GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 84 (2020)
ARTICLES
Carreño, Juan Eduardo, “My Name Is Legion”: The Biblical Episode of
Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Angelic
Location ..................................................................................... 233
Cessario, Romanus, O.P., Sanctified Thought and Affection in Aquinas’s
Teaching on Nature and Grace ................................................... 467
Cole, Lee M., Between Actuality and Nonbeing: Prime Matter Revisited ... 547
Coughlin, Glen, The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning of
Metaphysics ................................................................................ 395
Enríquez, Teresa, and Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, Interpersonal
Commands and the imperium-praeceptum Debate....................... 207
Flannery, Kevin L., S.J., The Legal and Theological Background of Summa
theologiae II-II, q. 64, a. 7 ........................................................... 509
Gorman, Michael, Using Models for the Hypostatic Union: Lessons from
Aquinas and Scotus ..................................................................... 103
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before Lyons II
(1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas Aquinas and Pope
Gregory X’s Extractiones .............................................................. 51
Kristanto, Heribertus Dwi, S.J., Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the Virtuous
Person ........................................................................................ 263
Legge, Dominic, O.P., Incarnate de Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the Holy Spirit
and Christ’s Conception ............................................................. 173
Lévy, Antoine, O.P., Can Palamism Be Accommodated to the Western
Theological Tradition? A Few Considerations on “The Real
Problem” .................................................................................... 625
O’Callaghan, Paul, That All May Be Saved ................................................ 293
Reichberg, Gregory M., Scholastic Arguments for and against Religious
Freedom ......................................................................................... 1
Romero Carrasquillo, Francisco J., and Teresa Enríquez, Interpersonal
Commands and the imperium-praeceptum Debate....................... 207
Root, Michael, The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision: Hans
Boersma’s Seeing God ................................................................. 127
Schumacher, Michele M., The Reunification of Naturalism and Personalism in
the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais Pinckaers ................ 435
Turner, Barrett H., The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law: Two
Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic Tradition............ 339
Wahl, Michael A., “To Give Us an Example of Making Progress”: Aquinas on
the Perfection and Growth of Christ’s Virtue .............................. 585

REVIEWS
Bonino, Serge-Thomas, O.P., Dieu, “Celui qui est” (Thomas Joseph White,
O.P.) ........................................................................................... 647
Cross, Richard, Communicatio idiomatum: Reformation Christological
Debates (Corey L. Barnes) ........................................................... 322
D’Ettore, Domenic, Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic
Answers (Richard Cross) ............................................................. 664
Davison, Andrew, Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and
Metaphysics (Rudi te Velde) ........................................................ 326
Edwards, Mark, Aristotle and Early Christian Thought (David T. Runia) ... 661
Farkasfalvy, Denis, O.Cist., A Theology of the Christian Bible: Revelation,
Inspiration, Canon (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) .......................... 157
Fitzpatrick, Antonia, Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity (Therese Scarpelli
Cory) .......................................................................................... 653
Hain, Raymond, ed., Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture
(Diana Fritz Cates) ...................................................................... 658
Houck, Daniel W., Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution
(Celia Deane-Drummond) ........................................................... 165
Hütter, Reinhard, Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ
in the Eucharist (Jörgen Vijgen)................................................... 651
Jensen, Steven J., Sin: A Thomistic Psychology (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) .. 318
Kerr, Gaven, Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation (Joseph W. Koterski,
S.J.) ............................................................................................ 334
Knasas, John F. X., Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning
(Joshua P. Hochschild) ................................................................ 168
Levering, Matthew, Bruce L. McCormack, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................................... 309
Long, Steven A., Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................................... 485
Lynch, Reginald M., O.P., The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as
Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Roger W. Nutt) 489
Matava, R. J., Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez,
Physical Premotion and the Controversy “de auxiliis” Revisited (Trent
Pomplun) .................................................................................... 493
McCormack, Bruce L., Matthew Levering, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................................... 309
McKnight, W. Shawn, Understanding the Diaconate: Historical, Theological,
and Sociological Foundations (Frederick C. Bauerschmidt) .......... 153

REVIEWS (con.)

Nutt, Roger W., Steven A. Long, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................................... 485
O’Callaghan, Paul, Children of God in the World: An Introduction to
Theological Anthropology (Jacob W. Wood) ................................ 481
Ortiz, Jared, ed. Deification in the Latin Patristic Tradition (Daria Spezzano)
................................................................................................... 496
Svensson, Manfred, and David VanDrunen, eds., Aquinas among the
Protestants (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt) ........................... 501
Torchia, Joseph, O.P., Creation and Contingency in Early Patristic Thought:
The Beginning of All Things (M. J. Edwards)................................ 330
Umphrey, Stewart, The Aristotelian Tradition of Natural Kinds and Its Demise
(Christopher A. Decaen) ............................................................. 503
VanDrunen, David, and Manfred Svensson, eds., Aquinas among the
Protestants (Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt) ........................... 501
Venard, Olivier-Thomas, A Poetic Christ: Thomist Reflections on Scripture,
Language, and Reality (Timothy F. Bellamah, O.P.)..................... 313
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., Matthew Levering, and Bruce L. McCormack,
eds., Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s “Ad Limina
Apostolorum” (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) .......................................... 309
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., Steven A. Long, and Roger W. Nutt, eds.,
Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations (Simon
Francis Gaine, O.P.) .................................................................... 485
Wittman, Tyler R., God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and
Karl Barth (Matthew Levering).................................................... 161

The Thomist 84 (2020): 509-46

THE LEGAL AND THEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
OF SUMMA THEOLOGIAE II-II, Q. 64, A. 7
KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.
Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana
Rome, Italy

Q

UESTION 64, ARTICLE 7 of the Secunda secundae of
Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, on “whether it
is licit for someone to kill another in defending himself,”
has been the focus—or, at least, the starting point—of countless
articles and books over the past several decades. Notwithstanding
the great attention paid to the article, there remains much disagreement regarding how it is to be understood. The present
essay proceeds on the assumption that understanding the intellectual context within which Thomas was writing—taking into
account especially the works he cites in the article—enables us to
come to reasonable conclusions regarding what he meant in
making various points.
Offered first of all, in section I of the present essay, is a
translation of the corpus of the article, followed by some brief
remarks on the various parts (and subparts) of its argument. More
extensive remarks upon this main argument will be found in
subsequent sections, the initial concerns of which are typically
the article’s objections, Thomas’s responses, and the authorities
he cites. Section II considers objection 1 and ideas that Thomas
found in St. Augustine’s Letter 47 to Publicola. Section III
considers objection 2 and ideas that he found in Augustine’s De
libero arbitrio. (This section is rather lengthy; but the discussed
arguments from De libero arbitrio, which are complex and subtle,
are extremely useful in understanding Thomas’s own complex
attitude toward self-defense.) Section IV moves away briefly from
the article and considers what Thomas says about intention
509

510

KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

earlier in the Summa theologiae and in a passage in the
Quaestiones disputatae De veritate. Section V considers Thomas’s
responses to objections 1, 2, and 4 and what they tell us about
the intention to defend oneself. Section VI, also rather lengthy,
begins with a consideration of objection 3 and Thomas’s response, in both of which what is at issue is whether a cleric can
kill another in self-defense, as discussed in a letter written by
Pope Innocent III. Close attention to this letter helps one to
understand how Thomas regards licit self-defense as effected by
a private individual and noncleric. Section VII considers the final
part of the corpus of the article, where Thomas says that public
officials might licitly intend to kill but adds that they ought not
to be moved by personal animosity. It considers also objection 5
and Thomas’s response, which also deal with personal animosity.
I. STH II-II, Q. 64, A. 7
The following is a fairly literal translation of our article,
dividing it into parts and subparts for easy reference:1
{1a} Nothing prohibits there being two effects of a single act, only one of which
is intended [in intentione], the other being beside the intention [praeter intentionem]. {1b} Moral acts, however, take their species with respect to what is
intended, not from that which is beside the intention, since this is per accidens,
as is made clear above.2 {1c} So, from the act of someone who defends himself
there can follow a double effect: one, the conservation of one’s own life; the
other, killing of the aggressor. {1d} Such an act, therefore, in so far as what is
intended is the conservation of one’s own life, does not have the character of
the illicit, for it is natural to whatever thing to conserve itself in being as far as
possible.
{2a} It is possible, however, for some act proceeding from a good intention
to be rendered illicit, if it is not proportionate to the end. {2b} So, if someone
1
Citations of the Summa theologiae refer to the Leonine edition: Summa theologiae,
cum commentariis Thomae de Vio Caietani ordinis Praedicatorum, Opera omnia, vv. 4-12
(Rome: Ex typographia polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fidei, 1888-1906). The passage
in question here comes from volume 9. At one point later in this article I refer to the
Ottawa edition.
2
Modern editions of the Summa theologiae direct readers to STh I-II, q. 72, a. 1 and
II-II, q. 43, a. 3. On these two articles and their relationship with STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7,
see Kevin L. Flannery, “Thomas Aquinas and the New Natural Law Theory on the Object
of the Human Act,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13 (2013): 85-92.

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

511

in defending his own life uses more force than is called for, the act will be illicit.
{2c} If, however, he should repel a force moderately, the defense will be lawful,
for, according to law, it is licit “to repel force by force,” provided it is “with the
moderation of blameless self-protection.” {2d} Nor is it necessary for salvation
that a man omit an act of moderate self-protection so as to avoid the killing of
another, since a man is more obliged to take care of one’s own life than of the
life of another.
{3} But because it is illicit to kill a man, unless by public authority for the
common good, as was made clear above [STh II-II, q. 64, a. 3], it is illicit for a
man to intend to kill a man in order to defend himself, except for one who has
public authority, who, intending to kill a man in self-defense, refers this to the
public good, as is apparent in the case of the soldier fighting against foes and of
the minister of a judge fighting against a thief—although even these sin if they
are moved by a private passion.

Part {1}—and in particular {1b}—certainly gives the
impression that the dominant, even sole, factor in Thomas’s
analysis of self-defense will be intention.3 It is important to
understand, however, that, when he says that moral acts “take
their species with respect to what is intended,” his point is that,
in his taxonomy of moral acts, whether a particular act belongs
to a particular species depends upon what that act’s object is and
the context in which it is an object.4 Thus, an act of private selfdefense has as its object one’s own life but presumes also a
context, namely, an imminent threat to that life. That context
also includes the fact that the person defending himself is not, in
3
Authors who have emphasized the role of intention in STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7 would
include the exponents of what has come to be called the “new natural-law theory.” See
Germain Grisez, “Toward a Consistent Natural-Law Ethics of Killing,” American Journal
of Jurisprudence 15 (1970): 64-96; John Finnis, “Intention and Side Effects,” in idem,
Intention and Identity: Collected Essays, vol. 2 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2011), 173-97; and Joseph Boyle, “‘Praeter intentionem’ in Aquinas,” The
Thomist 42 (1978): 649-65. Boyle acknowledges that the meaning of praeter intentionem
(the expression used in {1b}) changes, depending on the context in which the expression
appears (see ibid., 654-56). See also Gregory M. Reichberg, Thomas Aquinas on War and
Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 181-82. The present essay, in as
much as the expression praeter intentionem enters into its argument, is interested simply
in how it is used in STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7.
4
See Kevin L. Flannery, Action and Character according to Aristotle: The Logic of the
Moral Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 39-70,
especially 39-42.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

that act, exercising public authority (see part {3}). Part {2}
provides the legal basis for maintaining that private self-defense
is licit. It also speaks about a way in which such an act might be
rendered illicit.
That part {1} is about the species “private self-defense,” and
that {1b}’s point about intention has primarily to do with identifying this species, becomes apparent in part {3}, where Thomas
says that someone who is exercising public authority can intend
to kill a man in self-defense and do so morally. This latter is a
different species of act: it has a similar object, but it is performed
within a different context, one in which the self-defender has the
proper authority and is acting within a context in which the
exercise of that authority is appropriate.
II. THE AUGUSTINE-PUBLICOLA EXCHANGE
The first objection in the article quotes a remark by Augustine
in his Letter 47, responding to a certain Publicola, of whom little
is known other than what can be gleaned from this exchange.5
Thomas quotes a line in Augustine’s letter which suggests that,
unless the act is performed by someone with the proper public
authority, the idea that killing in self-defense might be licit “does
not sit well with” him (that is, Augustine).6 And so, concludes the
objection, killing in self-defense appears to be illicit.
Before getting to Thomas’s response to this objection, it will
be useful to know more about the exchange between Publicola
and Augustine in general. Most of Publicola’s letter has to do with
relations with non-Christians, such as whether a Christian ought
to honor an oath made by a “barbarian” (barbarus), but a couple
of sections rise above such issues and ask questions that pertain
to ethics itself (that is, to barbarians and Romans alike). In one
such section (section 12), Publicola asks:

5
Publicola’s letter is letter 46 (Augustine, S. Aureli Augustini, Hipponiensis Episcopi,
Epistulae 31-123, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 34, part 2, ed. Alois
Goldbacher [Prague: Tempsky, 1898], 123-29); Augustine’s is letter 47 (CSEL
34/2:129-36).
6
Augustine, Letter 47 (CSEL 34/2:135).

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

513

If a Christian realizes that he will be killed by a barbarian or a Roman, ought
the Christian to kill them lest he be killed by them—or is it permitted, without
killing them, to repulse them or fight them off, for it is said: “Do not resist
evil”?7

There are a number of obscurities in this passage, which are
important for understanding Augustine’s response. The first has
to do with the phrase translated as “ought [debet] the Christian
to kill them.” A few lines later, Publicola uses a similar expression
in asking whether a Christian “ought [debet] to bathe” in waters
where sacrifice is made to pagan idols. It is clear in both places
that the question is not whether one is obliged to do these things
but whether it is permissible, as when in colloquial English one
might ask “whether he ought really to be doing those things.”
The second obscurity has to do with the second part of the
query, that is, whether it is “permitted, without killing them, to
repulse them or fight them off, for it is said: ‘Do not resist evil.’”
At first glance this seems to be suggesting a more acceptable
alternative—as if the author were asking, “Is it permissible to kill
the assailant or must I limit myself to resisting him?” But that
cannot be the idea, since the passage quoted from Scripture (Matt
5:39) itself speaks of—and apparently rejects—resisting evil. So,
the pair of questions asked by Publicola is (1) whether one can
kill an assailant (whether barbarian or Roman), and (2) whether
one can even put up a fight.
Somewhere between the years 396 and 399, Augustine
responded to Publicola. At the beginning of section 5 of that
letter (Letter 47), he says the following:

7
“Si christianus videat se a barbaro vel Romano velle interfici, debet eos ipse
christianus interficere, ne ab illis interficiatur: vel si licet sine interfectione eos repellere
vel impugnare, quia dictum est: Non resistere malo?” (Augustine, Letter 47 [CSEL
34/2:127]). The letter is written in not very classical Latin. According to Gordon Messing,
the construction velle interfici is a circumlocution for the future tense. He references “the
Rumanian periphrastic future” (Gordon M. Messing, review of Henry François Muller,
L’époque mérovingienne: Essai de synthèse de philologie et d’histoire, in Language 23
[1947]: 297]. One manuscript, instead of “vel si licet” has “vel scilicet,” which may be
preferable.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

(1) Regarding the killing of men lest someone be killed by them, the suggestion
that it is licit does not sit well with me, unless perhaps the person is a soldier or
obliged by virtue of a public function, so that he would not do this on his own
behalf [pro se] but for others [pro aliis] or for the city [pro civitate] in which he
finds himself, having acquired the proper authority, if it accords with his person.
(2) Those, however, who are deterred [repelluntur] by way of some forewarning
[terrore] lest they do some ill—for them it perhaps does some good. (3) As for
the saying that we ought not to resist evil, this is said as a caution—lest
vindication, which feeds the soul upon another’s evil deed, delight us—and not
in order that we might neglect to correct others.8

In the first sentence here (which is the only part of the
quotation that appears in objection 1), Augustine says very little
about private self-defense: most of it is about killing done by a
duly appointed authority or functionary (what we might call
“public killing”), of which he approves.9 He does not say
explicitly whether such killing is necessarily killing while under
attack or whether it might be (or might also be) performed
independently of such immediately impending circumstances;
but, since the one person is a soldier and the other is said to be
“obliged” (teneatur) to kill (that is, he fulfills his duty by killing),
it is apparent that Augustine is allowing also what we might call
“non-immediately” defensive killing at least by such persons. It is
also significant that Augustine uses the preposition pro (plus the
ablative) in his explanation of what these persons do. As we shall
see below, Thomas associates that construction as used by
8
“De occidendis hominibus ne ab eis quisque occidatur, non mihi placet consilium;
nisi forte sit miles, aut publica functione teneatur, ut non pro se hoc faciat, sed pro aliis,
vel pro civitate, ubi etiam ipse est, accepta legitima potestate, si eius congruit personae.
Qui vero repelluntur aliquo terrore ne male faciant, etiam ipsis aliquid fortasse praestatur.
Hinc autem dictum est, non resistamus malo, ne nos vindicta delectet, quae alieno malo
animum pascit; non ut correctionem hominum negligamus” (Augustine, Letter 47
[CSEL 34/2:135]).
9
On authority for killing, see Donald X. Burt, “To Kill or Let Live: Augustine on
Killing the Innocent,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 58
(1984): 112-19. On killing in general, see Donald X. Burt, “Augustine on the Morality of
Violence: Theoretical Issues and Applications,” in Congresso internazionale su S. Agostino
nel XVI centenario della conversione: Roma, 15-20 settembre 1986 (Rome: Institutum
patristicum Augustinianum, 1987), 25-54. See also John M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient
Thought Baptized (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 231-36.

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

515

Augustine with a certain type of act. It is relevant, therefore, to
the argument of article 7 and, in particular, to the contrast
between part {1} (in particular subpart {1d}) and part {3}. It
would suggest that a soldier (for instance) might in some sense
plan a defensive killing in advance of an attack, but that a private
citizen might not.
As for private self-defense, Augustine does exclude it—
although he does so rather tentatively (“the suggestion . . . does
not sit well with me” [non mihi placet consilium]). Why the
hesitation? It would seem that Augustine realizes that there is
more to say—in particular about killing effected by a private
person while under attack.
Immediately following the passage we have been considering
(but still in section 5), Augustine considers a number of acts that
are connected in various ways with an ensuing death. He
mentions, for instance, the act of erecting around one’s property
a protective wall, which is subsequently somehow instrumental
in another person’s death.10 He mentions also St. Paul’s revealing
to Claudius Lysius, the commander overseeing his imprisonment,
that certain Jews were intending to kill him upon his being led
out of the prison. This results in Paul’s being transferred to
Caesarea by a huge armed escort (Acts 23:12-35). (The suggestion is that he knew that some such protection would be
provided.) Had those Jews fallen victim to this force, Augustine
asks rhetorically, would Paul have considered himself culpable in
the shedding of their blood? “God forbid that the things we do,
or have, for the sake of that which is good and licit, if because of
these things, beside our will [praeter nostram voluntatem], something bad should happen to someone, the latter should be
imputed to us.”11 That phrase, “beside our will” (praeter nostram

10
The text is uncertain at this point. Goldbacher, acknowledging a lacuna, gives:
“Unde nec reus est mortis alienae, qui cum suae possessioni . . . murum circumduxerit,
aliquis ex ipsorum usu percussus intereat” (Augustine, Letter 47 [CSEL 34/2:135]).
11
“Absit, ut ea, quae propter bonum ac licitum facimus aut habemus, si quid per haec
praeter nostram voluntatem cuiquam mali acciderit, nobis imputetur” (Augustine, Letter
47 [CSEL 34/2:135-36]).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

voluntatem) is possibly at the back of Thomas’s mind when he
begins his analysis of self-defense in subpart {1a}: “Nothing
prohibits there being two effects of a single act, only one of which
is intended, the other being beside the intention [praeter
intentionem].”12
A close examination, therefore, of the first sentence of section
5 of Augustine’s Letter 47 reveals—or, at least, suggests—that
Augustine has not excluded as immoral all efforts by a private
person in defense of self. In the second sentence of that section—
which Thomas does not quote in objection 1 but certainly
knew—Augustine explains how the killing treated in the first
sentence can be understood as done “for the city [pro civitate]”:
it can serve as a deterrence or “forewarning” to those who might
consider performing similar criminal acts. The Latin word he
uses, terror, has in English and in today’s world an extremely
negative connotation, but it is clear that Augustine holds that
terror—that which causes fear—can be used to good purpose,
that is, when it serves as a deterrent to other criminal acts.
The third sentence in section 5 has to do with Publicola’s
query regarding Matthew 3:39. Augustine reassures him that the
verse is only about taking pleasure in vengeance. Bearing in mind
Publicola’s original query, Augustine is not necessarily speaking
in this sentence about killing, but would include also resistance
involving no killing or any intention to kill. He cautions against
the possible concupiscence that might come of vengeance—
although, he insists, preventing evil by means of fraternal
correction is not only permissible but to be recommended. A
caution against vengeance is found also at the very end of the
corpus of this article, that is to say, in Thomas’s remarks about

12

Gregory Reichberg suggests that Augustine’s expression is “very likely the source”
of Thomas’s expression (Reichberg, Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace, 188). But, as we
shall see below (at n. 38), for Thomas in these matters the distinction between will and
intention is important. It is also true that the type of acts that Augustine discusses just
before using the expression praeter nostram voluntatem are quite different from the type
of acts regarding which Thomas uses the expression praeter intentionem.

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

517

killing effected by a public official.13 That caution is discussed
below.
III. THE AUGUSTINE-EVODIUS EXCHANGE IN DE LIBERO ARBITRIO
In the second objection in article 7, Thomas again quotes
Augustine, this time book 1 of his De libero arbitrio, written in
387-88, some years before the letter to Publicola. The objection
is conceived, of course, as a problem for the thesis in favor of
which Thomas will go on to argue in the body of the article, that
is, that it is morally upright (sometimes) for someone to kill while
defending himself. Thomas quotes Augustine as saying, “How in
view of divine providence are they free from sin who, for these
things which one ought to despise, are defiled by human bloodshed?”14 Thomas goes on to explain that “these things which one
ought to despise” are, according to the argument found in De
libero arbitrio, those things that might be taken away from
someone unwillingly (such as life in the body), as opposed to
those things that cannot be taken away (such as one’s virtue).15
In order to understand the words, “How in view of divine
providence are they free from sin,” one must read them within
13
In his letter to Macedonius (Letter 153), while speaking about the liceity of various
sorts of killing (including capital punishment but also defensive killing by a private
citizen), Augustine, like Thomas, warns against “cupidity for injury” (utrum fiat nocendi
cupiditate). See below, n. 21.
14
“Quomodo apud divinam providentiam a peccato liberi sunt qui pro his rebus quas
contemni oportet, humana caede polluti sunt?” (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7, obj. 2). The words
pro his rebus become important in Thomas’s interpretation.
15
Evodius (who expresses this opinion) is in fact not sure whether life itself can be
taken away from one unwillingly, although he would agree that bodily life can be:
“Regarding life, someone might perhaps have doubts since the soul is in no way taken
away when this body is killed. But if it can be taken away, it is to be despised; if it cannot
be, there is nothing to be feared” (“De vita enim fortasse cuipiam sit dubium, utrum
animae nullo pacto auferatur, dum hoc corpus interimitur: sed si auferri potest,
contemnenda est, si non potest, nihil metuendum”) (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.12
[ed. William M. Green, in Sancti Aurelii Augustini: Contra academicos; De beata vita; De
ordine; De magistro; De libero arbitrio, ed. Klaus-Detlef Dauer and William M. Green,
Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1970), 218]).

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their proper context. De libero arbitrio is a dialogue between two
characters in a fictional dialogue: Evodius and Augustine. The
historical Evodius (of Uzalis) was a slightly younger colleague of
Augustine; in De libero arbitrio, he is portrayed as a thoughtful
man, whose ideas with respect to the issues discussed are not yet
settled. Especially in the first book, the character of Augustine is
portrayed as his intellectual superior; he interrogates Evodius in
dialectical fashion, occasionally eliciting from him acknowledgment of his own ignorance.16 The words quoted by Thomas in
objection 2 are spoken by Evodius, although, as we shall see, in
the larger passage of De libero arbitrio itself, Augustine (the
character) indicates a certain degree of assent to what Evodius
says. The key question is, to what exactly does Augustine assent?
To answer this question, it is necessary to consider the yet larger
context: in particular, what has transpired in the dialogue prior
to Evodius’s remark.
The most important chapters for our present purposes are
chapters 4 and 5 of the first book. In chapter 4, Augustine in
effect argues that evil desire does not fully explain the immorality
of murder. Near the beginning of the chapter, the two interlocutors agree that the following is an instance of culpable
murder: “Someone, not because of the desire to acquire something but fearing lest something evil befall him, kills a man.”17
The formulation is Augustine’s. Although Evodius agrees that the
act is immoral, he maintains also that the man who kills in order
to live free from fear does so because he is dominated by desire.
Augustine agrees, but points out that the desire to live free from
fear can hardly be called evil and that it is possible, therefore, for
an act that both of them agree is evil to be performed not because
16
See Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.4.10 (CCSL 29:216), where, regarding the slave
who plans the murder of his master, Evodius says: “It seems to me now that he was
condemned unjustly—which I would not dare to say if I had something else to say” [“Iam
mihi videtur iniuria iste damnari, quod quidem non auderem dicere, si aliud haberem
quod dicerem”]. Within a few lines of this remark, Evodius reverses his position once
again. In books 2 and 3, Evodius argues more confidently and challengingly.
17
“A. ‘Quid si ergo quispiam non cupiditate adipiscendae alicuius rei, sed metuens ne
quid ei mali accidat, hominem occiderit? Num homicida iste non erit?’ E. ‘Erit quidem’”
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.4.9 [CCSL 29:215]).

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519

one is dominated by evil desire.18 What Augustine says here
corresponds to what Thomas says in {1d} of his corpus: that “it
is natural to whatever thing to conserve itself in being as far as
possible.” But, like Evodius and Augustine, Thomas does
recognize at the end of {3} that killing can be born of a
disordered desire.
Just as important, however, as the remarks about desire is
what is said about the nature of the act that Evodius and
Augustine agree (at least initially) is immoral: someone’s killing
another because he fears a possible evil at the other’s hands. At
this point in the dialogue, it is not absolutely clear whether selfdefense occurring while a person is being attacked would be
included within the class of acts that the two are agreed are
immoral. But Augustine soon makes it apparent that that is not
the sort of act that he (in any case) has in mind; rather, he is
concerned with an act in which a person kills another in order to
avoid some evil that he believes will otherwise occur in the future.
Augustine uses the example of a slave who kills his master “from
whom he was fearing grave tortures.” Even this, however, cannot
be understood in an unqualified way, since he and Evodius also
agree that when “a soldier kills an enemy or a judge (or his
minister) kills a malefactor” the act is not immoral.19 A soldier is
18

“Proinde cogimur fateri esse homicidium, in quo nequeat malae illius cupiditatis
dominatio reperiri” (ibid.).
19
“Evodius: ‘If ‘homicide’ is to kill a man, it can sometimes occur without sin. For a
soldier who kills an enemy and a judge (or his minister) who kills a malefactor—or
someone unwilling but imprudent from whom perhaps a missile escapes his control—do
not appear to me to sin when they kill a man.’ Augustine: ‘I agree; but they are not usually
called murderers. Tell me, therefore, whether he who kills his master, from whom he was
fearing grave tortures, you would include among those who so kill someone but do not
deserve be called murderers?’ Evodius: ‘I see that this case is quite different from those,
for they were acting according to the laws—or, at least, not contrary to the laws; the
crime, however, of this other no law approves” (“E. ‘Si homicidium est hominem
occidere, potest accidere aliquando sine peccato. Nam et miles hostem, et iudex vel
minister eius nocentem, et cui forte invito atque imprudenti telum manu fugit, non mihi
videntur peccare, cum hominem occidunt.’ A. ‘Assentior: sed homicidae isti appellari non
solent. Responde itaque, utrum illum qui dominum occidit, a quo sibi metuebat cruciatus
graves, in eorum numero habendum existimes, qui sic hominem occidunt, ut ne

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

sent out in order to kill enemies, and neither the judge nor his
minister is immediately under attack by the malefactor they
execute; and yet both Evodius and Augustine accept—and without argument—that neither of these acts is immoral. And so the
act that Augustine (the character) holds is immoral is clearly the
act of a private person who in some sense plans the death of
another. This does not necessarily mean that any planning is
excluded, such as, when an assailant is approaching, choosing a
sword that is sharp rather than one that is dull; the crucial factor
appears to be whether the threat is impending or not.
The case of private self-defense while being attacked does
come into play in the fifth chapter of book 1 of De libero arbitrio,
which Augustine begins by asking Evodius whether an “onrushing foe or stealthy assassin might, for the sake of one’s life,
one’s liberty, or one’s chastity, but without any passion, be
killed.”20 Evodius, who cannot let go of the idea that the essence
of sin lies somehow in passion, says that he simply cannot understand how individuals who take up the sword “for those things
of which they can be deprived unwillingly” can be free from
passion.21 On the other hand, in the case of things of which one
cannot be deprived unwillingly, why fight? Since this is to suggest
that one ought not to defend oneself even when attacked,
Augustine, adopting a tone of stunned disbelief, responds:
So the law is not just which gives to a traveller the power to kill a highwayman
lest he be killed by him or to any man or woman to kill, if possible, a violently
onrushing rapist before being raped? For a soldier is even ordered by law to kill
an enemy and, if he declines to effect this bloodshed [caede], a penalty is levied
by the emperor. Are we to be so bold as to say that these laws are unjust—or,

homicidarum quidem nomine digni sint?’ E. ‘Longe ab eis istum differre video, nam illi
vel ex legibus faciunt, vel non contra leges, hujus autem facinus nulla lex adprobat’”)
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.4.9 [CCSL 29:216]).
20
“Prius enim mihi discutiendum videtur utrum vel hostis irruens, vel insidiator
sicarius, sive pro vita, sive pro libertate, sive pro pudicitia, sine ulla interficiatur libidine”
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.11 [CCSL 29:217]).
21
“Quomodo possum arbitrari carere istos libidine, qui pro his rebus digladiantur,
quas possunt amittere inviti?” (ibid.). Notice that here he uses the same phrase—pro his
rebus—that Thomas uses in objection 2 and that he declares crucial in his responses to
objections 1 and 2.

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521

indeed, null and void? For it seems to me that a law which is not just is no law
at all.22

The latter remark—that “a law which is not just is no law at all”—
will become one of Augustine’s most famous, attracting the
special ire of legal positivists.23 He is indicating—indeed,
emphasizing—here in De libero arbitrio that killing while under
attack is correctly regarded by positive law as acceptable.
It is apparent to Evodius that Augustine does not believe that
the relevant law should be declared null, and so he waffles. Law,
he suggests, is always imperfect, but it does the best that it can:
“law is indulgent with respect to minor misdeeds, lest greater
ones be committed.”24 In any case, even if a law is imperfect—
whether in itself or because the legislator is imperfect—it can be
discharged without passion.25 Straying a bit from the logic of his
22
“Non ergo lex iusta est, quae dat potestatem vel viatori, ut latronem, ne ab eo ipse
occidatur, occidat, vel cuipiam viro aut feminae, ut violenter sibi stupratorem irruentem
ante inlatum stuprum, si possit, interimat. Nam militi etiam iubetur lege, ut hostem necet,
a qua caede si temperaverit, ab imperatore poenas luit. Num istas leges iniustas, vel potius
nullas dicere audebimus? Nam mihi lex esse non videtur, quae iusta non fuerit”
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.11 [CCSL 29:217]). We find something similar in
Augustine’s Letter 153 to Macedonius: “Nevertheless, even when a man is killed by a
man, it makes a great difference whether he does this out of a desire to harm or to take
something unjustly—such as might be done by an enemy or a thief—or rather he does this
because of an order to punish or to obey, as from a judge or an executioner, or because
of the necessity of evading or assisting, as when a bandit is killed by a traveller or an
enemy by a soldier” (“Quamquam etiam cum homo ab homine occiditur, multum distet
utrum fiat nocendi cupiditate, vel iniuste aliquid auferendi, sicut fit ab inimico, sicut a
latrone; an ulciscendi vel obediendi ordine, sicut a iudice, sicut a carnifice; an evadendi
vel subveniendi necessitate, sicut interimitur latro a viatore, hostis a milite”) (Augustine,
S. Aureli Augustini, Hipponiensis Episcopi, Epistulae 124-84, in Corpus scriptorum
ecclesiasticorum latinorum, vol. 44, ed. Alois Goldbacher [Prague: Tempsky, 415]).
23
See Kevin L. Flannery, Acts amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of
Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2001), 188.
24
“Legem quidem satis video esse munitam contra huiuscemodi accusationem, quae
in eo populo quem regit minoribus malefactis, ne maiora committerentur, dedit licentiam”
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.12 [CCSL 29:217]).
25
This idea, as we shall see, comes into Thomas’s commentary on Romans 12. See
below, at the end of section VII.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

own argument (which is about those who defend their own lives,
liberty, or chastity), he notes that “one can obey without passion
that law which, in the interest of defending citizens, orders that
a hostile force be repelled by the same force.”26 But then he comes
back to those who kill while defending themselves:
But I do not see how those men, by virtue of a blameless law, can be blameless,
for the law does not compel them to kill but leaves it in their power. They are
free not to kill anyone for those things of which they can be unwillingly
deprived and which, for that reason, they ought not to love.27

Evodius concludes this part of his discourse with a remark
regarding the assailants mentioned earlier by Augustine (that is,
those who attack private persons): “And so I do not blame the
law, which permits such individuals to be killed, but in what way
I might defend those who kill, I cannot discover.”28 This elicits
from Augustine the weary remark: “Much less can I discover why
you are seeking a defense for men whom no law regards as
guilty.”29 It is apparent here—and, indeed, throughout this first
book of De libero arbitrio—that in deciding these matters
Augustine regards law as fundamental. This is consistent with the
approach adopted by Thomas, who, having first (in part {1})
spoken of that which is either intended or beside intention, in
{2c} and {2d} has recourse to law: first positive, then natural.
At this point in De libero arbitrio Evodius makes a remark that
attracts Augustine’s particular interest; the second sentence of the
remark is the piece quoted by Thomas in objection 2. To

26
“Potest ergo illi legi, quae tuendorum civium causa vim hostilem eadem vi repelli
iubet, sine libidine obtemperari” (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.12 [CCSL 29:218]).
As we shall see, language similar to the language used here—in particular, vim hostilem
eadem vi repelli—reappears in {2c} of Thomas’s corpus.
27
“Sed illi homines lege inculpata quomodo inculpati queant esse non video; non enim
lex eos cogit occidere, sed relinquit in potestate. Liberum eis itaque est neminem necare
pro his rebus, quas inviti possunt amittere et ob hoc amare non debent” (Augustine, De
libero arbitrio 1.5.12 [CCSL 29:218]). Note once again the phrase pro his rebus.
28
“Quapropter legem quidem non reprehendo, quae tales permittit interfici, sed quo
pacto istos defendam qui interficiunt, non invenio” (ibid.).
29
“Multo minus ego invenire possum, cur hominibus defensionem quaeras quos reos
nulla lex tenet” (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.13 [CCSL 29:218]).

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Augustine’s suggestion that those who simply defend themselves
break no law, Evodius responds:
None of the laws, perhaps, that are manifest and read by men—for I do not
know whether they might not be constrained by some other more forceful and
most secret law, given that there is nothing that is not governed by divine
providence. For how in view of it [divine providence] are they free from sin,
who for these things which one ought to despise, are defiled by human
bloodshed? So, it appears to me both that that law which is written in order to
rule people rightly permits these things and that divine providence punishes
them. The former takes on the task of punishing those things that are required
in order to establish peace among ignorant men and as many such things as can
be governed by man. But those other offenses have appropriate punishments
from which, it seems to me, only wisdom can give freedom.30

In other words, according to Evodius, wisdom, which transcends
“temporal law,” preserves certain men from committing those
acts, such as acts of private self-defense, which temporal law is
incapable of preventing among the less enlightened.31
Augustine’s reaction is positive but careful and complex:
I praise and approve of this, your distinction: although it is inchoate and less
than perfect, still it is marked by faith and suggestive of things sublime. For it
appears to you that that law which is adopted for the governing of cities
concedes many things and leaves them unpunished—things that are avenged,
however, by divine providence, and rightly so. Nor certainly is it the case that,

30

“Nulla fortasse, sed earum legum quae apparent et ab hominibus leguntur; nam
nescio, utrum non aliqua vehementiore ac secretissima lege teneantur, si nihil rerum est,
quod non administret divina providentia. Quomodo enim apud eam sunt isti peccato
liberi, qui pro his rebus, quas contemni oportet, humana caede polluti sint? Videtur ergo
mihi et legem istam, quae populo regendo scribitur, recte ista permittere et divinam
providentiam vindicare. Ea enim vindicanda sibi haec assumit, quae satis sint conciliandae
paci hominibus imperitis et quanta possunt per hominem regi. Illae vero culpae alias
poenas aptas habent, a quibus sola mihi videtur posse liberare sapientia” (Augustine, De
libero arbitrio 1.5.13 [CCSL 29:218-19]). Again, note the phrase pro his rebus (emphasis
added).
31
Augustine draws a distinction between temporal and eternal law at De libero
arbitrio 1.6.14-15 (CCSL 29:219-20).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

just because it does not do everything, the things that it does do are to be
despised.32

Augustine clearly likes the idea that there is a law higher than
temporal law: the “eternal law” that enjoins things not feasible
for temporal law to enjoin.33 And he does not reject outright what
Evodius says about human bloodshed. On the other hand, he
does not withdraw his earlier strong endorsement of temporal
law, provided that it is just. What temporal law accomplishes, he
insists, is not “to be despised.” Indeed, he holds that all justice—
and, in particular, the justice of the temporal law—is derived
from eternal law.34
32

“Laudo et probo istam, quamvis inchoatam minusque perfectam, tamen fidentem et
sublimia quaedam petentem distinctionem tuam. Videtur enim tibi lex ista, quae regendis
civitatibus fertur, multa concedere atque impunita relinquere, quae per divinam tamen
providentiam vindicantur, et recte. Neque enim quia non omnia facit, ideo quae facit
improbanda sunt” (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.5.13 [CCSL 29:219]).
33
Thomas likes this idea as well: see STh I-II, q. 96, a. 2, where he argues that it does
not belong to human law to correct every vice. In the sed contra of this article, Thomas
quotes the words that come immediately after the quotation in STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7, obj. 2
about those who are “defiled by human bloodshed”; that is, Thomas quotes Evodius’s
remark that “So, it appears to me both that that law which is written in order to rule
people rightly permits these things and that divine providence punishes them” (Augustine,
De libero arbitrio 1.5.13 [CCSL 29:218]). (The sentence as quoted by Thomas is slightly
different, but the differences are inconsequential.) The character of Augustine also speaks
of the things that the temporal law does not regulate: “Sin is not punished when these
things [i.e., things of which one can be deprived unwillingly] are loved but when through
dishonesty they are taken away by others” (“Non autem ulciscitur peccatum cum amantur
ista, sed cum aliis per improbitatem auferuntur”) (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.15.32
[CCSL 29:233]).
34
You must hold, says Augustine to Evodius, that “those who are subservient to
temporal law cannot be free from the eternal law, from which, as we said, all things that
are just, or are justly modified, are derived” (“eos, qui temporali legi serviunt, non esse
posse ab aeterna liberos, unde omnia quae iusta sunt, iusteque variantur exprimi
diximus”) (Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1.15.31 [CCSL 29:232-33]). Augustine in fact
holds that one cannot unwillingly be deprived of wisdom, which is equivalent to the
eternal law. “Now nobody is secure in those goods which he can lose against his will.
Nobody, however, loses truth, and especially wisdom, against his will, for it is not possible
for anyone to be physically separated from it, but that which is called separation from
truth and wisdom is a perverse will by which inferior things are delighted in. No one,
however, wills anything unwillingly” (“Nemo autem securus est in iis bonis quae potest
invitus amittere. Veritatem autem atque sapientiam nemo amittit invitus. Non enim locis

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525

This brings us back finally to the “key question” asked above:
In reacting (generally) positively to Evodius’s remark, to what
does Augustine assent? Important for answering this question is
his endorsement of temporal law. What does he understand as
being included in a (presumably just) temporal law? Clearly, the
permissibility of both the killing done by a soldier and that done
by a private individual—when, for instance, a highwayman or
rapist attacks and the individual defends himself—for it is with
respect to these types of killing that the character of Augustine
asks whether we are “to be so bold as to say that these laws are
unjust.”35 Excluded, however, from the temporal law is killing in
order to prevent some future ill being done to one, as when the
slave kills his master “from whom he was fearing grave tortures.”36 He and Evodius are agreed on this point; they would
probably agree too that such killing is contrary to the eternal law.
IV. INTENTION ACCORDING TO THOMAS’S ACTION THEORY
Before (in section V) looking directly at Thomas’s response to
objections 1 and 2 (and also at objection 4 and his response to
that), it will be useful to go into what Thomas says about
intention in his action theory, relating this material to what he
says in the corpus of article 7 and also to the Augustinian ideas
just presented. Regarding intention as understood in article 7, a
frequently debated issue is whether the means used in self-defense
described there are intended.37 But before getting into that issue,
it will be useful to say something about the word “means.”
The phrase used by Thomas which is often translated as
“means” is ea quae sunt ad finem: literally, “things that go toward
the end” or “things that are for the end.” Thomas, following
separari ab ea quisquam potest, sed ea, quae dicitur a veritate atque sapientia separatio,
perversa voluntas est, qua inferiora diliguntur. Nemo autem vult aliquid nolens”)
(Augustine, De libero arbitrio 2.14.37 [CCSL 29:262]).
35
See above, n. 21.
36
See above, n. 18.
37
See Joseph Boyle, “‘Praeter intentionem’ in Aquinas,” 651-54; but see also
Reichberg, Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace, 174-82.

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Aristotle, recognizes two ways in which someone can will to
order things that are for an end, to the end.38 One—which we
more easily term “means”—occurs when, with one act, a person
wills the end and, with another, wills that which is for the end;
the other occurs when a person, with one act, wills both the end
and that which is for the end. Thomas compares this second case
to apprehending a principle and that which follows from it with
a “single grasp” (uno intuitu). In this second case—that is, when
a person, with one act, wills both the end and that which is for
the end—Thomas says that it is true to say that the person wills
to order the things that are for the end, to the end. So, in what
immediately follows, when we use the phrase “things that are for
the end” (or similar phrases), we mean to include also means that
a person might seize upon “in a flash,” that is, at the same time
as he realizes that his life is threatened. We also, in subsequent
sections, use the more common English term “means,” understanding it as including also things that, in the thought process of
the agent, are separate from the end they are for.
Let us now consider a passage in which Thomas explains the
way in which things which are for the end are intended. In his
response to the fourth objection in question 12, article 1 of the
Prima secundae, he says that “intention is an act of the will with
respect to an end”—although he immediately acknowledges that
an act of the will might be with respect to an end in various ways,
only one of which pertains to intention. The act of the will that
is intention is that act which “considers the end as the terminus
of something that is ordered toward it. We are not said to intend
health simply because we will it but because we will to arrive at
it through something else.”39

38
“Et tamen erit verum dicere quod velit ordinare ea quae sunt ad finem, in finem”
(STh I, q. 19, a. 5). A few lines prior to this remark, Thomas speaks of apprehending a
principle and a conclusion with a “single grasp”: “uno intuitu apprehendens utrumque.”
On the concept of “things that are for the end,” see David Wiggins, “Deliberation and
Practical Reason,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (1975-1976) 76 (1976): 30-36.
39
“Ad quartum dicendum quod intentio est actus voluntatis respectu finis. Sed
voluntas respicit finem tripliciter. . . . Tertio modo consideratur finis secundum quod est
terminus alicuius quod in ipsum ordinatur, et sic intentio respicit finem. Non enim solum

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What we see here is that, in considering a particular action
and posing questions about what is intended, the primary
consideration is the end sought; that which is for the end is
secondary—it could be something else—although it is what
makes it to be the case that the end is intended and not just willed.
This is not to say, however, that in such an action that which
is for the end cannot be said to be intended. In question 22, article
13 of the Quaestiones disputatae De veritate, Thomas argues that
intention, since it is a “tending” from one point to another and
so has extension, takes in both the end and that which is for the
end. In this passage (as in STh I-II, q. 12, a. 1) he is concerned to
show that intention is an act of the will, although, since
determining upon a way to get to the end is a work of the
intellect, the will as involved in intention has “left in it the
impression of reason.”
He continues:
Since it is proper to reason to put things in order and to compare them,
whenever there appears in an act of the will some comparison or ordering, such
an act will be of the will not absolutely but in connection with reason. It is in
this way that to intend is an act of the will, since to intend appears to be nothing
other than, from that which someone wills, to tend toward something else as
toward an end. And thus to intend differs from to will in this: that to will tends
toward an end absolutely; but to intend speaks of [dicit] an order towards an
end, according as the end is that toward which are ordered the things that are
for the end.40

The advantage of this passage for our present purposes is that,
while acknowledging (as in STh I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4) that one
ex hoc intendere dicimur sanitatem, quia volumus eam, sed quia volumus ad eam per
aliquid aliud pervenire” (STh I-II, q. 12, a. 1, ad 4].
40
“Alium vero actum habet, qui competit ei secundum id quod ex impressione rationis
relinquitur in voluntate. Cum enim proprium rationis sit ordinare et conferre,
quandocumque in actu voluntatis apparet aliqua collatio vel ordinatio, talis actus erit
voluntatis non absolute, sed in ordine ad rationem: et hoc modo intendere est actus
voluntatis; cum intendere nihil aliud esse videatur quam ex eo quod quis vult, in aliud
tendere sicut in finem. Et ita intendere in hoc differt a velle, quod velle tendit in finem
absolute; sed intendere dicit ordinem in finem, secundum quod finis est in quem
ordinantur ea quae sunt ad finem” (De Verit., q. 22, a. 13).

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who intends does intend the end (as to be arrived at “through
something else”), it also acknowledges that intending encompasses the tending of the will—as receptive of an impression from
reason—towards that which is for the end: “to intend appears to
be nothing other than, from that which someone wills, to tend
toward something else as toward an end.”41
Interpreting the corpus of article 7 in light of what Thomas
says in these other two passages, it is apparent that things done
for an end can be described as intended. Indeed, given Thomas’s
Aristotelian understanding of things that are for an end, together
with his understanding that intention of the end can be said to
take in those things, there is little reason to deny that even in very
hurried acts of private self-defense, that which is for the end can
be described as intended.42 That said, however, in the analysis of
self-defense the primary concern must be, not whether that which
is for the end is intended, but whether what is intended is the
conservation of one’s life rather than the death of the other
person.
This leaves us with the crucial question: How does it happen
that sometimes private self-defense has as its intention the conservation of one’s life and at other times the killing of another
person? This is determined, at least partially, by law, since law
recognizes certain types of acts as legitimate self-defense and
others as not so qualifying. The act of private self-defense that
has as its intention the conservation of one’s life is recognizable—
41

See also STh I-II, q. 12, a. 4; and q. 13, a. 1. In the first, Thomas argues that
(understood in a certain way) the intention of the end is the same act as the willing of that
which is for the end; in the second, he talks about the way in which, when a means to an
end is chosen, reason leaves an impression upon the activity of the will.
42
In this regard, I agree with Reichberg (Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace, 177) and
Steven A. Long (“A Brief Disquisition regarding the Nature of the Object of the Moral
Act according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 67 [2003]: 61). Gareth Matthews
argues that Thomas would allow only killing in self-defense that one effects
“unintentionally”: “I could have killed him unintentionally. Not having a great deal of
practice at stopping attackers by hitting them with rocks, I might not have been able to
judge accurately how much force would be needed to stun but not kill my assailant”
(Gareth B. Matthews, “Saint Thomas and the Principle of Double Effect,” in Aquinas’s
Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Scott MacDonald and
Eleonore Stump [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press], 68).

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529

together with that which is for that end—in natural law and in
such positive law as is in accordance with that part of the natural
law. Fighting to conserve one’s life, such as might involve a
killing, and the conservation of one’s life are of a piece. Such an
act, stretching from the fighting to the conservation of one’s life,
follows an intelligible path whose type is already recognized
within law. That, however, leaves open the question, what is it
that alters an action from one in which the intention is to
conserve one’s life into one in which the intention is to kill? To
answer that question, we return to article 7.
V. THOMAS’S ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 1, 2, AND 4
Thomas responds to objections 1 and 2—that is, the objection
that quotes Augustine’s letter to Publicola and the one that quotes
his De libero arbitrio—with a single response. It runs as follows:
Regarding the first objection, the authority of Augustine is to be understood as
applying to that case in which someone intends to kill a man in order to free
himself from death. It is with respect to this case also that the authority,
introduced from De libero arbitrio, is understood. There significantly it is said,
“for [pro] these things,” by which is designated intention. And with this the
response to the second objection is obvious.43

It is notable that in this response Thomas does not speak of
Augustine but rather of Augustine’s authority. Given that in De
libero arbitrio the words in question are given to Evodius,
Thomas’s claim to Augustine’s authority may seem implausible at
first; but, when the passage quoted is understood within the
larger context of De libero arbitrio itself, it makes good sense. As
we have just seen, immediately after Evodius’s remark, Augustine
(the character) expresses a certain amount of agreement with

43
“Ad primum ergo dicendum quod auctoritas Augustini intelligenda est in eo casu
quo quis intendit occidere hominem ut seipsum a morte liberet. In quo etiam casu
intelligitur auctoritas inducta ex libro De libero arbitrio. Unde signanter dicitur, pro his
rebus, in quo designatur intentio. Et per hoc patet responsio ad secundum” (STh II-II,
q. 64, a. 7, ad 1-2).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

him. When one considers the array of types of acts that Augustine
has already considered and his judgments in their regard, there is
one type that Augustine would say is “not free from sin”: that is,
private self-defense that is in some sense planned.
The sense of “planned” that Thomas has in mind in his
response is suggested by the way he describes the immoral
intention. He speaks of one who intends to kill someone “in
order to free himself from death” (ut seipsum a morte liberet).
This does not seem to be the most apt description of what occurs
when one is under attack and so kills someone; in such a
situation, the phrase “in order to preserve one’s life”—as in the
corpus of the article, subparts {1c} and {1d}—is more accurate.
But the action of the slave killing his master is accurately
described as done “in order to free himself from” tortures. That
appears to be the sense of intention that Thomas has in mind in
this response. It is important, however, to bear in mind that it is
not the fact that there is an intention to kill that per se makes such
an act immoral. As Thomas states in part {3) of the corpus, a
soldier or a public official can intend to kill and not sin at all.
What makes a private person’s intention to kill immoral is the
fact that that intention pulls his act out of the pertinent path of
legitimate self-defense.
That Thomas understands self-defense in this way is apparent
in his answer to the fourth objection. That objection argues that
it is not permissible to commit fornication or adultery for the
conservation of one’s life; but homicide (homicidium) is a more
serious sin than fornication or adultery; therefore, it is not
permissible to kill another in order to conserve one’s life. Thomas
replies that “an act of fornication or adultery is not ordered
toward the conservation of one’s life from necessity, as is an act
from which sometimes there follows a homicide [homicidium].”44
In question 18, article 7 of the Prima secundae, Thomas says
similarly that the exterior act might be related to the end of the

44
“Ad quartum dicendum quod actus fornicationis vel adulterii non ordinatur ad
conservationem propriae vitae ex necessitate, sicut actus ex quo quandoque sequitur
homicidium” (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7, ad 4). On the translation of homicidium as ‘homicide,’
see below, note 47.

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531

will—the end of the interior act—in two ways: “one way, as per
se ordered to [that end], as ‘to fight well’ is per se ordered to
victory; and, another way, ‘per accidens,’ as ‘receiving something
belonging to another’ is per accidens ordered to giving alms.”
To take the first example, that is, committing fornication in
order to conserve one’s life, there are certainly other ways in
which this might be effected. In this sense, it is similar to the slave
killing his master so that he might avoid future tortures: that
result might be obtained in a different manner—for instance, by
going to the appropriate public authority or even by escaping
somehow from service to that master. As Thomas says in his
response to the fourth objection, there is no necessary connection
between killing the master and living free from that fear. But
when a person is attacked and needs to fight in order to conserve
his life, that act has an intelligible structure already recognized by
natural law. The act has this intelligible structure only if the agent
is truly forced to defend himself.
Thomas also says in the corpus, subparts {2a} and {2b}, that
the act of a private citizen undertaken in order to conserve his
life must be “proportionate to” that end. “So,” he says, “if
someone in defending his own life uses more force than is called
for [maiori violentia quam oporteat], the act will be illicit.” What
is proportionate to the end of conserving one’s life depends upon
what means are available. If one uses certainly lethal means when
less certainly lethal means would save one’s life—and one knows
this—one does not leave the intelligible path of private selfdefense. This case is not one of planning, as when the slave plans
to kill his master. But added to that act is what Thomas calls
elsewhere “a principal condition of the object repugnant to
reason.”45 (We will discuss this added factor more extensively
below.)
45
STh I-II, q. 18, a. 10: “principalis conditio obiecti rationi repugnans.” Thomas says
in ad 3 of that article that “nothing prevents one moral act from being in plural—even
disparate—moral species” (“non sit inconveniens quod unus actus moralis sit in pluribus
speciebus moris etiam disparatis”). He then refers back to STh I-II, q. 18, a. 7, ad 1: “an
action which according to its substance is in one species of nature can, according to

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

VI. OBJECTION 3, THOMAS’S RESPONSE, AND INNOCENT III ON
THE CASE OF A PRIEST
Objection 3 reads as follows:
Pope Nicholas says, and it is stated in the Decretals, “Regarding the clerics about
whom you seek advice—that is, those who defending themselves kill a pagan—
whether, having first been set right through penance, they might return to their
original status or ascend to a higher one, be it known that we offer no
opportunity, nor do we grant to them any license to kill any man in whatever
way.” But both clerics and laymen together are obliged to hold to the moral
precepts; therefore, neither for laymen is it licit to kill someone in defending
themselves.46

Nicholas was pope between 858 and 867 and was known for his
vindication of genuine Christian morality, especially among the
clergy.
Thomas’s response is not immediately intelligible to modern
readers:
Irregularity is a consequence of an act of homicide [actum homicidii] even if it
is without sin, as is apparent in the case of the judge who justly condemns
someone to death. And for this reason a cleric, even if he kills [interficiat]
someone while defending himself, is irregular even though he did not intend
[non intendat] to kill but to defend himself.

In order to understand Thomas’s position here, it is essential
first of all to understand what he—together with the ecclesial/
legal culture in which he lived—means by “irregularity.”
Irregularity itself is quite distinct from sin, although it is
sometimes incurred as the result of sin. Elsewhere Thomas says
this explicitly. An objection argues that no one ought to be
supervening moral conditions, be referred to two species” [“actus qui secundum substantiam suam est in una specie naturae, secundum conditiones morales supervenientes,
ad duas species referri potest”). See also STh I-II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3 (considered below).
46
I translate here the objection as it appears in the Ottawa edition of the Summa
theologiae. The canon cited can be found at Aemilius Ludovicus Richter and Aemilius
Friedberg, eds., Decretum Magistri Gratiani, vol. 1 of Corpus iuris canonici (Leipzig: B.
Tauchnitz, 1879), col. 179. Raymond of Peñafort cites this canon at Raymond of Peñafort
and William of Rennes (=Ioannis de Friburgo), Summa de casibus poenitentiae, cum
glossis Ioannis de Friburgo (Rome: Ioannis Tallinus, 1603), 153.

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

533

impeded from any sacrament because of an act of virtue. “But
sometimes blood is shed for the sake of justice—for instance, by
a judge; and, holding that office, he would sin if he did not shed
it.” Thomas responds: “Irregularity is not incurred only because
of sin but principally because of the unsuitableness of the person
to minister the sacrament of the Eucharist.”47 In the very next
response, he speaks of self-defense, even morally justified selfdefense: “Irregularity is also incurred without fault; and so even
he, who in some case while defending himself does not sin
committing a homicide, is nonetheless irregular.”48 In the corpus
of the same questiuncula, he explains why this is: “because homicide is maximally contrary to peace and homicide is more
conformed to those who killed Christ than to Christ killed.”49 We
find similar reasoning in Pope Nicholas’s letter, just after the part
quoted by Thomas: he says that he will give to none of “Christ’s
soldiers” license to defend themselves other than in the way that
Christ defended himself.50
It is apparent in what Thomas says in these various places—
and in accordance with the legal authorities he cites—that he
recognizes that natural law permits certain instances of killing in

47
“irregularitas non incurritur propter peccatum tantum, sed principaliter propter
ineptitudinem personae ad sacramentum Eucharistiae ministrandum” (IV Sent., d. 25,
q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 2) (Thomas Aquinas, Commentum in quatuor libros Sententiarum
magistri Petri Lombardi, vol. 2, p. 2 [Parma: Typis Petri Fiaccadori, 1858], 909).
48
“etiam sine culpa incurritur irregularitas; et ideo etiam ille qui se defendendo in
aliquo casu non peccat homicidium committendo, nihilominus irregularis est” (IV Sent.,
d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 3 [Parma ed., 909]). Translating homicidium as “homicide,”
given that what is referred to is not a sin or even a crime, seems incorrect; but just before
this passage Thomas has acknowledged that killing a man accidentally is not to be called
a homicide but simply a killing. As we shall see, he does think there is something
disordered even about a sinless homicidium.
49
“Et quia homicidium maxime contrariatur paci, et homicidae magis conformantur
occidentibus Christum quam ipsi Christo occiso, cui omnes ministri praedicti sacramenti
debent conformari” (IV Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2 [Parma ed., 909]).
50
“Non igitur licentiam damus militibus Christi aliter se defendere quam ipse in se
monstravit Christus” (Nicholas I [Pope], “Nicolai I Papae Epistolae,” in Epistolarum,
vol. 6, Karolini Aevi IV, Monumenta Germaniae Historica [Berlin: Weidmann,
1925], 661).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

self-defense and also of capital punishment (as imposed according
to justice by a judge), but also that he recognizes a sort of “supernatural law,” binding in a special way upon clerics, whose
sacramental role requires them to follow and to have followed
Christ more closely in these regards.51 This implicit reference to
a higher law regarding killing reminds one of the passage we saw
above in Augustine’s De libero arbitrio, where the character
Augustine, while upholding the positive law that permits killing
in self-defense, does not reject Evodius’s distinction between a
law “which is written in order to rule people rightly” and another
law that is according to “divine providence.”
What Thomas says about irregularity is a help in understanding what he says in part {2} of the corpus, where he cautions
against one who “uses more force than is called for.” That part
of the corpus concerns licit private killing in self-defense, and yet
the legal document Thomas cites there has to do with a cleric
who may have killed in self-defense and with whether he ought
to be allowed to continue to function publicly as a cleric. This
suggests that, for Thomas, even licit self-defense should reflect
Christ’s radical respect for life by reserving it to well-defined
situations—and also not using more force than is called for. The
example of Christ, which (presumably celibate) clerics are
obliged to follow in the strictest sense, is not obligatory in natural
law, which is binding for all, including those with responsibilities
towards their families and the state. That said, however, respect
51

Thomas says similar things in a more secular (and Aristotelian) context, where he
distinguishes two “intentions” of the natural law. “Nothing prohibits something’s being
contrary to the first intention of nature without its being contrary to its second intention,
just as every corruption and defect and growing old is—as is said in De caelo—contrary
to nature since nature intends being and perfection, but is not contrary to nature
according to the second intention of nature since, because nature cannot preserve being
in one thing, it preserves it in another which is generated from the corruption of the first”
(IV Sent., d. 36, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2 [Parma ed., 994]). The reference to De caelo is to
2.6.288b12-16. On Thomas’s use of the Aristotelian distinction (and its possible
contemporary applications) see Kevin L. Flannery, “Moral Taxonomy and Moral
Absolutes,” in Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P.,
ed. Peter A. Kwasniewski (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2007), 237-59; and Kevin L. Flannery, “Capital Punishment and the Law,” Ave Maria
Law Review 5 (2008): 399-427.

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535

for human life should so inform the character of a good
Christian—or, for that matter, the character of any human
being—that he would be disinclined to use possibly lethal means
except when necessary, or ever to use more force than is called
for, or to embrace such an occasion as an opportunity to exact
personal vengeance.
So then, immediately after saying (at {2b}) that the use of
more force than is called for makes the act of private self-defense
illicit, Thomas says that, if the person “should repel a force
moderately, the defense will be lawful, for, according to law, ‘it
is licit to repel force by force, provided it is ‘with the moderation
of blameless self-protection.’” The phrases “to repel force by
force” (vim vi repellere) and “with the moderation of blameless
self-protection” (cum moderamine inculpatae tutelae) are both
taken from a canon in Gregory IX’s Decretals.52 The canon in
question quotes at length a missive, sent by Pope Innocent III in
the early thirteenth century to an abbot in Germany, in which he
identifies the various factors and principles the latter should bear
in mind in determining whether, in a particular case, a priest
should be considered a killer (homicida) and, therefore, barred

52
Decretal. Gregor. IX 5.12.18, in Aemilius Ludovicus Richter and Aemilius Friedberg,
eds., Decretalium Collectiones, vol. 2 of Corpus iuris canonici (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz,
1881), col. 800-801. On the more distant origins of these phrases, see Stephan Kuttner,
Kanonistische Schuldlehre von Gratian bis auf die Dekretalen Gregors IX: Systematisch auf
Grund der handschriftlichen Quellen dargestellt, Studi e testi 64 (Vatican City: Biblioteca
apostolica vaticana, 1935), 336-43. The two phrases (vim vi repellere and cum
moderamine inculpatae tutelae) have different origins. It is possible but unlikely that
Thomas just happened to join the two phrases that Innocent III joins in his letter. There
can be no doubt that Thomas knew the Decretals (where the letter is found); they were
compiled by his religious superior Raymond of Peñafort. He wrote an expositio of the
first two decretals (Expositio super primam et secundam Decretalem ad archidiaconum
Tudertinum, in Opera omnia 40, part E [Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1968]). In STh II-II,
q. 64, a. 7, he makes reference to the iura (“nam secundum iura, vim vi repellere licet
cum moderamine inculpatae tutelae”); in the quodlibetal questions, he uses the term
“iura” in referring to Gregory IX’s Decretals (Quodl. IX, q. 7, a. 2, in Opera Omnia 25/1
[Rome: Commisssio Leonina; Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1996]). The reference is to
Decretal. Gregor. IX 3.5.18 (Richter and Friedberg, eds., Decretalium Collectiones, col.
471).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

from celebrating the sacraments. Somewhat paradoxically, it is a
canon in which is delineated the sort of action that would create
irregularity in which is delineated most clearly the sort of action
that is not excluded according to natural law. But, to repeat, this
suggests that, given canon law’s high regard for restraint even to
the point of nonresistance, legitimate self-defense should be
characterized by prudent—even cautious—moderation.
Addressing the abbot in the second person—the opening word
(and title) of the canon is Significasti—Innocent first recalls
briefly what he has heard from the abbot. He recounts, that is,
that when a certain malefactor (maleficus), having entered a
church, proceeded to carry away the Eucharist as well as altar
ornaments and liturgical books, a priest (and canon regular)
named Laurentius
struck the aforesaid son of iniquity with a hoe [fossorio] he had grabbed. But
whether such a blow was mortal both you and he [that is, the abbot and the
priest] are entirely ignorant: the parishioners of the church, seeing the man
carrying off the ornaments of the church, having grabbed swords and clubs,
killed him instantly on that very spot.53

Innocent goes on to mention a couple of other, related canons,
which would not have appeared in the edition of the Decretals
from which Thomas was reading, and so he may not have known
them.54 Still, whether he knew them or not, they are relevant to
the present argument, since they tell us something about the legal
context within which he was operating. One of the canons concerns cases in which “four or five or more men” get into a brawl
with one man and he is wounded by them. In such an event,

53

“praefatum iniquitatis filium fossorio arrepto percussit. Sed, si ad mortem fuit ictus
huiusmodi, tu et ipse penitus ignoratis; quem parochiani ecclesiae videntes ornamenta
ecclesiae asportantem, arreptis gladiis et fustibus in eodem loco protinus occiderunt.”
54
The section of Innocent’s letter describing these cases (“Praefatus vero Laurentius .
. . non habuit occidendi”) is included in the most authoritative edition of the Decretals,
although the editor (Aemilius Friedberg) indicates that they did not appear in Raymond
of Peñafort’s original. See Richter and Friedberg, eds., Decretalium Collectiones, col.
xlv-xlvi. The first canon comes out of the Council of Vermerias (see Richter and
Friedberg, eds., Decretum Magistri Gratiani, col. 965); the other originates with Pope
Nicholas I (see ibid., col. 194-95).

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

537

according to the canon, anyone who has struck a blow is to be
considered a killer. The other canon comes from another letter
by Nicholas I and concerns a priest who strikes a deacon who is
on horseback; the deacon falls from the horse and dies, his skull
crushed. According to the canon, if (quod si) the blow was not a
mortal blow, a penance should be imposed upon the priest, who
has acted incautiously (incaute); that is, he should be suspended
for a time from the celebration of Mass. “But if the deacon has
truly been killed by any such blow of the priest, in this case, for
no reason is he to be permitted to minister as a priest, even if he
had no intention [voluntatem] of killing.” Notable here is the fact
that the killing by the priest is (as Thomas would put it) praeter
intentionem, and yet it still brings about the irregularity of the
priest involved.
There then follows the section of Innocent’s missive that
Thomas certainly did know; it returns to the case of Laurentius
with the following (rather labyrinthine) analysis:
(1) In the present case, we believe that it needs to be ascertained whether it
is possible to verify that the aforesaid priest did not inflict a mortal blow but
that rather, if the wounds of the others had not followed, the person struck
would not have died and whether the one who struck had not the intention
[voluntatem] of killing, nor by his design, counsel, or mandate did the others
proceed against him.
(2) And indeed if the matter is such that perhaps with investigation it is
possible to show that, according to the judgment of experienced doctors, such
a blow would not be lethal ([that is to say,] if it appears certain that the blow
struck by him was so slight and so light and to that part of the body in which,
if someone is struck lightly, he normally does not die), since, among other
things, this priest is to be believed—who has not been accused or denounced by
anyone but, concerned for his own salvation, of his own volition seeks salutary
counsel—he can, after a penance imposed for caution’s sake, minister in the
priestly office, favor being most especially appropriate since he is a canon
regular and can without any scandal celebrate the priestly office.
(3) But if it is not possible to determine from whose stroke the one struck
died, because of this doubt the priest ought to be regarded as a killer [homicida]
(although perhaps he is not a killer) and must abstain from the priestly office,
for in this case to cease would be safer than rashly to celebrate—for this reason:
that, for the one, no, but for the other, great danger is to be feared. . . .
(4) If, however, in some manner it comes to light that this priest, struck first
by that church defiler, immediately [mox] then struck him in return on the head

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

with the hoe [ligone], although every law and every statute permits one to repel
force by force, since, however, that ought to come about with the moderation
of blameless self-protection, not in order to take revenge but in order to repulse
injury, it does not seem that the same priest is entirely absolved from the penalty
due to killing, both by reason of the instrument with which he struck—which,
since it is heavy, does not usually inflict a light injury—and by reason of the part
of the body in which he was struck, where with a slight blow one is usually
injured lethally.55

In what is marked here as part (1), intention is mentioned,
although Innocent does not speak explicitly of intention in the
remainder of the letter.56 Indeed, it is significant that Innocent
says here that, before getting into the details of his analysis, “it
needs to be ascertained . . . whether the one who struck had not
55
“Nos in praemisso casu credimus distinguendum, utrum constare possit, quod
praefatus sacerdos non inflixit percussionem letalem, de qua videlicet, si aliorum non
fuissent vulnera subsecuta, percussus minime interiisset, et si percussor voluntatem non
habuerit occidendi, neque ipsius studio, consilio vel mandato processerint alii contra
illum. Et quidem, si hoc ita se habet, quod forsan ex eo posset ostendi, si certa apparuisset
percussio ab eodem inflicta tam modica et tam levis, in ea parte corporis, in qua quis de
levi percuti non solet ad mortem, ut peritorum iudicio medicorum talis percussio
assereretur non fuisse letalis, quum de ceteris credendum sit ipsi sacerdoti, qui non
accusatur vel denunciatur ab aliquo, sed per se ipsum, de sua salute sollicitus, consilium
appetit salutare, post poenitentiam ad cautelam iniunctam in sacerdotali poterit officio
ministrare, maxime religionis accedente favore, quum sit canonicus regularis, et sine omni
scandalo possit sacerdotale officium celebrare. Quodsi discerni non possit, ex cuius ictu
percussus interiit: in hoc dubio tanquam homicida debet haberi sacerdos, etsi forte
homicida non sit, a sacerdotali officio abstinere debet, quum in hoc casu cessare sit tutius
quam temere celebrare, pro eo, quod in altero nullum, in reliquo vero magnum periculum
timeatur. . . . Si vero, quemadmodum perhibetur, sacerdos iste prius ab illo percussus
sacrilego, mox eum cum ligone in capite repercussit, quamvis vim vi repellere omnes leges
et omnia iura permittant; quia tamen id debet fieri cum moderamine inculpatae tutelae,
non ad sumendam vindictam, sed ad iniuriam propulsandam: non videtur idem sacerdos
a poena homicidii penitus excusari, tum ratione instrumenti, cum quo ipse percussit,
quod, quum grave sit, non solet levem plagam inferre, tum ratione partis, in qua fuit ille
percussus, in qua de modico ictu quis letaliter solet laedi” (Decretal. Gregor. IX, 5.12.18
[Richter and Friedberg, eds., Decretalium Collectiones, col. 800-801]). (Words in italics
did not appear in Raymond of Peñafort’s original; see Richter and Friedberg, eds.,
Decretalium Collectiones, col. xlv. I have kept and translated them since they make no
difference to the sense of the passage and they do allow it to be read more easily.)
56
The word used is “will” (voluntas) and not “intention” (intentio), although what
Thomas calls intention is clearly what Innocent means. The word voluntas is also used by
Nicholas in the canon referred to just previously.

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

539

the intention of killing.” In effect, he is setting to one side what
Thomas sets aside in part {1} of the corpus of article 7 when he
characterizes licit private self-defense as “beside the intention.”
Consistent with this, Innocent, in the immediately succeeding
phrase, also sets aside anything brought about by the priest’s
“design, counsel, or mandate.” Anything along these lines would
constitute “planning.”
Parts (2), (3), and (4) each propose a possible analysis of the
priest’s action. Part (2) supposes that it is possible to verify that
the blow that killed the malefactor was inflicted by the priest but
that it was so slight as to indicate that the priest did not intend to
kill; in this case, irregularity would not be incurred. Part (3)
supposes that it is not possible to determine who struck the blow
and therefore whether or not the priest intended to kill; in this
case, it would be “safer” to presume irregularity. The fear is that
the priest might have engaged in licit self-defense that is not
contrary to the natural law but that would create an irregularity.
Part (4) begins with the stipulation that the priest struck the
other person mox (“immediately”). In itself, this would mean that
the eventual killing was praeter intentionem. The word mox is
followed then by the phrases quoted by Thomas at subpart {2c}
in connection with private self-defense that is praeter
intentionem: “according to law, it is licit ‘to repel force by force,’
provided it is ‘with the moderation of blameless self-protection.’”
Since it is clear that Thomas was drawing from this part of the
canon in Gregory IX’s Decretals, there is good reason to believe
that, in speaking about licit private self-defense, he has in mind
Innocent’s use of the term mox.
Innocent’s point is that, although the law recognizes that such
an immediate striking is not to be regarded as (to use Thomas’s
vocabulary) in intentionem, the priest’s celebration of the
Eucharist would be irregular in as much as this striking is not the
type of act that Jesus Christ would ever have performed. Innocent
also adds that such immediate acts of self-defense ought not to be
performed “in order to take revenge” (ad summendam vindictam), a factor that Thomas mentions only later in part {3}.
Innocent mentions too that (under the hypothesis) the instrument

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

used would have been a lethal one, especially when used against
a vulnerable part of the body. He makes no suggestion, however,
that this factor makes it to be the case that the cleric’s intention
in so acting was the death of the assailant.57 Given that Thomas
cites this very canon in article 7 there is good reason to maintain
that he accepts that the use of certainly lethal weapons in private
self-defense is (independently of other factors) morally licit.
Presuming, then, that in depicting licit private self-defense
Thomas had in mind Innocent’s term mox, how might he have
understood that term? A help in this regard is Raymond of
Peñafort, whose work Thomas knew well.58 Raymond discusses
the sort of situation in which “striking back” (repercutere) might
be licit, making a distinction between striking back when one’s
person is attacked and striking back when one’s property is
attacked. It is the former that primarily interests us.59
Raymond’s analysis, it should also be noted, concerns
irregularity only tangentially, and is concerned primarily with the
57
The canon, as it appears in the Friedberg edition contains a conclusion which
Thomas would not have read (at least, in the Decretals). It has to do with self-defense that
is tinged with revenge: “especially since, according to the popular proverb, it is said that,
‘Who strikes first, strikes making contact; who strikes second, strikes being aggrieved’”
(“maxime quum secundum vulgare proverbium asseratur, quod, qui ferit primo, ferit
tangendo, qui ferit secundo, ferit dolendo”). Analyses of such situations appear as early
as Aristotle; see Eudemian Ethics 2.8.1225a14–19 (see also Flannery, Action and
Character, 95-97). The canon concludes (in the version that Thomas possibly did not
know) with Innocent’s judgment regarding the priest: “All things considered, it seems that
it would be best for him, with humility, to abstain from exercising the priestly office”
(“Unde, pensatis omnibus, ei creditur expedire, ut cum humilitate abstineat a sacerdotali
officio exsequendo”).
58
See Leonard E. Boyle, “The Setting of the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas—
Revisited,” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown
University Press), 1-2.
59
Raymond’s remarks in this regard owe much apparently to an earlier gloss,
beginning with the words “Qui repellere possunt,” on Gratian’s Decretum, part 2, causa
23, q. 1 (Gratian [Gratianus], Decretum Divi Gratiani Universi Iuris Canonici: Pontificias
constitutiones, & Canonicas brevi compendio complectens, una cum glossis & thematibus
prudentum, & doctorum suffragio comprobatis [Lyon: Pidaieus, 1554], 840). See Gregory
M. Reichberg, “Preventive War in Classical Just War Theory,” Journal of the History of
International Law 9 (2017): 7-10. The gloss is translated into English at Gregory M.
Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby, eds., The Ethics of War: Classic and
Contemporary Readings (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2006), 109-11.

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541

morality of the pertinent acts according to natural law.60
Raymond begins by noting that, according to law, “it is licit to
‘repel force by force’ contiguously [in continenti]—and this ‘with
the moderation of blameless self-protection.’”61 Quoted here, of
course, are the two phrases that appear both in Thomas’s subpart
{2c} and in Pope Innocent’s Signficasti (which Raymond
eventually mentions).62 The two phrases appear together in both
these places; Raymond, however, takes the expression “in
continenti” from a different canon where it appears together only
with “repel force by force,” the entire phrase reading “in
continenti vim vi repellat.”63 Raymond argues that this means
that force can be repelled “before it is inflicted” (priusquam sit
illata). But he adds: “If, however, after harm is inflicted upon
someone, he strikes back, if he does this contiguously—that is,
when he should see him [the attacker] once again prepared to
strike—in no way is he liable.”64
60
Raymond does at one point mention the distinction between clerics and others, but
it is clear that the position he upholds at that point makes no difference between the two;
he also, a few lines later, mentions irregularity (Raymond of Peñafort and William of
Rennes, Summa de casibus poenitentiae, 186).
61
Ibid., 185.
62
Ibid., 187.
63
Richter and Friedberg, eds., Decretalium Collectiones, col. 890.
64
Raymond of Peñafort and William of Rennes, Summa de casibus poenitentiae, 186.
When, however, it is property that is attacked, the concept “contiguously” has a broader
extension. As Raymond puts it: “If force should be inflicted upon things, it is licit to repel
both force inflicted [illatam] and force to be inflicted [inferendam]—although it ought
rather, that is, very much preferably, be force inflicted [illatam]—provided this is done
contiguously [in continenti], that is, as soon as the person is aware of the force inflicted
[illatam] and before he turns to a contrary act” (ibid., 186-87). Raymond’s contemporary
Dominican brother, William of Rennes, who glossed the entire work (though in editions
of the work the glosser is falsely identified as John of Freiburg), maintains that, when the
recovery of property is at issue, eating or drinking or even extended preparation would
not constitute “contrary” acts. A contrary act, he says, would involve looking away from
the injury suffered and turning to some other matter (ibid., 187]. In a book coedited by
Gregory Reichberg it is stated that, “in his gloss on this passage, William sought to expand
the notion of justifiable defense beyond the strict limits that had been set by Raymond.
The concept of immediacy (defense in continenti), which had constituted the core of
Raymond’s account, should not be taken to imply, William argued, that an attack can

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

Employing Thomas’s vocabulary, in the latter two cases the
death of the attacker would be praeter intentionem. In accordance with what was argued above in section IV, the requirement
that the reaction be effected contiguously would not mean that
the self-defender might not deliberate, even for some minutes,
about how to stave off the attack. In other words, he might intend
to employ the “means”—“that which is for that end”—which he
either seizes upon immediately or which he chooses after some
deliberation. On the other hand, a slave’s planning to kill the
master who threatens him with tortures—and his subsequently
doing so—would take him outside of that intelligible path of licit
private self-defense and into the path of that which is “intended”
(subpart {1a}).
We might repeat here also another point made above: that
Thomas regards the agent who uses more force than is called for
as still intending to conserve his life, albeit with an act that is
immoral. This is indeed suggested by the way he makes his point
in subpart {2b}: “So, if someone in defending his own life uses
more force than is called for, the act will be illicit.” Although this
person uses more force than is called for, he is still defending his
own life.
VII. LICIT INTENDING TO KILL, PLUS OBJECTION 5 AND
THOMAS’S RESPONSE
In the foregoing, we have mentioned a number of times the
statement in part {3} that it is licit for one who has public
authority to intend to kill a man in self-defense—this standing in
stark contrast with what Thomas says in part {1} regarding
private self-defense, which is illicit if it involves the intention to
legitimately be countered only in the heat of the moment, when it was actually under way
or about to begin” (Reichberg, Syse, and Begby, eds., Ethics of War, 133]. In his later
book, Reichberg does not see such a conflict between Raymond and William’s gloss. With
good reason he says that it “remains unclear” whether the explanation by Raymond and
William of acting in continenti when property is attacked is to be applied when the attack
is upon a person (Reichberg, Thomas Aquinas on War and Peace, 192). Still, what William
says does suggest that in continenti can be understood as allowing for preparation that is
not strictly speaking “immediate” (mox).

BACKGROUND TO STh II-II, q. 64, a. 7

543

kill. But we have not considered up until now Thomas’s saying in
{3} that the public official who intends to kill “refers this to the
public good.” This latter remark raises a question. Is Thomas
suggesting that the act ought not to be understood as the public
official’s intending to kill but rather as his intending to promote
or protect the public good? The answer to this question lies in his
use of the expression “refers this to” (refert hoc ad).
The one place in Thomas’s works where he uses precisely this
expression is in his commentary on 1 Timothy 4:8, the verse in
which St. Paul says that “corporal exercise is useful for little, but
piety is useful in every way.”65 In order to explain how corporal
exercise can nonetheless be meritorious when performed for the
love of God and by means of piety, he notes that, “When there
are two virtues and one contains the other, that which is of the
superior virtue per se, holds of the inferior per accidens.” He gives
an example: “if one who is fasting does not refer this to [refert
hoc ad] the love of God, he does not merit eternal life.” So, the
phrase refert hoc ad signals that the added end (which in this case
defines the higher virtue) holds of the lower act only per accidens.
This means that the act of fasting remains the species of act that
it is; in other words, it remains the species determined by that
act’s proximate end and does not become (except per accidens)
an act of the species determined by the remote end.
We find the same idea at in question 1, article 3 of the Prima
secundae (ad 3) where the example that Thomas employs is
identical to the one employed in our article 7, part {3}:
Still, it is possible that an act that is one according to its species of nature might
be ordered to diverse ends of the will, just as that very thing which is killing a
man, which remains the same according to its species of nature, can be ordered
as towards an end for the conservation of justice—and also for the satisfaction
of anger. The result is that there will be diverse acts with respect to moral
species, for in one way it will be an act of virtue, in another way an act of vice.

65
“corporalis exercitatio ad modicum utilis est, pietas autem ad omnia utilis est”
(Vulgate).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

For the motion does not receive its species from that which is the terminus per
accidens but only from that which is the terminus per se.66

We must conclude, therefore, that the public official mentioned
in {3} does intend to kill. That species of act remains, even
though it is referred to the public good.
The just-quoted passage—and in particular the phrase,”and
also for the satisfaction of anger”—assures us that a similar thing
can be said with respect to the very final clause of {3}, where
Thomas states that a soldier or a minister of a judge, although
licitly intending to kill, “sin if they are moved by a private
passion.” Such private animosity does not remove the agent’s act
from the path of authorized killing in self-defense. The situation
is similar to what we saw above regarding private self-defense:
even the use of disproportionate means does not disqualify the
act as an act of private self-defense.67
That brings us to the final objection in article 7 and Thomas’s
response, which, like the final clause in {3}, declares private
passion to be sinful, although its scope is wider, pertaining not
just to public authorities. Consideration of its background in the
thought of Thomas as he interprets Christian tradition sheds light
upon the significance of his specifying in {3} that the passion that
public authorities ought to avoid is private passion.
Objection 5 runs as follows:
If the tree is evil, so is the fruit, as is stated at Matthew 7.17. But self-defense
itself appears to be illicit, according to Romans 12:19: “Not defending
yourselves, dearly beloved.” Therefore, also the killing of a man, which
proceeds from it, is illicit.

Thomas, in formulating this objection, is recalling the Vulgate
translation of Romans 12:19, “non vosmetipsos defendentes,
66
“Possibile tamen est quod unus actus secundum speciem naturae, ordinetur ad
diversos fines voluntatis, sicut hoc ipsum quod est occidere hominem, quod est idem
secundum speciem naturae, potest ordinari sicut in finem ad conservationem iustitiae, et
ad satisfaciendum irae. Et ex hoc erunt diversi actus secundum speciem moris, quia uno
modo erit actus virtutis, alio modo erit actus vitii. Non enim motus recipit speciem ab eo
quod est terminus per accidens, sed solum ab eo quod est terminus per se.”
67
See above, at n. 44.

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545

carissimi”—which translation gives the objection a seemingly
stronger case than is found in the Greek, for the latter employs
the word ejkdikou~nte", which speaks more clearly of vengeance
or punishment.68 And, indeed, that is the gist of Thomas’s
response: “Prohibited there is defense which is with vindictive
spite. And so the Gloss says: ‘Not defending yourselves,’ that is,
‘Not striking adversaries back.’”69
There is not much more to be said about objection 5 and
Thomas’s response. But his commentary on the verse from the
Letter to the Romans that he cites in the objection itself sheds
light upon what he says in {3}—and upon article 7 more
generally. Immediately after saying “Not defending yourselves,
dearly beloved,” Paul says, “but give place to anger.” Regarding
the first clause, Thomas speaks of “precepts of patience always to
be retained in the preparation of the heart.”70 Regarding the
second (“but give place to anger”), he says that Paul is referring
to “divine judgment.” “It is as if he were saying,” says Thomas,
“‘entrust yourselves to God, who by his judgment can defend and
vindicate you, according to what is said in 1 Peter: ‘Cast all your
worries upon him, for he cares for you.’” “This, however, is to
be understood,” he adds, “in the event that there is not available
to us the faculty of acting otherwise according to justice.” He
goes on to mention “the authority of a judge” (auctoritate iudicis)
and “princes” (princeps), whom he describes as ministers of
divine judgment.71 The vengeance discouraged with the phrase
68
Thomas writes actually, “non vos defendentes, carissimi.” The word ejkdikou~nte"
(or ejkdikevw) might be translated as “meting out justice” (on one’s own). Within the very
same verse Paul writes: “but give place to anger, for it is written, the meting out of justice
[ejkdivkhsi"] is mine; I will have vengeance, says the Lord.” Paul is criticizing human beings
who assume authority that is properly God’s.
69
“Ad quintum dicendum quod ibi prohibetur defensio quae est cum livore vindictae.
Unde Glossa dicit, non vos defendentes, idest, non sitis referientes adversarios” (STh II-II,
q. 64, a. 7, ad 5).
70
“Sunt igitur ista praecepta patientiae semper in cordis praeparatione retinenda” (In
Rom., c. 12, lect. 3).
71
“Secundo assignat rationem, cum dicit sed date locum irae, id est divino iudicio.
Quasi diceret: committatis vos Deo, qui suo iudicio potest vos defendere et vindicare,
secundum illud I Petr. ult.: ‘omnem sollicitudinem vestram proiicientes in eum, quoniam

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“Not defending yourselves” is to be left to God or to his
ministers.72
What this does is to turn sinful—because disordered—passion
into naturally virtuous and reasonable behavior: the pursuit of
justice. The passion, provided that it is truly passion for justice,
is channelled into the intelligible path pre-established in natural
law and in that positive law that is consistent with natural law.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, then, and that very briefly, question 64, article
7 of the Secunda secundae has attracted enormous attention over
the years, not only because it deals with themes fundamental for
ethics and for our attempts to live together in a just manner, but
also because it was written by Thomas Aquinas. The words and
the ideas he puts forward in the article have been subject to
various, sometimes conflicting interpretations. In order to
determine just what he intended to say—and so what ideas should
enjoy his authority—it is reasonable to pay close attention to the
literature and the law he placed before himself as he wrote the
article.

ipsi cura est de vobis’ [1 Peter 5.7]. Sed haec intelligenda sunt in casu in quo nobis non
adest facultas aliter faciendi secundum iustitiam.” See above, at n. 24.
72
Seeking vindication is not necessarily immoral: see STh II-II, q. 108; I-II, q. 158,
a. 1; see also III Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4: “a man ought not to punish as one vindicating
himself but as one vindicating God, if this is his role by virtue of his office” (“homo non
debet punire quasi se vindicans, sed quasi Deum vindicans, si hoc ex officio habet”).

The Thomist 84 (2020): 547-84

BETWEEN ACTUALITY AND NONBEING:
PRIME MATTER REVISITED
LEE M. COLE
Hillsdale College
Hillsdale, Michigan

I

N HIS COMMENTARY on book I of the Physics, as he takes
stock of what has been demonstrated therein, Thomas Aquinas echoes and amplifies sentiments expressed by Aristotle
himself: namely, that while a number of difficulties led the ancient naturalists to deny generation, corruption, and a plurality
of natural substances, once the nature of matter is made manifest,
“all of their ignorance is resolved.”1 That Aristotle’s notion of
matter might prove to be so powerful is of course remarkable.
Still, even if Aquinas’s appraisal is accurate, it comes, as it were,
with a catch. The “enlightenment” that an Aristotelian conception of matter brings about is conditional: the nature of
matter removes further ignorance once it is understood. Aquinas
evidently assumes that Aristotle has understood matter—if not
exhaustively, at least rightly—and that he himself sees what
Aristotle saw before him.
Whether their more-or-less shared account is true is a question
of great interest, especially to those committed to a nonreductive
account of nature, though it is not an issue that I will attempt to
adjudicate, at least not directly. Rather, I want to consider, more
modestly, whether contemporary interpreters have achieved a
sufficiently accurate understanding of the Aristotelian account of
matter defended by Aquinas, as the viability of this account first
1
I Phys., lect. 14 (Marietti ed., no. 128). See In octo libros Physicorum Arisotelis
expositio, ed. P. M. Maggiolo (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1954). Unless otherwise noted,
translations of Aquinas are my own.

547

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requires its correct articulation. It may be noted that, even if
modest, this aim is only relatively modest, since I am taking for
granted that such a conception is notoriously difficult to grasp.
To appreciate this difficulty, I want to direct the present
reflection towards Aquinas’s understanding of “prime matter”
(materia prima), a notion that he takes himself to be drawing
from Aristotle’s physics.2 Insofar as matter, as such, is a principle
of potency, and insofar as Aquinas identifies prime matter with
pure potency (potentia pura), one of the chief difficulties that
besets his conception of matter presents itself in concentrated
form in the doctrine of prime matter.3 We might readily understand, for example, how brick and beam, as buildable, are material with respect to a house; but this is in no small part because
such materials are in fact actual, qua brick and beam—and, in the
natural order, are actual qua stone and wood. But how, we might
ask, is something a principle of natural being, and so of real being,
when it is, of itself and by definition, “potency alone” (potentia
tantum), as Aquinas frequently describes prime matter?4 The
2
For various instances of Aristotle’s use of prōtē hulē—instances which, to be clear,
often bear a meaning that is nontechnical and highly dependent on context—see On the
Generation of Animals 1.20.729a31-33; Physics 2.1.193a28-29; Metaphysics
5.4.1014b32 and 1015a5-11; 5.6.1017a5; 8.4.1044a20-24; and 9.7.1049a25-7. The last
reference is probably most explicit in capturing the notion with which Aquinas is working.
Aquinas acknowledges that some notion of prime matter precedes Aristotle and that “the
Platonists” had already made significant headway in articulating its character (I Phys.,
lect. 15 [Marietti ed., no. 131]). William Charlton offers a similar list of passages from
Aristotle in “Did Aristotle believe in Prime Matter?,” an appendix to Aristotle’s “Physics
I-II,” trans. W. Charlton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 129. Incidentally, Charlton
denies that Aristotle defends what has come to be a standard conception of prime matter;
however, Charlton presumes prime matter to be a quasi-independent substrate, a view
which my present argument attempts to overcome.
3
Aquinas uses the expression “potentia pura,” in reference to both matter and prime
matter, from the Sentences commentary (e.g., II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1, obj. 4 and ad 4;
II Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 2) up through the Summa theologiae (e.g., STh I, q. 115, a. 1, ad 2),
as well as in ScG I, c. 17; De Verit., q. 10, a. 8; De Pot., q. 5, a. 3; Q. D. De anima, a. 6,
obj. 12 and ad 12; a. 18, ad 5; De Spirit. Creat., a. 1, obj. 17 and ad 17; obj. 25 and ad 25;
De Substan. Sep., a. 7; and In Boet. De Trin., q. 4, a. 2.
4
Appearances of “potentia tantum” and “tantum in potentia” number in the
hundreds. For a few examples of these expressions as specifically identified with prime
matter, see I Sent., d. 39, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4; De Verit., q. 8, a. 6; ScG I, c. 43; II, c. 43; II,
c. 96; II, c. 98; STh I, q. 7, a. 2, ad 3; q. 87, a. 1; q. 115, a. 1, ad 4.

PRIME MATTER REVISITED

549

question inevitably imposes itself on the reader of Aquinas, and
indeed is something of a cliché. Avoiding the apparent contradiction, however, remains a tall order. One is tempted to hold
that the reality “pure potency” aims to pick out cannot be cleanly
transposed into the domain of concepts at all. Rather, it can only
be interpreted by approximation, and by taking one of two paths
at the hermeneutical fork in the road: that is, one seems forced
either to accord prime matter some kind of actuality of its own,
so as to preserve its reality, or to deny it being altogether, so as
to preserve the purity of its mere possibility.
This article seeks to articulate a kind of via media by engaging
with two contemporary readings of Aquinas’s account of prime
matter. I will begin with Aquinas’s account, chiefly as it is articulated in his On the Principles of Nature. In section II, I will consider two interpretations of Aquinas, each of which represents
one of the horns of the dilemma. The first reading, defended by
Robert Pasnau, offers what we might call a “reductionist” and
“anti-realist” interpretation, since Pasnau denies that pure
potency—or, for that matter, materiality in general—designates
an existing principle that is really distinct from natural form;
natural substances possess no real composition as hylomorphic.5
In contrast to this view, Jeffrey Brower has more recently argued
for a “realist” account, in which prime matter is conceived as
what he calls “gunky stuff,” an expression technical in meaning,
even if colloquial in its formulation. As “gunky stuff,” prime
matter is a nonindividuated substrate that requires the addition
of natural form but exists in the concrete composite as something
uncharacterized by such form.6 I consider these contemporary
5
See principally his “Excursus metaphysicus: Reality as Actuality,” the coda to part I
of Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
131-40. Pasnau employs the language of “reductionism” throughout; the term “antirealist” serves to anticipate, by way of contrast, Brower’s interpretation, insofar as Brower
uses the “realist”/“anti-realist” distinction as a way of describing the ontological status of
prime matter.
6
In characterizing Brower’s interpretation, I will be drawing upon his “Matter, Form,
and Individuation,” in Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, eds., Oxford Handbook of
Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 85-103; and Aquinas’s Ontology of the
Material World: Change, Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2014).

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interpretations precisely because they capture two perennial
possibilities for how we might interpret matter in the Aristotelian
tradition, and they establish the dialectical poles between which
a more authentically Thomistic account might emerge.
While each of these interpretive possibilities will help us arrive
at our goal, I will suggest in section III that neither quite captures
what Aquinas seems to mean by “prime matter.” Stated simply,
one falls short by according prime matter too little existence, the
other by according it too much. The former eliminates the means
by which Aquinas explains both substantial change and the
difference between material and immaterial being; the latter
makes substantial form something artistic or accidental and so
compromises the unity of substance. Although these contemporary interpretations are evidently opposed, they achieve this
opposition by virtue of a shared inability to conceive of matter as
a principle of potency. In the remainder of the article, then, I will
offer an account of potency that seeks to preserve the real distinction between form and matter without imparting actuality to
matter, such that it becomes a characterless substratum. Taking
seriously the primacy of the existing substance, I will provide a
basis for prime matter in the determinate matter of the concrete
composite, as defined and characterized by the presence of form.
Prime matter will thus come to light in the mind’s consideration
of the remote possibilities of matter, as grounded in the real and
proximate potencies of determinate matter. Nonetheless, Aquinas’s insistence that prime matter is “potency alone,” known only
through form, precludes that prime matter exist as such, in its
purity, in any particular material body. To make sense of prime
matter’s mode of existence, I will conclude by drawing an
analogy between prime matter and Aquinas’s understanding of
the existence of universals. In the end, just as Aquinas’s account
of universals seeks to protect the hylomorphic individual “from
above,” with respect to form, prime matter aims to preserve the
individual “from below,” with respect to matter.

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I. PRIME MATTER IN AQUINAS’S DE PRINCIPIIS NATURAE
The notion of materia prima appears throughout Aquinas’s
scholarly career and in various genres within his corpus—for
example, in each of his three great summations of theology, in
most of his disputed questions, in the relevant Aristotelian commentaries, and in various opuscula and other works.7 In our
initial exposition, however, we will principally have recourse to
a work in which Aquinas perhaps most directly introduces and
characterizes this principle, that is, his primer to Aristotelian
natural philosophy, De principiis naturae.8
In this short work, Aquinas treats of prime matter as an extension of his broader treatment of matter, form, and privation,
which constitute Aristotle’s three principles necessary for change.
He defines matter, most generally, as “being in potency” (c. 1,
ll. 12-15), a natural being’s positive capacity to become what it is
not. As such, matter differs from that at which potency aims and
through which it is actual—namely, form—and it likewise differs
from that absence of form or being which is overcome in
change—namely, privation. Distinct from form and privation,
matter itself admits of a distinction. As being in potency, matter
takes two basic forms, depending on the type of being towards
which the potency in question aspires. Hence, Aquinas distinguishes between matter that stands in potency to accidental existence and that which stands in potency to substantial existence.
He refers to the latter as materia ex qua—that is, the “matter out
of which” a substance comes to be—and he deems it to be matter
7
Thus, prime matter appears in De veritate, De potentia, De malo, De anima, De
spiritualibus creaturis, De malo, and Quodlibet IX, as well as in Aquinas’s commentaries
on De anima, Physics, Metaphysics, On Generation and Corruption, On the Heavens, and
Meteorology. For relevant opuscula, see De ente et essentia, De principiis naturae, De
mixtione elementorum, De substantiis separatis, and the Compendium theologiae. For
non-Aristotelian commentaries, see Aquinas’s commentaries on Boethius’s De Trinitate,
Dionysius’s De divinis nominibus, and the Liber de causis. Finally, the notion appears in
De 108 articulis and even in a few of Aquinas’s scriptural commentaries—namely, on the
Psalms, on the Gospels of Matthew and John, and on the Letter to the Hebrews.
8
All citations of De principiis naturae refer to the Leonine edition and follow its
division of chapters and line numbering: Opera omnia, vol. 43 (Rome: Commissio
Leonina, 1976), 36-47.

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in the more proper sense (c. 1, ll. 20-23).9 Since matter is being
in potency, that which stands in potency to being in the most
proper sense is itself matter in the most proper sense. Thus, potency with respect to substantial being is more properly material
than potency with respect to accidental being. To take Aquinas’s
own example, sperm considered in relation to the human being
generated therefrom is “material out of which” and is more
properly material; the human being in relation to a possible skin
tone, by contrast, constitutes a material subject “in which” an
accident may inhere and so is material in a less proper sense.
Aquinas defines prime matter both by extending his general
account of matter and by contrasting prime matter with the
senses of matter already discussed. Thus, as is consistent with
matter considered more generally, prime matter is neither form
nor privation but is “subject to form and privation” (c. 2, l. 76).
On the other hand, unlike the materiality of sperm with respect
to human being or human body with respect to being tan—each
of which clearly signifies a composite of matter and form—prime
matter is understood as having no form whatsoever. Likewise,
while sperm has a determinate absence of human form and a pale
body lacks the hue of bronze, prime matter is understood without
any particular privation. Thus, while prime matter, as matter, is
“subject to form and privation,” it is, as primary, “understood
without a form or privation of any kind” (c. 2, ll. 74-78).10 As
9
Here I follow the Leonine edition, where matter with respect to substantial being is
called matter in the proper sense (dicitur proprie materia). The critical edition prepared
by John Pauson has “dicitur materia prima”, but this insertion of prime matter seems to
overstate Aquinas’s intentions. See De principiis naturae, intro. and critical text by John
J. Pauson, Textus Philosophici Friburgenses, vol. 2 (Fribourg: Société Philosophique,
1950).
10
See also, e.g., De Spirit. Creat., a. 1. Here we might suspect that prime matter is
“primary” precisely because it actually possesses and signifies every possible privation.
Nevertheless, to be understood as possessing a privation, prime matter would need to be
the proper subject of coming to be or change, in terms of which privation is defined. The
susceptibility to change, however, requires a basic degree of actuality and completion on
the part of the subject—a completion that prime matter, as such, lacks. Thus, rather than
being that which contains all privations, prime matter, as pure potency, lacks the
determination from which particular privations might follow. Note that while an earlier
claim in De principiis naturae—namely, that matter is “never stripped of privation”—
appears to contradict the present point, Aquinas’s immediate elaboration actually serves

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that which altogether lacks the actuality of form, prime matter is
tantamount to a principle of pure possibility. Anterior to specification, it seemingly represents what stands in potency to natural
form and so natural body, simply as such.
Already, it appears as if prime matter constitutes both a special
case of matter and matter in the most genuine sense. The former
holds because prime matter, as altogether lacking actuality, most
departs from colloquial discussions of matter and is generally not
the most proximate principle needed to explain instances of
change. It is neither matter that is itself a composite—a specified
body open to further actualization—nor is it the specified matter
of that which is a composite—that is, the complement of form as
determined by that form. On the other hand, prime matter
expresses with still greater intensity what is true of matter more
generally. If matter is a principle of potency, if it is incomplete in
itself and has being only through another (c. 1, ll. 30-32), then
prime matter is matter in its most purified expression, since it is
purely potential and altogether incomplete.11 As the distillation
of natural potency, it deserves to be called “hyle” (c. 2, l. 78).
Accordingly, whatever ambiguity might remain in the term
“matter,” the designation “prime matter” eliminates this ambiguity, and it does so precisely by eliminating from “matter” the
possible signification of some specific actuality or form. And
because there is no formality within it, there is then “no other
matter before it,” no more fundamental sense of natural potency
to which it might be reduced. Prime matter represents, as it were,
the outer limit of potency—potentia pura or potentia tantum.12
to confirm it. Matter is “never stripped of privation” because “inasmuch as it is under one
form, it has the privation of another” (c. 2, ll. 20-23). “Matter,” here, is already informed,
and by this specification it acquires a determinate privation (or set of privations); such
matter is evidently not prime matter as such. With all of this being said, Aquinas can still
affirm that prime matter, in its maximal indetermination, has a relation to all forms and
privations; in the real order, though, any proper relation obtains through the mediation
of form.
11
Thus it is unsurprising that Aquinas freely describes not simply prime matter as “pure
potency” but matter more generally. See, e.g., De Pot., q. 5, a. 3; and De Spirit. Creat.,
a. 1, ad 25.
12
In De Princ. Natur., c. 2, ll. 85-89, Aquinas allows for a secondary and relative use
of prime matter, namely, as that matter which is primary not absolutely, but in a particular

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But if prime matter exists precisely as potency, then in what
sense does it exist at all? If prime matter constitutes the outer
limit of potency, is it then the outer limit of being—or, in
stripping potency of all act, have we altogether passed beyond
being? Aquinas clearly insists that prime matter cannot exist by
and through itself: “Sed per se numquam potest esse” (c. 2,
ll. 114-15). Since potency exists only on account of the
completion and determination added by actuality, then to the
extent that matter exists, it exists only by way of form and thus
in and through the composite body. And since prime matter
implies no intrinsic actuality, no ordination to any particular
form, it certainly cannot exist of its own accord. Indeed, Aquinas
is so committed to the incapacity of prime matter to exist through
itself that he famously insists that even God cannot create prime
matter apart from form.13 From Aquinas’s perspective, to allow
prime matter to exist per se is simply to equivocate upon the term
“prime matter”—that is, to mean by that expression something
other than “pure potency.” Prime matter, then, “est solum in
potentia” (c. 2, ll. 117-18). Such an affirmation acknowledges not
simply the nature of prime matter as potency, but likewise implies
that its independent existence can be approached but never
realized. Like the infinite division of the continuum, it exists
potentially but never in act. “Whatever is in act cannot be called
prime matter” (ibid.).

genus. Thus, water could be called the “prime matter” of all aqueous substances. Here,
Aquinas is clearly drawing upon Metaphysics 5.4.1015a5-11, though by way of
modification. In Aristotle, water is used—hypothetically, or following Thales—as an
example of what might be prime matter in a universal (i.e., absolute) sense, in contrast to
bronze, which—in the case of select artifacts—might be primary “with respect to the thing
itself” (apparently, with respect to a particular order or genus). See also Aquinas’s
commentary on this passage, at V Metaphys., lect. 5 (Marietti ed., no. 821), where he
distinguishes between matter that is primary “ex toto vel simpliciter” and what is primary
“secundum genus.” See In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, ed.
M.-R. Cathala and R. M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1964).
13
See, e.g., De Pot., q. 3, a. 5, ad 3; q. 4, aa. 1-2; and STh I, q. 66, a. 1. God’s
omnipotence extends only to what is metaphysically possible, and once matter is
understood as a principle of potency, the coexistence of matter with form is not simply
something that happens to hold true; it is, rather, an absolutely necessary condition of
natural being—lest we have “actual being without act” (STh I, q. 66, a. 1).

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If prime matter cannot exist through itself, then for the same
reason it cannot be known through itself. If knowledge aims at
expressing something determinate in reality, it presumes the
actuality and determination that follows upon form. Thus, since
prime matter altogether lacks actuality, it “cannot be defined or
known in itself” but is instead known only through form and so
with reference to a composite (c. 2, ll. 80-81).14 Knowledge
follows upon being, and that which cannot exist through itself
cannot be known through itself.15 Matter is thus known only
through a dual consideration, one that bears upon both principles
intrinsic to the composite. Hence, we know the specified matter
of the human body only by virtue of what has been done for it by
the rational soul, which both exceeds the body and makes it what
it is.16 To such knowledge per formam, Aquinas adds a second
way in which we might know matter, another dual consideration,
though one that operates ad extra, rather than simply ad intra.
He argues that matter can be known by way of analogy.17 We can
grasp the nature of the human body as distinct from, and yet
related to, both soul and man, and in a way that is analogous to,
for example, the relationship between bronze and the figure or
the statue. The body as possibility-for-rational-life and its
14

For the provenance of this claim, see Aristotle, Metaphys. 9.9.1051a29ff.
This is not a problem strictly for human knowledge, since just as God cannot create
prime matter apart from form, neither can God know prime matter apart from its
reference to form. Matter, secundum se, is unknown (In Boet. De Trin., q. 4, a. 2). See,
e.g., STh I, q. 15, a. 3 for a discussion of the relationship between divine ideas and prime
matter. For a brief survey of Aquinas’s various treatments of this issue, see Gregory
Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 133-35.
16
See Aristotle’s definition of soul in De anima 2.1. Because form exceeds matter, but
precisely as that which makes the material body what it is, the “dual consideration” of
matter and form evidently does not involve merely attending to two discrete and selfdefining principles—principles that, in a merely secondary manner, happen to relate to
one another in an intelligible fashion. As being-in-potency, matter is always already made
to be, and to be intelligible, by the work of form within it. Knowledge of matter through
form is not, then, simply a way of enhancing one’s knowledge of material being; it is,
more radically, a condition of the commencement of such knowledge.
17
See In Boet. De Trin., q. 4, a. 2, where Aquinas specifies that matter is known in two
ways, by analogy or proportion and through form. De Princ. Natur., c. 2, l. 80 specifies
that prime matter must be known “per comparationem” (“per compositum” in Pauson).
15

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material relation to the living organism become intelligible by
their approximate, structural equivalence to the bronze’s
possibility-for-artistic-figure and its realization as Donatello’s
David. To capture the pure possibility of prime matter, however,
Aquinas must further radicalize this artistic analogy. Thus, he
argues that as bronze is related to the statue and its shapelessness,
so prime matter is “related to all forms and privations” (c. 2, ll.
82-85).18 Such an analogy anchors the mind in a relationship
between relative indetermination (bronze) and some further actualization (statue) and then invites us to extend this relationship,
as if to the point of pure indetermination. By amplifying, even
universalizing, the potency of matter for natural form, the mind
(in concert with the imagination) finds itself impelled towards a
notion of primary materiality.
That matter can be so conceived as primary proves relevant,
not simply for explaining the constitution of the natural substance, but also for modeling its capacity to undergo change. In
particular, matter as pure potency seems to be implied by the
tenuous continuity present in instances of substantial change.
Unlike the continuity undergirding accidental change, which has
as its primary locus the actuality of the composite subject, the
continuity of substantial change lies on the side of material potency. Substance passes into substance without total ontological
rupture because of some sort of underlying permanence, a
perduring material unity. Such continuity inspires the positing of
a material “substrate” of change, and—while dangers of reification loom—the relative unity of this substrate gestures toward
the unity of prime matter.19 This primary unity comes “closest to
18
See Aristotle, Phys. 1.7.191a9-12: “The underlying nature can be known by analogy.
For as the bronze is to the statue, the wood to the bed, or the matter and the formless
before receiving form to any thing which has form, so is the underlying nature to
substance, i.e., the ‘this’ or existent” (following Hardie and Gaye’s translation in The
Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, ed. J. Barnes [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995], 326). At I Phys., lect. 13 (Marietti ed., no. 118), Aquinas interprets this passage
explicitly in terms of prime matter.
19
In an observation relevant to the permanence of the substrate, but which also serves
as a further caution against reification, Aquinas notes that prime matter is itself neither
generated nor corrupted (De Princ. Natur., c. 2, ll. 90-97). Because substance is the
primary locus of being, generation and corruption apply only to substance itself. To insist

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the surface” in the case of change between the elements, where
the lowest order of form informs a body at one remove from pure
potency.20 Prime matter is felt as not quite realized at the seam
between elemental states.21 Were it so realized, per impossibile, it
would constitute something like a unified substrate of pure
indifference. To shift perspective but slightly, matter can serve as
a continuous substrate of change precisely because a body’s form
does not exhaust the possibility of its materiality. On account of
this noncoincidence of form and matter, natural body remains
open to being other; it exceeds itself by way of its materiality.
Accordingly, a natural composite may be said to have a kind of
“indetermination within its determination” due to its being
material. When maximized, such indetermination has its own
unity precisely as indeterminate. In this way, prime matter is
understood to be “one,” not through the work of form, but
through the undoing of form’s influence (c. 2, ll. 98-99).22
that matter be subject to generation and corruption is tantamount to granting it per se
being. Moreover, since every coming-to-be presumes an underlying material substrate, the
material substrate cannot be the result of the coming-to-be, at least not without some still
more basic substrate. Since prime matter is “that matter which has no prior matter,” it
does not admit a more fundamental substratum and so cannot be the subject of generation
or corruption.
20
See, for example, I Phys., lect. 13 (Marietti ed., no. 118): “Since, therefore, we see
that air sometimes becomes water, it is necessary to say that there is something existing
under the form of air, and at times under the form of water; and so this is something
beyond the form of water and beyond the form of air, just as wood is something beyond
the form of a stool and beyond the form of a bed. What therefore is so related to these
natural substances, as bronze is related to the statue and wood to the bed—and whatever
is material and formless to form—this is said to be prime matter.”
21
To be clear, to note that the elemental stands “at one remove” from prime matter,
or that prime matter is “not quite realized” in the elemental, is hardly to suggest an
equivalent distance between, on the one hand, the elements and prime matter and, on the
other, the elements and the next most actual composite—as if one step down from the
elemental on the hierarchy of being were equally proximate to one step up. Because prime
matter cannot actually be realized in itself, there is, as it were, an infinite-becauseuntraversable gap between the elemental and prime matter. To fail to acknowledge this
asymmetry between what lies above and below the elemental is to reify and falsify prime
matter.
22
On the relation between the oneness of matter and the continuity presumed in
change, see Aristotle, Phys. 1.7.190a13-16; and Aquinas, I Phys., lect. 12 (Marietti ed.,
no. 102-4).

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With all of this in mind, it seems that prime matter enjoys a
strange kind of being and a strange kind of unity, each of which
presents a challenge to its intelligibility. Prime matter is a
principle of existing natural beings, but its own existence is one
of pure possibility, which apparently denotes that which could be
but is not. Prime matter can be said to have unity, it is “one in
number,” because, paradoxically, it is “understood without any
of the dispositions from which difference in number arises” (c. 2,
ll. 106-8). Both of these facts entail, again, that prime matter can
be known only in a correspondingly peculiar fashion: not
through itself but through form. Any attempt to isolate matter
separates it from actuality, and so from intelligibility; so matter
seems to withdraw from view precisely to the extent that intelligence attempts to know it as prime. Moreover, to the extent
that prime matter has no intrinsic actuality, it likewise seems to
lack its own corporeal density—that is, it lacks the kind of natural
dimensionality that one would associate with “matter.” Thus, a
commitment to materiality as pure potency seems to relegate
prime matter to the domain of mere metaphysical abstraction,
thereby leaving a vacancy in Aquinas’s account of the physical
order. Materiality in its purity might, counterintuitively, have
nothing to contribute to the “weightiness” of a body’s natural
being or physicality. Given matter’s lack of intrinsic actuality, the
ultimate coherence of prime matter cannot but tempt suspicion.
Any effort to minimize the importance of these difficulties by
minimizing the ultimate significance of prime matter immediately
runs aground. The coherence of pure potency, rather than
constituting a special and isolated problem, stands as an essential
part of an integrated vision of natural substance. As pure potency,
prime matter condenses what is true of materiality as such, and
so represents, ad extremum, one of the two basic polarities that
define hylomorphism. Thus, a hylomorphism that concedes the
problematic character of prime matter, but then simply tries to
quarantine this problem, achieves a dubious consistency and
cannot find final rest in its principles. To this extent, Aristotelian
nonreductionism can rightly be said to rise or fall on the
coherence of materia prima.

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II. THE BEING OF PRIME MATTER: TWO INTERPRETATIONS
It is still not sufficiently evident how prime matter can be said
to “be”—how it can exist without being actual and so exist while
remaining pure potency. Even if, as Aquinas has claimed, the
potency of prime matter requires that it exist only through the
actuality of form, what existence remains for prime matter,
beyond the existence accorded to form itself? Or, assuming some
distinctly material existence does remain, how can such existence
be prime matter? Seemingly, prime matter oscillates between
nonbeing and being, and this oscillation invites two, divergent
metaphysical frameworks: on the one hand, a monism of
actuality that denies the real existence of material potency and so
denies genuine dynamism in nature; on the other, a dualism that
accords matter its own distinct actuality and so undermines the
very unity of substance.
One strategy for negotiating this difficulty involves denying
that Aquinas ever understands prime matter to be a real and
distinct constituent of natural being. This strategy finds an
advocate in Robert Pasnau, who defends what we might call an
anti-realist or eliminativist account of prime matter in his Thomas
Aquinas on Human Nature.23 For Pasnau, prime matter as pure
potency quite simply does not exist. Nonetheless, while the term
“prime matter” does not name a really distinct principle in
natural beings, it is not for that reason empty of content. It
expresses instead a limit condition, a state that bodies asymptotically approach as we move down the hierarchy of being. Prime
matter cannot exist of itself because reality is constituted only by
that which is actual; thus, if we imagine being as it comes to be
ever more diminished in its actuality, it passes out of existence
altogether before ever realizing a state of “pure possibility.” Even
though Pasnau admits that Aquinas’s language often suggests that
prime matter is some sort of quasi-subsistent reality, he insists
that positing the existence of prime matter defies the

23

131).

The language of “eliminativism” is Pasnau’s (Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature,

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Dominican’s deeper intentions.24 Only by denying the reality of
prime matter do we preserve the primacy of actuality in Aquinas’s
metaphysics. In so doing, we happily avoid the scourge of
dualism and make Aquinas’s thought more amenable to
contemporary conceptions of nature and the human being.
To appreciate more fully why prime matter is not a real
principle of material being, we need to consider how such a view
reflects Pasnau’s broader treatment of Thomistic hylomorphism.
For, while prime matter is not an independent principle, really
distinct from form, neither is matter itself. If all that exists, as
such, must be actual, and if for Aquinas form is the principle of
actuality, then the existent is formal to the extent that it is.
Accordingly, insofar as materiality is understood as potency, and
insofar as what merely can be is not, materiality can be reduced
in the order of being to actuality and so to form.25 To quote
Pasnau himself: “Material beings are not composites of actuality
plus some kind of elusive stuff known as matter, they are instead
just composites of certain sorts of actuality. Reality is actuality all
the way down, and substances are bundles of actuality, unified by
organization around a substantial form.”26 For Pasnau, then,
natural bodies are not composites of form and matter (act and
24
Pasnau acknowledges that his reading is “highly unorthodox,” for “Aquinas
regularly talks as if material substances are composed of matter and form, and he regularly
speaks as if prime matter is a kind of substratum. But it seems to me,” insists Pasnau, “that
such talk cannot be taken literally” (ibid., 132).
25
To quote Pasnau, “metaphysically speaking, Aquinas’s hylomorphism is reductive in
the direction of form,” because “matter makes no causal contribution that can’t be
attributed to form” (ibid., 133). Again, “actuality is explanatorily basic because it is
metaphysically basic, because there is simply nothing else that might figure into an
explanation. What seem to be explanations in corporeal terms—the brain, the heart, fire,
air—always turn out in the end to be appeals to actuality” (ibid., 131).
26
Ibid., 131. Here, we leave aside the issue of whether a reduction to form could allow
for the “subordination” of “bundles of actuality” (see also ibid., 135, 140, and 168) to a
single substantial form, with the unity of ens as its result. At the very least, such a view
gives rise to formulations, such as the following description of the human being, that
strike the ear as an exotic repurposing of Thomistic terminology in defense of a new kind
of formal unicity: “The apparently disparate ingredients of human nature constitute a
single form, whose parts function together, are essentially related, and give rise to a
substance composed of a complex variety of actualized forms which is nevertheless one
thing in the strongest sense” (140).

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potency) but composites of various, actual components held
together in accordance with a substantial form. To think of prime
matter, or even matter, as some thing existing within natural
composites, somehow alongside form, is to project an abstract
conceptual distinction upon the real order. In so doing, we
violate the unity of material bodies. Prime matter, then, is not a
real constituent because, more broadly, matter is not a real
constituent; or, conversely, matter is not a real constituent
because prime matter, as most properly and purely material, is
not a real constituent.
Supposing that potency can be reduced to act in this way, we
might wonder what justifies the language of “matter” in the first
place. Why not simply talk of various formal expressions of being
without flirting with the problematic dualism that “matter”
invites? Pasnau anticipates such an objection and finds a way of
legitimating Aquinas’s use of this term. Although matter is not
really distinct from form or actuality, it is conceptually distinct in
this way: “matter” or “the material” is simply a means of
designating actual beings of a certain kind or grade—namely,
bodies—beings of inferior actuality that exist in space and are
subject to change.27 Thus, minerals, plants, animals, and so on,
27
Thus, Pasnau speaks of the distinction between matter and form as “conceptual,”
rather than “real” (ibid., 131), and “follows [Aquinas’s] lead” on what this distinction
means (ibid., 423 n. 4); likewise, matter is described as a “conceptual part” of the material
object (ibid., 131). Regarding the positive meaning of “material,” Pasnau avers, “to be
material is to be actual in a certain limited, inferior way. Matter is no more than a
particular manifestation of actuality: complex actuality in motion, subject to alteration,
generation, and corruption” (ibid.).
The exact nature or extent of this attempt at reductionism is often unclear. As but one
example, Pasnau cites the soul-body relationship, as understood by Aristotle and Aquinas,
as just another piece of “evidence” in favor of his reduction: “Although it might seem that
such reduction is untenable in the human case, Aquinas is eager to claim that the soulbody relationship is on a par, in this respect, with other form-matter composites” (ibid.,
133-34). While the body of his argument seems to contain no substantive qualification in
its use of the soul-body composition as a paradigmatic example of hylomorphism, Pasnau
acknowledges in an endnote that Aquinas clearly defends “the real composition of soul +
body”; he adds, while “there is no doubt” regarding the real distinction of soul and body,
“the question is how form and matter are composed,” which he interprets by way of
reduction (ibid., 424 n. 5). It is not clear how affirming the real distinction between soul
and body is consistent with Pasnau’s claim that—apart from questions surrounding the

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are material, not with respect to something added to their
formality or actuality, but because the kind of actuality that they
possess is inferior to the actuality possessed by immaterial beings,
that is, God and the angels. Materiality simply marks out a genus
within actual being. For this reason, just as matter may be
reduced (in an upward direction) to form, so too—within the
order of natural bodies—we could just as well reduce form
(downwardly) to matter.28 Since form and matter are simply conceptually distinct ways of talking about natural being, we could
rightly classify Aquinas as a kind of materialist, at least with
regard to his account of natural being.29 Actual bodies, after all,
are “simply actual” as “simply material.”
If Pasnau’s interpretation of prime matter tends in the
direction of a kind of monism, then it stands in evident contrast
to the reading offered by Jeffrey Brower. In his entry in the
Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, as well as in his more recent book,
Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, Brower aims to offer
an account of prime matter that affirms its distinct reality. He
human intellect—Aquinas can be read as a materialist regarding nature (see nn. 28 and 29
below). It is also not clear how a merely conceptual distinction could hold at the level of
the genus (form + matter) but then not hold at the level of the species (soul + body). This
problem is only further intensified when applied to the human being, given that Pasnau
unambiguously acknowledges a real distinction between rational soul and body, as well
as an excess of the operation of the former relative to the contribution of the latter. We
once again have a particular case violating the more global metaphysical account, wherein
“the material” is simply what stands below “the immaterial” on the spectrum of being;
were we to attempt to minimize this inconsistency without actually abandoning the
broader account, we could do so, ironically enough, only by conceding a too-radically
dualistic conception of the human being.
28
To be clear, Pasnau argues that his reductionism “cannot be in the direction of
matter,” because “the human soul is something over and above its matter” (Thomas
Aquinas on Human Nature, 135). This claim is not without difficulties, for reasons
suggested in the preceding footnote. Nevertheless, given the territory that Pasnau has
staked out, such a claim seems to amount to the following: while form, as such, is not
reducible to matter, natural form can be reduced to matter so long as “matter” means an
actual, natural body—and not simply potency—and so long as the form in question is not
the rational soul. Within these parameters, claims of a downward reduction seem perfectly
admissible.
29
For instances in which Pasnau calls Aquinas a “materialist” regarding all natural
substances and operations—save the human intellect and its activity—see ibid., 45, 65,
and 98.

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deems unsatisfying any account that makes prime matter “a mere
logical abstraction,” since only when matter is considered to be a
real constituent of natural bodies do substantial generation and
corruption become possible.30 Thus, Brower defends what he
calls a “realist” account of prime matter, which accords prime
matter reality, not as a complete and independent substance, but
as a formless ingredient of material substance.31 To capture the
incomplete, indeterminate, but nonetheless real character of
prime matter, Brower classifies it as “gunky stuff.”32 As “gunky
stuff,” prime matter is a single kind of characterless—and thus
not properly individual—substrate, portions of which enter into
the composition of each and every material substance.33 “Stuff”
is the stuff of numerically individual substances, and, as such, it
cannot exist apart from form. Still, in these individual substances,
prime matter exists underneath form, as something really
distinct. So understood, prime matter provides a substrate for
change, and it gives natural bodies their extension in space.34
The distinctiveness of Brower’s account perhaps best comes to
light in his claim that prime matter, as a real constituent of
material bodies, remains uncharacterized by the natural form of
the composite that it constitutes. That is to say, prime matter
retains its nature as one kind of thing, even as it is apportioned
30

Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 121.
For the language of “realism,” see, e.g., “Matter, Form, and Individuation,” 88.
Brower explicitly refers to Pasnau’s account as an example of “antirealism” (ibid.,
100-101 nn. 7 and n. 18).
32
Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 125ff.
33
I call prime matter “characterless” because Brower insists that prime matter is
neither “essentially” nor “accidentally” characterized “by any of the properties it possesses
via inherence” (ibid., 149-50). On the other hand, Brower holds that prime matter, as
extended stuff, “can be said to have a distinctive character or nature even in the absence
of forms or properties” (ibid., 125 n. 34).
34
In “Matter, Form, and Individuation,” Brower explains prime matter’s contribution
to spatial extension as follows: “stuff, it is natural to suppose, is just that which accounts
for an object’s extension or capacity to fill a certain region” (93). Prime matter is “that
which explains a material object’s capacity to ‘fill its place’ or ‘have extension in three
dimensions,’” while a thing’s precise dimensions require a further consideration of
“certain . . . accidents or qualities” (ibid., 95-96). Brower likewise holds that, since a
material individual, e.g., Romulus, “cannot exist without some dimensions or other, the
same will be true of his prime matter” (ibid., 96).
31

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LEE M. COLE

out among many substances. Brower arrives at this feature of
prime matter by comparing the role played by prime matter in
accidental or artistic change with the role played by matter in
substantial change; the latter, for him, involves prime matter. In
particular, he compares a lump of bronze becoming a statue to a
zygote becoming human (problematically understanding that the
latter involves substantial change), and he distinguishes between
these cases by considering how matter comes to receive form in
each. In the example of the lump of bronze becoming a statue,
there is a realization of an accidental compound whose material
term is not prime matter. In all such cases, claims Brower, two
conditions hold: (1) the matter goes from possessing one form to
possessing another, and (2) the matter goes from being
characterized by one form to being characterized by another. To
quote Brower, “our lump goes not only (a) from possessing
sphericity to possessing statuehood but also (b) from being a
sphere to being a statue.”35 Attending to these conditions allows
us to appreciate what is distinctive of substantial change, in which
prime matter plays the role of substratum. In the case of
substantial change—for Brower, when a zygote becomes
human—only the first of the two aforementioned conditions
holds. Specifically, while the material term goes from possessing
one form to possessing another, the matter does not go from
being characterized by one form to being characterized by
another. The material term, precisely as prime matter, remains
uncharacterized throughout. Again, to quote Brower, “prime
matter . . . goes from possessing zygotehood to possessing
humanity. Even so, such prime matter cannot itself be said to go
from being a zygote to being a human.”36 So, in the case of natural
beings, we can say that the matter (again, prime matter) possesses
a form, and we can say that the composite constituted out of the
form and matter is characterized by that form. Throughout,

35
Ibid., 91. To be clear from the outset, there are reasons to find this modeling of
artistic change to be misleading. A critical engagement follows below.
36
Ibid. See also Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 104-5.

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however, prime matter itself remains uncharacterized by the form
that it possesses.37
Why should we insist, as Brower does, that prime matter
remains uncharacterized by its form? The principal advantages
seem to be the following. First, such an account allows us to assert
that prime matter exists as a real principle of natural substance.
If matter were characterized by a distinct relation to form, then
the matter in question would no longer be pure potency, but
potency of a certain kind, relative to a certain act. If, however,
prime matter is left uncharacterized, its potency remains
“pure”—it retains its native indifference—and so it can
meaningfully be said to exist as such. The referent of Aquinas’s
notion of materia prima genuinely exists in the real order, in each
and every natural substance.
Second, once we allow that prime matter exists in reality, we
have a substrate that mediates substantial change.38 Brower takes
quite literally Aristotle’s claim that whenever there is generation
or corruption—whenever we pass from one terminus to
another—something must underlie the change and remain one
throughout. Clearly, substantial form cannot so remain and, by
implication, neither can matter characterized by such form, since
its characterization would vary in strict conformity to its
governing form. Matter can be this single, unchanging substrate,
if and only if it is characterized neither by the form (or privation)
of the terminus a quo nor by the form of the terminus ad quem.
Prime matter, on account of its indifference, satisfies this condition; it can receive both forms, and innumerable others, while
remaining the same in nature. Hence, rather than have its
capacity for form be “used up” by its present arrangement, prime
matter remains uncharacterized and so retains potency for all
other natural forms.39
37
By implication, “prime matter is a type of being that can be re-identified over time”
(Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 113).
38
Generation and corruption require a substratum and so the real distinction between
matter and form, and “if there is no prime matter, then material substances cannot literally
be composed of matter and form” (ibid., 121).
39
Brower also thinks that his account makes sense of Aquinas’s claim in De Princ.
Natur., c. 2 that prime matter is somehow “one” (Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material

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III. TOWARDS A VIA MEDIA: PURIFYING POTENCY
While each of these interpretations has merit, I think that we
cannot be forced to choose between them. They best serve to
point us in the direction of Aquinas’s genuine account, which lies
between these extremes, or perhaps beyond the logic that they
share.
Pasnau’s interpretation rightly attends to Aquinas’s broader
metaphysics of actuality when assessing his natural philosophy.
And Pasnau rightly seeks to privilege the unity of being as it is
found within the real order, rather than reconstituting reality out
of abstract parts. Yet, despite his commendable attempt to avoid
untoward dualisms, he appears to defend “the wrong kind of
monism.”40 That he is willing to defend a monism at all suggests
a problematic conception of what the real distinction of matter
and form actually amounts to. He argues that, once we consider
what is actual in a thing, we have exhausted the whole of the
existing thing. Since the actual is the formal, one can give a
complete account of the being of a thing in terms of form, such
that there is no room left for matter. But this account elides the
distinction between form and being, between principle and
substance, by trading on various senses of “actuality.” It is of
World, 116-18). For Brower, prime matter achieves numerical unity, not by virtue of its
identity within any single composite, nor by way of being a single substratum
corresponding to a single, cosmic form. Instead, we arrive at the oneness of prime matter
by adding together all of the uncharacterized “gunky stuff” in the universe that is
apportioned out among substances. I take Aquinas to be arguing, more modestly, that the
notion of prime matter is intelligibly one because, by the removal of diverse formalities
in nature, we approach a lack of determination, which has its own sort of unity—
imperfect, relative to the full unity achieved via form. Still, the vanishing point of act,
natural receptivity as such, can be called “one.” See De Princ. Natur., c. 2, ll. 98-108; and
De Ente, c. 2, ll. 236-39 (Leonine ed., 43:367-81). As will be clear below, prime matter
cannot possess the unity of gunky stuff.
40
Pasnau uses this expression to anticate a possible line of objection, which he grants
has some merit: “one might still regard my account as wrongheaded in that it defends the
wrong kind of monism. Rather than treat actuality as basic, perhaps we should treat the
composite substance as basic” (Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 135). Treating the
composite substance as basic—while of course acknowledging its fundamental unity—and
treating its composition as involving a real distinction between matter and form—rather
than simply a bundle of distinct formalities—is, I argue, what Aquinas actually does.

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course undeniable that all that exists does so by way of actuality,
but the fact that form is the principle of actuality does not entail
that existence is nothing more than formality. Indeed, insofar as
natural form is merely a quo, the “that by which” a material being
is made actual, it demands matter as its distinct complement.41
Natural form is that which confers actuality upon what might
receive it—namely, a material possibility. Thus, the relationship
between form and matter is one of necessary complementarity:
the actual does not exclude the potential, as one thing might
exclude another; form completes matter so as to make a body
actual as something distinct and one. This complementarity is
likewise, then, an expression of causal dependency. Form
actualizes, unifies, and defines a material body, while materiality
receives and restricts this actuality. Apart from the causal
determination added by form, the material body would be
something else—because, with respect to its materiality, it has the
natural potency to be otherwise.42 In the end, given that matter
and form stand in this reciprocal, causal relationship, it is not
clear how they could be “merely rationally distinct”; what is
merely rationally distinct is really one, and what is simply one
admits of no such causal reciprocity.43
Therefore, while it is true that material being can be
understood as having a lower grade of actuality relative to
immaterial being, more can be said on this score, because this
“diminished actuality” does not rule out the need to invoke real
composition. Lower-grade actuality expresses itself through
41

V Metaphys., lect. 10 (Marietti ed., no. 904).
Given that matter must be informed in one way or another, and given that matter
always brings some form with it, one might be tempted to infer that “form” and “matter”
are merely rationally distinct ways of naming the same organized substance. Accordingly,
to say that a material body “could be otherwise”—rather than implying a real
distinction—would be a truism that amounts to saying, “we could be talking about a
different substance.” But this alone is not the kind of potency at play in natural bodies: a
material body “could be otherwise,” not simply in some abstract, metaphysical sense, but
because of the natural potencies inscribed in its material constitution.
43
Insofar as the real distinction between form and matter follows straightforwardly
from their reciprocal causality, one wonders how this distinction could be denied, apart
from a privileging of efficient causality as a paradigm for all causal relationships—over
against which formal causality can no longer be recognized as such.
42

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composition, for, as being or actuality decreases, so too does
unity.44 Material beings are distinguished from immaterial beings,
not simply because the former possess a lower degree of actuality
that expresses itself in a physical mode, and not simply because
they possess composition in the order of quantity. Material
beings, as such, are not purely formal. In point of fact, Aquinas
already has a place in his hierarchy of being for the purely formal,
for an “upward reduction to form”: angelic beings, as subsistent
forms, possess no complementary material principle; and among
the angels differences of actuality are still admitted.45
Accordingly, material beings are, as such, not susceptible to a
formal reduction. They are subject to a composition of matter
and nonsubsistent form, the latter of which exists through body
as its act. Such composition sets the basic conditions of natural
being’s dynamism—its generation and decay, growth and
diminution, and (more broadly) historical and cosmic unfolding.
Thus, within the material individual, the unity and identity that
follow principally from form coexist with a susceptibility to
accidental and essential change, susceptibility that follows
principally from matter.46 Such susceptibility, though “potential,”
is not for this reason “unreal”; rather, it is real precisely as beingin-potency.

44
ScG I, c. 42. To this extent, Pasnau’s account upsets Aquinas’s hierarchical
metaphysics. Pasnau admits the real composition of the human soul and body, but this
composition becomes an exception, rather than the expression of a truth that would have
to hold, mutatis mutandis, for all natural kinds falling below man on the chain of being.
45
Aquinas’ provocative insistence that angels altogether lack matter, even spiritual
matter, gives rise to the consequence that each angel constitutes its own species (STh I,
q. 50, a. 4), differing from other angels by virtue of its intellectual capacities (STh I, q. 55,
a. 3).
46
To justify his reduction, Pasnau insists that matter never has any causal efficacy that
cannot be referred to form, and so matter has no explanatory power that cannot be
reduced to form (again, see Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 131 and 133). But this
observation simply takes advantage of the fact that, for Aquinas, matter just is a relative
principle, specifically ordered to an additional principle of actuality. Thus, any attempt
to find evidence of matter’s wholly independent causal contribution, as some
“extraformal agent,” will in principle fail. This is not to say, however, that matter has no
explanatory power, since its addition to form proves to be a condition for the possibility
of change, which is one of the first lessons of Aristotle’s Physics.

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Thus, to deny that material potency is a distinct principle is to
render material beings invulnerable to natural change. By refusing to probe actuality further, Pasnau’s account leaves us with
material beings limited in actuality, but without these beings
possessing, within the actuality of what they are, a genuine possibility to be other. Such limited but invulnerable beings simply
have no place in Aquinas’s metaphysics.
Brower offers what is arguably a more orthodox treatment of
matter in Aquinas, to the extent that he maintains the real
distinction of form and matter. His notion of “gunky stuff”
furthermore represents a fairly literal reading of prime matter
that relates rather intuitively to Aquinas’s conception of change
and the need for a material substratum. Aquinas does state, as we
have seen, that prime matter is “related to all forms and privations as bronze is to the statue and the shapeless.” Is not prime
matter, then, a more elemental bronze, a still more sculptable
materiality? And would not uncharacterized and indifferent
“stuff” be the purest potency imaginable? Perhaps, though, such
a conception of prime matter is too imaginable, too easy to express in an image, and so not pure potency, a notion more
properly grasped by intellectual insight and analogy.
It seems to me that, if Pasnau’s account is too reductionistic
and parsimonious, then Brower’s is too dualistic. Brower’s
account affixes prime matter to form in the way that Pasnau is
rightly anxious about. To be clear, Brower does not append
matter to form in a way that is mysterious because of matter’s
superfluity, since on his account matter and form serve distinct
and defined roles; rather, the mystery lies in how matter and
form are meant to constitute an integrated whole. Brower holds
that natural substances are composites of form and prime matter,
but he still wants to maintain that prime matter possesses natural
form while remaining uncharacterized by that form, even though
the composite is itself so characterized. But if natural substances
are simply, for Brower, composites of form and prime matter—
such that prime matter actually exists—and if form does not
characterize prime matter, then what matter does it characterize?
If natural form is the actuality of a material potency, then what
potency does it actualize? And if, in actualizing matter, form is

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not also characterizing, what do we even mean by the
“actualization,” “fulfillment,” or “completion” of what is
potential?
Apparently, such an account proceeds only by thinning out
what actualization entails, and—as a necessarily corollary—by
impoverishing the meaning of potency. Regarding the former,
substantial form ends up “actualizing” matter by granting it
admission into being, but as something largely added alongside
itself. Admittedly, gunky stuff still needs to be arranged in a
determinate way in order to exist, and so form permeates matter
to the extent that it provides matter’s concrete dimensionality.
And yet, to be clear, extension as such is not, for Brower, the
additional contribution of form: gunky stuff is inherently extended, and so form simply brings this inherent dimensionality to
a particular and concrete determination. With respect to dimensionality, then, form actualizes only to the extent that it “firms
up” the corporeal substrate that is prime matter, rather than
imparting the very actuality of spatial extension. This extrinsicism of actualization is still more evident in the case of form’s
conferral of a specific nature, which is what “characterization”
seems chiefly to entail for Brower. While determinate dimensions
can be transferred to prime matter itself on account of its own
inner nature as indeterminately dimensive, a thing’s specific
nature cannot be so transferred. Instead, the nature of a thing—
and here it becomes difficult to find a sensible verb—“adheres”
to prime matter without determining (and so compromising) the
purity of its potency. The specific nature actualizes as, at most, a
kind of artistic impress; it provides body a means of identification, but one that matter carries with it, rather than realizes
from within its depths.
It becomes clear, then, that the superficiality of act or form in
such a dualistic account has as its necessary correlate the fundamental indifference of prime matter’s “potency.” Matter serves
as an artistic medium to be writ upon, and so potency for form

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amounts to infinite malleability, not genuine inclination.47 In the
concrete particular, prime matter remains the “gooey indeterminate center” upon which rests the façade of formal
structure.48 Thus, if prime matter maintains its supposedly pure
character, this is only because matter does not fully receive form
into itself; it holds itself back from the suffusion of act. Of course,
that matter can hold itself back suggests that it has something to
hold back; actuality has already been smuggled into its possibility.
Brower’s account can protect the purity of prime matter from
formal characterization only on the condition that prime matter
is already “impure,” is something more than pure potency. Prime
matter is no longer a metaphysical principle of pure potency, but
is instead the most underlying natural and quasi-integral part of
the composite, an element still more elemental than earth, air,
fire, or water. Or, expressed differently, it is not pure potency,
but rather something closer to “body as such, considered
indeterminately”—though body which, even in the real order,
continues to “prescind” from specific characterization.49
Given this rendering of form and matter, it would appear that
Brower models natural substance in an overly artistic fashion,
which undermines the unity that should distinguish natural
compounds from artificial compounds. Once prime matter is
defined as having its own actuality, the relationship between it
and its form must have something of an accidental character, like
that of bronze and its artistic arrangement. That Brower relies
upon a model of artistic change to introduce Aquinas’s hylomorphism is not itself problematic; however, when he turns his

47
Here, we are a long way from Aristotle’s remarks on the natural inclination of matter
found at Physics 1.9.192a21-24: “The truth is that what desires the form is matter, as the
female desires the male and the ugly the beautiful.”
48
Brower himself describes material substances as “layer cakes” with “pudding” at the
center—this pudding being “prime matter” (Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World,
41).
49
For a discussion of praecisio, see De Ente, c. 2, ll. 123ff. Evidently, insofar as
praecisio describes an act of intellectual abstraction, I am applying the notion in a
somewhat nonconventional fashion. However, this is because prime matter, on Brower’s
terms, exists in a nonconventional fashion: namely, it exists in the real order according to
a kind of abstract indifference that should be possible only in the order of knowing.

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attention to nature, art retains a paradigmatic status.50 And, to
the extent that the equivalence between art and nature is
qualified, it is qualified in the wrong way. Aquinas himself insists
that artistic compounds are not genuine substances, precisely
because artistic form is accidental to the underlying matter, which
retains its own character as a natural substance (e.g., as bronze).51
Inverting Aquinas, Brower insists that form characterizes matter
in the domain of art and not in the domain of nature: the artistic
matter is a statue, while the prime matter of Socrates is not
specifically human.52 Insofar as Brower allows form to characterize its matter in artistic compositions, but not in natural
ones, nature becomes more artistic than art itself.

50

See “Matter, Form, and Individuation,” 86-90.
This is why, for Aquinas, “bronze” does not immediately signify a form or privation:
it exists as bronze with and without artistic arrangement (De Princ. Natur., c. 2).
52
This inversion has a provisional plausibility on the artistic side only if, unlike in
Aquinas, the bronze is no longer the statue’s material term—since bronze evidently does
retain its character—and if “characterization” is no longer ontological in nature. Of
course, what exactly the material term would then be proves to be problematic. In
“Matter, Form, and Individuation,” Brower seems to think that the lump of bronze, qua
lump, is the material term that is characterized by artistic form (91), though he is not
wholly consistent in this regard (94). (For a lengthier treatment, see Aquinas’s Ontology
of the Material World, 166ff. and 227ff.) Using the “lump” as the material term seems to
allow for a principle of continuity through change, and it provides a subject of
characterization—precisely because of the lump’s own indifference as a kind of abstract
suppositum. The question becomes whether a “lump” serves as the relevant locus of
characterization in the analogy between art and nature. In Brower’s modeling of change,
the artistic lump is supposed to be analogous, in the order of natural, substantial change,
to prime matter—though merely analogous, since prime matter distinctively fails to be
characterized by its form. Such an analogy, however, seems to be contrived, and so its
putative implications for prime matter as uncharacterized should elicit skepticism. Given
the particular sort of abstraction that “lump” represents, its more evident natural analogue
would be, not prime matter, but “natural body considered indeterminately.” And, in the
real order, such “body” would exist, not indeterminately, but as a determinate kind of
body; in fact, this body would be “characterized” in a more robustly ontological sense
than the lump constituting the statue, since it would have a substantial form as its act. In
the end, Brower’s notion of prime matter actually seems to be strongly analogous to a
statue’s bronze, and while this prima facie accords with Aquinas, Aquinas’s analogy
presumes a greater nonequivalence between nature and art. Thus, against Aquinas,
Brower has prime matter retain its characterlessness beneath its substantial form, just as
bronze retains its own natural identity beneath its artistic form.
51

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Here, we have the resuscitation of a line of thinking that runs
through both ancient materialism (of the nonatomist variety) and
Platonism53—each of which Aristotle and Aquinas see themselves
as overcoming in their accounts of matter—as well as a return to
a (softened) version of the forma corporeitatis—the rejection of
which set the Thomists at odds with the Franciscan school.54 This
account of prime matter avoids a more overt materialism, a single
cosmic substrate, by apportioning matter out, by diffusing it and
requiring the co-presence of distinct substantial forms, but it fails
to secure matter’s full subordination to form and so its integration within each characterized substance. It avoids a more
robust Platonism by clearly specifying a single, substantial form
in the case of each substance—avoiding a constellation of
“participations” converging on the surface of the khôra—but it
does not fully “bring this form down” into potency, and so, again,
the unity of ousia is left incomplete. Brower’s account comes
about as close to the Thomistic view as is possible without fully
divesting itself of these prior influences. Still, once we conceive
of the principle of potency in terms of “stuff,” as a substrate of
“actual indifference”—that is, once matter is given definition
prior to ens—then ens can only be the result of a partitive
reconstruction.55 Having been submitted to the wrong kind of
53

See Plato, Timaeus, 48e-50c, where matter is described as a characterless, but quasisubstantial, receptacle. Of course, a vein of the Platonic tradition will object, in turn, to
Aristotle’s account of prime matter. For Plotinus’s objection, see Lloyd P. Gerson, From
Plato to Platonism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2013), 262.
54
It is genuinely puzzling that Brower underscores how his account, in particular,
makes sense of Aquinas’s “unwavering commitment to the so-called ‘unicity of substantial
forms’ doctrine” (“Matter, Form, and Individuation,” 93). He writes, “For once some
prime matter or stuff combines with a form or property, it is natural to think of the result
as an individual substance each of whose further forms are accidental” (ibid.). Even when
informed by Brower’s broader reflections, the “it is natural to think . . .” seems
insufficiently pregnant in meaning to arbitrate decisively between Aquinas’s notion of
matter and that of, for example, Scotus. Indeed, Brower’s account actually threatens the
doctrine of unicity, not after the addition of substantial form—not with respect to “further
forms”—but prior to its addition, in the already-too-formal character of prime matter.
The exaggerated actuality of prime matter threatens to make substantial form a second
form within the composite.
55
That prime matter ends up as stuff is no doubt connected to a privileging of one
possible meaning of “matter”—namely, matter as unchanging substrate—which then

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abstraction, matter and form simply cannot be reintegrated in a
coherent manner; their dualism invites yet further mediating
principles, whose number—even if extended to infinity—could
not make both ends meet.56 Such an account cannot secure the
unity of ens, because such unity requires the complete reception
of the nature by the suppositum. Form must permeate and
characterize matter in the depths of its potency.57
I think, then, that Aquinas would seriously qualify the claim
that (1) prime matter possesses form, and this because he would
altogether reject the claim that (2) prime matter is left
uncharacterized by that form. Regarding the first point, natural
substance may of course be understood in terms of the principles
of prime matter and substantial form. Such an affirmation,
however, differs from an insistence that a particular kind of
natural substance be understood, principally, as prime matter in
possession of a specific form or quiddity.58 In the concrete order,
unduly governs all further discussions. Accordingly, Brower sets as the basic sense of
“matter” for Aquinas “that which remains the same throughout a given change—that is
. . . the enduring subject of change” (ibid., 87).
56
Indeed, in Brower’s account, we are left with a strange divide not only between the
material and the formal, but also between the formal and the formal. Without denying
that there is an ordering of formalities, a Thomist should be perplexed by the claim that,
while prime matter remains uncharacterized by substantial form, it nonetheless has
extension, size, and even color (Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 150). It is
unclear, however, why the “whiteness” of Socrates would not be the result of the
characterizing influence of his human nature. (For reasons described in De Ente, c. 6,
ll. 81-86, however, nothing prevents such whiteness from perduring in the corpse of
Socrates.)
57
Throughout his works, Brower alternates between describing a natural substance as
a composite of prime matter and form and as a composite of prime matter and quiddity
(e.g., “zygotehood,” “humanity,” etc.). Strictly speaking, Aquinas treats quiddity as the
complementary principle, not of matter, but of the supposit (V Metaphys., lect. 10
[Marietti ed., no. 904]).
58
That Brower privileges prime matter as the complement, not only to substantial
form, but even particular species of forms, runs through his analysis. For but one example,
which appears in the context of explaining Aquinas’s notion of the forma totius (vs. the
forma partis), Brower claims that “the nature or essence of human beings includes not
only substantial form”—which Brower identifies as “humanity” (93)—“but also prime
matter” (“Matter, Form, and Individuation,” 102 n. 27). When Aquinas himself explains
the notion of the forma totius, he insists that it includes both form and “common sensible
matter” (e.g., VII Metaphys., lect. 9 [Marietti ed., nos. 1467-73]). That is to say, the

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in a particular kind of substance, prime matter is not that which
possesses form; primarily, the human body possesses a rational
soul, the canine body a specific sensitive soul, and so on. That is
to say, actualized bodies possess form. Bodies possess form on
account of being fulfilled from within by that form. Secondly,
and relatedly, to the extent that matter exists, it cannot be left
uncharacterized by form, because, to exist at all, the matter of a
natural substance must be characterized by its form. A substance
could not possess a form in the first place without its matter being
so characterized. After all, substances possess a natural form only
on the condition that a material potency which can receive form
has received it, as its act—and, in so doing, matter is specified by
form. Thus, as potency, matter’s very existence depends upon
actualization and so characterization. Rather than saying that the
composite is characterized by its form but the matter is left uncharacterized, we must insist that the composite has a character
only on the condition that its matter has been characterized. The
composite simply is the characterized matter—“For through
form, which is the act of matter, matter becomes an actual being
and this something.”59 As Aristotle and Aquinas repeatedly insist,
form and matter, when united, are one in being, insofar as they
constitute an actualized potency.60
Thus, to deny that prime matter possesses form in the sense
outlined above is not simply to prefer one, more concrete,
modeling of substance over another, more abstract—but equally
legitimate—one. It is to accord primacy to the real order, in its
organic unity, and to articulate the principles of this order in a
way that safeguards its unity. Expressed negatively, it is to avoid
quiddity or forma totius of the human being consists of a rational form and “flesh and
bones,” i.e., a human body considered indeterminately. Such indeterminate matter is not
prime matter; rather, it expresses what distinguishes human bodies from bodies of other
species but abstracts from what distinguishes one human body from another. By
extension, when Aquinas claims that the concrete individual, e.g., Socrates, is composed
of this form and this matter, he means not simply “this portion of matter” but this particular human body, constituted of this flesh and these bones. See De Ente, c. 2, ll. 77-89.
59
De Ente, c. 2, ll. 31-32.
60
For but two notable examples, see VIII Metaphys., lect. 5 (Marietti ed., no. 1767);
and II De Anima, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 234). See In Aristotelis librum De anima
commentarium, ed. A.-M. Pirotta (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1948).

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LEE M. COLE

projecting upon the real what belongs only and derivatively to
the domain of analysis. The interpretation of prime matter as
“stuff” capable of possessing form involves just such a projection.
To privilege prime matter as the principal subject in possession
of form is symptomatic of a reification of prime matter, a
reification that then leaves a fault line between matter and form.
The temptation so to reify matter is certainly understandable, at
least in this regard: apparently, the density or extension of the
corporeal stands in need of explanation, and given that of the
two potential candidates, matter and form, only the former is
distinctive to bodies, assigning such density to matter seems an
inevitability. Prime matter, then, is extended stuff, standing in
potency to further configuration. But hylomorphism, at its heart,
flouts just such an inevitability. Such a conception of prime
matter invests in but one principle what exists more primordially
in the union of both form and matter. Corporeal extension
clearly presumes actualization and so must in fact be a feature of
body, and not a feature of matter in its primary sense. For
Aquinas, then, extension follows “from the nature of corporeality
itself.”61 Thus, prime matter is not stuff, because it is not of itself
extended, not even indeterminately so. Bodies are extended, and
even if subjected to the gaze of reflective analysis their extension
cannot be separated from actuality and so formality. Extension
obtains in the primacy of the concrete body and cannot be found
in the derivation of the abstracted principle, potentia pura.

61
In Boet. De Trin., q. 4, a. 3. Aquinas concludes that, while some thinkers attempt to
locate dimensiveness in something more superficial, filling a place fundamentally applies
to a body ex ipsa corporeitatis natura. Now, body can be subjected to further analysis to
determine how exactly it is able to fill place (replere locum), but this analysis will not
arrive at a singular cause more basic than corporeitas: accordingly, form is in place only
per accidens, and matter is similarly (similiter) not subject to place when considered in
itself (secundum se considerata) and precisely because matter, taken in itself, is understood
as being prior to all genera (quia sic intelligitur praeter omnia alia genera). Matter does
indeed take on extension, but only through its relation to something else which has a
more primary connection to place (per quod habet primam comparationem ad locum)—
namely, the formality of dimension. Thus, body fills place on account of matter filling
place, but only because matter is subject to the formality of dimensionality in a body. See
ll. 176-207 (Opera omnia, vol. 50 [Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1992], 129).

PRIME MATTER REVISITED

577

Simply put, the dimensiveness of the natural requires actuality
and so obtains above the level of prime matter.
In the real order, it is thus the concrete body that possesses
form. Matter may likewise be said to possess form, but only by
virtue of being characterized by form. Still, by insisting upon the
characterization of matter—by insisting that matter is at no level
left indeterminate—are we not allowing form, as it were, to “soak
up” all potency, and so to soak up the potency necessary for
substantial change? Do we not then revert back to Pasnau’s
position, which seems to render material beings “atomic” by
denying real difference with respect to their principles, a difference that opens being to becoming? Must prime matter remain
uncharacterized as a condition of substantial change?
Thomists cannot admit this generic underlayer of matter, for
reasons already suggested, and need not do so to allow for
change. Substantial change does not emerge out of, or unfold on
the surface of, the matter that is left untouched by form—no
existing matter goes untouched. Change springs, instead, from
the potency of the very matter that is characterized by form and,
in part, insofar as it is so characterized.62 Natural forms, as such,
actualize and characterize matter but do so without exhausting a
thing’s potency.63 And natural form leaves potency unexhausted
not by failing to permeate all of matter, but through the very
62
In attending to natural change, I intentionally leave aside the issue of obediential
potency. I note only that, insofar as God makes use of obediential potency, God’s causal
influence still presumes an order of determination in potency relative to an ordained end
of actualization. Thus, the human being (not the beast) can be ordained to the
supernatural, the intellect (not touch) to the virtue of faith, Adam’s rib to Eve’s body, etc.
Regarding the last sort of example, God would actualize through the incorporation of
relevant matter or, beyond this, resort to the act of creation. No greater degree of actual
indifference need be attributed to prime matter than in instances of natural change. See
STh I, q. 92, a. 3, ad 1.
63
This reserve of potency is what, for Aquinas, differentiates forms found in the
sublunar order and the forms of incorruptible, celestial bodies. To explain the putative
incorruptibility of the celestial bodies Aquinas argues that their natural potency is wholly
subordinated to form without remainder, and so these bodies lack a susceptibility to take
on other substantial forms. Such a view of the heavenly order dovetails with a belief in a
quintessence, since a genuine potency for substantial change is rooted in a theory of
natural bodies constituted out of the four elements, whose various and rival qualities allow
for corruption. See STh I, q. 9, a. 2; and XII Metaphys., lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 2436).

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LEE M. COLE

manner by which it does permeate matter. That is to say, form
characterizes the whole of matter such that matter remains
capable of being otherwise characterized. On account of its
present actualization, matter is obliquely oriented to a specific
range of alternative actualities. For this reason, change unfolds
according to delimited pathways, and this process is mediated,
not by the indifferent underlayer of prime matter, but by virtue
of matter’s determinate possibility. Sperm becomes human
zygote, and the oak tree, upon death, decomposes into pulp and
carbon dioxide. In the natural course of things, tree matter
cannot become sperm, at least not proximately, because its matter
is not immediately open to generation or corruption of that kind.
These processes of determinate unfolding are the result of how
prime matter has been characterized—insofar as the purity of
prime matter is arrived at only by abstracting from such
determination. As Aquinas observes, “although generation comes
about from nonbeing which is in potency, still something does
not come about from anything whatsoever, but diverse things
come from diverse matters.”64 Without materiality, as such, we
would not have passibility, as such; in nature, however, even in
the case of substantial change, we always find characteristic
passibility, and we cannot explain characteristic passibility apart
from the way in which matter has been determined by form.

64
XII Metaphys., lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 2438). Aquinas continues, “For each thing
that can be generated has determinate matter from which it comes to be, since form must
be proportionate to matter. For although prime matter is in potency to all forms, still it
receives them according to a certain order. For, first, it is in potency to elemental forms,
and through their mediation, according to diverse proportions of commixing, is in
potency to diverse forms: whence anything is not able to come immediately from anything
whatsoever, except perhaps through resolution into prime matter.” Regarding this
concluding remark, Aquinas is hemming in his previous reflections by considering a
hypothetical extreme that would serve as the condition under which anything whatsoever
could pass into anything. There can of course be no actual resolution into—and back out
of—prime matter, because the indetermination of pure potency cannot concretely obtain.
Even elemental change does not involve such a momentary resolution and reemergence
of form but instead involves one element yielding immediately to another, to which it is
determinately oriented. As Aquinas suggests, prime matter can become anything, but only
because its “ideality” is mediated in the real order by diverse and determinate potencies.

PRIME MATTER REVISITED

579

CONCLUSION: PRIME MATTER’S FOUNDATION IN REAL POTENCY
AND THE PROBLEM OF UNIVERSALS
If we find in nature characterized potency, then is prime
matter, in the end, a real constituent of natural bodies? Can it be
said to exist? First, and negatively, the above reflections provide
genuine grounds for denying prime matter’s existence, assuming
the proper qualifications. If by prime matter we mean, following
Aquinas, “pure potency” or “potency alone,” and if we take
seriously his claim that “whatever is in act cannot be called prime
matter,”65 then I think we have to say that prime matter as such—
that is, in its purity “as prime”—does not and cannot exist. Its
existence would require a contradiction, since delimitation and
determination are the price that must be paid to enter the order
of creaturely being. What exist in nature are concrete substances,
each constituted out of a determinate act and determinate
materiality. To this extent, prime matter is, to use Pasnau’s
language, a “limit notion” asymptotically approached by reality.
Nevertheless, prime matter need not limit reality in the way
described by Pasnau, such that it merely marks out the null space
right below the lower bound of diminished, but incomposite,
actuality. We avoid this interpretation precisely by affirming
matter’s existence as a real complement to form: material
potency does exist as a principle of natural being and precisely
insofar as the particular material potencies of bodies do exist.
And only because matter exists as a real principle of being does
nature retain the potency and receptivity that make possible both
change and the diversity of natural substance. Furthermore, affirming the real existence of materiality does not signal disagreement with Pasnau only regarding the nature of matter more
generally, and agreement regarding prime matter. Prime matter
must be defined relative to matter more generally, and so a
different account of the latter implies a different conception of
the former.
Indeed, prime matter finds its proper place as an extension of
the potency of determinate matter found within natural bodies.
65

De Princ. Natur., c. 2, ll. 117-18.

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LEE M. COLE

The potency of any natural body, in its real and proximate
openness to what is other, can be understood as being open, more
remotely, to still other and more diverse possibilities, diverse in
species and nobility, constituting higher or more rudimentary
expressions of actuality. Accordingly, the mind can discern these
possibilities, indefinite in number, in the materiality of any body.
And, in appreciating these possible actualities that lie before a
natural body, the mind also and necessarily appreciates, with
respect to the inward depth of the natural body, the contingency
of its present, formal determination. In all of this, the mind
decouples materiality from its current specification and opens it
to all natural actualities, as if “at once.” Here the notion of prime
matter finds its place: it comes to light as an extension of the real
potency of a natural body, when the mind strips this potency of
its present act and so relates it, as pure possibility, to all natural
actualities. Potency is a genuine and distinct way of being, and
prime matter is an extension of this real dimension of the natural
order, but beyond the degree of proximate potency that can be
accommodated by the determination of a discrete substance.66
Thus, by considering real and determinate potency in various
instances of change, the mind can so direct its attention away
from the pole of actuality that it can conceive of potency for
natural form as such. This act of mental abstraction is, at it were,
inverted, because here the mind does not consider some formality
66
To be clear, to say that the notion of prime matter includes what lies beyond the
proximate possibility of determinate matter is not to claim that prime matter simply
designates what is presently excluded in substance, so as to make prime matter
indistinguishable from privation. While prime matter is an extension of the positive
fecundity of matter, a per se principle of being, privation is a negative principle and is
determinately negative. Unlike form and matter, privation does not enjoy real being, even
if the mind discerns its presence—as absence—as a genuine condition of change. For this
reason, Aquinas calls privation a per accidens principle. Moreover, privation is
determinately negative, since it follows upon the determination provided by form and is
defined relative to a state of actuality to which matter has a proximate relationship. Thus,
the lump of bronze in the artist’s studio has a privative relationship to the form of the
completed statue, a possibility that is rationally transferred back onto the bronze in the
manner of a present absence; the bronze does not possess, e.g., the privation of life, since
such a state of actuality is not proximately available to it. See De Princ. Natur., c. 2, ll. 6ff.;
and XII Metaphys., lect. 2 (Marietti ed., no. 2437).

PRIME MATTER REVISITED

581

in a universal manner, by drawing it forth from its material
individuation, but considers matter “even more universally,” by
divesting it of a relationship with any particular form. To the
extent that matter can be known only through form, such abstraction takes place imperfectly, and in a context of analogy or
comparison between composite wholes. To conceive of matter as
“stuff,” however, is to trivialize the claim that matter is known
“only through form and by way of analogy”: when understood
as a malleable substrate, prime matter is known through the
composite only because it always happens to exist alongside
form, whose specificity matter bears upon its back. When rightly
understood as potency, matter is known only by working through
actual composites, where prime matter is not yet found in its
purity, to what lies beyond the order of concrete existence. By an
expansion of the tension of analogical difference, the mind is
eventually taken beyond the ambit of the imagination and the
horizon of composite being, to the limit notion of prime matter.
If, in all of this, prime matter’s particular mode of existence
seems too Janus-faced, it might be fruitful to compare this vexing
issue to another, equally vexing issue within Thomism, though
one about which Thomists have perhaps come to a greater consensus: the problem of universals. While universal natures and
prime matter evidently occupy nonequivalent places in Aquinas’s
metaphysics, their status relative to the question of existence
seems, in certain respects, to be helpfully analogous. As is well
known, when faced with the question of whether universals exist
outside of the mind, Aquinas answers the question either
affirmatively or negatively, by way of a distinction.67 If by
“universal” we seek to designate a universal nature, precisely with
respect to the quiddity in question, then the universal can be said
to exist in nature, in the things in possession of such a nature; if,
however, by “universal” we seek to designate a universal nature,
precisely with respect to its universal aspect as common to many,
then the universal cannot be said to exist outside of the mind, in
the order of individuals. In short, universal natures exist in
67

See VII Metaphys., lect. 13 (Marietti ed., no. 1570); II De Anima, lect. 12 (Marietti
ed., no. 378); and STh I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 2.

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LEE M. COLE

reality, but not qua universal. Such a distinction preserves the
difference between the natural and ideal, while granting universal
concepts a genuine foundation in things, thereby avoiding the
false alternatives of extreme realism and nominalism.
In the case of pure potency, we encounter a similar problem,
not with respect to form, but with respect to matter. Here, too,
we ought to avoid picking between false alternatives—matter as
nothing really distinct from form or matter as quasi-actual stuff.
Instead, we can say that prime matter exists, qua matter, but not
qua prime. Insofar as “prime matter” aims to designate pure
possibility untethered from any formal specification, prime
matter does not exist as such. If it aims to designate the matter of
existing natural substances, insofar as it is capable of existing
otherwise, and more specifically as it is remotely open to any
natural form, then prime matter does exist.68 But we must avoid
going further. The possibility for remote actualities must be distinguished from the potency of matter in its present specification,
with the immediate possibilities that follow thereupon. To
smuggle all remote actualities—indiscriminately and with equal
determination—into the constitution of any material body, under
the guise of “prime matter,” is to conflate notions of
“possibility.” It is to conflate what follows immediately from a
body’s present determination with what could follow on the
supposition of further mediation: namely, on the supposition of
multiple, subsequent acts of generation and corruption and so
multiple, intervening kinds of determinate potency. Thus, to
posit in substance a materiality that is indifferently open to any
possible eventuality is to impose on being what the mind more
abstractly discerns as what could be, and precisely as mind
abstracts away from all of the intervening determinations that
would need to obtain within the real order. These remote
possibilities must, instead, be left to exist when the time comes,

68
The analogy between the existence of universals and the existence of prime matter
thus supposes the following nonequivalence: a nature’s potency for universality finds its
actuality in the mind, whereas matter’s potency, considered as prime, finds its possible
actuality in nature, but not all at once, and so as discerned by the mind.

PRIME MATTER REVISITED

583

under the required conditions.69 In this way, materiality, in its
present form, is preserved as real and genuine potency—“genuine
potency” not only in a negative sense, by virtue of the absence of
what is not yet actual, but also in a positive sense, by virtue of its
determinate orientation to proximate causal conditions.
In the end, such an account of prime matter secures hylomorphic unity “from below” as Aquinas’s account of universals
secures it “from above.” At its heart, hylomorphism seeks to
accommodate dynamism and relationality while retaining a rich
account of substantial unity. Accordingly, its account of form and
matter allows for substantial change in the order of nature and,
in the order of knowledge, secures the intelligibility of natural
bodies in terms of essences. Still, in affirming relationality—the
anticipation in being of what is naturally or intelligibly other—
hylomorphism likewise aims to accord maximal integrity to the
individual substance through the unity of matter and form. Such
balance is struck only through a proper notion of potency. With
respect to form, natural substance anticipates its intelligibility in
intellect, but Aquinas denies the universal actual existence in re
and insists instead on a material substance’s merely possible
intelligibility, thereby preserving the integrity of the individual as
having an actuality of its own.70 With respect to matter, natural
substance anticipates any number of alternative determinations
within the order of nature, but by denying matter its own
actuality Aquinas ensures that any matter that does exist in
substance exists with determinate potency, as subject to the
actuality of form. Thus, rather than suggest that all natural
possibilities exist all at once, or at equal remove, in matter’s
generic indeterminacy, the doctrine of prime matter explicitly
69
Any attempt to make the underlying potency of substance open to all alternative
actualities with equal proximity must default to one of two models of matter already
proposed in Presocratic philosophy: matter as actually indeterminate, represented by
Anaximander’s apeiron, or matter as hyperdeterminate, albeit germinally so, represented
by Anaxagoras’s spermata.
70
On the distinct modes of natural and intelligible being, see STh I, q. 84, a. 1.
Moreover, to be clear, affirming the natural object’s possibility to be known implies no
real relation in the knowable object relative to the knowledge that it brings about. See, as
but one example, De Verit., q. 1, a. 5, ad 16.

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LEE M. COLE

denies this fact. For Aquinas, pure possibility exists beyond the
limits of concrete being, so that real and determinate possibility
can exist within it. So, just as natural substance has nothing
abstract and universal with respect to its actuality, it likewise has
nothing generic with respect to its potency.71

71
In addition to thanking the anonymous readers from The Thomist, I would like to
express my gratitude to Matthew Gaetano and Alexandre Winston for their helpful
editorial suggestions, which undoubtedly improved the clarity and depth of this piece.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 585-623

“TO GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF MAKING PROGRESS”:
AQUINAS ON THE PERFECTION AND GROWTH OF
CHRIST’S VIRTUE
MICHAEL A. WAHL
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

O

NE OF THE CENTRAL ethical themes of the New
Testament is that Jesus provides a model for his followers to imitate.1 In his Last Supper Discourse in John’s
Gospel, Jesus himself declares to his apostles, “I have set you an
example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John
13:15). Likewise, the First Epistle of Peter reminds its readers,
“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you
should follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21). Saint Paul, too, instructs
the Philippians to “let the same mind be in you that was in Christ
Jesus” (Phil 2:5), and he urges the Corinthians to “be imitators
of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1). The biblical authors insist
that throughout Jesus’ life and ministry, and especially in his
passion and death, he exemplifies most perfectly the pattern to
which his disciples must be conformed.
The exemplarity of Christ is also a prominent and recurring
motif in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.2 Indeed, in the very
1

For a recent attempt to chart the moral exemplarity of Jesus in the New Testament
from the perspective of biblical studies, see Richard A. Burridge, Imitating Jesus: An
Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
2007). This biblical principle also animates Catholic moral theology, as Pope John Paul
II asserts: “Jesus’ way of acting and his words, his deeds, and his precepts constitute the
moral rule of Christian life” (Pope John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, §20).
2
On the exemplarity of Christ, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas,
vol. 2: Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2003), 101-24; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas
585

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

opening question of the Tertia pars of the Summa theologiae,
Aquinas submits that it was fitting that the Word should become
flesh, “with regard to right operation, in which he set us an
example.”3 Aquinas thus views the incarnation as, among other
things, a form of embodied instruction for humanity.4 In the
Summa contra gentiles, he expands on this insight, suggesting
that “so that man might be strengthened in virtue, it was
necessary for him to receive from God made man both the
teaching and the examples of virtue.”5
Aquinas embeds this view of Christ as moral exemplar within
a broader metaphysical and soteriological account of Christ’s
ontological exemplarity so that the actions of Christ are not only
morally instructive but also efficiently salvific. Through the
hypostatic union, Christ’s human actions serve instrumentally as
efficacious causes of the grace which, by virtue of his headship,
he mediates to human beings.6 Moreover, because the nature of
an instrument leaves its mark on the effect produced, Christ’s
humanity imparts its own distinctive character to the divine grace
that is mediated through it. Consequently, the grace that Christ
bestows to human beings conforms them to himself as their
Aquinas, trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2011), 74-109; Thomas Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader of the Psalms,
Studies in Spirituality and Theology 6 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2000), 81-105; Michael J. Dodds, “The Teaching of Thomas Aquinas on the
Mysteries of the Life of Christ,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical Introduction, ed.
Thomas Weinandy, Daniel Keating, and John Yocum (New York: T&T Clark, 2004),
91-115; Richard Schenk, O.P., “‘Omnis Christi actio nostra est instructio’: The Deeds
and Sayings of Jesus as Revelation in the View of Thomas Aquinas,” in La doctrine de la
revelation divine de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. Leo Elders (Rome: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 1990), 103-31.
3
STh III, q. 1, a. 2. All references to the Summa theologiae are to the Leonine edition,
and translations are my own.
4
On this point, see Mark D. Jordan, Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa
of Thomas Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 21-79.
5
ScG IV, c. 54. The English translation is mine, based on the Leonine edition.
6
STh III, q. 19, a. 1. On the connection between the instrumentality of Christ’s
humanity and Christ’s grace of headship in relation to exemplarity, see Bernhard
Blankenhorn, O.P., The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the
Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2015), 267-69.

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587

ontological exemplar.7 For Aquinas, then, Jesus not only models
perfect virtue through his actions, but he also mediates, through
those same actions, the grace that conforms the human person to
himself and that enables the human person to exercise the very
virtues that he displays.8 Christ makes possible the imitation of
his moral example by the grace that conforms human beings to
him ontologically. Therefore, Aquinas can say not only that
“Christ’s action is our instruction,”9 but also that “all Christ’s
actions and sufferings operate instrumentally by virtue of his
divinity for human salvation.”10
One of the most interesting, but also most frequently
overlooked, places where Aquinas takes up this theme of Christ’s
exemplarity is in a sermon composed for the First Sunday after
Epiphany, likely preached in 1271 during his second regency at
Paris.11 The sermon’s opening line foregrounds Christ’s salvific
exemplarity as Aquinas declares that “all the things together that
the Lord has done or undergone in the flesh are salutary lessons
and examples.”12 Aquinas does not intend for this opening
flourish to serve merely as a general claim about Christ’s action
as instructive, overlooking the concrete particulars of his
embodied, salvific teaching. On the contrary, he insists,
Because there is not any age from which the way of salvation is absent—and to
the highest extent this applies to the years in which one comes to discernment—
the adolescence of Christ is made an example for adolescents. Growth and
7

STh III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 2. Torrell, Christ and Spirituality, 91-94.
Super Ioan., c. 12, lect. 1 (Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, ed. R. Cai [Turin and
Rome: Marietti, 1972], no. 1604).
9
STh III, q. 40, a. 3.
10
STh III, q. 48, a. 6.
11
For the dating of this text, I follow the chronology proposed by Jean-Pierre Torrell,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). For helpful background
concerning the sermon, see Vivian Boland, O.P., “St Thomas’s Sermon Puer Iesus: A
Neglected Source for His Understanding of Teaching and Learning,” New Blackfriars 88
(2007): 457-70.
12
Sermo Puer Jesus. English translations of Puer Jesus are taken from Thomas Aquinas:
The Academic Sermons, trans. Mark-Robin Hoogland, C.P. (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 87-107, at 87.
8

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

progress are proper to adolescents. Therefore, the progress of Christ is made an
example for adolescents.13

With these words, Aquinas narrows the sermon’s scope and
directs his hearers’ attention to Jesus’ childhood—a period characterized by growth and development—as a locus for moral and
theological reflection.
As the sermon proceeds, Aquinas examines the growth that
marks Jesus’ adolescence from a number of different angles, most
of which are inspired by the appointed liturgical text for the day,
which includes St. Luke’s observation that Jesus “advanced in age
and wisdom and in grace with God and the people” (Luke
2:52).14 Hence, the sermon explores, among other things, Jesus’
physical maturation, his intellectual development, and his growth
in human fellowship. Yet, one dimension of Jesus’ growth that
Aquinas does not explicitly take up in the sermon is whether and
how Christ grew in virtue. This omission raises the question that
guides this article: according to Aquinas, did Jesus grow in virtue?
This question has significant implications for understanding
how we ought to conceive of the relationship between Christ’s
exemplarity and the graced efforts of Christians to grow in virtue
as his disciples. For example, one philosopher has recently
proposed that attributing growth in virtue to Christ has benefits
for a Christian moral pedagogy insofar as it enables us to “look
to Jesus as a moral exemplar . . . who grew and developed in his
moral character in ways that we can understand and imitate. In
our efforts to grow in virtue, we can engage in the same disciplines that Jesus practiced as he grew in virtue, and we can be
confident in their effectiveness.”15 Others, however, remain more
circumspect. They prefer to maintain that Jesus’ exemplarity
consists only in his manifestation of the perfection of human
nature as the archetype of what human beings are to become by

13

Sermo Puer Jesus (Hoogland, trans., 87).
Ibid. I am using the translation of the biblical text that appears in Aquinas’s sermon.
15
Adam C. Pelser, “Temptation, Virtue, and the Character of Christ,” Faith and
Philosophy 36 (2019): 81-101, at 99.
14

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grace, and not in any display on Jesus’ part of the process of
coming to attain that perfection.16
In what follows, I venture an answer ad mentem Thomae to
the question of whether Christ grew in virtue. In doing so, I strive
to hold together two central Thomistic claims: first, that virtue is
susceptible to growth and increase; and second, that Christ is the
“supreme exemplar of perfection” who possesses the virtues most
perfectly.17 The paper proceeds in five parts. The first section
offers an exposition of Aquinas’s understanding of virtue as a
habitus which admits of growth, and the second part examines
his claim that Christ possessed “all the virtues most perfectly.”18
The third section considers whether Christ’s perfection in virtue
is the terminus of a process of growth or an abiding perfection,
and it examines a key Thomistic distinction in order to argue that
Christ grew in the works of virtue, but not in the habitus of
virtue. The fourth section considers the fittingness of Christ’s
growth in virtue, and the fifth section proposes a conceptual
framework for making sense of Christ’s growth amid perfection
in light of Aquinas’s virtue theory. Finally, a brief conclusion
gestures toward how Christ’s growth in virtue, while importantly
different from ours, nonetheless offers an example for our own
progress in virtue.
I. THE DEVELOPMENTAL NATURE OF VIRTUE
When Aquinas discusses virtue in both the Summa theologiae
and the Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus, he does so in terms
16

See, for example, Stewart Clem, “The Passions of Christ in the Moral Theology of
Thomas Aquinas: An Integrative Account,” New Blackfriars 99 (2018): 458-80, at 476:
“Christ’s exemplarity is not accomplished by taking on all defects of our humanity
(including sin) and then showing us how to ‘cope’ with them or rise above them.” Aquinas
would agree with this formulation, but the burden of the present article is to suggest that
Christ’s growth in virtue can be conceived—on Aquinas’s own grounds—as a model for
our own growth despite the marked differences between Christ’s growth in virtue and
our own. Jesus need not “cope” with all the defects of our humanity in order to show us
an example not only of perfect virtue but also of moral growth.
17
Super Ioan., c. 12, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 1604).
18
STh III, q. 15, a. 2.

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

of habitus. In both texts, an affirmation that virtue is a species of
habitus precedes his presentation of a formal, comprehensive
definition of virtue. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas devotes
six questions to habitus in general before beginning his discussion
of virtue, and then he devotes the first three articles of his
treatment of the essence of virtue to identifying virtue as a good,
operative habitus. He even goes so far as to modify the
authoritative Augustinian definition in order to reflect the nature
of virtue as a habitus.19 In order to understand Aquinas’s account
of virtue, then, it is first necessary to consider the broader
category of habitus.
Aquinas identifies a habitus, along with the powers of the soul,
as intrinsic principles of human acts.20 A habitus is a quality, a
stable perfection of some power of the soul,21 which inclines that
power toward a determinate kind of operation that is either
becoming or unbecoming to the nature of its subject.22 A habitus
provides a measure of stability and direction to powers that are
naturally underdetermined with respect to their proper operation. Such indeterminacy is especially characteristic of the powers
of the human soul, Aquinas explains, because human beings
pursue the good neither solely by natural appetite nor solely by
instinct, but also by reason which “retains the power of being
inclined to various things.”23 Consequently, in concrete situations
of choice, “the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses
and is not determinate to one.”24 Yet, since attaining the end of
19

STh I-II, q. 55, a. 4.
STh I-II, q. 49, prol.
21
Bodily faculties can also be subjects of habits, in a sense.
22
STh I-II, q. 49, a. 3. For a helpful exegesis of Aquinas’s treatment of habitus in the
Summae theologiae, see Robert C. Miner, “Aquinas on habitus,” in A History of Habit:
From Aristotle to Bourdieu, ed. Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson (Lanham, Md.:
Lexington Books, 2013), 67-87. See also David Decosimo, Ethics as a Work of Charity:
Thomas Aquinas and Pagan Virtue (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2014),
72-105; Nicholas Austin, S.J., Aquinas on Virtue: A Causal Reading (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 2017), 23-57; Jean Porter, The Perfection of Desire: Habit,
Reason, and Virtue in Aquinas’s “Summa theologiae” (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette
University Press, 2018), 15-54.
23
STh I, q. 83, a. 1.
24
Ibid.
20

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human life requires the ordered and integrated pursuit of the
good as one’s overarching goal, the indeterminacy of the soul’s
powers requires focus and specification. Habitus provide such
direction to the powers of the soul.25 For this reason, Aquinas
argues that habitus are necessary for human beings.26
For Aquinas, what differentiates a habitus from other species
of quality (like dispositio or consuetudo) is its stability. A habitus
confers an orientation to the soul’s powers that is firmly established, long-lasting, and difficult to change.27 The stability that
characterizes a habitus leads Aquinas to describe it as the “first
act” of the soul’s powers, since a habitus involves a genuine
actualization of its subject insofar as that power is truly inclined
toward certain kinds of operations.28 Yet, he also notes that the
subject of a habitus still remains “in a state of potentiality in
respect to operation,” since a habitus is only a disposition toward
a certain kind of operation rather than the operation itself, which
Aquinas terms “second act.”29 A habitus thus involves “a kind of
intermediate actualization” of the soul’s powers because a power
modified by a habitus remains in a sort of active potency toward
certain operations.30
Readers of Aquinas have noted how his description of habitus
in terms of actualizing the potentiality of human capacities
suggests an inherently developmental understanding of human
agency. For instance, Jean Porter suggests that habitus “reflects a
kind of development or formation” of the soul’s powers as they
are determined toward certain goods.31 Similarly, Romanus
Cessario argues that habitus “implies a dynamic view of the

25

STh I-II, q. 50, a. 5, ad 1.
STh I-II, q. 49, a. 4. See also Jean Porter, “Why Are the Habits Necessary? An Inquiry
into Aquinas’s Moral Psychology,” in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert
Pasnau, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 113-35.
27
STh I-II, q. 49, a. 2, ad 3.
28
STh I-II, q. 49, a. 3, ad 3.
29
Ibid.
30
Jean Porter, Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm.
B. Eerdmans, 2016), 20.
31
Porter, Perfection of Desire, 16.
26

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

human person,” since it involves a modification of the soul’s
powers from indeterminacy toward specificity.32 Somewhat
paradoxically, the character of habitus as a stable disposition that
must be developed bespeaks the malleability and dynamism of
human nature, whose powers can be stably developed in different
ways and to various degrees.
These observations are further borne out in Aquinas’s account
of the growth of habitus, which lays the groundwork for his
subsequent treatment of virtue’s increase. Aquinas maintains that
the stable disposition of habitus, once possessed, is still subject to
further increase (and also to diminution).33 His understanding of
the growth of habitus is rooted in its identity as an accidental
form. He argues that a habitus increases when the subject of that
habitus comes to participate more intensely in the form of the
habitus.34 In other words, the growth of a habitus is not an
increase on the part of the habitus itself but rather a fuller
reception of the form on the part of the subject. Thus, one who
already possesses a habitus can come to possess that same habitus
more intensely. Aquinas’s understanding of habitus is thoroughly
dynamic and inherently incremental, for it allows growth not
only in the formation or generation of a habitus but even within
the possession of a habitus.
Aquinas posits that when the soul’s powers are determined by
a habitus toward modes of operation that are consonant with
right reason, they are the subjects of virtue. The virtues are thus
a species of habitus.35 They actualize human capacities in ways
that conform to the good of human nature, and they represent
stable developments of the soul’s powers that align with the true
good of the person. With respect to the will, the habitus of virtue
32
Romanus Cessario, O.P., The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 2d ed. (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 35.
33
On the relationship between the formation of a habitus (rather than a less stable
disposition) and the subsequent perfection of that habitus, see Decosimo, Ethics as a Work
of Charity, 168-73.
34
STh I-II, q. 52, a. 1. See also Gloria Frost, “Aquinas on the Intension and Remission
of Accidental Forms,” in Oxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert Pasnau, vol.
7 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 115-46.
35
STh I-II, q. 55, a. 1.

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forms the rational appetite so that it is inclined toward the good
determined by reason, especially the good of one’s neighbor and
the supernatural good of God himself. With respect to the
concupiscible and irascible appetites, the virtues align the movements of the passions with the judgments of reason so that they
become “rational by participation.”36
As his view of habitus as a stable development of natural
human capacities suggests, Aquinas does not hold that human
beings possess the virtues by nature, although he does maintain
that an aptitude to virtue is natural to human beings.37 On
account of the intellect’s natural grasp of the first principles of
human action through synderesis and the will’s basic orientation
toward the good defined by reason, human beings possess the
“seeds of the virtues.”38 Nevertheless, Aquinas insists that these
are not true virtues, for they merely reflect the human person’s
inherent potential to harmonize the movements of the appetites
with the judgments of reason; they do not represent the attainment of such harmonization. Likewise, Aquinas suggests that
certain aspects of an individual person’s temperament or constitution might make her “inclined to the activity of some virtue,”
but he insists that this natural inclination is “not perfect virtue,
for the moderation of reason is required for the perfection of
virtue.”39 Without the firm and enduring impression of reason’s
influence on the appetites, these dispositions lack the stability
characteristic of virtue as a habitus.
Since human beings naturally possess only an aptitude to
virtue rather than virtue itself, the only way they can possess the
virtues is by undergoing a change. They must move from lacking
a stable orientation toward action in accordance with right reason
and divine law to being stably inclined to desire and act according
to the dictates of reason and divine law. Aquinas argues that the
means by which one undergoes such a change from lacking a
36

STh I-II, q. 56, a. 4, ad 1.
STh I-II, q. 63, a. 1.
38
Ibid.
39
De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 8 (Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus in communi,
ed. E. Odetto [Turin: Marietti, 1965]).
37

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

virtue to possessing it is of two sorts. One comes to possess virtue
either as a result of one’s own activity (acquired virtues) or
through God’s gracious bestowal (infused virtues).
The acquired virtues are the products of human acts by which
the appetitive powers are habituated to obey the judgments of
reason. Inasmuch as the appetitive powers are in potency to a
variety of operations and are apt to receive the kind of stable
modification that habitus imparts, they have a passive character
in relation to reason which, as an active principle, moves them by
determining them to a particular course of action.40 Reason leaves
its mark on the appetitive powers when it directs them toward
certain goods, and in doing so, it inclines them to act accordingly
on subsequent occasions. When reason repeatedly determines the
appetitive power to a particular course of action in conformity
with right reason, this disposition is progressively strengthened
and eventually becomes a virtuous habitus. Aquinas insists that
this process occurs over the course of many acts because “in order
that some quality may be caused in what is passive, that which is
active must totally overcome the passive.”41 Since the appetitive
power is naturally inclined to many diverse objects, a single
formal movement of reason that determines the appetite by way
40
STh I-II, q. 51, a. 2; De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 9. When Aquinas speaks of the
intellect “moving” the appetitive powers, he is not espousing an intellectualist view of the
relationship between intellect and will according to which the will is entirely passive and
subservient to the judgments of reason. While his view on the relationship between
intellect and will develops over his career, his most mature view is found in STh I-II, q. 9,
a. 1. There he insists that the will moves itself quantum ad exercitium, inasmuch as the
will wills itself to will or not to will at all. Moreover, he contends that the will moves the
intellect after the manner of an efficient cause, directing the intellect to consider or not
to consider a certain object. Nevertheless, he also holds that the intellect moves the will
quantum ad determinationem, by judging a particular object to be good and presenting
that object to the will. In doing so, Aquinas submits, the intellect determines the will to
its act “after the manner of a formal principle.” With respect to this formal motion,
therefore, he submits that the intellect and will are related as active and passive,
respectively. On this point, see Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A
Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a 75-89 (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2001), 214-33; Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge and
by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 24-53.
41
STh I-II, q. 51, a. 3.

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of specification to a certain course of action is insufficient stably
to determine that appetite to a course of action in accordance
with right reason in every set of circumstances. Thus, reason
disposes the appetitive power to itself through a series of acts, “as
many drops hollow out a rock.”42 The process of acquiring the
virtues is inherently incremental.
Moreover, Aquinas maintains that, once one has acquired a
virtue through human actions, it can be further strengthened and
perfected through subsequent human acts. Like strengthening a
muscle, augmenting the virtues requires repeated virtuous action
of an intensity that corresponds to or exceeds the intensity of the
virtuous habitus already possessed.43 As the virtuous person
performs more and greater virtuous deeds, reason’s impression
on the appetites is further strengthened, and the agent comes to
participate even more intensely in that virtue. So, Aquinas holds,
the acquired virtues can be strengthened progressively over time
as the agent comes to be even more stably inclined to desire and
choose the good with ease, promptness, and pleasure. Thus, the
life of acquired virtue can be, for Aquinas, a life of continuous
growth and progress.
While the acquired virtues are the products of human effort,
the infused virtues are given by God alone. Because the human
person is oriented by God to an ultimate end that exceeds the
capacities of his nature, Aquinas argues that “it is necessary that
there should be given to man . . . something by which man’s very
nature should be raised to the dignity which would make such an
end suited to him, and for this grace is given.”44 Habitual grace is
the accidental form that modifies the essence of the soul so as to
give the human person a participation in the divine nature.45
Aquinas argues that, along with this new supernatural principle
in the essence of the soul, God endows the graced human agent
with new habitus in the powers of the soul which enable them to
42

De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 9, ad 11.
STh I-II, q. 52, a. 3.
44
De Verit., q. 27, a. 2. English translation from Truth, vol. 3, Questions 21-29, trans.
Robert W. Schmidt, S.J. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1954).
45
STh I-II, q. 110, a. 2.
43

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generate acts proportioned to the supernatural end of eternal life.
These habitus are the infused virtues—both the theological
virtues and the infused moral virtues. They are infused together
with habitual grace, and they flow from grace as from “their
principle and root.”46
Although the infused virtues are bestowed directly by God,
their divine origin and supernatural orientation do not render
them incapable of growth. On the contrary, Aquinas insists that
the infused virtues do admit of increase. He develops this point
most clearly with respect to charity, “for through it man’s mind
is united to God.”47 Since the human person is a wayfarer advancing toward his ultimate end of beatific union with God, “it
belongs to the very ratio of the wayfarer’s charity that it be able
to increase, for if it could not, progress along the way would
cease.”48 For Aquinas, the possibility (and reality) of growth in
charity is essential to the human person’s pilgrimage to God. The
virtue of charity—and indeed, all the infused virtues—can be
characterized by growth and increase.49 In fact, Aquinas goes so
far as to say that there is no upper limit to the human person’s
growth in charity in this life, “since it is a certain participation of
the infinite charity which is the Holy Spirit.”50
While Aquinas holds that both the acquired virtues and the
infused virtues admit of growth, the causes of their growth are
distinct. The acquired virtues are both generated and increased
by the gradual strengthening of reason’s imprint on the appetitive
powers through human acts, but “our acts are not the active
causes of the increase of charity and the other infused virtues,”
just as our actions are not the active causes of the infused virtues’
46

STh I-II, q. 110, a. 3, ad 3.
STh II-II, q. 24, a. 4.
48
Ibid.
49
Aquinas emphasizes the gradual nature of growth in charity by specifying three
distinct stages of its growth: the incipientes, who focus on avoiding sin and preserving the
gift of charity; the proficientes, who strengthen charity by steadily advancing in greater
works; and the perfecti, whose exercise of charity is directed at union with and enjoyment
of God. See STh II-II, q. 24, a. 9. See also Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian
Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P., 3d ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1995), 359-71.
50
STh II-II, q. 24, a. 7. See also De Virtut. in Comm., q. 2, a. 10.
47

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coming to be in the first place.51 Rather, Aquinas maintains that
the increase of the infused virtues is due to God’s action, just as
their initial infusion is God’s gift.
Even as he insists on the primacy of divine action in the
growth of infused virtue, Aquinas also acknowledges a role for
human action in this process, for he notes that human beings can
both merit and dispose themselves to receive an increase of the
infused virtues.52 By exercising the habitus of infused virtue
through the performance of virtuous actions, the human agent
increases her capacity to receive the form of the virtue more
completely when God elects to bestow an increase. Moreover,
Aquinas holds that acts of infused virtue, which are informed by
charity, merit an increase in virtue inasmuch as such an increase
constitutes the means toward attaining eternal life which human
beings merit through charity.53
The preceding analysis clearly illustrates that Aquinas’s understanding of virtue is inherently developmental. As a habitus,
virtue reflects the stable development and orientation of human
capacities in accordance with right reason and divine law.
Moreover, the virtues themselves admit of growth and increase,
either as a product of human action or through a divine gift.
Given this dynamic understanding of virtue as a habitus subject
to increase, the question at hand concerns whether Christ’s
virtues, too, underwent the process of growth that characterizes
Aquinas’s account of ordinary human progress in the life of
virtue.

51

De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 11, ad 14.
De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 11.
53
STh I-II, q. 114, a. 8. On Aquinas’s teaching on merit in the Summa theologiae, see
Joseph P. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of
Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 177-99.
Wawrykow notes that, for the most part, the meritorious and dispositive aspects of graced
human action coincide in Aquinas’s thought, inasmuch as one both “disposes oneself for
greater perfection, including ultimately the perfection of the light of eternal glory” and
also “creates a right to the reward of eternal life and of the growth in grace and charity
that leads to eternal life” (ibid., 225-26).
52

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II. AQUINAS ON CHRIST’S PERFECTION IN VIRTUE
Throughout the Tertia pars, Aquinas frequently attributes
particular virtues to Jesus and commends him as a model to be
followed, yet his systematic analysis of Christ’s virtue remains
quite brief. Nevertheless, its context proves instructive, and its
implications are significant. The discussion occurs within his
larger treatment of Christ’s coassumed perfections and defects
and, more specifically, within question 7, which is dedicated to
Christ’s personal grace.
Although Aquinas affirms that, by the incarnation, a human
nature is hypostatically united to the divine person of the Word
through an unmerited gift which he terms the grace of union,54
he nonetheless asserts in the first article of the question that
Christ also possesses the gift of habitual grace. This attribution
might appear superfluous, and Aquinas acknowledges this concern in the article’s first objection. The objection proposes that
Christ does not possess habitual grace because habitual grace is
merely a participation in the divine nature, whereas Christ is
divine by virtue of the hypostatic union.55 Aquinas argues,
however, that to suggest that the hypostatic union could account
for the sanctification of Christ’s human soul would be mistaken,
for such a claim emphasizes the union of Christ’s person at the
expense of the distinction of natures. In response, he asserts that
“the soul of Christ is not essentially divine,” since the Word
assumed a genuine human nature with a human soul, and
consequently, Christ’s human soul “must be made divine by
participation, which is by grace.”56 Therefore, Aquinas posits that
Christ possesses the gift of habitual grace so that his human soul
is proportioned to the supernatural works that are essential to his
salvific mission.
54

STh III, q. 6, a. 6.
STh III, q. 7, a. 1, obj. 1.
56
STh III, q. 7, a. 1, ad 1. Yet, as Dominic Legge observes, there is some ambiguity
surrounding Aquinas’s description of Christ’s possession of habitual grace, namely,
whether such possession is necessary or highly fitting in relation to the grace of union.
For an analysis of this question, see Dominic Legge, O.P., The Trinitarian Christology of
St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 135-57.
55

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Aquinas further contends that Christ possesses the fullness of
habitual grace, and he distinguishes two aspects of this plenitude.
First, he insists that Jesus possesses the fullness of grace
intensively, insofar as he “has grace in its highest degree, in the
most perfect way it can be had.”57 This is crucial for his role as
head of the Church, the one from whose “fullness we have all
received” (John 1:16). Aquinas argues that it is fitting that Christ,
as the source of grace for his members, should possess the fullness
of grace just as “fire, which is the cause of heat in all that is hot,
is itself the hottest thing.”58 Second, he posits that Jesus possesses
the plenitude of grace extensively, insofar as “he had it for all the
operations and effects of grace.”59 Christ’s human soul not only
participates in the habitus of grace as fully as possible, but his
habitual grace also elicits all the effects to which grace can give
rise.
Aquinas specifically names the virtues among those effects of
grace, noting rather tersely that “Christ had all the virtues.”60 He
proceeds to qualify this statement in subsequent articles,
however. Specifically, he denies that Christ possesses the theological virtues of faith and hope because they are characterized
by certain defects, inasmuch as faith regards divine things not yet
seen and hope aspires to a supernatural end not yet attained.61
Aquinas argues that it would be unbecoming to ascribe to Christ
these defects implicit in faith and hope because, possessing the
fullness of grace, Jesus already beholds God’s essence and thus
enjoys fully the divine object to which faith and hope attain only
partially and anticipatorily. Nevertheless, as Joseph Wawrykow
points out, while Aquinas denies the virtues of faith and hope to
Jesus on account of their inherent imperfections, he does hold
that Jesus possesses whatever “perfections” of intellect and will

57

STh III, q. 7, a. 9.
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
60
STh III, q. 7, a. 2.
61
STh III, q. 7, aa. 3-4.
58

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are conferred by the virtues of faith and hope, respectively.62
Thus, rather than undermining Aquinas’s claim that Christ
possesses all the virtues, the denial of faith and hope in Christ
actually preserves Aquinas’s logic of infused virtue: the extensive
fullness of Christ’s habitual grace extends to all the powers of the
soul so that grace’s effects enable those powers to operate in ways
that are proportioned to the divine nature.63
The relationship between Christ’s fullness of grace and his
possession of virtue is not limited to the extensive fullness of
grace that implies Christ’s possession of all the virtues. Because
Aquinas maintains that Christ’s plenitude of grace is not only
62
STh III, q. 7, a. 9, ad 1. Joseph Wawrykow, “Jesus in the Moral Theology of Thomas
Aquinas,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 13-33, at 22-24.
63
Aquinas is silent on the question of whether Jesus possessed the acquired virtues. It
is tempting to read his claim that Christ had “all the virtues” because he possessed the
fullness of grace as implying that Jesus did not have the acquired virtues. This interpretation would support what Angela McKay Knobel calls a “transformationist theory”
of the relationship between acquired and infused virtue by suggesting that the infused
virtues are the only virtues that Christ possesses (and could possess) because the infused
virtues take up and transform the acquired virtues. Yet, this is not the only possible
interpretation of Aquinas’s silence on this matter. Proponents of what Knobel terms a
“coexistence theory” might interpret Aquinas’s silence on this question as an unfortunate
omission in his analysis (as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange does), or they might argue that
“all the virtues” that Christ possesses by virtue of the fullness of grace are not only the
infused virtues but also the acquired virtues which he receives by infusion. The grounds
for this latter possibility come from Aquinas’s treatment of the generation of habitus,
where he acknowledges the possibility of a habitus that is proportionate to human beings’
natural capacities nonetheless being infused directly by God. See STh I-II, q. 51, a. 4.
Concerning the ongoing debate about the relationship between acquired and infused
virtue, see, among others, William C. Mattison III, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired
Cardinal Virtues?,” Theological Studies 72 (2011): 558-85; Angela McKay Knobel, “Can
Aquinas’s Infused and Acquired Virtues Coexist in the Christian Life?,” Studies in
Christian Ethics 23 (2010): 381-96; idem, “Two Theories of Christian Virtue,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2010): 599-618; idem, “Relating Aquinas’s Infused
and Acquired Virtues: Some Problematic Texts for a Common Interpretation,” Nova et
vetera 9 (2011): 411-31; David Decosimo, “More to Love: Thomas Aquinas on Infused
and Acquired Moral Virtue,” in The Virtuous Life: Aquinas on the Moral Virtues, ed. Harm
Goris and Henk Schoot (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 47-72; Jean Porter, “Moral Virtues,
Charity, and Grace: Why the Infused and Acquired Virtues Cannot Co-Exist,” Journal of
Moral Theology 8, no. 2 (2019): 40-66; William C. Mattison III, “Aquinas, Custom, and
the Coexistence of Infused and Acquired Cardinal Virtues,” Journal of Moral Theology 8,
no. 2 (2019): 1-24.

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extensive—that is, giving rise to all the effects of grace—but also
intensive—that is, being as full a participation in the divine nature
as is possible for human nature—he asserts not only that Christ
has all the virtues but also that he has “all the virtues most
perfectly.”64 He goes on to equate the intensity and perfection of
Christ’s virtues with what he describes elsewhere as “the virtues
of those who have already attained to the divine likeness” or the
“virtues of the already-purified soul.”65 Those who possess these
virtues desire, judge, and act in complete accord with the divine
exemplar to whom they have been most perfectly conformed.
Thus, Aquinas observes that “we say that these are the virtues of
the blessed, or, in this life, of those who are most perfect.”66
Aquinas asserts not only that Christ’s virtues are perfect but
also that he possesses them “beyond the common mode.”67 Such
an assertion illustrates his readiness to affirm significant differences between Christ’s possession of the virtues and our own.
With respect to the passions, which virtue perfects by making
them rational by participation, Aquinas not only affirms that
Christ has perfectly ordered and integrated passions as a result of
his perfect virtue, but he further contends that “the passions were
in Christ otherwise than in us.”68 For Christ, the passions tend
only toward licit objects, they are always in accord with reason,
and they never cloud reason’s judgments.69 Likewise, Aquinas
argues that Christ’s perfection in virtue beyond the common
64

STh III, q. 15, a. 2.
STh I-II, q. 61, a. 5. For Aquinas’s ascription of these virtues to Christ, see STh III,
q. 7, a. 2, ad 2.
66
STh I-II, q. 61, a. 5.
67
STh III, q. 7, a. 2, ad 2.
68
STh III, q. 15, a. 4.
69
Ibid. A complete treatment of the passions of Christ’s soul is beyond the scope of
this article, but there has been a recent surge of interest in this aspect of Aquinas’s
theology. The magisterial work on the topic remains Paul Gondreau, The Passions of
Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Providence, R.I.: Cluny Media,
2018). See also Barrett H. Turner, “The Propassiones of Christ, His Fullness of Grace,
and His Moral Exemplarity according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.)
18 (2020): 201-36; Craig Steven Titus, “Passions in Christ: Spontaneity, Development,
and Virtue,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 53-87; Clem, “Passions of Christ.”
65

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mode entails not only that he is free from sin but also that he does
not experience the fomes peccati, the affective inclination to sin
that most other human beings—including the virtuous—suffer as
a consequence of original sin.70 For Aquinas, Christ is the
virtuous man par excellence who possesses all the virtues most
perfectly and in an absolutely unique manner that follows from
his singular fullness of grace.
III. AQUINAS ON CHRIST’S GROWTH IN VIRTUE
Aquinas clearly and straightforwardly ascribes perfect virtue
to Christ. Yet, when this attribution is considered in light of
Aquinas’s understanding of virtue as a habitus characterized by
growth and increase, there remains an ambiguity concerning the
precise nature of Christ’s perfection in virtue. Specifically, one
might wonder whether Aquinas’s affirmation of Jesus’ “most
perfect” possession of virtue is intended to describe the terminus
of a process of growth in virtue over time, or whether he means
to posit that Jesus stably possessed all the virtues most perfectly
throughout his whole life, undergoing no moral growth.
The latter interpretation—that Jesus always possessed the
virtues most perfectly without growth or development—is more
congruent with Aquinas’s insistence, later in the Tertia pars, that
Jesus possessed the fullness of grace from the moment of his
conception.71 Aquinas’s argument for this claim draws on the
intimate connection he established in question 7 between the
grace of union by which the Word is hypostatically united to a
human nature and the habitual grace by which that human nature
is sanctified through a created participation in the divine nature.
Aquinas argues that the sanctification of Christ’s human nature
must be contemporaneous with that human nature’s union with
the Word, and since that human nature is hypostatically united
to the Word from the first instant of Christ’s conception, he
concludes that Christ possesses the fullness of grace from the first
moment of his earthly existence. In other words, there is no
70
71

STh III, q. 15, aa. 1-2.
STh III, q. 34, a. 2.

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temporal gap between the Word’s assumption of human nature
and the sanctification of that human nature. Aquinas asserts as
much when he declares, concerning Christ’s spiritual perfection,
that “he did not progress, but had it stably from the very
beginning.”72 Since we have seen that Aquinas regards Christ’s
virtues as the effects of sanctifying grace, this assertion would
seem quite plainly to indicate that Christ did not grow in virtue,
but rather was infused with the fullness of virtue from the first
instant of his human life.
Yet, a difficulty emerges for this interpretation of Christ’s
perfection in virtue when one recalls Scripture’s attestation that
“the boy Jesus advanced in age and wisdom and in grace before
God and the people” (Luke 2:52). At first glance, there appears
to be a tension between St. Luke’s observation that Jesus grew
(proficiebat) in grace and Aquinas’s insistence that Jesus’
sanctification did not include growth (non profecit) in holiness.73
Well aware of the evangelist’s words, the Dominican Master of
the Sacred Page endeavors to reconcile Luke’s testimony
concerning Christ’s growth in grace with his own emphasis—
inspired by the prologue of John’s Gospel74—on Christ’s fullness
of grace.
Aquinas’s solution to this dilemma rests on a distinction
between growth according to habitus (secundum habitum) and
growth according to act (secundum actum).75 In light of Luke’s
claim that Jesus grew in grace and wisdom, Aquinas proposes that
such growth might be of two sorts. On the one hand, the very
habitus of grace and wisdom might be increased such that one
comes to participate in them more intensely. Aquinas firmly
denies that Jesus’ growth in grace is of this sort, because it would
preclude his possession of the fullness of grace from the moment
of conception. On the other hand, Aquinas notes that one might
72

STh III, q. 34, a. 2.
Ibid.
74
For noting the biblical roots of Aquinas’s position, I am indebted to Andrew V.
Rosato, “Aquinas and Maritain on Whether Christ’s Habitual Grace Could Increase,”
Nova et Vetera (Eng. ed.) 15 (2017): 527-46, at 533.
75
STh III, q. 7, a. 12, ad 3.
73

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also be said to grow in grace “according to its effects, inasmuch
as one does greater and wiser works.”76 He does attribute this
kind of growth to Christ, “since, according to his progress in age,
he did more perfect works.”77
This distinction is clearly relevant for ascertaining how
Aquinas might answer the question of whether Christ grew in
virtue—although that is a question that he himself never explicitly asks. Taken in its immediate context, however, the
distinction is insufficient, for it addresses only the question of
whether Christ grew in grace. As we have seen, Aquinas insists
that grace and virtue are not identical, even if they are intimately
related.78 Therefore, in order to determine whether Christ grew
not only in grace but also in virtue, further investigation is
necessary.
In attempting to move from an understanding of Christ’s
growth in grace to an understanding of his growth in virtue, some
have argued that Aquinas’s affirmation of Jesus’ growth in the
effects of grace implies his growth in the virtues. At first glance,
this strategy is enticing, since Aquinas describes the (infused)
virtues as effects of grace.79 If the virtues are effects of grace, so
the argument goes, then growth in the effects of grace would be
nothing other than growth in the habitus that is virtue. The
trouble with this approach, however, is that Aquinas elsewhere
treats growth in the habitus of virtue as linked to growth in grace
secundum habitum.80 He contends that the habitus of infused
virtue is capable of increase only to the extent that one also grows
in the habitus of grace, since the powers of the soul can only be
proportioned to certain operations if the essence of the soul is
likewise proportioned. But, if Jesus does not grow in grace
secundum habitum (as we have seen Aquinas explicitly affirm),
76

STh III, q. 7, a. 12, ad 3.
Ibid.
78
STh I-II, q. 110, a. 3.
79
Arielle Harms, “The Moral Virtue of Christ: An Examination of Tertia Pars
Question 7 Article 2,” Angelicum 90 (2013): 371-89, at 386.
80
See, for example, STh III, q. 89, a. 2: “the penitent sometimes arises to a greater
grace than that which he had before, sometimes to an equal, sometimes to a lesser grace:
and the same applies to the virtues, which flow from grace.”
77

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then he cannot grow in virtue secundum habitum, either. It
follows, then, that any growth of Christ’s virtue must be growth
secundum actum, and it must be found in the “more perfect
works” of virtue that Jesus performed “according to his progress
in age” rather than in the habitus of the virtues themselves.81
IV. THE FITTINGNESS OF CHRIST’S GROWTH IN VIRTUE
Before considering how Jesus’ gradual performance of “more
perfect works” could indicate genuine growth in virtue if he
already possesses the virtues perfectly secundum habitum, we
must first take up a prior question that arises from Aquinas’s
decision to link Christ’s performance of more perfect works to
his progress in age. If Jesus possessed all the virtues most perfectly
secundum habitum from the first moment of his conception, why
did he only perform more perfect works of virtue as he advanced
in age? Why did he not perform perfectly virtuous deeds from
the beginning of his earthly existence? Aquinas takes up this
question, with respect to Christ’s growth in wisdom, in the
aforementioned sermon on Jesus’ adolescence:
It is true that Christ from the beginning of his conception was full of wisdom
and grace, but he has not shown it from the beginning, but at an age when
others usually show it. In that case we speak of advancing in wisdom, not in the
absolute sense of the word, but in view of the effect through which he advanced
amidst the people. If he had willed to show his wisdom when he was seven years
of age, people could have doubted the truth of the assumed human nature. And
because of this, Christ wanted to be similar to others. . . . At the time when a
sign of wisdom normally appears for the first time in a human being, Christ
manifested his wisdom for the first time, namely, when he was twelve years of
age: thus little by little. He did not will to show his wisdom, so that the truth of
the human nature in him would be acknowledged and in order to give us an
example of advancing in wisdom.82

81
In his examination of the development of Christ’s passions, Craig Steven Titus
rightly points to this distinction between habitus and effect as a locus for thinking about
Christ’s growth in virtue, but he does not investigate the further question of whether
Christ’s growth in the effects of grace is a consequence of volition or necessity. See Titus,
“Passions in Christ,” 83-84.
82
Sermo Puer Jesus (Hoogland, trans., 89-90).

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Aquinas gives two reasons why Christ did not manifest the
fullness of wisdom until he was twelve years old. First, he suggests
that Christ did not reveal his wisdom until the time that others
would be well-disposed to accept it. Here, Aquinas manifests his
abiding anti-docetism and his concern for the credibility of the
incarnation. As Paul Gondreau observes, Aquinas worries that “a
docetic take on Christ’s humanity might ensue if Jesus appears as
too perfect a human individual.”83 Therefore, he argues that it
would have been unfitting for Christ to display the fullness of
wisdom he already possessed before an age when human beings
would typically exhibit wisdom. Second, Aquinas discerns a
pedagogical motive behind Christ’s progressive display of his
fullness of wisdom when he suggests that Christ’s revelation of
his wisdom at the usual age gives human beings an exemplum of
growth in wisdom. Such arguments would also apply, mutatis
mutandis, to Christ’s gradual advance in the works of virtue.
Upon reading this text, however, one might worry that
Aquinas’s explanation of why it was fitting for Jesus to reveal his
fullness of wisdom and virtue in a gradual manner seems to imply
that Jesus’ growth secundum actum is not real growth at all but
rather only a shrewd pedagogical strategy. One might be
tempted, in other words, to interpret Aquinas’s claim that “he did
not will to show forth” the fullness of his wisdom and virtue as
suggesting that Christ strategically refrained from executing the
works of perfect wisdom and virtue that were otherwise
immediately possible to him.
Such an interpretation sits uneasily with some of Aquinas’s
most fundamental Christological commitments, however. It
would certainly be an ironic form of anti-docetism for Aquinas
to propose that Christ did not really develop like us but instead
strategically revealed his perfection so that he would merely
83
Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 141. On Aquinas’s staunch anti-docetism, see
Paul Gondreau, “The Humanity of Christ, the Incarnate Word,” in The Theology of
Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 252-76; Paul Gondreau, “Anti-Docetism in
Aquinas’s Super Ioannem: St. Thomas as Defender of the Full Humanity of Christ,” in
Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering,
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 254-76.

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appear to have developed like us. Although the process of
growing in virtue is an accidental perfection of human nature
rather than something essential to it (since Christ would still have
been fully human even if he had been perfect in virtue secundum
actum from the beginning), nevertheless, denying that Christ
could grow in virtue would undermine Aquinas’s anti-docetic
efforts by making Christ appear too perfect a human being and
thereby lessening the credibility of the incarnation that Aquinas
is at pains to preserve. Moreover, it would be odd to speak of
Christ’s strategically gradual revelation of his already-perfect
virtue as providing human beings with an example of “growth”
in virtue in any recognizable sense.84 These factors caution us
against interpreting Aquinas as implying that Christ is
strategically “holding back” whenever he does not perform some
magnificent act of wisdom or virtue.
How, then, should we understand Aquinas’s explanation for
why Jesus only gradually displayed his perfect virtue? I contend
that Jesus’ gradual growth in the works of virtue is best
understood as a coassumed feature of the incarnation itself. For
Aquinas, the coassumpta are the perfections or defects which
qualify the Word’s assumed human nature but which are not
essential to it. They are thus accidental aspects of concrete human
existence which the Word deems it fitting for him to assume in
view of his redemptive mission.85 To say that Christ’s capacity for
growth in the works of virtue is a coassumed defect of his human
nature, then, is to submit that God, in his wisdom, deemed it
more fitting than any alternative possibility that the Word should

84
One might object that Christ gives us an example of growth in virtue the same way
that a teacher, already knowing the answer to a geometric proof, models the steps of
completing the proof for the benefit of his students. Yet it is important to note that the
teacher is only modeling genuine growth to his students insofar as he is replicating for
them his own process of arriving at knowledge of the proof (albeit, a process that likely
occurred at some point in the past). If he had not himself undergone a process of growth
in knowledge with respect to the proof, he could not model genuine intellectual growth
to his students but only the exercise of a technique.
85
On Aquinas’s understanding of the coassumpta, see Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s
Soul, 132-41.

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assume human nature in such a way that gradually coming to
perform greater works of virtue should be an integral component
of Christ’s development as a human individual. As with any other
coassumed feature of the Word’s humanity, assuming this feature
is not strictly necessary.86 The Word could have become truly
human in a way that bypassed the normal processes of growth
and maturation. Yet, in his wisdom, God judged it more suitable
that the Word should become human in such a way that his
execution of greater works of virtue was tethered to his growth
in age. In this way, the incarnate Word conformed himself to the
concrete situation of the human nature he was coming to redeem,
a nature which at certain stages of development is not capable of
performing advanced acts of wisdom and virtue.87
Viewing Christ’s capacity for growth in the works of virtue as
a coassumed defect enables us better to interpret Aquinas’s
perplexing claim above that “[Christ] did not will to show forth
his wisdom.” If the capacity for growth in virtue secundum actum
is a coassumed feature of the incarnation, then we must understand this fact to be ultimately rooted in the Word’s divine
wisdom, which established the conditions whereby his assumed
human will would and, indeed, did cooperate with his divine

86

Here my position differs from that of Jean Galot, who views Jesus’ growth as
essential to the truth of his humanity. See Jean Galot, S.J., Who Is Christ?: A Theology of
the Incarnation, trans. M. A. Bouchard (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981), 378-79.
87
Understanding Christ’s capacity for growth in the works of virtue as a coassumed
defect has the added benefit of harmonizing the claims of Aquinas’s sermon—which
revolves around the exegesis of Luke 2:52—with some of the sources he cites in the
Catena aurea in Lucam. For example, the Catena quotes a comment from Theophylact
of Orchid who writes that “if, hearing that the Word humbled himself, no one is offended
(thinking slightingly of the true God), but rather marvels at his compassion, how is it not
absurd to be offended at hearing that he increases? For as he was humbled for us, so for
us he increased, that we who have fallen through sin might increase in him. For whatever
concerns us, Christ himself has truly undertaken for us, that he might restore us to a better
state” (Catena aurea in Lucam, c. 2, lect. 14). Theophylact emphasizes the agency of the
Word in humbling himself, first, by the incarnation, and second, by submitting to the
possibility of growth and increase, which seems to be the same principle implicitly
undergirding Aquinas’s claims in the sermon. I am grateful to Jane Sloan Peters for
suggesting to me the relevance of the Catena and to Daria Spezzano for alerting me to
this passage from Theophylact.

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will.88 Moreover, the reasons why the Word might choose to
divest himself of the possibility of executing perfect acts of virtue
from the beginning of his earthly existence cohere well with the
reasons Aquinas offers in the sermon for the delay in Jesus’
execution of perfect works of wisdom and virtue. Coassuming
the capacity to grow in these ways corresponds to the way that
human nature is typically experienced and thus safeguards the
credibility of the incarnation, and it enables Jesus to provide a
true example of making progress in wisdom and virtue.89
V. CONCEPTUALIZING CHRIST’S GROWTH AMID PERFECTION
But how could Jesus’ gradual performance of “more perfect
works” indicate genuine growth in virtue if he already possesses
the virtues most perfectly secundum habitum? After all, Aquinas
posits a reciprocal connection between the performance of more
perfectly virtuous deeds and the strengthening of the virtuous
habitus. Performing a virtuous act that corresponds to or exceeds
the intensity of the habitus one possesses leads to an increase—
or, in the case of the infused virtues, a disposition to receive an
increase—of that habitus.90 Conversely, the strengthening of a
habitus enables one to perform greater acts in accordance with
88
Consider, by way of analogy, the argument that Aquinas presents for the fittingness
of Christ’s passibility and other bodily defects before the resurrection. Holding that Christ
enjoys the beatific vision, Aquinas nonetheless argues that Jesus’ body does not experience
the effects of the soul’s glory overflowing into it, and therefore it is passible and subject
to other defects. Note well that Aquinas holds that this forestalling of Christ’s beatitude
in the soul “was subject to the will of his Godhead” and not to some sort of independent
act of his human will (STh III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2), respecting the truths about Christ’s unity
of person and about the lack of disorder or contrariety between Christ’s wills (STh I,
q. 18). Thus, Christ’s passibility is predicated on the divine dispensation which includes
that passibility should be a structural feature of how the Word assumes human nature. So
too, I suggest, is Christ’s inability to perform certain works of perfect virtue at certain
stages of his human development.
89
See STh III, q. 14, a. 1, where Aquinas argues that Christ’s coassumption of certain
defects is fitting by virtue of (1) their suitability to his redemptive mission, (2) their
capacity to protect the credibility of the incarnation, and (3) the opportunity they afford
him to provide an example of bearing defects well.
90
STh I-II, q. 52, a. 3; II-II, q. 24, a. 6.

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that virtue with promptness, pleasure, and ease. Given the mutual
interdependence between the execution of more perfect acts and
the growth of habitus, it is necessary to ask whether these two
facets of growth in virtue can coherently be separated from one
another such that Jesus could be said to grow in virtue secundum
actum but not secundum habitum.
Aquinas considers precisely such a scenario in his treatment of
the virtues in the Prima secundae, when he asks whether it is
possible for someone to possess the infused moral virtues without
charity. In that text, he considers an objection that argues that
many people who have charity nonetheless experience difficulty
in performing works of moral virtue, and therefore that such
persons, although they possess charity, do not have the moral
virtues.91 While Aquinas rejects the objection’s conclusion, he
does acknowledge that “sometimes someone who has a habitus
experiences difficulty acting in accordance with the habitus, and
consequently feels no pleasure or satisfaction in the act.”92
Aquinas posits two possible reasons for this difficulty in acting
according to the habitus that one already possesses. First, it might
be due to “some supervening extrinsic impediment.”93 As an
example, he proposes that a person might possess the intellectual
virtue of scientia yet be hindered from exercising it due to some
contingent circumstance, such as feeling tired or ill. The agent’s
temporary sluggishness of mind does not diminish the habitus of
scientia, but it does inhibit her from utilizing it. Second, Aquinas
suggests that “sometimes the habitus of the infused moral virtues
experience difficulty in acting because of certain contrary
dispositions remaining from previous acts.”94 While he holds that
the infusion of virtue eliminates any contrary vices that an agent
had previously acquired, he nonetheless recognizes that “neither
acquired nor infused virtue completely removes the passions that
incline one to evil.”95 The graced human agent still experiences a
struggle between the flesh and the spirit, and the inclination
91

STh I-II, q. 65, a. 3, obj. 2.
STh I-II, q. 65, a. 3, ad 2.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
95
De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 10, ad 14.
92

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toward inordinate acts remains, albeit as a dispositio rather than
a habitus.96 Thus, the person with infused virtue who still
struggles with the lingering effects of a previous vice can act
according to virtue, but the contrary disposition he possesses
makes the performance of virtuous works more burdensome.
While Aquinas indicates that these two cases are analogous—
presumably inasmuch as they both involve some disruption to the
exercise of virtue—there is also an important dissimilarity
between them.97 In the second case, the person with infused
temperance experiences difficulty in acting temperately precisely
because there are inclinations in his concupiscible appetite,
developed through his own actions, that run directly contrary to
the inclinations of the virtue he now possesses. This is not merely
an accidental obstacle, nor is it one that comes to him from the
outside, nor will it simply disappear in time. Rather, the obstacle
to the exercise of virtue is intrinsic and oppositional. In order for
him to grow in virtue secundum actum by performing greater acts
of temperance and doing so with promptness, pleasure and ease,
he must root out the residual inclinations toward intemperance
that inhibit the operation of his infused virtue. By contrast, the
first case—the person unable to exercise her scientia due to
sickness or exhaustion—involves an obstacle to the exercise of
virtue that is extrinsic and accidental.98 The agent’s difficulty in
96

De Virtut. in Comm., q. 1, a. 10, ad 16.
Aquinas connects the two examples with similiter in order to indicate this analogy.
Sherwin highlights the analogous relationship between the two cases, perhaps as a
pedagogical tool—moving from a more readily acknowledged case to a more
counterintuitive one—but he does not mention the important difference in how the
obstruction of virtue’s operation occurs in the two examples. See Michael S. Sherwin,
O.P., “Infused Virtue and the Effects of Acquired Vice: A Test Case for the Thomistic
Theory of Infused Cardinal Virtues,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 29-52, at 44.
98
The distinction employed here between intrinsic/oppositional and
extrinsic/accidental obstacles to the operation of a habitus mirrors distinctions that
Aquinas draws elsewhere in his corpus. In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, he
distinguishes between the inhibition of knowledge’s operation by a contrary habitus of
ignorance, on the one hand, or by an accidental obstacle such as exterior preoccupations
or bodily indisposition, on the other. See II De anima, lect. 11 (In Aristotelis Librum De
Anima Commentarium, ed. Pirotta [Turin: Marietti, 1948], nos. 360-65). Similarly, in the
97

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actually contemplating the knowledge she possesses habitually is
not due to some opposed inclination in her mind, nor is such
difficulty an intrinsic feature of her intellectual powers. She
simply happens to be tired or sick, and once she gets some rest or
the illness runs its course, she will once again be able to exercise
her scientia with ease, promptness, and pleasure. In both of these
cases, Aquinas notes that the agents still possess virtue secundum
habitum despite their inability or difficulty in exercising it
secundum actum.
While both of these cases are valuable for showing that, in
principle, possessing the habitus of virtue need not imply ease in
the operation of virtue, they are limited in their ability to shed
light on the particular case of Christ’s growth in virtue secundum
actum. The second case is clearly unhelpful, since Christ’s growth
in virtue secundum actum is markedly different from that of the
justified. As we have seen, Christ’s virtues do not supplant
previously acquired vices, his soul is not affected by the fomes
peccati, and his passions are already perfectly ordered from the
first moment of his conception. Christ’s growth in the acts of
virtue cannot therefore be described as the progressive removal
of internal, contrary inclinations which oppose the inclination of
virtue and hinder the virtuous habitus from being expressed in
virtuous acts. The first example is also unhelpful, albeit in a less
spectacular way, since it fails to illustrate genuine growth in the
works of virtue. The person with scientia whose exercise of it is
inhibited by illness or exhaustion has exercised this habitus in the
past and will soon be able to exercise it again without necessarily
exhibiting any greater knowledge than she did before she became
tired or sick. Thus, growth is not essential to this obstacle being
overcome. In other words, Christ’s progress in the works of
Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas distinguishes between two kinds of obstacles to an agent’s
bringing about change. One involves an extrinsic obstacle, “for if fire is hot, it is necessary
that it have the power to heat, although it is not necessary that it heat, since it may be
hindered by something extrinsic.” The other involves an intrinsic and oppositional
obstacle on the part of the recipient of the change, whose potency can be “hindered by
contrary agents or by contrary dispositions inherent to the movable, or by contrary forms
offering an obstacle that is stronger than the power of the agent in acting—thus iron is
not melted by a feeble heat.” See ScG II, c. 30.

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virtue cannot be explained by an extrinsic obstacle that comes
and goes at random.
There are, however, two other cases that Aquinas examines
that do prove helpful for understanding Jesus’ growth in virtue
secundum actum. In both examples, an agent lacks the capacity
to act in accordance with a habitus already possessed. The first
case concerns an agent who lacks the requisite development of
her faculties to exercise a habitus she already possesses, while the
second case involves an agent who lacks the requisite matter upon
which to exercise the virtue he has secundum habitum. Each case
shows, in different ways, how an agent can grow in the exercise
of virtue without concurrently strengthening the habitus of
virtue, and each case consequently sheds light on a different
aspect of Christ’s growth in virtue secundum actum amid his
abiding perfection in virtue secundum habitum.
The first case concerns the situation of an infant who receives
the infused virtues in conjunction with the grace of baptism.99
Speaking about the baptized infant’s ability to exercise the virtue
of infused prudence in particular, Aquinas asserts that “in
children who have been baptized but do not yet have the use of
reason, there is prudence secundum habitum but not secundum
actum.”100 He then goes on to suggest that, as the child “comes
to the use of reason,” the already-existent habitus of prudence is
reduced to act and “through its exercise merits increase, until it
is perfected.”101
There are, of course, significant differences between the
baptized infant’s progress in virtue and Christ’s own growth.
Chief among them is that the infant’s growth in virtue involves
not only growth secundum actum but also growth secundum
habitum. The child’s need to grow in prudence secundum
habitum—despite the fact that she truly possesses the habitus as
an effect of baptism—stems from the fact that her growth in

99

STh III, q. 69, a. 4. See Sheryl Overmyer, “Baptism and Its Glorious Cortege,” New
Blackfriars 96 (2015): 699-710.
100
STh II-II, q. 47, a. 14, ad 3.
101
Ibid.

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

virtue still requires that she contend with the concupiscible effects
of original sin. Even though the infant does not possess the
lingering effects of a previously acquired vice, she must still
undertake the arduous project of harmonizing her passions with
the judgments of reason and divine law. The fomes peccati stands
as an intrinsic and contrary obstacle to the infant’s growth in
virtue, but such an internal force of opposition is altogether
absent from the person of Christ. In short, Jesus’ growth in moral
virtue, unlike that of the baptized infant, does not involve the
progressive rectification of his appetites—that is, growth
secundum habitum—because his passions were always rightly
ordered.
Despite this important difference, there remains an
illuminating similarity between the baptized infant’s growth in
virtue secundum actum and the kind of growth in virtue that
Aquinas ascribes to Christ. We may note that Aquinas attributes
the baptized infant’s inability to act in accordance with the
infused habitus of virtue to an accidental obstacle, her lack of
capacity to reason. This is not a contrary disposition involving an
inclination inherently opposed to the exercise of prudence.
Rather, it is simply the lack of the appropriate matter to facilitate
the operation of prudence. Once this obstacle is removed through
the natural processes of psychosomatic maturation, the infant
will, with proper instruction, be able to perform acts in
accordance with the habitus she already has.102 The link that
Aquinas establishes between the infant’s gradual coming to the
use of reason through intellectual and physical development and
the acquisition of knowledge, on the one hand, and her gradually
increasing capacity to exercise her habitus of prudence by
performing more perfect works of virtue, on the other, likewise
applies to Christ’s growth in virtue secundum actum.
102
Cessario discerns this distinction between habitus and act in his treatment of the
baptized infant when he notes that, “for the infant, the infused virtues supplied only the
principles of virtuous operation. These virtues could not account for the actual practice
of virtue, since the individual lacked the physical and psychological abilities required for
any moral act. In the case of the infant, then, the actualization of the infused virtues would
accompany the normal development of human maturity which results from Christian
upbringing” (Cessario, Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 118-19).

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In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas famously affirms that
Christ advanced in acquired human knowledge not merely by
experience but also in essence, because it would be unfitting for
Christ to lack the natural ability to abstract intelligible species
from sensible images, and the execution of such abstraction
requires the possibility (and reality) of growth in empirical
knowledge.103 Yet, although Aquinas posits that Christ increased
in his acquired knowledge, he still insists on the perfection of that
knowledge in a certain sense, holding that Christ’s acquired
knowledge “was always perfect secundum tempus, even though
it was not always perfect simpliciter et secundum naturam.”104 By
speaking about Christ’s acquired knowledge as perfect according
to its time, Aquinas tethers Jesus’ growth in knowledge to his
growth in age.105 Christ’s knowledge was always perfect in
relation to a certain point in time, which is to say, at a certain age
and level of psychosomatic development. But, at each discrete
moment where Christ’s knowledge was perfect for the time
being, his knowledge nonetheless remained imperfect in
comparison to the knowledge he would possess at the culmination of his psychosomatic development.106 Affirming Aquinas’s
103

STh III, q. 12, a. 2. With this assertion, he departs in important ways from the views
of his patristic predecessors and Scholastic contemporaries and indeed reverses his own
earlier thinking on the matter in III Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 5. On this development,
see Kevin Madigan, “Did Jesus ‘Progress in Wisdom’? Thomas Aquinas on Luke 2:52 in
Ancient and High-Medieval Context,” Traditio 52 (1997): 179-200; Jean-Pierre Torrell,
O.P., “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ: Une relecture des questions 9-12 de la
‘Tertia pars’ de la Somme de théologie,” in idem, Recherches thomasiennes (Paris: J. Vrin,
2000), 198-213; Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., “Christ’s Acquired Knowledge according to
Thomas Aquinas: How Aquinas’s Philosophy Helped and Hindered His Account,” New
Blackfriars 96 (2015): 255-68.
104
STh III, q. 12, a. 2, ad 2.
105
Aquinas’s link between growth in acquired wisdom and growth in age coheres with
the connection drawn between them in Luke 2:52, the text Aquinas cites in support of
his position in the article’s sed contra.
106
Gaine notes that “Aquinas evidently takes [the absolute perfection of Christ’s
acquired scientific knowledge] to be achieved by adulthood, his early modern Carmelite
commentators at Salamanca specifying the age of twelve” (Simon Francis Gaine, O.P.,
Did the Saviour See the Father?: Christ, Salvation, and the Vision of God [London:
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015], 136).

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commitments to the embodied character of human knowledge as
rooted in the senses together with the truth of Christ’s integral
humanity entails that, as Simon Gaine puts it, “Christ could not
have exercised [his natural knowledge] without the requisite
physiological developments having taken place.”107
Here we see the likeness between the case of the baptized
child’s growth in the works of virtue and Christ’s own progress.
Just as the baptized infant possesses the infused virtues secundum
habitum but cannot yet exercise them because she lacks the
requisite physiological development to execute human acts, so
too Christ, while possessing the virtues most perfectly secundum
habitum from the first moment of his conception, was nevertheless unable to carry out perfect works of virtue until he had
undergone the necessary development to facilitate the performance of exterior acts of virtue. This is not to suggest that,
prior to some point in his human development, Christ ever acted
imprudently or in ways that were contrary to virtue; that would
be impossible given his perfect possession of the virtues
secundum habitum. Rather, in his childhood and adolescence,
Christ’s exercise of the habitus of virtue that he already possessed
most perfectly was inhibited by an accidental obstacle: his lack of
complete psychosomatic human development. Once this
impediment is removed through the natural processes of human
maturation, Christ exercised all the virtues most perfectly
secundum actum.
This analysis offers a plausible explication of Aquinas’s claim,
in his treatment of Christ’s growth in grace, that “according to
his progress in age, [Christ] did more perfect works.”108 As in his
discussion of Christ’s growth in wisdom, Aquinas here explicitly
draws a connection between Christ’s progress in age and his
progress in the execution of more perfect works. His growth in
age—and the psychosomatic development that accompanies it—
constitutes the condition for the possibility of his performing
more perfect works of grace, which is to say, more perfect works
of virtue. The processes of ordinary human development
107
108

Ibid., 146.
STh III, q. 7, a. 12, ad 3.

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constitute the gradual removal of an accidental obstacle to the
exercise of the habitus of virtue that Christ already has most
perfectly. As Jeremy Wilkins puts it, “the growth of Christ in
stature and in acquired understanding was a growth in the matter
to be perfected by grace.”109 The natural processes of human
growth and development allowed the supernatural effects of
Christ’s grace to be exercised and manifested more clearly.
The parallels between Aquinas’s linkage of Christ’s progress
in age to his increase in knowledge, on the one hand, and to his
increase in the works of virtue, on the other, suggest that we
might also reasonably apply Aquinas’s distinction between
absolute and relative perfection, already applied to Christ’s
wisdom, to his virtue as well.110 While Christ’s possession of the
virtues secundum habitum was always perfect simpliciter et
secundum naturam from the first moment of his earthly life, we
might say that his performance of works of virtue was only
perfect simpliciter et secundum naturam once he had completed
the natural process of human growth and development.111
Nevertheless, because the process of growth in age involves,
109

Jeremy D. Wilkins, “Love and Knowledge of God in the Human Life of Christ,”
Pro Ecclesia 21 (2012): 77-99, at 91 n. 72.
110
My application of the notion of relative perfection to Christ’s virtue differs from
that of Galot. I contend that Christ’s virtue was always absolutely perfect secundum
habitum and relatively perfect only secundum actum. By contrast, Galot argues that
Christ’s virtues were always relatively perfect both secundum habitum and secundum
actum. This leads him to posit that Christ grew in virtue secundum habitum so that “his
love for men . . . continued to grow until it attained its maximum degree in his death”
(Galot, Who Is Christ?, 379). This view, however, is incompatible with Aquinas’s
understanding of Christ’s complete sanctification from the moment of conception.
111
Garrigou-Lagrange contends that one cannot argue from Christ’s growth in
acquired knowledge to his growth in virtue because “the natural sciences do not make
man absolutely good, as the moral virtues do, but good only in a qualified sense.” The
implied conclusion is that growth in virtue would render Christ imperfect in a way that
growth in knowledge does not. This objection does not apply to the argument offered
here, however, which does not contend that Christ grew in virtue secundum habitum so
as to become better (which is Garrigou-Lagrange’s chief worry) but only through the
performance of more perfect acts. See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Christ the
Savior, trans. Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B. (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1950), 272; Galot,
Who Is Christ?, 379.

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

anthropologically speaking, the removal of the accidental
obstacle to Christ’s exercise of the virtues he already possesses
perfectly secundum habitum, it follows that the young Christ’s
every act of virtue also possessed a relative perfection secundum
tempus, for they manifested his perfect habitus of virtue in ways
that were appropriate to his corresponding stage of psychosomatic development.112
The second case in which Aquinas’s analysis of growth in
virtue secundum actum amid stability in virtue secundum
habitum sheds light on Christ’s growth in virtue concerns the
situation of Adam in the state of original justice. Aquinas argues
that the first man possessed all the virtues “in a sense”
(aliqualiter), a qualification Aquinas introduces because he views
the exercise of certain virtues as incompatible with the perfection
112
While at first glance the affirmation in Heb 5:8 that “Christ learned obedience
through what he suffered” appears particularly relevant to a discussion of Christ’s growth
in virtue, Aquinas actually takes this passage to be more germane to a discussion of Christ’s
growth in knowledge. In fact, he cites Heb 5:8 in the sed contra of STh III, q. 12, a. 2 on
Christ’s increase in acquired knowledge. Commenting on the passage, Aquinas notes that
although Christ, possessing the beatific vision, had perfect knowledge of the nature of
obedience through simple cognition, nevertheless he learned something new about this
virtue through the experience of being obedient. In particular, Aquinas suggests that
Christ “learned . . . how difficult it is to obey, because he obeyed in the most difficult
matters, even to the death of the cross” (Super Hebr., c. 5, lect. 2 [Super Epistolam ad
Hebraeos Lectura, ed. R. Cai (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1953), no. 259]). In other
words, Aquinas does not think that Jesus’ obedient suffering on the cross was a means to
his becoming more perfect in the exercise of obedience, since the obedience that Christ
manifested on the cross is already supremely perfect both secundum habitum and
secundum actum. Rather, he takes Heb 5:8 to mean that the experience of suffering—not
merely in small matters but in the intense suffering of the passion—gave Jesus new insight
into the costliness of obedience in a way that enables him to “have compassion on our
infirmities” (Heb 4:15) and which perfects him to become, “to all that obey him, the cause
of eternal salvation” (Heb 5:9).
Exegetical issues notwithstanding, however, it seems clear that Aquinas does see a
progress of growth secundum actum in Jesus’ exercise of the virtue of obedience. He notes
that “Christ had most perfect obedience,” just as he has all the virtues (STh III, q. 7, a. 3,
ad 2). Still, that perfect obedience was always manifested in acts of obedience that were
appropriate to Christ’s age and circumstances, such as in his subjection to Mary and
Joseph as a child (Sermo Puer Jesus [Hoogland, trans., 106]) and in his adherence to the
dictates of the Old Law (STh III, q. 37, a. 1; q. 40, a. 4; Super Ioan., c. 2, lect. 2 [Marietti
ed., no. 375]). Thus, Christ’s obedience in suffering and death suggests growth in
obedience secundum actum amid stable perfection secundum habitum.

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619

of humanity’s primitive state.113 For example, the sorrow, guilt,
and unhappiness that compel the exercise of mercy did not exist
in the state of original justice. Crucially, however, Aquinas argues
that Adam still possessed the virtue of mercy, but he only
possessed it secundum habitum and not secundum actum. By
invoking this distinction, Aquinas asserts that “if [Adam] had seen
misery in another, he would have dispelled it as much as he
could.”114 Adam did
not and could not exercise certain virtues in the state of original justice due to
a lack of the necessary matter for their exercise, yet he still possessed the habitus
that would have enabled him to perform such works with pleasure, promptness,
and ease, if the necessary matter were to exist.

Aquinas holds that Christ did not assume human nature in the
state of innocence, and therefore, he did exercise virtues like
mercy which Adam possessed but did not exercise.115
Nevertheless, Aquinas’s exegesis of Adam’s possession of certain
virtues secundum habitum but not secundum actum still proves
helpful for illustrating Christ’s growth in virtue if we apply its
logic to Christ’s human development. We might say, for instance,
that although Christ possessed all the virtues most perfectly
secundum habitum from the first moment of his conception, he
nonetheless grew in virtue secundum actum because, at certain
moments of his development, the matter that serves as the
necessary precondition for the exercise of certain virtues was
absent.

113

STh I, q. 95, a. 3.
Ibid.
115
For a fuller analysis of the relationship between Christ’s passions and those of
Adam, see Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 253-75; Daria E. Spezzano, The Glory of
God’s Grace: Deification according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Faith & Reason (Ave Maria,
Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2015), 172-78; Clem, “Passions of Christ.”
Aquinas’s affirmation of Jesus’ exercise of misericordia revolves especially around the
explicit biblical testimony, such as Matt 9:36 and Matt 14:14. See STh II-II, q. 30, a. 1,
ad 1; Super Matth., c. 9, lect. 6 (Super Evangelium S. Matthaei Lectura, ed. R. Cai [Turin
and Rome: Marietti, 1951], no. 805); c. 14, lect. 1 (Marietti ed., no. 1238).
114

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MICHAEL A. WAHL

This is especially true of the virtues of the passions. Although
Christ’s passions were perfectly ordered by grace from the first
moment of his conception, acknowledging the reality of true
psychosomatic development in Christ allows us to recognize
genuine development even in his experience of rightly ordered
passions.116 Consider, for example, Christ’s growth secundum
actum in the virtue of chastity. Because Christ was not subject to
the fomes peccati and because the movements of his sensitive
appetite were perfectly conformed to reason from the moment of
his conception, Aquinas would hold that Christ possessed the
virtue of chastity most perfectly and experienced no elicited
sexual desires, let alone lustful ones.117 Nevertheless, before
Jesus’ body had developed to physical maturity and therefore
would have been suitable for sexual activity, his exercise of the
virtue of chastity, while perfect according to his level of
psychosomatic development, might also be considered imperfect
in comparison with his practice of chastity at the age of maturity.
Before the sensitive appetite’s natural ordering to the good of
sexual pleasure was sufficiently developed, Jesus could not have
experienced the kinds of appetitive movements over which his
perfect chastity could exercise its complete self-mastery. Once he
reached such a point of psychosomatic maturity, however, Christ
would have begun to exercise his perfect chastity in new ways,
thereby growing in that virtue secundum actum. We might also
make similar arguments concerning the development of Christ’s
fears or his anger. Differences in how the passions are
experienced and integrated as the human being matures suggest
that Christ’s already perfect virtues could be manifested in new
ways through the performance of greater works of virtue in a
manner that indicates genuine growth on his part.
Both of the preceding cases show how Aquinas conceives of
the possibility of performing greater works of virtue without
116

On the development of Christ’s passions, especially with respect to their
spontaneity, see Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 68-86.
117
Paul Gondreau, “Aquinas on Christ’s Male Sexuality as Integral to His Full
Humanity: Anti-Docetism in the Common Doctor,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of
Christology, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria,
Fla.: Sapientia Press, forthcoming in 2021).

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621

necessarily strengthening the habitus of virtue. While such cases
are necessarily outliers among the ordinary experiences of human
growth in virtue, they offer a framework for understanding how
Christ, who is perfect in virtue secundum habitum, could still
make progress in virtue secundum actum. Far from being a
strategic manifestation of his already-perfect virtue, his gradual
perfection in the works of virtue stems from the gradual
perfection of the faculties that are the subjects of virtue, as in the
case of the baptized infant, and from the emergence of new
matter upon which his already-perfect virtues might act, the
possibility of which is seen in the case of Adam.
CONCLUSION
Christ, who was perfect in virtue from the first moment of his
conception, nonetheless grew in virtue. Possessing the fullness of
grace and, consequently, the fullness of virtue secundum habitum
from the beginning of his earthly life, he came to perform more
perfect works of virtue over the course of time. This progressively
perfect exercise of his already-perfect virtue is not a mere
pedagogical strategy, as if he were restraining the splendor of his
virtue from showing forth prematurely, but is rather a
consequence of his concurrent growth in age. As Christ grew and
matured, the natural, accidental obstacles that inhibited the
exercise of his perfect habitus of virtue gradually disappeared, the
emergence of new experiences of the passions offered
opportunities to display the virtues that had until that time been
exercised in limited ways, and newly acquired knowledge offered
avenues for him to display in greater ways the perfectly ordered
passions he possessed from the very beginning. Christ’s
performance of greater works of virtue thus reflected true growth
amid his abiding moral perfection.
Aquinas asserts in his sermon on the child Jesus that “the
progress of Christ is made an example for adolescents,” and this
is no less true of his growth in virtue than of any other respect in
which he grew. This is not necessarily to suggest the process by
which Jesus grew in virtue is a model for our own, as if we could

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“engage in the same disciplines that Jesus practiced as he grew in
virtue and . . . be confident in their effectiveness.”118 As we have
seen, there are important differences between Christ’s manner of
progress in virtue and our own. While Christ’s growth reflected
the natural and gradual manifestation in action of the habitus of
virtue that he already possessed most perfectly, our growth in
virtue involves the struggle to align our unruly and concupiscent
passions with the judgments of faith and reason so as to acquire,
strengthen, or dispose ourselves for an increase of the habitus of
virtue that we possess either imperfectly or not yet at all. Our
growth in virtue requires repentance, conversion, and struggle
against the effects of sin, while Christ’s progress in virtue
involved none of these; therefore, the process of our growth in
virtue will differ accordingly.119
Despite these differences, however, the very fact of Christ’s
growth in virtue remains exemplary and crucially so. Jesus passed
through each stage of human development from conception to
human maturity, simultaneously sanctifying it and providing a
model of perfection for each phase of human growth and
development. To see Christ’s growth as exemplary, therefore, is
to see in him not only the perfection of virtue at every stage of
human life but also a model of continual progress in the works of
virtue. This model of progress is exemplary both morally, insofar
as it instructs and encourages our own efforts to advance in virtue
at every stage of life, and ontologically, for Christ’s growth
constitutes the source of our own progressive assimilation to him
through grace.
118
Pelser, “Temptation, Virtue, and the Character of Christ,” 99. It is not clear that
Aquinas thinks that there are precise “disciplines” by which Jesus grew in virtue, since he
regards Christ’s growth in virtue secundum actum to be a natural consequence of the
disappearance of the natural and accidental obstacles to eliciting certain acts of virtue.
Still, the spiritual practices in which Jesus engaged—e.g., prayer, solitude, fasting—
certainly can be conducive to our own progress in the moral and spiritual life.
119
While Christ himself had no need of repentance, Aquinas does propose that “Christ
set the highest example to penitents, since he willingly bore the punishment, not of his
own sin, but of the sins of others” (STh III, q. 15, a. 1, ad 5). Nevertheless, even this
model for penitence stands at a remove from the situation of the sinner in such a way that
it would be difficult for it to provide an immediate pattern for a sinner to imitate in his
repentance from sin and struggle against vice.

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Aquinas takes Christ to be an adept teacher who instructs not
only by his word but also by his manner of living.120 Christ’s
gradual manifestation of his perfect virtue through his progress
in the works of virtue exemplifies this pedagogical acuity, for he
condescends to offer human beings an example of perfect virtue
that is suited to their particular stage of life and progressively to
conform them by grace to that model. For this reason, Aquinas
notes, “there is not any age from which the way of salvation is
absent.”121 And while the scriptural accounts of Christ’s life leave
much of his growth and adolescence hidden, his teaching retains
its power through its most important effect, namely, that he
impresses it interiorly upon his disciples. Thus, Christ, in
conforming himself to our condition not only by assuming
human nature but also by undergoing the ordinary processes of
human growth and development, enables our growth and
development to be conformed to the perfection that he manifests
in his own growth. Therefore, we can conclude with Aquinas
that, even in his youth, Christ remains “the supreme exemplar of
perfection,” whose very “progress . . . is made an example.”122

120

See STh III, qq. 40 and 42. See also Michael S. Hahn, “Thomas Aquinas’s
Presentation of Christ as Teacher,” The Thomist 83 (2019): 57-89; Mark J. Armitage,
“Why Didn’t Jesus Write a Book? Aquinas on the Teaching of Christ,” New Blackfriars
89 (2008): 337-53.
121
Sermo Puer Jesus (Hoogland, trans., 87).
122
I am grateful to Paul Gondreau and Daria Spezzano for their helpful comments on
an earlier draft of this article.

The Thomist 84 (2020): 625-45

CAN PALAMISM BE ACCOMMODATED TO THE
WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION?
A FEW CONSIDERATIONS ON “THE REAL PROBLEM”
ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.
University of Helsinki/University of Eastern Finland
Helsinki, Finland

S

CHOLARSHIP ON Gregory Palamas and Palamism often
gives the impression that dismissing Western theology is the
price that has to be paid in order to acknowledge the genius
of the Orthodox tradition. One should therefore wholeheartedly
welcome a book that has the explicit intention of bringing the
teachings of Palamas one step closer to the Western Christian
universe. From this point of view, one must salute Norman
Russell’s approach in Gregory Palamas and the Making of
Palamism in the Modern Age.1 As the author goes in search of a
“real Palamas” hidden behind denominational controversies, he
scrutinizes a considerable amount of scholarship for the benefit
of nonspecialists. Readers will find an abundance—sometimes an
overabundance—of observations related to known but also to
much less well-researched elements of historiography on Palamas
and Palamism. The courage of an attempt at such a vast synthesis
certainly deserves commendation. This does not mean that the
results of this attempt are immune to criticism. As I set forth my
reservations in the pages that follow, my hope is that this critical
analysis of Russell’s book will eventually shed some more light
on an ancient but still unsolved theological issue.

1

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. 272. $93.00. ISBN 978-0-19-9644643. Parenthetical page numbers in the text refer to this work.
625

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

The argument of Russell’s book could be roughly summarized
as follows: modern historiography on Palamism has presented
Palamas’s doctrine as incompatible with Western—mostly
Catholic—theological tradition on biased ecclesiological
grounds; actually, when examined in itself, this doctrine has
much to offer that could be integrated into the Western theological tradition and enrich it. In the first part of the book, “The
Historical Reception of Palamite Theology,” Russell recounts—
or “deconstructs,” as it is no longer fashionable to say—the steps
that have given the Palamite controversy its current configuration. In the second part of the book, “Raising the Larger
Questions,” the author delves into the texts of Palamas himself,
explaining them in the light of the controversies of the time, as
he goes in search of a “real Palamas” who would be more
acceptable to the Western theological tradition.
Russell’s narrative of Palamas’s Rezeptionsgeschichte consists
of three moments. (1) After the definitive vindication of
Palamas’s theology in Byzantium (Tomos of 1368), a long period
of almost complete silence ensued, neither Orthodox nor
Catholic theologians showing themselves keen on reading his
works and discussing their content. (2) The “problem” was
revived by Martin Jugie in his articles on Palamas and Palamism
for the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, but it was instrumentalized because of considerations pertaining to Church
politics. Jugie’s desire to see the “Greeks” come back into the
Catholic fold “made” Palamism into a theology incompatible
with the Western tradition, identified with the vessel of Truth.
On the opposite side, Orthodox theologians such as Vladimir
Lossky and John Meyendorff built on Jugie’s conclusions,
arguing that this incompatibility proved the superiority of the
Orthodox tradition over the Catholic one, and justified the
rejection of Catholic efforts to assimilate “Oriental Christianity.”
(3) More contemporary theologians and scholars on both sides
seem to oscillate between two mutually exclusive positions: a
rediscovery of the dimensions of Palamas’s theology that could
eventually be received in the West, and a more radical interpretation of this teaching that continues to pit the Latin West and
the Byzantine East against each other.

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627

Let us review Russell’s narrative step by step.
I. THE LONG HISTORICAL “SILENCE”
Russell takes the silence into which the discussions around the
teaching of Palamas fell as a fact that does not require special
explanation.2 Is it not natural that one would discuss a dogma
before it is officially proclaimed rather than after? For instance,
after the homousios-theology got the upper hand over Arianism
at the end of the fourth century, the thrust of theological
discussions shifted to Mariology and Christology in the fifth and
sixth centuries. But is the silence that Russell has in mind this
kind of silence, namely, the silence that follows a dogmatic
victory?
Russell dedicates much attention to the discussions that
preceded the canonization of Palamas in 1368, namely, the criticism of his ideas by Baarlam of Calabria, Gregorios Akyndinos,
and Nikeforos Gregoras successively, as well as the various
responses of Palamas to his opponents. In all fairness, one can
only pay homage to the elegance and virtuosity with which
Palamas crushed his adversaries. However, what I would call the
real problem associated with the teachings of Palamas has little to
do with these attempts to demonstrate that they contradicted the
tradition of the Fathers. It surfaces for the first time with the
megas domestikos Demetrios Cydones’s discovery of Aquinas.
After what Gerhard Podskalsky called the “breaking-in”
(Einbruch) of Thomism in Byzantium,3 the whole configuration
of the issue regarding the orthodoxy of Palamas changed. This
major epistemological shift seems to have evaded Russell’s
2
Russell is too vague in this regard: “For historical reasons [the teaching of Palamas]
was inhibited after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 until it was resumed again in Russia
towards the end of the nineteenth century and was brought to the West after the
Revolution of October 1917” (212). For what reasons? The desire of the Orthodox
hierarchy not to antagonize its Latin counterpart? One can only speculate.
3
Theologie und Philosophie in Byzanz: Die Streit um die theologische Methodik in der
spätbyzantinischen Geistesgeschichte (14.115. Jh.), seine systematischen Grundlagen und
seine historische Entwicklung (Münich: C. H. Beck, 1977), 180-230. This most
remarkable study is absent from Russell’s bibliography.

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

attention.4 The issue ceased to be primarily about the correct
interpretation of the Fathers and the limits of the human
understanding of God. What came to the fore was the alleged
incompatibility between the teachings of Palamas and a
thoroughly consistent theological system that had hitherto
remained foreign to the Byzantine tradition. Content-wise the
“real problem” could be formulated in the following manner: If
God is essentially simple, as Aquinas argued on sophisticated
philosophical premises, how could one accept the distinction that
Palamas drew between the divine essence and energy (or
energies)? Of course, Demetrios’s intention was to show that
Aquinas’s thinking more faithfully reflected the consensus of the
Fathers than did that of Palamas. But if this Western theologian
sounded more Greek than Palamas, Aquinas remained notwithstanding a Westerner.5 What I am calling the real problem
involves a tension between the Latin West and the Byzantine East,
respectively represented by Aquinas and by Palamas. In its
original form, this tension was purely theological. It had nothing
to do with the political tensions between the Church of Rome
and that of Constantinople following a last attempt at recovering
a degree of ecclesial unity (Second Council of Lyon, 1274).
Russell pointedly reminds us of the fact that Palamas himself
showed an exceptional openness to the Church of Rome.6 When

4

See The Making of Palamism, 4-5.
Hence the famous exclamation of Scholarios in the margins of his translation of his
abridged version of the Prima secundae: “If only, most excellent Thomas, you had not
been born in the West! Then you would not have been obliged to justify the errors of that
Church concerning, for instance, the procession of the Spirit and the distinction between
the divine essence and operation. Then you would have been as infallible in theological
matters as you are in this treatise on ethics!” (L. Petit, X. Siderides, and M. Jugie, eds.,
Oeuvres complètes de Georges Scholarios, 8 vols. [Paris: Maison de la bonne presse,
1928-36], 6:1, translation in M. Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012], 132). Russell neglects the most remarkable contribution of
Scholarios—an unrepentant admirer of Aquinas who became an advocate of Palamas
under the influence of Mark Eugenikos—to the debate.
6
See The Making of Palamism, 212. The very first sign of the “real problem” is the
embarrassment of Paul of Smyrna, the pontifical legate in Constantinople, invited by the
basileus John Kantakuzenos to witness his dispute with Nikeforos Gregoras in 1355. Even
if Paul’s letter to the pope denouncing Palamas’s distinction between essence and energies
5

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629

endeavoring to discard Palamas’s theological claims through
Thomistically shaped types of arguments, the brother of
Demetrios Cydones, the Athonite monk Prochoros, was speaking
in the name of the true tradition of the Fathers, just as Barlaam,
Akyndinos, and Gregoras had done before him. It is the
interference of Thomism as a theological system, not political
tensions between East and West, that generated the “real
problem.” If anything, it is because this purely theological issue
involved an unexpected but genuine theological tension between
the Latin West and the Byzantine East that it became a matter of
Church politics at a later point.
Indeed, the attraction exerted by Aquinas’s theology,
combined with the steadily increasing influence of Palamites
within the Church and the imperial administration, induced
Demetrios Cydones and a number of his disciples to convert to
Catholicism.7 The Tomos of 1368 not only proclaimed Palamas
a saint, it also sealed the defeat of Prochoros Cydones.8 As a
result, several talented disciples of Demetrios fled to Italy and
parts of Greece under Latin rule, among them Manuel Kalekas
and the brothers Chrysoberges, Maximos and Andreas, who
entered the Dominican Order.

(PL 154:835-38) is spurious (Jean Meyendorff, Introduction à l'étude de Grégoire
Palamas, Patristica Sorbonensia 3 [Paris: Les Éditions du Seuil, 1959], 166 n. 54), the
authenticity of the letters of Kantakuzenos to the legate in the wake of the Tomos of 1368
can hardly be disputed (see E. Voordeckers and F. H. Tinnefeld, eds., Refutationes duae
Prochori Cydonii et Disputatio cum Paulo Patriarcha Latino epistulis septem tradita,
CCSG 16 [Turnhout, 1987]). Kantakuzenos would not have defended the conformity of
Palamas’s distinction with the tradition of the Fathers had the legate not openly voiced
doubts in this regard. Russell does not mention the episode except to signal a slight
inaccuracy of Meyendorff regarding Kantakuzenos (The Making of Palamism, 78 n. 12—
without reference to the critical edition of Kantakuzenos’s letters).
7
See Demetrios’s depiction of the “bearded ones” that behave as the masters of the
capital: R. J. Loenertz, Les recueils de lettres de Demetrius Cydones, Studi e testi 131
(Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1947), Letter 50, pp. 36-37.
8
Elsewhere I have tried to show that the “Thomism” of Prochoros was superficial, its
philosophical substance coming from Akyndinos: see “The Transfiguration in 14th
Century Palamite Controversies and the East/West Line of Separation,” Nicolaus 40
(2013): 139-57.

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

It is at this point, and only at this point, that the theological
issue became part of Church politics. The Latins were largely
unaware of the Byzantine debates around Palamas’s teachings.
But Greek converts—most especially Demetrios’s disciples—
were aware. As the matter of the day yet again turned out to be
the reunion with the Church of Constantinople (Council of
Ferrara-Florence, 1438-45), Cydones’s disciples thought it was
their duty to alert the authorities of the Roman Church about a
new stumbling-block that needed to be added to the list of old
controversial topics such as the filioque and the supreme
authority of the bishop of Rome. Upon the request of Bessarion,
still metropolitan bishop of Nicaea at the time and one of the
main protagonists of the council, Andreas Chrysoberges wrote a
treatise against the doctrine of Palamas.9 On the other side, a
theologian such as Mark Eugenikos, who was concerned most of
all to oppose reunion with the Latins, was equally eager to submit
the teachings of Palamas to public discussion since he knew that
the Latins would not be able to accommodate such discussion.
Russell does not dedicate much attention to all these developments.10 Without them, however, the five hundred years of socalled silence that ensued is incomprehensible.
The fact is that this silence did not arise out of the absence of
a purely theological problem, all issues having been happily
resolved in the Byzantine context. The real problem was at the
Council of Florence, hiding in plain sight. More than sixty years
after the Tomos of 1368, it brought to the fore one more dividing
issue between the Latin and the Byzantine traditions. If Church
politics played a role here, it was not by inventing a theological
problem that did not exist, but, on the contrary, by artificially
silencing a lively theological issue that a number of theologians
on both sides were eager to see discussed. The geostrategic
calculations behind the proceedings of the council were of such

9
“Andrea Rhodiensis Archiepiscopi, de divina essentia et operatione ad sanctissimum
Dominum Bessarionem, Metropolitam Nicaeae, ex commentariis beatissimi Thomae
apodictica explicatio,” ed. Manuel Candal, Orientalia christiana periodica 4 (1938):
329-71.
10
See The Making of Palamism, 5 and 24-25.

PALAMISM AND THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION

631

pressing importance (the Ottoman threat for John V, the
Byzantine basileus in search of military support, creating an
opportunity for the pope to recover authority over the Eastern
part of the Oikumene) that nonessential bones of contention such
as the status of the essence/energy distinction were deliberately
left aside.11 From this perspective, the nonartificial silence that
followed the council, or rather the fall of Constantinople in
1453, is easy to understand. All hopes—or fears—of reunion of
the two parts of the Church having subsided due to the
nonreception of the Council of Florence in Constantinople and
the political disintegration of Byzantium, the need to bring up
theological issues that stood in the way of ecclesial reconciliation
became much less vital. The resulting five hundred years of
relative silence did not mean that Palamism as a theological issue
had gone away, or that it had never really existed. It only meant
that the opportunity for discussing it had been lost. The “real
problem” was only waiting for a new opportunity to resurface.12

11

Ibid.
The silence was far from complete. Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth
centuries, interest in Palamas’s works arose every time the reasons for the division
between the Church of Rome and the world of Orthodoxy were investigated and
discussed anew (as by Denis Petau, Leo Allatius, and Francois Richard, among others);
see The Making of Palamism, 26-29. As Russell shows, widely relying on the works of
Antonio Rigo, the harsh assessments of Palamas’s distinction originating from the West
are what triggered the printing of works by Palamas and his disciples (John Kantakuzenos,
Philoteos Kokkinos) in Europe. These publications featured the main response of the
“Greek Church” to the anti-Palamite considerations developed by Catholic scholars.
Learned confessional controversies did happen at the periphery of the Catholic and
Orthodox worlds. But one should refrain from making the mistake of Jugie and
interpreting a widespread ignorance of Palamas’s teachings in the “Église Greco-Russe”
as a de facto dismissal of these teachings (“Palamisme (controverses)”, Dic. theol. cath.,
vol. 11 [Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1932], 1810). By his own admission, Palamas had a purely
defensive understanding of the use of concepts, as the heart of the matter was not
speculative theology but hesychast practice as a concrete experience of deification. In a
situation where discussions about Palamas’s teachings were no longer topical, the embrace
of the Athonite practice of hesychasm by the wider Orthodox world manifested the most
eloquent form of approval of these teachings. From this point of view, Russell’s claim that
“Russians were slow to receive Palamas” (The Making of Palamism, 6) makes little sense.
The hesychasm of Nil Sorsky (+1508) was only the culmination point of a process
initiated by Cyprian (+1406), metropolitan of Kiev and direct disciple of the Patriarch
12

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

II. THE INVENTION OF “PALAMISM”
As mentioned earlier, Russell’s central claim is that what
broke the long silence was the publication of Martin Jugie’s
articles on Palamas and Palamism in the Dictionnaire de théologie
catholique (1932). But, according to Russell, this gesture was no
going back to square one. If he speaks of a “making” of Palamism
“in the modern era,” it is because he depicts Jugie as the one who
gave to Palamism the character of a “system” for the first time in
history: “Palamism as a ‘system’ was thus invented by Jugie as
part of the armoury of weapons he could use against the
Orthodox Church in order to undermine confidence in it as a
reliable vehicle of salvation and so encourage conversions to
Catholicism” (49). Let me briefly explain why I regard this
statement, which summarizes the whole argument of the book, as
inaccurate.
There was no “invention” of a system because there was no
“system.” It might well be the case, as Russell claims, that the

Philoteos Kokkinos a good hundred years before. Russia’s fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries witnessed a prodigious circulation of treatises related to hesychast spirituality
translated from Greek (including a few works by Palamas himself) as well as the
efflorescence of monastic life according to the Athonite pattern. Even before Cyprian, the
Synodikon issued after the defeat of Barlaam and Akyndinos in 1352, which stated the
main theses of Palamism, was almost immediately translated and integrated into the
Russian Tshin Pravoslavia (see Gelian M. Prokhorov, “Hesychasm and Social Thinking in
14th c. Eastern Europe” (“Исихазм и общественная мысль в Восточной Европе в ХIV
в”), Trudy Otdela Drevnerusskoj Literatury 23 (1968): 86-108; ”The Hesychastic
Literature from the Cells in Ancient Russia—The Transfer to the North,” in Ancient
Russian as an Historical and Cultural Phenomenon (Древняя Русь как историкокультурный феномен) (Saint Petersburg: Olega Albyshko, 2010), 215-42. These
elements, overlooked by Russell, explain the discrepancy in the Orthodox world between
the concrete spiritual integration of Palamite teachings and the obsolescence of a dogmatic
reflection on Palamism. Here lies the origin of the surprising debates among Orthodox
theologians regarding the validity of Palamas’s distinction in eighteenth-century Greece
(The Making of Palamism, 27) and nineteenth-century Russia (ibid., 34-35). But with the
development of Russian Orthodox historical scholarship (a genre borrowed from the
West and Germany in particular) towards the end of the nineteenth century, the interest
in one of the main doctrinal authorities of the Byzantine tradition was rekindled (ibid.,
33-37). As Russell shows, this rediscovery came into focus during the discussions on
Imiaslavie or the theological status of the name of the Savior (ibid., 37-44).

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633

term “Palamism” is a neologism forged by Jugie.13 But nothing
prevents a new name from designating an old reality. If what
defines a theological “system” is a “set of propositions, a coherent
body of thought” that should be judged according to the
standards of reason and Tradition (47), was Palamas not the first
to give such a form to his teaching? Did not all his adversaries,
beginning with Barlaam, continuously try to reduce his teaching
to a “(pseudo-) coherent body of thought,” so as to single out its
logical inconsistencies and its nonconformity to the tradition of
the Fathers with more ease? At times it seems that Russell
borrows his understanding of “system” from the theology that he
contrasts with what he calls “Palamism,” that is, Thomism.14 Let
us therefore ask: In what way does Jugie’s treatment of Palamas’s
teachings differ from traditional Catholic anti-Palamite argumentation, starting from Andreas Chrysoberges’s treatise “ad
sanctissimum Dominum Bessarionem”? The dogmatic heart of
Jugie’s argumentation is identical to all the previous treatises

13

However, the claim that the opponents of Palamas had no term to designate his
teachings other than “innovations” or “heresy” (see The Making of Palamism, 45) is
inaccurate. Barlaam was the first to refer to these teachings as “Messalianism” (from the
ancient heresy claiming that the physical perception of God’s essence was within the reach
of ascetics).
14
See ibid., 45: “The term ‘Palamism’ has a ring to it, suggesting a system of thought,
a counterpart to ‘Thomism’, which is precisely why Jugie adopted it.” It is true that
Palamas “had no intention of constructing a finished systematic theology in the manner
of his Western contemporaries” (ibid., 210). Scholasticism certainly implies
systematization. But if coherence is what makes a “system” according to Russell, there are
many “systems” that owe nothing to Scholasticism. Furthermore I am puzzled by the
notion that Palamas’s teaching was originally so fluid and “unfinished” that it never
became “mandatory” for the Orthodox Church in the way Aquinas’s teaching became so
after Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris (ibid). In any Church, nothing is mandatory to the degree
that dogmas are. Aeterni Patris did not proclaim any dogma. It solemnly stated the
intrinsic affinity of the mind of the Church with the theology of Aquinas. Meanwhile,
through the inclusion of decisions of the 1351 Council of Blachernae into the Synodikon
and the 1368 Tomos canonizing Palamas and his teachings, the Church of Constantinople
proclaimed dogmas of universal validity (this part of the Synodikon is still supposed “to
be read” in all churches on the Lenten “Sunday of Orthodoxy” every year, one week
before the “Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas”). Assuredly, the Church of Constantinople
did not need the help of Scholasticism to transform the teachings of Palamas into fixed
points of belief, echoing the holiness ascribed to Palamas himself.

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

pertaining to the same category: the essence of God being simple,
a distinction between essence and energies is unthinkable. One
could accuse Prochoros Cydones or Denis Petau of articulating
Palamas’s teachings along the pattern of Aquinas’s quaestiones
and articuli, but surely not Jugie. Actually, the originality of
Jugie’s treatment of Palamas derives from the fact that it is not
purely systematic. Indeed, it owes its enduring quality to the
amount of historical information it provides.
The intention of Jugie was not to instrumentalize Palamism
against the Orthodox Church. It was just the opposite. From the
time of the brothers Cydones and the brothers-friars
Chrysoberges to that of Jugie, Catholic dogmaticians would
argue that Palamism—pace Russell—being one more heresy
among all the errors contained in the Orthodox tradition, the
only way Orthodox believers could be saved was to convert
individually and join the Catholic Church. I readily admit that
this attitude shows little consideration for the venerable character
of the Orthodox tradition. But Jugie, a distinguished member of
the Assumptionist Fathers’ “Oriental Mission,” belonged to
another generation, which arose in the wake of Catholic
unionism and Orientalium dignitas (1894), Leo XIII’s encyclical
on the legitimate diversity of rites and jurisdictions within the one
Catholic and Apostolic Church. As Russell himself points out,
Jugie’s goal was not the conversion of individuals but the (re)union—whatever be the adequacy of its terms—of the Catholic
Church with Orthodox Churches as a whole.15 Describing
Palamism as a forgotten and obsolete doctrine in the Orthodox
Church, Jugie was therefore doing just the opposite of pitting the
“authentic” Catholic tradition against the “deviant” tradition of
Orthodoxy. By arguing that Palamism was an accidental and
therefore expendable feature of the Orthodox tradition, Jugie

15

See The Making of Palamism, 45-46. The same attitude transpires in Jugie’s
correspondence with Sergius Bulgakov: “With a little good will, [Jugie] feels, and
sympathetic reciprocal study, Catholics and Graeco-Russians can easily be reconciled”
(quoted in ibid., 53). By bringing members of the Orthodox Church closer to Catholicism,
Jugie entertained the hope of exerting an influence on Orthodoxy as a whole for the sake
of union.

PALAMISM AND THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION

635

thought he was working to eliminate a substantial obstacle on the
way towards the (re-)union between the Latin and Byzantine
ecclesial traditions.
To summarize: (a) Jugie did not invent the problem associated
with Palamism, and (b) Jugie’s reconstitution of Palamism does
not hide some anti-Orthodox agenda. On the contrary, if Jugie’s
articles incidentally reawoke the “real problem”—the theological
one—that had been more or less forgotten since the Council of
Florence, it is because, just like the Council of Florence itself,
Jugie’s contributions were dictated by the desire to see the Latin
West and the Orthodox West recover their ecclesial unity. But if
there is no trace in Jugie of an artificial “making” of Palamism
driven by base considerations of rivalry between the Latin and
the Byzantine traditions, what remains of Russell’s claim that the
modern approach to Palamas has been somehow biased from the
start?
Russell argues that the contributions of Jugie forced Orthodox
theologians to reply along similar apologetic and ideological
lines. Of course, Jugie’s input proved to be fruitful to some extent
as it spurred scholars such as Basil Krivoshein, Dumitru Stăniloae,
Vladimir Lossky, and Kiprian Kern to rediscover the legacy of
Palamas (56-74). The problem, according to Russell, is that these
theologians approached Palamas’s legacy through the eyes of
Jugie, that is, with attention to the rivalry between Catholicism
and Orthodoxy. From this point of view, Russell’s emphasis on
the significance of John Meyendorff’s works on Palamas and
Palamism (75-78) is probably due to the fact that, while not
directly engaging in apologetical work on behalf of the Orthodox
tradition, Meyendorff delivered a most remarkable defense of its
legitimacy through the scientific probity of his studies on
Palamas’s historical context.16
16

Given his marked emphasis on Meyendorff, Russell’s minimization of the
significance of Vladimir Lossky’s works, especially his Essai sur la théologie mystique de
l’Église d’Orient (1944), is puzzling. Russell seems to think that Lossky failed to be a
perfect representative of militant Orthodoxy due to his circle of Catholic acquaintances.
The claim that, especially in his later writings, Lossky does not conduct polemics “across
an East/West divide” (66) is hardly comprehensible. There is not a line written by Lossky
that does not reflect the issue of the East/West divide, most often in a polemical way. If

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

Undoubtedly, the ideological agenda of these theologians was
symmetrically opposite to that of Jugie. As much as Jugie was
striving to hasten the reunion between Catholicism and
Orthodoxy, they were bent on rejecting forms of uniatism that
would dissolve the authentic and original character of the
Orthodox tradition. This common conviction led them to
overturn Jugie’s judgment on the place of Palamas within
Orthodox tradition: in contrast to Jugie’s claim that Palamism
was an “accident” in the development of this tradition, they put
forward the claim that it was connected to its very heart, so that
Orthodoxy would be unthinkable without Palamas’s teachings.
This stance was accompanied by a dismissal of the Western idea
that Palamism is a heresy. While refraining from throwing back
the accusation of heresy at Western theology in general and
Thomism in particular, they argued that the Latin tradition,
entangled in its narrow rationalism, was incapable of grasping the
superior, “antinomic” truth of Palamism.
The ball was thrown into the Western camp, and it was not
long before it was kicked in the opposite direction again. Taking
their cue from Charles Journet’s review of Meyendorff’s
magisterial study of Palamas, a group of Dominicans led by
Marie- Joseph Le Guillou and Jean-Miguel Garrigues published
a series of articles that questioned the concept of participation in
Palamas’s writings, and the fidelity of his thought to that of the
Fathers (see 24 and 88-91). The heated discussion regarding the
status of Palamas’s teachings had begun. It is still very much
raging.17
The fundamental question is this: Should we say with Russell
that, due to its being connected with specific ecclesiological
agendas, the reviviscence of the controversy between Catholic

anything, it is precisely Lossky’s plea for the irreducible otherness of the Orthodox
tradition that drew Catholic intellectuals to him. The admission that Lossky is a “towering
figure” comes only briefly at the very end of the book (239).
17
I will discuss several other more or less contemporary contributions to the debate in
the third and last part of this review.

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637

and Orthodox theologians regarding the doctrine of Palamas is
likely to limit or distort our access to his authentic thought?18
The notion that, when dealing with the issue of Palamism, the
rivalry between the Latin West and the Byzantine East indicated
a new parameter, artificially introduced by Jugie, is misleading.
As mentioned earlier, the entanglement of Palamism with the
rivalry between East and West preceded the contributions of
Jugie by more than five hundred years. The fact is that, far from
concealing the thought of Palamas, this rivalry pertains to the
heart of the problem. Palamism as a theological issue is about the
nature of the distance between Byzantine tradition and Latin
tradition as essentially represented by Thomism. The most
fundamental mistake of Russell’s book is the confusion between
what reveals the issue of Palamism and what creates it.19 Merely
delving into the writings of Palamas, as Russell does in the second
part of his book (“Raising the Wider Issues”), will not offer a
solution to a problem that involves as much the content and
method of Thomism as the teachings of Palamas. It takes two to
tango, just as to provoke a clash. In addition to understanding
18
See The Making of Palamism, 212: “The main obstacle [to understanding Palamas’
true thinking] is the polemical use which has often been made of Palamas by both proPalamite and anti-Palamite scholars. In many cases, this is based on the persuasive
constructions of Palamism by Jugie, Lossky, or Meyendorff rather than on a first-hand
acquaintance with Palamas himself.”
19
This confusion is manifest in Russell’s analysis of Stăniloae’s attitude towards
Palamism. In the preface to his Dogmatic Theology (1938), Stăniloae writes: “The
hesychast controversy was the most important episode in the history of Orthodox
spirituality after the patristic era. This controversy came about through a collision
between Western scholasticism, which had already reached its final form in the fourteenth
century, and traditional Eastern religious thought, and led to the final sharpening and
formulation of Orthodoxy’s doctrinal characteristics and its position in relation to the
new thinking of Western Europe” (quoted in The Making of Palamism, 61). Russell speaks
of the “apologetic intention” that Stăniloae betrays here when he “portrays the hesychast
controversy in ideological terms as a clash between Western scholasticism, as personified
by Barlaam, and the Eastern patristic tradition, as summarized by Palamas” (ibid., 62).
But how could a theological problem (the apparent incompatibility between Aquinas’s and
Palamas’s respective understandings of divine simplicity) be discarded as an ideological
construct? The problem is that this specific theological problem is at the core of the
nonreception of Palamas in the West since the time of Demetrios Cydones. Denying its
authenticity is hardly compatible with the attempt at making this reception any easier.

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

Palamas, one must understand Aquinas as one strives to get to the
bottom of the discrepancy described by the Orthodox theologians who opposed Jugie and his followers. At no point,
however, does Russell show willingness to elaborate on the
original thought of Aquinas. This oversight is a major problem,
for one cannot try to bring Palamas closer to the Western
tradition, establishing his teachings as an “inheritance for all
Christians,” as Russell claims to do, if at the same time one shies
away from looking into what makes it so difficult for this
tradition to accept Palamas’s teachings.
In summary, there is no denying that the confrontation
between the position of Jugie and those of his Orthodox opponents is what sets the scene for contemporary research on
Palamas. But this confrontation is certainly not about an artificial
problem that would be the product of these authors’ antithetic
ecclesiological visions and goals. It is about a “real theological
problem,” going back to the latter part of the fourteenth century.
And it is the authenticity of this problem that makes the results
of modern research on Palamism so interesting to assess.
III. REFLECTING ON THE CONCLUSIONS OF MODERN
SCHOLARSHIP ON PALAMAS AND PALAMISM
New editions and translations of Palamas’s works (98-101)
and of treatises written by his teachers, disciples, and adversaries
(on the penetration of Thomism into the polemic among other
topics, see 108-11), as well as research on the historical context
of the quarrels around Palamism in Byzantium (for Rigo on
fourteenth-century Bogomilism and the condemnation of
Prochoros Cydones, and Nadal on Akyndinos, see 101-7), on the
intellectual environment (Pachymeres, Metochites, Chumnos,
etc.), and on the philosophical structure of Palamas’s thinking
(112-20) owe their origin, at least partly, to the curiosity
generated by the revival of the Palamitic quarrel during the first
half of the twentieth century. Russell does not argue that these
scientific works necessarily partake of what he describes as the
biased, ideological approach associated with the revival of an
ancient theological dispute. On the contrary, to the extent that

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639

they are scientific, these editions and studies should help us to
unveil the real doctrine of Palamas beyond confessional
prejudices. But in what sense do they effectively fulfill their
promises? In order to answer this question, one needs to recount
the evolution of this disputatio rediviva in recent literature.
It is not until the end of the book (chap. 8, “Could Palamas
Become ‘The Inheritance of All Christians’?” and the
“Concluding Reflections”) that Russell delves into the substance
of the most recent discussion on Palamism. He goes in search of
a “translation into modern concepts” of Palamas’s “distinctions”
in the hope of transcending ecclesial controversies and opening
even non-Orthodox minds to the theological and spiritual riches
of Palamas’s teachings (213). The postulate is that a “translation”
faithful to the original will eventually overcome the theological
prejudices of non-Orthodox readers of Palamas.20 But what if it
does not? What if faithfulness to the original only deepens the
gap between the Orthodox tradition and the Western theological
tradition(s)? However much Russell tries to justify his postulate,
there is no evidence that he succeeds in rebutting the opposite
claim.
The praise of Palamas’s teachings as essentially superior to the
narrow horizon of Scholasticism is not the prerogative of
Orthodox theologians such as Christos Yannaras (92, 221-23,
239-40) or David Bradshaw (12, 116, 227-28). It is also the
position of several Western philosophers and theologians such as
Georges Barrois (91) and Manuel Sumares (217-18). But how can
the dismissal of the Western tradition in the name of Palamism
bring Palamas closer to the Western tradition?
Conversely, criticism of Palamas’s teachings, coming either
from Catholic and Anglican theologians such as John Milbank
(223-25) or from a Greek philosopher such as Stelios Ramfos

20

At any rate, Torstein Tollefsen’s suggestion to translate Palamas’s energeia as
“activity” or “operation” will not solve the issue associated with the distinction between
the latter and the divine essence (see 16 n. 64).

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

(218-21), are unlikely to make these teachings more palatable to
Western Christians.21
Orthodox theologians (Amphilochios Radović on the Trinity
[121-24], Stavros Yangazoglou on communion and theosis [12628]) and Catholic scholars (Louis Bouyer on Palamas’s
connection with patristic tradition [81-84], Jacques Lison on the
Holy Spirit [124-25]) might have interesting things to say about
specific aspects of Palamas’s theology. But bluntly reaffirming the
supreme relevance of Palamas’s distinction, or ignoring its
problematic aspects from a Western point of view, will not
answer the question raised by Iltyd Trethowan regarding
Palamas’s energies being “severally and individually the whole
God, God in his entirety,” namely, “Must we accept these
paradoxes?” (93).22
Kallistos Ware may argue that any language about God is “by
way of symbol, image and analogy” (95), and John Zizioulas may
minimize the importance of Palamas’s distinctions in Orthodox
tradition seen as a whole (240). But how is this toning down
supposed to bring the teachings of Palamas any closer to a
tradition that has developed its own language about God, a
language apparently at odds with the Byzantine Doctor’s
dogmatic distinctions?
Russell’s final proposal consists of a plea in favor of
theological pluralism—a pluralism that “does not necessarily
entail relativism” (241). Non-Orthodox Christianity should see
in Palamas’s teachings one way among others of accounting for

21
Milbank’s attempt to contrast the merits of Sergius Bulgakov’s sophiology with the
problematic character of Palamas is futile, in spite of what Russell claims. Sophiology is
not an alternative to the faithfulness to Palamas professed by the whole of Orthodoxy. As
noted in the book, Bulgakov himself acknowledged the legitimacy of Palamas’s
distinction, considering it as a preparatory step to the advent of sophiology (51). One
should add that Bulgakov’s sophiology, unlike Palamas’s doctrine, failed to become part
of the official teaching of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, it became the object of two
solemn condemnations: once by the Moscow Patriarchate (August 1935) and once by its
dissident branch, the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (October 1935).
22
This is also the point of view of Rowan Williams, who holds that the Orthodox
“ontologization” of the distinction presents an irreducible logical paradox (The Making
of Palamism, 93-94).

PALAMISM AND THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION

641

salvation in Christ, one that has many spiritual riches to share.
The last sentence of the book reads, “If Western Christians could
learn likewise to see Palamas as a particular attempt within a
specific context to articulate a vision of divine-human communion, he would enter more fully into Western debates on the
relationship between divine transcendence and divine immanence, freed from the ideological constructions placed upon him
in the past” (242). A “particular attempt” that is valid for “a
particular context”: how does such a pluralism differ from a flatly
self-contradictory type of relativism? If Palamas’s vision of God
and divine participation claims to be true, how could this be a
“particular truth” that would somehow coexist with other
“particular truths” incompatible with it? A universal Truth that
admits of the simultaneous coexistence in itself of incompatible
truths is no Truth at all. If A and non-A can simultaneously be
said to be true, nothing—no single proposition in the world—can
be said to be true. Honoring Palamas’s authentic vision, freed
from “ideological reconstructions,” can hardly consist of
minimizing its claim to be unequivocally true.
Russell unfortunately fails to distinguish between the notion
of pluralism and that of complementarity. The principle of
pluralism implies that incompatible doctrines or theories can be
true at the same time. By contrast, the principle of complementarity claims that two doctrines or theories can point to an
identical truth described from two different angles (one might
think of Ernest Bohr’s “complementary principle” applied to the
wave/particle duality). Already in 1970, the Anglican theologian
Eric Mascall observed that Aquinas and Palamas had two of their
main “bêtes noires” in common, namely, essentialism and
nominalism (83). However, there was a priori little to justify the
equivalence Mascall established between Aquinas’s notion of
Being and Palamas’s concept of energy. Without bringing
forward a better principle of equivalence, André de Halleux, a
Catholic patristic scholar, was the first to theorize the
“complementarity approach” (87). Anna Ngaire Williams, Bruce
D. Marshall (215), and I (228) have followed in de Halleux’s
footsteps. The question is, how can this fundamental coincidence
between Thomism and Palamism be demonstrated? It is at this

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

point that the scientific studies of Palamas’s writings and the
context of Palamitic quarrels have a role to play in providing a
solution to what I am calling the “real problem.”
According to Russell, “one of the most striking new
discoveries” coming from the research on Palamitic quarrels is
the integration of Thomistic argumentation into the works of
Palamas’s disciples (109). Indeed, the first reaction of proPalamite theologians like Neilos Kabasilas (+1363) was to
disprove Aquinas, a stance that was later embraced by many other
pro-Palamite thinkers (Demetrios Crisoloras, Kallistos Angelikudes, Matteos A. Panaretos, etc.). From this point of view,
Ioannis Polemis’s exploration of the thinking of Theophanes,
metropolitan of Nicaea, led to very remarkable conclusions (see
The Making of Palmaism, 109-10) Writing against Prochoros
Cydones a few years before, and after, the latter’s condemnation
(1368), Theophanes turns the whole line of argumentation of his
opponent upside down, showing that the writings of Aquinas
could be used to justify Palamas’s distinctions. According to
Theophanes, the divine energies of God are perfectly compatible
with the temporality of their created productions, since they
reflect God’s bouvlhsi" (deliberative agency that fixes a beginning
and an end) and not his qevlhsi" (the eternal expression of his
will).23 Meanwhile, Theophanes claims, in a very Thomistic

23
Russell writes: “Theophanes’ distinction between an absolute non-relational energy
and a finite relational energy (finite because it ceased to operate on the seventh day of
creation) is not found in Palamas” (111). Coming from a Palamas scholar, statements of
this kind are perplexing. In the Triads, one finds the well-known passage that reads as
follows: “The wise Maximus [the Confessor] thus rightly says that ‘existence, life, holiness
and virtue are works of God that do not have a beginning in time’. . . . We say [God] is
life, goodness and so forth, and give Him these names, because of the revelatory energies
and powers of the Superessential. . . . There are, however, energies of God which have a
beginning and an end, as all the saints will confirm . . . we for our part know that while
all the energies of God are uncreated, not all are without beginning. Indeed, beginning
and end must be ascribed, if not to the creative power itself, then at least to its activity,
that is to say, to its energy as directed towards created things” (The Triads 3.2.7 and 8
[ed. J. Payne J. Meyendorff (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1983), 96, emphasis added]).
The expression kataV taV dedhmiourghmevna (“directed towards created things”) in the last
sentence is particularly remarkable. The preposition implies both “motion from above”
and “in relation to,” “after the fashion of” (Liddell and Scott). Energies that “have a

PALAMISM AND THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION

643

manner, that God’s intellect and God’s essence are one. It seems
that, according to Theophanes, the distinction-separation between God’s essence and energies has to do with the manner in
which God produces a temporal cosmos.
This position would be in line with the tendency, analyzed by
John Demetracopoulos, of the disciples of Palamas to conceive
Palamas’s distinction as a diakrisis kat’ epinoian, a conceptual
distinction associated with the finiteness of created minds as they
approach the nontemporal, uncreated infinity of their Creator
(118-20).24 In this sense, the distinction would derive from the
manner in which Palamites envisage the interaction between God
and the cosmos, the uncreated Creator and creatures elevated to
the vision of the Uncreated. It can be argued that Palamas
conceives this interaction in a manner opposite to that of
Aquinas, theocentrically and not anthropocentrically. A diakrisis
kat’epinoian would of course exculpate Aquinas from
introducing composition within God himself. But can one ascribe
this position to Palamas? Demetracopoulos argues that Palamas’s
disciples watered down the objective, ontological character of the
distinction in his thinking. However, as Russell points out,
Palamas himself denied that his distinction would imply the
possibility of a “severance or division” between energy and
essence and that speaking of a “lower divinity” and a “higher
divinity” entails composition in God (119).25
beginning and an end” are relative to the diastema, the spatio-temporal dimension of
created things, in contrast to the absolute and eternal emanations from God’s essence that
correspond to the divine attributes (Goodness, Life, etc.).
24
Demetracopoulos writes: “the Palamites felt it necessary to soften the harsh Palamite
distinction between God’s essence and ‘energies’ as well as between the various ‘energies’
themselves and adopted the Patristic idea that God is simple ex parte objecti but multiple
ex parte subjecti kat’ ejpivnoian or logw/~ (i.e., conceptually or by reason); and they
interpreted Palamas’ distinctions this way” (“Palamas Transformed: Palamite
Interpretations of the Distinction between God’s ‘Essence’ and ‘Energies’ in Late
Byzantium,” in Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History, 1204-1500, ed. M. Hinterberger,
C. D. Schabel, and P. Kyprou [Leuven and Walpole, Mass.: Peeters, 2011], 263-372, at
264).
25
Among contemporary Orthodox theologians, Torstein Tollefsen (117) and Nicholas
Loudovikos (224) emphasize the aspect of real ontological continuity between divine
essence and energy in Palamas’s writings.

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ANTOINE LÉVY, O.P.

Besides, it is not true that Palamas’s disciples were satisfied
with borrowing from Demetrios Cydones’s translations a notion
of diakrisis kat’epinoian that corresponds to Aquinas’s distinctio
rationis. The formula that one finds in the writings of Nilus
Cabasilas, Philoteos Kokkinos, Johannes Kantakuzenos and
others is more complex: “the distinction [between the essence
and the energy] is notional whereas the union [between the same]
is real, hJ meVn diavkrisi" ejpinoiva/, hJ deVV e{vnwsi" pragmatikhv.”26
Union implies the distinction of the two parts that unite, but this
union is real; distinction implies the possibility of separating
between two elements, but this distinction is merely in the mind.
In point of fact, Palamites do not borrow this definition from
Cydones, but from sixth-century dyothelite Christological
treatises.27 The notion that the distinction refers to a reality in
God, while any sort of separation derives from the finiteness of
the created minds considering God, corresponds literally to
Aquinas’s notion of distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re, a
distinction that Aquinas applies to God’s eternal attributes.28
That Palamas’s emphasis on the distinction between God’s
essence and energies derives from a theocentric account of God’s
interaction with the temporal world, while Aquinas’s emphasis
on the unity between God’s essence and action ad extra has to do
with an anthropocentric understanding of the same, is a hypothesis that could provide a solution to what I am calling the “real
problem” of Palamism. What matters is that Aquinas does not
conceive this unity without a distinction inscribed in the reality
of God, while Palamas believes that any composition in God
derives from the finiteness of created minds considering the
divine reality.
26
Nilus Cabasilas, Lovgo" suvntomo", 12, line 9 in M. Candal, “La ‘Regla teológica’ de
Nilo Cabásilas,” Orientalia christiana periodica 23 (1957): 240-56; Philoteos Kokkinos,
Antirrhetici duodecim contra Gregoram, Or,5, line 1305, in D. V. Kaimakes, ed.,
Filoqevou Kokkivnou dogmatikaV e[rga Mevro" A ,v Thessalonian Byzantine Writers 3
(Thessalonica: Centre for Byzantine Research, 1983), 19-515.
27
See my “Lost in Translation: Diakrisis kat’epinoian as a Main Issue in the Discussions
between Fourteenth-Century Palamites and Thomists,” The Thomist 76 (2012): 431-71.
28
See I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. 1 regarding the distinction cum fundamento in re itself;
I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3 regarding the distinction as applied to divine attributes.

PALAMISM AND THE WESTERN THEOLOGICAL TRADITION

645

At any rate, Russell’s book offers the proof that theological
pluralism is incapable of bringing Jugie’s “Palamism” closer to
the Western tradition. Continuously straddling the fence between
faithfulness to the “purity” of Palamas’s thinking and loose
formulations that might sound amicable to Western theologians
is not a win-win but a lose-lose undertaking, at least from the
standpoint of conceptual coherence. The future belongs to
rigorous theological inquiry—more than it ever did in the past.

BOOK REVIEWS
Dieu, “Celui qui est” (De Deo ut uno). By SERGE-THOMAS BONINO, O.P. Paris:
Parole et silence, 2016. Pp. 922. €39.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-2-88918772-0.
Written by the current secretary of the International Theological Commission and president of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, this
immense book on the treatise De Deo ut uno of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae is
one of the most important advances of Thomistic scholarship and analysis to
appear in recent decades. The book consists of five sections, encompassing
nineteen chapters. The first section consists of a methodological prologue of
three chapters on, respectively, the God of the Old Testament, the natural
knowledge of God, and the place of the treatise De Deo ut uno within
Aquinas’s larger speculative work of Trinitarian theology. The second section
consists of two chapters that examine Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of
God in question 2 of the Prima pars. The third section consists of five chapters
that cover the divine attributes from questions 3-11: simplicity, perfection,
goodness, immutability, eternity, and so on. The fourth section consists of two
chapters that examine Aquinas’s doctrine of knowledge of God, the beatific
vision, divine naming, and analogy in questions 12-13. The fifth section
consists of seven chapters that examine the life of God, namely, his
knowledge, will, love, mercy, justice, and power, topics covered in questions
14-21 and 25. The book is simultaneously historical and analytic, in the sense
that it seeks both to depict the nature of Aquinas’s understanding of God
within his medieval theological context and to interpret and analyze the
content of the Thomistic positions in view of making normative truth claims.
The book is obviously extensive in scope and impressive in this respect. It
does manage to treat effectively and in depth the whole treatise De Deo ut
uno, and frequently includes encyclopedic references to historical context and
secondary literature. (Providence and predestination are omitted from the
book, seemingly because they enter so deeply into other theological contexts,
particularly regarding grace and free will.) More significant to this reader,
however, is the methodology. The author’s treatment of Aquinas is historically
nuanced, but even in being so, it seeks above all to be analytically compelling.
That is to say, Thomistic arguments about God are consistently presented as
intellectually compelling and rationally warranted in a contemporary context.
To seek to interweave the historical and analytic elements in this way is clearly
quite ambitious. Furthermore, the author engages with a number of classical
647

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and contemporary debates while conducting his commentary. Significant
examples include Barth on natural knowledge of God, Rahner’s critique of the
treatise De Deo ut uno in Thomistic theology, the critique of metaphysics as
ontotheology in Heidegger and Marion (to which strong rejoinders are
offered), Scholastic discussions of God’s omnipresent immediacy (Bañez’s
theory in relation to Scotus, Cajetan, and Ferrara), criticisms of divine immutability in modern process theology, tactful criticism of de Lubac on the
natural desire for God, Aquinas’s use of analogical terms to name God (the
diverse views of Montagnes, Gilson, and Maritain), problems with Molina on
“middle knowledge,” and soteriological responses to contemporary criticisms
of divine omnipotence (only an all-powerful God can save us). This list is
more indicative than exhaustive. Clearly, the book is primarily an exposition
of the teaching of Aquinas on God, but the author’s interlocutions along the
way frequently contribute to the cumulative integrity of his argument for
Thomistic veracity, rather than detracting from it.
Detailed commentary on each section of the book is not possible, but some
sections merit particular mention so as to indicate typical characteristics of the
whole. The second section of the book is especially significant. Bonino’s treatment of Aquinas’s famous five ways is 101 pages long and constitutes, in this
reader’s opinion, one of the finest historical and analytic treatments of the
arguments available in recent scholarship. The text treats the notion of a
“demonstration” first within the medieval context by distinguishing Aquinas’s
approach from that of Anselm or Bonaventure and then by looking at the
structure of the Aristotelian demonstration as Aquinas intends it (quia a
posteriori). In his treatment of the first way, Bonino considers an array of
technical textual and historical questions: Is the argument derived from
Aristotle’s Physics 7 or 8 or Metaphysics 12, and is it a metaphysical argument
as such or one pertaining to the philosophy of nature? Does it seek to terminate in the knowledge of God as pure actuality—and if so, how? What is
the medieval and philosophical notion of change under consideration, and
why ought we to countenance it? How should we understand the principle of
nonregression to the infinite as Aquinas employs it? The analysis of secondary
literature and of parallel texts in this treatment of the prima via is impressive.
In his treatment of the second way, the author argues that the efficient
causality in question pertains to existence, so that the closest parallel to the
argument of De ente et essentia from the real distinction of esse and essentia in
creatures is the second way, not the third. In the treatment of the third way,
he debates against those commentators who take the argument to be concerned with metaphysical contingency in all created realities and sees it instead
as concerned with the possible and the necessary, beginning with the
experience of material contingency in physical realities that by nature are not
ontologically necessary. The fourth way is treated in some detail, as concerned
with the transcendental features of being, which of themselves imply no
necessary sense of limit or finitude. The scale of perfection in the order of
being, truth, and goodness implies a primary measure that does not fall within
the register of finitude itself. In his treatment of the fifth way, the author

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offers a prolonged historical explanation and philosophical defense of the
metaphysical notion of natural appetite in things and examines the relation of
the four causes to one another, so as to argue that efficient causality in nature
implies an intelligible form of teleology present in various ways in all things.
As he treats these various arguments, Bonino engages reasonably with the
interpretive views of modern authors such as Gilson, van Steenberghen,
Wippel, Elders, and Dewan, but also of classical commentators such as
Sylvester of Ferrara and Bañez.
The section on divine naming and analogy (chap. 12) is also conceptually
dense. Having examined Aquinas’s interpretation of Denys the Areopagite on
threefold naming in its historical context as well as Aquinas’s doctrine of
signification, Bonino traces Aquinas’s distinction between negative, relative,
and positive absolute terms for God. He then goes on to consider the medieval
polemical concern, in which the threat Aquinas perceives regarding divine
discourse is more properly the equivocity theory stemming from Maimonides
than univocity theory, which comes into ascendancy only after Aquinas’s
death. Bonino posits a genealogical development in analogical predication for
God from the Scriptum (I Sent., d. 35, q. 1, a. 4) to De veritate (q. 11, a. 2) to
the Summa (I, q. 13, a. 5). He sees a gradual evolution from analogy duorum
ad tertium to the privileged use of the analogy of proper proportionality (in
De veritate) to the mature decision to emphasize analogical proportion
between effect and cause. In all three instances, however, Aquinas is sensitive
to the importance of effectuating a procedure of divine naming that allows
one to respect the utter transcendence of God, while still maintaining the
possibility of proper attribution of terms to denote God’s very essence. We do
not have quidditative (a priori) knowledge of God, but we do have knowledge
of God’s quiddity. The chapter concludes with a nuanced examination of the
analogical naming of God in Gilson and Maritain and a summary of the
author’s views, derived from the textual and historical analysis of the chapter.
Although each of the chapters on divine attributes are substantive as textual
commentaries and engage in modern debate, we may highlight chapter 17,
which treats the love and mercy of God. Following Aquinas, Bonino examines
why mercy is best understood as a dimension of love, insofar as God in his
goodness takes account of the finitude, limitation, and suffering of his
creatures. This notion of mercy has sufficient analogical amplitude that it can
be applied in some way to all the works of God in regard to creatures.
However, understood in this light, mercy is not a pure perfection of God, as
John of St. Thomas notes, since it is foregrounded in the effects of God’s love
in creatures (708). This analysis, which underscores the maximal sense in
which God is merciful in all things, is a prelude to the examination of modern
theories of divine suffering, which the author subjects to criticism, treating
Moltmann in particular as a test case. As Bonino notes, modern passibilist
discourse often fails to understand the classical function of impassibilist
discourse in the patristic tradition. It effectively undermines the integrity of
the Chalcedonian confession of faith regarding the two natures of Christ since
it ignores the Church’s doctrinal affirmation of the immutability (and

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therefore real presence of!) the Trinitarian God present as God in Christ
crucified. It leads to the attribution to God of economic-historical attributes
from creatures and, in this sense, refabricates mythological conceptions of the
divine. Finally, it risks divinizing suffering as something pertaining essentially
to love, even within God, and as a condition of his eternal perfection. Bonino
is effectively critical of the late views of Maritain on this point (714-15).
If I have any reservation about this book, it has mainly to do with the first
chapter, which examines the question of the historical revelation of God to
Israel. There, the author adopts a conventional account of recent continental
Old Testament exegetes, marked by a sharply developmental understanding of
ancient Israelite religion, in which a primitive Yahwism elaborated within a
polytheistic matrix eventually gave rise through a religious society of prophetic leaders to a tribal Yahwism, one that eventually only in the Deuteronomic reform was thematized in terms of exclusive worship (monolatry), and
only after the Exile evolved into theoretical monotheism. Modern scholars
like de Vaux have articulated a version of the developmental thesis that is
compatible with belief in the historical election of Israel. Nevertheless, one
can wonder about the epistemic warrant for the contemporary trend, which
tends to create Israel virtually out of nothing at the Exile. Genetic hypotheses
of this kind are by their very nature highly conjectural, and tend to have
tenuous academic staying power. Ancient Israelite religion cannot be
explained merely as a gradual development of the surrounding cultures, even
from a merely rational point of view, since Israelites clearly came over time to
differentiate their views systematically and critically from those of their
neighbors, precisely in terms of prophetic revelation. Most fundamentally,
from the standpoint of theological discourse, no modern reconstruction will
allow us adequately to grasp the proper object of revelation in the Old
Testament other than the inspired text itself, which serves as the unique
supernatural witness to a concrete history of prophecy, one that is normative
for the faith.
This unique reservation aside, Bonino’s book constitutes a major
accomplishment. It is no doubt the most important and comprehensive
commentary on Aquinas’s treatment of the divine attributes written in quite
some time. Anyone interested in medieval philosophy and theology generally,
in the study of Aquinas specifically, or in the viability of Thomism as a living
tradition of thought will profit greatly from reading this book.
THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum)
Rome, Italy

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Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
By REINHARD HÜTTER. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2019. Pp. viii + 129. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-08132-3177-8.
The aim of this “small book” by Reinhard Hütter is to offer an answer to
the “widespread, albeit mainly soft, agnosticism” regarding “this most central
mystery” (2) of the Catholic faith. The root causes for this agnosticism lie,
according to Hütter, in the uncertainty regarding the fundamentals of
Catholic theology (Scripture, Fathers, dogma, Magisterium) as well as in
mistrust about the intellect’s ability to contemplate, with the light of faith, the
revealed mysteries. If this insight is correct, and I think it is, it indeed offers an
intrinsic reason to return to St. Thomas (Ite ad Thomam) in order to find an
“integral unity of the positive and the speculative components of sacred
theology” (5). Central to such a unity is a robust, realist metaphysics able to
receive natural and supernatural reality.
The book contains five chapters, dealing with (1) the scriptural foundations
of the mystery of the Eucharist, (2) the Magisterium, (3) the Eucharistic
conversion, (4) Christ’s passion and its extension by way of sacramental
signification, and (5) friendship with Christ through the Eucharist. All this is
supplemented with four appendices dealing with historical and systematical
objections, followed by some twenty-five pages of often extensive endnotes
(81-116). As a whole, the book can be read as detailed analysis of and
commentary on questions 75-77 of the Tertia pars.
Sacra doctrina is founded upon the act of faith resting on divine authority
and embracing the truth as proposed in sacred Scripture. Only after “being
taught by divine revelation” (STh I, q. 1, a. 1)—not by human conjectures on
cultural, societal, psychological, and other determining conditions—only after
having listened to God through revelation, is one then able to do theology. In
the first chapter, Hütter brilliantly connects these insights from the opening
question of the Summa with question 75, article 1 of the Tertia pars, where St.
Thomas begins his argument for the Real Presence by considering first the
salvific significance of that presence. This comparative analysis reveals that
“sacra doctrina is first and foremost the act of faith adhering to the first truth
(God) in the concrete instance of its self-communication as apostolically
mediated and interpreted by the doctrina Ecclesiae” (14-15). This is the
foundation for Hütter’s dismissal of modern quests for the historical words of
Jesus during the Last Supper (13). While I agree on this specific point, it
would be unfair to both St. Thomas and Hütter if this dismissal leads to the
suggestion that St. Thomas or medieval biblical exegesis in general is not
aware of or does not engage in textual criticism. His biblical commentaries
contain numerous instances of such an engagement.
The second chapter discusses recent magisterial texts, in particular Paul
VI’s encyclical Mysterium Fidei (1965) and John Paul II’s encyclical Ecclesia de
Eucharistia (2003) and their continuity with Trent. Of central importance
here is Hütter’s argument that these magisterial texts presuppose a

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“prephilosophical apprehension of reality” (24) and in particular a “common
knowledge of substance” (25).
This brings us to the pièce de résistance of the book, chapter 3 on
“Eucharistic Conversion and the Categories ‘Substance’ and ‘Quantity.’” In
less than thirty pages (27-56) Hütter fully displays his well-known ability to
provide a careful reading of St. Thomas’s text in light of modern and
contemporary objections. He first defends the naturalness of the subsistence of
contingent substances and their accidents. Next, he discusses the question of
whether bread is a natural substance and provides the insightful analogy of
cloning to argue that an artificial thing in which human intervention is not
essential but merely conducive for its existence is a natural substance. The real
distinction between substance and the first accident of quantity provides the
argument for the nonidentity of substance and quantity and therefore the
possibility of conversion of the former and not the latter. In the next section,
he discusses real concomitance in order to bring out Christ’s personal
presence. This brings us to the presence of the dimensive quantity of Christ’s
body and the real distinction between the two formal effects as developed
more explicitly by the Thomist tradition. It is this latter distinction—or, more
precisely, the logical separability of the two effects of dimensive quantity—
that enables a noncontradictory account of Eucharistic conversion. At this
point Hütter leads the reader to an insightful remark by Garrigou-Lagrange
warning against wanting to arrive at an excessive explication of this mystery
(n. 118).
The next chapter takes up sacramental signification as applied to
Eucharistic conversion. The Eucharistic species indicate Christ’s real and
substantial presence when they are gazed upon by the intellect commanded by
the will to assent to the truth of the words of consecration. Because the intellect is directed to knowledge of the nonsensible substance, such an intellect
is not deceived by faith but is rather preserved from deception. The fifth and
final chapter deals with the mystical body of Christ as the primordial effect of
the unifying presence of Christ in the faithful. The first appendix examines the
absence of the Fourth Lateran Council’s decree Firmiter in question 75 of the
Tertia pars. The second appendix explores the relation between fidelity to
God and obedience to the teaching authority of the Church. In the third
appendix, Hütter argues that Trent accepted not only the terminology
regarding transubstantiation but also its underlying metaphysical principles.
The final appendix expands on this claim in so far as it is argued that without
the metaphysical notions of and principles of being, of form and matter, of
substance and accident, it becomes almost impossible (“it is very hard, if not
impossible” [79]) to give expression to the Eucharistic mystery in a coherent
and intelligent way, so that the contemplative gaze of the eyes of faith is
strengthened and nourished. The same would be the case in Christology
regarding the notions of person, relation, nature, and so on. This claim is less
controversial than it seems if one holds to the Thomistic idea of theology as
sacra doctrina and if one understands these notions and principles as making
explicit man’s natural intelligence.

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One could quibble about the claim that in describing substance and
accidents St. Thomas departs from the central tenets of Aristotle’s metaphysics
of substance in favor of a metaphysics of creation (30-31), but a short review
is not the place to go into St. Thomas’s reception of Aristotle on this matter.
Hütter’s “opuscule” requires patient and diligent reading, not only because
of its density but also because of its aim, which is to provide both a robust
defense and an intellectual manuductio towards a prayerful gaze at the
Eucharistic mystery and its relation to the whole of the Catholic faith. In
arguing for a specifically Thomistic intellectus fidei on the basis of Aristotelian
principles, Hütter’s arguments are both passionate and lucid. He also brings to
the table an important number of often-forgotten authors from other
languages. His mastery of these texts and the theological stakes are impressive.
In short, the book has all the hallmarks of what one has come to expect from
such a distinguished Thomist. Undoubtedly, many students and teachers will
intellectually and spiritually profit from the book, not at least in a time when
faith in the Real Presence is declining, and many are, due to circumstances,
forced to revisit their active participation in the Eucharist. This reviewer
would welcome, by way of a follow-up, a similar volume on Aquinas on the
Eucharistic sacrifice. It is fitting to conclude here with St. Thomas himself,
that is to say, with a quotation that exemplifies the same biblical, systematic,
and spiritual density and passion as the book under review. Commenting on
Hebrews 10:20, “A new and living way which he has dedicated for us through
the veil, that is to say, his flesh,” St. Thomas writes: “For faith in the godhead
is not enough without faith in the Incarnation: you believe in God, believe
also in me (John 14:1). Or, through the veil, i.e., through his flesh given to us
under the veil of the appearance of bread in the sacrament” (In Hebr., c. 10,
lect. 2).
JÖRGEN VIJGEN
Philosophical-Theological Institute St. Willibrord
Heiloo, The Netherlands

Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity. By ANTONIA FITZPATRICK. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. viii + 203. $90.00 (hard). ISBN:
978-0-19-879085-3.
A substantial debate has been prolonged in recent years over Aquinas’s
theory of the continuity between (a) the human being in this life, (b) her soul
surviving death, and (c) the resurrected human being in the eschaton. Regarding the transition from (a) to (b), is Aquinas a corruptionist (holding that
at death one kind of substance is replaced by another), or a survivalist (holding
that the human person survives but in a radically mutilated state)? Even more

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puzzling, and correspondingly less studied, is the relationship between (a) and
(c). What does it take for the resurrected human being to be authentically me?
The difficulty for readers of Aquinas is this: His hylomorphic metaphysics
seems to entail that having the same substantial form (soul) should be enough
to preserve the numerical identity between my body now and my resurrected
body in the future. Yet Aquinas insists that, additionally, my resurrected body
must contain at least some of the “numerically same matter” as it has now. But
what could possibly guarantee the sameness of the matter, if not its form? The
question of what identifies a body as numerically one across time is important
not only for resurrection, but also for other areas of Aquinas’s metaphysics of
bodies, including the status of prime matter as opposed to “proper matter,”
the role of “indeterminate dimensions” in individuation, and his rejection of a
so-called form of bodiliness (forma corporeitatis) in favor of a single substantial form for a single body.
With Thomas Aquinas on Bodily Identity, Antonia Fitzpatrick has written
the first book devoted to this problem of “bodily identity” in Aquinas. The
book’s appeal consists in the refreshingly context-sensitive lens it brings to
these topics. Fitzpatrick contextualizes Aquinas’s account of bodily identity in
relation to the sources (especially Aristotle and Averroës) that helped shape
that account. She also introduces problems such as embryology and generation, whose relevance to his account of bodily identity has generally been
overlooked. This approach generates big expectations: Fitzpatrick claims to
discover in Aquinas a movement toward a kind of quasi-mathematical structure to matter. This movement, she claims, shows Aquinas’s keenness to give
the body its “autonomy” from the soul.
These promises, however, are not fully borne out. Interpretively, the book
actually hews quite close to the standard scholarly understanding of Aquinas’s
account of individuation and identity. With respect to the overarching
narrative concerning the body’s “autonomy” from the soul in Aquinas—a
puzzlingly sociopolitical formulation of a metaphysical problem— the author
fails in the end to provide real supporting evidence for such a strong claim. At
the same time, however, some good scholarly work is done in individual
sections, including an important account of how Aquinas dramatically reinterprets Averroës’s terminology of “determinate vs. indeterminate dimension.”
The first two chapters lay out the Aristotelian debates that frame Aquinas’s
treatment of bodily identity. Chapter 1, “The Aristotelian Tradition (I):
Individuality and the Individual Body,” lays out some basic concepts from
Aristotle, including form and matter, substance and accident, human generation, and individuation. The discussion of embryonic development from De
generatione et corruptione here is especially valuable, since this material is
highly relevant to the question of bodily identity, but seldom considered.
Chapter 2, “The Aristotelian Tradition (II): Bodily Identity,” turns to the
main topic of the book, bodily identity. Aristotle holds, Fitzpatrick points out,
that remaining numerically the same body requires having the same matter
and the same form; conversely, when one substance is corrupted and a new
one is generated, the new substance does not have the same matter and form

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as the old one. Fitzpatrick wonders how Aristotle reconciles this claim with his
view that some “substrate” must endure through any change (60-62). But
there is no puzzle here: For Aristotle, the matter that does not endure through
change is proper matter (e.g., the different kinds of fleshy mass that make up
the body, and whose nature depends on the body’s substantial form, such that
some fleshy mass is horse-muscle due to its belonging to a horse), but he posits
some prime matter (the universal substrate) precisely to answer the question of
what endures through every substantial change.
The ensuing section, on Averroës, is particularly useful. He is one of the
most important influences on Aquinas’s reading of Aristotle, and Fitzpatrick
provides an especially clear overview of how his conception of prime matter
invests body as such with a mathematizable structure. According to Averroës,
she explains, prime matter is invested with indeterminate dimension, that is,
“dimensionality or continuous spatial extension in three dimensions.” This
dimensional prime matter, not prime matter as such, is the ultimate substrate
(72-73). Drawing on the work of Silvia Donati, Fitzpatrick notes that
dimensionality for Averroës is an accidental form, so that dimensional prime
matter is not a substance in its own right; nonetheless, it maintains numerical
identity across change (75-78). Averroës’s view provides an important contrast
with Aquinas’s own view in the later chapters.
The two remaining chapters (chap. 3, on “Individuality and the Individual
Body,” and chap. 4, on “Bodily Identity”) are occupied with Aquinas’s own
view. The results here are mixed. Both chapters cover an assortment of topics
ranging from Aquinas’s hylomorphism, to his theory of universals, to his
embryology and theory of monsters, which are meant to provide conceptual
background for the chapters’ main contributions. While these sections are
individually largely well-researched and useful, the sheer quantity is distracting
and delays the distinctive contributions of each chapter until relatively late. As
a result, those contributions, while having some merit, remain
underdeveloped.
For instance, when chapter 3 finally arrives at its namesake topic of “the
individual body,” it begins to become clear that Fitzpatrick understands
“individuality” somewhat anachronistically in the sense of “personal uniqueness.” The term thus covers everything from metaphysical individuation, to
hereditary disabilities, to personality traits and preferences, to selfactualization through free will. Now it is surely intriguing to compile the
different respects in which Aquinas recognizes that one human can be
distinguished from others. But it is unhelpful to carry out that investigation
under the single heading of “individuality”—not only because the ambiguous
use of a single term here gives the misleading impression of a unified account,
but also because the term “individual” is already loaded in the scholarship on
medieval philosophy with strong, specific metaphysical connotations. These
metaphysical themes had dominated the first part of the book, leading the
reader to expect that a treatment of “the individual body” would be focused
on the metaphysics of individuation. The latter, however, appears only as a
“final point to consider” (118) at the very end of the chapter. Again, the

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question of how Aquinas accounts for the various factors that characterize us
as personally unique is an interesting one. Nonetheless, the evidence provided
does not justify the sweeping assertion, made in the book’s conclusion, that “It
was the material part of each human, and not their soul, which ultimately
determined the particular concrete characteristics that were their own and
nobody else’s” (172). (Intellectual and volitional habits, for instance, seem to
be clear counterexamples.)
I likewise have reservations about Fitzpatrick’s answer, in chapter 4, to the
guiding question of the book: that is, why Aquinas takes himself to be entitled,
metaphysically, to claim that one “chunk” of matter can be re-identified as
“mine” despite having passed through a series of bodies since my death, and
having been restored to me in the resurrection. Fitzpatrick nicely lays out the
problem, as follows. For Aquinas, the principle of individuation is signate
matter, that is, prime matter plus dimension. But dimension is an accidental
form, and accidental forms are identified in relation to the substantial form of
the substance. What makes this particular shape Fido’s is that it modifies the
substance Fido; when Fido dies, this shape is no longer numerically the same
shape, because it is no longer the shape of Fido (even if the shape is exactly
similar to the one that Fido had). So the numerically same accident of
dimension does not persist across change.
From this account, which accords with standard readings of Aquinas,
Fitzpatrick arrives at the opening problem of the book, which she had pledged
to solve: How then can Aquinas consistently hold that my resurrected body
must retain some of the “same matter” as I had during life? But by now there
is almost no space left to solve the problem. Fitzpatrick merely suggests that
Aquinas “may have been moving” toward the following solution:
Because the dimensive quantity belonging to Socrates’ body is a quasimathematical structure, its parts (or ‘dimension’) are objects which can
themselves survive in separation from the complex pattern of the whole
that was built out of them. These parts, which are radically or in
themselves individual, remain in a potential or virtual, if not in an
actual way, in the matter that formerly belonged to Socrates’ body. . . .
They serve as traces, in Socrates’ matter, of Socrates’ whole, actual,
three-dimensional bodily structure, and they allow Socrates’ matter to
be tracked by God across any sequence of substantial changes. (164)

This is an intriguing remark. There are in reality two distinct possible
strategies here: (1) the idea that there is a kind of mathematical identity of
dimension, besides the ontological identity of a dimension as belonging to this
or that substance; (2) the idea that Socrates’s dimension remains in the
subsequent (numerically different) dimension “in potency” given that God
could one day reactualize it as Socrates’s. Both would have been interesting
avenues to explore further. But unfortunately the excerpt cited above is all
Fitzpatrick says on the topic. She neither develops the philosophical significance of either solution, nor cites any textual evidence to show that Aquinas
was “moving” toward any such solution.

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These suggestions, alas, wreak havoc on Fitzpatrick’s attempt to specify the
historical relationship between Averroës and Aquinas on bodily identity. She
emphasizes that Aquinas never adopts the view of Averroës, for whom the
accident of dimensivity is more basic than the substance and persists across
substantial change. But by the end of chapter 4 she is suggesting that in reality
Aquinas is closer to Averroës than he appears, being pushed “in the direction
of at least partially breaking with the Aristotelian principle of the ontological
priority of substance to accident” (165). But there is no room here for
“partial” breaks: Either bodily substance is prior to the accident of dimension,
or it is not. Aquinas says it is prior; Averroës says it is not. If Aquinas had
intended to weaken his commitment to the priority of substance by making an
exception for the accident of dimension, that is not a “move toward”
Averroës’s position, but a wholesale adopting of that position.
On the whole, I do think there is something partly right about the narrative
that Fitzpatrick is advancing. Aquinas’s position on the “sameness of matter”
in the resurrected body does put him at odds with his own position on the
ontological priority of substance to accident. In order to resolve the inconsistency without endorsing a plurality of substantial forms, it looks as
though Aquinas should have taken a position that would effectively commit
him to a quasi-mathematical structure in prime matter, by adopting either (a)
Averroës’s view on which the accident of quantity is prior to substance; or (b)
a notion of mathematical identity that might have allowed him to assert that
dimensions can be mathematically if not metaphysically identical across
substantial change, thus reaping the conceptual benefits of Averroës’s view
without denying the priority of substance over accident. Still, not all the
alternative solutions here involve the mathematizing of prime matter: Another
avenue open to Aquinas would have been to rely on divine power. For
instance, one might assert that some chunk of formed matter has the potency
to regain the numerically same dimensions that had formed some previous
chunk that is in historical continuity with it, simply because God has the
power to achieve that effect.
What Fitzpatrick does not show is whether Aquinas actually followed, or
intended to follow, any of these paths for reconciling the inconsistency. Thus
in the end the very good historical work that this book does only reinforces its
opening problem, which still remains to be solved.
THERESE SCARPELLI CORY
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

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Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture. Edited by RAYMOND
HAIN. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2019. Pp. 296. $49.95
(hard). ISBN 978-1-4813-1041-3.
Beyond the Self is a collection of twelve essays, written by different authors,
which displays the contributions of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of
virtue ethics to contemporary moral philosophy. The collection originated in a
2014 conference celebrating the career of University of Notre Dame Associate
Professor of Philosophy W. David Solomon, now emeritus. Seven of the essays
are versions of papers that were delivered at the conference; most of them
were written by past graduate students of Solomon who are now accomplished scholars themselves. Four of the essays were commissioned separately.
The collection has three main sections: Historical Themes, Normative Ethics,
and Ethics and Culture. It concludes with an essay by Solomon in which he
seeks to weave together and extend some of his previous work on the
historical and conceptual development of twentieth-century virtue ethics.
The essays in this volume are uniformly interesting and excellent in quality.
Some of the arguments may not be convincing to some readers, even to those
who work in the same intellectual tradition. One reason for this may be the
Notre Dame factor—that is, the mostly implicit theological commitments that
shape several of the essays. In any case, the arguments are serious and
expressed with admirable clarity. Readers are thus spurred to sharpen their
own arguments through active and critical engagement with the text. It is a
pleasure to read the book from cover to cover, which is rare among edited
volumes; the editor deserves praise. Several additional features of the book
stand out and give it special value. I can touch on only a few of these. In the
process, I will indicate a portion of the range of topics and some of the modes
of analysis that readers can expect to find in the text.
Beyond the Self reflects Solomon’s career-long interest in the work of
British analytical philosopher G. E. M. Anscombe. The editor’s introduction
and several of the essays signal broad agreement on the importance of
Anscombe’s scholarship to the recent history of philosophical ethics. More
specifically, the contributors agree that the publication of Anscombe’s 1958
article “Modern Moral Philosophy” was a watershed event in twentiethcentury Anglophone analytic ethics. The questions that Anscombe raises and
the bold theses that she puts forward are clearly part of the undercurrent of
Beyond the Self and periodically bubble up for explicit treatment. Anscombe’s
textual presence gives the volume added cohesion. It also encourages readers
to place familiar metaethical and normative debates in historical perspective.
Solomon’s essay is directly concerned with Anscombe’s way of conceiving
the relationship between deontological, consequentialist, and virtuetheoretical approaches to ethics. He argues that “Anscombian virtue ethics” is
“radical,” as opposed to “routine,” in ways that distinguish it vis-à-vis many
other ethics of virtue. What makes it radical, in his judgment, is that (among
other things) it minimizes the differences between deontological and consequentialist moral theories by noting that both focus intently on moral

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obligations to act according to principles while following prescribed decisionmaking procedures. On Solomon’s reading, Anscombe sets virtue ethics up,
not only in distinction from these other approaches, but in “opposition” to
them—a move that Solomon affirms. “Opposition” in exactly what sense, and
in what respects, are topics that need further clarification.
Thomas Hibbs’s essay critiques Solomon’s conception of, and his advocacy
for, “radical” virtue ethics, focusing especially on the matter of “opposition.”
Hibbs turns to Aquinas and argues, much like Alasdair MacIntyre, that virtue
and law both play critical roles in Aquinas’s account of morality, most notably
in his analysis of the virtue of justice. Virtues and action-guiding principles or
precepts—most notably, moral prohibitions—are not antithetical for Aquinas;
they are interdependent, and both are necessary parts of a complete moral
theory. Thus, argues Hibbs, it is important to distinguish between different
sorts of principles and laws, and the ways in which they are grounded.
Anscombe argues that modern conceptions of the moral law and “the moral
ought” make little sense and have no force apart from their contingent
psychological resonance with historical experiences of living under the
authority of divine commands. Hibbs focuses more on the role that natural
law plays, for Aquinas, in establishing the parameters within which virtues
operate. The Thomistic “moral ought” is self-consciously grounded in a
substantive account of the sorts of beings that humans are, in relation to God
and to the rest of creation, the capacity that humans have to flourishing in the
exercise of virtue, and the dignity that makes all humans worthy of principled
protection. For Hibbs, Aquinas’s virtue ethic is “radical” partly in that it
“returns” people to the philosophical and theological “roots of the moral life.”
Further comment is needed, however, to clarify why such a “return” is not
simply conservative. Granted, “radical” is a relative term.
Another reflection of Anscombe’s influence on Beyond the Self is evident in
Candace Vogler’s essay, which picks up on Anscombe’s “radical” thesis that
the idea of moral obligation as such, as it is conceived by many of the
philosophers in her professional circle, ought simply to be jettisoned, partly
because it makes no sense apart from a divine command theory of ethics,
which these philosophers reject. Vogler focuses on David Velleman’s neoKantian account of the ground of morality, according to which our moral
obligations to others have their basis in a fundamental moral obligation that
we have toward ourselves. As Vogler interprets Velleman, the obligation is the
same for all persons, namely, to act for reasons that can be provided to others
who, as fellow persons, recognize the same “framework for practical reasoning” or the same rational requirements for action. Vogler’s critique of this
view is relentless. Another notable feature of her essay is her exploratory
analysis of why people might posit duties to govern themselves even though it
does not make sense, philosophically, to do so. Vogler’s idea is that perhaps
the intuition that I have duties to myself rests on an impression that what I do
as a person is, in some respects and to some extent, “up to me.” Nobody else
is going to hold me accountable for my becoming my own best self. Hence, it
will have to be me. But this sense of holding myself accountable does not

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require a reference to self-duty; it requires only the indication of an intention
to promote my own well-being, based in an unproblematic sort of selfconcern.
A second valuable feature of Beyond the Self is that it offers close analysis
of primary texts of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, even as it treats the
work of contemporary scholars and particular normative issues such as
physician-assisted suicide. Christopher Toner’s essay, for example, addresses a
series of dilemmas associated with Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia
concerning the dependence of humans on “external goods” for their
flourishing. Toner draws on the work of David Russell to advocate for a
conception of Aristotelian eudaimonia that is Stoic in holding that virtue is
sufficient for happiness, but Peripatetic in nonetheless acknowledging the
importance that a person’s projects and relationships can have for making her
who she is and delimiting how it is possible for her to thrive. On Toner’s
view, projects and relationships are not merely instruments that provide
opportunities to exercise virtue for the sake of one’s own happiness; nor are
they simply goods of themselves which, when present, add something to a
person’s stock of goods. Rather, they are—or can be—integral aspects of a
person’s active, embodied life of virtue. Toner clarifies that a virtuous person
is not necessarily self-centered in pursuing projects and relationships that
contribute to her well-being. Many relationships are “intrinsically demanding”
in that they create obligations for other-centered action that can, in some
cases, require self-sacrifice and may not seem at all rewarding. While “part of
the good life,” he says, “may involve giving to oneself a gift; much of it will
involve giving of oneself as a gift” (21). Both modes of gifting can comprise
forms of virtuous activity that contribute to eudaimonia.
Also in a historical, as well as a textual, vein, Kevin Flannery advances a
defense of Aristotle’s theory of justice by way of an analysis of Aquinas’s
commentary on book 5 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, which concerns
justice, and Aquinas’s own account of the virtue of justice in his Summa
theologiae. Flannery analyzes, more specifically, the conceptual relationship
between Aristotle’s two types of justice (distributive and “corrective”) and
Aquinas’s two types (distributive and commutative). Flannery shows that
“corrective” is too narrow a rendering of Aristotle’s διορθωτικόν δίκαιον.
This becomes clear when we consider Aquinas’s use of the broader term
commutativus to refer to the form of justice that is paired with distributive
justice, and we examine his rich discussion of arithmetic and geometrical
proportionality. Flannery concludes that a better way to parse Aristotle’s
διορθωτικόν δίκαιον is much as one would parse Aquinas’s commutativus,
which refers to something like corrective justice plus correct common dealings
between persons. Flannery’s analysis of Aquinas’s treatment of Aristotle’s
concept of justice shows that Aristotle’s account is more coherent than it is
often thought to be. This sort of fluid movement of the mind, within and
between ancient texts, medieval texts, medieval treatments of ancient texts,
and contemporary analyses of the same—across the various essays—are part of
what create the unique character of this volume.

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Finally, it is of special value that this book includes an essay written by
Solomon’s colleague Alasdair MacIntyre. If Anscombe generated an initial
push to recover the ethics of virtue for modern moral philosophy, MacIntyre’s
After Virtue opened the floodgates of scholarship on classical virtue ethics and
its relevance for a modern, secularized world. MacIntyre’s essay argues, in
part, that many people today follow the precepts of Thomistic natural law
implicitly, by the authority of secular practical reason alone. By implication,
these precepts, if made explicit, could form a basis for meaningful ethical
discourse across seemingly incommensurable perspectives—at least in cases
where people are willing to practice the intellectual virtue of openmindedness. The essay argues also for the recognition of multiple forms of
secularity in modern cultures, including a form in which people do not believe
in a divine being but also do not care to deny God’s existence. And even
where this denial occurs, there can be a concurrent openness to God or the
sacred in secular guises. MacIntyre tells a compelling story about the artist and
atheist Henri Matisse, who was asked by the Dominican Sisters of Monteil to
design a chapel for them. In MacIntyre’s judgment, this chapel is a profound
expression of Matisse’s attunement to the sacred.
This volume is recommended for scholars and students from philosophy,
theology, religious studies, cultural studies, and other quarters who are
interested in the history of virtue ethics and the challenges that a modern ethic
of virtue faces. My one disappointment with the volume is that Solomon does
not directly engage the work of the other contributors. However, they engage
his work both generously and critically. It is especially in the way that
Solomon’s students display their independence of thought, their philosophical
acumen, and their commitment to keeping the work of analytic ethics tied to
big questions of human life and well-being that Solomon is, in my eyes,
honored indeed.
DIANA FRITZ CATES
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

Aristotle and Early Christian Thought. By MARK EDWARDS. Studies in
Philosophy and Theology in Late Antiquity. London and New York:
Routledge, 2019. Pp. 226. $155.00 (hard). ISBN 978-1-138-69799-7.
This is an important book. Its aim is to establish the relationship between
Aristotle, including his philosophical legacy in the Peripatetic school and
beyond, and early Christian thought up to the sixth century. Earlier scholars,
including Père André-Jean Festugière and myself, have provided brief
treatments of the topic, taking named references as the starting point. Mark

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Edwards wishes to take the investigation to a deeper level. His main interest is
to determine how two bodies of thought, with very different origins and
trajectories of development, relate to each other. The connective “and” in the
title is thus, one must suspect, deliberately chosen (and also occurs in a
majority of chapter headings). The reader is indeed provided with “the vista of
a terrain still largely untrodden” (x).
The study consists of nine compactly composed chapters, all about twenty
pages in length. Three of the four first chapters do not treat Christian thought
at all. They focus exclusively on Aristotle himself, his interpretation in the
second century, and the Neoplatonic reaction to him in the third century. In
between the second and third of these is the chapter on Aristotle and anteNicene Christianity. There follow two chapters on the fourth century, the
second of which focuses almost entirely on Gregory of Nyssa. Next there are
two chapters on the fifth and sixth centuries in the East, with again an entire
chapter on a single thinker, John Philoponus. The ninth and final chapter is
the only one to be wholly directed towards a Western figure, namely,
Boethius.
The main focus of the book is the treatment of theological and
philosophical topics by means of conceptuality and argument drawn from the
Aristotelian corpus and its later interpretation. A corollary is that there is less
emphasis on genre and reception, though of course the necessary details
regarding these are furnished at regular intervals. The treatment of the use of
Aristotle up to the end of the third century might seem somewhat cursory,
since during this period many of the references to and much of the use of
Aristotelian material was drawn from the exoteric corpus which is no longer
extant, rather than the more technical works of the esoteric corpus which
gradually replaced it and are still in our possession. Edwards emphasizes
throughout that the themes that preoccupied Christian thinkers—the nature of
God and of the relationships within the Trinity, issues of Christology, the
doctrine of creation, the immortality of the soul and its afterlife, the existence
of providence and the implications for free will—are not central to Aristotle’s
philosophy. It is true that by the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias there is
already a greater convergence of interests, as can be seen in the comparison
with his younger contemporary Origen. But the two traditions follow
independent trajectories. One aspect relating to reception that might have
received more emphasis is the association of Aristotelianism with dialectic and
heretical thinking. For Gregory of Nazianzus Christian thinkers should
operate ἁλιευτικῶς ἀλλ᾿ οὐκ ἀριστοτελικῶς, “in the manner of fishermen, not
Aristotle” (Or. 23.12). But this of course is a pose since, as Edwards shows,
the Cappadocians and other prominent Christian theologians had mastered
the subtleties of Aristotelian dialectics and used them with a will, although in
service of their own aims.
In order to understand the Christian appropriation of Aristotle, it is thus
necessary, as our author believes, to have a knowledge of his key writings and
those of his main interpreters that approximates what Christians themselves
were acquainted with. This explains a main feature of the book, namely, that

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it contains extensive compactly formulated paraphrases and summaries of the
works of Aristotle himself, of his interpreter Alexander, and of his Neoplatonist readers Plotinus and Porphyry. When taken together with summaries
of key works by Christian authors, notably Gregory of Nyssa, Philoponus, and
Boethius, these amount to at least half of the book. Edwards is reviving a
practice associated with Oxford and particularly the expositions of W. D.
Ross. Paraphrase is by no means an easy art and there is always the danger
that it may misrepresent the original. An example can be found in the
summary of Boethius’s exposition on time and eternity in Cons. 5.6. We read,
“even if we concede to Plato and Aristotle that the sensible cosmos has no
beginning or end, we cannot join them in styling it eternal, for to be eternal is
to be exempt from the flow of time” (185). But Boethius’s Christian
affiliation, which Edwards strongly emphasizes, would surely have prevented
him from making such a concession. So we might have expected the
formulation “were to concede.” But the original in fact reads rather
differently: “And therefore those are not right who, when they hear that Plato
thought this world neither had a beginning in time nor would have an end,
think that in this way the created world is made co-eternal with the Creator”
(LCL translation). The formulation is admittedly neutral, but there is certainly
no concession. In addition, there is no mention of Aristotle at all. So on points
of detail comparison of paraphrase with the original is recommended. I do not
criticize the author for including these extended accounts: not only would it
have been unwise to assume too much knowledge of Aristotle and his tradition
on the part of his reader, but these paraphrases also provide a useful
introduction to the development of Aristotelian thought in late antiquity.
A main purpose of the book, we read (96), is to correct the impression that
the only intellectual force that could operate on Christianity from the outside
was Platonism. Here the genealogy of ancient Platonism is crucial. Plotinus
sharply criticized Aristotle’s doctrine of the categories of being, but Porphyry
rescued them in his Isagoge by restricting their application to the realm of
physical reality, as opposed to the intelligible world. Thereafter their influence, for example on Christological debates, was fundamental. On the
other hand, Plotinus was able to introduce the notion of infinity into
Neoplatonic thought, against the strictures of Aristotle, and this exerted an
important influence on Christian theology, starting with Gregory of Nyssa for
whom it is the “cornerstone of his theology” (102).
Can we then speak of a Christian Aristotelianism in the ancient world?
Edwards is adamant that the answer is no. From the fourth century onwards
“a cultured acquaintance with the thought of Aristotle is . . . a condition of
orthodoxy for the Christian intellectual” (113), but not in the case of John
Philoponus, where it led to heresy. There was no need to aspire to technical
mastery of Aristotle’s thought, and even first-hand knowledge of his works
was hardly mandatory. For the most part Aristotle supplies valuable tools to
be used in discussion and argument in order to defend beliefs that are held as
a matter of faith. Even in his Aristotelian commentaries Boethius was at all
times a Christian. It goes without saying that it would hardly have been

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possible for those using the resources of Greek thought not to have been
influenced by these resources to some degree. Edwards describes the relation
between the idiom of the Church and that of the schools as a kind of
“dialectic,” but of course one very different from the one against which
Gregory of Nazianzus railed. Above all, there was never any systematic
investigation into what the relationship between reason and revelation (to use
later terminology) might be. As Edwards states in the final paragraph of the
book, several stages in the reception of Aristotle would have to be traversed
before a synthesis of philosophy and theology could be achieved, notably in
the writings of Thomas Aquinas and his latter-day followers.
The book is by no means an easy read. Its style is terse and erudite,
displaying acuity of mind not always accompanied by a commensurate clarity
of expression. Fortunately, the author provides summaries at regular intervals,
which allow the trajectory of development through the centuries and the
sequence of topics and doctrines to be followed without too much difficulty.
Readers will find it very much worth their while to make the effort. Edwards
presents an overview of the relationship between two very different bodies of
thought with a depth and precision that has not been previously achieved,
certainly not in the English language. This important book is highly to be
recommended.
DAVID T. RUNIA
The University of Melbourne and Australian Catholic University
Melbourne, Australia

Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Thomistic Answers. By DOMENIC
D’ETTORE. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2019. Pp. 224. $65.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3122-8.
This excellent book traces the history of Thomistic accounts of analogy
from the early fourteenth century to Francis Sylvestri of Ferrara and Chrysostom Javelli, writing in the 1520s and 1530s in the light of Cajetan’s
magisterial De nominum analogia. D’Ettore starts with the philosopher who
caused such difficulty for the logic of analogy: namely, John Duns Scotus.
Scotus argued that both the principle of noncontradiction and syllogistic
validity require univocal concepts, such that there is one ratio through which a
name signifies reality. As the earliest Thomists saw, this directly threatens
Aquinas’s denial of that very claim, in his assertion that analogy is sufficient
for avoiding the fallacy of equivocation. D’Ettore argues that Aquinas’s
account simply does not evince any awareness of these difficulties, and hence
needs supplementation to enable it to provide answers to Scotus’s worries. A
good part of the exposition is devoted to the divergent interpretations of

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Aquinas proposed by the Thomists to shore up Aquinas’s position against the
Scotist onslaught.
It is fashionable in some theological circles today to urge that Scotus’s
target was Henry of Ghent, and thus that his criticisms do not touch Aquinas’s
account. But that was decidedly not the opinion of the early Thomists, and
they were clearly right to be worried. As D’Ettore puts it, “If a Thomist insists
that Aquinas’s model(s) of analogous naming demand more than one ratio,
then the Thomist must explain how this model dodges Scotus’s criticism that,
without one and only one ratio for a term, demonstration is impossible. If a
Thomist argues instead that there is one ratio involved in analogous
signification, then the Thomist must explain the difference between his own
position and that of Scotus, either admitting that analogy reduces semantically
to univocity or challenging Scotus’s definition(s) of univocity and analogy”
(31-32).
D’Ettore groups the philosophical and exegetical problems facing early
interpreters of Aquinas under three useful headings: the rationes problem
(whether analogous terms signify one or many rationes); the analogy-model
problem (whether the theory of analogy is modeled on the relationship
between one thing and another [unius ad alterum]—which D’Ettore labels the
“Healthy Model”—or of two to a third [duorum ad tertium]—which he labels
the “Principle Model”); and the equivocation problem (whether the use of
analogous terms necessarily generates equivocation, as Scotus held). The
discussion is quite dense, and the array of issues treated very complex. A
helpful chart (186) aids the reader in tracking the manifold different answers
offered by the subjects of this study: the early fourteenth-century thinkers
Hervaeus Natalis and Thomas Sutton; the early fifteenth-century thinker John
Capreolus; the late fifteenth-century philosophers Flandrensis and Socinas;
and from the early sixteenth century Cajetan and the two Thomists mentioned
above. All but the first three were associated with the Dominican studium in
Bologna.
As Joshua Hochschild convincingly argued a few years ago (The Semantics
of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s “De nominum analogia” [Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2010]), Cajetan has a good right to claim to
have solved Scotus’s objections by appealing to the analogy of proper
proportionality. As D’Ettore puts it, “Proportional unity does not eliminate
diversity, but it is, nevertheless, a real form of similarity such that whatever
properties belong to one thing also belong proportionally to whatever is
proportionally similar to it” (139). The different rationes have some kind of
unity or identity—a proportional unity or identity—and as such “whatever
belongs to one, belongs also to the other proportionally” (ibid., quoting
Cajetan, De nominum analogia, c. 10, n. 106). This unity allows Cajetan to
circumvent Scotus’s claim that syllogisms that include terms whose significations are related merely analogously ultimately have four (or more) terms.
What grounds syllogistic validity and theological reasoning is that, in effect,
creaturely cases model divine cases in relevant respects. D’Ettore sensibly
follows Hochschild’s study on this point, and allows his discussion of Cajetan

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to be structured simply around the same three questions that guide his account
of all the other philosophers he considers.
Cajetan is obviously the touchstone for any discussion of this topic. If
another hero emerges in the account, it seems to be Thomas Sutton, one of
Scotus’s most vociferous Oxonian opponents in the early years of the
fourteenth century. Sutton anticipates Cajetan’s key insight: “Although it is no
longer said through the same ratio when the name is extended to God, the
proportio between the ratio of the name said of the creature and the (distinct)
ratio of the name said of God suffices to preserve valid demonstration” (56).
According to D’Ettore, this puts the ball back in the Scotists’ court, “who, to
preserve their objection, must explain either why proportional unity (which
the Scotists themselves acknowledge) lacks the semantic unity necessary for
use in demonstrations, or why there is, contrary to Sutton’s position, really
only a verbal difference between Sutton and Scotus” (59).
All in all, this book offers an insightful account of the history of a vexed
concept in the story of Thomism.
RICHARD CROSS
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana