The Thomist 84 (2020): 173-205

INCARNATE DE SPIRITU SANCTO:
AQUINAS ON THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S
CONCEPTION
DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.
Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, D.C.

“She was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.” (Matt 1:18)
“And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be
called holy, the Son of God.’” (Luke 1:35)

T

HE GOSPELS OF Matthew and Luke connect the conception of Christ to the Holy Spirit. Likewise, the NiceneConstantinopolitan Creed professes that “by the Holy
Spirit,” the only-begotten Son of God was “incarnate of the
Virgin Mary.” But what, precisely, does this mean?
Some scholars have recently found important clues in other
allusive passages of sacred Scripture to the conception of Christ.1
In Exodus, the cloud “abode upon” the tent of meeting, “and the
glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle (Exod 40:35).”2 Might
the words of the angel Gabriel allude to that mysterious cloud
associated with the Holy Spirit, the descent of which accompanies the presence of the Lord (the child who is God and man)

1

For a detailed case for seeing references to the Holy Spirit in Old Testament texts,
see Matthew Levering, “The Holy Spirit and the Old Testament,” The Thomist 79 (2015):
345-81.
2
All Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, unless otherwise
noted.
173

174

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

in his tabernacle, the womb of the blessed Virgin?3 One might
think of the opening lines of Genesis, with their references to
“the Spirit of God” who “was moving over the face of the waters”
(Gen 1:2), and to the breath of God that brought the clay of
Adam’s nature to life. Might Gabriel’s words refer to this lifegiving Spirit, active in the first creation of Adam, now also active
in the first moment of the new creation in Christ?4 Indeed, one
might rightly wonder whether Gabriel’s message—“The Holy
Spirit will come upon you,” and “the power of the Most High
will overshadow you”—makes reference to all three persons of
the Trinity, for St. Paul tell us that the Christ the Son is the Power
of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and the Father is the Most High.5
Saint Thomas Aquinas was highly interested in these sorts of
references to the persons of the Holy Trinity. He regards the
conception of Christ not only as a Christological mystery, but as
a Trinitarian one as well, where the Holy Spirit’s action is at
center stage. Unfortunately, his account of the Holy Spirit’s place
in Christology is seriously underappreciated, leading to a common critique that Aquinas does not say enough about the Holy
Spirit.6 Some contemporary exegetes and theologians approach
3
Kindalee Pfremmer De Long, “Angels and Visions in Luke-Acts,” in The Jewish
Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought, ed. Benjamin E.
Reynolds and Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 83. See also
Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives
in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, new updated ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993),
290.
4
See Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 124-25; 160-61; 314; John J. Kilgallen, “The
Conception of Jesus (Luke 1,35),” Biblica 78 (1997): 228.
5
For the Father as “the Most High,” see, e.g. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the
Romans, trans. and ed. Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers I (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2003), 268: “the Father Most High” (patroVς uJyivstou). For
the views of a contemporary theologian on the significance of Christ’s conception de
Spiritu Sancto for the revelation of the relation of Jesus to the Holy Spirit and also for the
manifestation of the Holy Trinity, see Gerald O’Collins, “The Virginal Conception and
Its Meanings,” New Blackfriars 89 (2008): 431-40 (especially 439).
6
See, e.g., Bruce D. Marshall, “Ex Occidente Lux? Aquinas and Eastern Orthodox
Theology,” Modern Theology 20 (2004): 25 and 40, articulating the criticisms of
twentieth-century Orthodox theologians. See also Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2003), 153-54.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

175

this mystery as if Aquinas’s traditional claims about Christ’s
supernaturally elevated human knowledge and power leave little
place for the Holy Spirit’s role in Christology.7
Rightly understood, however, Aquinas offers a scripturally
and dogmatically satisfying and coherent solution: a rich SpiritChristology.8 The Holy Spirit’s role is absolutely indispensable in
the mystery of Christ in general, and, as this article will show, of
his conception in particular. Yet Aquinas accounts for this
without compromising the central place of Christ’s identity as the
Word, or endangering the consubstantial unity of the triune God.
In examining Christ’s conception, we will see this SpiritChristology at work and will discern some of its features.
This article has four sections: a preface, followed by a threepart analysis of Christ’s conception de Spiritu Sancto. The preface
identifies the theological frame within which Aquinas sets this
subject. From there, the first main part discusses the preparation
of the Blessed Virgin Mary for this wondrous conception. The
second part then examines Aquinas’s account of the Spirit’s
presence and activity in Mary at Christ’s conception. Finally, the
third part outlines the Holy Spirit’s role (and those of the other
divine persons) in bringing about the conception of Christ,
7
See, e.g., François-Marie Humann, La relation de l’Esprit-Saint au Christ: Une
relecture d’Yves Congar (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2010); James D. G. Dunn, The Christ
and The Spirit, vol. 1, Christology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998); Thomas Weinandy,
The Father’s Spirit of Sonship: Reconceiving the Trinity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995),
53-85; Ralph Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit Christology in Trinitarian Perspective
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama:
Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 3, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans.
Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 183-91; Wolfhart Pannenberg,
Jesus–God and Man, 2d ed., trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1977), 169-79; Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, trans. V. Green
(New York: Paulist Press, 1976), 250-52; James D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (London:
SCM Press, 1975); G. W. H. Lampe, “The Holy Spirit and the Person of Christ,” in
Christ, Faith and History, ed. S. W. Sykes and J. P. Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972), 111-30.
8
For a more extensive examination of and argument for the importance and centrality
of the Holy Spirit in Aquinas’s Christology, see Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian
Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 129-231.

176

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

understood as the first moment of the visible mission of the
Word. Taken together, these sections will enable us to answer the
question: What does this mystery of Christ reveal about the Holy
Spirit and, indeed, about all of the persons of the Holy Trinity?
I. A PREFACE: THE THEOLOGICAL FRAME
Aquinas frames our subject as the Son’s ingressus or entry into
the world. He draws this from the structure of the Gospels
themselves. For example, in the opening lines of his Commentary
on Matthew, he writes:
Among the evangelists, Matthew is especially concerned with the humanity of
Christ. . . . Through his humanity, Christ entered into the world, advanced, and
went forth [from the world]. And so the whole Gospel [of Matthew] is divided
into three parts. First, the evangelist treats of the entry [ingressu] into the world
of Christ’s humanity; second, of his advance; and third of his going-forth
[egressu].9

In his systematic treatment in the Summa theologiae, Aquinas
makes this triple division (ingressus, progressus, egressus) the organizing principle of a wide swath of material (STh III, qq. 27-59)
under the general rubric of “what the incarnate Son of God did
or suffered in the human nature united to himself,”10 or, as he
puts it later, simply “the mysteries of the Incarnate Word.”11 He
explains that questions 27-39 will address “those things that
pertain to [Christ’s] entry [ingressus] into the world.”12 So in fact,
the subject of this article is not just Christ’s conception, but the
Holy Spirit’s role in Christ’s entry into the world.
The key point here is that this is a real “entering,” a true
ingressus. When Mary conceives Christ in her virginal womb de
Spiritu Sancto, the eternal Son enters the world in a new way. He
9

In Matt., c. 1, lect. 1 (Super evangelium s. Matthaei lectura, ed. R. Cai [Turin and
Rome: Marietti, 1951], no. 11). Unless otherwise noted, all references to works of
Aquinas are to the Leonine edition; where no Leonine text is available, I have indicated
the edition used. All translations are mine.
10
STh III, q. 27, prol.
11
STh III, q. 60, prol.
12
STh III, q. 27, prol.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

177

does not begin to be, simply speaking; rather, the Word who
“was in the beginning with God” and through whom “all things
were created,” already present everywhere by his divinity, begins
to be in the world as man, sent by the Father. Or, to put it another
way, this miraculous conception in Mary’s womb marks the
beginning point in time of the visible mission of the Son, by which
the eternal procession of the Son from the Father is made present
in the humanity of Jesus, sent for the salvation of the world.13
This is one of the central themes of Aquinas’s theology: not only
does all creation come forth from God and return to him (the
often-noted exitus/reditus theme), but in the incarnation, the
divine Word is sent by the Father and enters into the world in a
new way (ingressus), in order to manifest the truth about God
and to accomplish the work of salvation (progressus) and, in returning to the Father, to open the way to heaven for our
humanity (egressus).
Consequently, we should read Aquinas’s treatment of the
Holy Spirit’s role in Christ’s ingressus (as well as of Christ’s
progressus and egressus, themes that fall outside the scope of this
article) within the frame of Aquinas’s teaching on the divine
missions. A divine mission always involves the eternal procession
of a person with the addition of a created effect by which the
divine person is made present in the world in a new way.14 We
can identify the subject of this article, therefore, as the Holy
Spirit’s role in the origin of Christ’s humanity, understood as the
created effect according to which the eternal procession of the
divine Word from the Father is made visibly present in the world.
To understand what this means in the framework of Aquinas’s
thought, we should start with his teaching on the eternal
processions. There are only two “notional acts” in God, eternal
acts of the intellectual divine nature that remain entirely within
13
See, e.g., In Hebr. c. 10, lect. 1 (Super epistolam ad Hebraeos lectura, in Super
epistolas s. Pauli lectura, vol. 2, ed. R. Cai [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953], no. 485).
14
Gilles Emery, “Theologia and dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine Missions in
St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology,” The Thomist 74 (2010): 521; Legge, Trinitarian
Christology, 14-23.

178

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

God himself: to understand and to will.15 The eternal Son
proceeds from the Father by way of intellect. In God, the Father
“understands himself” by a single eternal act and so generates his
eternal Word—as a conception proceeding from his act of
understanding—that “expresses” all that is in the Father.16 The
Holy Spirit, by contrast, proceeds from the Father and the Son
according to will, a “procession of love.”17 This procession is
ordered to the procession of the Word, since “nothing can be
loved by the will unless it is conceived in the intellect.”18 The
Holy Spirit is thus Love in person, the mutual love and nexus of
the Father and the Son;19 “Love” is a proper name for him.20
From this, another proper name for the Spirit unfolds: he is
“Gift,” because love is the “first Gift” from which every other gift
proceeds.21
If we are seeking to grasp the place of the Holy Spirit in
Aquinas’s Christology, we must start here. The proper names of
the Holy Spirit of “Love” and “Gift” point us to how the Spirit’s
procession is an origin of the economy of grace—including the
divine plan to save us in Christ.22 Every good bestowed on a
creature is given through the Holy Spirit, because a true gift—
which has absolutely no strings attached—flows from the giver’s
love.23
This means that the dispensation of salvation itself, with the
incarnation at its center, has the Holy Spirit’s procession as Love
as its ratio or explanation, just as much as it does the eternal
generation of the Word.
The love of the Father towards the Son . . . is the ratio in which God bestows
every effect of love on the creature; and therefore the Holy Spirit, who is the
15

See Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans.
Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 74-77.
16
STh I, q. 34, a. 3.
17
STh I, q. 27, a. 3.
18
Ibid., ad 3.
19
STh I, q. 37, a. 1 ad 3.
20
STh I, q. 37, a. 1.
21
STh I, q. 38, a. 2.
22
See Legge, Trinitarian Christology, 16-17.
23
STh I, q. 38, a. 2.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

179

Love by which the Father loves the Son, is also the Love by which He loves the
creature by imparting its perfection to it.24

Indeed, Aquinas affords such a central place to the Spirit that he
even claims that “all gifts are given to us through [per] him.”25
Aquinas’s teaching on these points is easy to misunderstand.
He is not simply speaking by way of appropriation when he holds
that the Holy Spirit’s procession is an origin, cause, or exemplar
of the economy of grace.26 Nor is he suggesting that the Holy
Spirit is an efficient cause of the dispensation of salvation apart
or separate from the Father and the Son—which would be an
impossibility. Rather, he means that the Father and the Son give
us the gifts of grace “through [per]” the Holy Spirit. Above all,
this is because supernatural charity in the soul is the sine qua non
of sanctifying grace (and also of every virtue and gift that is given
with and in sanctifying grace); as we will explain, Aquinas teaches
that the Holy Spirit is the eternal exemplar of that created gift of
charity, and therefore, whenever charity is present, the Holy
Spirit is also personally present in the soul according to what is
proper to him. (This is the foundation for Aquinas’s doctrine of
the divine indwelling of the persons in the soul.) Thus, when we
know that the Holy Spirit proceeds as Love and Gift in person,
24
I Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1 (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, vol. 1, ed. Pierre
Mandonnet [Paris: Lethielleux, 1929]).
25
III Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, qcla 2, ad 3 (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, vol. 3, ed.
Maria Fabianus Moos [Paris: Lethielleux, 1933]). Of course, Aquinas does not mean that
these gifts are not also given to us by the Father and the Son. In the order of efficient
causality, all three divine persons are equally the efficient cause of every gift given to
creatures. Yet the Holy Spirit has a distinct mode of causality for every gift, insofar as the
Spirit’s procession by way of Love is the exemplar of every gift to creatures. See I Sent.,
d. 14, q. 1, a. 1.
26
In an action common to all three persons, we are often able to grasp a kinship or
likeness to the distinct personal property of one divine person, and this is by
appropriation. Scripture often speaks in this way. In his important study, DominiqueMarie Cabaret shows the key importance of the doctrine of Trinitarian appropriations in
Aquinas: Dominique-Marie Cabaret, L’étonnante manifestation des personnes divines: Les
appropriations trinitaires chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Les Plans-sur-Bex, Switzerland:
Éditions Parole et Silence, 2015). See also Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 322-31.

180

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

we are able to discern the Spirit’s distinctive mode of action in
the dispensation of salvation, together with those of the Father
and of the Son (who likewise each act in their proper mode).
Aquinas’s statements along these lines must be read against the
backdrop of his sophisticated theology of the triune God, which
includes careful distinctions between what we say of the three
divine persons and what we say of the one divine essence or
nature. Every divine action ad extra is inseparably a single act of
all three divine persons in virtue of the one divine nature.27 Yet
within this joint efficient causality of the three, Aquinas holds
that we can distinguish how “the divine persons have causality
with respect to the creation of things according to the ratio of
their processions,” and specifically, that their processions “are
the rationes of the productions of creatures.”28 This analysis also
applies to the dispensation of salvation, since creation returns to
God according to the pattern of the divine processions:
As the procession of the persons is the ratio of the production of creatures from
the first principle, so also the same procession is the ratio of returning unto the
end, because just as we were created through the Son and the Holy Spirit,
likewise we also are joined [through them] to our ultimate end.29

As Gilles Emery has shown, in God’s actions ad extra, the whole
Trinity is one efficient cause according to the unity of the divine
essence, and the divine processions also exercise an exemplar
causality within this one efficient causality according to the

27
As Aquinas puts it succinctly at ScG IV, c. 25: “The three persons are one principle
of creatures, and they produce creatures by one action” (“Tres personae sunt unum
principium creaturae, et una actione creaturam producunt”). And again, ScG IV, c. 21:
“Since the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have the same power, just as [they have]
the same essence, it is necessary that everything that God works in us as from an efficient
cause would be at once from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” (“Cum ergo eadem
virtus sit Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, sicut et eadem essentia; oportet quod omne id
quod Deus in nobis efficit, sit, sicut a causa efficiente, simul a Patre et Filio et Spiritu
Sancto”).
28
STh I, q. 45, a. 6.
29
I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 2. Aquinas makes the same point again at I Sent., d. 15, q. 4,
a. 1.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

181

proper rationes of their processions.30 Aquinas offers an analogy:
the Father acts through the Word and the Holy Spirit in a way
like that in which a carpenter makes a table “through” the plan
of the table he conceives in his mind, and “through” the love of
his will for some good.31 In every exercise of efficient causality,
the eternal processions are already exercising their influence as
the origin, the ratio, and exemplar of what comes forth from
God.32
In every gift of grace, therefore, Aquinas identifies the special
exemplary influence of the Holy Spirit: “every gift, insofar as it
is a gift, is attributed to the Holy Spirit, because as Love he is the
First Gift.”33 More specifically, charity is “properly
30

Gilles Emery, “The Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action in Saint Thomas Aquinas,”
The Thomist 69 (2005): 31-77. Aquinas repeats this teaching often, and underlines that
it is the proper mode of the causality of the Word and of the Holy Spirit. For example, it
is not an appropriation to say that the Father creates the world through his Word. This is
said properly. In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 2 (Super evangelium s. Ioannis lectura, ed. R. Cai [Turin
and Rome: Marietti, 1952], no. 76): “If the word per designates causality on the part of
what is done, then when we say ‘The Father does all things through [per] the Son,’ it is
not appropriated to the Word, but is proper to him, because he has from another (namely,
the Father from whom he has being) that he is the cause of creatures.” See also STh I,
q. 39, a. 8; I Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 3; and the detailed discussion in Legge, Trinitarian
Christology, 67-74.
31
The analogy is from Aquinas himself; he uses it frequently. See STh I, q. 45, a. 6.
On how the Father acts “through” the Son, see In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 2 (Marietti ed., nos.
76-77); on how the Father also equally acts “through” the Holy Spirit, see I Sent., d. 14,
q. 1, a. 1.
32
Camille de Belloy offers an elegant account of the delicate interplay of these types
of causality in Aquinas, and of his account of the gift of the created form in sanctifying
grace, showing that, “in the divine missions, the common efficient causality of all three
persons is always realized as determined by exemplarity of the personal properties of the
Word and of the Holy Spirit, who impress wisdom in our intellect and charity in our will”
(Camille de Belloy, La visite de Dieu: Essai sur les missions des personnes divines selon
saint Thomas d’Aquin [Geneva: Ad Solem Editions, 2006] 115-16). An intelligent agent
only exercises efficient causality according to some exemplar idea that determines that
activity. “This is a metaphysical law of action” (Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 197).
33
STh I, q. 43, a. 5 ad 1. See also ScG IV, c. 21, where Aquinas is particularly clear in
delineating the distinction between the common efficient causality of all three persons in
grace and the proper mode of the Holy Spirit’s exemplar causality.

182

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

representative of the Holy Spirit.”34 Although it “is from the
whole Trinity efficiently . . . according to exemplarity, it flows
from Love, who is the Holy Spirit.”35 “According to exemplarity
. . . in the infusion of charity there is a termination to a likeness
of the personal procession of the Holy Spirit.”36
Thus, when Aquinas says that the Holy Spirit’s procession is
at the origin of the economy of grace, he does not mean that the
Spirit is acting as an efficient cause apart from the Father and the
Son. It is impossible for any divine person to be separated from
or to act apart from the others. Rather, he is designating the way
that the Holy Spirit is an efficient cause (inseparably with the
Father and Son in virtue of the one divine nature) and an
exemplar cause in a mode proper to him (in virtue of his distinct
procession by way of Love). In fact, Aquinas is expressing a
fundamental truth of God’s tri-unity: every divine action ad extra
is an action of the three divine persons acting together, where
each person has a mode of action proper to him.37
A further word is in order about how Aquinas understands the
special mode of presence of the divine persons in the soul
possessing sanctifying grace. This is the doctrine of the invisible
divine missions by which the Son and Holy Spirit dwell in the
hearts of the just.
In every divine mission, Aquinas teaches, there are two
relations: a relation to the whole Trinity as a principle, and a
relation that terminates in only one of the divine persons. This is
why a divine mission is not said by appropriation. The Son is not
incarnate by an appropriation, even though all three divine
persons are the efficient cause of the Son’s assumption of a
human nature. Aquinas explains that the same logic applies to the
other missions of the divine persons, and he specifically has in
mind the invisible missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit to
human souls in grace.

34

ScG IV, c. 21: “est proprium repraesentativum Spiritus Sancti.”
I Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 1.
36
I Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 2.
37
See Emery, “Personal Mode,” 48-50.
35

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

183

The terms “sent” [missus], “incarnate,” and others like them, imply two
relations, namely, a relation to a terminus and a relation to a principle. One of
these, namely, the relation to a principle, belongs to the whole Trinity—and
thus we say that the whole Trinity sends or makes incarnate. But the other
relation belongs to a determinate divine person, [namely, the distinct divine
person who is sent or who becomes incarnate,] which is why these terms [i.e.,
“sent,” “incarnate”] are not said of the whole Trinity.38

In their invisible missions to human beings, the Son and Holy
Spirit are sent and are present in the graced soul in person, in a
new way, according to what is proper to each. This is not said by
appropriation. When a human person receives the gift of sanctifying grace, the essence of his soul is elevated to participate in the
divine nature, and this always includes the infusion of the operative habitus of faith (in the intellect) and charity (in the will).
These are new created effects in the person’s soul. To be sure,
they are efficiently caused by all three divine persons acting together, since the three are one God with one divine power by
which they act. At the same time, Aquinas recognizes the distinct
personal presence of the persons in the order of exemplar
causality.
To speak specifically of the Holy Spirit: In the created gift of
charity, the Spirit impresses in the soul a likeness of his personal
property as Love (a special mode of exemplar causality), thus
assimilating this soul to himself. In this way, the Holy Spirit is
invisibly sent to this Christian, in whom he is personally present
in a new way according to the gift of charity.39 The whole Trinity
efficiently causes the created effect (charity) by which the Holy

38

I Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3.
The same can be said of the Word’s personal presence in the soul. In the created gift
of faith, the divine Word impresses in the soul a likeness of his personal property as Word
(a special mode of exemplar causality), thus assimilating this soul to the pattern of his
procession by way of intellect.
39

184

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

Spirit is personally present in the world in a new way.40 As
Aquinas explains:
It is possible that the relation of a creature [to God] can be to . . . something
personal . . . according to exemplarity, as . . . there is a termination in a likeness
to the personal procession of the Holy Spirit in the infusion of charity.41

A few pages later in the same work, Aquinas puts it even more
simply, again speaking of charity: “In the creature there is a real
relation which is refered to the whole Trinity as to its principle,
and to the Holy Spirit as to its terminus, through the mode of
exemplarity.”42
The incarnation is the visible mission of the Son, and it, too,
follows these same general rules. The whole Trinity efficiently
causes the created effect—Christ’s human nature—to be united
to the divine Son in person, so that the Son becomes personally
present in the world in a new and absolutely distinctive way, as
the God-man.43 Yet because the divine persons are one God, it is
inconceivable for Aquinas that there might be a visible mission of
the Word in the incarnation apart from the Holy Spirit, just as it
is inconceivable that there be a Father and Son without the Spirit
who is the mutual Love who proceeds from them.
There is thus a Trinitarian reason why we should expect that
the Holy Spirit will always necessarily be personally present and
active at every moment of Christ’s life. Aquinas accounts for this
by holding that the Holy Spirit is at the origin of the dispensation
of grace, is active in Christ’s conception, and is sent invisibly to
the human soul of Christ at the first moment of its existence,
according to the supreme charity that he receives (a key
dimension of Christ’s fullness of habitual grace). Moreover,
Christ’s coming as man culminates in his sending of the Holy
Spirit to the apostles and the Church through which the gift of
40

This paragraph is a short summary. Elsewhere, I have carefully examined and
discussed a large number of Aquinas’s texts on the matter. See Legge, Trinitarian
Christology, 17-48.
41
I Sent., d. 30, q. 1, a. 2.
42
I Sent., d. 30, q. 1, exp. textus.
43
STh III, q. 3, a. 4.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

185

salvation is given, so that we can even see the incarnation itself as
aiming at the gift of the Spirit to the world.
Having clarified these larger matters, we can now return to
the conception of Christ. Holy Scripture tells us that the Word
takes flesh when the Holy Spirit comes upon the Blessed Virgin
Mary, so that her child is conceived “of the Holy Spirit,” de
Spiritu Sancto. What does Aquinas make of this?
II. THE PREPARATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY BY THE
HOLY SPIRIT
Long before the Archangel Gabriel’s announcement, the Holy
Spirit had been preparing Mary to conceive the Incarnate Word.
In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas’s three questions (STh III,
qq. 27-29) on Mary’s preparation are not a detour from
Christology into Mariology, but a core aspect of his investigation
of the Son’s ingressus: the Word is made present in the world as
man through the maternity of Mary, already sanctified and
perfected by the Holy Spirit for this supreme gift.44
Aquinas speaks of this in many texts. His sermon Germinet
terra, on the nativity of the Blessed Virgin, is especially
44
Aquinas is sometimes criticized for having erroneously held that Mary was not
immaculately conceived. On this point, he agreed with other great medieval theologians,
such as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Alexander of Hales, and St. Bonaventure; see Jean-Pierre
Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères: La vie et l’oeuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,
vol. 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 43. In fact, based on the erroneous embryology of his day,
Aquinas thought that it required a special miracle—which he thought happened in the
case of Christ but not that of Mary—for a child to be able to receive grace in the first
instant of conception. See STh III, q. 27, a. 2.
One could argue that the theological principles that ground Aquinas’s discussion of
how the Blessed Virgin was prepared by the Holy Spirit’s grace sound in harmony with
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as it was declared nearly six centuries after his
death, even if Aquinas himself did not take them far enough. For arguments that Aquinas
was not opposed to the view that Mary was immaculately conceived, see J. F. Rossi, Quid
senserit s. Thomas Aquinas de immaculata virginis conceptione (Piacenza: Collegio
Alberoni, 1955); P. Lumbreras, “St. Thomas and the Immaculate Conception,” Homiletic
and Pastoral Review 24 (1923): 253-63; Norbert del Prado, Divus Thomas et bulla
dogmatica “Ineffabilis Deus” (Fribourg: Ex typis Consociationis Sancti Pauli, 1919).

186

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

evocative.45 The sermon begins with Genesis 1:11: “Let the earth
put forth the green plant that brings forth seed.”46 Aquinas
compares Mary to the lowly plant made green by the “the grace
of the Holy Spirit,” who then brings forth seed giving new life to
the earth. The Holy Spirit prepared her, even from her mother’s
womb, by inspiring her with “the most copious grace”47 (or as
Aquinas says in the Summa theologiae, “greater privileges of
grace than all others”).48 Aquinas teaches not only that Mary was
preserved from all actual sin, but that she received a unique grace,
above that given to any other saint, by which she was cleansed
even from original sin while still in her mother’s womb, so that
she never experienced any inordinate movement of passion or
temptation to sin. This made her most beautiful and without any
stain: “In the Blessed Virgin, there was nothing inordinate,
neither in act nor in desire, nor did she have the first movement
towards sin, and so the Canticle of Canticles says: ‘You are
entirely beautiful, my beloved, and there is no stain in you (Can
4:7).’”49
More important for our purposes, he teaches that Mary was
filled with the charity of the Holy Spirit. Following a long
tradition, Aquinas thinks that Mary made a vow of virginity.50 By
45

According to the Leonine edition, this university sermon was preached in Paris on
Sept. 13, 1271. Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia, iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita
(“Leonine edition”), v. 44/1, Sermones (Rome: Commissio Leonina, 2014), *201, 276.
46
This is my translation of the Latin verse set forth at the head of Aquinas’s sermon:
“Germinet terra herbam uirentem et proferentem semen, lignumque pomiferum faciens
fructum.”
47
Germinet terra.
48
STh III, q. 27, a 1.
49
Germinet terra.
50
STh III, q. 28, a. 4. He also says that Mary was inspired by an “intimate movement”
of the Holy Spirit (familiari instinctu Spiritus sancti) to agree to be espoused to St. Joseph,
“confident that by divine aid [divino auxilio] she would never come to have carnal
intercourse” (STh III, q. 29, a. 1 ad 1). For a detailed defense of the traditional biblical
teaching that Mary conceived Christ while remaining a virgin, see Charles W. Neumann,
“The Virginal Conception and the Divine Motherhood: A Modern Reappraisal,” Marian
Studies 33 (1982): 90-120. See also Jean Galot, “La conception virginale du Christ,”
Gregorianum 49 (1968): 637-66; Raymond E. Brown, “The Problem of the Virginal
Conception of Jesus,” Theological Studies 33 (1972): 3-34; and Raymond E. Brown, The
Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist Press, 1973),

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

187

this freely willed vow, Mary was prepared to conceive Christ in
her womb. This was the result of God’s grace acting within her
human freedom, Aquinas says, inflaming her heart with heavenly
love and moving her from her youth to consecrate herself entirely
to God.51 Mary’s supernatural charity, which Aquinas understands to be the effect in her soul of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling
personal presence, was precisely what made her virginity “green”
(translated literally, Aquinas says that this charity caused Mary to
“become green” or “to bloom” through her virginity” [viret per
virginitatem]), and thus to become immensely fruitful. Mary bore
Christ like earth “watered by the Holy Spirit.”52
The Blessed Virgin excelled in virginity, nay, she was the queen of virgins, and
because she had a surpassing greenness of virginity, she bore wondrous fruit.
Other virgins bear spiritual fruits . . . “love, joy, and peace (Gal. 5:22).” But
since the Blessed Virgin had an abundance of greenness, she even bore the fruit
of the womb. . . . Saint Hugh says: “Because the love of the Holy Spirit so
marvelously burned in her heart, she brought forth wonders in her flesh.”53

In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas goes even further, arguing that
this Spirit-inspired virginity of Mary has a Trinitarian significance
for the incarnation. First, it shows “the dignity of the Father who
sent the Son, for since Christ was the true and natural Son of
God, it would not be fitting if he had another father than God.”54
Second, the eternal Word is perfectly “conceived” in the Father’s
act of understanding without any corruption, and so, in time, he
should be conceived in Mary’s flesh according to a perfect purity
of heart.55 And third, the end of the incarnation was that men
would be reborn as sons of God in the Holy Spirit, and so Mary’s
virginity is made fruitful by the Holy Spirit “in order to signify
29-67. On Mary’s perpetual virginity, see José M. Pedrozo, “The Brothers of Jesus and
his Mother’s Virginity,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 83-104.
51
Germinet terra.
52
Ibid.: “humectauit . . . Spiritus sanctus”
53
Ibid.
54
STh III, q. 28, a. 1.
55
Ibid.

188

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

that the members [of Christ’s body] would be born according to
the Spirit from a virgin Church.”56 These reasons are highly
evocative. They show that Aquinas grasps, in the details of Mary’s
preparation and sanctification by the Spirit, the deep connection
between the personal properties of the divine persons and how
those persons are made present and manifested in the world
through the mysteries of Christ’s life. In God’s plan, how Mary
becomes the Mother of God points out who the true Father of
Christ is, testifies to the perfection of the Word made flesh, and
signals the symmetry between Christ’s conception by the Holy
Spirit and our rebirth in the Spirit unto conformity to him.
Rightly, then, would the angel Gabriel later testify that “the
Lord is with thee.” “This phrase . . . is the most noble phrase that
could be said to someone,” Aquinas explains. Even before she
conceived Christ, “the Blessed Virgin was so much more intimate
with God than the angel, because with her are the Lord the
Father, the Lord the Son, and the Lord the Holy Spirit, namely
the whole Trinity.”57
III. THE SPIRIT’S PRESENCE AND ACTIVITY IN MARY
AT CHRIST’S CONCEPTION
This brings us to the second major point: the Holy Spirit’s
special presence and activity in Mary’s soul at Christ’s conception. Here, Aquinas probes even further into the theological
intelligibility of how and why the Holy Spirit is at work in Mary
to accomplish the incarnation. The result is a series of overlapping themes rich with scriptural and Trinitarian echoes.
The first theme is Mary as “full of grace,” or filled with the
Holy Spirit—for Aquinas, these scriptural titles are almost
equivalent: “It is customary in sacred Scripture to attribute every
grace to the Holy Spirit, because what is gratuitously given seems
to be bestowed from the love of the giver.”58 Aquinas thinks,

56

Ibid.
In Salut. Angelic., a. 1 (Ioannes Felix Rossi, “S. Thomae Aquinatis Expositio
Salutationis Angelicae,” Divus Thomas [Piacenza] 34 [1931]: 445-79).
58
ScG IV, c. 46.
57

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

189

therefore, that the angel Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail, full of grace”
(Luke 1:28), expresses an important truth about the Holy Spirit’s
action in Mary. Unlike other saints who are described in Scripture
as filled with the Holy Spirit (there are many in the New
Testament: John the Baptist, his parents—Zechariah and
Elizabeth—Simeon, the apostles at Pentecost, Stephen, Paul,
Barnabas, and other early Christian believers), the fact that an
angel would greet a human being with this degree of honor and
deference shows that Mary’s fullness of grace is unique, even
above all angels.59 She had not only a fullness of grace sufficient
for herself as an individual person, like other saints. She received
a more extraordinary fullness, which Aquinas places in a special
category: “the fullness of overflow” (plenitudo redundantiae),
both into her flesh and even down to us. By this special fullness
of grace,
the Blessed Virgin surpassed every other saint, on account of her eminence and
the abundance of her merits. . . For the Blessed Virgin overflowed grace on us,
not as if she were the source of grace, but grace overflowed from her soul into
her flesh; for through the grace of the Holy Spirit, not only was the mind of the
Virgin perfectly united to God by love, but also her womb was supernaturally
impregnated by the Holy Spirit.60

Aquinas is echoing here a famous theme of St. Augustine: Mary
first conceived the Word by faith in her mind, and then in her
womb.61 Always attentive to Scripture—in this case, Luke 1:35
and Matthew 1:18—Aquinas transposes this into a truth about
Mary’s conception de Spiritu Sancto: Mary’s soul and mind were
59

In Salut. Angel., a. 1.
In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 10 (Marietti ed., no. 201). See also Comp. Theol. II, c. 221.
61
According to St. Augustine, Mary was “filled with faith . . . conceiving Christ in her
mind before conceiving him in her womb” (“illa fide plena . . . et christum prius mente
quam uentre concipiens”) (Augustine, Sermon 215 [Latin edition in Patrick Verbraken,
“Les sermons CCXV et LVI de saint Augustin: De symbolo et De oratione dominica,”
Revue Bénédictine 68 (1958): 5-40]). And again: “The angel announces, the virgin hears,
believes, and conceives: faith in her mind, Christ in her womb” (“Angelus nuntiat, uirgo
audit, credit, et concipit. Fides in mente, christus in uentre”) (Sermon 196 [PL 38:1019]).
60

190

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

so filled with the Holy Spirit, and hence she was so united to God
by love, that this grace overflowed from her soul into her flesh.
Elsewhere, Aquinas summarizes this with the concise formula of
St. Ambrose: “The Word was made flesh . . . by a mystical
spiration [mystico spiramine].”62 Spiration, of course, refers to
the unique mode of procession of the Holy Spirit, who is
“breathed forth” or “spirated” by the Father and the Son. “The
Holy Spirit is . . . life-bestowing breath [spiramen vivificum],”63
Aquinas explains. The human conception of the divine Word is
thus the supreme grace given to the world (that God would
become man is “the greatest grace,”64 a grace that is strictly
infinite,65 says Aquinas), and it comes to us through the “mystical
spiration”—in fact, the invisible mission—of the Holy Spirit to
the Virgin Mary in a singular gift of grace.66
Aquinas also follows St. Augustine in the Summa theologiae,
where he explains that it was fitting for Mary to receive the
angel’s message before she conceived Christ in her womb, “so
that first her mind would be instructed about him before she
conceived in the flesh. Thus Augustine says . . . ‘Mary is more
blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh
of Christ.’”67 Of course, earlier in the Summa, we learn that living
supernatural faith is the created effect according to which an
invisible mission of the Son is made to the mind of wayfarers.68
62
In Hebr. c. 11, lect. 3 (Marietti ed., no. 591). The quotation is from the Advent
hymn Veni redemptor gentium (its original incipit is Intende qui regis), which scholars
attribute “with certainty” to St. Ambrose. See Brian Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed in
the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 120-21, 225.
63
De Pot., q. 10, a. 1 (Quaestiones Disputatae de Potentia, in Quaestiones Disputatae,
vol. 2, ed. P. Bazzi, M. Calcaterra, T. S. Centi, E. Odetto, and P.M. Pession [Turin and
Rome: Marietti 1949]).
64
In Matt., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 112).
65
STh III, q. 7, a. 11.
66
Aquinas notes elsewhere that Mary’s fullness of grace is distinct from Christ’s,
insofar as Christ becomes the font and author of grace for the whole world, whereas Mary
receives the fullness of grace in order that she might become the Mother of God and
conceive the Word of God in her womb. See, e.g., In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 10 (Marietti ed.,
nos. 201-2); STh III, q. 7, a. 10, ad 1.
67
STh III, q. 30, a. 1.
68
STh I, q. 43, a. 5 ad 2 and ad 3; q. 43, a. 6, ad 2. In these texts, Aquinas does not
use the word “faith” but speaks instead of a supernatural intellectual illumination that

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

191

This means that, as the Virgin Mary made an act of faith in
believing the message of the angel, the eternal Son was personally
present in her soul even before she conceived him in her womb.
We should not be surprised that Aquinas speaks about both
the singular grace of charity in Mary’s soul (“the mind . . .
perfectly united to God by love,” the effect of the personal
presence of the Holy Spirit) and an extraordinary gift given to
her intellect that corresponds to the Son’s procession as the
divine Word. Aquinas writes: “Since the mind is nearer to God
than the body, it would not be fitting that the wisdom of God
would dwell in [Mary’s] womb unless her mind were resplendent
with the knowledge of the highest wisdom.”69 The angel’s
message thus prompts her to make an assent of faith to this most
high mystery: not only that the eternal Son of God would become
man, but that she would become his mother.
IV. THE HOLY SPIRIT’S DIVINE CAUSALITY OF THE
INCARNATE WORD’S CONCEPTION
This brings us to the third major heading for understanding
how Christ is conceived de Spiritu Sancto, closely related to the
perfects man’s intellectual power, for which he uses the more global term “wisdom.” This
does not refer to the gift of the Holy Spirit called wisdom; rather, it designates both faith
(in wayfarers) and beatific vision (in the blessed) under a single heading. This is significant
because Aquinas does not want to limit the Word’s mission to wayfarers: he wants to
include the blessed who know God by the lumen gloriae that grants them not faith but
vision. For further explanation of this point, see Legge, Trinitarian Christology, 30-36;
Gilles Emery, “L’inhabitation de Dieu Trinité dans les justes,” Nova et vetera 88 (2013):
166-71; Gilles Emery, “Missions invisibles et missions visibles: Le Christ et son Esprit,”
Revue Thomiste 106 (2006): 54; Emery, “Theologia and Dispensatio,” 526-27; Emery,
Trinitarian Theology, 375-79; Gilles Emery, La Trinité créatrice: Trinité et création dans
les commentaires aux Sentences de Thomas d’Aquin et de ses précurseurs Albert le Grand
et Bonaventure (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1995), 384-413. For a text where
Aquinas uses the word “faith” rather than “wisdom” in discussing divine indwelling, see
In I Cor., c. 3, lect. 3 (Super primam epistolam ad Corinthios lectura in Super epistolas s.
Pauli lectura, vol. 1, ed. R. Cai [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953], no. 173); cf. I Sent.,
d. 37, q. 1, a. 2.
69
III Sent., d. 3, q. 3, a. 1 qcla 1.

192

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

second: the Holy Spirit’s role in the divine causality of the
incarnate Word’s conception. Here, Aquinas affirms the
inseparable joint efficient causality of the three persons who are
one God, while also discerning, within that causality, facets of
this supernatural mystery that illuminate the distinct personal
properties of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.70
There are several important and lengthy texts where Aquinas
treats this issue. The three most notable are in his commentary
on Matthew’s Gospel, in book IV of the Summa contra gentiles,
and in the Tertia pars of the Summa theologiae. In each case, his
arguments are quite similar, with one notable variation that
appears only in the Summa theologiae, making that text worthy
of our special attention. We turn to it now.
A) Three Reasons of Fittingness
In question 32, article 1 of the Tertia pars, Aquinas asks
whether we should attribute to the Holy Spirit the effecting of
the conception of Christ. Scripture itself does so, as does the
creed, so the answer is obviously yes. But Aquinas’s justification
of this affirmation of Scripture and Tradition is a gem of theological reasoning. He offers three complimentary explanations
based on fittingness. Strictly speaking, we are here in the realm
of Trinitarian appropriations, where something that is common
to all three divine persons is attributed to one person in particular, in light of a special affinity to what is proper to that person.71
Aquinas’s first reason views Christ’s conception on the side of
God who acts out of love, highlighting the Holy Spirit’s personal
property as Love in person:
The whole Trinity accomplishes the conception of Christ’s body; nonetheless,
this is attributed to the Holy Spirit for three reasons. First, because, considered
on the part of God, this befits the cause of the incarnation. For the Holy Spirit
is the love of the Father and Son. . . . But this arises out of the supreme love of

70
Joining a human nature to the Son is an undivided work of the Trinity, which,
Aquinas explains, means that the Father does it, the Son does it, and also the Holy Spirit
does it. See In Matt., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 133).
71
See Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:109-15.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

193

God, that the Son of God would assume flesh to himself in the Virgin’s womb,
and thus it says in John 3[:16]: “God so loved the world that he gave his onlybegotten Son.”72

Aquinas’s starting point is the truth that, because all three divine
persons are one God and one divine essence, with numerically
one divine power, the miraculous conception of Christ’s body
must be efficiently caused by all three persons acting together. All
the same, it is especially fitting to ascribe this to the Holy Spirit
because, on the side of God, God’s love for us is the cause of the
sending of the Son in the lowliness of our nature. Scripture is
therefore teaching us something about the Holy Spirit who
proceeds as Love when it tells us that Mary conceived de Spiritu
Sancto. Meditating on the surpassing gift of Christ makes us
marvel at the supreme and eternal love that stands behind it. As
Aquinas says elsewhere, “the cause leading to the incarnation of
the Word could be nothing else but the immense love of God for
man, whose nature he willed to join to himself in a unity of
person.”73 The God-man is conceived from Love in person.
Aquinas then offers a second reason why Scripture tells us that
the Holy Spirit effects the incarnation, highlighting the elevation
of a created nature by grace:
We are thus given to understand that human nature was assumed by the Son of
God into a unity of person not from any merits, but by grace alone, which,
according to 1 Cor. 12[:4], is attributed to the Holy Spirit: “there are varieties
of graces, but the same Spirit.”74

This is a remarkable sentence. Scripture highlights Christ’s conception as the Spirit’s work because there was nothing on the side
of creatures that could merit it or call it forth. It was purely by
grace that our nature was supremely elevated to a personal union

72

STh III, q. 32, a. 1. See also In Matt., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 112); ScG IV,

c. 46.
73
74

ScG IV, c. 46.
STh III, q. 32, a. 1.

194

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

with the Son. In saying this, Aquinas uses Scripture to comment
on Scripture: because St. Paul identifies the Holy Spirit as the
cause of grace, so we should understand Christ’s conception de
Spiritu sancto to signify that the assumption of a human nature is
“by grace alone.”
Aquinas then gives a third reason why Christ’s conception is
appropriated to the Holy Spirit, based on the terminus or endpoint of the incarnation. This reason deserves special notice for
its Trinitarian resonance. He uses the words of Gabriel’s
announcement to explain why Christ is conceived de Spiritu
Sancto: Mary’s child will be called “Holy” and “Son of God.”
For the incarnation terminates at this, that this man who was being conceived
would be Holy and the Son of God. But both of these are attributed to the Holy
Spirit. For through [the Holy Spirit], men are made sons of God, as Galatians
4[:6] says: “because you are sons of God, God sent the Spirit of his Son into
our hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father.’” He also is the Spirit of sanctification, as
Romans 1[:4] says. Therefore, as other men are spiritually sanctified by the
Holy Spirit that they would be adopted sons of God, so Christ is conceived in
holiness in order that he would be the natural Son of God.75

This argument is striking on several levels. First, Aquinas begins
with what Scripture tells us is the Holy Spirit’s characteristic
action in the faithful: the Spirit makes us adopted sons of God
and sanctifies us. In fact, these are two facets of the same reality.
The first facet, that the Spirit makes us adopted sons and
daughters, is founded on the order of the Trinitarian processions:
the Holy Spirit “makes those to whom he is sent, like him of
whom he is the Spirit,”76 that is, the Spirit conforms us to the
eternal Son, and thus makes us children of the Father from whom
the Son proceeds. This effect of the Holy Spirit’s mission is
proper to him.77 Likewise, the second facet, that the Spirit
75

Ibid.
In Ioan., c. 15, lect. 5 (Marietti ed., no. 2062). See also In Ioan., c. 16, lect. 3
(Marietti ed., no. 2102).
77
At In Gal., c. 4, lect. 3 (Super epistolam ad Galatas lectura in Cai, ed., Super epistolas
s. Pauli lectura, vol. 1, no. 212-17), Aquinas comments on Gal 4:6 (“because you are sons
of God, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father’”), explaining
that it is precisely the mission of the Holy Spirit that makes us adopted sons who cry out
76

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

195

sanctifies us, invokes a related element of Aquinas’s teaching. “It
belongs to the Holy Spirit, insofar as he proceeds as Love, to be
the gift of sanctification,” Aquinas explains in the Prima pars.78
We become holy insofar as we receive in our souls the supernatural charity that is the created effect of the Holy Spirit’s personal presence. In other words, Aquinas is again invoking what is
proper to the Holy Spirit: his presence makes us holy by love.79
These two facets are revealed by Scripture as proper effects of
the Spirit’s presence in us. This is why, Aquinas concludes,
Scripture also says that Christ is conceived by the Holy Spirit. In
Christ’s case, the Holy Spirit does not make him an adopted son
but accomplishes a greater miracle—indeed, the greatest: that the
child being conceived would be by nature the Son of God.
Similarly, at the moment of his conception, his humanity is made
supremely holy insofar as he receives, as man, the Holy Spirit in
“Abba, Father.” It is a proper effect of the Spirit’s presence to make us like the Son, from
whom the Spirit proceeds, and our adoptive sonship consists in receiving this filial
likeness. More generally, the principle at work here is that, when a divine person is
invisibly sent to a creature, that creature is assimilated to what is proper to the divine
person sent. The creature thus also receives a likeness of the principle of that divine
person. (The divine persons are subsistent relations, and so they necessarily always refer
to each other, even when we distinguish them by their personal properties.) Since the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son (and the Father), the invisible mission of the Holy
Spirit assimilates a creature to the Spirit’s eternal procession (“from the Father and the
Son”), which means that that creature also receives a likeness to the Son-who-proceedsfrom-the-Father, that is, the creature becomes, in the Son, an adopted son or daughter of
the Father.
This is simply another way of articulating Aquinas’s teaching on the divine missions in
STh I, q. 43, where we learn that all three divine persons dwell in the soul according to
sanctifying grace, and that if the Holy Spirit is present, then the Son and Father are there
as well. See, e.g., STh I, q. 43, a. 4, ad 2; q. 43, a. 5.
78
STh I, q. 43, a. 7.
79
Of course, Aquinas does not mean that the Holy Spirit is present in the soul
independently of or apart from the other divine persons—the invisible missions of the
divine persons are distinct and proper to each, but just as the persons are inseparable from
each other, so also the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit are always found together
(STh I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 3). If the Holy Spirit is present, the Son is also present (with the
Father as well). What Aquinas is noting here, however, is that it is proper to the Holy
Spirit to make us holy by love.

196

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

full,80 so that he possesses the most perfect charity along with
every virtue, gift, and charism.81
B) The Spirit’s Action in Christ’s Conception
Up to this point, we have seen Aquinas affirming that all three
divine persons are jointly the efficient cause of Christ’s conception, and that this is attributed to the Holy Spirit by a special
appropriation.82 But Aquinas does not stop here. In a number of
his texts, he extends his Trinitarian analysis in order to discern
the personal mode of action of each divine person within this
joint efficient causality—and in particular to underscore the
unique mode (not simply an appropriation) that characterizes the
Holy Spirit’s action in Christ’s conception.
Thus, in the article from the Summa theologiae that we have
been examining, an objection argues that we should not attribute
Christ’s conception to the Holy Spirit because the Trinity’s
actions in the world are indivisible and belong to all three divine
persons. In replying, Aquinas affirms this classical axiom about
ad extra actions, and adds an important point.83
80
STh I, q. 43, a. 7, ad 6; STh III, q. 7, a. 1, s.c.; q. 34, a. 1; In Matt., c. 12, lect. 1
(Marietti ed., no. 1000); De Verit., q. 29, a. 3; In Ioan., c. 3, lect. 6 (Marietti ed., no.
543).
81
STh III, q. 7, aa. 1-2, 5, 7, 9-11.
82
We have also seen (in the preceding two paragraphs) that Aquinas justifies the
fittingness of this appropriation by referring to the Spirit’s proper effects in the faithful,
but, up to now, we have focused only on how the efficient causality of Christ’s conception
is appropriated to the Holy Spirit even though, properly speaking, all three persons are a
single efficient cause of Christ’s conception in virtue of the unity of the divine essence.
We are now turning to an examination of the Holy Spirit’s proper mode of action in
Christ’s conception. In other words, we are flagging an important distinction between (a)
a reason of fittingness that grounds an appropriation (something proper—either a
personal property, or, as in the texts mentioned just above, a person’s proper effect in the
order of exemplar causality), as distinct from (b) the personal mode of action of a divine
person (which is, as I explain below, the unique mode by which a distinct person acts in
inseparable unity with the other two divine persons in an ad extra action).
83
Despite the perspicacity of Jean-Pierre Torrell’s commentary underlining the
importance of STh III, q. 32, a. 1, ad 1, he omits to mention how it identifies the personal
modes of action of the distinct divine persons within the joint efficient causality of the
whole Trinity. See Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères, 1:109-15.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

197

The work of conception is indeed common to the whole Trinity, yet according
to a certain mode it is attributed to the individual persons. For authorship
[auctoritas] is attributed to the Father with respect to the person of the Son,
who assumed a human nature to himself through this conception; but the
assumption of flesh is attributed to the Son.84

The Father’s “auctoritas” here refers to the fact that the Father is
the principle or author (the “auctor”) of the Son. This is not an
appropriation; it designates the Father’s personal property. The
Father’s personal mode of action in the conception of Christ,
then, is as auctor and principle of the Son. We grasp that there
will now be a man who has the Father as his auctor or eternal
principle. Further, insofar as the conception of Christ is the first
moment of the visible mission of the Son, the Father does indeed
have a proper role in this, insofar as he sends the Son into the
world to assume flesh. So in Christ’s conception, the Father acts
inseparably with the Son and the Holy Spirit, but in the proper
mode of being the eternal auctor and principle of the Son, and
hence as being the person who sends the Son into the world.
Likewise, the Son has a proper mode of action here: he “assumes”
flesh. That is, the Son has a distinct mode of action as the person
to whom that humanity is united (by the common action of all
three persons). The Son is both a principle and cause of this
action (with the other persons), and is also (uniquely) its
terminus.85
So much for the Father and the Son. What is the proper mode
of the Holy Spirit’s action here? Aquinas has some important
things to say in the text we have been examining (STh III, q. 32,
a. 1, ad 1), but in order to grasp their full significance we should
recall a central teaching of Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology: the
divine Word is the perfect conception and thus the perfect
expression of the Father. “The Word in God . . . is perfect, and

84
85

STh III, q. 32, a. 1, ad 1.
See, e.g., STh III, q. 2, a. 8.

198

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

expressive of the whole being of the Father,”86 he writes. This
personal property of the divine Word is at center stage in the
incarnation. Consider the interplay between Father, Word, and
Spirit in this text from Aquinas’s Commentary on John:
As the Apostle says, “no one knows the [secret] things of a man except his spirit
which is in him (1 Cor. 2:11)”—in other words, except insofar as he wills to
manifest himself. But someone manifests his secret through his word: and hence
no one can come to a man’s secrets except through that man’s word. Because,
therefore, no one knows “the things of God except the Spirit of God,” no one
can come to know the Father except through his Word, which is his Son. “No
one knows the Father except the Son (Matt. 11:27).” Just as a man, wanting to
reveal himself by the word of his heart that he brings forth from his mouth,
clothes that word, as it were, with letters or sounds, so also God, wanting to
manifest himself to men, clothes his Word, conceived from all eternity, with
flesh in time. And thus no one can come to a knowledge of the Father except
through the Son.87

The incarnation is precisely the manifestation to the world of the
Father’s secret Word. The Father clothes that Word, not with
sound, but even more richly with a complete human nature, thus
expressing who the Father is with vastly greater resonance and
depth—not only by human sounds and human words, but also by
his actions, his love, and the whole complex of human relations
that he has.
How is that exterior word produced? When we speak, our
interior word is generated as a spoken word by the movement of
our breath. Considering that the first sense of the Latin “spiritus”
is breath, Aquinas remarks:
In us there is a twofold word: the word of the heart and the word of the voice.
The word of the heart is the conception itself of the understanding, which is
hidden from men unless it is expressed by the voice or a vocal word. But our
word of the heart is compared to the eternal Word before the incarnation, when
he was “with” the Father and veiled from us; a vocal word is compared to the
incarnate Word who has now appeared and is manifested to us. But the word
86
In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 29). Likewise, see STh I, q. 34, a. 3: “unicum
Verbum eius est expressivum . . . Patris.” In De Verit., q. 4, a. 3, Aquinas explicitly
connects the Word’s manifestation to his proper procession by way of intellect. Cf. De
Pot., q. 10, a. 4, ad 4.
87
In Ioan., c. 14, lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 1874).

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

199

of the heart is not joined to the voice except by the mediation of the spiritus
[“breath” or “spirit”], and so rightly the incarnation of the Word, through
which he visibly appeared to us, was made by the mediation of the Holy Spirit.88

Aquinas draws out the significance of the Trinitarian order of
persons even more clearly in the Summa contra gentiles:
The incarnation of the Word of God is like the vocal expression of our word.
But the vocal expression of our word is made through our spiritum [our
“breath” or “spirit”], by which the sound of our word is formed. Fittingly,
therefore, the flesh of the Son of God is also said to be formed by the Son’s
Spirit.89

It is hard to imagine an account of Christ’s conception that would
be more richly Trinitarian. The Father conceives the Son from all
eternity as the Word that perfectly expresses all that he is. That
Word is then spoken in time, not in sound only, but as a man, in
the flesh, which is conceived and formed by the Spirit who is
breathed forth as Love by the Father and the Son.
With this beautiful and evocative Trinitarian truth in mind,
we can return to the text of the Summa theologiae in order to see
the profundity of Aquinas’s explanation of the Holy Spirit’s
proper mode of acting in Christ’s conception. Aquinas’s detailed
explanation culminates in this key line:
the formation of the body assumed by the Son is attributed to the Holy Spirit,
for the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Son. . . . The power of God, which is the

88

In Matt., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 112). Aquinas does not mean that the Holy
Spirit was a “formal medium” of the incarnation, but only a “moving” medium. As he
explains at STh III, q. 6, a. 6 ad 3, when we pronounce a verbal word, our “breath”
proceeds from the “interior word” conceived in the mind. This breath is not a “formal
medium [medio formali]” uniting an interior word to one’s voice, but rather is a “moving
medium [medium movens].” Likewise, “the Holy Spirit proceeds from the eternal Word,”
and, in the Word’s visible mission, the Spirit formed the body of Christ, “but it does not
follow from this that the grace of the Holy Spirit was a formal medium in the [hypostatic]
union.”
89
ScG IV, c. 46. See also I Sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4; STh III, q. 6, a. 6 ad 3.

200

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

Son himself (1 Cor. 1:24) . . . through [per] the Holy Spirit, formed the body
which he assumed.90

There are two key aspects of this teaching. The first is purely
Trinitarian: the Holy Spirit acts as the Spirit of the Son. Aquinas’s
Trinitarian theology teaches that the Holy Spirit is “from” the
Father and the Son, and we see the consequence in this text. The
Holy Spirit’s personal mode of acting in Christ’s conception is
thus entirely relative: he is the Spirit of the Son. The Spirit acts
according to his personal property, as entirely relative to the Son
(and the Father) from whom he proceeds. This is not an
appropriation but refers to the proper mode of the Spirit’s action
within the joint efficient causality of all three persons.
The second aspect flows from this, building on the interplay
between the proper names of “Son” and “Spirit” and drawing on
an analogy to human generation. Aquinas’s explanation runs
parallel to the analogy we have just seen regarding an inner word
made audible by a speaker’s spiritus or breath (which drew on the
proper names of “Word” and “Spirit”). In human conception,
Aquinas reasons, a man’s seed is not purely material or inanimate:
it has a “spirit” that imparts a certain active power that is essential
to conception, a spirit which is from the life or power of soul of
the man himself. Likewise, in Christ’s conception, where there is
no male seed whatsoever, there is “the power of God,” who is
the Son (1 Cor 1:24), acting through [per]91 the Holy Spirit to
90

STh III, q. 32, a. 1, ad 1.
When he treats John 1:16 (“through him all things were made”) in his Commentary
on John, Aquinas takes great care to explain how it is true in the proper sense that the
Father acts “through [per]” his Word. The Father acts “through” the Word in the world,
but not by way of efficient causality (the Father is never moved to act by the Word), nor
by way of formal causality (the Word is not a formal cause of the Father’s action). The
Son never causes anything in the Father; rather, he receives everything from him. This
leads Aquinas to conclude that “per” designates the Word’s causality with respect to
creatures. It underlines that the Word receives this causality from the Father, so that the
Father and the Son act together. See In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 76). See
Emery, “Personal Mode of Trinitarian Action,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 49-50;
Trinitarian Theology, 198-99 and 349-55.
This seems to be the same logic as Aquinas’s explanation in the text we are examining:
“the Power of God, which is the Son himself . . . through [per] the Holy Spirit, formed
the body which he assumed.” That is, the Son acts through the Holy Spirit in forming the
91

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

201

“form” (or we might say “inform”) the body of Christ in Mary’s
virginal womb.92 Despite the errors in biology that we find in
body precisely because the Holy Spirit is from the Son. This expresses the proper relation
between these two divine persons and so is designating a proper mode of causality.
Likewise, the Holy Spirit acts “from the Son” (and also from the Father) in forming
Christ’s body, because the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son and so
receives his causality from them just as he receives (and is) the divine nature from them.
For a text of Aquinas treating how the Father acts through the Holy Spirit, see I Sent., d.
14, q. 1, a. 1.
92
Even though, in the details of this analogy, Aquinas draws on an understanding of
the biology of human conception that needs to be corrected by our contemporary
scientific knowledge, two key principles of his reasoning remain valid: (1) in every
conception (including Christ’s), there needs to be something intervening from outside of
the mother that activates the process of human development in her womb; and (2) the
Virgin Mary, truly Christ’s mother, contributes everything to his conception that any
mother contributes in a natural conception.
Regarding the first principle, Aquinas thought that, in natural human generation, the
female supplies material that is in proximate potency to conception but is not sufficient,
of itself, for conception. The male seed then communicates a “formative power” which
drives and guides the developmental process of the foetus conceived from the matter from
the mother; see STh III, q. 28, a. 1, ad 5. Such a formative power is not simply something
purely material; rather, Aquinas thinks that the man’s seed has this power from a formal
principle intrinsically related to his human essence. Since, in Christ’s conception, there is
no male seed that communicates this “formative power” by which a new child begins to
develop within Mary’s womb, he holds that the Holy Spirit himself miraculously acted,
immaterially, in place of the formative power that, in a natural conception, he assumes
would have come principally from the biological father; see In Matt., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti
ed., no. 132). See Richard Bauckham, “The Bishops and the Virginal Conception,”
Churchman 101 (1987): 325-27.
Regarding the second principle, Aquinas clearly teaches that Mary is also a true
principle of Christ’s conception. Despite his views about human conception that
contemporary embryology might dispute—for example, that the active formative
principle of a child’s development is communicated mainly by the man’s seed—Aquinas
insists that “because the Blessed Virgin is truly the Mother of Christ, it is necessary to
attribute to her all that belongs to a mother” (III Sent., d. 3, q. 2, a. 1; see also Comp.
Theol. II, c. 223). He may be wrong about what a mother in fact contributes, but his
theological principle is right: Mary contributes to the conception of Christ whatever any
other human mother contributes in the conception of her child.
Today, we understand a mother’s contribution quite differently than Aquinas did. We
know that a mother’s ovum provides half of her child’s genetic material, and once
activated and completed by male sperm, the new zygote (it is no longer only an egg)

202

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

Aquinas’s detailed explanation here, he draws an important and
perennially valid Trinitarian conclusion: that the Holy Spirit’s
action in the formation of Christ’s body is from the Son, and
ultimately from the Father as well.93 Aquinas’s text makes clear
that the Spirit is not a sole or exclusive actor here: all three divine
persons are the efficient cause of the formation of Christ’s body.
Yet we do see in this text the proper personal mode of the Spirit’s
action, which is discerned within the inseparably joined action of
the three divine persons.
This leads Aquinas to a Trinitarian exegesis of the angel’s
message to Mary at the Annunciation:
This is what the words of the Angel demonstrate: The Holy Spirit will come
over you, as if to prepare and form the matter of the body of Christ, and the
Power of the Most High, that is, Christ, will overshadow you, that is, as Gregory
says, “the human body in you will receive the incorporeal light of the
divinity. . . .” The “Most High” refers here to the Father, whose “Power” is the
Son.94

It is not proper to the Holy Spirit to be the efficient cause of the
formation of Christ’s body—in the order of efficient causality,
the three persons act inseparably together. Nonetheless, this
passage is authentically Trinitarian insofar as we can discern the
proper mode of acting of each divine person at Christ’s
conception.
The Spirit is “from” the Father and the Son and so acts from
them, and they act “through [per]” the Spirit: this is Aquinas’s
ultimate Trinitarian account of what can be properly attributed
rapidly unleashes in a wondrous way the complex processes of development of a new
human being.
While I think we should be cautious about claiming to know too much about the
biological details of Christ’s miraculous conception, it seems to me that, if we are to follow
Aquinas, we would say that there was no human seed, and no new matter was introduced,
in the supernatural miracle by which Christ was conceived. Instead, we might suppose
that the Holy Spirit, acting in a purely immaterial way, miraculously “formed” the bodily
material contributed by the Virgin Mary—her ovum—so that she conceived a child with
a perfect set of complete human chromosomes—Jesus’ chromosomes—half of which
would be from her.
93
STh III, q. 32, a. 1, ad 1.
94
Ibid.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

203

to the Holy Spirit in Christ’s conception. To summarize: The
Father is the source of the Son and the one who sends the Son to
assume a human nature; the Son, acting from the Father, is the
one who assumes flesh; and the Holy Spirit, who is from the
Father and the Son, is the one through whom the Son acts in
bringing about the miraculous conception of the Son as man.
CONCLUSION
The truth that Christ is conceived de Spiritu Sancto has
important consequences for Christology. Because the Holy Spirit
is an agent of infinite wisdom and power, Christ’s humanity is
without genetic defects and immune from the fomes of sin.95 Yet
neither the Trinity nor the Holy Spirit may be called the father
of Christ: Christ has only one Father, God the Father. As Aquinas
puts it, the Holy Spirit does not “generate” Christ as man,
because generation implies sameness of substance, while Christ’s
humanity is not consubstantial with the Holy Spirit. Rather,
Christ is conceived by the power of the Spirit, but ex Maria
Virgine. Mary is truly Christ’s mother, but the Spirit is not his
father.96
Aquinas explains that the Holy Spirit has a complex set of
relations to Christ. The Spirit is consubstantial with the Son as
God, from whom he proceeds. Likewise, the Spirit “has the
relation of efficient cause to [the Son’s human] body,”97
(although the Spirit is not an exclusive efficient cause but shares
that causality with the Father and the Son). And the Spirit dwells
95
STh III, q. 14, a. 4; q. 15, a. 2, s.c. On Aquinas’s view of Christ’s human passions in
relation to his freedom from sin and human perfection, see Paul Gondreau, The Passions
of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Scranton, Pa.: University of
Scranton Press, 2009); Craig Steven Titus, “Passions in Christ: Spontaneity,
Development, and Virtue,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 68-86.
96
III Sent., d. 4, q. 1 a. 2 qcla. 1, ad 2. See also III Sent., d. 4, exp. textus and q. 1,
a. 2, qcla. 1; d. 12, q. 3, a. 2, qcla. 1; STh III, q. 32, a. 3, corp. and ad 1; In Matt., c. 1,
lect. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 111); Comp. Theol. II, c. 223.
97
STh III, q. 32, a. 1.

204

DOMINIC LEGGE, O.P.

in Christ’s human soul by grace, in absolute fullness, with every
perfection that grace can bestow on a human nature: Christ as
man receives “the whole Spirit,” without measure, from the first
instant of his conception, and he is therefore holy in his humanity
in a unique way.98 The hypostatic union is the cause of this, but
only indirectly; more directly, the principle of Christ’s habitual
grace is the Holy Spirit.99 Moreover, the incarnate Son, both as
God and as man, gives the Holy Spirit to the world; this is an
aspect of Christ’s capital grace. As man, therefore, Christ is
conceived as the fount of the Holy Spirit for the whole world.100
We conclude with an evocative text from the Summa
theologiae where Aquinas ties the Spirit’s role in Christ’s
conception to the way Christ became the living bread that would
become the perfect sacrificial offering of the New Covenant.
[Christ] is the living bread . . . who was like formed bread after he had assumed
human nature, baked in the fire, that is, formed by the Holy Spirit in the oven
of the virginal womb; he was also baked in a pan, through the toils that he
underwent in the world; and he was as it were burned on the cross as if on a
gridiron.101

Having assumed a human nature, the Holy Spirit “formed” him
with the fire of charity. That same flame of divine love impelled
him throughout his earthly life, and reached its culmination in
his self-offering for the sins of the whole world on the cross, by
which he saved the world.
98

In Ioan., c. 16, lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 2088); In Hebr., c. 1, lect. 4 (Marietti ed.,
no. 63); In Psalm. 20 (In Psalmos Davidis expositio, in Opera omnia, vol. 14 [Parma:
Typis Petri Fiaccadori, 1863]).
99
STh III, q. 7, a. 13. On this point, see Legge, Trinitarian Christology, 132-59,
discussing the relation of the grace of union to the Holy Spirit’s presence in Christ’s
humanity according to habitual grace.
100
“Because Christ in a certain way infuses the effect of grace in all rational creatures,
he is therefore in a certain manner the principle of all graces according to his humanity,
as God is the principle of all being” (De Verit., q. 29, a. 5). Likewise, at STh III, q. 8, a. 1,
Aquinas explains that Christ “has the power of giving grace to all the members of the
Church,” by which he means that all who receive grace, receive it from Christ as their
head (see also STh III, q. 8, a. 3). For more detail on this point, see Legge, Trinitarian
Christology, 211-31.
101
STh I-II, q. 102, a. 3, ad 12.

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND CHRIST’S CONCEPTION

205

If, for contemporary exegetes and theologians, a robust
account of the Holy Spirit in Christ’s life is essential,102 I submit
that Aquinas deserves to be numbered among the theologians in
the history of Western theology with a great sensitivity to this
pneumatological dimension of the mystery of the incarnation.

102

See n. 7, above.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 207-31

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS AND THE
IMPERIUM-PRAECEPTUM DEBATE
TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO J. ROMERO CARRASQUILLO
Universidad Panamericana
Mexico City, Mexico

T

HE CONCEPT OF “COMMAND” is central to the moral
psychology of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has much to say,
for instance, on the role of imperium (and related
concepts, such as the actus imperatus) within his theory of human
acts. He also describes prudence as consisting in part in an act
that he calls the praeceptum. Yet St. Thomas never clarifies the
relationship between these terms, both of which we could
translate as “command.”
In the second half of the twentieth century, certain Thomists,
such as Odon Lottin and René Gauthier, noted this problem and
entered into a debate regarding the relationship (and possible
equivalence) between these two Latin terms in the thought of St.
Thomas. The discussion reached considerable proportions, to the
point that more recently Michael Konrad referred to it as an “old
cross of the Thomists.”1 Scholars today still refer to the discussion, whether they consider it resolved2 or wish to further the

1
M. Konrad, Precetti e consigli: studi sull'etica di san Tommaso d'Aquino a confronto
con Lutero e Kant (Rome: Lateran University Press, 2005), 59.
2
See J. F. Sellés, Conocer y amar (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2000), 361 n. 452. Sellés follows
Lottin’s later position, which Sellés believes is closer to that of Gauthier; cf. J. F. Sellés,
Los hábitos intelectuales según Tomás de Aquino (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2008), 80 n. 29; O.
Lottin, “Psychologie de l’acte humain,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médievale 29
(1962): 250-67, at 267.

207

208

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

debate,3 and often in order to point to its nuances and its wideranging consequences.4
The problem arises from two sets of texts of St. Thomas in the
Prima secundae, especially when read in translation. In one set of
texts, the most important of which is question 17, he explains
that in a human act, the act of choice (electio) is followed by the
“command” (imperium) of the will.5 That is to say, a person first
chooses a course of action to be followed and then commands
the different powers of the soul to begin executing the action.
But later in the Prima secundae, he says that prudence has three
distinct acts: primus est consiliari, secundus iudicare, tertius est
praecipere. The third and most important of these, praecipere, is
often translated as “to command.”6 The question, then, arises:
What is the relationship between the “command” (imperium) of
the will that follows choice and the “command” (praeceptum) of
prudence, which presumably must precede choice? Although in a
few texts St. Thomas actually uses the expressions imperium vel
praeceptum7 and praecipere vel imperare,8 he never addresses this
question explicitly. The semantic proximity between praecipere
3
See Konrad, Precetti e consigli, 48-49 n. 39; 57-60. Konrad in turn (59 n. 64) cites
G. Borgonovo, Sinderesi e coscienza nel pensiero di san Tommaso d’Aquino: Contributi
per un “ridimensionamento” della coscienza morale nella teologia contemporanea
(Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1996), 232-35. In his review of Konrad’s book, Iacopo
Costa focuses on refuting the view that imperium and praeceptum prudentiae are identical,
relying heavily on Gauthier: see I. Costa, “Konrad, M., Precetti e consigli,” Revue des
sciences philosophiques et théologiques 90 (2006): 754-57. Angel Rodríguez Luño also
sides with Gauthier: see A. Rodríguez Luño, La scelta etica: Il rapporto fra libertà & virtù
(Milan: Ares, 1988).
4
Cf. Paul Morisset, “Prudence et fin selon saint Thomas,” Sciences ecclésiastiques 15
(1963): 73-98, 439-58; D. Westberg, Right Practical Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994), 5-13; 191 n. 11.
5
Although electio can be correctly translated as “choice,” the term has a very specific
meaning in St. Thomas, which is much narrower than the meaning it has in contemporary
English. He conceives electio as an act of the will, within the order of intention, with
regard to the means whereby the end is pursued; see STh I-II, q. 13. The reader should
keep in mind the technical connotations that this and other terms have in the context of
St. Thomas’s psychological analysis of the human act.
6
STh II-II, q. 51, a. 2, ad 2; I-II, q. 57, a. 6; q. 58, a. 4; q. 61, a. 3; q. 65, a. 1.
7
IV Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, qcla. 1.
8
STh II-II, q. 47, a. 8, obj. 3.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

209

and imperare has thus led many Thomists9 to hold that these two
terms are ultimately equivalent, thus identifying the third act of
prudence with the act of command of the will that follows choice.
This identification is not without its problems, however. On
the basis of the first group of texts, most Thomists agree that
imperium follows electio—in other words, that choosing must
take place before the will can command the different powers of
the soul to execute the action. But if the praeceptum of prudence
is equivalent to the imperium of the will, then it would seem to
follow that the third act of prudence is posterior to electio, rather
than prior to it. This hypothesis is problematic because prudence
is required for making a good choice.10 That is to say, one would
not truly be prudent if one were to defer the prudent judgment
until after making a choice; far from being prudent, such a course
of action would be rather reckless. Aware of this conundrum,
Lottin and Gauthier questioned the identity between the praeceptum of prudence—which must precede choice—and the
imperium of execution—which must follow choice. Thus began
the controversy.
The discussion in the twentieth century is so extensive that an
exhaustive review of the literature would require its own study.
We have noticed, however, that the lengthy debates of recent
decades have generally omitted references to a few texts where
St. Thomas describes imperium and praeceptum within the context of interpersonal commands, that is, of one person commanding another. This is seen especially—though not exclusively—in
9
See Rodríguez Luño, La scelta etica, 87: “Many Thomists—Gonet, Sertillanges,
Noble, Deman, among others—affirm that the prudential precept coincides perfectly with
the act of command that St. Thomas studies in the Treatise on Human Acts of the Prima
secundae, that is, with the act of reason that is posterior to choice and prior to the active
use of the will. This thesis has wide implications, but it raises many problems” (“Molto
tomisti, e tra gli altri Gonet, Sertillanges, Noble, Deman, affermano che il precetto
prudenziale coincide perfettamente con l’atto imperativo che san Tommaso ha studiato
nel trattado delgli atti umani della Prima secundae, cioè con l’atto de la ragione posteriore
all’elezione e anteriore all’uso attivo della voluntà. Questa tesi gode di diffusiones molto
ampia, ma origina non pochi inconvenienti”).
10
See STh I-II, q. 57, a. 5.

210

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

St. Thomas’s discussion of divine precepts in his Commentary on
Psalm 18, a text that has been largely ignored in the discussion.11
These texts which speak of interpersonal commands can shed
much light on the relationship between praeceptum and
imperium in St. Thomas’s corpus. Our goal is to make a modest,
yet original contribution to this great debate by placing these
texts on the table for discussion.
Another original contribution to the debate is the very thesis
that we wish to defend in this essay: Gauthier’s reading of St.
Thomas—though problematic if left the way he presented it—
can be saved by incorporating into it the concept of alterity, in
both interpersonal and intrapersonal contexts.12 Previously,
scholars such as Pinckaers and Deman had only argued against
Gauthier,13 without suggesting how his interpretation could be
11
To our knowledge, the only other publication that makes reference to this important
text is Teresa Enríquez, De la decisión a la acción: Estudio sobre el imperium en Tomás
de Aquino (New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2011), 178-80. We utilized some of the texts
discussed in that book as our working material (see n. 12).
12
Some of the material in this article has appeared in Teresa Enríquez’s monograph,
De la decisión a la acción, which broadly addresses the praeceptum-imperium debate (e.g.,
ibid., 146-47). Most of the texts we cite in this article are also cited in the book, since this
material is necessary for the discussion. The similarities between the book and this article,
however, are material rather than formal. For instance, since in the book it was not her
aim to resolve the problem, the author merely acknowledged its existence and offered a
preliminary and synoptic presentation of the debate. In this article, however, our ex
professo aim is to contribute to the debate by putting the text of the Commentary on
Psalm 18 on the table for discussion and to offer a solution based on that of Gauthier. We
thus offer a whole section devoted to the state of the question, including a more detailed
review of the positions of Lottin, Gauthier, Deman, and Pinckaers (see section I). More
concretely, in her book Enríquez only briefly discussed, and in fact offered a criticism of
Gauthier’s position. In this article, however, we delve more deeply into Gauthier’s
position and present him in a much more positive light (see n. 13).
13
This was also the case in Enríquez’s De la decisión a la acción, where she offers a
critique of Gauthier along with a brief suggestion of a possible correction of his position
(see ibid., 153, 193-94). After years of work and dialogue on this issue, however, we have
decided to offer in this essay, as part of our own solution, a more robust rehabilitation—
and thus in a sense a defense—of Gauthier’s position by reading him and St. Thomas in
light of the concept of interpersonal commands. Moreover, in order to “save” Gauthier’s
reading, we felt the need to introduce the distinction between the order of intention and
the order of execution (see especially section II.B) as a key ingredient in the solution, a
distinction that is absent from the book.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

211

corrected or rehabilitated. We, on the other hand, wish to defend
Gauthier by considering him in light of texts not previously
included in the debate. Admittedly, our rehabilitation of Gauthier
involves modifying his position, and therefore we are not defending him simpliciter, but are rather developing a novel interpretation on the basis of his position.
After (I) a brief summary of the relevant discussion in the
literature, we shall (II) present a couple of texts that have been
hitherto underappreciated in the debate, and in which St.
Thomas discusses imperium and praeceptum within the context
of interpersonal commands. Then (III) we shall tie these texts
together into an argument in which we hope to show that they
offer a justification for Gauthier’s reading of St. Thomas even
within the context of “intrapersonal” commands, that is, in the
psychology of the individual human act. The conclusion
summarizes the argument and briefly points to its ramifications.
I. STATUS QUAESTIONIS
The relevant discussion began in 1949 with an observation by
Lottin, who in his reading of the middle sections of the Prima
secundae—the “Treatise on the Habits”14—claimed that the
praeceptum of prudence is prior to a virtuous electio,15 and
therefore is distinct from the imperium that initiates the order of
execution. Earlier in the Prima secundae, in his psychological
analysis of the human act, St. Thomas explicitly posits imperium
as an act that follows choice (electio). This order between electio
and imperium was understood by Lottin as being independent of
14
Specifically in STh I-II, q. 58, a. 4. The exact term praeceptum prudentiae is found
in STh I-II, q. 58, a. 5, ad 3.
15
Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. 3 (Louvain: Abbaye
du Mont César, 1949), 582: “While the imperium is presented as subsequent to choice
(I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1), the act of praecipere is, on the contrary, assumed to be prior to the
choice that it commands (I-II, q. 58, a. 4)” (“Tandis que l’imperium est présenté comme
consécutif au choix [I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1], l’acte de praecipere est, au contraire, supposé
antérieur à ce choix qu’il commande [I-II, q. 58, a. 4]).”

212

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

whether the electio is virtuous, given that at this point in the
Prima secundae St. Thomas is not yet dealing with the morality
of acts as such.16 Thus Lottin noted that in St. Thomas there is
first a praeceptum of prudence before a choice is made, then an
imperium after the choice is made, which implies that praeceptum
and imperium are not equivalent, but refer to distinct acts, or at
any rate distinct stages of one human act. Nonetheless, Lottin did
not wish to insist too much on this distinction, which ultimately
he thought is a matter of “minimal nuances,” and rather affirmed
a fundamental equivalence between the proper act of governmental prudence, on the one hand, and that of individual
prudence—namely, imperium or praeceptum—on the other.17
Gauthier, on the other hand, stressed Lottin’s distinction
between praeceptum and imperium and defended it deliberately
and explicitly as a novel interpretation of the thought of St.
Thomas.18 Yet he also acknowledged that the term praeceptum is
in some sense convertible with imperium, and that St. Thomas
himself sometimes uses the terms interchangeably. Thus,
Gauthier sought a synthesis: he proposed that a distinction
between two types of imperium must be made in order to read
St. Thomas’s texts harmoniously. One type of imperium must be
prior to choice, and this imperium is equivalent to the
praeceptum of prudence (at least in cases where the choice is
prudent), whereas the other type of imperium must take place
after choice and is the imperium in the order of execution which
is discussed in question 17 of the Prima secundae. In Gauthier’s
terminology, there is a “praeceptum or imperium that commands
the choice” (“praeceptum ou imperium qui commande le choix”)
and an “imperium that commands the execution” (“imperium qui
commande l’exécution).”19 Gauthier further explained that the
16

STh I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1.
Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, 3:582: “Mais on reconnaîtra
que ce sont là de minimes nuances, qui n’entament pas l’identité foncière de la loi, l’acte
propre de la prudence gouvernementale, avec l’imperium (ou praeceptum), l’acte propre
de la prudence individuelle.”
18
See René Gauthier, “Compte rendu: Lottin, Odon, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe
et XIIIe siècles. II-III. Problèmes de morale,” Bulletin thomiste 8 (1951): 60-86, esp. 64-71.
19
Ibid., 68.
17

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

213

difference between the two resides in their relation to electio. The
praeceptum of prudence, which he identified as “the imperium of
choice,” directs the electio and is therefore structurally prior to
it. On the other hand, there is also an “imperium of execution,”
which is subsequent to the electio and is, therefore, limited to
ordering the execution. The two are called imperium
analogously.20 Gauthier knew that by defending this thesis he was
opposing other Thomists, but he attributed to Cajetan—and in a
sense to St. Thomas himself—the core of his proposal: an identity
between imperium (“imperium of choice”) and the iudicium
electionis.21
Both Thomas Deman and Servais Pinckaers wrote responses
to Gauthier and defended the radical equivalence between the
20

Ibid., 68: “The imperium is therefore an ordination of reason imbued with a
voluntary influx, and which receives from this influx the force to move efficaciously. . . .
However, this is where the difficulty lies: this type-structure is concretely realized in two
acts, the praeceptum or imperium which commands the choice and the imperium which
commands the execution: two irreducibly distinct acts, because the imperium which
commands the execution is chronologically posterior to the choice, while the imperium
which commands the choice is chronologically simultaneous and logically prior to it; two
acts, however, in which the same structure is realized analogically” (“L’imperium sera
donc une ordination de la raison imprégnée d’un influx volontaire et tenant de cet influx
la force de mouvoir efficacement. . . . Mais, et c’est en cela que réside la difficulté, cette
structure-type se réalise concrètement en deux actes, le praeceptum ou imperium qui
commande le choix et l’imperium qui commande l’exécution: deux actes irréductiblement
distincts, car l’imperium qui commande l’exécution est chronologiquement postérieur au
choix, tandis que l’imperium qui commande le choix lui est chronologiquement simultané
et logiquement antérieur; deux actes, pourtant, dans lesquels se réalise analogiquement la
même structure”).
21
Ibid., 69: “Moreover, with this account we are merely coming to the same
conclusion as that found in the lucid exegesis of Cajetan . . . identifying an imperium
within the prudential praeceptum, he in fact does not hesitate to identify in express terms
this imperium, not with the imperium of execution, as modern Thomists do [Sertillanges,
Noble, Deman, see p. 65], but rather with the iudicium electionis, as St. Thomas did”
(“Nous ne faisons d’ailleurs que rejoindre par ces explications l’exégèse si lucide de
Cajetan . . . reconnu dans le praeceptum prudentiel un imperium, celui-ci, en effet, n’hésite
pas à identifier en termes exprès cet imperium, non à l’imperium d’exécution, comme le
font les thomistes modernes [Sertillanges, Noble, Deman, see p. 65], mais bien au
iudicium electionis, comme le faisait S. Thomas”).

214

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

imperium of the will and the praeceptum of prudence. Deman
argued that St. Thomas in his moral theology draws from
historically diverse doctrinal sources, which were translated into
Latin by different hands. His technical vocabulary is therefore
necessarily varied, and he employs different terms for the same
fundamental reality. Thus, imperium and praeceptum form a
Thomistic word pair (“un doublet du vocabulaire Thomiste”) in
which the terms are ultimately doctrinally equivalent. The term
imperium, which St. Thomas draws from St. Augustine and from
medieval Latin translations of St. John Damascene and Avicenna,
is used by him primarily to describe a peculiar psychological act
within the context of the discussion of the human act. The term
praeceptum is Aristotelian in origin (cf. prudentia est
praeceptiva), and—these authors claim—it is used by St. Thomas
to refer to the same psychological act but within the context of
the discussion on the virtue of prudence, which is where Aristotle
himself uses it.22
Pinckaers,23 following the same line as Deman, offered a
diagnosis of what he perceived as Gauthier’s error: a legalistic
way of understanding morality. Indeed, Gauthier saw in the
prudent praeceptum a law-based assurance of the righteousness
of our choices. Pinckaers alludes to the Aristotelian origin of St.
Thomas’s analysis, saying that choice is not governed by a
command, but by counsel (consilium). And a choice is prudent,
not because it obeys a precept, but because it is made according
to right reason, embodied in a true practical judgment (judicium
electionis). Thus, in Pinckaers’s eyes, Gauthier’s view tends to
blur the true role of praeceptum, which is to lead the will to make
a virtuous, yet nonobligatory, choice. Gauthier’s identification of
imperium with the judgment of prudence ends up “suffocating”
the electio, as it were, in the sense that it seems to preclude the
freedom of the latter.
In this article we propose that Gauthier’s distinction, though
admittedly problematic in itself, could become a very plausible
22
Thomas Deman, “Le ‘precepte’ de la prudence chez Thomas d’Aquin,” Recherches
de théologie ancienne et médiévale 10 (1953): 40-59, at 58; cf. VI Nic. Ethic., lect. 9.
23
Servais Pinckaers, “Compte rendu: Deman et Gauthier,” Bulletin thomiste 9 (1955):
345-62.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

215

interpretation if we introduce the notion of alterity to the
discussion. As a first step, this would entail considering St.
Thomas’s doctrine of imperium as obtaining in the scenario of an
interpersonal command. Viewed in this context, Gauthier’s claim
would be right: the praeceptum of the superior (“praeceptum or
imperium that commands the choice”) is prior to the electio of
the inferior; and the imperium of the inferior (“an imperium that
commands the execution”) is posterior to her own electio. Thus
far, Konrad has been the only author who has come close to
suggesting the relevance of the notion of alterity to Gauthier’s
interpretation, but even he has not altogether defended this
interpretation.24
II. TWO KEY TEXTS ON IMPERIUM AND PRAECEPTUM
Deman is, of course, right that St. Thomas at times uses
multiple terms for the same reality. Saint Thomas himself
acknowledges that an author tends to use various words (verba
multiplicat) in order to express the same concept (conceptum).25
This is certainly the case with the terms imperium and praeceptum, whose semantic proximity is undeniable: both express a

24
Cf. Konrad, Precetti e consigli, 60 and n. 72: “Both the term imperium and the term
praeceptum therefore refer to the act of prescribing. What changes is rather the addressee
to whose act it is addressed; but for this very reason the character of the act also changes:
as it is addressed to the subject himself, the imperium can indicate a decision, while the
praeceptum remains an imperative exhortation insofar as it is addressed to others.
[Footnote:] This distinction is certainly not valid in all cases; in fact there are also cases
in which the imperium is addressed to others. . . . There are also passages in which the
praeceptum is addressed to itself” (“Sia il termine imperium che il termine praeceptum si
riferiscono dunque ad una prescrizione. Ciò che cambia è anziotutto il destinatario al cui
atto è rivolta; ma proprio per questo motivo muta anche il caratterre dell’atto: in quanto
rivolto allo stesso soggetto, l’imperium può indicare una decisione, mentre il praeceptum
rimane, in quanto rivolto ad altri, una esortazione di carattere imperativo. [Footnote:]
Tale distinzioni non vale certo in tutti le casi; si trovano infatti anche casi nei quali
l’imperium è rivolto ad altri. . . . Esistono inoltre dei passi nei quali il praeceptum è riolto
a se stesso”).
25
See ScG III, c. 97.

216

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

type of command or order issued by a superior to an inferior. Yet
this semantic proximity does not imply a semantic identity.
A search for these terms within the Corpus Thomisticum
shows that there are two main contexts within which St. Thomas
uses them: (a) treatments of individual moral psychology, especially his “Treatise on Human Acts”;26 and (b) moral discussions,
especially those regarding prudence27 and divine law.28 Both
terms appear in both contexts, but imperium predominates in (a),
whereas praeceptum predominates in (b).29 As the respective
contexts suggest, praeceptum has strong moral connotations and
is used primarily to refer to the case of interpersonal commands.
Imperium, on the other hand, has a premoral connotation and is
used primarily to refer to individual or “intrapersonal”
psychology. Yet these are simply contexts and connotations; they
are not rigid categories. As we shall see, both terms can be and
are used in both intrapersonal (psychological/individual) and
interpersonal contexts. This versatility of the terms will be the
key to our defense of Gauthier’s reading.
A) Imperium: A Superior’s Rational Movement of an Inferior
The psychological connotation of the term imperium in St.
Thomas is rooted in the way it was used by his predecessors, both
26

STh I-II, qq. 6-21, esp. q. 17.
Esp. STh II-II, qq. 47-56.
28
Esp. STh I-II, qq. 90-108.
29
In (a) the “Treatise on Human Acts” (qq. 6-21), the terms imperare and imperium
are used 190 times, whereas praecipere and praeceptum are used only 3 times (63:1 ratio,
or 99% predominance of imperium over praeceptum). In the second group of texts (b),
which we have termed “moral discussions” and which contains both the “Treatise on
Habits” (qq. 49-89) and the “Treatise on Law” (qq. 90-114), we find the opposite trend.
In the “Treatise on Habits” we find only 6 instances of imperium and related terms,
whereas praeceptum and its variants appear 66 times (1:10 ratio, or 90% predominance
of praeceptum over imperium). And in the “Treatise on Law,” the terms imperare and
imperium appear only 17 times, compared to 888 instances of praecipere and praeceptum
(1:52 ratio, or 98% predominance of praeceptum over imperium). There are obviously
other contexts outside the Prima secundae in which St. Thomas uses these terms, such as
the many times he distinguishes between the elicited and commanded acts (actus imperati)
of the specific virtues (e.g., of the virtue of religion; see STh II-II, q. 81, a. 1, ad 1). But
we have omitted references to these discussions for the sake of brevity.
27

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

217

ancient and medieval.30 Lottin notes that in the Latin tradition
imperium was first used in a political or interpersonal sense
involving alterity, as, for example, when a ruler gives a command
to his subjects.31 From the time of Cicero, however, the term
began to be used psychologically, in relation to the individual
herself, insofar as she rules or is master of herself, commanding
her own powers to act according to her choices. The concept was
thus understood and developed by St. Thomas’s medieval Latin
predecessors, including William of Auxerre, Hugh of St. Victor,
Philip the Chancellor, and St. Albert the Great.32 Among them,
William of Auxerre stands out for being the first to use the term
imperium explicitly to designate an act of reason, a practical
judgment involved in a choice.33 This psychological sense of the
term is also found in some of the non-Latin sources to which St.
Thomas had access in Latin translation—for example, St. John
Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa, as translated into Latin by
Burgundio of Pisa, and especially the Avicenna latinus, in which,
St. Thomas explicitly tells us, he finds a fourfold distinction
between types of “movers,” including he who moves by

30

Impero literally means to “impose,” since it is derived from the prefix in and the
verb paro, which means to “set” or “put”; see J. Facciolati and E. Forcellini, Totius
latinitatis lexicon: “Impero”: “The original meaning is political, comes from ancient
Rome, meaning supreme power of command in war in the interpretation and
enforcement”; cf. S. Hornblower et al., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996), s.v. “Imperium”: “Imperium was the supreme power, involving
command in war and the interpretation and execution of law . . . which belonged at Rome
(from 445 to 367 BC). Viewed generally, imperium represents the supreme authority.” In
his Etymologies, Isidore points to the emperor’s superiority over other kings; see S. Isidori
Hispalensis, Etymologiarum 9.3: “While among the Romans, with whom the name of the
first emperors, the greatest of them alone the gift of the military could not stand still . . .
it is distinguished from other nations for the kings” (“Imperatorum autem nomen aput
Romanos eorum tantum fuis prius apud quos summa rei militaris consisteret . . . eo quod
is distingueretur a caeteris gentium regibus”) (PL 82:343).
31
See O. Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles, vol. 1 (2d ed.; Louvain:
Abbaye du Mont César, 1957), 393-424.
32
See ibid., 396, 404-14, esp. 412 n. 2, and 416-23.
33
See ibid., 405.

218

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

“commanding” (imperans).34 Yet one must not infer that this later
psychological or “intrapersonal” usage rules out alterity altogether, for even here there is an implied alterity among the
soul’s powers.35
Working with this background, St. Thomas presents imperium
within the context of the sequence of psychological acts involved
in a human (moral) act.36 Electio is an act of the will in the order
of intention which presupposes an act of reason (counsel, the
deliberation that terminates in a practical judgment). In turn,
imperium is an act of reason that presupposes the electio of the
will and initiates the order of execution. Thus imperium is the
pivotal point between the order of intention and the order of
execution: “After the determination of counsel [consilium],
which is the judgment of reason, the will chooses [eligit]; and
after the choice, reason commands [imperat] that whereby what
has been chosen must be done.”37
In different texts St. Thomas attributes imperium both to
reason and to the will. This dual nature of imperium is evident in
the seemingly contradictory responses he gives to the question of
whether imperium belongs to reason or to the will. In an early
work, Quodlibet IX (1256-59), he concludes that “it is an act of
the will,”38 whereas later, in the Summa theologiae (1270-71), he

34

STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1, obj. 1.
F. Gaffiot, Le grand Gaffiot: Dictionnaire latin-français (Paris: Hachette, 2000), s.v.
“impero”: “Impero . . . cupiditatibus, Cicero, Laelius, 82, command one’s passions;
impero sibi, Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 2, 47, to be master of oneself” (“Impero .
. . cupiditatibus, Cic. Lae., 82, commander à ses passions; impero . . . sibi, Cic. Tusc. 2,
47, se maîtriser soi-même”).
36
Pinckaers claims that this “sequence” of psychological acts involved in a moral
(human) act is not a temporal sequence, but rather a “structural” one. See Pinckaers,
“Compte rendu: Deman et Gauthier,” 350. However, it is difficult to see how this claim
stands up to scrutiny, given that St. Thomas explicitly says these acts are often temporally
distinct: “a command is not simultaneous with the act of the thing to which the command
is given: for it naturally precedes its fulfilment, sometimes, indeed, by priority of time”
(STh I-II, q. 17, a. 3).
37
STh I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1. Quotations from the Summa theologiae are taken from
the translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, with some
modifications. Translations of other quotations from St. Thomas are our own.
38
Quodl. IX, q. 5, a. 2, s.c.
35

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

219

states that “it is an act of reason.”39 The arguments are nuanced,
but what emerges from them is that imperium is primarily an act
of reason as it orders the execution of an act, but also an act of
the will insofar as it receives from the will’s electio the capacity
to move other powers towards execution.40 Imperium is essentially an act of reason, “because the commander orders the one
commanded to do something, by way of intimation or
declaration; and to order thus by intimating or declaring is an act
of the reason.”41 Commenting on Avicenna’s four ways of
moving another, St. Thomas says that “to command is to move,
not just in any way, but by intimating and declaring to another;
and this is an act of reason.”42 But imperium is also attributed to
the will due to the mutual influence between intellect and will:
the will must move in order for reason to command.43 That is,
“the will, which has the end as its object, is said to command
[imperare] insofar as command [imperium], which is an act of
reason, begins in the will, to which pertains the desire of the
end.”44 However, “through a certain interpretation or
equivalence,” the will commands due to its being the appetitive
power that moves other powers immediately by its command—
for example, the members of the body.45 In fact, all appetitive
powers and habits can command movement46 insofar as they
order the acts of other powers or habits to their own ends, as, for
example, the virtue of religion commands acts elicited by other
moral virtues.47 In short, there are three senses of imperium: (a)
39

STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1, s.c.
See Quodl. IX, q. 5 a. 2; De Verit., q. 22, a. 12, ad 4; STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1.
41
STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1. Cf. Quodl. IX, q. 5, a. 2.
42
STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 1.
43
STh I-II, q. 17, a. 1.
44
IV Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 3.
45
Although command is primarily an act of reason, the expression “commanded acts
of the will” is in fact more common in the Summa theologiae, and is even used in the
heading of q. 17 of the Prima secundae.
46
See IV Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 3.
47
STh II-II, q. 81, a. 1, ad 1. See Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, “Religion and the
Theological Virtues as ‘Commanding’ in Aquinas,” in H. Goris, L. Hendriks, and H. J.
40

220

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

in the proper sense, it is an act of reason that consists in giving
an order; (b) it is also an act of the will insofar as the will moves
other powers to act for an end; and (c) broadly speaking, it is an
act of any appetitive power or habit insofar as it has the capacity
to move other powers. In an act of imperium, then, the intellect
sets order and the will moves to action.
The fact that imperium in a sense belongs to the will as the
“universal mover of [the soul’s] powers” has important ethical
corollaries. One of these corollaries is that acts performed by
powers other than the will, but which are the result of a
command of the will, such as walking or fighting, are themselves
voluntary. Saint Thomas calls these acts the “acts commanded by
the will” (actus imperatus a voluntate).48 These acts are
contrasted to the “elicited acts of the will,” such as intending and
choosing, which are immanent to the will itself. Despite being
immediately elicited by powers other than the will, the
commanded acts are fully voluntary, as voluntary as the elicited
acts of the will.49 This is ultimately the reason why a physical act
can be morally good or bad, praiseworthy or blameworthy: because it issues from a command of the will. Exterior acts are
human acts, and thus morally good or bad, insofar as they are
commanded by the will.50
Further, to execute the imperium, the powers that are
subordinate to the imperium apply themselves to action. That
“application to action” is called usus, an act that belongs to the
will as mover, and to reason as ordering other powers to execution.51 Through the will, the agent uses her own executive
M. Schoot, eds., Faith, Hope, and Love: Thomas Aquinas on Living by the Theological
Virtues (Utrecht: Peeters, 2015), 79-90; idem, “The Moral Disadvantage of Unbelief:
Natural Religion and Natural Sanctity in Aquinas,” Quaestiones Disputatae 5 (2014):
93-104.
48
See STh I-II, q. 17, passim. Although many authors consider the elicited-commanded
distinction in this question to be equivalent to that made by St. Thomas in the very next
question between interior-exterior acts, the two distinctions are not entirely equivalent;
see Teresa Enríquez, De la decisión a la acción, 181-82.
49
See STh I-II, q. 1, a. 1 ad 2; q. 17.
50
II Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 2, ad 2; STh I-II, q. 71, a. 6; q. 74, aa. 2 and 6; q. 76, a. 2,
ad 3.
51
STh I-II, q. 16, a. 1.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

221

powers to carry out the commanded act. Usus is thus the last of
the psychological acts with regard to the means in the order of
execution. The progression with respect to the means is thus as
follows: in the order of intention, first consilium and then electio;
in the order of execution, first imperium and then usus.52 From
the foregoing is evident that, as St. Thomas presents it in the
treatise on human acts, imperium is posterior to electio, as the
order of execution is posterior to the order of intention. Thus
far, therefore, Gauthier’s claim that imperium can be prior to
electio seems highly problematic.
However, if we turn to one example that St. Thomas uses to
illustrate the distinction between “command” and “use,”
Gauthier’s claim becomes more appealing. Saint Thomas mentions the case of interpersonal command, that is, an action
involving one person commanding another:
Because after counsel’s decision, which is reason’s judgment, the will chooses;
and after choice, reason commands that power which has to do what was
chosen; and then, last of all, someone’s will begins to use, by executing the
command of reason. Sometimes it is the will of another, when someone
commands [imperat] another; sometimes the will of the one who commands
[imperans], when he commands himself to do something.53

Since this case involves the wills of two distinct persons, it
follows that we are dealing with not one, but two electiones and
two imperia: one electio and one imperium in each person
involved. The one who commands—let us call her person A—
first chooses (elegit) a course of action to be followed by someone
else—person B—and then issues a command (imperat) to her.
Subsequently B must first choose to obey, then command her own
members to execute the act. The two commands are different in
nature: there is an interpersonal command issued by A, and an
interior or merely psychological or intrapersonal command
within person B. In each case, each command is posterior to its
52
53

See STh I-II, qq. 13-16.
STh I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1.

222

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

corresponding electio. However, the interpersonal command of
A is clearly prior to the electio of B, which itself is prior to B’s
own psychological command. This fascinating text, then, shows
that Gauthier’s distinction between the “imperium that commands the choice” and the “imperium that commands the
execution” fits at least the case of interpersonal commands.
This is not a trivial case of an interpersonal command, for St.
Thomas presents it as an illustration of the order of psychological
acts within an individual human act. Despite the fact that he
presents his doctrine of imperium predominantly within the
context of individual moral psychology in the Prima secundae, in
his mind this doctrine still has a direct application to the
interpersonal context. In fact, in this text in particular he seems
to move seamlessly between both contexts—interpersonal and
intrapersonal commands—as though the principles discussed
apply equally to both. Given St. Thomas’s general insistence on
analogy, it should not surprise us that he finds imperium to take
place in both interpersonal and intrapersonal contexts.54
Gauthier’s distinction between two imperia therefore makes
sense within the interpersonal context. But so far we have not
seen sufficient evidence for his identification between imperium
and praeceptum, which he evidently makes when he uses the
expression “praeceptum or imperium that commands the
choice.” Let us now turn to another text where St. Thomas makes
an explicit connection between imperium and praeceptum.
B) Praeceptum: Imperium “plus” debitum
Whereas the text presented above merely hints at the
interpersonal dimension of imperium, many of St. Thomas’s texts
explicitly refer to the interpersonal implications of the term
praeceptum.55 We will highlight just one fascinating text that has
54

An important feature of Gauthier’s claim is that it is couched in the doctrine of
analogy: he understands the imperium of choice and the imperium of execution as being
called imperia analogously. Cf. Gauthier, “Compte rendu: Lottin, O., Psychologie et
morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” 68.
55
The interpersonal dimension of praeceptum is evident when St. Thomas
characterizes it as one of the signs of the will of the superior; see I Sent., d. 45, q. 1, a. 4;

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

223

hitherto been mostly absent from the discussion in the secondary
literature: Exposition on Psalm 18(19), v. 9, “the commandment
of the Lord is lightsome, enlightening the eyes” (Vulgate:
praeceptum Domini lucidum, illuminans oculos). Saint Thomas’s
remarks here are directly relevant to the issue of imperium/
praeceptum because this is one of the few texts where he
explicitly presents a relationship between these two terms. He in
fact defines praeceptum in terms of the imperium of a superior.
A precept [praeceptum] is that which is heeded according to the command of a
superior [secundum imperium superioris], and it concerns things that are to be
done, and implies an obligation to act [debitum faciendi] in him who has been
commanded: this obligation [debitum] is either [a] on part of the divine rule
[regulae divinae] that we are obliged to follow, and thus falls under an obligation
without which the order of reason cannot be preserved: or [b] it is an obligation
flowing from the authority of the one who commands [ex auctoritate
praecipientis], whom we are obliged to obey: or [c] on the part of the end that
we absolutely desire [finis quem omnino volumus], which is set forth for us; and
then under the precept falls that without which we cannot preserve our
subjection to the one who prescribes [praecipientem]; or without which we
cannot attain the intended end.56

Note in this text the explicit relationship that St. Thomas
draws between praeceptum and imperium. A praeceptum is
fundamentally an imperium, but praeceptum involves the added
note of a moral debitum, something that is due to another on
account of an end, or on account of authority. Thus, a
praeceptum is conceptually narrower than an imperium, because
an imperium does not necessarily imply obligation or debitum.
De Verit., q. 23, a. 3; STh I, q. 19, a. 12; see also Enríquez, De la decisión a la acción,
205-12.
56
In Ps. 18, n. 5 (Thomas Aquinas, Opera Omnia, t. 14, In psalmos Davidis expositio,
[Parma: Petrus Fiaccadori, 1863]): “Praeceptum dicitur ad quod attenditur secundum
imperium superioris; et est de agendis, et importat debitum faciendi in eo cui praecipitur:
quod quidem debitum est vel ex parte regulae divinae quam tenemur sequi; et sic illud
cadit sub debito, sine quo rationis ordo servari non potest: vel est debitum ex auctoritate
praecipientis, cui obedire tenemur: vel ex parte finis, quem omnino volumus, qui est
praestitutus nobis; et tunc cadit sub praecepto illud sine quo non possumus servare
subjectionem ad praecipientem; vel sine quo non possumus consequi finem intentum.”

224

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

An imperium could be a rational movement without any implied
obligation, as when the will moves the executive powers—this is
a case of an imperium that is not a praeceptum. But praeceptum
says more than imperium: a divine precept is not simply an
imperium, but an imperium that implies obligation. In short, a
praeceptum is an imperium plus debitum.57
It is also noteworthy that precisely here, in one of the few texts
where St. Thomas explicitly links the terms imperium and
praeceptum, he is bringing alterity into play: a praeceptum
involves a “superior” as well as someone else “who has been
commanded.” This explains why the concept of praeceptum is
predominant in properly moral texts where St. Thomas wishes to
discuss cases of one person obeying another, as when human
beings obey the divine precepts. The act of giving a law or precept
is a pristine example of an interpersonal command, one that is
directly relevant to many themes in St. Thomas’s moral theology.
Now, this text is, of course, not meant simply as an abstract
presentation of the concept of praeceptum. The context is the
theme of the divine law. What St. Thomas wishes to do here is to
apply this general presentation to the text of the psalm, showing
how God’s commandments are “lucid,” and so on. The alterity
in play is therefore that between God and his rational creatures,
who are his subjects and who have the debitum of obeying his
commandments. Since God, as superior, both orders rational
creatures to their ultimate end and reveals to them rationally the
best way to achieve it, St. Thomas concludes that the divine
precepts fit the description of praeceptum in the most perfect
way. To show how this is the case, St. Thomas presents an
etymology of praeceptum which—even if modern research were
to show it is incorrect—can give us an insight into his
understanding of the nuances of the concept:
The term precept [praeceptum] means “taken precisely” [praecise-ceptum], that
is, with respect to that which should be done; as if we are obliged to do that
exactly: and such a precept is described as “illuminating the eyes” [Ps. 18(19):9],
57
The text from this commentary stands out among many others that assume that
praeceptum includes the ratio of debitum; e.g., STh I-II, q. 44, a. 1; q. 99, a. 5, corp. and
ad 1; II-II, q. 122, a. 1; see Enríquez, De la decisión a la acción, 163-77.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

225

that is, the eyes of reason, which eyes are darkened by the unrestrained desire
for exterior things and by the desires of the passions within: and the precept of
the Lord removes this, “illuminating the eyes.”58

Thus, whereas imperium denotes a certain motion proceeding
from reason though not necessarily terminating in reason (since
the executive powers can be the terminus of an imperium),
praeceptum here has an additional cognitive connotation in that
the recipient is also rational and free. That is, unlike imperium,
the term praeceptum lays stress on a debitum that is being
cognitively revealed to the one that is to obey it. This cognitive
dimension of praeceptum is highlighted in the moral precepts in
particular:59 divine commands instruct60 and are light.61
58
In Ps. 18, n. 5: “Dicitur enim praeceptum quasi praecise ceptum, scilicet ad
agendum: quasi quod praecise teneamur illud agere: ideo tale praeceptum est: illuminans
oculos, scilicet rationis, qui oculi tenebrescunt per cupiditatem exteriorum et
concupiscentias interiorum passionum: et hoc removet praeceptum domini, et ideo
illuminans oculos.”
59
Ibid.: “The moral precepts are bright and illuminating; hence he says that the
commandment of the Lord is bright. It is said to be bright because it is in itself manifest
and evident, such as this one, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou
shalt not commit theft, and the like: which have clarity in themselves” (“Moralia vero
praecepta sunt lucida et illuminativa; unde dicit, praeceptum domini lucidum. Lucidum
dicitur, quia in se est manifestum et evidens, sicut hic, non occides, non moechaberis, non
furtum facies, et similia: quae habent in se claritatem”).
60
Super II Tim., c. 4, lect. 1 (Thomas Aquinas, Super epistolas S. Pauli lectura, t. 2 [8th
ed., ed. R. Cai (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953)]): “In order that he may teach the truth
and remove error; and with regard to the first of these, he says ‘correct,’ namely errors.
Tit. 2, 15: ‘correct with all authority.’ Or it is a matter of good morals, and to this end he
must sometimes promote the good, and also his superior, and then he must calmly and
kindly admonish; hence he says ‘entreat’” (“Ut doceat veritatem, et removeat errorem; et
quantum ad hoc primum dicit argue, scilicet errores. Tit. II, 15: argue cum omni imperio.
Vel de pertinentibus ad bonos mores, et ad hoc debet inducere aliquando bonum, et
superiorem, et tunc debet placide et benigne monere; unde dicit obsecra”); Super I Tim.,
c. 4, lect. 3 (Cai, ed.): “And hence he says, ‘prescribe these things’. Tit. 2, v.15: ‘correct
with all authority’. As for what must be believed, he says ‘and teach’” (“Et ideo dicit
praecipe haec. Tit. II, v.15: argue cum omni imperio. Quantum ad credenda dicit et
doce”).
61
In Ps. 18, n. 5: “The commandment is a lamp, and the law is light” (“Mandatum
lucerna, et lex lux”).

226

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

From this text, then, we can see that Gauthier is to an extent
justified in seeing praeceptum as a sort of imperium. That is, at
least within the context of the divine law, one could speak of
praeceptum vel imperium, since a divine precept (praeceptum) is
also a command (imperium). A divine precept is indeed a rational
movement of an inferior, with the additional note of a cognitive
revelation of a debitum to someone who is rational and capable
of freely obeying. A divine precept is indeed a “praeceptum or
imperium that commands the choice.”
III. GAUTHIER’S TWOFOLD IMPERIUM IN THE INTRAPERSONAL
CONTEXT
If we combine our two sets of texts, we can easily see that at
least in the case of interpersonal commands (e.g., divine precepts)
Gauthier’s thesis is correct. For example, in a divine precept there
is not only on God’s part a “praeceptum or imperium that
commands the choice,” but on the part of human beings who
obey him there is also an internal “imperium which commands
the execution.” That there are two imperia involved when one
person commands another should not be controversial, since St.
Thomas states this explicitly in the Prima pars: “Sometimes it is
the will of another, when someone commands [imperat] another;
sometimes it is the will of the one who commands [imperans],
when he commands himself to do something.”62 Moreover, that
the first imperium, issued by God, is also a praeceptum should
not be controversial, as St. Thomas clearly states this in his
Commentary on Psalm 18.
It would be more controversial if we were to “reinsert,” this
setup into the context of individual psychology, which is what
Gauthier had in mind when he made his claim. It is not so evident
that within an individual human being there are two imperia, the
first of which is also a praeceptum that precedes electio, and the
second of which follows electio. This would be problematic, since
St. Thomas teaches that imperium follows electio. Additionally,
this claim of a twofold imperium in the individual seems to bring
62

STh I-II, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

227

an undesirable complexity into the discussion of human acts, a
complexity that is apparently absent from St. Thomas’s own
presentation of it in the Prima pars.
However, we wish to insist that this reinsertion of the twofold
imperium into the intrapersonal context would fit the texts of St.
Thomas, at least implicitly. What saves Gauthier’s reading within
the context of the divine law is the notion of alterity or otherness.
Since there are two persons involved, one can issue an imperium
that is prior to the other person’s electio, and therefore there is
no case of an imperium preceding electio within the same subject.
But just as alterity saved Gauthier’s claim in the interpersonal
context, it can also save his claim in the intrapersonal context,
given that even in the latter there is, in some sense, an alterity or
otherness among the powers of the soul, enough to warrant the
language of one power commanding another. This alterity
allowed St. Thomas to make a seamless move between interpersonal and intrapersonal commands in the key text that we
presented from the Prima secundae. The basic assumption is that
alterity is required for any command to be issued: a command is
issued by A and received by B, whether A and B are distinct
powers or distinct persons. What matters is not whether they are
persons or powers, but that they are distinct, that there is a
superior that commands and an inferior that obeys.
As mentioned in the introduction, St. Thomas explicitly
teaches that prudence has three distinct acts, the third and most
important of which is praecipere.63 Is this intrapersonal praeceptum fundamentally different from an interpersonal praeceptum?
There seem to be undeniable parallels between the praeceptum of
prudence and interpersonal precepts, especially divine precepts.
Clearly, in an interpersonal praeceptum the superior presents to
the inferior an action that is to be done. And in the case of the
praeceptum of prudence, the practical intellect presents to the
will an action to be done. As we saw in our discussion on the
Commentary on Psalm 18, a praeceptum is fundamentally an
63

STh II-II, q. 51, a. 2, ad 2; I-II, q. 57, a. 6; q. 58, a. 4; q. 61, a. 3; q. 65, a. 1.

228

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

imperium, with the added note of debitum. Therefore, like all
praecepta, the praeceptum of prudence must be fundamentally an
imperium as well, since it is a superior power commanding an
inferior power to do something, with the added note of debitum.
A sign that St. Thomas thinks of the praeceptum of prudence as
a sort of imperium is the fact that in question 61 of the Prima
secundae he alludes to the three acts of prudence in terms of
consilium, judicium, and imperium (rather than praeceptum):
“the good that consists in the act of reason is found primarily in
the command of reason itself [in ipso rationis imperio], and not
in counsel or judgment, as stated above.”64 In the margin, the
Leonine editor includes a cross reference to a text from a few
questions earlier, where St. Thomas offers a more detailed presentation of those same three acts. One notable difference in this
earlier text is that instead of calling the third of these acts
imperium, he calls it praecipere:
We find three acts of reason concerning human things that can be done [agibilia
humana]: of which the first is to counsel, the second is to judge, the third to
command [praecipere]. . . . Now it is evident that in things done by man, the
principal act is to command [praecipere], to which the others are ordered.65

Here we see very clearly St. Thomas’s willingness to use praeceptum and imperium interchangeably in reference to the third
and chief act of prudence. That is, he tacitly acknowledges a very
tight semantic proximity between imperium and praeceptum,
such that both can describe the third and principal act of
prudence.66
64

STh I-II, q. 61, a. 3.
STh I-II, q. 57, a. 6.
66
Saint Thomas draws a clear analogy between the interpersonal praeceptum of a
person in a position of authority and the intrapersonal praeceptum of the virtue of
prudence; see STh I-II, q. 19, a. 5, obj. 2: “Further, according to Augustine, the command
of a lower authority does not bind if it be contrary to the command of a higher authority:
for instance, if a provincial governor command something that is forbidden by the
emperor. But erring reason sometimes proposes what is against the command of a higher
power, namely, God Whose power is supreme. Therefore the decision of an erring reason
does not bind. Consequently the will is not evil if it be at variance with erring reason”
(“Praeterea, secundum Augustinum, inferioris potestatis praeceptum non obligat, si
contrarietur praecepto potestatis superioris, sicut si proconsul iubeat aliquid quod
65

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

229

Gauthier, then, is not mistaken in saying that prudence, which
resides in the intellect, issues an imperium to another power, that
is, the will, to choose (eligere) a given course of action. There is
a “praeceptum or imperium that commands the choice,” to use
Gauthier’s words. This praeceptum sive imperium is distinct from
the other command which in question 17 of the Prima secundae
St. Thomas consistently calls imperium (and never praeceptum)67
and which begins the order of execution. One could reasonably
call the latter the “imperium that commands the execution,” to
differentiate it from the “imperium or praeceptum” of prudence.
Both are imperia, but analogously so.68 Gauthier’s reading,
imperator prohibet. Sed ratio errans quandoque proponit aliquid quod est contra
praeceptum superioris, scilicet Dei, cuius est summa potestas. Ergo dictamen rationis
errantis non obligat. Non est ergo voluntas mala, si discordet a ratione errante”); ibid., ad
2: “The saying of Augustine holds good when it is known that the inferior authority
prescribes something contrary to the command of the higher authority. But if a man were
to believe the command of the proconsul to be the command of the emperor, in scorning
the command of the proconsul he would scorn the command of the emperor. In like
manner if a man were to know that human reason was dictating something contrary to
God's commandment, he would not be bound to abide by reason: but then reason would
not be entirely erroneous. But when erring reason proposes something as being
commanded by God, then to scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of
God” (“Ad secundum dicendum quod verbum Augustini habet locum, quando
cognoscitur quod inferior potestas praecipit aliquid contra praeceptum superioris
potestatis. Sed si aliquis crederet quod praeceptum proconsulis esset praeceptum
imperatoris, contemnendo praeceptum proconsulis, contemneret praeceptum
imperatoris. Et similiter si aliquis homo cognosceret quod ratio humana dictaret aliquid
contra praeceptum Dei, non teneretur rationem sequi, sed tunc ratio non totaliter esset
errans. Sed quando ratio errans proponit aliquid ut praeceptum Dei, tunc idem est
contemnere dictamen rationis, et Dei praeceptum”).
67
In one text, he comes close to doing so: he refers to the commanding subject as
praecipiens, and to the command itself as imperium, thereby almost treating the two terms
as synonymous. See STh I-II, q. 12, a. 1: “everyone who is in authority, by his command
moves others to that which he intends” (“omnem praecipientem, movere suo imperio
alios ad id quod ipse intendit”).
68
To what extent can the imperium of an authority or the praeceptum of prudence
oblige or bind the will to act? A clue can be found in an article where St. Thomas asks
whether the elicted act of the will is itself commanded: STh I-II, q. 17, a. 5, obj. 1 and ad
1. There he suggests that the will obeys an imperium according to the degree of perfection
of the imperium, i.e., to the extent that the imperium is endowed with volitional force.

230

TERESA ENRÍQUEZ and FRANCISCO ROMERO

therefore, is fully justified, even in the intrapersonal or
psychological context: in the order of intention, prudence
commands (praecipit) the will to choose (eligere), and after this
electio there is another imperium in the order of execution, the
imperium properly so-called.
SUMMARY
We have reconsidered Gauthier’s thesis on the relationship
between imperium and praeceptum in light of a couple of hitherto
overlooked texts of St. Thomas. In the Prima secundae, still
within the context of individual moral psychology, St. Thomas
brings up the case of a person who commands (imperat) another.
In this case, there are two imperia: an interpersonal imperium
issued by a superior, commanding the inferior to choose to
execute the action, and an interior or intrapersonal imperium
within the inferior, which commands the execution of the act.
Thus, Gauthier’s distinction between the “imperium that
commands the choice” and the “imperium that commands the
execution” fits at least this one case of interpersonal commands
which St. Thomas presents to us. The first, interpersonal
imperium is prior to the inferior’s electio, whereas the second,
internal imperium on the part of the inferior is posterior to her
own electio.
We also saw in the Commentary on Psalm 18 a discussion that
ties together imperium and praeceptum, again within the context
of interpersonal commands. There St. Thomas tells us very
clearly that a praeceptum is fundamentally an imperium, but an
imperium that is issued by a superior and that implies an
obligation to act. Therefore, the term praeceptum adds to that of
imperium the note of a moral obligation, and thus a praeceptum
has a cognitive, revelatory role with regard to its recipient.
Praeceptum illuminates the subordinate by revealing to it the will
of the superior, as something it must do (debitum). From this
text, it is evident that Gauthier is also justified in seeing the
superior’s command as being both an imperium and a
praeceptum. Ultimately, alterity “saves” Gauthier’s reading
within the context of the divine law.

INTERPERSONAL COMMANDS

231

We entered controversial ground by further giving credence
to Gauthier’s thesis outside of the context of interpersonal
commands. We argued that (1) St. Thomas recognizes alterity
even among the soul’s powers, and it is this alterity that makes it
possible for one power to command another, such that
interpersonal and intrapersonal commands are governed by the
same principles; and that (2) every praeceptum is fundamentally
an imperium of a superior, even if the former term adds to the
latter the note of debitum. Therefore, in the order of intention,
the praeceptum of prudence is the intellect’s imperium to the will
to choose (eligere). After this electio another imperium takes place
in the order of execution, the imperium properly so-called.
Although Gauthier never offers this specific argument for his
thesis, in light of the texts we have presented his thesis could be
saved by the concept of alterity, in both interpersonal and
intrapersonal contexts.
Deman observed that St. Thomas uses multiple terms for the
same reality. Far from being a successful objection against
Gauthier, this observation explains why it makes sense that we
find in St. Thomas two different terms for closely related, yet distinct psychological acts: the praeceptum of prudence (imperium
of choice) and the imperium of execution. In his vast treasury of
sources, St. Thomas finds sufficiently nuanced terms for
describing these two distinct acts, and thus avoids the potential
confusion that would arise if he simply called them both
imperium.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 233-61

“MY NAME IS LEGION”: THE BIBLICAL EPISODE OF
GERASENE IN THE LIGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS’S
THEORY OF ANGELIC LOCATION
JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO
University of los Andes, Chile
Santiago, Chile

O

N THE BASIS OF various well-known scriptural
passages and philosophical and theological arguments, a
tradition that includes such figures as Tertullian, St.
Ambrose of Milan, St. Gregory the Great, and St. John
Damascene argues that the angel possesses some kind of
corporeality.1 Although St. Augustine seems to grant a degree of
credibility to these arguments, he avoids a conclusive judgment.2

This article was financed with the grant FONDECYT Research Project Nº
11180640, CONICYT, Chile. I gratefully acknowledge the feedback and help received
from Patricio Domínguez, Nicolás González, Paul Davis, Fr. Dominic Langevin, O.P., and
the anonymous reviewers for The Thomist.
1
See Tertullian, De carne Christi 6.9, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (New York:
Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), 527a; Clement of Alexandria, Exerpta ex
Theodoto 10.1-2; 14.1-2, in Sources chrétiennes, vol. 23 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf,
1948), 76-79; 86-87; Ambrose of Milan, De Abraham libri duo 2.8.58, in Patrologiae
cursus completus, series latina (hereafter PL), vol. 14, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Garnier frates
editores, 1882), 506; Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 2.3, in Sources chrétiennes, vol.
32 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1975), 256-60; John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 2.3,
in Sources chrétiennes, vol. 535 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010), 225-34. On the
factors that disposed the Fathers to attribute to angels a certain corporality, see SergeThomas Bonino, Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 111-15.
2
See Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei, 8.15-16, in Corpus christianorum, series
latina (hereafter CCSL), vol. 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 232-34; 21.10, in CCSL, vol.
48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 775-76; Sermones 362.17, in PL, vol. 39, ed. J. P. Migne
(Paris: Garnier frates editores, 1863), 1622; De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus,
q. 47, in PL, vol. 40, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris: Migne editorem, 1841), 31. For historical

233

234

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

Pseudo-Dionysius, on the other hand, opts decidedly for the
thesis of a complete angelic spirituality, but his influence on this
specific question is felt only several centuries later.3
This hesitant attitude regarding the angelic ontological
structure is perpetuated over the course of the medieval period.
Although the thesis of an angelic corporeity continues to have
considerable weight until the thirteenth century, authors of such
standing as Peter Lombard, St. Bernard, and St. Albert the Great
follow the example of the bishop of Hippo, opting to postpone a
final ruling on the issue.4 On the other hand, from the twelfth
century on, thinkers such as William of Conches, Abelard, and
Hugh of St. Victor openly defend angelic incorporeity, in line
with that supported by Pseudo-Dionysius and anticipating, to
some extent, the position Saint Thomas Aquinas will develop in
the next century.5 In parallel, a fourth hypothesis begins to gain
strength in this period, especially among the friars minor, in
which the imprint of the Jewish-Arab thinker Solomon Ibn
Gabirol is powerfully felt.6 According to this interpretation, the
idea of incorporeity does not necessarily imply a complete
background, see Palémon Glorieux, Autour de la spiritualité des anges: Dossier scripturaire
et patristique (Tournai: Desclée, 1959).
3
See Pseudo-Dionysius, Les noms divinis 4.1, in Patristische Texte und Studien, vol.
36, Corpus Dionysiacum II, ed. G. Heil and A. M. Ritter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991), 20;
La hiérarchie céleste 10.2; 15.1, in Sources chrétiennes, vol. 58 (Paris: Les Éditions du
Cerf, 1958), 139-41; 163-66. For St. Thomas’s quote of the first text, see STh I, q. 50,
a. 2.
4
See, for instance Peter Lombard, II Sent., d. 8, cc. 1, 2, in PL, vol. 192, ed. J. P.
Migne (Paris: Migne editorem, 1855), 667-68; Bernard, On the Song of Songs, Sermon
5.1-2, in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 5, ed. G. B. Winkler (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1994),
90-93; Albert the Great, II Sent., d. 8, a. 1, in B. Alberti Magni opera omnia, vol. 27, Super
II Sententiarum, ed. S. C. Borgnet (Paris: Bibliopolam editorem, 1894), 166-69.
5
See John Marenbon, “Abelard on Angels,” in Angels in Medieval Philosophical
Inquiry: Their Function and Significance, ed. Isabel Iribarren and Martin Lenz
(Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), 64.
6
See Avicebron, Fons vitae, III-IV, in The Font of Life, trans. J. A. Laumakis
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2014), 106-214. For discussion, see José Ignacio
Saranyana, “Sobre la inmaterialidad de las sustancias espirituales (Santo Tomas versus
Avicebron),” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 70 (1978): 63-97; Tomasz Stepien,
“Aquinas against Spiritual Matter,” Epekeina 6, no. 2 (2016): 1-13; María P. Rodriguez,
“Relación transcendental ‘materia-forma’ en el ‘Fons Vitae’ de Ibn Gabirol,” Mediaevalia:
Textos e estudos 5 (2015): 247-58.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

235

immateriality, since the notion of matter is, in fact, broader and
more generic than that of body. One of the most prominent
exponents of this position, St. Bonaventure, will argue that the
angel has no body but instead a type of matter he describes as
subtle.7
As is well known, St. Thomas8 is unequivocal and consistent
in defending the thesis of the complete immateriality of the angel.
The separated substance, he claims, is a substantial form that
exists by itself and without the need to actualize a material coprinciple. From this absolute immateriality, he derives what for
the later tradition will become the classic attributes of the angel,
including its incorporeity and immortality9 and the fact that each
7
See Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 3, a. 1, q. 1; d. 8, a. 1, q. 1; in S. Bonaventurae opera
omnia, vol. 2, In secundum librum Sententiarum, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura (Ad
Claras Aquas: Quaracchi, 1885), 89-94, 210-12. For discussion, see José T. Alvarado,
“Two Alternatives of Angelic Ontology,” Cuestiones teológicas 41, no. 95 (2014): 75-96.
8
References to St. Thomas’s works are from the following editions: Sancti Thomae de
Aquino opera omnia (Leonine, 1882-): vol. 2, In octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis
expositio; vols. 4-12, Summa theologiae; vols. 13-15, Summa contra gentiles; vol. 22/13, Quaestiones diputatae De veritate; vol. 23, Questiones disputatae De malo; vol. 24/1,
Quaestio disputatae De anima; vol. 24/2, Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis;
vol. 25/1-2, Quaestiones de quolibet; vol. 40, De substantiis separatis; vol. 42,
Compendium theologiae; vol. 43, De ente et essentia; vol. 43, De principiis naturae; vol.
50, Super libros Boethii, De Trinitate et De hebdomadibus; Scriptum super libros
sententiarum, 4 vols., ed. P. Mandonnet and M. Moss (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929-47);
Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 2, Quaestiones disputatae De potentia, ed. P. Pession (Turin
and Rome: Marietti, 1965); In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, ed.
M. R. Cathala and R. M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1964); Catena aurea,
Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers, 6 vols.,
(Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1874); Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas:
vol. 33, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 1-12, ed. The Aquinas Institute
(Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013); vol. 39,
Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Galatians and the Ephesians, ed. J.
Mortensen and E. Alarcón (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred
Doctrine, 2012). Translations of Aquinas are based upon those published by the Aquinas
Institute.
9
See De Ente, c. 1; De Princ. Natur., c. 1; II Sent., d. 19, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; Comp. Theol.
I, c. 74; De Verit., q. 5, a. 2, ad 6; De Pot., q. 5, a. 3; I Sent., d. 7, q. 1, a. 1; ScG II, cc. 49,
55, 91; STh I, q. 18, a. 2; q. 50, aa. 1, 5; q. 51, a. 1. For a historical overview of the

236

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

individual angel exhausts its own species.10 But the simplicity of
the separated substance is not absolute but relative, he adds in
response to Ibn Gabirol, to the extent that the angelic essence
does not identify with its esse, as is the case with God.11
This, of course, raises the question of the angel’s relationship
with time and place.12 Regarding the former, St. Thomas takes up
the idea—which enjoyed a certain consensus among his
contemporaries—of aevum as a different and in some sense
intermediate kind of duration between eternity and time. This
aeviternity corresponds to a sort of existence that he describes as
a “simultaneous totality” in which, strictly speaking, there is no
before and after, but of which, however, prior and later can be
predicated.13 Although discussions on this subject were not
lacking, the truth is that it was the second point—the locus

discussions that took place at the time of St. Thomas in relation to this issue, see Franklin
T. Harkins, “The Embodiment of Angels: A Debate in Mid-Thirteenth-Century
Theology,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 78 (2011): 25-58.
10
See De Ente, cc. 4, 5; De Spir. Creat., a. 1; De Subst. Separat., c. 5; I Sent., d. 8,
q. 5, a. 2; II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1; Quodl. III, q. 8; Quodl. IX, q. 4, a. 1; ScG II, cc. 50,
51, 95; STh I, q. 50, aa. 2, 4. For some historical insights on this issue, see Mark Jordan,
“The Order of Lights: Aquinas on Immateriality as Hierarchy,” Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 52 (1958): 112-20; Rega Wood, “Angelic
Individuation: According to Richard Rufus, St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas,” in
Individuum und Individualität im Mittelalter, ed. Jan A. Aertsen and Andreas Speer (New
York: Walter de Gruyter, 1996), 209-29.
11
See De Spir. Creat., a. 1; II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1; Quodl. II, q. 2, a. 1; ScG II, cc.
52-54; STh I, q. 50, a. 2, ad 3; De Ente, c. 5; De Pot., q. 6, a. 3, ad 9; q. 7, a. 2; In De
hebdo., lect. 2; I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 1; d. 24, q. 1, a. 1; ScG I, c. 22; STh I, q. 3, a. 4. For
a commentary, see Gallus Manser, La esencia del tomismo (Madrid: CSIC, 1947).
12
As Suárez-Nani points out, the notion of space, as we think of it today, was not
familiar to the medieval mind. “Place,” on the other hand, was omnipresent in theoretical
discussions. See Tiziana Suárez-Nani, “Angels, Space and Place: The Location of Separate
Substances According to John Duns Scotus,” in Iribarren and Lenz, eds., Angels in
Medieval Philosophical Inquiry, 89. For the Aristotelian definition of place, see below,
text at note 18.
13
“aevum est totum simul, non tamen est aeternitas, quia compatitur secum prius et
posterius” (STh I, q. 10, a. 5, ad 2 [Leonine ed., 4:101]). See also De Pot., q. 3, a. 14, ad
s.c. 9; I Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 2; d. 19, q. 2, a. 1; STh I, q. 53, aa. 1-3. Note that the
observations introduced by St. Thomas in relation to the local movement of the angels
have given rise to certain discussions. See, for instance J. MacIntosh, “St. Thomas on
Angelic Time and Motion,” The Thomist 59 (1995): 547-75.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

237

angelii—that caused the fiercest disputes in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. Indeed, St. Thomas’s position concerning
the relationship of the angel with place was subject to harsh
criticism in the decades following the condemnations of 1277.14
The focus of this article is the difficulty involved in reconciling
St. Thomas’s conclusion regarding the impossibility of two or
more angels occupying the same place and the well-known
passage of Mark 5:9, where a demoniac, interrogated by Jesus of
Nazareth, replies, “My name is Legion, because we are many.”
Although the framework of the question is undoubtedly theological, its treatment will allow us to recapitulate and explain
some aspects of the natural and metaphysical philosophical
theory of St. Thomas.
I. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE ANGEL WITH PLACE IN THE
DOCTRINE OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
In principle, it could be assumed that for those authors
inscribed in the tradition that defended the thesis of the angel’s
corporality, the problem of the angelic locus did not allow great
nuances or variants: the angel should be in a place, like any other
body. But it all depends on what kind of corporality one is willing
to assign to the angel. Thus, for example, St. John Damascene
argues that, compared to God, angels do have bodies, although
of a different sort from those of the sublunary world, and,
therefore, their relationship with place is also of a different
nature: the angel is there where he acts.15 The idea was revisited
some centuries later by Abelard, although selectively and within
the framework of his own angelological scheme. Maintaining the
14
For the general impact of Tempier’s condemnations on the medieval speculation on
angels, see Richard Cross, “The Condemnations of 1277 and Henry of Ghent on Angelic
location,” and Henrik Wels, “Late Mediaeval Debates on the Location of Angels after the
Condemnations of 1277,” in Iribarren and Lenz, eds., Angels in Medieval Philosophical
Inquiry, 73-88, 113-27.
15
John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 1.13, in Sources chrétiennes, vol. 535 (Paris:
Les Éditions du Cerf, 2010), 209-17.

238

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

thesis, still scarcely present among his contemporaries, of a
complete angelic immateriality, Abelard affirms in his Sententie
Parisienses that the angel cannot be in a place in the same way as
a body, but wherever it exerts its action.16
Unlike other aspects of his thinking, Abelard’s position in relation to angelic location went virtually unnoticed, which makes it
highly unlikely that he had a direct influence on the speculations
of the next century.17 However, the general coincidence of
Abelard’s thesis with that which St. Thomas would develop later
is striking. Following the Aristotelian guidelines set forth in book
4 of Physics, St. Thomas conceives of place as “the innermost
motionless boundary of what contains.”18 Implicit in this characterization is the idea that the presence of a body in a certain
place demands a peculiar type of contact. To explain this, St.
Thomas resorts to the concept, also Aristotelian, of the dimensive
quantity, which corresponds to the accident that flows from the
potency of the matter of sensible substances.19 A body, then, is in
a place in a circumscribed fashion (circumscriptive) because its
dimensional quantity is in contact with that of another body that
contains it, and by which it is measured (commensuratur).20 As is
evident, this type of location cannot correspond to a separate and
immaterial substance, which is how St. Thomas understands the
entitative structure of the angel.21 In his view, one can say that
the angel is in a place but it must be admitted that, in speaking
16
“Et secundum illas actiones dicuntur angeli circumscriptibiles. Quid est dicere
circumscriptibiles? Id est, ita exercent actiones in uno loco quod non in alio” (quoted in
Marenbon, “Abelard on Angels,” 70).
17
Ibid., 70-71.
18
Aristotle, Physica 4.4.212a20-21. For the commentary of St. Thomas, see IV Phys.,
lect. 6.
19
V Metaphys., lect. 15; STh I, q. 14, a. 12, ad 1. For a commentary on this point, see
Juan E. Bolzán, La continuidad de la materia: Ensayo de interpretación cósmica (Buenos
Aires: Editorial universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1973), 5.
20
“Nam corpus est in loco circumscriptive, quia commensuratur loco” (STh I, q. 52,
a. 2 [Leonine ed., 5:25]). See also I Sent., d. 37, q. 3, a. 3, s.c. 1; IV Sent., d. 10, q. 1,
a. 3, qcla. 1, arg. 1; STh III, q. 52, a. 3, ad 3.
21
“Est enim corpus in loco per contactum loci; contactus autem corporis est per
quantitatem dimensivam, quae in angelo non invenitur, cum sit incorporeus” (Quodl. I,
q. 3, a. 1 [Leonine ed., 25/2:181]).

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

239

thus, one is making an equivocal and abusive use of that
expression.22 Lacking matter and quantity, the angel is not in a
place in a circumscribed fashion, nor is he measured by the place.
On the contrary, it is rather the angel who contains the place
where he is, according to a modality that St. Thomas, following
the nomenclature in use in his time, qualifies as definitive
(definitive). With this, he refers to the fact that the angel, unlike
God, is in one place in such a manner that he is not in another.23
It is worth asking, however, what exactly is meant when we
say that the angel is in one place and not in another. Appealing
also to the authority of the Damascene, St. Thomas says that,
although the angel lacks dimensive quantity, he can nevertheless
be in a place by virtual contact; that is, he is there where he
applies his power or virtus.24 It is from this intimate connection
between location and angelic causality that St. Thomas explicitly
concludes that it is impossible for an angel to be in more than one
place simultaneously and, furthermore, that there cannot be two
or more angels in the same place. Regarding the former, he
22
“Respondeo dicendum quod Angelo convenit esse in loco, aequivoce tamen dicitur
angelus esse in loco, et corpus” (STh I, q. 52, a. 1 [Leonine ed., 5:20]). See also De Subst.
Separat., c. 19.
23
“Angelus autem non circumscriptive, cum non commensuretur loco, sed definitive:
quia ita est in uno loco, quod non in alio. Deus autem neque circumscriptive neque
definitive: quia est ubique” (STh I, q. 52, a. 2 [Leonine ed., 5:25]). See also I Sent., d. 37,
q. 3, a. 1, ad 5; d. 37, q. 3, a. 2, s.c. 2; d. 37, q. 3, a. 3, s.c. 1; IV Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 3,
qcla. 2. Note that the terms “circumscriptive” and “definitive” were already in use by the
time of St. Thomas. They can be traced to the work Summa naturalium of 1245 (Albertus
de Orlamunde, Summa naturalium, I, c. 11). This work was erroneously attributed to St.
Albertus Magnus. However, Wels emphasizes that St. Albert draws an explanatory scheme
highly compatible with these distinctions in his work De causis et processu universitatis a
prima causa, II, lect. 4, c. 11. See Wels, “Late Mediaeval Debates on the Location of
Angels after the Condemnations of 1277,” 122-23.
24
See Quodl. I, q. 3, a. 1; De Pot., q. 3, a. 19, ad 2; De Subst. Separat., c. 18; I Sent.,
d. 37, q. 3, a. 1; II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 3; STh I, q. 52, a. 1. In some of these texts, St.
Thomas introduces the notion of virtual quantity (quantitas virtualis) to describe this sort
of virtual contact that the angel establishes with the place where he applies his power.
Here we prefer to avoid that terminology, which seems somewhat metaphorical and
obscure.

240

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

explains that God, being the universal cause of all things, is not
present here or there, but everywhere; the angel’s power,
however, is finite and therefore does not extend to all things, but
to one determined thing. The oneness referred to here is not that
of the indivisible, like that of the geometric point, a hypothesis
that, in St. Thomas’s view, is nothing but an error due to an
excessive attachment to the imagination; on the contrary, that in
which the angel exercises his power can be as extensive as a city
(i.e., Sodom), as long as it behaves as one thing with respect to
the angelic action directly applied on it.25
More important for the purposes of this article, however, is
the second observation made by St. Thomas. As is known, he
consistently holds the thesis that the same effect can be generated
by several causes simultaneously, if those causes are not
completely identical. Thus, nothing prevents first and second
causes from acting on the same effect, and the same goes for main
and instrumental causes and the various species of causes that St.
Thomas recognizes, namely, formal, material, efficient, and
final.26 On the other hand, it is perfectly feasible that several
causes of the same nature, which by themselves and in isolation
are insufficient to produce a certain effect, can act together to
achieve it. The example offered by St. Thomas himself is that of
several people who cooperate to move a ship.27 Now, the
hypothesis of two (or more) separate substances acting in the
same place seems not to fall into either scenario. Regarding the
25

“Et ideo dicendum est, quod angelus est in uno loco tantum; sed ille locus potest
esse divisibilis vel indivisibilis, aut magnus vel parvus, secundum quod operatio ejus
immediate ad magnum vel parvum terminatur. Unde si immediate operetur circa totam
domum, tota domus respondet sibi sicut unus locus, ita quod in qualibet parte erit; sicut
etiam dicimus quod anima est in qualibet parte corporis. Et dico immediate, quia si
Angelus moveret lapidem ex cujus motu multa alia moverentur, non oporteret quod esset
nisi ubi est primum motum; sicut patet etiam in motore corporali, quem necesse est
tangere solum id quod movetur ab eo inmmediate” (I Sent., d. 37, q. 3, a. 2 [Mandonnet,
ed., 874]). See also IV Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 2; Q. D. De anima, a. 10, ad 18; STh I,
q. 52, a. 2; q. 8, a. 2, ad 2; q. 112, a. 1. For the example of Sodom, taken from Gen
19:25, see STh I, q. 52, a. 2, obj. 3.
26
See Comp. Theol., c. 135; De Pot., q. 3, a. 7; De Verit., q. 27, a. 4, ad 3; De Princ.
Natur., c. 4; ScG II, c. 89; ScG III, cc. 67, 70; STh I, q. 105, a. 5.
27
See below, n. 47.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

241

second, St. Thomas is quite clear: an angel perfectly contains the
place where he acts, and therefore, has by nature all the causal
efficiency necessary to move bodies, without having to cooperate
with other agents to produce such an effect. In principle, this
position also seems to entail a rejection of the first situation
described—that is, of causes that intervene in the same effect,
although not in exactly the same way—because if two angels
belong to the same ontological plane, that holds true also for their
operations. And indeed, St. Thomas affirms that two angels
cannot be at once in the same place, since it is impossible for two
complete (completae) and immediate (immediatae) causes to
coexist for the same thing or effect.28 This second observation,
however, should not be ignored, because, as we shall see below,
it opens space for some relevant nuances and interpretations.
In the thirteenth century, in contrast to the century before, the
angelological discussion received considerable attention, and
therefore it is not surprising that the various points outlined by
St. Thomas in relation to angelic location were the subject of
lively debate.29 Saint Bonaventure, argues that, in principle, it is
possible for two or more angels to be in the same place, but this
does not happen because it would undermine the order of the
world set by God.30 In the next century, another Franciscan, John
Duns Scotus, leaves this possibility even more open, although the
ambiguity of his suggestion is undeniable.31 Be that as it may, the
28

“Respondeo dicendum quod duo Angeli non sunt simul in eodem loco. Et ratio
huius est, quia impossibile est quod duae causae completae sint immediatae unius et
eiusdem rei” (STh I, q. 52, a. 3 [Leonine ed., 5:28]). See also De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 11;
I Sent., d. 37, q. 3, aa. 2, 3; IV Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 2; Quodl. I, q. 3, a.1, ad 2;
STh I, q. 112, a. 1.
29
See above, n. 14.
30
Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a. 2, qq. 3 and 4 (S. Bonaventurae opera omnia,
vol. 2, In secundum librum, Sententiarum, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura [Ad aquas
claras: Quaracchi, 1885], 80-86).
31
John Duns Scotus, Ord. II, d. 2, p. 2, q. 4 (Opera omnia, vol. 6, ed. C. Balic [Rome:
Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1963], 276-77); Quodl. XI, q. 4 (in John Duns Scotus: God
and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, ed. F. Alluntis and A. B. Wolter [Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1975], 268); Lect. II, d. 2, p. 2, q. 4 (Opera omnia, vol. 18,

242

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

fact is that by 1325, a couple of years after St. Thomas’s
canonization, the articles of the condemnations of 1277 that
directly affected the Thomistic doctrine about the angel’s
relationship with place had already been revoked. While this did
not prevent these sentences from continuing to exert a restrictive
effect for some time, Wels rightly observes that, by the beginning
of the sixteenth century, St. Thomas’s thesis was positioned as
the most reasonable solution to this vexing question.32 But of
course, there were some points that deserved more attention. In
the next section, I address one of them.
II. MY NAME IS LEGION: THE DEMONIAC OF GERASA/GADARA
Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Mark narrates the famous episode
in which Jesus calms the storm. The events that occur when the
boat touches ground are reported in the passage of chapter 5 to
which I have referred above. Briefly, it is mentioned there that,
when Jesus arrives in the region of the Gerasenes, a man
possessed by an unclean spirit, who lives among the tombs, comes
to meet him. This man cannot be restrained by anyone, “he was
always day and night in the monuments and in the mountains,
crying and cutting himself with stones.” When the demoniac sees
the Lord, he adores him, and, with a loud voice, calls Jesus “Son
of the most high God,” begging not to torment him. Jesus then
asks the man his name, to which he gives his famous response,
ed. L. Modric [Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1982], 177). For some commentaries,
see Suárez-Nani, “Angels, Space and Place,” 108; David Keck, Angels and Angelology in
the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 111.
32
Wels, “Late Mediaeval Debates on the Location of Angels after the Condemnations
of 1277,” 126-27. In saying this, obviously, Wels does not want to suggest that St.
Thomas’s solution enjoyed universal acceptance. As an example, we can mention the
position of the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, who, based on his notion of an ubi intrinsecum
(understood as a real mode of being, intrinsic to both physical and spiritual beings),
explicitly defends the possibility that two angels are simultaneously in one place. See De
angelis IV, 9. For an analysis of the philosophical assumptions that underlie this thesis,
see Olivier Ribordy, “Francisco Suárez and Francesco Patrizi: Metaphysical Investigations
on Place and Space,” in Space, Imagination and the Cosmos from Antiquity to the Early
Modern Period, ed. C. Palmerino, D. Bellis and F. Bakker (Cham, Switzerland: Springer,
2018), 133-56.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

243

“Legion is my name, because we are many.” Next, Mark tells how
the Lord accedes to the request of the demons to take possession
of two thousand pigs that lie on a nearby hill, which end up
falling off a cliff and drowning in the sea.33 Luke’s narration is
similar, although it adds some further details.34 Matthew’s story,
meanwhile, introduces two important variations. The first relates
to the location of the events, no longer described as the region of
the Gerasenes, as in Mark and Luke, but of the Gadarenes, a
point that does not go unnoticed by the exegetes, as we shall see.
But there is a second discrepancy here, certainly more relevant to
the issue at hand: In the Gospel of Matthew, there is not one
demonized man, but two. The use of the plural in the
conversation they have with Jesus, therefore (“What have we to
do with thee, Jesus Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment
us before the time?”), can be explained without resorting to a
possession of each man by many demons, but rather to the fact
that there are two men possessed.35
These passages have been the subject of many and varied
exegeses, some of which are recorded by St. Thomas himself in
his Catena aurea.36 One of the aspects that has attracted attention
since the time of the first commentators is the geographical

33
Mark 5:1-13. For references to Scripture I have consulted Biblia sacra Vulgata, ed.
R. Weber and R. Gryson (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007); translations are
based upon the Revised Standard Version and the New Jerusalem Bible. For a
commentary on the narrative structure of this passage, see Michael W. Newheart, My
Name Is Legion: The Story and Soul of the Gerasene Demoniac (Collegeville, Minn.: The
Liturgical Press, 2004), 34-49.
34
Luke 8:26-39. Among these details, there is the mention that the region in question
was located opposite Galilee; it is also indicated from the beginning that the man was
naked, a situation that changes once the demons are expelled. In Mark, clothing is
mentioned only towards the end of the passage.
35
Matt 8:28-32. Note, on the other hand, that in the exorcism in Capernaum the
demoniac speaks of “us,” though he has been possessed by only one unclean spirit (Mark
1:24).
36
Catena in Marci evangelium, c. 5, lect. 1; Catena in Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6;
Catena in Matthaei evangelium, c. 8, lect. 8.

244

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

location where the events actually happened.37 Both accounts
coincide in the fact that the land where Jesus steps after having
silenced the wind and sea corresponds to a Gentile territory; this,
in addition to the reaction of its inhabitants after the liberation
of the demoniac(s), undoubtedly attracts the attention of the
exegetes, several of whom see all this as symbolic of Christ’s
redemptive role in regard to Gentiles and Jews.38 For understandable reasons, another focus of attention has been the
possession and subsequent death of the pigs, in which some,
including St. Thomas, see a sign of the perversity of fallen angels
and a teaching about the subordination of animal life to human
and spiritual life.39
The points indicated are part of a heritage well established for
posterity. However, it is undeniable that what has made this
passage famous is the fact that, in both Mark and Luke, the
demoniac has given himself the name “Legion.” This term
designated, in the military hierarchy of Rome, a unit of around
six thousand men. This, plus the expression that follows (“for we
are many”), is an explicit statement that the Gerasene/Gadarene
was actually possessed by a multitude of demons.40 A tradition
that goes back to the Fathers has therefore understood these
biblical passages as referring to a meeting that actually occurred
37

See Origen, John 6.21 (Commentary on the Gospel according to John: Books 1–10,
vol. 80 of The Fathers of the Church, ed. T. P. Halton (Washington D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1989), 226. See also the interpretations of John Chrysostom
and Titus Bostrensis quoted by St. Thomas in Catena in Marci evangelium., c. 5, lect. 1;
Catena in Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6.
38
See Super Matt., c. 8, lect. 4. See also the interpretations of Bede, Rabanus, St.
Hilary, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine cited by St. Thomas in Catena in Marci
evangelium, c. 5, lect. 1; Catena in Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6; Catena in Matthaei
evangelium, c. 8, lect. 8.
39
Super Matt., c. 8, lect. 4. See also the exegeses of Bede, John Chrysostom, and Cyril
mentioned by St. Thomas in Catena in Marci evangelium, c. 5, lect. 1; Catena in Lucae
evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6; Catena in Matthaei evangelium, c. 8, lect. 8.
40
I stress this because, as mentioned above (see n. 35), the mere fact that the demoniac
uses the plural to refer to himself does not necessarily mean that this is a case of multiple
possession. On the other hand, the significance of the pronominal switch in the response
of the demoniac must not be ignored: “Legion is my name, for we are many.” According
to Willett, “the demoniac himself fades into the background, and the demons themselves
charge into the foreground” (Willett, My Name Is Legion, 44-45).

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

245

between Jesus of Nazareth and a man (or two, as the case may
be) possessed by many demons. It is an unquestionable fact that
St. Thomas is inscribed in that tradition. He did not write a
commentary on the Gospel of Mark, or of Luke, where the
demoniac, in response to the Lord’s question, declares his name
to be Legion. But in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,
St. Thomas expressly wonders why two demoniacs are mentioned here and not just one, as in the other Synoptics. His
response follows the interpretation of St. Augustine and St. John
Chrysostom: If in some Synoptics only one possessed man is
mentioned, it is because although there were two, one was a more
serious and famous case.41 Saint Thomas’s conclusion—“One
should say that without doubt there were two, but one was more
famous”—clearly shows that his intention is to save the
historicity of the events narrated by Matthew but also the
fundamental veracity of the other Synoptics.42 If he remains so
faithful to the gospel narrative regarding the number of
demoniacs, it is reasonable to assume that the same must apply to
the multitude of demons involved, which is, after all, the most
striking feature of the passage. From which it follows that, for St.
Thomas, the encounter between Jesus and a man possessed by
many demons is not a mere symbolic story, but something that
really happened.43
41
Augustine of Hippo, De consensu evangelistarum libri quatuor 2.24.56
(PL 34:1104-5); John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew 28:2 (in
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 10, ed. P. Schaff [New York: Christian Literature
Publishing Co., 1886], 265). See also Catena in Marci evangelium, c. 5, lect. 1; Catena in
Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6; Catena in Matthaei evangelium, c. 8, lect. 8.
42
“Sed quaeritur quare alii evangelistae non faciunt mentionem nisi de uno; iste de
duobus. Dicendum quod sine dubio duo fuerunt; sed unus fuit magis famosus” (Super
Matt., c. 8, lect. 4 [Aquinas Institute ed., 269]).
43
The possibility of a purely symbolic interpretation (whether moral, psychological,
or sociological) of the episode is worth mentioning because it is certainly the most
frequent reading in our day. See, e.g, Diarmuid McGann, The Journeying Self: The Gospel
of Mark Through a Jungian Perspective (New York: Paulist, 1985), 71-80; A. J. R. Uleyn,
“The Possessed Man of Gerasa (Mart D. 1–20). A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of
Reader-Reactions,” in Current Issues in the Psychology of Religion: Proceedings of the

246

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

The above raises an obvious difficulty for the Thomistic thesis
of angelic location. According to St. Thomas, there can be no
more than one angel in the same place at once. But as we have
seen, there are passages in the Gospels, whose truthfulness St.
Thomas does not doubt, that narrate the possession of a man by
many demons.44 Moreover, St. Thomas is emphatic in maintaining that, after the fall, the demons do not lose their nature,
and are, therefore, still angels.45 All this leads us to conclude that
many angels can, after all, be present in what, at least prima facie,
seems to be only one place, namely, a man’s body. The relevance
of this apparent contradiction can be seen from two different
perspectives, not necessarily mutually exclusive. From a purely
historical-systematic point of view, it can be argued that the
difficulty indicated has an interest in itself to the extent that it
tests the consistency of an aspect of the Thomistic doctrine—
namely, its angelology—in which its author articulates and
outlines cosmological, anthropological, and metaphysical notions
that have become part of the Western philosophical tradition. But
for the Christian, the question acquires an additional significance,
not only because its author is the Doctor communis of the
Catholic Church, but because of the very issue at hand. Certainly,
the purpose of this work is not to wonder how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin, but to understand a terrible
Third Symposium on the Psychology of Religion in Europe, ed. Jacob van Belzen and Jan
van de Lans (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986), 90-96; René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 1986), 165-83; Paul W. Hollenbach, “Jesus, Demoniacs,
and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historical Study,” Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 49 (1981): 567-88. See also Willett, My Name Is Legion.
44
The same cannot necessarily be said of the gloss of St. Thomas to Matthew
12:43-45, where, according to the Evangelist, Jesus Christ compares the spiritual state of
the Pharisees with that of a man who, after being released from an impure spirit, ends up
being possessed by seven devils. Although St. Thomas does not deny that this may occur,
his comment makes it clear that what is discussed here is not a historical event, but a
parable; see Super Matt., c. 12, lect. 3; Catena in Matthaei evangelium, c. 12, lect. 14.
One might also note the passage of the Gospel of Mark that mentions the appearance of
Jesus after his resurrection to Mary Magdalene, “from whom he had cast out seven devils”
(Mark 16:9). The text does not, however, say whether these demons were simultaneously
or consecutively present in that woman.
45
See De Malo, q. 16, a. 6; In Ephes., c. 6, lect. 3; II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 4; ScG III,
c. 108; STh I, q. 109, a. 1.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

247

phenomenon whose reality is supported by the Scriptures and
also by the liturgical practice of exorcism in the sphere of
Christianity.46
III. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR THE PROPOSED DIFFICULTY
Before exploring and comparing the available alternatives to
solve the difficulty outlined above, it will be useful to recapitulate
succinctly the reason why St. Thomas rules out the possibility that
two or more angels may be simultaneously in the same place. In
his opinion, there cannot be two complete and immediate causes
for the same thing or effect. Note that the causes in question must
satisfy not just one but both requirements—completeness and
immediacy—to fall into the situation that St. Thomas designates
as impossible.
Assuming this Thomistic angelic framework, three hypotheses
could be proposed to explain the phenomenon of multiple
possession:
(1) There are two or more angels acting immediately in the body of the
demoniac, but none, by itself, is the complete cause of the effect, i.e., of
possession.
(2) The body of the demoniac, as an extended reality, is composed of many
places, in each of which acts—and therefore is present—a demon. Each of these

46

The Rituale Romanum of Exorcism of 1614 states that the priest must ask for the
name or names of evil spirits (see René Laurentin, El demonio, ¿símbolo o realidad?
[Bilbao: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998], 253; Francis Young, A History of Exorcism in
Catholic Christianity [Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016], 116-20). The testimonies
of exorcists in the tradition of the Catholic Church agree that the phenomenon of multiple
possession is not mythical, but real. See José A. Fortea, Summa daemoniaca (Zaragoza:
Editorial Dos Latidos, 2004), 155; Corrado Balducci, La possessione diabólica (Rome:
Edizioni Mediterranée, 1988); idem, El diablo, vivo y activo en nuestro mundo (Bogotá:
San Pablo, 1994), 273 (English trans., The Devil, Alive and Active in Our World [Staten
Island, N.Y.: Alba House, 1990]); Gabriele Amorth, An Exorcist Tells His Story (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 95-98; idem, Memoirs of an Exorcist: My Life Fighting
Satan (Newburyport: The Mondadori Group, 2014), 34-50; 223-25; Léon Cristiani,
Evidence of Satan in the Modern World (Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books, 1974), 68.

248

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

demons, then, is a complete and immediate cause of an effect (possession)
confined to a part of the body of the demoniac.
(3) Only one angel is the complete and immediate cause for the possession of
the demoniac’s body. Any angel or angels that intervene additionally must act
mediately in the body of the demoniac, i.e., through any influence they can
exert on that angel that completely and immediately causes possession.

As is evident, each of these possibilities entails its own
complexities, meriting, therefore, a separate and careful scrutiny,
whose general lines I offer below.
A) First Hypothesis: Many Angels Cooperate to Achieve the
Possession of the Body
This explanatory alternative involves a causal model quite
close to our daily experience, which gives it a certain plausibility,
at least at first glance. Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine many
situations in which our own causal power is insufficient to
produce some effect, forcing us to collaborate with other causal
agents to remedy our ineptitude. Saint Thomas seems to notice
the proximity and persuasiveness of this causal model and
therefore quickly discards it in the corpus of question 52, article
3 of the Prima pars, even at the expense of continuity and rhythm
in the text; reasoning about whether two or more angels may or
may not share the same place, he inserts—in a somewhat abrupt
and surprising way—an explicit rejection of the idea that the
situation may be equated with that of, for example, several men
who simultaneously push a ship:
Nor can it be objected that several individuals may row a boat, since no one of
them is a perfect mover, because no one man’s strength is sufficient for moving
the boat; while all together are as one mover, in so far as their united strengths
all combine in producing the one movement. Hence, since the angel is said to
be in one place by the fact that his power touches the place immediately by way
of a perfect container, as was said, there can be but one angel in one place.47
47
“Nec habet instantiam de pluribus trahentibus navem: quia nullus eorum est
perfectus motor, cum virtus uniuscuiusque sit insufficiens ad movendum; sed omnes simul
sunt in loco unius motoris, inquantum omnes virtutes eorum aggregantur ad unum motum
faciendum. Unde cum Angelus dicatur esse in loco per hoc quod virtus eius immediate
contingit locum per modum continentis perfecti, ut dictum est, non potest esse nisi unus

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

249

If several individuals must cooperate to move the ship, it is
because none of them is, by himself, a perfect and sufficient cause
of that movement. But this does not apply to the separated
substance, warns St. Thomas, because if he is in a place, it is
because his causal power is exerted there and relates to that place
as a perfect container. It must be admitted that this answer is
somewhat enigmatic, especially with regard to the possibility of
angelic virtue contacting the place as a perfect container. To
clarify, it is important to delve into an issue already noted. Local
or circumscriptive presence is that which results from the contact
of the dimensional quantity of one body with that of another. But
according to St. Thomas, the angel lacks matter and is therefore
not determined by the accident of quantity that follows from it;
therefore, the angel cannot be locally present in a place. But this
does not preclude the angel being in a place according to another
mode of presence, which St. Thomas describes as the way in
which the act is present in the potency that receives it.48 It is
important, however, to guard against an interpretation too
closely attached to the literal sense of the text and the spatial
images it spontaneously evokes in our imagination. When we say
that the potency receives an act, that expression should not be
understood in the sense of the said potency being a kind of
physical receptacle in which a certain content is poured, namely,
the act; that would amount to a type of local presence. On the
contrary, the reception alluded to by St. Thomas has a
metaphysical connotation, and consists of the actualization of
potency by its corresponding act, by virtue of which we can say
that this potency is subjected or “contained” in the sphere of
determination of that act. This is precisely what happens with a
place submitted to the causal power of a separated substance, and
which, in that sense, can be described as “contained” by the
angelic virtus.
Angelus in uno loco” (STh I, q. 52, a. 3 [Leonine ed., 5:28]). For the rest of the passage,
see above, n. 28.
48
See the references cited above, n. 24.

250

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

With this in mind, we can return to what St. Thomas affirms
in the passage cited above. By pointing out that the angel is
related to the place where he exercises his power as a perfect container, St. Thomas underlines the sufficiency of angelic causality
and the perfect domination that a separate substance exerts, by
nature, over bodily realities. Therefore, the situation of the
collaborative movement of the ship by various agents does not
apply here. Angels do not need to constitute a society or union
to move a body, or more specifically, to possess it; the natural
power with which God has endowed each of them from the
moment of their creation is more than enough to produce that
effect.49 Indeed, and as St. Thomas himself points out in another
passage, if bodies can move each other, the more the angel will
be able to provoke that kind of movement, since “whatever an
inferior power can do, a superior power can do, not in the same
way, but in a more excellent way.”50 In sum, the hypothesis that
many demons must cooperate to possess a man because each one
is, independently and by himself, unable to exercise control of
the possessed body, is hardly reconcilable with the angelological
and cosmological proposal of St. Thomas.
B) Second Hypothesis: Each Angel Possesses Only One Part of the
Body
As indicated above, St. Thomas expressly discards the thesis,
vigorously defended in his time, according to which the place in
which the angel operates must be indivisible, in the manner of a
49
Saint Thomas maintains that the influence the angel exerts on the body is mediated
by the most perfect kind of movement recognized by Aristotelian physics, i.e., by local
movement. Despite the restriction that this could imply, he insists that, by the intervention
of the angel, certain effects are produced in corporal things that surpass the corporal
agents themselves, just as the cook and the blacksmith, following the rules of their arts,
are able to achieve, through fire, certain effects that fire does not achieve on its own. See
De Malo, q. 16, a. 1, ad 14; q. 16, a. 10; De Pot., q. 6, a. 3; Quodl. IX, q. 4, a. 5, corp.
and ad 1; ScG III, c. 103; STh I, q. 110, a. 2, ad 3; q. 110, a. 3, corp. and ad 2; Super Iob,
c. 1.
50
“id quod potest virtus inferior, potest superior non eodem, sed excellentiori modo”
(STh I, q. 110, a. 2, ad 2 [Leonine ed., 5:512]). See also De Malo, q. 16, a. 9, ad 4; De
Pot., q. 6, a. 3, ad 1 and 15.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

251

geometric point. That on which the virtue of the angel is
immediately applied, St. Thomas teaches instead, is for the angel
a place, regardless of its divisibility or size.51 This, he explains, is
also true for the continuous body assumed or possessed by an
angel—a body which is composed of parts that nonetheless
constitute a single place in relation to the angel’s power.52
Note that this last consideration does not refute the hypothesis
we are now examining. What St. Thomas rejects is the idea that,
if an angel assumes a continuous body, which has many parts, it
can be said that the separated substance is, in that case, in many
places. But this does not deny the possibility that an angel could
circumscribe his virtue to a part of that body, so that such a part
constitutes a single place with respect to that angel. Saint Thomas
openly admits that this place can be indivisible or divisible, major
or minor, large or small. Thus, this second hypothesis seems, up
to this point, compatible with Thomistic angelology and the fact
of multiple possession.53 There are, however, at least three objections, of a different nature and scope, that can be raised against
it.
First, it could be argued that a body possessed in the manner
described would not be viable from an organic point of view.
Undoubtedly, corporeal life, from its humblest manifestations,
demands a sophisticated morphological and physiological
integration that contemporary science describes even at the
molecular level. The possession of a human body by a multitude
51

See above, n. 25.
The objection is as follows: “Praeterea, angelus est in corpore assumpto; et cum
assumat corpus continuum, videtur quod sit in qualibet eius parte. Sed secundum partes
eius considerantur diversa loca. Ergo angelus est simul in pluribus locis” (STh I, q. 52,
a. 2, obj. 2 [Leonine ed., 5:25]). Saint Thomas replies: “Et per hoc patet de facili responsio
ad obiecta, quia totum illud cui immediate applicatur virtus angeli, reputatur ut unus locus
eius, licet sit continuum” (STh I, q. 52, a. 2, ad 1 [Leonine ed., 5:25]).
53
It should be noted that this idea of the devil acting in a circumscribed part of the
body is not totally alien to the Catholic liturgical tradition. See George H. Forbes and
John M. Neale, The Ancient Liturgies of the Gallican Church (London: Pitsligo Press,
1855), 161; quoted in Jeffrey Burton, Lucifer: El diablo en la Edad Media (Barcelona:
Laertes, 1995), 140. See also Cristiani, Evidence of Satan in the Modern World, 63.
52

252

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

of angels, each of whom exercises his power in a part of that
body, could then be judged as incompatible with that vital
integration and therefore with organic life. In response, it should
be borne in mind that, according to St. Thomas, the demon (or
demons), when taking possession of a body, does not relate to it
as the soul is related to matter, but as a mover is related to the
thing moved.54 In fact, this is the reason why he sees no difficulty
in admitting that an angel and a soul can be in the same body:
The first can act as an efficient cause of the movement of that
body, but the second is its substantial form.55 The soul of the
possessed person, therefore, remains the substantial form of the
human compound, and as such, could allow continuity of the
basic vegetative and sensitive functions of organic life. I use the
expression “could allow” because, just as the pathological indisposition of certain body parts may end up being incompatible
with life, it is also plausible that a possession worked by a legion
of demons, each of whom acts in a part of that body, ends up
affecting health and eventually causing the death of the
individual.56 But if this possibility cannot be ruled out, neither
does it seem that it should always and necessarily occur. That is
already sufficient for the object of this discussion.
A second objection, partly linked to the previous one, has to
do with the operational integrity of the body possessed according
to this modality. How could a body so possessed act as one—as
54
See Comp. Theol., c. 74; De Malo, q. 16, a. 1; De Verit., q. 5, a. 2, ad 6; De Pot.,
q. 5, a. 3; q. 6, a. 3, ad 4; q. 6, a. 6; De Spir. Creat., a. 5; De Subst. Separat., c. 18; I Sent.,
d. 7, q. 1, a. 1; II Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 1; ScG II, cc. 49, 55, 91; STh I, q. 50, aa. 1 and 5;
q. 51, aa. 1-3; q. 110, a. 2, ad 1. For a historical overview of the discussions that took
place at the time of Aquinas in relation to this issue, see Harkins, “Embodiment of
Angels,” 25-58.
55
“Ad tertium dicendum quod nec etiam daemon et anima comparantur ad corpus
secundum eandem habitudinem causae; cum anima sit forma, non autem daemon. Unde
ratio non sequitur” (STh I, q. 52, a. 3, ad 3 [Leonine ed., 5:28]).
56
This, strictly speaking, could occur in any possession that lasts for a long time,
regardless of the number of demons involved in it. An especially striking case is that of
Anneliese Michel, who died at the age of 22 due to the organic deterioration caused by
an anorexia that dropped her weight to 68 pounds. For a general account of the episode
and an additional bibliography referring to the inexhaustible controversies generated
around her exorcism, see Laurentin, El demonio, ¿símbolo o realidad?, 258; Young,
History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity, 216-19.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

253

seems to be the case in the Gerasene/Gadarene, whose behavior,
however aberrant it may appear, shows an obvious unity? This
objection is more serious and understandable, although not
necessarily decisive. Saint Thomas states that demons replicate in
some sense the order of the celestial hierarchy, and there is
undoubtedly coordination and obedience among them (in which,
of course, there is nothing virtuous).57 In principle, nothing
prevents this demonic ordination from being used to move and
govern the possessed body in an orderly and seemingly unitary
way. In support of such a suggestion is the fact that beings of
much more limited intelligence and power, such as men, can
achieve surprisingly unitary effects when they work in
coordination. Thus, a group of musicians—each one acting
immediately and completely on his own instrument—with
proper direction, can interpret the harmonious and unitary
beauty of a single piece. Also, felons belonging to organized crime
can act with striking coordination, a situation probably much
closer to the moral tenor of the demonic phenomenon discussed
here.
More difficult to counter is a third possible objection
regarding the specific motivation behind such a possession.
Indeed, St. Thomas and the Christian tradition teach that its
purpose, on the part of the devil, is nothing other than to cause
harm and suffering.58 The question that emerges, however, is
what reason the demons might have to exercise the possessive act
in this particular way, that is, circumscribing their action to a
certain part of that body. As just mentioned, an angel is endowed,
57

See below, nn. 65, 72.
It is striking that, in response to the imprecation of Jesus Christ, the demons beg
him not to torment them (Mark) and not send them into the abyss (Luke). Several Fathers
have seen in this a sign that, for demons, just being deprived of the possibility of causing
direct harm or suffering to man is itself a torment. See, for example, John Chrysostom,
Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, hom. 28:2 (NPNF 10:265-66). See also Catena
in Marci evangelium, c. 5, lect. 1; Catena in Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6. Saint Thomas
also assumes this interpretation. See STh I, q. 64, a. 4, ad 3; q. 114, a. 1; Super Matt.,
c. 12, lect. 4.
58

254

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

by nature, with the power to move bodies. Therefore, if angelic
causality is to be exercised in a part of the possessed body, yet
not in all of it, this cannot be justified by resorting to any
limitation of angelic power, but must have some other reason.
What could such a motive be? The discussion could, at this point,
take on an excessively conjectural tone. For our purposes, it is
enough to point out that, although the hypothesis investigated
here cannot be ignored, its underlying intention remains
somewhat obscure.
C) Third Hypothesis: A Single Angel Is the Complete and
Immediate Cause of the Possession; the Other Angels Act
Mediately in the Body of the Demoniac
This alternative, too, is compatible with Thomistic
angelology. In this regard, it is appropriate to insist on what St.
Thomas points out in question 52, article 3 of the Prima pars. As
we saw, he expressly excludes there the possibility of two
complete and immediate causes for the same thing, which he
explains with respect to the formal and efficient cause. Regarding
the latter, he says that there can only be one proximate mover,
but that many remote movers may also exist.59 This thesis
coincides with the warning that he introduces in the body of the
immediately previous article, in response to the question of
whether an angel that moves the whole sky can be said to be
everywhere. The power of the angel, explains St. Thomas, applies
to what is first moved by him, which, in the case of the sky, would
correspond to its eastern part.60 Following these guidelines, it is
plausible to maintain that it is only one fallen angel who
immediately and completely applies his virtue to the body of the
59

See above, n. 28.
“Neither, if any angel moves the heavens, is it necessary for him to be everywhere.
First, because his power is applied only to what is first moved by him. Now there is one
part of the heavens in which there is movement first of all, namely, the part to the east:
hence the Philosopher [Physic. 8] attributes the power of the heavenly mover to the part
which is in the east. Second, because philosophers do not hold that one separate substance
moves all the spheres immediately. Hence it need not be everywhere” (STh I, q. 52, a. 2
[Leonine ed., 5:25]).
60

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

255

demoniac, that demon being the proximate cause of the
possession. Every angel who exercises his causality over a man so
possessed will do so as a remote cause, that is, through the demon
that possesses the body completely and immediately.
The proposed causal scheme is compatible both with St.
Thomas’s requirements regarding angelic location and with the
truthfulness of the fact of multiple possession narrated in the
Gerasene/Gadarene episode. In relation to the first point, we
must insist that, according to this hypothesis, it is only one
separate substance who acts completely and immediately in the
body, and who is then present in that place simpliciter. The angel
or angels who come to the body thus possessed will be present in
that place in a relative and secondary way (secundum quid),
which implies the mediation of the former. But it should not be
forgotten that this way of being present in a place that belongs to
demons that are remote causes of possession, despite being secondary and relative, is nevertheless real, or multiple possession
would be a figurative or metaphorical event. While the presence
of that angel who acts as a remote cause has less ontological
robustness than that which corresponds to the angel who is there
as a complete and immediate cause, this does not imply that the
first type of presence is merely fictitious. Rather, it should be said
that this is an authentic demonic presence, but one derived from
and superimposed upon that other one that can be conceived as
primary. Despite the differences, this situation has a certain
parallel with the relationship between substance and accident; the
latter is, according to St. Thomas, a real entity, although
secundum quid, since it can exist as a determination of the
substance that is simpliciter.61
The question arises, of course, about exactly what kind of
causal influence one demon could exert on another in order to
affect the body possessed indirectly. The instrumental causality
model inevitably fails at this point. According to St. Thomas, the
61

ad 8.

See De Ente, c. 6; De Princ. Natur., c. 1; Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 2; De Verit., q. 27, a. 1,

256

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

instrument has a double function. The first one belongs to the
instrument according to its proper form, and this is how the ax
is able to cut with the edge it has; the second function, which he
qualifies as formally instrumental, consists in a participation of
the agent’s virtue in order to produce an effect superior to the
power of the instrument itself. Now, says St. Thomas, the
instrument performs this instrumental function precisely by
exercising its own activity; therefore, if the ax can serve as a
carpenter’s instrument to make a bed, it is only because it has the
power to cut.62 Returning to the problem at hand, the separated
substance is, according to St. Thomas, a perfect and sufficient
cause of the movement of bodies. That means that the angel can,
by its own form and virtue, produce the corresponding effect,
and the intervention of another angelic agent acting as the main
cause is essentially superfluous and gratuitous.
An alternative explanation appeals to what St. Thomas calls a
“prelacy.”63 As we saw, he maintains the thesis that while demons
have lost the order of grace in which they were created, they
retain the angelic nature and perfect ordination that follow from
it.64 This natural ordination takes the form of a prelacy, whereby
the action of the lower demons is subject to that of the superiors.
This is not, of course, founded on the justice of the demons
themselves, nor does it come from a sort of “demonic friendship”
but from “their common wickedness whereby they hate men and
fight against God’s justice.”65 In principle, this type of influence,
of which the closest image is that of the citizen submitting to his
62
“Non autem perficit actionem instrumentalem nisi exercendo actionem propriam;
scindendo enim facit lectum” (STh III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2 [Leonine ed., 12:20]). See also De
Pot., q. 3, a. 4; De Verit., q. 2, a. 5, s.c.; q. 24, a. 1, ad 5; ScG II, c. 21; ScG III, cc. 70,
78; ScG IV, c. 74. Note that this is valid both if the instrument is a free agent and if it is
not. In the first case, it would be an instrument in an improper sense, in the second, in a
proper sense. See De Verit., q. 24, a. 1, ad 5.
63
See II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 4. See also II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 2; IV Sent., d. 47, q. 1,
a. 2, qcla. 4, ad 1; STh I, q. 63, a. 8; q. 109, a. 2.
64
See above, n. 45.
65
“concordia daemonum, qua quidam aliis obediunt, non est ex amicitia quam inter
se habeant; sed ex communi nequitia, qua homines odiunt, et Dei iustitiae repugnant”
(STh I, q. 109, a. 2, ad 2 [Leonine ed., 5:507]). See also II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 4, ad 2 and
3.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

257

sovereign, seems to fit well with the kind of power that some
angels may exert over others in the case of multiple possession.
Besides preserving the natural order existing between the
different demons that could participate in the possession, this
demonic prelacy has in its favor the fact that, according to St.
Thomas, it is exercised in the plane of action, which is what
concerns us here (because the angel is present where he acts, and
possession is the result of an angel’s action on a body). Before
accepting this idea, however, it is necessary to consider two
serious difficulties.
The first has to do with the specificity of this kind of causal
influence. As we saw, St. Thomas admits the fact of the demonic
prelacy as a general arrangement because it is not only extensible
to the whole sphere of fallen angel activity but, moreover,
involves the entire demonic hierarchy. Thus, a demon’s activity,
by virtue of this prelacy, is subjected to that of all his superiors
and dominates, in turn, the activity of demons lower in the
ontological hierarchy. Therefore, if this is the causal model that
explains the action of one separate substance on another in the
context of a diabolical possession, it would follow that,
ultimately, all possession is actually multiple and, furthermore,
exhaustive, in the sense that all the fallen angels would be acting
on the one possessed. Although this conjecture cannot be completely ruled out, it does not seem entirely compatible with
biblical texts and would also subtract much of the meaning from
the Gerasene/Gadarene episode.66
66
In particular, it is remarkable that in Mark and Luke Jesus expressly asks for the
name (and not the names) of the demon that has taken possession of man; see Mark 5:9;
Luke 8:30. But beyond these verses, there are several scriptural passages in which it is
affirmed or implied that the demon that has taken possession or has been expelled from
a human person is one and not many. See, for example, 1 Sam 16:14-16; Luke 4:35;
11:14; Mark 7:24-30; 9:18-25; Matt 9:33; 17:17-18; Acts 16:16-18; 19:13-16.
Although these texts, by themselves, do not conclusively refute the possibility that every
demonic possession is multiple and general, they do underline the artificiality of the
hypothesis, and the difficulty of harmonizing it with the biblical text. On the other hand,
if it is the whole demonic hierarchy that acts in each possession, it is difficult to make
much sense of the practice of exorcism, which, following the example of Jesus, specifically

258

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

The second problem posed by this model has to do with the
fact that St. Thomas also admits a prelacy of the blessed angels
over demons.67 Indeed, if it is the prelacy of some demons over
others that explains multiple possessions, and if the demons, in
turn, are submitted to the holy angels, it would follow that each
possession is operated not only by a multiplicity of fallen angels,
but also of blessed ones. The solution to this objection is provided
by St. Thomas himself through the distinction between causing
and allowing. Just as God can tolerate certain evils in order to
obtain from them a greater good without being the cause of that
evil, so the blessed angels may, under divine mandate, allow the
demons to perform morally evil actions, although the holy angels
are not the cause of such iniquities.68 But there is one aspect of
this difficulty that still stands, and that in part links to the first
objection discussed. When a demon commits a reprehensible act,
such as the possession of a man, he does so with the complicit
permission of the superior demon to which he is subjected
according to the natural order of the prelacy. These higher
demons, who not only tolerate but positively desire that evil, are
therefore also morally responsible for it.69 From an ontological
perspective, however, it is not clear that this prelacy implies an
active exercise of the power of the superior angel over the lower
one. Using the example offered by St. Thomas to illustrate this
angelic ordering, the prelacy exercised by the sovereign over the
subject is first and foremost a subordination of the action of the
latter with respect to the former, which does not require from
the prelate—at least not always and constantly—a discreet and
distinct act. This is not a mere subtlety but a very important point
since, in the light of the Thomistic theory of angelic location,

asks for the name or names of demons (see above, n. 45). Names are used, no doubt, to
identify individuals. For a commentary on exorcism in the Gospels, see José A. Sayés, El
Demonio: ¿Realidad o mito? (Madrid: San Pablo, 1997), 49-52.
67
STh I, q. 109, a. 4.
68
“The holy angels are the ministers of the divine wisdom. Hence as the divine wisdom
permits some evil to be done by bad angels or men, for the sake of the good that follows;
so also the good angels do not entirely restrain the bad from inflicting harm” (STh I,
q. 109, a. 4, ad 2 [Leonine ed., 5:508]).
69
Cf. STh I, q. 63, a. 8; I–II, q. 79, a. 1; q. 80, a. 1.

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

259

without an active exercise of his power, it is not clear that this
higher demon is actually possessing the body of the possessed,
even secundum quid.
I know of no text in which St. Thomas explicitly confronts
these issues. Within the framework of this third hypothesis, and
with all the reservations that the matter demands, I suggest that
the causality that some demons exert over others in the
phenomenon of multiple possession presupposes the general
prelacy described above, but cannot be fully subsumed in it. This
would be, instead, a specific type of causal influence, exerted not
on the will of the subordinate angel (for that power can never be
directly moved by another creature, according to St. Thomas),70
but in his operation. Through this influence, the superior demon
would actively direct the application of the virtue of the angel
submitted to him in the order of nature, an order that the latter
has confirmed from the moment of his fall.71 This angel, in turn,
could replicate the action on another lower demon, and so on
until the action reaches the separate substance that has,
completely and immediately, taken possession of a body.
Of course, it is worth asking what purpose the infernal choirs
might pursue in acting in this way. As in the second hypothesis,
we cannot resort here to any kind of insufficiency on the part of
angelic causation. In that sense, the idea that a second angel
70
On the part of the object, the angel can influence the will of other angels and man,
but always by way of inclination and persuasion (see De Malo, q. 3, a. 3; De Verit., q. 22
a. 9; ScG III, c. 88; STh I, q. 106, a. 2; q. 111, a. 2; I-II, q. 9, a. 6; q. 10, a. 2; 80, a. 1).
The type of causality that some demons exert on others in the phenomenon of multiple
possession, however, implies a type of control that far exceeds that of mere instigation.
See below.
71
“Habet enim hoc ordo divinae iustitiae, ut cuius suggestioni aliquis consentit in
culpa, eius potestati subdatur in poena; secundum illud II Pet. II, a quo quis superatus est,
huic servus addictus est” (STh I, q. 63, a. 8 [Leonine ed., 5:137]). See also STh I, q. 63,
a. 8, ad 2; II Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 2. Interesting, in this regard, is the experience of Father
Amorth, a recognized exorcist, who points out that when there is a case of multiple
possession, there is always a “boss” among the demons who is the last to leave the
possessed (Amorth, Narraciones de un exorcista, 71). For more references, see above,
n. 46.

260

JUAN EDUARDO CARREÑO

comes to “reinforce” the action of the first, and a third that of
the second, is nothing more than anthropomorphism. In this case,
however, one can conjecture a motivation consistent, at least,
with Thomistic theology. Certainly, through the despotic control
that some demons exert over others, the Prince of this world
displays a disfigured and sarcastic representation of the way the
true God governs the universe and respects the second causality
inherent in all his creatures, including, of course, the angelic
ones.72 But the culmination of this macabre parody is embodied
in the violent possession that the demonic hierarchy exercises
over the human being; created in the image and likeness of God,
man arouses and concentrates the hatred and envy of hell, which
spares no effort to pervert him morally, and whenever possible,
vex him psychologically, biologically, and physically.
CONCLUSION
The difficulty raised, and the hypotheses put forward to solve
it, could be considered a “thought experiment,” a resource well
represented in contemporary academic discussion. While I have
no substantive objections against anyone who wants to regard the
matter in these terms, that is not the perspective I wish to adopt
here. Contrary to the trend to try to “demythologize” the
theological and philosophical speculations of the Middle Ages
and even some passages of Sacred Scripture not easily compatible
with the naturalistic criteria imposed by our culture, I have, in
this article, assumed the effective and not merely symbolic truth
of the action of the separated substances in the corporeal world.
With this attitude, we have considered the difficulty of articulating the Thomistic theory of angelic location in the case of a
famous New Testament passage in which, in response to the
imprecation of Jesus Christ, a demoniac responds that his name
is Legion. Certainly, if each angel is present where he acts, as St.
Thomas teaches, and if there cannot be more than one angel in
72
“Greg. Nyss. Certain evil spirits imitating the heavenly hosts and the legions of
angels say that they are legions. As also their prince says that he will exalt his throne above
the stars that he may be like to the Most High” (Catena in Lucae evangelium, c. 8, lect. 6
[J. H. Parker ed., 4:282]).

ST. THOMAS ON ANGELIC LOCATION

261

the same place at once, it is not clear how a multiple possession
could occur.
Here, we have explored three causal models with the potential
to explain the phenomenon of multiple demonic possession. The
first implies an alleged cooperation of the angels in the movement
of the body of the possessed, which St. Thomas explicitly
describes as inadmissible. According to the second, several angels
act in different parts of the possessed body, and therefore, each
of those parts would behave as “the” place where each separate
substance is. Although there are no insoluble difficulties that
refute this hypothesis, the resulting picture suffers from a certain
gratuitousness, especially as regards the purpose of such
distribution. This judgment should be made with caution,
however, because it is all too easy to fall prey to a pretentious
rationalism when trying to explain, especially in the space of a
brief article, the intentions that could move beings whose natural
hierarchical position far exceeds ours.
With the same note of precaution, I propose a third hypothesis
as the most harmonious and compatible with the whole of the
doctrine of St. Thomas and with the practice of the sacramental
of exorcism, as it has been practiced for centuries in the Catholic
Church. According to this scheme, it is one angel who completely
and immediately possesses the body, and it is that angel, therefore, that is present in that place simpliciter. A demon that acts
additionally on that body will do so in a mediated way, that is,
by applying his power in the operation of that first separate
substance. If a third angel comes to that body, he will do so
through the second, and so on, in an order that is not primarily
chronological, but ontological, because it follows the natural
angelic hierarchy preserved in demons. The model outlined, of
course, raises additional questions, especially regarding the
specific type of causality that a demon exerts on another and how
this influence differs from the order of prelacy that also exists
among fallen angels. The speculations offered here are intended
as nothing more than a modest step, faithful to the spirit of the
work of the Angelic Doctor.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 263-91

AQUINAS ON SHAME, VIRTUE, AND
THE VIRTUOUS PERSON
HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.
Driyarkara School of Philosophy
Jakarta, Indonesia

Shame is a true Christian virtue, and also a human virtue. . . . Being ashamed
of oneself is a virtue of the humble, of the man or woman who is humble.1
Pope Francis, Encountering Truth

S

OME SCHOLARS within the Aristotelian tradition,
notably C. C. Raymond and K. Kristjánsson, have
recently questioned the Stagirite’s denials that shame
(aidōs) can be a moral virtue in the proper sense of the term
and that a virtuous person needs a sense of shame in addition
to other moral virtues.2 Aristotle famously claims that, although shame is the mean between bashfulness and shamelessness, shame is “more like a feeling than a state of
character” and that “one is ashamed of what is voluntary, but
the virtuous person will never voluntarily do base things.”3
Raymond and Kristjánsson argue that Aristotle has overlooked two interrelated distinctions: first, the distinction
between an episodic or occurrent feeling of shame and a
durable emotional disposition of a sense of shame, and
second, the distinction between retrospective shame (which
follows upon base actions) and prospective shame (which
inhibits base actions).4 Even if it be conceded that virtuous
1

Pope Francis, Encountering Truth (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015),

43.
2

C. C. Raymond, “Shame and Virtue in Aristotle,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy, vol. 53, ed. E. Caston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 111-61;
K. Kristjánsson, Virtuous Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018),
87-101.
3
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1128b10-11, 28-29 (trans. T. Irwin
[Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999]).
4 Raymond, “Shame and Virtue in Aristotle,” 115 and 131ff.; cf. K. Kristjánsson,
Virtuous Emotions, 92 and 96ff. By “emotional disposition” these authors refer to
263

264

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

persons might not need to draw upon retrospective shame,
according to Kristjánsson, they will still need proper
dispositional shame or prospective shame as “a deterrent
voice to warn them against potentially base future courses of
action.” If not, Aristotle would be committed to a conception
of a saintly or morally infallible virtuous person.5 For his part,
Raymond contends that, if Aristotle admits that honor and
social standing constitute external goods and that virtuous
persons are not indifferent to what people think of them (to
such a degree that avoiding disrepute can be the goal of
action), “it seems that Aristotle should allow that aidōs can be
a ‘prohairetic’ mean as well,” that is to say, a virtue, since
“knowing when, how, and to what extent to care about the
opinion of others will require practical wisdom.”6
This article addresses these interpretations by exploring
the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,7 given that in his treatan “emotional tendency” or “emotional proneness” that disposes someone to feel a
given emotion “at the right times, about the right things, toward the right people,
for the right end and in the right way” (cf. Nic. Ethic. 1106b17-35).
5 Kristjánsson, Virtuous Emotions, 97. He admits that by advocating that a proper
dispositional shame be understood as a full-fledged virtue he departs from the
orthodox Aristotelian tradition.
6
Raymond, “Shame and Virtue in Aristotle,” 158-59.
7
For a fuller treatment on Aquinas’s account of shame, see H. Dwi Kristanto,
The Praiseworthy Passion of Shame: An Historical and Philosophical Elucidation of
Aquinas’s Thought on the Nature and Role of Shame in the Moral Life (Rome:
Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2019). The book examines shame as a praiseworthy
passion: its nature, its role in the moral life, its connection with moral growth,
conscience, social rank, gender, and violence. This article focuses more on arguing
why shame is, for Aquinas, not a genuine moral virtue and why, in order to be
virtuous, the passion of shame needs to be sustained by humility and magnanimity.
There have been very few significant treatments of Aquinas’s concept of shame, a
notable exception being A. Guindon, “La ‘crainte honteuse’ selon Thomas d’Aquin,”
Revue thomiste 69 (1969): 589-623. Guindon limits himself to a lexicographic
analysis of some shame-related words in Aquinas’s works. Other articles offer merely
a concise and general presentation of Aquinas’s views on shame, since they deal with
the topic of shame in the context of providing a panoramic account of the history of
emotions in the Middle Ages. Generally, they compare Aquinas’s idea of shame with
those of St. Augustine and Richard of St. Victor. See J. Müller, “Scham und
menschlichen Natur bei Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin,” in Zur Kulturgeschichte
der Scham, ed. M. Bauks and M. Meyer (Hamburg: Meiner, 2011), 55-72; S.
Knuuttila, “The Emotion of Shame in Medieval Philosophy,” Spazio filosofico 5
(2012): 243-49; S. Vecchio, “La honte el la faute: La réflexion sur la verecundia dans
la littérature théologique des XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Shame between Punishment
and Penance : The Social Usage of Shame in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times,
ed. B. Sere and J. Wettlaufer (Florence: Sismel-Ed. del Galluzzo, 2013), 105-21;

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

265

ment of shame, especially in “De verecundia” (STh II-II,
q. 144, aa. 1-4), he draws substantially on Aristotle’s ideas
about shame in both the Nicomachean Ethics
(2.7.1108a31-36; 4.9.1128b10-35) and the Rhetoric
(2.6.1383b11-1385a15). I shall argue in section I that since,
unlike Aristotle, Aquinas does not conceive of persons with
acquired virtues as morally infallible, he does not preclude the
experience of (both retrospective and prospective) shame in
the virtuous person’s moral life. Indeed, in keeping with the
Philosopher, Aquinas holds that shame is best understood as
a passion of the soul (or an emotion), and yet he also claims,
as I shall expound in section II, that shame’s concurrence is
necessary for the virtue of temperance, for shame is an
integral part of this cardinal virtue. Felt in an appropriate
degree with respect to a truly disgraceful action (be it one
already done or one yet to be done), shame is morally
praiseworthy and, as such, can be called a virtue in the loosest
sense of the term.8 Aquinas retains the idea, however, that
shame is properly speaking not a moral virtue because it falls
short of the perfect notion (ratio) of a virtue as a habit that
operates from choice (habitus electivus) and as a habit that
produces good actions (habitus operativus). Since, furthermore, the person who experiences shame naturally tends to
shrink and to hide from others, to the extent that sometimes
shame even “sends the person into despair,”9 in section III of
this paper I shall extend Aquinas’s argument by suggesting
that, for shame not only to be praiseworthy but also to
produce a beneficial outcome in the person, it must be
accompanied by the paired virtues of humility and
magnanimity. In suggesting this, I go beyond what Aquinas

C. Casagrande and S. Vecchio, “La vergogna tra passione e virtù,” in Passioni
dell’anima: Teorie e usi degli affetti nella cultura medievale, ed. idem (Florence:
Sismel-Ed. del Galluzzo, 2015), 263-81. Another article by T. Ryan (“Aquinas on
Shame: A Contemporary Interchange,” in Aquinas, Education and the East, ed. T. B.
Mooney and M. Nowacki [Dordrecht: Springer, 2013]) focuses on demonstrating
the relevance of Aquinas’s ideas of shame for the contemporary practice of moral
education. For this purpose, Ryan compares Aquinas’s idea of shame as a moral
emotion with that of E. Probyn (E. Probyn, Blush: Faces of Shame [Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005]).
8 See STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1.
9 Super I Cor., c. 4, lect. 3.

266

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

explicitly says, though the idea is latent in his biblical
commentaries.
I. AQUINAS ON SHAME AS FEAR OF DISGRACE
Aquinas understands shame (verecundia, erubescentia,
pudor, or confusio)10 as one of the species of the passion of
fear. Shame is the fear of disgrace (timor turpitudinis) and,
more precisely, of disgrace that damages one in the opinion
of others (turpitudo laedens opinionem).11 Thus, Aquinas
follows Aristotle closely in conceiving of shame as essentially
fear of disrepute or of dishonor (timor ingloriationis). What
is at stake in shame is one’s reputation; when one feels
ashamed, one is afraid that one’s worth in the eyes of others
is significantly diminished, as when, for example, one
becomes an object of ridicule or derision.12
The passion of fear, according to Aquinas, is a movement
of the sensory appetite away from a future possible evil that
is imminent and difficult to avoid. The sensory appetite is the
power of the soul that moves animate beings toward or away
from any objects apprehended—through sensory perception,
imagination, and, in human beings, also through intellective
cognition—under the intention of good or evil. While the
movement of the sensory appetite constitutes the formal
element of a passion, the bodily change that accompanies and
is proportional to such a movement makes up the material
element of the passion. In fear, the material element consists
in a certain contraction in the appetite: “the heat and vital
spirits abandon the heart instead of concentrating around it,”
with the result that one who is afraid becomes pale, trembling,
and speechless and is inclined to run away.13

10
For an extended study of these terms, see Kristanto, Praiseworthy Passion of
Shame, 81-156. Notwithstanding some differences in nuance, all these words share
a common feature of denoting the fear of disgrace (timor de turpi).
11 STh I-II, q. 41, a. 4.
12 See STh II-II, q. 75, a. 1
13
STh I-II, q. 44, a. 1, ad 1 and ad 2. English translations of quotations from the
Summa theologiae come from the translation by the Fathers of the English
Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948; rev. and repr. by The Aquinas
Institute, 2012). However, whereas the revised version of this translation translates
verecundia as “shamefacedness” (archaic), I prefer to follow the Blackfriars edition
(Summa Theologiae, vol. 43 [2a2ae, qq. 141-154], trans. Thomas Gilby, O.P. [New

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

267

In the case of shame, its formal element is the sensory
appetite’s movement away from the imagined or recognized
disgrace that spoils one’s reputation. Shame’s material element is a contraction of the appetite of the soul, depicted by
Aquinas as follows: “the soul, as though contracted in itself,
is free to set the vital spirits and heat in movement, so that
they spread to the outward parts of the body: the result being
that those who are ashamed blush.”14 In another place,
commenting on the Nicomachean Ethics, he writes, “honor
and shame are reckoned among external things, and, therefore, since a man fears the loss of honor by shame, he blushes
as the humors and spirits stream back to the surface.”15 No
doubt, modern psychology, benefiting from today’s neuroscience, can provide a better physiological explanation.16 Yet
Aquinas’s most important point here is that because shame,
like fear, involves the somatic phenomenon of bodily change,
which pertains more to a passion than to a habit, it is evident
that shame is not a virtue.17
The disgrace that elicits shame may derive from a variety
a of sources, ranging from a fault or a sinful action (culpa),
for which one can be held responsible, to states of affairs, such
as a poor family background or physical deformities, for
which one need take no responsibility at all.18 Aquinas even
notices that, though shame does not regard virtuous actions
per se, sometimes one may accidentally feel ashamed of doing
virtuous actions if the actions look disgraceful to others or
“because he is afraid of being marked as presumptuous or
hypocritical for doing virtuous deeds.”19 The actions one
might consider more disgraceful are not coextensive with the
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006]) and translate verecundia as “feeling of
shame” or “sense of shame.”
14
Ibid., ad 3.
15
IV Nic. Ethic., lect. 17 (Leonine ed., 47/2:260). The English translation is from
Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, vol. 1, trans. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1964).
16 See for example, T. L. Gruenwald et al., “When the Social Self Is Threatened:
Shame, Physiology, and Health,” Journal of Personality 72 (2005): 1191-216. The
authors link the occurrence of shame, understood as an emotional response to the
acute threat to the “social self,” with the increase of proinflammatory cytokine
activity, cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure.
17
IV Nic. Ethic., lect. 17 (Leonine ed., 47/2:260-61).
18 STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2.
19 Ibid., ad 2.

268

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

more sinful actions; in fact, “sometimes a man is more
ashamed of lesser sins [e.g., petty theft, carnal sins], while he
glories in those which are most grievous [e.g., robbery,
spiritual sins].”20 This is because ultimately “shame is not fear
of the very act of sin, but of the disgrace or ignominy which
arises therefrom, and which is due to an extrinsic cause.”21
For Aquinas shame is different from repentance (poenitentia)
precisely in that repentance directly regards the sin itself,
whereas shame regards an effect of sin, that is, ignominy or
dishonor.22 A sinful action would not per se cause one to feel
shame, unless such an action entails opprobrium and jeopardizes one’s reputation. That said, following Aristotle, Aquinas
affirms that one will feel more shame if the disgrace in
question results from voluntary defect (defectus voluntarius),
that is, from one’s own fault or from other things of which
one is the cause.23
Aquinas, this time drawing on John Damascene and
Nemesius (attributed by Aquinas to Gregory of Nyssa), states
that shame can regard fault or sinful action (culpa) in two
distinct manners: prospectively and retrospectively.24 In the
first manner, shame, through fear of reproach, prevents one
from performing a sinful action. In this case, the disgrace
feared lies in an action that is yet to be done.25 Aquinas,
following the two aforementioned authors, calls this forwardlooking or prospective shame erubescentia. In the second
manner, the disgrace feared lies in an action already done or
in an action that is in the course of being done.26 In this case,
shame, through fear of reproach, prompts one who has done
or is doing a base action to avoid the public gaze. Aquinas
names this backward-looking or retrospective shame verecundia. Despite this distinction, throughout his writings

20

STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2, ad 4; q. 66, a. 9, ad 2; q. 116, a. 2, ad 3.
STh I-II, q. 42, a. 3, ad 4: “verecundia non est timor de actu ipso peccati, sed
de turpitudine vel ignominia quae consequitur ipsum, quae est a causa extrinseca.”
22 IV Sent., d. 17, q. 2, a. 1, qcla. 1: “pudor respicit effectum peccati, qui est
ingloriatio, quia verecundia secundum philosophum est timor ingloriationis; sed
dolor directe ipsum peccati respicit.”
23
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2, corp. and ad 1. Cf. Aristotle, Rhet. 2.6.1384a14.
24
STh I-II, q. 41, a. 4; STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2; see John Damascene, De fide
orthodoxa 2.15 (PG 94:932); Nemesius, De natura hominis 21 (PG 40:689).
25 STh I-II, q. 41, a. 4: “turpitudo in actu committendo.”
26 Ibid.: “de turpi iam facto”; STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2: “in turpibus quae agit.”
21

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

269

Aquinas often uses erubescentia and verecundia interchangeably, and he treats both prospective and retrospective
shame as one and the same passion characterized by a
common feature, namely, the fear of reproach (timor
vituperii).27 Both are forms of fear that share the same
efficient cause: reproach or opprobrium. Hence, to the extent
that both types of shame belong to the category of passion,
the distinction in question does not imply any ontological
difference, but merely a temporal one: before or after the
disgraceful action.
In contrast to honor, which denotes attestation to one’s
excellence, especially the excellence that comes from one’s
virtue, reproach denotes attestation to one’s defect, especially
the defect consequent upon one’s sin. Accordingly, as Aquinas
sees it, one feels more shame before those whose attestations
are weightier, either because their attestation carries more
certitude of truth or because it brings about a more
detrimental effect.28 One feels more shame in front of wise
and virtuous persons, not only because their judgment is more
truthful but also because one actually desires more to be
admired or honored by them. One is also more liable to feel
shame before those to whom one is closely connected, insofar
as they are better acquainted with one’s conduct and one is
continually around them.29 Likewise, because tale-bearers can
cause greater harm by defaming one at large, despite perhaps
not knowing the details of one’s conduct, one feels greater
shame before tale-bearers.30
Aristotle states in the Nicomachean Ethics that shame is
not appropriate to every age but only to the young, for they
often go wrong through living by their feelings but can be
prevented from going wrong by shame. By contrast, shame
should no longer characterize older people and virtuous
persons, since they should not perform any action which is a
source of shame. “If some actions are really disgraceful and
others are only thought to be so,” Aristotle writes, “that does
not matter, since neither should be done, and so the decent

27
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2. On this point I concur with the conclusion of Guindon
in “La ‘crainte honteuse’ selon Thomas d’ Aquin,” 590-96.
28
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 3.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.

270

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

person should not feel shame.”31 For Aristotle, in sum, “the
decent person will never voluntarily do disgraceful actions”—
be it disgraceful according to truth (kat’ alētheian) or only
according to opinion (kata doxan).32 An ancient commentator, Alexander Aphrodisias, criticizes Aristotle’s failure to
recognize realistically “that we ourselves, [although] we have
already reached this age, feel shame [aidōs] at many things
and frequently.”33 Alexander observes that shame is not alien
to older people or to those who live a noble and respected
life; in the ultimate analysis, disrepute is not only consequent
upon truly disgraceful actions but also may come from
misrepresentation.34
In general Aquinas endorses Aristotle’s stance on shame,
including the idea that shame is appropriate and praiseworthy
for the young but not for older and virtuous persons.35 That
notwithstanding, in his commentary on the Nicomachean
Ethics, while agreeing with Aristotle that shame, properly
speaking, regards voluntary defects for which reproach is due
and that it is inconsistent with virtue, since a virtuous person
will not voluntarily perform a base action, he adds a proviso
that shame, just like sickness, might involuntarily occur in
virtuous persons.36 Similarly, in the Summa he adopts
Aristotle’s principal line of argument and highlights that the
old and the virtuous lack a sense of shame because they
apprehend disgrace as impossible to themselves or as easy to
avoid.37 Of course, shame is in the virtuous hypothetically, for
“they are so disposed, that if there were anything disgraceful
in them they would be ashamed of it.”38 Aquinas, however,
31

Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 4.9.1128b23-26.
Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 4.9.1128b28-29.
33
A. Aphrodisias, Ethical Problems, Problem 21 (trans. R.W. Sharples [London,
1990], 141.26-27).
34
Aphrodisias, Ethical Problems, Problem 21 (Sharples, trans., 142.5-7).
35
Super I Tim., c. 2, lect. 2; Super Tit., c. 2, lect. 1. For the gender dimension of
shame, especially shame’s relationship with the body and sexuality in women, see
Kristanto, Praiseworthy Passion of Shame, 344-51. Aquinas believes that shame is a
laudable passion recommended particularly for women. See Super I Cor. c. 14,
lect. 7; and Super I Tim., c. 2, lect. 2.
36
IV Nic. Ethic., lect. 17 (Leonine ed., 47/2:261): “Secus autem esset si
verecundia esset eorum quae involuntarie possunt accidere, sicut aegritudo
involuntarie accidit homini.”
37 STh II-II, q. 144, a. 4.
38 Ibid. Aquinas refers here to Nic. Ethic. 4.9.1128b29-30.
32

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

271

makes this last point stronger by acknowledging explicitly
that virtuous persons are not immune to shame when they are
slandered or suffer reproach undeservedly.39 In other words,
Aquinas recognizes that acting virtuously is not sufficient for
avoiding disrepute, since one’s reputation is also partly
determined by luck. Despite stating that “the virtuous man
despises ignominy and reproach, as being things he does not
deserve,” Aquinas is willing to admit the fact that “some
feelings of shame, like the other passions, may forestall
reason.”40
A passage from his commentary on Psalm 43 provides
another textual support for Aquinas’s realistic acknowledgment that virtuous persons are not absolutely unsusceptible to
shame. Commenting on verse 16 of the psalm, he offers this
opinion:
Shame is, according to the Philosopher, a fear of something disgraceful. Now, there
are two kinds of disgrace. One is disgrace according to truth [turpitudo secundum
veritatem]. This is the disgrace of sin [turpitudo peccati], and shame due to this kind
of disgrace does not affect virtuous persons, since they do not have in themselves a
consciousness of some sin that would provoke the feeling of shame. Instead, such a
shame affects the wicked. . . . Second is disgrace according to opinion [turpitudo
secundum aestimationem]. This is the disgrace that one suffers externally due to
humiliation and opprobrium. And this kind of disgrace also affects perfect men [in
perfectis viris].41

Hence, although perfect or virtuous persons are not affected
by shame due to disgrace according to truth (i.e., disgrace
consequent upon a sinful action), in Aquinas’s view they are
still susceptible to shame due to disgrace according to opinion
(i.e., disgrace following some undeserved reproach or
humiliation). In brief, just as sickness may undesirably afflict
someone, shame due to undeserved reproach may accidentally strike a virtuous person.
More importantly, Aquinas believes that the person with
acquired moral virtues is not morally infallible. Only God is
perfect in the absolute sense (simpliciter). A virtuous man, as
a wayfarer on earth, can be perfect only in a restricted sense

39

STh II-II, q. 144, a. 4, obj. 4.
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 4, ad 3: “Infamationes et opprobria virtuosus, ut dictum
est, contemnit, quasi ea quibus ipse non est dignus. . . . Est tamen aliquis motus
verecundiae praeveniens rationem, sicut et ceterarum passionum.”
41 In Ps. 43, no. 8.
40

272

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

(secundum quid).42 Indeed, acquired virtuous habits incline a
person to acting rightly, insofar as they give him a right
judgment about the end. The inclination of the moral virtues,
however, is not without choice.43 A virtuous habit does not
produce virtuous actions automatically, because “it is not
necessary to use a habit, since it is subject to the will of the
person who has that habit.”44 Aquinas stresses that a habit is
“something we use when we will,”45 and, hence, “one who
has a habit may fail to use it or may act contrary to it.”46 In
his revelation-informed anthropology, postlapsarian human
nature is deeply marked by fomes peccati, that is, the
corruption of the sensory appetite, which inclines the sensory
appetite to what is contrary to reason and “which is never
completely destroyed in this life.”47 Consequently, “those
with a virtuous habit sometimes act against the inclination of
their own habit, because something appears otherwise to
them according to some standard, for instance, through
passion or some allurement.”48 Thus, compared to Aristotle,
Aquinas is more realistic in stating that “acquired virtue does
cause us to avoid sin—not in every case, but for the most
part.”49 If persons with acquired virtuous habits are morally
fallible, inasmuch as they may sometimes backslide and
commit (or desire to commit) a sinful action they know they
ought not to, then it is legitimate to assume that at times they
may experience shame due not only to the disgrace that is
according to opinion but also to the disgrace that is according
to truth.50

42

STh II-II, q. 161, a. 1, ad 4; cf. De Verit., q. 24, a. 9, ad 4.
STh I-II, q. 58, a. 4, ad 1: “Sed inclinatio virtutis moralis est cum electione”.
44
STh I-II, q. 78, a. 2; see also q. 71, a. 4: “habitus in anima non ex necessitate
producit suam operationem, sed homo utitur eo cum voluerit.”
45 STh I-II, q. 78, a. 2: “habitus definitur esse quo quis utitur cum voluerit”; see
De Virtut., a. 1.
46 STh I-II, q. 52, a. 3.
47
STh I-II, q. 74, a. 3, ad 2; STh III q. 27, a. 3.
48
De Caritate, a. 12. The English translation is that of J. Hause and C. E. Murphy,
Disputed Questions on Virtue (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2010).
49
De Virtut., a. 9, ad 5; Cf. a. 10, ad 14.
50 In his commentary to STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1, Cardinal Cajetan alludes to this
possibility.
43

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

273

II. SHAME: NOT A VIRTUE PROPER BUT AN
INTEGRAL PART OF TEMPERANCE51
To say that shame is in the virtuous person, however, does
not amount to affirming that shame is a virtue. For Aquinas,
shame is in the virtuous person as an integral part of
temperance, but not as a species of virtue or as a secondary
virtue annexed to temperance. Before considering this point,
let us first look at several reasons why Aquinas, similar to
Aristotle, refuses to grant to shame the status of a full-fledged
virtue.
A) Why Shame Is Not a Virtue Proper
In the first place, as stated earlier, for Aquinas, as for
Aristotle, shame is more a passion than a habit (habitus), since
it involves bodily change. There is an ontological difference
between a passion and a habit. A passion belongs to the
metaphysical category of movement (motus), whereas a habit
belongs to the category of quality (qualitas). A passion is a
transitory movement of the sensory appetite of those
composite beings made of soul and body, in response to their
evaluative apprehension of an object. A passion is thus a
passivity, something that nonhuman and human animals
occasionally suffer (pati). By contrast, a habit, to which genus
belong the moral virtues, is a quality long-lasting or hard to
change. It is a stable disposition whereby the possessor is wellor ill-disposed to feel and to act in a certain way. A habit is
not a passivity but a principle of action. Aquinas says, “a
moral virtue is not a movement, but rather a principle of the
movement of the appetite, being a kind of habit.”52
In the second place, but in relation to the first, shame is
not a virtue because it is not an elective habit. Some critics of
the Aristotelian account of shame have objected that, while
the first argument above applies well to retrospective shame
or to the occurrent feeling of shame, it does not seem to apply
51
For a fuller treatment on Aquinas’s idea of shame as an integral part of
temperance, see Kristanto, Praiseworthy Passion of Shame, 235-57. Several
arguments why shame is, for Aquinas, not a moral virtue can also be found scattered
in different parts of the book (pp. 85-85, 88, 188-214, 247). Here I attempt to bring
those arguments together in a more concise and systematic way.
52 STh I-II, q. 59, a. 1.

274

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

to prospective shame or to what they call the “emotional
disposition” of the sense of shame, because this latter implies
that its possessor is disposed to feel shame in an appropriate
way.53 Aquinas himself never really speaks of shame as a
disposition. The notion of disposition in his understanding,
moreover, is different from that of habit. Habit is a perfect
quality, which is not easily lost, whereas disposition is an
imperfect quality, and can be easily lost. He says
metaphorically, “a disposition becomes a habit, just as a boy
becomes a man.”54 Even if it is granted that a sense of shame
implies some disposition, Aquinas would argue that it still
lacks another important requisite to count as a full-fledged
virtue: it does not operate from deliberate choice. He admits
that an appropriately felt shame observes the rational mean
and thus fulfills one important requisite included in the
definition of virtue. Yet he further argues that “observing the
mean is not sufficient for the notion of virtue, but it is
requisite, in addition to this, that it be an elective habit, that
is to say, operating from choice [ex electione operans].”55 For
Aquinas, the arousal of shame is impulsive; it does not directly
proceed from judgment of reason and choice: “shame’s
movement does not result from choice but from an impulse
of passion.”56 Shame is not something one typically feels at
will or by design; it occurs instantaneously, without one’s
anticipatory consent.
We recall that a moral virtue is a habit that from its very
nature is related to the will, inasmuch as “a habit is that which
one uses when one wills.”57 The movement of shame, by
contrast, may occur against one’s will, even when one knows
well that one need not feel it. Aquinas gives an example of a
religious mendicant who feels shame when he must go
begging under the vow of poverty.58 Though the mendicant
knows that he is actually doing a virtuous action (i.e., begging
because of a spiritual motive) and desires not to feel shame,
nonetheless, since in public opinion begging is deemed
53 See Kristjánsson, Virtuous Emotions, 96-97; Raymond, “Shame and Virtue in
Aristotle,” 115.
54
STh I-II, q. 49, a. 2.
55
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1, ad 1.
56
Ibid.
57 STh I-II, q. 50, a. 5.
58 Contra Impug., p. 2, c. 6, ad 22.

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

275

disgraceful, he cannot but naturally feel ashamed. In this
context, the feeling of shame is inappropriate and needs
subsequently to be regulated by right reason in order not to
hamper one’s noble practice of religious life. Shame is clearly
more a passion than a virtue, since its movement begins in the
appetite and then needs to be regulated to conform to reason,
whereas the movement of a virtue begins in the reason and
ends in the appetite, inasmuch the latter is moved by reason.59
Indeed, shame can observe the rational mean, but Aquinas
stresses that “virtue is a mean between passions, not by reason
of its essence, but on account of its effect; because, to wit, it
establishes the mean between passions.”60 Virtue is not
equivalent to and the same as the mean; rather, virtue is that
which determines the mean.
Undeniably the arousal of a praiseworthy shame, which is
felt about the right things, at the right times, and in the right
manner, indicates that a person has a good will, since, for
Aquinas, one is liable to shame only if one has loved what is
morally good and beautiful (honestum) and detested what is
morally evil and ugly (turpe).61 Nevertheless, this praiseworthy shame, according to Aquinas, participates in reason
and voluntariness only indirectly, that is, through a kind of
overflow (per quandam redundantiam).62 He explains that the
disgrace of sin (i.e., one’s social and moral decline) cannot be
apprehended merely by the senses, but is apprehended
necessarily by the intellect.63 Following the intellective apprehension, the will or the superior appetite moves to detest the
disgrace of sin, and, as the motion of the will becomes
adequately intense, it overflows to the lower appetite or the
sensitive appetite, moving the latter to fear of such a disgrace,
that is, shame.64 Hence, inasmuch as, through the mechanism
of overflow, shame flows not directly but only indirectly from
a deliberate choice, it cannot be regarded as an elective habit
but is better understood as a passion.
59

STh I-II, q. 59, a. 1.
Ibid., ad 1.
61
See IV Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5; De Verit., q. 26, a. 6, ad 16.
62
De Verit., q. 26, a. 3, obj. 13 and ad 13.
63
In a similar way, but in a converse sense, honor as respect paid by others in
recognition of one’s excellence is an external good that can be apprehended not by
the senses, but by the mind. See STh I-II, q. 60, a. 5.
64 De Verit., q. 26, a. 6.
60

276

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

In the third place, shame’s only indirect participation in
reason and voluntariness means that it is not a reliable guide,
in the sense that it does not always lead to good action. It is
true that a prospective sense of shame might inhibit one from
committing a sinful action. Yet, at times it might also hamper
one from confessing one’s sins65 or from performing a noble
or virtuous action if the action happens to appear disgraceful
to others, as is shown clearly by the example of the religious
mendicant above.66 In this sense, shame falls short of an
operative habit. For Aquinas, “it is essential for human virtue
to be an operative habit [habitus operativus],”67 meaning that
it is “a good habit, productive of good works.”68
Following Aristotle, Aquinas holds that virtue is a perfection of a power “which makes its possessor good, and his
work likewise good.”69 Now, “since shame is the fear of
something base, namely, that which is disgraceful,” according
to Aquinas, “shame [be it prospective or retrospective] is
inconsistent with perfection.”70 With regard to prospective
shame, Aquinas writes, “one who is perfect as to a virtuous
habit does not apprehend that which would be disgraceful
and base to do [exprobrabile et turpe ad faciendum], as being
possible and arduous, that is to say, difficult for him to
avoid.”71 In other words, one who is perfect in terms of a
virtuous habit would not entertain any thought of performing
something base, such that he would hardly need a prospective
shame to restrain himself from base action. With regard to
retrospective shame, Aquinas says, “nor does one who is
perfect as to a virtuous habit actually do any base action [actu
facit aliquid turpe], so as to be in fear of disgrace.”72 To put it
another way, one who has committed a base action and feels
shame about it must not have reached a perfection in his
virtuous habit. Thus, falling short of the perfection of virtue,

65

See Contra Impug., p. 2, c. 3 (Leonine ed., 41A:1970)
See STh III, q. 72, a. 9. Due to shame, one might recoil from confessing the
name of Christ.
67
STh I-II, q. 55, a. 2.
68
STh I-II, q. 55, a. 3.
69
Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 2.6.1106a16-17.
70
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
66

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

277

shame cannot be considered a virtue in the proper sense of
the term.
An objection may arise from this third argument, as
Aquinas himself notices while drawing a comparison between
shame and repentance in the Tertia pars (STh III, q. 85, a. 1).
Similar to shame, repentance, too, is about base actions or
sins. Thus, repentance, which consists in sorrow for past sins,
seems to imply some imperfection as well. One may ask why
repentance can be considered a virtue in the proper sense,
whereas shame cannot be considered so. Responding to this
objection, Aquinas highlights that repentance presupposes a
moderated sorrow for past sins with the intention of
removing them.73 He writes,
Virtue, in fact, includes a right choice on the part of the will. This, however,
applies to repentance rather than to shame, because shame regards the
disgraceful deed as present, whereas repentance regards the disgraceful
deed as past. Now it is contrary to the perfection of virtue that one should
have a disgraceful deed actually present, of which one ought to be ashamed;
whereas it is not contrary to the perfection of virtue that one should have
previously committed disgraceful deeds, of which it behooves one to
repent, since one from being wicked becomes virtuous.74

Hence, repentance is not inconsistent with the perfection of
virtue, because it regards disgraceful action as past, insofar as
by virtue of repentance the previously wicked person has now
attained perfection or has become virtuous. In repentance,
one not only feels sorrow for past sin, but at the same time
also willingly aims at the destruction of that sin. Hating the
past sin leads one to repentance. In contrast, shame is
inconsistent with perfection, since shame is a reaction to a
disgraceful deed as present, meaning that at present the
person still somehow desires the past sin to the extent that he
has not yet reached a perfect disposition.75
Unlike repentance, which disposes one to amend what one
has committed against others and against God,76 shame does
73 STh III, q. 85, a. 1: “poenitens assumit moderatum dolorem de peccati
praeteritis, cum intentione removendi ea”; cf. q. 85, a. 3.
74
STh III, q. 85, a. 1, ad 2.
75
I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer who has helped to clarify
Aquinas’s point in this passage.
76 Aquinas suggests that, insofar as it involves merely sorrowing physically for evil
done (e.g., with tears), repentance can be considered as only a passion; yet insofar as

278

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

not always dispose one to perform good works. Aquinas
admits that, due to shame, one may recoil from sinning and
may thus follow the morally right path,77 yet in various places
he also notes that shame may drive one to cover up one’s
sins.78 He observes, “The one who feels shame does not dare
to speak nor to appear before other men.”79 The ashamed
person tends to lower his eyes and does not dare to compare
himself with others.80 Out of a sense of shame one may also
fail to follow one’s right judgment and may fall instead into a
superficial conformity so as not to offend others. This latter
case is exemplified, according to Aquinas, by the reaction of
the Twelve upon hearing Jesus’ teaching that his flesh is the
Bread of Life (John 6:51): they could have, out of a sense of
shame, kept silent about any objections they had to Jesus’
teaching.81 Likewise, Aquinas notes that “those who are born
of lower class are ashamed to recognize their siblings when
they are promoted to higher social position.”82 Shame,
therefore, cannot be a virtue, since it does not always incline
one to produce good works and, as such, it lacks the
perfection that should characterize a virtuous habit. In order
to be productive of good works, as I will argue in the last
section, shame needs to be accompanied by humility and
magnanimity.
In the fourth place, a moral virtue (e.g., courage) is
acquired through habituation, that is, by repeatedly doing
good actions (e.g., courageous actions). In general, the
experience of shame is painful, to such an extent that one
usually wants to avoid repeating it. As noted above, shame is
felt not for only for one’s voluntary action but also for a wide
variety of reasons, including a state of affairs that does not
necessarily have a moral import. Being repeatedly shamed by
it entails the intention of amending, repentance must involve choice and thus can be
considered as a virtue. STh III, q. 85, a. 4: “We can speak of repentance in two ways:
first, insofar as it is a passion, and thus, since it is a kind of sorrow, it is in the
concupiscible part as its subject; second, insofar as it is a virtue. . . . Repentance,
insofar as it is a virtue, is subjected to the will, and its proper act is the purpose of
amending what was committed against God” (emphasis added).
77
IV Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 1.
78
See IV Sent., d. 19, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 3, exp.; Contra Impug., p. 2, c. 3.
79
Super Isaiam, c. 47 (Leonine ed., 28:196).
80
STh II-II, q. 161, a. 2, ad 1.
81 Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 8.
82 Super Hebr., c. 2, lect. 3.

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

279

another for one’s bodily defect, for instance, rather than
producing a good outcome in the person, will very likely
produce what psychologists call “toxic shame” that destroys
one’s personal well-being.83 Indeed, shame experienced as a
result of one’s evil action—for example, shame a husband
feels for having been unfaithful to his faithful wife—might
prompt one to repent and not to repeat such a sinful and
shameful action. In this case shame produces a good outcome
and can thus be called “good shame” inasmuch as it helps one
to control one’s depraved lust and to moderate one’s
behavior. The experience of good shame such as this, if
repeated in various circumstances, according to Aquinas, will
not produce an “acquired virtue of shame”—or, to use
Cajetan’s terminology, virtus verecundandi84—but it will
produce “an acquired virtue whereby one avoids what is
shameful.”85 Cajetan rightly points out that the acquired
virtue meant by Aquinas here is temperance: being frequently
ashamed will not produce a disposition to feel shame
(dispositionem ad verecundandum) but will generate the
virtue of temperance.86 “That notwithstanding,” Aquinas
adds, “as a consequence of this acquired virtue [i.e., temperance], one would be more ashamed, if confronted with
shame-inducing matter.”87 This means that persons with the
acquired virtue of temperance will not cease to be sensitive to
shame, in the sense that “they are so disposed that, if there
were anything disgraceful in them they would be ashamed of
it.”88 Indeed, though a sense of shame is not a virtue, it
constitutes an integral part of the virtue of temperance, to
which topic we now turn.

83
See J. Bradshaw, Healing the Shame That Binds You (Florida: Health
Communications, Inc., 2005), 21.
84 Cajetan, In STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1.
85 STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1, ad 5: “ex multoties verecundari causatur habitus virtutis
acquisitae per quam aliquis turpia vitet.”
86
Cajetan, In ST, II-II, q. 144, a. 1: “ex operibus verecundiae non verecundiae
virtus, sed temperantiae virtus fit.”
87
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1, ad 5: “Sed ex illo habitu virtutis acquisitae [i.e.,
temperantia] sic se habet aliquis quod magis verecundaretur si materia verecundiae
adesset.”
88 STh II-II, q. 144, a. 4.

280

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

B) Shame as an Integral Part of Temperance
Acquired temperance is a cardinal virtue that enables a
person to control properly or to moderate his concupiscible
appetite in general and his desire for the bodily pleasures
regarding food, drink, and sex—the “pleasures of touch”—in
particular. Temperance directs and orders one’s pursuit and
enjoyment of bodily pleasures so that these latter become
well-ordered, in the sense of becoming consonant with the
good of reason. The desires for food, drink, and sex are
common to human and nonhuman animals. Temperance,
however, renders human beings capable of living such bodily
desires in a distinctively human way, that is, in accordance
with their dignity as rational beings. This means that a
temperate man desires food and drink of a reasonable quantity and quality—that is, necessary for the preservation of his
well-being, and becoming to his given circumstances. He also
desires to have sexual relations only with his wife and only on
appropriate occasions. His well-ordered bodily desires and
pleasures reflect the dignity of rational animality. In temperance, for Aquinas, the beauty and honorability (honestas)
proper to men as rational animals shine more brightly.
The vice of intemperance, by contrast, denotes a bad habit
of indulging the desire for bodily pleasures in an excessive or
unproportioned way, that is, more than as is necessary and
becoming. Consequently, whereas beauty and honorability
are attributes most appropriate for temperance, disgrace and
shamefulness are attributes most appropriate for intemperance. This is, according to Aquinas, for two reasons. First,
intemperance is “most repugnant to human excellence, since
it is about pleasures common to us and the lower animals.”89
Second, intemperance is “most repugnant to man’s clarity or
beauty, inasmuch as the pleasures which are the matter of
intemperance dim the light of reason from which all the
splendor and beauty of virtue arises; wherefore these
pleasures are described as being most slavish.”90 Thus,
whereas temperance, which consists in a certain moderate and
fitting proportion, “more than any other virtue lays claim to

89
90

STh II-II, q. 142, a. 4.
Ibid. (translation slightly modified)

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

281

a certain comeliness [decorum], the vices of intemperance
excel others in disgrace [turpitudinem].”91
Shame (verecundia) together with a sense of honor
(honestas) constitute, according to Aquinas, the integral parts
of temperance. An integral part of a cardinal virtue is
distinguished from its subjective parts (i.e., various species of
virtues, distinct from one another according to their specific
objects but not from the cardinal virtue which is present in
each species according to its entire essence and operative
power) and from its potential parts (i.e., other virtues
connected with the cardinal virtue but that are directed to
secondary acts or matters, without having the whole power
of the principal virtue). The integral parts of a virtue are the
conditions whose concurrence is necessary for the perfect act
of the virtue: “integral parts are those by which the perfection
of the whole is integrated.”92 It should be underlined,
however, that “properly speaking, these integral parts are
themselves not virtues, but only conditions for the virtue that
integrates them.”93 Integral parts, according to Aquinas,
belong to the constitution of the whole, as wall, roof, and
foundation are constitutive parts of the whole building of a
house. Yet, he says, “the integral whole is not present in every
single part, neither according to its essence nor according to
its power; as the whole [essence of the] house is not in its
walls, so the whole virtue is not [in its parts]; and
consequently, the integral whole is in no way predicated of its
parts.”94 Hence, “house” is not predicated of a wall, since the
essence of a house is not contained in a wall.
Shame and a sense of honor are components of the cardinal virtue of temperance, in the sense that the concurrence
of both is necessary for the realization of temperance, just as
the presence of wall, roof, and foundation is necessary for the
construction of a house. Aquinas says that through shame
“one recoils from the disgrace that is contrary to temperance,” while through a sense of honor “one loves the
beauty of temperance.”95 On the one hand, the sense of honor

91

STh II-II, q. 143, a. 1.
STh III, q. 90, a. 3, s.c.
93
III Sent., d. 33, q. 3, a. 1, qcla. 1.
94 Ibid., ad 1.
95 STh II-II, q. 143, a. 1.

92

282

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

as the affection for being worthy of honor in a more positive
fashion inspires one to deal with one’s desire for food, drink,
and sex in a decent or becoming manner. On the other hand,
shame as fear of disgrace or dishonor in a more negative
fashion prompts one to distance oneself from indulging one’s
desire for the pleasures of touch in an indecent or
unbecoming manner. A person with a sense of honor has a
vivid consciousness of his dignity as a rational being and
aspires to conduct himself in a way that corresponds to his
dignity, namely, in a way that is “well-proportioned to the
spiritual clarity of reason.”96 A person with a sense of shame
remains vigilant not to overstep the boundary of what is
decent or becoming with regard to his pursuit and enjoyment
of bodily pleasures, in order not to fall into disgrace or
dishonor. In this respect, Aquinas contends that “a sense of
shame fosters a sense of honor by removing that which is
contrary to the latter, but not so as to attain the perfection of
the sense of honor.”97
Thus, by inspiring one with the horror of whatever is
disgraceful, a prospective sense of shame is helpful in
motivating one to temper one’s concupiscible appetite,
especially the desire for the pleasure of touch. Constituting
an integral part of temperance, though, does not mean that
shame enters into the essence of temperance, for temperance
is more than a mere sense of shame. Drawing on St. Ambrose,
Aquinas states that, filling one with the fear of dishonorableness, “shame lays the first foundation of
temperance.”98 A sense of shame, which arises as an impulse
of feeling rather than as an act of freedom, is only a prelude
to temperance: “shame is a part of temperance, not as though
it entered into its essence, but as disposing to it.”99 A
temperate person will still need to make a deliberate choice
as to whether following the impulse of his sense of shame is
right or not, for such an impulse at times can be misleading.
As the example of the religious mendicant above indicates, it
can happen that an action one has judged to be right (or

96

STh II-II, q. 145, a. 2.
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 1, ad 3.
98
STh II-II, q. 144, a. 4, ad 4. Aquinas refers to Ambrose’s De officiis ministrorum
1.211.
99 Ibid.
97

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

283

temperate, just, courageous, etc.) sometimes appears
disgraceful to others, to such an extent that in order to be able
to perform the action, one needs first to overcome the assault
of the natural feeling of shame. Shame alone, being an
impulsive passion, will not produce good works unless it is
accompanied by the necessary virtues.
III. SHAME, HUMILITY, AND MAGNANIMITY
Like any other passion, shame can be good or bad
depending on whether it regards the right object, whether it
is felt in the right ways, and whether it ultimately leads to
good acts. Aquinas, often quoting Sirach 4:21, says that there
is shame that leads to glory and grace, but that there also is
shame that leads to sin.100 Shame leads to sin when it drives
one to hide rather than either to confess one’s fault or to
confront its evil consequences, if any, for others. Shame is
likewise bad when it leads one to servile conformity for the
sake of appeasing certain others, for this means that shame
leads one into the sins of dissimulation and hypocrisy, which
are opposed to the virtue of truthfulness whereby one
presents oneself to be what one is. Shame is not laudable
when it sends one into despair or into violent rage.
Contrariwise, shame is good when it leads one in a
prospective manner to shun sinful actions, or when in a
retrospective manner it leads one to repentance. Feeling
ashamed for the sin done, according to Aquinas, can become
the beginning of a life reform (principium emendationis
vitae).101
Although opprobrium or reproach that triggers shame is
“properly due to sin alone,” Aquinas notes, “nevertheless, at
least in human opinion, it regards any kind of defect.”102 In
shame one’s defect or shortcoming is revealed both to oneself
and to others, which revelation can diminish both one’s selfrespect and the respect of others. Consequently, the ashamed
person typically has no courage to appear and to speak before
others; he tends to cast down his eyes as though not daring to
100

See In Ps 24, n. 3; In Ps 34, n. 17; In Ps 39, n. 7; In Matt., c. 18, lect. 2; Super
I Cor., c. 4, lect. 3.
101 In Ps. 6, n. 7.
102 STh II-II, q. 144, a. 2, ad 2.

284

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

compare himself with others. Contemporary psychologists
describe the ashamed person as “wishing to sink through the
floor and hide from the penetrating gaze of the other.”103
Shame involves feeling inferior to what one expects from
oneself and to what others expect. Insofar as one desires to
be loved as much as one desires to be honored,104 shame, as
the fear of dishonor, also involves the fear of becoming
unworthy of others’ love. A disgraceful action might cost one
exclusion from or rejection by relevant others. It is
understandable, therefore, that shame can lead one not only
into the concealment of one’s defect but also, and even worse,
into despair.
Because for Aquinas shame, properly speaking, is only a
passion, nowhere in his works does he speak about the gift or
the infused version of shame. By contrast, repentance can be
twofold: (1) a passion, insofar as it occurs in the sensitive
appetite and involves bodily alteration; (2) a virtue, insofar as
it occurs in the rational appetite and involves right choice on
the part of the will. 105 Because repentance can be a genuine
virtue, Aquinas speaks not only about the habit of repentance,
but also about repentance as infused by God.106 By means of
infused repentance God turns the heart of the sinning person
to himself. Whereas various acquired virtues are governed by
prudence (prudentia) in the human pursuit of temporal good,
various infused virtues are governed by divine friendship or
divine love (caritas) in the human pursuit of supernatural
good, namely, beatific union with God.107 As said above, the
passion of shame involves the fear of rejection by relevant
others because one’s shameful defect makes one feel
unworthy of others’ love. Shame can become, as E. Stump
points out, “a potent source of distance between the
[a]shamed person and the others, and it can also introduce

103 E. J. Anthony, “Shame, Guilt, and the Feminine Self in Psychoanalysis,” in
Object and Self: A Developmental Approach, ed. S. Tuttman et al. (New York:
International University Press, 1981), 203.
104
STh II-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 2; Cf. Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.8.1159a12-13.
105
STh III, q. 85, a. 1.
106
STh III, q. 85, a. 5.
107 C. Vogler, “Turning to Aquinas on Virtue,” in The Oxford Handbook of
Virtue, ed. N. E. Snow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 233.

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

285

distance between [a]shamed person and God.”108 Thinking of
himself as defective or ugly, the ashamed person can
experience self-loathing, which is an inner division that can
prevent an interpersonal union between the ashamed person
and God. In this way, shame is not compatible with infused
virtue, since the passion of shame arises only in the context
of a betrayal of love and is thus opposed to the interpersonal
virtue of caritas (divine friendship).109
Aquinas does not specifically elaborate on how shame can
bring about positive outcomes in the person who experiences
it, yet he provides some clues in his commentaries on the
Gospels. For instance, commenting on the way Jesus died, he
writes, “It was specially in keeping with His humility, that, as
He chose the most disgraceful manner of death [turpissimum
genus mortis], so likewise it was part of His humility that He
did not refuse to suffer shame [confusionem] in so celebrated
a place [Jerusalem].”110 As Aquinas sees it, it is in virtue of
humility that Jesus was able to bear shame and to go through
the crucifixion for the sake of attaining a more valuable end
(i.e., the salvation of humankind). Similarly, commenting in
the Catena aurea in Marcum on the scene of a leper who
kneels down and implores Jesus to heal him (Mark 1:40-45),
Aquinas cites St. Bede, who says that the leper’s bodily
gestures manifest the latter’s humility and shame, “for
everyone should feel ashamed of the stains of his life.”111 The
leper must be ashamed of his physical defect, and it is also
reasonable to imagine that he naturally desires to hide his
disgraceful stain from others. Yet, thanks to the leper’s
humility, Bede writes, “such a feeling of shame [verecundia]
did not stifle confession: he showed his wound and begged
for healing.”112 Again, it is by virtue of humility that the
passion of shame does not cripple the person or even send
108
E. Stump, “Guilt, Shame, and Satisfaction,” in idem, Atonement (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2018), 52.
109 A. Pinsent, review of R. Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, in the Notre
Dame Philosophical Reviews (https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/thomas-aquinas-on-thepassions).
110
STh III, q. 46, a. 10.
111
In Catena aurea in Marcum c. 1, lect. 13: “In faciem procidit, quod humilitatis
est et pudoris, ut unusquisque de vitae suae maculis erubescat.”
112 Ibid.: “sed confessionem verecundia non repressit: ostendit vulnus, et
remedium postulavit.”

286

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

him into despair; instead, humility enables the person to react
positively in spite of his disgraceful defect.
In Aquinas’s account, humility is a moral virtue which
deals with the movement of the appetite toward great things,
so that it does not aim at them against right reason. Humility,
in other words, regulates the passion of hope, “to temper and
restrain the mind, lest it tend to high things immoderately.”113
In order not to let himself be carried away by craving things
above him, a humble person must “know his disproportion to
that which surpasses his capacity.”114 He needs to have a
realistic or truthful assessment of his ability and not to think
of himself as greater than he actually is. For Aquinas,
“knowledge of one’s own defect belongs to humility, as a rule
guiding the appetite.”115 A humble person is disposed to
acknowledge his own shortcomings. In the context of Aquinas’s Christian commitments, a humble person is well aware
of his place in the order of creation: that is, that he is
dependent on God and on other human beings. Having a true
self-esteem, he knows his strengths and has confidence in
them, but he does not trust in them in an excessive way, since,
while aiming at excellence, he puts his confidence in God’s
help.116 He is willing to see and to recognize that those around
him might have some good or excellence that he does not, or
that he has some evil or deficiency which they do not, and so
he is disposed to subject himself to others.117 For Aquinas,
humility chiefly consists in man’s subjection to God; thus,
when a humble person subjects himself to others he does so
for God’s sake, recognizing God’s gifts in them.118
Shame can demoralize or even paralyze a person because
it focuses his attention on defects that seem certain to
diminish his worth in the opinion of relevant others. Shame
is marked by some self-centeredness; due to shame, one can
turn to navel-gazing and the avoidance of others. If humility
enables one to experience shame in a positive manner, it is
because by virtue of humility one embraces some othercenteredness, which allows one to see the defect in a much
113

STh II-II, q. 161, a. 1.
STh II-II, q. 161, a. 2.
115
Ibid.
116
STh II-II, q. 161, a. 2, ad 3.
117 STh II-II, q. 161, a. 3.
118 STh II-II, q. 161, a. 1, ad 5; q. 161, a. 2, ad 3; and q. 161, a. 3, ad 1.
114

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

287

larger perspective. A humble person sees himself as a creature
of God: though he may seek to become perfect through living
virtuously, “his perfection is found wanting in comparison to
God.”119 He knows that he is always in need of God’s
assistance, for humility “makes man submissive and ever open
to the influx of divine grace.”120 Humility allows the ashamed
person to acknowledge his creaturely limitations and to see
the prospect of redemption beyond his defective self. He does
not despise the opinion of others about himself, yet he does
not let himself be captive to their judgment either, since he
does not measure his self-worth entirely in terms of public
opinion but also in terms of his dependence on God. If the
humble leper mentioned in the example above dared to
present himself and to beg for a remedy for his shameful
defect, presumably it is because he took God as the last and
truest judge of his self-worth.
For Aquinas, however, humility is complemented by
magnanimity. While humility keeps one from desiring great
things that surpass one’s capacity or just deserts, magnanimity
reminds one of one’s valuable capacity and urges one to deem
oneself worthy of great things. Whereas humility enables the
ashamed person to accept his defect in a realistic way,
magnanimity strengthens his spirit against despair and impels
him to go beyond his shameful defect by attempting to
achieve excellence in accordance with right reason.121 A
magnanimous man does not fail in hope in the face of the
arduous task of transforming his defect into excellence. By
contrast, in a pusillanimous person who has a low opinion of
himself, who ignores his own worth and capacities, and who
shrinks from attempting to do great things due to excessive
fear of failure,122 shame is very unlikely to produce a positive
119

STh II-II, q. 161, a. 1, ad 4.
STh II-II, q. 161, a. 5.
121
In arguing that, in addition to humility, shame needs the presence of
magnanimity in order to produce a good outcome, I revise my argument in my abovementioned book. The book refers to confidence (fiducia) rather than magnanimity.
In fact, for Aquinas “confidence belongs to magnanimity.” A magnanimous man has
both confidence in others that can be of service to him and confidence in himself
that he has enough abilities to obtain certain good. As a certain mode of hope, that
is, hope strengthened by good opinion about others and about himself, confidence
itself is not a virtue but a condition for the virtue of magnanimity (ST II-II, q. 129,
a. 6).
122 STh II-II, q. 133, a. 2.
120

288

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

outcome; instead, it will only dissuade him from attempting
to amend his defect and to become a better sort of person.
As some scholars have noted,123 Aquinas’s account of
magnanimity, rooted in a Christian anthropology, differs
from that of Aristotle. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that a
magnanimous man “strives to do what is deserving of honor,
yet not so as to think much of the honor accorded by man.”124
If a magnanimous man desires and attempts to perform great
acts of virtue, he does them not because he craves recognition
from others or glory, but because he considers them as
appropriate expressions of the excellence that he has. More
than just seeking honor qua public recognition, a magnanimous man strives, above all, to be worthy of honor by
performing great acts of virtue, inasmuch as honor is the
attestation to virtue. Hence, “the magnanimous man cares
more for truth than for opinion. . . . He will not depart from
what he ought to do according to virtue only because he is
preoccupied with what others think.”125 Notwithstanding all
this, Aristotle’s magnanimous man still measures his worth or
greatness in terms of his superiority vis-à-vis others. He exalts
self-sufficiency and dislikes being indebted to others, for this
would imply shameful deficiency, dependency, and
inferiority. Aristotle writes, “He is the sort of person who
does good but is ashamed when he receives it; for doing good
is proper to the superior person, but receiving it is proper of
the inferior. . . . The recipient is inferior to the giver, and the
magnanimous man wishes to be superior” (Nic. Ethic.
4.3.1124b9-13).
By Aquinas’s standards, Aristotle’s magnanimous man is
presumptuous, on account of his pretentious self-sufficiency,
that is, his independence from both divine and human
assistance. Aquinas’s magnanimous man is shaped by humility
and, thus, rather than feeling ashamed of being a debtor to
another’s favor, he feels grateful for it. “Magnanimity makes
a man deem himself worthy of great things in consideration

123
See Mary M. Keys, “Aquinas and the Challenge of Aristotelian Magnanimity,”
History of Political Thought 24 (2003): 37-65; R. Konyndyk DeYoung, “Aquinas’s
Virtues of Acknowledged Dependence: A New Measure of Greatness,” Faith and
Philosophy 21 (2004): 214-27.
124 STh II-II, q. 129, a. 1, ad 3; Cf. Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 4.3.1123b22-25.
125 IV Nic. Ethic., lect. 10 (Leonine ed., 47/2:153-56).

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

289

of the gifts he holds from God.”126 In addition to gratitude
for and confidence in God’s help, a magnanimous man also
exhibits gratitude for and confidence in others’ assistance:
“Insofar as he needs others, it belongs to the magnanimous
man to have confidence in others, for it is also a point of
excellence in a man that he should have at hand those who
are able to be of service to him.”127 He recognizes his potential
for performing great acts of virtue as a gift from God, and at
the same time he accepts with a great heart the fact of his lack
of perfection: “There is in man something great which he
possesses through the gift of God and something defective
which accrues to him through the weakness of nature.”128
Thus, in Aquinas’s account, humility restrains the mind of
Aristotle’s magnanimous man from falling into the presumption that is due to excessive self-confidence.
Acknowledging his dependence on God and on others,
Aquinas’s magnanimous man is not ashamed to ask for help
and to receive a favor from another, when that is necessary.
If the leper of Mark 1:40-45 was able not only to accept his
physical defect but also to appear in public in a hopeful
attempt to find a remedy, that is because he was not only
humble but was simultaneously also magnanimous. Likewise,
if the crucified Jesus was able to bear the most shameful
manner of death and to face the contemptuous gaze of the
hostile onlookers without falling into despair and failing in
hope for his bodily resurrection and glorification,129 that must
126

STh II-II, q. 129, a. 3, ad 4.
STh II-II, q. 129, a. 6, ad 1.
128 STh II-II, q. 129, a. 3, ad 4.
129 In Aquinas’s account humility-informed magnanimity, in some respects, can
coincide with the theological virtue of hope. Both humility-informed magnanimity
and the theological virtue of hope encourage and strengthen the mind of a believer
for a strenuous task of attaining a possible but difficult good in the awareness of
God’s unfailing assistance. Yet they also differ in some respects. First, while as a
moral virtue subordinate to courage magnanimity resides in the irascible part of the
soul, the theological virtue of hope belongs to the will or the rational appetite.
Second, magnanimity and hope differ with regard to their objects. The possible but
difficult good in question for magnanimity is a great thing deserving great honor.
Being confident in the gifts he has received from God, Aquinas’s magnanimous man
is hopeful of being capable of accomplishing great things. In the case of the
theological virtue of hope, the good in question is God himself. Hope makes a
believer tend to God both as the ultimate good to be obtained and as a strong helper
to rely on while pursuing that ultimate good. For a fuller treatment of the theological
virtue of hope see, R. Cessario, O.P., “The Theological Virtue of Hope,” in The
127

290

HERIBERTUS DWI KRISTANTO, S.J.

be due to his humility-informed magnanimity. Magnanimity
renders someone capable of performing a virtuous action
even if such an action looks disgraceful in the eyes of others.
The magnanimous man does take care of his good name. Yet
he does great acts of virtue not for the sake of human glory,
as he does not take empty pleasure in human praise. Insofar
as he strives more to be honorable than to be honored, and
cares more for truth than for opinion, he is able to despise
any honor or disgrace that he does not actually deserve.
Informed by humility, the magnanimous man is not ashamed
of shame, including shame due to disgrace according to truth;
he is liable to shame where there is adequate reason to feel it.
Instead of paralyzing him, shame can motivate him to
improve by amending the defective aspect of his self.
CONCLUSION
Unlike some Aristotelian scholars mentioned in the
introduction, therefore, Aquinas does not see why the
Stagirite should have recognized shame, particularly in its
prospective form of a sense of shame, as a genuine moral
virtue. There is no question, pace Raymond, that one’s good
name or reputation is an external good that renders an
individual more trustworthy and thus guarantees him more
success in his social life. Indeed, by doing virtuous acts, a
virtuous person desires not only to be good but also to be
reputed as good. It is in his interest to avoid anything that
would bring him disrepute. Nevertheless, good reputation is
not the ultimate good, and above a good reputation there are
other still more valuable goods. In Aquinas’s perspective, if
one shuns doing what is morally more valuable only in order
to avoid disrepute, then one must either be imperfect with
regard to his virtuous habits—perhaps he is a young moral
learner who relies heavily on his sense of shame—or be
lacking in humility-informed magnanimity. Shaped by the
paired virtues of humility and magnanimity, truly virtuous
Ethics of Aquinas, ed. S. J. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
2002), 232-43. In the case of shame that generates despair, the theological virtue of
hope can have a significant role to play. The theological virtue of hope enables the
ashamed person not to lose sight of the goal of perfect happiness and not to give up
the arduous journey of reforming or reinventing one’s defective self but to lean on
God as the savior and friend who will help him to complete that journey.

SHAME, VIRTUE, AND THE VIRTUOUS PERSON

291

persons are able to transcend the passion of shame and to
forgo their good reputation in order to attain some higher
goods (e.g., a spiritual good).
Thus, rather than relying on a sense of shame, truly
virtuous persons should rely on their rational judgment and
deliberate choice. This is not to say that, in Aquinas’s account,
retrospective shame or a prospective sense of shame play no
role at all in the virtuous man’s life. Since virtuous persons
are not morally infallible, they might appropriately feel
retrospective shame when they lapse into base actions.
Additionally, inasmuch as virtuous persons are mindful of
their dignity and honorability, a prospective sense of shame
continues to inspire them to act temperately. On this point,
Kristjánsson, who criticizes Aristotle for having undervalued
the role of a sense of shame in virtuous persons, would
happily agree with Aquinas. That notwithstanding, for
Aquinas the temperate person cannot simply follow his sense
of shame either, for at times the sense of shame can be
misleading. The temperate person still needs to deliberate
whether his sense of shame is rationally justifiable or not.
Hence, although shame can be virtuous, that is, morally
praiseworthy, especially in the humble and magnanimous
person, it still falls short of the perfect notion of a moral
virtue because of the very fact that it does not operate from
choice and needs to be sustained by other virtues in order to
produce a beneficial outcome.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 293-308

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED
PAUL O’CALLAGHAN
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

D

AVID BENTLEY HART’s book That All Shall Be
Saved has been creating quite a stir. 1 And understandably so. In it he makes an all-out case in favor
of universal salvation. Dissatisfied with the efforts of Hans
Urs von Balthasar and others who speak half-heartedly of our
hope that all may be saved, that “Christians may be allowed
to dare to hope for the salvation of all” (66), he states outright
that all humans will in fact be saved. Theologians have
struggled with the issue time and again, and have seldom
come up with such a clear-cut answer as Hart offers. Of
course, if the thesis is right, it would change the dynamic of
Christian life considerably. Hart has been accused of
mistranslating and misinterpreting Scripture, of presenting a
dictator God who obliges everyone to keep company with
him for ever and ever, of making a good God of our imagination morally superior to the God revealed in Scripture, of
neglecting the power of human free will to the point of
trivializing human acts, of taking it for granted that most
Christians delight in the pains of the condemned, of obscuring the value of temporal life, and of being a pugnacious
and determined adversary.2 Nevertheless he argues his case
cogently and with depth.

1
That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Universal Salvation. By David Bentley
Hart. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2019. Pp. 222. ISBN 978-0300-24622-3. Page numbers within the text refer to the book.
2
See, e.g., M. Werntz, “Making Nothing of Evil, and Everything of God,” In All
Things (August 13 and 14, 2019); P. Leithart, Theopolis (October 2, 2019), to which
Hart responded in the same journal (October 7, 2019). See also Hart’s article “Why
Do People Believe in Hell?,” New York Times (January 10, 2020). See also reviews
by D. Waldow, Journal of Moral Theology 9, no. 2 (2020) 200-202; S. F. Gaine, New
Blackfriars 101 (2020) 628-30; D. King, Religious Studies (2019) 1-4; as well as J. P.

293

294

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

I. FOUR MEDITATIONS
Hart presents his position through four meditations,
preceded by an ample introduction and with a final
conclusion.
The first meditation goes to the core of the matter, which
Hart considers to be the goodness of God who creates the
world ex nihilo (65-91). If God created the world without
presuppositions of any kind—every last thing, every single
atom, every last person, and so on—then how can we say that
even one such person or creature could be lost forever? To
do so, Hart says, we would have to deny God’s ultimate
attribute, which is his goodness. Yet Scripture teaches
unequivocally that God is good, indeed that God is Love.
Christ proved this beyond all doubt by dying on the Cross, as
did the Father by raising him from the dead. Hart notes that
according to Gregory of Nyssa creation ex nihilo is not merely
a protological issue (referring to the beginning), but also an
eschatological one, for God creates the world with an end, a
purpose, a design. If the end is defective, so too must be the
beginning. For Gregory (as well as Maximus the Confessor),
“protology and eschatology are a single science” (68). God is
“the beginning and end of all things” (69). Ultimately, “all
causes are logically reducible to their first cause” (70).
If God has made everything, then evil can never be
considered as “something” that might oppose God autonomously, especially if it endures forever. Rather evil is always
and only a privatio boni, the privation of the good in a
particular being, which can always be supplemented or
overcome by God’s creative or saving action. This was the
consistent position of Christian theologians as they opposed
different kinds of Gnosticism, dualism, and spiritualism. God
is involved in no “dialectical struggle with some recalcitrant
exteriority” (71). God acts in “an inexhaustible power wholly
possessed by the divine in peaceful liberty in eternity” (ibid.).
“God does not determine himself in creation” (72), as Hegel
had suggested he did. Hart recognizes that for some people
divine “goodness” obeys a logic different from what we find
in created goodness, and so they propose that eternal
Manoussakis, “Salvation à la Hart: A Review Essay of David Bentley Hart’s That All
Shall Be Saved (unpublished manuscript, College of the Holy Cross).

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

295

condemnation might be the fruit of God’s “goodness.” Hart
insists however that a certain analogy, or mutual recognizability, between the two should be possible (74).
Hart concludes in this first meditation that
if both the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and that of eternal damnation are
true, that very evil is indeed already comprised within the positive
intentions and dispositions of God. . . . He has willed a tragedy, not just a
transient dissonance within creation’s goodness . . . but as that irreducible
quantum of eternal loss that . . . still reduces all else to a merely relative
value. (82f.)

The temporal punishment that leads to the soul’s correction
(what Catholics call “purgatory”) is quite different from
“eternal torments, final dereliction” (84). This is not just a
human problem, but a divine one, Hart says; the condemned
would be “still the price that God has contracted from
everlasting . . . for the sake of his Kingdom” (87). The
apocalyptic work 4 Ezra (7:7) puts it admirably: “When the
Most High made the world . . . the first thing he prepared
was judgment, and everything that relates to it.” This is Hart’s
position: “if God creates freely . . . his final judgment shall
reveal him for who he is. . . . If God is the good creator of all,
he must also be the savior of all, without fail” (90f.)3.
The second meditation is biblical in character (92-129). In
it Hart draws on his own recent translation of the New
Testament.4 He holds that Scripture does not contain a clear
doctrine on an everlasting hell. It is absent, he says, in the
letters of Paul (93). Judgment is understood in salvific terms.
Words normally translated as “eternity” or “eternal” or
“forever” should be understood in a temporal way (120-29),
for in the original they refer to the term “age,” aîon, which is
usually finite in character in New Testament usage, as Ramelli
and Konstan have proposed.5 Likewise, Hart recognizes the
impropriety of identifying hell with the biblical Gehenna
3
Hart presents the same position in D. B. Hart, “The Devil’s March: Creatio ex
nihilo, the Problem of Evil, and a Few Dostoyevskian Meditations,” in Creation ex
nihilo: Origins, Development, Contemporary Challenges, ed. G. A. Anderson and M.
Bockmuehl (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018), 297-318.
4
D. B. Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2017).
5
I. A. Ramelli and D. Konstan, Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical
and Christian Texts (New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2013).

296

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

(112-19), which “was a place of neither annihilation nor
purification” (117).
The principal biblical texts Hart refers to in this meditation
are those which speak of the salvation of “all”: thus Rom
5:18f.; 1 Cor 15:22-28 (“so that God may be all in all”); 2
Cor 5:14, 19; Rom 11:32; 1 Tim 2:3-6; Titus 2:11; Eph
1:9f.; Col 1:27f.; John 12:32; Heb 2:9; John 17:2 with John
4:42, 12:47 and 1 John 4:14; 2 Pet 3:9; Matt 18:14; Phil
2:9-11; Col 1:19f.; 1 John 2:2; and so on (95-102). He
quotes many of them at length. He also mentions 1 Tim 4:10,
“we have hoped in a living God who is the savior of all human
beings, especially (malista) those who have faith.” Texts such
as the last do raise the issue or whether or not salvation is
automatic and universal, since personal faith is involved
somewhere. Still, Hart holds that the texts in question teach
that God will save each and every one.
Hart is of the opinion that the Book of Revelation, which
to all appearances is deeply eschatological in character, is not
“about the end of time” (107). It is, rather,
an extravagantly allegorical “prophecy” not about the end of history as
such, but about the inauguration of a new historical epoch in which Rome
will have fallen, Jerusalem will have been restored, and the Messiah will
have been given power. (108)

The expression “for ever and ever” occurs frequently in this
book, and is applied on several occasions to the condemned
(Rev 14:11; 19:3; 20:10). Hart, however, translates it as
“unto the ages of the ages.” He holds that “it is absurd to treat
any of the New Testament’s eschatological language as containing, even in nuce, some sort of exact dogmatic definition
of the literal conditions of the world to come” (119). He is
wary of what could easily become fundamentalistic interpretations of single texts taken out of context.6 He does not
deny that there is a “hell,” but he regards it as temporal and
medicinal, what he calls a “transient dissonance” (89).
Hell exists, so long as it exists, only as the last terrible residue of a fallen
creation’s enmity to God, the lingering effects of a condition of slavery that
God has conquered universally in Christ and will ultimately conquer
individually in every soul. (129)

6

See D. B. Hart, Theopolis (October 7, 2019).

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

297

The third mediation considers the issue of universal
salvation from an anthropological angle. Hart asks how
realistic it is for a particular human being actually to close in
on himself forever, permanently, totally closed to change
(130-58). An eternal hell would convert “the ‘good tidings’
of God’s love in Christ into something dreadful, irrational,
and morally horrid” (131). For there is no proportion between the sinful act of the human being (any sinful act is finite
in commission and effects), and the resultant wrenching,
tormented, eternal punishment it gives rise to simply on
account of the infinite dignity of the one offended, God
(132).
Hart offers an extensive, favorable explanation of Gregory
of Nyssa’s defense of the apokatastasis, or final, universal
reconciliation (138-44). Unlike Augustine, Gregory did not
see
some everlasting division between the two cities of the redeemed and the
reprobate, but only a provisional division between two moments within a
single economy of a universal salvation . . . two distinct eschatological
horizons, one wholly enclosed within the other. (139)

God conceives humanity in terms of an eternal, unitary
archetype, made in God’s image. “It is only in the purity of
the divine wisdom that this human totality subsists
‘altogether’ in its own fullness” (140), which is fully assumed
by Christ. “Humanity, understood as the plērōma of God’s
election, never ceases to possess that deathless beauty that
humanity, understood as an historical community, has largely
lost” (141). Christ, who fully assumes humanity within
himself, brings all things back to the Father who at the end of
time will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
Besides, Hart insists (on many occasions throughout the
book) that should only one human being be lost, all would
suffer, and none would be truly saved.
Each person, as God elects him or her from before the ages, is
indispensable, for the humanity God eternally wills could never come to
fruition in the absence of any member of that body, any facet of that beauty.
. . . The loss of even one would leave the body of the Logos incomplete,
and God’s purpose in creation unaccomplished. (144)

298

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

He insists that we are not “persons” as mere individuals of
the human race, but in our multiple and complex relationship
with others.
There is no way in which persons can be saved as persons except in and
with all other persons. . . . No soul is who or what it is in isolation; and no
soul’s sufferings can be ignored without the sufferings of a potentially
limitless number of other souls being ignored as well. . . . Finite persons are
not self-enclosed individual substances; they are dynamic events of relation
to what is other than themselves. . . . If not subsistent relations [this refers
to the divine persons], we are . . . subsistences of relationality; each of us is
an entire history of attachments and affinities, and none of those
attachments and affinities is merely accidental to some more essential self.
(146, 149, 151, 154)

Hart takes particular exception to those authors (he mentions
Tertullian, Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas [see also 78,
167, 169]) who hold that “the knowledge of the torments of
the damned will increase the felicity of the blessed in heaven”
(146). He concludes that “either all persons must be saved, or
none can be” (155). He quotes Kierkegaard, who writes: “If
others go to hell, then I will too” (198).
The fourth mediation deals with the notion of human
freedom (159-95). Hart returns to Gregory of Nyssa’s position on universalism (164f.), pointing out specifically
Gregory’s “metaphysical and biblical conviction regarding the
inherent finitude of evil, the infinite fullness of God’s
goodness, and the irrepressible dynamism of the moral life of
rational spirits.” Thus “no rational will could ever be fixed
forever in the embrace of evil” (165). Hart’s understanding
of freedom is very classical, rooted doubtless in both
Augustine and Aquinas. He eschews the libertarian or modern
view of freedom as mere choice, by which people define
themselves and construct their own life and spirit (172).
Rather, freedom is based on rationality. “There is such a thing
as an intrinsic nature in rational spirits. . . . Freedom is a
being’s power to flourish as what it naturally is, to become
ever more fully what it is” (ibid.). Hence “to be fully free is
to be joined to that end for which our natures were originally
framed. . . . We are free not because we can choose, but only
when we have chosen well” (173).
Humans, Hart says, are simply incapable of deciding upon
an end and then pursuing it “out of pure unreasoning per-

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

299

versity” (174). In fact, “true freedom is contingent upon true
knowledge and true sanity of mind” (177). This, Hart holds,
does not amount to a kind of metaphysical determinism, as it
leaves “considerable room for deliberative liberty with regard
to differing finite options (what Maximus the Confessor calls
the ‘gnomic will’)” (179). In effect, Hart accepts Maximus’s
distinction between “natural” and “gnomic” will (36, 185,
189)—and he notes, “however the ‘gnomic’ will may wander,
the ‘natural’ will animating it seeks only one ultimate end”
(185).
With a graphic translation of John 12:32, Hart speaks of
God freeing souls by “dragging” (most translations have
“drawing”) them to himself (179; see also 27, 98, 129), an
idea that evokes Augustine’s suavitas amoris, the way in
which God’s grace gently draws and seduces the soul to
himself. Or perhaps it evokes Seneca’s Ducunt volentem fata,
nolentem trahunt (“Destiny leads whoever is willing, and
drags whoever is not”).7 Hart speaks of “the will’s constant
and consuming preoccupation with God” (186). As a result,
he concludes, Gregory’s “reasoning is unassailable” (190).
“Evil itself must disappear in every intellect and will, and hell
must be no more” (195).
II. CRITIQUE
A) First Impressions
Some observations are in order in respect of Hart’s tour de
force, or perhaps, should we say, his cri de cœur. The book is
written with verve. Explanations are often graphic though
sometimes dismissive of positions with which the author
disagrees. At an intellectual level, the fundamental thrust of
the work is philosophically serious and classical, rooted in
Scripture and the Church Fathers. At a more human level I
was glad to have spent pleasant hours sharing the insights of
someone who is convinced that I am going to be saved at
some stage! I don’t know if I could say the same about
Aquinas, who does state “pauciores sunt qui salvantur”
(“those who are saved are a minority” [STh I, q. 23, a. 7, ad
3]). Aquinas was not the only one to have done so. It may be
7

Seneca, Epist. 107:10.

300

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

noted in passing, however, that his references to the image of
the blessed savoring the hellish torture of others are always
measured and nuanced. He attempts to understand the existence of perpetual condemnation in terms of the repristination of order in the universe.
God inflicts punishments, not for his own sake, as though he took pleasure
in them, but for the sake of something else: namely on account of the order
that must be imposed on creatures, in which order the good of the universe
consists. (ScG III, c. 144)

Hart’s book rings true with what the historian Tom
Holland, in his recent work, Dominion, 8 has shown:
Christians over the centuries have learned to be more and
more compassionate with their fellow creatures to a degree
unthinkable in ancient Athens or Rome. And they have spread
the word successfully: to enjoy the suffering of other people,
indeed of other living beings, is unthinkable for a believer.
While this substantial contribution to civilization should not
be taken for granted, it does help us appreciate the impropriety of representing a divinity who is not powerful nor
loving enough to save those whom he created and destined to
live forever in communion with him.
That said, some observations may be made in respect of
the four meditations. I have attempted elsewhere to deal with
many of the issues that arise here.9
B) The Bond between Creation and Eschatology
As regards the first meditation, we may say that the
doctrine of creation ex nihilo involves two things.10 First is
the notion of complete divine responsibility. That the world
exists, and exists as it is, is because God made it so. This is the
principal support Hart provides for justifying universal
reconciliation. God made the world and must take full
8

T. Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (London: Little, Brown
& Co., 2019).
9
See Paul O’Callaghan, Christ our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology
(Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 189-221.
10
I deal with the history and doctrine of creation extensively in God’s Gift of
Creation (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming
in 2021).

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

301

responsibility for it, at the beginning and the end. But creation
ex nihilo also means that the created world is not God. Hart
speaks clearly about the transcendence of God and of the
complete distinction between the Creator and creation on
several occasions (56-58). Yet this distinction is what makes
it metaphysically possible for free, rational creatures to
separate themselves from God, even forever, without compromising the divinity or transcendence of the divinity. God’s
immanence in creatures does not involve any loss of
transcendence. The reality of being truly created persons gives
them the opportunity of freely configuring their lives far from
God, as Eleonore Stump explains in a dense yet important
article cited by Hart (182, 214). 11 That some part of the
cosmos would separate off forever would be a problem for a
Greek ontology, structured out of a single, continuous
hierarchy, a single metaphysical world, but not so much
perhaps for a Christian one, which in reality involves two,
entirely distinguishable, ontologies, that of God and that of
(all) creatures.
Another important area that needs further discussion is the
weight Hart places on the testimony of Gregory of Nyssa in
defending apokatastasis, or universal reconciliation. Gregory
uses the term forty times. Hart’s reading is shared by several
contemporary students of Gregory’s, among them von
Balthasar, S. Lilla, J. Gaïth, M. Pellegrino, M. Ludlow, and
G. Maturi. 12 However, more recently, other authors,
following Jean Daniélou, have opposed this reading, for
example M. Azkoul, A. A. Mosshammer, J. Zachhuber, C. N.
Tsirpanlis, and G. Maspero. 13 Interestingly, Gregory does
11

E. S. Stump, “Dante’s Hell, Aquinas’s Moral Theory, and the Love of God,”
Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1986): 181-98.
12
H. U. von Balthasar, Présence et pensée: Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de
Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne 1942), 40; S. R. Lilla, Gregorio di Nissa,
L’anima e la resurrezione (Rome: Città Nuova, 1981), 31; J. Gaïth, La conception
de la liberté chez Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 187-95; M. Pellegrino, “Il
platonismo di S. Gregorio Nisseno nel dialogo ‘Intorno all’anima e alla
resurrezione’,” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 30 (1938): 437-74; M. Ludlow,
Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000); G. Maturi, “ jApokatavstasiς e janavstasiς in
Gregorio di Nissa,” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 66 (2000): 227-41.
13
Daniélou says of Gregory: “One cannot even say that he holds the thesis of
universal salvation” (L’être et le temps chez Grégoire de Nisse [Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1970], 224); see his earlier work “L’apocatastase chez Saint Grégoire de Nysse,”

302

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

not speak of apokatastasis when dealing with soteriology,
though he does use it when speaking of both creation and
eschatology. He certainly rejects Origen’s doctrine of the
preexistence of souls, though in some texts he shares Origin’s
conviction as regards universal reconciliation. The basic
reason for this is that he is convinced evil cannot endure
forever, not being a substance in its own right. Still, universal
reconciliation according to Gregory is applicable to human
and cosmic nature as a whole, but not to each and every
individual. 14 For this reason Daniélou says that Gregory’s
apokatastasis is equivalent to resurrection, which is common
to all, but not to eternal life which is personal and faithdependent. 15 And, of course, Scripture distinguishes resurrection from eternal life (John 6:40); the classical texts that
speak of resurrection (Dan 12:1f.; John 5:28f.) make it clear
that, while all will rise up, not all will be saved.
Gregory explains the apokatastasis as the moment when
God will establish absolute sovereignty over all things, and all
will know that he is the Lord (Ps 59:14). In his commentary
on verse 15 of this psalm, which refers to those who return at
night and move about the city, like hungry dogs (v. 7),
Gregory writes:
I think that in repeating the expression is revealed that men, even after this
life, will be in one state and the other, that is, in the same good and evil in
which they now find themselves. For he who moves about outside now and
does not live in the city will conserve the human character of his life, but,
having willfully made themselves beasts and having become dogs, those
then too, thrown out of the heavenly city, will be punished with the hunger
for goods. The victor of the adversaries will instead, advancing “from
beginning to beginning”—as the Psalmist says in another passage (Ps

Revue des sciences religieuses 30 (1940): 328-47. Cf. also M. Azkoul, St. Gregory of
Nyssa and the Tradition of the Fathers (Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Messen Press,
1995), 141-48; A. A. Mosshammer, “Historical Time and the Apokatastasis
according to Gregory of Nyssa,” Studia Patristica 27 (1991): 70-93; J. Zachhuber,
Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological
Significance (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000); C. N. Tsirpanlis, “The Concept of Universal
Salvation in Saint Gregory of Nyssa,” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 1139-40; G.
Maspero, Trinity and Man: Gregory of Nyssa’s ‘Ad Ablabium’ (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
2007), 76-94; G. Maspero, “Apokatastasis,” in L. F. Mateo-Seco and G. Maspero,
eds., The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), 55-64.
14
This position is carefully documented in Maspero, Trinity and Man, 76-94.
15
See Daniélou, L’être et le temps, 224f.

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

303

83:7)—and passing from victory to victory, say: “But I will sing your
power, in the morning I will exalt your grace.”16

The point is an important one: God saves the whole of nature,
but not necessarily each and every human being. People are
relational indeed, and their lives are intertwined with those
of others, but, as Hart himself says, they are not subsistent
relationships (154).
Gregory speaks in this text of those who have willfully
made themselves beasts, those who live on “with the hunger
for goods.” Perhaps this can give us some idea of what eternal
punishment might look like through the eyes of Gregory:
perpetual hunger for good things, unrealized humanity, an
impoverished, animal-like existence. Does this involve unmitigated torment? Perhaps not. Unimaginable agony? Not
necessarily. But the objective loss of God, yes. The condemned are more dead than alive, they are incapable of
loving. Dostoevsky, C. S. Lewis, and Bernanos all coincide in
saying that that “Hell is not to love any more.” Indeed,
Bernanos once said that
the error common to us all is to invest those damned with something still
inherently alive, something of our own inherent mobility, whereas in truth
time and movement have ceased for them: they are fixed for ever. . . . The
sorrow, the unutterable loss of those charred stones which once were
human beings, is that they have nothing more to be shared.17

“Charred stones”: what is left over at the bottom of the pile.
Above and beyond them are an enormous variety of human
beings, some closer to God, others less so; some in perpetual
growth (epektasis in Gregory), some riveted to immobility
forever. All equally loved into existence, but not all equally
loving.
Hart’s insistence on the parallelism between beginning and
end, between protology and eschatology, is fundamentally
valid of course, and deeply patristic. But an eschaton that just
replicates the proton tells us that all the tears and the sighs,
all the love and the pain, all the joy and the hope, all the
strivings of humans and nature, were just so much wasted
time and effort, a sterile, useless struggle and rebellion. To
16
17

Gregory of Nyssa, In Inscr. Ps. (GNO 5:175, ll. 12-23).
G. Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest (London: Fount, 1977), 177.

304

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

borrow a line from Thomas Gray, we were wasting our
sweetness on the desert air. Besides, identification between
the proton and the eschaton is the deepest theological root of
conservatism.18
Of course if, as Daniélou suggested, Gregory identifies
apokatastasis with resurrection, then so does Maximus, who
endorses Gregory, besides making it quite clear that the final
divinization of rational creatures will only be realized in those
who have shown themselves to be worthy of God’s gift.19
Origen’s understanding of the apokatastasis may end up being
shared by Isaac of Nineveh, Didymus the Blind, and Diodore
of Tarsus, but few others.
C) Eschatology and Scripture
Hart’s second meditation, as we saw, deals with biblical
issues. An observation of Joseph Ratzinger’s is to the point
here: the notion of universal reconciliation may well be
“derived from the system rather than from the biblical
witness.”20 Scripture is not meant to be domesticated; rather,
we must allow it challenge us. Speaking of perpetual
condemnation, Augustine says, “Scripture does not deceive
anyone!”21 One might also mention Pierre Grelot, who says
of the doctrine of apokatastasis that “no text from Scripture
offers the slightest basis for it.”22
Many of Hart’s scriptural observations are perfectly valid.
Still, it is questionable whether the New Testament texts he
cites speaking of the salvation of “all” can be used to justify
the salvation of each and every person. Hart himself
recognizes this in saying that they have “been explained away
. . . again and again down the centuries of Christian history”
(162f.). Of course God saves only those who believe; on no
account may salvation be considered an automatic or
18
See my study “Is the Christian Believer Conservative or Liberal?”, Church,
Communication
and
Culture,
4
(2019):
137-51;
available
at
doi.org/10.1080/23753234.2019.1616580.
19
See B. E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 202.
20
J. Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1988), 217.
21
Augustine, De civ. Dei 21.23.
22
P. Grelot, Le monde à venir (Paris: Le Centurion, 1974), 120.

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

305

unconscious process. Augustine put it in the following
succinct way: “Omnis autem homo Adam; sicut in his qui
crediderunt, omnis homo Christus, quia membra sunt
Christi,” 23 a position later assumed by Aquinas. 24 All are
born of Adam, Augustine says, all without exception are born
with original sin (Hart refers to inherited sin somewhat
negatively [24, 75, 145]). And all are justified by Christ, the
New Adam, as long as they believe in him, one by one. Of
course, this is an essential proviso. Being born in sin is
automatic (Eph 2:3); salvation is not (Luke 13:23f.).
On the whole it may be incorrect to say that the doctrine
of eternal condemnation is absent in the Pauline corpus (93).
Paul does speak on repeated occasions of sinners being
excluded from “eternal life” or from the kingdom of God
(1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 5:19-26; Eph 5:5).
We have already referred to Hart’s interpretation of aiōn
and aiōnios in more a literal, finite, sense, as “an age,” in the
sense of an epoch: an extended, undefined, unitary but finite
period. This is a valid option from the literary point of view,
although the history of translation, in all languages, has held
on to the terms “eternal,” “everlasting,” or their equivalents.
Matt 25:46, situated solemnly at the end of the final judgment
discourse, is usually rendered as follows: “And they [sinners]
will go away to eternal [aiōnios] punishment, but the
righteous into eternal [aiōnios] life.” Hart offers the following
translation: “And these will go to the chastening of that Age,
but the just to the life of that Age.”25 The problem here is that
if punishment (or “chastening”) is temporary, then the reward
would likewise have to be temporary. This seems out of
keeping with John’s understanding of “eternal life” in terms
of permanent communion with the divinity. Of course, it is
easier to explain the eternity of heaven in which God fills us
with his light and draws us to himself26 than to account for
the permanence of hell where the will has nothing permanent
to latch on to.27 Aquinas distinguishes clearly between eternal
life and eternal death, but the use of a common term, aiônios,

23

Augustine, Enn. in Ps. 70, 2.1.
See STh III, q. 8, a. 5, ad 1.
25
Hart, The New Testament, 68.
26
See Aquinas, ScG IV, c. 92; cf. John 12:32.
27
See ScG IV, cc. 93, 95.
24

306

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

in a particularly important, solemn text spoken by Jesus,
makes it difficult to justify two different interpretations.
A significant part of this meditation is taken up by a reflection on the hermeneutics of eschatological texts—a
complex issue, no doubt, that requires closer attention.28
D) The Anthropological
Condemnation

Outworkings

of

Eternal

The third meditation deals with anthropological issues that
arise from our understanding of “hell.” Here Hart goes back
to the central role played in this question by Gregory of
Nyssa, while distancing himself from Augustine. We have
already seen that Gregory’s position quite probably does not
involve strict universal salvation, but rather reconciliation of
the cosmos as a whole. But Hart is right in saying that the
intrinsically relational aspect of human persons and life
would put Christian teaching on hell under considerable
strain. In fact, St. Catherine of Siena protested confidingly to
the effect that she would never be happy as long as even one
of those united to her in nature or in grace had been
condemned. She implored God that, if at all possible, hell
should simply be destroyed. “I do not wish any of my
brothers, who are united with me in nature and grace, to be
lost,” she said.29 This is a prayer, of course, but so is the title
of Hart’s book: “that all shall be saved.” Doubtless the point
is a valid one.
Still, the individuality of the human person and his
distinction from others is also an essential aspect of
anthropology. Leibniz with his theory of the monads set the
scene for a clearly individualistic view of human existence,
which has left a powerful mark on modernity. Yet the notion
that the human person is metaphysically incommunicabilis
may be found during the Middle Ages in Richard of St.
Victor, Aquinas, and Scotus. Without this indissoluble
individuality there would be little space for meaningful
liberty, true responsibility, and cordial openness to others.
28
For two different approaches, cf. A. Nitrola, Trattato di escatologia, vol. 1
(Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo, 2001); and my work The Christological Assimilation
of the Apocalypse (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004), esp. 103-36, 232-56.
29
Vita del B. Raimundo di Capua (Siena: Cantagalli, 1982), 27.

THAT ALL MAY BE SAVED

307

Otherwise the fact of manipulation of others might be seen as
a duty of manipulation.
I find myself in substantial agreement with Hart’s fourth
meditation on the dynamics of human freedom. Following
from what he said in an 2003 essay, as well as in his work
Atheist Delusions,30 he has shown clearly that the libertarian
or modern view of free will has no place in the Christian
understanding. But we need to be attentive so that the
Christian view of freedom, based on rationality, is not
interpreted in a “necessitarian” way, as if humans could only
choose the good. As an aside, we might mention that the
modern libertarian view of pure choice, which would seem to
be fully compatible with the existence of hell, in practice has
tended to deny it.
Throughout history, many philosophers and theologians
have held that we are free in respect of created goods, but not
in relation to God (or Destiny, etc.). This is so with Seneca
(the fata nolentem trahunt); it is also suggested by Maximus
with his distinction between “gnomic” and “natural” will, the
first directed towards creatures, the second towards God; and
it is implied also by Luther in his De servo arbitrio (we are
free before creatures, but not before God). Hart cites
Maximus’s distinction approvingly (36, 179, 185, 188). The
upshot would seem to be that we can do what we wish in the
created sphere, but not coram Deo, for God will save us
anyway (he will “drag all to himself”).
Perhaps the distinction established by Silvester of Ferrara
and Francisco Suárez between an “innate desire” and an
“elicited desire” for God focuses things in a different way.
The former refers to the natural attraction created things have
for one another. But this cannot be applied to our desire for
God, because it would involve a necessary union with the
divinity. The “elicited desire” derives from the knowledge
either of the works of God or of the limits of the created
human condition. In effect, humans, in recognizing created
limits, can desire to transcend them and so direct their lives
to the one who has created them. In other words, the “elicited
desire” is occasioned by the indirect knowledge we have of
30
See D. B. Hart, “Christ and Nothing,” First Things (October 2003); idem,
Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

308

PAUL O’CALLAGHAN

God through creatures. Whether the distinction, which is
presented by Silvester, Suárez, and other authors as an
interpretation of Aquinas, can hold up will depend on the
epistemology involved in desire, and the degree to which we
are allowed to look at Aquinas with Platonic-AugustinianDionysian glasses. 31 But the distinction between “natural”
and “elicited” desire would leave the door open for the
possibility of eternal condemnation.
CONCLUSION
Speaking of the possibility of perpetual condemnation,
Joseph Ratzinger counters that what is peculiar to
Christianity “is this conviction of the greatness of man.
Human life is fully serious.”32 Thus it may just be possible for
someone to reject God outright. When asked by the disciples
how many would be saved, Jesus avoided giving a yes or no
answer. He simply said, “Strive to enter by the narrow door;
for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able”
(Luke 13:23f.). Maybe not much more can be said.
All in all, Hart has offered an important and challenging
work that proposes anew a central issue in the history of
theology, and invites us to further theological study.

31
I have dealt with this issue in my book Children of God in the World: An
Introduction to Theological Anthropology (Washington D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2016), 387-405, especially 402f.
32
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 217.

BOOK REVIEWS
Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina Apostolorum.”
Edited by MATTHEW LEVERING, BRUCE L. MCCORMACK, and THOMAS
JOSEPH WHITE, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2020. Pp. ix + 369. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-81323240-9.
Why should a bunch of Roman Catholic theologians meet to compare and
contrast the teaching of an ecumenical council with the private judgment of a
Protestant theologian? First, quite simply, because they can thereby enjoy the
company of many distinguished students and heirs of the thought of this theologian. Second, the theologian in question is Karl Barth. Third, the ecumenicity
of Vatican II is open to the future, and the tradition of its reception should most
of all engage a thinker whose chief criticism of the council pertained to the
chapter on tradition in Dei Verbum.
This criticism is contained in Barth’s Ad Limina Apostolorum, the account of
his visit to Rome in 1966 at the invitation of the Secretariat for Christian Unity.
His preparatory study of the conciliar constitutions and decrees included
composing questions both clarifying and critical. It is around these questions
that the essays of Dogma and Ecumenism are organized, products of a 2016
symposium sponsored by the Barth Center at Princeton University and the
Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of
Studies in Washington, D.C. The symposium engages Barth’s questions
touching on Dei Verbum, Lumen Gentium, Nostra Aetate (the Decree on NonChristian Religions), Gaudium et Spes, and Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on
Ecumenism), lining up a Protestant and a Catholic interlocutor for each of these
documents. Matthew Levering contributes an opening, framing essay, and
Richard Schenk bats last, looking to the future after a consideration of the uses
of history for Church and theology.
In “Holy Scripture as a Mirror for God,” Katherine Sonderegger addresses
the question of the inerrancy of Scripture using the council’s image of Scripture
as a "mirror" in which God is to be beheld (DV 7). Just as the material of the
mirror may produce a flawed image of what is mirrored, so the human form of
the word of God may also state errors. Sonderegger thus puts Scripture under
the same eschatological proviso that Barth puts Church doctrine. In “A
309

310

BOOK REVIEWS

Theology of Tradition in Light of Dei Verbum,” Lewis Ayres undertakes to show
the sacramental quality of the act of tradition, arguing by analogy from Lumen
Gentium. The perceived ecclesial acts of interpretation in the teaching of the
gospel manifest to the eyes of faith the agency of the Spirit.
Christoph Schwöbel and Thomas Joseph White provide model essays in
bringing Lumen Gentium and Karl Barth in close proximity to one another.
They agree that the chief issue is the relation between the divine agency and the
agency of the Church in maintaining access to God’s revelation and participation in salvation. They agree also in finding in Barth’s Christology guides to
the solution of ecclesiological problems. Schwöbel points out that just as God’s
Word becomes visible flesh in Christ, so the invisible Church of those who live
by the Spirit in faith is located in history in the visible Church. Nor are these
two Churches, but two aspects of only one Church (102-4), as Lumen Gentium
8 says. If in Christ the humanity of Jesus is the organ or instrument of his
divinity, as Barth recognizes, why, White asks, cannot other created realities
similarly be taken up by God as reliable instruments? So, for Catholics the
magisterium is the stable and trustworthy instrument by which God maintains
the truth of his revelation in the world of many sometimes conflicting interpretations of Scripture; habitual grace that justifies the sinner is intrinsic to the
justified, a reliable foundation used by the Spirit to elicit the Christian’s real
cooperation in sanctification; and minsters can be used by God infallibly to offer
this grace when the sacraments are rightly administered. Schwöbel draws
attention to the fact that, for Barth, the word of God is prior to any word
spoken from out of the quite posterior Christian experience that word evokes,
informs, judges (102). But if revelation and reconciliation are exclusively God’s
work (132), why, White asks, should this exclude the divine use of created
instruments unto the accomplishment of this same work, even as the created
humanity is an instrument of the Word? Schwöbel argues that ecumenical
discussion should proceed by linking individual issues to the fundamentum of
the self-revelation of God, and White’s careful arguments of fittingness unto
ecclesiological echoes or repetitions of the relation of Christ’s humanity to his
divinity is a sort of instantiation of Schwöbel’s recommendation.
Bruce McCormack and Bruce Marshall take up Nostra Aetate. McCormack
asks whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The text of Nostra
Aetate, he thinks, as well as the classical metaphysics that informs much Catholic
magisterial teaching, incline to an affirmative answer. Recapitulating Barth’s
account of how Christians receive God’s revelation of himself, which is the only
path to the knowledge of God, McCormack constructs an argument that inclines to a negative answer. On Barth’s showing, the very way we come to the
knowledge of the distinction of divine persons is built in to the object known,
the ontology of the persons themselves, such that the human obedience of the
Son tells us of his eternal obedience and thus of a God eternally constituted by
the temporal display of the persons in the economy. If Muslims do not share

BOOK REVIEWS

311

this faith in the gospel, it would seem impossible for them to have the “same”
God as Christians. McCormack notes, however, that the New Testament does
not evidently give us adequate ground for adjudicating this question. It must,
then, remain open, perhaps unto the Second Coming. How Christians answer
this question in no way prejudices their duty in charity to all men, coreligionists
or not.
With the help of Charles Journet, Bruce Marshall seeks a way beyond the
common postconciliar recognition of all religions as ways of salvation, all
equally providentially willed by God to play a similar role in the economy of
salvation (e.g., Hick’s pluralism) or the idea that Christianity includes in a better
form all that is true and good in non-Christian religions (Rahnerian inclusivism).
Non-Christian religions can in fact mediate salvation, according to Marshall,
but they do so only by letting Christ work “at a distance,” in which the Spirit
does more to elicit desire than to produce anything that can substitute for the
explicit word of the gospel about Christ. Marshall argues at length for the
impossibility of a “wordless” encounter with Christ, and non-Christian religions
do not, therefore, work “by contact,” where one is knowingly and intentionally
and voluntarily joined to Christ by faith and baptism. Thus, notwithstanding
what we may style the provisionally providential role of non-Christian religions,
especially as a possible preparation for the gospel, the universal missionary activity of the Church is by no means made accidental to the salvation of all those
whom God elects. Marshall does not engage Barth himself, except by raising
the question whether Barthian Christology and soteriology unstring the bow of
missionary fervor quite as much as the anonymous Christianity of Rahner (41).
John Bowlin and Francesca Aran Murphy give themselves over to a
consideration of Gaudium et Spes. Murphy tracks its reception by George
Lindbeck, for whom the eschatological viewpoint of the constitution relativized
and even overcame the divisions of the sixteenth century. She thinks Lindbeck
missed the Christological center and classical apologetic concerns of the
constitution. John Bowlin brings Gaudium et Spes into conversation with the
Barthian-inspired Confession of 1967 of the United Presbyterian Church. This
is a good conversation, where Bowlin thinks Gaudium et Spes speaks a word
that can allay Barthian fears about Christians claiming subjective rights, and
where Barth’s insistence on the priority of covenant to creation finds expression
in the constitution (221).
Hans Boersma rightly perceives that Catholics think that the unity of the
Church such as Christ desired it from the foundation is something that cannot
be lost and is a good that the Catholic Church alone enjoys. This makes it
difficult for Catholic ecumenical interlocutors really to meet their Protestant
counterparts “on an equal footing,” Boersma thinks, if we are speaking of an
equal institutional footing. Boersma also thinks that the famous acknowledgment of a “hierarchy of truths” by the Decree on Ecumenism provides little
hope for the restoration of unity with Protestantism, in as much as all Catholic

312

BOOK REVIEWS

truths are held by Catholics to be taught with the same formal authority. This,
too, is right. He thinks there may be hope in the distinction John XXIII made
between the substance and the form of expression of dogmas, which Boersma
understands to be roughly the same distinction Henri Bouillard made in 1946
between the absolute “affirmation” of dogmas and the “representations” in
which the affirmation is expressed. Writ large, I think such hope as Boersma
evinces here would commit the Church to some kind of historicism, since it is
hard to see how doctrine could remain “irreformable.” Like many Protestants,
Boersma urges us to remember that the unity of the Church is something
eschatological. But again, in an extreme form, this can too much eschatologize
the very truth of revelation, such that it, too, is something we look forward to
but do not possess. It is indeed just in virtue of the eschatological nature of
revelation that doctrine, for Barth, must remain always reformable. For Catholics this would mean that it has never really been delivered, never really been
heard by the Church, and so never been spoken by God. Boersma thus puts his
finger on a most difficult issue.
Reinhard Hütter treats in detail Barth’s questions concerning the Decree on
Ecumenism. Within his carefully reasoned response to Barth, he includes a
demonstration that the teaching of the Decree is itself an evident instance of the
development of doctrine, and he argues this at length from John Henry
Newman’s seven notes of genuine developments. This invocation of Newman,
moreover, allows Hütter to explain why Catholic engagement in ecumenism
should be “late.” More importantly, it gives him occasion to rebuke Barth for
conceiving of the relation of revelation to history episodically: if for Catholics
divinely revealed truth is above history and presides over the community of the
Church it evokes, it is also thoroughly in history, since it is truly addressed to
and received by hearers whose historicity cannot be escaped or laid aside. Hence
we can observe an historical passage of the received Word, in which that Word
is recast, analyzed, recapitulated, related to philosophical truths and so
develops. This very historicity of the Word is precisely what Catholics mean by
tradition, and precisely because of the nature of the hearer of the Word, it is
something prior to the written word, because more foundational. An episodically sounding Word, moreover, suggests an episodically faithful Church,
which is a key point in distinguishing Catholic and Barthian ecclesiologies.
In his introduction to the volume, White observes that man is a “doctrinal
being”—we constitute the world around us via the reception of teaching, and
we constitute the Catholic world we inhabit by way of the tradition of apostolic
teaching. Matthew Levering, for his part, insists on the cognitive character of
Scripture, of tradition, and of doctrine. Together with Hütter, they take most
seriously the turn to historicism and doctrinal relativism after the council on the
part of many Catholic theologians. Barth himself, whose first passage of arms
was with Protestant Liberalism, issued the same warning after the council. If
Catholic encounter with him does nothing more than to remind us of this

BOOK REVIEWS

313

danger, we will have been well served. But of course it does much more, and
we should thank the contributors of the volume for this very generous “more.”
GUY MANSINI, O.S.B.
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

A Poetic Christ: Thomist Reflections on Scripture, Language and Reality. By
OLIVIER-THOMAS VENARD. London: T&T Clark, 2019. Pp. 496. $35.96
(paper). ISBN: 978-0-5676-8470-7.
This book is an anthology of the author’s doctoral dissertation at l’Université
de la Sorbonne-Paris-IV, as it has appeared in the trilogy Thomas d’Aquin, poète
et théologien, I: Littérature et théologie: Une saison en enfer (Geneva: Ad Solem,
2002); II: La langue de l’ineffable: Essai sur le fondement théologique de la
métaphysique (Geneva: Ad Solem, 2004); III: Pagina sacra: le passage de
l’Écriture sainte à l’écriture théologique (Paris: Cerf/Ad Solem, 2009). Professor
of the New Testament at the École biblique et archéologique française de
Jérusalem, Olivier-Thomas Venard is a graduate of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud, and a Dominican of the Province of Toulouse.
Translated and edited by Francesca Murphy and Kenneth Oakes, and
comprising five main sections, it introduces Venard’s prodigious scholarship to
an English-speaking audience. The first section, drawn from Pagina sacra,
begins with a presentation of the Gospels as conveying not merely an ensemble
of performances, but a capacity for encountering and living with Christ in faith.
It then examines, among other matters, human understanding and language as
originating in and participating in God’s Word. The second section, from
Littérature et théologie, begins with a consideration of the literary vocation,
described as prone to two opposite pitfalls. One is the tendency to present pure
ideas by way of literary language, removed from lived experience and ordinary
speech. The other is the crass trivialization by which literature is reduced to the
demands of consumerism. As a third way the author proposes the literary
vocation understood as engagement with symbolic experience, made possible
by a theology of the Word. To illustrate art of this kind Venard presents
Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, noting that it was written with a view to meeting
the concrete practical requirements of instructing Dominican students, yet in its
every detail is animated by and ordered to a unique transcendent end, God’s
Word. The third section, from La langue de l’ineffable, undertakes a theological

314

BOOK REVIEWS

examination of language and its origin, God’s Word, again with reference to
Aquinas, as well as several of his twentieth-century commentators. Here the
author whom Venard has in mind is God, who has left us two books, one of
nature, the other of Scripture. Mutually interpretative, the two are engaged in
an ongoing dialectic which culminates in discourse on God. Aquinas is once
again taken as a model in the fourth section, drawn from Pagina sacra, which
studies the centrality in Christian culture, especially in theological culture, of
devotion to the cross, considered as an efficacious sign, at once the summit and
source of speech about God. After discussing the cross as the means by which
the incarnate Word speaks his love by the language of the body, and which
becomes a true word, the author then turns his attention to the Eucharist,
reflection on which, he endeavors to show, sheds light on our experience of
signs and language. In the final section, also from Pagina sacra, Venard reflects
on the epistemic force of Christian speech about God in a disenchanted, deChristianized world, and considers the prospects for dialogue between the
believer and the nonbeliever. After mentioning a few paradoxes inherent in
rationalistic historical criticism, he points to the persuasiveness of the metaphysics of participation implied by the Christian doctrine of creation and to the
enduring beauty of Scripture and the Church’s sacraments as reasons for
confidence. Against the symmetrical intolerances of rationalism and
fundamentalism, the author optimistically proposes the aforesaid symbolic
communication at the service of the Word made flesh (449).
It is symbolic communication of this sort that is suggested by the book’s title.
As Venard indicates, poetics here is less a matter of rhyme or meter than of
literary aesthetics: “We intend to sketch a poetics of the Gospel: we want to
envisage the word of the Gospel as the result of an art of using words and
phrases within a conception of language” (21). This may seem strange to those
who recall that towards the beginning of his Summa theologiae (I, q. 1, a. 9,
ad 1), Aquinas put clear blue water between poetry and sacred doctrine,
precisely on the basis of aesthetics—whereas the first makes use of metaphor
because such representation is naturally pleasing (naturaliter homini delectabilis
est), the second does so out of necessity and for the sake of utility (propter
necessitatem et utilitatem). All the same, the author surely does well to draw
attention to the fineness of Aquinas’s style, which has too often been written off
as lifeless. His ideal poet, of course, is Christ, who, in turn, makes poets of all
believers. But some are better than others, and the one whom Venard offers for
the reader’s edification and instruction is Aquinas. It is from him that Venard
draws the understanding of ars at work throughout the book—knowledge or
skill, speculative or practical, for acting or making well. What must be done
well here is speech about God.
Without pointing too many fingers, the author suggests that much of what
has passed for biblical scholarship and theology fails as Christian speech for lack
of engagement with Christ’s own poetic speech. He goes on to propose an

BOOK REVIEWS

315

examination of the conditions for the possibility of Christian poetics. Merely
descriptive language will not do: “The signification of the Gospel is performed
not only by the weave of the story and the thematics of its discourse, but also
by the inscription of the reader herself into the text by the text” (79). By
extension, the interpreter’s work is truly Christic and Christian to the extent
that it draws readers into Christ’s speech.
At the heart of Venard’s project is exposing as fatally reductionist an implied
premise of much New Testament scholarship: “the relationship of Jesus to the
Gospels cannot be reduced to the relationship between the subject of a book
and a book which speaks about him” (81). Even if few commentators on the
Gospels would like to be called biographers, Venard’s arguments for differentiating between the two disciplines—presented on literary, metaphysical and
historical grounds—will be of interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike.
Since the book’s interests are too many and varied for consideration here,
with what follows I will confine my attention to part 3, “Language as a Theological Question.” In a chapter entitled “Little Thomasian Semiology,” Venard
presents the case for a realist understanding of language, particularly for coming
to terms with divine revelation. To some readers the lines of dependence
connecting revelation and language may come as a surprise. For the author, it
is not the case that a realist theoretical framework for speech secures our access
to revelation, but the other way around: “Our hypothesis is that only the
revelation of the creation of the world by an intelligent and loving God enables
us to enter into the fundamental symbolic experience of the realist intentionality
of speech, and to the extent that this idea is expressed, metaphysics depends on
the biblical text” (236-37). Here, too, by extension the theologian’s vocation is
to employ language that participates in the divine Word, so drawing readers
into this same participation. It is just such realism that Venard has previously
found poetic in Aquinas’s writing: “In the final analysis the theology of the
Word has to establish the dicere of the Summa through adding the reality of
participation of human speech in the Logos of truth to formal or propositional
analogy. Without such an addition, how could we reconcile confidence in the
word with a realist position?” (134). Put another way, it is Aquinas’s faith in
God’s creative and incarnate Word that grounds his confidence in speaking of
the real.
Venard then turns his attention to the deconstructionist critique, which
would denounce any such realism as illusory. As the deconstructionists would
have it, our need to use words to talk about words leaves all such language
irreducibly locked within the confines of tautology. Precluding any prospect of
linguistic realism, deconstructionism would force us to abandon all hope of
finding poetry in Scripture, exegesis, theology, or anywhere else. It is this
irreducibility which Venard proposes to ground on Thomistic terms (275), all
the while acknowledging that Aquinas himself neither raised nor responded to
the deconstructionists’ problem. It is mainly Roland Barthes and Jacques

316

BOOK REVIEWS

Derrida whom Venard has in mind, and the list of concepts and genres he finds
them setting aside as unfounded is considerable—truth, consciousness, doctrine,
kergyma (304). On his reading of Aquinas, the created order itself is language,
representing God not as his inner word (verbum), but as the inner word’s
exterior or oral expression, its voice, functioning in the fashion of a
mysterium/signum. Such is the representation that differentiates the theology of
language implicit in Christianity from mythology or “mytho-graphy,” the
embrace of which would require a leap into the absurd (328).
In this remarkably original work, Venard very ably introduces his readers to
a few of the paradoxes lying in store for anyone inquiring about the functioning
of language in divine revelation. This study is learned, drawing support as it
does from an impressive array of sources, philosophical, literary, and theological, early modern, modern, and postmodern, not to mention numerous
ancient and medieval ones. His placement of Aquinas in conversation with
deconstructionists makes for no light reading, but the effort required is well
rewarded.
All the same, it must be said that the author’s style and vocabulary are often
ostentatious, and they sometimes obscure rather than disclose whatever he
might wish to say. So we find the relation between the aforementioned books
of Scripture and nature described in terms of mutual dependence, or the lack
thereof, as follows: “Such is the intersected foundation of the two ‘books’
written by God for human beings: The Book of Scripture is necessary for
piercing the enigma of nature and transfiguring its meaning; the Book of nature
is necessary for understanding Scripture. The dialectic of Scripture and creation,
of ‘revealed sense’ and ‘ontological sense’, encapsulates all the dialectics that we
have encountered up until now . . . without, however, being necessary for the
intelligibility of either one” (335). The reader is left to wonder which of these
two sentences may be taken at face value. Fault here is not to be found in the
translation, which is admirable.
Also problematic is the author’s tendency to find in Aquinas what he wants
him to say rather than what he, in fact, says. One such case is Venard’s reading
of the following extract from Aquinas’s commentary on the first chapter of
John’s Gospel: “Then since the Word is the true light by his very essence, then
everything that shines must do so through him, insofar as it participates in him.
And so he enlightens every man coming into this world. . . . All men coming
into this visible world are enlightened by the light of natural knowledge through
participating in this true light, which is the source of all the light of natural
knowledge participated in by men” (In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 5). Venard finds Aquinas
assuming an epistemic premise he leaves unmentioned in his methodological
remarks and engaging in the kind of presupposition that would be the undoing
of the deconstructionists: “St. Thomas turns out to presuppose in the very reality
of his theological performance something which he does not show on the
theoretical level: a kind of direct illumination by the Word (incorporated into

BOOK REVIEWS

317

the Scriptures!)” (322). Though one can only wonder at what the author means
by “direct illumination,” Aquinas’s meaning is clear enough. Presupposing
nothing he does not say unambiguously in many other places, he points out that
the light of natural reason participates the light of God’s word, without itself
becoming the object of knowledge, the source of which is normally sense
perception (cf. STh II-II, q. 8, a. 1). Aquinas does not doubt that even in this life
our love of God is immediate, tending to him first and then falling on other
realities, but on his view, with knowledge it is the other way around, as we
know God through his effects (see STh II-II, q. 27, a. 4). In connection with this
same exposition Venard also finds that Aquinas “does not hesitate to make
human words participate in the divine Word.” But such an inference requires
some forcing of the text, wherein that which participates in the divine Word is
the natural light by which we form words. Aquinas does not say the same for
the words themselves.
Of course, a sustained reflection on the created order’s revelatory character
that draws attention to the centrality of participation in Aquinas’s understanding of creation should warm the heart of any Thomist, provided that it
respect on the differences between God and his effects. At the outset of his
commentary on John, Aquinas expatiates on the differences between God's
Word and ours (In Ioan., c. 1, lect. 1). The discussion so interested subsequent
generations of readers that they reproduced and circulated it as an independent
treatise of just under 1200 words under the title De differentia divini uerbi et
humani, with the result that it survives in no fewer than thirty-four manuscript
copies and was included in printings of Aquinas’s opuscula up to the late
nineteenth century. The first of the differences it mentions is that, by contrast
with God’s Word, our words normally signify neither the substance of our
intellect nor the species by which we understand, because these are not typically
what we intend to name when speaking of things. Making reference to
Augustine (De Trin. 9.5), Aquinas adds that for this reason the mind bears a
likeness to the Trinity when it reflects on itself, but not when it considers
worldly things. Venard’s remarkable study has the great merit of showing the
import of this likeness in the minds of those who would speak about Christ.
And so it is to be hoped that it will prompt further discussion of the Divine
Word's centrality in the functioning of our words.
TIMOTHY F. BELLAMAH, O.P.
Leonine Commission
Paris, France

318

BOOK REVIEWS

Sin: A Thomistic Psychology. By STEVEN J. JENSEN. Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2018. Pp. 336. $34.95 (soft).
ISBN: 978-0-8132-3033-7.
The Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston
enjoys prominence among faculties devoted to the study of Saint Thomas
Aquinas. Since 1975 a succession of recognized authorities in the field of
Thomist studies has taught there. Steven Jensen, who currently serves as
Director for the Center and also holds the Bishop Nold Chair in Graduate
Philosophy, continues a work that began under the directorship of Professor
Anton C. Pegis, formerly president of the Institute of Mediaeval Studies at
Toronto. The Center places Houston on the map of Thomist centers throughout the world, alongside Toulouse, Rome, and Fribourg—to name only a few.
The present volume witnesses to the quality of the scholarship that one has
come to associate with Texas Thomism. Distinguer pour unir recalls an
important work of the Thomist author Jacques Maritain, who visited the
Houston Center and is numbered among its honorary members. Distinguish to
unite captures the overall achievement of Jensen’s presentation of what he calls
a Thomistic psychology. In other words, the author demonstrates the remarkable ability of a good thinker to expose the arguments of those colleagues
who purport to interpret the same texts that he does. In this case, the texts
under analysis come from the pen of the Angelic Doctor, especially the Secunda
pars of the Summa theologiae and the disputed questions De malo. Both works
date from roughly the same period of Aquinas’s teaching career (the late 1260s
and early 1270s).
It is a fair generalization to state that the way Aquinas understands the
specifically human workings of the rational animal differs from how many
theorists of our period explain human behavior. To claim, as Aquinas does, that
“a good understood [bonum intellectum] is the will’s object and moves it by
being something to aim for” (STh I, q. 82, a. 4) separates Thomists from those
who hold that human actions arise from anything but an understood good. To
further claim “that in all of our choices we always act for some good” (1)
introduces a number of questions that the author treats in chapter 1 under the
heading of “The Enigma of an Evil Will.” Facile replies to questions about the
relationship of the will to the highest good leads to assertions that would easily
fit in the mouth of someone like Goethe’s Mephistopheles. The authentic
Christian tradition, however, will not allow evil to determine anything.
Had Adam not sinned, Jensen would not have had to write this book.
However, original sin entered the world. Christian thinkers, then, face the
challenge of explaining the existence of disorder in a world that God created
good. I believe that the author chose the title that he did, Sin, in order to make
this point. One, therefore, may be forgiven for thinking that a book about
Aquinas’s discussion of human willing would most fittingly carry the title

BOOK REVIEWS

319

“Blessedness,” whereas casuist authors might hawk their wares by promising
cogent thought about sins. The present author, however, cleverly draws us to
his subject by his implicit appeal to that which no Christian can escape. Once
Christ dies on Calvary, those who follow him must seek to promote the good
and to restrain what is evil. Aquinas in fact makes this point explicitly at the
start of the Tertia pars. Some have even argued that the whole of the Summa
exposes the path persons must follow to become what God made the human
creature to be. Jensen outlines the mistakes that thinkers have made about how
one should walk along this path. We need to know these errors, even though it
remains the case that the only real remedy for the mistakes humans make
provides work for theologians and not philosophers.
Chapter 2 introduces the various ways in which contemporary philosophers
interpret Aquinas’s teleology. The word “teleology” does not appear in the
Index. Jensen discusses the ways in which Aquinas considers a person’s ordering
unto God. I found the translation of “in Deum” as “into God” (19 n. 12)
puzzling. I should have thought that “unto” would better express the motion
toward that the Latin ad with an accusative indicates. In any event, Jensen
admirably defends Aquinas’s telic conception of human action against the
several thinkers who prefer to read Aquinas from a more subjectivist point of
view. The late Germain Grisez stood out among them. Once Ralph McInerny
delivered a lecture to which he gave the title, “Are There Natural Ends?” I
overheard Professor Grisez, while looking at the title, observe to a colleague of
his, “Sure, lots of them.” He of course referred to natural deaths. For his part,
Jensen treats his interlocutors with the utmost courtesy. He does not, for
instance, dismiss Grisez’s reading of Aquinas as overly Kantian. All in all, the
author eschews caricatures and summary dismissals. At the same time, he clearly
explains how the overall good governs human actions, although several
distinctions are required to make this claim applicable to the progress of daily
life. Chapter 3 furthers this discussion by considering several views of what
constitutes an overall good.
Chapter 4 introduces a focused treatment of the book’s leitmotiv. Given that
God has made us for himself and that we suffer restless hearts until we embrace
him, why do people move away from pursuit of the embrace? To begin this
inquiry Jensen asks, How does venial sin happen? In the Prima secundae,
Aquinas devotes seventy questions to material that today we would consider
under the heading of general morals before he arrives at a treatment of sin.
Granted that Jensen does not intend to offer a commentary on the Summa, still
the introduction of sin in order to examine Aquinas’s action theory strikes the
theologian, though arguably not the philosopher, as influenced more by modern
casuistry than by Aquinas’s description of the human person as set between God
and God. The discussion of venial sin nonetheless affords the author the chance
to explain why a person can depart from the movement toward happiness
without abandoning the trajectory altogether. Again, he deploys what the old

320

BOOK REVIEWS

Scholastics call the “sword of distinction” with profit. This quality of his
scholarship proves especially useful when in chapter 5 he discusses the famous
unbaptized child who upon reaching an age of discretion makes “a choice for
or against God” (84). Few commentators observe that if the boy lives, he still
faces a lifetime of moral choosing in accord with the natural law and,
presumably, without the benefit of the sacramental mediations that restore
sinful persons to communion with God, thus rendering them capable again of
choosing unto God. In this chapter, the author makes a reference to the Thomist
commentatorial tradition before 1900 when he reports on the solution offered
by Cardinal Cajetan (d. 1534) that employs a distinction between the love of
concupiscence or desire and the love of benevolence or friendship. In short,
venial sin weakens friendship but does not destroy it.
Chapter 6 introduces the figure of Charles De Koninck (d. 1965) whose
teaching on the true nature of the common good has contributed significantly
to Thomist studies. “Creatures have a natural love for God above all else
because their good belongs to the divine good. The good is not solitary but
shared” (105). Therein lies the philosophical foundation for the life of divine
charity that we learn about from divine revelation. Against the backdrop of
much crushing totalitarianism during the first half of the twentieth century,
personalist philosophies and theologies gained, after World War II, widespread
attention among religious persons. Martin Buber’s I and Thou (New York,
1970) is a famous example from outside Christianity. It is better to think of
Christian communities as made up of participants in a shared common good,
the good of divine charity, instead of an assembly of persons connected by some
extrinsic ideal such as service.
Whereas the discussion of venial sin serves the author’s purpose to clarify
how a will made for the good can veer from its complete embrace of the good,
chapter 7 introduces a series of discussions that dissect various aspects of sin
(chapters 8 to 11). Again, the author returns to his opening theme, namely, the
enigma of an evil will. Aquinas’s treatment of the hostes voluntarii, the enemies
of the voluntary, has long occupied moral theorists. Thomists generally agree
that while every free act is a voluntary act, not every voluntary act is a free act.
The overall thrust of the Prima secundae shows, as Thomas Gilby puts it, that
freedom is not an absolute or ultimate value. Liberty within limits describes
Aquinas’s outlook on human activity. The limits arise from the ordering of
divine wisdom, not from a social contract. Jensen ably handles his colleagues
who find this outlook difficult to reconcile with modern outlooks on human
subjectivity. He helpfully points out that medieval authors like Aquinas
emphasized judgment more than the status of the will (284). Recall that for
Aquinas man is first of all an image of God, not an auto-constituting Self. Sins
of commission occupy a place of greater importance in the moral manuals of
the sixteenth century than they do in Aquinas’s moral thought (see STh I-II,
q. 72, a. 6). The author points out that Aquinas seems to argue differently about

BOOK REVIEWS

321

omissions in De malo than he does in the Summa. Of course, questiones
disputatae arise from lecture hall exchanges, whereas the Summa follows the
order of teaching. Most teachers recognize that responding to a student’s
question may require a temporary departure from the ordo disciplinae.
The final chapters (12 through 15) discuss controversies that mainly arise
from within academic settings. It remains a tribute to Aquinas’s genius that those
who do not share his religious convictions nonetheless recognize the seriousness
of his thought. Even those who number themselves among his coreligionists
have produced various accounts of his teachings, especially on a matter as theologically dense as human freedom. Jensen handles these inquirers (for lack of a
better term) fairly, while politely refusing to update Aquinas so as to make him
congenial to the tastes of today’s polite academic society. At the same time,
Jensen avoids taking sides in every intra-Thomist debate, such as we see in his
delicate treatment of F. Marin-Sola (who appears only in footnote 43 on page
237). Some ethicists, in order to protect what they consider the innocence of
God, find ways to create an independent movement in the human creature that
becomes the space where sin can arise. Classical Thomists, on the other hand,
were slow to follow this line of thought and preferred rather to maintain the
priority of the divine initiative in all human action. Those who find such an
abandonment to divine providence a chilling prospect should ask themselves a
simple question: Which do you prefer when it comes to ensuring your eternal
salvation, to trust God or yourself?
This book merits careful attention from those who study Aquinas’s moral
thought, as well as those who want to understand human conduct within the
overall context of the Christian tradition. Because of the Houston Center’s
historical connection to Toronto, I want to say that Jensen has produced a work
of Christian philosophy. He shows us that Christian tenets can serve to raise
perfectly legitimate philosophical questions to which philosophers can respond,
albeit in various ways. He has done an admirable job of collecting the major
thinkers of the period who have wrestled with Aquinas’s texts. He treats them
courteously and at the same time critically.
ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P.
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

322

BOOK REVIEWS

Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates. By RICHARD
CROSS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv + 288. $85.00
(hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-19-884697-0.
Richard Cross’s Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological
Debates approaches the development of Lutheran Christologies with attention
to the Scholastic background, to the intertwined metaphysical and semantic
issues at play, and to internal and external pressures shaping the conversations.
The result is seven chapters of careful exegesis leveraging finely wrought
distinctions to offer a precise analysis of the nature and stakes of the debates.
The Introduction sets out crucial parameters and terms for the investigation.
The seven chapters trace developments in Lutheran and Reformed Christologies
from the 1520s to the 1590s, featuring a lengthy cast of characters and several
clearly drawn fault lines.
The Council of Chalcedon serves as a point of initial departure and of
constant reference, allowing Cross to introduce as technical terms “person,”
“hypostasis,” and “suppositum” as well as to present overlapping metaphysical
and semantic questions. Chalcedon affirms a union of and in two natures
without change, confusion, separation, or division. This union is typically
designated the hypostatic union. Chalcedon’s affirmation provides a limit
marking off permissible and impermissible theological reflection, excluding as
impermissible any combination of divine and human natures into some new
nature (a tertium quid) and any assignment of separation of the natures between
“two distinct concrete particulars” (3). Within the permissible limits, Cross
argues that theologians “have by and large identified two ways of construing
this union” (ibid.). One “makes the union between the natures basic” (ibid.),
and the other “makes the hypostatic union derivative of or parasitic on some
more basic relation” (5). Cross traces this second way of construing the union
from Cyril of Alexandria to John Duns Scotus, whose own account focused on
the dependence of the assumed nature on the person assuming, in a way akin
to the dependence of an accident on a substance. Scotus’s articulation of this
model proved influential on late medieval and Reformation debates. Lutheran
scholars labelled the model “according to which the human nature was
something like a (complex) contingent property of the divine person” the
“supposital union” (8). Cross employs this label to indicate the assumed human
nature’s dependence upon the divine person assuming and distinguishes the
supposital union from the hypostatic union, which more generally indicates the
relationship of the divine and human natures.
Whether or not one affirms the supposital union can change one’s
conception of the relationship between the divine person and the properties of
the human nature. Cross employs the term “properties” to designate “both
(contingent) accidents and propria, things that follow automatically from a
given nature without being included in it” (9). Porphyry lies behind these

BOOK REVIEWS

323

discussions. One fault line dividing the thinkers Cross treats is whether they
view the divine person directly to bear the properties of human nature or
indirectly to bear the properties insofar as they are directly borne by the human
nature assumed. Another fault line concerns the assumed human nature as a
concrete particular and the reasons why the concrete particular human nature
assumed does not fulfill the necessary conditions for personhood.
These metaphysical considerations relate to semantic issues as well. Cross
establishes a detailed framework for categorizing a broad range of approaches
in their general classifications and in their specific forms. He builds from a
“semantics for Christological predication” suggested by Timothy Pawls, a
semantics that allows symbolic formulation of fine-tuned differences (helpfully
listed under “Frequently Cited Principles” on xxiii-xxiv). Using various
symbolic formulations within this semantics allows Cross to develop precise
designations to indicate the metaphysical grounds for different predications of
Christ. In Cross’s analysis “one of the major fault lines in Reformation
Christological debate focuses precisely on whether or [not] the divine person
bears not only his human nature but also human properties” (19). Framed
otherwise, intra-Lutheran and Lutheran-Reformed debates concerned different
understandings of the communicatio idiomatum, a phrase Cross notes
“specifically applies to predicating divine or human properties of the one person
under a description appropriate to the other nature—‘God is passible’, for
example, or ‘the man is eternal’” (21). The Latin tradition adopted the phrase
communicatio idiomatum from John Damascene, and Reformation thinkers
distinguished within this notion a genus idiomaticum and a genus maiestaticum.
The genus idiomaticum refers to properties of both natures pertaining to the
divine Word. The genus maiestaticum refers to properties of the divine nature
somehow shared with the human nature. Cross touches upon further points in
the Introduction, which I have lingered over due to its larger framing of all the
particular discussions and exegeses that follow in the seven chapters, which
move along broadly chronological lines.
The chapters begin with debates between Martin Luther and Huldrych
Zwingli from the 1520s. As Cross acknowledges, his assessment of Luther’s
Christology differs in significant ways from standard assessments, as he reads
Luther squarely within a Scholastic framework and as affirming a supposital
union. Cross persuasively argues that Luther’s arguments for consubstantiation
over transubstantiation in Eucharistic debates have misled some commentators
to suppose that Luther rejects a supposital union. Luther’s proposal of
consubstantiation relates to his affirmation of Christ’s (nonspatial) bodily
omnipresence, an affirmation Luther grounds in Chalcedon and its specification
of the natures united without separation or division. Cross is careful to note
that Luther does not advance a theory of the genus maiestaticum but that
subsequent Lutheran thinkers do. Zwingli rejects Christ’s bodily omnipresence
along with any attempt to assign divine predicates to Christ’s human nature.

324

BOOK REVIEWS

Many of Zwingli’s arguments are scriptural, which Cross acknowledges while
concentrating on his discussions of alloiosis as related to the communicatio
idiomatum. Zwingli confusingly describes two distinct forms of predication
with the name alloiosis. Cross parses out these distinct forms (naturepredication vs. subject-predication) and the circumstances under which Zwingli
allows them to be true even if figurative.
Perhaps no thinker influenced Luther’s Christology to the extent that Philip
Melanchthon did. Though closely aligned with Luther in his earlier Christological views, Melanchthon comes to diverge from Luther in rejecting the divine
person of the Word as the ontological subject of human properties and bodily
omnipresence. Moreover, Melanchthon comes to view the communicatio
idiomatum as a figure of speech and to deny that Christ’s human nature bears
divine properties. Johannes Brenz moves in the opposite direction, articulating
and defending the genus maiestaticum. Cross highlights two crucial aspects of
Brenz’s approach. The first is to “use ‘man’ and ‘Son of Man’ to refer not to the
divine person as such, but to Christ’s human nature” (96). The second “is a
metaphysical principle, to the effect that the communicatio requires the divine
person to have human properties, and the human nature to have divine
properties” (ibid.). Brenz’s understanding of the communicatio idiomatum
together with his somewhat careless blending of concrete and abstract predications lead to untenable conclusions. Cross draws careful attention to this
fundamental problem and examines various attempts to exploit or to address it
in Christological debates.
Cross returns to Eucharistic considerations in discussing John Calvin and
responses to Calvin from Joachim Westphal and Tilemann Hesshus. Cross also
examines Calvin’s similarities to and differences from Zwingli. The similarities
include rejection of bodily omnipresence and acceptance of the communicatio
idiomatum as a figure of speech that can nonetheless be true. Perhaps the most
notable difference is Calvin’s allowance that Christ’s body is life-giving, though
he rejects the more general principle of the genus maiestaticum. Treating
Westphal and Hesshus allows Cross to examine the breadth of Lutheran
approaches in the mid-sixteenth century. Westphal sees himself as explicitly
following Luther and Brenz in affirming Christ’s bodily omnipresence, mistakenly believing that these two agree and showing himself more a polemicist
than a theologian attuned to fine distinctions. Hesshus exhibits greater delicacy,
clearly recognizing the distinction between abstract and concrete predications
and utilizing this distinction to affirm Christ’s bodily omnipresence. Cross
presents Westphal and Hesshus as affirming the genus maiestaticum but only at
Christ’s exaltation. In subsequent chapters, Cross investigates later thinkers
unwilling to restrict the genus maiestaticum to Christ’s exaltation. He also
presents a fruitful discussion of Christ’s human nature as life-giving and how
these three thinkers understand that differently, based upon different
understandings of the hypostatic union.

BOOK REVIEWS

325

The central figure in the development of Lutheran majestic Christology was
Brenz. Cross highlights Brenz’s move to articulate the genus maiestaticum on
the assumption that “Son of Man” is the human nature assumed and to restrict
which divine properties were communicated to the assumed nature. Discussions
of Peter Martyr Vermigli, Heinrich Bullinger, Theodore Beza, and Jakob
Andreae serve to draw out Brenz’s distinctive contributions to Reformation
Christologies. Brenz’s late Christology advocates the curious position that
supposital union was the common phenomenon of human beings sustained by
God and that it is rather the genus maiestaticum that properly explains the
union of natures in the Incarnation. Brenz labors to explain how Christ’s human
nature bore divine powers without thereby being essentially equal to the divine
nature. Thus he attempts to avoid the rather extreme position of Caspar
Schwenckfeld according to which Christ’s exalted human nature became equal
to the divine essence. Beza’s criticisms of Brenz and Andreae’s reworking of
Brenz’s views shaped subsequent debates and attempts to refine Brenz’s
approach. Not all of those who accepted the genus maiestaticum did so on
Brenzian grounds, and Cross presents Jakob Schegk, Johann Wigand, and
Martin Chemnitz as prominent examples, adding richly to the mix of reflection
on the conditions for Chalcedonian orthodoxy and the metaphysical and
scriptural grounds for the genus maiestaticum.
The range of approaches evident within Lutheran Christologies in the 1560s
and 1570s reveal stark divisions. The 1577 Formula of Concord sought to
harmonize these divisions and to address the pressing question of the correct
interpretation of Luther’s own Christology. The various parties emphasize
different aspects of Luther’s thought, namely, abstract predication and Christ’s
bodily omnipresence. Cross details how the Wittenberg theologians focus on
select texts from Luther to raise serious concerns over Brenz’s use of
asymmetrical and abstract predications in his version of communicatio
idiomatum. The Wittenberg theologians build upon Luther’s predications of
divine properties of the human being Christ in the concrete rather than in the
abstract.
The discussion of the Formula of Concord proves particularly interesting
and compelling, especially in its attention to the second edition of Chemnitz’s
De duabus naturis in Christo, which Cross notes “is perhaps the outstanding
Christological treatise from the Reformation” (209). Chemnitz, Cross argues,
departs from his earlier understanding of the hypostatic union to follow
Melanchthon and also develops a novel approach to the genus maiestaticum
according to which Christ’s human nature possesses the very divine properties
without those properties inhering in the human nature, which would risk some
elision of the natures and seemingly fall into the non-Chalcedonian views of
Schwenckfeld. While intra-Lutheran debates continue, there is also a final
attempt to harmonize Lutheran and Reformed Christologies at the Colloquy of
Montbéliard. The task was made yet more difficult in that Andreae represents

326

BOOK REVIEWS

the Lutheran perspective, Beza the Reformed. Andreae develops a Brenzian
account heavily criticized by Beza on semantic grounds as failing to meet the
standards of Chalcedonian orthodoxy.
This book is learned, thorough, and valuable to those with interest in
Reformation theologies or more generally in Christology. Cross makes a
credible case that many standard readings of Luther’s Christology are incorrect
in significant ways. That alone suffices to recommend the work, but there is far
more to this book than consideration of Luther. The technical precision of
Cross’s analysis of different Christological positions and semantics allows for
fine-grained comparisons of subtle yet significant differences within
Reformation Christologies whilel also providing a framework for similar
approaches in other Christological contexts. While the technical precision and
symbolic notations might prove difficult for some, the only real criticism to note
of Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates is the
regrettable frequency of typos.
COREY L. BARNES
Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio

Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics. By
ANDREW DAVISON. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Pp. xii + 423. $34.99 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-1087-0404-5.
This wonderful book is the fruit of the growing interest among theologians
in the notion of participation and the participatory way of thought, not only as
found in an exemplary way in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, but more
broadly as characteristic of a Christian (biblical and patristic) understanding of
God’s creative and saving presence in the world. It is a form of theology that
dares to speak freely in a metaphysical register without feeling cornered
somehow by the secular presuppositions of modern philosophy. The book
shows signs of being influenced by the Radical Orthodoxy movement, with its
predilection for Platonic participation. Even though the book does not assume
that movement’s full force of a critical and polemical stance towards modern
secular culture, it does oppose modern varieties of nominalism, with its individualist ontology, voluntarism, and the modern split between the human
subject and the world. The general approach is positive, aiming at setting out a
broad Christian vision of the world that has the notion of participation at its
heart. The book’s closest parallel, explicitly mentioned as a source of inspira-

BOOK REVIEWS

327

tion, is Hans Boersma’s Heavenly Participation (2011), which has introduced
many readers to a participatory account of theology. The author proves himself
to be an excellent teacher who in a clear and simple language draws a persuasive
and well-informed picture of the Christian participatory view of the world in
its relation to God. To the author, participation means first and foremost that
the world is approached in terms of sharing and receiving, or of communion.
The spirit of participation is recognizable, for instance, in the question posed
by the apostle Paul: “What have you got that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7).
The double message of participation is that a creature is nothing apart from
God’s gift, while at the same time, by God’s gift, it truly exists and has being.
The book’s subtitle is “A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics.” The
perspective may be called distinctively theological, even in the sense that the
relevant sources used to elaborate the participatory way of thought include
biblical texts. The author acknowledges that Plato is the philosophical father of
participatory thinking, and that the presence of participation in the writings of
the Church Fathers (not least Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and in the Latin west, Augustine) is due to the comprehensive influence of
Platonist metaphysics in the period of late Antiquity. The most prominent
source in this book is, undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas, “the master of the
participatory perspective” (7). The author does not intend his book to be a
scholarly study about participation in Aquinas; nonetheless it is Aquinas with
his broad and consistent participatory vision in the whole of theology who
provides the author’s main point of reference.
The book is divided into four parts. The first part—“Participation and
Causation”—treats of creation, the notion that everything comes from and
depends upon God. Creation is approached from the angle of the Aristotelian
four causes: God is the efficient cause, the creative agent by which everything
is made; he is the (extrinsic) formal cause in the sense that creatures are made
“after God’s likeness” and have a characteristic form corresponding with the
idea in God; he is the final cause in the sense that creatures are made for the
sake of God and have their fulfilment in God; and God is not the matter out of
which things are made, but rather creatures are made out of nothing (ex nihilo).
In this way, the author describes a threefold pattern of God’s creative causality,
which is then linked explicitly with the Trinitarian life in God which is the
exemplary model of participatory relatedness and communion.
Part 2 is devoted to language—“The Language of Participation and Language
as Participation.” It begins with a useful clarification of the grammar of the
language of participation. Participation can be understood as having a part in
or having a part of. Christian theology will take participation primarily as
having a part in, implying a connection with the whole. The author refers to
some characteristic formulations used by Aquinas: in his commentary on the
Liber de causis, he writes that “what is participated is not received in the one
participating according to its entire infinity but in the manner of a particular

328

BOOK REVIEWS

[particulariter].” The qualitative language of particulariter, of receiving a
perfection in a particular way, is thought to be more appropriate than the
quantitative partem capere. The author also mentions another formulation, used
in the Summa theologiae, where Aquinas says that God’s act is not so much
shared by others according to “a part,” but “by diffusion of its processions.” It
is not a part of God himself that is received in creatures, but “processions”
flowing out from God. The aspect of reception is associated with limitation.
Participation stands for a limited reception from another of what is in its source
more abundantly (141).
The chapters that form part 3 discuss such topics as Christology, human
action and freedom, evil as the failure of participation, and redemption.
Especially interesting is the doctrine of incarnation, worked out in participatory
terms. The author sees here a double participation: through the Son, human
beings come to share in a divine relationship, while Jesus comes to share our
humanity. There is a lot of sharing and communion in Christianity; and sin may
be conceived of as falling out of the mutual sharing. In part 4 (“Participation
and the Shape of Human Life”), the author pays attention to the implications
of the participatory way of thought for a series of topics pertaining to human
life—knowledge, love, ethics, and law. Organized around the transcendental
ideas of truth, goodness, and beauty, this part looks especially at how a
participatory framework might animate a way of life. The chapters are
exceptionally rich in their analyses, observations, and (critical) comments. I
want to mention just one theme, that of knowledge, seen from a participatory
perspective. Knowledge is, in this view, not so much a matter of the conceptual
activity of the knower, aiming to shed light on the data of experience by putting
them into a theoretical structure; rather, knowledge is based on the
communication to the knower of the form of what is known. According to
classical metaphysics, things have a form, an intrinsic truth (veritas rei), which
is a likeness of their idea in God, and through which they are able to present
themselves in the process of knowledge to the mind of the knower. Participation
functions here as an alternative to the subject-object opposition of modern
philosophy, with its constructive view of knowledge.
What follows are a few comments, some critical, some questioning. The title
of the book initially made me raise my eyebrows. To speak of participation in
God may suggest to the unprepared reader a form of pantheism, as if God is
shared by other things. It reminded me of the warning of Aquinas in his
commentary on Dionysius’s On the Divine Names: God, he says, is imparticipabilis. However, in a note at the end of chapter 1, the author explains that the
expression “participation in” should be read as an active donation from the
source. Creatures participate from God, meaning that they receive from God;
and what they receive is not God himself but a likeness of him. Aquinas often
uses the expression “to participate in a likeness of God”; what creatures receive
from God is being, and this being is a likeness of God. For the author, the central

BOOK REVIEWS

329

point is the language of gift and donation; and the gift is such that it relates the
creature directly and most intimately to God himself. In Aquinas, however,
there are two kinds of participation with respect to God: participation in the
order of creation, and participation in the order of grace. The difference is that,
in the first, creatures receive something from God according to an outward
going process of influentia, while in the latter, (rational) creatures receive a
likeness of God’s nature, which results in a being connected with God
personally (coniunctio ad Deum).
The Trinity can be seen, according to Aquinas, as the reason and cause of the
procession of creatures from God. This close connection between the Trinity
and creation, discussed in chapter 2 of part 1, brings the author to the idea that
one also can speak of participation within God: “The creature’s participation in
God is grounded in God’s own participation in himself” (54). There is indeed
“communion” (sharing, mutuality, perichoresis) between the divine persons. But
it seems to me that the term participation is used here in a too thin, even
improper, sense. Not everything is a matter of participation. Participation
cannot be without an aspect of causal dependency and derivation.
There is some confusion about the notion of likeness (similitudo). One
should strictly distinguish between the general likeness and the specific image.
These two notions get mixed up when the author explains that the creature’s
goodness comes from the goodness of God, and has a likeness of that divine
goodness. He then says, correctly, that the idea of likeness denies any continuity
of substance between God and creatures. He illustrates what it means to say that
the creaturely likeness differs in substance with the example of an image such
as a portrait, which is a representation of the original in another medium, thus
lacking the same nature of the original. I think the term “image” here is
confusing, since it is already in use with respect to the specific likeness which
exists between intellectual creatures and God. The author, however, uses the
term in order to emphasize the aspect of discontinuity. To make his point he
quotes a passage from Kathryn Tanner who speaks of creation in a peculiar and
unfitting way. God’s creation of the world, she says, is a kind of “duplication of
what God is in the form of something that is not God. It is not an exact
duplication. . . . Creation is a duplicate in the form of an image” (78). The word
“image” is used here to highlight the aspect of difference and distance, but
normally it is used in exactly the opposite sense (the human person as imago
Dei, thus more than merely a similitudo). A similar confusion happens in note
4 of chapter 2, where the notion of an analogical cause (God—creature), in
contrast to the univocal causation within nature (man generates man) is clarified
and illustrated with the example of a footprint.
In Aquinas’s view, one must say that God is his being while a creature has
being. The author offers some interesting reflections about the English word
“to have” (75). “Having” might point in the direction of “possessing”: if a
creature is said to have being or to have beauty, it truly exists (in virtue of its

330

BOOK REVIEWS

being) and it truly is beautiful (in virtue of its beauty). Some might suggest
instead an opposition between “having” (possessing) and “participation”
(having by way of derivation from a source). The author then explains what in
his eyes are the two senses of the word “to have,” both of which should be
affirmed. For instance, Aquinas says that “the creature has what belongs to
God” (creatura habet quod Dei est). There is distinction—the creature is not like
God—but the word “has” also stresses the reality of what the creature receives.
The unity of both aspects, derivation/dependency and possession, is then
expressed by the following crucial formulation: “the perfect intensity of divine
being ought to make us think that what God gives is all the more real on that
account, not less” (76). I agree with all of this: it is because God has the fullness
of being that he can give being to others, in such a way that they truly have
being in themselves. The real communication of being to the creature seems
absent in the quotation of Calvin, used as one of the book’s mottoes. According
to Calvin, “our being is nothing but subsistence in the one God.” This certainly
indicates a strong and radical dependency upon God, but not participation.
Participation in God works with a globalized notion of participation which
is given a place of honor within a distinctive Christian theological view of God,
the world, and human life. This approach is successful in its broad and
persuasive vision, but the disadvantage is that the deeper speculative meaning
of participation with regard to the ontological constitution of finite reality, thus
participation of being, does not receive due attention.
RUDI TE VELDE
Tilburg University
Tilburg, The Netherlands

Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought: The Beginning of All
Things. By JOSEPH TORCHIA, O.P. Pp. xxiv + 228. Lanham, Md.:
Lexington Books, 2019. Pp. xxiv + 288. $95.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-14985-6281-2.
Although this book covers ground that has been covered by previous books
on the Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing, the title intimates that the
question for Christian writers before Nicaea, and even their philosophical
interlocutors, was not so much the provenance of the substrate of the world as
its “contingency,” its dependence on an eternal power and purpose. As Torchia
demonstrates in his first chapter, the opening verses of Genesis, while not
entirely destitute of a philosophy, were written to proclaim the complete

BOOK REVIEWS

331

subjection of the world to its maker, not to determine the ontological status of
the chaos that preceded it. The prophets extol God’s majesty and beneficence,
while the Psalms and Solomonic books ascribe all the works of nature to his
wisdom, without pronouncing on the origin of matter, and even the incidental
praise of God as the one who made all things “from what is not (ex ouk onton
or ouk ex onton) at 2 Maccabees 7:28 does not tell us whether this state that
precedes existence as we know it was one of absolute nothingness. Torchia
argues that the early Christians were chiefly concerned to renew and refine this
doctrine of contingency when they married the Mosaic account of creation to
its most beguiling rival in the Greek world, the Timaeus of Plato (which is the
subject of chapter 2).
In the Timaeus (which, as Torchia says, follows the discussion of formal
causes in the Phaedo and of the good as final cause in the Republic), the efficient
cause of creation is a Demiurge, or artificer, who imposes upon the labile realm
of becoming the timeless principles that inhabit the realm of being. His action
as creator is voluntary, yet also a logical corollary of his goodness; the narrative
inevitably depicts him as acting in time, yet time itself is one his first
productions, the necessary matrix of the laws which regulate change and
succession in the physical cosmos. For the shaping of this world a receptacle is
necessary; consistency of reasoning forbids us, however, to grant it any definite
form, so that even Plato’s own word khora or “space” is only a symbol of the
unbridged lacuna in our vocabulary. While it is never called “matter,” it is
sufficiently recalcitrant to impose limits on the resemblance of the temporal
copy to its eternal paradigm; at the same time, we are not told whether the
Demiurge is the author of this paradigm or what it was a paradigm of in the
time (if it was a time) before the cosmos came into existence. Even without the
assistance of Aristotle, any thoughtful reader of Plato might have come to the
view that this “likely tale” was not a literal statement of his beliefs but a new
sketch of the “way of seeming” which his venerable predecessor Parmenides of
Elea had opposed to the way of truth.
To these arguments against the literal reading of the dialogue, which are
accurately set out by Torchia, we must add that in the Phaedrus of Plato, soul is
necessarily immortal, being the source of every movement and therefore the
only possible mover of itself. From this it would seem to follow both that the
temporal creation of the soul in the Timaeus is not to be understood literally
and that the motion of the receptacle before it submits to the Demiurge must
also be attributed to a pre-existent soul. This second point accounts for the
postulation of an evil soul of the world in both traditions of exegesis, the literal
and the allegoretic, in the early Roman era. Torchia declares the allegorists a
majority, though they include at the highest count Calvenus Taurus, Apuleius,
Alcinous (whose date and identity are uncertain) and Albinus if he is not the
same person as Alcinous. The literal reading, which affirms a temporal creation,
is defended at least by Atticus and Plutarch, who answers the difficulties raised

332

BOOK REVIEWS

above by ascribing an evil soul to matter, which opposes the operations of the
world-soul. Alcinous speaks obscurely of a transformation of this evil soul into
the world-soul, though not by any temporal process. This speculation deserves
more than passing notice because it explains how those who went under the
name of Gnostics could imagine themselves to be Platonists when they
maintained that the world is the product of an inferior Demiurge.
It is hard to explain the omission of Numenius of Apamea, an avowed
Platonist who nonetheless held that the physical world was produced by the
deflection of the gaze of the Second God, or Demiurge, from the realm of being
to that of matter. Since he does not imply that this aberration was eternal, he
must therefore be added as a third to the minority party, and Torchia’s own
nomenclature invites us to add the Jewish and Christian “Platonists” who
occupy the remainder of this volume. The first of these is Philo of Alexandria
who, as Torchia demonstrates, is bound by the authority of Moses to identify
God with the Good, with the highest principle, and with being itself, so that
Plato’s realm of forms becomes the logos or template of the temporal world
within the eternal intellect. The arguments for the eternity of the world are
honored by the postulation of an intelligible cosmos, but the natural world has
a finite history. The doctrine of the absolute omnipotence of God might be
thought to entail, and some texts in Philo might seem to assert, that matter itself
is created, presumably from nothing. As Torchia shows, however, treading
nimbly between the competing inferences of Wolfson, O’Neill, and Winston,
the contingency of the world is more clearly formulated in Philo than is any
doctrine of creation out of nothing. Torchia suggests that his use of the locution
mê on rather than ouk on implies that God created not from nothing but from
that which was not yet something; this is both a tenable view and the dominant
one, but Gerhard May’s dissenting position (Creatio ex nihilo [London: T&T
Clark, 2004], 27-28) ought not to be ignored.
Divine prepotence is naturally the dominant theme of the chapters on
Christian authors, even where there is no clear affirmation of creation out of
nothing. For Clement of Rome, God is not only Father but Demiurge and
Creator, this cluster of terms implying responsibility not only for the
governance of the world as one concordant whole but for its very existence.
Justin is for Torchia a “Christian Platonist” who substitutes formless matter for
the chaos of Genesis 1:2, asserting the temporality of creation but reserving his
judgment as to whether God found or created the substrate. Athenagoras goes
beyond him in equating God with being as well as goodness—thereby proving
himself at once more biblical and more Platonic—but magnifies the sovereignty
of God by explicitly declaring matter to be his creation. Tatian too, although he
tacitly sides with the “minority” among Platonists who denied an eternal
creation, sets himself apart from both Greeks and Platonists in deducing from
the omnipotence of God that God is also the author of matter. While all this is
well observed, Torchia attenuates at least one important distinction between

BOOK REVIEWS

333

some Platonists and all Christians when he argues that both philosophies hold
the world to be contingent in the sense that it depends for its existence on the
eternal. The contingent, in common usage, is surely that which might have been
otherwise, and the Christian doctrine of temporal creation therefore upholds
not only the literal truth of Scripture but the freedom of God to refrain from
producing a world. At the same time, there is also at least a superficial analogy
to be noted between the evil world-soul of Plutarch and Alcinous and the
representation of Satan, in both Tatian and Athenagoras, as the self-appointed
overlord of matter. Their purpose of course is to demonstrate the futility of
idolatry, not to diminish the power of God, but for that very reason they assert
the sovereignty of God over matter more vehemently than do Justin or any of
his Platonic forebears.
Theophilus of Antioch unambiguously denies the pre-existence of matter and
indicates, by contrasting ex ouk ontôn with einai, “to be,” that he understands
2 Maccabees 7:28 as a testimony to creation out of absolute nonbeing. As
Torchia remarks, he cements his argument with quotations from the prophets
and a more tenacious exegesis of the first chapters of Genesis than one finds in
any of his precursors. In his discussion of the “polemical context,” however,
Torchia has nothing to say of Hermogenes, against whom Theophilus wrote a
whole treatise, and who seems to have been the first professing Christian to
have differentiated creation ex oudenos (out of nothing) from creation ex ouk
ontôn. Tertullian, who gives us this information, was bound by biblical
precedent to embrace creation ex nihilo, for that is the wording of 2 Maccabees
7:28 in his Latin translation. Studies of creation from nothing repeatedly fail to
note that for all Latin authors it is the only position sanctioned by the
Scriptures—not so much for theological reasons as because common Latin
speech had no equivalent for the Greek participle of the verb “to be.”
The Alexandrian school of Clement and Origen supplies a bridge between
Athens and Jerusalem, and a fine peroration to Torchia’s inquiry. Clement
vindicates both the goodness of the created order against the Gnostics and the
superiority of the biblical God to any first principle imagined by the
philosophers. Yet even his strong asseverations of divine transcendence and the
contingency of the material order yield no clear doctrine of the creation of
matter, and he does not achieve perfect clarity in reconciling the temporal
creation with the atemporal design of the Creator. In Origen the Wisdom of
God is eternally pregnant with the forms of being, and the material cosmos
(which he takes to be temporal in origin and created out of nothing) would not
need to exist at all were it not that the beings who populate the intellectual
realm are prone to fall away and are therefore in need of a penal sphere in which
they can expiate their sins. Neither Torchia nor others who accept this reading
of Origen explain why it should not entail an everlasting cosmos or (as some of
his detractors claimed) an infinite series of worlds. There is no discussion here
of the authenticity of the Greek text in Koetschau’s edition of the First Principles

334

BOOK REVIEWS

(see 200 n. 52), of the possible distinction between a fall and a descent of souls
(as noted by Ilaria Ramelli), or of Panayiotis Tzamalikos’s observation that the
contents of the eternal realm are logika (intelligibles) rather than logikoi
(intelligible beings). The Greek in Koetschau is once again preferred to the Latin
when Origen is said to have held that God’s power is finite rather than that God
has the power to create a finite world of any magnitude that he chooses (First
Principles 2.9.1 [Torchia, 188]). And, like most other scholars, including those
who made a search for antecedents of Bishop Berkeley in the Fathers, Torchia
does not mention Origen’s doubts (at First Principles 4.4.7) as to the necessity
of postulating even created matter as a substrate for entities which a truly
omnipotent deity could sustain by the mere exertion of his will.
I do not say that this is Origen’s settled theory, and I do not expect Torchia
to resolve in half a chapter the questions that have not been put to rest by other
scholars in whole monographs on Origen. Within the terms that it sets for itself,
this study of the early Christian doctrine of contingency is both subtle and
comprehensive, and my comments have been designed not to express
disagreement with what Torchia has said, but to show what more may need to
be said to complete our understanding of this momentous topic.
M. J. EDWARDS
Christ Church, University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom

Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation. By GAVEN KERR. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 252. $99.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-01909-4130-7.
At the core of Gaven Kerr’s new volume is an explanation and a defense of
Aquinas’s account of divine creation. Aquinas’s basic insight on this topic is that
everything other than God is dependent on God for existence but that God is
dependent on nothing whatsoever. This position recurs throughout the corpus
of Aquinas’s works and is a nonnegotiable aspect of the Catholic faith.
Kerr includes an analysis of Aquinas’s use of other thinkers as well as a brief
comparison of his position with contemporary scientific thinking on the
evolutionary development of the cosmos and on biological evolution. He
defends the Thomistic position that all developments in the physical cosmos,
including those of a biological character, necessarily presuppose the creative
activity of God. The activity of divine creation, for Aquinas, is not simply a
divine act that took place long ago and far away. By envisioning divine creativity

BOOK REVIEWS

335

not only as what brought things into existence but also as what sustains them in
existence and guides their development, Aquinas shows how every creature and
every kind of creature exhibits ultimate dependence upon God.
In the first chapter Kerr considers the body of thought about the nature and
origins of the cosmos that Aquinas inherited, especially through his study of the
newly recovered texts of Aristotle. Chapter 1 reviews the positions taken by
various Presocratic thinkers. Where they argued that all forms of being are
produced from certain first principles of a material character by the operations
of an efficient cause, Aquinas saw the need to consider the topic in a more
universal way (that is, from the perspective of what they all share: existence) so
as to supply in his account something that could bring things that do not have
existence of themselves into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing).
In Plato Aquinas saw a thinker who regarded all material being as dependent
on an immaterial source and who proposed a version of the doctrine of
participation as an explanation for the unity in being that obtains among the
multiplicity of existents. Here Kerr finds Aquinas quietly to have adapted the
Platonic concept of participation (and thereby to have corrected what Aristotle
so sharply criticized in the thought of Plato) by interpreting it in a way that
resembles his own position: those things that do not possess being essentially
must depend on God, whose essence is existence. For Aquinas, participation in
existence by things that do not of themselves have existence is a vital aspect of
the metaphysics of creation.
In the final portion of this first chapter, Kerr treats Aquinas’s use of other
thinkers whom he found to have proposed the reality of a first cause by
reasoning that without such a primary cause nothing else would exist. These
philosophers include Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers and their pagan
Neoplatonic sources.
The second chapter features Aquinas’s argument for holding that the nature
of the creator differs in kind from the natures of all creatures. Whereas the
creator of beings has existence essentially and bestows esse on creatures, every
creature (no matter what kind it is) is a composite of esse and essentia. The gift
of esse actualizes the potency of these finite essences, which participate in (that
is, depend on) the existence that God gives them in order for them to be.
In this chapter Kerr considers at length the signature Thomistic doctrine that
in God existence and essence are identical. As the unique source of existence
for everything else, God is not dependent on anything for existence. Kerr then
relates this fundamental aspect of divine existence to Aquinas’s discussion of
divine knowledge, love, and power. In Aquinas’s account of the divine ideas,
God knows all the possible ways in which his essence can be reflected in his
creatures, but he does not choose to bring all these possibilities into existence.
The beings that God does call into existence are ordered to the end of showing
forth his divine goodness.

336

BOOK REVIEWS

Much as Lawrence Moonan did in his wide-ranging Divine Power: The
Medieval Power Distinction up to Its Adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and
Aquinas (Clarendon Press, 1994), Kerr in his third chapter locates Aquinas’s
doctrine of creation within the long-standing medieval tradition of
differentiating the infinite power of God (that is, considered absolutely) and the
actual exercise of divine power (that is, considered conditionally). The
significance of this distinction for the doctrine of creation turns on Aquinas’s
decision to argue for the one-way real relation between God and creatures, such
that creatures are causally dependent on God (and thus really related to him)
because of the gift of esse that God communicates to them when bringing them
into existence. Apart from this use of divine power they would not exist, and
even once creatures are in existence, they cannot create anything ex nihilo but
can only act upon what already exists. God, however, is independent in being
and not dependent on creatures in any way.
The nature of divine causality is the subject of Kerr’s fourth chapter. Here
we find a lucid account of the difference between God as the uncaused cause
and the series of caused causes that participate in the causality communicated
to them and to each element in the series by the first cause. Taking this point as
the lynchpin of Aquinas’s account, Kerr stresses the way in which all the
causality that we can ever in principle observe among secondary causes would
cease if a theorist were to remove from the series the operation of the first cause.
Kerr devotes the fifth chapter to a consideration of the being of creatures as
participants in esse. The topic leads him not only to a consideration of the role
of secondary causes in the production of new substances but also to a defense
of the Thomistic doctrine of creatio continua. It follows from the recognition
that each created substance as a whole and each of its metaphysical components
(e.g., matter and form, accidents) are to be understand as preserved in being by
the creator. Without the gift of esse in which a substance participates, neither a
substance considered as a whole nor its components would exist.
The final two chapters take up the question of the history and purpose of
creation. After reviewing the reasons for Aquinas’s reticence about ruling out
the possibility of the eternity of the created world on purely philosophical
grounds, apart from faith in divine revelation, Kerr examines Aquinas’s
understanding of the notion of creatio ex nihilo as meaning that beings that are
composed of essence and existence would be nothing without the gift of a
participation in existence. The act of creation, he notes, does not involve a
process of change in something that exists but the bestowal of existence that it
would not have unless it were given (whether in time or in eternity).
In the latter half of the sixth chapter, Kerr introduces the subject of Aquinas’s
use of the biblical account of creation in Genesis. For the purpose of his
exegesis, Aquinas distinguishes God’s work into three periods: the creation of
the entirety of the cosmos (the conferral of existence upon spiritual creatures as
well as corporeal things), the distinction of creatures (the role of the divine ideas

BOOK REVIEWS

337

in the way God thinks up the various ways in which different types of creatures
could reflect one or another aspect of God’s own goodness), and the adornment
of creation (including the interventions by God that bring individual human
beings into existence as creatures made in his image and according to his
likeness).
In chapter 7 Kerr examines Aquinas’s views on God himself as the end for
which God made all that he chose to create and to preserve in existence. Here
Kerr stresses Aquinas’s use of one of the most fundamental principles in his
typical pattern of argumentation, namely, his doctrine that every action is for
an end. If the final cause were to be removed, an efficient cause would be
without its causality. Kerr shows that, for Aquinas, secondary efficient causes
depend on the first cause both for their causal efficiency and for their end. God
is not only being itself and thus the source from which everything else proceeds,
but also the end toward which all things are directed. For Aquinas, this is true
of every range of being in the cosmos, but especially human beings. The
possibility of their union with God comes about through the access to the
beatific vision that is opened to them by the grace of Christ.
Kerr’s volume on the metaphysics of creation is a well-crafted account of an
important aspect of Aquinas’s thought.
JOSEPH W. KOTERSKI, S.J.
Fordham University
Bronx, New York