The Thomist 83 (2019): 321-55

THE SPECIFICATION OF ACTION IN ST. THOMAS:
NONMOTIVATING CONDITIONS IN THE OBJECT OF
INTENTION
STEPHEN L. BROCK
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

I

N A LECTURE delivered in 1982, Elizabeth Anscombe
voiced some reservations about the principle of double
effect.1 She said that she had come to realize that it was not
really a single principle, but rather a “package deal,” combining
a number of principles or criteria that are not intrinsically
connected.2 She suggested splitting it up and keeping only a part,
which she called the “principle of side-effects.” This principle is
rather modest. For one thing, it concerns only one kind of side
effect, namely death. Other harms or evils are not mentioned.
What it says is that the exceptionless moral prohibition on
murder “does not cover all bringing about of deaths which are
not intended.”3 Of course it does not say that the prohibition
covers no such cases. Nonintended killings can be murder too.
But neither does the principle of side effects determine which of
them are murder and which are not. That requires other
principles. Here Anscombe proposed only one, which she took
to be obvious and to cover a good many cases: namely, that the
1

G. E. M. Anscombe, “Medalist’s Address: Action, Intention, and ‘Double
Effect’,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 56
(1982): 12-25.
2
Ibid., 22-24.
3
Ibid., 21. She does think that the prohibition covers intentional killing, with
only “the relevant ‘public’ exceptions” (ibid.).
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“intrinsic certainty of the death of the victim, or its great likelihood from the nature of the case,” would render the act
murderous.4
Anscombe went on to protest against the ascription of the
principle of double effect to St. Thomas Aquinas. Often, in fact,
the principle is said to be present, at least implicitly, in Thomas’s
treatment of killing in self-defense.5 In part, this is because of his
requirement of “proportionate means” in defending oneself. But
Anscombe insisted—quite rightly, I think—that this requirement
has nothing to do with the double-effect “doctrine of a proportion of good over evil in the upshot.”6 She also declared that, if
we want Thomas’s view on responsibility for evil consequences
generally (and not just death), the place to look is not his discussion of self-defense, but rather a passage earlier in the Summa
theologiae—question 20, article 5 of the Prima secundae—in
which he explains the relation of a consequence (eventus sequens)
to an action’s goodness or badness.7 She closed the lecture by
quoting that passage, without comment.
A good way to begin my own discussion will be to summarize
that very passage. Then, still in the first section, I shall summarize
a related passage, also from the Summa theologiae, on whether
sins are graver, the more harm they cause. In light of these two
passages, I shall argue that Thomas’s treatment of nonintended
effects that follow per se on intentional action—I call them headon effects—does not accord well with the usual understanding of
the distinction between intended effects and side effects. This is
because he presents these effects as directly voluntary. In section
2, I try to correct two common readings, which I think mistaken,

4

Ibid., 24. By “the nature of the case” she seems to mean the nature of the
action performed. Thus, immediately following this remark, she exemplifies it
with a case of surgery aimed at getting an organ, in which the patient’s death is
“pretty certain from the nature of the operation.”
5
STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7.
6
Anscombe, “Medalist’s Address,” 24-25.
7
Translations of Thomas in this paper are mine. For references to some of
his works I shall be citing the Leonine edition: Sancti Thomae Aquinatis doctoris
angelici Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII. P. M. edita, cura et studio Fratrum
Praedicatorum (Rome and Paris: Leonine Commission, 1882-).

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of Thomas’s discussion of killing in self-defense. As it happens,
they are readings to which at least one of the authors of the New
Natural Law theory subscribes. Then, in section 3, I shall start to
home in on the central thesis of this paper, which is that, for
Thomas, features of an action that do not motivate the agent, or
do not provide reasons for acting, can fall within the agent’s
intention, and can sometimes even specify the action. As a way
of both arguing for this thesis and showing why it matters, I
undertake to contrast Thomas and the New Natural Law theory
on the question of the scope of the object of intention. Section 4
therefore presents some passages from writings by the theory’s
proponents that illustrate their view of the object of intention.
Section 5 lays out my reading of Thomas on the matter. Here I
argue, among other things, that for him something can be
intended merely per accidens and nevertheless not be praeter
intentionem, and that it can therefore be a factor in the
specification of action. In section 6, I try to characterize the issue
in general theoretical terms.8
I. HEAD-ON EFFECTS
The passage to which Anscombe refers is about whether a
consequence can add to an act’s goodness or badness. The answer
that Thomas defends is no. Generally speaking, an act’s consequences do not affect its own quality. But Thomas acknowledges
important exceptions. If the agent of a bad act foresees bad
consequences, yet goes ahead with it, that shows him to have an
even more disordered will. Moreover, any consequence—even
unforeseen—that “follows on such an act per se and for the most
part,” shows the act itself to be better or worse “in its kind” (ex
suo genere).9 This last point, that per se consequences reflect an
act’s kind, is what most interests me. The other passage that I

8
I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful
comments and suggestions.
9
Perhaps his general answer is negative because he thinks most consequences
are neither per se nor foreseen.

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

wish to summarize—question 73, article 8 of the Prima
secundae—will help bring out the interest of it.
In the latter passage, Thomas is discussing whether a sin is
graver, the more harm it causes.10 This time his overall answer is
yes. But he distinguishes four ways in which harm can aggravate
sin. First, there is harm that is foreseen and intended, as by a
murderer or a robber. Such harm is itself an object of sin, and so
of course it aggravates the sin, quite directly. The second sort is
harm that is foreseen but not intended. This also aggravates sin,
but only indirectly, by showing a will so bent on the sin as to
accept a harm that the agent would otherwise avoid. Here
Thomas gives the example of someone who crosses a field in
order to fornicate and thereby knowingly harms the crops. In the
third place are harms that are neither foreseen nor intended and
that follow on the sinful act merely per accidens. These do not
directly aggravate the act itself. However, they are imputed to the
sinner, as owing to his negligence: he fails to avoid them when
he could and should do so (inasmuch as he could and should
avoid the sin itself).11 Finally, some harms are neither foreseen
nor intended, but follow on the sinful act per se. An example is
the scandal caused by fornicating publicly.12 This sort of harm
aggravates directly. “For whatever follows on a sin per se,”
Thomas explains, “pertains somehow to its kind.”
It is important to understand what Thomas means by saying
that something follows per se. He does not mean simply that it is
foreseeable. Even results that can be foreseen with certainty—
necessary results—may not be per se. Their certainty may be
owing to extrinsic, merely accidental factors, rather than to
anything intrinsic to the act itself, anything in the act’s own kind.
That is to say, to use Anscombe’s phrase, the certainty may not
be “from the nature of the case.” For example, given a person’s
character, it may be quite certain that she will be scandalized by
another’s action, and yet the action itself not be intrinsically

10
STh I-II, q. 73, a. 8. I am summing up the first two thirds or so of the
corpus.
11
Cf. STh II-II, q. 64, a. 8.
12
Cf. STh II-II, q. 43, a. 1, ad 4.

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scandalous.13 Most Catholic moralists hold that the nonintended
death of a fetus resulting from a hysterectomy performed on a
pregnant woman is like this. The hysterectomy itself does not
constitute a lethal action upon the fetus. Indeed, it is not trained
upon the fetus at all. It only, as it were, removes an obstacle to
the fetus’s death. The death of the fetus is certain and necessary,
but nevertheless it is only a per accidens result, not per se.14
But let us consider more closely what Thomas is saying about
unforeseen, nonintended harms. As we have just seen, those that
follow per se on a sin aggravate the sin directly, while those that
follow per accidens do not directly aggravate the sin, but they do
so indirectly, being ascribed to culpable negligence. This
difference is, I think, an application of a distinction drawn early
in the Prima secundae, between two ways in which things may be
voluntary.15 Let me explain this distinction and why I think it
applies here.
To be voluntary is to be caused by the will. But something may
be caused by the will either directly or indirectly.16 Directly
voluntary effects proceed from the will inasmuch as it is active,
as heating proceeds from heat.17 Indirectly voluntary effects
proceed from the will inasmuch as it does not act, as the sinking
of a ship is attributed to the ship’s pilot insofar as he leaves off

13
See STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3. For other examples, see the sed contra of STh I-II,
q. 20, a. 5.
14
On Thomas on necessary per accidens effects, see Stephen L. Brock, Action
and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1998), 129-32.
15
Thus in STh II-II, q. 64, a. 8, using language very similar to the relevant
lines of STh I-II, q. 73, a. 8 (“dare operam rei illicitae,” etc.), Thomas explicitly
characterizes effects brought about through culpable negligence as indirectly
voluntary.
16
STh I-II, q. 6, a. 3.
17
When he distinguishes between scandal that follows on an act per se and
scandal that follows only per accidens, Thomas calls the former “active” scandal:
STh II-II, q. 43, a. 1, ad 4. Of course, the example of an act of heating that
proceeds from heat hardly serves to illustrate the idea of a per se effect that the
agent does not intend. Thomas is not concerned with that idea in STh I-II, q. 6,
a. 3.

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steering the ship.18 However, things are not attributed to the will
in this indirect way, by its not acting, unless the circumstances are
such that it could and should act in such a way as to prevent them.
By contrast, things that result directly from the will’s act are
always attributed to the will as their cause. No special circumstances are needed.
Now as we saw, in question 73, article 8, harm that is ascribed
to the sinner’s negligence is said to aggravate his sin in an indirect
way, by the fact that he fails to avoid it when he could and should.
This is the language of the indirectly voluntary.19 Contrasted with
this is harm that follows per se on a sin. It directly aggravates the
sin, even if it is unforeseen and not intended. The very contrast
already suggests that this sort of harm is to be regarded as directly
voluntary. Elsewhere, in fact, Thomas is quite clear that something can be said to result directly from the will’s act even when
the will does not directly bear upon or directly tend toward that
result. This is the case when the will does directly bear upon or
tend toward the result’s cause—the so-called voluntary in cause.20
(Presumably the cause itself must be direct or per se, tending of
itself to produce such a result.)21 Moreover, both in the article
about consequences and in the one about harms, Thomas tells us
that per se results somehow reflect or pertain to the act’s own
kind. He is obviously talking about the act’s moral kind, which is
to say, its kind as a human, voluntary act. Since the act itself is
directly voluntary, surely anything that pertains to its moral kind
18

I do not think the example in STh I-II, q. 73, a. 8 of crossing a field to
fornicate and harming the crops is a case of indirectly voluntary harm. The harm
to the crops seems to follow per se on the act of crossing the field. What is
indirect is not the harm’s voluntariness, but only its aggravation of the sin of
fornication. It is not a function of this sin’s own object or kind. By contrast, the
scandal given by public fornication is a function of the act’s being fornication.
19
See STh I-II, q. 6, a. 3.
20
See STh II-II, q. 77, a. 7. Here the voluntary in cause is explicitly
distinguished from the indirectly voluntary. It is directly voluntary—a direct
effect of the will, one attributed to the will’s act—because the will’s act does
bear upon or tend toward it (fertur in ipsum), albeit not directly or in itself but
in its cause.
21
In ibid., an example of the voluntary in cause is the behavior that results
from intentionally getting drunk.

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is as well. It seems clear, then, that in the passage on harms
Thomas is saying that a harm that is not intended or even foreseen can be directly voluntary,22 namely, if it follows per se on a
voluntary act.
This is striking. As it is usually formulated, the principle of
double effect supposes that all nonintended harms are either not
voluntary at all or only indirectly voluntary (in the above sense),
depending upon whether or not the agent could and should have
acted in such a way as to avoid them. The principle gives criteria
for deciding. But such criteria are irrelevant to directly voluntary
harms, and what I am arguing is that, for Thomas, a nonintended
and even nonforeseen harm may be directly voluntary.
A good example of this is offered in a passage from the
disputed questions De malo:
A necessity that is on the supposition of something subject to the will does not
take away the quality of mortal sin. Thus, if a sword is thrust into someone’s
vital organs, the person necessarily dies; but the blade-thrust is voluntary. Hence
the death of the person who is smitten by the blade is imputed to the one who
smites as a mortal fault.23

Clearly Thomas means that the death’s being intended or not is
incidental. It is imputed to the agent in any case, and this means
that it is voluntary of him in any case. This makes sense if indeed
it is directly voluntary in any case.
I do not mean to suggest that Thomas’s treatment of nonintended per se effects implies that there are kinds of actions
which the principle of double effect would allow but which he
would prohibit. His text, after all, is about harms following per
se on sinful kinds of actions. There is no risk that the principle of
double effect allow such actions, because it rules out all actions
that are sinful in kind. But what especially interests me is the
22

I take it that Thomas is assuming that the agent does know (or at least
could and should know?), in a general way, that such a result follows on that
kind of act. What is not actually foreseen is this instance of the result, as
following on this instance of the kind. The agent’s not having bothered to
consider the consequences of what he is doing does not exclude their being
voluntary of him—even directly voluntary.
23
De Malo, q. 3, a. 10.

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connection that Thomas posits, quite generally, between an act’s
per se results and its kind. Such results “somehow pertain” to the
kind. Not everything that is outside an action’s kind, then, is
merely extraneous or incidental to it. The action is not, so to
speak, hermetically sealed within its kind, such that nothing else
can directly qualify it. Even though the public fornicator does not
intend to scandalize, and his action’s kind is not plain scandal, it
is still an intrinsically scandalous act.24 Anscombe provides
another example: “Surgery would be thought murderous, even
though it was not done in order to kill, but, say, to get an organ
for someone else, if the death of the subject were expected as a
near consequence, pretty certain from the nature of the
operation.”25
Thomas even indicates that a nonintended result can aggravate
“infinitely,” that is, make an act be mortally sinful which without
that result would not be so. He grants that remote and unforeseen
results cannot do this, but a result that is conjoined (coniunctus)
and foreseen can. “Thus, shooting an arrow is not a mortal sin,
but shooting an arrow in conjunction with killing a man is a
mortal sin; and likewise, not to repel a passion that inclines
toward mortal sin is not without mortal sin.”26 I assume that
“shooting an arrow in conjunction with killing a man” means
shooting at what one knows to be a man—but not necessarily
because it is a man or because he can thereby be killed. It does
not matter whether one intends to kill the man with the arrow,
or to commit the sin toward which the passion inclines. These
results still aggravate the acts and make them mortal sins. Now,
Thomas cannot be saying that the result is constitutive of the act’s
kind. He insists repeatedly that an action’s kind is constituted by
its object, and that this is something intended.27 But a per se result
24

Cf. STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3, obj. 3 and ad 3.
Anscombe, “Medalist’s Address,” 24 (emphasis added).
26
De Malo, q. 3, a. 10, ad 5.
27
For example, in STh I-II, q. 1, a. 3; q. 72, aa. 1, 5, 8; II-II, q. 39, a. 1; q.
43, a. 3; q. 59, a. 2; q. 64, a. 7. Especially instructive, again, is the example of
scandal in STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3. If one is not intending to lead another into sin,
but this result follows per se on one’s action, then one is guilty of active scandal
(ibid., ad 4); yet one’s action does not have the species of scandal. See also IV
25

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is per se precisely because the act’s order to it pertains somehow
to the act’s kind, and hence to the act’s object. Acts with different
per se results must differ correspondingly in their objects, and this
difference may in turn make for different kinds, even kinds that
differ infinitely in gravity.
It would be helpful to have terms that reflect the difference
between per se and per accidens results of actions. I would suggest
restricting the expression “side effect” to per accidens results.
Would anyone call a death resulting from a sword-thrust to the
vitals a side effect, even if the agent did not intend it? For such
per se results, I propose the term “head-on.”28
II. SELF-DEFENSE AGAIN
An objection to the very notion of nonintended results that
follow per se can be drawn from Thomas’s discussion of selfdefense (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7). Moral acts, he says, take their
kinds from what is intended and not from what is outside
intention, since this is per accidens.29 If it is per accidens, how can
Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 3. A description may be true of an action,
even true of it per se, yet not express its essential species. (Here it is crucial to
distinguish different senses of “per se”; see below, the first paragraph of section
2.) As Thomas explains in STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3, obj. 3 and ad 3, a sin’s being
performed in the presence of others is only a circumstance and does not give a
species. Contrast this with cases in which there is a nonmotivating condition of
the action’s very object; see the examples of sacrilege cited below at nn. 70, 84,
and 85, and in n. 92. That sort of condition does give a species.
28
I would gladly call them “direct.” But this term is used in magisterial
documents of disputed interpretation, and among Catholic moralists it is
contentious. The New Natural Law proponents restrict it to intended effects.
29
See also the other texts cited in n. 27, as well as V Ethic., lect. 13; and VII
Sent., lect. 9 (Leonine ed., 47/2:309-10, ll. 1-38; and 47/2:417, ll. 50-57). I find
it odd that, on this point, editions and discussions of STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7 usually
point only to STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3 (the text on scandal), or STh I-II, q. 72, a. 1
as well. Surely, if we want to stay within the Secunda secundae, more pertinent
than q. 43, a. 3 is q. 59, a. 2, which is nearer to q. 64, a. 7 and regards the same
virtue, justice. And if we look back to the Prima secundae, we find what is surely
the most important text on this point, standing almost at the beginning of the
entire Secunda pars and therefore indicating just how fundamental the idea is in
Thomas’s moral thought: q. 1, a. 3. It is true that the term “intention” and its

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it ever be per se? The answer, I believe, is simply that the terms
per se and per accidens are equivocal. In one sense, only what is
in a thing’s essence or definition belongs to it per se, and
everything else is per accidens. But in another sense, not only
what is in a thing’s essence, but also what follows on its essence
either necessarily or for the most part belongs to it per se, and
only what derives from an extrinsic source, as though by mere
coincidence, is per accidens.30 In this sense, what belongs to a
thing per se is sometimes not a species of it, but rather some sort
of property. To cite an old Scholastic example, this is how
risibility—capacity for laughter—belongs to humans. Socrates’
species is man, not risibility, but risibility follows upon the
essence of man, and in this sense Socrates is risible per se. In the
sphere of action, then, anything in an action’s essence must be
within the agent’s intention. But something outside intention can
follow on the essence necessarily or for the most part. It is not
merely coincidental. It follows on the action in virtue of the
action itself, and in that sense it belongs to the action per se. If it
can fail in rare cases, this is because occasionally some extrinsic
impediment can appear. Likewise, other results might follow on
cognates are not given great prominence there (although there are two
instances). But the article’s very thesis is that “human acts properly take their
species from an end,” and to function as an act’s end is nothing other than to
be intended.
30
See STh I-II, q. 7, a. 2, ad 2: some accidents are “altogether per accidens,”
while others are “per se.” Here Thomas is discussing the so-called circumstances
of actions, which are treated by the arts and sciences that deal with actions, as
accidents of actions (cf. the previous article). He says that they are of the per se
type, this being the type that can be considered by an art or a science. On
circumstances, see also STh I-II, q. 18, a. 3, ad 2. Earlier references, in the
Summa theologiae, to the general distinction between per se accidents and those
that are per accidens include I, q. 3, a. 6; and I, q. 77, a. 6. On the fact that no
science treats of what is entirely per accidens and in no way per se, see VI
Metaphys., lect. 2 (Thomas Aquinas, Commentaria in Metaphysicam Aristotelis,
ed. M.-R. Cathala, O.P., and R. M. Spiazzi, O.P. [Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1950], 358-59, nos. 1172-79); also I Post. Anal., lect. 14 (Leonine ed., 1*/2,
53-54, ll. 1-92). On the fact that the same science treats a subject and its per se
accidents, see II Phys., lect. 3 (Leonine ed., 2:62 [no. 2]); III Metaphys., lect. 6
(Marietti ed., 133 [no. 395]); and IV Metaphys., lect. 1 (Marietti ed., 180-81
[no. 529]).

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the action on account of the coincidental presence of some other
cause.
Similarly equivocal, I think, is the notion of praeter
intentionem, “outside intention.” Thomas distinguishes between
those things outside an agent’s intention that are not intended at
all, and those to which the intention does somehow extend. Per
se consequences are among the latter.
Just as a per se effect of a natural cause is what follows according to the demand
of its form, so the effect of a cause acting deliberately is what occurs by the
agent’s intention; hence whatever comes about in the effect outside the
intention is per accidens. And I say this if what is outside the intention follows
rarely; for what is always or frequently adjoined to the effect falls under the
same intention. For it is foolish to say that someone intends something, and
does not will that which is often or always adjoined to it.31

That last sentence further corroborates the view that such effects
are directly voluntary. Again,
sometimes an accident of some effect is joined to it in few cases and rarely; and
then the agent need not in any way intend the per accidens effect while he
intends the effect per se. But sometimes an accident of this type is attached either
always or for the most part to the effect principally intended; and then the
accident cannot be separated from the intention of the agent. If, therefore,
something evil is joined only infrequently to the good that the will intends, it is
possible to be excused from sin; for example, if someone cutting down a tree in
a forest where people rarely pass kills a person by cutting down the tree. But if
the evil is joined either always or for the most part to the good that is intended
per se, one is not excused from sin although he does not intend this evil per se.32

Following Joseph Boyle, I think we can say that such effects are
intended per accidens.33
Surprisingly, however, in the face of the very passage just
quoted, Boyle asserts categorically that question 64, article 7
allows a private person to defend himself in such a way that the
aggressor’s death follows “naturally”—that is, per se. Boyle grants

31

II Phys., lect. 8 (Leonine ed., 2:79-80, no. 8).
De Malo, q. 1, a. 3, ad 15.
33
Joseph Boyle, “Praeter intentionem in Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 42
(1978): 660.
32

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that the “use [in ad 4] of ‘quandoque’ [sometimes] to describe the
frequency of the deadly consequence’s following from an act of
self-defense suggests that the aggressor’s death is not a natural
and totally predictable consequence of the defensive act as
such.”34 But as Boyle sees it, since Thomas seems to be permitting,
in private self-defense, any killing that is outside intention and
that involves no greater use of force than is needed to stop the
attack, and since sometimes a use of force that is naturally (or per
se) lethal is needed, Thomas must also be allowing that.
On this question, I find Steven Jensen’s arguments to the
contrary persuasive.35 His strongest argument, I think, is that a
use of force upon which the aggressor’s death follows naturally
must be one in which at least some serious harm to the aggressor
is intended,36 and that, for Thomas, it is illicit for private agents
ever to harm (let alone kill) anyone intentionally.37 This means
that the defender’s action itself is a sin, and that therefore, as we
gathered from question 73, article 8, the per se result of the
aggressor’s death directly aggravates it and is directly voluntary
of the defender.

34
Ibid., 658. Quandoque connects well with the way accidental nonintended
harms, as opposed to per se ones, are described in q. 73, a. 8: “quae consequi
possent”—“which might follow.”
35
Steven J. Jensen, Good and Evil Action: A Journey through Saint Thomas
Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010),
62-64.
36
It is crucial, though, not to confuse being lethal per se with being in
circumstances such that death results certainly or inevitably (see above, at n.
14). For instance, if the aggressor is on a cliff-edge, pushing him away may
inevitably result in his death, but it is not lethal per se, and it need not involve
any intention even to injure. Boyle, in “Praeter intentionem in Aquinas,” does
not seem to see much difference between the notions of a per se result and a
certain result. Moreover, although he does refer to q. 73, a. 8 (ibid., 653, 662),
he is silent about its treatment of nonintended per se results.
37
Thomas says this just four articles prior to q. 64, a. 7 (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 3,
ad 3). He had also said it earlier, in his discussion of rixa, strife (STh II-II, q. 41,
a. 1). Finnis agrees that it is never licit to intend to injure someone (John Finnis,
Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory [Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998], 276, 278; also idem, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 54-55.

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In question 64, article 7, in fact, Thomas says flatly that “to
kill a man is not licit except by public authority for the common
good.” This is to say that no voluntary killing at all is licit for
private persons, no matter whether the voluntariness be direct or
indirect.38 Thomas does indeed allow that a “moderate”
defensive action, in which the force used is no more than is
needed, can be licit. The defender is not bound to set such action
aside so as to avoid killing the aggressor. In other words, in such
a case, the aggressor’s being killed is not indirectly voluntary of
the defender. It is not something that he causes by failing to avoid
it when he could and should.39 But this is only to say that it may
be licit for the private agent to do something upon which the
aggressor’s death follows per accidens.40 If it follows per se, it
cannot be licit. In fact we find a clear indication that this is what
Thomas means at the beginning of the article’s corpus, where he
says that an effect of action that is outside intention is per
accidens (and so does not specify the action). This is what he goes
on to allow, in some cases, to private agents: per accidens killings.
As we have just seen, the effects of action that are per accidens
38
If it is not voluntary in any way, then properly speaking it is neither licit
nor illicit. See STh II-II, q. 64, a. 8. To say that it is not voluntary in any way is
to say that the defender’s will is in no way its cause. Evidently it would be
important to distinguish between the range of the causality of the defender’s
will and the range of its mere power and consent. That is, the fact that the
defender could avoid the aggressor’s death by willing not to defend himself as
he does, and that he therefore in some way consents to the aggressor’s death or
to letting the aggressor die, does not make him a cause of the death. For a
comparable case, see together the following texts: STh I, q. 19, a. 9, ad 3; q. 49,
a. 2, ad 3; STh I-II, q. 79, a. 1.
39
I explain this point at greater length in Action and Conduct, 222-23.
40
Here I am correcting something I say in ibid., 206 n. 18. There, having in
view the fact that Thomas treats killing by chance in STh II-II, q. 64, a. 8, and
taking “by chance” to mean the same as per accidens, I concluded that any result
that is not by chance must be per se, and that q. 64, a. 7 was allowing killings
that result per se. But clearly what Thomas means by a chance killing is one that
is not only per accidens but also unforeseen. Per accidens killings may be
foreseen, and q. 64, a. 7 allows some of those. This error led me, in those pages
of the book, to adopt an unnecessarily complicated explanation of the
impermissibility of craniotomy; on this see the first paragraph of section 3
below.

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are those that are wholly outside the agent’s intention, being
intended neither per se nor even per accidens. By contrast, per se
effects are intended at least per accidens, and they are directly
voluntary. Directly voluntary killing in self-defense can be licit
only for a public agent.41 And even this is only if the aggressor is
a malefactor—a criminal or an unjust belligerent.
It is sometimes suggested that, for Thomas, the objective
justice or injustice of the aggression is incidental to the morality
of killing in self-defense.42 This, however, is not altogether true.
Not long after question 64, article 7, Thomas asks whether
someone condemned to death may licitly fight the executioner.
He says that, if the condemnation is unjust, the answer is yes; but
if the condemnation is just, then since clearly in that case the
executioner may licitly fight the condemned man, the condemned man’s fighting the executioner amounts to “unjust
war.”43 Thomas is not saying that one is bound to accept a death
to which he has been justly sentenced. Even a justly condemned
man may licitly flee execution, if he can, because he is not bound
“to do that whence death would follow.”44 But Thomas is saying
that it is not licit forcibly to resist an agent acting justly. An
objection argues that it is always licit to follow natural
inclination, and that there is a natural inclination in all things to
resist what can destroy them. He replies: “Man is given reason so
as to follow natural inclination, not indiscriminately, but
according to the order of reason. And so not just any self-defense
is licit, but that which is done with due moderation.”45 So the
“moderation” that Thomas requires in self-defense is not, after
all, only a matter of using force sufficient to stop the attack and
41

Not even a public agent may licitly kill someone in an indirectly voluntary
way, since indirect voluntariness by its nature implies culpability, being failure
to avoid or prevent the thing in question when one could and should.
42
“Aquinas's analysis of the intention in self-defence does not depend upon
there being an unjust aggression” (John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph
Boyle, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’: A Reply to Critics of our Action Theory,” The
Thomist 65 [2001]: 28 n. 46). See also n. 47 below.
43
STh II-II, q. 69, a. 4.
44
Ibid., ad 2. By the same token, someone sentenced to starvation may eat
food brought to him secretly, since “not to eat would be to kill himself” (ibid.).
45
STh II-II, q. 69, a. 4, ad 1.

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no more. Any use of force at all is immoderate, if it is upon an
undue object—in this case, upon an executioner or other public
authority acting justly.
If this holds where there is a just assault, it surely holds where
there is no assault at all—and all the more so if the force is used
in a way that is naturally or per se lethal.46 I say this because the
topic that I shall take up next is craniotomy.47 The issue is both
vexed and tired, and so I beg the reader’s indulgence. I also beg
indulgence for dredging up something I wrote about it more than
two decades ago. It offers a good case study for the topic that is
my central interest here.
III. CRANIOTOMY AGAIN
In that old discussion, although I did not mention the New
Natural Law theory, I said things having an obvious bearing on

46

Thomas condemns killing the innocent in absolutely any way: “nullo modo
licet occidere innocentem” (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 6).
47
Immediately prior to the sentence quoted in n. 42, the authors assure us
that “we in no way suggest that the baby in the craniotomy is an unjust aggressor
or any other kind of aggressor. (Indeed, we deny that the unborn baby is ever
an aggressor.)” In an earlier piece, Boyle had said this: “St. Thomas, unlike
many other scholastic moralists, does not introduce the question of the injustice
of the attack into his analysis [of killing in self-defense]. What’s more those who
do make use of this feature of the self-defense case, use it to justify direct
killing—that is, the killing is a means to saving one’s life. What is at stake here,
of course, is whether the craniotomy is indirect killing and so the argument
about whether the fetus is a ‘materially unjust aggressor’ is not to the point; that
argument assumed that if the fetus were shown to be a materially unjust
aggressor it could be directly killed” (Joseph Boyle, “Double-Effect and a
Certain Type of Embryotomy,” Irish Theological Quarterly 44 [1977]: 312). I
agree that Thomas is not saying that directly killing an unjust aggressor can be
licit for a private agent. But I am talking about what Thomas does allow to a
private agent in q. 64, a. 7, namely, the direct use of violence upon the
aggressor. This cannot be licit if the aggression is just (though the point is made
explicit only in q. 69, a. 4). Even less can it be licit if the person undergoing the
violence is no kind of aggressor at all—especially if the violence is such as can
sometimes result in death, and very especially if it does so naturally or per se.

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its proponents’ position on craniotomy.48 I agreed with them in
part, saying that the surgeon performing craniotomy need not be
intending the fetus’s death. I also disagreed with them in part,
seconding Kevin Flannery’s view that a craniotomy cannot be
seen as essentially nothing but a cranium-narrowing, with the
cranium’s being crushed regarded as a mere side effect and not
part of the act’s essence or kind. I further held (citing q. 73, a. 8)
that acting with the aim of producing the crushed skull of an
innocent person is unjust, and that the injustice of it has the
gravity of murder, because the person’s death follows on it per
se.49
In an article published not long afterwards, John Finnis,
Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle took notice of my remarks.50
Addressing what they said will help me to define the issue better
than I originally did.
Their first remark was that I failed to show that craniotomy is
better described as “producing the crushed skull of an innocent
person” than as “cranium-narrowing for the purposes of removal
from the birth-canal.” I shall return to this point after addressing
their other remarks.
Then they said that I seem “to be perhaps conceding, sub silentio, that the craniotomy need not be excluded by the exceptionless moral norm against killing the innocent, and therefore letting
the assessment of its moral character rest on an assessment of its
fairness, its justice.” Initially I could not make sense of this. For
(as was surely obvious) my remarks reflected what I took to be
48
Brock, Action and Conduct, 204-5 n. 17. For their view, see Boyle,
“Double-Effect and a Certain Type”; also Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord
Jesus, v. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993), 502-3.
49
The reading of Thomas on “head-on” effects that I am proposing in this
paper makes that account of the impermissibility of craniotomy unnecessarily
complicated (see above, n. 40). It is sufficient to see that the fetus’s death is
directly voluntary. Moreover, since the fetus is the very object of the action of
craniotomy, it seems that the death can be said to specify the action (making it
to be murder) and not merely to add a nonspecifying qualification, as in the case
of nonintended active scandal. It is more like the case of theft from a sacred
place, which is specified as sacrilege, evidently because the very thing stolen
somehow shares in the place’s sacredness (see below, n. 92).
50
Finnis, Grisez, and Boyle, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect,’” 26 n. 38.

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Thomas’s view, and (as is surely no less obvious), for him the
exceptionless norm against killing the innocent is an assessment
of such action’s justice. His best-known treatment of it falls
squarely within the Summa’s treatise on justice.51 Eventually I
realized that they were speaking in the terms of their own theory,
in which the morality of (intentional) killing is framed, not
primarily as a matter of justice or injustice toward the person
killed, but as a matter of how one’s will is related to the basic
good of human life.52 In any case, I certainly was not making that
concession. What I was driving at was simply that there can be
“murder where death foreseeably results from one’s action,
without the actual intention of killing,”53 and that this would be
such a case. And I took it that there is indeed an exceptionless
moral norm against murder, which of course they too hold.
The authors went on to repudiate my use of question 73,
article 8. They said that this text was not to the point, “since it
deals only with the way in which consequences, even though
unintended, can aggravate the gravity of what is already judged
to be wrongful.” But that is exactly the point I was urging. Having
(as I thought) established that what is intended in craniotomy is
unjust, because the fetus has a right to its intact skull, I observed
that the fetus’s life depends on its intact skull—which is to say,
its death follows per se on the craniotomy—and I appealed to
question 73, article 8 to argue that this aggravated the injustice,
making it tantamount to murder.
Their last comment was this: “Note that whether and to what
extent the life of the unborn child ‘depends on’ not being
subjected to the craniotomy is far from clear in the obstetric
emergency we are considering—a situation in which the child is
expected to die no matter what is done.” This I find astonishing.
Taken at face value, it means the child’s being certain to die soon
anyway casts doubt on whether the craniotomy kills it.
51

STh II-II, q. 64, a. 6. He also says that all of the precepts of the
Decalogue—including the fifth, of course—regard justice: STh II-II, q. 100, a. 3,
obj. 3 and ad 3.
52
See John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth
(Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 81.
53
Anscombe, “Medalist’s Address,” 20.

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

In sum, I think that all but the first of their responses missed
the target. The first, however, was a hit, and it was also the most
important: that I failed to show my description of craniotomy to
be better than theirs. This is so. I merely asserted it. More
precisely, I merely asserted the more general thesis from which I
derived it. The thesis is that while a human action’s object—the
object constituting its kind—always has (or seems to have) the
form of some good (either as end or as means) for the agent, the
object is not that form all by itself. It is rather that which has (or
seems to have) the form. In other words, although the object must
have some feature that moves the agent to apply himself to it as
he does, the object is not this feature alone. It is that to which the
agent thinks the feature belongs, the feature’s subject. It is
relatively concrete. Nor is it only the feature’s subject taken “as
such,” that is, as described or named according to that feature. It
also includes whatever other features the agent ascribes to it. It
can be truly described or named according to any of them.
In the case of craniotomy, this would mean that the act’s
object is indeed, as they would say, a cranium able to be removed
from the birth-canal.54 They would also call it a narrowed
cranium. These descriptions rest on features that move the
surgeon’s will, reasons why he acts as he does. But I am saying
that the object can also be called a damaged, even a lethally
damaged cranium. For the surgeon knows that this description is
true, intrinsically, of the narrowed cranium. He knows that the
cranium’s being narrowed (in the way he intends) is one with its
being lethally damaged. That he is not interested in its being
lethally damaged is incidental. His action’s object is a lethally
damaged cranium, and he intends to bring this about—even
though he does not intend it because of its being that, but only
because of its being something that he can go on to remove from
the birth-canal.
In assuming, however, that the specifying object of a human
act, and what an agent intends, includes more than what
motivates him to act or constitutes a reason for his acting, I

54

But on the term cranium, see below, at n. 56.

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assumed just what the New Natural Law proponents deny.55 The
cranium-narrowing’s being a damaging is, on their view, per
accidens. It belongs to the procedure considered as a mere piece
of external behavior and as subject to natural conditions, but not
considered as an intentional, human action. Indeed, on their
view, the very fact that the cranium is a true cranium—a living,
properly functioning part of a living human fetus56—is per
accidens. What is per se is only that it is a hard, cranium-sized and
cranium-shaped object that must be crushed and narrowed if it is
to be removed from the birth-canal. This alone constitutes a
reason why the surgeon acts on it as he does. And since, on their
view, not only the fetus’s death, but also the harm to it, is outside
the surgeon’s intention, the death cannot be deemed a per se
effect of his action or regarded as pertaining to its kind. In
general, the crushing and narrowing of hard objects does not
usually or naturally result in death. So the fetus’s death only
follows per accidens on what the surgeon intends, and it cannot
be imputed to the surgeon as something directly voluntary of
him. At most, there may be a question of its being imputed to him
as something indirectly voluntary (in Thomas’s sense), something
that he fails to prevent when he could and should do so—for
example, when the procedure is not really necessary to save the

55
They could even grant that the craniotomy’s object is a crushed cranium.
For they can still deny that it is a damaged cranium. In fact, Boyle seems to have
no objection to calling it a crushed cranium: Joseph Boyle, “Who Is Entitled to
Double Effect?,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 480.
However, he must be taking the term cranium itself somewhat loosely. He can
hardly mean that the object is or includes precisely a true, living cranium (on
which see the next note and the text associated with it). This is because its being
a true, living cranium does not (or need not) enter into what motivates the
procedure.
56
I am alluding to Aristotle’s view that it is false to predicate man of a dead
man (De interpretatione 11.21a22-23), except in an equivocal sense
(Meteorology 4.12.389b31-32; Parts of Animals 1.1.640b34-36), and that,
likewise, if a part of a man, for instance an eye or a finger, dies or loses the
capacity for its proper function, what results is no longer the same kind of thing
and bears the name of that part only in an equivocal sense (Meteorology
4.12.390a10-13; Parts of Animals 1.1.641a4-6; De anima 2.1.412b19-22;
Metaphysics 7.10.1035b23-25).

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mother’s life. Circumstances will decide this question. This, I take
it, is the New Natural Law view of the case.
What is required, then, is a comparison of that general view
of the scope of intention with Thomas’s view.
IV. THE NEW NATURAL LAW THEORY ON THE OBJECT OF
INTENTION
Sometimes the proponents of the New Natural Law theory
characterize the object of intention simply as a determinate state
of affairs that the agent’s practical reason has proposed as an end
or a means.57 In their more rigorous discussions of the matter,
however, they qualify this characterization or offer a more
restricted one. The following is a representative passage, by
Joseph Boyle.
Whatever does not function as an end of action or a means to the end can be
praeter intentionem, even if it is a natural consequence or a property of what is
within the intention, if it can be separated from the goodness of the end
intended or the resolve to achieve that good. . . . It is possible to distinguish
what is within the intention from what is foreseen but is not within the intention
and this distinction can be drawn at the point where ends and means are
separated from concomitants and non-essential properties of ends and means.58

By “non-essential,” I take it, Boyle means not essential to the
goodness of the end or to the resolve to achieve that good. He is
ascribing this view to Thomas. Other representative passages are
as follows.
Foreseen effects of what one does are intended only if they actually are among
one’s reasons for acting. If they are not, they are part of neither the proposal
one adopts in choosing nor the purpose(s) for the sake of which one chooses:
they are part of neither the means nor the end(s). . . . Intentions are constituted

57

See, for example, Joseph Boyle, “Toward Understanding the Principle of
Double Effect,” Ethics 90 (1980): 534-36.
58
Boyle, “Praeter intentionem in Aquinas,” 665.

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by acting persons’ reasons for making their choices and by precisely what they
choose to do.59
The means are included in the proposal under the description that makes them
intelligibly attractive as a means.60
The description under which what is done is intended is . . . settled by one’s
practical reasoning as an agent, by the intelligible benefit one seeks and the
means one chooses under the description which promises to yield that benefit.61
What is being done is not settled simply by looking at behaviour, to see what
movements are being made, with what awareness and what results. Rather, that
is settled by what one chose, under the description which made it attractive to
choice (not: the description which makes it acceptable to onlookers, or to
‘conscience’).62
Now, in choosing, one adopts a proposal to bring about certain states of affairs.
And the states of affairs which one commits oneself to bringing about—one’s
instrumental and basic purposes—are precisely those identified under the
intelligible description which made them seem rationally appealing and
choosable.63

The following are two case types other than craniotomy in
which this account clearly plays a role.

59
Finnis, Grisez, and Boyle, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect,’” 8. Similarly, “If shortterm financial gain was not part of the director’s reasons for their decision, they
do not intend it” (ibid., 6).
60
Finnis, Moral Absolutes, 68.
61
John Finnis, “Intention and Side Effects,” in John Finnis, Intention and
Identity, vol. 2 of Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
190. This chapter is a reprint, with some additions, of John Finnis, “Intention
and Side-Effects,” in R. G. Frey and Christopher W. Morris, eds., Liability and
Responsibility: Essays in Law and Morals (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), 32-64.
62
Finnis, “Intention and Side Effects,” 191.
63
Ibid., 194. I find it hard to tell from this passage whether states of affairs
that are identified under different descriptions can be the same states of affairs.
But I take it that, if they can, they are intended only as identified under the
description(s) making them seem choosable, and not according to all the
descriptions that are true of them, nor even all those that the agent ascribes to
them. See Boyle, “Toward Understanding,” 534-35.

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By my reformulation of the principle of double effect, some additional
operations involving the removal of a nonviable fetus could be justified. An
example would be when the pregnancy itself was dangerously overloading an
ill mother’s heart and kidneys. In such a case, I think the fetus may be removed,
because although it will certainly die, the very same act (through a humanly
indivisible process) lessens the strain on the mother and contributes to the
mother’s safety, which alone need be intended by an upright agent.64
If a baby, by falling asleep, will fall onto a button which will bring about the
incineration of a school full of children, and the only way to stop the baby from
falling is to shoot it so that it topples the other way, that can be done without
intent to kill or injure even though the effect on the baby is mutilating or lethal
and ‘deliberate’, that is, caused with full knowledge and control.65

Sometimes I do wonder whether the New Natural Law authors are applying their own account consistently. For instance,
Finnis takes up the example of an eccentric surgeon who, while
operating on an appendix, removes the patient’s heart for the
purpose of a later experiment. Finnis says that, although the
surgeon does not intend to kill the patient, this is still murder. He
explains:
The surgeon intends to and does deal with the body, that is, the very person of
the patient, as his own to dispose of. Though his choice is not, precisely, to kill
or even, perhaps, to impair the functioning of the patient/victim—that is,
though death and impairment of functioning are side-effects—the surgeon’s
choice is precisely to treat the bodily substance and reality of that other human
person as if that person were a mere subhuman object. The moral wrong, on a
precise analysis of the surgeon’s intent, is a form of knowingly death-dealing
enslavement; one who inflicts death, even as a side-effect, in order to effect such
an instrumentalisation of another has, in the fullest sense, ‘no excuse’ for thus
knowingly causing death.66

64
Germain Grisez, “Toward a Consistent Natural-Law Ethics of Killing,”
The American Journal of Jurisprudence, 15 (1970): 94. For a similar, more
recent discussion, see Grisez, Living a Christian Life, 502-3.
65
This passage is from a long endnote added in the reprint of Finnis, Grisez,
and Boyle, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect,’” in Finnis, Intention and Identity, 266-7n†.
The passage is on p. 267. It is not entirely clear whether the passage should be
ascribed to Finnis alone or to all three authors.
66
Finnis, “Intention and Side Effects,” 194.

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I do not see why the surgeon’s intention or choice is any more to
enslave or instrumentalize the patient than it is to harm or kill
the patient. What makes the surgeon’s action favor the end of
experimentation is not the action’s enslaving the patient. It is
simply the action’s obtaining something fit to experiment upon.
Moreover, would it constitute enslavement if it did not harm the
patient? If not, then if the harm is not intentional, how can the
enslavement be so?
In a note added to the reprint of this essay, Finnis says that, in
the original article, he failed to consider sufficiently whether the
surgeon’s intent, which does not include death, does nevertheless
include mutilation—violation of bodily integrity—as a means.
Evidently he judges that it does. He also mentions other cases of
intentional mutilation: as a means (to facilitate begging), or as an
end (when done out of a grudge), and he refers to the issue of the
separation of conjoined twins. He then offers a general
reflection:
What is decisive for the intention- and act-analysis in such cases is whether the
bodily position or activity of person V is itself a threat to another’s well-being
and the cutting into or dismemberment of V is a means of mitigating that threat.
That is why war-like acts in legitimate defence of self, others, or common good
can be brought under Thomas’s analysis of defensive intent, in respect not only
of the good of life . . . but also of the good of bodily integrity.67

I do not see why the mere fact that the end is to mitigate the sort
of threat described entails that intending V’s dismemberment
does not constitute intending the violation of V’s bodily integrity.
As is well known, Thomas certainly recognizes the possibility of
intending to kill or to harm as a means (a legitimate one) to
defense of the common good, and also as a means to self-defense
(this being illegitimate for private agents).68 Nor do I see why the
end’s not being to mitigate that sort of threat entails that, ceteris
paribus, the violation of V’s bodily integrity necessarily is being
intended as a means. Perhaps, with any other end, the action
67

Finnis, “Intention and Side Effects,” 197. See also Finnis, Intention and
Identity, 267.
68
See STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7 itself; also STh II-II, q. 64, a. 2; q. 65, a. 1.

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cannot fail to be “unfair” to V. But if we are given only what the
end is not, and not what it is, how can we possibly judge, from a
mere description of behavior, what is or is not being intended as
a means to it?
In any case, the main point I wish to make here is simply that,
from Thomas’s viewpoint, the proponents of the New Natural
Law theory unduly narrow the scope of intention.
V. THOMAS ON THE OBJECT OF INTENTION
These authors do seem to recognize that their view differs
from Thomas’s somehow. Grisez says:
Thomas often includes in its object anything which makes an act definitely
wrong, for this settles its moral species (cf. De Malo, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2). On my
account, the object only includes what one chooses even if the wrongness of the
act arises elsewhere. For example, the object of an act of driving somewhere in
an automobile is determined by the choice to travel to that place, and this
remains so even if the auto belongs to another, is used without permission, and
in using it one accepts the side effect of grave partiality toward oneself against
the other.69

If I understand rightly, Grisez is claiming that such an act,
although wrong, is not properly of the kind called theft. It would
only be “thievish” or something like that. Its proper kind would
be theft only if the automobile’s belonging to another and the
agent’s lacking permission to use it somehow furnished him with
a reason for taking it. Grisez is quite correct, I believe, to suggest
that Thomas would include those factors in the act’s object and
would specify the act as theft. But I do not think Thomas would
grant that he is thereby including in the act’s object or kind
anything not included in what the agent chooses. Rather, Thomas
differs from Grisez on what is included in what an agent chooses
(and intends).70
69
Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, v. 1, Christian Moral Principles
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 247 n. 3.
70
With regard to the passage that Grisez cites, however, I suspect that he was
looking at a version of it that contains a highly pertinent textual error. In De
Malo, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2, the Marietti edition (p. 481) has this: “Fit species furti

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Boyle says that the state of affairs that he calls the object of
intention is what the Scholastics call the “formal object” of the
act, which gives the act its essential character.71 The alternative
to this view, he says, presents intentional actions as the initiation
of concrete causal sequences with indefinitely many descriptions
and effects.72 But it seems to me that Thomas’s position lies
between these alternatives, and that for him the object of
intention is indeed something definite, but nevertheless not as
abstract as the New Natural Law authors make it.
Thomas’s use of the expression “formal object”—or, more
usually, “formal proportioning (ratio) of the object”73—is
somewhat variable. Sometimes, for instance, he says the formal
ratio of sight is color.74 At other times he says it is light. In either
case the idea is clear. Light makes color visible, and illuminated
color makes what has it visible.75 But Thomas does not mean that
only light, or only luminous color, is properly seen or an object
of sight. In fact he says that, properly speaking, what is seen is
not (luminous) color, but rather, the concrete “a colored.”76 The
quae est sacrilegium, ex circumstantia loci, et non ex conditione obiecti” (“the
species of theft that is sacrilege comes about from the circumstance of place and
not from a condition of the object”). This would actually be saying that the
species of the act is taken from something outside the object. But in the more
recent critical edition (Leonine ed., 23:48, l. 273), the non has been replaced
with tamen, “yet,” so that the passage runs: “The species of theft that is sacrilege
comes about from the circumstance of place and yet from a condition of the
object.” This version also fits far better with the rest of the passage.
71
Boyle, “Double-Effect and a Certain Type,” 317 n. 22.
72
Boyle, “Double-Effect and a Certain Type,” 307; “Toward Understanding,” 535; “Praeter intentionem in Aquinas,” 664.
73
Ratio formalis obiecti. The thought is that what an action or a power bears
upon always has some feature that proportions it to the action or the power and
that functions as the reason why the action or power bears on it.
74
For example, STh I, q. 1, a. 3; q. 59, a. 4.
75
For example, STh II-II, q. 1, a. 3.
76
STh I, q. 45, a. 4, ad 1. A helpful text on this matter is I Sent., d. 17, q. 1,
a. 5. There Thomas distinguishes quite sharply between the notion of the object
of an act and the notion of the ratio in virtue of which the act bears on the
object. At the same time, he is clear that one and the same thing can function
now as object, now as ratio; and sometimes an object is its own ratio, sometimes
not. But it is quite clear that the object sometimes includes a good deal more
than the ratio. Here, for example, he says that the object of an act of love may

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difference is not just grammatical. He holds that there can be
other features of a thing, besides its luminosity and its color, that
fall within the scope of the act of seeing it: size, shape, distance,
and so on. These features can enter into a thing’s look. Not all of
its features can; for instance, its flavor cannot (though we may
associate a flavor with a look). Of course, a thing’s size and shape
get their visibility from its color, and not vice-versa. And the size
or the shape are not seen by themselves, in abstraction from the
colored thing. Yet not even the color, taken separately or
abstractly, is properly seen either. What is properly seen is the
colored, sized, shaped (etc.) thing.
The case with intention and its scope is similar. One can
intend only what one has judged somehow good (or “attractive”
or “beneficial” or “appealing” or “choosable”), either on its own
account or on account of its order to something else judged good;
and one judges a thing good according to some (real or apparent)
feature of it. Being judged good according to some feature,
together with being judged attainable through one’s action, is
what makes a thing apt to be intended, by furnishing a sufficient
reason or motive for intending it. But other features of the thing
can also fall within the scope of the act of intending it. In fact all
the features that the agent ascribes to it do so.77 The only features
that do not do so are those of which the agent is ignorant. To be
sure, those features that the agent ascribes to the thing, but that
furnish no reason for intending it, fall under his intention only
by virtue of their connection with the feature(s) that motivate the
intention. They are not intended by themselves. But that which
is intended includes them. They do not fall outside intention, any
more than size and shape fall outside sight.

be a person, while the ratio may be God’s dwelling in the person, or the person’s
charity, or some other feature. In other words, the motivating feature does not
exhaust the object.
77
If, however, the thing is an action, it is important not to slip from a feature
of that action to a mere effect of it, or even to a distinct action that is merely
circumstantial to it. The two actions cannot simply be identified, even if one
somehow qualifies the other.

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To use an example from Thomas, suppose a sawmaker intends
to make a saw out of iron.78 His reason for making it out of iron
is that iron is hard. The hardness is the feature that motivates his
intention. But the sawmaker also ascribes other features to iron,
for instance, aptitude to rust and to wear out. These are not
reasons why he intends to make the saw out of iron—quite the
contrary. Yet they fall within the scope of his intention. His
intention is not merely to make the saw out of something hard.
The object of his intention is more concrete. What Thomas says
is that his intention is to make the saw out of iron. So at least the
hard thing’s being iron falls within the intention. But, as the
sawmaker understands it, to be made out of iron is to be made
out of something apt to rust and wear out. Of course these
features do not fall within his intention apart from their
connection with the iron’s hardness, just as size and shape are not
seen apart from their connection with color. But size and shape
are included in what the sighted person sees, and the iron’s
aptitude to rust and wear out are included in what the sawmaker
intends.
This is a delicate point.79 All the features that an agent ascribes
to the effect that he intends fall within the scope of his intention,
but this does not mean that all the further results to which he
thinks his intended effect leads must fall within the scope of his
intention as well. The sawmaker intends to make an iron saw,
and hence he intends to make a saw that is apt to rust, but he
need not intend the further result, the saw’s actually rusting. Still,
as we saw earlier, per se effects do somehow “pertain” to an
action’s species, which again is a function of the agent’s intention.
If they are foreseen, then at least the action’s order toward them
cannot be wholly outside the scope of the agent’s intention. The
saw’s aptitude to rust must somehow fall within the sawmaker’s
intention.

78

See STh I, q. 76, a. 5, ad 1; Q. D. De Anima, a. 8.
For a more complete treatment, see my discussion of Roderick Chisholm’s
principles of the “diffusiveness and non-divisiveness of intention” in Action and
Conduct, 208-16.
79

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

Similarly, not all of the circumstances that an agent associates
with what he intends need fall within the scope of his intention.
But the thing’s being so circumstanced must do so. For instance,
Thomas says that in the case of washing someone by pouring
water on him, the cooling that results is a circumstance of the
washing.80 That act of washing is not simply identical with the act
of cooling, any more than being clean is identical with being cool.
But the washing can be qualified, as it were adjectivally, by the
cooling: it is a refreshing washing, or something like that. Or, to
use the now familiar example, giving scandal by fornicating
publicly does not mean that the act of fornicating is itself an act
of giving scandal. But it is a scandalous act of fornicating. And
even if the agent does not fornicate publicly in order to give
scandal, he intends to fornicate publicly, and so scandalously.81
In other words—and this may be my most controversial
claim—although, taken by themselves, nonmotivating features
are intended only per accidens, they are not always praeter intentionem. Boyle says, “Aquinas identifies what is related per
accidens to the agent’s intention and what is praeter intentionem.”82 I do not think this is quite accurate. Granted, what is
praeter intentionem, if intended at all, must be so only per
accidens. But the converse, I believe, does not always hold. That
is, not everything intended per accidens is praeter intentionem.
“Praeter intentionem” means outside what the agent directly
intends. But it is possible for something to be inside what an agent
intends, and yet not be something that he intends directly, but
only per accidens.
We can compare what is intended to what is moved. Anything
outside of what a mover directly moves will be moved by it, at
most, only per accidens. But there may also be things moved by
it only per accidens that are inside what it directly moves. When
80

STh I-II, q. 7, a. 3, ad 3.
By contrast, if the scandal is only a per accidens result, as in pharisaical
scandal, then even if it is foreseeable, an action from which it results is neither
an act of giving scandal nor even a scandalous act. It is simply an act that
foreseeably results in scandal. An act is qualified by its effect according to the
nature of its order to the effect.
82
Boyle, “Praeter intentionem in Aquinas,” 660.
81

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the wind moves a ship, it also moves a nail inside the ship, though
only per accidens.83 Likewise, things that are intended only per
accidens may still, for Thomas, be within the intention.
In line with this point, places abound in which Thomas
ascribes something to the object of a voluntary action, and to the
action’s resulting species or kind, that does not furnish the agent
with a motive or reason for the action. The following text is quite
explicit about it. It is on whether a circumstance can give a sin its
kind.
[Objection] Every sin is voluntary. . . . But the will does not bear on a
circumstance; as when someone steals a golden consecrated vessel, he does not
care about its being consecrated. So this circumstance does not give the sin its
kind; and likewise with others.
[Reply] Although the thief’s will does not bear chiefly on the sacred object but
on the gold, it bears on the sacred object as a result; for he wills rather to take
the sacred object than to do without the gold.84

In this article from De malo, and also in the parallel Summa
passage, where the example is an object stolen from a sacred
place, Thomas explains that a circumstance can constitute a kind
of action insofar as it can be considered as something more than
a circumstance, namely, as a “principal condition of the object.”85
A condition’s being “principal,” however, does not consist in its
giving the agent a motive.86 It consists in the fact that the
condition “regards a special order of reason, whether for or
against.”87

83
The example of the nail in the ship is taken from Aristotle, Physics
4.4.211a17-23.
84
De Malo, q. 2, a. 6, obj. 6 and ad 6. See also IV Sent., d. 16, q. 3, a. 2,
qcla. 3.
85
De Malo, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2 and ad 9; STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10.
86
In STh I-II, q. 72, a. 9, ad 2, he says that a circumstance never transfers an
act to some other species unless it is connected with some other motive. There
he is evidently talking about circumstances that are nothing but circumstances
and that do not constitute principal conditions of the object. We might say that
a circumstance qua circumstance does not specify except by connection with a
motive. But a condition of the object can specify on its own.
87
STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10.

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

I do not think that Thomas is hereby rejecting the idea that
moral actions always get their kinds from ends and things
intended. He is not saying that the condition in question is the
object or that it is intended per se. It is only a condition of the
object. The object is indeed an end.88 But this end, this object,
must be taken concretely, as having all the features that the agent
ascribes to it, and not just as having those that make it attractive
to him or constitute a reason for acting. And any feature, whether
or not it constitutes a reason, can determine a moral kind, simply
by making the end especially due, or especially undue, according
to reason.
Another good example is drunkenness.
The sin of drunkenness . . . consists in the immoderate use and desire of wine.
Now this may happen to a man in three ways. First, such that he does not know
the drink to be immoderate and intoxicating: and then drunkenness may be
without sin. . . . Secondly, such that he perceives the drink to be immoderate,
but without knowing it to be intoxicating, and then drunkenness may involve
venial sin. Thirdly, it may happen that a man is well aware that the drink is
immoderate and intoxicating, and yet he would rather fall into drunkenness
than abstain from the drink. Such a man is a drunkard properly speaking,
because morals take their species not from things that occur accidentally and
beside the intention, but from that which is directly intended. In this way
drunkenness is a mortal sin, because then a man willingly and knowingly
deprives himself of the use of reason, whereby he performs virtuous deeds and
avoids sin, and thus he sins mortally by running the risk of falling into sin.89

Thomas says that there is drunkenness, not just when the
drinker’s direct aim is to be drunk, but whenever the drinker’s
aim is to drink what he knows to be an immoderate and
intoxicating amount of drink. The formulation is like that of the
passage from De malo on sacrilegious theft: it is enough that the
drinker’s will bear on being drunk in such a way that he would
rather “fall into” (incurrere) drunkenness than abstain from the
drink.90 He gets drunk willingly, but neither being drunk nor
88
Even the exterior act’s object specifies the act only insofar as it is an end,
that is, intended: STh I-II, q. 72, a. 3, ad 2.
89
STh II-II, q. 150, a. 2.
90
Also pertinent is STh I-II, q. 76, a. 4, corp. and ad 2: a man who wants
only to drink an immoderate amount, but who thereby gets drunk, loses

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even the amount’s being intoxicating need be something that he
intends per se.91
A great many of the kinds of acts that Thomas discusses fit the
same analysis. One example is that of the man condemned to
starvation who is secretly provided with food. As we saw,
Thomas says flatly that not to eat it would be suicide. He does
not make it depend on the man’s having an interest in dying. He
never says that in order properly to be guilty of theft, one must
be taking what is another’s because it is another’s; or that there
is true adultery only if conjugal condition is a motive of the act;
or that it is not really murder if the victim’s innocence (or
whatever factor makes his being killed undue) is not a reason for
killing him; and so on.
It can also happen that a nonmotivating condition of the
object affects the morality of an act without putting it into a
distinct kind. This is what happens in the example in question 73,
article 8 of fornicating publicly. The condition of being public
does not specify the act. The act’s kind remains simply
fornication, and this condition only aggravates it, by making it
tend per se toward scandal.92 Still, such a condition aggravates,
discretion, and consequently kills a man, is guilty of two sins, killing and
drunkenness.
91
Preferring one thing to another and so choosing to bring it about when the
only alternative is the other thing does not entail that the thing chosen is
intended per se; see STh I-II, q. 78, a. 1, ad 2. The thing chosen is “willed” or
done “willingly” in the sense used in the passage from the Physics commentary
above at n. 31.
92
See STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3, ad 3. The act’s being scandalous depends on this
circumstance and yet belongs to the act per se. As we saw earlier, Thomas says
that per se, nonintended effects pertain somehow to the act’s kind. The scandal
example suggests that he does not mean that such effects follow on the kind
universally; rather, they may follow on the kind only under certain conditions.
Obviously the act’s being fornication is quite pertinent to its being scandalous,
even though its being scandalous also requires the further condition of being
public. But why does this further condition not specify the act as scandal, in the
way that the condition of being in a sacred place does specify an act of theft as
sacrilege (STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10)? Is it because only the latter condition relates
the act’s own object to a “special order of reason” (STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10)? That
is, a thing’s being in a sacred place makes the thing itself somehow sacred, and
so makes the act of stealing the thing be in itself a violation of a sacred thing

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

and is voluntary, directly, proceeding from the agent inasmuch as
he acts.
But it should not be too surprising that things indirectly
intended sometimes specify actions, if indeed it is true that even
nonintended per se effects—head-on effects—somehow “pertain” to an action’s species. If the indirectly intended item is
included within the very object that is directly intended, then it
can be a specifying factor, even if it is not a motivating one (in
which case, at least usually, it would be directly intended); that
is, even if it does not fall per se under the inclination of the agent’s
will. For it may still “regard a special order of reason, whether
for or against,” and it may do so per se.
VI. THEORETICAL ISSUES
Have I now proved that I have a better description of
craniotomy, and a better theoretical basis for it, than do the New
Natural Law authors? No. I have only tried to show that they do
not have Aquinas on their side. Nor, I believe, do they have the
man on the street. I think most people would say that taking what
is another’s property can be genuine theft even if the thing’s being
another’s furnishes the taker with no reason for taking it; and
likewise for the other cases. Of course the authors have no duty
to agree either with the man on the street or with Thomas.
I wish, however, to formulate a little more precisely how I
understand the general theoretical issue. Regarding my own
position, I would insist that I am not adopting (or foisting on
Thomas) what the New Natural Law authors sometimes call
physicalism. I am not simply identifying the object of intention
with an externally observable piece of behavior or result. This is
because I hold that the object of intention is essentially something
conceived or understood by the intention’s subject. Thus, for
(that is, a sacrilege); the sacrilege is not a mere further result of the act. But
being in public does not make an act of fornication be a scandalizing of the very
person with whom one fornicates (that person being the object of one’s act of
fornicating); the scandal is a result that affects only some other person or
persons. In order to specify the act, this result would have to be intended, or at
least associated with a distinct motive (see above, n. 86).

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instance, an externally observable result of which the agent is
invincibly ignorant is not within his intention. Nor is every result
that he can or does foresee. Moreover, I am certainly not saying
that a human action’s kind is constituted only partly (“formally”)
by what is within the agent’s intention, and partly (“materially”)
by other, purely physical or natural determinations (“teleologies”).93 It is constituted entirely by what is within the agent’s
intention. My claim is that I am looking at intention and its
object, and at human action and its specification, from the
properly moral perspective, that of the acting person.
Regarding the New Natural Law authors, I would stress that I
am not charging them, as some have, with exaggerating the role
of intention in the specification of action. I think Thomas gives it
no less of a role. Only, I think he has a different view of its scope.
How might we characterize the disagreement? If we want a
label, I would propose that, from Thomas’s point of view, the
New Natural Law theory is rather too intellectualist. By this I
mean that it makes the proper object of an act of will as abstract
as even an object of intellect can be. Thomas says, “the object of
intellect is simpler and more absolute than the object of will; for
the very concept [ratio] of appetible good is an object of intellect;
but the object of will is the appetible good whose concept is in
intellect.”94 Thomas is explaining why the intellect’s object is
nobler and higher than the will’s. It is simpler and more abstract.
This is why, and how, intellect moves will. It works to form the
will’s very object. It does so by applying the ratio of will’s
object—the ratio of good—to the judgment of something. This is
what properly moves the will: not the ratio of good by itself, but
93

For one thing, not every natural tendency is really teleology at all, that is,
order toward a telos, an end. An end is a perfection, a good, and it explains the
tendency, as its final cause. There is such a thing as tendency (in the sense of
noncasual order) toward results that are accidental to the agent’s end; see above,
n. 14. And even when the result in question is a true end, Thomas is very clear
that natural ends, merely as natural, do not specify moral acts. Only moral ends,
which are ends of the will, do so. “For a movement does not take its kind from
that which is a terminus per accidens, but only from that which is a terminus per
se. But moral ends are accidental to a natural thing; and conversely, being a
natural end is accidental to a moral end” (STh I-II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3).
94
STh I, q. 82, a. 3.

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STEPHEN L. BROCK

something judged to possess this ratio. The ratio of good is indeed
the formal ratio of the object of the will. But it is not the whole
object. The object is more concrete, including not only the ratio
itself but also that to which it is understood to apply.
Intellect can bear on the very reason for desiring something,
all by itself, in abstraction from the thing’s other conditions,
according to the sort of existence that things can have in an
intellectual soul. But the will bears only on the real thing that is
understood to be desirable for that reason, and it bears on this
thing according to and together with all the conditions that are
understood to pertain to the thing in its real being. Not all of
these conditions are reasons for willing, but they are all included
in what is willed, and they even condition the one who wills it.
“For the action of intellect consists in this, that the ratio of the
thing understood is in the one who understands; but the act of
will is completed in this, that will is inclined to the very thing, as
it is in itself.”95 Here Thomas speaks generally of the will’s
inclination, not specifically of the act of will called intention. But
among the acts of the will that regard something taken as an end,
intention seems to be the most practical, since it bears on an end
as something to be attained by some means.96 And so it also seems
to have the most concrete object, since human actions regard
concrete particulars.97
In this respect, the will’s intention is rather like a nature’s. “A
[human] nature does not intend to produce a [human] nature
except in a concrete subject, and hence it does not intend to
generate humanity, but a man.”98 Of course the two sorts of
intention are not simply identical. The object of the will’s
intention is, if anything, even more concrete—more determined
by particular conditions—than that of nature’s. In fact, the will’s
object is always potentially open to determination by further
conditions. This is precisely because the will’s object is presented
by reason—practical reason, which is not confined to universal
95

STh I, q. 82, a. 3; see STh I-II, q. 13, a. 5, ad 1.
STh I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4.
97
STh I, q. 29, a. 1; I-II, q. 9, a. 2, ad 2.
98
III Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2. On the notion of intention in (irrational)
nature, see STh I, q. 2, a. 3 (Quinta via); I-II, q. 12, a. 5.
96

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considerations, as speculative reason tends to be, but which can
and must extend to singulars.99 Reason’s capacity for very abstract objects goes together with its being open to absolutely all
forms, and this in turn means that there is no limit to its power
to combine forms into more and more concrete composites.100
Even though the will’s act is always motivated by a universal
reason, the fact that it is inclined toward things as they are in
themselves means that it is inclined toward them as concrete
singulars.101 So instead of saying merely that it is too
intellectualist, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that,
from Thomas’s point of view, the New Natural Law theory’s
account of intention and its object is too speculative, not
sufficiently practical.
As for the principle of double effect, it is concerned, not with
what motivates the will, but with the will’s effects. The principle’s
main job is to distinguish between those bad results of action that
are in no way effects of the agent’s will and those that are its
indirect effects by his failing to avoid them when he could and
should. What I have argued is that, for Thomas, a result, the
thought of which does not motivate the will, can still be the will’s
direct effect and can even specify its action. In order to judge such
cases, a principle of side effects is not needed.

99
STh I-II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 2; II-II, q. 47, a. 3. Universal considerations can be
principles of action, but only as applied to particular considerations; see III De
Anima, lect. 10 (Leonine ed., 45/1:251, ll. 123-45).
100
STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10.
101
STh I, q. 80, a. 2, ad 2.

The Thomist 83 (2019): 357-405

THE SPIRATION OF LOVE IN GOD ACCORDING TO AQUINAS
AND HIS INTERPRETERS
JEREMY D. WILKINS
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
“Pondus meum amor meus; eo feror quocumque feror.”1
Augustine
“Contemplatio spiritualis pulchritudinis vel bonitatis est principium amoris
spiritualis.”2
Thomas Aquinas

T

HE HOLY SPIRIT, according to Thomas Aquinas’s
teaching in the Summa theologiae, proceeds from the
Father and the Son in the mode of will (per modum
voluntatis), as proceeding love (amor procedens), as the beloved
in the lover (amatum in amante), as an inclination to and
impression of the beloved (inclinatio, impressio).3 Both the
Scholastic commentary tradition and more recent scholarship
attest to a problem of interpretation regarding these assertions.
Interpreters do not agree about (1) whether the will emanates an
operatum, parallel in some way to the procession of the inner
word within the intellect; (2) what is meant by the beloved in the
lover; (3) what, exactly, Aquinas’s analogue for the procession of
the Spirit is; and (4) how Aquinas uses the one name, “love,” to

1

Augustine, Confessions 13.9.10: “My weight is my love; by it I am borne
whithersoever I am borne.” All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
2
STh I-II, q. 27, a. 2: “Spiritual contemplation of beauty or goodness is the principle
of spiritual love.” See below, n. 71.
3
STh I, q. 27, a. 3; q. 27, a. 4; q. 37, a. 1.
357

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

denote (a) an essential attribute of God, (b) a personal property
of the Spirit, and (c) a notional act of the Father and the Son.
The chief question regards the operatum in, or from, the will.
One line of interpretation, classically represented by John of St.
Thomas (Poinsot) and lately promoted by Gilles Emery, takes the
beloved in the lover to be a product or term in the will emanating
from the act of love, as the inner word is a reality in the intellect
emanating from the act of understanding. On this interpretation,
there are two acts called love, one emanated from the other: a
basic act of love, and a derivative act described as love’s fruit,
impress, or impulse, but also called love. It is this derivation of
one act of love from another, according to the majority of interpreters, that provides Aquinas’s analogue for spiration in God. A
minority report, however, urged most explicitly by Bernard
Lonergan and others under his influence, but possibly found also
in Cajetan, takes the beloved in the lover to be the act of love
itself, emanating into the will from the inner word in the intellect.
This reading denies that the impress or impulse of love is
anything other than the act of love itself; affective momentum is
not something love produces, but is just what love is (as Augustine
suggests in the remark quoted in epigraph).
The problem has psychological, theological, and exegetical
aspects. Fundamentally, the question lies in the field of rational
psychology. Either the psychological facts can be determined
clearly and exactly, or they cannot. But insofar as the matter at
hand is an interpretation of Aquinas, our concern shall be to
determine as best we can how he understood the psychological
facts, leaving to the side an evaluation of his views.
To this question of psychological fact is annexed a theological
issue. We develop an imperfect but fruitful understanding of the
mysteries by analogy with realities more familiar to us. But if the
more familiar realities are themselves shrouded in mystery, we
are moving per ignotum ad ignotius. The more familiar reality
Aquinas takes for his Trinitarian analogue purports to be a
structure of acts within our rational consciousness, but he has

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359

been accused of rigging the system.4 In the measure that
accusation is sustained, his achievement is not theoretical
illumination but at best a coherent restatement of the truths of
faith. Verbal coherence is not nothing, of course, but neither is it
the imperfect but fruitful understanding that is the aim of
systematic theology. If, then, we ourselves wish analogically to
conceive how (and not merely coherently to assert that) divine
understanding utters an inner word spirating love, we must first
grasp as clearly as possible how our own understanding utters an
inner word spirating love. In the measure that these psychological
facts are obscure to us, the illuminating substance of theory is
exchanged for a merely verbal coherence; we are left with a
model that is unverified, opaque, or contrived, and a set of
syntactical rules for applying it to the Trinity.
Finally, there is the direct locus of contention, which is
exegetical. How are the various statements of Aquinas to be
understood? Remotely and fundamentally, perhaps, the source of
the confusion is unfamiliarity with the relevant psychological
realities, or the obscurity of the realities themselves. But
proximately, the source of exegetical confusion stems from
ambiguities in certain of his statements about the procession of
love in God.
Any evaluation of Aquinas’s contribution to the theoretical
problems of Trinitarian systematics depends on an exact
interpretation of his views. That is my present aim. The
4
This objection is ventured in Karl Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter
Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte,” in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriß heilsgeschichtlicher
Dogmatik, ed. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, Mysterium Salutis 2, Die
Heilsgeschichte vor Christus (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1967), 395; in English, Karl Rahner,
The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1997), 117-18;
similarly, John O’Callaghan, “Verbum Mentis: Philosophical or Theological Doctrine in
Aquinas?,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 (2001):
103-19; idem, “More Words on the Verbum: A Response to James Doig,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 77 (2003): 257-68; fuller discussion in Jeremy D.
Wilkins, Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom (Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 278-315.

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procedure, however, will be somewhat dialectical. The conflict
of interpretations presents a range of options for how Aquinas’s
statements might be read. They could all be wrong, but they
cannot all be right if the differences are real. Whether Aquinas
himself has the psychological facts correct or not is a question for
another day, though I tend to find him impressively accurate as
far as he goes. Here, then, I will assemble, classify, and evaluate
the conflicting interpretations of Aquinas’s mature position, that
is, the position in the Summa theologiae. My present interest in
his earlier writings is restricted to their relevance to a determination of the mature position. I begin with a fuller statement
of the problem, followed by a classification of the principal texts.
Then I offer a brief review of opinions. The fourth, fifth, and
sixth parts indicate what I regard as the more probable readings
and the positions that might result from developing them.
Let me tip my positive argument. I take it that Aquinas’s
analogy for the Trinity is divine theoria, contemplation of the
divine goodness, as suggested by my second epigraph.5 Contemplation (or, more precisely, speculation, that is, the consideration
of God as reflected in our own spiritual acts) is both the
theological activity by which we ascend to the mystery, and the
speculum (mirror) in which we consider it.6 The minority report,
I find, is favored by the balance of psychological, theological, and
exegetical considerations. It succeeds better than the alternative
in ascertaining the spiritual structure of contemplation and the
spiration of contemplative love, which is Aquinas’s analogue for
the spiration of love in God. The rather technical issues treated
here have implications far beyond the relatively narrow scope of
my investigation, but sufficient to the day its own labors.7
5
See too STh I, q. 27, a. 5, ad 2: “Only the processions of word and love are
acknowledged in God, inasmuch as God understands and loves his essence, truth, and
goodness.”
6
In an early writing, Aquinas distinguished contemplation and speculation as two
manners in which we consider God, either directly (contemplation) or in creatures as in
a mirror (speculum, whence speculation); see III Sent., d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qcla 3.
7
These implications bear on Trinitarian theory, obviously, but also on questions of
rational psychology and its entailments, such as the difference between knowing and
loving, the meaning of intelligible emanation, the role of the inner word in human

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I. THE PROBLEM
There are three criteria for an analogical conception of a
procession in God. First, the procession must be of one act from
another, rather than a movement from potency to act. Second,
the proceeding act must be internal to the agent and not an
external effect. Third, the kind of procession meeting these first
two criteria and appropriate to our conception of God must be
wholly spiritual, an intelligible emanation.
First, then, a movement from potency to act, a perfection in
the agent, is excluded from God who is pure act.8 A movement
from potency to act does not give rise to a distinct object (res) or
(considered in itself) originate one act from another, because one
and the same reality is perfectible in potency and perfected in act.
In the disputed questions De veritate, accordingly, the procession
of an operation or action (processio operationis) is distinguished
from the procession of an operatum (processio operati).9 In the
Summa contra gentiles, what seems to be the same distinction is
asserted by asking for one act from another.10
For instance, the movement from not understanding to
actually understanding would be a processio operationis, a movement from potency to act, a perfection received in the possible
intellect. The movement from actually understanding to the
formation of the inner word would be a processio operati: the
inner word is an immanent object emanated from the act of

cognition, the rationality of the will, the scope of human self-determination, and so forth;
on the use of analogy in systematic theology; and on how we might understand such
matters as the presence of God in the minds and hearts of the just.
8
STh I, q. 27, a. 2, ad 1.
9
De Verit., q. 4, a. 7, ad 2: “An operation proceeds as a received perfection; but an
operatum proceeds as a distinct object [res].”
10
See ScG IV, c. 14, where it is explained that the kind of procession relevant to
Trinitarian theory is not act from potency, but “sicut oritur actus ex actu.”

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understanding.11 The operatum is an act, object, or term wrought
by, and really distinct from, the principle from which it emanates.
For terminological convenience, I will refer to the first type of
act, the processio operationis, as an elicited act (i.e., an act elicited
in a potency). I will refer to the second type, the processio operati,
as an emanated act (i.e., one act emanated from another). I shall
take it that act-from-act and processio operati are functionally
equivalent criteria.12
Second, the emanated act must be internal and not an external
effect. Such an act is illustrated by the procession of the concept
or inner word from the act of understanding; Aquinas calls this
an “intelligible emanation” which is the more perfectly one with
its principle the more perfectly it proceeds.13 I take “intelligible”
in this context to mean intelligent, that is, actively rather than
passively intelligible, autonomous rather than imposed from outside, and open of itself rather than specifically determined.14 The
analogy of intelligible emanation, because it is wholly spiritual,
befits the divine reality.15 These points suggest the importance of
verifying the relevant realities within the field of our rational and
moral consciousness.
Both kinds of procession—elicited and emanated—are
relevant to a psychology, but only the second kind is relevant to
Trinitarian theory. God is pure actuality, so there is in God no
movement, even analogically, from potency to act: no processio
11
The inner word is the concept, definition, or formulated ratio as distinct, though
not necessarily separate, from the linguistic formulation that carries it. Although it seems
the inner word is usually carried linguistically, it is distinguishable in principle from
language, else translation would be impossible. That, however, is a question for another
day.
12
Possibly it is significant that an operatum suggests an immanent term or object,
whereas act from act does not; further investigation of that question would be valuable
to a complete understanding of Aquinass’s progress. For the moment, however, I shall
take the statements of the De veritate and the Contra gentiles as functionally equivalent;
but if De veritate were superseded in this respect, it would only strengthen my case that
the significant development was not the discovery of a volitional operatum.
13
STh I, q. 27, a. 1, ad 2.
14
See the valuable discussion of this point in Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Verbum: Word
and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works 2
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 46–48. I will say more about this below.
15
STh I, q. 27, a. 1.

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operationis. There is, however, a real order of origination in God,
which Aquinas conceives on the analogy of one act arising from
another.16 Only a procession of love that fulfills the ratio of an
emanated, internal, and intelligible act can provide an analogue
for spiration in God. Thus we may further refine our question: is
there an act of love fulfilling the ratio of an emanated, internal,
and intelligible act, and in what sense?
Hypothetically, there are at least two ways this ratio might be
satisfied. It might be satisfied by positing the emanation of an
immanent object (operatum) in the will from the act of love, as
the majority reading holds. Such an act, proceeding from the act
of love, would itself be called “love” (as the majority hold) only
in an equivocal or analogical sense and out of a paucity of
language; more properly it might be called the impress, impulse,
or fruit of love. This position, in effect, opposes a basic to a
derived act in the will, both of which are named “love.” A second
way the ratio of an emanated act might be satisfied in the will is
by the conscious, rational emanation of love from the judgment
of the intellect, as the minority reading holds. This position holds
that the act of rational love, though an elicited perfection in the
will, is also an intelligible emanation from the intellect; and it is
the latter dimension that provides an analogue for divine
spiration.
The question might also be posed in a different manner.
Aquinas asserts that the beloved is in the lover (amatum in
amante) through love.17 Everyone affirms an impression of the
beloved on the affect of the lover; the question is whether this
impression is constituted by the act of love, or is something the
act of love produces. Does Aquinas mean to say that the beloved
is present through an object or term produced by love, that is, by
some stamp or impulse emanated from basic love (as the majority

16
These acts are “notional” in the sense that we affirm only one real act in God though
we have to conceive the Trinity in terms of distinct acts.
17
For instance, STh I, q. 27, a. 3.

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holds)? Or does he mean that the beloved is present just in virtue
of love itself (as the minority claims)? Does love produce a further
impulse toward the beloved, or is love itself already such an
impulse?
Before we examine the texts, I will provide clarification by
briefly schematizing the main alternatives as they appear in the
field of Trinitarian theory. The schemas are only models. It
would be too involved here to verify the actual positions taken
by different interpreters, which exhibit important variations.
Henceforth I shall refer to these alternative readings as the
“parallel operati” model and the “intelligible inclination” model,
respectively. (Note that in both lines of interpretation, the act of
understanding is the analogue for the Father not as taken
absolutely, but as taken relationally, that is, as speaking the word:
Father as Speaker.18)
The majority interpretation affirms an operatum emanating
within the will from the act of love. The procession of this
operatum is the analogue for the second procession in God, thus:
Act of Understanding (dicere)
Word
Act of Love
Inclination, Fruit, Impress of Love = Beloved in the Lover

In this schema, there are two parallel processes, one in the mode
of intellect, one in the mode of will. The procession in the mode
of intellect is the inner word from the act of understanding. The
procession in the mode of will is the fruit or impress of love
which, it is claimed, proceeds from the act of love. Thus, there
are two parallel objects: the intellect in act (actually understanding) speaks the inner word as its immanent object or term,
and the will in act (actually loving) spirates a fruit or impression
or impulse as its immanent object or term.
An obvious difficulty for this model is that the Spirit is said to
proceed in God, not from the divine will, but from the Word.
This difficulty is resolved not in the analogue but in its theological
18
STh I, q. 28, a. 4, corp. and ad 1; cf. q. 40, a. 4. For Aquinas, each statement is valid,
in its own conceptual order: The Father is Father because he generates, and he generates
because he is Father. In other words, we have to think of the acts through which the divine
relations are constituted, and conversely of the persons whose acts they are.

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application. Because divine love is really identical to divine being,
we conceive the Speaker and the Word to be the principle of the
fruit of love (the Spirit) inasmuch as they are (in God) really
identical to divine love.19 In us, however, speaker and word are
not really identical to the act of love; so the analogy illuminates
the mystery only because in God everything is one except where
real opposed relations meet.
The minority interpretation denies an operatum emanating
within the will as from a prior and more basic act in the will; at
the same stroke it denies an equivocal use of the name “love.” It
refers descriptions of love’s impress or impulse, or the beloved in
the lover, to properties of the act of love itself, not to some
further act, impulse, object or term proceeding from the act of
love. It affirms that the act of love itself, the basic act of the will,
is an intelligible emanation from the inner word expressing a
judgment of worth, nobility, or value (the “verbum spirans
amorem”).20 There are, of course, other emanated acts in the will,
such as the election of means; but only the basic act of love,
emanated from the judgment of the intellect, provides a suitable
analogue for the Spirit’s procession:
Act of Understanding (dicere)

Word (breathing love)

Love

In this interpretation, the basic act of the will has a twofold ratio.
With respect to the will as a potency, it is an elicited act and an
immanent perfection (a processio operationis). But with respect
to the judgment of the intellect, it is an emanated act; and this is
the aspect relevant to Trinitarian theory. Again, on this reading,
the will does not emanate the “beloved in the lover” as an object

19

At least for Emery, this basic love that the Father and Son are, in relation to the
Spirit as a derived fruit of love, is the meaning of love as a notional act. I will say more
about this below.
20
Henceforth I shall speak of a judgment of value, where by value I understand the
good as the possible object of rational love.”

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distinct from the act of love itself. Rather, the beloved is in the
heart of the lover by love itself, as a term is in an inclination.
As these schemas suggest, different accounts of rational
psychology portend rather different analogies for the second
procession in God. For the minority, the analogue for the Spirit
is an intelligible, voluntary inclination whose principle is the
utterance of the inner word. But for the majority, the analogue
for the Spirit is a derived volitional impulse whose principle is
the act of love itself. Similarly, for the minority the beloved in the
lover is constituted by the act of love; for the majority, the
beloved in the lover denotes an immanent object, term, or
impulse produced by the act of love. Again, for the minority,
rational love names the basic act elicited in the will; for the
majority, “love” is used equivocally to name both the basic act
and a subsequent act produced from it. The minority regards the
volitional object or act stipulated by the majority as an occult
entity that Aquinas, at least, never affirmed. Finally, the
alternatives present different ways of understanding the sense in
which the Spirit proceeds from the Word. For the minority, the
Spirit proceeds from the Word as rational love proceeds from the
judgment of value, that is, from the Word as word; for the
majority, the Spirit proceeds from the Word because the Word is
really identical to basic love on account of divine simplicity, and
(mediately, it would seem, through basic love) inasmuch as the
intellect specifies the object of the will. Probably the lines also
diverge on the question whether the dependence of rational love
on intellectual judgment satisfies the ratio of an emanated act;
but whether this is a real divergence, or only a possibility the
majority has not considered, is difficult to determine.
II. THE EXEGETICAL DILEMMA
Obviously it is one matter to understand Aquinas’s meaning,
another to understand the realities of consciousness, and a third
to judge the adequacy of Aquinas’s meaning to those realities.
Since our immediate concern is the first, we may turn to some
data in the writings of Aquinas.

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The exegetical case for an operatum from the will is favored
by certain statements in the Pars prima (ca. 1268)21 that strongly
imply a parallel between the procession of the word in the
intellect and the procession of love in the will. On the other side
of the ledger is the fact that Aquinas explicitly denies such a
parallel elsewhere. The most explicit denial is, perhaps, a statement from the earlier De veritate (ca. 1256), where an operatum
in the will is denied on the ground that the operation of the will
terminates in things, while the operation of the intellect
terminates in the true and the false, which are in the mind. This
basic difference between intellect and will is iterated in later
writings; a determination of its meaning and relevance might
hold the key to our problem, but more on that in due course. A
presentation of the texts themselves will expeditiously illustrate
the exegetical difficulty.
In the first part of the Summa theologiae, Aquinas explains the
sense in which “love” is a proper name for the Spirit by noting a
similarity between intellect and will:
Both processions should be considered in a similar way. Just as, from the fact
that someone understands something, there comes forth a kind of intellectual
conception of the object understood in the one who understands, which is called
the word; so too, from the fact that someone loves something, there comes forth
a kind of impression, so to speak, of the object loved in the affection of the
lover, according to which the beloved is said to be in the lover, just as what is
understood is in the one who understands.22

21

I follow throughout the dating proposed by Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1996). The chronology is probably more important here than
the exact dates of composition.
22
“Et tamen similiter utramque processio considerari oportet. Sicut enim ex hoc quod
aliquis rem aliquam intelligit, provenit quaedam intellectualis conceptio rei intellectae in
intelligente, quae dicitur verbum; ita ex hoc quod aliquis rem aliquam amat, provenit
quaedam impressio, ut ita loquar, rei amatae in affectu amantis, secundum quam amatum
dicitur esse in amante, sicut et intellectum in intelligente” (STh I, q. 37, a. 1).

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This “coming forth” (provenire) is what I have called “emanation.” Aquinas’s formulation here implies, or at least seems to
imply, that there is an emanation within the will. This emanation
is an impression of the beloved. It comes forth from the fact that
the beloved is loved, which rather strongly implies a prior act
aptly called “love.” It is to loving what the inner word is to
understanding. A similar statement occurs at an earlier point in
the same treatise:
But according to the operation of the will, there is found in us another
procession, namely, the procession of love, by which the beloved is in the lover,
just as, by the conception of the word, the thing said or understood is in the one
who understands.23

This text, like the other, affirms an emanation of love. Again this
emanation is said to parallel the emanation of the word in the
intellect, although it is also clearly stated that the emanation is
the procession of love itself (does the same name denote two
different acts?). The beloved is in the lover by the procession of
love, that is, the operation of the will. Both texts state that, in
some sense, the procession of love in the will is comparable to
the procession of the word in the intellect.
We may pose three questions, not to answer them
immediately but to keep the problem in focus. What is the
principle of this volitional emanation? What is its term? What
kind of emanation are we talking about? By the minority report,
the principle is the judgment of the intellect, the term is the act
of love itself, and the emanation, at least in its relevant aspect, is
an intelligible procession. To the majority, however, these texts
seem to assert so clear a parallel between intellect and will, as to
signify that an immanent term (operatum) is produced in each
and by each.24 The majority, then, takes it that the principle is the
23

“Secundum autem operationem voluntatis invenitur in nobis quaedam alia
processio, scilicet processio amoris, secundum quam amatum est in amante, sicut per
conceptionem verbi res dicta vel intellecta, est in intelligente” (STh I, q. 27, a. 3).
24
Several examples to follow in the exposition of opinions below. Albert Patfoort,
O.P., in an otherwise warm review of Bernard Lonergan, Divinarum personarum conceptio analogica (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1959), faults Lonergan for neglecting
the significance of this “parellelism.” “To give a small but precise example, we wonder if,

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act of love, the term is an operatum emanated by love (but equally
called love), and the emanation is a self-movement of the will
proportioning itself to the beloved.25 As the word is to the act of
understanding, so this term, love’s fruit, is to the basic act of love.
The former provides an analogue for the procession of the Word,
and the latter for the procession of the Spirit.
At first blush, the majority would seem to have the better case.
If the majority interpretation requires some equivocal use of
“love,” so, it might seem, does the minority line. The minority
has to explain how the spiration of love from intellectual
in his analysis of the procession of love, Lonergan takes sufficient account of St. Thomas’s
development, and if he gives sufficient accord to the vigorous parallel the Angelic Doctor
posits between, on the one hand, ‘the relation to its principle, of the impression or
affection for the object loved, which comes forth in the lover from the fact that he loves’
(q. 37, a. 1), and, on the other hand, ‘whoever understands, from the very fact that he
understands, there proceeds something within him, which is the conception of the object
understood’ (q. 27, a. 1). It seems to us that the text and, more generally, the bearing of
the Trinitarian analogy, that St. Thomas attaches to proceeding love in the Prima pars
resist Lonergan’s interpretation, and that a whole series of the texts he invokes could, on
the contrary, be lined up quite normally along the lines of our preferred solution” (“Pour
donner un exemple mineur, mais précis, nous nous demandons si dans l’analyse de la
procession d’amour [Lonergan] tient suffisamment compte de l’évolution de S. Thomas
et s’il fait assez droit au parallélisme énergique que le Docteur angélique établit entre
«habitudo ipsius impressionis vel affectionis rei amatae quae provenit in amante ex hoc
quod amat ad suum principium» d’une part (q. 37 a. 1), et d’autre part : «quicumque
intelligit, ex hoc ipso quod intelligit procedit aliquid intra ipsum quod est conceptio rei
intellectae» [q. 27 a. 1]; il nous semble que ce texte et, de façon plus générale, la portée
de l’analogie trinitaire que S. Thomas dans la Ia Pars attache a l’amour procedens résistent
à la interprétation de l’auteur et que toute une série parmi les textes invoqués peuvent au
contraire s’aligner très normalement sur le rapprochement que nous venons de faire”
[Bulletin thomiste 10, no. 2 (1959): 531-34, at 533-34]).
25
So John Poinsot: “The will differs from the intellect in this, that the intellect is
determined by a pati, whereas the will is not determined or driven by a pati, but rather
by a voluntary determination and inclination from within; it loves when it spirates and
impels itself. Nor would the will impel or determine itself, and be rendered heavy
(ponderosa) unless in a vital way, as we said above, and spontaneous” (Cursus Theologicus,
t. 4, disp. 12, a. 7, §11 [(Paris: Vivès, 1884), 148a]). See also Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian
Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Murphy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 228-29.

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judgment matches what Aquinas says here about the impression
of love arising from the fact that we love something (ex hoc quod
aliquis rem aliquam amat). Their answer can only be that moral
judgment loves by spirating love. We shall have to examine this
in the pages to come.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to wonder at the majority’s
case. In De veritate, about a dozen years prior to writing his Pars
prima, Aquinas expressly denies—also in a Trinitarian context—
that the will brings forth any operatum comparable to the word
in the intellect. The question from our first Summa passage above
is whether “love” in God is a proper name of the Spirit; here, the
question is whether “word” is a proper name of the Son. The
arguments are similar, for the objection in De veritate is that “just
as ‘love’ conveys an emanation of affection, so ‘word’ [conveys]
an emanation of intellect. But ‘love’, in God, is said essentially,
and therefore, too, ‘word’.”26 Here, however, Aquinas replies
unequivocally that the cases of intellect and will are different.
The inner word is a distinct term arising from the act of
understanding, but the will originates no comparable term; and
the reason is that true and false are in the mind, while good and
evil are in things.
This is the difference between the intellect and the will: that the operation of
the will terminates at things, in which there is good and evil; but the operation
of the intellect terminates in the mind, in which is true and false. . . . And
therefore the will does not have anything coming forth from it and remaining
in it, except by way of a [perfecting] operation; but the intellect has in itself
something coming forth from it, not only by way of an operation, but also by
way of an object wrought [rei operatae]. And for this reason, “word” is meant
as a proceeding object [res] [i.e., an emanated term], but “love” as proceeding
operation [i.e., an elicited perfection]. Therefore “love” is not said personally
in the way “word” is.27
26
“Praeterea, sicut amor importat emanationem affectus, ita verbum emanationem
intellectus. Sed amor in divinis essentialiter dicitur. Ergo et verbum” (De Verit., q. 4 a. 2,
arg. 7).
27
“Haec autem est differentia inter intellectum et voluntatem: quod operatio
voluntatis terminatur ad res, in quibus est bonum et malum; sed operatio intellectus
terminatur in mente, in qua est verum et falsum, ut dicitur in VI Metaphysic. Et ideo
voluntas non habet aliquid progrediens a seipsa, quod in ea sit nisi per modum
operationis; sed intellectus habet in seipso aliquid progrediens ab eo, non solum per

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What the later statements seem to imply by parallelism, this
earlier text denies in the most explicit manner: an immanent
object in the will comparable to the word in the intellect.
In doing so, however, the earlier statement also denies that
love can be a proper name in God. On this point Aquinas definitely changed his mind, so perhaps (as some suggest) he changed
his mind about the operatum in the will, too. Perhaps, one might
think, it was the discovery (or stipulation) of a volitional
operatum that made it possible for Aquinas later to affirm that
love can be both an essential and a personal name in God.
On the other hand, Aquinas certainly did not change his mind
about the underlying principle: true and false are in the mind, but
good and evil are in things. The same principle is iterated in the
Pars prima to deny, it would seem, an immanent object in the
will. For instance:
The action of the intellect consists in this, that the ratio of the object understood
is in the one who understands; but the act of the will is perfected in this, that
the will is inclined toward the thing itself as it is in itself. Hence Aristotle says
that good and evil, which are the objects of the will, are in things; true and false,
which are the objects of the intellect, are in the mind.28

The ratio of the object understood is expressed in the inner word.
The mind does not judge about the truth of things, but about the
truth of its conception of things, whether it has understood
modum operationis, sed etiam per modum rei operatae. Et ideo verbum significatur ut res
procedens, sed amor ut operatio procedens; unde amor non ita se habet ad hoc ut dicatur
personaliter, sicut verbum” (De Verit., q. 4, a. 2, ad 7). Two kinds of procession are
distinguished: a received perfection, which is excluded from God, and the procession of
an operatum, which constitutes an object (res) distinct from its principle, and is therefore
relevant to conceiving the distinction of persons in God.
28
“Actio intellectus consistit in hoc quod ratio rei intellectae est in intelligente; actus
vero voluntatis perficitur in hoc quod voluntas inclinatur ad ipsam rem prout in se est. Et
ideo philosophus dicit, in VI Metaphys., quod bonum et malum, quae sunt obiecta
voluntatis, sunt in rebus; verum et falsum, quae sunt obiecta intellectus, sunt in mente”
(STh I, q. 82, a. 3). We will return to this passage below. See the parallel statement at STh
II-II, q. 23, a. 6, ad 1.

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correctly. Understanding (intelligere) emanates its own immanent
object, the inner word, as the expressed species in which it
considers the real. This immanent object may be abstract and
general, but real things are concrete and particular. Love,
however, bears on the things conceived, not on the adequacy of
the conception. It bears on them in their concreteness, not as
abstract; what may be intelligently disregarded as irrelevant to
understanding cannot be irrelevant to love. Hence there is no
object in the will, parallel to the inner word in the intellect,
because volition terminates not in the conception of a good but
in the objective good itself.
A similar contrast occurs in a context generally dated between
the first and second parts of the Summa theologiae: question 6 of
the disputed questions De malo.29 Love seeks the objective good;
judgment regards the adequacy of conception: “love is said to
transform the beloved into the lover, inasmuch as the lover is
moved by love toward the beloved object. But knowledge assimilates, inasmuch as the likeness of the known comes to be in
the knower.” Further, “assent names not a movement of the
intellect [with respect] to the thing, but rather [with respect] to
the conception of the thing had in the mind, to which the intellect
assents when it judges it true.”30 In other words, it is not for us
to judge whether reality is true or false, but only to judge whether
we have understood it correctly. These statements do not give the
impression that Aquinas revised his views on the difference between knowing and loving; they seem quite consistent with the
view enunciated in De veritate. Intelligence conceives in order to
judge its conception; its term, in this sense, is immanent. But the

29

See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:205, 336.
“Ad decimumtertium dicendum, quod amor dicitur transformare amantem in
amatum, in quantum per amorem movetur amans ad ipsam rem amatam; cognitio vero
assimilat, in quantum similitudo cogniti fit in cognoscente; quorum primum pertinet ad
imitationem quae est ab agente, quod quaerit finem; secundum vero pertinet ad
imitationem, quae est secundum formam. Ad decimumquartum dicendum, quod assentire
non nominat motum intellectus ad rem, sed magis ad conceptionem rei, quae habetur in
mente; cui intellectus assentit dum iudicat eam esse veram” (De Malo, q. 6, a. 1, ad 13
and ad 14).
30

SPIRATION OF LOVE IN GOD

373

very meaning of love is displacement into the beloved; it is
ecstatic.
We have, then, an interpretive dilemma. On the one side, two
texts suggest an apparent parallelism regarding the Spirit as
proceeding love. On the other side, the parallel is expressly
negated on the constant and fundamental principle that good and
evil are in things, but true and false are in the mind.
III. OPINIONS
Interpreters tend to divide into two main camps.31 The
majority opinion holds that the will produces within itself an
immanent object or term (John [of St Thomas] Poinsot, I. Dockx,
M. T.-L. Penido, H.-F. Dondaine, A. Patfoort, G. Emery;
probably Sylvester of Ferrara).32 This term proceeds from the act
of love as its impulse or impression, by which the will in act
proportions itself to its beloved. It is what is meant by the beloved
in the lover. The procession of this immanent term within the
will is Aquinas’s analogue for the procession of the Spirit. This
opinion seems to have commanded the assent or at least the
acquiescence of the majority in the Thomistic school after Poinsot
(1589-1644),33 and today is perhaps widely taken for granted due
31

I hesitate to call these different lines “schools” because the dependence of one author
upon another within the same line is not always easy to determine, although in some cases
it is.
32
John [of St Thomas] Poinsot, Cursus Theologicus, vol. 4 (Vivès ed., 141-69); I.
[Stanislaus Isnard] Dockx, O.P., “Note sur la procession de terme dans la volonté,”
Angelicum 15 (1938): 419-28; Maurilio T.-L. Penido, “Gloses sur la procession d’amour
dans la Trinité,” Ephemerides theologicae lovaniensis 14, no. 1 (1937): 33-68; H.-F.
Dondaine, Somme théologique: La Trinité (traduction et commentaire), 2ème éd., 2 vols.,
Éditions de la revue des jeunes (Paris: Desclée, 1950); Patfoort, review of Divinarum
personarum conceptio analogica, 531-34; Emery, Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas
Aquinas; Sylvester of Ferrara, Commentaria in Summam contra gentiles s. Thomae
Aquinatis IV, c. 19 ([Rome: Leonina, 1930], 76-79). On Patfoort, see n. 24, above.
33
In characterizing this as the majority opinion, I am relying upon Penido, “Gloses,”
37, but also my impression.

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

to the prestige of Gilles Emery, who presents it definitively as
Aquinas’s mature and innovative solution without even adverting
(as far as I have read), to any difficulties of interpretation.
Interpreters of this persuasion subdivide into those who
attempt to harmonize the earlier and later texts, and those who
adopt a theory of development. For his part, Poinsot simply
harmonized the texts: the volitional operatum denied in De
veritate is an immanent terminus; the volitional operatum
affirmed in the Pars prima is not a terminus.34 A similar position
is detectible in Sylvester of Ferrara’s commentary on the Summa
contra gentiles: (1) the Spirit does not proceed as the act of love
itself, but as an affection produced from the act of love;35 (2) the
negation of an operatum in De veritate means only the negation
of a similitude in the will, or rather that the will does not produce
34
Poinsot, Cursus Theologicus, 4: In Sum. Theol. q. 27, disp. 12, a. 7 (Vivès ed.,
141-69. For Poinsot, because the will is not externally determined to one good or another,
it must determine itself. For this, the good presented by the intelligence is insufficient
since it remains within the order of finality (final causality). An efficient cause is also
required, namely, that the will adapt or proportion itself to the good in moving itself
toward the good. This self-determination depends on the apprehended form, but is itself
an impulse internally produced by the will, a vital act which however is an impulse, not a
terminus. What Aquinas denies in De veritate, on this reading, is an operatum that is a
terminus, not an operatum that is a self-movement toward the beloved. See ibid., §5 (Vivès
ed., 144). More on this doctrine in the pages to follow.
35
“By the name love he understands, not the act itself of love, but that which is
produced through such an act of love. Because the things of love lack the kind of proper
names that the things of intellect have, one and the same word is used, sometimes to
designate the object produced by love, and sometimes the act of love itself. For this reason
St. Thomas sometimes says that the Holy Spirit is himself the act of love (as in I Sent.),
meaning that he is something produced by the act of love, but designated by the name of
the very act” (“Nomine enim amoris intelligit, non ipsum actum amoris, sed id quod per
talem actum amoris producitur. Quia enim ea quae ad voluntatem pertinent, non ita
habent propria nomina sicut ea quae pertinent ad intellectum, ideo quandoque uno
nomine utimur ad significandum tam id quod per actum amandi producitur, quam ipsum
amandi actum. Propter quod quandoque dicit Sanctus Thomas quod Spiritus Sanctus est
ipse actus amoris, ut patet I Sent., intendens quod est aliquid actu amoris productum, sed
nomine ipsius actus significatum” [Sylvester of Ferrara, In IV, c. 19, §11.2 (Leonine ed.,
78)]). Again, “The beloved is in the lover inasmuch as he is loved: that is, through an
affection produced by the act of love, by which the lover is inclined to the beloved and,
in a way, impelled” (“Amatum est in amante secundum quod amatur: idest, per
affectionem actu amandi productam qua amans in amatum inclinatur et, quodammodo
impellitur” [ibid., §11.3 (Leonine ed., 78)]).

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its volitum in the way the intellect produces the intellectum;36 (3)
because of the poverty of our terminology for love, we name the
term produced by the act of the will from the operation.37 The
36

“But against this determination of the question, there are the words [of De Verit., q.
4, a. 2, ad 7]. . . . He posits there a difference between intellect and will. . . . To this I
reply, first, that St. Thomas did not wish there to exclude all manner of operatum or
product from the act of the will, but only such as would be a similitude of the object [res]
willed. The intellect and the will differ because the intellect, by its act, produces within
itself a similitude of the object understood, for the intellect’s conception is an expressed
similitude of the object understood. The will, however, does not produce within itself, by
the act of loving, a likeness of the beloved object, though it does a certain form by which
it is inclined to the beloved object, just as a heavy thing is inclined to a lower place” (“Sed
huic determinationi videntur obstare verba [in De ver. 4.2 ad 7]. . . . Ponit enim ibi
differentiam inter intellectum et voluntatem. . . . Ad hoc, respondetur primo, quod non
vult excludere Sanctus Thomas ibidem omne operatum aut productum ab actu, voluntatis,
sed tantum productum quod sit similitudo rei volitae. Differunt enim intellectus et
voluntas, quia intellectus per suum actum producit in seipso rei intellectae similitudinem,
conceptio enim intellectus est similitudo expressa rei intellectae: voluntas autem non
producit in se per actum amandi similitudinem rei amatae, licet producat quandam
formam per quam in rem amatam inclinatur, sicut grave per gravitatem ad locum deorsum
inclinatur” [ibid., §10.1-2 (Leonine ed., 78)]). Again, “When, then, St. Thomas says that
the will does not have anything proceeding within it in the way of an operatum, he is
talking about how the thing is designated and named. He means that there is nothing in
the will, that bears a proper and distinct name, designating it in the way of an operatum.
Rather, that which truly is an operatum, bears a name designating it in the way of an
operation, the name, that is, of Love” (“Cum ergo inquit Sanctus Thomas voluntatem
non, habere aliquid in se procedens per modum operati, intelligitur quoad modum
significandi et quoad nominis proprietatem. Sensus enim est quod in voluntate non est
aliquid quod habeat proprium et distinctum nomen significans per modum operati: sed
id quod vere est operatum, habet nomen significans ipsum per modum operationis, scilicet
nomen Amoris” (ibid., §10.3 [Leonine ed., 79]) He adds that the first response is better,
because in De veritate the reason assigned is “verum et falsum sunt in mente, bonum et
malum sunt in rebus,” while nothing is said of the propriety of names (ibid., §10.4
[Leonine ed., 79]).
37
“From this [paucity of names for love], it follows that the term produced by the act
of the will is not designated in the way of a term, but in the way of an operation: since
love designates an operation before it designates the term of an operation” (“Ex quo
sequitur quod terminus per actum voluntatis productus non significatur per modum
termini, sed per modum operationis: cum amor per prius significet operationem quam
terminum operationis” [ibid., §10.3 (Leonine ed., 78)]). Note that this explanation seems

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

upshot is that we cannot use love as a personal name in the same
way we can use verbum as a personal name. This, in substance, is
also the position taken by Dockx.38
If, however, these authors are correct to say that the operatum
denied in De veritate is not the operatum affirmed in the Summa,
it becomes all the more perplexing that Aquinas should ever have
denied that love could be a personal name of the Spirit. Why not
simply distinguish different kinds of immanent term? Enter
theories of development. In a celebrated study, H.-D. Simonin
documents a general shift in Aquinas’s semantic patterns from
love as “information” to love as “impulsion.”39 In the earlier
writings, the beloved is in the lover as informing the will; in the
latter, as a term is present in a tendency to the term. This finding
influenced both Penido and Emery, who invoke Simonin as a
kind of character witness though he did not, as far as I know,
pronounce on our precise question. Penido, who regards the majority reading as inevitable but also unsatisfactory, hypothesizes a
development as the only way to avoid violence to the texts; he
thinks it probably occurred around the time of De potentia
(1265-66), that is, just before the Pars prima.40 For his part,
Emery stipulates a development on our question as part of a turn,
curiously, from an excessively narrow parallel between intellect
to be the opposite of Aquinas’s, as we will see in section 5 below; notional love is an
action denominated from its formal effect.
38
Dockx, “Note sur la procession.” Dockx argues that there is no development in
Aquinas’s thought concerning an operatum in the will, because from the Scriptum
onwards Aquinas distinguishes the act of love (“aimer”) from its term (“amour,” res quae
procedit from the act of love) (there is, as we shall see, something to this, though not quite
as Dockx takes it). Love in the latter sense is what in the Summa theologiae is called the
“impression” of love. When it comes to De veritate, what is negated is not the procession
of an operatum in the will, but the procession of an operatum that is the immanent term
of willing. The amorous impression produced by the will in second act is a terminus quo,
but it differs from the procession of the inner word in that it is not directly what is loved.
The term of the intellect is both quo and quod, while the term of love is only quo. Here,
Dockx is calling for a more precise distinction than that given by Cajetan and Ferrara,
who understood De veritate to reject both a similitude and a point of rest. See ibid., 427.
39
Henri-Dominique Simonin, O.P., “Autour de la solution thomiste du problème de
l’amour,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age 6 (1931): 174-276.
40
Penido, “Gloses,” 40 n. 29. On the dating of De potentia, see Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 1:161-62.

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377

and will, that is, an unduly intellectual conception of love.41
“Using this [new] model of an imprint of love,” Emery writes,
“Thomas no longer just discerns an action in the loving will, but
sees in it a ‘fruit’ which proceeds from volition and remains in
the will . . . the emanation of a reality which proceeds from the
will and remains immanent within it.”42 It was only when Aquinas
recognized this procession within the will itself that he had an
adequate analogue for the procession of the Spirit. The new
position, according to Emery, was articulated as early as the
Summa contra gentiles (1259-65).43 Finally, we may mention
H.-F. Dondaine who, in his French translation and commentary
on the Summa theologiae, reads Aquinas as affirming an
emanated “impression” from love, “at least in the Summa.”44
41

Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 67-69. This is frankly the opposite of what one might
expect, since the parallelism of intellect and will is most explicitly denied in the earlier De
veritate, but perhaps implied (and on Emery’s interpretation affirmed) in the later Summa
theologiae. Emery, however, has a different point in mind. For him, the earlier doctrine
of love as a kind of information was excessively intellectual. This excess was remedied in
the later doctrine of love as an impulsus and inclination.
42
Ibid., 68.
43
Ibid. In his footnote, Emery quotes ScG IV, c. 26, “when the mind loves itself, it
produces its own self in the will as beloved” (“Quae dum ulterius [mens] seipsam amat,
seipsam producit in voluntate ut amatum”). This is, at best, an inconclusive statement,
since the meaning of the mind loving itself remains to be explained; is it by spirating love,
or by spirating a product from love? See section 5 below. On the dating of the Summa
contra gentiles, see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:101-4.
44
“Are there three loves in God? No. The thought of St. Thomas seems clear, at least
in the Summa. There is, in the proper meaning of the act, to love, only one love in God,
common to the Three: essential love (I). Next, spirated from the heart of this love, there
is a mysterious impressio: the Holy Spirit, called ‘Love’ (III) by accommodation. Finally,
there is the active production of this impressio by the Father and the Son: the notional act
of active spiration, which is likewise called ‘to love’ (II), again by accommodation” (“Cela
ferait-il trois amours en Dieu?—Non. La pensée de saint Thomas paraît claire, au moins
dans la Somme. Il y a en Dieu un seul amour, au sense propre d’acte d’aimer, commun
aux Trois: l’amour essentiel (I). Il y a en outre, spirée au couer de cet acte d’aimer, une
mystérieuse impressio: le Sainte-Esprit, nommé «Amour» (III) par accommodation. Enfin
il y a la production active de cette impressio par le Père et le Fils: c’est l’acte notionnel de
spiration active, qu’on nomme aussi un «aimer» (II), par accommodation encore”

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For the authors in the minority, Aquinas never affirmed an
immanent term or object emanating from the act of love (B.
Lonergan, F. Bourassa, F. Crowe; possibly Cajetan).45 Lonergan
treats the question directly in Verbum and, in the systematic
volume of his De Deo Trino, mounts an explicit, pointed, but
schematic critique of Poinsot’s interpretation; it would be valuable to see an interpreter of Emery’s calibre address his argument.
According to Lonergan, the alternative readings represent two
opposed theoretical systems: one (attributed to Poinsot and “the
Thomists generally”) which finds a procession within the intellect
and another within the will; and another (attributed to Aquinas)
which finds a procession within the intellect and another from
the intellect into the will.46 “It seems a plain matter of fact,”
Lonergan writes,
that for Aquinas the second procession grounding real relations [in God] is not
the procession of the act of love from the will, nor the procession of something
else from the act of love in the will, but the procession in the will of the act of
love from the inner word in the intellect.47

[Dondaine, Somme théologique: La Trinité, 2:332]). If this is what Aquinas meant,
however, one wonders why he called the third sense amor rather than, say, impressio
amoris. Dondaine takes no position on a development, but leaves the door open: “at least
in the Summa.”
45
Lonergan, Verbum, 108-10, 209-13; Bernard J. F. Lonergan, The Triune God:
Systematics, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields,
Collected Works 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 218-29, 614-25;
Frederick E. Crowe, “Complacency and Concern in the Thought of St. Thomas,” in Three
Thomist Studies (Chestnut Hill, Mass.: Lonergan Institute at Boston College, 2000),
71-203; François Bourassa, “Sur la propriété de l’Esprit Saint, questions disputées,”
Science et esprit 28 (1976): 243-64; idem, “Sur la propriété de l’Esprit Saint, questions
disputées II,” Science et esprit 29 (1977): 23-43; Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria
in Summam Theologiae Aquinatis (Rome: Leonina, 1888), in I, q. 27 a. 3, §§9-13 (Leonine
ed., 4:312-13). Lonergan, for his part, is persuaded that the negation of an operatum in
the will would become clearer if we understood better the necessity of an operatum, an
inner word, in the intellect; that premise informed his Verbum inquiry. His student
Frederick Crowe adds that love, for Aquinas, is the term of one process (as complacentia
boni) and the principle of another (as moving toward a course of action).
46
Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, 220.
47
Lonergan, Verbum, 109. The accompanying note (n. 20) supplies ten quotations
(and points to several others), from all stages of Aquinas’s career, affirming the procession

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On Lonergan’s interpretation, the beloved is in the lover by love
itself; this love proceeds from the apprehended good as its
specifying cause, and is therefore an intelligible emanation from
the intellect into the will and in that (and no other) sense an
operatum.48
Perhaps we may add Cajetan to this side of the ledger, because
he seems to exclude the equivocal use of “love” required by
Poinsot’s interpretation. Cajetan grants an operatum in the will,
which is love itself, an affection, inclination, impulse toward the
beloved, not an emanated fruit from the act of love.49 This
inclination constitutes the presence of the beloved in the lover.
The analogy for the procession of the Spirit is not an impression
arising from love; it is not one act of the will arising from another
of love from the word as the analogue for divine spiration. Compare Lonergan, Triune
God: Systematics, 614-17.
48
Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, 222-26; 622-25. Penido’s hypothesis that
Aquinas later affirmed the operatum he denied in De veritate is brusquely dismissed: “Our
response is that a hypothesis concerning development is superfluous when one attends to
St. Thomas’s explicit doctrine. St. Thomas taught explicitly (1) that the second procession
is the procession of love from the word; (2) that the Holy Spirit is both ‘the beloved in the
lover’ and proceeding Love; (3) that the only procession in the will is the procession after
the manner of an operation [i.e., an elicited perfecting act]; and (4) that the beloved is in
the lover inasmuch as the beloved is being loved” (ibid., 229 [original Latin on p. 228]).
49
For Cajetan, the distinction of divine love into essential and personal is a distinction
not of realities but of the meaning of words (it would seem to be otherwise for those who
distinguish basic love from its derived impulse). For the whole force of the distinction is
an accommodation of the word to another meaning, just as if the name of knowledge
(notitia) were accommodated to the Word. There are, then, not two loves in God, one
essential, another personal. Rather, because of a poverty of words, the name “love” is
used sometimes to mean divine, i.e., essential love, and sometimes to mean the third
person, who proceeds by way of will and of love. “Adverte hic quod illa distinctio amoris
in essentialem et personalem ut clare ex hoc articulo habetur, non est distinctio rei, sed
vocis in suas significationes. Tota enim ratio distinctionis est accommodatio vocabuli ad
aliam significationem; sicut si notitiae nomen accommodaretur Verbo. Unde non sunt duo
amores in divinis, unus essentialis, et alter personalis. Sed ly amor, propter penuriam
vocabulorum, quandoque significat divinum amorem, qui procul dubio essentiae
quoddam est: quandoque vero tertiam Personam procedentem per modum voluntatis et
amoris” (Cajetan, In I, q. 37 a. 1, §§2 [Leonine ed., 4:388]).

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

act of the will; it is the act of love itself, arising from the word in
the intellect, or from the knowledge of the beloved as from an
efficient cause.50
Interpreters in each group tend to find the alternative unconvincing. The majority view is beset by exegetical, psychological,
and theological difficulties. To begin with the exegetical, in De
veritate Aquinas explicitly denies an immanent object in the will
on grounds he never renounces and that he continues to repeat.
Further, if, as Poinsot maintains, he did not change his mind
about the operatum, it is difficult to explain why he ever negated
love as a personal name; but if he did change his mind, it is
difficult to explain other late texts in which he denies that the
will emanates an immanent object, and on the same principle as
was invoked in De veritate. Moreover, hypotheses of a development on this precise point are, at best, inconclusive. There is no
doubt Aquinas’s vocabulary around love developed, and there is
no doubt he earlier denied and later affirmed that love could be
a personal name in God; but outside the very (few) texts whose
meaning is in doubt, I find no explicit evidence that he ever
affirmed a volitional operatum. Furthermore, the hypothesis of
an equivocation seems almost untestable; for if it is true, the
evidence will be concealed; but, for the same reason, it cannot be
falsified. Nor is it easy to see why, if Aquinas meant what the
majority take him to mean, any equivocation should have been
required; he might very easily have distinguished “love” from
“impress,” a neat and rather obvious verbal solution put to good
use by Emery. If indeed the same word names two different but
scarcely distinguishable acts, by day’s end the result will be that
Aquinas can express no precise teaching on the psychology of
love, and perhaps cannot even have had one, for want of a
technical vocabulary; for in every place we will have to wonder
which act is at stake, and in only a handful will we have any
grounds for discriminating.
Furthermore, the majority postulate a volitional act for which
the psychological evidence is, at best, inconclusive. As far as I can
tell, the derivative act that basic love is supposed to spirate plays
50

Cajetan, In I, q. 27, a. 3, §§9-11 (Leonine ed., 4:312).

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381

no role and satisfies no exigence in Aquinas’s rational psychology. Nor is it easy to verify in consciousness any difference
between a supposedly basic act of love and a supposedly derived
act of attraction or affection. In these respects the matter of love
is quite different to the inner word, whose significance we have
already briefly mentioned. We shall return to this question in
section 6.
Finally, this interpretation seems to yield an inconvenient
Trinitarian theory, as we have already intimated above. It claims
that the Spirit proceeds as love from the will or from some prior
act of love. But what Aquinas explicitly affirms, and what the
mystery itself requires, is that the Spirit proceeds from the Word.
Further, love, for Aquinas, is an analogical concept. It is the basic
act of any appetite, and it is verified in the lower appetites no less
than in the rational. But Aquinas restricts the Trinitarian image
in us to the rational part. He conceives the processions in God by
analogy with intelligible emanation within the rational part. The
procession of one act from another is not enough to satisfy
Aquinas’s criteria for an analogy to the divine processions; the
procession has to be an emanation within rational consciousness
as rational. This criterion would seem to be met only, or at least
best, by a love that is rational because it is spirated from the word
of rational judgment, the “word spirating love.”51
On the other hand, the minority opinion is not without its
difficulties. In the first place, it has to contend with the rather
strong parallelism apparent in Aquinas’s statement of the two
processions in the Pars prima; this seems to be the strongest
argument for the majority. Besides, one might well ask why
Aquinas made anything of love’s impress, fruit, or impulse, if he
meant no more by them than love itself. Furthermore, the De
veritate text is by no means peremptory, for by denying an
operatum from the will it also denies that love can be used as a
personal name in God. The minority, then, has to explain why
51

“verbum, non qualemque, sed spirans amorem” (STh I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2).

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Aquinas later permitted “love” as a personal name for the Spirit
though he did not, according to them, change his mind about a
volitional operatum. What new light permitted Aquinas later to
affirm love as a personal name, or to affirm that the act of love
itself, elicited in but not emanated from the will, provides an
analogue for divine spiration? On this score, the minority’s view
is that the act of love is a personal name precisely as emanated
from the judgment of the intellect. But it still has to explain how
this solution would permit Aquinas to continue to use love as
both an essential and a personal name in God. Perhaps most
vexing for this interpretation is Aquinas’s statement that the
beloved in the lover arises “from the fact that someone loves
something,” a statement which seems to imply that love is a
principle and the beloved in the lover is its term, whereas the
opinion of Lonergan and those who follow him is that moral
judgment is the relevant principle and love itself the relevant
term. The minority therefore has to explain how moral judgment
constitutes us as lovers, and again how the act of love itself, and
not any immanent object, constitutes the beloved in the lover.
Despite the undeniable difficulties for their position, it is the
minority who, by my lights, have the more persuasive and
nuanced considerations on psychological, theological, and exegetical grounds. Psychologically, the minority reading gives a
better account of the principle that good and evil are in things,
not in the mind. Further, the majority’s emanated act is an occult
entity for which there seems no corroboration and no exigence,
except perhaps on the dubious supposition that the will somehow
specifies its proportion to its own object (in some other way than
by deciding what to do about it). A distinction between the act of
love and some further spirated impulse toward the beloved
strikes me as a contrivance. If affection, impulse, or the stamp of
the beloved on the will of the lover are something other than
love, then what is love?
Theologically, the minority reading gives a better account of
the spiration of the Spirit from the Word. By appealing to the
rational dependence of rational love on the judgment of the
mind, it explains not only how love is an intelligibly emanated
act, but also the sense in which the Word in God is not just any

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kind of word but, as Aquinas says, a word breathing love. By
distinguishing the relative aspect of rational love as arising from
the rational judgment of true value, on the one hand, from its
absolute aspect as a pure perfection, on the other, this
interpretation explains as well as the other how Aquinas is able
to use the same attribute in one sense as a personal name and in
another as an essential name, just as the act of understanding is
an absolute perfection and so an essential name, but in its
ordination to the word, that is, as speaking, is also proper to the
divine Speaker (i.e., the Father).
These observations, however, plunge us back into the
exegetical matter, on which I would like to note some further
considerations in favor of the minority. They are mostly
complementary but occasionally overlap the passages adduced by
Lonergan to show that (1) love proceeds from the word; (2) the
relation of love to the word is alone germane to divine spiration;
(3) the beloved in the lover is constituted by love, not its product;
and (4) the procession of an operatum is excluded from the will,
so love is not used equivocally.
IV. INTELLIGIBLE EMANATION
Everyone agrees that only an internally emanated act of love
fulfills Aquinas’s requirements for an analogue to divine spiration. It is disputed, however, whether this act is basic love itself
or a subsequent act emanated in the will, and what is the principle
whence it emanates. In other words, what act, in the will, fulfills
the ratio of an emanated act in such a way as to meet Aquinas’s
requirements for conceiving the procession of love in God? Let
us begin with a closer examination of those requirements.
In the Pars prima, Aquinas explains that procession in God has
to be conceived on the analogy of “intelligible emanation.” His
example is the inner word uttered by understanding.52 Intelligible
52

STh I, q. 27, a. 1.

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emanation is within the field of intellectual or rational consciousness, as he explains in the Summa contra gentiles. The intellect,
reflecting or consciously pivoting on its insight into phantasm,
forms an intention or conception, which we call an inner word.
In the limit, which is divine intellectual consciousness, this
formed intention is identical with the reality itself that is
understood.53
Is the spiration of love also, in any sense, an instance of
intelligible emanation? Can it be, even if love is something one
undergoes (pati) before it is something one chooses?
Spiration, one might object, is not intelligible (i.e., of the
intellect) but volitional. Aquinas does not (as far as I know)
expressly call the spiration of love an intelligible emanation.
Indeed, he says that there are two kinds of immanent action in an
intellectual nature: the “intelligible action” of the intellect,
wherein we find the procession of the word, and the action of the
will, wherein we find the procession of love by which the beloved
is in the lover.54
On the other hand, Aquinas uses intelligible not only to mean
“of the intellect” but also to designate spiritual reality.55 Plainly
the relevant procession by way of intellect could only be rational
in the fundamental sense of belonging to spiritual being that
knows reasons and acts for reasons. It stands to reason that the
relevant procession by way of will must likewise be some form of
rational emanation; the will, after all, is not just appetite but
rational appetite. Furthermore, in other contexts Aquinas
explicitly restricts the Trinitarian image to the rational part of the
soul.56 He explains that the image is best realized by acts and,
53

ScG IV, c. 11.
“Considerandum est quod in divinis non est processio nisi secundum actionem quae
non tendit in aliquid extrinsecum, sed manet in ipso agente. Huiusmodi autem actio in
intellectuali natura est actio intellectus et actio voluntatis. Processio autem verbi attenditur
secundum actionem intelligibilem. Secundum autem operationem voluntatis invenitur in
nobis quaedam alia processio, scilicet processio amoris, secundum quam amatum est in
amante, sicut per conceptionem verbi res dicta vel intellecta, est in intelligente. Unde et
praeter processionem verbi, ponitur alia processio in divinis, quae est processio amoris”
(STh I, q. 27, a. 3).
55
STh I, q. 87, a. 1; compare De Pot., q. 9, a. 10.
56
STh I, q. 93, a. 6.
54

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indeed, the acts by which, contemplating God, we burst forth
into love.57 Now, love for Aquinas is an analogical concept
indicating the basic act of any appetite. But plainly the love
relevant to this context can only be a rational love, a love arising
from the contemplation of God.
What proceeds in the will is not a similitude but an
inclination.58 This inclination is love itself, not, it would seem, a
further act consequent to love.59 It is what is called the beloved
in the lover.60 Next, the inclination proper to a rational agent is
an intelligible inclination following the intellectual apprehension
of the good. It is rational or intelligible because it follows rational
judgment: “The act of the will is nothing other than a certain
inclination following an understood form,” an “intelligible inclination, intelligibly [intelligibiliter] in the understanding [or the

57
“Et ideo primo et principaliter attenditur imago Trinitatis in mente secundum actus,
prout scilicet ex notitia quam habemus, cogitando interius verbum formamus, et ex hoc
in amorem prorumpimus” (STh I, q. 93, a. 7). “Attenditur igitur divina imago in homine
secundum verbum conceptum de Dei notitia, et amorem exinde derivatum” (STh I, q. 93,
a. 8).
58
“The difference between the intellect and the will is this, that the intellect is put in
act inasmuch as the object understood is in the intellect by its likeness; whereas the will is
put in act, not because it has within it any likeness to its willed object, but because it has
a certain inclination to its willed object” (“Haec est differentia inter intellectum et
voluntatem, quod intellectus fit in actu per hoc quod res intellecta est in intellectu
secundum suam similitudinem; voluntas autem fit in actu, non per hoc quod aliqua
similitudo voliti sit in voluntate, sed ex hoc quod voluntas habet quandam inclinationem
in rem volitam” [STh I, q. 27, a. 4]).
59
Love is the first immutation of the appetite by the appetible (STh I-II, q. 26, a. 2); it
is an inclination or aptitude for the beloved (STh I-II, q. 23, a. 4). “Est autem proprium
amoris, quod moveat et impellat voluntatem amantis in amatum” (STh I, q. 36, a. 1). Note
also that the movement of the free will in justification is said to be instantaneous, not
successive, upon the infusion of grace (STh I-II, q. 113, a. 7, ad 4); this implies that the
first movement of the will is original to love, not a self-determination consequent upon
basic love.
60
“What is called the beloved in the lover is nothing other than an affection and
complacency, that is, love, for the beloved” (ScG IV, c. 19 [Leonine ed., 74-75]). Cf. STh
I, q. 36, a. 2, ad 4.

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one who understands] as in its principle and proper subject.”61
This inclination is formally rational because it tends to its object
according to the order of reason.62 The principle of this act, then,
is not a prior act in the will, but the intellectual contemplation of
the good.63 This does not mean that the affections are in the
intellect by some likeness, or as if the intellect were their subject
faculty. Rather, an intelligible inclination is in the intellect “as a
consequent [principiatum] is in a principle with an awareness
[notio] of the consequent.”64 In this emanation of love from understanding, then, the order linking principle and term, ground
and consequent is conscious (notio).
The meaning of intelligibiliter in these characterizations seems
to involve a psychological content. Perhaps I may indicate that
content by way of an observation regarding the difference
between an elicited and an emanated act within consciousness.
An elicited act, such as the movement from potentially to actually
understanding, is not consciously self-determining, but rather
spontaneous. One can inquire diligently, but one cannot simply
decide to understand. But the emanated act, by which (for
instance) we express our understanding in a relevant set of
concepts (inner words), is consciously governed by the act of
understanding it expresses. Now, every instance of movement is
at least passively intelligible, that is, potentially understood, as
long as there are minds around to do the understanding. But
intelligible emanation in the relevant sense is not just passively
61

“Actus voluntas nihil aliud est quam inclinatio quaedam consequens formam
intellectam . . . inclinatio intelligibilis, quae est actus voluntatis, est intelligibiliter in
intelligente, sicut in principio et in proprio subiecto” (STh I, q. 87, a. 4).
62
STh I-II, q. 13, a. 1.
63
For instance: “The act of the will is nothing but a certain inclination proceeding
from a knowing interior principle, just as a natural appetite is a certain inclination from
an interior principle without knowing” (“actus voluntatis nihil est aliud quam inclinatio
quaedam procedens ab interiori principio cognoscente, sicut appetitus naturalis est
quaedam inclinatio ab interiori principio et sine cognitione” [STh I-II, q. 6, a. 4; see q. 13,
a. 5, ad 1; STh I, q. 87, a. 4, ad 1; q. 19, a. 4; q. 59, a. 1; ScG IV, c. 19 (Leonine ed.,
74-75)]).
64
“affectus animae non sunt in intellectu neque per similitudinem tantum, sicut
corpora; neque per praesentiam ut in subiecto, sicut artes; sed sicut principiatum in
principio, in quo habetur notio principiati” (STh I, q. 87, a. 4, ad 3).

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intelligible but actively intelligent: it points to the intrinsic
luminosity of the rational consciousness that conceives because it
understands, judges because it grasps the sufficiency of the
evidence, rationally spirates love because it affirms what is good,
noble, worthy.65
This psychological observation may be transposed into
metaphysical terms. Metaphysically, intelligible emanation is an
instance of one act arising from another. Act is prior to potency;
the possible intellect in act with respect to an intelligible moves
itself to the emanation of the inner word; the will in act with
respect to an end moves itself to the willing of the means. But
neither the possible intellect nor the will is able to give itself the
first, principal act; each has first to be moved by another. The
possible intellect is moved to its basic act, understanding
(intelligere), by the phantasm instrumentally and the illuminating
light of the agent intellect principally. The basic act of the will is
the will of the end, which it seems can only be love, the basic act
of all appetition. Once in act with respect to an end, the will
moves itself to the willing of the means, but its first act is received
from another: the intellect, quoad specificationem, and God,
quoad exercitium.66 This emanation into the will would seem to
be the conscious dependence of rational desire on the judgment
of the intellect, which specifies this or that good as rationally
lovable, although the will subsequently determines itself by
choosing how it will honor or pursue the objects of its love.67 In
this sense, as I suggested, the judgment of the mind is not only

65

Fuller discussion in Lonergan, Verbum, 46-48.
STh I-II, q. 9.
67
STh I-II, q. 9, a. 1 (“quantum ad determinationem actus . . . secundum quod
specificatur actus . . . isto modo intellectus movet voluntatem, sicut praesentans ei
obiectum suum”). Hence, as we have seen, “there is no procession of love except in an
order to the procession of the word, for nothing is loved by the will, unless it be conceived
in the intellect” (“Non enim est processio amoris nisi in ordine ad processionem verbi,
nihil enim potest voluntate amari, nisi sit in intellectu conceptum” [STh I, q. 27, a. 3,
ad 3]).
66

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the principle of rational love but gives such love its formally
rational character by conscious and intelligible emanation.68
Clearly enough, it seems, Aquinas conceived the procession of
rational love as an intelligible emanation from the judgment of
the intellect. Once this is grasped, it is difficult not to suspect that
this intelligible emanation of love from the inner word is his
analogy for divine spiration. It seems certainly to be his account
of the Trinitarian image in us: “we take the image of the Trinity
in the mind first and foremost from acts, namely: just as from the
knowledge we have, we inwardly form a word by thought, and
from this burst forth into love.”69 This is most of all true of us
when the object of our contemplation and love is the divine
goodness, so that our inner word speaks of God and our love is
derived therefrom.70
In the treatise on love, we read that “spiritual contemplation
of beauty or goodness is the principle of spiritual love; and in this
way, knowledge is the cause of love.”71 Let us note this very
carefully: the principle of spiritual love is the contemplation of
spiritual beauty or goodness. But what is the contemplation of
spiritual beauty in God, except the Father’s utterance of the lovebreathing Word? Commenting on the fittingness of the Mosaic
account of the six days, Aquinas tells us that the divine Three are
68

STh I-II, q. 13, a. 1; cf. q. 12, a. 1, ad 3.
“primo et principaliter attenditur imago Trinitatis in mente secundum actus, prout
scilicet ex notitia quam habemus, cogitando interius verbum formamus, et ex hoc in
amorem prorumpimus” (STh I, q. 93, a. 7).
70
“Attenditur igitur divina imago in homine secundum verbum conceptum de Dei
notitia, et amorem exinde derivatum” (STh I, q. 93, a. 8).
71
“Et similiter contemplatio spiritualis pulchritudinis vel bonitatis est principium
amoris spiritualis. Sic igitur cognitio est causa amoris” (STh I-II, q. 27, a. 2). There is an
ambiguity in the Latin; “spiritual” may be taken to qualify either the contemplation, or
the object contemplated. In favor of the latter, it might seem more needful to qualify
beauty than contemplation as spiritual. But the context seems to favor the former. The
previous sentence pairs bodily sight (visio corporalis) with sensitive love; the structure of
the present sentence runs parallel; so one expects a pairing of spiritual sight (contemplatio
spiritualis) with spiritual love. The difference seems negligible; since acts and objects fall
in the same proportion, both will be spiritual. See also, “Love has to proceed from the
word, because we do not love anything except as we apprehend it by a conception of the
mind” (“Necesse est autem quod amor a verbo procedat: non enim aliqua amamus, nisi
secundum quod conceptione mentis apprehendimus” [STh I, q. 36, a. 2]).
69

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insinuated in the work of formation thus: “the person of the
Father in God that speaks; the person of the Son in the word in
which he speaks; and the person of the Spirit, in the pleasure
[complacentia] with which God saw that what he made was
good.”72 Here we have the same process, except now God is
contemplating his loveliness contingently expressed in the whole
order of creation.
It is difficult not to read each of these passages as elegant
recapitulations of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theory. In none of them
(unless there is a hidden equivocation) is anything said of one act
of love derived from another. In all of them, Aquinas says quite
explicitly that love is spirated from the knowledge of God, from
the inner word of our contemplation of God, from the
contemplation of spiritual beauty. He was nodding if this was not
also what he meant by divine spiration and the “verbum spirans
amorem.”
V. NOTIONAL AND ESSENTIAL LOVE
We mentioned, however, that the minority has to explain the
sense in which love breaks forth from one in love, “from the fact
that we love,” so that the Father and the Son are said to love by
spirating the Spirit. With this in mind, let us turn to Aquinas’s
handling of the problem of notional love in the treatise on the
Trinity in the Summa theologiae. Love, or to love, is said in three
different ways of God: (1) essentially, (2) notionally, and (3)
personally. Essentially, God is love, that is, the infinite divine act
is an act of loving understanding and in this sense each person
singly simply is, and all taken together simply are, infinite love.
72

“Et sic in utroque opere creationis et formationis, Trinitas personarum insinuatur.
In creatione quidem, persona patris per Deum creantem; persona filii, per principium in
quo creavit; spiritus sancti, qui superfertur aquis. In formatione vero, persona patris in
Deo dicente; persona vero filii, in verbo quo dicitur; persona spiritus sancti, in
complacentia qua vidit Deus esse bonum quod factum erat” (STh I, q. 74, a. 3, ad 3). Cf.
STh I-II, q. 11, a. 1, ad 3.

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Personally, the Spirit is proceeding love (i.e., spiration taken
passively), while notionally, the Father and Son love by spirating
(spiration taken actively).73 We have been focused mainly on the
second sense, but it is bound up with the third, for the Spirit’s
procession as love is the passive aspect of the (active) spiration of
Speaker and Word.74
Aquinas explains that sometimes we name an action from its
effect, when the effect is itself included in the understanding of
the action.75 This, he asserts, is the sense in which we say that
Speaker and Word (notionally) love: not that they are conceived
as the act of love, but that they ground and bring forth the act of
love. Thus, “to love, taken notionally,” that is, as a personal act
of the Speaker and Word, “is to produce love.”76 Just as a fire
warms by radiating heat, or a tree flowers by putting forth
flowers—not as though the flowers were the efficient or the
formal cause of its flowering, but rather because the flowers are
the result of its flowering, the formal effect entailed by “to
flower”—so the Speaker and Word are said to love by spirating
love. “To love is nothing other than to spirate love, just as to
speak” (we might say, “to word”) “is to put forth a word, and to
flower is to put forth flowers.”77 The word is not the cause but
the formal effect of the speaker’s utterance; and (proceeding)
love is not the cause but the formal effect of (active) spiration.

73

STh I, q. 37, a. 1.
An act is said to be “notional” when we conceive a divine person or persons through
it, although we take from this notional action only the order it imports, affirming that in
reality there is but one infinite simple act in God. The notional act of spiration, taken
passively, Aquinas calls procession; taken actively, he calls it spiration. Later Scholastics
speak of passive and active spiration. See STh I, q. 28, a. 4.
75
“Contingit autem aliquid denominari per id quod ab ipso procedit, non solum sicut
agens actione; sed etiam sicut ipso termino actionis, qui est effectus, quando ipse effectus
in intellectu actionis includitur” (STh I, q. 37, a. 2). Hence we say the fire warms by
heating, although heating is not heat, which is the form of fire, but its effect; and similarly
we say the Father and the Son (notionally) love by loving, that is, by spirating love, i.e.,
the Holy Spirit.
76
“diligere, prout notionaliter sumitur, est producere amorem” (ibid., ad 2).
77
“diligere nihil est aliud quam spirare amorem; sicut dicere est producere verbum, et
florere est producere flores” (STh I, q. 37, a. 2).
74

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The meaning seems difficult to doubt. Aquinas does not say
that there are two volitional acts, both called “love,” of which
one is the principle of the other; he says that contemplation is
loving, because it bursts forth into love. Just as the tree is
flowering when it puts forth flowers, so contemplation is loving
when it spirates love. Aquinas’s analogy, in sum, is not that the
intellect in act brings forth a word and the will in act brings forth
some internal impression of the beloved. His analogy is that God
just is the loving contemplation of his own infinite loveliness, and
this loving contemplation is the utterance of a true word spirating
love. As uttering, God is the Father; as true word, the Son; and
as spirated love, the Spirit. What is the principle of this spiration?
It is, just as the mystery itself demands, not the divine will, not
an act in the divine will, but the utterance of a true word: the
Father and the Son.
Finally, it seems to me the qualifications Aquinas offers on this
point differ from those he might offer if indeed he held the theory
imputed to him by the majority. On the majority’s interpretation
of spiration, the impression or impulse of love is a derivative act
of the will whose principle is a prior act of the will, also called
love. In that case one would expect Aquinas to explain that the
Father and the Son notionally love because intellect and will are
really identical in God; though we conceive speaker and word by
analogy with intellectual procession, we conceive love and its
fruit by analogy with a volitional procession by which the basic
act of love brings forth a derived act variously named the fruit,
the impulse, or the stamp of love. Spiration, on this hypothesis,
is not the fruition of contemplation in love, but the derivation of
one volitional act from another. In that case, one should say that
the notional act of love is not denominated from its effect only,
but also from the action itself, since, on this reading, the Father
and Son are principle of the Spirit just as basic love is the efficient
cause of derived love. This interpretation would seem to be
excluded, however, by Aquinas’s explicit teaching that spiration

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taken actively is denominated from its effect,78 that there is in
God no procession of love from love,79 that processions internal
to an intellectual nature terminate in the procession of love (not
of love from love)80 because love is the principle of doing or
making, that is, of self-transcending ecstasis.81 It is also superfluous, of course, next to his explicit teaching that the principle
of spiritual love is the contemplation of spiritual loveliness.
Either interpretation has to face Aquinas’s observation that
our vocabulary around love is rather impoverished. The readers
in the majority take this to mean that Aquinas is using “love”
equivocally: it means the basic act, and a derived act. But it is
frankly difficult to see why this meaning should present any more
terminological difficulty for Aquinas than it did for Emery; could
it not be resolved simply by speaking of basic and derived love,
or love and impression, love and fruition, love and impulsion?
On the other hand, what really does seem difficult is to
distinguish the act of love, as a pure perfection, from the same
act in its relational aspect as intelligibly dependent on the
judgment of the intellect.82 This seems to be the terminological
problem Aquinas describes. In matters intellectual, he notes, we
have language to designate the relativity of understanding both
to the object understood (an intelligibility) and to the object
expressed (an inner word). In the former relation, God’s understanding is identical to his essence, the object understood; thus
understanding is a pure perfection and names the divine essential
act. In its latter relativity, understanding is utterance (dicere); it
is really identical to God but really distinct from the word in
78

Ibid.
STh I, q. 27, a. 5, ad 3.
80
STh I, q. 27, a. 3, ad 1.
81
STh I, q. 27, a. 4; a. 5, ad 1.
82
Emery’s hypothesis leads him to misunderstand Aquinas’s linguistic “accommodation.” The difficulty is that because the noun, “love,” connotes a relation to the beloved
but not relation to a principle, we have to qualify it with terms that more properly denote
the notional acts (spiration, procession) than relations if we wish to express the relativity
to principle that alone makes “love” a proper name for the Spirit; and this is the
accommodated use (STh I, q. 36, a. 1). Emery takes the “accommodation” to mean that
“love” is being used equivocally, “the same word to signify something else” (Trinitarian
Theology, 231).
79

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which it expresses itself. (To conceive is to bring forth a concept,
an inner word.) In matters volitional, however, our words for
love designate the relativity of love to its real object; in God these
are identical, for God is the infinite love wherewith he loves
himself and which he loves in himself; love is a pure perfection
and an essential name. But we lack a name clearly designating the
relativity of love to its (active) principle, and vice versa. Since it
is only that relativity which can offer a personal name for the
Spirit, we are obliged to qualify our vocabulary around love.
Hence we say amor procedens (proceeding love) to indicate love
in relation to its principle; and by the verbs diligere or amare (to
love, notionally), we mean to spirate love.83 This explanation is
perfectly coherent with what we have just established, namely,
that the principle of love is the contemplation of spiritual
loveliness, and that to spirate is nothing but to bring forth love,
just as to flower is to bring forth flowers. I would surmise, finally,
that it was an insight into just this relational dependence of love
on moral judgment that permitted Aquinas to revise his earlier
83
“Sed ex parte intellectus, sunt vocabula adinventa ad significandum respectum
intelligentis ad rem intellectam, ut patet in hoc quod dico intelligere, et sunt etiam alia
vocabula adinventa ad significandum processum intellectualis conceptionis, scilicet ipsum
dicere, et verbum. Unde in divinis intelligere solum essentialiter dicitur, quia non importat
habitudinem ad verbum procedens, sed verbum personaliter dicitur, quia significat id
quod procedit, ipsum vero dicere dicitur notionaliter, quia importat habitudinem principii
verbi ad verbum ipsum. Ex parte autem voluntatis, praeter diligere et amare, quae
important habitudinem amantis ad rem amatam, non sunt aliqua vocabula imposita, quae
importent habitudinem ipsius impressionis vel affectionis rei amatae, quae provenit in
amante ex hoc quod amat, ad suum principium, aut e converso. Et ideo, propter
vocabulorum inopiam, huiusmodi habitudines significamus vocabulis amoris et
dilectionis; sicut si verbum nominaremus intelligentiam conceptam, vel sapientiam
genitam. Sic igitur, inquantum in amore vel dilectione non importatur nisi habitudo
amantis ad rem amatam, amor et diligere essentialiter dicuntur, sicut intelligentia et
intelligere. Inquantum vero his vocabulis utimur ad exprimendam habitudinem eius rei
quae procedit per modum amoris, ad suum principium, et e converso; ita quod per
amorem intelligatur amor procedens, et per diligere intelligatur spirare amorem
procedentem, sic amor est nomen personae, et diligere vel amare est verbum notionale,
sicut dicere vel generare” (STh I, q. 37, a. 1).

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position on love as a personal name in God, without reversing his
denial of an operatum in the will.84
Further, Aquinas explicitly denies what the majority interpretation plainly implies: that there is, in God, any love derived
from love.85 Such a derivation would be superfluous in God in
any case, for (1) God is his love, (2) he is present to himself in his
love as the beloved in the lover, and (3) this love that God is and
by which God is present to himself as beloved proceeds, not from
a prior love, but from the Word.86 God, moreover, is perfect;
there is no real multiplicity of acts, though there is a real order in
God; hence there is but one word, which is perfect, and one love,
which is perfect.
Nevertheless, a reader who has internalized or is partial to the
parallel operati interpretation may be wondering why Aquinas
even brings up the fruit, or the impress, or the impulse of love, if
these are but names for love itself. He presumably thought he was
saying something; what was it? Several points may be made. First,
it is not Aquinas but Emery who describes his derivative love as
love’s “fruit”; Aquinas comes no closer than to compare spiration
to flowering, a comparison which, as we have seen, cuts against
Emery’s point. Next, the references to “impulse” and “impress”
are neither ubiquitous nor mysterious. They occur in definite
contexts to handle specific problems. Thus we are told that while
intellectual action is by likeness, so that the Word is also Image,
volitional action is by inclination, movement, or impulse, so that
proceeding Love is also Spirit. But this inclination, movement,
impulse is not love’s product but its property,87 and plainly the
reason it is mentioned is to connect the names “love” and “spirit.”
Again, we read that the beloved is in the lover, not by way of
likeness, but by way of “a stamp [impressio], so to speak, of the
beloved on the affection of the lover.” This stamp of the beloved
84

He may also have been helped by shifting attention from the question of an
operatum to the question of act from act; but I have not investigated that possibility with
care.
85
“non potest esse processio verbi ex verbo, neque amoris ex amore: sed est in ei
solum unum verbum perfectum, et unus amor perfectus” (STh I, q. 27, a. 5, ad 3).
86
ScG IV, c. 19.
87
STh I, q. 27, a. 4; q. 36, a. 1.

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is affection for the beloved, and it arises from the fact that the
lover loves the beloved.88 But, as we have just seen, this cannot
mean that the lover’s love spirates affection (which would be
redundant, or rather, senseless); it must mean (as Aquinas will
explain in the very next article) that the lover spirates love. The
lover loves by spirating love, because he beholds the loveliness of
the beloved; this spiration constitutes the lover as a lover, just as
the proceeding love constitutes the affection of the lover for the
beloved. Further, just as this affection is not something different
in reality from the stamp of the beloved on the lover’s heart, so
it is not different in reality from the movement of the lover into
the beloved.89 And this movement, impulse, stamp, or affection
is itself nothing other than the presence of the beloved in the
lover. Why did he speak of the stamp at all? Because he wanted
to explain how the beloved is in the affection of the lover.
VI. THOUGHT AND ECSTASY
Because love, the basic act of the will, is an act elicited in the
will (i.e., a perfecting act received in the will), the majority
interpretation has not considered it to be the emanated act
required by Trinitarian theory. If love is in the will as an elicited
act and not an emanated term, it does not provide a valid
analogue for the procession of the Spirit. These interpreters
therefore posit a further act, emanating within the will from the
act of love, which is the fruition or inclination of love, the
beloved in the lover, and the analogue for the Spirit. This act
would seem to constitute a kind of immanent objectification of
the beloved in the lover.
88

“ex hoc quod aliquis rem aliquam amat, provenit quaedam impressio, ut ita loquar,
rei amatae in affectu amantis, secundum quam amatum dicitur esse in amante”;
“habitudinem ipsius impressionis vel affectionis rei amatae, quae provenit in amante ex
hoc quod amat” (STh I, q. 37, a. 1).
89
“Est autem proprium amoris, quod moveat et impellat voluntatem amantis in
amatum” (STh I, q. 36, a. 1; see STh II-II, q. 27, a. 2).

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As far as I can make it out, the act in view here cannot be one
of the other acts of the will, such as desire, delight, or hatred.
Nor is it one of the acts by which the will moves itself toward its
end, such as command or election. Such acts may be said to
emanate from love and are in some way autonomous, because the
will in act with respect to the end moves itself to the willing of
the means. But they are only relevant to an agent that proceeds
incrementally and by deliberation toward a goal, and God is not
such an agent.90 Furthermore, these subsequent acts are those by
which a lover moves toward its beloved; they are not affection or
impulse but presuppose it; and they do not constitute the beloved
immanently.
I take it, therefore, that the majority interpreters mean
something other than the series of voluntary acts enumerated in
Aquinas’s analysis of human action. Somehow they discover
another act, equivocally (or analogously) called love, by which
the will in act with respect to some beloved emanates or produces
its own immanent term or object, impulse or affection, its own
proportion or adherence to the beloved. This immanent term,
Emery explains, is what Aquinas means by the impressio amoris,
love’s stamp.91 Aquinas, however, says that love is the impression
(affici) of the beloved on the lover; to be so affected is to love.92
This affection arises from the apprehension of an object as
lovable or worthy. It is the one principle and common root of
every other voluntary act.93 It seems to me that we can square
these statements with Emery’s position only if we grant that love
names two different acts; but we cannot very well concede that
without evidence, and the very possibility of an equivocation
renders all the evidence intractable.
90
“By one simple act God understands all things, and likewise wills all things. Hence
in God there cannot be a procession of word from word nor love from love, but only one
perfect word and one perfect love” (“Deus uno simplici actu omnia intelligit, et similiter
omnia vult. Unde in eo non potest esse processio verbi ex verbo, neque amoris ex amore,
sed est in eo solum unum verbum perfectum, et unus amor perfectus” [STh I, q. 27, a. 5,
ad 3]).
91
Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 66-67.
92
“Affici autem ad aliquid, inquantum huiusmodi, est amare ipsum” (ScG IV, c. 19).
93
Ibid.

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For Poinsot, the spirated act is a vital act by which the will
determines or proportions itself with respect to a particular
good.94 But this does not seem to be the doctrine of Aquinas, who
explains that object proportionate to the will is the understood
good.95 Insofar as the will determines itself to particular goods, it
does so by choice (election).96 Directly, election bears on means.
We decide about ends only indirectly, insofar as we decide what
to do about them or insofar as we subordinate some ends to
other, more comprehensive ends.97 Regarding the complete
good, which is beatitude, there is no question of selfdetermination.98 Were we to behold God, we would love him
with the same necessity with which he loves himself.99 In brief, I
take Aquinas to teach that the will determines itself not by
producing its own affections and desires but by choosing about
them; ends are specified by the intellectually apprehended good,
and only once in motion does the will move itself and the other
powers to execution.100 Thus, there are emanated acts within the
will, but they regard means, not ends; accordingly, they are
relevant only to beings that realize their good incrementally, and
not to God.
Aquinas’s solution to the problem of spiration is not the
discovery of an operatum wrought by love in the will. It is the
discovery that the act of love itself is an intelligible emanation
from the contemplation of spiritual loveliness. Love is elicited in
the will, but emanated from the intellect. This solution certainly
squares with the requirement of a procession of act from act, as
formulated in the Summa contra gentiles. The distinction in De
veritate is between a perfection elicited in or from a potency, and
94

Poinsot, Cursus Theologicus, 4, §§11-12 (Vivès ed., 148ab).
STh I-II, q. 19, a. 3.
96
STh I-II, q. 13, a. 2.
97
STh I-II, q. 13, a. 3.
98
STh I-II, q. 13, a. 6; see q. 13, a. 3; I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 5.
99
STh I, q. 19, a. 3; see q. 82, a. 1.
100
See De Malo, q. 6, a. 1; STh I-II, q. 9, a. 3.
95

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

a perfection from a perfection; the latter is a processio operati and
seems to be verified in the relation of love to the word, but not
in the relation of love to the will. If, on the other hand, we take
it that by excluding an operatum in the will De veritate excludes
an immanent object comparable to the word, our interpretation
is still compatible, for we have likewise negated an immanent
object in the will.
This solution, however, is not without its difficulties. In the
Summa contra gentiles, for instance, Aquinas explains that every
voluntary inclination arises from the apprehension of some object
as worthy or attractive through an intelligible form.101 Q.E.D., it
might seem. But he immediately adds that to be attracted in this
way is to love something. It is from love, therefore, that every
voluntary inclination takes its origin. Does he mean that the
inclination of the will is an operatum emanating from love? Or
does he mean that love itself is an inclination emanating from the
intellect? In favor of the latter is Aquinas’s explanation that “love
is said to transform the lover into the beloved, inasmuch as the
lover is moved by love toward the beloved.”102
The problem is not insoluble. As we have noted, Aquinas
consistently maintains that whereas true and false are in the mind,
good and evil are in things. From this he consistently concludes
that intellectual operation has an internal term or object, the
inner word, while volitional operation has no internal term or
object. Previously we observed that this principle was invoked in
the discussion of truth in the Pars prima and in De malo, question
6. Aquinas explains that the difference between cognition (of any
kind) and appetition is that the former has an immanent term,
the known in the knower, while the latter is an inclination of
desirer toward the thing desired. Thus, the term of appetite,
which is the good, is in the appetible thing; but the term of
cognition, which is the true, is in the intellect itself. 103

101
“Unde etiam hinc oritur omnis inclinatio voluntatis, quod per formam intelligibilem
aliquid apprehenditur ut conveniens vel afficiens” (ScG IV, c. 19).
102
De Malo, q. 6, a. 1, ad 13 (“amor dicitur transformare amantem in amatum,
inquantum per amorem movetur amans ad ipsam rem amatam”).
103
See above, n. 28.

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Here I would put in evidence a parallel discussion from the
treatise on love in the Secunda secundae.
The operation of the intellect is completed inasmuch as the understood is in the
one who understands. Hence, we take the nobility of intellectual operation from
the measure of the intellect. The operation of the will, however, and of any
appetitive power, is perfected in the inclination of the desirer to the object of
desire as to a term. Thus we take the dignity of appetitive operation from its
object.104

Here is reaffirmed the continued relevance of the underlying
principle that governs the negation, in De veritate, of an immanent term in the will: bonum et malum sunt in rebus. There is
explicitly denied a parallel between the action of the intellect and
of the will on this point, namely, the emanation of an immanent
term or object in the will. The perfection of the will is said to be
found, not in an immanent term, but in its inclination toward the
good. This inclination, as we have shown, is nothing other than
love itself.
This contrast between knowing and loving reappears,
moreover, in the very discussion of the divine processions in the
Pars prima. Previously, we quoted Aquinas’s initial statement on
the procession of love: the beloved is said to be in the lover by
love, just as the known is said to be in the knower by the conception of the word.105 In the next article, however, we read that
this is the difference between intellect and will. Intellect is put in act in that the
thing understood is in the understanding according to its likeness. Will,

104
“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod operatio intellectus completur secundum quod
intellectum est in intelligente, et ideo nobilitas operationis intellectualis attenditur
secundum mensuram intellectus. Operatio autem voluntatis, et cuiuslibet virtutis
appetitivae, perficitur in inclinatione appetentis ad rem sicut ad terminum. Ideo dignitas
operationis appetitivae attenditur secundum rem quae est obiectum operationis” (STh
II-II, q. 23, a. 6, ad 1).
105
The full statement is quoted at n. 23 above.

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JEREMY D. WILKINS

however, is put in act, not in that a likeness of the thing willed is in the will, but
from this, that the will has a certain inclination to the thing willed.106

Aquinas goes on to say that the procession by way of will is
conceived as impelling and moving toward something. For this
reason it is called “spirit,” which names vital movement and
impulse, in the way someone is said to be moved or impelled by
love to do something. In other words, the reason there is no
immanent term in the will seems to be the result of the ecstatic
quality of willing.
The assigned reason, “true and false are in the mind, good and
evil are in things,” has the ring of metaphysical principle, but
expresses a core of psychological fact. Most anyone ought to be
able to confirm that her judgments of truth and falsity bear not
on the adequacy of reality but on the adequacy of her conception
of it. Most everyone has probably experienced the difference
between a sound judgment and a rash one; hence most everyone
has some basis on which to validate the difference between a yes
or no based on a rational grasp of evidence as sufficient, and a
yes or no based on some other motive, such as the desire to
impress, win, or avoid embarrassment or self-scrutiny. The
former is an intelligible emanation of rational judgment; the
latter is an unintelligible emanation of irrational judgment. Again,
with a little practice, most people could come to distinguish the
act of understanding (intelligere) as a grasp of intelligibility in
phantasm from the concepts (inner words) understanding
intelligibly emanates. On the other hand, I am very hard pressed
to distinguish love from attraction to the beloved, as the majority
106

“haec est differentia inter intellectum et voluntatem, quod intellectus fit in actu per
hoc quod res intellecta est in intellectu secundum suam similitudinem, voluntas autem fit
in actu, non per hoc quod aliqua similitudo voliti sit in voluntate, sed ex hoc quod voluntas habet quandam inclinationem in rem volitam. Processio igitur quae attenditur secundum rationem intellectus, est secundum rationem similitudinis, et intantum potest habere
rationem generationis, quia omne generans generat sibi simile. Processio autem quae attenditur secundum rationem voluntatis, non consideratur secundum rationem similitudinis, sed magis secundum rationem impellentis et moventis in aliquid. Et ideo quod
procedit in divinis per modum amoris, non procedit ut genitum vel ut filius, sed magis
procedit ut spiritus, quo nomine quaedam vitalis motio et impulsio designatur, prout
aliquis ex amore dicitur moveri vel impelli ad aliquid faciendum” (STh I, q. 27, a. 4).

SPIRATION OF LOVE IN GOD

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view seems to require of me. I can distinguish love from decisions
I might take about it; more generally, I can recognize in my
experience all of the acts Aquinas treats in his account of
decision-making at the head of the Prima secundae; but none of
them seems to be the act posited by the majority.
What is the sense in which intellect, or at least finite intellect,
emanates an immanent object or comes to an internal term? The
act of understanding grasps relational structures in phantasm: for
instance, in the image of a wheel, it grasps the necessity of a
uniform curve if the spokes are equal, and the impossibility of a
uniform curve if the spokes are unequal. Intelligence pivots on
this grasp of relational structures to formulate the interrelated
concepts (inner words) of point and center, radii and perimeter,
and so forth. The insight is into a particular instance, the
imagined circle; conception is a universalizing process that
regards every sufficiently similar instance. Understanding conceives by constructing the inner words, birthing the concepts, in
which it considers its object, being. This consideration may
abstract or prescind, though reality is never abstract or partial.
Judgment, finally, bears on the adequacy of our concepts.
The will, on the other hand, is not involved in this problem;
its basic act, which is to love, carries us ecstatically out of ourselves and into reality in all its concreteness. Consider the
difference between knowing and loving. Conceiving rests on a
grasp of intelligibility in phantasm, and terminates in concepts.
Judging rests on a reflective grasp of evidence as sufficient or
insufficient, and terminates in an inner yes or no. With that yes
or no, some increment of knowledge is complete. But to love,
insofar as it is a principle of subsequent acts, is to set in motion a
process of deliberation. Deliberation neither is nor has an internal
resting point, for what brings deliberation to a conclusion is
making and executing a choice. In most cases the choice is not
the only morally permissible course of action, but one possibility
among many. This is also true analogously of divine freedom,
inasmuch as divine wisdom embraces a (presumably) infinite

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number of possible world orderings, every one of them ordered
by divine wisdom, worthy of divine goodness, and realizable by
divine power, but none of them obligatory. Nevertheless, even
when a course of action is morally obligatory and the sole
possibility, voluntary action comes to completion not in an
internal term but in execution.107
Another way we might put this is that love intends the good
directly, while concepts and judgments refer to real objects only
through the questions they answer. In other words: the intention
of being is immediate in questions and mediated in the objects of
thought; but the intention of the good is immediate in love.108
Hence, cognition has an external reference but an immanent
point of rest in its expressed objects, which are concepts and judgments. Love has neither an immanent object nor an immanent
point of rest. It moves us to the objective good.109
This last observation should be qualified, however. It might be
more accurate to say that love arises as the conclusion of one
process and, by the same token, stands as the principle of
another.110 That is because, in a sense, the spiration of love is a
kind of resting point in a contemplative process, while at the
same time love for the end is the basis for all the acts of counsel
and deliberation, consent, decision, and execution, by which the
moral subject is plunged into the world of moral objects.111
107

STh I-II, q. 13, a. 5.
See, e.g., STh I, q. 19, a. 3, ad 6; I-II, q. 12, aa. 1-3.
109
See In De Divinis Nominibus, c. 2, lect. 4. “Passio enim magis ad appetitum quam
ad cognitionem pertinere videtur, quia cognita sunt in cognoscente secundum modum
cognoscentis et non secundum modum rerum cognitarum, sed appetitus movet ad res,
secundum modum quo in seipsis sunt, et sic ad ipsas res, quodammodo afficitur” (“Passion
seems to belong more to appetite than to knowledge, for things known are in the knower
in the knower’s fashion and not in their own way; but appetite carries us toward them as
they are in themselves and so attaches us to them”).
110
This was Frederick Crowe’s thesis in his three articles on “Complacency and
Concern.”
111
Aquinas explains the sense in which both intellection and volition, though having
an external reference, are nevertheless actions remaining within the agent: “To
understand, to will, and to love, though all are named in the manner of actions passing
into objects, are nevertheless actions remaining in their agents, but so as to convey a
relation in the subject to the object. Hence, even in us love remains in the lover, and the
heart’s word remains in the speaker, though the word is related to the thing it expresses,
108

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Perhaps this is how we are to understand why, in an intellectual
nature, immanent procession terminates in the procession of the
will.112 The spiration of love is the conclusion of one process, an
immanent process, and the beginning of another, ecstatic process.
Immanent procession terminates in the procession of love,
because love is the principle of ecstasy or real self-transcendence.
Spiritual love, the love of friendship, carries us beyond ourselves,
because we will the absolute good which, unless we are God, is
not ourselves.113 Love is the last immanent procession, because it
is the basis of the ecstatic movement of the agent toward the
attainment or the good of its beloved.
CONCLUSION
There exists a conflict of interpretations centering on Aquinas’s theory of the procession of the Spirit. The difficulty exists
in contemporaneous texts in such a way that it cannot be resolved
simply by postulating a development or change in his thinking.
Positively, I find Aquinas teaching that rational love is (1) an
intelligible inclination, (2) intelligibly in the knowing and loving
and love is related to the beloved. But in God, in whom there is no accident, there is
more: the Word is subsistent, and so is Love. When, then, we say that the Holy Spirit is
the love of the Father for the Son, or for anything else, we do not mean that anything
passes from one to another, but only that love is related to the beloved, just as a word is
related to the thing it expresses” (“intelligere et velle et amare, licet significentur per
modum actionum transeuntium in obiecta, sunt tamen actiones manentes in agentibus, ut
supra dictum est; ita tamen quod in ipso agente important habitudinem quandam ad
obiectum. Unde amor, etiam in nobis, est aliquid manens in amante, et verbum cordis
manens in dicente; tamen cum habitudine ad rem verbo expressam, vel amatam. Sed in
Deo, in quo nullum est accidens, plus habet, quia tam verbum quam amor est subsistens.
Cum ergo dicitur quod spiritus sanctus est amor patris in filium, vel in quidquam aliud,
non significatur aliquid transiens in alium; sed solum habitudo amoris ad rem amatam;
sicut et in verbo importatur habitudo verbi ad rem verbo expressam” [STh I, q. 37, a. 1,
ad 2; see too ScG IV, c. 26]).
112
“Processio enim quae est ad intra in intellectuali natura terminatur in processione
voluntatis” (STh I, q. 27, a. 3, ad 1).
113
STh I-II, q. 28, a. 3.

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subject, (3) related to the intellect as to its principle, and (4)
consciously so. Our love, furthermore, (5) is elicited in the will
as its basic act, but (6) consciously (notio) emanates from moral
judgment, and (7) brings to a term the internal emanations of
spiritual consciousness (8) because it is ecstatic, that is, it has no
internal term but refers immediately to a reality beyond itself.
Aquinas’s analogy for the most holy Trinity, finally, is perfect,
loving contemplation of infinite loveliness, uttering a true word
spirating love.
Negatively, in my best judgment, the interpretation of the
majority posits an act for which the only textual evidence is
ambiguous, no corroboration may be found outside the small
number of passages it was devised to explain, and a wealth of
countervailing evidence exists. It also meets no exigence in
Aquinas’s rational psychology or his Trinitarian theory. Since,
then, there is no reason, whether exegetical or psychological or
theological, to distinguish love from an affection for the beloved,
or to postulate an immanent object in the will, I conclude that
the equivocation imputed to Aquinas is a fiction. At the very least,
I should say there is no warrant sufficient to present (as Emery
does) the parallel operati reading, without qualification, as
Aquinas’s “mature interpretation . . . very personal and original”
of the doctrine of the Spirit as love.114 The interpretation so
characterized is more likely original to John of St. Thomas than
to Aquinas himself.
While I consider my thesis well established in both its positive
and negative parts, I expect that, to many, the exegetical question
is likely to remain inconclusive at best. The passages in
contention are compact and difficult to correlate with Aquinas’s
more expansive discussions of rational love in other places. The
more points that have to be brought together, the more difficult
it will be to garner consensus. Besides, the alternative has a
certain simplicity, even if it offers only a verbal solution.
Understanding the rules of a discourse is at least understanding
something, so it is not too surprising if it is sometimes mistaken
for theoretical light.
114

Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 232.

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In the end, we must come to the question of psychological
fact. Either Aquinas did or did not find a structure within his consciousness that could illumine, however imperfectly, conception
and spiration in God. If he did not, his analogy is a sleight-ofhand and deserves to be forgotten. If he counts on us distinguishing love from affection or attraction, he is playing at words
rather than science. For my own part I find that imputation of
unseriousness a harder sell than the alternative. In other words, I
assume that Aquinas was not contriving his psychology and knew
exactly what he meant by the spiration of love. This assumption
is open to query, and a definitive answer must converge on the
same point as our exegetical problem: an exact account of the
relevant psychological facts, and a determination of their
correspondence, or not, to Aquinas’s statements about them.
Because those statements are open to different and even disparate
construals, I expect their meaning will be as fuliginous or as
luminous as the facts to which they refer. But if my assumption
about Aquinas is correct, then unless we attain a similarly clear
and exact grasp of the relevant structures in our own
consciousness, we do not share his analogical understanding of
the divine processions; we merely trade in his words as in a
debased currency.115

115
I am grateful to Phillip L. Forgione, John Kern, Daria Spezzano and the members
of the 2018 Aquinas Studium, and two anonymous referees for valuable feedback on
previous drafts.

The Thomist 83 (2019): 407-35

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW
PETER KARL KORITANSKY
University of Prince Edward Island
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada

I

N 1949 C. S. Lewis published an essay entitled “The
Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,”1 in which he argued
for what he called a more “traditional” retributive theory
over one that is solely directed to the rehabilitation of criminals
and/or the deterrence of potential criminals. As Lewis argued,
whereas many have dismissed the concept of retribution as
nothing more than a veil for vengeance and barbarism, it turns
out upon analysis that it is the removal of retribution from our
notion of criminal justice that truly has a dehumanizing effect.
Especially striking about Lewis’s argument is his claim that
retribution is of great value, not just from the point of view of
the law, but from that of the criminal. Once the concept of
retribution is removed and we are left only with the
“humanitarian” goals of deterrence and rehabilitation, Lewis
says, “each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is
deprived of the rights of a human being.”2
How is this so? According to Lewis, the problem with the
humanitarian theory is that it “removes from Punishment the
concept of Desert,” a concept that is “the only connecting link
between punishment and justice.”3 He continues,

1
The article first appeared in 20th Century: An Australian Philosophy Quarterly 3,
no. 3 (1949): 5-12. It was reprinted in a collection of essays by Lewis entitled God in
the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970), 287-94 (all further references to the essay will be to
the latter).
2
Ibid., 288.
3
Ibid.

407

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. . . .
There is no sense in talking about a “just deterrent” or a “just cure.” We
demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We
demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we
cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure
him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice
altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object,
a patient, a “case.”4

A criminal, argues Lewis, at the mercy of a humanitarian
system of punishment will have his fate decided by experts in
psychotherapy or sociology rather than by judges trained in
jurisprudence. Instead of a definite sentence imposed by such a
judge, the criminal will receive an indefinite sentence that is
only lifted when the so-called expert considers him cured.
Followed consistently, the humanitarian theory might impose a
much more severe penalty upon a harmless but difficult-to-cure
criminal than upon a murderer who is cured relatively quickly.
The fact that such disparity of punishments strikes decent
human beings as alarmingly unfair is beside the point. To the
experts, fairness is another word for justice, a notion inseparable from the belief that criminals should be punished no
less and no more than they deserve, and it is precisely this
understanding of desert that the apologists for the humanitarian
theory consider meaningless and aim to replace.5
Lewis goes on to argue that the problems with eliminating
retribution are even worse if we consider deterrence, because,
here, the eclipse of justice is even more evident. As Lewis puts
it, when deterrence becomes the sole or even the primary goal
of punishment,
it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have
committed the crime. . . . The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the
public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a
man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty.6

4

Ibid.
See, for example, Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, chap. 13.
6
Lewis, “Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” 291.
5

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409

To be sure, supporters of the humanitarian theory of punishment have argued7 that punishing an innocent person to achieve
a deterrent effect would never be worth the risk of the general
public finding out the truth.8 Lewis, for his part, insists that
“every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a
trial” and that “when a victim is urgently needed for exemplary
purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes
of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment . . . of an
innocent victim.”9 In the end, it may not matter so much to
Lewis how likely the above scenario is to occur in the real
world. The mere fact that something as startlingly wrong as the
punishment of the innocent could be justified, even in principle,
by the humanitarian theory is enough to discredit it. Whether
we espouse rehabilitation or deterrence, therefore, letting go of
the idea that criminals should be punished because they deserve
it easily opens the door to punishing people in a way far greater
than justice requires. “Which one of us, if he stood in the
dock,” Lewis provocatively asks, “would not prefer to be tried
by the old [that is, retributive] system?”10
Some aspects of Lewis’s essay are reminiscent of Immanuel
Kant’s argument for retributivism, such as his complaint that the
7

See John Rawls, “Two Concepts of Rules,” in H. B. Acton, ed. The Philosophy of
Punishment (London: MacMillan Press, 1969), 105-14.
8
In an article entitled “A Non-Utilitarian Approach to Punishment” (Inquiry 8
[1965]: 249-63), H. J. McCloskey suggests what he considers to be a plausible situation
in which punishing the innocent could be justified on strictly utilitarian grounds. He
asks us to imagine that a murder occurs in the American South in which the perpetrator
is believed to be a black man. As a result, the predominantly racist population forms a
lynch mob and begins murdering innocent black men in the town in which the original
murder occurred. As McCloskey argues, faithfully adhering to utilitarian principles
would allow, perhaps even require, the sheriff of this town to frame an innocent black
man for the crime. If such an act is successfully carried out (and McCloskey insists it
could be under the right conditions) more lives would be saved in the end and a net gain
of utilitarian happiness would be achieved. McCloskey’s article prompted a response
entitled “A Utilitarian Reply to Dr. McCloskey’s ‘A Non-Utilitarian Approach to
Punishment’” (Inquiry 8 [1965]: 264-91) by utilitarian philosopher T. L. S. Sprigge, to
which McCloskey replied in “Utilitarian and Retributive Punishment,” Journal of
Philosophy 64, no. 3 (1967): 91-110.
9
Lewis, “Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” 291.
10
Ibid., 290.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

humanitarian theory of punishment uses the criminal “as a
means to an end; someone else’s end.”11 Much more prominent,
however, are his frequent references or allusions to natural law,
a much older tradition and one that Lewis clearly intends to
represent.12 This explains Lewis’s criticism of the humanitarian
theory of punishment on the grounds that it turns the
responsibility of sentencing criminals over to psychologists and
social scientists rather than leaving it with judges trained in
jurisprudence who take their guidance from the “law of
nature.”13 Although he claims the natural-law tradition as his
own, however, Lewis does not provide an explanation as to
how retribution is itself required by the natural law or natural
justice. In fairness, this would require a philosophical argument
far beyond the scope of his short essay because it would require
answers to some fundamental questions: What exactly is retribution? What makes retributive punishment good or necessary
such that society is morally obliged to inflict it? How are we to
understand retribution as an aim of punishment different from
those aims emphasized by the consequentialist, such as rehabilitation, deterrence, or simply the physical protection of society?
In the following sections, I will argue that retributive justice
is intelligible and defensible, but only when viewed through the
lens of Thomistic natural law (to which Lewis alludes above).
To begin, I will consider the philosophical pitfalls of the leading
contemporary case for retribution from which natural law is
absent, namely, the “unfair advantage” theory of punishment. I
will then explain why Thomas Aquinas’s moral and political
philosophy is incompatible with the unfair-advantage theory,
and how Aquinas’s theory of natural law provides a basis for
retributive punishment that the unfair-advantage theory fails to
provide. In light of the fact that Aquinas’s argument for
retributive justice, like his natural-law theory itself, depends
11

Ibid., 291.
This becomes even clearer in Lewis’s published response to the essay’s critics, in
which he describes the humanitarian theory of punishment as threatening to replace
“the whole tradition of natural justice” (“On Punishment: A Reply to Criticism,” in God
in the Dock, 299).
13
Lewis, “Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” 288.
12

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411

upon an appeal to natural inclination, I will conclude by
explaining how Aquinas’s principles enable us to distinguish
meaningfully between retribution and revenge.
I. A NON-NATURAL-LAW ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY RETRIBUTIVE
JUSTICE
Shortly after the appearance of Lewis’s article, a group of
philosophers who defended retributive justice began to emerge.
But unlike Lewis, who tried to anchor retribution in the naturallaw tradition, these latter-day retributivists instead argued for
retribution from the perspective of a contractarian approach to
civil society. The article that laid the foundation of this new
retributivism was “Persons and Punishment,” by Herbert
Morris. Morris’s retributivism, and the contractarian understanding of political society from which it comes, is nicely
summarized in the following passage:
Let us suppose that men are constituted roughly as they now are, with a rough
equivalence in strength and abilities, a capacity to be injured by each other and
to make judgments that such injury is undesirable, a limited strength of will,
and a capacity to reason and to conform conduct to rules. Applying to the
conduct of these men are a group of rules, ones I shall label as “primary,”
which closely resemble the core rules of our criminal law, rules that prohibit
violence and deception and compliance with which provides benefits for all
persons. These benefits consist in noninterference by others with what each
person values, such matters as continuance of life and bodily security. The
rules define a sphere for each person, then, which is immune from
interference by others. Making possible this mutual benefit is the assumption
by individuals of a burden. The burden consists in the exercise of self-restraint
by individuals over inclinations that would, if satisfied, directly interfere or
create a substantial risk of interference with others in proscribed ways. If a
person fails to exercise self-restraint even though he might have and gives in
to such inclinations, he renounces a burden which others have voluntarily
assumed and thus gains an advantage which others, who have restrained
themselves, do not possess. This system, then, is one in which the rules
establish a mutuality of benefit and burden and in which the benefits of
noninterference are conditional upon the assumption of burdens.14

14

Herbert Morris, “Persons and Punishment” in Jeffrie Murphy, ed., Punishment
and Rehabilitation, 2d ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1985), 26.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

To be sure, Morris’s description of political society as a
“mutuality of benefit and burden” reveals his contractarian, and
distinctively modern, perspective. But even as one might expect
him to derive from this perspective an equally modern,
utilitarian, or (as Lewis puts it) “humanitarian” theory of
punishment, Morris suggests a penology that is decisively
retributivist:
It is just to punish those who have violated the rules and caused the unfair
distribution of benefits and burdens. A person who violates the rules has
something others have—the benefits of the system—but by renouncing what
others have assumed, the burdens of self-restraint, he has acquired an unfair
advantage. Matters are not even until this advantage is in some way erased.
Another way of putting it is that he owes something to others, for he has
something that does not rightfully belong to him. Justice—that is, punishing
such individuals—restores the equilibrium of benefits and burdens by taking
from the individual what he owes, that is, exacting the debt.15

The penology described above has aptly been called the
“unfair-advantage theory of punishment” and it has gained a
chorus of defenders and elaborators.16 There is, indeed, much to
be admired in it. It is a considerable improvement, for instance,
upon the earlier non-natural-law retributivism defended by Kant
in his Rechstlehre, which he insisted must be carried out by a
strict observance to the lex talionis: “Any undeserved evil that
you inflict upon someone else among the people is one that you
do to yourself. If you vilify him, you vilify yourself; if you steal
from him, you steal from yourself. Only the Law of Retribution
(jus talionis)” says Kant, “can determine exactly the kind and
degree of punishment.”17 But as many have pointed out,
whereas Kant’s lex talionis might find application in the case of
crimes such as slander, theft, or murder, it would be impossible
15

Ibid.
See, for instance, Jeffrie Murphy, “Marxism and Retribution,” Philosophy and
Public Affairs 2, no. 3 (1973): 217-43; John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 262-64; Richard Dagger, “Playing Fair with
Punishment,” Ethics 103, no. 3 (1993): 473-88; and George Sher, Desert (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), esp. chap. 5.
17
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6:331-32.
16

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413

(or absurd) to apply it to rape, embezzlement, or attempted
murder. Hence, the unfair-advantage theory suggests that true
retribution does not merely match the crime that the criminal
originally committed, but negates the social advantage that the
criminal appropriated to himself in the committing of the crime.
As Morris explains it, since fairness in political society consists
in an equal distribution of benefits and burdens, and since the
commission of a crime (regardless of the kind of crime committed) consists in enjoying society’s benefits without exercising
the burden of restraint, the law achieves fairness (or justice) by
imposing an additional burden upon the criminal and thus
restoring the balance.
In addition to improving upon Kant’s crude and unworkable
retributivism, the unfair-advantage theory also seems to defend
retribution in terms that will make good sense to those already
committed to a traditional natural-law understanding of this
notion. Perhaps most satisfyingly, this theory provides a clear
distinction between our demand for retribution and the mere
subrational desire for vengeance. Criminals ought to be punished, not because those outraged by the crime desire it, but
because punishment (so conceived) is a necessary condition for
fairness. Not only that, the precise fairness described by the
unfair-advantage theory is one that squares well with the
traditional observation that justice is a certain kind of equality.
As Aristotle observes, a judge is concerned with justice to the
extent that he “tries to restore [an] unjust situation to equality,
since it is unequal.”18 This concern with equality, on the
Aristotelian-Thomistic view, is precisely what characterizes
particular justice and distinguishes it from general or legal
justice. As Aquinas explains, the equality observed is that of the
real mean “in a certain proportion of equality between the
external thing and the external person.”19 Again, this at least
initially seems to harmonize well with the unfair-advantage
18
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.4.1132a6-7 (trans. Terrence Irwin [Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing, 1999])
19
STh I-II, q. 58, a. 10. Quotations from the Summa theologiae are taken from the
translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, Ind.:
Christian Classics, 1981).

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

theory’s suggestion that punishment is necessary to restore an
inequality to a state of fairness. It also appears to do so in a way
that preserves the intuitive distinction between criminal and
civil law (a distinction not always explicitly recognized by
Aristotle and Aquinas). Just as civil law is necessary to restore
the equality that has been disturbed between two individuals,
criminal law is necessary to restore the inequality between an
individual criminal and society as a whole. As Morris would say,
whereas a criminal may owe something to the victim of theft for
lost property and other “damages,” this has nothing at all to do
with the punishment that is due to him, which pertains to his
relationship to society as a whole, that mass of law-abiding
citizens who showed the proper restraint where the criminal
showed none, and for which reason the criminal must have an
additional burden imposed upon him.
Yet the unfair-advantage theory of punishment has been
subject to serious, even devastating, criticisms.20 The most
serious of these is closely related to the inability of the theory to
explain why some crimes deserve punishments of greater or
lesser severity. Why, for example, should a murderer be
punished more than someone who commits libel? According to
the unfair-advantage theory, punishment is understood as an
additional burden imposed to balance out the benefit that the
criminal appropriates to himself in committing the crime. It
would stand to reason, then, that greater punishment would be
necessary for crimes in which the criminal benefitted more.
But what exactly does that mean? One would be tempted to
point to obvious examples, such as the fact that someone who
steals an automobile or another person’s retirement savings
benefits more than one who steals a pack of gum, and therefore
deserves more punishment. But upon analysis this explanation is
not really open to the unfair-advantage theory. The benefit of
the crime that needs to be cancelled out (or “equalized”) is not
the material benefit of the crime, such as the goods stolen from
20

For a full account of these criticisms, see my Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy
of Punishment (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012),
53-67.

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW

415

another. Those would have to be paid back to the victim, not as
a matter of criminal justice or punishment, but as a matter of
civil law, in addition to whatever just compensation (or
damages) a judge might see fit to award. On the unfairadvantage theory, punishment is necessary for an altogether
different reason, namely, to impose a burden that equalizes the
benefit consisting in the very committing of the crime itself, or
the “excess freedom” enjoyed by the criminal in committing his
crime and which his law-abiding fellow citizens rightfully
denied themselves.
This seems to be precisely the point on which the unfairadvantage theory collapses. In what meaningful sense does the
murderer gain more in the very commission of his crime in
comparison with the thief? How does the murderer, in other
words, have more than he had before he murdered, such that
more needs to be taken from him in the form of punishment?
For the unfair-advantage theory to be defensible, we must
affirm John Finnis’s difficult claim that the mere exercise of free
choice (even in the form of a morally evil or unjust action) is
itself a “great human good,”21 and so the man who carries out
that exercise where the rest of us restrain ourselves has, in some
sense, gained an advantage over us, such that there is now a
mysterious kind of disparity in his favor that may only be erased
through punishment. Yet, even if we accept that a criminal
somehow gains more freedom in committing a crime, there
remains the difficulty of explaining how more serious crimes
gain more freedom for their perpetrators than less serious
crimes, in such a way that more punishment must be imposed to
settle the score. Unfair-advantage theorist George Sher attempts
to explain this fact by pointing out that more serious crimes
deserve to be punished more because they violate a moral
prohibition of greater seriousness. Perpetrators of murder, in
Sher’s words, “get away with more”22 than perpetrators of tax
evasion, and so more punishment is necessary to erase their
unfair advantage. But even on this account, it remains
21
22

Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 263.
Sher, Desert, 82.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

unexplained how the murderer has “more” of anything (even
freedom) than the tax evader simply by virtue of committing a
more serious crime. One-time unfair-advantage theorist, Jeffrie
Murphy (now turned skeptic), criticizes Sher on precisely this
point:
Sher himself puts the phrase “gets away with more” in scare quotes (thereby
indicating that even he finds it difficult to take literally) and, in my judgment,
comes close to sacrificing whatever it was in the moral balance theory [i.e.,
unfair-advantage theory] that initially made it seem preferable to simple
intuitionism. We were supposed to get our intuition that serious wrongdoers
deserve serious punishment explained and justified in terms of an account of
excess advantage; but, if the concept of excess advantage can be itself
explicated only in terms of that very intuition, we have not moved very far.23

In the end, the unfair-advantage theory fails to provide a
coherent account of the alleged “gain” that a criminal receives
by exercising his freedom in performing the criminal act.
Granted, a criminal certainly exercises, in Sher’s words, a
“freedom from the demands of the prohibition he violates,” but
it remains unexplained how that freedom constitutes a gain, an
advantage, or even a good of any kind. The precise problems
with this theory are probably stated best by David Dolinko in
his criticism of the unfair-advantage theory. Although the
following argument is directed at the account given by Sher, it
applies just as powerfully to all of the theory’s major defenders:
It is hard to assign any meaning to Sher’s claim that the criminal has gained
“freedom from the demand of the prohibitions he violates,” unless it simply
means that the criminal has in fact ignored the prohibition’s demands. To
make . . . [the unfair-advantage theory] work, there must be something that
the criminal necessarily “gains” from lawbreaking, which we can claim gives
him the unfair advantage that punishment removes. Confronted with the
difficulty of specifying what this “gain” is in a way that will make the theory
come out right, Sher has, I think, simply reified the criminal’s act of lawviolation, misleadingly labeled it “freedom,” and treated it as the “unfair
advantage” to be taken away. Once we see this move clearly, Sher’s analysis
becomes virtually indistinguishable from Hegel’s obscure claim that

23

Jeffrie Murphy, review of Desert, by George Sher, Philosophical Review 99, no. 2
(1990): 282.

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW

417

punishment somehow “annuls” the crime itself—a claim no more convincing
in its new garb.24

II. THOMAS AQUINAS VS. MODERN RETRIBUTIVISM
If we are persuaded of the unfair-advantage theory’s inability
to explain coherently the notion of retribution, we are confronted with three possibilities. The first is to conclude that the
institution of punishment cannot be morally justified at all (as
might be suggested by a postmodern approach to punishment
inspired by Foucault or Nietzsche).25 The second would be to
embrace a theory of punishment that explicitly removes the
notion of retribution, such as utilitarianism.26 A final possibility
is to recover the notion of retribution as originally understood,
not by liberal political theory, but by the natural-law tradition
alluded to by Lewis and championed by Aquinas. The
remainder of this essay will explore this third possibility.27
Let us begin by explaining why the natural-law tradition, and
the political/legal thought of Aquinas in particular, is incompatible with the unfair-advantage theory of punishment. As we
have seen, the unfair-advantage theory is based on an understanding of political society firmly rooted in liberal political
24

David Dolinko, “Some Thoughts on Retributivism,” Ethics 101, no. 3 (1991):

548.
25
See Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, especially Essay 2, as well as Jeffrey
Metzger, “Nietzsche’s New Naturalized Conception of Justice and Punishment,” in The
Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought, ed. Peter Karl
Koritansky (Columbia, Mo.: The University of Missouri Press, 2011), 172-98. See also
Jeffrey Polet, “Punishing Some, Disciplining All,” in ibid., 199-218; and Arthur Shuster,
Punishment and the History of Political Thought: From Classical Republicanism to the
Crisis of Modern Criminal Justice (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2016),
chap. 5.
26
For the classical defense of the utilitarian theory of punishment, see Jeremy
Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, esp. chaps. 13 and
14.
27
Throughout this essay, I will use the term “retribution” to refer exclusively to the
retributive imposition of punishment. As Finnis points out (see his Aquinas: Moral,
Political, and Legal Theory [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998], 211 n. 136),
Aquinas’s use of the term “retributio” includes punishment but also reward. See STh I-II,
q. 21, a. 3.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

thought. Its architects describe political society as a cooperative
venture that exists for the material benefit of individuals as
individuals. As Morris puts it, political society requires that we
take on certain burdens of self-restraint (burdens not required
of us outside political society) in exchange for society’s
overriding benefits, such as peace, security, and the opportunity
for material prosperity. This account of society, of course, was
the justification for describing punishment as the imposition of
an additional burden to balance out the criminal’s attempt to
enjoy society’s benefits without having to show the required
self-restraint.
This liberal understanding of political society is fundamentally incompatible with that of Thomas Aquinas. For
Aquinas, political society is not a cooperative venture created by
individuals to further their individual interests, but is rather a
natural community in which individuals reach their full moral
potential only by committing themselves to the common good.
This teaching is, of course, fundamentally incompatible with
any political philosophy that understands political society as an
instrumental good. To be sure, Aquinas does not consider
political society as the highest or most authoritative community,
and he often reminds us that “man is not ordained to the body
politic, according to all that he is and has.”28 But it remains true
that Aquinas wholeheartedly agrees with Aristotle that political
society is natural in the sense of being an intrinsic, and not
merely instrumental, good for man.
Aquinas’s endorsement of this traditionally Aristotelian claim
that “man is by nature a political animal”29 is normally gathered
from his frequent approving citations of this doctrine as well as
his statement that “to live in society” is one of the basic natural
inclinations from which the precepts of the natural law may be
derived.30 Of course, one could argue that when Aquinas says
human beings have a natural inclination to live in society, his
use of the term “societas” does not necessarily refer to political
28

STh I-II, q. 21, a. 4, ad 3.
See Aristotle, Politics 1.2.1253a3.
30
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
29

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society, but to any sort of community in general, and this is the
interpretation of John Finnis, who, as we have seen, happens to
be one of the architects of the unfair-advantage theory of
punishment.31 If true, this would mean that Aquinas might well
hold the liberal view that the good of political society is
instrumental and not something intrinsic to human nature. As
Lawrence Dewan has shown, however, this interpretation of
Aquinas does not stand up under scrutiny.32
Dewan begins his argument by examining an important
remark Aquinas makes concerning, of all things, the virtue of
vindicatio, which he understands as that aspect of justice which
deals with the “infliction of a punitive [poenale] evil upon one
who has sinned.”33 In response to the question of whether
vindicatio, so defined, is a special virtue, Aquinas explains that
“virtues perfect us so far as we follow, in due manner, our
natural inclinations, which belong to natural right. Wherefore
to every definite natural inclination there corresponds a special
virtue.”34 Hence, the natural inclination of human beings to
have sex is governed by the special virtue of castitas, the natural
inclinations to eat and drink are governed by the special virtues
of abstinentia and sobrietas, and the natural inclination to
pursue knowledge is governed by the special virtue of
studiositas. This is Aquinas’s ground for arguing that vindicatio
is also a special virtue, since there must be some virtue in place
to govern the natural inclination associated with man’s irascible
appetite (primarily expressed in the passion of anger). We will
examine the far-reaching implications this has for Aquinas’s
account of retribution, but for now we may take it as a
confirmation that, in his mind, there exists a special virtue for
every natural inclination properly so-called.
On this analysis, there must be a natural inclination to live in
political society (and not just any sort of society) if there also
exists a special virtue governing such an inclination (and
31

See Finnis, Aquinas, 222-28.
Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good,” The Thomist
64 (2000): 337-74.
33
STh II-II, q. 108, a. 1.
34
STh II-II, q. 108, a. 2.
32

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

prompting us to live in political society well). But does such a
special virtue exist for Aquinas? According to Dewan, the
answer to this question is yes, and the virtue in question is that
of legal justice. This will, to be sure, strike many readers of
Aquinas as odd, since he defines legal justice primarily as a
general, not a special, virtue (that which directs all the moral
virtues to the common good). But in a critical passage, Aquinas
argues that legal justice, like charity, may also be understood as
a special virtue:
Accordingly, just as charity which regards the divine good as its proper object,
is a special virtue in respect of its essence, so too legal justice is a special virtue
in respect of its essence, insofar as it regards the common good as its proper
object. And thus it is in the sovereign [in principe] principally and by way of a
master-craft, while it is secondarily and administratively in his subjects.35

It seems quite clear that, for Aquinas, inasmuch as legal
justice, which directs our actions to the common good, is also
considered a special virtue, there must be a corresponding
natural inclination to live in political society. The only way out
of this interpretation would be to suggest that the princeps to
whom Aquinas refers in this passage is not, in fact, a political
sovereign, but merely one who possesses rightful authority in
any sort of community whatsoever (such as the CEO of a
business or the captain of an athletic team). Dewan, however,
anticipates this alternative and points us to Aquinas’s discussion
of the virtue of prudence, in order finally to put Finnis’s novel
interpretation to rest. As Dewan explains, Aquinas distinguishes
between two kinds of prudence in the Summa theologiae. The
first he calls prudence “simply so called,” which directs our
practical intellects in the area of moral virtue broadly conceived.
There is also need for a kind of prudence that directs one in
matters pertaining to legal justice, which specifically has to do
with the common good. The reason this is significant is that
Aquinas explicitly refers to this second type of prudence as
“political prudence.” Thus he indicates that the common good
which is the purview of legal justice is a specifically political
35

STh II-II, q. 58, a. 6.

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW

421

good. If legal justice is directed (at least primarily if not
exclusively) to a political common good, moreover, it would
also follow that the natural inclination it governs would be a
natural inclination to the political common good as well (and
not just the common good of subsidiary societies). From all of
this it seems that we are justified in adhering to the traditional
Aristotelian interpretation of Aquinas as upholding the natural
and intrinsic good of political society—an interpretation
entirely incompatible with the liberal political theory underlying
the unfair-advantage theory of punishment.
III. RETRIBUTION AND POLITICAL JUSTICE
Instead of speaking of retribution as erasing a criminal’s
unfair advantage, Aquinas instead speaks of it as restoring the
“equality of justice.” In his various discussions of the institution
of punishment, he uses this term repeatedly, though rarely with
any thematic explanation as to its meaning. Two examples are
particularly noteworthy. The first comes in a discussion of
whether the debt of punishment (reatus poenae) remains after a
sin is committed:
It is evident that in all actual sins, when the act of sin has ceased, the guilt
remains; because the act of sin makes man deserving of punishment, in so far
as he transgresses the order of Divine justice, to which he cannot return
except he pay some sort of penal compensation, which restores him to the
equality of justice; so that, according to the order of Divine justice, he who
has been too indulgent to his will, by transgressing God’s commandments,
suffers, either willingly or unwillingly, something contrary to what he would
wish. This restoration of the equality of justice by penal compensation is also
to be observed in injuries done to one’s fellow men.36

To be sure, the context of this passage is primarily that of
divine law, but Aquinas’s statement that restoring the equality
of justice is also “to be observed in injuries done to one’s fellow
men” is noteworthy. Such injuries are, of course, also violations
of divine law, and so it would be superfluous for Aquinas to add
this remark unless it implies that the punishment that restores
36

STh I-II, q. 87, a. 6.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

the equality of justice must also be inflicted by human authority.
This is even clearer when we reflect upon an earlier passage in
which Aquinas argues that, for one and the same sin, “man can
be punished with a threefold punishment corresponding to the
three orders to which the human will is subject”: the order of
reason itself (the punishment of which is the remorse of
conscience), the order of human law, and the order of divine
law.37 Although Aquinas does not explain this in detail, he
seems to suggest that justice requires the criminal’s will to be
subdued or repressed, not to erase some kind of advantage that
the criminal wins over his fellow citizens in committing his
crime (as the unfair-advantage theory would suggest), but in
some other (admittedly mysterious) way. The following passage
sheds some additional light:
Punishment may be considered in two ways. First, under the aspect of
punishment, and in this way punishment is not due save for sin, because by
means of punishment the equality of justice is restored, in so far as he who by
sinning has exceeded in following his own will suffers something that is
contrary to this will. . . . Secondly, punishment may be considered as a
medicine, not only healing the past sin, but also preserving from future sin, or
conducing to some good.38

As before, we are given to understand that the equality of
justice is restored by virtue of something contrary to the
criminal’s will being imposed upon him. The idea, again, is that
the criminal must be subdued, humbled, put in his place, even
harmed in some important sense in order for the equality of
justice to be restored. But what we learn from this passage in
addition is that this sense of restoring the equality of justice is
more central to the nature of punishment than are the other
benefits of punishment, which Aquinas labels as “medicinal.” In
his own words, punishment considered in its capacity to restore
the equality of justice is punishment considered “as punishment,” which comes with the strong implication that punishment’s other benefits are somehow secondary. The medicinal

37
38

STh I-II, q. 87, a. 1.
STh II-II, q. 108, a. 4.

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benefits of punishment include something like what we call
today rehabilitation—at least this seems to be the sense of what
Aquinas means by “healing the past sin.” It also seems to
include something like the notion of specific deterrence, or
what Aquinas calls “preserving from future sin.” Elsewhere,
Aquinas extends the notion of medicinal punishment to include
general deterrence, saying that punishment “is not always
intended as a medicine for the one who is punished, but
sometimes only for others.”39
The ability of punishment to restore the equality of justice is
something that it has in common with other acts of justice,
whether commutative or distributive, and it is crucial to
distinguish punishment from these other acts in order to
understand where it may fit in Aquinas’s moral and legal
thought. That punishment fits only awkwardly into his
discussion of justice is evidenced by the fact that he refers to it
sometimes as commutative and sometimes as distributive.40 To
be sure, punishment is very much unlike what is most
commonly identified by Aquinas as an act of commutative
justice, namely, a simple payment for goods or services received.
In this sense the equality of justice is quite straightforward. If
person A renders a service to person B, there exists a disparity
in person B’s favor until person B pays person A enough to
restore the equality of justice. Matters are slightly more
complex when one considers what Aquinas calls “involuntary
commutations,” which involve someone taking something
unjustly or against the will of the one from whom the thing is
taken. Aquinas’s example here is theft, in which case it is
insufficient for the thief simply to restore to his victim what he
stole. For equality to be restored, explains Aquinas, the thief
must make restitution, not only for the thing taken, but also on
account of “the injurious action.” To support his case, Aquinas
uses the example of simple assault. Even though the assaulter
does not gain anything in committing assault, he nevertheless
39

STh I-II, q. 87, a. 3, ad 2.
For references to punishment as pertaining to commutative justice, see STh II-II,
q. 80, a. 1, ad 1 and (even more explicitly) II-II, q. 108, a. 2, ad 1. For a reference to
punishment as “distributive,” see ScG III, c. 142.
40

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

takes something from his victim in the form of the injury
inflicted. This is why both the assaulter and the thief owe
something to their victims beyond the simple restoration of
stolen goods or payment of doctor’s bills. The equality of justice
also requires some kind of payment for damages on account of
the taking itself. What is significant for our purposes is that this
additional payment owed to the victim of a crime, which we
may be tempted to call punitive, is clearly in Aquinas’s mind not
the same thing as punishment. As he explicitly states, even once
every compensation has been made by a criminal to his victim,
both on account of the thing taken and the taking itself, the
criminal “in addition [alterius] must be punished for the
injustice committed.”41
By these remarks we are given to understand that the
equality of justice obtained by punishment is altogether
different from (and at best analogous to) the equality of justice
obtained by the chief act of commutative justice, namely,
restitution. But what, then, is the nature of the equality of
justice that punishment restores? One reason punishment fits so
poorly into Aquinas’s understanding of commutative justice is
the fact that commutations are understood as acts of justice
involving two or more private individuals. By contrast,
punishment in the order of human law fundamentally involves
the relationship, not between individuals, but between one
individual (the criminal) and the political community as a
whole. Thus understood, punishment is not a compensation
paid by the criminal to the victim of crime for damages, but is
rather something paid by the political community to the
criminal. As we have already seen Aquinas explain, a man’s sin
disturbs not only the order of reason and divine law, but also
the temporal order by which he is “subjected to the order of
another man who governs him in spiritual or in temporal
matters, as a member either of the state or of the household.”

41

STh II-II, q. 62, a. 6 (emphasis added)

RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE AND NATURAL LAW

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And so on behalf of the political community, and not primarily
on behalf of the victim,42 punishment must be inflicted.
It is important to notice, at this point, that none of these
definitional parameters answer the question “why?” By what
moral imperative, apart from the “medicinal” goals of rehabilitation, deterrence, or protecting society from dangerous
criminals, must criminals be punished? Given the clear
distinction between restitution and punishment, it is not very
satisfying (though it may well be true) merely to respond that
punishment is necessary for re-establishing the equality of
justice. Given that a certain equality of justice is re-established
by fully compensating victims of crime, what further equality of
justice must be restored in the form of the political community’s
imposing something painful or harmful upon the criminal? If I
am right to argue that Aquinas’s moral and political thought is
fundamentally incompatible with the unfair-advantage theory of
punishment, we must keep looking for his answer to this
question. More specifically, we must take a deeper look at the
connection between his understanding of retribution and his
doctrine of natural law.
IV. RETRIBUTION AND NATURAL LAW
As is well known, Aquinas holds that the precepts of the
natural law must be derived from the natural inclinations of the
human person. If there exists a moral imperative, rooted in
natural law, to punish criminals, there must exist a
corresponding natural inclination. It is not surprising, then, that
42

Aquinas’s claim that punishment is a matter of justice between the criminal and the
community as a whole meets some resistance when one considers STh II-II, q. 67, a. 4,
which asks “whether a judge can lawfully remit punishment.” Aquinas responds by
saying that a judge may be hindered from remittance “on the part of the accuser, whose
right it sometimes is that the guilty party should be punished.” Aquinas does not explain
why an individual accuser, having been injured, has a right to the criminal’s punishment
(beyond what he may be entitled to as a matter of restitution). But this remark should
not cause us to conclude that punishment is primarily a matter of settling a score
between private individuals. In fact, Aquinas adds in the same article that judges are also
hindered from remitting punishment “on the power of the commonwealth . . . to whose
good it belongs that evildoers be punished.”

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

in addressing the question as to whether the “debt of punishment” [reatus poenae] is an effect of sin, Aquinas appeals to a
natural inclination that is characteristically punitive. As he
explains,
It has passed from natural things to human affairs that whenever one thing
rises up against another, it suffers some detriment therefrom. For we observe
in natural things that when one contrary supervenes, the other acts with
greater energy, for which reason “hot water freezes more rapidly,” as stated in
Meteor. i, 12. Wherefore we find that the natural inclination of man is to
repress those who rise up against him. Now it is evident that all things
contained in an order, are, in a manner, one, in relation to the principle of
that order. Consequently, whatever rises up against an order, is put down by
that order or by the principle thereof. And because sin is an inordinate act, it
is evident that whoever sins, commits an offense against an order: wherefore
he is put down, in consequence, by that same order, which repression is
punishment.43

To be sure, Aquinas is speaking not only of human
punishment in this passage, and as he continues he explains
something we have already seen, namely, that one and the same
sin may incur a threefold punishment: one from the order of
reason, one from divine law, and one from human authority.
Moreover, Aquinas is not necessarily speaking only of
retributive punishment. The question at hand is merely whether
there exists a debt of punishment, and his answer is that the
punishment of criminals is justified by the natural law and the
underlying natural inclination to “repress” those who commit
injustice. We may surmise that God created us with this
inclination for a number of useful reasons, including the
protection of society, deterrence, and rehabilitation, which is to
say those aspects of punishment Aquinas labels “medicinal.” In
fact, Aquinas reveals in a later passage that the punishments
(both human and divine) of “this life” actually have more of a
medicinal character44—a claim that possibly explains the
complete absence of retribution in his justification of the death

43
44

STh I-II, q. 87, a. 1.
STh II-II, q. 108, a. 3, ad 2.

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427

penalty, in which the expression “equality of justice” never
occurs.45
Nonetheless, retribution is not absent from the above discussion. To see this, we must examine more carefully what
exactly Aquinas is referring to when he speaks of the natural
inclination to repress those who “rise up” against us. In fact, the
above discussion of punishment is hardly the only time Aquinas
mentions this human phenomenon. Elsewhere, he describes
exactly the same thing (and in much greater detail) explicitly
identifying it as the “irascible appetite” of the human soul:
The sensitive appetite is one generic power, and is called sensuality; but it is
divided into two powers, which are species of the sensitive appetite—the
irascible and the concupiscible. In order to make this clear, we must observe
that in natural corruptible things there is needed an inclination not only to the
acquisition of what is suitable and to the avoiding of what is harmful, but also
to resistance against corruptive and contrary agencies which are a hindrance to
the acquisition of what is suitable, and are productive of harm. For example,
fire has a natural inclination, not only to rise from a lower position, which is
unsuitable to it, towards a higher position which is suitable, but also to resist
whatever destroys or hinders its action. Therefore, since the sensitive appetite
is an inclination following sensitive apprehension, as natural appetite is an
inclination following the natural form, there must needs be in the sensitive
part two appetitive powers—one through which the soul is simply inclined to
seek what is suitable, according to the senses, and to fly from what is hurtful,
and this is called the concupiscible: and another, whereby an animal resists
these attacks that hinder what is suitable, and inflict harm, and this is called
the irascible. Whence we say that its object is something arduous, because its
tendency is to overcome and rise above obstacles. Now these two are not to be
reduced to one principle: for sometimes the soul busies itself with unpleasant
things, against the inclination of the concupiscible appetite, in order that,
following the impulse of the irascible appetite, it may fight against obstacles.
Wherefore also the passions of the irascible appetite counteract the passions of
the concupiscible appetite: since the concupiscence, on being aroused,
diminishes anger; and anger being roused, diminishes concupiscence in many
cases. This is clear also from the fact that the irascible is, as it were, the
champion and defender of the concupiscible when it rises up against what
hinders the acquisition of the suitable things which the concupiscible desires,
or against what inflicts harm, from which the concupiscible flies. And for this
reason all the passions of the irascible appetite rise from the passions of the
concupiscible appetite and terminate in them; for instance, anger rises from
sadness, and having wrought vengeance, terminates in joy. For this reason also
45

See STh II-II, q. 64, a. 2.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

the quarrels of animals are about things concupiscible—namely, food and sex,
as the Philosopher says.46

Although Aquinas does not explicitly use a form of the word
“irascibility” in discussing the debt of punishment, the parallels
between that text and the one above are striking. In both cases,
Aquinas speaks of a natural inclination to “rise up” against that
which encroaches upon oneself or the order to which one
belongs. In both cases, he considers it important to add that,
although this tendency is most apparent in creatures with a
sensitive appetite, some semblance of it exists even in “natural
things,” in one case using the example of hot water that “freezes
more rapidly” and in another that of fire, which “resists
whatever hinders or destroys its action.”
What exactly these obscure examples have to do with retribution is unclear, perhaps, until we consider the phenomenon
of irascibility itself. To be sure, irascibility exists in nonhuman
animals. The dog that snaps at a person that threatens to take its
food, the swarm of bees that attacks the one who pokes the
hive, and the horse that jerks up its head when its nose is pulled
down, all exemplify in various ways the broad natural
phenomenon that Aquinas describes. We as human beings, of
course, experience irascibility in our own unique way given the
fact that we possess rational powers in addition to sensitive
ones; nowhere is this made clearer than in Aquinas’s discussion
of the passion in which the irascible appetite is given its fullest
expression, namely, anger.
Aquinas sides with Aristotle against the Stoics47 in arguing
that anger is not necessarily sinful or morally vicious. The
determining factor, as with many other passions, is whether it is
expressed in accordance with “the order of reason.” It is
extremely noteworthy that, for Aquinas, it belongs to the nature
of anger to desire the punishment of the one to whom our
anger is directed. This is one of the factors that distinguishes
anger from hatred. And so he explains that,
46

STh I, q. 81, a. 2.
For a classic statement of the Stoic position (against the Peripatetic one), see
Seneca’s De Ira.
47

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429

If one desire revenge to be taken in accordance with the order of reason, the
desire of anger is praiseworthy, and is called “zealous anger”. On the other
hand, if one desire the taking of vengeance in any way whatever contrary to
the order of reason, for instance if he desire the punishment of one who has
not deserved it, or beyond his deserts, or again contrary to the order
prescribed by law, or not for the due end, namely the maintaining of justice
and the correction of defaults, then the desire of anger will be sinful, and this
is called sinful anger.48

There is something deep within human nature, it seems, that
desires the punishment of those who commit injustice. For
Aquinas, this human response to injustice is too universal an
experience to dismiss as not inherent in human nature. And
whereas the human capacity for righteous indignation certainly
has an unmistakably subrational dimension, the connection
between human anger and injustice reveals an important
rational and moral component as well. In a revealing moment in
his analysis of anger as a passion, Aquinas asserts that anger
actually requires an act of reason.49 It is impossible, in other
words, for a human being to be angry (or at least to stay angry
for any length of time) without holding the belief that some
injustice has been committed and that some sort of punishment
is deserved. So long as anger is not excessively fierce or desirous
of punishments that do not fit the crime, therefore, anger
actually becomes the ally of reason by directing us to things that
are in themselves good (in the same way, perhaps that fear is the
ally of reason in causing us to flee from things that are
genuinely harmful).
Aquinas’s discussion of anger underscores what human
experience reveals, namely, that anger is inherently retributive.
Anger desires the punishment of its object, not as a useful or
even necessary means to societal safety, but as deserved. The
angry or righteously indignant man demands that wrongdoers
be punished regardless of whether they can be reformed,
whether their punishment will bring tangible or practical
benefits to society, and quite independently of the need to

48
49

STh II-II, q. 158, a. 2.
STh II-II, q. 46, a. 4.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

compensate the victims of crime for damages. As Walter Berns
puts it in his well-known defense of capital punishment,
Anger is expressed or manifested on those occasions when someone has acted
in a manner that is thought to be unjust, and one of its bases is the opinion
that men are responsible, and should be held responsible, for what they do.
Thus, anger is accompanied not only by the pain caused by him who is the
object of anger, but by the pleasure arising from the expectation of exacting
revenge on someone who is thought to deserve it. . . . Anger, then, is a very
human passion not only because only a human can be angry, but also because
it acknowledges the humanity of its objects: it holds them accountable for
what they do.50

Understood in this way, anger is also an emphatically social or
political passion. To use Aquinas’s language, it is properly
understood as “directed to those to whom one has an obligation
of justice.” Anger is either misplaced or difficult to sustain to
the extent that the angry person and unjust person are not
united under the same sphere of justice, such as a political
society. As Aquinas explains, “both on the part of the cause,
viz., the harm done by another, and on the part of the
vengeance sought by the angry man, it is evident that anger
concerns those to whom one is just or unjust.”51 It follows from
this, of course, that criminals are most fittingly the objects of
anger. To borrow, again, the words of Walter Berns, criminals
have done more than inflict an injury on an isolated individual; they have
violated the foundations of trust and friendship, the necessary elements of a
moral community. . . . A moral community, unlike a hive of bees or a hill of
ants, is one whose members are expected freely to obey the laws and, unlike a
tyranny, are trusted to obey the laws. The criminal has violated that trust, and
in doing so has injured not only his immediate victim but the community as
such. . . . If, then, [people] are not angry when someone else is robbed, raped,
or murdered, the implication is that there is no moral community because
those [people] do not care for anyone other than themselves. Anger is an
expression of that caring, and society needs [people] who care for each other,
who share their pleasures and pains, and do so for the sake of others.52

50
Walter Berns, For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death
Penalty (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), 153-54.
51
STh I-II, q. 46, a. 7.
52
Berns, For Capital Punishment, 155.

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431

If Berns’s analysis is correct, it explains very well why
Aquinas appeals to the irascible faculty when arguing that
wrongdoers (including criminals) deserve to suffer punishment.
The link between righteous indignation and retribution also
helps to explain some ambiguities in the nature of retribution
itself. As we have seen, Aquinas distinguishes punishment’s
retributive nature, punishment considered “under the aspect of
punishment,” with its “medicinal” purposes, by which it “heals
the past sin,” “preserves from future sin,” or “conduces to some
good.” Now that we have seen his analysis of punishment in the
context of natural law, we can be assured that these remarks
hardly mean that retributive punishment “conduces” to no good
whatsoever.53 Retribution is intimately connected to our
commitment to the common good, to the belief that our fellow
citizens are morally responsible for their actions, and to our
commitment to the rules of justice that make political society
possible in the first place. We may surmise, therefore, that just
as God created us with powerful desires to pursue those things
vital to our survival as individuals and as a species (what
Aquinas calls concupiscence), he also had good reason to create
human nature with the inclination to become angry and to seek
retribution when confronted with injustice.
V. RETRIBUTION AND REVENGE
At this point it is necessary to anticipate an objection. If the
rightness or justice of retribution is grounded in the human
inclination of righteous indignation and the irascible faculty,
how is retribution distinguishable from revenge? One might
argue that this, in fact, is precisely the reason why retributivism’s best foot forward does not come from natural law, but
rather from the unfair-advantage theory (rooted in a liberal
conception of the state). For all of that theory’s problems, it
does at least provide a clear distinction between retribution and
53

Interestingly, and contrary to the way he treats the matter in the Summa
theologiae, Aquinas at one point seems to consider retributive punishment as itself
medicinal. See II Sent., p. 2, d. 36, a. 3, ad 3.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

revenge. Retribution, on the unfair-advantage theory, is morally
justified as necessary to erase the criminal’s advantage regardless
of whether (or the degree to which) those around him have an
inclination to punish him. To allow, as Aquinas does, our
inclination to punish criminals as part of the justification for
punishing them seems to play into the hands of Jeremy
Bentham’s mockery of (what he took to be) the natural-law
basis of punitive justice: “If you hate much, punish much: if you
hate little, punish little: punish as you hate.”54
To state Bentham’s case very plainly, the natural-law
justification of retribution (such as we see in Aquinas) identifies
the moral basis of punishment in the subrational, which is
reason enough to dismiss it. If we look at Aquinas’s understanding of natural inclination’s role in establishing moral
norms, however, we can see that this objection is unfounded. In
fact, reason enjoys a prominent role in determining those
norms, which, for Aquinas, are partially established by natural
inclination as well. To see how this is so, we may examine a
short but crucial reply to an objection that Aquinas considers in
answering the question as to whether the natural law contains
several precepts or only one. The argument in the objection is
that there must be only one precept because there exists only
one human nature. More specifically, the objection states that it
would be absurd to affirm multiple natural-law precepts
according to the multiple parts of human nature, because then
“even things relating to the inclination of the concupiscible
faculty [would] belong to the natural law.”55 The unstated
premise of the objection is, then, that the concupiscible faculty
cannot belong to the natural law because it is a subrational
faculty of the soul. It is noteworthy that, in his reply, Aquinas
understands this objection to be equally important for the
irascible faculty’s moral significance as for that of the
concupiscible.

54

Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. 2, sec. 15
(n. 6).
55
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2, obj. 2.

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433

All the inclinations of any parts whatsoever of human nature, e.g., of the
concupiscible and irascible parts, in so far as they are ruled by reason, belong
to the natural law, and are reduced to one first precept [“good is to be done
and pursued, and evil is to be avoided”], as stated above: so that the precepts
of the natural law are many in themselves, but are based on one common
foundation.56

To understand how the irascible faculty, in which Aquinas
identifies the moral basis for retribution, is not simply an appeal
to the subrational, we may examine the parallels between
irascibility and concupiscence. As Aquinas makes clear, the
concupiscible inclinations provide moral precepts, not inasmuch
as we follow the promptings of concupiscence whatsoever they
incline us to do, but inasmuch as reason is able to discern the
purpose (and thus the moral context) of those inclinations
themselves. For example, the sexual inclinations of concupiscence are to be followed only to the extent that our actions
conform to what reason is able to discern is the natural purpose
of those inclinations in the first place, namely, procreation. On
Aquinas’s analysis, this natural end discerned by reason is
precisely what constitutes the “order of reason” to which
Aquinas refers again and again when he argues for the
immorality of actions like homosexual sex, fornication,
masturbation, and incest. We might observe, therefore, that
these moral norms of the natural law are established neither by
“pure reason” nor by any subrational part of the soul, but by
the two working in tandem. Our natural desires and inclinations
provide the content, so to speak, upon which reason reflects as
it interprets the moral parameters of a natural order created by
God.
Something similar is going on, we may surmise, in the connection between irascibility and the debt of punishment, though
Aquinas admittedly leaves us precious few remarks as to how
we should understand that connection. It is at least clear that
Aquinas considers the irascible, angry, or indignant response to
injustice not as something to be overcome, but as something
morally instructive in itself. God, it seems, created us with these
56

STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2, ad 2.

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PETER KARL KORITANSKY

inclinations just as he created us with the inclinations to eat,
drink, and have sex, and the human intellect is assigned with
the task of discerning what God’s reasons may have been. To be
sure, part of natural inclination to “repress” wrongdoers though
punishment is the physical protection of society and the
deterrence of potential criminals. But from the fact that our
angry or indignant response to crime is also a desire for the
punishment of criminals as deserved, one could argue that there
is something distinctively retributive about the natural
inclination to punish. If so, it seems fitting that the act of
punishment as well should be retributive, at least in part.
Perhaps the response of political society to crime in a retributive
manner serves to rebuke the crime itself, to solidify a
commitment to the common good, and to affirm the people’s
hatred of injustice. Of course, God could have created us in
such a way that we would pursue these goals nonretributively
(just as could he have created us to procreate nonsexually), but
in Aquinas’s mind we should honor the natural law by dealing
with crime after the mode of the natural inclinations we have,
and those inclinations are unmistakably retributive.
To be sure, Aquinas’s explanation of retributive justice leaves
a great many questions unanswered. To what degree, for example, should judges consider retributive justice in sentencing,
and how should retributive considerations weigh against the
more “medicinal” goals of rehabilitation and deterrence? To
what degree does the natural law allow for variation across
political societies as to what punishments are deserved for
specific crimes? Under what conditions should mercy or
clemency be granted to criminals without running afoul of the
requirements of justice? In spite of the fact that Aquinas does
not provide us with a fully developed penology, however, what
he does provide is of great value, namely, an explanation of
retributive justice in the context of a broader theory of natural
law. That theory was, of course, discarded by modern
philosophy, which subsequently produced two theories of
punishment that dominate the intellectual landscape today,
namely, utilitarianism and a distinctively modern form of
retributivism. If C. S. Lewis’s argument considered at the

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435

beginning of this essay is sound, the first of these essentially
severs punishment from the realm of justice altogether, while
the latter is fraught with the philosophical problems I have
outlined above. Arriving at the conclusion that the modern
debate leaves us with no satisfactory alternative, we are all the
more justified in turning to Aquinas, whose theory of natural
law undergirds a more compelling, humane, and philosophically
coherent account of retributive justice than the best efforts of
modern thought have been able to provide.

The Thomist 83 (2019): 437-59

LAWRENCE DEWAN, LEGAL OBLIGATION, AND THE
NEW NATURAL LAW
CHARLES ROBERTSON
Newman Theological College
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

I

N AN ARTICLE entitled “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights,
and the Moral Order,” Fr. Lawrence Dewan, in responding
to the “New Natural Law” approach to ethics elaborated by
John Finnis, does two things.1 First, he reminds us that ethical
reflections are preceded by sapiential seeds planted in the human
intellect through its cognition of being, and so our knowledge of
good is preceded (logically) by knowledge of being. Second, he
shows that the grasp of being as good entails an incipient
awareness of being bound to an order of goodness with God as
its ultimate source. In the course of doing the latter, he provides
a paragraph dense with footnotes emphasizing the legal character
of natural law. It is this legal character of the natural law that I
am interested in examining, and contrasting with the approach
of the New Natural Law (NNL) theorists.2
1

In Lawrence Dewan, Wisdom Law and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (Bronx,
N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 2007), 199-212.
2
The considerations on moral obligation that follow are most immediately indebted
to the studies of Steven J. Jensen, Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and
Inclinations to Deriving Oughts (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2015); and Stephen L. Brock, “The Legal Character of the Natural Law according
to St. Thomas Aquinas” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1988). This approach has
much in common with older manuals of Thomistic philosophical ethics. See John
Oesterle, Ethics: The Introduction to Moral Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,
1957), 211-12; Michael Cronin, The Science of Ethics, vol. 1, General Ethics (Dublin: M.
437

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I. DETERMINATION OF THE RULE
It will be well to begin with an example of the reasoning St.
Thomas Aquinas employs when determining the right rule
governing our pursuit of a naturally given end. As is well known,
St. Thomas determines that the first rule governing the begetting
and rearing of offspring is that sexual intercourse is to be reserved
to the married.3 In his disputed questions De malo, we find an
objection to that thesis, working from the premise that the end
of nature can be preserved even if the means employed is not
marital coitus.4 Saint Thomas’s reply to this argument emphasizes
the couple’s need to order themselves to the common good, that
is, to obey the law in their use of generation. In other words, the
couple are not competent to determine for themselves the means
by which they order themselves to that good: “it ought to be said
that the act of generation is ordered to the good of the species,
which is a common good. But a common good is ordainable by
law, whereas a private good falls under the ordination of each
person.” The means prescribed by law must be employed even if
it is judged that the end can be attained by other means:
“although in some case the intention of nature can be saved in an
act of fornication with respect to the generation and education of
offspring, nevertheless the act is disordered according to itself
and a mortal sin.”5

H. Gill; New York: Benziger, 1909), 214-19, 229-30; Austin Fagothey, Right and Reason:
Ethics in Theory and Practice, 2d ed. (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books and Publishers, 2000),
190-206; Thomas J. Higgins, Man as Man: The Science and Art of Ethics (Rockford, Ill.:
TAN Books and Publishers, 1992), 80-114.
3
This rule is prior to further determinations concerning marriage, such as its
indissolubility and the demand that it be monogamous
4
De Malo, q. 15, a. 2, arg. 12 (Leonine ed., 23:273b): “Commixtio maris et femine
ordinata est ad actum generationis et educationis prolis. Sed quandoque ex fornicario
concubitu potest sequi conuenienter generatio et educatio prolis. Ergo non omnis
fornicarius concubitus est peccatum mortale.”
5
De Malo, q. 15, a. 2, ad 12 (Leonine ed., 23:276a): “Ad duodecimum dicendum
quod actus generationis ordinatur ad bonum speciei, quod est bonum commune; bonum
autem commune est ordinabile lege; set bonum priuatum subiacet ordinationi
uniuscuiusque. . . . ideo licet in aliquo casu possit saluari intentio nature in actu fornicario

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The idea that willing subjection to the rule provides an act
with moral rightness is congruent with what St. Thomas determines earlier in the work concerning what belongs essentially to
the concept of sin:
it is clear that to omit the rule of action belongs more to the notion of sin than
even to fall short of the end of the action. For this belongs per se to the notion
of sin, whether in nature, or art, or morals, that it is opposed to the rule of
action.6

For St. Thomas, the voluntary refusal to follow a rule, set by a
lawmaker, belongs to the essence of sin or moral failure.
Conversely, one acts well when one acts according to the rule.
The rule to be followed in pursuing the end of generation is
identified as the limitation of sex to marriage. Saint Thomas
arrives at that rule by a resolutive process, moving from the end
intended by nature to the means “proportioned” to that end. The
means are thus seen to be necessary on account of the end, and
the end is seen to belong to us in virtue of a natural inclination.
But if the necessity of specific means depends solely on the
supposition of a natural end, how does that supposition impose
a moral obligation to use those, and only those, specific means?
Why is the human will bound to will only those means? In other
words, what is it that makes this rule governing a hypothetical
order to an end a precept or law that must be obeyed?
II. THE NEW NATURAL LAW CRITIQUE
New Natural Law theorists maintain that such reasoning from
natural end to proportioned means cannot establish moral
obligation, as it gratuitously extracts an ought-statement from an
is-statement. Saint Thomas’s argument could be formalized thus:
the begetting and rearing of offspring is a natural end; this natural
quantum ad generationem prolis et educationem, nichilominus actus est secundum se
inordinatus et peccatum mortale.”
6
De Malo, q. 2, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 23:29b): “Ex quo patet quod magis est de ratione
peccati preterire regulam actionis quam etiam deficere ab actionis fine. Hoc est ergo per
se de ratione peccati, siue in natura, siue in arte, siue in moribus, quod opponitur regule
actionis.”

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end is best achieved by marital intercourse; therefore the
begetting and rearing of offspring ought to be pursued only by
means of marital intercourse. The conclusion, enjoining an
“ought,” contains more than the premises, which merely indicate
a naturally knowable suitability of means to end. The suppositional necessity of nature, then, could not by itself account for
the rational necessity to act according to the rule. Further, NNL
theorists might argue that the method of resolutive analysis
employed by St. Thomas models moral action (or “doing”) too
closely on reasoning about things-to-be-made (or “making”), thus
subordinating the moral to the technical.7 Moral reasoning, they
say, begins not from knowing some end as a good of nature and
resolving to the best means to attain it, but from knowing all the
goods that fulfill us and directing our actions such that we remain
open to them all. As Patrick Lee says, “The moral norm is right
reason; and reason is right if it is informed by all of the principles
of practical reason [i.e., the basic goods]. Thus, the moral norm
is that one must choose and will in accord with or in harmony
with all of the goods prescribed in the first practical principles.”8
According to Germain Grisez, it is practical reason itself that
prescribes the pursuit of the basic goods by recognizing them as
to-be-brought-about-by-action: “For practical reason, to know is
to prescribe.”9 Practical reason’s grasp of the basic goods as basic
is to know them “as ultimate rational grounds (principles of
practical reasoning) for proposing actions to be done for certain
benefits (anticipated instantiations of those goods).”10 This grasp
of the basic goods is the principle and precondition of any
rationally guided, and thus moral, action. To act against a basic
good is necessarily seen as a failure to act rationally. Thus, as
7
See Patrick Lee, “Is Thomas’ Natural Law Theory Naturalist?” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997): 579-80.
8
Ibid., 580.
9
Germain G. Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on
the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2,” Natural Law Forum 10 (1965):
193-94.
10
John Finnis, Germain G. Grisez, and Joseph M. Boyle, “Practical Principles, Moral
Truths, and Ultimate Ends,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence Paper 846, no. 32
(1987): 106.

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Christopher Tollefsen explains, “the goods of human nature,
considered through the lens of practical reason operating without
error, provide sufficient justification for moral obligation.”11 As
a result, contrary to what the above passage from De malo
suggests, NNL theorists contend that obligation cannot be
founded in the command of a superior. Rather, it is seeing the
command of the legislator as one that could have issued from
oneself that can make the following of the law imposed by an
authority obligatory.12 Thinking along these lines, Tollefsen
suggests that God’s commandments should be viewed as divine
proposals or invitations to fulfillment, and not as imperatives
with extrinsically imposed sanctions for disobedience to the
rule.13
III. THE BINDING FORCE OF THE RULE
What, on St. Thomas’s account, enjoins us to follow a rule in
our actions, such that the dictate of reason about what is to be
done is binding on the agent? Perhaps it is conscience that has
this binding force, “For conscience is said to testify, bind or
impel, and also to accuse or nag or reprehend.”14 Conscience is,
for St. Thomas, the application of knowledge to actions we have
performed or are planning to perform, a judgment considering
them as things to be done or refrained from, or, having been
done, as having been done well or poorly. In judging an action as
a thing to be done or avoided, “conscience is said to instigate or
11
Christopher Tollefsen, “Morality and God,” Quaestiones Disputatae 5, no. 1
(2014): 47.
12
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 341:
“The important thing is that the expressed imperium, the promulgated ‘intention of the
legislator,’ represents to the subject an intelligible determinate pattern of action, which,
having been chosen by the lawgiver to be obligatory, can actually be obligatory in the eyes
of a reasonable subject because the ruler’s imperium can (for the sake of the common
good) be reasonably treated by the subject as if it were his own imperium.”
13
See Tollefsen, “Morality and God,” 56-60; see also Germain G. Grisez, The Way of
the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
1983), 103-5 (chap. 4, q. F).
14
STh I, q. 79, a. 13: “Dicitur enim conscientia testificari, ligare vel instigare, et etiam
accusare vel remordere sive reprehendere.”

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bind.”15 Even an erroneous conscience binds one to act or not to
act, since it properly consists in the judgment that a certain act is
in accordance with the rule of action or not.16 But in itself,
conscience is simply a judgment about the moral demands on
what we are intending to do here and now, or a judgment about
the moral quality of an act already performed. Thus part of the
knowledge brought to bear on action in the judgment of
conscience must already contain some notion of obligation. In
other words, the judgment of conscience presupposes knowledge
of the rule that is brought to bear on the action.17 The rule or
precept or law to be applied in an act of conscience, then, is
already seen to have the character of something that ought to be
done or refrained from, and thus binds us to make a judgment
that an act is to be done or left undone. How does this rule bind?
In his discussion, in the disputed questions De veritate, of why
conscience is said to bind one to act or not, St. Thomas identifies
two forms of necessity that can be imposed on an agent. The first
of these, force, cannot be brought to bear on the act of the will.18
The second, a conditional necessity, can. This conditional
necessity imposes on the agent a condition for the attainment of
the good: “it is necessary to choose this, if he ought to attain this
good, or if he ought to avoid this evil.”19 For St. Thomas, then,
in contrast to the NNL theorists, an extrinsically imposed sanction (i.e., the threat of losing the good) does seem to have a role
to play in knowing the obligatory force of the law. There is a
necessity of means imposed on the human agent that conditions
his attainment of the good.
This necessity, however, can be imposed on an agent only by
the condition being made known to that agent. The action of
making the condition known, according to St. Thomas, belongs
to one who is the agent’s superior: “The action by which the will
15

Ibid.: “dicitur conscientia instigare vel ligare.”
See II Sent., d. 39, q. 3, a. 3.
17
See II Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 4; De Verit., q. 17, a. 4 (Leonine ed., 22/2:523b-526a);
STh I-II, q. 19, a. 5.
18
De Verit., q. 17, a. 3 (Leonine ed., 22/2:522a).
19
Ibid.: “necessarium sit hoc eligere, si hoc bonum debeat consequi, vel si hoc malum
debeat vitare.”
16

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is moved is the command of the ruler and governor.”20 But is it
the case that this kind of conditional necessity can be imposed on
the will only by an agent’s superior? Can it not, as the NNL
theorists suppose, be simply a deliverance of practical reason
prescribing pursuit of the goods? It seems not. In response to the
objection that conscience cannot bind since no one can make law
for himself, St. Thomas responds: “a man does not make law for
himself; but through the act of his cognition, by which he knows
the law to have been made by another, he is bound to fulfill the
law.”21 The rule or law binds because it is known to be from
someone who has the authority to make the law:
for this that the law obtain the power of obliging, which power is proper to law,
it is necessary that it be applied to the men who ought to be regulated according
to it. But such an application comes about through this, that he is led to
knowledge of them from its very promulgation.22

Thus the judgment of conscience involves the affirmation of a
rule, seen as having its origin from a superior, as true. Implicitly,
this judgment of the rule as true proclaims itself as a certain
participation in eternal truth, such that even the one who acts in
accordance with an erroneous conscience sees the deliverance of
erring reason as coming ultimately from God:
it ought to be said that although the judgment of erring reason is not derived
from God, nevertheless erring reason proposes its judgment as true, and
consequently as having been derived from God, from whom is all truth.23

Thus St. Thomas sees it as uncontroversial to claim in the
preamble to the treatise on law in the Summa theologiae that law
20

Ibid.: “Actio autem qua voluntas movetur, est imperium regentis et gubernantis.”
Ibid., ad 1: “homo non facit sibi legem; sed per actum suae cognitionis, qua legem
ab alio factam cognoscit, ligatur ad legem implendam” (emphasis added).
22
STh I-II, q. 90, a. 4: “ad hoc quod lex virtutem obligandi obtineat, quod est
proprium legis, oportet quod applicetur hominibus qui secundum eam regulari debent.
Talis autem applicatio fit per hoc quod in notitiam eorum deducitur ex ipsa
promulgatione.”
23
STh I-II, q. 19, a. 5, ad 1: “dicendum quod iudicium rationis errantis licet non
derivetur a Deo, tamen ratio errans iudicium suum proponit ut verum, et per consequens
ut a Deo derivatum, a quo est omnis veritas.
21

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is an extrinsic principle of action: “God, who instructs us by law
and aids us by grace, is the exterior principle moving us to the
good.”24
IV. OBJECTION: UNACCEPTABLE HETERONOMY
At this point, an NNL theorist may object that the knowledge
that a rule is from God is just one more fact that cannot generate
an ought. Grisez takes the position that even if we know that the
rule is a command of God, there would still have to be, prior to
this knowledge, knowledge that we ought to obey God’s
commands.25 Even knowing the condition that God will punish
us for noncompliance is simply one more fact that cannot
generate a moral obligation.
This objection does have some force. Specifically, it raises the
question of how any external command can have the character
of being obligatory in a nonarbitrary, and ultimately coercive,
way, much as the threat of a robber is arbitrary and coercive:
“Your money or your life!”26 The danger of seeing the moral law
as ultimately grounded in the command of a superior is that the
connection between the moral law and the human good will be
severed. To avoid this result, Grisez argues that the end as
grasped by practical reason is sufficient for moral obligation:
“obligation is merely one result of the influence of an intelligible
end on reasonable action.”27 To view the precepts of the natural
law as obligatory because God commanded them threatens to pit
24
STh I-II, q. 90, proem.: “Principium autem exterius movens ad bonum est Deus, qui
et nos instruit per legem, et iuvat per gratiam.”
25
Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, 1:105 (chap. 4, question F): “unless there is a
logically prior moral norm indicating that God’s commands are to be obeyed, any
command of God considered by itself would merely be another fact which tells us nothing
about how we ought to respond.” See also Grisez, “First Principle of Practical Reason,”
194.
26
Here it should be noted that the coercion of the robber is brought to bear on the
victim by means of inducing fear, and voluntary action still remains possible for the fearful
victim. See STh I-II, q. 6, a. 6. The kind of coercion that is absolutely repugnant to the
nature of the will would be one that would violate the nature of the will itself, introducing
into it an inclination contrary to its own natural inclination. See STh I, q. 82, a. 1.
27
Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, 1:187 (chap. 7, question F).

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the human will against the divine will, and is thus to see the moral
life as governed not by human reason but by the divine will. As
Fulvio Di Blasi has said, the NNL theory is concerned to escape
a view of morality that would involve heteronomy—the imposition of rules from outside our nature—which would thus “end
up in a sort of frustration compared to what we really are and
want.”28 Consequently, NNL theorists want to walk the fine line
between opposed voluntarisms: on the one hand, the law should
not be seen as imposed from outside one’s own nature by being
reducible to the will of another; on the other, it should not be
seen to arise consequent to one’s own volitions. As Grisez
explains,
From man’s point of view, the principles of natural law are neither received
from without nor posited by his own choice; they are naturally and necessarily
known. . . . Without such a foundation God might compel behavior but he could
never direct human action.29

Practical reason should be directive without being coercive. In its
recognition of the basic goods, practical reason imposes a
“rational necessity” on our possibilities for action.30
This “rational necessity,” however, is no kind of necessity
imposed on the will that is recognized by St. Thomas. For him,
the human will is subject to an absolute necessity to incline to the
ultimate end in virtue of being a natural inclination to the good
of the person, and to the hypothetical necessity of the means
proportioned to the attainment of the human good.31 This
hypothetical necessity has its obligatory force from the promise
of reward and the threat of punishment: “for the proposers of a
28

Fulvio Di Blasi, “The Role of God in the New Natural Law Theory,” National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13, no. 1 (2013): 39.
29
Grisez, "First Principle of Practical Reason," 192-93.
30
Grisez seems to acknowledge that we can recognize that the principles of practical
reason are a kind of “divine guidance” in the course of our lives and can thus intend
harmony with God as part of our human fulfillment, but this does not seem to be, for
him, the ultimate foundation of the obligatory character of the natural law. See Germain
Grisez, "The True Ultimate End of Human Beings: The Kingdom, Not God Alone,"
Theological Studies 69 (2008): 54-55.
31
See STh I, q. 82, a. 1.

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law induce the observance of the law by means of reward and
punishment.”32 Moreover, punishment is a proper effect of law
by means of which we see its binding character: “But that through
which the law induces to this, that obedience be given it, is the
fear of punishment, and with respect to this, to punish is posited
as an effect of the law.”33 Saint Thomas holds that, properly
speaking, to be bound to a certain course of action means that “if
we do not do it, we will incur a penalty.”34 Thus the problem
remains: how is this not coercion, as in the case of being held up
by a robber? Does this not make morality into a legalistic pitting
of the divine will against the human will and sever the law from
the human good?
V. THE BINDING FORCE OF THE COMMON GOOD
The answer to this query can be found by looking again at the
definition of law as an ordinance of reason for the common good.
Those precepts commanding particular acts have the nature of
law only if they can be referred to the common good:
operations are indeed in particulars, but those particulars can be referred to the
common good, not indeed by a community of genus or species, but by a
community of final cause, according to which the common good is called the
common end.35

Here St. Thomas distinguishes between a good that is common
by predication and a good that is common by way of causality. It
is the latter kind of good to which law properly orders us. A good
that is common by predication does not have the notion of a final
32

ScG III, c. 140: “legis enim latores per praemia et poenas ad observantiam legis
inducunt.”
33
STh I-II, q. 92, a. 2: “Id autem per quod inducit lex ad hoc quod sibi obediatur, est
timor poenae, et quantum ad hoc, ponitur legis effectus punire.”
34
De Verit., q. 23, a. 7, ad 8 (Leonine ed., 22/3:678a): “si non faciamus, penam
incurremus quod est proprie ad aliquid teneri.” See also I Sent., d. 48, q. 1, a. 3.
35
STh I-II, q. 90, a. 2, ad 2: “operationes quidem sunt in particularibus, sed illa
particularia referri possunt ad bonum commune, non quidem communitate generis vel
speciei, sed communitate causae finalis, secundum quod bonum commune dicitur finis
communis.”

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cause. For example, the notion of “animal” is common to both
human beings and dogs; our animality is not a final cause, but a
formal one. A good that is common by way of causality, however,
is one that enables us to engage in common action. It draws many
to it in such a way that in its attainment that good is not divided
or diminished, as in the common pursuit of knowledge. A good
that is common in this latter way is truly our own good, but is
also a fundamentally shared good, and is loved by a natural love
even more than one’s private good:
But in those things of which one is the whole reason for the existence and
goodness of another, the other is naturally loved more than the self, as it is said
that each and every part naturally loves the whole more than itself. And every
singular naturally loves more the good of its species than its own singular
good.36

As parts of an ordered cosmos, all human beings are ordered to
the good of the universe, and that good exercises a final causality
on all by extending to every particular. Our own private good is
only good in virtue of its order to the common good, which is, in
the final analysis, God himself:
The particular good is ordered to the common good as to its end, for the being
of the part is for the sake of the being of the whole, whence the good of a people
is also more divine than the good of one man. But the highest good, which is
God, is a common good, since the good of all things depends on him, for the
good by which any thing is good is the particular good of it, and of the other
things that depend on it. Therefore all things are ordered to one good as to an
end, which is God.37

36

STh I, q. 60, a. 5: “Sed in illis quorum unum est tota ratio existendi et bonitatis alii,
magis diligitur naturaliter tale alterum quam ipsum; sicut dictum est quod unaquaeque
pars diligit naturaliter totum plus quam se. Et quodlibet singulare naturaliter diligit plus
bonum suae speciei, quam bonum suum singulare.”
37
ScG III, c. 17: “Bonum particulare ordinatur in bonum commune sicut in finem:
esse enim partis est propter esse totius; unde et bonum gentis est divinius quam bonum
unius hominis. Bonum autem summum, quod est Deus, est bonum commune, cum ex eo
universorum bonum dependeat: bonum autem quo quaelibet res bona est, est bonum
particulare ipsius et aliorum quae ab ipso dependent. Omnes igitur res ordinantur sicut in
finem in unum bonum, quod est Deus.”

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The common good is the principle of an ordered whole, and
inasmuch as we recognize ourselves as belonging to a whole we
know ourselves as subject to the order of the whole. The good of
the order is a shared good, and so no part of that order is able to
act for that good without reference to that order, for in so doing,
that part would be trying to exercise personal dominion over a
good that is under the dominion of another, and intended for the
benefit of the whole community. It is a demand of the order itself
that those who belong to it act in an order to the end of the
whole, and that the order will itself resist those rising up against
it, much as the body works to combat disease. To act against the
order is to sin, and to make oneself fit for punishment; the “guilt
of punishment” (reatus poenae) is the immediate effect of sin, and
the bearer of this guilt is necessarily to be punished by the order
sinned against:
But it is manifest that whatever things are contained under some order are
somehow one in an order to the principle of that order. Whence whatever rises
up against some order is consequently to be suppressed by that order itself or
by the principle of that order. But since sin is an inordinate act, it is clear that
whoever sins acts against some order. And therefore he should consequently be
suppressed by that order. Which suppression, indeed, is punishment.38

Saint Thomas continues this consideration by identifying three
orders to which we belong and in virtue of which we may be
deprived of the good of those orders.39 The first of these is the
order of reason itself, the good of which is removed by remorse
of conscience. This is the natural, self-inflicted punishment of sin.
The other two orders, however, concern our relationship to a
whole of order. One is the order of civil society. Since the good
life of civil society is a shared good, one who seeks to possess that
good life as a private good through the violation of the laws of
38

STh I-II, q. 87, a. 1: “Manifestum est autem quod quaecumque continentur sub
aliquo ordine, sunt quodammodo unum in ordine ad principium ordinis. Unde quidquid
contra ordinem aliquem insurgit, consequens est ut ab ipso ordine, vel principe ordinis,
deprimatur. Cum autem peccatum sit actus inordinatus, manifestum est quod quicumque
peccat, contra aliquem ordinem agit. Et ideo ab ipso ordine consequens est quod
deprimatur. Quae quidem depressio poena est.”
39
Ibid.

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society is fit to be subjected to that order by punishment, which
will entail the loss of that shared good by imprisonment, exile, or
death.40 The other is the order of divine government. Since the
shared good of cosmic order is our ultimate end, God himself,
the violation of that order will entail the loss of that end. In these
latter cases, the good we are deprived of by punishment is truly
our own good, but is not our own good alone; it belongs
primarily to the order itself, or rather to the principle of that
order. It can thus be legitimately removed from the sinner by the
principle of the order without any violation of justice, though this
will be detrimental to the sinner himself.
Insofar as an order is governed by dictates, and the violation
of these dictates incurs punishment, it does not belong to just
anyone to establish laws, but to the whole itself or to the principle
of that whole of order:
law properly, firstly, and principally regards the order to the common good.
But to order something to the common good belongs either to the whole
multitude, or to the vice-regent of the whole multitude. And so to establish a
law pertains either to the whole multitude or to a public person who has the
care of the whole multitude. For in all other things, ordering to the end belongs
to him for whom that end is proper.41

By recognizing ourselves as ordered by nature to the various ends
or goods of our nature, we see ourselves as subject to the
universe’s order to its good, whether we conceive of that good
only as the intrinsic order of the universe, or as the extrinsic
common good of the universe, God.

40
While these are the punishments mentioned by St. Thomas in the article, they are
not meant to be an exhaustive list. Exile, imprisonment, and death name the punishments
that most fully subject the offender to the community by his permanent or temporary
exclusion from it.
41
STh I-II, q. 90, a. 3: “lex proprie, primo et principaliter respicit ordinem ad bonum
commune. Ordinare autem aliquid in bonum commune est vel totius multitudinis, vel
alicuius gerentis vicem totius multitudinis. Et ideo condere legem vel pertinet ad totam
multitudinem, vel pertinet ad personam publicam quae totius multitudinis curam habet.
Quia et in omnibus aliis ordinare in finem est eius cuius est proprius ille finis.”

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VI. A BLESSED HETERONOMY
From the foregoing, we can see that Dewan is right to insist
that in our first encounter with being we are able to catch a
glimpse of God as the source of the moral law, but only virtually
and implicitly:
We do immediately catch a glimpse of God, and “to love God more than
oneself” is the first and most evident principle of natural law, but the mode of
knowing this, the natural practical knowing, is reason naturally grasping nature
and its natural order, and is thus more a simple grasping of the goodness of
being, than the reception of a law from a lawgiver. . . . What is in fact law is
only inferentially grasped by us as law. It is first grasped by us in a more
immediate way, as the goodness of being. This conclusion makes it very
important that we underline the role of nature in the doctrine or, if one prefer,
the role of being.42

This is why we must recognize that our natural inclinations, by
which we come to know the human good, are not the conscious
inclinations of the appetites that arise consequent to cognition,
but are the very innate tendencies of our nature. It is only these
latter that we necessarily recognize as being prior to the will’s act,
and thus having nature, and not ourselves, as their source. In
these natural inclinations we recognize ourselves as subject to an
order that we did not make, and thus as beholden to the principle
of that order. Only the principle of this order can determine the
laws in accordance with which we are to attain our end, namely,
happiness, and to punish transgressions of those laws by
withholding that end. The potential for the loss of this end
through sin is the only adequate sanction the natural law can
provide, for it is this end that we necessarily desire.
However, it is not primarily by fear of the loss of the ultimate
end that God enjoins us to obey the law; rather, it is by desire for
the good that is promised in its fulfillment. Saint Thomas points
out that, due to the nature of the will, one can be impelled by
another to act voluntarily only by being presented with a good
that can move one’s will.43 In his commentary on Dionysius’s
42
43

Dewan, “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order,” 210
See STh I-II, q. 80, a. 1.

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Divine Names, St. Thomas distinguishes between the ways in
which the principle of an order can hold one to obey his laws,
namely, fear and love:
But it happens that someone can rule others in two ways. In one way, by way
of fear, and that mode of ruling is not efficacious for binding his subjects, for
those who are subdued contrary to their own will, who serve out of fear, will
cast off the yoke of servitude if given the opportunity. In another way, by way
of love, and this mode of ruling is efficacious for binding subjects who are
voluntarily subdued; and this mode of ruling is attributed to God . . . for all
desire him, as has been said many times.44

As the only thing that can bring to rest all our desires, God
himself is able to induce us to obey his law out of love, not fear.
Moreover, God’s laws are not mere external impositions, but are
inscribed in our very being, such that the following of them all is
in accordance with our own nature. The requirement of obedience to these laws, far from pitting the divine will against the
human, is so fitting to our nature that the laws themselves can be
called “voluntary”:
[Dionysius] adds that “to all,” he has given “voluntary laws,” for the law of God
for each creature is its imprinted natural inclination to do that which is suited
to it by nature; and so, as all are bound by divine desire, so are they bound by
his laws. . . . Whence that the divinely instilled laws are voluntary for all things
is shown by that which is added: “and the sweet offspring of the divine and
omnipotent and indissoluble love of goodness itself.” Where it ought to be
considered that out of love and desire for the end, there arises the desire of that
which is adapted to the end. But the ultimate end of all is the divine goodness,
to which all the previous and particular ends to which things are naturally
inclined are ordered. Therefore, the very natural inclinations of things to their
proper ends, which we say are natural laws, are certain “offspring,” that is,
effects; “sweet,” that is, consonant with natural desire; [they are] effects or
offspring, I say, of the love by which the divine goodness is loved. Which love
is also divine, and binding all things, and indissoluble, whether this is
44

In De Div. nom., c. 10, lect. 1: “Contingit autem aliquem aliquibus principari,
dupliciter: uno modo, per modum timoris et iste modus principandi non est efficax ad
subditos tenendum: qui enim contra propriam voluntatem subduntur, qui timore serviunt,
data opportunitate, servitutis iugum excutiunt. Alio modo, per modum amoris et hic
modus principandi est efficax ad tenendum subiectos qui voluntarie subduntur; et hunc
modum principandi Deo attribuit, cum dicit: et sicut omnibus desiderabilis, omnia enim
ipsum desiderant, ut pluries dictum est.” See also Super Rom., c. 6, lect. 3.

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CHARLES ROBERTSON

understood of the love by which God himself loves his own goodness, through
which he binds all things and which is indissoluble because he necessarily loves
himself, or is said of the divine love which is divinely implanted in all things,
through which all are bound by God and which cannot be loosed, for all things
necessarily love God, at least in his effects.45

VII. INCLINATION TO THE GOOD AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE
GOOD: A FRIENDLY AMENDMENT
At this point, I would like to turn to Dewan’s consideration of
the role of being in the mind’s becoming practical, for it is at the
birth of practical knowledge that we begin to know ourselves as
ordered to the good, and not as originators of the good. I would
also like to point out some problems with his approach, and I
hope to offer a corrective that will strengthen his overall position.
In question 16 of the Prima pars, St. Thomas gives an account
of the order in which we come to know the primary concepts of
being, truth, and goodness:
the intellect first apprehends being itself, and in the second place it apprehends
itself understanding being, and in the third place it apprehends itself desiring
being. Whence the notion of being is first, the notion of the true is second, the
notion of the good is third, even though the good is in things.46
45

In De Div. nom., c. 10, lect. 1: “subdit quod omnibus supermittit voluntarias leges:
lex enim Dei est cuilibet creaturae infixa naturalis inclinatio ipsius ad agendum id quod
convenit ei secundum naturam; et ideo, sicut omnia tenentur a desiderio divino, ita
tenentur a legibus eius, secundum illud Psalmi 148: praeceptum posuit et non
praeteribit super aliqua creatura. Et propter hoc etiam dicitur Sap. 8 de divina sapientia,
quod suaviter omnia disponit. Unde quod omnibus leges divinitus infixae, sunt
voluntariae, ostenditur per id quod subditur: et dulces partus divini et omnipotentis et
indissolubilis amoris ipsius bonitatis. Ubi considerandum est quod ex amore et desiderio
finis, exoritur desiderium eius quod est ad finem adaptatum. Ultimus autem omnium finis
est bonitas divina, ad quam sicut ad finem ordinantur omnes praevii et particulares fines
in quos res naturaliter inclinantur. Sic igitur ipsae naturales inclinationes rerum in
proprios fines, quas dicimus esse naturales leges, sunt quidam partus, idest
effectus, dulces, idest consoni naturali appetitui, effectus dico vel partus amoris quo divina
bonitas amatur; qui quidem amor est divinus et omnia tenens et insolubilis: sive hoc
intelligatur de amore quo ipse Deus amat suam bonitatem, per quam omnia tenet et
insolubilis est quia ex necessitate se amat; sive dicatur divinus amor qui est divinitus
omnibus rebus inditus, per quem omnia tenentur a Deo et qui solvi non potest, quia omnia
ex necessitate Deum amant, saltem in eius effectibus.” See also ScG III, c. 128.
46
STh I, q. 16, a. 4, ad 2.

DEWAN, LEGAL OBLIGATION, AND THE NEW NATURAL LAW

453

Dewan emphasizes that when the intellect apprehends itself
desiring a being, it is not observing the will’s act and then forming
the notion of the good. The notion of the good must come first,
for the will cannot incline to the understood good if the good is
not first understood. Thus he says,
The object, the good, the being toward which appetite is envisaged, must be
given in cognition prior to our having actual appetition. Appetition is known
prior to appetition occurring. Thus, the notion of the good, as including that of
appetite, follows from the notions of being and intellectual apprehension. The
notion of the will is in the intellect, because the intellect is the principle, the
source, the cause, of the act of the will.47

Again, in an essay entitled “Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy
of Cooperation,” Dewan maintains that when St. Thomas says
that the will’s act is in the intellect as the principled is in its
principle, what this means is that
intellect, as that which naturally gives rise to will, knows the act of willing. Thus,
we can envisage a natural knowledge of the good, which natural knowledge is
prior to the act of the will and mover of the act of the will. It is knowledge of
inclination, but not knowledge derived from observation of already given
inclination, and still less is it knowledge through inclination.48

While maintaining with Dewan that knowledge of the good
involves knowledge of appetite or inclination, I would challenge
his claim that we do not first know appetite by way of knowing
ourselves to have intellectual appetite or will in the formation of
the concept of the good.
First, this runs counter to the general thesis that we come to
know the nature of a power of the soul first by knowing its act
47

Dewan, “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order,” 205.
Lawrence Dewan, “Jacques Maritain and the Philosophy of Cooperation,” in
Dewan, Wisdom Law and Virtue, 218. Dewan’s interpretation of STh I, q. 16, a. 4, ad 2,
is also held by Stephen Brock. See Stephen L. Brock, “Natural Inclination and the
Intelligibility of the Good in Thomistic Natural Law,” Vera Lex 6, no. 1-2 (2005): 57;
“Natural Law, the Understanding of Principles, and Universal Good,” Nova et vetera
(Eng. ed.) 9 (2011): 671; “Practical Truth and its First Principles in the Theory of Grisez,
Boyle, and Finnis,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15 (2015): 303. The
interpretation I favor can also be found in Jensen, Knowing the Natural Law, 80-83.
48

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CHARLES ROBERTSON

and proper object, and thus as the subject of a natural appetite
for a determinate perfection. In the order of knowing, the act is
known through its object, and the power is known through its act
as directed to or as having a natural appetite for the object of its
act. In every instance of knowing a power of the soul, it is by
means of analyzing a completed, not an anticipated, act that we
are able to determine the object of the act and thus the existence
and nature of the power that is the principle of the act. For
example, we come to know the power of sight through actually
seeing something and then reflecting on that completed act. We
are first aware of the visible object, and it is on account of the
thing seen that we know that we have performed an act of seeing.
Knowing ourselves as the subject of an act of seeing reveals to us
that we are also the subject of a power of sight that is directed to
the visible object. The power of sight itself is thus seen to have an
appetite or inclination for the visible. If Dewan’s interpretation
is correct, then we would need to know the will’s appetite, act,
and object prior to any completed act of the will in order to form
the concept of the good which would be suited to elicit the will’s
act.
Second, the texts to which Dewan appeals (viz., STh I, q. 87,
a. 4, ad 1 and ad 3) do not actually support his point. In the body
of the article in question, St. Thomas identifies two ways the act
of the will is understood by the intellect: “both insofar as
someone perceives himself willing and insofar as someone knows
the nature of this act, and consequently the nature of its principle,
which is a habit or power.”49 The reply to the first objection
emphasizes that since both intellect and will are rooted in the
same subject and that the one is “in some manner” the principle
of the other, what is in the will can “in some manner” be also in
the intellect. In response to the third objection, St. Thomas is
defending St. Augustine’s contention that the “affections of the
soul,” that is, the will’s acts, are in the mind as “nescio quas

49

STh I, q. 87, a. 4: “Unde actus voluntatis intelligitur ab intellectu, et inquantum
aliquis percipit se velle; et inquantum aliquis cognoscit naturam huius actus, et per
consequens naturam eius principii, quod est habitus vel potentia.”

DEWAN, LEGAL OBLIGATION, AND THE NEW NATURAL LAW

455

notiones”50 that differ both from likenesses derived from bodies
and from those habits of the mind that are known by their
presence in it, such as art. Acts of the will are instead present in
the intellect “as a thing principled is in its principle, in which is
had the notion of having been principled.”51 That this entails the
intellect’s foreknowledge of the will’s acts in its formulation of
the concept of the good is not at all clear.
Third, in De veritate (De Verit., q. 10, a. 9), St. Thomas glosses
this same text of Augustine as presenting three ways of knowing,
the third of which pertains to knowing the will’s acts or habits:
The third way is of those things pertaining to the affective part, whose reason
for being known is not in the intellect but in the affection; and so they are
known not by their presence, which is in the affection, but by the knowledge or
definition of it which is in the intellect, as by an immediate principle. And yet,
by their presence, the habits of the affective part are a kind of remote principle
of cognition, insofar as they elicit acts in which the intellect knows them, such
that it can also be said that they are in some manner known by their presence.52

If a habit is a principle of cognition insofar as it elicits an act in
which the intellect can know it, so much the more is a power or
appetite, for these latter are even more remote principles of
operation than is a habit. It is difficult to see, then, how the
intellect could know the nature of the will’s appetite, even in a
confused way, prior to any act of the will in which that appetite
could be known.53
50

See Augustine, Confessiones 10.17.26.
STh I, q. 87, a. 4, ad 3: “sed sicut principiatum in principio, in quo habetur notio
principiati.”
52
De Verit., q. 10, a. 9, ad s.c. 1 (Leonine ed., 22/2:330b): “Tertius modus est eorum
quae pertinent ad partem affectivam, quorum ratio cognoscendi non est in intellectu, sed
in affectu: et ideo non per sui praesentiam, quae in affectu, sed per eius notitiam vel
rationem, quae est in intellectu cognoscuntur, sicut per immediatum principium; quamvis
etiam habitus affectivae partis per sui praesentiam sint quoddam remotum principium
cognitionis inquantum eliciunt actus in quibus eos intellectus cognoscit; ut sic etiam possit
dici quod quodammodo, per sui praesentiam cognoscuntur.”
53
See also De Verit., q. 10, a. 9 (Leonine 22/2:329a): “a habit of the affective part is
indeed the principle of that act from which the habit can be perceived, but not of the
knowing by which it is perceived” (“habitus affectivae partis est quidem principium illius
actus ex quo potest habitus percipi, non tamen cognitionis qua percipitur”); and ibid., ad
5 (Leonine ed., 22/2:330a): “although a habit is closer to a power than its act, nevertheless
51

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CHARLES ROBERTSON

When Dewan says that we do not first see ourselves having an
appetite and then forming the notion of the good, he is trying to
avoid both the metaphysically impossible position that we could
have an act of the intellectual appetite arising prior to our
understanding of the good, and the approach of the NNL
theorists who hold that the animal appetites following on
cognition are the natural inclinations St. Thomas has in mind
when he says (in STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2) that “all those things to
which man has a natural inclination, reason naturally apprehends
as goods, and consequently to be sought by operation, and the
contrary of those things as evils and to be avoided.” There is,
however, another possibility. It could be that when the intellect
apprehends itself desiring being, it is apprehending its own
inclination to being, and not the will’s—or any other power’s—
inclination to its proper object. It bears emphasizing that even
apprehensive or cognitive powers are the subjects of natural
appetite. In question 78, article 1 of the Prima pars, an objector
denies that animals need a sensitive appetitive power since the
cognitive power itself has a natural appetite for the sensible
object. Saint Thomas, in his reply, confirms the objector’s
premise that cognitive powers have natural inclinations. Indeed,
this is merely an application of the general principle that every
thing or nature has such an inclination: “natural appetite is the
inclination of each thing, from its nature, to something, whence
every power desires what is suited to it.”54 Nevertheless, the
natural inclination of a cognitive power is insufficient for animal
activities such as hunting, fleeing enemies, mating, and the like,
even though the same sensible object may be both a thing seen
and a thing desired for the sake of one of those further activities.
The inclination of the cognitive power is for the sake of its proper
the act is closer to its object, which has the ratio of the thing known; but a power has the
ratio of a principle of knowing, and so an act is known before its habit, but the habit is
more a principle of knowing” (“Ad quintum dicendum, quod quamvis habitus sit
propinquior potentiae quam actus, tamen actus est propinquior obiecto, quod habet
rationem cogniti; potentia vero habet rationem principii cognoscendi: et ideo actus per
prius cognoscitur quam habitus; sed habitus est magis cognitionis principium”).
54
“appetitus naturalis est inclinatio cuiuslibet rei in aliquid, ex natura sua, unde
naturali appetite quaelibet potentia desiderat sibi conveniens” (STh I, q. 78, a. 1, ad 3).

DEWAN, LEGAL OBLIGATION, AND THE NEW NATURAL LAW

457

act; thus the power of sight desires the sensible object for the sake
of seeing it, while the appetitive powers desire the same sensible
object for the sake of using it: “Whence it is clear that sight
naturally desires the visible only with respect to its action,
namely, for seeing, whereas the animal desires the thing seen by
its appetitive power not only for seeing it, but also for other
uses.”55
Saint Thomas applies these distinctions directly to intellect
and will in the reply to a similar objection in the disputed
question De anima:
it ought to be said that intellect naturally desires the intelligible inasmuch as it
is intelligible. For intellect naturally desires to understand and sense to sense.
But since a sensible or intelligible thing is not only desired for the sake of sensing
or understanding, but also for the sake of something else, therefore it is
necessary that there be an appetitive power besides sense and intellect.56

As a wholly immaterial power of the soul, the intellect has the
capacity to turn back on itself and know its own act, recognize
itself as ordered to that act, and thus understand being-as-known
as perfective of it.
Returning to De veritate (q. 10, a. 9), we see St. Thomas
explain that we apprehend the natures of the intelligible species,
habits, and powers in the soul by this reditio or return of the soul
upon itself, and that this return happens precisely through the
objects and acts of the power:
55

“Unde patet quod visus appetit naturaliter visibile solum ad suum actum, scilicet ad
videndum, animal autem appetit rem visam per vim appetitivam, non solum ad videndum,
sed etiam ad alios usus” (ibid.). “But if the soul did not need the things perceived by sense
other than for the sake of the actions of the senses, namely, that it should sense them, it
would not be necessary to posit a special appetitive genus among the powers of the soul,
for the natural appetite of the powers would be sufficient” (“Si autem non indigeret anima
rebus perceptis a sensu, nisi propter actiones sensuum, scilicet ut eas sentiret; non
oporteret appetitivum ponere speciale genus inter potentias animae, quia sufficeret
appetitus naturalis potentiarum” [ibid.]).
56
Q. D. De Anima, a. 13, ad 11 (Leonine ed., 24:121b): “dicendum quod intellectus
quidem naturaliter appetit intelligibile ut est intelligibile. Appetit enim naturaliter
intellectus intelligere, et sensus sentire. Set quia res sensibilis uel intelligibilis non solum
appetitur ad sentiendum et intelligendum, set etiam ad aliquid aliud, ideo preter sensum
et intellectum necesse est esse appetitiuam potentiam.”

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CHARLES ROBERTSON

According to apprehension, knowledge of them [i.e. habits] needs to be grasped
from their objects and acts, nor can they be apprehended through their essence.
The reason for this is that the virtue of each and every potency of the soul is
determined to its object, whence also its action first and principally tends to its
object; but it is not able [to tend] to that by which it is directed into its object
except by a certain “return”, just as we see because sight is first directed to color,
but [one] is not directed into the act of vision except by a certain return, when
in seeing color, one sees himself seeing. But this return indeed is incomplete in
sense, but complete in the intellect which returns by a complete return to
knowing its essence . . . whence the action of our intellect first tends to those
things that are apprehended through the phantasms and then returns to
knowings its own act, and further into the species, habits, powers, and essence
of the mind.57

It turns out that the “incomplete return” of sight on itself is
accomplished not by the power of sight itself, but by the common
sense power or intellect.58 The reason vision cannot make a
complete return on itself is due to the fact that sight “can only
see that whose likeness can be spiritually received in the pupil.”59
In other words, sight cannot see the act of sight because the act
of sight is not itself a colored—that is, a visible—object. The act
of the power of sight thus needs to be perceived by a higher
cognitive power than sight. This is not the case with the intellect,
however, due to its immateriality:
The reason for this is that the act of an immaterial power is not excluded from
the ratio of its object. For the object of the will is the good, and under this ratio

57

De Verit., q. 10, a. 9 (Leonine ed., 22/2:328a-b): “Secundum apprehensionem
quidem eorum notitia oportet quod obiectis et actibus capiatur, nec ipsi possunt per
essentiam suam apprehendi. Cuius ratio est, quia cuiuslibet potentiae animae virtus est
determinata ad obiectum suum; unde et eius actio primo et principaliter in obiectum
tendit. In ea vero quibus in obiectum dirigitur, non potest nisi per quamdam reditionem,
sicut videmus quod visus primo dirigitur in colorem, sed in actum visionis suae non
dirigitur nisi per quamdam reditionem dum videndo colorem videt se videre. Sed ista
reditio incomplete quidem est in sensu, complete autem in intellectu qui reditione
completa redit ad sciendum essentiam suam . . . unde actio intellectus nostri primo tendit
in ea quae per phantasmata apprehenduntur, et deinde redit ad actum suum
cognoscendum, et ulterius in species et habitus et potentias et essentiam ipsius mentis.”
58
See, for example, I Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, ad 3; ScG II, c. 66; STh I, q. 78, a. 4, ad 2.
59
I Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, ad 3: “non potest cognoscere nisi illud cujus species
spiritualiter in pupilla potest recipi.”

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the will loves all that it loves; and so it can love its act insofar as it is good; and
it is likewise on the part of the intellect.60

Thus, by means of our intellect, we can know not only being,
truth, and essence (as the objects of the intellect), but we can also
know that we know being, that we are somehow completed or
perfected in this knowing of being, and thus know that knowing
being is a certain human good. This is to understand knowledge
of being as the end to which the intellect in its proper nature is
ordered, and as St. Thomas says in his commentary on Aristotle’s
Physics, “natural appetite is nothing other than the ordering of
things to their end according to their proper nature.”61
Moreover, in thus coming to see our intellect as desiring being,
we must implicitly recognize that this order is not original to it;
it is an order that we find, not one that we make. Consequently,
at the very birth of the notion of the good there is an implicit
awareness of belonging to an order which we did not create, and
thus an awareness that we are somehow “bound by being,” or
beholden to the principle of the order of being even in our
intellectual judgments, be they speculative or practical.

60

Ibid.: “Cujus ratio est, quia actus potentiae immaterialis non excluditur a ratione
objecti. Objectum enim voluntatis est bonum; et sub hac ratione diligit voluntas omne
quod diligit; et ideo potest diligere actum suum inquantum est bonus; et similiter est ex
parte intellectus.”
61
I Phys., lect. 15 (Leonine ed., 2:53b): “Nihil est igitur aliud appetitus naturalis quam
ordinatio aliquorum secundum propriam naturam in suum finem.”

BOOK REVIEWS
Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom. By JEREMY D.
WILKINS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2018. xvii + 412 pages. $65.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3147-1.
Noted Lonergan scholar Jeremy D. Wilkins, who teaches systematic theology
at Boston College, has written an important book about the Canadian Jesuit
Bernard Lonergan (1904-84), arguably one of the premier Catholic theologians
and intellectuals of the twentieth century, indisputably so in the Englishspeaking world. Before Truth is the most important book on Lonergan in recent
decades—a work that has all the characteristics of becoming the standard
interpretation of Lonergan’s thought for the next generation.
Written in an admirably lucid prose, Wilkins’s book is both an engaging
interpretation of Lonergan’s complex, sprawling, and often daunting oeuvre
and simultaneously a robust cumulative argument for Lonergan’s ongoing
and—as Wilkins argues—increasing relevance for contemporary Catholic
theology. This makes it a “Lonerganian” book about Lonergan, but one
commendably free of the technical terminology characteristic of much of
Lonergan’s own work and especially that of many of his disciples. What makes
Before Truth interesting and indeed relevant for students of Thomas Aquinas in
general and for Thomists in particular is the fact that the book—not unlike an
ellipse—has two focal points, Lonergan and Aquinas. Lonergan understood
himself to be in an eleven-year-apprenticeship to Aquinas, during which time
he composed studies that later became known under the titles Grace and
Freedom: Operative Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Verbum:
Word and Idea in Aquinas. During this apprenticeship Lonergan’s goal was, in
his own words, “to reach up” to Aquinas’s mind and grasp, not the conclusions
of his teaching and the inferences that might be drawn from them, but rather
his fundamental intuitions and deepest insights. Eventually, Lonergan would
have these intuitions and insights undergo what he judged to be a congenial
transposition into an approach that, according to his considered judgment,
would best meet the contemporary challenges posed to Catholic theology by
the modern natural sciences and by a modern historiography informed by the
historical-critical methodology, and their ideological intensifications,
evolutionary naturalism, and perspectivalist historicism.

461

462

BOOK REVIEWS

The fundamental motivation of this program of transposition is captured in
the title of Wilkins’s book: Before Truth. For Aquinas truth came first, in the
sense that the truth conveyed in revelation by the First Truth is contained in the
articles of faith that articulate revelation and thus constitute the received first
principles of sacra doctrina. However, because of an ever-deepening modern
awareness of the active human participation in the ongoing doctrinal
articulation and specification of the articles of faith—Wilkins calls this their
fundamental contingency or historicity—Lonergan holds that, for contemporary Catholic theology, truth cannot be “first” anymore in an unproblematic
and unquestioned way. Truth has to be, rather, understood as the achievement
of theological judgments that are guided by fundamental ascetical practices of
self-appropriation and self-understanding and reflected in methodological
considerations—all of which come “before truth.” Before truth can be attained
by way of right judgment, the subject that judges must achieve an adequate selfappropriation and thereby become rightly ordered to reality. The subject will
then be capable of judgments that comport with reality and are thus able to
attain truth. What must come first is the acquisition of the wisdom that results
from self-appropriation by gaining insight into insight as well as the reception
of the infused wisdom that comes from self-surrender. Lonergan’s “turn to the
subject,” celebrated by some and loathed by others, is, so Wilkins argues,
motivated by and must be understood as a response to the modern crisis of
normativity.
It is crucial to understand that for his program of recovering normativity by
way of a hermeneutics of interiority, Lonergan does not take his cues from
Descartes and Kant but rather, and significantly, from Augustine, Newman, and
Aquinas. Lonergan’s overarching goal, Wilkins argues, remains identical with
Aquinas’s—the appropriation of wisdom. Hence the subtitle of the book:
Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom: “Principally, [wisdom] regards
the objective order of reality; but in some fashion it also has to do with the
transition from the order of thought to the order of reality” (8). Wisdom has,
therefore, a subject pole and an object pole. Lonergan structures his magnum
opus, Insight, according to the division of wisdom into subject and object
(“Insight as Activity” and “Insight as Knowledge”), and Wilkins structures
Before Truth along the lines of a similar division. In the first major part,
“Wisdom as Subject,” Wilkins discusses the mode of, reasons for, and
implications of Lonergan’s “turn to the subject,” in the second part, “Wisdom
as Object,” he shows how this program was actually spelled out in Lonergan’s
theological work proper.
Before Truth has a transparent organization. The Introduction states the
nature and scope of the project and the structure of the cumulative argument
that unfolds over the course of the book. A subsequent “Prelude” comprises two
chapters that articulate the twofold Problemhorizont, the first pertaining to the
ongoing obstacles surrounding a deeper and fuller reception of Lonergan’s work
and the second to the contemporary intellectual and sociocultural context,

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between modernity and postmodernity—a context characterized by
fragmentation, confusion, and arbitrariness that makes it increasingly difficult
for Catholic theology to meet these challenges effectively. Due to a certain
unevenness of argumentation and of documentation pertaining to positions
criticized, and a lack of proper nuance and differentiation in the rather broad
claims about these criticized positions, the two opening chapters, and especially
the second chapter, leave quite a bit to be desired when compared with the high
standard of precision and nuance characteristic of all the other chapters.
Especially the critique of neo-Scholasticism in its Jesuit Suarezian instantiation
serves as a foil in order to set off in attractive contrast Lonergan’s unique
ressourcement in Aquinas and his subsequent program of transposition. Greater
nuance, specification, and differentiation of the complex and internally
considerably variegated reality of neo-Scholasticism would have befitted well
the otherwise high interpretive and argumentative quality of the book
The main section of the book comprises two parts of about equal length. The
first, “Wisdom as Subject,” focuses on Lonergan’s three seminal works, Verbum,
Insight, and Method in Theology. Wilkins offers lucid interlocking interpretations of these works. The chapter on Insight alone is worth the price of the
book, for here Wilkins offers an indispensable interpretive key to what is
arguably Lonergan’s most ambitious and at the same time most hermetic work.
The upshot of Wilkins’s persuasive interpretation is that Method in Theology is
to be appreciated fully only if one undergoes the ascetical practice of selfappropriation and self-understanding laid out in Insight. And the gnoseological
justification for the “insight into insight” that a self-appropriating journey
through Insight is supposed to afford is advanced in Verbum. The three chapters
of this part compellingly reconstruct Lonergan’s itinerary from gnoseology via
the hermeneutics of interiority to theological methodology. The ultimate
warrant for the hermeneutics of interiority, based on the practice of selfappropriation and self-understanding, is the logico-ontological parallel that, as
Wilkins argues, Lonergan discovered in Aquinas: “Truth ‘is the correspondence
between mental and real synthesis’ and knowledge of truth is knowledge of the
correspondence” (115). The logico-ontological parallel denotes two parallel
structures that represent a set of proportions, each also proportioned to the
other. Importantly, this parallel is located “in the process or structure of the
knowing and the process and structure of the known: the becoming of
knowledge and the becoming of things; the being of knowledge and the being
of things” (ibid.). This isomorphism between understanding and being becomes
the principle for the development of a new “first philosophy” conceived of as a
hermeneutics of interiority—Insight—standing, so to speak, Aquinas on his
head. Method in Theology is a direct application of Insight to the task of
Christian theology, a task that Lonergan in the mid-1960s conceived of as the
mediation of the gospel into diverse cultures. At the same time, he increasingly

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came to understand human consciousness in the process of insight itself as
conversational (judgments must be shared and results need to be coordinated in
order to have a lasting effect). Method in Theology is Lonergan’s proposal to
relate eight distinct functions of theology “by a kind of isomorphism to the
conversational structure of consciousness” (212), advancing thereby a functional conception of theology that undercuts the conventional modern areas or
fields of specialization. Furthermore, consistent with Insight, Lonergan takes
conversion (to the primordial reality of the love of God incarnate in Christ) to
be of absolute existential priority for theology: “For Lonergan, theology is
authentically theological only in the measure that theologians themselves are
truly wise both by the infused wisdom of self-surrender and by the achieved
wisdom of self-knowledge” (225). Would that this criterion of an authentically
theological theology informed the existence and work of all Catholic
theologians in the early twenty-first century!
In the second part of the book, “Wisdom as Object,” Wilkins shows what
the implementation of Lonergan’s program actually looks like, turning to three
topics central to Lonergan’s dogmatic theology: the nature and development of
doctrine, Trinity, and Christology. Since after the completion of Method in
Theology Lonergan turned away from theology to economics, Wilkins has to
draw upon Lonergan’s earlier theology—largely his lectures in dogmatic
theology at the Gregorian University—that he worked out in tandem with his
increasing preoccupation with the question of what comes “before truth.” The
second part of Before Truth is possibly even more important than the first part,
because here Wilkins not only introduces but also develops the brilliant and
profound work of the speculative theologian Lonergan, a work until recently
largely unknown due to the relative inaccessibility of Lonergan’s Latin
university lectures to a wider audience, as well as to the eclipse of his systematic
theology by Insight and Method in Theology.
First Wilkins examines Lonergan’s contribution to the discussion about the
development of doctrine by revisiting his analysis of the process from the New
Testament to the Council of Nicaea. Lonergan understands this process as one
from the clarity that narrative and symbol afford to the clarity that the
systematic meaning of doctrine affords. The overarching property of doctrine
over against narrative and symbol is “the function of doctrines as truth claims
about the world. Doctrines have cognitive truth-intention that is not merely the
expression of our immanent religious experience” (13)—a position worthy of
full recovery in the present theological climate. Subsequently Wilkins turns to
Lonergan’s brilliant defense and transposition of Aquinas’s psychological
analogy of the Trinity. This chapter is worthwhile not only because of the highly
instructive contrast between Rahner’s and Lonergan’s theologies of the Trinity,
but especially because of the subtle reflections on order, criteria, and method
that Lonergan undertakes in the context of his Trinitarian theology. No contemporary systematic theologian working on a conceptual approximation of the

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mystery of the Trinity can afford to ignore Lonergan’s reconstruction of
Aquinas’s account and Wilkins’ lucid presentation and analysis of it.
In the last chapter, Wilkins focuses on Christ, wisdom incarnate, and
Lonergan’s development of Aquinas’s position on Christ’s human knowledge.
Instead of rejecting the “old consensus,” articulated paradigmatically by
Aquinas, in light of modern objections, Lonergan prefers to meet these
objections by way of a solution that is able to meet all modern concerns while
remaining faithful to the old consensus: “Christ was both beholder and pilgrim.
As beholder, his contemplation of God was immediate and constant. He knew
divine love and wisdom in the direct and intimate way enjoyed by the saints in
glory. But as a pilgrim, it was the task of his life to discern, in some sense invent,
and enact what this supernal knowledge concretely required of him and how it
might be communicated to others. This enactment was his human and historical
life” (332). “Christ’s way is converse to ours. Our end is his beginning. From
the immediate knowledge of God, he progressed not only to effable knowledge
but to its expression for us in his human life” (337). In Wilkins’s able theological
hands, the fecundity and relevance of Lonergan’s Christology come to full life
in this chapter. Again, contemporary theologians defending an account of the
simultaneity of Christ’s divine and human knowledge cannot afford to ignore
Lonergan’s subtle and persuasive account and Wilkins’s pellucid summary,
analysis, and development of Lonergan’s proposal.
The book ends with a brief conclusion and epilogue in which Wilkins
reemphasizes Lonergan’s attempt at addressing the contemporary crisis of
normativity, the centrality of beginning with an adequate hermeneutics of
interiority: “In theology as in life, we have to become competent, and becoming
competent is not merely a mastery of material but also mastery of oneself as an
observer, interpreter, judge, and agent. Becoming competent, measuring up,
getting ready: this is the radical form of the problem ‘before truth’” (355).
The problem “before truth” is the problem of acquiring the wisdom of selfappropriation, the wisdom that comes from gaining “insight into insight,” and
simultaneously receiving the infused wisdom, the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Lonergan argues and Wilkins forcefully and rightly reaffirms that the theologian
is in need of both in order to become a faithful and authentic practitioner of
Catholic theology. All students of Aquinas should be in agreement about this
and much else that Lonergan—as interpreted and developed by Wilkins—
advances. All productive disagreement with Lonergan would have to occur on
the other side of Wilkins’s book—more so about the hermeneutics of interiority
as a new “first philosophy,” about the exact nature, status, and function of the
logico-ontological parallel, and about sacra doctrina, its method and the nature
of its first principles, the articles of faith—and less so about the nature and
development of doctrine, Trinitarian theology, and Christology. Yet in order to
enter into a serious and fruitful engagement of pivotal aspects of Lonergan’s

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program, one needs to study Lonergan closely, carefully, and sympathetically.
This is the point of Wilkins’s book. At present there is no better companion to
such an enterprise than Before Truth. The lasting achievement of this book is
the compelling presentation of Lonergan’s philosophy and theology as an
integral whole whose telos is wisdom, and thereby the full recovery of Lonergan
the dogmatic and speculative theologian who is deeply inspired and informed
by St. Augustine, St. John Henry Newman, and St. Thomas Aquinas, and rightly
haunted by the modern crisis of normativity.
REINHARD HÜTTER
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

The Charred Root of Meaning: Continuity, Transgression, and the Other in the
Christian Tradition. By PHILIPP ROSEMANN. Foreword by JOHN
MILBANK. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2018. Pp. 264. $50.00
(cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6345-4.
In this wide-ranging and ambitious book Philipp Rosemann articulates a view
of the Christian tradition in which the emphasis falls decisively on discontinuity
rather than continuity. For Rosemann, continuity has been privileged by most
modern and contemporary thinkers of the tradition, even if all have gone far
beyond the notion of tradition as a static deposit. In the context of the main
aim of The Charred Root of Meaning Yves Congar is both an exemplum and
synecdoche of a kind of consensus approach that needs to be challenged.
Rosemann’s impeccable academic credentials give the reader every confidence
that he is up for the task: a lover of the Catholic tradition who is at the same
time a distinguished medievalist and an expert in Scholastic theology, but also
a theorist with a significant background in Foucault and especially the latter’s
reflection on genealogy, historiography, and tradition. It is Foucault who in fact
supplies (13) the title for the book, in which his notion of “transgression” plays
a key role. As I see it, The Charred Root of Meaning speaks to three “transgressions” or differentiations that only together are constitutive of properly
functioning tradition: (1) the differentiation between the holy and the unholy
introduced by theophany, and the correlative differentiation of human
receivers; (2) the differentiation of Christianity from biblical Judaism; and (3)
the continual differentiation within the Christian tradition beyond these related
but different theophanic events.
The first and foundational differentiation focuses on theophany as the
irruption of the divine into the nondivine area of existence, which in turn elicits

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the human response of felt elevation and separation from given culture and also
other humans. This is the brief of chapter 1 in which Rosemann selects as his
scriptural base the theophany described in Exodus 19 and Moses’ paradigmatic
response (25-32). The irruption of the divine is not only experienced as
overwhelming, it divides reality into the spheres of the holy and unholy. In
addition, Moses’ response articulates a further split between a figure such as
Moses who is granted privileged—if dangerous—access to the holy, and those
down the mountain who are not. Crucially, for Rosemann, what he calls after
Foucault “transgression,’’ and which I am translating by the more anodyne
“differentiation,” serves as a pretext for plural and varied interpretations
throughout the Christian tradition. Rosemann is more interested in getting the
reader to understand the various types of reception of the theophany of Exodus
19 across the centuries of the Christian tradition rather than in giving an
exhaustive inventory. Two types of reception come in for particular attention.
The first is provided by the subtradition of mystical theology for which PseudoDionysius serves as exemplar (33ff.). This highly stylized form of discourse in
which the figure of Moses of Exodus 19 functions prominently (perhaps
intratextually linked with Exod 33) provides the pattern for mystical ascent and
encounter for which language and concept are not adequate. A second and very
different kind of response is to be found in the Scholastic appropriations of
Peter Lomband’s Sentences. Here Rosemann presents a fascinating discussion of
Pseudo-Peter of Poitiers’ Commentary on the Sentences (42-50). He points out
that instead of translating Exodus 19 in the direction of the privileges of
contemplation and ecstatic experience, this text uses it to fold back on Scripture
itself as the site of the numinous and the mysterious, and to make comments
about different depths in interpretation (49). Concretely, this means that the
mountain Moses climbs is Scripture itself, with Moses signifying what an
apostolic rendition would look like, whose illumination both the best of
patristic and medieval interpretation seeks to emulate. Importantly, The
Charred Root of Meaning underscores both the translation of the Exodus
theophany scene into mystical theology (38) and the particular commentary
tradition represented by Pseudo-Peter of Poitiers (47) that there is both
repetition and difference. Perhaps with a little leeway from Rosemann we can
put the two demands together and speak to nonidentical repetition.
With regard to the second form of differentiation, the second chapter of The
Charred Root of Meaning focuses on Christ as the new Moses who troubles the
relation between the irruption of the totally Other and human response. There
are at least four features of a nonidentical repetition of Sinai. First, the
incarnation is an even more dramatic irruption of the divine into the cosmos
and the historical world (51). This seems supportable. Indeed, Rosemann could
plausibly have gone further and suggested that in the incarnation of Christ the
irruption of the divine is paradoxical, since in a manger it has lost the

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spectacular features accompanying the theophany of Exodus 19. We are in fact
dealing with a theophany in the mode of the incognito. Second, the New
Testament figuration of the Cross on the hill/mountain of Golgotha opens up
even further the gap with the theophany of Exodus 19 and its human reception
(53-54). Importantly, Rosemann suggests that the humiliation of Christ on the
Cross not only thoroughly recalibrates the Moses figure, but in a sense also
subverts expectations regarding theophany established by Exodus 19 that have
become more or less conventional. Third, the transfiguration scenes in the
Gospels, which nonincidentally occur on a mountain, both repeat the
glorification of Moses that is a feature of his experience of God in Exodus 19
and surpass it in that the glory seems to be in the mode of being discovered in
Christ rather than conferred (57). Fourth, and finally, the message as well as
the person of Jesus is radical (58): his morality is hyperbolic in comparison with
the system of commandments and transgressive with respect to our common
morality in which, for example, there are different obligations regarding
enemies and friends. In summary, then, without in the slightest downplaying
the dangers of Christian supercessionism, Rosemann wants to remind Christians
that while massive continuities exist between Christianity and Judaism,
nonetheless, Christianity is in the last instance both an event of separation and
differentiation and an attendant repression or forgetting of this fact.
The third differentiation concerns that of the continuing tradition itself. This
differentiation is charted across chapters 3-5 with Rosemann providing us with
numerous—but mainly medieval—examples. Rosemann’s text, however, does
not separate out neatly history from recommendation. And it becomes evident
over the course of these three chapters that Rosemann wants to recommend
plurality and even quite intentional forms of interpretation that dissociate from
the established conventions of the sedimented Christian or Catholic tradition.
Some of the main examples of relative differentiation that come in for some
attention are the work of Denys the Carthusian (106-13), the Douay-Rheims
Bible, which offered a literal translation of the Vulgate (125-28), Grosseteste’s
line-by-line translation of the corpus dionysiacum (129-31), and the work of
Augustine (136-43). Rosemann offers a rich exploration of each of the above
four examples. Here I will speak to just the first, although I will tie in some of
Rosemann’s other examples when I consider the more theoretical and hermeneutical dimensions of his argument elaborated in these chapters. Rosemann’s discussion of Denys the Carthusian, who is, indeed, an appropriator of
Pseudo-Dionysius, is intriguing not only for the reason that Rosemann gives an
exemplary account of how the praxis of exegesis both gives way to and is
grounded by broader reflections on the tradition, but also because of its
extraordinarily interesting coda of reading Denys the Carthusian with Alasdair
MacIntyre (113-19). On the first front, Rosemann goes to some lengths to
elaborate Denys’s developmental view of the tradition grounded in evangelical
disclosure that exceeds both pagan wisdom and the Torah. The very fact that
patristic and medieval thought are regulated by revelation represents the

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opening to originality, since no one particular translation of that which by
definition is excessive will be adequate. It is this conjugation of continuity and
discontinuity in the tradition, which makes it a scene of nonidentical repetition,
that allows the conversation between Denys and MacIntyre to be as fruitful as
it turns out to be.
The horizonal complement to fined-tuned interpretation of particular texts
in The Charred Root of Meaning is general hermeneutic reflection that carries
evaluative force. In chapter 3 Rosemann problematizes the Christian trope of
spolatio Aegyptiorum as the only or even best way for Christians to approach
and appropriate other cultures. Granted that all appropriation is guided by
interest, nonetheless, in translation the other should not be reduced to the same.
This injunction, however, is not simply moralism. If it is intended to protect the
other, it is also intended to protect Christianity which requires such otherness
in order to be faithful to its own history which is a history of encounter. This
reflection on spoliation is continued in chapter 4 (119-29) in which the recalcitrance of classic texts to our acquired hermeneutic regimes is underscored.
Rosemann takes as his two examples the Douay-Rheims Bible’s word-for-word
translation of the Vulgate, in which the awkwardness of syntax arrests (125-28)
and Grosseteste’s line-by-line translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius that
productively defamiliarizes the work of the sixth-century Syrian monk. Chapter
5 speaks to another negative note of the sedimented or sedimenting tradition,
namely, its tendency to cover over the original inspiration and transformation.
This means that one of the main exercises of the tradition is overcoming its own
tendencies towards redundancy and sclerosis, or “forgetting,” which is
Rosemann’s preferred Heidegger-inspired locution. One could read The
Charred Root of Meaning to say that the Christian tradition necessarily exercises
a critical and even “destructive” relation (145-52) to its own past in the interest
of constructing a truly viable tradition, that is, one that is characterized by
“nonidentical” repetition.
In the sixth and final chapter, titled “A Genealogy of Transgression,”
Rosemann turns to Kant and post-Enlightenment repressions of the numinous.
Although Rosemann might well have returned to Exodus 19 at this point,
instead he turns to Genesis 3 and the enigmas of the Fall story. The specific text
he has in mind is Kant’s 1786 essay “Conjectural Beginning of History,” in
which the German philosopher dismisses the snake and elevates disobedience
as the taking on of the autonomy proper to human being. Implied is that Kant
can only synonymize innocence and ignorance. From what Rosemann calls
Kant’s “de-eviling”—which translates Entübeling—he moves on to paint a
somewhat depressing picture of the banalization that is the handwork of
modernity. Still, it is worth pointing out that despite a clear elective affinity for
the thought of MacIntyre, The Charred Root of Meaning is not just the latest
anti-modernity screed. This is implied throughout the book: the theophany of

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Exodus 19 gives the Jewish people access to an unnamable God, while effecting
a transformation of the receiver Moses who is representative of all humans. This
is true to an even greater extent of the incarnation, transfiguration, passion,
death, and also resurrection of Christ, who unveils the paradox of the union of
the divine and the human. In addition, more regular and minor shocks to the
tendency to assimilate and domesticate can be seen throughout the Western
tradition in general and in the medieval tradition in particular. This achieves its
most transparent interpretation in chapter 5 and most specifically in Rosemann’s adoption and adaptation of Heidegger’s method of Destrucktion
(153ff.).
The Charred Root of Meaning is best thought of as an essay on the nature of
tradition rather than a comprehensive treatment thereof. And in a sense it is as
much an intervention as an outline of what a comprehensive treatment would
look like in that it wishes to correct for the overemphasis on continuity in the
Christian and more specifically Catholic understandings of tradition. Challenge,
foreignness, and irreducible strangeness are also crucial features of the tradition.
This has all the merit of sanity, especially coming from a scholar who so loves
the Catholic tradition. This brings me to my one major reservation regarding
The Charred Root of Meaning. It concerns the use of Foucault as providing the
theoretical apparatus of the kind of sober and responsible revision of the basic
optics concerning tradition. Although Rosemann makes clear that for him
Foucault provides him solely with “tools” (13) that do not bear at all on
substantive commitments, even with MacIntyre functioning as a something of a
damper, one is sometimes made nervous by the language of “transgression.”
One is inclined to ask some questions. Is “transgression” an actual construct or
more accurately a hyperbole of differentiation and separation? Even more
generally, what does Foucault provide on the level of interpretation theory and
genealogy that is not provided by either Gadamer or Ricoeur? The good news
is that the very fact that we are asking these questions suggests that in its use of
Foucault The Charred Roots of Meaning does not subvert its entirely positive
intentions towards medieval exegetes and High Scholastics expressed
throughout the text, which is a hallmark of Rosemann’s work.
CYRIL O’REGAN
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

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Atonement. By ELEONORE STUMP. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 536. $80.00 (hard).
978-0-19-881386-6.
In the beginning of the last chapter of Atonement, Eleonore Stump states that
the entirety of her argument “is an explanation of the love of God” (378), a
summary statement which also provides her primary criterion for judging
atonement theories alternative to hers. For Stump the atonement shows how
the life, passion, and death of Christ “takes God’s love to be maximally expressive of God’s nature and central to the atonement, and . . . God’s forgiveness
to be God’s love in operation towards human beings suffering from guilt”
(ibid.). She arrives at these concluding remarks through a rigorous work of
philosophical theology, yet one that works from broadly orthodox theological
commitments, which she explores for an understanding of how Christ’s
atonement removes the guilt and shame consequent to human sin and thus
unites humans to God.
Stump begins by investigating previous atonement theories, which she
divides into two main types, Anselmian and Thomistic. Stump criticizes
Anselmian types (which include Anselm, Luther, and Calvin) because they
“locate the main obstacle to a solution to the problem of human sinfulness in
God’s justice or God’s honor or some similar divine attribute” (21), while
Thomistic types “locate the obstacle to a remedy for human sinfulness in human
beings themselves” (22). She also notes some problems with the Thomistic
approach, especially the “connection between its solution to the problem of sin,
on the one hand, and the passion and death of Christ, on the other” (27), though
she generally expands upon Thomistic ideas as she develops her own account.
In her second chapter, which treats of the central problems of guilt, shame, and
satisfaction, Stump argues that an evaluation of atonement theories requires
fidelity to biblical texts, a moral psychology, and an ethical theory. Her
preferred ethical theory is Aquinas’s, which emphasizes love and relationship in
its normative account of human acts (39). If love, understood as willing the
good for the other and desiring union with the beloved, is the central virtue of
Thomistic ethics, then the guilt of sin breaks our ability to will the good for the
other and shame breaks our desire for union with the beloved. A fully Christian
account of the atonement must account for both guilt and shame in reuniting
humans with the greatest good, God.
In this Thomistic ethical system, love is obligatory and forgiveness for sin is
unilateral and unconditional on God’s part. Stump therefore develops her attack
on Anselmian theories in chapter 3 by arguing that these interpretations are
“antithetical to God’s love” (109) because satisfaction is required as a precondition of forgiveness and reconciliation. The required satisfaction is seen as
a requirement of God’s justice or honor, which seems to place an obstacle or

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limitation on God’s loving forgiveness, and has the additional problem that it
minimizes our efforts to reconcile with those against whom we have sinned.
Instead, Stump argues that human satisfaction, which should benefit those we
have sinned against, follows from God’s forgiveness and God’s central attribute
of love. Consequently, Stump claims that “the God of the Anselmian interpretation is not a loving God,” and so the Anselmian approach is
“unsalvageable” (115).
Over the next four chapters, Stump develops the philosophical foundations
necessary for her own positive account of atonement. Since the goal of love is
union with the beloved, in chapter 4 she describes what is required for union
and indwelling with God. The purpose of the cross is union with God in this
life (117), a union that comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, which raises
the question of how an omnipresent God can be in union with particular
humans. Consequently, Stump develops a theory of indwelling and union as a
function of shared attention and personal presence that comes from a kind of
empathy and mind-reading. This position, however, creates an additional
problem of how the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is connected to the cross.
In chapter 5, Stump challenges her idea of indwelling through the thorny
problem of Christ’s cry of abandonment on the cross, which seems to put a
distance between God and Christ. She argues that the cry of dereliction comes
from a lack of shared attention between God and Christ on Christ’s part, due
to the overwhelming psychological stress from simultaneously bearing the sins
of all persons from all times. Yet it is precisely Christ’s openness to all human
psyches that allows for mutual indwelling between God and humans (166). In
her account of the cry of dereliction Stump suggests that Christ’s experience of
human sin on the cross “would introduce separation into the composite that is
the incarnate Christ” (169) and that the “divine nature begins to have some
distance from the human nature” (171), leaving one to wonder whether human
nature can receive the healing necessary from Christ at the very moment it most
needs it—that is, if the hypostatic union somehow separates or divides when
Christ takes up the burden of human sin.
If the goal of atonement is to unite humans with God through grace, the
consequence of that union is a shared will between humans and God, which is
the topic of the sixth chapter. The goal of the indwelling is to will what God
wills (180). Stump explores this by contrasting Aquinas’s understanding of a
shared will between God and humans with the understanding of Meister
Eckhart. She argues that Eckhart’s desire to remove the human’s will from
willing anything other than what God wills does not fit the biblical data, while
Aquinas’s account of how we should will under the general good, since we
cannot always know what God wills in particulars (189), provides a more
realistic account of Christ’s first order and second order willing as seen in his
prayer at Gethsemane (192).
The defect of our will, that is, our inability to will the good of the other, is
remedied by a life in grace, which gives justification and sanctification, and is

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the goal of atonement. The philosophical problem, however, is that if humans
are to have truly free wills, they must be able to resist God’s grace, but if we are
to avoid Pelagianism, then humans cannot will God’s grace for themselves.
Stump argues that all the will needs to receive God’s grace is to “stop resisting
God’s love and grace” by placing the will in a “quiescent state” (227) in which
it surrenders to God without resisting. Only then will God infuse operative
grace into the human will, which will allow the process of sanctification to
begin. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which Stump posits as the basis of
union with God, only becomes possible when we surrender ourselves to God.
How we surrender to God, maintain the process of justification, and are
healed from our guilt and shame are the topics of the last four chapters of the
book. The pivotal chapter is the eighth, where Stump describes how the passion
and death of Jesus elicits the surrender of our will to the love and grace of God
by attracting us through his vulnerability, which “gently disarms a human
person’s resistance to love (288).” She arrives at this conclusion via a discussion
of the temptation narrative from Luke, in which she suggests that in the third
temptation in Luke’s account, Satan means to lead Christ toward a kind of
Docetism by which he would avoid suffering. In rejecting Satan’s test, Christ
commits himself “to accepting great suffering for the sake of human flourishing
(267),” which motivates our surrender. Persons who surrender their will to
receive the grace and love of God still require the ability to persevere in the will,
since they are free to turn back away from God. Chapter 9 thus deals with how
both the Eucharist and human suffering might be means of helping the will
persevere. Regarding the Eucharist, Stump provides both a minimal account of
how the Eucharist stirs us to love, as well as a more metaphysically rich one that
shows how the Eucharist creates an intense connection with Christ, even to the
point of our being present to Christ in his suffering. With all of these elements
in place Stump returns to the problems of guilt and shame, arguing that shame
is healed by the honor we receive from God who shares in our shame (361),
and that atonement puts us in a position to make amends to human victims,
thus also making amends to God and so solving the problem of guilt.
In the final chapter, Stump deals with some remaining issues, including
biblical texts, such as Romans 3:21-28, which seem to challenge her theory.
Against Richard Swinburne’s Anselmian type of atonement theory, which finds
something atoning in sacrifices to God, she argues that Old Testament sacrifices
serve to alter something about the human person, so that the gift offered allows
the human to draw near to God (390). By being united to Christ we too are
offered to God, in love, in the sacrifice of the cross (398). Thus, the atonement
is seen not only as an act of love on God’s part, but also as an act of love of God
on the part of humans who are drawn to God through the cross.
In Atonement Stump has made an important and ambitious contribution to
contemporary discussions of the atonement that demands serious engagement

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among interested philosophers and theologians. While the book has many
virtues—clarity, rigorous argumentation, breadth of discussion, and lively
examples—it is beset by one abiding vice, which is its treatment of Anselm.
Stump attempts to escape from being held responsible for specific interpretations of the “Anselmian kind . . . including Anselm’s own” by claiming that
the “book is not the elucidation of particular historical interpretations of the
doctrine of the atonement” (79). Yet in labeling an entire genus of atonement
theories “Anselmian” and then declaring that those theories, as Anselmian, are
unsalvageable, Stump cannot escape responsibility for her reading of the
particularities of Anselm’s own argument. One does not justly attempt to write
this entire theory out of the tradition without attending to the nuances of
Anselm’s argument. By putting Anselm’s and Calvin’s atonement theories in the
same category, Stump shows a fundamental misunderstanding of both.
Additionally, for Stump, one of the main problems of the Anselmian type is that
God’s justice visits punishment on a completely innocent person (24), but
Anselm is aware of this objection and completely rejects the idea that God
would exact punishment from the innocent (Cur Deus Homo 1.8). While Stump
thinks that Anselmian types of atonement theory require someone to pay “the
penalty for human beings” (22), Anselm thinks that (a) divine punishment
would only condemn all humans to hell and would thus subvert God’s original
plan for human beings and (b) a sinless Christ does not owe God death.
Consequently, Anselm argues that it is only satisfaction, not any form of
punishment, that can reconcile humans to God. For Stump, the God of the
Anselmian type is a kind of cosmic debt collector who “exacts every bit of what
is owed (24).” Yet Anselm is clear that God derives no benefit from the debt
paid through satisfaction; rather, the benefit of paying the debt accrues to the
human being because it restores the human to a position of justice with respect
to God. This is an act of love on God’s part, as God desires that humans be
restored to the justice he intended for them in creation, so that they might be
equal in justice to the persevering angels. For Anselm, a God who can forgive
and restore the human being to justice is a greater, more merciful, and more
loving God that a God who only forgives without restoring the human to justice.
In short, and without going into other problems in her interpretation of Anselm,
despite Stump’s best efforts to exile Anselm’s theory, this otherwise excellent
book is unsatisfying in its treatment of Anselm’s still relevant work.
DAVID L. WHIDDEN III
Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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The Hiddenness of God. By MICHAEL C. REA. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2018. Pp. xii + 198. $30.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-882601-9.
“God is supposed to be my heavenly father. So why can’t he just whisper ‘I
love you’ once in a while?” Michael Rea begins his book recounting these words
of a friend from a tearful conversation during his college years. He describes
the event as his “first real confrontation with the problem of divine hiddenness
as a challenge to faith,” which, he says, “has been on my mind in one way or
another ever since—sometimes in its guise as a purely philosophical objection
to theistic belief, but more often as a kind of pastorally and existentially
important theological problem for religious believers” (vii). The conversation
sets the tone for his book, which is both pastorally insightful and academically
rigorous.
Rea chooses an “interdisciplinary approach” for his study, incorporating not
only “relevant philosophical literature, but also ideas and insights drawn from
theology and biblical studies” (viii). In chapter 1, he contrasts the contemporary
notion that “divine hiddenness counts against the existence of God” with earlier
Hebrew and Christian traditions which integrate God’s presence and hiddenness in such a way that “God’s love and existence remain unchallenged” (5). He
explains that his “aim in this book” is to develop “a theory about the attributes
of God, and particularly about the love of God, and the way in which it is
manifested to humans, that makes room for divine hiddenness in its various
forms as a natural outgrowth of who and what God is rather than of what God
is doing to serve human needs and desires” (7).
In chapter 2 Rea outlines the problem of divine hiddenness, viewing it, along
with the problem of evil, as “the two most important and widely discussed
reasons on offer for disbelieving in God” (6). Since he finds the problem to be
rooted in “certain ways of understanding the nature of God and God’s
attributes,” his proposed “solution” involves showing how that deficient
understanding gives rise to “unwarranted assumptions and expectations about
God’s love for human beings” (6, 8). In this, the notion of divine transcendence
plays a key role: “[A] proper appreciation of the place of divine transcendence
both historically within the Christian tradition, as well as in contemporary
theology and spirituality, will be a vital component in my overall response to
the challenges posed by divine hiddenness” (14-15). Accordingly, he refutes J.
L. Schellenberg’s arguments from divine hiddenness to the non-existence of
God, by arguing that his philosophical notion of God fails to touch “belief in
the Christian God” since it lacks “a proper appreciation of divine
transcendence” (23, 28).
In chapters 3 and 4, Rea expands on the notion of divine transcendence.
Scripture portrays God as both transcendent and personal, but “philosophical
literature on the hiddenness problem” tends to “downplay divine transcendence

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in favor of God’s personal attributes” (35). When God’s transcendence is
neglected, however, our language about God and creatures tends to become
“univocal” (49). An overemphasis on God’s transcendence and otherness, on
the other hand, renders our language equivocal since it then has “no literal
application to God” (41). Rea therefore endorses analogy as a “doctrine of
transcendence that falls somewhere in the middle” (51). The problem with most
philosophical arguments from divine hiddenness to the non-existence of God is
that they are based on false expectations of how God should act, arising from
their mistaken presupposition that, in God and humans, love and goodness are
univocally the same (57). Rea points out that as “confidence in those
preconceptions diminishes, the problem of divine hiddenness dissolves” (63).
He acknowledges, however, that most philosophers engaged in the divine
hiddenness discussion tend to overlook divine transcendence and view divine
love as “simply an idealized version of one of the best kinds of human love”
(63). To answer them, he argues in chapter 5 that “even if we set aside
considerations involving divine transcendence, there remain good a priori
reasons for denying that God would be an ideal lover of human beings. The
reason is that even a perfect being might have non-anthropocentric loves and
interests that conflict with and take higher priority than promotion of the good
for human beings” (79).
The rest of the book is concerned with showing that God is not so hidden or
absent as is often thought. In chapters 6 and 7, Rea considers “the metaphysics
of divine presence” in order to show that “experiential access to God’s presence
is more widely available than many suppose it to be” (11). To counter divine
hiddenness arguments, he does not think he needs to show that his theory of
divine encounters is true, only that it is “credible” (93).
As a metaphysical account of divine presence, Rea’s theory is rather striking
in that the one factor it generally rules out in such divine encounters is the
causality of God. He argues that “the difference between those who experience
God and those who do not has, for the most part, nothing to do with God’s
causal contact with people. . . . Rather, on this account, the difference has
everything to do with differences in how people cognitively engage with
perfectly natural phenomena” (98). Later, he excludes God’s causality more
explicitly. He first defines “causalism” as the position that “paradigmatic
religious experiences, or an important subclass of those, typically result, at least
in part, from special causal contact with God, or some other religiously
significant phenomenon,” and then avers, “I reject causalism” (119). He further
stipulates: “My central thesis is simply that all divine encounters . . . involve
entirely natural stimuli and require no special causal contact with God, and that
cognition enters in as part of the explanation for why the stimuli are experienced
as divine encounters” (121).
Of course this raises the question: If God is not causally involved in such
experiences, in what way is God involved? Rea’s answer is that God is involved
intentionally: “So long as the natural events stimulating these experiences were

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at least partly explained by God’s intention that the subjects experience them as
they did, it is appropriate to say that God communicated with them” (106-7).
To the deeper question of how we are to know whether God is intending a
particular natural event in this way, Rea answers: “And, on the assumption—
which I endorse—that God is always and everywhere intending that people
experience as much of God’s love and presence as they are able given their
psychological profile, background cognition, and so on, there is a clear sense in
which all that I have been saying in this chapter implies that God is constantly
communicating, and that any experience of God’s love or presence that a person
manages to have will be veridical (at least as regards God’s love for them, and
God’s presence, if nothing else)” (135).
While preserving God’s universal intentional involvement in all such
encounters, Rea also seems to allow for instances of God’s causal involvement.
His explanation warrants some detailed consideration since he explicitly
describes it as “my characterization of special causal contact” (119 n. 12). He
says:
Although I do not deny that it is correct to say that God has
communicated with people like Stephanie and Jason Lomelino [who
experienced some natural phenomenon as an encounter with God],
I do deny that, in saying this, we must believe that God entered into
some kind of special causal contact with them. For purposes here, I
take it that someone’s experience involves special causal contact with
God if, and only if, God or some supernatural phenomenon
involving God or God’s activity is either the immediate stimulus for
their experience or in some other way its direct cause, so that the
occurrence of the experience, its character, its content, or some
combination of these can be adequately explained only by reference
to God or the occurrence of some supernatural phenomenon. There
is no reason why the providential acts that might explain Stephanie’s
and Jason Lomelino’s experience cannot be realized in perfectly
natural events that are adequately explainable by appeal to natural
causes operating in accord with the laws of nature. Of course, if God
is causally involved in the occurrence of some natural event, no
perfectly natural explanation will be complete; but the same will be
true for a great many other providential happenings that, except
when seen through the lens of faith, have perfectly adequate natural
explanations. My point, then, is emphatically not to deny either the
veridicality of these experiences or God’s causal involvement in
producing them, but just the supposition that such experiences,
when veridical, involve special causal contact with God in the sense
just described. (107)

Rea does not want to deny “God’s causal involvement in producing” such
encounters, but if God’s involvement is not by way of “special causal contact,”

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what form does it take? He refers to divine providence, even suggesting that, in
Stephanie’s case, God might be “providentially arranging for perfectly natural
brain events” (ibid.). But how does God make such arrangements except
through divine causality? (Here, Thomas Aquinas’s teaching on God as primary
cause and creatures as secondary causes of natural events might be helpful; see
STh I, q. 105, a. 5.)
Rea’s motive for excluding God’s causality from such divine encounters is
that “the hiddenness problem gains traction from the idea that experiencing
God’s presence requires some kind of special causal contact with God. . . .
Closing off this possibility therefore helps to mitigate the hiddenness problem”
(125). But if God’s providential causality remains the source of natural events
which give rise to experiences of divine encounter, then eliminating God’s
“special causal contact” from such experiences themselves would not necessarily
diminish the hiddenness problem. God might still be providentially arranging
natural events (including “brain events”) in one way for some people and in
another way for others.
Perhaps the problem is not the fact of God’s causal involvement but the way
that such involvement is characterized. Rea notes that a problem arises “out of
the idea that more vivid (and many might say, more desirable) experiences of
God’s presence often involve special causal contact with God, bestowed like
gifts only at God’s whim or in response to hard effort of some kind” (97).
Perhaps the way to mitigate the hiddenness problem is not to eliminate God’s
causality from divine encounters, but only to correct our understanding of the
character of that causality—to see it as proceeding not from a divine whim, but
from God’s wisdom and love. We might then affirm that the supernatural
causality of divine grace is present not only in profound mystical experiences,
but also, in what Rea charmingly describes as “garden-variety divine
encounters” (115).
Chapter 8 attempts to show that God is not utterly absent even from people
who experience themselves as alienated from God. Through a penetrating
reflection on Job and Lamentations, Rea suggests how we may recognize that
“God is providing them with a path forward” (11).
Finally, in chapter 9, Rea considers how God may be present even to people
who have no concept of God. He argues that “we have no good reason to doubt
that anyone capable of participating in personal relationships—regardless of
whether they have the Christian concept of God—is both in a position to try to
participate in a relationship with God, and actually to do so just by trying”
(162).
Rea’s book is remarkable in that its scholarship is able to engage the
fundamental issues of the divine hiddenness problem even as its pastoral tone
expresses a sincere invitation to all readers to open themselves to the experience
of God. In this manner, it addresses the hiddenness problem not only by
demonstrating the importance of divine transcendence, but also by describing

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the nature of our encounter with God in a way that shows its availability to all
people.
MICHAEL J. DODDS, O.P.
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

An Avant-garde Theological Generation: The “nouvelle théologie” and the
French Crisis of Modernity. By JON KIRWAN. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2018. Pp. xiii + 311. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-881922-6.
There are some periods of the history of theology that cannot be told too
often—the fourth century, for instance, or the stretch from the Council of
Ephesus to Second or Third Constantinople, and in the West, the long hundred
years from the Council of Carthage to Second Orange, and the sixteenth
century. Then there is theology in the twentieth century, from Modernism to
postconciliar disarray. The heart of this story is the nouvelle théologie, the story
of Marie-Dominique Chenu, Yves Congar, Jean Daniélou, and Henri de Lubac
and their impact on the Church at large before, during, and after the Second
Vatican Council. This last history is important for us first of all in coming to
understand ourselves and our own moment in the life of the Church. But also,
since this last history dwells on the very question of the historicity of the human
mind, it turns out to be important for understanding how we tell all the histories
of dogma and theology.
If there is one word by which to characterize the nouvelle théologie, it would
be ressourcement. The men associated with it wanted to recover a usable history
in the Fathers and in Aquinas, one that made an end-run around Baroque
Scholasticism and its revival in the Neo-Scholasticism mandated by Leo XIII,
one that would address modern philosophical and political concerns in their
own terms with the ambition of making France wholly and vibrantly Catholic.
Kirwan’s aim, he says modestly enough, is “to more fully understand
twentieth-century French Catholic thought,” and in this he succeeds (4). Kirwan
thinks to accomplish his aim in two ways. First, he wants to insert the nouvelle
théologie into the context of French thought and culture as a whole, where we
can see how it was fueled by a general concern for a historically conscious
philosophy, a philosophy turned toward the concrete phenomena of life and
politics, and a philosophy committed to the dignity of workers and laborers,
even as twentieth-century Marxism and Communism claimed to be. This he

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accomplishes especially in chapter 5, a canvas of French secular and philosophical thought in the 1930s that illumines the theological concerns and why
they were posed as they were by the Catholic generation of the 1930s, the years
of the coming of age of de Lubac and Chenu and company, which are treated
in chapter 6. While the general culture could be looking for a new humanism
that might repudiate old patterns of thought, a new political orientation that
could contradict older ones, Catholics had to come to grips with change within
continuity, with much less room to maneuver, for the central issue—and here
Kirwan adopts the words of Thomas Joseph White—was “the relation between
the historical character of human existence and human knowledge and the
supposedly absolute, unchanging truth claims of Christian revelation” (5).
The second way Kirwan comes to understand the nouvelle théologie is by the
kind of generational analysis of history inaugurated by Karl Mannheim, José
Ortega y Gasset, and more recently such historians as Jean-François Sirinelli and
Michel Winock. Kirwan explains this analysis in chapter 1. The identity of a
generation—an intellectual generation, mark—is formed by a crisis to which
those born within the same decade or so respond, not always in the same way
but in a way that marks them as related to all the others of their generational
cohort. So, the French distinguish first the génération de l’affaire Dreyfus that
comes to maturity in the 1890s, which is also the generation of the Modernists,
where the questions still driving theology in the nouvelle théologie are
formulated. This is chapter 2. Chapter 3 deals first with such men as Léonce de
Grandmaison, Jules Lebreton, and Ambroise Gardeil—the grandfathers, as it
were, of the nouveaux théologiens, and then the generation just before the Great
War, the “fathers” of de Lubac and company—men such as Auguste Valensin,
Pierre Rousselot, and Joseph Maréchal. Chapter 4 then tells us many interesting
things about the formation of de Lubac and his Jesuit companions—Gaston
Fessard, Yves de Montcheuil, and Henri Bouillard—in the 1920s, years
indelibly marked by the Great War. This history relies on Kirwan’s research at
the Jesuit archive in Paris. This is maybe the most interesting chapter of the
book, recounting the influence of Valensin, Rousselot, and Maréchal on the
Fourvière Jesuits.
Then, following a canvas of French intellectual and political life in chapter
5, the génération de la Crise—a crisis of confidence and a call for political
decision common to all of French society, the generation of the 1930s—we have
chapter 6, the nouveaux théologiens in their maturity. There follows chapter 7,
the new theologians in their triumph after the Second World War in the 1940s,
a triumph garlanded by the authority their spiritual resistance to Nazism and
Vichy won them, and last, chapter 8, a quick canvas of their influence in the
1960s and at the council.
Part of the unity of Kirwan’s study as a whole is thus this generational
analysis, more useful for understanding the Jesuits, I think, than for the
Dominicans, but not unhelpful there either. In Kirwan’s telling, Chenu becomes
modern in turning to a theological concern for culture and politics because of

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the Great Depression, while Congar is animated by ecumenical concerns. The
Jesuits, especially, are heirs of Maurice Blondel, and Kirwan indicates this in
many ways throughout chapters 3, 4, 6, and 7. Congar is not uninfluenced by
Blondel, of course, especially in thinking about Tradition, but Blondel particularly came to inhabit the minds of the Jesuits, and none more so than de Lubac’s.
In Kirwan’s study, while de Lubac does not suck all the oxygen out of the
room, he stands out as the dominant figure of the generation of the 1930s, and
his influence after the Second World War is everywhere. As Kirwan tells it,
Blondel’s influence is more and more pervasive as the twentieth century
progresses (as shown by Peter Henrici and others). For Blondel’s influence on
de Lubac was early—even very early—comprehensive, and controlling of how
de Lubac read both the Fathers and Aquinas from the beginning. This is not
without help from his confrères: Valensin delivers a Blondelian Augustine to de
Lubac (79), and Rousselot and Maréchal deliver a Blondelian Aquinas to him
(85, 87, 94). With Fessard, de Lubac works out in the early 1920s a Blondelian
reading of the history of philosophy (116) and a first trial run of the relation of
the natural to the supernatural inspired by L’Action (120). De Lubac’s inaugural
lecture at the Institut Catholique in Lyon in 1929 fairly channels Blondel’s 1896
Letter on Apologetics (131).
Kirwan’s study therefore shows us that it is a teaching that gives unity to de
Lubac’s theological life. Blondel’s teaching about the openness of human desire
onto the supernatural, about the worthlessness of Neo-Scholasticism, and about
how revelation is maintained through a tradition that knows more in what it
secretly brings forward from the past and in what it is directed to than in what
it already possesses conceptually—it is this teaching (for in the end the three
things make one complex theory) that gives unity to de Lubac’s theological
work and to his own history: it is the yardstick by which he reads the history of
theology, finding Blondel in Augustine (and Plotinus) and Thomas Aquinas; it
is the inspiration for his greatest works, Catholicisme and Le drame de
l’humanisme athée, Surnaturel, and La connaissance de Dieu; and it is the
warrant for his accusation that it is Baroque Scholasticism and therefore the
Church herself that is responsible for the split with modernity for 500 years
since the Reformation. In this way, he is a sort of illustration that the only
unifying principle of a history that is really one history is a teaching, a collection
of propositions held as true. And in the Church’s life, her one history, her one
tradition is also to be located, if not in a theory, at least in a collection of
propositions called dogmas. And de Lubac corroborates this, in Kirwan’s telling,
in how he received Chenu’s final thoughts on dogma. Chenu said after the
council that the Word of God is to be found in “the existential fabric of the
Church, in the life of the Church,” and is not “reduced in a series of
authoritative utterances,” a remark de Lubac thought “absurd” (278).

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Beyond simply understanding the theological history of France of the last
century, Kirwan says also that he wants to discern “what is of lasting and
transcendent value” in the work of the nouveaux théologiens and so to let what
is bygone go (17). Although he leaves it to his readers to name what is of lasting
value, this is easy to do since the work of discernment he proposes already
supposes some sort of a position on how to maintain continuity of identity in
change. What is of lasting value generally, then, is the role of what Newman
called the “dogmatic principle” in maintaining Catholic identity, and what is of
value in understanding the historicity of Christian faith, dogma, and theology
is the role of the proposition, the dogma, the conceptually formulated theory,
in giving the history in question an identical subject, an identical truth, making
for one history, though the truth or dogma be expressed now in this way, now
that, or associated now with this, now with that other idea or institution or
practice. And so what is of value in the nouvelle théologie is the attention the
great figures of the period (and let us include Bouillard here) pay to the
dogmatic principle, how they think it operates, and whether or not they think
it indispensable. For de Lubac, it is indispensable, despite his Blondelian
criticisms of Neo-Scholastic rationalism and “dogmatic propositionalism”
(131). For Chenu, it is dispensable, something already foreshadowed (I believe)
in Une école de théologie of 1937. I think Kirwan agrees with those he studies
who think that, in some way, a theological commitment to the dogmatic
principle is key to maintaining the Church’s identity, not only in the turbulence
of French culture and society in the twentieth century, but in the turbulence of
our own age today. But perhaps he will name the lasting things more clearly in
his next book, a more detailed study of the influence of the nouvelle théologie
on the Second Vatican Council, to which we may all look forward.
It is unfortunate, given the expense of the book, that it is marred by many
typographical errors, confused citations, an incomplete bibliography, and other
evidences of sloppy copyediting and proofreading.
GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide. By RANDALL B.
SMITH. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2016. Pp. xxxiv + 342.
$44.95 (cloth). 978-1-941447-97-0.
The appearance of the Leonine Commission’s critical edition of Thomas
Aquinas’s sermons in 2014 fulfilled a great desideratum, affording access in the

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original Latin to a range of Aquinas’s work that has perhaps received less
attention than it deserves, namely, his preaching. In the introduction to his
edition, Père Louis Bataillon understandably concentrated on issues of textual
criticism and theology, leaving to one side any deeper exploration of the
contexts within which Aquinas had actually delivered his sermons or the
rhetorical forms employed in the pulpit in his day. We were thus left with
another desideratum: a study that would bridge the gap between the
theologians’ appreciation of the content of Aquinas’s preaching and an
understanding of the peculiar homiletic form to which he was heir that those
who study medieval sermon survivals would bring to a reading of his sermons.
To provide that bridge is precisely the propositum of Randall B. Smith’s Reading
the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide.
Smith organizes his material into five chapters, bookended by an Introduction and a sixth chapter of “Summary and Conclusions.” A pair of
appendices rounds out the volume. Appendix I offers outlines of the twentyone formal sermons attributed to Aquinas, fifteen grouped together here as
dominical sermons ordered according to the liturgical calendar, and the
remaining six as feast-day sermons. Each is broken down into its component
parts of theme and subdivisions according to the rules of sermon-making in
Aquinas’s day. These schemata are the book’s most valuable contribution, a
ready-reference to the content and form—the very exacting Scholastic form—
of each of Aquinas’s sermons. Appendix II then correlates the themata adopted
in the sermons with the pericopes from the Dominican lectionary.
The Introduction touches lightly—perhaps too lightly—on several important
preliminaries: the state of the question regarding the number and numbering of
Aquinas’s sermons; the audiences to which they were preached, including a
quick lesson in the difference between sermons and collations (here called
“sermon-conferences”); and the author’s justification for the current study,
occasioned by the belief that most modern readers will be unfamiliar with the
Scholastic style of preaching that had evolved at the medieval universities, and
are in need of a road map to its rhetorical conventions if they are to parse
Aquinas’s sermons.
Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Aquinas’s preaching style by looking
closely at a single sermon, Ecce rex tuus. Here the author’s approach is largely
to define Aquinas’s preaching by suggesting what it is not, in relation to modern
expectations of what sermons should be or even when compared to what
preaching became in the hands of Cardinal Newman and the great Protestant
homilists. Smith remarks on the “oddity” of Aquinas’s approach, asks whether
he is guilty of “reading meaning into the Bible,” and acknowledges that an
educated medieval would have possessed an intimate familiarity with the texts,
tropes, and cadences of Scripture that no longer obtains in the minds of modern
Christians. Chapter 2 then works to acquaint the reader with the form of the

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sermo modernus as the template according to which Aquinas will construct his
own sermons. Smith briefly describes what he calls the “homiletic revolution”
of the thirteenth century that gave birth to the new Scholastic style of preaching,
and devotes short sections to each of the key characteristics of the “modern”
sermon. These are sermons built around a single line from Scripture known as
the thema; the structure of a sermon emerges from a division, often a threefold
division, of that line to suggest three main exegetical motifs (divisio), which are
then developed with the help of a standard répertoire of rhetorical and textual
techniques (dilatatio). Chapters 3 and 4 proceed to the analysis of Aquinas’s
sermons, showing, first (in chap. 3), how Aquinas adopts and divides themata
to provide the overall structure for several of his sermons, and then (in chap.
4), how he applies the various methods of dilatatio described in the preaching
manuals to elaborate them: further subdivisions, argumentation (that is, the use
of rationes), chains of auctoritates verbally concorded on a single word, exegesis
according to the fourfold interpretation of Scripture, and so forth. Chapter 5,
entitled “Evaluating the sermo modernus Style,” offers the author’s thoughts on
what he considers good, bad, or indifferent about the style and Aquinas’s
particular appropriation of it, especially when measured against the standard of
how “biblical” his preaching could be said to be—a question that seems a bit
incongruous to ask of medieval sermons built on the skillful martialing of
scriptural texts and imagery. This concern resurfaces in the brief concluding
chapter 6, which ends by characterizing the book as having demonstrated what
“it mean[s] for Thomas Aquinas to be a biblical theologian” insofar as Aquinas’s
sermons illustrate what “taking the Bible seriously looked like in the Middle
Ages.” The author’s final word is that Aquinas’s sermons were “remarkably
well-organized, quite clever in their use of words and imagery” and were
“crafted with a view towards teaching his listeners and exhorting them to live
biblically.”
The project of Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide
is a commendable one. There is no doubt that, just as learning to read Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae requires one to confront the nature and structure of the
Scholastic summa if one is to appreciate what Aquinas is doing as a theologian
and teacher, so, too, one needs to understand the demands that the sermo
modernus made on the preacher and how it shaped his message. This is a book
that most assuredly needed to be written; unfortunately, it is also one of those
books one truly wishes were better.
One criticism is that the author has a tendency throughout to try to defend
Aquinas with respect to his own preconceptions and preaching preferences,
which he assumes his readers share. While the author does ultimately find value
in the sophisticated exegetical techniques and rhetorical rigor of the sermo
modernus, and appreciates Aquinas as capable of a respectably biblical
theologizing from the pulpit, the book would have been much better if
Aquinas’s sermon texts had simply been presented and described, their
“modern” technique explicated, and accurate contemporary context provided,

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rather than the repeated refrain of how Aquinas confounds the expectations of
someone who is used to more modern, more “biblical” preaching.
If such a reaction could be dismissed as a matter of taste, other criticisms do
very much go to the quality of the scholarship. An issue that looms large is the
author’s handling of the Latin. The first challenge for anyone who would write
a guide for English-speaking beginners is to decide how to make the Latin texts
accessible. Simply translating the sermons (as others have discovered) is not the
solution, as much of the textual and exegetical process, if not to say prowess,
of the sermo modernus is based on an exposition of a Latin line from Scripture
in which wordplay within the Latin figures prominently, whether in the form
of additional texts, biblical or otherwise, that are adduced because they concord
verbally with a key Latin word; or in the form of puns that work only in the
Latin and layers of meaning that simply will not translate. Smith has opted for
a hybrid solution, relying for the most part on Mark-Robin Hoogland’s English
translations of the sermons, but preserving the Latin of the themata, principal
divisions, and concorded texts, which are then rendered macaronically in
English for the reader’s benefit. A first difficulty this decision creates is evident
immediately when the author in his Introduction confronts some of the basic
divergences between what we now have in the critical Latin edition produced
by the Leonine Commission and Hoogland’s translations.
More troubling are the author’s own numerous misrenderings and misreadings of the Latin texts, both from Aquinas and from others. A typical
example surfaces during the author’s extended commentary on what he
considers to be an odd division of a thema (Ps 83:6-7) on Aquinas’s part, which
seems to fly in the face of the way Smith is used to seeing the passage construed
(96-99). He cites the Douay English translation of Psalm 83:6-7, moots the
Septuagint Greek, but never once parses the Latin with which Aquinas actually
presents him, and which happens to be a well-known medieval variant of the
text. Smith says he expected Thomas to divide his thema in this fashion: “Beatus
vir cuius auxilium abs te; // ascensiones in corde suo disposuit // in valle
lacrimarum in locum quem posuit,” but instead Aquinas offers “Beatus vir cuius
auxilium abs te; // ascensiones in corde suo disposuit in valle lacrimarum // in
locum quem posuit.” The problem Smith thinks he sees is that Aquinas has
ignored the parallelism between “the vale of tears” and “the place in which the
blessed man is set,” and has read the passage creatively in order to make a divisio
that will allow him to build a sermon around the conceit of a motion with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. But that apparent problem would have
evaporated if Smith had read the Latin in front of him rather than allowing
himself to be swayed by the modern edition of the Vulgate (which has “in valle
lacrimarum, in *loco* quem posuit”). That is to say, if he had recognized the
difference between the ablative of location (in valle lacrimarum) and the
accusative of motion (in locum quem posuit) in the line as Aquinas is actually

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quoting it, the problem ceases to exist: the first clause refers to the location in
which the blessed man has made his decision to place his heart on higher things,
namely, while living in this vale of tears, while the second clause refers to the
destination towards which he now intends to ascend, into the place God has
prepared for him, heaven. Aquinas is not reading the passage creatively; he is
reading it correctly. What is more, exegetes from Augustine to Robert
Bellarmine discuss this very variant in Psalm 83—locum for loco—noting that
it suggests precisely the alternative interpretation Aquinas pursues. The author’s
discussion here epitomizes the three bad habits of the book: faulty handling of
the Latin, anachronistic preconceptions brought to the analysis of Aquinas’s
sermons, and a lack of familiarity with the exegetical and other contexts within
which Aquinas is operating. Examples of gaffes large and small when dealing
with the originalia could be multiplied, each one only serving to undermine
further the reader’s confidence in the author’s proficiency with languages.
Equally troubling are the factual errors that lead to misrepresentations of
Aquinas’s work as a preacher. The author’s discussion of the difference between
sermons and collations is a case in point. While Smith does outline one meaning
of the term “collatio” as an evening-time sermon delivered at the University of
Paris, he does not come to grips with the real nature of the exercise or its other
incarnations outside the university. It might have been worth noting, for
example, that it was Aquinas’s own Dominican order that was responsible for
introducing this practice at the University of Paris, and that Jordan of Saxony
made the case for vespertine preaching at Paris precisely so that his friars, who
were in class when the usual morning sermons were scheduled at the university,
would not miss hearing the Word of God. Parisian collations were therefore
conceived explicitly as a repetition of the morning’s preaching; there was a
statutory requirement that whoever preached the evening collation must treat
the same thema that had been preached on in the morning. Thus, for Smith to
argue that Aquinas’s re-use in a companion collation of the same thema he had
previously treated in a sermon is somehow evidence that Aquinas was uniquely
sensitive to his audience and uniquely attuned to the possibilities of the collatio
genre is problematical, when this reduplication was, in fact, something he was
required to do. And all this still begs the question of the other more catechetical
forms of preaching that were also known as “collationes” none of which Smith
ever acknowledges.
Had he made a few more soundings into other sermons from this period, the
author might also have tempered some of his comments about what he perceives
to be unusual characteristics of Aquinas’s sermons. For example, because in
some of the sermons the last division is given comparatively short shrift or, to
Smith’s eyes, appears truncated, he concludes that Aquinas is “clearly running
out of time” or clearly “went too long” and had to “wrap things up quickly” (or
even offers a “mercifully short wrap-up”) (e.g., 86-87; 320; 325). But many
surviving “modern” sermons present similarly succinct final sections: this was
common practice. Neither does Smith consider the problems of transmission or

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even entertain the possibility that these “truncations” might be due to the state
of the manuscripts rather than being unblemished indications of Aquinas’s
original intention in constructing his sermons. Indeed, on this last count it is
clear that the author is not thinking of the reality of medieval manuscript culture
at all, when he suggests at one point that Aquinas might have consulted “an
actual printed concordance” (173).
The author is also off the mark in his comments about the use of exempla,
those illustrative moral tales that became part of the stock-in-trade of thirteenthand fourteenth-century preachers. Using exempla was a method of dilatatio that
many saw as perhaps more useful for moving the hearts of lay listeners and
therefore less likely to be employed in formal university sermons, but Smith
overstates his case by insisting that Aquinas never used exempla (177). While
they are admittedly rare in the corpus of his sermons, they do appear, as in the
sermon for the feast-day of St. Martin of Tours, Beatus vir, where Aquinas does
not shy away from narrating hagiographic episodes, leaving one to conclude
that he was no stranger to the genre. This is, in fact, confirmed by the author’s
own mention of Aquinas’s concern that only true stories be repeated in the
pulpit. But even here, the reader is left with the erroneous impression that this
vigilance on Aquinas’s part somehow made him a more exacting and honest
preacher than most of his contemporaries (178 n. 52), when, on the contrary,
it was widely insisted upon that to be beneficial exempla needed to be true, or
at least made plausible by the invoking of eyewitnesses and the addition of as
much realistic detail as possible.
There are also some rather strange reactions on the author’s part to a few of
Aquinas’s interpretations. On at least two occasions Smith says he can only think
Aquinas must have been “jesting” or “going for the joke” with the exegesis he
offers (84, 86). In his collation for the Exaltation of the Cross, for example,
Thomas likens Christ hanging on the wood of the cross to a magister in his
wooden chair. Smith opines that this must have been “intended somewhat
humorously,” a joke about the suffering a professor endures at the hands of his
students being analogous to Christ’s suffering on the cross. Far from implying
he was being crucified anew by ungrateful students, Aquinas is assuming that
his listeners would have known that the Latin word for the professor’s chair is
the same as that used to describe the bishop’s chair, “cathedra,” and in both
instances it is the exalted wisdom seat from which teaching emanates and in
both instances in imitation of Christ’s own teaching, even unto the cross. Smith
also fails to register that the metaphor of the master’s chair is not even Aquinas’s
own, but one he has taken from Augustine’s commentary on the Gospel of John,
used there to suggest that Christ’s dying on the cross is itself the Master’s
greatest act of teaching. Not a mere witticism, it was, in fact, something of a
favorite image for Aquinas, who would employ it not only in this sermon, but
in his Catena aurea and in the Summa theologiae.

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In fairness, Smith does have a particular sort of beginner in mind for his
Beginner’s Guide, not necessarily a scholarly audience. He is painstaking in his
effort to run through all the rhetorical elements that constitute the sermo
modernus as described in medieval preaching manuals, and to illustrate each
with specific examples from Aquinas’s sermons. In this, he provides an
important service to those interested in Aquinas for whom the Scholastic
structure of his sermons may have been an impediment to understanding his
work as a preacher and exegete. Smith will, however, struggle to keep the
interest of those who have done work on medieval preaching in this period, as
he moves with slow deliberation through these basics; a similar difficulty will
be encountered by those who already have some familiarity with the
fundamentals of medieval exegesis. It should also be said that Smith’s book—a
book that aims to teach the reader how an exacting medium truly is a big part
of the message—deserved the attentions of a more careful copy editor, who
should have caught the many typos and errors, and eliminated the redundancies
that see the author reiterating entire passages when he returns to the same
sermon from a different angle.
In sum, Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide had the
potential to be a valuable handbook in its own right, illustrating how Thomas
Aquinas applied the techniques summarized in the medieval handbooks
intended for preachers in his day. It does not quite live up to that potential, but
it can pique the interest of readers who wish to understand more about Aquinas
and his sermons and, hopefully, will encourage them to explore the world of
medieval preaching and exegesis further.
M. MICHÈLE MULCHAHEY
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

A Gift of Presence: The Theology and Poetry of the Eucharist in Thomas Aquinas.
JAN-HEINER TÜCK. Translated by SCOTT G. HEFELFINGER. Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Pp. xxiv + 379.
$75.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3039-9.
Tück begins by recognizing that today “it is possible to receive a diploma or
Master’s degree in Catholic theology without ever having read one article of the
Summa theologiae” (1). The gulf between contemporary Catholic theology and
the theological work of prior generations is widening. He therefore proposes to
undertake a retrieval of Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology, even as he differentiates
his project from “current efforts to establish a new iteration of Thomism” (5).
Unfortunately, his representation of these “current efforts” is dated: he cites

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only the work of David Berger. At the same time, he insists that “the theological
heritage of Thomas Aquinas” is not “obsolete” (6). He finds in the historical
work of Jean-Pierre Torrell and others the insight that Aquinas’s theology can
be investigated to expose the connections between theology and spirituality and
also, constructively, to “think with and through a paradigmatically speculative
penetration of the deposit of faith” (7).
To my mind, such labor actually does produce “a new iteration of
Thomism,” and there is no reason to be apologetic about this. Part of Tück’s
“new iteration” is his careful attention to Aquinas’s Eucharistic hymns, which
he argues constitute “a poetic distillation of the Eucharistic theology of Thomas
Aquinas” (9). Thus, Tück belongs to the school of Thomism that, with Torrell,
emphasizes the unity of his theology and spirituality. The only question is
whether this “new iteration” will present itself solely as a historical retrieval
rather than as a constructive contribution to contemporary dogmatics. Tück
makes clear that he intends to do the latter.
In Part A, Tück examines Aquinas’s general sacramental theology. As a point
of contact with contemporary Catholic sacramental theology, he notes that in
many ways Aquinas offers “an anthropologically oriented sacramental
theology” (52). In this regard, he rightly proposes, “With Thomas, we ought to
hold fast to the sacraments’ Christological foundation, which tends to recede
somewhat when the sacraments are spoken of as ‘self-performances of the
Church’” (53; the interior quotation is from Karl Rahner). He defends
Aquinas’s deployment of instrumental causality on the grounds that—much
more than the medieval Franciscan approach—it allows for real appreciation of
the bodily-material dimension of the sacraments. Aquinas’s theocentrism, too,
ensures that the sacraments cannot be perceived as human magic.
Tück does think that the ecclesial character of the sacraments does not
receive sufficient attention from Aquinas. But he emphasizes, against Johannes
Betz, that Aquinas pays rich attention to “the remembrance of the saving deeds
of Jesus Christ” and to Christ’s actual presence (today) in the sacrament (57).
He adds that even if the medieval focus on the consecration was one-sided, it
fruitfully energized medieval Eucharistic spirituality. He finds Aquinas’s
account of transubstantiation, with its articulation of the “sacramental mode of
presence” (66), to be helpful in avoiding overly symbolic and overly realistic (or
physical-spatial) extremes, as well as in avoiding the local motion of Christ’s
body implied by impanation or consubstantiation. He considers Aquinas’s
treatment of the words of consecration to be helpful in showing that “Aquinas
bases his thought on the givens of the Bible” (77). Moreover, Aquinas is clear
that the author of the Eucharistic conversion is Christ himself, acting through
the priest who speaks in persona Christi: “Jesus Christ himself as the eternal
high priest institutes ever anew the reminder of his self-surrender in the stream
of time” (95; cf. 128-37).

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Tück examines Aquinas’s soteriology in some detail, pointing out that
Christ’s Passion flows from God’s love for us rather than from the need to
placate an angry God. With utter mercy, Christ freely handed himself over to
sinners out of love for them; and his love, in paying their penalty (death),
reestablishes human justice in the presence of God, thereby restoring friendship.
The merit of his supremely good act—its meriting of the gift of grace—
overflows to his members, who are able to cooperate with this grace and thereby
by their graced actions to merit (properly understood) the attainment of
salvation. Tück praises Aquinas’s “logic of a love that gives itself away—a logic
that is legible in Christ’s self-gift unto death” (120).
Tück devotes extensive consideration to Aquinas’s comments on each part
of the liturgy in question 83 of the Tertia pars. He notes that Aquinas
“designates the whole canon as consecratio,” even if Aquinas focuses on the
words of consecration (152). Answering an objection to Aquinas’s theology and
the Latin medieval liturgy in general, Tück suggests that the prayer Quam
oblationem may implicitly function as the epiclesis. He also suggests that for
Aquinas, the gathering of the community to commemorate or remember
Christ’s Passion has the function of uniting Head and members: the Eucharist,
as the “sacrament of unity” and the “sacrament of charity,” makes the Church
(156-58). It prepares the members of the Church for the eschatological
consummation and anticipates this consummation.
Part B treats the Eucharistic hymns. After showing that Aquinas is indeed
their author, Tück examines Pange lingua gloriosi (remarking upon the
relationship of the Old and New Covenants and the fact that the hymn has in
view both the glorified Christ and the mysteries of Christ’s life as the life of the
incarnate Word); Sacris solemnis and Verbum supernum (remarking upon the
new Paschal lamb and the new bread from heaven, as well as the
multidimensional self-gift of the incarnate Word); Lauda Sion (remarking upon
the earthy and heavenly Church pouring forth praise to Jesus Christ, the living
bread and new Passover); and Adoro te devote (remarking upon the hiddenness
of Christ in the Eucharist, which calls forth our faith and confession as well as
our yearning for full union). Each of these hymns is filled with details of
Eucharistic theology, including the nature and mystery of the Eucharistic
conversion, the full panoply of Old Testament figures of the Eucharist, the
effects of receiving communion, and the eschatological wedding banquet.
Tück devotes a chapter to the poetic artistry of the hymns. He also takes the
occasion to explain how they fill what might otherwise be seen as gaps in
Aquinas’s Eucharistic theology. For example, he points out, “The prandial and
communal character given with the origins of the Eucharist in the last supper
can sometimes retreat into the background in systematic Eucharistic doctrine,
but in the hymns it is present through and through” (248). Likewise, the theme
of Christ’s simultaneous presence and absence is accentuated, along with the
eschatological orientation of the Eucharist.

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In Part C, Tück begins with reflection upon the development of doctrine. He
denies that truths of faith can be abstracted from time-bound cultural-linguistic
forms, but he thinks that it is possible to distinguish retrospectively the
theological content of earlier expressions. He considers, “As long as theology is
in statu viae, it cannot take up a metahistorical standpoint, which judges quasisub specie aeternitatis the adequacy or inadequacy of categorial forms of
communication in view of the truth to be attested” (256). He does think,
however, that the following “categorial truth” can stand as “the fundamental
truth of Christian faith” and thus as the “criterion” of Christian truth: “the
proposition that God himself acted in the person and history of Jesus and
communicated himself to men,” or, in other words, “the historical selfrevelation of God in Jesus Christ, which theology articulates in the linguistic
terms of love” (ibid.). He expands upon this fundamental truth by stating that
“the event of God’s self-revelation is held present as love through God’s
pneumatically making himself present in word and sacrament” (ibid.).
My concern here is how, if there is no “metahistorical standpoint” accessible
to faith from which we can judge the adequacy of propositional truth-claims,
we can suppose that we have any real idea what “God” (surely a historically and
culturally contextualized term), let alone “God’s self-revelation” or “Christ,”
actually mean. In other words, why is it, for Tück, that historicism does not cut
all the way down? Given his denial of any “metahistorical standpoint” for
judging the adequacy of particular propositions to the realities of faith, how is
it that he can speak with such assurance about (for instance) “God’s unconditional determination for men, as made manifest in the life and death of Jesus
for us” (257)?
Tück goes on to survey the history of Eucharistic theology. After
investigating the biblical data, he notes that patristic discussions of the Eucharist
are grounded in “the real symbolic thought of Platonism” (ibid.), which he
thinks has advantages but also tends to put in the shade Jewish emphasis on free
will and history. He examines the shift that takes place in the “Germanic”
thought-world of the early Middle Ages, with its much-less symbolic ontology.
He contends that Aristotle helped Aquinas and the other high medievals to
navigate between Platonic and Germanic pitfalls while generally retaining their
strengths. Aquinas retains the liturgical, ecclesial, eschatological, prandial, and
historical elements of Eucharistic theology, even if his hold on these elements is
more tenuous than it should be. Late-medieval emphasis on philosophical
speculation and the sacrificial (propitiatory) dimension of the Mass are viewed
by Tück as negative; but in his view the Council of Trent largely (though not
entirely) restored the balance, with the downside being a separation of
sacrament and sacrifice.
Moving forward, Tück urges that Aquinas’s theology offers resources for
conceiving (and reconceiving) Eucharistic theology around Christ’s self-gift,

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enabling his disciples to “share in the blessing brought about by his death”
(281). He first provides a valuable biblical defense of interpreting Christ’s death
(and resurrection and ascension) in this way. Then he interprets “transubstantiation” as the risen Christ’s withdrawing “substantial proper reality” from
the bread and wine “so that they become pure signs of the personal presence of
Jesus Christ” (286-87, a formulation indebted to Walter Kasper and Joseph
Ratzinger). He accepts the criticism that bread and wine are not properly
“substances” even in the Aristotelian sense. Here he would have been helped by
Reinhard Hütter, who has demonstrated in his Aquinas on Transubstantiation
(The Catholic University of America Press, 2019) that this criticism does not
hold. Once one acknowledges that bread and wine really are substances, then
one need not follow Tück into the claim that transubstantiation simply means
that “bread and wine lose their creaturely substantiality by being taken into
Christ’s personal realm of power and reality” so that Christ’s own substantial
presence, his “pro-existent selfhood,” can pneumatically become present
instead (295-300).
In a concluding chapter to Part C, Tück observes that “gift, presence, and
conversion are motifs that can shape the contours of a Eucharistic theology even
today” (301); and he makes his own faith beautifully clear. He thereby joins
together the projects of historical theology, dogmatic theology, and personal
spirituality. Citing Karl Rahner, he affirms the value of Eucharistic contemplation (or adoration) not least as an antidote to the modern experience of time,
in which past and present are disjoined, failure and suffering become meaningless, the individual stands as the primary reality, and the eschatological future
is lost as an illusion.
Tück also emphasizes that in the Eucharist, Christ objectively gives us his
body, even while he does not thereby become “object”: “we are ourselves taken
up into the horizon of Christ’s presence” (314). Of course, Christ’s presence is
one that, insofar as it is also an “absence,” leads us to yearn for full union with
him in the eschatological consummation. In his solidarity with sinners and with
the victims of history, Christ ensures that our Eucharistic remembrance awakens
us both to our guilt and to the fact that we must have mercy upon those who
have wronged us. He reflects upon the failures of Christians, including the ways
in which the Eucharist itself has been caught up in intra-Christian enmity and
failures in neighbor-love. The Eucharist must not become a site of selfrighteousness, but rather must be handled by Christians as truly “the gift of
love” (328).
These spiritual insights provide a fitting conclusion to an enriching and
stimulating book. Thanks are owed both to the author and to the translator.
MATTHEW LEVERING
Mundelein Seminary
Mundelein, Illinois