas's ex professo
treatment of the issue (III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3), and I shall close
with a treatment of the same. First, however, I wish to exhibit the
evidence that Thomas once thought that desire precedes love.
A) II Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1

One rather illuminating text involves a question about whether
God acts for an end:
It must be known, therefore, that to act in this way [i.e., for an end] is twofold:

either on account of a desire for the end or on account of a love for the end. For
desire is of something not had, but love is of something that is had, as Augustine
says. Thus, it is fitting for every creature to act on account of a desire for the end
15 See Gillon, "Genese de la theorie thomiste de !'amour,"

322£.
"As to imperfect love, it seems more or less to be conflated with desire" ("Quant a
['amour imparfait, ii semble plus ou moins se confondre avec le desir" [Simonin, "Autour de
la solution thomiste du probleme de !'amour," 184]).
16

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

73

because for every creature the good that it does not have of itself is acquired
from another. But it belongs to God-to whose goodness nothing can be
added-to act on account of love for the end. 17

The premise of this argument is that love is of something that is
possessed and that desire is of something that is not possessed.
Love is perfect; desire is imperfect, for it implies a movement
toward that which can be loved only when it is "attained." Since
God alone has or is the goodness that is the end of his action, he
alone can act on account of love for the ultimate end.
Accordingly, no creature can act out of love for the ultimate good
until it somehow "has" that good. For creatures, therefore, desire
of the end precedes love of the end.
Simonin contends, in discussing Thomas's ex professo
treatment of the priority of love (III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3), that
Thomas's placement of desire before love (because of the
conflation of desire and imperfect love) is unambiguous with
respect to things intended in light of the end (ea quae sunt ad
finem). As I shall contend, Simonin's reading is completely
justified in light of a key passage in this article (III Sent., d. 27, q.
1, a. 3, ad 3). Yet, Simonin further suggests that whether Thomas
also thought that the end is desired before it is loved cannot be
determined. 18 The passage from book 2 of the Scriptum tells
against Simonin's judgment. Thomas herein maintains that
creatures, not possessing the end, act out of desire, not love, for
the end. This passage is significant because it regards the ultimate
principle of human action, the final end. The end is intended
before anything related to the end. If desire for the end precedes
love for the end, then desire precedes love simpliciter. This
passage certainly presupposes a priority of desire in generation.

17 II Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1: "Sciendum

est ergo, quod agere hoc modo, est dupliciter: vel
propter desiderium finis; vel propter amorem finis: desiderium enim est rei non habitae; sed
am or est rei quae habetur, ut Augustinus <licit; et ideo omni creaturae convenit agere propter
desiderium finis, quia unicuique creaturae acquiritur bonum ab alio quod ex se non habet; sed
Deo competit agere propter amorem finis, cujus bonitati nihil addi potest."
18 Simonin, "Autour de la solution thomiste du probleme de !'amour," 183.

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CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

B) III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3

The most notable instance of Thomas's struggle can be
discerned through a comparison of two versions of this article on
hope, within which Thomas examines the relations among the
passions. An initial draft reads:
The first concupiscible passion, therefore, caused by the apprehension of a good
not yet had, is desire; the second passion, in truth, caused by the apprehension
of an evil not yet had, is unnamed, but it may be called flight or avoidance; the
third passion, caused by the apprehension of the good that is had, is love, to
which is contrasted the fourth passion, hate. The fifth passion, in truth, which
is caused by the present appetible itself, is delight or joy. The sixth is its contrary,
which is pain or sadness. 19

In this draft, Thomas clearly depicts desire as preceding love. In
fact, he added the words "first concupiscible" to this draft,
between the lines of the text. The analysis in this draft cannot be
taken as carelessness. That Thomas once held a position on this
matter that he later rejected is indisputable. What arouses
puzzlement, with regard to this text, is how Thomas understood
19 "Passio ergo ( +prima concupiscibilis+) causata ex apprehensione boni nondum habiti
est [-concupiscentia vel] desiderium; passio vero ( +secunda +) causata ex apprehensione mali
nondum habiti innominata est, dicatur autem fuga vel vitatio; passio vero tertia causata ex
apprehensione boni habiti est amor, cui contrariatur quarta quae est odium; passio vero quinta
causata ex [-apprehensione] ipso appetibili praesente est delectatio vel gaudium; [-passio] sexta
vero est contraria, quae est dolor vel tristitia" (P.-M. Gils, "Textes inedits de S. Thomas: Les
premieres redactions du Scriptum super Tertio Sententiarum," Revue des sciences
philosophiques et theologiques 46 [1962]: 445-62, at 460. This is the second of lhree
identically titled articles.)
Gils utilizes a critical apparatus in his citations of Thomas's manuscripts. He expressly
adopts lhis apparatus from the Leonine critical edition. The apparatus reflects additions,
corrections and deletions from Thomas's own hand. Words lhat Thomas crossed out appear
wilhin brackets and are preceded by a single "minus" sign. For instance, if Thomas crossed out
lhe word "primum" the text would read as follows: "[-primum] autem .... " Sometimes,
Thomas added words to his original draft. These additions appear between lines of lhe
manuscript. Thomas's additions are found within parenlheses, togetlier witli two "plus" signs.
Such additions appear as follows:"( +primum +) autem .... "My translations reflectThomas's
final redaction of the cited draft in order to read more smoolhly. For Gils's explanation of lhe
apparatus, see his first essay, P.-M. Gils, "Textes inedits de S. Thomas: Les premieres
redactions du Scriptum super Tertio Sententiarum," Revue des sciences philosophiques et
theologiques 45 (1961): 204 n. 14.

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

75

the difference between a good "had" and a good "present." It
would seem difficult to maintain any such difference, unless
"having" is conceived simply according to the appetite, as a
"union of affection" that presupposes a definitive choice for or
acquiescence in some good, as opposed to a restless search to
identify an object of love. 20
In any case, the final draft of the Scriptum scraps this
enumeration of the passions. Instead, there appears an analysis
that bears greater resemblance to Thomas' s mature thought:
Love implies a relation of the concupiscible power to good, and hate, to evil, for
love makes the beloved connatural and as though one with the lover, while hate
does the contrary. And since this relation is perfected by the presence of the
object, therefore love, according to its perfect nature, is of something had, as
Augustine says.... But the motion of the concupiscible power towards good is
called desire. 21

The final draft offers an interpretation of "Augustine's" dictum
that can be harmonized with Thomas's later teaching. It is notable
that Thomas later emends this dictum: "Love regards the good in
general, whether that good is possessed or not possessed. " 22 Yet
the emergent doctrine does not hold consistent sway in the
20 To emphasize love as "having," in this manner,

is quite Augustinian.
habitudinem concupiscibilis ad bonum,
odium vero ad malum; quia amor amatum ponit connaturale et quasi unum amanti, cujus
contrarium odium facit. Et quia haec habitudo perficitur ex praesentia objecti, ideo amor
secundum perfectam sui rationem est habiti, utAugustinus <licit (In Psal. CXVIII, serm. 8; L.
36, 1518) .... Motus autem concupiscibilis in bonum, dicitur desiderium" (Thomas Aquinas,
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, vols. 3-4, ed. Maria Fabianus Moos [Paris: Lethielleux,
1933-1947], 821).
22 STh la, q. 20, a. 1: "Amor autem respicit bonum in communi, sive sit habitum, sive non
habitum" (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1951). Not surprisingly, Thomas's
Roman lecture on the Sentences also bears his mature teaching: "Among all the affections love
is before the others and more common. It is before, indeed, because no affection emerges
except from love. But it is more common because desire is only of something absent, joy of
something already had. But love is not only of seomthing already had but also of things to be
had" ("Inter omnes affectiones, amor et prior est et communior. Prior quidem quia nulla
affectio procedit nisi ex amore .... Communior autem est quia desiderium est tantum de re
absente, gaudium de re iam habita, amor autem est non solum de re iam habita sed etiam
habenda" [Roman Lecture, d. 1, q. 1, a. 1 (Thomas Aquinas, Lectura romana in primum
Sententiarum Petri Lombardi, ed. Leonard Boyle and John Boyle [Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Mediaeval Studies, 2006], 85, II. 37-44)]).
21 III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3: ''Amor enim importat

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CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

Scriptum, as is manifest in a text that follows the final draft of the
text just treated.
C) III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 2
One finds a conflation of imperfect love and desire (noted by
Simonin and Gillon) rather clearly in this text. Perfect love results
from the possession of that towards which desire-or imperfect
love-tends:
Desire and love differ in this: that love implies a certain fitness and connaturality
of the lover towards the beloved. Now this fitness is perfected when the beloved
is in some way had or possessed by the lover. Desire, however, implies a motion
towards the lovable thing itself which is not yet had. Thus, the motion of the
appetite begins in desire and terminates in perfect love. So desire is a certain
inchoate beginning of love and, as it were, a kind of imperfect love.
But since the first way in which a thing is had is according as it is in potency
(for that which is in the faculty of the one "possessing" it, is considered as
something already had), the first thing that leads to love is the faculty of having
that which is desired. Therefore, love of a distant object which is not actually
possessed presupposes hope. But hope is only for that which is good, and the
first motion of the appetite to the good is desire. Hence, hope presupposes desire
and comes between love and desire. 23

Before analyzing this text, I would simply note that here
"presence" (the opposite of "absence") and "having" are
identified. Thomas appears, then, to have acknowledged the
difficulty implied in the first draft of the previous passage (III
Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3).
The present text is quite complex and not unambiguous;
however, one discerns here the marks of Thomas's immature
23 III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 2: "desiderium et amor in hoc differunt quod amor
importat quamdam convenientiam et connaturalitatem ad amatum, quod quidem perficitur
dum amatum aliquo modo habetur; desiderium autem importat motum in ipsum amabile
nondum habitum. Uncle motus appetitus incipitin desiderio, et terminatur in amore completo.
Et ideo desiderium est quaedam inchoatio amoris et quasi quidam amor imperfectus ....
Sed quia prim um habere rei est secundum quod est in potentia-quia quod est in facultate
habentis, quasi jam haberi reputatur-ideo prim um quod amorem inducit, estfacultas habendi
id quod desideratur. Et ideo amor rei distantis quae actu non habetur, praesupponit spem. Sed
quia spes non est nisi boni, et primus motus appetitus in bonum, est desiderium; ideo spes
praesupponit desiderium, et est media inter amorem et desiderium,

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

77

pos1t10n. If hope presupposes desire, it follows desire. If love
presupposes hope, it follows both hope and desire. This is
precisely what Thomas argues in the text that follows. Every
irascible appetite depends upon some concupiscible appetite. 24
Desire and love are concupiscible appetites, whereas hope is an
irascible appetite. How are these three, all of which depend upon
some cognition, ordered? "The act of faith precedes desire,
because every act of the affective part presupposes an act of the
cognitive part; now, desire precedes hope, but hope precedes
love. " 25 This text also upholds the priority of desire as the first
motion of the appetite towards the good. Desire can be called an
inchoate beginning of love, but it is not, as is said in the Summa
Theologiae, the effect of love (even of an imperfect one).
This reading gathers more force in light of responses to two
objections. The second objection supposes that hope cannot be
unformed, that is, cannot exist without charity towards God, since
hope tends toward God and since the faith that tends toward God
must be formed faith. Thomas responds: "It must be said that
formed faith tends toward God out of love, but unformed faith is
not from love but from desire. " 26 In the third objection, a doubt
arises about the priority of desire. This priority appears to conflict
with another Augustinian saying: "Every affection comes from
love. ,m From this saying, it would appear that desire follows love.
Indeed, that is what Thomas consistently holds after the Scriptum
(with the possible exception of De Verit., q. 23, a. 1, ad 8). Here,
however, Thomas responds, "It must be said that there love is
taken in a wide sense for imperfect love, which is desire, the first
24 One reason is that good is what is sought primarily. The overcoming of obstacles is
desirable only in light of an appetite for the good to which they are obstacles.
25 III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 2: "actus fidei praecedit desiderium, quia omnis actus
affectivae praesupponit actum cognitivae; desiderium autem praecedit spem, spes autem

amorem."
26 Ibid., ad 2: "dicendum quod fides formata tendit in Deum ex amore; sed spes informis
non est ex amore, sed ex desiderio."
27 Ibid., obj. 3: "Omnis affectio ex amore est." Moos attributes this saying to De civitate
Dei 14.9 (although Moos's first reference to this text is a typo [chapter 19]). The saying is not
found in Augustine's text in so many words; however, the thrust of the saying is clearly
evident (see CCSL 48:425-30). The more relevant passage, cited by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province in their translation of the Summa, is De civitate Dei 14.7.

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CHRISTOPHER]. MALLOY

motion of the appetitive power." 28 We thus encounter the conflation of imperfect love and desire and, hence, the priority of
desire.
D) III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1

To maintain that desire precedes love is understandable in light
of the creaturely appetite's relation to its good, for the appetite of
every creature is oriented toward a good not identical with that
creature's essence. The very name "appetite" implies outward
orientation to a good not identical with the creature's essence
(recall II Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1). Similarly, the word "desire"
designates unrest, a tendency towards the good. Love, however,
does not necessarily imply this unrest and this tendency. Rather,
love implies a type of union with the good. As the Thomas argues
in his mature writings, love is defined as the second of three
unions with the good-union of similitude, union of affection (or
love), and union of possession. Thomas's difficulty in the
Scriptum is also rooted in his failure to distinguish these three
unions consistently and simultaneously.
Chiefly, Thomas does not distinguish-precisely
when it
matters to his analysis of the order of the passions-between the
union of affection and the union of possession. 29 This neglect
28 III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 2, ad 3: "dicendum quod ibi accipitur amor large pro
amore imperfecto, quad est desiderium, quod est primus motus appetitivae virtutis.
Desiderium autem non sufficit ad formandum actus virtutum."
29 Scholars will surely point to passages in which Thomas explicitly distinguishes union of
affection from union of possession: e.g., III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2. On this basis, he
distinguishes love and delight. The accurate analyses in these passages, however, neglect
inferences about the relationship between desire and love. However, those passages that treat
of this latter relationship tend to conflate love and delight. Compare, for instance, the
definition of delight in III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3 with that of love in III Sent., d. 27, q.
1, a. 1, ad 2. For a more explicit conflation see IV Sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 4: "It must be
said that as motion is related to the end in natural things, so (in volitional matters) is the
appetite for both the end and for the means related to the attainment of the end. Therefore,
as when a natural thing attains to the end, its motion ceases, so too when the will has what it
seeks, its appetite desists and is converted into love or delight" ("dicendum, quod sicut in
rebus naturalibus se habet motus ad terminum, ita in voluntariis se habet appetitus finis, et
eorum quae propter finem appetuntur, ad consecutionem finis; et ideo sicut quando res
naturalis pervenit ad terminum, cessat motus ejus; ita voluntas cum habet quod quaerit,

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

79

allows him to assert the priority of desire: If love implies union,
and if desire does not imply union, and if union of affection is not
clearly distinguished from union of possession, then love must
follow desire:
Now every passive power is perfected according as it is informed by the form of
its active power. In this its motion reaches its end and rests, as the intellect,
before it is formed by the form of the intelligible thing, searches and wavers.
This inquiry, when the intellect has been informed, ceases and the intellect is
fixed upon its object. Thus, the intellect is said to inhere firmly in that thing.
Similarly, when the affection or appetite is in every way imbued by the form of
the good that is its object, it takes complacency in that thing and adheres to it as
though fixed in it. And then, it is said to love that thing. Therefore, love is
nothing other than a certain transformation of the affection into the beloved
thing. 30

According to Thomas in this passage, love begins when the
appetite is thoroughly informed by or united with the object of its
affection. The union that he intends to describe is that of
affection. Yet the characteristics of this "complacency" appear to
belong not simply to an affective stance underlying either desire
or delight but rather to rest in the possessed good. If such is the
case, the description of love given here merges with that of
delight, and desire appears as the first motion of the appetite. In
short, Thomas's description here of union of affection bears some
resemblance to his later description of union of possession, with
this difference: the "thorough information" allowing for rest is
predicated of the appetitive power and not of the cognitive
power. This predication is significant because, as Thomas argues
elsewhere, any "rest" predicated of the appetite in virtue of the
appetite (or in virtue of an information of the appetite) cannot
constitute the definitive rest at which appetite aims. The first
appetitus ejus desistit, canversus in amarem vel delectatianem").
30 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1: "Omne autem passivum perficitur secundum quad informatur
per formam sui activi et in hoc matus ejus terminatur et quiescit. Sicut intellectus, antequam
formetur per forma intelligibilis, inquirit et dubitat: qua cum informatus fuerit, inquisitia
cessat, et intellectus in ilia figitur; tune et dicitur intellectus firmiter illi rei inhaerere. Similiter
quanda affectus vel appetitus omnina imbuitur forma bani quad est sibi objectum, complacet
sibi in ilia et adhaeret ei quasi forus in ipso; et tune dicitur amare ipsum. Uncle amor nihil
aliud est quam quaedam transformatio affectus in rem amatam."

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object of the appetite cannot be an act of appetite. 31 If we bring
this logic to the present text (if to do so is permissible), perhaps
we could say that the "rest" here has more to do with firm choice
of an appropriate good rather than that "rest" that follows real
union with the chosen (loved) good.
In any case, Thomas's conflation of union of love and union of
possession appears again in a response to an objection. The
following objection is raised: Dionysius's saying that love is a
"unitive power" (i.e., a force driving towards union), appears to
conflict with Augustine's dictum that love is of what is already
had: "Augustine says that love is of something that is already had.
But that which is already had is in a certain way united.
Therefore, love is not a unitive power but something following
union." 32
The Angelic Doctor offers two ways of reconciling Dionysius
with Augustine.
To the second it must be said that love is said to be of something had, as the
formed thing has its form. Desire precedes this formation, tending towards it, as
reason precedes understanding or science. Therefore, desire is said to be of
something not had. Thus is love called a unitive power formally, since it is the
union itself or bond or transformation by which the one loving is transformed
into the beloved and in a certain way changed into it.
Or it must be said that the quieting of the affection in something, which love
implies, is not able to exist except on account of the fitness of one for the other.
This fitness is indeed according as one thing participates in that which belongs
to another. So in a way the one loving has the beloved. Therefore, the
conjunction that is implied in the word "to have" [habere] is the conjunction of
one thing to another and precedes the union of the object to the affection. This
latter union is love. 33
31 See IV Sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 2; STh I-II, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; I-II, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2.
32 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, obj. 2: "AUGUSTINUSdicit ... quod amor est jam habiti. Sed
illud quod jam habitum est, quodammodo est uni tum. Ergo am or non est virtus unitiva, sed
unionem sequens."
33 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2: "Ad secundum dicendum, quod amor dicitur esse habiti,
sicut formatum habet suam formam: quam quidem formationem desiderium praecedit in
ipsam tendens, sicut ratio intellectum vel scientiam; et ideo dicitur esse non habiti. Uncle amor
dicitur virtus unitiva formaliter, quia est ipsa unio vel nexus vel transformatio qua amans in
amatum transformatur et quodammodo convertitur in ipsum. Ve! dicendum, quod quietatio
affectus in aliquo quam amor importat non potest esse nisi secundum convenientiam uni us ad
alterum: quae quidem convenientia est secundum quod ab uno participatur id quod est

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

81

The response is divided into two because there are two possible
(even complementary) explanations for love as both following
union and being "unitive," that is, driving towards union. The
first response deals with Dionysius's saying. Rather than reading
Dionysius's term "unitive" as implying a quest for union, Thomas
interprets it as implying the essence of union itself. Love is
"unitive" in a formal sense-its very nature is the "transformation" of the lover into the beloved. Here, Thomas defines
love as the second of the three unions that he later distinguishes.
Had he distinguished this union of affection and union of
possession, he could have held the priority of love over desire in
generation, for desire would then come between union of
affection and union of possession, as impelling towards the latter
on the basis of the former. As 1t 1s, however, Thomas's first
attempt to reconcile Dionysius with Augustine presumes the
priority of desire.
The second response treats Augustine's saying that love follows
union. Aquinas distinguishes two types of union: that of similitude
(or proportion or ontological fittingness) and that of affection.
Love is of something "already had" in terms of the union of
similitude between some good and the lover. Since this union of
similitude precedes love, love is of what is "already had" by way
of similitude. This explanation has the merit of distinguishing two
unions-similitude and affection. Yet, one wonders why Thomas
does not suggest that love can be called "unitive" in the sense that
it drives toward real union. He does not simultaneously entertain
all three unions. In fact, he describes love as the rest (quietatio) of
the appetite, thereby obscuring the distinction between love and
delight, which is rest in the real presence of the beloved. At the
end of his response, he labels love the "termination [terminatio ]"
of the appetitive motion. 34 Further, the place of desire is not
treated. In light of all the above considerations, the reader is still
alterius; et sic amans quodammodo habet amatum. Uncle conjunctio quae in habere
importatur, est conjunctio rei ad rem, et praecedit unionem rei ad affectum, quae est amor."
34 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 2: "Et similiter dicendum est de amore qui est terminatio
appetitivi motus."

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led to believe that desire precedes love, which is of something
"already had."

E) Selected Texts on the Priority of Love
The foregoing analysis shows Aquinas ascribing a priority to
desire in terms of generation. There are, to be sure, several texts
in which Thomas' s mature teaching comes to the fore.
First, as already noted, the final draft of the text from question
1 of distinction 26 (III Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3) is to some degree
amenable to Thomas's mature teaching. At the very least, Thomas
scrapped an initial draft in which he clearly taught the priority of
desire.
Second, in treating of charity, Thomas contends that love-a
broad term-includes desire: "Love includes desire for the
beloved, by which the presence of the beloved is desired. " 35 If
love includes desire for the presence of the beloved, it would
appear to come before desire, since love remains in the presence
of the beloved. Still, even with this text, one might make a
distinction. Thomas is arguing that charity (a supernatural love)
is a friendship with God. It is love for God, but it includes many
notes. One of these notes is desire for the presence of the beloved.
Anyone who loves another with true friendship must also (must
in the strict sense of the word) desire to communicate with that
person. 36 Here, there are two distinguishable though inseparable
rationes of love: that of friendship and that of concupiscence.
Moreover, Thomas concludes this reflection with a statement that
has the mark of his immature thought: "But love, above the four
items previously mentioned, adds something, namely, a rest of the
appetite in the thing loved, without which [rest] any of the
aforesaid items is able to exist." 37 This text, then, is not without
ambiguity.
35

III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: "amor includit concupiscentiam amati qua desideratur ipsius

praesentia."
36 One notes that this is a far cry from that banal reading of charity as "purely disinterested
love" that so plagues Western society.
37 III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1: "Amor tamen super quatuor praedicta aliquid addit, sciliCet
quietationem appetitus in re amata, sine qua quodlibet praedictorum quatuor esse potest."

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

83

Third, and most importantly, we have Thomas's ex professo
treatment (III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3). Here, Thomas asks whether
love is the first and most principal passion. He answers in the
affirmative, citing another saying from Augustine: "Every
affection comes from love." Love is prior to the other passions
because love "names the termination of the affection by the fact
that it is informed by its object. "38 Just as the intellect begins from
an understanding of principles, which it grasps without discursive
movement, so the appetite begins from this "information" by the
apprehended good. Thus, "every motion proceeds affectively
from the rest and completion [terminatione] of love. "39 Here,
there may be a clue to resolving the tension in the Scriptum.
Thomas rarely, if ever, predicates "motus" of "amor" in the Scriptum. Therein, love designates quiet, termination, information,
rest. Desire, by contrast, designates motion towards. In some
sense, desire truly is the first motion of the appetite, for desire is
a tending towards whereas love is the principle of this tending
towards. In his later works Thomas describes love as a motion in
a broad sense. 40 Love is not a motion qua "motion towards" but
rather qua operation or qua the principle of "motion towards" 41
or, finally, qua the information of the appetite by some
apprehended good. 42
More importantly, Aquinas does not emphasize love's
terminative character in later works. To describe love in such a
way would risk conflating love-which is a principle of desire and
delight-with delight itself. Thomas' s emphasis in the Scriptum on
love's terminative character may in fact reflect an existential
approach to a "decision to be made," whereby one considers the
wayfarer's struggle to identify a true good to be sought.
38 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3: "Amor enim dicit terminationem affectus per hoc quod
informatur suo objecto."
39 Ibid.: "Oportet quod omnis motus affectivae procedat ex quietatione et terminatione

amoris."
40 STh 1-11, q. 4, a. 3: "Amorem, qui est primus motus voluntatis in aliquid," See also, IV
De Div. Nom., lect. 11; STh 1-11, q. 28, a. 4. For Thomas's rationale for the use of the term
'motion', see III De Anima, lect. 15; and STh 11-11, q. 179, a. 1, ad 3. Cf. Drost, "In the Realm
of the Senses," 54-55.
41 Drost is quite accurate on this point.
42 STh 1-11, q. 26, a. 2, ad 3.

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CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

Vacillating among various apparent goods and not yet committed
wholeheartedly to any one, the wayfarer is indeed "restless" and
full of desire to identify and choose that which he can love fully.
Thus read, love would involve a "full affective acceptance" of this
good as a true good to pursue here and now. On a less profound
note, one standing in an ice-cream store may be said not yet to
love one kind of ice-cream, since a good number may for some
time be similarly tempting.
In any case, in his ex professo treatment, Thomas indeed
maintains the priority of love in generation, implying that desire
is an effect of love that arises because of the absence of the
beloved. Still, even the analysis in this text differs noticeably from
those of later works. Thomas raises the following objection, quite
understandable in the context of his thought at this stage: Since
love is the end of motion and since desire is a motion, does not
love follow desire? Here is the objection: "Motion precedes the
end. But love is the determination of the appetitive motion, as is
evident from what is said above. Therefore, love follows desire,
which implies the motion itself of the appetite. "43 The very
objection expresses concisely Thomas's immature position. In his
response, Thomas recalls the comparison of intellect and will.
There is a circularity to both intellect and will. The intellect
begins by understanding some principles naturally, reasons to a
grasp of particular conclusions, and comes to rest by relating
those conclusions back to the principles that it understands with
natural certitude. Comparing this to love, Thomas writes:
Similarly, too, the affection, out of love for the end (which love is a kind of
principle), proceeds by desire towards those things that are for the end-things
that it accepts as in some way containing the end in themselves. Through love it
rests in them, and therefore, desire follows love of the end although it precedes
love of those things that are for the end. Love is also a more vehement affection

43 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, obj. 1: "Motus enim praecedit terminum. Sed amor est
determinatio appetitivi motus, ut ex dictis patet. Ergo amor sequitur desiderium, quod motum
ipsum appetitus importat."

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

85

than desire insofar as it signifies the end and formation of the affection by the
appetible thing, towards which desire moves. 44

Two important features of this response differ from Thomas's
presentation in the Summa Theologiae, where he states unequivocally: "Desire for anything always presupposes love for that
thing." According to the Summa, desire never precedes love,
except if one considers a change of objects, one thing being loved
on account of desire for another: "But desire for one thing may
arouse love for some different thing: as one who desires wealth
loves, on account of this, the man from whom he receives
wealth." 45 From love of this particular man's assistance emerges
desire for his particular assistance. The first difference between
the Scriptum and the Summa, then, is that in the former Thomas
admits that desire for those things that are for the end precedes
love for those same things. This admission is consonant with his
insistence in the Scriptum that love is of something already had,
but it contrasts with his mature teaching because it allows for
cases in which desire for one thing can precede love for that same
thing.
Second, and more to the point, even in this ex professo
treatment Thomas is upholding love of the end as prior to desire
for those things that are for the end. This is not tantamount to
describing love of the end as prior to desire for the end-his
mature position. Once again, the priority of love that he maintains
here depends upon a change of objects. Since, however, the
priority of the passions in generation-taken simply-can be
discerned only with regard to the same object, the article does not
explicitly state that love of the end precedes desire for the end.
44 Ibid., ad 1: "Similiter etiam affectus ex amore finis qui est quasi principium procedit
desiderando in ea quae sunt ad finem, quae prout accipit ut finem in se aliquo modo
continentia per amorem in [eis] quiescit; et ideo desiderium sequitur amorem finis, quamvis
praecedat amorem eorum quae sunt ad finem. Est etiam amor vehementior affectio quam
desiderium, inquantum dicit terminationem et informationem affectus per appetibile ad quod
movetur desiderium."
45 STh I-II, q. 27, a. 4, ad 3: "desiderium rei alicuius semper praesupponit amorem illius
rei. Sed desiderium alicuius rei potest esse causa ut res alia ametur: sicut qui desiderat
pecuniam, amat propter hoc eum a quo pecuniam recipit."

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Simonin, it will be recalled, accurately noted this difficulty. Yet,
did Thomas uphold love of the end as prior to desire for the end?
For want of evidence, Simonin was reluctant to make any
pronouncement. Perhaps his is the wisest route. I join him in not
pronouncing either way; however, I would draw attention to two
items partially suggestive of a negative answer.
First, and most importantly, in an already cited passage (II
Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 1), Thomas declares that God alone always acts
out of love for the end. Creatures (at least, those not yet beatified)
act out of desire for the end, since desire is of something not had
and since no creature has its end by its essence. Second, even in
his ex professo article, Thomas's response to the fifth and last
objection reverts to the priority of desire. The fifth objection
contends that because, as Dionysius teaches, all things act on
account of peace, love has less effective power (is less principal)
than peace. The response bespeaks Thomas's belief that desire is
prior to love in generation: "Peace is not distinguished from love,
but is something belonging to it-for it denotes a kind of rest of
the appetite. But love denotes, further, a transformation and a
certain conversion of the appetite itself into the beloved.
Therefore, peace stands between desire and love. " 46 Love adds
additional notes to the appetitive rest implied in peace, so peace
stands between restless desire and complacent love. Thus, desire
precedes both peace and love. In the very article in which Thomas
argues for the principal role of love, he still includes statements
indicative of the priority of desire.
CONCLUDING REMARKS

It is beyond doubt that, in writing the Scriptum, Thomas
struggled to identify the order of generation of desire and love.
Observing Thomas's development of thought is intrinsically
interesting to the Thomist, yet the development of thought may
46 III Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 3, ad 5: "pax non distinguitur ab amore, sed est aliquid
amoris-dicit enim quasi quietationem appetitus-sed amor <licit ulterius transformationem
et quamdam conversionem ipsius in amatum. Uncle pax est medium inter desiderium et

amorem."

THOMAS ON THE ORDER OF LOVE AND DESIRE

87

be relevant in historical and systematic analyses of other issues as
well. Historically, one may ask whether Thomas arrived at his
mature position through independent thought, against the
consensus of his sources, or whether he learned it through
encounter with some source. Comparison of his analyses with
those of his predecessors (e.g., Albert the Great, Alexander of
Hales, and perhaps Avicenna) may be illuminating. 47
Systematically, the placement of desire before love and the
restriction of love to that which is "already had" has relevance for
treatments of the "problem of love." It is indubitable that he who
already enjoys the presence of what, or better, whom, he loves is
more able to act out of love than he who still yearns for that
presence (STh I-II, q. 27, a. 3). It is perhaps for that reason that
Thomas frequently uses "concupiscere" and "desiderare" to signify
a yearning or erotic love. Yet, cannot one maintain, with Thomas
in his mature writings, that a lover can love his beloved even
though the beloved is absent? Most of all, does not the holy
person so love God? I suspect that Thomas's development of
thought on the order of love and desire may contribute in some
fashion to his mature attempts to resolve this difficulty.

47 See the intriguing remarks by Pierre Rousselot (who was unaware of the issue I pursue)
about a little-known text of Avicenna: Pierre Rousselot, The Problem of Love in the Middle
Ages: A Historical Contribution, trans. with introduction by Alan Vincelette, reviewed and
corrected by Pol Vandevelde, Marquette Studies in Philosophy, no. 24, Collected
Philosophical Works of Pierre Rousselot, vol. 2 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press,
2001), 120.

The Thomist 71 (2007): 89-112

ARTIFACTS, SUBSTANCES, AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION:
SOLVING A PUZZLE FOR AQUINAS'S VIEWS
CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN
The University of Tennessee at Martin
Martin, Tennessee

T

HOMAS AQUINAS REFERS to composed beings that are
unqualifiedly one as substances. But just what kinds of
things in our experience enjoy this sort of unqualified
unity? Certainly, any human person provides us a good example.
Although I am composed of parts insofar as I am (at least under
normal circumstances) an embodied being, I am also one object in
the strongest sense of that expression. I am not identical to some
aggregate of material objects-for example, the fundamental
particles that constitute my body at a time-for I endure through
the changes that my body invariably undergoes on a daily basis
with respect to such parts. If I were identical to some aggregate of
fundamental particles, then I would not endure through my
body's changing with respect to those fundamental particles.
Neither is my unity merely a function of someone-least of all
myself-believing that I am one thing. Despite the fact that I am
composed of parts (of various kinds), and despite the fact that I
am something that is constantly changing, I am a perfect example
of a being in the strongest sense of that term, a fundamentally
unified "center of action," 1 a substance.
It seems reasonable to suppose that when it comes to questions
about unity, what goes for me also goes for any other members of
my kind. So any human person presents us with a perfect example
1 This is W. Norris Clarke's apt phrase in The One and the Many: A Contemporary
Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, Ind.: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 67.

89

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

of a being that is unqualifiedly one. In fact, it seems that all living
organisms are good examples of unified objects in an unqualified
sense. Moreover, there are presumably instances of nonliving
object-kinds that are unqualifiedly one as well, for example, water
molecules and carbon atoms.
But what kind of being and unity do the other kinds of
composed objects that make up such an integral part of our world
enjoy? In particular, what about artifacts, objects such as bikes,
computers, and guitars? Are artifact-objects unqualifiedly one?
And if they are, are they one in the same way that persons and
living organisms are one? To put this question in Thomistic terms,
are artifacts substances?
Aquinas defends the view that no artifacts are substances. He
does so in a number of places throughout his corpus, sometimes
only implicitly,2 at other times explicitly. 3 Many contemporary
philosophers find such a position on the ontological status of
artifacts counterintuitive. 4 Such philosophers suppose that (at least
some) artifact-objects are just as real as the instances of natural
kinds. For my present purposes I want to set aside the question
whether or not Aquinas's views on artifacts are, in fact,
counterintuitive. 5 It seems that Aquinas himself has ample reason
for thinking that some artifacts are substances. His own
understanding of the Eucharistic doctrine of transubstantiation has
it that at the consecration in the Mass the substances that are
some bread and some wine are miraculously transformed into the
substances that are the Body and Blood of Christ. But the
2 See, e;g., ScG IV, c. 35; I Physic., lect. 12, n. 109; II Physic. lect. 1, nn. 142 and 145; II
Physic., lect. 2, nn. 149 and 154.
3 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., c. 1 (6); II De Anima, Iect. 1, n. 218; II De Anima, lect. 2, nn.
235-37; I Physic., lect. 2, n. 14; I Physic., lect. 12, n. 108; II Physic., lect. 2, n. 149; VII
Metaphys., lect. 17, n. 1680; STh ill, q. 2, a. 1.
4 See, e.g., Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); and E. J. Lowe, The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and Time
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) for two recent, representative examples of the view that
artifacts are just as real as organisms.
5 For an argument that Aquinas's views on artifact being and identity are compatible with
common-sense beliefs about artifacts, see Christopher M. Brown, "Souls, Ships, and
Substances: A Response to Toner" (forthcoming in American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly).

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91

elements employed in this religious rite, bread and wine, would
seem to be perfect examples of artifact-kinds. Aquinas's belief that
bread and wine are substance-kinds would appear to show that he
thinks that at least some artifacts are substances. In other words,
Aquinas's applied metaphysics of the Eucharist appears to be at
odds with his overall metaphysics of material objects. I shall call
this argument, purporting to show that Aquinas has a logically
inconsistent set of views on the ontological status of artifacts, the
Transubstantiation Objection.
In this paper I do three things. First, I argue that Aquinas does
indeed hold the view that no artifacts are substances. Second, I
explain some of Aquinas's reasons for taking such a position on
the ontological status of artifacts and I offer some remarks in
defense of Aquinas's arguments on this score. I thus show that
Aquinas wouldn't (and shouldn't) resolve the Transubstantiation
Objection by way of admitting that some artifacts are substances.
Third, I show how Aquinas can answer the Transubstantiation
Objection in a manner that is consistent with his metaphysics of
material objects. I do this by offering a series of reflections on the
nature of artifacts, reflections that take their start from a passing
remark that Aquinas makes in the Tertia Pars of the Summa
Theologiae, question 75, article 6.
I. AQUINAS ON THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF ARTIFACTS:

No ARTIFACTS ARE SUBSTANCES
That Aquinas holds the view that no artifacts are substances
can perhaps best be seen by noting how he speaks about the
composition of material objects. Any material object for Aquinas
is a composite of matter and form. The form of a material object
goes some distance towards explaining why that object actually
exists, as well as why that material being belongs to the species or
kind that it does. The matter of a material object is what "stands
under" the form of that object, and makes sense of the fact that
the object in question was generated and may very well be corrupted in the future as a consequence of the generation/corruption

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

of some other object or objects. We might call the form and
matter of a material object its metaphysical parts 6 in order to
distinguish them from the same object's integral parts,7 that is, the
discrete quantitative portions of the material object.
The prime examples of material objects for Aquinas are
substances. Substances, of course, have integral parts. For
example, a dog has a head, a heart, and a tail (not to mention the
cells and fundamental particles that constitute the dog at any one
time). But a particular dog also has metaphysical parts which
Aquinas calls its 'substantial form' and 'prime matter'. The
substantial form of a substance is that part of a substance that
explains why that substance is a being and why it has the speciesspecific properties, powers, or potentialities that it does. This
means that a substance's substantial form is responsible for
conferring on that substance actual being and all of the properties
that belong to that substance insofar as it is a member of a certain
species. 8 Furthermore, when, for example, a dog comes into
existence, none of that dog's integral parts actually exist before
the generation of the dog. Rather, each one of the dog's integral
parts comes into existence when that dog comes into existence; a
dog's integral parts exist on account of the dog's substantial form.
Aquinas thinks of substances as unified things of the highest order,
and a substance's having only one substantial form guarantees that
the substance in question is such a unified thing. To put things
another way, Aquinas thinks that a substance cannot be composed
of actual substances; if a material object o were composed of
actual substances, then o would be one thing only in a qualified
sense, and substances are objects that are unqualifiedly one. 9

6 See, e.g., the following texts in De Prin. Nat.: "Matter and form are said to be intrinsic
to a thing, because they are parts constituting a thing" (c. 3 [17]); "[Matter and form] are
related to a composed thing as parts to a whole, as the simple to the composed" (c. 4 [22]).
See also ScG II, c. 54; Q. D. DeAnima, a. 1, ad 13; and VIIMetaphys., lect. 21, n. 1095. All
translations of Aquinas's texts are my own, unless otherwise noted.
7 See, e.g., VIIMetaphys., lect. 16, n. 1632.
8 See, e.g., STh I, q. 76, a. 6, ad 1.
9 See, e.g., STh I, q. 76, a. 8. See also ScG II, c. 72; ScG IV, c. 36; and VII Metaphys., lect.
13, n. 1588.

ARTIFACTS, SUBSTANCES,AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION

93

Saying that a material substance s is composed of prime matter
makes sense of the fact that we do not regard s's coming into
being as a creatio ex nihilo. When a dog is conceived, it does not
come into existence with no material relation to the world it
comes to inhabit. Rather, a dog's coming into existence is a kind
of change (albeit a change of a rather radical sort). But if a dog's
coming into being is a kind of change, then there must be a
subject for that change, since any event that counts as a change
(and not a creatio ex nihilo) requires that there is some subject x
that has a property at some time t that x lacks at t-1. The subject
for this kind of radical change-which might be called substantial
change-cannot itself be a substance or an aggregate of substances
(e.g., an aggregate of fundamental particles) that remain the selfsame substance or aggregate of substances through the change in
question. If the subject of a substantial change were a substance or
an aggregate of substances, then substances could be composed of
actual substances. But substances-beings that are unqualifiedly
one-cannot be composed of actual substances. Unlike an aggregate of substances-the kind of object that has actual substances
as its integral parts-a substance is a unified thing of the highest
order. If the integral parts of a substance s were actual substances,
each of s's parts would enjoy a greater unity than did s. In such a
case the integral parts of an organism would be the prime
candidates for substance-hood. For Aquinas it is the other way
around: organisms and not their parts are material objects in the
primary sense. Hence, the prime matter of a substance is not itself
a material substance or a collection of substances; rather, prime
matter is matter that is entirely devoid of form in and of itself.
Prime matter is therefore that part of a material substance that
explains how that substance can-qua substance-naturally come
into being by way of the corruption of other beings and how upon
its demise that material substance may very well contribute to the
being of some numerically different material object. 10
10 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., cc. 1 and 2. For further discussion and defense of Aquinas's
views on substantial forms and prime matter, see Christopher M. Brown, Aquinas and the Ship
of Theseus: Solving Puzzles about Material Objects (London: Continuum, 2005), 71-87.

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Aquinas also speaks about artifacts as composites of matter and
form. However, he takes the view that the artifact-configuring
form of an artifact-that form that makes the artifact to be an
artifact instead of some other kind of object-is merely an accidental form, 11 while the matter of an artifact is a material
substance (or a collection of material substances). 12 In other
words, an artifact's form of the whole-that form that explains
that the artifact is and what it is-is an accidental form. Thus,
artifacts are not themselves substances for Aquinas. We might say
that an artifact for Aquinas is merely a phase in the 'life' of some
material substance (or a collection of material substances). 13
Consider a bronze statue of George Washington. According to
Aquinas, it is only the matter of this statue that counts as a
material object in the primary sense, namely, this piece of bronze.
The artifact-configuring form of the statue is a certain accidental
form, presumably a relation (between a certain shape, a sculptor,
her audience, and the object to which such a shape is designed to
point), having the man-shape that human beings associate with the
first president of the United States of America as a result of the art
of a sculptor. 14 The statue of George Washington itself is not a
11 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., c. 1 (6); IV Sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 2, ad 4; ScG II, c. 72 (3);
ScG IV, c. 35; IIDeAnima, lect. l, n. 218; IIDeAnima, lect. 2, nn. 235-37; STh I, q. 76, a.
8; and STh III, q. 2, a. 1.
12 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., c. 1 (6); IIDeAnima, lect. 1, n. 218; !Physic., lect. 12, n. 109;
and VIIMetaphys., lect. 3, n. 1710.
13 The reader should note that my use of the expression 'phase' here is potentially
misleading, since an artifact a's form of the whole would be an accidental form, according to
Aquinas, even if a and a's matter (some substance or collection of substances) existed at all and
only the same times. For example, even if a piece of bronze b is generated at time t and
corrupted at t+ l, and a sculpture constituted by bis constructed at t and destroyed at t+ 1,
that sculpture's form of the whole would still count as an accidental form by Aquinas's lights.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that the being of the material components of most artifacts does
in fact predate the origin in being of the artifacts of which they come to form the integral
parts. Therefore, thinking about artifact-being as a 'phase' in the 'life' of some substance (or
collection of substances) is not only appropriate, but helpful insofar as it communicates the
inherent ontological difference between substantial being and artifact-being in Aquinas's
thought.
14 See, e.g., De Prin. Nat., ch. 1. Aquinas also distinguishes between what we might call
'simple' and 'complex' artifacts: a simple artifact has one substance functioning as its
underlying matter (e.g., a statue constituted by one continuous piece of bronze), while a
complex artifact has many substances functioning as its underlying matter (e.g., an axe) (see,

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substance-it is not a 'material object' in the primary sense.
Rather, it is the piece of bronze that constitutes the statue of
George Washington that is a material object in the primary sense.
What we refer to as 'a statue' is merely a temporary (or more
precisely, an accidental) feature of some substance that functions
as the matter of that statue.

II. AQUINAS ON WHY ARTIFACTS ARE NOT SUBSTANCES
Why does Aquinas take the position that artifact-configuring
forms are accidental instead of substantial forms? In other words,
why can't artifacts be substances? First of all, Aquinas thinks it
obvious that a material substance is not corrupted simply because
it comes to function as an integral part of some artifact-object.
Imagine that an axe has the following integral parts: (1) a piece of
wood, (2) a piece of iron that has a razor-sharp edge on one side
and (3) a screw-shaped piece of iron. Each of these integral parts
of the axe is presumably identical to some substance (or collection
of substances) that existed prior to someone's making the axe. 15
For example, the piece of wood that functions as an axe handle
at time t is (at least possibly) numerically the same object as a
piece of wood that is not a part of an axe at t-1 (i.e., before the
axe was produced). But if the axe were a substance for Aquinas,
then the piece of wood that functions as an integral part of the
axe would be (necessarily) numerically different from any piece
of wood that existed prior to making the axe. Before the piece of
wood becomes an integral part of the axe it would be a substance
and after it becomes a part of the axe it would be a
nonsubstance-since
substances are not composed of actual
e.g., V Metaphys., lee. 3, n. 779). See also the discussion of simple and complex artifacts,
below.
15 More precisely, we might say that each one of the integral parts of the axe (the handle,
the blade, the fastening screw) is itself an artifact which has a substance (or collection of
substances) functioning as its underlying matter, and the substances that function as the matter
of the integral parts of the axe are themselves numerically identical to substances that existed
prior to the existence of the axe and the existence of the integral parts that compose the axe.
For the sake of simplicity, I will avoid such complications in the body of the article and speak
of the integral parts of the axe as though they were substances in their own right.

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substances-and
it would be infelicitous to say that a
nonsubstance object is identical to an object that is a substance.
But a piece of wood does not undergo a substantial change just in
virtue of becoming an integral part of an object we call an 'axe'.
Rather, the piece of wood that composes an axe is numerically
identical to a piece of wood that existed prior to the generation
of the axe. Since substances are not composed of actual substances, and the piece of wood that composes the handle of the
axe is a substance, the axe itself is not a substance. The axe's form
of the whole is merely an accidental form-perhaps a relation or
complex set of relations between substances-and
not a
substantial form.
An axe is what we might call a complex artifact-it is an
artifact composed of more than one substance. But the same point
will hold in the case of an artifact that is composed of only a
single substance. We might call such an artifact 'simple'. Assume
(with Aquinas) that a piece of bronze is a single substance. A
statue composed of one continuous piece of bronze would be a
good example of a simple artifact. Now a piece of bronze does
not undergo a substantial change simply because that piece of
bronze comes to function as the matter of a statue. As Aquinas
argues in a passage from his De principiis naturae:
When a statue is made from bronze, the bronze, which is in potency to the form
of the statue, is the matter. ... The shape by which [something] is called a statue
is the form. But [it is] not a substantial [form], since the bronze, before the
coming of that form has actual being, and its being does not depend upon that
shape. Rather, the form [of the statue] is an accidental one. For all artificial
forms are accidental. 16

Note here that Aquinas expresses his view that a statue has an
accidental form and not a substantial form, and this because the
16 De Prin. Nat., c. 1 (6): "Sicut quando ex cupro fit idolum, cuprum quad est in potentia
ad formam idoli, est materia; hoc autem quad est infiguratum sive indispositum, est privatio;
figura autem a qua dicitur idolum, est forma; non autem substantialis, quia cuprum ante
adventum illius formae habet esse in actu, et eius esse non dependet ab illa figura, sed est
forma accidentalis. Omnes enim formae artificiales sunt accidentales." See also IT Physic., lect.
2, n. 149; and II De Anima, lect. 1, n. 218.

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statue's matter remains even though it takes on the form of a
statue. Of course, one might hold that Aquinas is simply wrong
that the piece of bronze that exists prior to taking on the shape of
a statue is numerically identical to the piece of bronze that has the
shape of a statue. 17 But Aquinas's position is certainly the sensible
one. The piece of bronze, before it gets the statue shape, is
identical to the piece of bronze that has the statue shape. Pieces of
bronze are not corrupted simply because they take on a different
shape. 18 Bringing a new substance into existence cannot be as easy
as giving a piece of metal a new shape.
One of Aquinas's reasons for denying that artifacts are
substances thus has him drawing on the intuition that the integral
parts of an artifact do not (necessarily, even usually) come into
being when they come to compose some artifact. He also has a
second reason for thinking that no artifacts are substances:
artifacts are not substances because artifacts are not natural
things. 19 He does not maintain that all natural things are
17 This is part of Michael Burke's solution to the so-called 'problem
of material
constitution' where artifacts such as statues are concerned: a piece of bronze that is not
functioning as the underlying matter of a statue and a piece of bronze that is functioning as
the underlying matter of a statue are necessarily numerically different pieces of bronze. See
his "Preserving the Principle of One Object to a Place: A Novel Account of the Relations
among Objects, Sorts, Sortals, and Persistence Conditions," Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research 54 (1994): 591-624.
18 For the sake of brevity, I am overlooking a complication here that is bound to arise in
discussing Aquinas's understanding of artifact-identity over and at a time, namely, that
Aquinas is committed to the view that a nonliving substance undergoes a substantial change
whenever it loses an integral part (for argument and discussion of this point, see Christopher
M. Brown, "Aquinas on the Individuation of Non-living Substances," Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 75 (2001): 234-54). If the fashioning of an
original piece of bronze into a statue involves more than simply changing the statue's shape,
but also involves shaving off pieces of bronze from the original piece of bronze-which is, of
course, very likely-then the resulting statue-shaped piece of bronze would be numerically
distinct from the original piece of bronze. However, in fashioning a bronze statue of, say,
George Washington, there certainly would be some piece of bronze that was not-yet-a-statue
that is numerically identical to the piece of bronze that ends up functioning as the matter of
the said statue. For further discussion and defense of Aquinas's views on artifact-identity
through time and change, see Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus, 130-43; and Brown,
"Souls, Ships and Substances."
19 See, e.g., ScG IV, c. 35; IIDeAnima, lect. 1, n. 218; II Physic., lect. 1, nn. 142 and 145;
II Physic., lect. 2, nn. 149 and 154; VII Metaphys., lect. 17, n. 1680; and STh III, q. 2, a. 1.

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substances, for there certainly are some naturally occurring things
that do not count as substances: for example, a pile of rocks
(which is just a heap of substances) or some muddy water (which
is a compound "according to sense only"). 20 But Aquinas
apparently does think that being a natural thing is at least a
necessary-if not sufficient-condition for something's being a
material substance. Since artifacts would seem to be by definition
unnatural things, and all substances are natural things, artifacts are
not substances.
Aquinas has a number of reasons for taking the position that
being a natural thing is a necessary condition for being a material
substance. One reason is that natural things change and undergo
changes in virtue of themselves, whereas artifacts only change and
undergo changes because of the natures of their integral parts,
that is, the substances that compose them. Aquinas makes an
argument such as this in commenting on a passage from Aristotle's
Physics.21 Although any living thing obviously depends upon other
things to allow it to be something that grows-for example, we
would say that it has to be composed of certain kinds of objects
such as carbon and water-we would not speak of a living thing
'growing' if it were not for changes that originate with the living
organism itself. More importantly for Aquinas's case here, he
thinks that some nonliving things also have a principle of change
per se-fire moves to a higher place because of its nature, earth to
a lower place, etc.
Aquinas makes a related point in the treatise on human beings
in the Summa Theologiae:in the context of discussing whether the
human soul is a substance, he mentions the axiom that whatever
exists per se has a distinctive operation per se.22 But in contrast to
substances, artifacts, even if they have distinctive operations or
functions, have these operations or functions only in virtue of
being composed of certain kinds of substances and, perhaps more
importantly, only in virtue of agents extrinsic to them adopting
certain psychological attitudes. An artifact does not have
20 See, e.g.,

De mixtione elementorum, n. 5.

21 II Physic., lect. 1, nn. 142 and 145.
22 See STh I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 2.

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operations (does not change) in virtue of its own being; it has
operations only in virtue of the being (and thoughts) of objects
other than the artifact.
To take one example, the material object that we refer to in
English by the word 'axe' is what it is because of the function that
some human beings have given to it, namely, the notion that an
axe is something that consists of a piece of wood and a piece of
metal, where those things are bonded in such a way that the result
is useful for chopping wood. Imagine that an object that we refer
to as an 'axe' is buried in the ground. Our civilization is
destroyed. Years later, some aliens from another planet discover
the object that we referred to as an 'axe'. These aliens do not
know what the axe was used for (perhaps they have no need for
cutting wood, or for weapons), although we might presume that
they can figure out that the object in question had some purpose
or function-that it has obviously been constructed by rational
agents. The aliens begin to use the object we called an 'axe' as a
door jam, for which it is quite useful. Does the axe thereby
undergo a substantial change, changing from an axe (an artifact
that is primarily used to cut wood) to a door-jam (an artifact
whose primary function is to prop open doors)? No, because
something does not undergo a substantial change without
undergoing any intrinsic changes. 23 It seems more reasonable to
say that what has substantially existed through these changes (that
is, through the various changes in attitudes that rational beings
have taken up towards this object we refer to as an 'axe') is merely
a collection of naturally occurring substances, that is, some wood
and some iron. Even if artifacts have a function, they do not really
have a function per se but only per aliud. Artifacts are not
substances because only natural things have functions per se,

23 Lynne Rudder Baker would agree that the axe does not undergo a substantial change in
my example, but she would say this on the grounds that once a thing is knighted an 'axe', that
thing will always be an axe for as long as it exists (Personsand Bodies, 38). But I don't see that
she provides any good reasons for taking this line. Indeed, why ought one privilege the
thoughts of the original creators of the axe over the thoughts of those who later find what we
called an 'axe' and use it for a totally different purpose?

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which is a minimal requirement for being a substantial kind of
being, a being that is unqualifiedly one. 24

III. A PUZZLE FOR AQUINAS'S VIEW:
BREAD, WINE, AND THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSUBSTANTIATION
As we have seen, Aquinas thinks that substances are natural
things. But this view is at least prima facie puzzling, given
Aquinas's own understanding of the Eucharistic doctrine of
transubstantiation. As he understands the doctrine, at the moment
of consecration in the celebration of the Mass, the substances of
bread and wine are transformed into the substances of the body
and blood of Christ. 25 Bread and wine are apparently treated by
Aquinas as good examples of substance-kinds. But one would have
thought that bread and wine are also perfect examples of artifactkinds, and artifacts are not substances according to Aquinas. Thus,
his understanding of the doctrine of transubstantiation seems to
be in conflict with his general metaphysical view that artifacts are
not substances. This is the problem-purporting to show that
Aquinas has a logically inconsistent set of views on the ontological
status of artifacts-that I have labeled the Transubstantiation
Objection.
How can Aquinas respond to the Transubstantiation Objection? One might suggest that Aquinas does not really think of
bread and wine as substances at all; the bread (or wine) used in
24 Aquinas has a second reason for thinking that substances must be natural things: unlike
substances, artifacts do not generate things of their own kind, that is, they are not things that
perpetuate their own species (see, e.g., II Physic., lect. 2, nn. 149 and 154). Although Aquinas
does not explicitly say here that artifacts are not substances, this appears to be implied by his
saying that artifacts are not natural things. The argument is as follows. If an artifact were a
substance, then it would be able to contribute to the generation of (or, itself be generated by)
a member of its own species. For example, two human beings generate another human being,
and although the generated human being is not identical to either of her generators in number,
she is identical to both of them in species. Even a nonliving substance such as some fire (for
Aquinas) is generated from a fire that is identical to it in species (e.g., some fire catches some
papers on fire, or a fire is divided into two fires). But artifacts are not generated by, nor do
they generate, objects that are identical to them in species while being different from them in
number. Therefore, artifacts are not substances.
25 See, e.g., STh III, q. 75, a. 3.

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the Eucharistic celebration is itself really just an aggregate of
material substances. In that case, it would be the matter of the
bread (or wine) that is the substantial reality that is actually
transformed into the body and blood of Christ at the moment of
consecration. According to this way of resolving the Transubstantiation Objection, when Aquinas talks about bread being
changed into the body of Christ by transubstantiation, he should
be taken to mean that it is actually the substances (plural) that are
in the bread that are changed into the body of Christ. It is not the
bread itself that is being transformed in the rite but rather the
substantial materials that make up the artifact that is a piece of
bread.
However, Aquinas makes it clear in many different ways in his
treatment of transubstantiation in the Summa Theologiae that he
considers bread and wine to be substance-kinds. To take just one
example, Aquinas speaks in one passage of the 'substantial forms'
of bread and wine, and anything that has a substantial form for
Aquinas is a substance. 26
So Aquinas clearly takes bread and wine to be substance-kinds.
But perhaps Aquinas doesn't really think that no artifacts are
substances. We might take him to adopt a weaker line on the
ontological status of artifacts, something such as the following:
although most artifacts are not substances, some kinds of
artifacts-perhaps instances of artifact-kinds that are, as it were,
"close to nature"-do enjoy the ontological status of being
substances. We might also think that instances of bread and wine
(and perhaps plastics) are good examples of artifacts that are
quasi-natural and so exceptions to the general rule that no
artifacts are substances. Taking such a view would allow Aquinas
to say consistently both that bread and wine are artifact objects
26 STh III, q. 75, a. 6. See also Aquinas's questions at STh III, q. 75, a. 2 ("Whether in this
sacrament the substance of bread and wine remains after the consecration"); and STh III, q.
75, a. 3 ("Whether after the consecration of this sacrament the substance of bread is
annihilated or dissolved into its original matter"). Aquinas also implies in STh III, q. 75, a. 3,
that bread and wine are mixed bodies (an expression he typically reserves for referring to
compound substances). Finally, he refers to bread and wine as substances in an uncontested
premise of an objection (STh III, q. 75, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1).

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and that bread and wine are transubstantiated in the Eucharistic
celebration.
One problem with this way of resolving the Transubstantiation
Objection is that whenever Aquinas says that artifacts are not
substances he does not seem to suggest that this should be
understood in some qualified way. For example, consider the
following passage from the commentary on the Metaphysics:
"Certain things are not substances, as is clear particularly in the
case of artificial things, but all things are true substances that are
'according to nature' with respect to their being 'and constituted
by nature' with respect to their becoming. " 27 We cannot resolve
the Transubstantiation Objection by suggesting that Aquinas takes
some artifacts-including instances of the kinds of bread and
wine-to be substances.
IV. A THOMISTIC RESPONSE TO THE TRANSUBSTANTIATION
OBJECTION

Aquinas makes some claims in the Tertia Pars that serve as an
adequate basis for a solution to the Transubstantiation Objection,
a solution consistent with Aquinas's own general metaphysics of
material objects. The relevant claims come in an answer to the
following objection:
It seems that after the consecration the substantial form of bread remains in this
sacrament. For it was said that, after the consecration, the accidents [of bread]
remain. But, since bread is a certain artificial thing, its form is also accidental.
Therefore, [the form of bread] remains after the consecration. 28

Note that the objector seems to assume the following: (i) an
artificial thing has an accidental form functioning as its form of
27 VII Metaphys., lect. 17, n. 168 0: "quaedam rerum non sunt substantiae, sicut praecipue
patet in artificialibus, sed quaecumque sunt secundum naturam, quantum ad esse, et per
naturam constitutae, quantum ad fieri, sunt verae substantiae."
28 STh III, q. 75, a. 6, obj. l: "Videtur quod facta consecratione, remaneat in hoc
sacramento forma substantalis panis. Dictum est enim quod facta consecratione, remanent
accidentia. Sed cum panis sit quoddam artificiale, etiam forma eius est accidens. Ergo remanet,
facta consecratione."

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the whole and not a substantial form, and (ii) bread is an artificial
thing. Therefore, since bread's form of the whole is an accidental
form and since the accidents of the bread remain after the
consecration, there is still bread present on the altar after the
consecration.
We might think that the objector here is entertaining a theory
of the Real Presence alternative to the theory of transubstantiation, perhaps one at least similar to that which is known
as the 'irnpanational theory'. In the irnpanational theory of the
real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Christ is indeed present
on the altar after the consecration, but so is some bread (Christ
and the bread are hypostatically united). What exists on the altar
after the consecration is an object that is both the body of Christ
and some bread. I shall call the objection Aquinas is fielding here
the Impanation Objection. Aquinas responds to the Irnpanation
Objection as follows:
Nothing prohibits something coming to be by art whose form is not an
accidental, but a substantial form, just as frogs and serpents can be produced by
art. For art does not produce this kind of form by its own power, but by the
power of natural principles. And in this way it produces the substantial form of
bread by the power of fire baking matter made up of flour and water. 29

The first thing to notice about Aquinas's response to the
Irnpanation Objection is that by talking about bread's substantial
form, he is clearly stating that bread is a substance-kind. He thinks
the objector is confused in thinking that the bread on the altar is
not a substance. Since the bread is a substance and only the
accidents of the bread remain after the consecration, one need not
admit that the bread's form iof the whole remains after the
consecration.
We might be tempted to read into Aquinas's response to the
Irnpanation Objection here his acceptance of the following thesis:
all artificial things (i.e., things "corning to be by art") are artifacts.
29 STh III, q. 75, a. 6, ad l: "nihil prohibet arte fieri aliquid cuius forma non est accidens,
sed forma substantialis; sicut arte possunt produci ranae et serpentes. Talem enim formam non
producit ars virtute propria, sed virtute naturalium principiorum. Et hoc modo producit
formam substantialis panis, virtute ignis decoquentis materiam ex farina at aqua confectam."

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But if he answers the Impanation Objection by accepting the view
that all artificial things are artifacts, he would raise the
Transubstantiation Objection. As we have seen, he is elsewhere at
pains to deny that some artifacts are substances. But the view that
all artificial things are artifacts-assuming (with Aquinas) that
bread is indeed a certain kind of artificial thing-entails that he
believes that some artifacts are substances. If we assume that his
considered answer to the Impanation Objection entails that all
artificial things are artifacts, this leaves his applied metaphysics of
the Eucharist at variance with a doctrine of his general
metaphysics of substance.
All things being equal, we shouldn't favor an interpretation of
Aquinas that has him contradicting himself-even across his
corpus-particularly if there is a viable alternative interpretation
available. Here follows a viable alternative interpretation of
Aquinas's response to the lmpanation Objection, an interpretation
that also provides the key to answering the Transubstantiation
Objection. Clearly, Aquinas's answer to the Impanation Objection
has him agreeing that the Eucharistic elements-this piece of
bread and the wine in this cup-are things coming to be by art,
that is, artificial things. As we have seen, he also thinks that this
piece of bread and the wine in this cup are substances. I suggest
that Aquinas does not identify the class of things that are artificial
with the class of things that are artifacts. Since he denies that all
artificial things are artifacts, this bread and this wine are not
counterexamples to his view that no artifacts are substances.
Although this bread and wine are artificial things, they are not
artifacts and therefore they are substances fit for undergoing
transubstantiation. The Transubstantiation Objection is thereby
answered by way of making a distinction between artificial things
and artifacts.
But what reason can Aquinas have for distinguishing artificial
things and artifacts? A material object o is not an artifactpresumably an unnatural thing-just in virtue of an artisan's
participating in the total process of o's generation. To see
Aquinas's reasons for thinking this, consider what he says about

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the case of a frog's being generated as a result of some secret art
(whether the art in question is a magical power or some kind of
cloning technology need not detain us here). 30 A frog produced
with the help of art is still a frog and all frogs are substances.
Anything that is a frog is a substance-and therefore a natural
thing-even if the frog happens to have been generated in part as
a result of some human art. Therefore, a frog produced by art is
nonetheless a substance. But no artifacts are substances (and so no
substances are artifacts). Therefore, a frog made by art-although
perhaps an artificial thing-is not an artifact.
Aquinas asks us in his reply to the Impanation Objection to
compare some bread prepared by an artisan with the frog that has
been generated by a magical art. Both, he says, are produced by
art and by natural principles. Just as a frog produced by art is
nonetheless a substance, so too is bread made by the baker.
Aquinas's interesting suggestion here is as follows: the fact that an
artisan is involved in bringing about some object x is not by itself
a sufficient condition for x's being an artifact. Recall that the
Transubstantiation Objection assumes that bread and wine are
obvious examples of artifact-kinds. I take it that Aquinas would
want to say that, at most, what is obvious is that this bread and
this wine are brought into existence through a human art. But the
class of things that are de facto brought about with the help of a
human art should not be confused with the class of things that are
artifacts.
More must be said by way of explanation and defense of
Aquinas's frog/bread analogy if it is to provide a satisfactory
answer to the Transubstantiation Objection. There is, after all,
reason to think that artifacts just are things brought about as a
result of art. More importantly, we might have worries about the
relative strength of the frog/bread analogy itself: frogs are the
sorts of things that are typically brought about solely by way of
natural processes whereas bread is typically (if not always) the sort
30 Ibid. Aquinas undoubtedly has in mind Exodus 7:11-12; here Egyptian magicians
produced frogs by their magical arts in an attempt to mimic everything that Moses was able
to produce by the power of God.

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

of thing that is brought about partially as a result of the baker's
art. It may make perfect sense to say that an artificially engineered
frog is a substance since the generation of a frog does not under
normal and natural circumstances require a human intervention.
But we might find ourselves wondering why bread is not an
artifact, since bread is the kind of thing that is typically-if not
always-brought about as a result of the baker's art. Does
Aquinas's frog/bread analogy really show that bread is not an
artifact?
Of course the frog/bread analogy crucially depends upon the
assumption that the magically produced frog is not an artifact.
This claim seems right to me. However, to find the frog/bread
analogy convincing, we must agree that Aquinas offers us a good
reason for why the magically produced frog-and by analogy a
piece of bread-is not an artifact. Aquinas's proposed reason is as
follows: "For art does not produce this kind of form by its own
power, but by the power of natural principles." In applying this
reason to the case of the magically produced frog he seems to be
saying that the artificial frog is not the kind of thing that is
produced by the power of art; rather, it is the kind of thing that
is produced by natural principles.
Aquinas certainly has to concede that the magician (an artisan)
is one of the efficient causes of the artificial frog. It may be that
he means simply to point out here that a human artisan is not the
only efficient cause of the frog; natural principles too are involved
in the generation of a frog produced by way of the secret arts of
the Egyptian magicians. In that case, we might read Aquinas's
frog/bread analogy in such a way that it relies on accepting the
following general principle (call it the Partial Principle):
If x is partially brought into being by the workings of natural principles or
powers, such as heating, lighting, fertilizing, cell-dividing, etc., then xis not an
artifact.

We have seen that Aquinas thinks that the artificial frog is a
substance. This is compatible with his insistence elsewhere that
artifacts are not substances, since the artificial frog is not an

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107

artifact. The Partial Principle explains this as follows. The
artificial frog is not the kind of thing that is produced by the
power of art alone; rather, it is the kind of thing that is also
produced by natural principles. Given the truth of the Partial
Principle, what goes for artificially produced frogs also goes for
pieces of bread that are baked by bakers: like a magically
produced frog, a loaf of bread is produced not only by art but at
least by one natural principle or power. Aquinas notes in his
response to the Impanation Objection that fire's power of heating
is a necessary and natural efficient cause of some bread. We might
think that his acceptance of (something such as) the Partial
Principle forms the basis for his belief that artificial frogs and
loaves of bread prepared by bakers are not, for all this, artifacts.
However, the Partial Principle is subject to obvious
counterexample. Consider an axe, which certainly is an artifact.
But according to the Partial Principle, an axe is not an artifact,
since an axe too numbers among its efficient causes certain natural
principles or powers. An axe must have an axe handle, which, if
it is made out of wood, requires trees. Trees themselves require
sunlight. The sun's powers of heating and lighting are natural
powers that act as efficient causes in the production of all natural
things. Even the dead wood of an axe-handle must have been the
living wood of a tree at some point. So-at least indirectly-an
axe is partially produced by way of the workings of the natural
power of the sun. Furthermore, the axe is directly produced by
way of the workings of natural powers or principles. For example,
the blade of an axe is obviously brought about by way of the
blacksmith's art. In a way that is analogous to the way in which
the actualization of the baker's art depends upon the natural
power of the heating power of fire, the actualization of the
blacksmith's art depends upon the heating power of fire as a
natural power that must be present while the blacksmith alters the
shape of the metal that will become the blade of an axe. If we
understand Aquinas's frog/bread analogy in such a way that it
relies on the truth of the Partial Principle, then Aquinas would be
committed to the (unhappy) view that axes do not count as

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

artifacts. The Partial Principle cannot be used by Aquinas to
mount a successful case that bread is not an artifact.
Fortunately, there are alternative ways of explaining Aquinas's
reason for thinking that a frog produced by some Egyptian
magicians is not an artifact. For example, consider the following
principle (call it the Primary Principle):
If xis brought into being primarily by natural principles or powers, then xis not
an artifact.

The problem with the Partial Principle was that it was subject to
obvious counterexample: a object such as an axe (an obvious
example of an artifact) would not exist if it were not for certain
natural principles or powers. The Primary Principle can
accommodate such a case. Although we can admit that axes exist
only because of natural principles and powers such as the heating
power of fire, it also seems right to say that the artisan's role in
bringing an axe into being is more important than-is primary in
relation to-any of the natural principles or powers that are
involved in producing an axe.
Of course, we might want to ground Aquinas's frog/bread
analogy in a principle that more clearly distinguishes artifact
objects from nonartifact objects that nonetheless number an
artisan among their efficient causes than does the Primary
Principle. It seems natural to ask what it means to say that "a
cause x of y is a primary rather than a nonprimary cause." What
are the necessary and sufficient conditions for x being a primary
as opposed to a nonprimary cause of y? The importance of
knowing such conditions becomes clear when we begin to ask
how we apply the Primary Principle to specific cases. For
example, Aquinas maintains that a frog produced by a magician
and some bread produced by a baker are substances and so are not
artifacts, despite the presumed fact that both an artificial frog and
a piece of bread number human artisans among their efficient
causes. On the other hand, an axe is presumably a good example
of an artifact-object. But both an axe and some bread have
rational (specifically, human) agents and nonrational (natural)

ARTIFACTS, SUBSTANCES,AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION

109

agents functioning as their efficient causes. As we have seen,
Aquinas notes that one cannot make bread without the heating
power of fire. But we have noted that the generation of an axe
also crucially depends upon fire's natural power of heating. What
reason could we have for supposing that the natural heating
power of fire is the primary efficient cause of some bread, thereby
making bread a substance (and thereby not an artifact), whereas
the natural heating power of fire is not the primary efficient cause
of an axe?
Let us assume that we could make a solid case that some
bread's primary efficient cause(s) is (are) natural whereas an axe
has a human artisan as its primary efficient cause. It would still be
reasonable to ask why it should matter so much that an artifactobject's so-called primary causes are nonnatural causes as opposed
to natural ones. Our intuition is that any kind of object that
necessarily numbers human artists among its efficient causes is
thereby an artifact. Given this intuition, perhaps it makes more
sense to think that Aquinas is grounding the frog/bread analogy in
some such principle as the following (call it the Species Principle):
An object x is an artifact if and only if x belongs to a species S such that any
member of S numbers at least one human artisan among its efficient causes.

The Species Principle is compatible with the commonsense
intuition that axes are perfect examples of artifact-objects. Since
axes clearly aren't produced in the absence of an artisan, then, on
the Species Principle, axes would count as artifacts. Furthermore,
we can accept the Species Principle and also accept what Aquinas
takes to be the case with respect to the frogs produced by the
Egyptian magicians, namely, that such frogs are nonartifacts; they
are rather substances that just happen to be produced with the
help of some human artisans. Although the frogs produced by the
Egyptian magicians have some kind of occult human art as one of
their efficient causes, not all frogs do. Since frogs can be
generated without the help of human art, nothing about this frog's
being generated in part with the help of human artisans entails
that the frog in question is an artifact (and so not a substance).

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

But what about the bread used in the Eucharistic celebration?
If we are to make good sense of Aquinas's (implied) claim that
bread is not an artifact in light of what we have already said and
argued for so far, then it seems to me that there are only two
possibilities: either (i) the Species Principle is false or else (ii) the
Species Principle is true and bread is the kind of thing that need
not have some human art among the efficient causes of every one
of its instances. I suggest that option (i) is not plausible. Imagine
that some object x belongs to a species S such that any of S's
instances numbers among its efficient causes some human artisan,
where an artisan is someone who is intentionally making or
producing something. How could we reasonably say that object x
is not an artifact? If object x of species S is not an artifact, it is
hard to see what would count as an artifact. Aquinas must be
thinking that some bread-like a frog-is the sort of thing that
need not number a human artisan among its efficient causes (even
if it typically does). In that case, we could read Aquinas's
frog/bread analogy as follows: the artificial frog-qua frog-is not
the kind of thing that requires the power of art for its production;
rather, it is the kind of thing that can be produced solely by
natural principles or powers. Similarly, some bread is the kind of
thing that need not be produced by the power of some human art
such as the baker's; natural principles or powers are sufficient to
bring about instances of bread. Of course, such natural
processes-processes that are by themselves sufficient to produce
things such as frogs and bread-are in some (or most) cases
helped along (e.g., sped up, made more efficient, etc.) by the art
of an artisan (a magician in the case of the magically produced
frog or a baker in the case of the bread bought at the local
bakery). But both an artificial frog and the baker's bread are in
reality products of nature, and therefore natural things, and
therefore fit to count as substances.
The Species Principle entails the following:
if x belongs to a species S such that at least one member y of S does not require
some human artisan to act as an efficient cause of y's generation-if y is such that
only natural principles or powers in conjunction with God's creating and

ARTIFACTS,SUBSTANCES,AND TRANSUBSTANTIATION

conserving power are sufficient to bring about y's generation-then
artifact.

111

x is not an

If Aquinas's frog/bread analogy is, in fact, grounded in (something
such as) the Species Principle, then this suggests that Aquinas is
thinking that it is naturally (and not, I think, simply logically)
possible for the following to occur: some pulverized wheat and
water (the necessary and sufficient material causes of some bread)
commingle in nature, this mixture of wheat and water is baked by
the heat of the sun, and some bread results, all of this occurring
without the intervention of any human art. Although bread
typically comes about as a result of the intervention of the baker's
art, the bakery art is something accidental to the nature of bread,
since the art of baking bread already makes use of certain natural
processes, and some bread might come about completely through
such natural processes. What Aquinas says about wine in another
passage in the Summa Theologiae offers some evidence for what
I am suggesting here (assuming we can indeed draw an analogy
between the cases of bread and wine). In that passage Aquinas
notes that although wine is typically brought about with the aid of
an artisan, a (human) artisan is not required for the generation of
some wine. 31 Although wine-like bread-is customarily brought
about by way of humans working with natural processes, the
naturally occurring process of fermentation is necessary and
sometimes sufficient for the generation of some wine.
We might also note that the way of understanding Aquinas's
frog/bread analogy that I have been developing here is fully
compatible with there being clear cases of material object-kinds
that are artifacts. For example, an axe is the sort of material
object whose generation requires an artisan. If an axe exists, we
must posit that one of the efficient causes of the axe is the
craftsperson who fastens a piece of iron to a piece of wood (and
works in tandem with the natural heating power of fire in
changing the shape of the metal in order to bring about the
distinctive shape of the axe blade). Axes are in no sense natural
things. By contrast, a frog produced by the art of a magician (or
31

STh III, q. 74, a. 5 (see esp. ad 2 and ad 3).

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CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN

a bioengineer) is still a natural thing-because what essentially
brings about the object in question is a power (or some powers)
of nature-and so a frog's being generated with the help of the
magician is nonetheless still a natural thing-a substance-and not
an artifact. Just so, the bread baked for the Eucharistic celebration
is essentially a natural thing-a substance-and not an artifact.
Given that it is naturally possible for bread to be produced
without the intervention of the baker's art, Aquinas's doctrine of
transubstantiation is thus consistent with his general view of the
ontological status of artifacts: namely, that no artifacts are
substances. Some substances can be aided in their generation by
human art. But an artisan's aiding the generation of a natural
thing is not a sufficient condition for that natural thing's being
considered an artifact. Furthermore, it makes sense to say that a
given artificial object is not thereby an artifact, since it is not the
case that the artificial object in question belongs to a species S
such that any one of its members requires that a human artisan act
as one of its efficient causes. It may very well be that this piece of
bread-the one being used in the Eucharistic celebration
tonight-was brought into existence with the help of a baker. But
it is not thereby an artifact. This is because the processes that are
essential to generating the bread in the first place are natural ones,
for example, the heating of a mixture of flour and water by fire.
Therefore, since being baked by art is not essential to bread-and
like some wine or a frog this piece of bread belongs to a kind that
can occur naturally-it is reasonable to think with Aquinas that
this piece of bread is a substance fit for transubstantiation. 32

32 There are a number of people I would like to thank for helpful comments on earlier
drafts of this paper: Merry Brown, the participants in a session at the 39rh International
Congress of Medieval Studies, May 6-9, 2004 (I would particularly like to thank Sarah Byers
for raising a good criticism of the paper at this session), as well as an anonymous reviewer for
The Thomist. Finally, I would like to thank Jennifer Hart Weed and Eleonore Stump for
introducing me to (what I've been calling) the Transubstantiation Objection.

The Thomist 71 (2007): 113-41

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERM ABORTION:
A THOMISTIC ANALYSIS
ANDREW J. PEACH
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

I. INTRODUCTION

'What is said by many cannot be altogether false. " 1

P

ERHAPS THE GREATEST intellectual stumbling block
facing critics of abortion is the fact that, by and large, the
general public regards late-term abortions as more seriously
wrong than early-term ones. Evidence for this fact can be seen in
the contrast between the American public's consistent condemnation of the late-term procedure known as "partial-birth
abortion" (dilation and extraction) and their general toleration or
even approval of abortion in the first trimester. 2 Polls consistently
show significant majority support for both the banning of lateterm abortions and the continued legalization of abortions in the
first trimester.
This "moral intuition," as philosophers would put it, regarding
early- and late-term abortions is routinely cited by defenders of
abortion as evidence that human life at its earliest stages is less
than a full "person" and, hence, has less than full moral standing.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 5, a. 3, obj. 3. All translations from the
Summa Theologiae are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican
Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948).
2 It should be noted at the outset that the present paper will deal exclusively with the
question of the morality of abortion, not its legal status, though the repercussions of late-term
abortions on society as a whole will be discussed below.
1

113

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ANDREW J. PEACH

If it is less seriously wrong, if indeed wrong at all, to abort in the
early stages of fetal development and more seriously wrong to do
so in the later states, then it would seem to follow that the moral
status of a fetus changes along with that development. More
specifically, abortion apologists have marshaled this "later is
worse than earlier" intuition as evidence in support of two
related, though distinct, positions in regard to the moral status of
the life in the womb: (1) a gradualist account of "personhood,"
such as that advocated by Margaret Olivia Little or Mary Anne
Warren, 3 in which the rights of a fetus are proportional to his
level of development, or (2) the much more prevalent "achievement view" 4 of personhood, such as that advanced by L. W.
Sumner or David Boonin, 5 in which the attainment of some
specific trait or quality, such as sentience or the possession of
some type of desire, transforms the unborn human into a being
with rights.
In the past, critics of abortion have responded to this moral
intuition by aggressively attacking both of these philosophical
positions, not by directly responding to the intuition itself. For
example, in response to gradualism, Patrick Lee has persuasively
argued that substances, such as persons, cannot admit of degrees
or grades. 6 In a similar vein, Stephen Schwarz has attacked the
See Margaret Olivia Little, "The Moral Permissibility of Abortion," in Contemporary
Debates in Applied Ethics, ed. Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Wellman (New York:
Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 28-29; and Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status
of Abortion," in The Problem of Abortion, ed. Susan Dwyer and Joel Feinberg (Belmont:
Wadsworth Group, 2001), 69. Cf. also Sissela Bok, "Who Shall Count as a Human Being? A
Treacherous Question in the Abortion Discussion," in What is a Person?, ed. Michael F.
Goodman (Clifton, N.J.: Humana Press, 1988), 213-28. Additionally, Jane English, in
"Abortion and the Concept of a Person," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 5 (1975): 151-60,
makes comments that suggest her position might fall under or at least be sympathetic to this
categorization.
4 The phrase "achievement view" of personhood is that of Stephen Schwarz in his The
Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1990), 103££.
5 See L. W. Sumner, "A Third Way," in Dwyer and Feinberg, eds., The Problem of
Abortion, 98-117; and David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), chap. 2, esp. sect. 2.8.
6 See Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1996), esp. 54-58; and more recently, in collaboration with
Robert P. George, "The Wrong of Abortion," in Cohen and Wellman, eds., Contemporary
3

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

115

achievement view on the grounds that it invariably overlooks the
distinction between being a person and functioning as a person. 7
However, what critics of abortion have failed to do is to account
for the general feeling that late-term abortions are more seriously
wrong than early-term ones. Can a critic of abortion, one who
regards all direct abortions as acts of murder 8 and intrinsically
wrong, account for this moral intuition? Is there any way to
oppose all abortions as acts of murder without wholly disregarding many people's gut-level insights in this regard? A failure
to answer these fundamental questions sufficiently would have to
be regarded as more than a minor lapse in the case against
abortion.
In this paper, I would like to argue that there is little tension
between the proposition that all direct abortions are intrinsically
wrong acts of murder and the claim that there are moral
distinctions between early- and late-term abortions. Outside of the
abortion debate, it is generally recognized that murder can vary in
terms of its gravity and the murderer can be more or less culpable
depending upon the circumstances under which he commits the
act. In a parallel fashion, it would seem that an understanding of
circumstances can generally explain why, in a late-term abortion,
the act can be more grave and the agents involved more culpable
than in an early-term abortion. 9
Debates in Applied Ethics, 13-26. See also Philip E. Devine, The Ethics of Homicide (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1976), 77-82.
7 See Schwarz, The Moral Question of Abortion, esp. chap. 7.
8 Supporters of abortion rights and, perhaps, even some critics of abortion may cringe at
the use of the term "murder" to describe the type of act under discussion. The term may
conjure up.images of vengeance, rage, intrigue, or plotting that rarely, if ever, enter into actual
abortions; and from a pastoral perspective, the term is likely to alienate readers who might
otherwise be open to the arguments of the paper as a whole. However, there is simply no
other word in the English language for "the intentional killing of an innocent human being."
"Homicide" would seem to be a plausible alternative, but, understood legally and morally,
there are acts of justifiable homicide, such as cases of self-defense. Hence, there seems to be
no other term for capturing this category of intrinsically wrong acts than "murder." For better
or for worse, the term will be employed throughout to name this category of acts.
9 It is worth emphasizing that the aim of the present paper is not to defend the thesis that
all direct acts of abortion are intrinsically wrong but, rather, to explore whether a
philosophical case against all abortions can accommodate this basic moral intuition. For a
defense of the right to life of the fetus based upon his rational nature (or what has become

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ANDREW J. PEACH

II. A NOTE ON "INTUITIONS" AND
How TO ACCOUNT FOR THEM

Before explaining how a critic of abortion can account for the
"later is worse than earlier" intuition, something should be said at
the outset about what it can mean to "account for moral intuitions." To this end, four preliminary observations, the last of
which is hopelessly though unavoidably imprecise, will have to
suffice for present purposes.
First, "to account for moral intuitions" cannot mean "to
consistently synthesize all of the various gut feelings that all
cultures throughout time have felt about a moral issue." As has
been noted and repeated ad nauseam in nearly every introductory
text and course in philosophical ethics, different peoples in
different cultures at different times have been moved by varying
moral intuitions. As Bertrand Russell never tired of mentioning,
some exotic African tribes, at least at one time, approved of
cannibalism, and the samurai practice of "trying out one's sword"
on a chance wayfarer, a practice with which all college freshmen
are now acquainted, was undoubtedly supported by the moral
intuitions of at least the samurai themselves. Today in America in
particular and the West in general, neither of these practices is
acceptable; indeed, either one might qualify as a paradigm of an
immoral act. Needless to say, no moral theory short of relativism
(which is, to be more precise, a denial of all moral theory) will be
able to incorporate the disparate and conflicting intuitions of all
times, places, and cultures.
known as the "substance view" of the person of the fetus)-a position that has been
consistently ignored and/or misunderstood in the philosophical literature-see Lee, Abortion
and Unborn Human Life; Lee and George, "The Wrong of Abortion"; Schwarz, The Moral
Question of Abortion;]. P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and
the Crisis in Ethics (Downer's Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000), esp. 231-60; J. P.
Moreland, "James Rachels and the Active Euthanasia Debate," Journal of the Evangelical
Society 31 (1988): 81-90; Robert Spitzer, S.J., Healing the Culture: A Commonsense
Philosophy of Happiness, Freedom, and the Life Issues (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000),
esp. 37-54; Francis Beckwith, "The Explanatory Power of the Substance View of Persons,"
Christian Bioethics 10 (2004): 33-54; and Andrew J. Peach, "A Natural Response to Boonin,"
International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2005): 357-76.

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

117

Second, even in regard to one specific issue (viz., abortion) in
one specific country (viz., the United States) at one specific time
in history (viz., the present), the moral intuitions of the public
vary greatly and are frequently directly contradictory. For
example, in a 2000 Los Angeles Times poll, the vast majority of
respondents surveyed believed that first-trimester abortions
should remain legal without restrictions, and yet fifty-seven
percent of those surveyed also believed that abortion was murder.
How exactly these two convictions are to be reconciled is far from
clear. Perhaps the respondents, being more savvy and nuanced
than supposed, understood "murder" to mean "justifiable homicide." Or perhaps, employing Augustinian reservations, the
respondents only envisioned the second and third trimesters when
they said that "abortion" was murder. Most likely, however, the
moral intuitions of the public in this regard are just plain
muddled, running in differing directions and experienced with
differing degrees of intensity. Again, no philosophical undertaking
can hope to absorb the moral intuitions of even the majority of
Americans in the twenty-first century on a specific issue in toto
and with complete consistency.
Third, a philosopher must be clear whether he is attempting to
account for the intuitions themselves or the reasoning that lies
behind them, or both. Though most Americans or Westerners
have some sense that later abortions are more seriously wrong
than earlier ones, their reasons for believing so are probably
varied, inconsistent, and undeveloped. I would hazard to guess
that the reason many people believe that later abortions are more
seriously wrong is that, in the second and third trimesters, the
being in the womb "looks more like a baby" or "looks more like
us" than he did in the first trimester. Not surprisingly, philosophers who, in their defense of abortion rights, have latched on
to the "later is worse than earlier" intuition as one of decisive
importance have not felt compelled to follow the public's
reasoning in regard to why later is worse and earlier is better. For
example, L. W. Sumner defends a "moderate and differential"
view of abortion-one in which first- and early second-trimester

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ANDREW J. PEACH

abortions require no justification, though late second- and thirdtrimester abortions are only permissible on certain grounds-in
part because it "is capable of drawing the common sense distinction between early and later abortions. " 10 However, Sumner's
philosophical defense of this distinction-namely, that later-term
fetuses, unlike younger ones, have moral standing because they
are sentient-can hardly be said to capture the reasoning of the
public, especially a public that heartily enjoys eating animals that
may be much more sentient than late-term fetuses. Though I reject
his thesis regarding sentience and the permissibility of early-term
abortions, in the present essay I will follow Sumner in attempting
to account for the distinction between later and earlier abortions
without seeking to ground it in the reasoning of the public.
Fourth and finally, despite the vague and shifting nature of
moral intuitions, they must, to some extent, be accounted for and,
indeed, be among the starting points in any serious moral
exploration. Ethics is, of course, more than a sociological account
or cataloguing of cultural or personal moral intuitions. Its most
important work is explaining and defending that explanation of
what makes human actions virtuous, as well as what constitutes a
virtuous and happy life more generally. Nonetheless, it is difficult
to see where a philosophical moral theory would get its moorings
if not from the prephilosophical moral experience of human
beings. A theory that ignores this experience necessarily condemns
itself to irrelevance and risks advocating the gravest and most
counterintuitive of moral offenses. Genocide is the act of
ideologues, forced by adherence to their theories to deny their
intuitions and conscience. In this respect, then, this essay will
attempt to follow the methodology Aristotle outlines in his Nicomachean Ethics: "We must, as in all other cases, set the apparent
facts before us and, after discussing the difficulties, go on to
prove, if possible, the truth of all the common opinions ... or,
failing this, of the greater number and the most authoritative. " 11
Assuming, then, that the moral intuition that later abortions are
10 Sumner, "A Third Way," 117.

11 Aristotle, Nicomachean

Ethics 7. 7.1145bl-5 (trans. David Ross, rev. by J. L. Ackrill and

J. 0. Urmson [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998], 160).

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

119

worse than earlier ones is among "the greater number and the
most authoritative [of opinions]"-all hope of proving the "truth
of all the common opinions" having been abandoned-its truth
needs to be accounted for by any comprehensive and credible
critique of abortion.
III. GRAVITY AND CIRCUMSTANCES
In arguments in favor of abortion rights, the intuition that
there are moral differences between late- and early-term abortions
has been cited as evidence that an early-term abortion is somehow
a different kind of act from a late-term one because of an alleged
change in the moral standing of the fetus. Prior to the onset of
personhood, it is argued, abortion is some type of action other
than murder. It may be some type of killing (akin to the killing of
other types of animals), and the fetus may have some type of
moral status (akin to the value of other types of animals), but the
act is not murder and the being in question is not a full-fledged
person. In short, the moral differences between earlier and later
abortions are accounted for by parallel differences in moral
standing between younger and older fetuses. Early abortions are
less seriously wrong or not wrong at all because they are a
different type of act from later ones.
However, differences between moral acts can be accounted for
in other ways than by assigning those acts to disparate kinds of
moral offenses. More specifically, it is a commonplace that moral
offenses of the same general kind can vary in their gravity based
upon differences in individual circumstances. In the analysis to
follow, then, it will be argued that an understanding of the
circumstances surrounding earlier and later abortions can help to
explain how abortions can differ in their moral gravity without
compromising the notion that all such acts are acts of murder and
inherently wrong.
Before launching an investigation of circumstances in
particular, though, it will be helpful to introduce a number of
preliminary remarks on the notion of "moral gravity" in order to

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shed light on how moral acts can differ without differing in kind.
These general observations about moral gravity will be unpacked
and further developed as they are applied to the specific issue of
early- and late-term abortion. In this regard, as in the matter of
circumstances, Thomas Aquinas provides a number of useful
distinctions and descriptions.
As a proponent of a form of virtue ethics, Thomas maintains
that human acts are either good or evil based upon whether or not
they are truly perfective or fulfilling of the agent in question.
Virtue-moral,
intellectual, and theological-is
this very
perfection of the agent. Further, the faculty in a human being that
measures and judges which acts are or are not in keeping with this
genuine good is reason, and so Thomas regularly speaks of evil
acts as ones that deviate from "right reason." 12 Very generally
speaking, all acts that deviate from right reason and genuine
human flourishing are wrong or, more theologically speaking,
sinful. In this regard, then, it is equally true to predicate "sin" or
"wrongdoing" of gluttony and murder insofar as both species of
act can never be perfective of a human being and, hence, can
never be willed well. Both are, as such, contrary to virtue.
As Thomas notes, however, "all sins need not be equal because
all sins are equally sins. " 13 Though gluttony and murder are
equally sins, they do not necessarily deviate from virtue or proper
human fulfillment in the same way or to the same extent. Acts will
differ in their gravity to the extent to which they fall short of
virtue. "The gravity of sin depends on its remoteness from
virtue," 14 according to Thomas. Though gluttony and murder are
equally sins, murder in itself is a graver sin than theft because it is
more remote from virtue.
12 For Thomas, human vice and vicious human acts are generally defined in two ways, as
being contrary to human nature and as being contrary to the law of God. For the present
discussion, the former-the more Aristotelian and more philosophical definition-will be
used, though it should be noted that Thomas, in fact, equates the two definitions of evil. See,
e.g., STh I-II, q. 71, a. 2, ad 4.
13 Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, q. 2, a. 9, ad 16. Translations of De Malo are from the
translation by Richard Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
14 STh II-II, q. 79, a. 4.

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At this point, it is necessary to introduce a number of
distinctions in order to understand more fully the ways in which
one act or agent can be more remote from virtue than another. In
regard to this matter, Thomas explains, "We can weigh the gravity
of sin in two ways: in one way regarding the very act; in the
second way regarding the one who sins. And there are two things
to consider regarding the act, namely, its species and its accidents,
which we have previously called circumstances of the act." 15 The
first distinction to note, then, is between the gravity of the act and
the gravity of the sinner, the latter of which we would tend to call
"culpability."
In terms of the gravity of the act itself, two wrong acts can
differ in their gravity depending upon either their species or their
accidents. First, in regard to their species, Thomas observes,
[W]e note the gravity that sin has from its species in relation to its object or
subject matter, and in considering the object or subject matter, we call sins
contrary to greater virtuous goods more serious by reason of their kind. 16

An act is more grievous than another if it is contrary to a greater
good, and one way one good can be greater than another is by
belonging to a higher virtue or being of a higher type, one that is
more of the essence of human flourishing. As Thomas puts the
matter, "[A] sin must needs be so much the graver, as the disorder
occurs in a principle which is higher in the order of reason." 17 For
instance, an act of gluttony in itself, understood as a violation of
the virtue of temperance, is less grievous than an act of murder in
itself, understood as a violation of the virtue of justice. The
nourishment of one's own body, which is the subject of
temperance, is a lesser good than the good of the whole
community, which is the subject of justice, for the virtue of
temperance is less of the essence of human fulfillment than is
justice. The flourishing of any human being, of course, depends
upon both virtues, but it is principally as part of a community, not
15 De Malo,

q. 2, a. 10.

16 Ibid.
17 STh I-II,

q. 73, a. 3.

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as a healthy body, that human beings find their fulfillment. In this
case, the former act is more grievous because it is a violation of a
greater good or kind of virtue, which is greater because it is more
important for human flourishing.
According to the pro-choice logic cited above, early-term
abortions are less grave than late-term ones for this reason,
because they are essentially different types or kinds of acts. The
victim in the first case is less of a person and hence a different
kind of being than the victim in the second case. However,
Thomas also identifies another possible way in which acts can
differ in gravity, namely, because of their accidents. An act can be
more grievous than another by being a greater violation of the
same virtue and the same type of good. Such acts, then, will not
differ in their species but will differ accidentally, in virtue of their
individual circumstances.
Thomas defines the term "circumstance" in the following way:
For a circumstance is described as something outside the substance of the act,
and yet in a way touching it. Now this happens in three ways: first, inasmuch as
it touches the act itself; secondly, inasmuch as it touches the cause of the act;
thirdly, inasmuch as it touches the effect. 18

In describing a circumstance as something "outside the substance
of the act and yet in a way touching it," Thomas is arguing that
individual human acts, judged by reason and chosen by the will,
have qualities that do not specify them or make them the type of
act they are but, nonetheless, enter into the character of the act as
a whole. Just as natural entities, such as human beings or trees,
18 Ibid. Thomas's account of circumstances is laid out in various places in his corpus,
though the principal locations are STh I-II, qq. 7 and 18-21; and De Malo, q. 2, aa. 6-8.
Thomas's account of the parts of a human action in terms of "object" and "circumstances,"
the latter of which includes "intention," is exceedingly nuanced and layered, and the foregoing
explanation will not attempt to capture many of its subtleties; only what is immediately
pertinent to the issue of late- and early-term abortions will be addressed. For clear expositions
of Thomas's account of human action, see David Gallagher, "Aquinas on Moral Action:
Interior and Exterior Acts," in Proceedingsof the American Catholic Philosophical Association,
64 (1990): 118-29; and Daniel Westberg, "Good and Evil in Human Acts (Ia Hae, qq. 1821)," in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press, 2002), 90-102.

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belong to certain species and yet have characteristics that individuate them-such as height, weight, color, etc.-human
actions can be understood as being of a certain type and also
having characteristics that individuate them. 19 In order for an
action to be good, it must be more than simply a good type of
action, such as almsgiving; it must also be performed in the right
circumstances-at the right time, in the right way, with the right
person, etc. In the same fashion, a type of act that is in itself
immoral, such as murder, can be more or less grave depending
upon its individual circumstances. These circumstances "touch" or
surround, as well as individuate, the act itself, the cause, and the
effects of the act.
The example of murder can be used to illustrate the first way
in which circumstances inform moral acts. To kill an innocent
man by way of setting him on fire is a different individual act
from killing him quietly by filling his bedroom chamber with
carbon monoxide, though both acts are clearly of the same type:
murder. In Thomas's language, the way in which an act is carried
out would fall under the notion of circumstance. It is not burning
or poisoning per se that renders an act murder but, rather, the
intentional taking of innocent human life. Nonetheless, in the
above case the way in which the first act is carried out would
undoubtedly render it more grievous, and such a circumstance
would have to be included in a full moral analysis of the act.
Death by burning would "multiply the ratio of evil within the
same species" 20 of act; the addition of burning, which inflicts
significant pain on the victim, multiplies the reasons why this one
act is wrong without placing it in a different category. A murderer
who kills in this way is further from the virtue of justice, which is
ordered to the good of one's neighbor and the community as a
whole, than the one who uses carbon monoxide.
The second way in which circumstances can affect the gravity
of an act is in terms of the condition of the agent. Gravity that is
the result of the condition of the agent Thomas calls "accidental
I-II, q. 18, a. 3.
STh I-II, q. 73, a. 7.

19 STh
20

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gravity" because it is not anchored in the species or "whatness" of
an act. Of this gravity, he writes, "The accidental gravity of a sin
is to be considered in relation to the sinner, who sins more
grievously if he sins deliberately than if he sins through weakness
or carelessness. "21 Of two murderers, one may be more removed
from virtue and human fulfillment due to the fact that his act, so
to speak, belongs to him more than the corresponding act belongs
to the other murderer. A murder done deliberately and voluntarily
reveals a more gravely disordered person than a murder
committed out of passion or through weakness, for the will is
more the person than his passions or any external forces acting
upon him. As Thomas explains, "[S]ince we call voluntary
something whose source is in the very one who acts, the more the
source of an act is in the one who acts, the more something is
voluntary, and so the more sin there is if the act be evil. " 22
Human acts that arise from defects in the sense appetites or the
intellect, as opposed to the will itself, are less voluntary in nature
and, hence, less human and less grave. Human acts swayed by
passion, pressured by force or fear, or carried out in ignorance
arise less from the will than from other sources, and therefore the
agent who performs them is less culpable. Though a number of
distinctions still need to be made in this regard, it is true to say
that human acts that are contrary to right reason, all other things
being equal, will be more grievous to the extent that they are
more voluntary, that is, the extent to which they are free from
ignorance, as well as pressures placed upon the will, both internal
and external to the agent himself.
The final accident or circumstance that can have an impact on
the moral gravity of an act is the consequences. Acts of the same
kind or type can obviously have different consequences, and if
those consequences are voluntary, then the act will be more
grievous. Simply put, the agent who wills an action with worse
consequences is guilty of willing a greater evil, and hence his will
is more disordered-he is further from virtue and true human
21 STh II-II, q. 73, a. 3.
22 De Malo, q. 3, a. 13.

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flourishing. This fact is especially evident in the case of the agent
who foresees the evil consequences of his choice of object and yet
still forges ahead. As Thomas remarks, "For when a man foresees
that many evils may follow from his action, and yet does not
therefore desist therefrom, this shows his will to be all the more
inordinate. "23 Should a man carry out murder knowing that his
victim is a husband and a father of five his act would be more
grievous than that of a man who killed a bachelor. Though both
are to be condemned as acts of murder, the murder of a
breadwinning father of five is to be regarded as more grave, given
the condition in which the widow and her children will now find
themselves. Nor must consequences always be foreseen in order
to be voluntary and to increase the gravity of an act, according to
Thomas. If the harmful consequences follow naturally from the
kind of act in question, then the agent will be responsible for
them as well, even if those consequences did not consciously enter
into his deliberations. "If ... the harm follows directly from the
sinful act, although it be neither foreseen nor intended, it
aggravates the sin directly, because whatever is directly
consequent to a sin, belongs, in a manner, to the very species of
that sin. " 24 The man who murders a person must also take
responsibility for the gaping hole that the absence of this person
creates in human society, even if such a consequence never
entered the murderer's mind. Indeed, the act of murder is so
closely connected to the personal losses that follow from it that,
in a way, these losses should be considered part of the very act
itself. In short, murders will differ in their level of moral gravity
in proportion to the overall damage they inflict upon society.
In summary, for Thomas the gravity of an immoral human act
is a function of the extent to which that action opposes virtue,
which is the perfection of the agent. One act can be graver than
another by differing in kind (i.e., by violating different virtues or
by having different objects), or it can be graver by violating the
same virtue to a greater extent. In the latter case, the act will have
23

STh I-II, q. 20, a. 5.

24 STh I-II, q. 73, a. 8.

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the same kind of object, but its individual differences-the
circumstances touching upon the object, agent, and effects-will
take it further away from virtue without altering its substance.
IV. THE GRAVITY OF LATE-TERM ABORTIONS

A) Circumstances Touching the Act
Given this general understanding of circumstances, then, and
the way they can affect the gravity of moral actions, are there
circumstances touching or surrounding late-term abortions that
would render them more grave than early-term ones?
Perhaps the most obvious difference between early- and lateterm abortions in terms of the act itself is the greater likelihood
of the fetus feeling pain during the latter procedure. Though
estimates as to when fetuses are capable of feeling pain vary
drastically and largely on ideological lines, 25 no one doubts that
fetuses in the second and third trimester can feel pain. And a
murder that involves pain is, in itself, more grievous than one that
does not. An abortion that is performed after the fetus is capable
of feeling pain is, for that very reason, more seriously wrong than
an abortion that is performed prior to the onset of this capacity.
The infliction of pain need not enter into the act of murder, but
when it does, it renders the act more grievous "by multiplying the
ratio of evil," to use Thomas's phrase.
Additionally, as the fetus moves into the second and third
trimesters, the possibility of his living outside the womb increases.
Unlike the issue of fetal pain, which is more open to interpretation, the issue of viability is a simple matter of how early
fetuses have been delivered and kept alive in neonatal intensive
care units. In general, the point at which fetuses are considered
viable is around twenty-three to twenty-four weeks, though there
25 For example, in his A Defense of Abortion (98-129), David Boonin argues that the fetus
is most likely unable to feel pain until around twenty-five to thirty-two weeks after
conception. On the other hand, a document on the website for the National Right to Life
organization (http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/FetalPain091604.pdf) argues that this
ability is unarguably present at twenty weeks and may be present as early as eighteen.

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are children on record who have lived prior to twenty weeks. If,
for a particular child, the moment of viability has been reached,
the decision to abort, as opposed to having the child merely
removed and incubated, should be regarded as more wanton and,
hence, more grave than the decision to abort a previable fetus. To
grasp this insight, one needs to understand that the degree of
goodness or evil of human acts is grounded, in part, in the
difficulty of securing the good or evil in question. "For just as it
is a greater strength that does not succumb to a stronger force,"
Thomas explains, "so on the other hand to be overcome by a
stronger force is proof of lesser vice, and to succumb to a weaker
force, is proof of a greater vice." 26 A man who dives into sharkinfested waters to save his neighbor from drowning acts more
courageously than one who rescues his neighbor in a backyard
swimming pool. Both men are courageous, risking life and limb,
though the former is braver because his task is more difficult and
dangerous. And the converse is true of moral evil or failure: a
man who refuses to enter shark-infested waters to save his
neighbor acts less cowardly than a man who refuses to enter the
pool. In an analogous fashion, the fetus's independent existence
could be secured and the mother's physical burden relieved with
less time and difficulty later in the pregnancy than earlier. For the
woman whose child has passed the point of viability, the effort
involved to spare the life of that child is little, if at all, greater
than that involved in inducing labor and delivering the child. In
earlier stages of pregnancy, say at around four weeks, the woman
who no longer wishes to carry the fetus would have to endure
approximately twenty more weeks of pregnancy, as well as
inducement and labor, to secure the independent existence of the
fetus. To do what is good is easier in the former case than in the
latter, and so to fail to do what is good in the former case is worse
than to fail to do so in the latter.
That it is a less grievous moral offense to fail in what is more
difficult than in what is less difficult clearly resonates with our
moral intuitions regarding late- and early-term abortions. Though
26 STh

II-II, q. 142. a. 4, ad 1.

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some philosophers find abortion to be either morally neutral or
even "honorable," 27 it would be safe to say that most people
regard it as, at best, a necessary evil-or, more precisely, the lesser
of two evils. The public's willingness to tolerate early-term
abortions sterns in part from an unwillingness to place a
significant burden on a woman who is averse to bearing and/or
having a child. Legally requiring a pregnant woman to carry a
child to term or even to viability-to carry the fetus for five
months or more and to bear the psychological and financial
hardships involved-seems, for some, too high a burden to place
on an unwilling subject; even mere moral exhortations to bear
such burdens are likely to be felt as too exacting or demanding.
Even though early-term abortions might be regarded as inherently
wrong, to allow a pregnant woman to fall short in such a difficult
task is regarded by many as a necessary legal and moral
indulgence. By this same standard, though, late-term abortions are
not so easily excused. Moral outrage against and calls for the
outlawing of second- and third-trimester abortions must stern in
part from the fact that the effort now required of the woman to
spare the life of the child is significantly less. In the case of
dilation and extraction, for example, the child, save his head, is
already out of the birth canal prior to being destroyed. Why not
simply deliver the child, thereby sparing his life, and let another
couple raise him? At this stage in the pregnancy, the moral failures
of the parties involved 28 are much less likely to be tolerated
because doing what is right is far less burdensome.

B) Circumstances Touching the Agent
Though there are circumstances touching the act itself that
make late-term abortions more grave than early-term ones, the
Little, "The Moral Permissibility of Abortion," 27.
In the pages to follow, whenever the "agents" involved in the act of abortion are
mentioned, they should be understood to be principally the pregnant woman and the
biological father. For the sake of focusing the discussion at hand, the question of the
culpability and gravity of action of the abortionist has been omitted. Needless to say, this
omission should not be taken as in any way an excuse for or exoneration of the abortion
providers or their actions.
27

28

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circumstances touching the agent are, by far, the most definitive
in this regard. This stems from the fact that the agent himself is
really the heart of any moral action. No act is moral or immoral
unless it is voluntary; even if a man's behavior and its
consequences are, in fact, beneficial or detrimental to himself or
other people, the man, the behavior, and the consequences will
not be in the realm of the moral unless the behavior is voluntary. 29
A person's act itself, as well as all of the effects that flow from it,
are also only moral or immoral insofar as they are formed by and
follow from the will of the person. In a certain sense, the
circumstances touching the act, as well as those touching the
effects, are only morally significant insofar as the act and the
effects are connected to the will.
The question arises whether, generally speaking, late-term
abortions are likely to be carried out in a more voluntary fashion
than early-term abortions. If so, such a difference in circumstance
can, at least in part, account for the difference in gravity between
the two kinds of abortion. To answer this question, let us focus
upon the significance of ignorance.
For Thomas, ignorance can be related to the will, and hence to
voluntariness, in three general ways: antecedently, consequently,
and concomitantly. Only the first two are particularly relevant to
the present discussion. 30 Ignorance is either "antecedent" or
"consequent" depending upon whether it precedes an act of the
To use Thomas's language in this regard, a behavior might be "an act of man" (actus
hominis) without being a "human act" (actus humanus); the latter must proceed from the will
of a person. See STh I-II, q. 1, a. 1 for this distinction. On moral goodness or evil, as
distinguished from goodness or evil more generally, see David M. Gallagher, "Aquinas on
Goodness and Moral Goodness," in Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy, ed. David M. Gallagher
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 37-60.
30 According to Thomas, ignorance is concomitant to the act of the will "when there is
ignorance of what is done ... but, so that even if it were known, it would be done" (STh I-II,
q. 6, a. 8). To use Thomas's example, should a man, believing he was killing a stag, discover
that he actually killed his enemy, whom he intended to kill anyway, he would have acted with
concomitant ignorance. Though the man did not, in this particular act, intend to kill his
enemy, his action is not contrary to his will; it is not involuntary, for he did not bring about
a result that was repugnant to his will. In such a case, Thomas calls the act "nonvoluntary" in
order to emphasize that, though it was, in one way, not voluntary, it was certainly not
contrary to the man's will either.
29

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130

will or is itself directly or indirectly willed. In regard to the
former, Thomas explains:
Ignorance is antecedent to the act of the will, when it is not voluntary, and yet
is the cause of man's willing what he would not will otherwise. Thus a man may
be ignorant of some circumstance of his act, which he was not bound to know,
the result being that he does that which he would not do, if he knew of that
circumstance. 31

Had a hunter, for example, after taking proper precautions,
known that the creature in his crosshairs was not a bear but,
rather, a man in a fur coat, he never would have fired his gun and
killed him, as evidenced by his remorse. The hunter acts on
account of ignorance: the ignorance is a principal cause of his
acting. In this instance, the ignorance is ignorance of the very
aspect of the situation which would have rendered it morally
wrong if it had been known (viz., that the target in question is a
man, not an animal). Because the hunter took proper precautions
against harming any people, the act in question, though
destructive of human life, is rendered involuntary; the hunter is
not culpable of murder. The act as hunting is voluntary, the
killing of the person is not.
Consequent or willed ignorance, on the other hand, is
ignorance of what one can and should know. Agents who act
under such ignorance are responsible for their ignorance. Such
agents do not so much act on account of ignorance, as is the case
with antecedent ignorance, as they do in ignorance; 32 the agent's
heedlessness, disordered passions, or even malice cause him not
to give sufficient attention or recognition to particular features of
his situation. Accordingly, such ignorance does not entirely
remove guilt; indeed, it may increase it.
Ignorance can be consequent to or follow from an act of the
will either directly or indirectly, and ignorance that is indirectly
willed can be one of two types. Ignorance that is directly willed
Thomas calls "affected ignorance" (ignorantia affectata). It occurs
31

Ibid.

this distinction, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.1.1110b24-30; as well as
Thomas's III Nie. Ethic., lect. 3; and De Malo, q. 3, a. 8.
32 For

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when the agent, because he is so intent upon securing or keeping
some good (or avoiding or escaping some evil), wills not to know
anything further about this good (or evil). For example, a man
who finds a substantial sum of money in his office building does
not inquire as to whose it is in order to convince himself that it
has no owner and is, therefore, rightfully his. Such ignorance
indicates that the agent is so wedded to the disordered end in
question that he is willing to remain ignorant of certain aspects of
the situation in order to attain that end. Affected ignorance, then,
both arises from and further deforms an already ill-formed will.
Ignorance that is indirectly willed can be due to either
negligence or what Thomas calls "evil choice" (malae electionis).
Ignorance due to negligence occurs when the agent, because of
some passion or habit of the will itself or out of sheer negligence,
simply fails to consider what he can and should consider. This
type of consequent ignorance may only be a sign of an
overworked or otherwise preoccupied person, not a vicious or
malevolent character, though it may also be symptomatic of a life
with misplaced priorities. A man who finds lost money may
simply forget to track down the previous owner because of
absentmindedness or pressure to get his reports at work done on
time, although he might also forget to pursue the rightful owner
because of some frivolous distraction.
Far from the potentially innocuous character of negligence,
however, ignorance of evil choice arises from a deformed appetite
or will. In this case, knowledge about the proper course of action
is blurred or absent because the passions cloud the judgment of
reason about some particular in the situation or because the will
itself, perverted by so many bad choices in the past, refuses to give
sufficient consideration to those same particulars. For example,
prior to finding the lost money, the man may be fully aware that
one should not steal, but once the money is presented to him, he
may be swayed by an inordinate desire to possess the money and
be overcome by specious internal "arguments" that convince him
the money is rightfully his (e.g., because it currently belongs to no
one). Though he knows the general premise that stealing is

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forbidden, he fails to apply that principle to the particular case
because of his passions; that this act in particular is an act of
stealing fails to register because of his greed. Even worse, the
man, through sheer viciousness or malice, may not even consider
the issue of stealing as relevant. Unlike the man swayed by
passion, this person does not even recognize the general precept
regarding stealing. Instead, his reason and will completely fail to
restrain his passions. He has found money, a source of great
pleasure, and pleasure is always to be pursued. This latter kind of
act-due to a habit of the will rather than the influence of the
passions-is more voluntary and the agent more culpable, for the
wrongdoing arises from the will itself.
In regard to ignorance, then, Thomas supplies a number of
distinctions for evaluating the level of voluntariness and, hence,
the culpability of an agent: two general types of ignorance,
namely, antecedent and consequent; three more specific types of
consequent ignorance, namely, affected ignorance, ignorance
through negligence, and ignorance of evil choice; and two types
of ignorance of evil choice, namely, one stemming from passion
and one stemming from habits of the will. Applied to the question
at hand, these distinctions help to explain why late-term
abortions, all things considered, are judged to be more seriously
wrong than early-term ones without compromising the basic
insight that all direct abortions are acts of murder.
First, all other things being equal, it is possible that, in the
earliest stages of a pregnancy, a woman, as well as the father of
her child, may be antecedently ignorant of the moral standing of
the developing human life; they may not be fully aware that the
being inside her womb is a human being and, hence, a person, and
as a consequence they may go forward with an action that, had
they been better informed biologically and philosophically, they
otherwise would have avoided. When a culture routinely describes
a developing human being as a "clump of cells," a "blastocyst," or
even an "embryo" and derides commonsense descriptors such as
"baby" or "human being" as unscientific, ideological, or biased, it
is reasonable to suppose that, in these earliest stages of pregnancy,

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a woman or biological father could possibly not know what she or
he is doing. As David C. Reardon has documented in his interviews with women who have regretted their abortions, many feel
that they were misled and even deceived by the descriptions used
and not used by abortion providers. As one woman reported:
I was eighteen years old when I first became pregnant .... I didn't even know
what abortion really was .... The doctor told me I was almost four months
along. I asked the doctor, "Is the baby alive?" He said, "No." I never had any
prior instruction in school as to the development of a baby, so I didn't know any
better. All I had to go on was what he told me; and that's all he said. 33

Given the possibility that some abortion providers may
intentionally withhold information on the state of fetal
development, it is not unreasonable to believe that some women,
such as the one cited above, who choose to have an abortion
would never have gone through with the procedure had they
known more in this regard.
One can certainly object that these women and the biological
fathers of their children, given the magnitude of the decision,
should have thoroughly studied and deliberated over it prior to
their choice to abort, and so the ignorance in question might still
be voluntary (i.e., a form of negligence). It is also difficult to
avoid the conclusion that abortion, by its very nature, is a tacit
acknowledgment of the human and personal nature of the fetus,
as well as the natural obligations the parents have to this child. As
Richard Stith argues, "[A]bortion paradoxically reaffirms the very
parent-child bond that it betrays. The fetus is unwanted precisely
as the child who must eventually be cared for by her parents. " 34
Nonetheless, antecedent ignorance should still be held out as a
genuine possibility in the earliest stages of pregnancy, and to the
extent that the parties in question in their specific situation do not
know and could not have known that the being in question was a
33 David C. Reardon, Aborted Women: Silent No More (Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1987), 147-48.
34 Richard Stith, "Embryonic Stem Cell Funding Is Worse than Abortion," Ethics and
Medics 39 (2006): 3.

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ANDREW J. PEACH

human person, then to that extent they are free of guilt in the
matter and the act in question is less grave.
Such antecedent ignorance, however, becomes more and more
unlikely as the fetus continues to develop. Sonograms, which are
now a routine part of prenatal diagnosis in Western countries,
reveal in great detail the level of development and complexity of
the life in the womb, and the experience of quickening, though
often and rightly dismissed as philosophically insignificant in
determining the fetus's moral status, does have a significant effect
on the psyche of the pregnant woman. She knows there is a baby
inside her when she feels him moving. To deny the humanity and
personhood of the fetus at later stages of the pregnancy almost
certainly must involve some active cooperation on the part of the
agents involved; the ignorance in question must be voluntary in
some way, and, as a consequence, an agent who performs or
cooperates in a late-term abortion must be more culpable than an
agent who cooperates in an early-term abortion.
As indicated above, voluntary ignorance can be of many kinds.
Let us suppose that the people involved choose the evil of
abortion because of ignorance through negligence-for whatever
reason, they do not attend to what they can and should attend to
regarding the circumstances of their situation and the relevant
moral precepts. As the pregnancy progresses and the signs of the
humanity and personhood of the fetus become harder and harder
to ignore, ignorance due to negligence in regard to abortion
becomes increasingly more voluntary, which is to say more
blameworthy, because what can and should be known becomes
increasingly more evident. Not everything that can and should be
known is, as it were, on the same level. An adult who was not
aware that stealing a CD from a retailer is wrong and that illegally
downloading music from the Internet is also wrong would be
negligent in both cases, but, all other things being equal,
ignorance in the first case would be worse. It is more readily
known that the CD is owned by the retailer than that the
downloaded music is the artistic property of musicians,
songwriters, producers, etc. who are being cheated of royalties. In

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

135

a somewhat similar fashion, the late-term fetus is much more
evidently a human person than an early-term fetus; hence, the
fault in not knowing that the moral precept forbidding murder
applies in the former case is greater than in the latter.
Just as antecedent ignorance becomes more and more unlikely
as the fetus continues to develop, so too does ignorance due to
negligence. As the woman and biological father feel the child
move, see him developing on sonogram, etc., the retort, "I (We)
never thought to ask whether we were taking innocent human
life" becomes nearly inconceivable. In the later stages of
pregnancy, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the ignorance in
question would have to be affected ignorance or ignorance of evil
choice. Unlike those individuals involved in an early-term
abortion, the participants in a late-term abortion cannot plausibly
claim that they could not have known or were not paying
sufficient attention to what they were doing. If they did not know,
then they must have taken conscious and voluntary steps not to
know. They must have deliberately refused to see a sonogram,
read literature on fetal development, acknowledge the emergence
of fetal movement, etc., in order to proceed with the abortion.
Because they were so wedded to the goods promised by the
procedure, they were willing to veil themselves in ignorance lest
they themselves were to realize what they were doing and thereby
prevent themselves from achieving some apparent good. As
Thomas explains in theological terms, "For it seems that some
persons out of love of sinning may prefer to suffer loss of
knowledge in order to cling freely to sin." 35 In a way, then, such
people are to be doubly blamed, for the ignorance incurred as
well as for the act of injustice committed.
Ignorance of evil choice, it will be remembered, is the product
of either disordered passion or a deformed will. Taking into
consideration the full complexity of any given case of abortion, it
can be said that, as the pregnancy enters the later stages, there is
a greater chance that the people involved act out of malice or at
least more severely deformed passions. When a woman first
35 De Malo, q. 3, a. 8.

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ANDREW J. PEACH

becomes aware of the pregnancy, the passions are most likely to
be at their highest intensity: dread of the burden of carrying the
baby arises, apprehension and anxiety at the notion of being a
parent for the first time or of having to parent another child, the
fear of being financially and emotionally abandoned by the
biological father, etc. When one considers that these passions
surface all at once at the onset of pregnancy and when the
developing human being is at its earliest developmental
stages-when it does not "look like a baby" yet-then one can
understand how easy it can be for a person, out of weakness and
due to difficult circumstances, to fail to apply the general
prohibition against murder to the particular case of the person in
the womb. As the time for delivery approaches, these passions
may become more intense, given the fact that the reality toward
which they are directed is about to make his appearance in the
world. However, passion by its nature is fleeting, and it can be
harnessed and controlled through reason and deliberation; time
allows the passions to cool and provides an opportunity for
planning, reaching out for help through various agencies, and
consulting virtuous friends for guidance.
On the other hand, should a person (or persons) endure the
initial onslaught of emotion and, after ample time for deliberation
and investigation into the nature of the being in the womb, still
decide to abort in the later stages of pregnancy, one may more
reasonably suspect that the parties in question have a wanton
disregard for human life. Unlike the woman (or couple) who acts
out of weakness and somehow fails to consider the case at hand
as a case of murder, vicious or malicious parties can be said to will
the evil involved in a much more direct fashion. Though the good
chiefly willed is presumably not the death of the child but, rather,
some other good-such as not being pregnant, financial or
emotional security, time devoted to existing duties such as other
children or one's job-there is another sense in which the evil is
willingly taken on by the agent(s) in question. Thomas explains
this in regard to the sin of adultery:

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

137

[W]e call something voluntary both if the will is borne to it primarily and
intrinsically as an end, and if the will is borne to it as the means to an end ....
Therefore, supposing that persons happen to will to enjoy some pleasure (e.g.,
adultery or any like desirable thing) so much that they would not shun incurring
the deformity of sin that they perceive to be involved in what they will, not only
will we say that the person wills the good that they chiefly will, but also that they
will the very deformity that they choose to suffer lest they be deprived of the
good they desire. And so the adulterer chiefly wills the pleasure and secondarily
wills the deformity. 36

Whereas those agents who choose abortion out of weakness fail
to recognize or delude themselves into denying that the act in
question is really murder, those agents who choose out of malice
do seem to know that they are taking innocent human life, but
they are willing to commit murder to secure the goods in
question. The possibility that a given abortion is carried out
maliciously or with a wanton disregard for human life only
increases as the pregnancy moves along.
C) Circumstances Touching the Effects
The final circumstances that touch the object of an action are
its effects, the further results or ramifications that issue forth from
the object chosen. As illustrated above with the case of the murder
that leaves a widow and children behind, the consequences of a
given action, if anticipated or naturally connected to the object in
question, can increase its gravity. Given this distinction, are there
reasons to believe that late-term abortions produce more harmful
further effects than their early-term counterparts, effects that
render late-term abortions in general more seriously wrong?
In regard to the agents who choose late-term abortion, it
would stand to reason, given the preceding analysis as well as
anecdotal evidence, that they would be more likely to suffer
feelings of remorse, guilt, and loss than those agents who opt for
early-term abortion. In general, as argued above, the later the
stage of the pregnancy the more evident it must be that the being
in the womb is a human person and, hence, the more likely the
36 De Malo,

q. 3, a. 12.

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ANDREW J. PEACH

agents are to realize the evil they have chosen and the loss they
have incurred. Even if they feel or have judged that abortion is a
necessary evil, all things considered, their sense of remorse and
loss would have to be more palpable or intense given the level of
development of the child; what has been taken away cannot
plausibly be denied. This must be particularly true for the woman,
whose attachment to the person in her womb presumably
develops as the child develops. Just as, in general, late-term
miscarriages are likely to impact a woman (or couple) more
severely than early-term ones, late-term abortions must surely
impact a woman (or couple) more severely than early-term ones.
Though the effects of late-term abortion are likely to be felt
most immediately and intensely by the couples themselves, their
decisions also have a subtle though definite and pernicious impact
on society in general and the medical profession in particular. Just
as the agents who opt for late-term abortion must be more aware
of the evil they are choosing and the loss they are incurring, so
society in general and the medical profession in particular must be
more aware of the evil they are permitting and, thereby, more
likely to be corrupted by that evil. A society that legally and/or
socially condones early-term abortions can perhaps be somewhat
excused for not knowing what it is doing; the same cannot be said
of a society that safeguards or even tolerates the practice of lateterm abortions. Laws that uphold and protect such evils as well as
cultures that countenance them give tacit approval to abortion and
further chisel away at respect for human life more generally.
More particularly, because the evil done in late-term abortions
is more evident than that done in early-term ones, it is more
evident that the medical profession, in performing late-term
abortions, is acting against its nature and more likely that it will
continue to act against its nature in the future. When the principal
ends of medicine-namely, the preservation and restoration of
physical and psychological health-are openly and brazenly
flouted, then the public and the medical profession itself easily
lose sight of these ends, and medicine becomes anything we would
like it to be. Commenting on physician-assisted suicide, Daniel

LATE-VS. EARLY-TERMABORTION

139

Callahan wisely observes that "[t]he great temptation of modern
medicine, not always resisted, is to move beyond the promotion
and preservation of health into the boundless realm of general
human happiness and well-being." 37 Physicians now have the
power to end life if the parties involved conclude that the death
in question will promote somebody's well-being. Needless to say,
there is more than an accidental relationship between the
widespread legalization and toleration of abortion and the move
to legalize and tolerate euthanasia, as well as cloning, eugenics,
and embryonic stem-cell research. And the more late-term
abortions are sanctioned by the medical profession, the less likely
it is that the profession will be able to halt its descent down the
slippery slope.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, it has been argued that the moral intuition that
late-term abortions are more seriously wrong than earlier-term
ones can be accounted for in different way from the ways
proposed by apologists for abortion. Defenders of abortion, it will
be remembered, typically resort to a gradualist or achievement
account of personhood in order to accommodate this intuition.
On these accounts, late-term abortions are worse than earlier ones
because the moral status of the fetus changes throughout or
during pregnancy. However, by showing how circumstances affect
the gravity of a human action and the culpability of a moral agent,
one can account for the differences between early- and late-term
abortions without compromising the conviction that all abortions
are acts of murder and inherently wrong. One need not resort to
a dubious account of personhood in order to account for this
moral intuition.
In the final analysis, the success of the foregoing account
regarding circumstances will have to be judged by how well it
fares in comparison to the accounts offered by defenders of
37 Daniel Callahan, "Physician-Assisted Dying: Self-Determination Run Amok," Hastings
Center Report 22 (1992): 55.

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ANDREW J. PEACH

abortion. An in-depth comparison of the two attempts to account
for this moral intuition goes beyond the scope of the present
paper. Yet it should be noted that the foregoing account of the
moral importance of circumstances has the merit of being
universally applicable: differences in circumstances help to
explain why not only some acts of abortion but also theft,
robbery, lying, adultery, kidnapping, drunkenness, backbiting,
ingratitude, etc., are more grave than others and why some who
commit such offenses are more culpable than others. Additionally,
circumstances help us to understand why some good acts, such as
acts of truthtelling, almsgiving, temperance, generosity, gratitude,
liberality, courage, and justice, are better than other such acts and
why some who perform such good acts are more praiseworthy
than others. In short, the treatment of early- and late-term
abortions presented in this essay is merely a particular application
of more general principles that are part of a cohesive theory of
moral action.
All moral actions can be analyzed and understood in terms of
their object and circumstances; that late-term abortions are more
seriously wrong than early-term abortions is simply what one
would expect given this framework for understanding moral
decision making. The same, however, can hardly be said of the
gradualist and achievement accounts of personhood offered by
abortion apologists. As I have argued elsewhere, 38 it is difficult not
to feel that such accounts of personhood have been engineered for
no other reason than to justify abortion, and, not surprisingly,
they play virtually no role, if any, in any other analyses in applied
ethics. Gradualist and achievement accounts of personhood are
not based upon generally valid moral distinctions and then
applied to the problem case of abortion; they appear to have been
devised exclusively to justify the practice of abortion, and that
practice alone. Whatever its other merits or shortcomings may be
the present explanation of early- and late-term abortions at least
38 See Andrew J. Peach, "Pro-Choice 'Personhood': An Abortive Concept," in Life and
Leaming XIII: Proceedings of the Thirteenth University Faculty for Life Conference, ed. Joseph

W. Koterski, S.J. (Washington, D.C: University Faculty for Life, 2004), esp. 193-94.

LATE- VS. EARLY-TERM ABORTION

141

has the merit of arising from and being grounded m a more
universally applicable moral theory. 39

39 I would like to thank Paul McNellis, S.J., Robert Barry, Stephen Schwarz, Philip E.
Devine, Celia Wolf-Devine, Joseph Cosgrove, Giuseppe Butera, Michael O'Neill, Matthew
Cuddeback, Timothy Mahoney, and Vance Morgan, as well as an anonymous reviewer from
The Thomist for their helpful comments on earlier drafts on this paper.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Soul of the Person: A Contemporary Philosophical Psychology. By ADRIANJ.
REIMERS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2006. Pp. xvi+ 301. $59.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8132-1453-X.
Adrian]. Reimers is adjunct assistant professor of philosophy atthe University
of Notre Dame, where he teaches philosophical anthropology. The present
volume, he says, is the product not only of several years of writing, but also of
a life of thinking. In his youth, Reimers had ambitions of becoming a priest and
scientist, and after graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a B.S. in
mathematics, he entered a Catholic seminary for a time. Eventually, he went on
to complete his master's and doctorate in philosophy, in the course of which
Rocco Buttiglione led him into the rich philosophy of Karol Wojtyla Qohn Paul
II). This exposure led to the publication of his book An Analysis of the Concepts
of Self-Fulfillment and Self-Realization in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla, Pope
John Paul II (2001) and to his offering of courses in Wojtyla's "Philosophy and
Theology of the Body" at the University of Notre Dame.
One of the curious things about Wojtyla's writings, Reimers observes, is how
little he speaks of the soul. Reimers suggests that the term 'soul' has been
rendered nearly toxic by our current philosophical climate, in which it suggests
Cartesian dualism-a view Wojtyla regarded as seriously problematic. Instead of
speaking about the soul, Wojtyla focuses on the person's transcendence toward
truth and goodness, which he identifies as the basis for calling the human person
a spiritual being. Reimers leans heavily upon Wojtyla's work in his own analysis,
but considers its phenomenological approach inaccessibly difficult and alien to
most Anglo-American readers. He therefore borrows a number of concepts from
Charles Peirce. Peirce's theories of signs and of habits, Reimers believes, provide
an especially helpful framework to support an analysis of Wojtyla's account of
the person's self-realization, self-fulfillment, and transcendence in act. In his
essay "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," Peirce writes: "The mind is a
sign, developing according to the laws of inference." Reimers considers this a
particularly felicitous expression of the traditional notion that human beings are
rational animals. In other words, all human acts and habits signify that the
human mind interprets the world and is an ideal reality formed and governed by
ideas according to the laws of reason-and is therefore irreducible to its material
substrate.
One of the underlying concerns animating the writing of this book is the
challenge posed by the pervasive contemporary agnosticism concerning the
143

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BOOK REVIEWS

existence of the soul. Many students today, including Catholics, consider the
soul to be a purely religious matter, a mere tenet of personal faith. Reimers is
sensitive to this challenge, and The Soul of the Person is his answer. While parts
of the book are technical and obviously intended for philosophers, most of it
should be accessible to any educated and attentive reader. From one point of
view, the book may be regarded as a contemporary re-reading of St. Thomas
Aquinas's account of the human soul. In this respect, probably not since David
Braine's The Human Person: Animal and Spirit (1992) has there been such a
thoroughgoing analysis of philosophical anthropology based on such a
thoroughgoing synthesis of the contemporary literature. Braine's work aimed at
a retrieval of the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception from the perspective of
Anglo-American philosophy of mind, while combining insights of analytic
thinkers like Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Austin with those of Continental thinkers
like Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Reimers, on the other hand, makes
extensive use of Wojtyla's phenomenological analysis of the human person in
The Acting Person and draws on Peirce's theory of habits and signs as a heuristic
tool. But the book is also distinguished by Reimers's impressive gift for providing
numerous helpful illustrations and sometimes humorous examples ("The knife
on the floor may moan and secrete blood by the gallon"), and his extensive
discussion of various scientific, mathematical, and logical cases. One gets the
sense that Reimers is most likely an engaging instructor in the classroom.
The "conflict between religion and science" has become a kind of shorthand
for the contradictory worlds that a Christian scholar inhabits, although, as
Reimers notes, "the true contradiction does not lie in the respective natures of
faith in God and disciplined inquiry into the natures of things around us."
Rather, the true contradiction is between a model of understanding human
nature that has developed since the Enlightenment that is fundamentally at odds
with the model that underlies Christian belief and most traditional religions. One
world sets forth an evolutionary materialist view of human beings assumed not
only by philosophical mind-brain theorists and scientific brain physiologists, but
by semi-popular media for the educated, such as Scientific American and PBS
documentaries. The other world is the one we enter on Sunday or the Sabbath,
and "when our humanity is affirmed or challenged by marriage, a birth, or
death"-a world in which is set forth a religious view of ourselves as created in
God's image. It is this conflict between these two worlds and two understandings
of human nature that Reimers sets out to explore in his book.
Reimers's strategy is to begin with an analysis with the materialist's own
understanding of the human person as a byproduct of a nondirected, mechanical
process of evolutionary development. On this view, the differences between
humans and their animal cousins are differences of degree, not of kind. Human
DNA differs from that of the chimpanzee by about one percent. What we call the
human 'soul' or 'mind' and its 'choices' and personal aspirations for 'love' are all
explicable in terms of a complex functioning system of neuron firings within the
brain and nervous system. The brain is seen as a physical system that differs from

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145

other physical systems only in its degree of complexity. What we call 'mind',
then, is no more than the operation of this system.
Recoiling against such a reductionistic materialist vision, some (like Richard
Rorty) have ventured to defend the distinctively human and preserve human
freedom by denying that human beings have any nature at all. The difficulty here
is that no 'self' then remains to enjoy human freedom once it is deconstructed
of its natural bodily relations and history. One sees this particularly in the
vanishing 'self' of pure consciousness in the phenomenological turn, whether in
its Cartesian or in its Husserlian form. While phenomenology may appear to save
the human from reductionist scientific theories, the unavoidable cost is the
uprooting of pure consciousness from nature and intractable quandaries about
what kind of being the subject of this consciousness is.
Hence, either human beings are seen as reducible to matter, which is
understood as dead "stuff," governed by invariant nonteleological laws of
nature-or human beings are identified with free consciousness, which stands
over against the deterministic natural world in an unclearly defined but dualistic
relationship. Both views present nearly insurmountable difficulties to the task of
reconciling mind and body and developing an integrated understanding of the
person, which is Reimers's goal.
Reimers undertakes his reconstruction of an integrated vision by beginning
with the inadequacy of materialism's attempts at accounting for matter itself. He
notes that while matter is experienced typically through the phenomenon of
bodily resistance, it cannot be reduced to some sort of atomic or subatomic
Urstoff, but remains a fundamental mystery even to scientists. Hence, materialists
need not only a theory of matter but a theory of why matter is all there is-a
conceit that clearly rests on more than scientific premises. Here Reimers
proceeds to discuss concepts of 'existence', 'being', and 'essence', making use of
Peirce's concept of 'habit' to explain how things are of the same kind to the
extent that they share the same kinds of behavior (on Peirce's view, any regular
behavior of a thing is a 'habit', so that even "laws of science" may be called
'habits'). The very classifiability of things reveals them as bearers of ideal
significance, which, in turn, belies the view that the mental is reducible to the
biological, which is reducible to the chemical, which is reducible to the physical.
Here Reimers's argument recalls Michal Polanyi's "boundary conditions," setting
off that which transcends from that which is transcended in the hierarchical
levels of things.
Reimers underscores the spiritual dimension of the human person through a
'true', 'being', and 'beauty'. In
detailed analysis of the transcendentals-'good',
discussing the good, he offers classic rebuttals against the objections that the
good is nothing but the desirable, the pleasant, or what is in one's self-interest.
Science may insist it has no need of the good, but Reimers notes Aquinas's argument that although the existence of numbers is good, mathematicians do not
study numbers according to their existence but only according to their formal
character. The fact that mathematical or scientific reasoning does not make use
of the notion of finality does not negate the existence of that finality. Similarly

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BOOK REVIEWS

with 'truth' (with its unavoidable correspondence to reality), 'being' (with its
self-transcending personal modality), and 'beauty' (which pertains to the proper
essence and intelligible form of a thing), Reimers shows how these ideas are
incomprehensible apart from an irreducibly nonmaterial dimension to human
nature.
He proceeds to consider our power to know by analyzing the structure of
belief, understanding, ideas, and habits, and logical reasoning. He divides 'habits'
into 3 classes-(a) perceptions, which are not passive, but active and purposive,
"shot through with rationality," ordered and interpretive; (b) work or practical
activity, which is ineluctably rational, purposive and formed by ideas; and (c)
reasoning, which is "controlled sign-making," whose objective is truth. He offers
detailed analyses of universals and forms of inference, laying particular stress on
hypothesis. "Of the three fundamental forms of reasoning," he writes,
"hypothesis is that which has no physical counterpart. Hypothesis has the
character of a leap, an intellectual connection of what was previously
unconnected. The mechanical process cannot accomplish this logical operation."
Thus Reimers recalls Peirce's dictum that "The mind is a sign, developing
according to the laws of inference"-which is to say that persons are rational
animals, capable of juxtaposing themselves over against the world as a whole in
order to understand it by means of intelligible ideas.
Reimers notes how modern philosophy has driven such a sharp wedge
between thought and action that many today question whether there is any
relationship between the two. Against this, he argues that human habits are
understood in terms of practical syllogisms that have ultimate reference to values
adopted by the rational person, and that habits develop ideally, manifesting the
person as spiritual. Likewise, he rejects the "theater metaphor" in the notion of
the radical privacy of consciousness as something "inside" the mind, while the
brain, its activities, and interactions of the body with the world are all "outside."
"Consciousness is not a primary given," he says. Wojtyla invokes the concept of
suppositum as a transphenomenal, metaphysical subject of experience and
activity-the human being in his fullness of being.
What happens at death? Aquinas asks whether the human soul can be both a
form and "this something" (hoc aliquid). He answers in the affirmative because
the soul has an immaterial operation of its own. Thus, the soul must be capable
of subsisting immaterially, at least in its intellectual part, although it is not itself
a complete substance. Reimers argues, however, that since the soul cannot act
without the body, and since consciousness is an application of act, the soul
cannot be conscious apart from the body. He does not deny, however, that the
soul retains and continues to experience the reality of ideas that have formed it.
Beyond this, he concedes, the philosopher must defer to the prophet and the
apostle.
PHILIP BLOSSER

Lenoir-Rhyne College
Hickory, North Carolina

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147

The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. 9, Littlemore and the
Parting of Friends, May 1842-0ctober 1843. Edited at the Birmingham
Oratory. Notes and introduction by FRANCIS J. MCGRATH, F.S.M. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xxxix + 833. ISBN 0-19925458-3.
In his Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Uniform Edition [London: Longmans, Green,
and Co.], p. 147), Newman remarked that "from the end of 1841, I was on my
death-bed, as regards my membership with the Anglican Church." Such haunting
words reflect the "three great blows" that progressively suffocated Newman's
Anglican life: the perceived parallel to early Church heresies in the Via Media
theory he used to justify Anglican integrity, the establishment of a single
bishopric in Jerusalem serving Anglican and Prussian Protestant interests that
fudged the Catholic/Protestant distinction, and the recurring episcopal
condemnations of Tract 90. Volume 9 of Newman's Letters and Diaries
documents the third blow and completes, as it were, the famous death-bed scene.
The two previous volumes of Newman's letters detail the first two blows. (See
my reviews in The Thomist, April 1997 and October 2003.)
As one may surmise, these published letters have appeared but slowly in print,
the lack of haste reflecting the uncommon scholarship characterizing them. It is
worthwhile to recall the series' overview. Rev. Charles Stephen Dessain, the
great modern archivist of Newman's writings, began publishing Newman's
correspondence in 1961, beginning with the Roman Catholic period. Having
collated and mapped the entire correspondence to fill thirty-one volumes,
Dessain began with volume 11(October1845). He died as he was bringing to
print the last of the Catholic-period letters. After the first five volumes, dealing
with Newman's early Anglican life, were published by others, Mr. Gerard
Tracey, who had replaced Fr. Dessain as archivist, published volumes 6-8. He
died as volume 9 was in preparation. Marist brother Dr. Francis McGrath has
completed the work and dedicated this present volume to Mr. Tracey. Newman's
published correspondence has come almost full circle, although there are plans
for many Newman letters that have been discovered since Dessain's earlier
collation.
Newman thought he had an "understanding" (Apologia, 90) that the bishops
would not censure Tract 90 if the High Church party would cease publishing
more tracts. How unsettled his Anglicanism became when bishop after bishop
attackedTract 90 over a three-year span is clear: "I could not stand against such
a unanimous expression ofopinion from the Bishops" (LD 9: 57 3); " [the charges]
have got worse and worse every year" (W 9:575). Newman's own bishop, Bagot
of Oxford, delivered his "charge" (a triennial official teaching of an Anglican
bishop to his presbyters) on 23 May 1842. Surprisingly, Newman's summary of
it, in a letter to Keble the following day, gave the bishop's words a benign
interpretation (e.g., "very favorable to us, or rather to our cause" [LD 9:14]),
and to brother-in-law Tom Mozley the same day he termed it "a noble charge,
very favorable to us" (LD 9:18). But eighteen months later, Newman recalled

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that he could not "believe my ears" when Bagot said Tract 90 made the 39
Articles of Religion mean "anything or nothing" (LD 9 :57 4 ). Painful intervening
months surely shaped this retrospective!
During those months other episcopal charges (eleven are given in appendix
2) condemned Tract 90 as unfaithful to Anglicanism, making Newman feel like
"a foreign material [who] cannot assimilate with the Church of England" (LD
9:573). One senses the irony. Newman had written Tract 90 to prove that
Anglo-Catholic sentiments were tolerated by the Articles of Religion, but its
censure by the bishops served to drive Anglo Catholics toward Roman
Catholicism. To confidante Marie Giberne he wrote in October 1843: "The
Tractarian party is in process of being broken up .... All the Anglo Catholics are
trooping off .... Pusey's assistant in Hebrew, Mr. Seager, has joined the Church
of Rome" (LD 9:589-90). Whence Newman's famous recollection in the
Apologia (140): "There were no converts to Rome, till after the condemnation
of No. 90." His letters describing defections during this period make those
words vibrate.
I propose in this review to indicate three types of Newmanian observations:
(1) as bearing on theology or spirituality and likely most germane to readers of
The Thomist, (2) as illuminating his own story more than perhaps the Apologia
does, (3) as private miscellany or obiter dicta on sundry topics.
The main theological topics met in volume 9 of Letters and Diaries are
development of doctrine and Tract 90's thesis. The principle of doctrinal
development, "to which I gave my mind at the end of 1842 ... [and in 1843]
began to consider it attentively" (Apologia, 197), is not as prominent in this
material as Newman's words of 1864 would suggest. He did preach on
development, on the 1843 feast of the Purification in the pulpit of St. Mary the
Virgin. It was his very last University sermon (found today in University Sermons
[London: Longmans, Green, and Co.] and as appendix 4 in LD 9), and a tough
sermon to prepare. "I am at present much plagued with a University Sermon for
Fehr 2 which won't write," he groused to Tom Mozley (LD 9:205). The sermon
adumbrates themes that will be enlarged in the famous essay of 1845, such as
that the words of the apostles are like "half sentences" admitting of
"development," and that heresy fastens on only one aspect of the full "idea" of
revelation.
The letters and concerns of 1843 do not, however, return to the topic of
doctrinal development, save for a few diary entries. Newman began this year to
put musings alongside some of the daily factual entries, and his diary for 7
October 1843 is illustrative: "If the gospel may be fairly called a development of
the Law, so that it is a continuation of it, may not much more the Roman
Catholic system be a development of the early Church? If the developed doctrine
of the Holy Trinity, as universally received, must be true, else the whole Church
has fallen into the most awful idolatry, for the same reason may not the doctrine
of saint worship, which is universal, be considered religious, lest the same
conclusion follow?" (LD 9:553; see also note 3).

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Apropos Tract 90, the 1842-43 letters make clear that Newman's use of
Catholic and Catholicity refers not to the customary Church attribute of
"universality" but rather to Christian doctrines (such as baptismal regeneration
and confession) as being consonant with apostolic Christianity. His essay argued
that the 39 Articles allowed Anglicans to hold Catholic principles, also called by
members of the Oxford Movement "Church principles." His essay was not about
squaring the Articles with contemporary Roman Catholicism, as he noted to
Mary Holmes, a young woman receiving spiritual direction from him: "I do not
see that the Tridentine Decrees and our Articles are in certain points
reconcilable-if I had a clear view in favor of the Decrees ... I could not sign the
Articles" (LD 9:290). (His 1845 Essay on Development will square Trent with
the apostolic teachings, and he will then be able to pass through the doorway
into Roman Catholicism.)
The Oxford Movement-disposed publisher, Francis Rivington, wrote
Newman on 8 September 1843 that the press had been criticized for the
(Catholic) tone of its publications. This he could live with, but Rivington did not
want the press to be advocating "distinctive corruptions of Romanism" (J.,D
9:518). Newman retained a synopsis of his return letter of 17 October (LD
9:575), and it provides the raison d'etre for how he construed the tract project:
"that the Tracts etc aimed at bringing out the idea of the English Church, as
distinct from other bodies [i.e., Dissenters, Protestantized Anglicans] and to
infuse from Roman sources a certain quality of life, interest, heart, etc Rome and
the Evangelical School had [i.e., absent from the high and dry Anglicans]." This
clarifies immediately why the note of the Church's holiness played the important
role it did in his post-1839 writings.
For students of Newman's late Anglican ecclesiology, a letter to J.C. Wynter,
of unknown background, is vital.
According to the great Anglican theory, (by which I mean the theory
of Laud, Bull, Butler, etc upon which alone the English Church can
stand as being neither Roman nor Puritan) the present state of the
Church is like that of an Empire breaking or broken up .... Our
Lord founded a kingdom, it spread over the earth and then broke up .
. . . [Our difficulties] are all in very different ways, difficulties which
arise out of a sick or rather dying kingdom. Under these
circumstances when we are asked "Where is the Church?" I can but
answer where it was-The Church only is, while it is one, for it is
individual, as he who animates and informs it. It is under an eclipse
or in deliquium now, or as Bellarmine says of the 10'h century "Christ
is asleep in the ship" .... We rule ourselves by what the Church did
or said before this visitation fell upon her, we obey those that are set
over us first because they are set over us-next because at least the
apostolical succession is preserved. (LD 9:44-45)

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Even with this high esteem of the one and original Church of Christ, Newman
had occasion to say to an inquirer concerning a rumor: "I do not hold that there
is no salvation out of the visible church" (LD 9:27).
Given Newman's great command of the Fathers of the Church, one notes
with special interest his advice for doing patristic studies.
When I began to read the Fathers many years ago, I began at the
Apostolical [he means 2"d century writers], and took a great deal of
pains with them and Justin Martyr-all which I count now as
wasted-and that for this reason, that I did not understand what was
in them, what I was to look for, what were the strong and important
points, etc.... It is best to get a footing in some one place, and then
to proceed as our particular taste or curiosity leads. [From the letter's
context, one should understand a problem, e.g., Donatism, and begin
reading Augustine, for example.] Bishop Lloyd used to recommend
beginning at the beginning-I have found this in my case a failure.
(LD 9:118-20)

Finally, apropos of spiritual theology, important religious decisions require
circumspection, long discernment, and provisional testing of them. One meets
these cautions passim in Newman's letters of spiritual direction. "You must be
patient, you must wait for the eye of the soul to be formed in you. Religious
truth is reached, not by reasoning, but by an inward perception. Any one can
reason; only disciplined, educated, formed minds can perceive. . . . You are
overflowing with feeling and impulse-all these must be restrained, ruled,
brought under, converted into principles and habits, or elements of character"
(LD 9:274). On the danger of quick decisions based on feelings or fascination by
the seemingly miraculous, Newman had advice that is still timely: "Our Lord
tells us to count the costs. How can you tell whether it is His voice or that of a
deceiving spirit? It is a rule in spiritual matter to reject a suggestion at first to any
thing extraordinary from the certainty that if it is from heaven, it will return"
(LD 9:555). Such spiritual advice is of a piece with his epistemological insight in
Grammar of Assent many years later that true inferences are the result of the
slow building up of "converging probabilities" until they become irresistible to
a truth-seeker. And as to readying oneself for praying, always for Newman the
context for discernment, he gave this good advice: ''You should begin by strongly
impressing on your mind that you are in Christ's Presence, and you might
(reverently) picture Him to yourself as standing over you with His Saints and
Angels. Of course there is the greatest care necessary to do this with extreme
reverence, not as an experiment or a kind of prescription or charm" (LD 9: 18485).
This review's second focus looks to the man himself and his life. I begin with
something most personal, something never appearing in the Apologia both from
Newman's own discretion and from its personal pain, involving his sister
Harriett. She had married Tom Mozley, very much a man of the "Movement"
and successor to Newman as editor of the British Critic, an organ for Tractarian

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views. Tom became very attracted to Roman Catholicism and decided to
"conform" to it in 1843 at a moment Harriett was visiting Normandy. He never
"went over," but his flirtation with Rome, his "Roman fever" in Harriett's
disdainful view, caused her to blame John and to sever relationship with him
henceforth. But the 1843 letters (esp. LD 9:530 to Tom and LD 9:537 to
Harriett herself) show how much Newman urged Tom against conversion, much
on the principle listed above, namely, to wait patiently and to discern God's will
more clearly. Newman, the enemy of impetuosity, became ostracized by Tom's
impetuous "fever" and Harriett's impetuous response.
Newman notes in the Apologiathat Fr. Charles Russell of Maynooth (Ireland)
"had, perhaps, more to do with my conversion than any one else" (Apologia,
194). Their 1843 correspondence supports the Apologia's claim that Russell
provided Roman devotional writings to Newman that disabused Newman of his
notion that the Roman Catholic invocation of saints undermined the immediacy
of the soul's contact with God. This was an important breakthrough for
Newman, and this volume provides Russell's letters to him and his questions in
return. The reader is brought into Newman's mental transformation. This insight
was like a "final straw," leading Newman to make a public retraction of
previously published anti-Roman Catholic statements (see LD 9:167-72, also in
Via Media, vol. 2 [London: Longmans, Green, and Co.]) and which he described
to close friend J. R. Hope as having "to eat a few dirty words of mine" (LD
9:215).
The Apologiareminded people in 1864 that Newman had resigned the pulpit
and pastoring of St. Mary's and its satellite village church in Littlemore because
his ability to represent the English Church, in any meaningful official manner,
was compromised by the episcopal charges against his Anglican orthodoxy. But
there was another precipitating cause. William Lockhart lived with Newman and
some other men in a kind of small support community near the Littlemore
church. Lockhart had Roman leanings. Newman had extracted from him a
promise that he would make no decision for three years, and Lockhart broke it
less than a year after coming to live with Newman. Rather than being seen as
holding people back from Rome, which he was attempting to do, Newman was
accused of fostering conversions. In LD 9:336 note 1, we find a comment
Newman made years later about the Lockhart embarrassment, supplementing the
story above: "The immediate cause of my giving up the Living of St. Mary's and
Littlemore, was Lockhart's becoming a Catholic. I had told the Bishop I was, in
our retreat at Littlemore, keeping young men back from leaving the English
Church; and when this took place, I said, "! ou see, I cannot do it; but converts
to Rome should not go our from St. Mary's Parsonage."'
One of the other men living with Newman was Ambrose St. John, familiar to
people knowing Newman's later life as his closest friend during his Catholic and
Oratorian years, a friend so dear that Newman requested that he be buried in
Ambrose's actual grave when death came. Listen to how the relationship began
on 16 July 1843, when Newman answered the relatively unknown St. John's
request to join the small group in Littlemore: "Come to Littlemore by all

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means-and we shall all rejoice in your company" (LD 9:429). Edward Bouverie
Pusey was another of Newman's treasured friends. This co-leader with Newman
of the Movement-the Tractarians were sometimes called Puseyites by their
enemies-never left the Church of England. But he was in the Littlemore church
on Monday, 25 September 1843, when Newman preached his very last Anglican
sermon, "The Parting of Friends" (printed as appendix 7). Francis McGrath
wisely supplies the first-hand recollection from Edward Bellasis of this friendship
and the poignancy of the moment.
But the sermon I can never forget, the faltering voice, the long
pauses .... Then we heard the story of David and Jonathan, the
scene of their separation ... with an address almost personal to Dr
Pusey who sat by, and ... [addressing] the English Church: 'O my
Mother, my Mother, how is it that those who would have died for
thee fall neglected from thy bosom? . . . And now my friends, my
dear friends' (here a long pause) 'if you should be acquainted with
any one who by his teaching, or by his writings, or by his sympathy
has helped you or has seemed to understand you .... Oh, my friends'
(here a long pause) 'remember such a one and pray for him.' After the
sermon Newman received the Communion, but took no further part
in officiating. Dr Pusey consecrated the elements in tears, and once
or twice became entirely overcome and stopped altogether. (LD
9:334, n.1).

Such rare friendships!
As one would suspect, the context of these many letters is Oxfordshire,
London, and, what the British then were wont to call, the "country" (the village
parsonages, such as John Keble's Church of All Saints in Bursley [Winchester]).
When American connections appear, readers like this reviewer take note. The
Movement had many devotees ("Churchmen") in America, and written
appreciations can be found from northern New York State Anglicans (LD 9:71),
bishops applauding Newman's printed sermons (LD 9:293), and from New York
City area friends (LD 9:315-18). One Yankee, a Congregationalist at that, visited
Newman in Oxford, and Newman liked him immediately, remarking to his sister
Jemima of his "New England twang" and "how dreadful it is that the sheep of
Christ are scattered to and fro" (LD 9:435). Rarely did "Dissenters" cause such
compassionate sentiments in Newman. A final vignette is reminiscent of a
potentially schismatic situation in worldwide Anglicanism today. The presiding
bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Alexander Griswold, a Low Church
Evangelical, admitted a Nestorian into communion, causing Newman to write
to his oldest Oxford friend, John Bowden, "If it is accepted by the Church
generally, I don't see how we could communicate with them" (LD 9:73). One is
reminded that the Protestant Episcopal Church USA recently accepted a
practicing homosexual as bishop of New Hampshire, causing other Anglican
national churches to talk as Newman did.

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This review concludes with a farrago of comments in the volume, both from
Newman and from the editor, on sundry matters of interest. Visitors today to
Littlemore go to the cottages where "younger men" of the Movement (Dalgairns,
Lockhart, Bowles, Bridges, St John, Meyrick, Balston, Walker, Coffin) at various
times lived with Newman, and people visit the nearby church, made famous by
the "Parting of Friends" sermon. Many of the appointments in the church came
from Newman family benefactions. Descriptions of the stained glass windows
can be found in this volume (LD 9:6 n. 3; 72 n. 2). Newman described the
"monastery rules" the Littlemore community followed in letters to Marie
Giberne (LD 9:259, 271). Extended notes satisfy those curious as to how Oxford
undergraduates behaved (LD 9:149-50 n. 6; 416 n. 1). Students of British
literature might not be surprised by Newman's high esteem for writers like
Herbert, Coleridge, and Scott. Of a biography of Sir Walter Scott, which brought
"tears into my eyes," he thought it "may be an instrument in the hands of
Providence for the revival of Catholicity" (LD 9:87). And in an item drafted in
1843 but not then published, Newman wrote that "those great names in our
literature, Sr. Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge, though in different
ways and with essential differences one from another, and perhaps from any
Church system, still all bear witness to [spirituality with a Catholic flavor]" (LD
9:419 n. 4).
From Newman's many books, none would doubt his sober and clearheaded
thinking and his command of language and style. But one would not suspect his
playfulness, which runs throughout his letters but is never met in his seriousminded publications. Here is one example. "Tuesday, June 27. My dear Bloxam,
They tell me that you are at present performing the character of a mope-and
the due maintenance of that character forbids your coming so far as Littlemore.
If you have nothing better to do, I would come and mope with you at your
rooms at dinner on St Peter's day (Thursday) at any hour you please. I am, My
dear Bloxam, Your sympathetic mope John H Newman" (LD 9:406).
Many thanks from Newman scholars are due Francis McGrath, who stepped
in suddenly, on the untimely death of Gerard Tracey, to assume supervision of
the Birmingham Oratory archives and editorship of Letters and Diaries, volume
9. His hand is detected in the fuller footnoting, the greater inclusion of letters
and book excerpts from others, and ten appendices of 150 pages covering
germane materials. In fact, if one were to transpose these materials into the
normal type size in which Newman's letters are printed, this book of more than
800 pages would approximate 1200 pages easily. Newmanists need no
encouragement to attack the tome; this review, I hope, helps others to ascertain
more easily the key ideas and life experiences of Newman in his "death bed"
years.
EDWARD JEREMY MILLER

Gwynedd-Mercy College
Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania

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Spirit's Gift: The Metaphysical Insight of Claude Bruaire. By ANTONIO LOPEZ,
F.S.C.B. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2006. Pp. xii+ 262. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-8132-1443-2.
This is a welcome book, well-written, well-researched, well-structured, and
informed by philosophical thoughtfulness and theological discrimination. It is
also a very helpful introduction to a thinker not well known in the Englishspeaking philosophical world, even though as a commentator on Hegel he might
be known by some Hegel scholars. Claude Bruaire (1932-86) developed an
ontology of gift, an "ontodology" as he calls it-making an important
contribution to a theme now much discussed, at least in English-speaking
philosophy, through the influence of thinkers like Derrida and Marion. Bruaire
sought to develop an anthropology and ontology that would do justice to the
truths claimed by the Christian religion. He was a student of Ricoeur, and among
those whom he considered as dominant influences were Gaston Fessard, S.J., and
Gabriel Marcel. But it would seem that Hegel occupied the place of primary
importance.
On the basis of Hegelian logic, Bruaire develops the notion of the absolute as
self-determining freedom in the direction of understanding spirit as gift: gift to
itself in the first instance, and gift of being to creation in the second instance.
Lopez elaborates how Bruaire corrects Hegel's view with the help of Schelling,
and then to correct "the work of both with the perception of Christian revelation
learned from his two masters, Gaston Fessard and Gabriel Marcel" (6). These
corrections replace Hegel's negative, and the negation of the negation with an
understanding of the absolute positivity in the self-giving of the Absolute or God,
formulated in Trinitarian terms as the self-donation of Father, Son, and Spirit.
Granting the corrections, the logical structure of Hegel's "concept" or Begriff still
remains basic. Indeed Bruaire does not shy away from making use of Hegel's
speculative syllogism to understand the inner structure of the Trinitarian God.
I shall come back to the question of whether one can modify Hegel so, and
whether the Hegelian logical basis still continues to determine Bruaire's thinking,
all extra-Hegelian corrections notwithstanding. First, however, I shall offer a
brief overview of what Lopez does in his fine book.
The book is divided into two parts. In the first, entitled "Self-determining
Freedom," Lopez offers an account of Bruaire's "negative" anthropology. The
relation of philosophy and theology is presented in chapter 1, and this offers the
methodological parameters that give form to Bruaire's reflections. In chapter 2,
Lopez gives a systematic account of Bruaire's anthropology. He ·defines this as
"negative" in contrast to Hegel's understanding of the spirit's movement of selfdetermination which returns to itself after having become the other of itself. The
human spirit, for Bruaire, cannot return to itself in that Hegelian sense, for it is
neither its own origin, nor its own destiny. In chapter 3, Lopez gives an account
of Bruaire's concept of the absolute, seeking to integrate "Christian positivity"

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as needed to overcome the negative movement of self-determination that marks
German idealism.
·
Part 2 offers a reading of Bruaire's "negative" anthropology in light of a
positive ontology that conceives the human being and God in terms of gift. In
chapter 4 Lopez investigates claims that the concept of spirit must be restored to
a true metaphysics if we are to rescue being from the oblivion to which it now
seems relegated. Chapter 5 shows how the concept of spirit leads to an
understanding of finite spirit as given to itself in order to become itself. Chapters
6 and 7 deal with Bruaire's concept of infinite spirit, God in religious terms. This
is the infinite pure and eternal act of donation, pure gift. It not only gives itself
to itself and begets the Word, it also confirms the gift "because the absolute spirit
is also Holy Spirit." The absolute is also the "bottomless gratuity that gives itself
to what it is not, the finite other, and confirms it in being" (7). Both infinite and
finite being are to be interpreted in terms of gift. In his conclusion Lopez offers
a brief summary but also suggests important reservations, albeit politely
expressed, about the closeness of Bruaire's understanding to Hegel's speculative
concept.
Lopez makes it clear that Bruaire has very important things to say about gift,
and that he is attentive to worries that ought to beset any appropriation of
Hegelian philosophy. Sometimes it seems all the required considerations are in
place, including considerations that are not included in Hegel's scheme or are
overlooked by it, but the difficult question is how we are to put these
considerations together. If they remain under the dominating influence of
Hegel's logic, all our corrections of Hegel will turn out to be variations on the
basic logical structure, while the logic remains intact. One gets the impression
from Lopez's account that Bruaire's "corrections" of Hegel, while correct,
remain too much within the governing structure of Hegel's logic. Lopez clearly
admires the work of Bruaire, and in general is delicate in his criticisms of it, yet
he does indicate more firmly, especially towards the end of the book, that there
are important questions to be put. (In a foreword Kenneth Schmitz also
delicately hints at certain reservations about Bruaire.) These questions bear on
issues such as the relation between philosophy and theology, the univocity of the
concept of gift, Bruaire's "rationalism," and the exceeding mystery of God.
One could say that it dubious to buy into Hegel's logic in its basic orientation
and then propose to modify it simply by reversing the negative and the positive
signs. Hegel has the negative that negates itself and hence proves its positivity;
reversing this one might say that there is first a positivity that gives and enables
giving. But if the governing structure of the latter is understood in terms coming
from the logic of the former, the positivity may not quite turn out to be what it
seems to be. Hegel's logic is governed by the triad: the universal, the particular,
the individual (which is the concrete universal). Theologically Hegel correlates
these with the Father, Son, and Spirit. But the first is indeterminate, the second
determinate, the third self-determining. Hegel's logic moves from an origin
lacking determinacy through a necessitated determining, culminating in an

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inclusive self-determination. But if there is genuine "positivity" about the first,
then it cannot be mapped unto an indeterminacy. I would rather speak the
language of an overdeterminacy: more than the indeterminate, the determinate,
and the self-determining. If there is an overdeterminacy to the original positivity,
the relation of the first, second, and third cannot be correlated with Hegel's logic
of the concept.
Further, if there is a "fourth" of creation, this cannot be modeled on Hegel's
logic of the concept. It is clear from his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
that "creation" is a (mere) representation (Vorstellung), not properly a concept
(BegriffJ. Hegel associates "creation" with the Jewish God, which in turn is
criticized just for its transcendence. Hegel's point is indeed the selfdetermination of Godself. If "creation" has any meaning for him, it is its
contribution to the consummated, fully self-including self-determination of God.
By contrast, one might say that not only is the inner intermediation of God's
own life questionably understood in terms of Hegel's logic of self-determination,
lacking as it does a sense of divine overdeterminacy, so also is the release of
creation as giving to be something genuinely other to God. Bruaire's account of
gift promises more on this score, but to the extent that the logic of Hegelian selfdetermination governs our account, the freeing release of enabling origination
is difficult to understand.
One also gets the impression that the relation of theology and philosophy in
Hegel himself is much more equivocal than Bruaire grants. This might have been
stressed more strongly in Lopez's book. That Hegel could produce descendants
as much atheistic as religiously pious should give us pause. Quite clearly Hegel
wants to transcend religious representation: theology as a thinking, he will say,
must be conceptual, hence transcends the Vorstellung to the Begriff. For Hegel
it is evident that only his own speculative philosophy properly effects this
transcending of (religious) representation, a transcending consummated in the
immanence of philosophical thought at home with itself. Hegelian philosophy
might claim to be the true theology, but it is only a speculative theology in a
qualified sense, since the God of any theology remains tied to representation.
There is a more ultimate thinking, Hegel's own philosophy. Bruaire might
dissent with this last view but his commitment to Hegel's logic strikes one as
having the character of a Trojan horse. This gift is the source of one's undoing.
Is it possible to adjust Hegel in the theological direction Bruaire wants
without some twisting and turning? Lopez thinks that Bruaire's use of Hegel's
speculative syllogisms as a theological syllogism is "brilliant" (208). To this
reader at least, the use of the speculative syllogism in relation to God creates the
impression of a kind of conceptual abracadabra. Word-magic parades as if it
were a conceptual penetration of the Godhead. In a certain sense Hegel is not a
theologian, not a philosopher, but a kind of theosophist-an onto-theosophist.
Lopez does grant a kind of excessive rationalism in Bruaire. There are moments
of worry we have with Hegel, which surfaced more than once for this reader in
relation to Bruaire: namely, that this rationalism in its excessive light brings on

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darkness and, in a kind of idolatry of the concept, risks blindness to God's
mysterious excess.
How helpful is Hegel vis-a-vis the proper philosophical protocols for
approaching the question of God? The reply might be that the issue is resolved
in terms of the speculative univocity of reason. There is no ultimate difference
of human and divine reason. The issue is reason as such, not its qualification as
human or divine. One sees the point, but this point undermines any
acknowledgment of the infinite qualitative difference of the human and the
divine. Without this acknowledgment one is inclined to say that the God about
which we discourse speculatively is not God-certainly not the God of the
monotheistic tradition. "Si comprehendis non est Deus" (Augustine). Lopez is
troubled by a certain univocity of the concept of gift in Bruaire. In his last pages
he suggests a more analogical approach. He is perfectly right to do this, but
anyone who is too much under the spell of Hegel's logic tends to reduce analogy
to representation, representation itself reconfigured in accord with the
speculative concept, and hence closed off to the delicate balance of sameness and
difference, immanence and transcendence, that analogy at its best tries to
articulate.
What of Bruaire's agreement with Hegel's stress on freedom as selfdetermination? Hegel modifies the Kantian template of autonomy in a social
direction-freedom is social self-determination. This is applied to God. In the
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, as I mentioned, creation is seen as a
deficient effort to represent God's own self-determination. "Creation" does not
speculatively recuperate the otherness either of God or of the finite world for a
fully self-determining and immanent whole. Since "creation" is essentially Jewish
it is a representation defined by dualistic opposition between divine
transcendence above and de-divinized immanence. Relativization of this
transcendence defines the Hegelian understanding of the Trinity. Father and Son
are always burdened with either a transcendence or an externality. The Father
qua indeterminate universal must negate its transcendent eternity entirely for the
immanence of time in the Son. Further, the contingency of the temporal
incarnation of the Son as Jesus must itself be relativized in light of the divine
humanity that is properly revealed as spirit in community. Spirit provides the
absolutely immanent God. But there is an equivocity here that is not mentioned
in the present account: for Hegel this immanent God is not fully realized in the
spiritual community of religion but only in the political community of the
modern state. Hegel ends up with a postreligious humanism in which the
difference between the divine become human and the human become divine is
blurred. The left-Hegelians were not entirely wrong to suspect that the secret
harbored by Hegelianism was atheism. Bruaire seems so bewitched by the
speculative concept that Hegel's equivocity on this score seems not to figure in
his account.
We need a more radical thinking of freedom than we find in idealism, in
which a freeing that is the other to self-determination is given its due, and the

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interplay of other and self is thought differently. One might say we need more
on the agapeics of freedom, not the erotics. The sources of freeing and being free
are not in determinacy, or self-determinacy, or indeterminacy, but in an
overdeterminacy of agapeic goodness. This, though ultimately reserved in the
mystery of the God who exceeds determinate and self-determining thinking,
enables determinate and self-determining being in finite form. Can freedom as
be univocally applied to the understanding. of gift? Gift is selfihng, one might say, and self-giving is then the self-determination of the being
hat gives itself to itself. God is absolute self-giving, one says. This seems
but what of the always-already given and given surplus of divine
oodness, divine generosity? Is there not something super-plus about this, in the
'rriension of the hyperbolic, that escapes speculative self-determination? Selfg ving needs to be nuanced further, not in terms of Hegelian self-determination,
a d not quite in terms of a Schellingian "correction" of Hegel, and not also in
te ms of a substitution of "positivity" for Hegelian "negativity." The agapeic
" ore" of God, while self-giving, and giving of the other-being of finite creation,
ha a reserve of surplus generosity, which is not retracted into a jealous
int riority, but which, qua giving, is always in excess of every gift. With the
spe ulative univocity of the Hegelian concept one worries not only about the
cliff rence of the human and divine but whether we pass over the hyperbolic
sens of gift coming singularly from God as agapeic goodness.
T is brings me to a final point on love. Love is central to Bruaire's vision.
Once again it is important to grant that there are different kinds of love. Love
is not . nivocal. Hegel is sometimes praised for his early concern with love, but
clearlylhe came to think of love as primarily a feeling, in need of the rational
concept as more ultimate. There is a serious deficiency in Hegel in differentiating
kinds of loves. His early views are ambiguous and often unclear, but
overall, 'from early to late, there is no systematic understanding of the nature of
agapeic love. This defect is not remedied in his later work because the logical
structure of his speculative concept does not lend itself to this understanding. On
the contrary: in Hegel's view, it is love that is not up to the mark of the
speculative concept. From what I glean from Lopez's fine book, Bruaire points
towards and needs something like an understanding of agapeic love. My surmise
is that, on this score, the help of the Hegelian concept is finally a hindrance.
WILLIAM DESMOND

Institute of Philosophy, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Leuven, Belgium

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The Treatise on the Divine Nature: Summa Theologiae 1, 1-13. Translated with
commentary by BRIAN SHANLEY, O.P. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 2006. Pp. 400. $47.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paper). ISBN 0-87220806-0 (cloth}, 0-87220-805-2 (paper).
Any attempt to offer a translation and commentary on a classical figure will
inevitably reflect the current state of scholarship on the thinker in question, as
both translation and commentary combine to help readers appropriate his
thought. When well-executed, both translation and commentary will facilitate
the retrieval necessary to allow that appropriation to expand the reader's
understanding through a living encounter with the thinker in question. And
when this combined effort is superbly executed, the result proves to be an
excellent teaching tool. Such is the work produced here by Brian Shanley.
What features of this work prompt such an assessment? How can both
translation and commentary display superb execution? First, if the goal is
personal appropriation, then "less is more." In general, the translator/
commentator should eschew giving extensive documentation of his sources; a
bibliography articulated with reference to each question suffices to reveal the
translator's acquaintance with the current state of scholarship, as his pointed
commentary will exhibit how he has assimilated that scholarship to help us
encounter the riches of the text. The same synoptic grasp will be reflected in the
translation itself to a practiced eye, as in this case one seeks deft expression to
render Aquinas's lapidary prose. The challenge is heightened in these initial
questions of the Summa Theologiae, because Aquinas is himself engaged in an
exposition that draws on astute semantic skills to hone the theological language
he is employing-largely Aristotelian but also drawn from pseudo-Dionysius-to
illuminate, as best we can, the subject of his inquiry (God as "the beginning and
end of all thing"), by identifying this reveled and revealing God as a proper
object of inquiry. This he accomplishes by showing that there is such a One, and
how this One might first be identified (by contrast with anything and everything
else}, and then be articulated without falsification-that is, in a nonidolatrous
manner. Few writers and thinkers are up to that task, as most preaching and
teaching displays!
With Aquinas especially, this has proven to be a daunting task, as the rollercoaster of readings since Leo XIII's Aetemae Patris has led readers through a
number of personae, some stultifyingly unattractive. In the early decades of the
twentieth century these questions were read as establishing a "natural theology,"
a veritable rational ladder which, once mastered, could lead one ineluctably to
God. Karl Barth's resounding "Nein" awoke some Catholic inquirers from so
pretentious an endeavor. Soon, however, sensitive historical retrievals began to
temper the demand for "systematic" presentations, so that an inquiring subject
began to emerge from the texts, alive with the struggle to articulate what had to
escape conceptualization: "Because it is not possible for us to know what God
is, but rather what God is not, we cannot consider how God exists, but rather
how God does not exist" (STh I, q. 3, pro!.). Shanley's translation-cum-

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commentary shows how those engaged in this retrieval have opened their minds
and hearts to the inner journey of understanding latent in this richly layered,
often paradoxical, text. The neo-Thomist bifurcation of "philosophy" from
"theology" had notably inhibited access to these opening questions of the
Summa, as the modernist presumptions of the neo-Thomists allowed them to
pass over question 1, which announces a staunchly theological agenda, to turn
the initial questions of the Summa into a philosophical treatise: de Deo uno!
How this ahistorical appropriation understood questions 3 to 11 is baffling to
us now, as it seemed simply to overlook the prologue just cited, in an effort to
confirm an ideological divide between "philosophy" and "theology."
The French ressourcement among Dominicans and Jesuits especially (from the
1930s through the 1960s), laid the groundwork for a fresh retrieval of Thomas
as well, which flourished in the wake of Vatican H's finding of neo-Thomist
readings to be distracting and unhelpful. It is that reading, quite beyond the
"philosophy"/"theology"
divide, that illuminates and animates Shanley's
translation and commentary, rendering it serendipitous for classroom use. This
rich background alerts him to remind us how Aquinas's treatment of "divine
names" turns signally on creation, thereby accentuating "the distinction" of
creatures from their creator, thereby blocking the misunderstanding of Aquinas's
recourse to analogy that Barth had had to reject. So Shanley comments on
question13, article 2 ("Are any of the names of God said substantially?"):
God and creatures cannot share perfections as though they were
members of the same genus or the same species. Instead, God's
nonunivocal causality is such that the form of the perfection as it is
found in creatures is not according to the same mode of the
perfection as constituting God's own being. The perfections that we
see in creatures are finite and fragmented; in God their source, they
are an infinite unity. (330)

The "names" in questing-"just," "merciful," etc.-are found in Scripture,
notably in the psalms, yet can also be treated as "attributes."
Aquinas makes a sharp division, however, in the very ordering of these initial
questions, between these names/attributes and those that are operative in
questions 3 to 11: simplicity, perfection, good, infinity, immutability, unity. Yet
Shanley groups these among the "attributes," without alerting us explicitly to
Thomas's separate treatment which displays them as "formal feature," for they
attempt to locate the subject of this "science" in a metaphysical space utterly
distinct from creatures, and so serve to direct us to a proper use of the
names/attributes collected under question 13. To be sure, his treatment of them
does call attention to their axial semantic role, but he would have better helped
us to appropriate the structural significance of Thomas's locating questions 3 to
11 separately from question 13 had he highlighted the difference between these
two sets of "attributes": one formal, the other scriptural. Yet this is principally
a question of highlighting, for Shanley's treatment of the "formal feature," divine

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unity (q. 11 ), eminently displays how metaphysical is this capstone assertion,
culminating the preceding questions 3 through 10, and so reminding us how
Aquinas's corroborating of this assertion common to each Abrahamic faith-that
God is one-asserts far more than the fact that there is but one God, so
confirming rabbinic reflection as well as the centrality of tawhid (faith in divine
unity) to Islam. In other words, he shows how Aquinas employed metaphysics
in a way that transformed his Aristotelian legacy, often in the direction of
pseudo-Dionysius, precisely to highlight the faith-dimension of Christian
doctrine about God. Moreover, Shanley shows himself cognizant of Aquinas's
drawing from Moses Maimonides as well as Avicenna, as he formulates the
nominal definition of God as "the beginning and end of all things" (STh I, q. 1)
into an object appropriate for Christian theological reflection. As the early
Church understood so well, the privileged revelation of God as triune, granted
to Christian believers in Jesus himself as the revelation of God, is utterly
beholden to the shema: "Hear, 0 Israel, God your god is one!" Indeed, it seems
that this fundamental belief so constrained early Christian reflection on the
ontological status of Jesus that it took Christianity four centuries to articulate its
central revelation, at the Council of Chalcedo.n! So far from opposing de Deo
uno to de Deo trino, as "philosophy" to "theology," as neo-Thomism had done,
we can see these initial questions of the Summa Theologiae as framing a theology
faithful to Christian revelation by acknowledging its roots in the first covenant,
with signally cognate concerns in Islam. That Shanley's translation-cumcommentary can open students to such a rich appropriation of Aquinas explains
why I call it "superb."
DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C.

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
Tantur Ecumenical Institute
Jerusalem, Israel

Health Care Ethics: A Catholic Theological Analysis. By BENEDICTM. ASHLEY,
0.P., JEAN DEBLOIS, C.S.J., and KEVIN D. O'ROURKE, 0.P. 5th edition.
Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2006. 328 pp. $34.95
(paper). ISBN 9781589011168.
Unlike previous editions, the fifth edition of Health Care Ethics contains
many references to the sources on medical moral theology published by the papal
magisterium of the Catholic Church, as well as the Ethical and Religious
Directives of the American bishops. From the very beginning of their work,
Ashley, deBlois, and O'Rourke clearly state their wish to write a book on

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bioethics that is about the flourishing of both the supernatural and the natural
dimensions of the human person. This means that they want to base their
findings on revelation as interpreted by ecclesiastical authority, but also on
reason, especially in those areas where the Church's magisterium has made no
definitive declarations or where further development and interpretation may be
needed.
The book is composed of three parts containing eight chapters. Part 1 gives
a brief history of moral theology and the importance of treating the human
person's real needs on the basis of his fundamental inclinations, as in St. Thomas
Aquinas's perspective. Part 2 deals with the clinical issues or the nuts and bolts
of solving some moral dilemmas of the field. This is accompanied by a very
perceptive analysis of the social-justice issues that surround bioethics. Finally,
part 3 presents a well-crafted treatment of pastoral care, laced with historical
data about the origins of hospital care, along with a look at pastoral and social
responsibilities. While the authors appeal to an abundance of scholarship from
secular sources to bolster their presentation of medical facts, they are deeply
rooted in St. Thomas. They use him as a framework as a moderate realist would,
but in a truly creative way, especially in understanding the moral virtues in
relationship to the emotions. In other words, their use of St. Thomas is not a
mere rehash of common concepts.
This fifth edition of Health Care Ethics is not a repetition of the previous four
editions but a rewriting. The authors have taken into account some of the major
problems and arguments that have emerged in the field since the last edition,
such as the Human Genome Project, stem-cell research, brain death, artificial
nutrition and hydration, and reconstructive surgery. Chapter 5 gives much
attention to moral issues surrounding psychiatry and the morality of sex
operations, which can be of great value to clergy who must deal with very
troubled persons but cannot and must not act like psychiatrists themselves.
After treating the nature of medical moral theology and its history in chapters
1 and 2, the authors move in chapter 3 to treat certain difficult topics, beginning
with human sexuality. The authors explain the Church's teaching, from the
perspective of Humanae Vitae, through the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the
further teaching of Pope John Paul II, against contraception and sterilization.
They give credit to Fr. John Harvey, O.S.F.S., for his work with homosexuals
and hold the view that the problem of homosexuality has many different causes.
Later on in the same chapter, they argue that contraception is unnatural because
it temporarily or permanently destroys a good (namely, human fertility), and so
depersonalizes sex. On the other hand, they wonderfully defend and explain why
natural family planning destroys nothing within the male or female during
conjugal acts and is the sure method of spacing children, following the reasoning
of Familiaris Consortia.
The next section of chapter 3 deals with the question of when human life
begins. Once fertilization takes place, a new unified, self-sustaining organism
begins to develop itself. This self-organizing factor is the sign of a distinct human
life in the making, not the mother's. To destroy that life in the name of women's

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163

rights, the authors argue, undermines human dignity and equality of rights,
leading to racism and "all kinds of discrimination" (73). Later in the chapter,
they maintain that the wrongness of deliberately and directly killing fetuses is an
infallible teaching of the ordinary magisterium (applying the teaching of John
Paul II's apostolic letter motu proprio Ad tuendam (idem to the encyclical
Evangelium Vitae).
When it comes to surgical sterilization, which the authors teach is inherently
wrong, they maintain that Catholic hospitals that are joined to a community
hospital that practices this evil are somehow in only mediate cooperation in evil,
if scandal can be avoided.
As in the fourth edition, the authors continue to maintain that the use of
methotrexate and salpingectomy produce indirect abortions as side effects of a
procedure that does not attack the fetus, and hence are justifiable.
Concerning rape victims, it must be said that where there is doubt about the
presence of ovulation or fertilization having occurred, the benefit must be given
to human life before rape victims are given a contraceptive, lest an abortifacient
effect occur. Yet the authors assert that "when honest doubt exists as to whether
conception has in fact taken place, the probability should favor the certain rights
of the woman" (84). On the other hand, concerning the use of a new procedure
to procure stem cells from a being whose genes have been genetically altered
such that no human is present, they assert that "where there is doubt the benefit
must be given to human life" (122). It would seem to this reviewer that in the
case of rape a test for fertilization is absolutely necessary to show that ovulation
has not occurred, to settle any doubts. But if there is any doubt whether new
human life now exists, then one should live by the principle that it is certain that
there may be a human person already present in the woman, and act
conservatively.
When it comes to GIFT as a method of generating children, the authors think
it does separate and not assist the unitive and the procreative meaning of the
marital act and so is contrary to Donum vitae. Although I would agree, I would
also note that the Holy See has yet to rule on this question.
Chapter 4 analyses questions concerning the modification of the human
body-from choosing to have cosmetic surgery to genetic engineering or trying
to enhance the genetic pool of a baby. The authors are opposed to procedures
that pursue this last aim because it may be in the long run very damaging to the
human intelligence of the child. They also judge that such an aim appears to
violate the right of the child who is expected to meet the parents' hopes and
expectations rather than exist as he is in his own right. Further on in this
chapter, the authors teach that genetic testing for major defects is very
important, even if it can be abused by parents who may be tempted to terminate
a child that is judged to be defective. Much good can come from helping parents
to cope with and plan for the future of a disabled child.
Chapter 4 closes by treating some grave problems concerning embyonic stemcell research and persons who feel they are in a wrong body, sexually.
Concerning sexual dysphoria, the authors conclude that it is not a genetic

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problem but a psychological one; they thus oppose sex-change operations. They
also think it is important for parents to choose the sex of their child when it is
born with both male and female sexual organs. This conclusion seems to ignore
the obvious solution of using the chromosomal make-up of the child (xx or xy),
which can be found in the blood, as the basis for the choice. If the blood type is
xxy-a rare phenomenon-then it would seem essential to make an intelligent
choice based not on personal preference but what is beneficial to the child.
Chapter 5, on mental health, is truly a wonderful exposition of the problems
facing parents and doctors dealing with mental illness. The authors give a overview of the four major problems-depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia,
and obsessive-compulsive disorder-which can further be divided into about two
hundred kinds of mental problems. The cures offered, together with an historical
introduction of their evolution, are analyzed: psychosurgery, shock treatments,
psychotherapeutic drugs (not the solution but only a help), and psychotherapies.
Later in the chapter, the authors deal with neuroses and how therapy is different
from case to case. The overall goal for treatment in any case is greater
psychological freedom, based upon realistic perfection of reality.
Therapy can present some problems, morally speaking, ranging from
attempting to control behavior to the detriment of human freedom, to problems
of codependency on the therapists. The section on addictions is very informative,
with its treatment of drug use and alcoholism, along with a brief treatment of the
problems of masturbation and gambling addictions. The authors favor the use of
the famous twelve steps of AA to overcome these addictions.
Chapter 6 deals with the issues of suffering and death, which ultimately are
effects of original and personal sin but not necessarily pains inflicted by God.
The authors recognize that the criterion of brain death now supplements that of
a nonbeating heart, which was previously regarded as the only sign of death.
They refer to the angiogram and isotopes as a means of discovering whether
blood is circulating in the brain. If there is no blood, then the brain is dead.
Unfortunately, the authors do not provide a reference to any medical study of
this procedure, nor to the arguments against it.
The authors go into the Terri Schiavo case only from the point of view of
who should have decided her treatment and seem to agree with the civil courts
that eventually allowed her husband to remove her feeding tube. They give the
date when she died, but some thinkers argue that she did not die so much as she
was killed by starvation. For reasons of their own, the authors apparently did not
want to enter the morass of this controversy.
Truth-telling, handling of the corpse, and autopsies are discussed with much
insight. The authors distinguish euthanasia from allowing someone to die and
withholding or withdrawing life support. Physically, these actions have the same
result (bodily death); morally, however, they are different. The authors use Pope
John Paul H's test to bolster their assertion. The distinction between ordinary
and extraordinary medical means is developed as well, showing that these
principles are not moral absolutes practically, even though theoretically they are
clear and true. Prudence has to decide many of these questions in the concrete

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165

when it comes to discovering what procedures have more benefits or more
burdens.
With regard to the care of permanently unconscious patients, the authors
remind us that the papal address of 2004 on tubal feeding and hydration of those
in the vegetative state says that this is normal care "in principle," implying that
there may be cases where the burdens outweigh the benefits, and so suggest a
prudential judgment of an exception. Under certain conditions, therefore, this
feeding and hydration may be extraordinary and, so, morally optional. I shall
return to this problem at the end of my review.
Chapter 7 is a fine example of describing what the person-centered profession
of medicine means, namely, care that is holistic and takes into consideration
spiritual and emotional well-being as well as healing the body. "Thus authentic
medicine has both priestly and scientific dimensions" (207). The authors give a
short history of what it has meant to be a doctor, then offer a theology of what
it means to be a Christian doctor and why confidentiality is so important in
treatment. This is all in contrast to "for-profit" doctors and hospitals who treat
the patient as a consumer and the consequent failure of alleged "managed care."
Also within this section, one learns how social-justice principles, such as the
common good, subsidiarity, participation, and functionalism, and sound public
policies apply to a just healthcare policy morally and politically. The authors also
cover the importance of Catholic identity and what it means in the healthcare
system to taking care of the poor.
Chapter 8 on pastoral care is a fine exposition for nonordained ministers in
a hospital setting. It should be read by those religious sisters and laypersons who
have the ministry of consoling and counseling patients in pain or close to death.
The authors show how a nonordained minister can do a great deal in preparing
the dying for confession by assisting them to make a perfect act of contrition, but
they overlook the concept of spiritual communion, which could also be helpful
to patients unable to receive the Blessed Sacrament.
Overall, this edition of Health Care Ethics seems to be best edition so far for
beginners in the field of medical moral theology or. Catholic bioethics. I do,
however, have the following serious reservations.
It is true in the abstract that scandal does not necessarily follow from joining
up with secular hospitals who practice sterilization and other immoral acts in the
name of so-called "good medicine" or "legal medicine." However, one wonders
is this is the case in the concrete. If Catholic hospitals have a mission to witness
to the Church's teaching mission, collaboration here seems to undermine their
whole apostolate, and the force of evangelization against the culture of death is
at least greatly muted.
While the authors may be correct concerning the use of methotrexate in
ectopic pregnancies, prudence would suggest that probable cause exists for the
opposite conclusion. It would have been better to treat their opinion as if it were
yet not allowed until it is more clear that these methods do not directly attack
the fetus. If the fetus is already dead, as in the vast majority of cases, there is no
problem. Nevertheless, I would agree with the National Catholic Bioethics

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Center when it says: "Because less is known about the effects of methotrexate on
the embryo and the possibility of the direct destruction of its life, the position
of the National Catholic Bioethics Center is that this drug ought not be used in
the treatment of ectopic pregnancy at the present time" (Catholic Health Care
Ethics: A Manual for Ethics Committees, Peter J. Cataldo and Albert S.
Moraczewski, O.P., eds. [Boston: The National Catholic Bioethics Center,
2001], part 3, lOB/5). In fact, the authors assert this caution in another area
when it comes to holding back on oocyte assisted reprogramming until more
research is done with animal experiments, something agreed upon by the
proponents of this method of extracting stem cells from these beings who they
claim are not human embryos.
I found it strange that adult stem cells were not treated because they have
produced around ninety-eight cures, while embryonic stem cells at this point in
time have produced no cures. Much more could have been said with profit on
this point.
Further, the authors are inclined to consider tubal feeding and hydration in
principle to be burdensome rather than benefitting someone by keeping him
alive. One could interpret them to mean that a family member being
psychologically disturbed by the condition of someone in a persistent vegetative
state would be burden enough to warrant a decision to cease feeding. This would
mean that getting rid of the person by starvation would solve the personal
burden of the caregiver. Ordinarily, feeding people with a tube is not
burdensome, though there can be exceptional cases where this can occur. By
contrast, the authors seem to be saying that tube feeding is too burdensome, but
in exceptional cases it may be of benefit. They claim, erroneously, that their
position is that of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia.
Likewise, the book does not cover the burning issues of condom use by AIDSinfected married couples, the adoption of embryos, the use of vaccines taken
from an aborted fetus, and the moral problems revolving around endometriosis
and others questions occurring in pregnancy, such as induced labor and
craniotomy.
The authors cannot be expected to cover everything that pertains to medical
moral questions. Many of the conclusions and principles they have articulated
provide a basis for solid ethical conclusions and applications. In certain
problematic sections, the theologian can easily go to other authors and discover
varying points of view. Until the Holy See makes some interventions in this
whole area of bioethics, many questions still remain open. This can become a
great teaching moment for the Church's magisterium.
BASIL COLE, 0.P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

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Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It. By JEFFREY
BURTON RUSSELL. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. 210.
$28.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-516006-1.

At Regensburg, on 12 September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI spoke eloquently
of Christian Hellenization, the synthesis of revelation with Greek thought that
began in the Septuagint. He then called attention to de-Hellenization as, in
effect, deconstructing Christian thought. Precisely such deconstruction is treated
by Jeffrey Burton Russell in hi§ analysis of the eclipse of the concept of heaven
in the past five hundred years. Engaging and erudite as usual, Russell has in this
new work contributed to intellectual history and to the history of Christianity
and-particularly interesting to readers of this journal-he has done so in a
volume valuable for demonstrating and contextualizing the diminution of
classical Christian philosophy in the Western world. Set clearly in their historical context are changes in philosophy of science, philosophy of language, theology,
and biblical studies as well.
Founder of the "history of concepts" (Historically Speaking 3 .4 [2002], 1720), Jeffrey Burton Russell has produced several masterful interdisciplinary
volumes tracing specific ideas from antiquity to the present. After he had
presented the history of the concept of the Devil in five volumes, arranged
chronologically, Heaven became his focus (as a welcome refrigerium). A History
of Heaven: The Singing Silence (1997) covered antiquity through the fifteenth
century. Now Paradise Mislaid treats how the classical Christian view of heaven
"was modified, fragmented, denied, and defended" in the last five centuries (13).
The history of a concept can be studied, regardless of whether the concept has
a referent beyond the imagination: "A history of heaven, then, is a history of the
human concept of heaven, and that is true whether or not heaven exists in itself"
(2). An orthodox Catholic, Russell affirms the reality of heaven, yet he uses his
historian's perspective effectively to present a discussion accessible to others and
in this light refers to himself as a "lapsed atheist" (1). He uses the topic as a lens
to disclose changes in faith more broadly. This is quietly evangelical scholarship.
Put another way: In the Consolation of Philosophy Boethius can be
understood to have set himself the task of exploring how far reason without
revelation can take one in theological truth. Analogously, in Paradise Mislaid
Russell has taken on the task of presenting a Catholic analysis of the last five
centuries while writing in terms accessible to a general modern readership which
has had a secular education-or, as he notes, "inducation": "The newer kind of
education might better be called 'inducation' of ideology, because the root of
'education,' the Latin educere (to 'draw out') was lost" (145). A strength of the
volume is Russell's awareness that people whose formation has been of the
contemporary, post-Enlightenment ilk need unobtrusive explanation of terms
(such as metaphysics) and ideas that were common knowledge only a few
generations ago. Importantly, the author is astute in discerning and explaining
metaphysical assumptions within various intellectual and social theories; one
instance of many is found in his remarks on the thought of Emile Durkheim,

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who invented the term "sociology of religion" in 1898 (112). Philosophers and
schools of philosophy are treated in their emergence and also in their influence
upon Christianity and ideas about heaven.
This is a fascinating and insightful book. As Russell observes, "The classical
Christian concept of heaven-the baseline against which anomalies can be
measured-developed over fifteen hundred years and suffused Western thought
through the sixteenth century" (5). The first chapter summarizes the major facets
of belief in heaven before modernity and lays out Russell's methodology. For
some readers, this will make the initial chapter rather demanding, so it is well to
note how rich the volume as a whole is. The rest of the book sets forth cogently
how changes in metaphysics undermined for many the primary bases for faith:
the Bible, tradition, reason, and experience. The breadth of the bibliography is
daunting, but made accessible through this learned book and its notes.
The Protestant Reformation involved the rejection of traditional metaphysics
as not justified by sola scriptura (a point also made at Regensburg). "Hyperliteralism" now interpreted "every biblical text in the overt sense, dispensing
with the three classical metaphorical meanings whenever possible" (23). Appreciation of metaphor and typology diminished. Copernican cosmology is often
seen as the major reason for the decline in the sixteenth through seventeenth
centuries of the metaphor of heaven as "above," yet in chapter 2 ("Up") Russell
goes further to limn the heart of the philosophical change of the time:
The shift from essential to quantitative thinking is perhaps the most
important in the history of thought, far more than the Copernican
shift. That heaven exists is not a disturbing proposition for an
essentialist. That heaven exists is a problematic proposition for a
materialist and an impossible one for a physicalist. (30)

A dissection is provided, in chapter 3, of "eighteenth-century skepticism,
which failed to be sufficiently skeptical of its own skepticism" (43). When
"reasonableness" ceded to "rationality," the classical recognition of the authority
of the Bible and of tradition and of reason were undermined. However, the
Enlightenment then "provoked a reaction in the direction of emotions" and
"morphed" into Romanticism, as seen in "the narcissistic life of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau" (66). With Rousseau's valorization of basic feelings as good and the
source of value, "The trajectory of sentimentality was thus set" (67). Rousseau,
Russell observes, "might have been bewildered by the eventual perversion of his
ideas of 'liberty' by Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot" (67).
Chapter 4 ("Ahead") explores the nineteenth-century adherence to the idea
of Progress both by physicalists and in various idealist philosophical systems.
August Comte applied physicalist ideas of progress to social thought: "He
believed of course that he himself was in the final and best stage" (72), the
"universal brotherhood of man." Characteristically, Russell correlates this
influential idea with its contemporary artistic expression, in this case, Schiller's
"Ode to Joy," set to music by Beethoven. The nineteenth century also, however,
saw the "full-bodied emergence of antitheism" (73).

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The next chapter ("Back") shows how "Evolution eclipsed heaven more than
Copernicus had done" (83). The effect upon ethics was dire. Although,
lamentably, there have always been "Christians and others who thought and
acted in racist and anti-Semitic ways," until Progressivism "there had been no
theories of racism in the West" (85). Lucidly Russell distinguishes between "the
scientific theory of evolution ('evolution science') on the one hand and two
metaphysical theories on the other," the latter being "theo-evolution," which
"maintains that evolution is guided and intelligently designed by God" and
"physicalist evolution" which "maintains that evolution is entirely without any
cosmic purpose or design" (88). Although only "physicalist evolution" is
incompatible with heaven, in popular thought "evolution science" and
"physicalist evolution" are often fused. The range from mild skepticism to
nihilism is shown among the influential philosophers of the nineteenth century,
culminating in Nietzsche, who set "the springboard for twentieth-century
Existentialism and for a number of other movements from Deconstruction ...
to Nazism" (104).
The psychological theories and social sciences of the twentieth century are the
subject of chapter 6 ("In and Out"), with Freud and Weber dismissing religious
conviction as neurotic, while Jung held religion to be valid. Readers will quite
enjoy Russell's incisive charge that common to twentieth-century intellectual and
social movements is a characteristic destructive to faith including belief in
heaven: "the use of jargon and sloppy writing to disguise muddled thinking"
(110). Because Pragmatism vaunted "adaptability," soon "Technique replaced
philosophy, technology replaced wisdom, process replaced goal" (111). Among
significant developments Russell treats, for instance, Whitehead's "original
variant of pantheism" which became the basis for Process Theology (119) and
Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy and Karl Barth (122).
Admirably clear is Russell's contrast of textual criticism of the Bible, evident
from late antiquity onwards, to the "historical biblical criticism" arising in the
nineteenth century. It is "less criticism than interpretation" for it imposes
"contemporary and often ephemeral sociological, anthropological, psychological,
and political assumptions on the texts" (123 ). He proceeds to identify the logical
flaws of circular reasoning, begging the question, and the primitivist fallacy
endemic in such criticism. Moreover,
The impact of higher criticism can scarcely be exaggerated. Demonstrating "what
the Bible says" was replaced by theories first about what the various authors of the
Bible supposedly meant to say and more recently by what scholars can make of the
texts regardless of what the authors meant to say. (125)

Physicalism and deconstruction became the two dominant world views by the
end of the twentieth century (chap. 7). "Both drained the world of meaning: The
first reduced reality to only one of its aspects; the other denied reality
altogether" (134). Deftly Russell identifies the metaphysics of physicalism: the
"belief that the only valid statements about reality (other than mathematics) are
statements about physical objects, movements, and forces; there is no real world

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other than the physical world" (135). Illogically, but across the disciplines,
physicalists such as Wilson, Futuyma, Lewontin, Dawkins, and Dennett use
"axioms instead of arguments, as if materialism were self-evident" (136). This
constitutes a departure from tradition, for "before the invention of physicalism,
religion and science usually worked hand in hand" (138). A clear presentation
of the anthropic principle and its implications for the likelihood of intelligent
design shows that "the preponderance of evidence has come to favor theism over
atheism" (143).
Deconstruction, "a sophisticated defense of relativism and solipsism" (146),
erodes ethics, leaving deconstructionists without a basis "to fault Hitler and
Stalin" (14 7). Although the absurdity of deconstruction "will soon be recognized
by everyone," Russell observes, it has deprived generations of students in
language and history departments "of the ability to encounter, understand,
commune with, and argue with great ideas and great writing. When students
have no connection with Augustine or Dante, with Calvin or Donne, they can
have little sense of heaven" (148).
In sum, the three stages of de-Hellenization that Pope Benedict outlined at
Regensburg are detailed in Russell's Paradise Mislaid.
The generous index greatly enhances the usefulness of this volume. Moreover,
as the preface notes, the index also functions as a reference and glossary: one can
look up persons to find their dates as well as where they are discussed in the
book, or look up a philosophical term and find the page where it is defined as
well as where it is treated in the volume. The coining of words sets milestones
in intellectual history, and the index readily helps the reader find again the page
which sets forth the first attestation of "atheist," "skeptic," "rationality,"
"phenomenon," "development," "eugenics," "evangelicalism," "fundamentalism"
(defined in 1895 at Niagara), etc. The redefinition of "nature" in 1662 and the
modern definitions of "science," etc., are likewise retrievable through the index.
Apt examples and deft analogies spark this volume, just as one would expect
from a scholarly author with a keen appreciation of the value of metaphor,
especially "depth metaphors" (i.e., ones that are particularly true), everlasting
wells inviting contemplation and sustaining it. Such metaphors "intend to point
toward ultimate truth" and "bring us closer to reality, not by narrowing things
down but by opening things up" (15). "Poetry is at least as essential to
understanding heaven as logic" (3). Therefore, along with the philosophers,
theologians, and scientists of the past five hundred years, also quoted are John
Donne, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Goethe, Rilke, Gerard Manley Hopkins,
Annie Dillard, T.S. Eliot, and a lyrical anonymous poet. Gratitude to God and
hope are delicate leitmotifs to the volume; each chapter concludes with an
understated affirmation of faith, culminating on the last page with the most
direct affirmation, "Taste and see."
CATHERINE BROWN TKACZ

Gonzaga University
Spokane, Washington