The Thomist 85 (2021): 349-76

SURVIVALISM, SUITABLY MODIFIED
JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.
Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong SAR, China

A

SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGE to those views according
to which human beings have immortal souls or minds
that survive their bodily death is that this appears to
entail substance dualism. One must hold, it would appear, that
humans are essentially their minds or souls; otherwise, a human
person would cease to exist at death. Substance dualism,
however, is a controversial view in large part due to the
difficulty in giving an adequate account of the interaction
between body and mind. To some, including myself, dualism
also seems patently false because humans are essentially animals
of a particular species, not immaterial minds. The view that
human beings are essentially animals, nevertheless, does not
intuitively sit well with the claim that our souls can survive
bodily death. Yet if sense can be made of how these two claims
are compatible, the resulting view would be far more friendly,
or closer, to typical naturalist views of body-mind relations than
is traditional dualism.
There has been a revival of interest in hylomorphic theories
of material composition, and some have applied these insights
to mind-body identity, arguing precisely that a human being is a
metaphysical composite whose form, his mind or soul, structures his matter to constitute what is essentially a certain kind of
animal.1 Consequently, the hylomorphist identifies as holding a

1

E.g., James Madden, Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for
the Philosophy of Mind (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
349

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

position resembling “animalism” among contemporary theories
of personal identity. 2 Nevertheless, there is significant controversy over the status of a soul that would survive the death of
the body and whether extant explanations are coherent. I focus
in this paper on one prominent debate among Thomists on the
question as to whether the soul post mortem comes to constitute
the same human person as in life, although persons are not
identical to their souls in ordinary circumstances, or whether
the human person ceases to exist at death.
I do not think the Thomistic debate can be resolved by
further interpretation of the texts of Aquinas, as it seems that all
parties in the Thomistic controversy are taking stands on a
matter that goes beyond those texts. After outlining the dialectic
of that debate, and engaging with a famous paper by Elizabeth
Anscombe, what I will propose is that my soul comes to constitute my personality after I die, and that this allows a satisfying
way to say that I survive my death, without violating any claims
made by Aquinas. My view is a Thomistic account of the personhood of the separated soul—constrained by what Thomas
Aquinas claims about human beings as matter-form composites
and presuming other features of his metaphysics—but it has
implications beyond Aquinas. My proposal is intended to give
us an adequate theory of the semantics and metaphysics which
allow a hylomorphist to say that I survive my death, in virtue of
my soul surviving my death, even though that which I am
identical to—the animal that is me—ceases to exist when I die.
What I will propose is that there is a coherent hylomorphic
account that permits me to survive my death, because hylomorphism can accommodate theories of personal identity that
otherwise seem to be out of bounds to the substance dualist.

2013); William Jaworski, Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2016).
2
E.g., Patrick Toner, “Hylemorphic Animalism,” Philosophical Studies 155 (2011):
65-81.

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I. THE STATE OF THE QUESTION
For our purposes, it is helpful to lay out the dialectical moves
that have been made thus far in the Thomistic scholarship.
What follows is merely a series of logical steps, and no temporal
claims are being made—the point is to grasp how these
positions developed as responses to a certain problem and to
each other. At a first stage in the dialectic (representing an
initial stream in the discussion), there was Peter van Inwagen. In
an essay for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, van
Inwagen posed a problem for hylomorphic theories of the
human person, including that of Aquinas:
If Socrates was a material thing, a living organism, then, if a man who lives at
some time after Socrates’ death and physical dissolution is to be Socrates,
there will have to be some sort of material and causal continuity between the
matter that composed Socrates at the moment of his death and the matter that
at any time composes that man. . . . But “physical dissolution” and “material
and causal continuity” are hard to reconcile. To show how the continuity
requirement can be satisfied, despite appearances—or else to show that the
continuity requirement is illusory—is a problem that must be solved if a
philosophically satisfactory “materialist” theory of resurrection is to be
devised.3

Van Inwagen was not alone in posing this problem; others too
expressed worries about whether Aquinas could coherently
respond to this objection.4
In response to van Inwagen, Eleonore Stump attempted to
defend the hylomorphic approach. Stump attacked the interpretation van Inwagen offered as misrepresenting the Thomistic
view. Her overarching point was that the view that the human
person ceases to exist at death is in conflict with Aquinas’s
overall theological claims. 5 To this end, Stump appealed to a
common solution to problems of material composition—namely,
3

Peter van Inwagen, “Resurrection,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 8,
ed. E. Craig (London: Routledge, 1998), 296.
4
E.g., Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Mind (London: Routledge, 1993), 138.
5
Eleonore Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the
Soul,” in Bruno Niederbacher and Edmund Runggaldier, eds., Die menschliche Seele:
Brauchen wir den Dualismus? (Frankfurt and London: Ontos-Verlag, 2006), 154-60.

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

the principle that “constitution is not identity”6—to argue that,
for Aquinas, the human being or person is not identical with
what constitutes it during life (i.e., both body and soul).7 On her
view, during life, the human person is constituted, but not
identical with, his body and soul together. After death, the
person comes to be constituted of his soul alone, but otherwise
survives his bodily demise. 8 Others came to the defense of
Aquinas’s hylomorphism, adopting a perspective similar to that
of Stump, with “survivalist” interpretations of Aquinas subsequently defended by Christopher Brown, 9 David Oderberg, 10
and others.11
Subsequent to this, however, there was a counter-reaction,
represented here by Patrick Toner and Turner Nevitt. There
was an uneasiness with Stump’s solution, because the texts of
Aquinas seem clear—especially in Christological contexts—that
a person or human being ceases to exist at death.12 In terms of
history, too, the view seems implausible, as Aquinas’s position
that Christ was not a man during the three days in the tomb was
controversial and well-known in the medieval theological

6
E.g., Mark Johnston, “Constitution is Not Identity,” Mind 101 (1992): 89-105; L.
R. Baker, (1997), “Why Constitution Is Not Identity,” Journal of Philosophy 94 (1997):
599-621.
7
Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2003), 51-52. Also see idem, “NonCartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism,” Faith and
Philosophy 12 (1995): 505-31.
8
Eleonore Stump, “Resurrection and the Separated Soul,” in The Oxford Handbook
of Aquinas, ed. B. Davies and E. Stump (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012),
458-66.
9
Christopher M. Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus: Solving Puzzles about
Material Objects (New York: Continuum, 2005); idem, “Souls, Ships, and Substances: A
Response to Toner,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2007): 655-68.
10
David Oderberg, “Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Mereology,” in European
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 1-26.
11
Christina Van Dyke, “Not Properly a Person: The Rational Soul and Thomistic
Substance Dualism,” Faith and Philosophy 26 (2009): 186-204; John Wippel, The
Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2000), 298-99.
12
Patrick Toner, “Personhood and Death in St. Thomas Aquinas,” History of
Philosophy Quarterly 26 (2009): 121-38.

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world. 13 The implications for the coherence of the Thomistic
system could be serious, as Toner and Nevitt argued that the
survivalist position requires a deep revision of important principles in Thomistic metaphysics.14 The “corruptionist” position
then bit the bullet of van Inwagen’s critique, conceding that
human beings or persons cease to exist at death, but arguing
that this consequence was not problematic. Toner, for example,
argued that it is just to punish a soul for the sins of the person it
once composed, not because the soul is identical with that
person, but because the soul is “the principle of all my evil or
good acts.”15 This seems to imply that, since I commit sins with
my soul, my soul can be punished in my place. Many followed
Toner and Nevitt in advocating, in contrast to the position of
the survivalists, a “corruptionist” position on which the human
person ceases to exist at death. 16 Thus emerged a significant
division among positions in Aquinas scholarship on how to
understand Aquinas’s hylomorphic commitments.
The options did not seem entirely satisfactory to many,
prompting Mark Spencer, Daniel De Haan and Brandon Dahm,
and others17 to pursue alternative strategies that fell outside of
the established positions. Spencer, for example, argued that
Stump’s position seems to require that an essence is
dispositional, in the sense that something can be a human
person (the soul alone) and nevertheless fail to have a complete
13
See John Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Unicity of Substantial Form,” in
Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages, ed. M. Mauriege, S. Brown, A. Speer,
E. Kent, and R. Friedman (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 117-54.
14
Turner Nevitt, “Survivalism versus Corruptionism: Whose Nature? Which
Personality?” Quaestiones Disputatae 10, no. 2 (Spring 2020): 127-44.
15
Toner, “Personhood and Death,” 130.
16
Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992),
215-20; Leo Elders, The Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas (Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 1997), 274-84; Robert George and Patrick Lee, Body-Self Dualism in
Contemporary Ethics and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008),
66-81; John Haldane, “The Examined Death and the Hope of the Future,” Proceedings
of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 74 (2001): 253-54.
17
E.g., Jeremy W. Skrzypek, “Complex Survivalism, or: How to Lose Your Essence
and Live to Tell about It,” Philosophy, Faith, and Modernity: Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 91 (2017): 185-99.

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

human essence. Whereas Stump and typical survivalists did not
concede that their position requires such a modification,
Spencer openly argued that we should reject elements of the
Thomistic metaphysical apparatus on which human beings are
essentially material composites.18 This would be unacceptable to
those, such as myself, who might think this involves throwing
the baby out with the bathwater, radically revising our notions
of essence or disposition to accommodate a marginal case. In a
more recent development, De Haan and Dahm proposed that
separated souls are “incomplete persons,” and tried to develop
an account of incomplete personhood.19 But, I think rightly, the
position was criticized as seeming either to make personhood a
matter of degrees (one cannot be “just a bit” of a person, as one
cannot be “just a touch” pregnant or “a bit” dead) or merely to
restate the problematic in different terms.20 When all is said and
done, however, Thomistic scholarship remains without
consensus on this issue, as many have felt that the positions
currently extant are unsatisfactory in various ways, and so the
question of the survival/nonsurvival of the person after death
remains an open one.
This is only a sketch of the dialectic, not a comprehensive
summary. Yet even from this sketch there emerge two related
sets of issues, one semantic and the other metaphysical. Given
the technical meaning Aquinas gives to the terms “substance”
and “person,” it becomes semantically difficult to say how
personal survival can occur without any enduring substance. In
ordinary English, it would be relatively tautologous to say that
18
Mark Spencer, “The Personhood of the Separated Soul,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.)
12 (2014): 863-912.
19
Daniel De Haan and Brandon Dahm, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls as
Incomplete Human Persons,” The Thomist 83 (2019): 589-637.
20
What I mean by saying that they restate the problem is that, if one accepts the
survivalists have a point about the desiderata for our account of the post mortem state,
claiming one can be an “incomplete person” seems just as problematic as corruptionism
itself and raises all the same questions, only with different terminology. Spencer makes
this point: Mark Spencer, “Survivalist, Platonist, Thomistic Hylomorphism,”
Quaestiones Disputatae 10, no. 2 (2020): 177-84; see De Haan and Dahm’s responses
in “After Suvivalism and Corruptionism: Separated Souls as Incomplete Persons,”
Quaestiones Disputatae 10, no. 2 (2020): 161-76.

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the human organism or the human animal does not persist after
death—and this seems the spirit of what Aquinas wants to say
when he claims a human being undergoes substantial change at
death. What one would want to say persists after death, in
ordinary English, is the human person. But, for Aquinas, a
“person” is an “individual substance of a rational nature,” a
definition he borrows from Boethius. And the soul is not a
person in this sense, because a soul is not a complete individual
substance of the kind “human being.” 21 Similarly, the use of
“person” in ordinary English is not metaphysically perspicuous,
as we can say things like “I am not the same person I was back
then” without affirming any radical loss of metaphysical identity.
But, for Aquinas, the semantics carry far-reaching metaphysical
weight; the term “person” is central to a coherent affirmation of
the Trinitarian dogma that God can be one substance and three
persons. In addition, Aquinas wants to affirm the plausible view
that human persons are essentially material organisms, and that
there are no persons of no or indeterminate nature. Lastly, there
is a looming issue of trying to indicate how, although the soul
survives death, this is a strange state for it—so that the
resurrection of the body and the restoration of the human
organism by God is desirable. There is clearly much on the line
for the Thomist.
To begin with, we should consider which semantic issues are
relevant. Intuitively, I take it that what is important in attributing personal identity to a separated soul is not the strict
and technical meanings of “person.” What seems problematic
about corruptionism is that we cannot apparently refer to the
separated soul by those proper names (e.g., “Paulina”) and
indexicals (“you,” “her,” “I”) that would refer in ordinary circumstances to the human organism it formerly composed.
Consider, in illustration, the parable of Dives (“the rich man”)
in the Gospel of Luke. Dives, the rich man who feasts sumptuously and ignores the poor man Lazarus at his door, dies and
21
See STh I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 5. All translations of the Summa are taken from the
translation by the English Dominican Fathers (2d ed.; New York: Benzinger Bros.,
1920).

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ends up in the flames of hell. After seeing Abraham in paradise
with Lazarus, Dives requests that Abraham help ease his
suffering, and this dialogue ensues:
Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your
good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted
here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm
has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot
do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” He said, “Then, father, I beg
you to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—that he may
warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” (Luke
16:25-28 [NRSV])

It is hard to see, on a standard corruptionist view, how any of
these claims Dives and Abraham make could be true. For
Dives’s soul to think “I was a human being once,” or for
Abraham to make similar claims about Dives as having received
good things, when he is addressing only Dives’s soul, looks
strictly speaking false; how can one who exists now have been
something that ceased to exist? Moreover, Dives’s soul makes
claims about his brothers, when the brothers are kin to Dives
and not to Dives’s soul.
I agree with the survivalist side of the debate that the truth of
propositions involving personal pronouns (e.g., referring to my
separated soul truly as the same “I” as I was when on earth), is
vitally important for the right account of personal identity (let
alone theological commitments as a Catholic). It would thus be
undesirable to accept either fictionalism or a view on which
these propositions are merely metaphorically, but not literally,
true when thought by the separated soul, of itself. What unites
both survivalists and corruptionists, however, is the presupposition (as Spencer’s discussion indirectly illuminates)22 that
propositions involving personal pronouns are true or false
depending on whether someone is numerically the same
substance after death. I will argue that we should preserve the
Thomistic set of commitments by denying this apparently
plausible intuition and instead hold that numerical identity of
22

Spencer, “Personhood of the Separated Soul,” 911-12; Spencer, “Survivalist,
Platonic, Thomistic Hylomorphism,” 182-83.

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substance is not necessary for personal identity. The view that
persistence of substance is the only grounds for what makes it
apt to say that “I survive” is an assumption held in common
with traditional substance dualism but, I argue, is not a
necessary commitment for the hylomorphist. Yet my proposal
does not require that we fiddle with the Thomistic metaphysical
machinery to get the right result either, pace Spencer and others.
I will propose a modified version of survivalism. The truth
conditions laid out here would allow the Thomist to assent to
propositions about the personal identity of a separated soul
with the human person it once composed in life, despite ceasing
to be the same substance, and allow for what Dives and
Abraham say in the above dialogue to be true statements about
the separated soul of Dives. The first step is to outline the
semantic features of a theory of reference that would be
required for the separated soul to entertain true propositions
about itself such as “I was once alive” alongside the claims that,
when I am alive, it is true that “I am not identical to my soul.”
Such a proposal for modifying survivalism would not quite be
complete, however, as one still needs to say more about whatever it is in virtue of which these propositions are true. The
second step will be to examine the metaphysics according to
which these expressions are apt. Specifically, I will argue that
Aquinas has the tools to give us an account on which my
personality survives my death, even when my person, or the
substance that I am, does not. The relevant move is then similar
to the traditional survivalist position, but it does not involve
violating any claims about the human person or substance as
essentially bodily.
II. SEMANTIC MOVE:
ANSCOMBE AND THE FIRST-PERSON PRONOUN
Elizabeth Anscombe once advanced a controversial thesis
that helps to illustrate the semantic features of my proposal,
arguing that the first-person pronoun “is neither a name nor
another kind of expression whose logical role is to make a

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reference, at all.” 23 Prima facie, her claims here might be
dismissed incredulously, as it seems obvious that first-person
pronouns have referents and can be used in judgments of selfidentity. Nevertheless, I would venture to say that Anscombe is
indulging in hyperbole, reacting to a problematic account of
first-person pronouns. I agree with her that a theory such as she
construes it is problematic, even if her own preferred resolution
might also have weaknesses. Her paper is nevertheless a
dialectically helpful starting point for grasping the semantic
move that is a component of my modification of the survivalist
position. In any event, I will defend a thesis weaker than
Anscombe’s; one need not accept that first-person pronouns are
nonreferring expressions to grasp the point.
Anscombe presents a series of arguments against the view
that one who uses the first-person pronoun in a true proposition has a certain infallibility in referring—“guaranteed
reference.” She explains the view she opposes as involving two
different kinds of guaranteed reference: “the object an ‘I’-user
means by it must exist so long as he is using ‘I’, nor can he take
the wrong object to be the object he means by ‘I’.”24 She points
out how Descartes and other philosophers have misused true
propositions involving the first-person pronoun as premises in
arguments which are supposed to entail the existence of, for
example, a substance that is the subject of the true “I”
proposition. She argues that such arguments are rightly seen as
invalid. An illustration of this is the fact that we are fallible in
making self-identity judgments; we can misidentify the thing we
are. If we could not do so, views like substance dualism would
seem to be a priori necessary truths.25 Similarly, taking a point
from Russell, she points out that even if one correctly refers to
the ego, or mental substance, or what-have-you in a true “I”
23
Elizabeth Anscombe, “The First-Person Pronoun,” in Metaphysics and the
Philosophy of Mind: Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1981), 32-33.
24
Ibid., 30.
25
Ibid., esp. 21-26. Adrian Haddock, “‘I am NN’,” European Journal of Philosophy
27 (2019): 960: “As it might be put: the capacity to use a name is vulnerable to errors
of identification. . . . the same cannot be true of the capacity to use ‘I’.”

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proposition at one moment, that does not guarantee that one is
referring to the same one in a later true proposition involving
the first person.26
Anscombe’s solution is to propose that first-person pronouns
refer to nothing—no objects at all—but that their truth conditions are determined by use. Despite the radical and
counterintuitive claim here, Anscombe concedes that “we must
accept the rule ‘If X asserts something with “I” as subject, his
assertion will be true if and only if what he asserts is true of X’”
as part of the normal truth conditions for propositions involving personal identity. One need not accept Anscombe’s full,
radical proposal to see that she has hit on something important
about pronouns. One way of putting Anscombe’s diagnosis of
the problematic belief is that, on the view that first-person
pronouns imply “guaranteed reference,” the use of the firstperson pronoun in a true proposition entails that such a
pronoun has some definite kind of thing or particular as its
referent, just as “dog” always refers to members of the kind
“dog,” or a proper name “Jack” always refers to Jack.27 In this
light, it seems reasonable to hold that first-person pronouns are
not proper names, nor do they involve “definite reference,”
because they are paradigmatic indexical terms that take their
truth conditions from the subject who expresses propositions
including them.
We do not need to take Anscombe’s position to accept a
weaker thesis that first-person pronouns can refer, and that they
can constitute identity judgments, but that the truth of
26

Anscombe, “First-Person Pronoun,” 31.
See Haddock, “‘I am NN’,” 958: “Fregean orthodoxy has it that, in using a
subject-predicate sentence whose subject is a singular referring expression, the user
knows what it is for a use of the sentence to be true. Inter alia, the user knows which
object is referred to by the expression in subject position, and as such knows which
object a use of the sentence turns on for its truth. . . . If this is what Anscombe is
rejecting, then it is clear how she can reject the idea that ‘I’ is a referring expression,
without thereby rejecting the familiar rule. To reject this idea is to hold that no
identifying knowledge is internal to any use of a sentence with ‘I’ as subject, and as such,
that no use of such a sentence expresses a singular thought. But this does not mean that
it is not possible to assign conditions of truth to uses of such sentences by means of the
rule.”
27

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propositions involving first-person pronouns (and other
indexicals) does not determine by itself the nature of the
referent of pronouns. My use of the “I” does not ipso facto
decide whether I am identical to an animal, a cloud of particles,
or an immaterial soul. I can, in fact, use the “I” competently,
and there are clear conditions under which my statements
involving the pronoun are true or false, but it is a posteriori
with which of these things I might be identical. First-person
pronouns are indexicals and can form true propositions only
when the subject uses them in an appropriate circumstance. But
this means that there is a semantic possibility that the pronoun
could be used in a situation where the referent was not identical,
but where the subject was. For example, it does not seem
ridiculous to say “I’m not the person I once was” when the
referent is distinct psychological states or moral character. So, I
could assert one day that “I am a banker” and then, after
quitting my job, deny this. Or, “I am Napoleon Bonaparte” can
be a false proposition if thought by a lunatic in an asylum, but
not if thought by Napoleon Bonaparte. The ordinary use of
these indexicals indicates that there is some relevant gap in what
counts as appropriate use that relies less on sameness of referent
and more on sameness of subject.
The key insights of Anscombe that I want to adopt are that
the truth conditions for the use of first-personal pronouns seem
to be constrained more by metaphysical than by semantic
considerations, and that the semantic conditions for the correct
use of the pronoun are not fixed by some definite kind of thing
to which “I” must refer. 28 Clearly, then, there is something
special about the use of the first-personal pronoun, so that the
use of “I” expresses one’s self-consciousness, and it is this that
one cannot fail to do when using the term competently. For this
reason, even though the semantics do not establish whether one
is using the term appropriately, the appropriate dispositional
28
As Brian Garret puts it in “Anscombe and the First Person,” Revista
hispanoamericana de filosofõa 26, no. 78 (1994): “It would be objectionable if the only
acceptable account of ‘I’ had to be reductive, if our use of ‘I’ had to be analysed in terms
which do not themselves presuppose the first person. But there is no reason to think
that our analysis is subject to such a constraint” (102).

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attitudes involved in thinking about oneself in a first-personal
way do necessarily seem to involve some continuity in entity, if
the expressions of self-identity are to be apt and true for the
subject of the attitude. If there was nothing to which I was
identical, for instance, my claims about self-identity would all be
false. And, although it seems impossible for someone to assert
that “I am not identical to anything,” what makes this use
impossible is as much semantic as metaphysical. 29 Even
Buddhists have generally felt the need to give some metaphysical account in light of which propositions about selfidentity can be asserted truly, despite denying that there is a
proper subject entertaining any propositional attitudes. 30 Yet
there is a theoretical possibility, illustrated by that same
tradition, and by four-dimensionalism, for expanding true
propositions about self-identity beyond conditions under which
the subject is one and the same self-identical, enduring
substance wholly present at each time it exists.
While a Buddhist might invoke a fictionalist approach to
personhood (as Candrakirti does),31 Aquinas is not a Buddhist
who denies the existence of a continuous or identical self over
time; he clearly affirms that I am essentially a substance,
identical with the human organism that I am, when alive.
Conversely, Aquinas is clear in affirming that I am not identical
to my soul. In giving reasons for the fittingness of the
resurrection of the body, he notes that if the soul alone were to
obtain happiness this would be unsatisfying in some way
because “the soul, since it is part of man’s body, is not an entire
man, and my soul is not I; hence, although the soul obtains
salvation in another life, nevertheless, not I or any man.”32 He

29
It seems plausible that someone who asserts such a sentence is not so much saying
something false as misusing the pronoun.
30
See Jay Garfield, Engaging Buddhism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), esp.
95-106.
31
Ibid., 111-14.
32
In I Cor, c. 15, lect. 2: “anima autem cum sit pars corporis hominis, non est totus
homo, et anima mea non est ego; unde licet anima consequatur salutem in alia vita, non
tamen ego vel quilibet homo” (Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the

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also requires that, strictly, the proper name of a person only
applies to a person. So, he notes that “the soul of Abraham is
not, properly speaking, Abraham himself, but a part of him.”33
There is, however, an interesting parallel with Buddhism,
because Aquinas is careful to say that the propositions involving
the name of the person “Abraham” are true, even when
Abraham the man/person has strictly speaking ceased to exist
and those propositions directly refer only to Abraham’s soul (a
part of the person) existing separated in the afterlife. These
predications, referring to the deceased person, can be true in
virtue of “synecdoche, [by which] sometimes only a part of man
is called man, especially the soul, which is the more noble part
of man.”34 This echoes a general logical strategy Aquinas elsewhere endorses in cases where we predicate a term from a part
to its whole. He affirms the semantic appropriateness of
denominating a whole from one of its parts, as when we say
someone is curly because his hair is curly. Yet, if we are not
literally referring to the same person who existed during life
when we call Abraham’s or Dives’s soul by the personal name
“Abraham” or “Dives,” how could this kind of use of a personal
name or indexical remain apt and not merely metaphorical?
In these cases, Aquinas claims that a whole is aptly denominated either because the predicate is applied to a principal
part of that whole or because the predicate is appropriately
predicated of the whole even if only one part has that property. 35 Thus, we can predicate true claims about a person in
virtue of referring directly to a part of that person, as long as
the parts are of the right kind. When we truly refer to

Corinthians, trans. Fabian Larcher [Lander, Wyo.: Aquinas Institute, 2012). See also
Expositio super Iob ad Litteram, c. 19 (Leonine ed., 1965).
33
IV Sent., d. 43, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 2: “anima Abrahae non est, proprie loquendo,
ipse Abraham, sed est pars ejus.”
34
De Verit., q. 13, a. 5, ad 3 (Truth, trans. James V. McGlynn, S.J. [Chicago: Henry
Regnery Company, 1953]). See also IV Sent., d. 43, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 2; in III Sent.,
d. 22, q. 1, a. 1, obj. 6.
35
See the discussion in Gyula Klima, “The Semantic Principles Underlying Saint
Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Being,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996):
95-96.

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Abraham’s and Dives’ souls as if they were the whole person,
we seem to predicate something of a whole in virtue of a
predicate that applies to one of the principal parts of that whole.
Note too that these predications from part to whole cannot be
mere metaphor or fictional, as Aquinas uses this strategy in critical Christology to predicate terms of the Word from Christ’s
human nature (i.e., the communicatio idiomatum).36
Aquinas’s intuition as to why it is appropriate sometimes to
use synecdoche to refer to Abraham’s soul by the proper name
“Abraham” presumes, or at least is independently supported by,
a view of meaning that would take the content of our linguistic
expressions to be assigned by a mechanism like David Lewis’s
concept of “reference magnetism.” In response to debates about
the nature of meaning, Lewis famously held that
the assignment of contents to expressions of our language is fixed . . . by
picking the interpretation which does best at jointly satisfying the constraints
of truth-maximization and the constraint that the referents of our terms
should, as much as possible, be “the ones that respect the objective joints in
nature.”37

As Jeff Speaks points out, Lewis’s view comes with a “nontrivial metaphysical price tag,” where there is an objective set of
more or less natural “joints” suitable for reference.38 But this is
a price that Aquinas would be willing to pay. Thomistic metaphysics posits many such “natural” joints, for example, natural
kinds, proper accidents, substances. With a theory of meaning
in which reference magnetism is presumed, sentences in which
proper names for persons figure, though they refer only to a
separated soul, are true. The predicates are appropriated to the
soul, because the souls is a principal part of the person. On a
view such as reference magnetism, we presume charitably to
interpret the speaker’s sentences as referring to what is, strictly
36

E.g., STh III, q. 16, a. 8.
Jeff Speaks, “Theories of Meaning,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Winter 2019 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
win2019/entries/meaning/), sec. 3.2.3. The internal quotation comes from David Lewis,
“Putnam’s Paradox,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984): 227.
38
Speaks, “Theories of Meaning,” sec. 3.2.3.
37

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

speaking, merely a part of a person (his soul), and the natural
referent of the proper name is, in this context, actually the soul.
Thus, we can legitimately say that St. Peter or St. Paul are
praying for us in heaven, even though St. Peter’s soul alone is
doing the praying. And this is exactly how Aquinas deals with
these cases.39
I suggest that such a view of meaning, combined with the
considerations drawn from Anscombe’s treatment of the firstperson pronoun, indicates that personal pronouns do not
function as proper names for persons, nor do they require a
definite description of the referent. In this sense, Anscombe’s
point is also relevant to other personal pronouns—“we” “you”
“y’all” “she/he.” If we take this to be the case, then it appears as
if one could aptly refer to both a person and the separated soul
of that person by the same personal pronoun, aptly saying (for
example) that “you will be in heaven,” just as the separated soul
might think of itself aptly as being the same “I” that once was a
human being. However, this requires us to show that semantic
claims are supported by the right kind of metaphysical
conditions; if the soul is not related in the right way to its
composite, such that these predications of self-identity are
appropriately natural and truth-maximizing, it does not seem
like it could truly say that it is identical with the person it
composed.
For example, if my foot were to survive my death as a living
thing, it would be hard to see how that foot could consider
itself to be identical with the person it once composed, let alone
entertain a propositional attitude at all. Reference magnetism
would not help us, because it would not seem as if the predications were appropriately natural. Nevertheless, it seems intuitively plausible that reference-magnetism-type considerations
should apply in cases where the soul entertains propositions
such as “I was once a human being” or “I am John Smith.” The
soul understands the relation of itself to the human being it
once composed just as we might understand our past psychological self as an earlier but continuous version of our present
39

STh II-II, q. 83, a. 11, ad 5. See further De Verit., q. 13, a. 5, ad 3.

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365

self; further, there seem to be important differences between a
form and a material integral part. For this reason, in the next
part, I will present the appropriate metaphysical machinery to
understand why this first semantic move does not merely
assume that it is apt to refer to a separated soul as if it were
relevantly identical with the person it once composed, but that
this semantic aptness has metaphysical foundations in an
identity of personality.40
III. METAPHYSICAL MOVE: IF “PERSON” IS NOT A (NATURAL)
SORTAL, NEITHER IS “PERSONALITY”
As Anscombe points out, the conditions for truth of selfidentity claims involve primarily metaphysical, not semantic,
necessities. Aquinas’s metaphysics constrains us to say that there
are no actions or properties without a subject—no actions can
occur without any subject at all, pace Buddhist eliminativists.
Moreover, having a propositional attitude requires an entity
capable of thinking those propositions. For the Thomist,
consequently, only an intellect can think and entertain the right
propositional attitudes. Further, in constrast to the assertion
that I am identical or not identical to a cloud of particles, which
is knowable only through empirical investigation, Aquinas holds
that the soul has habitual knowledge of itself, accompanying
any act of cognition it undertakes. 41 His epistemology would
then seem to support the view that the soul, if conscious, always
has the kind of self-knowledge that permits appropriate use of
the first-person pronoun.42 Yet, beyond being able to entertain
40
Although the corruptionists have repeated Aquinas’s claims on synecdoche, I take
it to be a weakness of corruptionism’s approach to these problems that these views leave
unexplained why synecdoche is appropriately applied to the soul in the afterlife, other
than in a loose or metaphorical way. While the soul is a principal part of a human being,
we need to specify in what respect it is principal (e.g., the quantitatively largest parts of
the human being would not be addressed as the person by synecdoche), and why this
permits calling the soul by the name of the person (a person being a special kind of
object).
41
See Q. D. De Anima, a. 16, ad 8; De Verit., q. 10, a. 8.
42
For a full treatment, see Therese Scarpelli Cory, Aquinas on Human SelfKnowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

propositions and to know itself immediately, the separated soul
is positively metaphysically apt to be an appropriate subject for
expressions of self-identity with the person it once composed.
This aptness is grounded in two features of the separated soul:
that it is essentially such that the soul is disposed to constitute a
person in ordinary circumstances, and that it remains numerically the same thing when it constitutes a person and when
it does not.
Hylomorphism is the view that material substances are all
constituted by two metaphysical principles, matter and form. A
“substantial form” is what constitutes matter into a substance of
some definite kind. And Aquinas is well-known for holding that
there is only one substantial form in any substance.43 For the
Thomist, matter generally conceived (i.e., “prime matter”)
belongs to no kind. There are material objects, not “matter in
general.” What exists is not matter in general, but particular
kinds of matter; matter does not exist except as constituting a
substance, informed by a substantial form. Thus, when some
particular matter, like Socrates’ body, ceases to be part of a
composite substance, as when Socrates dies, that matter ceases
to be informed by Socrates’ substantial form, his soul, and
becomes some other substance(s). The body of Socrates is not
numerically identical with his corpse; they are not the same
kind of object, and so cannot be the same substance.44 Matter is
ontologically dependent on form to constitute a substance of a
kind. But form can be dependent on matter as well, in a different respect. In most material substances, the forms that
constitute them are dependent on matter for their existence.
That is, given the kind of substance that they constitute, the
form does not do anything other than make the matter to be a
certain way.45
Aquinas holds that the human soul, the substantial form of
the human being, is not like other substantial forms of material
objects. The human soul has activities and capacities associated
43

See Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Unicity of Substantial Form.”
ScG IV, c. 80 (trans. Charles J. O’Neil [New York: Hanover House, 1957]).
45
See STh I, q. 76, a. 1, ad 4-6.
44

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with it that, while requiring material organs to provide input on
which those capacities (ordinarily) operate, are not the
capacities of any bodily order. Aquinas therefore concludes the
soul does not depend on matter for its existence.46 However,
this makes the human soul a very unique part of a material
substance because, as forms are not dependent on matter for
what kind of substance they constitute, the soul neither ceases
to be a specifically human soul after death and nor ceases to be
the same particular thing that once constituted a human being.47
Aquinas appeals precisely to these considerations about souls
qua forms in order to argue that the resurrection of the dead,
which occurs by God’s power, does not involve the creation of
a new person but, rather, that people who die will all be
numerically identical with those whom God resurrects. When
human beings in this life undergo changes in matter—growth,
eating, excretion, amputation—what is important for
persistence over time is not that the particular matter remains
identical (Aquinas is not a mereological essentialist) but that the
same form constitutes all the matter, diachronically, as one
human being.
This means not only that the soul is such that, after the death
of the person, it can persist, but that it persists as numerically
identical and as having a disposition to constitute a human
being. These two facts lead Aquinas to claim that the soul
retains the same being that it had while constituting a person,
because the soul is such that it retains the disposition to
constitute not merely a human being in general but exactly the
same person it once constituted: the soul’s “being . . . is not
merely in its concrete union with matter. Its being, therefore,
which is that of the composite, remains in the soul even when
the body is dissolved.”48 Not only does a soul continue to exist
after death, but it remains the principle of substantial existence
of a human being, and, indeed, of a particular person, that it

46

ScG IV, c. 81.
Ibid.
48
Ibid. See also De 108 articulis, q. 34.
47

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

was during life. 49 In short, “there is no interruption in the
substantial act of being of man”50 because the soul after death
remains the same principle that essentially constitutes the person it caused to exist when the person was alive. Aquinas takes
this as a decisive reason, for example, to reject the possibility of
reincarnation,51 and, naturally, as a reason that makes it fitting
for God to restore the soul’s material body to it at the
resurrection.52 But Aquinas also makes clear that, while the soul
remains a particular thing, it is not properly a substance, even
though it subsists when it does not compose a human being,
because substances are associated with natural kinds and the
human soul remains essentially a part of a complete material
substance, not (for example) becoming a member of a distinct
kind of immaterial substance. 53 For this reason, although it
subsists, the separated soul is not a person either: “Not every
particular substance is a hypostasis or a person, but that which
has the complete nature of its species. Hence a hand, or a foot,
is not called a hypostasis, or a person; nor, likewise, is the soul
alone so called, since it is a part of the human species.”54 Because the soul is essentially the form of a human being, it cannot
act as it ordinarily would in a material composite;55 for instance,
without the brain, the soul would have no sensory content on

49
See the debate between Nevitt and Klima in The Metaphysics of Personal Identity:
Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, ed. G. Klima and A. Hall,
vol. 13 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016). Nevitt argues that Aquinas can
countenance “gappy” existence of the human person (“Annihilation, Re-creation, and
Intermittent Existence in Aquinas,” 101-18), whereas Klima argues that the existence of
the human being continues, insofar as the human soul has the same substantial act of
existence as that of the human person (“The Problem of “Gappy Existence” in Aquinas’
Metaphysics and Theology,” 119-34).
50
IV Sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 1 (trans. Klima, “The Problem of ‘Gappy
Existence’,” 129).
51
E.g., ScG II, c. 83. For a review of Aquinas’s claims about reincarnation
throughout his works, see Marie George, “Aquinas on Reincarnation,” in The Thomist,
Vol. 60 (1996): 33-52.
52
ScG IV, c. 79.
53
See STh I, q. 75, a. 2, ad 1.
54
STh I, q. 75, a. 4, ad 2.
55
De Verit., q. 19, a. 1, ad 5.

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369

which to exercise its intellectual powers, and so God would
need to supply for what the brain would otherwise do.56
My proposal requires a focus on the way that kindmembership terms function in the background of the
hylomorphic account. Consider the generic term “humanity.” In
Aquinas’s semantics, terms like “humanity” function to pick out
a certain (natural) kind of object. We can say that Aquinas holds
that “humanity” is a generic sortal term, picking out substances
having a human nature. 57 Since, on his hylomorphic metaphysics, human beings are such that their nature involves both
matter and form, the sortal term “humanity” picks out what
Aquinas calls a forma totius of a human being—the composition
of matter and form in things that are constitutive of what it is to
be a human being, rather than, for example, picking out merely
their substantial form (i.e., soul) alone. 58 Material substances
aren’t essentially just immaterial forms. Thus, an object ceases
to fall under the generic sortal in virtue of ceasing to have the
essential principles of the kind, and a material substance ceases
to exist when there ceases to be material composition. Aquinas
therefore states that Christ’s humanity ceased to exist when he
died.59 In parallel with Christ’s ceasing to fall under the generic
sortal “humanity,” Christ also ipso facto ceases to be a man
when his soul separates from his body and he dies on the
Cross.60
Recall by contrast that “person” for Aquinas, following the
Boethian definition, signifies an “individual substance of a rational nature.” This entails that the term “person” is not a
generic sortal term in the same way that “humanity” is, as there
are no genera or species for what it is to be an individual or
particular in general; the definition we give of a “person” does
56

E.g., STh I, q. 89, a. 1.
For contemporary discussion of substance sortals, see Richard E. Grandy and Max
A. Freund, “Sortals,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020), ed.
Edward N. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/sortals/), esp. sec.
4.
58
See ScG IV, c. 80 and 81; Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4.
59
Quodl. II, q. 1, a. 1, s.c.
60
STh III, q. 50, a. 4.
57

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

not pick out a nature.61 And, per the definition, only substances
are persons, which is what necessitates Aquinas’s denial that
souls are persons or that a part of Abraham is Abraham. For this
reason, pace the classical survivalist position, the slogan “constitution is not identity” is not of obvious help here. While it is
true that neither my soul nor my body are identical with me
when they constitute me, Aquinas thinks sortal terms like
“human/humanity” only apply to things identical with instances
of the natural kind of organism “human being,” and that
nonsortal terms like “person” only apply to things identical with
individuals having a complete rational nature; neither of these is
true of the separated soul.
Nevertheless, there is a term Aquinas uses that can apply to
the situation of the rational soul: “personality” (personalitas).
Aquinas uses “personality” in theological contexts, parallel to
his use of the generic term “humanity,” as referring to things
having the disposition to constitute a person. On one hand, in
Trinitarian theology, Aquinas notes that one could refer to the
Trinity either as involving three personalities—referring to the
three personal properties constituting, or identical with, the
three persons of Father, Son, and Spirit 62 —or as having one
personality, in virtue of God’s having a personal nature. 63
Personality can then indifferently indicate, in the Godhead,
either what is disposed to constitute the three individual persons
individually, or the generic “form” in virtue of which God’s
nature is disposed to constitute a person. On the other hand,
the use of the term “personality” is critical in Christological
contexts to indicate how it is that Christ’s human nature, just
like any other, has a disposition to form a person. Given the
fact that the individual subsistence of the human nature is
provided immediately by the person of the Word, this disposition in Christ’s human nature to form a separate human
substance or a person is not actualized—pace Nestorianism.64

61

STh I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 1.
STh I, q. 39, a. 3, ad 4; STh III, q. 3, a. 5.
63
STh III, q. 3, a. 3, ad 2.
64
ScG IV, c. 41.

62

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Christ’s human nature had a personality, a disposition to
form a person, which was nevertheless “assumed to the
personality of God the Word; just as the body, when it is
without the soul, has its proper species, but, when it is united
with the soul, it receives its species from [the soul].”65 In fact,
Aquinas uses this view of personality as a premise in an
argument against a version of Apollinarianism that holds that
Christ did not have a human soul at the moment of his
conception. Aquinas argues that, if we grant that
a personality of the man [Christ] were to be generated, there must needs exist
a body and a rational soul. But the personality of the man Christ is not
different from the personality of God’s Word. But the Word of God united a
human body to himself in the very conception. Therefore, the personality of
that man was there. Therefore, the rational soul must also have been there.66

That is, the personality of Christ included both the principles of
the divine nature that constituted the person of the Word and
the principles in Christ’s human nature that would ordinarily
constitute a human person (but were accidentally impeded from
doing so because they had a relation to a divine person).
“Personality,” then, functions as what I will call a “nonsortal
generic term” because it picks out no determinate kind of a
rational nature. One could just as easily say it is a sortal, if one
specifies that it is a “nonnatural” sortal, because it does not pick
out a natural kind. The important point is that “person” is not a
natural kind definable in terms of a genus or species,67 and thus
the forma totius that refers to personhood generically, namely,
“personality,” does not pick out any complete nature. And, in a
context such as this, the principle that “constitution is not identity” now becomes relevant. As Christ’s human nature has a
disposition to be a person, in virtue of having those metaphysical principles that would ordinarily constitute an individual
human person, that nature has personality but is not a distinct
person from the person of the Word. This is an application of
65

ScG IV, c. 49 (my translation).
ScG IV, c. 44.
67
STh I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 1.

66

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

the principle that constitution is not identity: at the Incarnation
the soul and body of Christ come to constitute, but are not
identical with, the personality of the Word. Aquinas employs
claims about personality, in that vein, to resolve questions about
whether the person of the Word is modified by coming into
relation to its human soul and body.68
Aquinas explicitly makes such a move in regard to the
separated soul, employing a nonsortal generic term to characterize a sense in which the “corporeity” of a human being
persists post mortem as one and the same with that possessed by
the human during life, in virtue of the persistence of the soul as
the principle of bodily corporeity.69 In similar fashion, then, we
can see that there is an apt application of the nongeneric sortal
“personality” in the claim that the soul of a person comes to
constitute that person’s personality after death, even though it is
not identical to it during life. It is one and the same personality
of the person, given both that the principle of the personality of
that person (having a disposition for constituting a person in the
past and at the future resurrection, as that principle of a
person’s substantial being or actuality) is precisely what persists
post mortem, and that the soul is numerically identical when it
constitutes a person and when it does not. The continuity of
personality is what allows an apt use of personal pronouns in
regard to the separated soul. When I am dead, I can think truly
that I was once a human being.70
IV. THE RESULTING POSITION:
SURVIVALISM, SUITABLY MODIFIED
The metaphysical picture is that the separated soul comes to
constitute the personality of the person when the composite
68
Richard Cross goes so far as to call Aquinas’s view the “whole-part” model in The
Metaphysics of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 51-62.
69
ScG IV, c. 81.
70
My model differs from that of De Haan and Dahm because I hold that my “ego” is
relevantly identical, not “radically diminished,” in the post-mortem state—the use of “I”
is indexical, it does not need to refer to a single substance in order for “I” to refer
appropriately.

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ceases to exist, although during life the soul does not.71 This is a
move familiar in the debate, as it is essentially the same move
made by Stump. The metaphysical fact that my soul comes to
constitute my personality when I am dead is what makes it
intuitively apt for us to use personal pronouns to describe its
relation to the composite person it once formed. Yet the soul is
a principle having a disposition to constitute my person in the
appropriate circumstances, not the whole me that was an
organism. Thus, what persists is my personality and not my
person, the suffix illustrating that the soul is not a proper
substance. Combined with the semantic moves made above, we
therefore have a twofold set of appropriate contexts in which
the survivalist and corruptionist intuitions can be expressed. It is
appropriate in some contexts to say that I survive my death, or
that Abraham is in heaven, without any falsity, because the
separated soul will come to constitute the personality of the
person in those situations.
Nevertheless, given that my soul is not identical with my
personality, it is appropriate in other contexts to say that I do
not survive my death when I want to indicate that such a state
would be incomplete or imperfect, given that only a part of
what I am survives my death and my person will not then exist
post mortem. On earth and at the resurrection it will be false to
say that I am my soul, as my soul alone does not constitute my
personality in these circumstances. This affirmation that a soul
remains essentially a metaphysical part of a particular material
substance ensures that the resurrection restores something that
is missing and that is essential to being a human person—I am
not really a person even if I am the same personality in the
intermediate state. Some semantic mechanism such as reference
magnetism helps to determine how, in these distinct contexts,
the personal pronouns in each proposition “latch on” to a
distinct joint in the nature of reality. This view nevertheless
resembles survivalism more than corruptionism, because the
71
There is a possible parallel to Christ’s human nature being an instrument of the
second person of the Trinity and being drawn into the personality of the Word even
when it is not itself a substance (ScG IV, c. 41).

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overall result is that it remains not merely semantically but also
metaphysically appropriate to say that I—rather than merely
one of my parts—survive my death.
There might be worries that the view detailed above is
simply incoherent, by simple transitivity of identity. It would
seem as if the view requires holding that a part of me survives
my death, but that I am not identical with that part. If so, then
what survives my death is not identical with me. And, by the
basic logic of identity, what is not identical with me is not me.
However, this entails that what survives my death is not me.
Ergo, the view is incoherent. My semantic point about indexicals, however, allows me to deny two moves in this
reasoning, because those moves require equivocations. Indexicals depend for their truth conditions on the context of use. In
light of this, first, I would deny that what survives my death is
not me. What I claim is that what survives my death will be me,
when my body ceases to constitute me, but that I am not
presently my soul. This is because the truth conditions of indexicals can sometimes, as in this case, depend on a temporal
qualification. Second, I take essential identity judgments with
indexicals to be difficult, because of the ambiguity that attaches
to indexicals. For example, “I am essentially an animal” could
be interpreted as “the thing that I am, this thing, is essentially an
animal,” or “whatever is referring to itself as ‘I,’ in any context,
is essentially an animal.” Anscombe attacked the latter type of
interpretation, and it seems clearly false, as, for example, an
angel or God could also use the term “I” aptly. The interpretation of the claim that I am essentially an animal in the first
sense, however, only seems to involve an identity judgment
about the referent of the indexical in the context.
Consider Stump’s parallel understanding of how identity
claims function:
A human person is not identical to his soul; rather, a human person is
identical to an individual substance in the species rational animal. A particular
of that sort is normally, naturally, composed of form and matter configured
into a human body. Because constitution is not identity for Aquinas, however,
a particular can exist with less than the normal, natural complement of
constituents. It can, for example, exist when it is constituted only by one of its

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main metaphysical parts, namely, the soul. And so although a person is not
identical to his soul, the existence of the soul is sufficient for the existence of a
person.72

This allows Stump to interpret claims that “Abraham is not his
soul” as only true or false depending on the context of the
utterance, in light of the presupposition that a person is not
identical to his soul even if that person comes to be constituted
by his soul alone. This results in the view that, in some contexts,
one can truly say that Abraham is his soul (i.e., when he is in
heaven), but, in other contexts, it is true to say that Abraham is
not his soul (i.e., when he is alive). The contextualism of my
account, however, is no more problematic than Stump’s. Unlike
Stump, I hold that an individual substance of the species
rational animal is essentially a particular composite of body and
soul, because I want to avoid claiming that human persons are
essentially such that they can exist without bodies. On my view,
the personality of a person is constituted by, but not identical
with, his body and soul in normal, natural circumstances. The
personality that after death comes to be constituted by my soul
alone is identical with the personality once constituted by my
body and soul. My personality is the identical subject of the “I,”
in every circumstance, even if the referent of that indexical, the
constituents of me, change. But the differing constituents of the
subject correspond to the change in truth conditions, even
though the subject is identical. Thus, when I say that I am
essentially an animal, what I mean is that this thing that I am
(what constitutes my personality in these circumstances) is
essentially animal. When I am dead, by contrast, it is not true to
think I am an animal, because my personality is no longer
constituted by an animal, even though the subject, my personality, is identical with what it was when I was an animal. My
personality is identical with what it is essentially, even if it is not
constituted by the same person after death. Thus, the identity
claims on my contextual account are coherent.
This modified version of the survivalist position would be, I
think, a preferable interpretation of Aquinas, because no
72

Stump, “Resurrection, Reassembly, Reconstitution,” 168.

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JAMES DOMINIC ROONEY, O.P.

modification of Aquinas’s metaphysics or denial of any of his
texts about the death of the person (human being, substance,
supposit) is necessary. Further, it would be understandable (in
light of Aquinas’s theory of reference) that he would think this
point about personal survival might not need explicit statement,
presuming instead that predication of personal pronouns is
obviously apt in the case of human souls and that we only need
to appeal to something further, like synecdoche, to account for
predication of proper names. Unlike solutions that restate the
problem in different terms or seem to make personhood come
in degrees, the modified survivalist view is truly explanatory,
because it involves taking implications of Aquinas’s hylomorphism, as they apply to his theological interests, and showing
that they entail metaphysical or semantic conclusions that have
not yet been pushed far enough. Too many Thomists have been
operating, it seems, under the shadow of substance dualist
presuppositions rather than in the sunlight of hylomorphist
truth.
This view of post-mortem survival is also of general interest
because it illustrates a consequence of a hylomorphic account of
the human being. Hylomorphism permits us to concede, in a
straightforward way, many naturalist intuitions about human
beings. Aquinas’s denial that human beings survive death is a
clear affirmation that a human being is essentially a material
substance. I am identical with the human animal that I am.
What survives is not even a substance. What survives is the
principle of a human being’s personhood, namely, his soul; not
a human person, but that person’s personality. Yet, in contrast
with substance dualism, the hylomorphist does not need to hold
that personal identity claims are true only in virtue of the
existence of a substance that is identical with the referent of
“you” or “I” or other indexicals. Instead, the hylomorphist has
resources for adopting certain strategies of understanding
personal identity that would otherwise resemble Buddhism or
four-dimensionalism. When I die, it will still be appropriate to
say that I survive because my personality will come to be
constituted by my soul alone. On that account, I do not need to
remain a substance to survive my death.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 377-409

AQUINAS ON HUMAN PERSONHOOD AND DIGNITY
TIANYUE WU
Institute of Foreign Philosophy, Peking University
Beijing, China

A

QUINAS’S CONCEPTION of person and personal identity has attracted considerable attention in recent years.
On the one hand, much ink has been spilled on Aquinas’s
metaphysical reflections on the beginning of human personhood, the possibility of its survival after biological death, and
the criteria of personal identity.1 On the other hand, contemporary Thomistic ethicists have laid strong emphasis on the
moral significance of persons and often invoked Aquinas in
bioethical discussions of, for example, stem-cell research,

1

Recent literature on the beginning and the end of human personhood is extensive.
In particular, it has been hotly debated whether a human person has the same identity
conditions of a human being as a living body. See Eleonore Stump, “Resurrection,
Reassembly, and Reconstitution: Aquinas on the Soul,” in Die menschliche Seele:
Brauchen wir den Dualismus? ed. Bruno Niederbacher and Edmund Runggaldier
(Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006): 153-74; Patrick Toner, “Personhood and Death in St.
Thomas Aquinas,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 26 (2009): 121-38; “St. Thomas
Aquinas on Gappy Existence,” Analytic Philosophy 56 (2015): 94-110; Christina Van
Dyke, “The End of Human Life As We Know It: Thomas Aquinas on Bodies, Persons,
and Death,” The Modern Schoolman 89 (2012): 243-57; “I See Dead People:
Disembodied Souls and Aquinas’s Two-Person Problem,” Oxford Studies in Medieval
Philosophy 2 (2014): 25-45; Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of
Human Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013); Turner C. Nevitt,
“Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Intermittent Existence in Aquinas,” History of
Philosophy Quarterly 31 (2014): 1-19; Antonia Fitzpatrick, Thomas Aquinas on Bodily
Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Daniel D. De Haan and Brandon
Dahm, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls as Incomplete Human Persons,” The
Thomist 83 (2019): 589-637.
377

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abortion, and brain death.2 Human personhood is often taken
as a key to elucidate the moral status of human embryos,
patients in persistent vegetative state, human/nonhuman chimeras, and so on. The idea is that only a human person can
enjoy the highest or full moral status, in that only such an entity
deserves a genuinely moral consideration in its own right, such
as to be treated fairly or not to be harmed.3
It seems natural to ask further what grounds the full moral
status of a human person, or what justifies the moral worth of
personhood. In this light, human dignity appears to provide a
link between the metaphysical and the moral perspectives of
personhood. Today, dignity means nothing but “the fundamental moral worth or status supposedly belonging to all
persons equally.”4 Modern readers thus have been excited to
find that Aquinas explicitly identified an intimate relation
between human dignity and personhood, claiming that each
person is immediately given a certain dignity simply because of
its ontological status as a rational individual. Such dignity is
taken to be a unique feature of human beings in the natural
world, and grounds basic human rights.5 However, some other
2
See for instance, Norman Ford, The Prenatal Person: Ethics from Conception to
Birth (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002); John Haldane and Patrick Lee, “Aquinas on
Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life,” Philosophy 78 (2003): 255-78;
Robert Spaemann, “Is Brain Death the Death of a Human Person?”, Communio 38
(2011): 326-40; Jason T. Eberl, Thomistic Principles and Bioethics (New York:
Routledge, 2006); “The Ontological and Moral Significance of Persons,” Scientia et
fides 5 (2017): 217-36.
3
Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum, “Persons and Moral Status,” in Persons:
A History, ed. Antonia Lolordo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 334-62, at
335.
4
Remy Debes, ed., Dignity: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 1.
5
See for instance, Aquinas, STh I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 2: “Et quia magnae dignitatis est in
rationali natura subsistere, ideo omne individuum rationalis naturae dicitur persona, ut
dictum est.” Cf. Servais Pinckaers, “Aquinas on the Dignity of the Human Person
(1987),” in J. Berkman and C. S. Titus, eds., The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic
Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 144-63,
esp. 151; Giles Emery, “The Dignity of Being a Substance: Person, Subsistence, and
Nature, “ Nova et vetera (English ed.) 9 (2011): 991-1001; Lawrence Dewan, “Some
Notes on St. Thomas’s Use of ‘dignitas’,” Nova et vetera (English ed.) 11 (2013):
663-72; Paul A. MacDonald, Jr., “Grounding Human Dignity and Rights: A Thomistic

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commentators claim that what Aquinas had in mind was
probably not the inherent, equal, and inalienable dignity specific
to human species that we debate today, but rather a more
traditional conception of moral worth, which is based upon
one’s merits.6 Clarifying Aquinas’s notion of human dignity is
therefore significant for understanding both his ontological
approach to human personhood and its moral implications.
As commentators have rightly observed, Aquinas employs the
term dignity in various contexts. It can designate people with
outstanding social or moral achievements, rational creatures
who can determine their own actions in an autonomous
manner, as well as God as the most perfect efficient cause of all
things.7 In this paper, I will focus on Aquinas’s account of
personal dignity, in particular the dignity of the human being as
a person. By “personal dignity” I mean the fundamental worth
or status that belongs to a person qua person and distinguishes
the person from other sorts of entities. I will try to reconstruct a
philosophical account of personal dignity from Aquinas’s
theological reflections on hypostasis, person, rationality, and
dignity. Following the guidance of Aquinas’s texts, I will query
the source of human personal dignity, its ontological status, and
its normative force. In other words, instead of presenting a
comprehensive analysis of Aquinas’s conception of personhood
and its moral significance, this article is intended to be an
exploration of personal dignity as it pertains to his definition of
human personhood.8 It mainly dwells on the subsistence,
Response to Wolterstorff,” The Thomist 82 (2018): 1-35. See also John F. Crosby, The
Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1996), 65-72 for a similar contemporary account of the inherent value of the
person.
6
See Ruedi Imbach, “Human Dignity in the Middle Ages (Twelfth to Fourteenth
Century),” in Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity, ed. Marcus Düwell, Jens
Braarvig, Roger Brownsword, and Dietmar Mieth (Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity
Press, 2014), 64-73; Bonnie Kent, “In the Image of God: Human Dignity after the Fall,”
in Debes, ed., Dignity, 73-97.
7
See Pincakers, “Aquinas on the Dignity of the Human Person (1987),” 162-63;
Dewan, “Some Notes on St. Thomas’s Use of ‘dignitas’,” 664-72.
8
For a general overview of Aquinas’s conception of personhood and its moral
implications, see Joseph Torchia, O.P., Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the

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incommunicability, and rationality of a human person, which
directly account for her inalienable value as an individual being
from a philosophical point of view, while leaving aside other
features of human personhood, such as its participation in
divinity by being an image of God or its inherent interpersonal
relationality in a community.
In particular, I will examine Aquinas’s interpretation of
person as “a hypostasis distinct by a property pertaining to dignity,” a definition that was popular in the thirteenth century.9 I
will argue that by commenting on this “dignity definition of
person,” Aquinas develops an insightful interpretation of human
dignity as a personal property, which is deeply rooted in a
rational substance whose existence cannot be shared, communicated, or replaced. I will show that this fundamental
personal dignity is neither a merit-based value nor an abstract
claim related to the nature of the human species, but rather a
specific sort of normative force, which is grounded on the
incommunicable existence of a rational being. However, a
careful analysis of the rationality contained in personhood will
show that Aquinas makes a distinction between rationality as
the substantial form of the human body (Rationalitys) and rationality as a capacity to determine one’s own actions
(Rationalityc), which leads to a further distinction of personal
dignity: one is inherent and inalienable while the other is
acquired and merit-based. Finally, I will argue that this
distinction helps us better understand Aquinas’s justification of
Philosophy of Human Nature (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008),
125-55. For a more comprehensive and systematic analysis, see Édouard Wéber, Nature,
singularité et devenir de la personne humaine chez Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Librairie
Philosophique J. Vrin, 2018).
9
This definition can be traced back at least to Alexander of Hales, who reports it as
from an anonymous master. See Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quatuor libros
sententiarum Petri Lombardi I, d. 23, n. 9b. Cf. Pinckaers, “Aquinas on the Dignity of
the Human Person (1987),” 151, n. 10, where he mentions that Alain de Lille has been
wrongly mentioned as a reference to this definition; see also Corey L. Barnes, “Albert
the Great and Thomas Aquinas on Person, Hypostasis, and Hypostatic Union,” The
Thomist 72 (2008): 107-46, esp. 113-14. The conception of personhood in terms of
dignity can be found earlier, in William of Auxerre; see Richard Cross, The Metaphysics
of the Incarnation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 242-44.

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381

the death penalty in terms of the criminal’s total loss of personal
dignity (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 2, ad 3), which seems to present a
possible counterargument to the notion of personal dignity as
an inherent property that can never be taken away from a
person. By a more charitable reading of the passage in its
context, I will argue that even a murderer being sentenced to
death is credited with the personal dignity defended in this
article—otherwise he or she cannot be held responsible for the
crime.
I. TRINITY, INCARNATION AND THE
ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF PERSONAL DIGNITY
In Aquinas’s writings, “person” is above all a theological
concept. It is introduced for a better understanding of two central questions in the mysteries of Trinity and Incarnation: (1)
How can the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit be distinct
from each other while remaining the same one God? (2) How
can Jesus possess both divine and human natures but nevertheless persist as a single unified being? In answering these
Trinitarian and Christological questions, Aquinas develops a
theory of personhood that can be applied to God, angels, and
human beings, though in an analogical, not a univocal way. By
contrast, it has been well noted that the term “person” and its
cognates are almost absent in Aquinas’s treatises on human
nature, human acts, and even morality in the Summa theologiae.10 This absence means that we need to start with his
theological contemplations on the divine persons in order to
reconstruct a philosophical account of human personhood. In
particular, I will analyze in this section two passages from the
commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (I Sent., d. 23,
q. 1, a. 1; I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1) and two passages from the

10
See David M. Gallagher, “Person and Ethics in Thomas Aquinas,” Acta
philosophica 4 (1995): 51-71, at 51; Victor Salas, “Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of
the Person and Phenomenological Personalism: The Case of Incommunicability,”
Gregorianum 94 (2013): 573-92, at 573.

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Summa theologiae (STh I, q. 29, a. 3, corp. and ad 2; STh III,
q. 2, a. 3).
In the Sentences commentary, Aquinas frequently alludes to
the dignity definition of person and refers to “person” as a
“name of dignity” (nomen dignitatis).11 This is crucial for his
distinction of various terms that can be predicated of God, such
as substance, subsistence, essence, and person. Aquinas is well
aware that the genuine challenge is to show that they are not
synonyms but names having different significations, even
though there is no real distinction in divine things.12 Unlike
essence, subsistence, and substance, which can be defined by
their corresponding acts (i.e., being [esse], subsisting [subsistere],
and underlying [substare]), “person” is distinct by one of its
properties, namely, the property that pertains to dignity:
Lastly, this name “person” signifies a particular substance just as it is placed
under a property that implies dignity, and so is prosopon among the Greeks.
Therefore, person is found in nothing but an intellectual nature. And
according to Boethius, the name “person” [persona] derives from [the verb]
“to sound through” [personare], because actors in tragedies and comedies put
a mask on themselves to represent the one whose deeds they narrate in an
enchanting way. Hence it has been accepted in practice that any individual
human being about whom such a narrative can be made would be called a
person.13

Here Aquinas recognizes the connotation of dignity in the word
“person” and specifies that the dignity in question is based upon
the intellectual nature of a person. It is evident that Aquinas
implicitly adopts Boethius’s classic definition of person as “an
individual substance of a rational nature,” but revises it by
replacing “individual” with “particular,” and “rational” with
“intellectual.”14
11
E.g., I Sent., d. 10, q. 1, a. 5: “Moreover, since person is a name of dignity, it
follows that this relation must pertain to dignity. Therefore, three things must be
considered in the constituting of persons, i.e., what is the relation of origin, what is
proper [to a person], what pertains to dignity.” All translations of the passages cited
from Aquinas’s Sentences commentary are mine.
12
I Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 1.
13
Ibid.
14
Cf. Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, III.

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383

However, instead of clarifying the ontological relationship
between person and dignity, Aquinas merely cites Boethius’s
etymological interpretation of persona as a mask used in
theatrical practices, signifying a character.15 This interpretation
seems to imply that such a character deserves a dramatic representation or narrative because of his or her social influence or
reputation: this character often leads a dignified life. This is
obviously a social value due to one’s high rank or other social
achievements, far different from the inherent worth that is
supposed to be equally enjoyed by all beings of an intellectual
nature (i.e., all persons). It remains unclear how this social
dignity is related to the fundamental personal dignity mentioned
at the beginning of this essay.
Later in the Sentences commentary, Aquinas elucidates the
property pertaining to personal dignity in order to show the
difference between “hypostasis” and “person”:
Therefore, I say that the name “hypostasis” in God signifies the relation as
distinguished in the manner of that which is subsistent in the divine nature, as
has been said of the name of person; but they are different because hypostasis
by its nature does not include a definite notion of distinction, whereas the
name “person” includes a special notion of distinction which relates to
dignity, inasmuch as it signifies that which is subsistent in a noble nature,
namely, intellectual. 16

As will become evident, the individual subsistence of person in a
rational nature proves to be crucial to Aquinas’s mature conception of personal dignity in his later writings. Nevertheless, in
this earlier work, the ontological status of the dignity in
question remains ambiguous. It seems that dignity is an essential
feature of person, which explains the distinction of the term
“person” from other divine predicates such as “subsistence” and
“substance.” On the other hand, the social connotation of its
original use in theaters implies that dignity is an accidental
property, which supervenes upon other more fundamental
characteristics—upon one’s social rank or popularity in one

15
16

Ibid.
I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 1.

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case, or upon one’s intellectual capacities in another. Certainly,
this does not cause a serious problem in the case of a divine
person because there is no real distinction between the property
of dignity and his intellectual being. However, the distinction is
substantial for our approach to the source of normativity
relating to human dignity. If dignity is an essential property of
human personhood, it would be an inherent worth of a human
person, which has normative force in its own right. In that case,
a human person would be by definition a being of dignity. It
would follow that personal dignity is an ineradicable feature of
human beings equally. By contrast, if dignity is a supervening
property, it will need to derive its normativity from something
else, such as the recognition of other members in the social
community or the supreme goodness of God as an intellectual
substance, which grounds the value of created intellectual
beings. These two short passages from the Sentences
commentary offer little help in this regard.
In the Summa theologiae, when addressing the question
whether the word “person” should be said of God, Aquinas
returns to the etymology of “person” and argues that the
inherent dignity of person makes it an appropriate predicate for
God:
For as famous men were represented in comedies and tragedies, the name
“person” was imposed to signify those who held [high] dignity. Hence, those
who held certain dignity in the Church came to be called “persons.” For this
reason, some define person as “a hypostasis distinct by a property pertaining
to dignity” [hypostasis proprietate distincta ad dignitatem pertinente]. And
because to subsist in a rational nature is of great dignity, therefore every
[omne] individual of the rational nature is called a “person.” But the dignity of
the divine nature excels every other dignity; and thus the name “person”
preeminently [maxime] belongs to God.17

Several points of this passage are notable in comparison with
Aquinas’s earlier account. First, he openly acknowledges that
17
STh I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 2; emphasis added. All quotations of the Summa are taken,
with modifications, from the translation of the English Dominican Fathers as found in
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica: Complete English Edition in Five Volumes (New
York: Benziger Bros., 1948).

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the original signification of “person” is based upon one’s social
rank and reputation in a given community and is restricted to
certain outstanding members. Second, he draws a more
perspicuous parallel between a lofty personage and a rational
individual with regard to dignity: they both occupy a certain
position in a given hierarchy, whether civic, ecclesiastic, or
ontological. It does not seem difficult to invoke the great chain
of being to justify this claim. In the body of the article, Aquinas
claims that “person signifies what is most perfect [perfectissimum] in all nature.”18 In this context, he explicitly cites the
dignity definition of person, which will prove crucial in his
understanding of human personhood in the special case of
Christ.19 Last, but probably most important, he makes an even
sharper division between social dignity and personal dignity: the
latter is given to every (omne) individual of rational nature. As
Servais Pinckaers rightly points out, here the term “person”
surpasses its original social contexts and rises to a universal level
by grounding a dignity that is specific to a subsistent thing of
rational nature.20 This personal dignity is universal in that it
applies not only to all human beings who are by definition
rational, but also to God, angels, and other intelligent beings,
certainly in an analogous way. They all share the same sort of
personal dignity, albeit to various extents. In this article,
Aquinas emphasizes that rational nature, in this context, should
be understood in a broad sense to be equivalent to intellectual
nature, as he himself does in his earlier Sentences commentary.21
Furthermore, God is an individual substance of intellectual
nature not in that the divine nature can be individuated by
matter as are sublunary natures but in that his existence is
incommunicable in the most eminent sense. It is for this reason
that Richard of St. Victor proposes an alternative definition of a

18

STh I, q. 29, a. 3.
Aquinas already refers to this definition in his earlier Sentences commentary, e.g.,
II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 2, s.c. 1.
20
Pinckaers, “Aquinas on the Dignity of the Human Person (1987),” 151-52.
21
See the passage cited above, n. 13.
19

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divine person as “the incommunicable existence of the divine
nature.”22
We shall return to the significance of incommunicability in
Aquinas’s notion of personal dignity below (section III). It is
important to note here that by appealing to a hierarchical
conception of nature Aquinas provides an ontological justification for the species-wide dignity of personhood in human
beings. However, this account still leaves open whether
personal dignity is an essential part of personhood or merely an
accident that happens to be found in all rational beings.
According to Porphyry’s theory of predicables, which was generally accepted in Aquinas’s time, from the fact that a property
P is common to all the members of a class S, one cannot infer
that P is a part of S’s essence. P can be an inherent but nonessential property of S, like laughing of human beings, or an inseparable accident of S, like the color of a raven. In both cases,
one can conceive of the essence of S without referring to P.23
In light of Porphyry’s distinction of predicables, the
Scholastic definition of “person” as “a hypostasis distinct by a
property pertaining to dignity,” which Aquinas quotes without
further comment here, can be understood at least in two
different ways:
(a) Accident reading: the “property pertaining to dignity” is an accident or a
property of a hypostasis (i.e., an individual such as Socrates)24 and therefore
“person” is an accidental compound;
(b) Essence reading: the “property pertaining to dignity” is something like a
differentia in an Aristotelian definition that divides persons from other sorts of
hypostases.

22

STh I, q. 29, a. 3, ad 4. For comments on Victor’s definition of person, see
Stephen A. Hipp, “Person” in Christian Tradition and the Conception of Saint Albert the
Great: A Systematic Study of its Concept as Illuminated by the Mysteries of the Trinity
and the Incarnation (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001), 160-76.
23
Porphyry, Introduction, cc. 4-5, 12 (trans. with commentary by Jonathan Barnes
[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003]).
24
For brevity I will use “hypostasis” in later discussions. Here I simply follow
Aquinas’s conception of hypostasis as an Aristotelian primary substance without taking
into account the Scholastic controversy over the ontological status of hypostasis,
discussed below.

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We shall return to these two different readings shortly. But
before we proceed, it should be mentioned that in addition to
the ontological status of personal dignity, we are also left
wondering what kind of dignity it is and what it amounts to in
our ethical life. Is it merely a metaphysical fact that confirms the
place of rational beings in the cosmos? Or is it a genuine moral
value that should be taken into fundamental consideration in all
moral practices?
A clue to solving the above puzzles arises from Aquinas’s
engagement with the mysterious union of divine and human
natures in Christ. Chalcedonian Christology requires that there
are two natures but only one person in Christ. A theoretical
challenge for Scholastic theologians is to explain how Christ
takes on or assumes a substantial human nature while not being
a human person. This is especially problematic for an Aristotelian philosopher who believes that a nature needs to be
instantiated by a particular substance.25 A strategy to soften this
tension between Chalcedonian Christology and Aristotelian
philosophy is to draw a subtle distinction between hypostasis
and person, arguing that there are two hypostases involved in
the Incarnation, especially in Christ’s assumption of human
nature: one divine, another human, the latter of which
individualizes human nature without generating a human
person. For instance, the authors of the Summa halensis insist
that there is a nonpersonal hypostasis in Christ with a unique
set of human properties that make him an authentic human
individual (individuum), even though not a genuine human
person.26 Aquinas’s teacher, Albert the Great, also occasionally
25
See for instance De Pot., q. 9, a. 2, ad 1: “And as a nature, absolutely considered, is
common, so also is the nature’s way of existing. For example, we find the nature of a
human being existing in things only as individuated in a particular individual, since
there is no human being who is not a particular human being, except in the opinion of
Plato, who posited separate universals” (Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, 3 vols.
Trans. by Laurence Shapcote [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1932-34]; I have
modified the translation). For a more developed account of this theoretical tension, see
Michael Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017), 73-76.
26
Summa halensis III, tr. 1, q. 4, tit. 1, d. 3, m. 4, c. 1, a. 4: “Christ, as a human, is
not a person, but he is still an individual. Therefore, when he asks whether Christ as a

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refers to two hypostases in Christ and interprets the act of
assumption as the divine hypostasis accepting the properties of
the human hypostasis, or conversely as the human hypostasis
participating in the properties of the divine nature.27
Unlike his master, Aquinas forcefully rejects the twohypostases theory of the Incarnation. In question 2, article 3 of
the Tertia pars he offers three reasons why there is only one
hypostasis in Christ. First, he cites Boethius’s classic definition
of person to argue that person is a special kind of hypostasis,
namely, a rational hypostasis. Since both the divine and the
human natures in Christ are rational in a broader sense, if each
of them constitutes a hypostasis there will be two rational
hypostases—that is, two persons—in Christ, which would be no
different from the heresy of Nestorius.28
His second argument is based upon a specific reading of the
dignity definition of person mentioned above:

human is someone, if the word ‘someone’ generally stands for a singular substance, that
is to say, if it stands for an individual, then I will say that he is someone. But if it
actually stands for a singular substance that is not joined to another more dignified
being, but remains as a separate thing, i.e., a person, then I will say that he as a human is
not someone in this sense” (“Christus, secundum quod homo, non est persona, est
tamen individuum. Unde, cum quaerit utrum Christus, secundum quod homo, sit quis, si
hoc nomen ‘quis’ supponit generaliter substantiam singularem, hoc est dicere, si
supponit individuum, dico quod est quis. Si vero supponit substantiam singularem, non
alteri digniori coniunctam, sed distinctam, quod est persona, dico quod secundum quod
homo, hoc modo non est quis” [in Lydia Schumacher, Early Franciscan Theology:
Between Authority and Innovation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 196
n. 44; translation is mine]).
27
Albert the Great, Commentarii in tertium librum Sententiarum, d. 5, a. 10, ad 4:
“It suffices for assumption that the hypostasis of human nature participates in the
properties of the Son of God and the divine nature, and conversely the divine hypostasis
acceptes the properties of the human hypostasis, as has been said before” (translation
mine). It is noteworthy that Albert the Great nevertheless insists upon the hypostatic
union in Christ. For an effort to reconcile the apparent discrepancy, see Barnes, “Albert
the Great and Thomas Aquinas on Person,” 129-30.
28
STh III, q. 2, a. 3: “First, because person only adds to hypostasis a determinate
nature, viz. rational, according to what Boethius says (De Duab. Nat.), ‘a person is an
individual substance of rational nature’; and hence it is the same to attribute to the
human nature in Christ a proper hypostasis and a proper person. ” See also De unione
Verbi, a. 2; Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1, s.c.

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Secondly, because if it is granted that person adds to hypostasis something in
which the union can take place, this something is nothing else than a property
pertaining to dignity; according as it is said by some that a person is a
“hypostasis distinct by a property pertaining to dignity.” If, therefore, the
union took place in the person and not in the hypostasis, it follows that the
union only took place in regard to some dignity. And this is what Cyril, with
the approval of the Council of Ephesus, condemned in these terms: “If anyone
after the uniting divides the subsistences in the one Christ, only joining them
in a union of dignity or authority or power, and not rather in a concourse of
natural union, let him be anathema.”29

This passage is dense and needs some clarification. Above all,
the “property pertaining to dignity” in the definition is often
cited to distinguish a person from a hypostasis in explaining
why Christ’s human nature constitutes a human hypostasis but
not a human person. For instance, Alexander of Hales argues
that, lacking the dignity proper to a person, the human
hypostasis in Christ is “a concretely existing individual thing,
not as the individual within a species.”30 By contrast, Aquinas
assumes that a human hypostasis is not merely an individualized
human nature, but a particular substance that has its own
unique substantial form. If it needs to obtain an additional
property to become a human person, this property must be an
accidental form; otherwise, there would be two different substantial forms in a single person, which conflicts with Aquinas’s
controversial doctrine of the unity of substantial form.31 As
Aquinas makes this argument more explicit in another version,
it will lead to the result that the union of the human hypostasis
and the personal dignity pertaining to the divine Word is merely
an accidental one and not a natural one, as required by
Christological orthodoxy.32 It seems that in this context Aquinas
29

STh III, q. 2, a. 3.
W. H. Principe, Alexander of Hales’ Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 64.
31
For the controversy over Aquinas’s view on the unity of substantial form in human
beings, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Unity of Substantial Form,” in
Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, ed.
Kent Emery, Russell Friedman, and Andreas Speer (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill,
2011), 117-54.
32
De unione Verbi, a. 2.
30

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adopts an accident reading of personal dignity. However, we
should be cautious here. What Aquinas intends to show here is
simply that if a two-hypostases theorist employs the dignity
definition of person to explain the distinction between hypostasis and person, he will have to concede that personal dignity
is an accident of hypostasis. It is very probable that Aquinas
merely accepts an accident reading ad hoc or for the sake of
argument. This probability will be strengthened if we can identify an alternative reading of the dignity definition of person in
other contexts.
Before turning to such texts, it is important to mention
Aquinas’s third reason for defending the unity of hypostasis in
Christ. He insists that when we make a statement in concreto or
about a definite subject, such as “this man was crucified,” we
are actually ascribing an operation or a property, no matter
whether it is essential or accidental, to a hypostasis or to a
suppositum. For it is such a particular substance subsisting per se
that individualizes a given nature and underlies whatever
belongs to the nature. If there are two hypostases in Christ, we
will ascribe Christ’s deeds such as being crucified to a hypostasis
distinct from the incarnate Word, which is also not far from
Nestorius’s position.33 Aquinas here is appealing to the famous
principle “actions belong to supposits” (actiones sunt suppositorum) to show the absurdity of two-hypostases theory, which
ascribes the same action or operation to two different individual
substances (supposits or hypostases) that occupy the same
temporal and spatial location.34 What is significant for our
33
STh III, q. 2, a. 3: “Thirdly, because to the hypostasis alone are attributed the
operations and the natural properties, and whatever belongs to the nature in the
concrete; for we say that this man reasons, and is risible, and is a rational animal. So
likewise this man is said to be a suppositum, because he underlies [supponitur] whatever
belongs to man and receives its predication. Therefore, if there is any hypostasis in
Christ besides the hypostasis of the Word, it follows that whatever pertains to man is
verified of someone other than the Word, e.g. that he was born of a Virgin, suffered,
was crucified, was buried.”
34
For a superb treatment of the significance of this principle for the invention of
modern subjectivity, see Alain de Libera, “When Did the Modern Subject Emerge,”
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2008): 181-220, at 210-11. See also
Richard Cross, “Accidents, Substantial Forms, and Causal Powers in the Late Thirteenth

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present purpose is Aquinas’s emphasis on the inherent
individuality or concreteness of a hypostasis. As Michael
Gorman rightly observes, “the notion of individuality is built
into the meaning of words like ‘supposit’ and ‘hypostasis,’ with
the result that it is redundant to speak of an ‘individual
supposit’ or an ‘individual hypostasis’.”35
This intrinsic individuality is a point to which we shall return
shortly. What is more urgent for our purpose here is an
alternative interpretation of the union of hypostasis and dignity.
II. CAN HYPOSTASIS AND PERSON BE SEPARATED IN ONE’S
MIND?
Aquinas addresses the dignity definition of person again in a
different theological context. The question is whether one can
separate hypostasis and person in the mind by abstracting
relations or properties from the person. What is in question
here is the conceptual distinction between hypostasis and
person. An objection based upon the dignity definition of
person goes like this: Person adds to hypostasis nothing other
than a property pertaining to dignity. If we take this personal
property away, we will get a concept of hypostasis.36 This seems
to be the case with human persons: when we take away that

Century: Some Reflections on the Axiom ‘Actiones sunt suppositorum’,” in Compléments de substance: Etudes sur les propriétés accidentelles offertes à Alain de Libera, ed.
Christophe Erismann and Alexandrine Schniewind (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 133-46.
35
Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union, 16; see also De
Haan and Dahm, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls,” 597. Cf. De Pot., q. 9, a. 6;
STh I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 3.
36
I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2, arg. 3, “Everything that falls within the definition of
something can be understood without that thing being understood; so, if the intellect
removes the rational [property], by which human is constituted, it gets animal, which is
placed in the definition of human. But person is a hypostasis distinct by a property
pertaining to dignity. Thus, when the intellect removes the relative property, the
hypostasis still remains distinct.” See also De Pot., q. 8, a. 4, obj. 5; STh, I, q. 40, a. 3,
obj. 1.

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which pertains to dignity and makes a human person, a human
hypostasis will remain.37
Aquinas offers three different answers to this objection,
which show the evolution of his thought on the ontological
status of personal dignity.
In his first treatment of the objection, in the Sentences
commentary, Aquinas’s response highlights the special case of
divine persons. He first concedes that for a creature such as a
human being, when a relation or a nonessential property is
taken away an individual substance or a hypostasis will still
remain. However, this is not the case with divine beings because
it is impossible for an accident to be in a divine hypostasis or
person. A divine property, whether a quality or a relation,
always subsists as a whole and is actually nothing other than the
divine hypostasis or person himself. For instance, the divine
goodness is precisely the divine person who is good. Consequently, if the divine goodness is abstracted by our intellect,
nothing will remain as the thing that can receive goodness as an
accident, as in the case of human beings.38 Accordingly, the
character of dignity or nobility is already contained in the
conception of a divine hypostasis, because when we conceive of
the divine hypostasis we are thinking about something
subsisting in a noble property (in proprietate nobili). Therefore,
when the dignity is taken away, so is the divine person, as well
as the divine hypostasis.39 In this context, Aquinas also mentions
in passing “‘human hypostasis’ indicates nothing less than a
human person.” However, it is unclear how this pertains to
personal dignity for human beings.40 As mentioned above, it
seems possible for human dignity to be an accident inhering in a
human person.

37
De Pot., q. 8, a. 4, obj. 1, “But in human beings, when the relations and properties
of the hypostasis are removed, there still remains the hypostasis.”
38
I Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 2.
39
Ibid., ad 3.
40
Ibid.: “Hence the notion of nobility that person adds [to hypostasis], is [already]
included in the divine hypostasis. Therefore, just as ‘human hypostasis’ indicates nothing
less than a person, so neither does the divine hypostasis.”

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In his second response to the objection, in the the disputed
question De potentia Dei (probably written in 1265-66, before
the composition of the Prima pars of the Summa), Aquinas
draws a general distinction between the definition of a substance and the definition of an accident. In the former, at least
in the Aristotelian tradition, the first thing to be mentioned is
the genus, such as “animal” in the definition of human beings.
By contrast, an accident is defined, above all, by specifying its
subject, such as “nose” in the definition of snubness. In light of
this, if we abstract rationality from our notion of human beings,
we will no longer have rational animals but rather a more
general conception of animals. However, if we take away flatness from snubness, the nose will remain the same individual
substance in our mind since its essence does not change, even
though it is no longer flat. Aquinas believes that the dignity
definition is a substance definition:
When therefore we say, a person is a hypostasis distinct by a property
pertaining to dignity, hypostasis is included in the definition of person not as
subject but as genus. Wherefore if we remove the property pertaining to
dignity the hypostasis does not remain the same identically or specifically but
only generically, and as applied to nonrational substances.41

Here, the property pertaining to dignity is evidently not an
accident of a hypostasis but rather a differentia that divides the
genus of hypostasis. In this context, the dignity definition is
getting very close to Boethius’s classic definition, simply with
“of rational nature” being replaced by “distinct by a property
pertaining to dignity.” In other words, such a property of
dignity is an essential one which constitutes one’s personhood.
Quite different from his earlier response, Aquinas now allows
something to remain after the abstraction of personal properties, that is, a general conception of hypostasis that covers both
rational and nonrational substances. However, what remains
cannot be the species of rational hypostasis, nor the notion of
divine hypostasis Aquinas’s opponent aims to obtain by the
process of abstracting personal properties. Nevertheless, one
41

De Pot., q. 8, a. 4.

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may argue for the opponent that the dignity definition could be
a definition of accident, as we have seen above. Aquinas does
not address this possible rebuttal, probably because such a
reading is obviously not applicable to the divine person. It is
theologically indefensible to claim that dignity is merely an
accident of God, as already shown in the Sentences
commentary. However, from a philosophical point of view, this
theological solution still leaves us wondering whether the
property of dignity should be taken as an accident or as an
essential differentia.
Aquinas gives his third but somehow unexpected answer to
the objection in a parallel discussion in the Prima pars (STh I,
q. 40, a. 3). In the main body of that article, he draws a distinction between (1) abstracting the universal from the particular and (2) abstracting the form from the matter. They are
different with regard to the result of abstraction: the former
leads to a universal concept and the starting point of the
abstraction will no longer exist in one’s mind. As shown above,
when we remove rationality from the definition of human
beings, what remains in our mind will be the genus of animal
itself. By contrast, in the case of abstracting the form from the
matter, Aquinas introduces a further distinction between (2a)
nonpersonal and (2b) personal properties. By personal properties, Aquinas means the features that define the personhood,
especially the divine personhood, such as paternity or filiation.42
Accordingly, nonpersonal properties refer to other attributes of
the person, such as the Father’s being unbegotten, in which case
the hypostasis or person will remain after being abstracted from
them, just like the definition of snubness we discussed before.
However, unlike a mere accident, a personal property should
never be conceived of as a form added to an individual substance as its matter or subject, but rather as something that
42

See, e.g., STh I, q. 30, a. 2, ad 1: “The three relations—paternity, filiation, and
procession—are called personal properties, constituting as it were the persons; for
paternity is the person of the Father, filiation is the person of the Son, procession is the
person of the Holy Spirit proceeding” (“Sed hae tres relationes, paternitas, filiatio et
processio, dicuntur proprietates personales, quasi personas constituentes, nam paternitas
est persona patris, filiatio persona filii, processio persona spiritus sancti procedentis”).

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constitutes its corresponding suppositum or hypostasis. This is
especially true in the Godhead, since paternity is nothing but
the Father himself. Therefore, when we take paternity away by
abstraction, we also remove the hypostasis or the person of the
Father from our mind.
Against this theological background, Aquinas presents a
reason different from his earlier accounts why we cannot attain
a hypostasis by abstracting the dignity property from a person:
Person does not add to hypostasis a distinguishing property without
qualification, but a distinguishing property pertaining to dignity, all of which
as a whole [totum] must be taken as replacing a differentia. Now, this
distinguishing property pertains to dignity precisely because it is understood as
subsisting in a rational nature. Hence, if the distinguishing property be
removed from the person, the hypostasis no longer remains; whereas it would
remain were the rationality of the nature removed; for both person and
hypostasis are individual substances. Consequently, in God the distinguishing
relation belongs essentially to both.43

It is not difficult to see here that Aquinas identifies dignity as a
personal property, which constitutes the individual existence of
a person. His reason seems to be the inherent connotation of
subsistence, or more precisely the subsistence of a rational
being, in the concept of personal dignity, since person by
definition is a being of rational nature. In particular, Aquinas
distinguishes this property pertaining to dignity from mere
rationality, unlike in his account in De potentia, where he seems
to confuse them. The dignity in question does not supervene
upon rational nature in the abstract, but rather grounds itself on
the concrete existence of a rational substance. As we have seen
in the conceptions of hypostasis and person, here incommunicable existence is also understood as an intrinsic feature of
personal dignity. As Aquinas explicitly asserts in his Christological discussions, it pertains to the dignity and perfection of a
thing to exist per se. This is why human nature has a greater
dignity in Christ than in us: the person of the Word has a

43

STh I, q. 40, a. 3, ad 1; emphasis added.

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greater existence by himself.44 Certainly, Aquinas reaches this
conclusion in theological contexts which focus primarily upon
God and his dignity; divine dignity constitutes a divine person.
However, he understands the dignity definition of person to
apply to all rational natures in an analogical manner.
III. THE INCOMMUNICABILITY AND RATIONALITY OF A PERSON
It is clear now that the property pertaining to dignity is
neither an accident, nor a differentia, but rather a personal
property that can never be separated from the particular being
of a rational substance, not even in one’s mind. Here, Aquinas
not only elucidates the ontological status of dignity, but also
specifies the source of its worth. As some modern commentators
have rightly pointed out, Aquinas adopts a metaphysical
approach to human dignity.45 What I try to argue here is that
his metaphysical account of human personhood and dignity is
not based upon an abstract conception of rationality or
autonomy, which is supposed to be a set of capacities equally
distributed among all members of the human species.46 His

44
STh III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2: “Personality pertains of necessity to the dignity of a thing,
and to its perfection so far as it pertains to the dignity and perfection of that thing to
exist by itself (which is understood by the word “person”). Now it is a greater dignity to
exist in something nobler than oneself than to exist by oneself. Hence the human nature
of Christ has a greater dignity than ours, from this very fact that in us, being existent by
itself, it has its own personality, but in Christ it exists in the Person of the Word.”
45
Cf. Emery, “Dignity of Being a Substance,” 992.
46
As noted in the introduction of this article, Aquinas does speak of human dignity
in terms of autonomy, especially one’s capacity to incline oneself toward the good by
observing the natural law written in one’s heart. See In Rom., c. 2, lect. 3: “Third, he
[Paul] shows their [Gentile’s] dignity in that they, having not the law, are a law to
themselves, inasmuch as they function as a law to themselves by instructing and inducing
themselves to the good. . . . It is, of course, the highest level of dignity among men,
when they are induced toward the good not by others but by themselves” (Fabian R.
Larcher, trans. Commentary on the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans, ed. John
Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón, with parallel Latin and the Greek text of the epistle
[Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute, 2012]; translation modified). Cf. Dewan, “Some
Notes on St. Thomas’s Use of ‘dignitas’,” 666-67. However, this hierarchical conception
of dignity is obviously different from that of personal dignity in focus here. The former

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conception of personal dignity transcends speciesism not only in
that it comprehends other rational beings like God and angels,
but more importantly in that it does not take an abstract nature
of any species as its primary ontological ground. What matters
in personal dignity is above all the individual existence of
rationality, no matter how the rationality is defined. Incidentally, this existential interpretation of personal dignity distinguishes Aquinas’s theory from the capacity approach to human
dignity, which is popular today. What underlies personal dignity
is primarily one’s individual existence, rather than a set of
rational capacities.47
More importantly, Aquinas carefully distinguishes different
sorts of individuality in a person: the individuation of human
nature should not be confused with the individuality that
constitutes a human person.48 This is more evident in Christ
because he has an individual human nature but is nevertheless
not a human person.
The Word of God “did not assume human nature in general, but ‘in
atomo’”—that is, in an individual—as Damascene says (De Fide Orthod. iii.
11) otherwise every man would be the Word of God, even as Christ was. Yet
we must bear in mind that not every individual in the genus of substance, even
in rational nature, is a person, but that alone which exists by itself, and not
that which exists in some more perfect thing.49

As mentioned above, Aquinas’s predecessors, such as the
Halensian Summists and Albert the Great, already note the
nonpersonal individual in Christ and refer to it as the human
hypostasis of Christ. Worrying about its Nestorian implications,
is based upon a human person’s moral merits, while the latter is equally shared by all
human beings as persons.
47
Joseph Torchia, in his general overview of Aquinas’s conception of human
personhood, also notes that the intrinsic dignity of the person is grounded upon her
subsistence as an individual being, even though he does not speak of dignity as a
personal property as we argue here but appeals to a more traditional conception of
dignity in terms of the image of God. See Torchia, Exploring Personhood, 147-50, esp.
149.
48
For a similar discussion of various sorts of uniqueness, see Crosby, Selfhood of the
Human Person, 46f.
49
STh III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3.

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Aquinas completely rejects the two-hypostases terminology in
explaining Christ’s assumption of human nature. Nevertheless,
he does not deny the individuality of human nature in Christ,
even though it does not suffice for constituting a human
hypostasis or person. In this regard, he needs to make a more
explicit distinction between various modes of individuality.
For Aquinas, what distinguishes personhood from other
modes of individuality is a person’s subsistence or existence in
its own right.50 This distinction is significant because individualized human nature is similar among human persons while
personhood cannot be shared by different substances: it is
impossible for two human beings to be a single person even
though we can imagine that they have completely similar
rationality. Therefore, the individuality that matters in personal
dignity is the imparticipable, unrepeatable, or incommunicable
existence of a person, which has at least an ontological status
that needs to be recognized. This incommunicability does not
enable a person to exist “as if in a sense the others did not
exist” as some philosophers believe.51 Nevertheless, it does indicate the uniqueness of a person as a being per se, whose subsistence does not depend on any other entity and cannot be
replaced by any other person, no matter how alike they look.
For Aquinas, in the case of Christ the incommunicability is
grounded in the supreme being of the divine nature, whereas in
human beings it might be traced back to the primordial
individuality of a human person when a particular intellective
soul is created by God in the embryo.52 It is obvious that this
personal individuality cannot be reduced to any rational
capacity or set of capacities one develops later. Quite the
50

For a more detailed account of per se subsistence as a criterion of personhood, see
De Haan and Dahm, “Thomas Aquinas on Separated Souls,” 591-98.
51
See Crosby, Selfhood of the Human Person, 51.
52
For the human individuality originating from God’s creation of human souls, see,
e.g., De Pot., q. 3, a. 10: “Consequently there cannot be many human souls of the same
species and distinct individually unless from their very beginning they be united to
bodies, so that their mutual distinction arises from their union to bodies, as from a
material principle in a manner of speaking, although that distinction comes from God as
their efficient cause.” Cf. Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life,
44-45, n. 17.

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opposite: rational capacities are individualized in virtue of the
intrinsic incommunicability of the person to which they belong.
To understand fully the normative force of personal incommunicability, we need a thorough reconstruction of Aquinas’s
metaphysics and ethics, especially his philosophical anthropology, which goes far beyond the scope of this article. For our
present purposes, I just want to mention an important clue from
another essential feature of personhood, namely, rationality. As
Aquinas emphasizes in his discussion of angelic personhood in
the Sentences commentary, three things are to be considered in
the notion of person: subsistence, rationality, and individual
existence.53 It is rationality that separates persons from other,
nonrational hypostases. For Aquinas, the rationality in question
is not primarily a capacity or a set of capacities for theoretical
calculation or contemplation, but rather the more fundamental
power to act by oneself or the freedom to determine one’s own
actions, which is deeply rooted in the rational creature’s
distinctive mode of existence:
Just as it is proper to an individual substance to exist by itself, so is it proper
to it to act by itself. For nothing acts but an actual being: for which reason as
heat exists not by itself so neither does it act by itself, but the hot thing heats
by its heat. Now to act by themselves is becoming in a higher degree to
substances of a rational nature than to others: since rational substances alone
have dominion over their actions, so that it is in them to act or not to act,
while other substances are acted on rather than act themselves. Hence it was
fitting that the individual substance of rational nature should have a special
name (sc. person). 54

This emphasis on a person’s autonomy is obviously based upon
Aquinas’s conception of the radical indeterminacy of reason as a
two-way power. For Aquinas, it is true that a rational agent
necessarily tends to something good, especially what is apprehended as good by her intellect or rational cognition. Nevertheless, the rational agent is still able to choose otherwise than she
has actually done so far as she thinks it is good to do so.
Furthermore, unless the action itself is good universally and
53
54

II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 2.
De Pot., q. 9, a. 1, ad 3. Cf. STh I, q. 29, a. 1.

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from every point of view, which is rare, the agent can always
consider it good not to perform the action; therefore, she does
not necessarily tend to her actual deed. For this reason, Aquinas
often refers to rational powers as powers that remain open to
opposites.55
A full account of Aquinas’s theory of rational agency is also
beyond the scope of this article. Here I just want to highlight
that this indeterminacy is a part of human personhood, which
makes one’s life unique to a human person and therefore
establishes this person’s fundamental dignity. However, since
this dignity is grounded upon one’s free decisions that vary
from one person to another, it manifests itself in various
manners among different persons.
It is evident now that all three elements of personhood, that
is, (a) individuality, (b) subsistence, and (c) rationality—
especially in terms of the indeterminacy in deciding one’s
actions—play an important part in Aquinas’s conception of
personal dignity. The question then arises: how are these
elements related to each other in establishing a person’s
inherent dignity?
First of all, it is best to consider individuality and subsistence
together for the present purpose. For Aquinas, subsistence principally belongs to particular substances, because a common
nature is said to subsist inasmuch as it belongs to an individual
substance to subsist. A thing subsists primarily as an individual
thing that exists in its own right.56 As we have demonstrated
55
See, e.g., STh I-II, q. 6, a. 3: “Since, then, the will by willing and acting, is able,
and sometimes ought, to hinder not-willing and not-acting; this not-willing and notacting is imputed to, as though proceeding from, the will”; STh I-II, q. 10, a. 2: “If, on
the other hand, the will is offered an object that is not good from every point of view, it
will not tend to it of necessity. . . . Whereas any other particular goods, in so far as they
are lacking in some good, can be regarded as non-goods: and from this point of view,
they can be set aside or approved by the will, which can tend to one and the same thing
from various points of view.”
56
See, e.g., STh I, q. 29, a. 2, ad 4: “Boethius says that genera and species subsist,
inasmuch as it belongs to some individual things to subsist, from the fact that they
belong to genera and species comprised in the predicament of substance, but not
because the species and genera themselves subsist; except in the opinion of Plato, who
asserted that the species of things subsisted separately from singular things.”

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(section II), the mode of individuality that really counts in
personhood is precisely its incommunicable existence in itself.
In Aquinas’s terminology, hypostasis signifies nothing but the
combination of individuality and subsistence, which is
inseparable from one’s conception of human dignity as a
personal property.
Second, in the case of human persons, rationality, the third
element in question, can be understood in two distinct but
closely interrelated ways. It can refer to the above-mentioned
fundamental capacity to determine one’s actions (Rationalityc)
as well as to the rational soul which is the substantial form of
the human body (Rationalitys). According to Aquinas’s strict
distinction between the soul’s essence and its capacities,
Rationalityc, no matter how fundamental it is, is merely an
accidental form flowing from the essence of the rational soul (or
Rationalitys) as its source.57 What matters in the constitution of
personhood and personal dignity is above all Rationalitys,
without which a human being will be no different from other
animals and therefore entirely lose her personhood. In this
regard, Rationalitys is as important as the incommunicable
subsistence in establishing a person’s inherent dignity. As
mentioned above, the rational soul is created by God in the
human embryo, from which an incommunicable person comes
into being. At the moment of human ensoulment, the person, or
better the fetus, is obviously far from being able to determine
her actions by Rationalityc. More importantly, Rationalitys is
equally shared by all members of the human species, including
those whose use of Rationalityc has been severely impeded by
mental disorder but whose personal dignity seems to remain
intact. Some recent studies on disability in Aquinas’s theology
57
See STh I, q. 77, a. 6: “Whence it is clear that all the powers of the soul, whether
their subject be the soul alone, or the composite, flow from the essence of the soul, as
from their principle; because it has already been said that the accident is caused by the
subject according as it is actual, and is received into it according as it is in potentiality”
(“Unde manifestum est quod omnes potentiae animae, sive subiectum earum sit anima
sola, sive compositum, fluunt ab essentia animae sicut a principio, quia iam dictum est
quod accidens causatur a subiecto secundum quod est actu, et recipitur in eo inquantum
est in potentia”).

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have compellingly argued that those who lack the use of reason
or Rationalityc (amentes) can nevertheless attain beatitude or the
perfect fulfillment of the human rational function or activity.58
This is possible above all because human beatitude ultimately
relies on supernatural gifts of grace, which include the gift of
wisdom assigned to infants and the mentally impaired in baptism.59 But more significantly for our present purpose, mental
impairment cannot undermine a human person’s status because
the innate dignity of the human being is firmly embedded in the
intellectual soul or Rationalitys, which remains undamaged in a
mentally impaired person, rather than in its activities or
Rationalityc.60
What about the contribution of Rationalityc to personal
dignity? The significance of Rationalitys in primitive personal
dignity does not, I think, necessarily come into conflict with our
earlier emphasis on the radical indeterminacy of Rationalityc.
The incommunicable subsistence in Rationalitys merely determines the initial status of a human person, whose basic rights
call for recognition, whereas the radical indeterminacy of
Rationalityc and its free decisions characterize the typical
functioning of the person in most of her adult life. More importantly, Rationalitys is an attribute of the person that is given
from without, or created by God (from a theological point of
view), whereas Rationalityc enables the person as a free agent to
determine her life in her own way. As we argued above, what
grounds the initial personal dignity is the incommunicability of
one’s subsistence in Rationalitys. In normal cases, it is
58
See for instance, Miguel J. Romero, “Aquinas on the corporis infirmitas: Broken
Flesh and the Grammar of Grace,” in Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, ed.
Brian Brock and John Swinton (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012), 101-51; idem,
“The Happiness of ‘Those Who Lack the Use of Reason,’” The Thomist 80 (2016):
49-96; John Berkman, “Are Persons with Profound Intellectual Disabilities Sacramental
Icons of the Heavenly Life? Aquinas on Impairment,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26
(2013): 81-96; Richard Cross, “Aquinas on Physical Impairment: Human Nature and
Original Sin,” Harvard Theological Review 110 (2017): 317-38. I am grateful to the
Editor of The Thomist for these references.
59
Berkman, “Are Persons with Profound Intellectual Disabilities Sacramental Icons of
the Heavenly Life?,” 95.
60
Romero, “The Happiness of ‘Those Who Lack the Use of Reason,’” 75-78.

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403

Rationalityc that preserves and develops this uniqueness in a
person’s life, because Rationalityc establishes a person’s genuine
ownership of her existence. Since Rationalityc ultimately directs
to one’s final end, that is, happiness, it seems to follow that the
incommunicable existence of a rational person or one’s personal
dignity can be fulfilled only by one’s free actions in virtue of
Rationalityc. 61
It is true that Rationalityc is unevenly distributed. It is also
true that Rationalityc can be hindered and even entirely
paralyzed in some cases. More importantly, Rationalityc is
essentially indeterminate with regard to its decisions. All of
these mean that the final achievements of Rationalityc by free
decisions vary from one person to another. It seems to follow
that the dignity corresponding to Rationalityc is a moral value
that is based upon one’s merits. Yet I do not think that Aquinas
is contradicting himself in defining personal dignity in terms of
rationality. He is very well conscious of the distinction between
Rationalitys and Rationalityc, as shown above, and is introducing
a corresponding distinction between the initial inherent dignity
and the final merit-based dignity of a human person. These two
sorts of dignities are closely interconnected but remain distinct:
the former is essentially inalienable even when the latter is completely absent. Nevertheless, both of them are called personal
dignity in that they are only applicable to incommunicable
existence of rational nature, that is, persons.
We can acquire a better understanding of this distinction of
personal dignity in Aquinas’s defense of the death penalty,
where he seems to claim that personal dignity can be wholly

61

For a different account of Aquinas’s conception of personal dignity in terms of
rationality, see Stephen L. Brock, “Is Uniqueness at the Root of Personal Dignity?: John
Crosby and Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 173-201. Brock rightly criticizes
Crosby’s radical interpretation of the uniqueness of a human person as the ability “to
exist as if there were no other.” Against this idiosyncratic notion of uniqueness, Brock
argues that what grounds personal dignity in Aquinas’s thought is not a special kind of
uniqueness or incommunicability, but rather the person’s “infinite depth,” or the
rational ability to unite oneself to all being and goodness. Nevertheless, Brock himself
also concedes that personal dignity should not be found in an abstract rational nature
but in an individual that subsists in such nature. See esp. ibid., 197 n. 36.

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annihilated in a sinner who commits terrible crimes by his or
her free choices.
By sinning man departs from the order of reason, and consequently falls away
from his human dignity, in so far as he is naturally free, and exists for himself,
and he falls in a certain way [quodammodo] into the slavish state of the beasts,
by being disposed of according as he is useful to others. . . . Hence, although it
be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he preserves his dignity, yet it may be
good to kill a man who has sinned, even as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man
is worse than a beast, and is more harmful, as the Philosopher states in Potitics
I and Ethics VII.62

It is often suggested that Aquinas here eschews the conception
of an inherent, inalienable, species-wide human dignity and
turns to a more traditional merit-based understanding of
dignity.63 A convicted criminal, according to this passage, seems
to be entirely deprived of human dignity and becomes
comparable to beasts. The reason seems to be that the criminal,
in subordinating his rational mind to sinful lusts and committing
a mortal sin, irrevocably loses the option to become good and
consequentially the freedom to change the direction of his
moral life. Aquinas here implicitly assumes that a human being
needs such freedom to preserve his dignity. After becoming
slavish to his sinful desires, the severe criminal is no different
from a beast and no longer deserves to be treated like a human
being. For some scholars, this conclusion appears incompatible
with the idea of human dignity as an essential property of
personhood because it seems difficult (if not impossible) to
imagine that a human being can totally lose his or her
personhood so that he or she is no longer a human person after
committing a serious crime.64

62

STh II-II, q. 64, a. 2, ad 2.
See for instance, Kent, “In the Image of God,” 93-94. In contrast, Dewan rightly
notes two different conceptions of dignity in this passage: one is understood in terms of
a person’s control over her actions or autonomy, while the other refers to the person’s
“intrinsically valuable existence.” Nevertheless, he does not clarify how these two
conceptions of dignity can be reconciled. See Dewan, “Some Notes on St. Thomas’s Use
of ‘dignitas’,” 669-70.
64
Pinckaers, “Aquinas on the Dignity of the Human Person (1987),” 160-61.
63

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However, our interpretation of personal dignity in terms of
rationality can help us better understand at least the coherence
of Aquinas’s thought on personal dignity, though not his
justification of the death penalty in this context. It is evident
that Aquinas’s justification of the penalty is primarily concerned
with Rationalityc and its correlated merit-based dignity. The
criminal might retain the capacity of calculation and
deliberation, especially that for planning another crime. At the
same time, it is at least conceivable that he forfeits Rationalityc,
or the more fundamental power and freedom to choose a
morally good life that leads to beatitude, as shown above. By
contrast, the criminal’s Rationalitys survives the mortal sin he
has committed, for his body is still animated by the same
rational soul as its unique substantial form and he therefore
remains the same individual of human nature as before. More
importantly, the death penalty itself seems to presuppose the
personal identity of the criminal because it is obviously unjust to
punish a person for a sin committed by another. In short, the
point of the above-cited passage is merely that the criminal on
death row has totally lost the dignity of a human agent endowed with Rationalityc, but not necessarily that he has been
irreversibly deprived of the ontological status of an
incommunicable being of Rationalitys and its dignity.
A major obstacle to the above interpretation is Aquinas’s
analogy between sinners and beasts, which seems to indicate
that serious criminals are denied personhood. It may be
conceded that Aquinas’s language here is misleading and lends
support to a blank denial of inherent personal dignity. Nevertheless, the passage can be read in a more charitable way in the
context of Aquinas’s broader conception of sin and dignity.
First of all, as has been rightly observed, Aquinas expresses
his reservation regarding the comparison of criminals and beasts
by inserting the phrase “in a certain way” (quodammodo) into
his description of the criminal’s status.65
65
Lawrence Dewan, “Thomas Aquinas, Gerard Bradley, and the Death Penalty: Some
Observations,” Gregorianum 82 (2001): 149-65, at 159; Peter Karl Koritansky, Thomas
Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2012), 186, 189.

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TIANYUE WU

Moreover, in the main body of the article from which the
above passage is taken, Aquinas argues that it is lawful to
execute a criminal only when his existence is dangerous and
infectious to the whole community. The common good of the
community is the ultimate end that justifies the death penalty. It
is not the case that the criminal loses his worth by falling into
the slavish status of a beast and therefore deserves the death
penalty, but rather that executing the criminal can safeguard the
common good.66 As Aquinas argues elsewhere, a judge puts
sinners to death “not out of hatred for the sinner, but out of the
love of charity, by reason of which he prefers the public good to
the life of the individual.”67 Whether this defense of the death
penalty is successful is not our concern here. It at least shows
that Aquinas’s strategy of argumentation does not require that
the person sentenced to death has no worth or dignity at all.
What matters is merely whether his removal can benefit the
whole community or not.68
Furthermore, earlier in the Secunda secundae, Aquinas cites
Augustine’s comment on loving one’s neighbor as his authority
to argue that all sinners should be loved as our neighbors. The
reason is that their sin does not destroy their human nature,
which deserves to be loved.69 In the main body of that article,
Aquinas goes further to interpret the sinners’ undamaged nature
in terms of the capacity for happiness, which is given by God
and functions as the ground for charity.70 This fundamental

66
STh II-II, q. 64, a. 2: ”Now every individual person is compared to the whole
community, as part to whole. Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the
community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be
killed in order to safeguard the common good, since ‘a little leaven corrupteth the
whole lump’ (1 Cor. 5:6).”
67
STh II-II, q. 25, a. 6, ad 2.
68
Koritansky, Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment, 189-90.
69
STh II-II, q. 25, a. 6, s.c.: “Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 30) that ‘when it is
said: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor,” it is evident that we ought to look upon every man
as our neighbor.’ Now sinners do not cease to be men, for sin does not destroy nature.
Therefore we ought to love sinners out of charity.”
70
STh II-II, q. 25, a. 6: “According to his nature, which he has from God, he has a
capacity for happiness, on the fellowship of which charity is based, as stated above (II-II,

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407

capacity seems to be embedded in human nature and cannot be
lost at all (except for the damned). Reading Aquinas’s apology
for the death penalty in this light, it seems more charitable to
assume that his attitude to sinners remains the same: even the
worst sinners like Cain retain the capacity for beatitude and the
value to be loved.
Finally, the practice of the death penalty itself requires the
personal dignity we defend in this paper. For personal dignity
also grounds the moral agency of a human being by enabling
one to determine a course of action via one’s own free decisions. The human person is therefore taken to be responsible for
these actions. It means that this dignity also establishes the full
moral status of a human being in that only one’s personal
actions are to be morally considered in a serious manner,
namely, as moral actions that deserve praise and blame. This is
even the case with a sinful murderer who has fallen into a
slavish state by his own free decisions. For a beast will not be
morally blamed for its faults, while a terrible criminal deserves
punishment for his or her evildoings.71
This more charitable reading certainly does not suffice for
defending Aquinas’s justification of the death penalty, which
deserves a separate study. Nevertheless, it at least provides good
reasons for believing that he is consistent in respect of the inherent character of personal dignity that he defends elsewhere.
It also shows that Aquinas is implicitly appealing to the
distinction between two sorts of personal dignity in virtue of the
distinction between Rationalityc and Rationalitys. He is merely
committed to the claim that a convicted criminal is deprived of
the merit-based dignity related to Rationalityc, not necessarily
the inalienable dignity of Rationalitys. Certainly, we have to
concede that even this weakened claim is problematic. For
instance, the dignity grounding moral responsibility cannot
simply be the inalienable dignity of Rationalitys. Some mentally
disordered people are supposed to enjoy basic rights of dignity,
q. 25, a. 3; II-II, q. 23, aa. 1, 5), wherefore we ought to love sinners, out of charity, in
respect of their nature.”
71
For a similar account of moral responsibility in terms of human dignity, see
Dewan, “Thomas Aquinas, Gerard Bradley, and the Death Penalty,” 159.

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but not held fully responsible for their evil deeds, and normally
would not incur the death penalty. It seems that a criminal on
death row still possesses a minimal amount of Rationalityc
which grounds his moral status as a responsible agent. How
much Rationalityc or autonomy a human person needs to be
held accountable for his actions is a topic into which we cannot
go further here. At least, our reinterpretation of this famous
passage on the death penalty has shown that Aquinas still credits
a criminal with minimal personal dignity, which is primarily
based on the incommunicable existence of a person in rational
nature.
CONCLUSION
Aquinas recognizes an intimate relation between dignity and
personhood. For him, personal dignity in its primary sense is
not an accident that simply exists in a rational being in virtue of
more fundamental characteristics such as rational capacities.
“The property pertaining to dignity” is not even Rationalitys
itself as an abstract differentia, which divides human beings
from other nonrational species. Instead, personal dignity is
primarily a personal property in that it essentially contains the
incommunicable existence of a person, without which a person
would no longer be an individual substance at all. It defines the
initial or primitive personal dignity that is given from without at
the moment when a human person comes into being by
acquiring a unique rational soul as her substantial form or
Rationalitys.. However, a thing’s mode of being also determines
the thing’s mode of action. It is proper for a person who exists
per se in rational nature to act per se in her personal life. The
incommunicable subsistence inherent in Aquinas’s conception of
personal dignity contains its realization in an incommunicable
personal life in concreto. According to our analysis, it is the
radical indeterminacy of Rationalityc that establishes a person’s
irreplaceable dominion over her free actions and creates a life
unique to the person. The autonomy grounded on Rationalityc
also constitutes the dignity or moral status of a human person as
an agent responsible for her actions. This is a derived sense of

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409

personal dignity, which relies on one’s achievements in virtue of
Rationalityc. This merit-based dignity can be damaged and
hindered by a person’s actions and thus should not be confused
with the more fundamental sense of personal dignity, which can
never be annihilated insofar as the person’s Rationalitys persists
in her individual existence. Nevertheless, both of these are
called personal dignity because they are profoundly seated in
the uniqueness of a normal human person as a rational individual (Rationalitys + Rationalityc).
What Aquinas tries to defend in personal dignity is therefore
something different from what we debate today. It is not an
abstract status of human beings that grounds fundamental
human rights in a way indifferent to the particularity of each
person. For Aquinas, personal dignity is equally distributed and
inalienable not because all persons share the same property in a
similar way but because each person has a unique existence that
cannot be replaced by anyone else. Moreover, by appealing to
the distinction between Rationalityc and Rationalitys, Aquinas’s
account of two different senses of personal dignity also shows a
way out of the contemporary dichotomy between inherent and
merit-based notions of dignities. Both of them can be unified in
the whole life of a human person that is intrinsically incommunicable, irreplaceable, and unrepeatable.72

72
Earlier versions of this paper have been read at Peking University, Sun-Yat Sun
University, and the UK Medieval Philosophy Network Meeting. I am indebted to the
audience in all these occasions who helped me improve this paper in various ways. I also
benefited from the extremely helpful comments of the Editor and one of the anonymous
reviewers for The Thomist. This research is generously funded by the National Social
Science Foundation of China（中国国家社会科学基金，项目编号Project No.
19AZX011).

The Thomist 85 (2021): 411-42

HOW SHOULD CHRISTIANS RESPOND TO SCANDAL?
REPLIES FROM ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
PIOTR ROSZAK
Nicolaus Copernicus University
Torun, Poland

T

HE LIFE OF THE CHURCH is sometimes shaken by the
outrageous immoral conduct of certain Christians,
causing a sense of scandal. How should one properly
behave in the face of such a situation: conceal it, disclose it, be
scandalized, or pass over it indifferently? Saint Thomas Aquinas,
in his commentary on Galatians, ponders the scandal caused for
some by the behavior of St. Peter in Antioch; Peter was eventually admonished by St. Paul (Gal 2:11-14). Aquinas also
considers how one should act towards a priest who refuses to
baptize if he is not paid for the celebration of the sacrament.1
Superiors are called to avoid scandal arising from their decisions
and actions, without giving up their fidelity to the truth, although this may be scandalous in the perception of some,
especially the little ones—beginners on the path of faith. Nonetheless, as a theologian embedded in the realities of his time,
and with a pastoral mind,2 Aquinas also gives guidance on how
to respond in cases of scandalous behavior or situations that
could cause a scandal. These may concern such issues as the
wicked origin of the gift placed on the altar,3 giving Holy
1
Aquinas’s judgments about these pastoral situations illustrate his grounding in the
realities of life. See STh II-II, q. 100, a. 2, ad 1.
2
Leonard. E. Boyle, “The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care,” The
Thomist 38 (1974): 232-56. See also Jean-Pierre Torrell, “La pratique pastorale d’un
theologien du XIIIe siecle: Thomas d’Aquin prédicateur,” Revue thomiste 82 (1982):
213-45.
3
STh II-II, q. 32, a. 7, ad 2.

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Communion to a criminal suspect,4 transition from one order to
another,5 and so on.
In his biblical commentaries, Aquinas considers all the
contexts in which various meanings of the term scandal appear,
pointing to the essence of scandal and its evil as a specific kind
of sin, as well as proposing concrete ways of responding in the
spirit of the gospel. These exegetical insights are—in line with
the logic of the method of biblical Thomism6—worth integrating with the insights one may find in his systematic works.7
In this article we will (1) distinguish between the various
types of scandal considered by Aquinas, that is, between active
and passive scandal; (2) focus on the sinfulness of scandal, as it
is an occasion for sin or a special kind of sin; and (3) present the
proper response to scandal as proposed by Aquinas.
I. TYPES OF SCANDAL
The key Greek term scandalon, translated in Latin as impactio, signifies a stone, that is, an obstacle over which someone
might fall (as if one person caused another one to stumble on a
straight road),8 or which blocks the road ahead and causes
someone to leave the main road, thus heading into dangerous
territory. The so-called scandal triggers a feeling of powerlessness in the face of an unconquerable obstacle, and leads to a loss
4

IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 5, qcla. 2, s.c. 1.
STh II-II, q. 189, a. 8.
6
Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, eds., Towards a Biblical Thomism: Thomas
Aquinas and the Renewal of Biblical Theology (Pamplona: Eunsa, 2018).
7
Systematic considerations on scandal can be found in the commentary on the
Sentences, in the Summa Theologiae, and in the Quodlibets. The last by their very nature
have a practical orientation; the treatment here concerns the question of how to deal
with the experienced scandal. See IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2; STh II-II, q. 43, pro.; Quodl. V,
q. 12, a. 25.
8
This etymology was a commonplace in medieval theology from the time of Rabanus
Maurus (Expositio in Matthaeum, lib. 5: “scandalum quippe sermo Graecus est, quod
nos ‘offendiculum’ vel ‘ruinam’ et ‘inpactionem pedis’ dicere possumus”). Aquinas
quotes it in In Matt., c. 15, lect. 1: “Scandalum in Graeco idem est quod offendiculum,
ut lapis in via.” All Latin quotations are taken from Corpus Thomisticum
(www.corpusthomisticum.org), ed. E. Alarcón.
5

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413

of both enthusiasm and the desire to continue the effort of the
journey. These physical connotations point to the spiritual
meaning of scandal as the kind of act by which a person encounters a problem, a difficult obstacle on the path of faith,
resulting in a fall caused precisely by obex spiritualis.9 It is in
this sense that Christ is a scandal for the Jews (cf. 1 Cor 1:23),
for, as the crucified Messiah, he became a barrier to their
understanding of God who, out of love for all people, takes up
the sacrifice of the Cross. Nonetheless, Jesus never gave rise to
scandal, although his actions were taken as an opportunity for
scandal by the Jews.10 The same goes for Peter who, after the
confession at Caesarea Philippi, is called a scandal by Christ
(Matt 16:23) since he attempts to hinder Christ on the path of
accomplishing salvation, which involves the suffering of the Son
of God.
Scandal is the result of doing something less right (minus
rectum), either by a deed or a word, that provides an occasion
for another human being to fall (occasio cadendi, occasio datur
alterius ruinae, occasio peccandi), even if that fall does not
9
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1: “In a corporeal stumbling there are two things to
consider, namely, the very stumbling of the one who falls or of the one who is disposed
to fall, and the thing on which he stumbles, which is called a stumbling-block. So it is
also in spiritual matters. And both of these things are called ‘scandal,’ but not
univocally, just as faith is said of both the very thing believed and of the act of believing.
Therefore, the spiritual stumbling by which someone is disposed to fall is called passive
scandal. But the spiritual stumbling-block which occasions the stumbling is called active
scandal. And this is the way scandal is defined here, for by a word or a deed that is not
quite right, someone is disposed to ruin” (“Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod sicut in
corporali impactione est duo considerare; scilicet ipsam impactionem cadentis, aut ejus
qui ad causam disponitur, et illud ad quod fit impactio, quod dicitur obex; ita et in
spirituali; et utrumque nomen scandali accepit, sed non univoce; sicut etiam fides dicitur
ipsa res credita, et actus credendi. Ipsa ergo spiritualis impactio, qua aliquis ad casum
disponitur, dicitur scandalum passivum; sed obex spiritualis ad quem fit impactio,
dicitur scandalum activum; et sic definitur hic scandalum, quia ex dicto vel facto minus
recto aliquis ad ruinam disponitur”). Unless otherwise noted, all English translations are
taken from the Opera omnia project (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study
of Sacred Doctrine). On decision making in Aquinas, see María Teresa Enriquez and
Jorge Montoya, “Imperium and Causality in Thomas Aquinas,” Scientia et fides 1
(2021): 329-55.
10
IV Sent., d. 38, a. 2, a. 1, ad 5.

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ultimately occur. It is an act that is visible to all, not hidden like
human thoughts. Scandal is not only about “evil” acts in
themselves and their impact on other people; it is about
covering up situations which, by their circumstances, lead to
scandal. These are deeds which may possess the “appearance of
evil” and thereby contribute to the fall of man.11 The aforementioned minus rectum is a recognition of the fact that
situations that have lost their proper order do occur in the
moral life, although these may include small and light failings
that result from human limitation.12 As Kevin Flannery notes,
Aquinas’s emphasis on instability or moderation (due to imperfections) signifies that he examines scandal on a broad plane of
the rationality of life, rather than in terms of the simple logic of
harm.13
A) Active and Passive Scandal: To Scandalize and to be
Scandalized
This understanding of how scandal comes about draws
Aquinas’s attention to two different situations. One is when
someone gives scandal to others by acting less rightly; the other
is when someone takes advantage of the circumstances (which
could include someone else’s good behavior) to become bad.14

11
In Matt., c. 15, lect. 1: “Scandalum dicitur dictum, vel factum minus rectum
praebens occasionem ruinae. Et non dicit cogitatum, quia oportet quod sit patens. Item
non dicit malum, sed minus rectum, quia oportet quod habeat speciem mali; I Thess. V,
22: ab omni specie mali abstinete vos.”
12
STh II-II, q. 43, a. 1, ad 2: “The expression ‘less correct’ here does not mean a
lesser degree of correctness in relation to a higher degree, but a lack of correctness,
consisting in the fact that something is bad in itself, such as sins, or looks evil, as when
someone is seated at table in a pagan temple (1 Cor. 8:10). For although it would not be
a sin in itself if someone would do it without having a bad intention in mind, it can
nevertheless become an opportunity for the neighbor to fall, because it seems to be
worshiping pagan idols. For this reason, the Apostle admonishes in 1 Thessalonians
(5:22): ‘abstain from every form of evil’. Therefore, ‘less correct’ was accurately said, to
encompass both what is sinful in itself and what has the appearance of sin.”
13
Kevin L. Flannery, Cooperation with Evil: Thomistic Tools of Analysis
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 124.
14
De Malo, q. 3, a. 1, ad 13.

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The distinction between these situations is crucial for the
analysis of scandal found in Aquinas’s systematic works.
Following St. Jerome, Aquinas divides scandal into “active”
and “passive.” The former describes a situation in which someone induces a scandal by his actions, causing another to fall.
This can occur when a person explicitly intends for it to
happen, and thus when he, by his actions, becomes causa
peccandi for the other. But it can also occur when the deed itself
is of such kind that it prompts the other to sin. In this group,
Aquinas includes all public sins that are not committed with the
intention for everyone to see them, but become such by disclosure. According to Aquinas, such an act is always a sin because although it was not intended to be seen it does indicate a
disorder in the person who commits the deed (due either to the
type of deed or to its circumstances).15 Active scandal, in this
sense, is more than bad example; it leads to failure in every way.
The second type of scandal—passive or “indirect”—concerns
a situation where a word or deed becomes the cause of another
person falling, although, objectively, if the act itself is good it
should not trigger such a reaction. An example of this would be
envying someone for the good that he does.16 Aquinas distinguishes between two situations. The first is when a person by
choice follows someone who sins. This kind of scandal does not
occur in the perfect, who follow Christ’s example and do not
choose to do otherwise. The second situation occurs when a
person is unwillingly affected by someone’s behavior, experiencing concupiscence, sadness, or anger.17
It is clear for Aquinas that “the imperfect can also give others
an occasion of ruin by their words or deeds, either indirectly by
setting an example, or directly by inciting to evil by persuasive
words or disturbing deeds.”18 Even a perfect man can be a
scandal, though only at the level of a venial sin that can come
about per accidens. Furthermore, Aquinas notes that the

15

STh II-II, q. 43, a. 2: “Activum etiam scandalum semper est peccatum.”
STh II-II, q. 43, a. 1, ad 4.
17
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 1.
18
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 3.
16

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PIOTR ROSZAK

example of many who are not in a state of perfection leads to
sin: it is not only the example of superiors that drives a person
to act, but also the example of one’s equals and one’s inferiors.19
This is why Aquinas always perceives two dimensions in sin:
it harms the sinner himself, but it can also oppose the social
good, offending others or scandalizing them, by destroying
relationships. This evil is removed by the restoration of justice
in mutual relations, which is the purpose of fraternal
admonition.20
In Contra impugnantes, Aquinas makes yet another division,
apart from the division between active and passive scandal. He
distinguishes between the scandal of the Pharisees (scandalum
Pharisaeorum) and the scandal of the weak (scandalum
infirmorum). The first is born out of malice. This kind of
outrage was criticized by Christ, who commanded his disciples
to leave the Pharisees as blind guides of other blind people (cf.
Matt 15:14).21 The second is born out of weakness or ignorance, and by removing it through explanation nothing
wicked is done.22 In this case, the risk of scandal should not
prevent one from defending the due good.
B) Scandal as a Circumstance or “Special Sin”
In the context of this classification of types of scandal,
Aquinas introduces the question of whether scandal is a special
sin or not. This is not just a question about the classification of
an evil act; it refers to the essence of scandal.
In his commentary on the Sentences, he examines active
scandal, that is, the true contribution to the fall of another
human being, in a double key: formaliter-materialiter.23 The
former indicates that something is directly intended, namely,
scandalizing the other. The purpose of a sin may be theft or
murder, but insofar as the agent formally intends scandal as
19

Ibid., ad 2.
STh II-II, q. 33, a. 1.
21
See also Quodl. IV, q. 12, a. 1, ad 3.
22
Contra Impugn., p. 4, c. 3, ad 8.
23
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2.
20

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417

well, this is a separate sin. The goal of the scandal is to make
someone turn away from the good, thereby opposing the
theological virtue of charity, which is the desire for good. In
this sense, it is the opposite of fraternal admonition (correctio
fraterna), which seeks to recover a lost good, and in the case of
scandal the purpose of the one committing the scandal is, in a
formal sense, to lead someone to persist in evil. Materially,
scandal is the kind of act that provokes the fall of others even if
there is no direct intention of doing so.
It is worth noting that Aquinas strongly emphasizes that it is
not only the circumstance that determines whether a given thing
is a scandal. If something arises due to circumstances, which it
sometimes does (drinking wine which scandalizes the observer,24
or telling a facetious lie), it becomes a scandal per accidens, but
increases moral responsibility:
A lie that is compliant and playful by itself does not oppose to the love of God
or neighbor. That is why it is essentially a venial sin. It can, however, become
a mortal sin due to the bad consequences which a liar could and should have
foreseen, for example, because of the scandal that his lie might cause.25

For Aquinas, moral action should consider not only the essence,
but also the circumstances of the act. Good conduct requires the
ability to harmonize and organize what should be said and
when; hence, for Aquinas, moral action has something of art in
it—a proper combination of different elements to achieve a
goal. Scandal therefore involves directly intentional actions,
which is a defect, or a result of circumstances that occur due to
a lack of prudence.
C) Scandal Committed by a Superior
The situation changes when sin is committed by someone in
a superior position. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas asks
whether the status of the sinner has an impact on sin and states
that a deliberate sin is more imputed to the person who is in a
24
25

STh II-II, q. 149, a. 3, corp. and ad 2
STh II-II, q. 110, a. 4.

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PIOTR ROSZAK

superior position.26 He gives four arguments for this: (1) it is
easier for the superior to resist sins; (2) the sin of the superior
displays his ingratitude for the great benefits he has received;
(3) there is a special inconsistency between the status of the
sinner (prince, priest) and his deeds; and (4) the sin of the
superior gives greater, more extensive scandal: “the sins of the
great are much more notorious and men are wont to bear them
with more indignation.”27 Aquinas considers such sins from the
perspective of the damage they cause, especially—but not
exclusively—if it is intended or foreseen. In the case of a sin
that by its very nature brings harm to others, even if someone
sinned without considering that he would be bringing loss to
others, this sin is ascribed to him (e.g., “if a man is a notorious
fornicator, the result is that many are scandalized; and although
such was not his intention, nor was it perhaps foreseen by him,
yet it aggravates his sin directly”).28
A scandal is therefore measured not only by the awareness
and intention involved, but also by the extent of its effects. For
this reason, Aquinas indicates that the more people it concerns
the more harmful it becomes. This includes sins against superiors, for example, by unjust accusations against them, given that
they represent the entire community.29 On the other hand,
when superiors commit sin, it is already qualified differently;
hence in the case of sin of a person in religious life, this act is
greater on account of scandal, because many take note of his manner of
life . . . if a religious, not out of contempt, but out of weakness or ignorance,
commit a sin that is not against the vow of his profession, without giving
scandal (for instance if he commits it in secret) he sins less grievously in the
same kind of sin than a secular.30

26

STh I-II, q. 73, a. 10. See also In Matt., c. 17, lect. 2.
STh I-II, q. 73, a. 10: “Quarto, propter exemplum, sive scandalum, quia, ut
Gregorius dicit in pastorali, in exemplum culpa vehementer extenditur, quando pro
reverentia gradus peccator honoratur. Ad plurium etiam notitiam perveniunt peccata
magnorum; et magis homines ea indigne ferunt.”
28
STh I-II, q. 73, a. 8.
29
STh I-II, q. 73, a. 9.
30
STh II-II, q. 186, a. 10.
27

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419

Aquinas analyzes the situation of potential scandal that can be
caused by a religious manifestly living on alms or from community property, rather than off the work of his hands; this
might scandalize the little ones.31 There will be no scandal once
the situation is understood; it will emerge when the
requirements of the situation are no longer obvious, and that
should be avoided.32
What if superiors do not act in exemplary fashion? Aquinas
considers the opinion that the wrong behavior of superiors
excuses others and says that
the evils of the prelates do not excuse us, because they are an example to their
subjects only in those matters in which they imitate Christ, who is the
shepherd without sin. Hence, He expressly says in John: I am the Good
Shepherd (John 10:11); and the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians: be imitators of
me, as I also am of Christ (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1). As if to say: imitate me in those
things in which I imitate Christ. And although you excuse yourself before men
because of the evil acts of prelates, yet God is not mocked, i.e., cannot be
deceived.33

According to Aquinas, Paul draws attention to two issues
when discussing these matters.
First, the imperative to imitate superiors only applies to
those things in which they follow Christ, according to 1
Corinthians 4:16: “be followers of me as I am a follower of
Christ,” that is, “imitate what I follow in Christ, namely,
patience in the midst of afflictions.”34 Substantially, it is about
following Christ in superiors, in how they embody his example,
rather than mindlessly repeating all their actions.
31
See J. M. Anderson, “When Must One Permit Scandals to Arise? A Comparison of
Two Traditions,” Irish Theological Quarterly 86 (2021): 254-72. The concept of triplex
veritas maintained by Peter Cantor is presented as a criterion of the suggested medieval
approach to the scandalous situations. As Anderson argues, this attitude was changed in
the manualist tradition of modern moral theology. In this context, more historical
analysis of the juridical indication to avoid scandals is studied by Arnaud Fossier,
“Propter vitandum scandalum: Histoire d’une catégorie juridique (XIIe-XVe siècle),”
Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Moyen-Age 121 (2009): 317-48.
32
STh II-II, q. 187, a. 4, ad 5.
33
In Gal., c. 6, lect. 2.
34
In I Thess., c. 1, lect. 1.

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PIOTR ROSZAK

Second, the situation in Antioch is an example of the scandal
caused by the apostles, reported in the Letter to the Galatians,
where Paul publicly rebukes Peter for faking his adherence to
the provisions of the Old Law before the Gentiles. Peter, in
order to avoid scandal among the Jews, does not eat the meals
prohibited by the Law, although he himself stated in the house
of Cornelius (Acts 10:1-48) that the ritual commandments of
the Old Law are no longer valid with the coming of Christ,
since the incarnation of the Word makes everything new.
Aquinas treats the question of the apostles’ observance of the
Law more broadly from an historical perspective (distinguishing
between the epochs before and after the spread of grace, and
the two attitudes towards the Law: living under the Law and
fulfilling the Law)35 and points out that old regulations are not
simply rejected as no longer valid, but implemented in a new
spiritual way, in accordance with their original intention, in a
time of grace.36 Nevertheless, the scandal caused by the attitude
of Peter among some is clearly of interest to Aquinas and
prompts reflection. Paul accuses Peter of pretending to obey the
Torah rules, which the latter does not do when he is among the
Gentiles. Aquinas reflects on two issues in this regard, examining a wealth of patristic material: whether Peter committed sin
in acting in this way, and whether Paul behaved appropriately in
the face of the scandal caused by Peter.
As reported by Aquinas in his commentary on Galatians,
there was a dispute on this point among the Fathers of the
Church. Some of them were in line with Augustine’s solution,
which regarded Peter’s attitude in terms of sin, even disorder,
lack of proper discernment. This action was not deliberate or
perverse, but indiscreet, and therefore involved a venial sin.
Saint Jerome, who was always cited in relation to Augustine in
35

In Gal., c. 5, lect. 5.
Aquinas notes (In Rom., c. 14, lect. 2) that the prohibitions already in the Old Law
were not absolute (as if some food had been inherently unclean), whereas messianic
symbolism is covering only certain periods of time, hence the coming of Christ abolishes
these prohibitions. Cf. Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple:
Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
2002).
36

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421

these matters, was of the opposite opinion, and denied that
Peter had sinned.37 Aquinas shares Augustine’s view: there was a
sin on Peter’s part and he deserved a rebuke. Interestingly,
Scripture itself forms the basis of his argument (“because it is
more in accord with the words of the Apostle”). The passage
ends with a somewhat enigmatic phrase, “Paul did not sin in
rebuking him, because no scandal followed from his rebuke.”38
For Aquinas, Paul’s response serves as a model of how to
admonish a superior when confronted by a scandal. Aquinas
notes:
The manner of the rebuke was fitting, i.e., public and plain. Hence he says, I
said to Cephas, i.e., to Peter, before them all, because that dissimulation posed
a danger to all: them that sin, reprove before all (1 Tim 5:20). This is to be
understood of public sins and not of private ones, in which the procedures of
fraternal charity ought to be observed.39

This passage from Galatians is also considered in the Summa
theologiae, where Aquinas draws attention to the conflicting
interpretations of Jerome and Augustine. Jerome, who wanted
to explain away the tension between the two apostles, considered it to be a sham in order to avoid scandal: Peter pretends
because of the Jews, Paul pretends because of the Gentiles. For
Augustine, however, it was unacceptable that such a pretense
should be praised in the canon of the New Testament. Paul
therefore truly admonishes Peter, yet the reprimand is deserved
not for keeping the provisions of the Old Law (for this was
permissible at this stage of spreading grace), but rather for too
great a zeal in obeying these provisions, which would cause a
(passive) scandal among the Gentiles.40
Among the themes addressed in the context of a scandal
which a superior may cause, a question appears in Quodlibet
IV: whether a Church superior can entrust the management of
Church goods to a relative who is suitable for this role, even

37

IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 3, qcla. 2, ad 2.
In Gal., c. 2, lect. 3 (no. 84).
39
Ibid.
40
STh I-II, q. 103, a. 4, ad 2.

38

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PIOTR ROSZAK

though it would mean overlooking someone better? Aquinas
answers by distinguishing between a relative just as well suited
for the role as anyone else, and one who is less well suited, but
he adverts also to the possibility of scandal. Although the superior could appoint a relative (out of his natural love for his
relatives), he should refrain from doing so because of the scandal or bad example that other superiors could draw by appointing their less-well-suited relatives, taking this case as an
excuse.41
II. EVIL AND HARMFULNESS OF SCANDAL
Having presented the essence of scandal, its forms and
effects, it is worth reflecting on what establishes the evil of scandal. Therefore it is a question about the consequences of scandal, from the perspective of both the person who causes scandal
and the scandalized person. Aquinas is convinced that pretending is wrong not only because it destroys human relationships,
which are founded on truth, but also because of the scandal it
causes.42 Therefore, the evil of scandal consists not merely in
exceeding certain boundaries, but in creating situations that lead
to the downfall of other people, referred to in the gospel as “the
little ones” (Matt 18:6). In the face of this situation, the question of how to behave arises: should the scandal be concealed or
exposed in order to avoid scandal of the little ones? However, it
is worth starting by analyzing how scandal occurs.
A) Scandal as the Creation of Occasions for Evil
The proper understanding of “occasion” for sin—which is
the essence of scandal—is explained by Aquinas in his commentary on Romans 7:2, that is, in the context of the reflection on
the Law as giving knowledge of sin. Aquinas wonders how the
Law became an occasion for sin and thus scandal. He recalls
that a scandal consists in a “less right” behavior which offends
41
42

Quodl. IV, q. 8, a. 4.
STh II-II, q. 101, a. 1, ad 4.

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or scandalizes one’s neighbor. He invokes the classic distinction
between active and passive scandal, which he illustrates by two
examples.
The first concerns going to the wrong places, even if not
with bad intentions, for such behavior is criticized in Romans
14:13 (“do not pass judgement on one another, but rather
decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way
of a brother”). Appearing in an inappropriate place can trigger a
scandal for the observer. In his commentary on Job, Aquinas
gives a similar assessment of the situation of Job, who in the
crucial part of the dispute (Aquinas interprets the entire book in
this key) is admonished by God for levitas sermonis (and not for
misrepresenting God). This way of responding to evil gave the
listeners the impression of arrogance, “and so his friends took
occasion of scandal. For one must not only avoid evil things,
but also those things which have the outward appearance of
evil.”43 The latter is a reference to Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:22,
who said that one should avoid not only evil itself, but also
whatever has the appearance of evil. That is why Job speaks of
putting his hand on his mouth in the future, which is a symbol
of both caution and repentance for what he has already said.
The second regards doing a good thing, such as giving
someone alms, which scandalizes another person who believes
that such people should not be granted help. In such a case, “the
one who is scandalized [by this right conduct] takes the occasion
and sins,”44 and not the one who gave alms. One must not refrain from doing good and proclaiming the truth out of fear of a
scandal.45 In light of this, Aquinas sees that the Law itself did
not give rise to sin, but that sinful passions, which are the work
of sin, have been occasioned by the Law. Being scandalized by
someone else’s good conduct stems from one’s own disorder
and bad attitude, and not from the conduct itself. It is in this
43

In Iob., c. 39.
In Rom., c. 7, lect. 2 (no. 543).
45
Quodl. IV, q. 12 a. 1, ad 3: “we should not stop encouraging something good
because a person takes it as an occasion to downfall”; in the commentary on the
Sentences he quotes Gregory: “si de veritate scandalum sumitur, utilius permittitur nasci
scandalum quam Veritatis relinquatur” (IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 4, qcla. 1, s.c. 1).
44

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PIOTR ROSZAK

sense that Aquinas reads the words about Christ who was a
scandal to the Pharisees, that he was appointed “for the fall and
rise of many in Israel” (Luke 2:34; see Isa 8:14).46
Aquinas observes that occasion does not always signify causal
relationship, but may indicate “insufficient causality.” Sin requires free consent; therefore, an external cause cannot be its
complete or sufficient cause (causa sufficiens). It can be, at most,
introductory, according to Aquinas’s definition (causa inducentem), and this will be possible by its very nature, either
because it always leads to sin—a situation inherently evil which
leads to evil—or for some other reason, per accidens, as
illustrated by an example of a straight path on which someone
falls: though he falls on the path, he does not fall because of it.47
A scandal may prove to be a difficulty for the little ones, for
whose welfare Jesus pleads when he utters the famous words
about the millstone as a punishment to people who cause scandals to such men. When explaining this passage in the commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Aquinas notes
that Origen considers these little ones to be the imperfect, such
as the newly converted, while Chrysostom considers them to be
anyone who receives injury from the scandal, whether they are
imperfect or perfect. Jerome reconciles both opinions with his
distinction between active and passive scandal, thus suggesting
that these words apply to all the apostles, particularly Judas
(Matt 26:31: “all will be scandalized by me”).48 The millstone
was not, at the time in Palestine, used at water mills but pulled
by horses. The penalty of being thrown into the sea, so that the
body would not come up to the surface—and thus, would be

46

In Matt., c. 15, lect. 1.
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a.1, ad 4.
48
In Matt. c. 18, lect. 1: “Chrysostomus dicit quod scandalizare idem est quod
iniuriam inferre, et haec potest perfecto et imperfecto inferri. Origenes dicit quod aliqui
sunt effecti parvuli, aliqui in fieri: illi qui effecti sunt parvuli, sunt illi qui ad
perfectionem pervenerunt, hi non possunt scandalizari; illi qui sunt in fieri, quia
imperfecti sunt, possunt scandalizari, sicut sunt qui conversi sunt de novo. Hieronymus
dicit quod licet non scandalizentur, aliquis tamen potest eos scandalizare, quia est
scandalum activum et passivum. Dominus videtur tangere omnes apostolos, et specialiter
Iudam tangit.”
47

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deprived of burial—was used for thieves. This indicates that the
person causing scandal deserves eternal damnation. Jesus is
encouraging the proper judgment of things. It is better to suffer
and be overwhelmed by worldly punishments or difficulties
than to cause scandal and deserve eternal punishment.
Are we therefore doomed to scandals, since Christ himself
said that “scandals are sure to come” (cf. Luke 17:1)? A fully
realized kingdom of heaven will be characterized by a lack of
scandals (in accordance with the words of Matt 13:41:
“colligent de regno eius omnia scandala”). Aquinas notes that
some were convinced that the inevitability of scandals was
absolute, based on divine foreknowledge or the nature of the
stars. Quoting the opinion of several Fathers of the Church, he
first tries to demonstrate that the necessity of which Jesus
speaks is conditional, as emphasized by St. John Chrysostom.
Aquinas captures this in the metaphor of a physician who in
“seeing a man partaking of unsuitable food might say that such
a man must needs injure his health, which is to be understood
on the condition that he does not change his diet. In like
manner it must needs be that scandals come, so long as men fail
to change their evil mode of living.”49 Origen, by contrast,
placed this necessity in the evil of demons and human weakness,
where the devil, out of the compulsion of his nature, tempts,
which consequently makes man obey him. For others (collectively referred to by Aquinas as alii), this necessity of scandals
signifies their usefulness, because on account of them the quality
of human life is verified—Aquinas evokes 1 Corinthians 11:19
to confirm this. Yet others, like Haymo of Auxerre, believed
that Christ was referring to the scandal of the Cross, which
scandalized the apostles, and was the cause of inner pain for
Christ during the Passion.50 From the acceptance of this
conditional necessity, Aquinas brings up another question:
whether this necessity exempts sinners from responding? In the
answer he stresses that no one is freed from avoiding a scandal
49
STh II-II, q. 43, a. 2, ad 1 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New
York: Benziger Bros., 1947).
50
STh III, q. 46, a. 6.

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PIOTR ROSZAK

that can always be defeated “by something useful for action, or
knowledge, or support.”51
B) To Speak about Evil or to Avoid Spreading Scandal?
Faced with such responsibility for another human person and
the awareness of the evil that scandal introduces into spiritual
life, the question arises whether to speak about it, or the
opposite—that is, to reduce its impact by not disclosing the evil
committed. How should someone behave when obtaining
knowledge about the evil committed by his neighbor?
There is no one universal rule (always reveal; never disclose),
but Aquinas recommends distinguishing between situations,
starting with determining whether a sin is public or private.
Detailed principles are discussed in the Letter to the Romans in
the context of the words “bless, not curse” (Rom 12:14), which
he understands as an invitation always to speak well and not
badly about one’s neighbor, an invitation which results from the
love of neighbor that Christians should practice. Among the
neighbors are not only the perpetrators but also the victims, for
the sake of whom it is sometimes necessary to reveal the evil
deed which remains unpunished. Aquinas is opposed to
disclosing the scandalous act when it is done just for the sake of
obtaining information; its disclosure must be for the good
involved (sub ratione boni). This caution results from the belief
that knowledge about evil can lead to evil. This is why
confession of sin should take place not in public, but in secret;

51
In Matt., c. 18, lect.1 (“per aliquod utile ad actionem, vel cognitionem, vel
supportationem”); see also IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 1, ad 1, where Aquinas
distinguishes necessitas absoluta from necessitas conditionata. In the latter sense there is
a (conditional) necessity for scandals to come on account of one of three reasons: divine
foreknowledge, ex inclinatione fomitis (although some common sins can be avoided, not
all can), and ex utilitate, when it is said, that all that is useful should come into being.
See David Torrijos-Castrillejo, “Divine Foreknowledge and Providence in the
Commentaries of Boethius and Aquinas on the De interpretatione 9 by Aristotle,”
Biblica et patristica thoruniensia 13 (2020): 151-73.

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the same goes for the imposed atonement.52 At the same time,
the notion of bona fama is an important criterion that warns
against rashness in this matter.53
Aquinas considers the relationship between the disclosure of
scandal and the form of fraternal correction in his disputed
questions De virtutibus, and states that conscience and good
opinion among people are jeopardized in man due to sin—
whereas the latter is needed for man in order to carry out
duties.54 Good repute is a treasure for man, and it is therefore
harmful for him to be unnecessarily deprived of it.55 Also,
people often refrain from sin just to maintain good repute;
therefore, exposing them may be counterproductive. For this
reason, if both conscience and good repute (among others) can
be preserved, admonition in secret must come first. From the
point of view of others, it is also risky to deprive people of their
good repute, because of the scandal that may arise due to the
belief that no one really deserves a good reputation, which may
harm the innocent and provoke sin. Since conscience is more
important than human opinion, it takes precedence over
concern for good repute, and the concern for opinions cannot
become a criterion for concealing evil, because the purpose of
revealing it is the good of the admonished brother. Nevertheless, as we will return to later, Aquinas thinks there should
be a proper order of fraternal correction, which takes place,
time, and circumstances into account.
Aquinas raises the topic of social sin and the responsibility
for it in a slightly different context: if it is possible to punish the
guilty without scandalizing others, and when it is possible to
separate the guilty from the whole society, they can so be
punished. He adds that

52
IV Sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 4, qcla. 4, ad 4: “Ad quartum dicendum, quod propter
scandalum aliorum, qui possunt ex peccatis auditis ad malum inclinari, non debet
confessio fieri in publico, sed in occulto. Ex poena autem satisfactoria non scandalizatur
ita aliquis; quia quandoque pro parvo vel nullo peccato similia opera satisfactoria fiunt.”
53
In Matt., c. 18, lect. 2.
54
De Virtut., q. 3, a. 2.
55
Ibid.

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PIOTR ROSZAK

the same applies to the sovereign, whom the multitude follow. For his sin
should be borne with, if it cannot be punished without scandal to the
multitude: unless indeed his sin were such, that it would do more harm to the
multitude, either spiritually or temporally, than would the scandal that was
feared to arise from his punishment.56

At the same time, he opposes the concealing of scandalous
events even if to do so would be only a venial sin: this is not a
price that should be paid, for the human being should love God
infinitely more than his neighbor.57 Aquinas is in favor not of
defending people and covering up scandal, but of assessing
moral consequences. Therefore, he is even convinced of the
need to reveal scandal, as he says in his commentary on the
Letter to the Romans. He refers to the opinion that speaking
about evil (“cursing”) is good for the purpose of revealing it, so
that the required truth can be known; this is something good
and thus fair, according to Aquinas.58 It is necessary to distinguish between a situation in which someone says something
evil “in terms of the good” (e.g., in Job 3:1—the cursing of Job,
who cursed the day he was born, stressing the torments of his
present life), and a situation in which someone says something
evil and means it, and thus reveals the truth about a scandal in
order to hurt either a person or a community.
For a better understanding of the logic of how to handle and
reveal evil, Aquinas refers to a matrix that includes three forms
of blessings: (1) by proclamation, when the goodness of one’s
neighbor is being praised; (2) by command, when the good
flows upon creation (mediated by creation); and (3) by wishing
the other well.59 Thus, by analogy, speaking harshly—with a
56
STh II-II, q. 108, a. 1, ad 5: “Et eadem ratio est de principe, quem sequitur
multitudo. Tolerandum enim est peccatum eius, si sine scandalo multitudinis puniri non
posset, nisi forte esset tale peccatum principis quod magis noceret multitudini, vel
spiritualiter vel temporaliter, quam scandalum quod exinde timeretur.”
57
IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 4, qcla. 1, ad 2: “quia homo debet in infinitum plus diligere
Deum quam proximum; et ideo nullus debet facere peccatum veniale ad vitandum
scandalum, dummodo actus suus ex tali causa factus peccatum veniale remaneat. Est
enim oppositio in adjecto, si dicatur quod aliquis debet peccare, aut bene facit
peccando.”
58
In Rom., c. 12, lect. 3.
59
Ibid.

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good intention—to someone in regard to his evil deed may be
fair when directed at someone’s spiritual progress (as is cursing
the success of a bad man [see Job 5:3]), but wicked when done
out of hatred or vengeance, as Goliath did to David. Proclaiming evil by command for revenge, hatred, or the sake of
praising evil is wicked. Aquinas cites 1 Corinthians 6:10 for
justification (“nor slanderers nor extortioners will inherit the
Kingdom of God”).
Although it is important to ensure that scandal does not
unnecessarily affect the little ones, bad deeds must never be
presented in such a way that they may seem good.60 Aquinas is
deeply convinced that it is one thing to prevent evil from
spilling over, and another to cover it up and make something
evil be regarded as good: hypocrisy is always evil.61
As a commentator on the Holy Scriptures, Aquinas notes that
Christ, in fact, avoided scandal with those not yet formed in
faith.62 At other times, he commands the apostles to remain
silent (e.g., after the Transfiguration and the miracles), although
at the same time he is not afraid of offending the Pharisees with
his goodness. Aquinas notes, in his commentary on Matthew
(15:12), that Jesus himself ordered Peter to pay taxes in order
to avoid a scandal (of the little ones), though at the same time
he was not afraid of scandalizing the Pharisees. Hence Aquinas
asks the question—is it not necessary to avoid scandals at all
costs? He settles this dubium (with a small quaestio) as follows:
“It ought to be said that scandal sometimes arises from the
truth, hence it is said: Scandal must be avoided without
prejudice to the truth or justice. Hence, a judge should not
change his verdict if someone is scandalized therefrom.”63

60
IV Sent., d. 16, q. 4, a. 1, qcla. 1, ad 2: “Ad secundum dicendum, quod peccatum
occultare sufficit ad vitandum scandalum; sed peccatum sub specie virtutis palliare
hypocrisis est, et malum semper; et per hoc quis famam non conservat, sed furatur.”
61
See Piotr Roszak, “Hipocresia y sus peligros: El sermón Attendite a falsis,” Scripta
theologica 44 (2012): 558-611.
62
In Matt., c. 19, lect. 1: “Cum consummasset sermones istos, scilicet de vitando
scandalum, migravit a Galilaea in fines Iudaeae trans Iordanem.”
63
In Matt., c. 15, lect. 1.

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When should a scandal be disclosed and when should it not,
according to Aquinas? To answer this, it is necessary to discern
whether the scandal is due to weakness or malice. If it arises not
out of malice but out of weakness, then it cannot be left without
comment, and the person guilty of the scandal must be
instructed. As a general rule, Aquinas states, “Scandal of the
little ones ought to be avoided, while preserving the truth; and
even so, a man can delay or forego an action.”64 In the case of a
scandal out of malice, it should not be concealed, which is why
Christ tells the disciples to leave the scandalized Pharisees, “let
them alone: they are blind.” Concealing the evil is harmful;
disclosing it uncovers the possibility of repairing and healing.
Scandal sometimes prevents people from preaching the truth
or performing good deeds. The fear of being judged by others
paralyzes. Nonetheless, Aquinas sets a certain rule of conduct:
“The truths of faith must not be avoided because of scandal, just
as Christ did not neglect to teach his truth despite the scandal of
the Pharisees.”65 This lesson considers the scandal that can come
out of good conduct; the wish to avoid scandal cannot occur at
the expense of good. Therefore, Aquinas notes that:
For one is not said to place a stumbling block by doing a good work, even
though someone takes the good work as a stumbling block. . . . It should not
be avoided just because someone with an erroneous conscience makes a
stumbling block of it. For according to this, Catholics would have to abstain
from meat and marriage to prevent heretics from being offended according to
their erroneous conscience.”66

64

Ibid.
In Rom., c. 14, lect. 3; see In Gal. c. 2, lect. 3: “in cases where danger is imminent,
the truth must be preached openly and the opposite never condoned through fear of
scandalizing others, ‘that which I tell you in the dark, speak in the light’ (Matt 10:27);
‘the way of the just is right; the path of the just is right to walk in’ (Isa 26:7)” (“veritas,
maxime ubi periculum imminet, debet publice praedicari, nec fieri contrarium propter
scandalum aliquorum. Matth. X, 27: quod dico vobis in tenebris, dicite in lumine. Is.
XXVI, 7: semita iusti recta est, rectus callis iusti ad ambulandum”).
66
In Rom., c. 14, lect. 2 (no. 1121).
65

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III. APPROPRIATE RESPONSES TO SCANDAL ACCORDING TO
AQUINAS
Once an evil deed which has caused scandal among other
people has occurred, what should be the response, according to
Aquinas? One should bear in mind the sociopolitical context
assumed by Aquinas, that is, the existing Christianitas and its internal relations. Out of fear of the loss of what is most precious
(faith, from which the reward of eternal life comes), Aquinas
distinguishes between the relationships with believers and those
with nonbelievers who have never accepted faith or who have
turned away from it (like heretics).67 Despite such differences in
circumstance, however, a few rules can be observed.
A) Decisive Action to Eliminate Evil: “Gouge the Eye” and
“Remove the Leaven”
The primary response to public evil—which becomes an
occasion for falling—is to remove the harmful situation. This is
how Aquinas reads the words of the gospel about eliminating a
part of the body when it becomes a reason for sin. Reading this
hyperbolic expression in a spiritual sense, he notes that Jesus’
suggestion to cut off one’s hands or feet, if they are the cause of
sin (Matt 18:8-9), may refer to the people who guide us (hands)
or support us (feet), and therefore requires a certain assessment
of a situation.68 The members of the body are friends, and
because they are in need of each other there may appear an
67
There are detailed recommendations in the questions in the Secunda secundae on
faith (STh II-II, qq. 10-11), as well as In 1 Cor. c. 5, lect. 3 (no. 263); and c. 6, lect. 1
(no. 266), where Aquinas calculates the consequences of voluntary submission to the
judgments of the unbelievers. Following 1 Peter 2:13, which concerns submission to
authority, he is aware that in many cases believers are left without a choice. One may
regard such situations as involving the choice of believers whether or not to seek justice,
yet they also can involve the denigratation and oppression of believers (occasio
calumniandi et opprimendi fideles) as well as social contempt (occasio contemnendi).
68
Cf. STh II-II, q. 11, a. 4, where Aquinas distinguishes between two types of goods
pertinent to accepting those who return from heresy into the Church: spiritual goods
(salvation) and secondary goods (property, opinion among people). The Church cannot
accept people for the sake of the latter if it comes at the expense of the former.

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occasion for sin and, consequently, a scandal. It is worth
keeping in mind that the image of the members of the body is a
metaphor for the Church; hence it does not come as a surprise
that Aquinas also uses it to refer to the situation of scandal on
the part of superiors—he is of the opinion that such should be
removed rather than to let the Church be scandalized.69
In this spirit of responsibility for the Church, Aquinas acknowledges the possibility that a scandal may arise when
someone inappropriate is called to the bishopric. In such a
situation, the bishop should resign from his office, because he is
a hindrance preventing the duty from being fulfilled. At the
same time, Aquinas notes that if the scandal is the work of
the wickedness of persons desirous of subverting the faith or the righteousness
of the Church . . . pastoral duties should not be renounced, in line with the
words: “Leave them,” namely, those who are scandalized at the truth of
Christ’s teaching, “they are blind, and leaders of the blind.”70

The general principle, however, is that genuine scandal should
be taken into account.
Scandal is like a little leaven that corrupts the whole lump
(see 1 Cor 5:6). Commenting on this passage, Aquinas ponders
two aspects of leaven. The first is the taste it gives to bread: this
signifies the wisdom of God, which gives flavor to all human
actions. The second factor is corruption: in this context, “leaven
can signify sin, because by one sin man’s works are corrupted;
for example, by the sin of hypocrisy which is compared to
leaven.”71 The whole metaphor, however, serves to describe a
negative phenomenon in which a single evil act destroys the
entire community, and is not met with any response, but is left
unchecked:
This happens when by the sin of one person others are prompted to sin or
even when they consent to his sin, by not at least correcting him when they
can: “those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but
approve those who practice them” (Rom 1:32). Consequently, the Corinthians
69

In Matt., c. 18, lect. 1.
STh II-II, q. 185, a. 4.
71
In I Cor., c. 5, lect. 2 (no. 240).
70

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should not have boasted of another’s sin but rather taken a step to prevent
others from being defiled by associating with him.72

Quoting Song 2:2 about the lily among brambles, and Baruch
3:11 about growing old in a foreign country, Aquinas points to
the necessity of breaking away from evil, which consists in
purification: “by cutting off one sinner the whole group is
purged.”73
The important quotation from 1 Corinthians 5:6 appears in
his commentary on the Second Letter to the Thessalonians,
where he examines Paul’s recommendation to avoid people who
seem to be scandalous:
Then the Apostle gives the command that you should avoid. For this reason,
the practice of avoiding bad people was introduced in the Church so that the
weak would not be contaminated by their presence. Touch pitch and you
blacken your hand (Sir 13:1). A little yeast leavens all the dough (1 Cor 5:6).
Besides, it serves to heal the sinner, so that shame will lead him to salvation.
There is a shame heavy with guilt, and a shame that brings glory (Sir 4:21).
And this should not be done recklessly, but deliberately and maturely. When
you have gathered together and I am with you in spirit with the power of the
Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction (1 Cor 5:45). Similarly, he says here: that you should avoid etc.74

In certain circumstances, Aquinas recommends that the individual “flee” from evil. Since it is not always possible to resist
certain vices, it is better to escape from them by avoiding the
occasion of sin.75 The recommendation to avoid people who
make such situations come about can be understood in this key.
He notes that this was the advice of Paul, who called the
Corinthians to flee from fornication (1 Cor 6:18). Nonetheless,
sometimes sin is overcome by steadfast resistance, because the
longer a person observes and ponders certain sins, the fewer

72

Ibid. (no. 241).
Ibid. (no. 243): “per separationem unius peccatoris tota societas expurgatur.”
74
In II Thess., c. 3, lect. 1.
75
This distinction appears, for example, in STh II-II, q. 35, a. 1, ad 4. See also STh
II-II, q. 151, a. 1, ad 2.
73

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reasons he finds to relish them.76 This entails a certain difficulty,
due to original sin, which weakens the inclination in man to
persist in the pursuit of a future good, grasped by reason and
expressed by the attitude of patience.77
With respect to scandalizing others in public, concern for the
benefit of the whole community is required for an act to be just.
The severity of the punishment for unjust acts must be aimed at
social peace. Because punishing someone may lead to a split in
the community, Aquinas is convinced that severity is advisable
only in some cases; admonitions and encouragements may work
better than threats. But this applies to a situation in which the
faith, the truth of doctrine and good customs, are not harmed
by the behavior of superiors or a larger group, who often try to
take advantage of their authority (today we would say
influence) or power.
B) To Bear with the Failings of the Little Ones
If the primary response to public evil is to remove the
harmful situation, a secondary principle is that of bearing with
the weak. Aquinas cites a sentence from the Gloss—“non fuit
bonus, qui malos tolerare non potuit”78—in the context of the
accusations of the Pharisees, who were scandalized by Jesus’
feasting with sinners and tax collectors, and asks if they were
right after all, since bad company should be avoided. In his
commentary on Matthew, he examines the motives for which
associations with sinners are avoided (on account of pride and
contempt; for the benefit of the sinners, who might be ashamed
and thus led toward conversion; for the sake of one’s own
safety). He also points to several reasons why others dwell
among them, such as proving themselves, because temptation
puts man to the test (Song 2:2). This situation, however,

76
In I Cor., c. 6, lect. 3: “Ubi notandum quod caetera vitia vincuntur resistendo, quia
quanto magis homo particularia considerat et tractat, tanto minus in eis invenit unde
delectetur, sed magis anxietur.
77
STh II-II, q. 136, a. 3, ad 1.
78
In I Cor., c. 5, lect. 2 (no. 241).

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requires a distinction: are we dealing with persistent sinners
who are unwilling to repent or with those who are open to
conversion? Christ “was a steadfast doctor; for that reason,
although he was with them, he was not fearing danger.”79
Bearing with the weak results from faith in providence and its
power:
If we see someone obviously sinning, we should not despise him and rashly
judge that he will never rise again; rather, we should presume that he will
stand again, not considering the human condition but God’s power.80

Elsewhere, Aquinas quotes a theological reason why one should
bear with the failings of the other: “You and he bear two
persons within you, namely yours and Christ’s. Therefore, if
you cannot bear with him for the sake of himself, then bear
with him for the sake of God’s image.”81 “To bear with”
therefore means to separate a person from sin. The point is to
see the good, to look for it even under many layers of evil.
The theme of “bearing with” the failings of others—who do
not deliberately make a scandal, even though scandal occurs out
of ignorance or weakness—is taken up by Aquinas in his
commentary on Romans, where we find the phrase “we who are
strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak”
(Rom 15:1). The passage has to do with meals prohibited by
Jewish law, and whether one should abstain from them due to
the possible scandal of the little ones. Aquinas provides some
specific advice on what to do in such a situation and whether
one is allowed to use things that are permitted without taking
one’s neighbor into account.82 In the case of a scandal that
79

In Matt., c. 9, lect. 2.
In Rom., c. 14, lect. 1.
81
In Phil., c. 2, lect. 1 (no. 49).
82
In Rom., c. 14, lect. 3 (no. 1135): “If the scandal proceeds from the weakness or
ignorance of those scandalized on account of it, then to avoid this scandal a man should
abstain from lawful things, if they are not necessary for salvation. For this is scandal of
little ones, which the Lord commands us to avoid: see that you do not despise one of
these little ones (Matt 18:10). But if scandal of this sort arises from the malice of those
scandalized, such scandal is Pharisaical and the Lord taught that it should be ignored.
Hence, to avoid scandal of this sort, it is not necessary to abstain from lawful things”
80

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PIOTR ROSZAK

comes from ignorance or weakness, one should abstain from
what is permitted, so far as it concerns matters necessary for
salvation. In other cases, there is no obligation to avoid
acceptable and decent behavior, and when a scandal of the little
ones occurs, one should patiently explain the reasons for which
a different attitude can be adopted and thereby contribute to
the development of one’s neighbor. Aquinas notes that if the
passive scandal persists despite the explanations, then it is a sign
that we are dealing with a scandal of the Pharisees, which is
born out of bad will.83 In this way, the type of scandal is verified
according to the criterion mentioned by Aquinas in his
commentary on Galatians:
For if the one corrected loves the corrector, it is a sign of virtue; conversely, it
is a sign of malice if he should hate him. For since a man naturally hates what
is contrary to what he loves, then if you hate one who corrects you for evil, it
is obvious that you love the evil; but if you love him, you indicate that you
hate sin. For at first, when men are corrected, they are attached to their sins—
that is why a sinner’s first reaction is to hate the one correcting him; but after
the correction, he puts aside his attachment to sin and loves the one correcting
him.84

Aquinas, in his commentary on Romans, gives four
arguments why it is worthwhile to avoid a passive scandal with
regard to the weak in faith who were tolerated by the Church in
the process of initiation.85 For example, when it comes to eating
foods that should no longer be divided into clean/unclean after
(“Scandalum ex infirmitate vel ex ignorantia proveniat eorum qui propter hoc
scandalizantur, ad vitandum hoc scandalum, debet homo a licitis abstinere, si non sunt
necessaria ad salutem. Hoc enim est scandalum pusillorum, quod dominus vitari iubet,
Matth. XVIII, 10: videte ne contemnatis unum ex his pusillis. Si vero huiusmodi
scandalum ex malitia proveniat eorum qui scandalizantur, tale scandalum est quasi
Pharisaeorum, quod dominus, Matth. c. XV, 12 ss., docuit esse contemnendum. Unde
ad vitandum huiusmodi scandalum non oportet a licitis abstinere. Sed tamen circa
scandalum pusillorum attendendum est, quod propter illud vitandum tenetur homo
usum licitorum differre, quousque reddita ratione hoc scandalum amoveri possit. Si vero
ratione reddita, adhuc scandalum maneat, iam non videtur ex ignorantia vel ex
infirmitate procedere sed ex malitia: et sic iam pertinebit ad scandalum Pharisaeorum”).
83
See also In Matt., c. 17, lect. 2.
84
In Gal., c. 4, lect. 5 (no. 237).
85
In Rom., c. 14, lect. 2.

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the coming of Christ, it is worth finding a solution that does not
scandalize, and this is the attitude Jerome ascribes to Peter in
the dispute in Antioch (shifting the axis of the issue to whether
or not the preferential approach to the weak should have
ceased). The first argument is love, since the scandalized person
is saddened by noncompliance with food regulations, and food
should not be preferred to the peace of the brother. The second
argument points out that such an emphasis on food annihilates
the fruits of Christ’s passion, because a scandalized brother loses
his faith (1 Cor 8:11). The third, which is the most extended
argument, concerns the impropriety of passive scandal, which is
in conflict with having the gifts of grace. The fourth refers to
the respect for the works of God, among which the work of
grace in the life of the neighbor is more important than the
work of God as it pertains to food.
In a situation of a passive scandal that scandalizes the weak,
Aquinas clearly encourages his readers to try to explain their
rightful conduct with peaceful and calm words. This shows that
one is acting for another person’s benefit by freeing him from
injustice and bad habits; this is different from simply not
offending by acting well. In such circumstances, one should be
concerned not so much to avoid evoking any scandal, but rather
to focus on the good of the neighbor.86
C) Truthfulness
Fraternal correction (correctio fraterna) is another way of
responding to sin, which, however, is not directly related to and
focused on evil, but is undertaken for the sake of the good that
comes from the removal of evil.87 This may appear in two ways,
for sin both harms the sinner himself and has a social
dimension, bringing disorder and imbalance not only to the
wrongdoer but also to the community. The admonition will be

86

Contra Impugn., p. 4, c. 3, ad 8.
See Fainché Ryan, “Truth Matters: Living in Dangerous Times—Aquinas on the
Virtue of Truth-Telling,” European Journal for the Study of Thomas Aquinas 37 (2019):
35-48.
87

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different in the two cases. In the first case, fraternal correction
is intended to remove evil and improve the life of the sinner
himself. It leads to a certain good which consists in deliverance
from evil, and therefore it springs from love and is motivated by
it. Such an admonition has to do not with cleansing the world
of evil, but with restoring the good in the life of the neighbor.
Since it is about not material obstacles or external damage but
the moral good (related to virtue), Aquinas says that “fraternal
correction is an act of charity rather than the healing of a bodily
infirmity, or the relieving of an external bodily need.”88
Regarding the second case, when an admonition is given
because of the social impact of someone’s bad behavior,
Aquinas perceives the admonition as a manifestation of justice,
which, as a relational virtue, properly regulates the mutual relationships between people. Thus, the response to such a scandalous evil will be the desire to restore the relationships that
have suffered the most from the scandal—those that have
broken up and are not socially bonded. The aim of the admonition is not to torment the person who has fallen, or to compile a
thorough list of his vices, but to attempt to repair the common
good that has suffered—for example, due to the sin of the
superior.89 For Aquinas, however, this situation raises several
questions: in what way the subordinate can admonish his
superior (and whether he should), but also whether someone
can be forced to reveal someone else’s sin.
The latter issue appears in one of the quodlibets, in which
Aquinas ponders whether it is appropriate to obey the superior
88

STh II-II, q. 33, a. 1.
Ibid.: “The correction of the wrongdoer is a remedy which should be employed
against a man’s sin. Now a man’s sin may be considered in two ways, first as being
harmful to the sinner, second as conducing to the harm of others, by hurting or
scandalizing them, or by being detrimental to the common good, the justice of which is
disturbed by that man’s sin” (“Respondeo dicendum quod correctio delinquentis est
quoddam remedium quod debet adhiberi contra peccatum alicuius. Peccatum autem
alicuius dupliciter considerari potest, uno quidem modo, inquantum est nocivum ei qui
peccat; alio modo, inquantum vergit in nocumentum aliorum, qui ex eius peccato
laeduntur vel scandalizantur; et etiam inquantum est in nocumentum boni communis,
cuius iustitia per peccatum hominis perturbatur. Duplex ergo est correctio
delinquentis”).
89

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when he orders someone to reveal the sin of a fellow brother,
differentiating between secret sin and public sin. In this context,
the order of fraternal correction becomes apparent: it can be
given in the form of a direct correction if it concerns only this
person’s salvation. In a situation when many are scandalized,
the superior may compel someone to reveal the truth about the
evil deed, because
the good of many takes precedence over the good of one. Hence, his superior
ought to investigate the matter and uncover the truth in order to put the
scandal to rest, either by punishing or by pardoning the sinner. Then, in such
cases a superior can command a religious who knows about a brother’s fault
to disclose it to him.90

In certain circumstances—as the example of Paul, who
admonished Peter in Antioch, shows—admonition of superiors
becomes a necessity. Such fraternal correction should be devoid
of pride, which destroys the purity of motivation. Aquinas
advises in De virtutibus that it is equally necessary to make sure
the admonition is given in an appropriate way, so that the
disclosure of someone’s sin does not appear more scandalous.
If, for example, the admonition seems to be simply a venting of
emotional indignation, then, according to Aquinas, it is not a
virtuous act.91 This, as we know, includes not only the matter of
the act, but also the circumstances of time and manner.
Moreover, care for virtue applies not to one side only, but to
both. In the context of the dispute between Peter and Paul,
Aquinas notes:
Therefore from the foregoing we have the example: to prelates, indeed, an
example of humility, that they not disdain corrections from those who are
lower and subject to them; to subjects, an example of zeal and freedom, that
they fear not to correct their prelates, particularly if their crime is public and
verges upon danger to the multitude.92

90

Quodl. IV, q. 8, a. 1.
De Virtut., q. 3, a. 1, ad 16.
92
In Gal., c. 2, lect. 3.
91

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D) Achieving More Good—An Effective Atonement
The logic of the response to the evil of scandal and the way
to prevent the scandal from spreading is, as we have seen, to
draw attention to the necessity not to underestimate evil, but to
respond to it. Aquinas reminds those who claim not to be able
to resist sin that they should not be negligent about avoiding
scandal, for something useful can always be done in terms of
action, or knowledge, or support.93 In other words, the response to evil should be based on doing more and greater good,
along the lines of the incarnation, which is God’s response to
evil through the good of the hypostatic union. This fits in with
the essence of atonement, which must be read not so much in
juridical terms as in terms of friendship: Aquinas notes that
healing from the wounds of sin is accomplished by taking
measures against the disorder introduced by sin94—which can be
accomplished by the one guilty of the sin and by someone who
is in relationship with him.
The need to avoid scandal also applies to situations where an
unjust law should be upheld under certain circumstances.
Giving up one’s rights can be justified to avoid scandal. This is
how Aquinas reads the gospel exhortation that when someone
obliges another to walk a thousand steps, he should go two
thousand. The point is not to increase the evil that has been
committed, but to repair it with good.95
If scandal always has as its (implicit or explicit) purpose to
prevent the moral improvement of one’s neighbor,96 the way to
fight a scandal does not lie in covering it up so that it cannot be
seen. This leads only to a concealment of evil, adopting increas93

In Matt., c. 18, lect. 1 (no. 1499).
STh I-II, q. 87, a. 6, ad 3. Cf. Steven J. Jensen, Sin: A Thomistic Psychology
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018). In Heb., c. 1, lect
2 (no. 40) refers to what every sin is (transgressio legis aeternae, amissio luminis rationis,
deformatio similitudinis Dei, amissio aeternae haereditatis) and Christ purges sin,
repairing the perversity of the will by turning it towards the unchangeable good
(justification).
95
STh I-II, q. 96, a. 4.
96
STh II-II, q. 43, a. 3, corp. and ad 3.
94

A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO SCANDAL

441

ingly clever methods of hiding it, leaving the root intact; it will
cease to be a scandal, but it will not cease to be a sin. For
Aquinas, the fight against scandal should always be directed
towards the good of one’s neighbor, a good which is always
worthwhile because it is the Lord’s fundamental commandment.
CONCLUSION
Aquinas’s reflections on scandal show that moral actions not
only affect individuals, but can also become an occasion for
others to do evil. This presupposes the existence of a certain
ordo in the world, which is violated by sin. Interaction with evil
can take various forms, and public sin has a cognitive overtone:
it manifests certain evil and can lead to the downfall of another.
At the same time, Aquinas seeks to clarify the situation of a
planned scandal, which falls within the definition of this sin,
taking into account not only what has been done (sin), but also
the reason why it has been done (i.e., with the intention of
bringing someone to sin).97
Aquinas encourages people to care for good opinion, but this
is more than a concern for one’s self-image.98 It involves being
aware that we can work together in good or bad. Consideration
for the weak in faith therefore becomes a manifestation of our
mercy.
When scandal is committed in the community, some may encourage concealment of the evil due to its consequences. Aquinas proposes a different path. In the biblical commentaries he
encourages the explanation and disclosure of the truth to those
who have the right to know it, and yet not to lose sight of the
chance of saving every brother through fraternal correction—
cutting him off from the source of sin—and responding to evil
by an even greater good. Atonement on the part of the person
guilty of scandal, along with his rejection of this path—due to
the community which responds to scandal with an even greater
97
Joseph Pilsner, The Specification of Human Actions in St. Thomas Aquinas
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 236.
98
In I Tim., c. 3, lect. 2.

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PIOTR ROSZAK

power of love and good, so that the cross of Christ will not be
wasted—become the best answer to evil. A scandal is harmful,
not just by its viciousness, but by weakening the light with
which Christians are to shine in the world.99

99
The project used information obtained through a grant from the National Science
Centre in Poland, no. 2019/35/B/HS1/00305. My gratitude to Jörgen Vijgen for his
valuable suggestions and to Eliza Litak for her helpful comments.

The Thomist 85 (2021): 443-78

AQUINAS AND THE THEORY OF THE EMPYREAN
HEAVEN
NICHOLAS PORTER
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

I

N MEDIEVAL COSMOLOGY the empyrean heaven was
the highest and outermost heaven. In modern scholarship it
is most frequently mentioned in studies on theories of place,
since its status as the universal limit naturally connected it to the
question, long before raised by Aristotle, as to whether the
universe as a whole could be considered to be in a place. Given
how completely the idea of the empyrean has been discarded as
a cosmological theory, one may reasonably ask if it merits more
than such incidental mention. To those who have some interest
in the progress and development of ideas, I suggest that it does.
Discarded as incompatible with modern science, it was also in a
number of respects seemingly incompatible with medieval
science. Its supposed attributes harmonized poorly with Aristotelian physics and cosmology,1 prompting considerable speculation of genuine originality in the Middle Ages.2 An investigation
of the empyrean may have nothing to tell us about our cosmos,
but it has something to tell us about our predecessors.
1

For some general observations on the point, see Gianfranco Fioravanti, “Aristotele
e l’empireo,” in Christian Readings of Aristotle from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance,
ed. Luca Bianchi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 25­36.
2
This speculation was largely on the part of natural philosophers and theologians
since the empyrean, being invisible, was of little account to astronomers. John of
Sacrobosco’s De sphaera mundi, the common astronomical primer in Aquinas’s day,
does not discuss the empyrean, while a modern authoritative study of medieval
astronomy and cosmology, Michel-Pierre Lerner’s two-volume Le monde des sphères
(Paris: Les belles lettres, 1996­97), assigns the empyrean a chapter of but six pages.
443

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NICHOLAS PORTER

The analysis of what Thomas Aquinas has to say on the
matter given in these pages should be read in this light. The
famous question of the eternity of the world being a notable
exception, Aquinas was generally a committed Aristotelian in
physics and cosmology, but not so committed as to be an
Aristotelian and nothing more. He was no partisan of the ipse
dixit, and he never regarded the Philosopher as the whole of
philosophy. Had he been, it would have been easy enough for
him to deny the existence of the empyrean, which was in any
case but poorly attested. On the other hand, had he been
inclined to depart from or substantially to modify Aristotelian
metaphysics and physics, (after the manner, say, of Robert
Grosseteste), he might have invented a novel physical theory
adjusted for the empyrean. He did neither. The result is that his
discussion of the subject is a piece of speculation within
Aristotle’s system and an exercise in accommodation of that
system. Reading it through affords us a view of the medieval
doctor at work when tackling a subject that does not readily
harmonize with the broader science of the day. What course
does he take? How flexible is his science? Are his presuppositions regarding matter, motion, and the heavens to be
trusted? Read in this frame of mind, Aquinas’s speculations may
yet interest the modern scholar.
A small, but fairly comprehensive literature exists on the
empyrean.3 Aquinas, indeed, figures very prominently in it, but
3

Bruno Nardi, “La dottrina dell’empireo nella sua genesi storica e nel pensiero
dantesca,” in Saggi di filosofia dantesca, 2d ed. (Florence: La nuova Italia, 1967),
167­214, remains an excellent introduction to the historical development of the idea of
the empyrean, and is also noteworthy for including one of the few treatments of Islamic
thought on the subject. Another substantial history, with copious references, is supplied
by Gregor Maurach, “Coelum Empyreum, Versuch einer Begriffsgeschichte” in Boethius
VIII (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1968). W. G. L. Randles, The Unmaking of the Medieval
Christian Cosmos, 1500­1760: From Solid Heavens to Boundless Aether (Aldershot,
U.K.: Ashgate, 1999), 1­31, gives special attention to the function of the empyrean as
the home of the blessed, and the sometimes embarrassing physical questions this
involved, such as how it is possible to breathe or move when surrounded by immutable
matter. The short chapter on the empyrean in Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs:
The Medieval Cosmos, 1200­1687 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
371­89, is the best introduction to the various physical questions it motivated. A kind of

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

445

nearly always for what he has to say upon a few of the most
important, most discussed questions. For the object of this
article, which is to exhibit how he tackles a problematic subject
with the resources of his physics, it will be preferable to collect
and analyze in toto all of his arguments. This presents little
difficulty, as he develops his theory of the empyrean in only
three places, the numerous other references to it scattered
throughout his works being incidental or referential in character.4 These places are distinction 2, question 2 in the second
book of his commentary on the Sentences; questions 61, 66, and
68 in the Prima pars of the Summa theologiae; and question 11
in Quodlibet VI. As the section from the Sentences commentary
is the most extensive, its threefold division of the matter is followed here.5 We will treat first its existence, corporeality, and
place; second, the nature of its matter; and third, its influence
upon the rest of the cosmos. Before entering into the
arguments, it will be helpful to say a bit about Aristotle’s
cosmology and how the empyrean had been added to it, and the
attitude Aquinas adopted towards this non­Aristotelian heaven.
I. ARISTOTLE AND EXEGESIS
Aristotle’s cosmos consisted of the earth surrounded at
increasing distances by the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun,
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars. These were all part of
or in some sense embedded in eight heavenly spheres, each
containing the next. Each sphere had a single, simple proper
motion, but was, in addition, moved in a different way by the

conclusion to the story, tracing the fall of the empyrean into desuetude and obscurity at
the time of the collapse of the Aristotelian­Ptolemaic system, is provided by William
Donahue, The Dissolution of the Celestial Spheres 1595­1650 (New York: Arno Press,
1981), 223­34.
4
A list, with little comment, of the places where Aquinas mentions the empyrean is
to be found in Thomas Litt, Les corps célestes dans l’univers de saint Thomas d’Aquin
(Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1963), 255­61.
5
Peter Lombard’s introduction of the empyrean in book II of his Sentences explains
why so much medieval discussion of it is concentrated in commentaries on the
Sentences.

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NICHOLAS PORTER

higher spheres. As these combinations of simple movements did
not suffice to produce all apparent celestial motions (e.g.,
planetary retrogression), a number of other spheres were
supposed to be interspersed among the “visible” ones. 6 The
combinations thus generated were supposed to explain all the
various movements observable in the heavens. Since the sphere
of the fixed stars appeared to have only a single uniform
motion, that is, daily rotation, it was the highest sphere and the
first moving body in the world.7
An initial complication of this scheme came from the
discovery that the fixed stars had not only the single uniform
movement of daily rotation, but also a slow precession about
Earth’s axis.8 Hence, by the logic of Aristotle’s celestial physics,
there ought to be a sphere with uniform motion above that of
the fixed stars. It is unclear when this step was first taken. In his
Planetary Hypotheses, Ptolemy speaks of a sphere of “the
universal motion” above the fixed stars, though he does not
relate it explicitly to sidereal precession.9 By the Middle Ages,
however, the idea of a sphere or spheres above the visible firmament was commonplace and held to be justified on physical
grounds. Those, for instance, who accepted Thābit ibn Qurra’s
theory of a third motion of accession and recession in the starry
sphere (proposed to account for disagreements in measurements
made across the centuries) naturally proposed yet another

6
See Aristotle, Metaphys. 12.8.1071b1­1074a13, where he reviews the twentyseven-sphere system of Eudoxus and its modification by Callippus, and then, by adding
intervening spheres to counteract the extra motions that would be produced by the
spheres of the higher upon the lower, arrives at a total of fifty-five or forty-seven,
depending on how many motions the moon and sun are taken to have.
7
Aristotle, Metaphys. 12.7.1072a21­23.
8
It is, of course, the Earth whose axis is precessing, at about 25,800 years per cycle.
The discovery of precession is generally attributed to Hipparchus in the second century
BC.
9
Bernard Goldstein, “The Arabic Version of Ptolemy’s Planetary Hypotheses,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 57, no. 4 (1967): 3­55, at 5. See also
Olaf Pedersen, A Survey of the Almagest, rev. ed. (New York: Springer, 2011), 249.

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

447

higher sphere to explain the additional movement.10 The first
moving sphere, with a perfectly simple uniform movement,
whether held to be the ninth or the tenth sphere, was typically
called the primum mobile.
These astronomical conclusions harmonized nicely with a
long-standing tradition of scriptural exegesis.11 In verse 1 of the
first chapter of Genesis, God creates “heaven and earth”; verse
2 speaks of “waters” in some unspecified place; in verses 6­7, on
the second day, a “firmament”12 is created to divide the waters;
and, in verse 8, God calls this firmament “heaven.” To explain
the puzzling creation of two heavens, it was held that the
heaven of the second day was the visible starry firmament;
above this was a sphere of water or something called water by
way of likeness; and above this was the first heaven created in
the beginning. Thus were added two spheres above that of the
stars: the aqueous (or crystalline) sphere and the first heaven.
Depending on whether an author chose to identify the primum
mobile of celestial physics with either of these biblical heavens
or to make it a distinct sphere, the final result was either a tenor an eleven-sphere system.

10
Otto Neugebauer, “Thâbit ben Qurra ‘On the Solar Year’ and ‘On the Motion of
the Eighth Sphere’,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106 (1962):
264­99.
11
For the history of this tradition, see Randles, Unmaking of the Medieval Christian
Cosmos, 1­31.
12
The Vulgate faithfully translates the στερέωμα of the Greek Septuagint by
firmamentum, both words denoting something firm, strong, steadfast, or solid. Only
much later would it be learned by European scholars that the corresponding word in the
Hebrew text, raqia, had rather the sense of an extension or expanse.

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NICHOLAS PORTER

Figure 1: The eleven sphere system in Peter Apian’s Cosmographia
(1564).

The first and outermost heaven came to be known as the
empyrean due to the influence of the widely read Glossa ordinaria. Long attributed to Walafrid Strabo, this text is more
probably the work of Anselm of Laon. Randles asserts that
Anselm took the word “empyrean” from Martianus Capella.
This seems quite probable, given the popularity of The Marriage
of Philology and Mercury in the Middle Ages, but it can hardly
be proved.13 The fact that Augustine employs empyreum (from
ἐµπύριος, “fiery”)14 to refer to the higher reaches of the heavens
in controversy with Porphyry 15 proves that this sense of the
Latin word already existed in antiquity, and we cannot be sure
by what route it reached Anselm. The gloss on Genesis 1:1 says
13

Randles, Unmaking of the Medieval Christian Cosmos, 7.
Nardi, “La dottrina dell’empireo,” 175­82. Nardi says that the word is of
“provenienza neoplatonica,” and gives a history of its application to high or divine
realms.
15
Augustine, City of God 10.9 and 10.27.
14

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

449

that the first heaven is “not the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, fiery or intellectual, so­called not from heat but
from splendor, and straightaway filled with angels.” 16 Shortly
thereafter, Peter Lombard repeated the Gloss’s identification of
the first heaven of Genesis as the empyrean heaven, quoting its
words almost verbatim in his second book of Sentences.17 Peter
adds, from Bede, the assertion that this higher heaven “is
separate from the instability of the world,”18 a claim that may
have prompted, and at least encouraged, the hypothesis that the
empyrean is motionless.
By Albert the Great’s day there seems to have been a fairly
settled opinion about the empyrean’s basic characteristics. It is
immobile, luminous, and uniform.19 Along with this communis
sententia went a standard set of pro and con arguments, which
reappear in author after author. Bonaventure, for instance, in
his commentary on the Sentences, discusses many of the same
aspects of the matter as Aquinas, to wit, whether or not a
heavenly sphere can be immobile, whether the cosmos requires
(or admits) a uniform body, whether the empyrean might be
illuminated by the sun, whether the empyrean might influence
lower bodies by way of heat or light, and in what way it makes
sense to speak of immaterial angels being in a corporeal place.20

16

The text is found in Migne, PL 113:68: “Coelum non visibile firmamentum, sed
empyreum, id est, igneum vel intellectuale, quod non ab ardore, sed a splendore dicitur,
quod statim repletum est angelis.”
17
Peter Lombard, II Sent., d. 2, c. 4 (The Sentences: Book 2, On Creation, trans.
Giulio Silano [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008], 11). See
Migne, PL 192:656 for the Latin.
18
Ibid. Peter’s source is Bede’s Hexaemeron, and the statement can be found in
Migne, PL 91:13d: “ab omni hujus mundi volubili statu secretum.”
19
Albertus Magnus, De IV coaequavis tract. 3, q. 11, a. 2 (Alberti Magni Opera
omnia, vol. 34, ed. A. Borgnet [Paris, 1895], 423): “Solutio Magistrorum est, quod
coelum empyreum sit immobile”; idem (Borgnet, ed., 422), “Communis Magistrorum
sententia est, quod omnino sit uniforme, plenum lumine.”
20
Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1 (S. Bonaventurae Opera omnia, vol. 2
[Quaracchi, 1885], 70ff.).

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NICHOLAS PORTER

II. HOW AQUINAS APPROACHED THE EMPYREAN
One less popular theory of the empyrean emphasized its
theological character to the point of making it a purely
“spiritual” place, in contradistinction to the rest of the material
cosmos. This is the view expressed by Dante in the Paradiso:
Noi siamo usciti fore
del maggior corpo al ciel ch’è pura luce;
luce intellettual, piena d’amore;
amor di vero ben, pien di letizia;
letizia che trascende ogne dolzore.21

Here, the travelers pass from the “largest body” (i.e., the highest
material heaven), into the empyrean, which is a heaven of
“intellectual light” (i.e., spiritual or immaterial). Aquinas, by
contrast, in agreement with the more widespread communis
magistrorum sententia, thinks that the empyrean is a material
part of our world. 22 As such, it is, in principle, treatable by
mundane physics as a purely spiritual realm would not be.
Here, however, Aquinas manifests a notable hesitation. To
be sure, if the empyrean exists, it is fair game for science, but
Aquinas is of the opinion that its existence is not demonstrated
by science. His discussion of its existence in his commentary on
the Sentences aims, somewhat unexpectedly, to show that some
physical arguments on offer for its existence fail to prove it. But
neither does he think that the empyrean is a conclusion of
theology. Though it was commentators on Scripture who
introduced it, Scripture itself does not assert it. In fact, the
position that Aquinas adopts is that the existence of the

21

Paradiso, XXX, 38­42: “We have gone forth / from the largest body to the heaven
that is pure light / light intellectual, full of love / love of true good, full of joy / joy that
transcends every sweetness.”
22
This has the curious consequence that, given the right technology, one could
actually make Dante’s journey and travel to the heaven of the blessed. Aquinas never
acknowledges this, and may not have thought of it. If he had, one wonders if he would
have deemed it an objection to his position.

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

451

empyrean is held only upon an august literary tradition.23 It is
neither a conclusion of science nor a part of revelation.
From the latter position especially might have come problems: history affords striking lessons of the unhappy consequences of erroneous theological opinions intruding into other
sciences. Had the view expressed by Campanus of Novara that
an invisible heaven beyond the stars was held “by faith”24 won
general acceptance, the empyrean might have joined geocentrism as a scandal to theology. Though Aquinas is quite
willing to mix Scripture, theology, written authority, and
physical science in his discussion, his firm position on the
grounds for even considering that there might be an empyrean
heaven precludes this possibility.
Indeed, what will particularly strike readers familiar with
Aquinas is how tentative and hypothetical his statements are—
unusually so, for a characteristically confident thinker. Perhaps
we may even detect a subtle note of suspicion. How much
ought one to trust a literary tradition? At any rate, he is cautious
and undoctrinaire, frequently reviewing the possibilities without
settling on a definite answer, and even changing his mind
altogether. As a consequence, his discussion is more restrained
than those of many of his contemporaries, such as his eminent
Franciscan colleague Bonaventure, who ends his first question
on the empyrean with a hearty “et sic patent omnia.”25

23
STh I, q. 66, a. 3 (English translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican
Province [2d and rev. ed; New York: Benziger, 1920/22]): “The empyrean heaven rests
only on the authority of Strabus and Bede, and also Basil.” Aquinas here identifies the
author of the Glossa ordinaria as Strabus.
24
Campanus of Novara, Campanus of Novara and Medieval Planetary Theory:
Theorica planetarum, trans. Francis Benjamin and G. J. Toomer (Madison, Wis.:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 183: “Whether there is anything, such as another
sphere, beyond the convex surface of this [ninth] sphere, we cannot know by the
compulsion of rational argument [alone]. However, we are informed by faith, and in
agreement with the holy teachers of the church we reverently confess that beyond it is
the empyrean heaven.”
25
Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a. 1, q. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 72).

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NICHOLAS PORTER

III. IS THE EMPYREAN A CORPOREAL PLACE?
In his commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas begins by
asking “Whether the empyrean is a body,”26 but in fact what is
at issue is whether the empyrean exists at all, and if so, what
sort of thing it is. Three distinct questions are addressed: Can its
existence be known by reason? Is it a material body? Is it in a
place?
A) Can the Empyrean’s Existence Be Demonstrated?
After noting that the philosophers make no mention of the
empyrean, which would seem to argue against its existence,
Aquinas proceeds to consider three arguments in favor of its
existence, all of which he must rebut to maintain that that existence is held on authority.27 First, “everything that is moved in a
place is in a place. Therefore, it seems that the primum mobile is
in a place. But a place means the surface of a containing body.
Therefore the primum mobile must have an immobile body containing it, and this is the empyrean.”28 Second, “that is more
perfect which acquires its good without motion than that which
acquires it by motion. But the works of God are perfect. Hence,
the most perfect body must be immobile.”29 Third, “before everything complex is something simple. But the starry firmament
is partly transparent and partly luminous. Therefore, there must
be something only transparent and something only luminous
(this latter being the empyrean). Moreover, the transparent is

26

II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1 (Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libro sententiarum, vol.
2, ed. Pierre Mandonnet [Paris: 1929]). All translations from this work are my own.
27
For a short list of those who accepted physical arguments for the empyrean, see
Nardi, “La dottrina dell’empireo,” 199­200.
28
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, s.c. 1: “omne quod movetur in loco est in loco: quia motus
localis est primus motuum. . . . Ergo videtur quod primum mobile sit in loco. Sed locus
est superficies corporis continentis. Ergo oportet quod habeat corpus continens
quietum, et hoc dicimus caelum Empyreum.”
29
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, s.c. 2: “perfectius est quod acquirit bonitatem sine motu,
quam quod per motum acquirit. Sed Dei perfecta sunt opera. Ergo oportet
perfectissimum corpus esse immobile.”

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

453

like potency (of being luminous) with respect to light. Therefore, there must be a body entirely luminous (i.e., the
empyrean).”30
Aquinas answers that “the empyrean is not able to be
investigated by reason, since whatever we know of the heavens
is known either by sight or by motion, but the empyrean neither
moves nor is visible. Its existence is held on authority.”31 The
reason why the philosophers do not mention it is therefore
plain. The argument from place will be discussed below.
Though accepting the principle that what acquires its good
without motion is more perfect than that which does so by
motion, Aquinas denies that there needs to be a body that does
this for the perfection of the universe. And he simply denies the
premiss of the last argument, that a complex body needs to be
reduced to simple bodies.
In support of the claim that the empyrean cannot be
investigated by reason, Aquinas subjoins a statement that verbally involves a petitio principii, saying that the “empyrean is a
body principally ordained to be the dwelling of the blessed”
(whether it was a body, it should be recalled, was what was to
be determined in the article), and, therefore, as the “glory of the
blessed exceeds human investigation, so also does the empyrean.” 32 However, it is not hard to see an implicit argument
here. The blessed will have bodies after the resurrection,
therefore they must be in a corporeal place; the empyrean is
where the blessed will be, therefore it is a corporeal place. That
there will be a corporeal place for the blessed may be inferred

30

II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, s.c. 3: “ante omne multiforme est aliquid uniforme. . . .
Sed est aliquod caelum difforme, quod partim est diaphanum et partim lucidum actu, ut
caelum stellatum. Ergo oportet aliquod esse tantum diaphanum et aliquod tantum
lucidum. . . . Sed diaphanum est sicut potentia respectu lucidi. Ergo oportet primum
corpus esse totum lucidum actu.”
31
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1: “Respondeo dicendum, quod caelum Empyreum ratione
investigari non potest: quia quidquid de caelis cognoscimus hoc est aut per visum aut
per motum. Caelum autem Empyreum nec motui subjacet nec visui, ut in littera dicitur,
unde nec naturali ratione sed per auctoritatem est habitum.”
32
Ibid.: “est corpus quod principaliter ordinatum est ut sit habitatio beatorum . . .
quia illa gloria excedit investigationem humanam, ideo etiam et caelum Empyreum.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

from Scripture, which teaches the bodily resurrection of the
dead; that this place is the empyrean heaven is held on authority
(i.e., of Basil, Bede, and the Gloss). Hence, if the authorities are
right, then the empyrean is a corporeal place. However, at some
point later in his career, Aquinas found his authorities wanting.
In the Summa theologiae he confesses that the reasons given by
Basil, Bede, and the Gloss “are not very cogent,” and he offers
his own argument for the existence of the empyrean. “For in
the reward to come a two­fold glory is looked for, spiritual and
corporeal,” he says, but since the spiritual glory began when the
world began (with the angels), it is fitting that, “even from the
beginning, there should be made some beginning of bodily glory
in something corporeal, free at the very outset from the
servitude of corruption and change”; in other words, there
should be a glorious body, the empyrean.33 The design of the
world requires that its end be united with its beginning. The
exitus-reditus scheme which continues to attract interest from
theologians and philosophers is here, so to speak, impressed
upon the physical structure of the cosmos, such that the first
place of creation is also the last.34 The important point, that the
empyrean is not a demonstration of philosophy but is founded
on a certain interpretation of revelation, is maintained.
By itself, this is unobjectionable. Yet Aquinas renders his
claim that the empyrean cannot be investigated by reason
somewhat perplexing, since in the following articles he proceeds
to do just that, and to do it more with the help of Aristotle than
by appealing to theological opinion. He can be read without
imputation of inconsistency if we limit the force of his “ratione
investigari non potest,” as is not unreasonable to do, for reason
is a word with many senses and wide implications. We cannot
reason about the empyrean quite as we can about the sun or the
tides or any of the objects of natural science which are
presented to us on the immediate authority of the senses. Yet

33

STh I, q. 66, a. 3.
Ibid., ad 1. So thorough is the reditus that “when glory is finally consummated, the
movement of bodies will cease.” In the end, the lower creation will take on the
immutability that characterized the empyrean from the beginning.
34

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

455

reasons can be given why its existence is, at least, plausible. And
supposing it exists, it may be possible to show how it harmonizes or interacts with the rest of the cosmos that is available
to natural science—that is, showing what its existence implies,
and what science implies about it. There is no doubt that
Aquinas adopts an attitude of this kind towards many strictly
theological matters. He is quite clear that certain theological
doctrines, such as the Trinity, cannot be proved by reason but,
if accepted, can be shown not to contradict what is known by
reason. Moreover, reason can amplify itself by this exercise,
extending its province some way into mysteries by analyzing the
unknown by the known, while also enriching the science proper
to its own nature by the addition of new ideas. Granted that
Aquinas did not hold the empyrean on faith, but on a much
weaker authority, it nonetheless seems probable that he approached it with a touch of the same caution suitable for
theological mysteries.
B) The Corporeality of the Empyrean
We have already seen Aquinas give his own reason for the
corporeality of the empyrean, namely, that there are human
bodies there. But he also addresses three objections: (1) “Every
natural body is sensible, especially to the sense of sight. But the
empyrean is not visible, it is ‘intellectual,’ as the Gloss says.”35
(2) “The empyrean is the place of contemplation, but this does
not require a corporeal place.”36 (3) “Aristotle says that there is
no further body beyond the primum mobile.” 37 To this last,
Aquinas answers that what Aristotle proves is that there is no
other body outside the universe, not that there is no corporeal
heaven above the visible heaven. The second objection is beside
35

II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, obj. 1: “Omne enim corpus naturale est sensibile, et
praecipue sensu visus. Sed caelum Empyreum non est visibile, sed intellectuale, ut in
littera dicitur. Ergo non est corpus.”
36
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, obj. 2: “caelum Empyreum est locus contemplationis. Sed
contemplationi non debetur locus corporalis.”
37
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, obj. 3: “philosophus probat . . . quod extra primum mobile
non est aliquod corpus.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

the point, since it is not contemplation but bodily resurrection
that entails a corporeal place. Aquinas adds that the empyrean
(a place of splendor) is assigned to contemplation not by
necessity, but by fittingness.
The text of the Gloss, however, confronts Aquinas with an
ambiguity. It says that the first heaven is “not the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, fiery or intellectual, so­called
not from heat but from splendor, and straightaway filled with
angels.” This igneum vel intellectuale reflects a longstanding
ambiguity regarding the kind of heaven that might be suitable
for creatures like angels, which may or may not have bodies. In
Plato’s Timaeus the divine bodies (i.e., the stars) are literally
fiery, being composed of the element fire. 38 A poetic bent in
later authors sometimes inclines them to use the same language
to convey brightness, purity, and height (since fire is an element
that rises). In writers willing to countenance the existence of
incorporeal beings, it is not difficult to see how this fades away
into complete metaphor. The medieval Schoolman, however,
was of all kinds of thinkers the least given to relaxing into
ambiguity and mystical metaphor. Aquinas will not entertain the
idea that the highest heaven is a purely intellectual or spiritual
place. It is not because it is invisible in itself that we cannot see
it, but merely because it is not visible to us.
C) The Place of the Empyrean
The argument that the primum mobile needs an immobile
place in which to move calls for more discussion, though
Aquinas disposes of it very briefly. If this argument were sound,
then it would be a purely philosophical argument for the
existence of the empyrean. But it is not cogent, says Aquinas,
because an ultimate mobile heaven is not in a place per se but
per accidens. 39 He does not here explain what this means. In
fact, he is appealing to an extensive tradition of the theory of
38

See Plato, Timaeus 40a.
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1, ad 5: “Aliae etiam rationes non sunt cogentes: quia
ultimum caelum quod movetur, non est in loco per se sed per accidens.”
39

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

457

place. 40 Aristotle defines place as “the boundary of the containing body.”41 It follows that “a body for which there is an external body containing it, is in a place; but not a body without a
containing body.”42 This implies straightaway, as Aristotle himself says, that the universe as a whole is not in a place. 43
Furthermore, in the material plenum of Aristotle’s cosmos,
every body will be in a place since it is surrounded on all sides
by other bodies, with the anomalous exception of the outermost
heavenly sphere. Two obvious objections present themselves.
First, it seems paradoxical to say that a physical body (as the
highest sphere was conceived), having length, depth, and
breadth, is not in a place. Second, there is the objection of
Aquinas’s text, namely, that the heavens move and what moves
must be in a place. Hence, philosophers cast about for various
devices by which the ultimate sphere might have a place or its
paradoxical nonlocality made more palatable. The problem
attracted considerable interest. Edward Grant notes that during
the period covered by his study (1200­1687), “the possible
place of the last sphere was one of the most widely discussed
questions.”44 As such, the matter cannot be treated comprehensively here. What follows is a summary of the positions that
Aquinas himself reviews in his commentary on Aristotle’s
Physics, and then an exposition of the one he adopts himself.
Though Aristotle firmly denies that things like the soul and
heaven are actually in a place in the strict sense of the phrase, he
is willing to speak of them being in a place in a way. He makes
two suggestive, slightly different statements regarding the way
heaven might be said to be in a place. First, “in respect of
motion, it is a place for its parts, for one part contains
40
For a more complete treatment, see Edward Grant, “The Medieval Doctrine of
Place: Some Fundamental Problems and Solutions,” in Studi sul XIV secolo in memoria
di Anneliese Maier, ed. A. Maierù and A. Paravicini Bagliani (Rome: Edizioni di storia e
letteratura, 1981), 57­79.
41
Aristotle, Phys. 4.4.212a7: “τὸ πέρας τοῦ περιέχοντος σώµατος.”
42
Ibid. 4.5.212a32­33: “ᾯ µὲν οὖν σώµατι ἔστι τι ἐκτὸς σῶµα περιέχον αὐτό, τοῦτό
ἐστιν ἐν τόπῳ, ᾧ δὲ µή, οὔ.”
43
Ibid. 4.5.212b15: “the whole has not a ‘where’ [που]”.
44
Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 123.

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NICHOLAS PORTER

another.”45 Second, “all the parts are in some way in a place,
since one contains another spherically.”46 He straightaway goes
on to reiterate that the universe has not a “where” since there is
nothing to embrace it, but the suggestion that it might be in a
place in some indirect way would often be followed.
Of course, quite a number of authors were willing to accept
the logical conclusion of Aristotle’s theory and deny that the
outermost sphere was in a place.47 The objection from motion
was met in various ways. Averroës reports that Alexander of
Aphrodisias taught that the ultimate sphere was neither in a
place, nor really moved, thus disposing of the whole matter.48
Avicenna, assuming that the ultimate sphere did move, adheres
to Aristotle’s view that rotational movement, unlike linear
movement, does not require a place.49
On the other hand, those who held that the ultimate sphere
is in some way in a place were often induced to modify or reject
Aristotle’s definition of place. Avempace distinguishes bodies
that revolve about themselves from those subject to linear
motion. Since the latter imply a terminus a quo and ad quem,
their place depends on what is external to them, and is defined
45
Aristotle, Phys. 4.5.212b11­12: “ἐφ᾿ ᾧ δὲ κινεῖται, ταύτῃ καὶ τόπος ἐστὶ τοῖς µορίοις·
ἕτερον γὰρ ἑτέρου ἐχόµενον τῶν µορίων ἐστίν.”
46
Ibid. 4.5.212b13­15: “τὰ γὰρ µόρια ἐν τόπῳ πως πάντα, ἐπὶ τῷ κύκλῳ γὰρ περιέχει
ἄλλο ἄλλο.”
47
Grant (Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 124) lists Alexander of Aphrodisias, Avicenna,
Johannes Canonicus, Roger Bacon, Jean Buridan, Albert of Saxony, and Marsilius of
Inghen.
48
Averroes, Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentariis, vol. 4, trans. Michael Scott
(Venice: Apud Junctas, 1562/1574), lib. 4, 143r, col. 1: “Alexander is of the opinion
that the sphere of the fixed stars is not in a place. It doesn’t move per se because it is
impossible for it to move either as a whole or according to its parts. The whole doesn’t
move because it doesn’t change place. The parts do not move because they are not
separate from the whole, which is at rest.”
49
See Pierre Duhem, Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void,
and the Plurality of Worlds, trans. Roger Ariew (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987), 140: “According to Avicenna, the revolution of a sphere on its axis is not a
movement from one place to another; it is a movement in place. In order that a body be
animated by such a movement in place, it is not necessary for it to have a place. The
eighth sphere then is not in a place either by itself or by accident; but it can, however,
rotate on itself.”

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correctly by Aristotle. But the heavenly spheres revolve upon
themselves; hence, their place is internal, that is, not what
encloses them, but what they enclose. In other words, Avempace shifts the boundary from the outer convex surface of each
sphere to the inner concave surface. Hence the ultimate sphere
is in a place, namely, the surface of the next sphere. 50 Obviously, this involves a radical departure from Aristotle’s definition of place as a containing body.
Averroës follows Aristotle’s suggestion that some things can
be in a place indirectly. He proposes that the ultimate heaven is
in a place per accidens because its center is in a place, much as a
mathematician might locate a circle by the coordinates of its
center. 51 But like Avempace’s proposal, this breaks with Aristotle’s definition of place as a container.
In his commentary, Aquinas declines to follow Alexander in
admitting that the ultimate sphere is in no sense in a place. He
objects to Avempace for not holding to Aristotle’s definition of
place. He also objects to Averroës on the grounds that the
center of the sphere is physically extrinsic to it and “it seems
ridiculous to say that the ultimate sphere is in a place per
accidens because the center is in a place.” 52 He says that he
rather approves of “the opinion of Themistius, who said that
the ultimate sphere is in a place through its parts.”53 The theory
of Themistius, as transmitted by Averroës, is simply an explanation of Aristotle’s cryptic suggestion that the heavens might in
some way be considered in a place. Themistius seems to have
seized on Aristotle’s remarks that the parts of heaven “have” or
“embrace” each other, and he interprets these parts as the inner

50

Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 126­27. See Averroës, Physics, lib. 4, 142v, col.

2ff.
51

Averroës, Physics, lib. 4, 142v, col. 1.
IV Phys., lect. 7 (S. Thomae Aquinatis, In octo libros physicorum Aristotelis
expositio, ed. P. M. Maggiòlo [Turin: Marietti, 1954], 477): “ridiculum videtur dicere
quod sphaera ultima sit in loco per accidens ex hoc quod centrum est in loco.”
53
Ibid. (Marietti ed., 478): “approbo sententiam Themistii, qui dixit quod ultima
sphaera est in loco per suas partes.”
52

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NICHOLAS PORTER

spheres.54 These are each in a place with respect to their containing sphere, and he concludes that the outermost sphere
could be considered in a place per accidens in respect of them.55
Despite saying that he approves of the opinion of Themistius, Aquinas proceeds to set forth a quite different theory of
place, one that harmonizes somewhat better with Aristotle’s
text. Aquinas ignores the multiplicity of spheres, and considers
heaven as a continuous substance and its parts as divisions that
reason might make in a continuum. The rotating whole, he says,
can only be said to be in different places insofar as these are
distinguished by reason, but remains always in the same place
“as to subject,” as we might say that a rotating top or gryoscope
stays in the same place.56 The parts, however, do change place,
“not only according to reason, but as to subject,” and hence, “in
circular motion there is a succession in the same place not of
whole bodies, but of their parts.”57 But there is a subtle significance in that these parts of the whole are potential rather than
actual. If a division actually were made—that is, if one were
somehow to make a cut in the heavenly substance—a part
would become actual and be actually in a place as described by
its limiting boundary. In this case, the whole would no longer
be a single continuum and the situation would yield circular
motion such as described by a juggler’s balls rather than, say, a
rolling tire. But because the part is only potentially such, it is
only potentially in a place (though, as said above, that place
does change “as to subject” during rotation). And it is in this
54
The ambiguity of Aristotle’s use of “parts” and resulting differences in
interpretation are analyzed in Cecilia Trifogli, “The Place of the Last Sphere in
Late­Ancient and Medieval Commentaries,” in Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval
Philosophy: Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Medieval Philosophy
(S.I.E.P.M.), vol. 2, ed. Simo Knuuttila, Reijo Työrinoja, and Sten Ebbesen (Helsinki,
1990), 342­50.
55
Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs, 129­30.
56
IV Phys., lect. 7 (Marietti ed., 478): “In motu autem circulari, licet totum fiat in
diversis locis ratione, non tamen totum mutat locum subiecto: semper enim remanet
idem locus subiecto, sed diversificatur ratione tantum.”
57
Ibid.: “Sed partes mutant locum non solum ratione, sed subiecto. Attenditur ergo
in motu circulari successio in eodem loco, non totorum corporum, sed partium eiusdem
corporis.”

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461

way that the ultimate sphere can be said to be “in a place
through its parts.” The whole does not require a place, the
potential places of the potential parts suffice for rotational
motion (unlike linear motion which requires actual places), and
it is by reason of its parts that the whole is said to be in a place
per accidens.58 It should be observed that Aquinas here considers
a rotating outermost heaven since he is commenting on Aristotle, who held the starry firmament to be the final heaven.
However, if the outermost heaven is not the primum mobile but
the nonrotating empyrean, there would be even less reason to
posit a place for it.
IV. THE NATURE OF EMPYREAL MATTER
The second article in Aquinas’s commentary asks whether
the empyrean is luminous. However, as in the first article, several distinct concerns are lumped together: (1) whether the empyrean is luminous, (2) whether it is mobile, and (3) whether its
matter can vary in density. To the last, Aquinas adds (4) that, if
it varies in density, then it admits of generation and corruption.
At first glance, the combination may seem odd. However, all
these questions regard the nature of the empyrean’s matter.
Having established that the empyrean is a material body in the
first article, it would appear that Aquinas decided to combine
everything he had to say about what sort of body it might be in
the next. He maintains that it is incorruptible, immobile, and
luminous. But the defense of this assertion involves not a few
difficulties—in particular, the fact that Aristotle’s theory of
elemental matter is closely connected to change, whether local
motion only as in the case of the heavenly bodies, or, among
sublunar things, other kinds of change as well.

58

Ibid. (Marietti ed., 479): “Sic igitur, quia aliquid dicitur de toto ratione partium,
inquantum partes ultimae sphaerae sunt in loco in potentia, tota ultima sphaera est in
loco per accidens ratione partium: et sic esse in loco sufficit ad motum circularem.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

A) Luminosity
According to Avicenna, luminosity is caused by a translucent
concentration of parts. But the empyrean, being the most noble
of bodies, is also the most subtle; and if its subtlety implies that
it is diffuse, then it cannot be luminous.59 Moreover, the empyrean is certainly greater in size and (presumably) in power
than the sun. But the sun is visible—indeed, its light causes it to
be day. Given that the empyrean is always overhead, if it were
luminous, it ought to be visible, and, indeed, it ought always to
be day.60
Now, that we should experience perpetual day (or something
more intolerable still), if we were surrounded on all sides by an
enormous shining sphere some finite distance from us, is a very
good astronomical argument against the empyrean.61 Moreover,
Aquinas does not believe that there is any opaque heaven intervening between us and the empyrean that might block its light,
as he explicitly says when treating the same objection in the
Summa theologiae. 62 He meets this objection, and that drawn
from Avicenna’s theory of light, by a distinction: empyreal light
is not the same as solar or terrestrial light. Empyreal matter
does not emit visible rays, rather, it has light “in its nature,”
being maxime formale. Later in the Summa he seems to hedge,
suggesting that the empyrean’s light may be of a “more subtle
59

II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 1: “Quia secundum Avicennam, causa luciditatis est
congregatio partium diaphani, ut patet in chrystallo. . . . Sed caelum Empyreum est
subtilissimum, cum sit nobilissimum corporum, et maxime formale. Ergo caelum
Empyreum non est lucidum.”
60
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 2: “Praeterea, caelum Empyreum est majus quantitate
et virtute quam sol. Sed sol quando directe nobis opponitur, facit nobis diem. . . . Ergo
cum caelum Empyreum semper nobis opponatur directe, videtur quod si esset lucidum,
semper nobis esset dies.”
61
Ideas like redshift or the expansion of space sometimes proposed in the face of
Olber’s paradox were obviously not available to Aquinas.
62
STh I, q. 66, a. 3. That the empyrean’s light was obstructed by the starry
firmament was taught by Giles of Rome and Gerard of Siena. See Elpida Lazari and
Chris Schabel, “Cosmology and Theology in Gerard of Siena’s Question on the
Empyrean Heaven,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 81 (2014):
95­135.

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nature” than that of the sun, and then adds, as an alternative:
“Or it may have the brightness of glory which differs from mere
natural brightness.”63 While this could be criticized as an equivocation, it does parallel another phenomenon of Aristotelian
cosmology: the sphere of pure fire above us is also not visible
despite being in some way luminous.
Nardi notes that Aquinas considers the light of the empyrean
only as a quality of it, rather than its substance (which Bonaventure says).64 This minor difference may have a metaphysical
motive, inasmuch as Aquinas did not accept the Neoplatonic
view of light as a kind of first substance (a view most famously
espoused by Robert Grosseteste).
B) Immobility
Against the supposed immobility of the empyrean, it is first
urged that in anything that has distant parts (i.e., a body), where
one of its parts is, another can be; likewise, each part can be
where it is not. This implies local motion, and hence the empyrean, being a body, would seem to be mobile.65 Secondly, all
natural bodies are mobile66—nature, after all, is the principle of
motion according to Aristotle. Moreover, bodies are material,
and matter and motion entail each other. Since the empyrean is
a natural body, it must be mobile.
In answer to the first objection, Aquinas denies that a
quantifiable distinction of parts per se necessitates mobility.
What has a natural determination to place, such as an elemental
body, will also have the potential to be in a place, and hence the
possibility of motion. But a body that lacks such a determination, such as one constituted of a different kind of supermundane matter, need not be mobile though it be quantifiable.

63

STh I, q. 66, a. 3.
Nardi, “La dottrina dell’empireo,” 202­3.
65
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 3: “Sed quod habet partes distantes, ubi est una pars
ejus potest esse etiam alia: ita et singulae partes ejus possunt esse ubi non sunt: et quod
est hujusmodi, est mobile secundum locum.”
66
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 4: “omne corpus naturale est mobile.”
64

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NICHOLAS PORTER

Aquinas meets the next objection, that as all natural bodies
are mobile, so must be the empyrean, with arguments along two
different lines. First, he distinguishes between senses of the
word “natural” so as also to distinguish the empyrean from the
parts of the cosmos we know by experience. Second, he makes a
case that materiality does not entail mobility.
Things are said to be natural in two ways: first, as contrasted
with mental entities, in which case even angels and the empyrean may be called natural beings; and, second, as contrasted
with divine beings, which are separated from matter and
motion. In the latter sense, that alone is called natural which
moves and is subject to generation and corruption. In this way,
the empyrean is not a natural but a divine being, because,
although it is a material body, its matter is determined not to
motion but to “its end,” that is, being a place of rest for the
elect. 67 Waiving the materiality of the empyrean in this way
amounts to an ad hoc redefinition of the typical Scholastic
characterization of the divine as separate from matter and
motion. Indeed, Aquinas feels obliged to subjoin the remark
that, however, “it is true that in mobile and immobile things,
matter is taken equivocally.”68
Nonetheless, the idea of a uniquely quiescent type of matter
is defensible. Aristotle defines nature as a principle of motion
and rest, 69 and rightly so, on his theory, since it is by nature
both that heavy matter moves towards the center of the world
and that it rests at the center once there. The four lower elements are subject to both local rectilinear motion and local rest
along with substantial change. The fifth element of the heavens
is subject only to continuous local circular motion, but not to
rest or substantial change. Is it then an unwarranted extrapolation to suggest the possibility of a matter subject only to
local rest?

67
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4: “hoc modo caelum Empyreum non est ens naturale,
sed divinum, quod ordinatum est ad gloriam bonorum; nec materiam habet determinatam ad motum, sed ad finem suum.”
68
Ibid., sed verum est quod in mobilibus et immobilibus est materia aequivoce.
69
Aristotle, Phys. 2.1.192b22­24.

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Yet it is odd that Aquinas decides to call such matter divine.
Pagan writers, to be sure, might well hold the heavenly bodies
to be actual gods. But Christians tend to balk at characterizing
material bodies as divine. A tradition descending from Aristotle
and Boethius, which taught that the divine science treated what
is immaterial and immobile, permitted the medieval doctors to
apply the name “divine” to immaterial creatures, such as the
angels were often thought to be. 70 In most of his writings,
Aquinas adheres closely to this convention, and he might have
done so in this case as well. After all, why is it preferable to say
that the divine substances include one singular material
exception rather than to say merely that the natural substances
include one singular immobile exception?
The second argument, highly compressed into a couple of
lines, is that matter need not entail mobility. This can be seen in
the case of mathematics, which considers things apart from
motion but not altogether apart from matter. A mental triangle
may be acquired by abstraction from a corporal object (e.g., this
triangular sign). But, as Aquinas explains elsewhere, such a mental triangle is abstracted from sensible matter, but not from
from substance;71 a mental triangle is conceived of as an extended “something” or an extension of a “something.” Aristotle
called this underlying nonsensible substrate of mathematicals
ὓλη νοητὴ,72 which was rendered in Latin as materia intelligibilis. The point is that mathematics abstracts from matter as
sensible, but not from matter as such—if it did, one could not
think of two congruent but different triangles, for what individuates them even in mind? Hence, because in mathematics we
consider things apart from motion but not absolutely apart from
matter, Aquinas concludes that “it is not necessary, wherever
there is matter, that there should be motion.”73 Therefore, it is
possible for there to be an immobile material body, viz. the

70

Cf. Aristotle, Metaphys. 6.1.1026a15­20; and Boethius, De trinitate 2.
See STh I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 2; and Super Boet. De Trin., q. 5, a. 3.
72
See Aristotle, Metaphys. 7.10.1036a9­12.
73
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4: “Unde non oportet, ubicumque est materia, quod sit
motus.”
71

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NICHOLAS PORTER

empyrean heaven. Aquinas, however, is accustomed to describe
abstraction, including mathematical abstraction, as that act
whereby what is joined to something else in reality is considered
separated from it in the mind. On this theory of abstraction, is it
licit to argue, (now from mind back to reality), that because
something can be considered separately in the mind, then it can
also exist separately in reality?
C) Incorruptibility
In Aristotle’s system the celestial fifth element has two
prominent characteristics, both drawn from simple observation.
Some puzzles like planetary retrogression notwithstanding, the
heavenly bodies move around in a circle. Therefore their matter
has a natural circular motion. Furthermore, no body ever permanently disappears and no new body appears in the heavens.74
Nor does a body alter its shape or real size. Changes in the
heavens are only positional, or what follows on such, such as
changes in brightness or apparent magnitude. Therefore, celestial matter does not permit substantial generation or corruption,
alteration, or any kind of growth or diminution.
The empyrean’s immobility suggests that it is not composed
of the same matter as the rest of the heavens. If the elements are
distinguished by having distinct simple motions, as Aristotle
holds, this ought to follow necessarily—though, strangely,
Aquinas does not draw this conclusion. If empyreal matter
differs from other celestial matter in one way, might it not in
others? Might this one heaven be composed of corruptible
matter like the sublunar region? The hypothesis is contrary tout
court to the medieval hierarchical conception of the cosmos,
where things superior in position are also superior in nature,
and corruptibility is an inferior quality. Moreover, generation
and corruption of an immobile matter must be utterly different
from the kind of changes we experience, if it is even possible.
Aquinas, of course, is committed to the hierarchical view and
would likely never have introduced a question that might raise a
74

Aristotle holds that comets are aerial phenomena. See Meteorology 1.7.

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doubt about it, were it not for the doctrine of the resurrection
of the body. If the empyrean is the eventual home of the
blessed, then human bodies will be there and this raises
awkward questions.75
It is objected first that empyreal matter must be divisible in
density and rarity because, ut a multis dicitur, there will be
verbal praise there. But a voice cannot be formed save in a body
that is divisible in this way, such as air.76
The next objection is that, according to Scripture, the blessed
will be able to move.77 But if they move then that through
which they move must be divisible by “rarefaction and
condensation.” Aquinas adds that, from this, it could be
concluded that the empyrean admits of generation and corruption because “density and rarity are principles of generation
and corruption.”78
In answer, Aquinas opts to review various suggestions
without deciding the issue himself. Angels and disembodied
souls offer no difficulty, since they do not produce vocal praise.
As to the resurrected elect, there are several possibilities. (1) It is
uncertain whether they will give vocal praise; perhaps their
praise will be entirely mental. (2) They will use interior air
(although this seems insufficient, because exterior air is required
for a sound). (3) It may be that the sound is transmitted in a

75
Locations in the cosmos other than the empyrean had been proposed for the
heaven of the blessed. On January 13, 1241 the bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne,
issued an edict condemning ten errors, among which we find the proposition that the
souls and bodies of the blessed are not in the empyrean with the angels, but in the
aqueous or crystalline heaven. See H. Denifle and A. Chatelain, Chartularium
universitatis parisiensis, vol. 1 (Paris, 1889), 128. It is suggested by Isabel Iribarren,
“L’empyrée et ses habitants au moyen âge,” Revue des sciences religieuses 91 (2017):
181­92, that the condemnation may have been a reaction to a Neoplatonizing tendency
to separate the world into spiritual castes.
76
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 5: “Vox enim non potest formari nisi in tali corpore
[i.e., “divisibile per densitatem et raritatem”] quod per modum istum dividitur, sicut in
aere. Sed in caelo Empyreo formabitur vox, quia erit ibi laus vocalis, ut a multis dicitur.”
77
E.g., Wis 3:7: “The just shall shine and dart about as sparks through stubble.”
78
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, obj. 6: “et ex hoc ulterius potest concludi, quod sit
generabile et corruptibile: quia densitas et raritas sunt quaedam principia generationis et
corruptionis.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

spiritual way, without motion in the medium. (4) It may be that
empyreal matter is divisible in such a way as to permit the
transmission of sound. If the latter is the case, Aquinas goes on
to add, it does not follow that the empyreal matter is subject to
generation and corruption, because “rarity and density are said
equivocally of this body and other bodies.”79 As an example of
how such physical terms of common experience may be applied
“equivocally” to a kind of matter unknown to us, Aquinas offers
the heavenly matter through which the planets move on their
epicycles, which must therefore be divisible in some sense
though it cannot be cleaved. This, he says, makes it clear how
the blessed will be able to move through the empyreal matter.
But what, of all this, is true, he concludes, is uncertain, “nec
fide determinatur, nec ratione probatur.”
Aquinas devotes the bulk of this article to answering objections, which is appropriate, given the defensive epistemological position he staked out in the preceding article.
Nevertheless, it is questionable whether we ought to be content
to accept, from traditionary authority, that the empyrean is
luminous, immobile, and incorruptible. The tenuous authority
on which its existence is held aside, can no probable arguments
be made to render these traditional claims about it plausible? In
the body of his response, Aquinas makes an attempt.
Everything, he says, is determined by its purpose. Since the end
for which the empyrean was made is to be the dwelling of the
blessed, its characteristics must suit this purpose. And since the
blessed are to enjoy light, rest, and life eternal it is fitting that
the empyrean be luminous, immobile, and incorruptible.80
Now, that a place should suit its purpose is surely
reasonable. But that such suitability involves resembling who or
79
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, ad 5: “Vel potest dici, quod etiam erit confractio caeli
Empyrei . . . nec propter hoc sequitur quod sit generabile et corruptibile: quia raritas et
densitas sunt aequivoce dicta in isto corpore et in aliis corporibus.
80
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2: “Respondeo dicendum, quod cum omnes res
determinentur a fine, oportet conditiones caeli Empyrei accipere secundum quod
convenit statui bonorum, propter quod factum est; et quia illi sunt in plena
participatione aeternae lucis et quietis et aeternitatis, ideo decet caelum Empyreum
lucidum, immobile et incorruptibile esse.”

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

469

what is to be in the place is not. By Aquinas’s logic the structure
of a greenhouse ought to be as living and growing as its
contents. In reality, the environments most hospitable for living
creatures are generally very unlike them in their characteristics
and material composition. Air is not bird­like and water is not
fish­like. Neither then should we suppose that heaven should
share the character of the blessed.
One further aspect of the argument deserves to be noted.
Granted that environments do generally suit their denizens, the
modern mind immediately takes this to mean that the inhabitant
is adapted to the environment. Aquinas, by contrast, thinks that
the place is adapted to the inhabitant. This, of course, is because
his cosmos is not a wilderness in which life may chance to
appear and take hold, but a kind of gigantic house produced by
a divine architect.
V. THE INFLUENCE OF THE EMPYREAN
The relationship between the empyrean and the lower parts
of the cosmos seems to have been a matter of considerable
doubt. Though Bonaventure is inclined to think that the empyrean does have an influence on the lower bodies, he admits
that each side of the question “seems probable enough, and
which is the truer does not readily appear.”81 In his commentary
on the Sentences, Albert says that since the empyrean is ordered
for an age of rest and contemplation, it does not seem
unsuitable that it should exert no influence on the lower nine
spheres. 82 Elsewhere, however, he says that it does have an
influence. 83 Like his teacher, Aquinas also changes his mind,
saying first in the commentary on the Sentences that it can
reasonably be maintained that the empyrean has no influence on
81

Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 2, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2: “Quaelibet harum opinionum satis
probabilis est; quae autem sit magis vera, non plane apparet.”
82
Albertus Magnus, II Sent., d. 2, G, a. 5 (Alberti Magni Opera omnia, vol. 27, ed. A.
Borgnet [Paris, 1894], 54): “non videtur mihi inconveniens, et tunc dicimus, quod
decimum coelum non habet influentiam super nonum.”
83
Albertus Magnus, De IV coaequavis, tract. 3, q. 11, a. 2: “dicendum, quod coelum
empyreum influit in inferioribus” (Borgnet, ed., 422).

470

NICHOLAS PORTER

lower bodies, but later (in the Summa theologiae and Quodlibet
VI) allowing the contrary.
A) Against the Influence of the Empyrean
If “influence” is interpreted as a cause of local motion, as is
the most natural sense in a medieval discussion of the interaction of one heaven with another, then an obvious objection to
attributing any such influence to the empyrean arises from
Aristotelian physics, namely, that a body must itself be in
motion to put another in motion. Hence, the empyrean cannot
influence other bodies by reason of its immobility. 84 Aquinas
also adds that it is ordered to a “state of glory” rather than a
state of generation and corruption. But it does not seem that
things ordered to different states should influence each other.85
Other kinds of influence apart from local motion are
conceivable, and Aquinas poses four in the objections. First, the
empyrean contains the other heavens, therefore it influences
them by containing and preserving them.86 Second, according to
Avicenna and other philosophers, the sun has an effect on the
lower bodies by its light. But the empyrean is entirely luminous,
therefore it influences the lower bodies. 87 Third, the primum
mobile has left and right directions. But this could not be
without the influence of a superior body, which can only be the
empyrean.88 Fourth, a more noble form requires a more noble
disposition of its matter. Since the light of the sidereal heaven
disposes to the vegetative soul, it would seem that the light of

84

II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3: “Unde cum caelum Empyreum ponatur immobile, non
potest rationabiliter poni influentiam super corpora habere.”
85
Ibid., s.c.: “Sed ea quae non sunt ejusdem ordinis non habent influentiam ad
invicem.”
86
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 1: “caelum Empyreum continet alios caelos . . .
videtur quod influat in eos continendo et salvando eos.”
87
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 2: “sol habet effectum in istis inferioribus per
lumen. . . . Sed caelum Empyreum est totum lucidum. Ergo videtur quod influentiam
habet.”
88
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 3: “in primo mobile est dextrum et sinistrum. . . . Sed
hoc non potest esse nisi per influentiam alicujus superioris.”

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

471

the crystalline heaven should dispose to the sensitive soul and
the light of the empyrean should dispose to the rational soul.89
Aquinas replies that the bodies that require a container to
preserve them are those with rectilinear natural motion, subject
to generation and corruption, that is, the four lower elements.
As already discussed in the section on place, the heavens that
move with a circular natural motion have no need of a
container. It is, as Aquinas puts it, per accidens that they have
one, and no influence can be inferred from a per accidens
container. Since he had earlier denied that the empyrean was
luminous with any kind of light as we know it, he easily
disposes of the argument that makes a comparison to the sun.
That in the heavens or the primum mobile left and right
directions may be distinguished is due purely to their own
motion—again in agreement with Aristotle, whose outermost
heaven did not need a place in which to rotate.
In answer to the fourth objection, he says that since all lower
bodies are less noble than the heavens, nothing prevents the
same heaven from disposing to the vegetative, sensitive, and
rational soul alike.90 But he goes on to say that the position that
calls for different heavens disposing to different souls rests on
three false premises: that the power disposing to the soul cannot
be from the sun, that light is a body that enters materially into
the animated composite, and that there is a medium between
body and soul. 91 At first glance, the relevance of these statements to the matter at hand is unclear. In fact, as was the case
with his brief remarks addressing the question of place, he is
89
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3, obj. 4: “ad formam animae vegetabilis disponit lux caeli
siderei. Ergo cum anima sensibilis sit nobilior, videtur quod ad ipsam disponat lux caeli
chrystallini; ulterius ad animam rationalem lux caeli Empyrei; et sic influentiam habet in
inferiora.”
90
II Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4: “nobilissima dispositio quae unquam potest esse in
corpore ad formam, est infra nobilitatem caeli: unde eadem virtus caelestis est per quam
corpus disponitur ad formam elementi et mixti, et animae vegetabilis, sensibilis,
rationalis.”
91
Ibid.: “Unde patet quod ista positio fundatur super tria falsa. Primum est quod
dispositio quae est in corpore humano ad animam, non possit esse ex virtute solis.
Secundum est quod lux sit corpus materialiter veniens incompositionem animati.
Tertium est quod sit per medium inter animam et corpus.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

here adverting to a separate debate, namely, the way the soul is
joined to the body.
In the question in the Summa theologiae on the union of
body and soul Aquinas rejects several positions that call for
some kind of intermediary between the two. The first, which he
ascribes to the Platonists, considers the body to be an instrument moved by the soul. Were this the case, “it would be
right to say that some other bodies must intervene between the
soul and body of man, or any animal whatever; for a motor
naturally moves what is distant from it by means of something
nearer.”92 The second and third positions come from those who
say, respectively, that “the soul is united to the body by means
of a corporeal spirit” and those who say that it is
united to the body by means of light, which, they say, is a body and of the
nature of the fifth essence; so that the vegetative soul would be united to the
body by means of the light of the sidereal heaven; the sensible soul, by means
of the light of the crystal heaven; and the intellectual soul by means of the
light of the empyrean heaven.93

This third position, positing celestial light, particularly that
of the empyrean, as an intermediary, seems to have been put
forth especially by Franciscan writers. 94 There were differing
opinions as to the exact role played by the light. One held that
that celestial light itself enters corporeally into the human composite, as a third part between the sublunar elementary matter
and the soul. A second denied this, but said that the role of the
light is rather to effect the combination of the elementary
matter and the soul, perhaps by suitably disposing the matter to

92

STh I, q. 76, a. 7.
Ibid.
94
Maria Sorokina, “Le ciel des empyrées: Une fonction harmonique? Un débat
théologique au XIIIe siècle,” Micrologus 25 (2017): 244­301, at 247, “we suppose that
the idea of the union of the rational soul and the body via the mediation of empyreal
light (and not of any celestial light whatsoever) was formulated and discussed in the
Franciscan university environment between 1230 and 1250. The key texts are the
Summa de anima of John of La Rochelle, the Summa halensis (Summa fratris Alexandri),
and Bonaventure’s commentary on the Sentences.” In what follows, I depend on
Sorokina’s article.
93

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

473

be informed by the soul. The common motivation for both
views was the observation that the human body is composed of
“contraries,” that is, elements that of themselves tend to separation and to the corruption of the composite. Hence, there is a
need for a harmonizing agent to combine the contraries. This, it
was argued, must be either the fifth element or some effect of it,
since this element exhibits no contrariety, unlike the wet and
the dry, or the up and down motions observed in sublunar
matter. A further question, also applicable to both views, was
which heavenly body is responsible for the light. A connection
between vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls and the sidereal, crystalline, and empyrean heavens was posited by John
of la Rochelle on the grounds that more noble souls ought to be
joined to their matter by a more noble light.95
Obviously, Aristotle’s theory that the soul is a substantial
form, to which Aquinas was always committed, does not permit
any material intermediary between it and the body that it
informs.96 A further reason for rejecting a specifically celestial
intermediary body is that such matter cannot be in the sublunar
realm. In fact, this would be incoherent, since such matter is
held to be immune from violent movement away from its natural place, yet its presence in us would require such a movement.97 And, as already noted, Aquinas also denies that light is a
body.
Aquinas does allow a role for heavenly matter in the union
of body and soul, but only in the manner that it affects all
95
John of la Rochelle, Summa de anima, vol. 19, ed. J. G. Bougerol (Paris: Vrin,
1995), 128­29: “It requires a nobler light to dispose a body for a sensitive nature by
union with a sensitive soul than for plants because the sensible is nobler than the
vegetative. A still nobler and more subtle light is required to dispose a body for human
nature by union with a rational soul.” The three lights, he continues, are the sidereal,
aqueous, and empyreal, paired, respectively, with vegetable, sensitive, and rational souls.
96
STh I, q. 76, a. 7: “If, however, the soul is united to the body as its form, as we
have said, it is impossible for it to be united by means of another body.”
97
II Sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 1, s.c. 2: “locus corporis caelestis est supra elementa. Ergo
nihil de natura illius corporis potest hic esse nisi sicut in loco innaturali, et per motum
violentum. Illius autem corporis non potest esse violentus motus, cum motus ejus
circularis contrarium non habeat. . . . Ergo nihil de natura corporis caelestis ad
compositionem hominis venit.”

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NICHOLAS PORTER

composites. Since the rotation of the heavens is the motor of
sublunar changes, everything, he says, obtains its substantial
form through heavenly power. 98 But there is no reason to
associate the disposition of the elements to a rational soul with
the empyrean in particular: the heavenly influence that drives
human generation is the same as all other generation. Aquinas
likely has in mind Aristotle’s assertion that “man is born of man
and the sun.”99
B) For the Influence of the Empyrean
Aquinas rarely speaks in his own person, and hardly ever
relates the changes or steps involved in the movement of his
own mind. But in question 11 of Quodlibet VI he tells us that,
“for a time it seemed to me” that the empyrean had no influence on the rest of the world, “but, considering it more diligently, it seems that we ought rather to say that the empyrean
does influence the lower bodies because the whole universe is
one by a unity of order.”100 This unity of order, he continues,
is considered according to a certain order by which corporeal things are
governed through spiritual things, and lower bodies through higher. . . .
Whence, if the empyrean heaven did not influence lower bodies, it would not
be part of the unity of the whole, which is unfitting.101

98

II Sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 1: “Alio autem modo venit aliquid in compositionem
alicujus per effectum virtutis suae; et hoc modo natura corporis caelestis venit in
compositionem corporis humani, et omnium mixtorum corporum: quia nihil
consequitur formam substantialem nisi per virtutem caelestem, eo quod corpus caeli est
primum alterans, cujus virtute omnes alterationes regulantur.”
99
Aristotle, Phys. 2.2.194b14: “ἄνθρωπος γὰρ ἄνθρωπον γεννᾷ καὶ ἥλιος.”
100
Quodl. VI, q. 11 (Quaestiones quodlibetales, ed. R. Spiazzi [Turin: Marietti,
1949], 140): “Dicendum, quod quidam ponunt caelum Empyreum non habere
influentiam in aliqua corpora . . . hoc quidem mihi aliquando visum est. Sed diligentius
considerans, magis videtur dicendum quod influat in corpora inferiora, quia totum
universum est unum unitate ordinis.”
101
Ibid.: “Haec autem unitas ordinis attenditur secundum quod quodam ordine
reguntur corporalia per spiritualia, et inferiora corpora per superiora. . . . Unde, si
caelum Empyreum non influeret in corpora inferiora, caelum Empyreum non
contineretur sub unitate universi: quod est inconveniens.”

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

475

That this reversal of his opinion in the Sentences commentary
represents his mature thought is corroborated by a corresponding passage in the Summa theologiae, although he there
expresses himself with a little more caution. He says that it is
“sufficiently probable, as some assert, that the empyrean
heaven, having the state of glory for its ordained end, does not
influence inferior bodies”; nevertheless, “it seems still more
probable that it does influence bodies that are moved, though
itself motionless.”102
The Aristotelian cosmos is a chain of descending causation:
what is not part of the chain would seem not to be part of the
cosmos.103 Broadly speaking, if the medievals were determined
to maintain the immobility of the empyrean (and, hence, its
inability to influence via motion), they were left with two
choices. Either they could cut it off from the causal chain, to the
prejudice of cosmic unity, or they could include it in that unity
by attributing to it some other (inevitably more mysterious)
causality.
For Aquinas, cosmic unity is a capital point, and it prevails.
“As uniformity of motion precedes diversity,” he says, “thus
also does unity of rest precede uniformity of motion: because to
move is to be otherwise now than before, while to rest is to be

102

STh I, q. 66, a. 3, ad 3. There is a question as to whether the more emphatic
statement in the Quodlibetales itself indicates a strengthened confidence in the opinion.
If current scholarly opinion on the dating of Aquinas’s works is correct, not many years
elapsed between the two. The Prima pars of the Summa was likely composed around
1268; Mandonnet gave 1272 for Quodlibet VI, which Gauthier has more recently
revised to 1270. See Jean­Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and
His Work, trans. Robert Royal (rev. ed.; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2012), 146 and 209­11.
103
Objections seem to have been raised against the postulation of any heavenly
entities—the crystalline heaven, the empyrean, and a primum mobile distinct from the
visible firmament—without detectable effects. See Graziella Federici Vescovini, Il
‘Lucidator dubitabilium astronomiae’ di Pietro d’Abano (Padua: Programma e 1+1
Editori, 1988), 199­201, who comments that the spheres were known to exist by the
influence they exerted. Since the ninth sphere had neither stars nor planets it exerted no
influence, and if it did not influence, it did not exist.

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NICHOLAS PORTER

the same now as before, and so rest is pure unity.”104 Hence,
just as the sidereal heaven’s diverse movements of diurnal
rotation and precession are preceded and influenced by the
uniform diurnal movement of the aqueous heaven (here considered to be the primum mobile), so also is that uniform
movement preceded and influenced by another uniformity,
namely, the immobility of the empyrean. And we should accept
the assertion that uniformity of movement must be preceded by
unity because “it is proper to that body,” namely, the empyrean,
“insofar as it is highest, to come near in a manner to the order
of spiritual substances, for, as Dionysius says, divine wisdom
conjoins the beginnings of secondaries to the ends of primaries.”105 We thus find a broad metaphysical presupposition
introduced to justify the attribution of a physical influence to a
celestial sphere, and a larger Neoplatonic hierarchy of causes is
blended with the more purely physical Aristotelian causes.
Nowhere does Aquinas venture so much as a probable
opinion regarding the nature of the empyrean’s influence on the
lower bodies. He comes closest with a vague statement in
question 66 of the Prima pars that
it may be said that the influence of the empyrean upon that which is called the
first heaven [he means the primum mobile, though properly the empyrean
should be called first] and is moved, produces therein not something that
comes and goes as a result of movement, but something of a fixed and stable
nature, as the power of conservation or causation, or something of the kind
pertaining to dignity.106

In Quodlibet VI he does not even go this far. Doubtless this was
wise, for such speculations might be risky. The assertion that

104
Quodl. VI, q. 11 (Marietti ed., 140): “Sicut autem uniformitas motus praecedit
difformitatem, ita etiam unitas quietis praecedit uniformitatem motus: quia movere est
se aliter habere nunc quam prius; quiescere autem est eo modo se habere nunc ut prius;
et sic quies habet puram unitatem.
105
Ibid.: “Hoc autem est proprium huic corpori quod influat absque motu, in
quantum est supremum, attingens quodammodo ordinem substantiarum spiritualium;
prout Dionysius dicit, II cap. de Divin. Nom., quod divina sapientia coniungit principia
secundorum finibus primorum.”
106
STh I, q. 66, a. 3, ad 2.

AQUINAS ON THE EMPYREAN

477

the uniform movement of the primum mobile is preceded by the
empyrean’s unity might be interpreted incautiously to mean that
the latter causes the motion of the former. But this would make
the empyrean a corporeal unmoved mover, in contradiction to
the whole thrust of Aristotle’s arguments concerning the beginnings of motion, that an unmoved mover cannot be a body. The
risk is not avoided merely by denying that the empyrean causes
the rotation of the primum mobile, since Aristotle’s idea of
motion extends beyond local movement to include changes in
quantity, quality, and the generation or corruption of
substances.107 Hence, even if the empyrean exerts a “power of
conservation or causation, or something of the kind pertaining
to dignity,” this must not involve any kind of alteration,
increase, diminution, generation, or corruption. Perhaps it is
not possible to guess what such an influence could be.
CONCLUSION
Aquinas speculates, but with restraint and even hesitation.
Knowing that the existence of the empyrean is held on human
authority rather than scientific demonstration or revelation, he
can employ arguments at best probable and defensive rather
than demonstrative. Even this cautious position is not a strong
one. He finds his authorities lacking; their reasonings are not
cogent. And as the existence of the empyrean may be doubted,
so also is ascertaining its nature a doubtful enterprise. He resorts to ad hoc argumentation; he reviews options without
settling on one; twice he frankly admits he is using terms
equivocally; and once he changes his mind. But, let it be noted,
the doubts all regard the empyrean, not physics or cosmology
generally. Aquinas never raises the possibility that Aristotle
might be fundamentally mistaken. On the one hand, it would be

107
Aristotle enumerates the kinds of changes differently in different places. Local
movement, quantitative change, and qualitative alteration would seem to be the
fundamental kinds, speaking most strictly; at times, however, he lists substantial
generation and corruption along with them. Other changes, i.e., of relation, resolve into
these. See Phys. 3.1.200b32; 5.2.225b10­16; and Categories 14.

478

NICHOLAS PORTER

easy, after so many centuries of discoveries and developments,
to call this regrettable. What, after all, might have been the
result had a few of the preeminent philosophers of the Middle
Ages found Aristotle’s system less convincing than they did? On
the other hand, it is illuminating to see how flexible the old
physics could be. We are apt sometimes to consider the Aristotelianism of the schools as something heavy and rigid, an
intellectual equivalent of plate mail. But Aquinas finds it
accommodating enough, capable of being improved, extended,
and modified. In the final analysis, he employs it to make a
plausible case for sticking an immobile sphere where, according
to Aristotle’s lights, it has no right to be.
The foregoing account has presented Aquinas’s treatment of
the empyrean as speculation on a subject that was held to be
doubtful and problematical in his own day. But it is not the only
such instance. In this regard it may not be out of place to close
with an observation of larger relevance. The history of science
as it is ordinarily written focuses on those ideas that were once
established, and later found wanting and overturned. We read
of geocentrism, natural resting places, and the four elements
giving way to truer theories. There can be no question that this
is right with respect to science, but it is not quite satisfactory
with respect to history. To be complete, a history of the
development and dissolution of medieval science must extend
itself beyond what the medievals believed about the world to
treat also what they doubted about it.108

108

I would like to express my gratitude, in primis, to Marius Stan for his expertise
and assistance, as well as to Jean-Luc Solère, Daniel McKaughan, and Eileen Sweeney
for reading and commenting on an early draft of this article.

BOOK REVIEWS
Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the
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The contemporary interest in the inner life of animals and animal rights is
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the line between human and animal (or at least between the human and those
we call higher animals) seems drawn on ever-shifting sand.
Much the same may be said for medieval Scholastic views of animals. Despite
attempts to establish a “hard boundary” between human and animal, a fixed
boundary remained elusive. Human and animal bodies and behaviors offered
too many similarities. It is abundantly clear that medieval Latin exempla and
sermons treat animal behavior as instructive for humans. Positively, animals will
display naturally some of the most noble human qualities: chastity, monogamy,
a self-sacrificing defense of progeny, and even a natural solicitude for elderly
parents. Negatively, animals provide examples of the very worst in humanity:
predatory behavior, violence, carnality, promiscuity, and gluttony. While
medieval bestiaries and medieval fabliaux reveal animals and animal societies to
be very nearly human, medieval polemics invoke animal stereotypes to
dehumanize and stigmatize religious “others” (i.e., Jews, Muslims, and heretics).
Controversy remains over the extent to which animals were valued beyond
their contributions to the medieval European domestic economy as food sources
(pigs, sheep, dairy cows), as beasts of burden (donkeys, oxen), as hunting aides
(dogs, cats, falcons, hawks), as support for warfare (horses), or as sources of
entertainment (dancing bears and the organ grinder’s monkey). Modern
research has proposed, moreover, that in the Middle Ages service animals (e.g.,
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seeing-eye dogs) even assisted individuals with disabilities, and there is also a
growing awareness—promoted, for example, by Kathleen Walker-Meikle’s
Medieval Pets—that in later medieval culture some animals achieved the special
status reserved for our pets today as quasi family members.
On the one hand, even though medieval philosophers and theologians
generally denied that animals have free will or can be held morally responsible,
by the fourteenth century legal proceedings were convened to convict and
punish animals for criminal assault against humans or their property. On the
other hand, although animals were seen as cognitively inferior to humans, some
animals were invested with almost prophetic insight: after Aubry de
Montdidier’s murder in 1371, his dog Dragon reacted with such violence
toward his murderer, Richard Macaire, that King Charles V ordered a trial by
combat in which Dragon was victorious and Macaire was condemned for
homicide. Furthermore, although these same medieval thinkers denied that
animals can sin or possess moral virtue, in popular culture some animals even
achieved sainthood (see Jean-Claude Schmitt’s The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort,
Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century).
Ian P. Wei’s Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris is not a
cultural history of animals devoted to an investigation of their roles in the
medieval domestic economy, in homiletic literature, or in vernacular fabliaux.
Instead Wei provides a focused discussion of what several thirteenth-century
theology masters at the University of Paris said about humans and animals. He
traces Scholastic theological discussions that explore the similarities and
differences between “us” and “them.” In three chapters Wei provides a “close
reading” and detailed paraphrase of a handful of texts to reveal the manner in
which mid-thirteenth-century Parisian theology masters agreed that animals are
good to think with: “By understanding how animals were placed in relation to
humans, they could work out what fitted all the way up the hierarchy of being
to God. Animals provided not just food for the human body, but food for the
human mind” (208). Footnotes provide not only some references to relevant
secondary literature but also lengthy Latin quotations from the primary source
texts.
Chapter 1 examines William of Auvergne’s De universo and De legibus,
which formed part of his Magisterium divinale et sapientale. Chapter 2
examines two Franciscan works: the Summa halensis and Bonaventure’s
Commentary on the Sentences. Chapter 3 explores books 20 and 21 of Albert
the Great’s massive commentary on Aristotle’s De animalibus as well as
selections from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles and Summa
theologiae. The authors were all theology masters at the University of Paris at
roughly the same time, and Wei assumes (not incorrectly) that because the
university was a small community these masters must surely have known each
other. Of the authors treated, only William of Auvergne (d. 1249), who became
bishop of Paris, remained a secular cleric, although he provided significant
support to the mendicants at the university by appointing Alexander of Hales

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to the first Franciscan chair in theology and Roland of Cremona to the first
Dominican chair in theology.
Wei selected these authors for his study in part because of their prominence
in Paris. He chose these particular works because “they tackled a broad range
of theological issues” (6) that address both differences and similarities between
humans and animals. Wei acknowledges that Albert the Great’s De animalibus
is not a theological text at all but he includes its books 20-21 because they
provide a focused discussion on animals by one of the greatest medieval natural
philosophers. Wei does not claim that these authors and their texts in any way
constitute a “school” of thought, nor does he assume that they provide the best
window upon thirteenth-century discussions of animals. For that, one might
want to explore more fully Albert the Great’s De animalibus and Quaestiones
super de animalibus, as well as encyclopedias compiled by two other Dominicans who were also present in Paris about the middle of the thirteenth century,
namely, Vincent of Beauvais (Speculum maius) or Thomas of Cantimpré (De
natura rerum). It is not entirely clear, then, what guided Wei’s choice of authors
and texts for his study. Wei does not promise a definitive study of animals, but
only an examination of the use of animals as a rhetorical instrument in
theological discussion at the University of Paris about the middle of the
thirteenth century.
Given the common environment in which they worked, it is not surprising
that these authors share many of the same principles. All agree that although
humans and animals display many physical similarities, their souls are essentially
different. All share a view that humans are superior to animals by virtue of their
rationality, and that humans are nobler than animals because they possess free
will and the capacity for effective communication through articulate speech.
Moreover, the differences that distinguish the human from the animal soul also
introduce different theological expectations for the future: humans alone can
hope for a life to come in an eternal heaven where the soul will be united to the
resurrected body. Animals remain bound to an inferior, corruptible nature, and
neither animals nor plants will experience renewal after the Last Judgment.
Since both animals and plants were created to sustain and to serve the needs of
humans, after the Last Judgment their cycle of generation and corruption will
cease since, as William of Auvergne concludes, they will be of no further use to
glorified humans. Although perhaps the air and the earth will endure, life on
earth will not, and therefore animals lack any hope for an eternal future (48).
That Adam was given the power to name the animals indicates humanity’s
dominance and the subordinate status of animals. As a result, “all [authors]
understood animals to be subject to human dominion, to be used by humans
according to human needs. Most of them denied that animals had free will or
the capacity to sin . . . [or had any] prospect of an eternal future” (202).
The theological axiom that animals (and plants) were created to serve human
needs determined the ultimate disposition of animal bodies. Although Albert
the Great does not treat animals’ postresurrection status in his De animalibus,
he does consider it in an early work that he revised while he was in Paris and

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later in Cologne, namely, his De resurrectione (tract. 4, q. 1, a. 15, §1, sol. 2).
Albert likely began De animalibus between 1256 and 1260, and a decade or
more after he had left Paris. Wei quotes my work incorrectly to suggest that
Albert “completed” De animalibus during this period, when in fact the project
continued to undergo revisions throughout most of the 1260s (145). Albert
provides the most nuanced view of animals because of his concession that some
higher animals possess a “shadow” reason, learn from remembered experience,
are subject to instruction, may understand audible signs, and even may possess
a capacity for a kind of speech. Nonetheless, these higher animals (among whom
Albert includes pygmies) remain cognitively inferior because of an inability to
abstract universals from experience (159). Aquinas emphasizes this cognitive
distinction even more: humans alone act based on a knowledge of universals
rather than from an innate, natural instinct (172).
Despite a catalogue of shared philosophical and theological principles, these
texts do not all arrive at the same conclusions. This points to the most significant
contribution of this volume. Despite the search for a “hard boundary”
separating humans from animals, Wei rightly insists that “acceptance of these
[shared] defining characteristics opened up an intellectual space in which
diverse ideas could be explored” (202), sometimes even by the same author in
different works. Consequently, as “food for the human mind” animals
nourished theological and philosophical debate and encouraged reflection on
the nature of the human. Wei’s book casts light on an enduring thought
experiment.
IRVEN M. RESNICK
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Chattanooga, Tennessee

Individuals and Institutions in Medieval Scholasticism. Ed. ANTONIA FITZPATRICK and JOHN SABAPATHY. Royal Historical Society: New Historical
Perspectives. London: University of London Press, 2020. Pp. xi + 288.
$65.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-912-70226-8. $45.00 (paper). ISBN 987-1912-70227-5.
Following an extremely useful Introduction surveying, and critiquing,
historiography on medieval individualism, institutionalism, and Scholasticism,
noting as well how theoretical preconceptions and other biases have limited or
distorted it, Antonia Fitzpatrick and John Sabapathy present eleven essays by
distinguished British and continental medievalists illustrating particular interactions of the three issues flagged in the book’s title. David d’Abray appends an
Afterword suggesting where he thinks scholarship should go from here. Some

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of this volume’s essays will yield few surprises to its intended scholarly readership; others expand on existing interpretations; still others present fresh
revisions, findings, and perspectives.
Blaise Dufal’s observation that Scholastic thinkers treated the diversities
within the patristic tradition, or within the oeuvre of a single figure such as
Augustine, as validating their own varied uses of tradition, falls into the “no
surprises” category. In the second category, Sabapathy and Emily Corran both
advance the ongoing demolition of the preclusively “biblical/moral” view of
Peter the Chanter’s importance. Sabapathy shows that Robert of Courson’s
systematic treatment of ethical and sacramental themes reflects his debt to
Peter’s scholasticizing of them. Corran proposes that thirteenth-century
quodlibets on cases of conscience, embracing economic and political issues as
well as norms pertinent to Scholastic intra-academic debates, are better read as
reflections of the Chanter’s scholasticization of penitential and pastoral
theology than as casuistry avant la lettre.
Fitzpatrick and Cornelia Linde both expand on our knowledge of the
Dominican order’s inability to force all its members to toe the Thomist party
line. Focusing on the unicity-of-form debate, Fitzpatrick shows that some
Dominicans freely subscribed to anti-Aquinas arguments. Reflecting on Robert
Holcot’s polemics, given papal ups and downs on mendicants as confessors,
Linde cites, inter alia, his provocative claim that, just as it would be absurd to
read Lateran IV’s Omnes utriusque sexus decree as applying only to
hermaphrodites, so it would be absurd to read it as requiring everyone to
confess only to a parish priest, a position not shared by other Dominicans.
Less startling treatments of Dominicans are provided by Matthew Kempsall
and Peter Biller. Kempsall explains the departure of Nicholas Trevet as a
historian from the tradition of history as a source of moral and political advice,
relating it to his selective application of principles derived from Aristotle and
Augustine. Biller revisits the revisionist attack on the view of the medieval
Inquisition as an organized administrative system. Revising the revisionists, he
examines the role of scholastically educated Dominicans, not just in staffing the
Inquisition but in institutionalizing it by the mid-thirteenth century. A look at
education in sub-university Dominican studia not included here might add
further weight to Biller’s thesis.
Franciscans are not ignored in this volume. With a nod to David Burr, Silvain
Piron maintains that, for Angelo Clareno and Peter John Olivi, the usus pauper
debate hinged less on poverty itself than on the question of where the ultimate
authority for resolving the controversy lay: in papal approval, divine inspiration
(as claimed by some Fraticelli), or the rights of conscience?
It falls to this reviewer to note that, while divine inspiration is also a key
theme in Gert Melville’s contribution, his essay looks to be a step-child in this
collection since it involves no Scholastics of any stripe. Drawing on carefully
chosen monastic examples, Melville wants to show that charismatic leaders
could circumvent existing institutional norms and manage to found and
institutionalize their own movements. They thereby validate Max Weber on

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charisma. Omitted are charismatic leaders whose efforts failed, or were deemed
heretical, and information on those whose success depended on powerful
patrons whose support ecclesiastical authorities did not want to jeopardize.
While Melville’s chosen figures were not Scholastics, the Pietro Pomponazzi
of John Marenbon’s essay was a Paduan arts master, albeit a postmedieval one.
Unlike his humanistically trained contemporaries, Pomponazzi did not read
Aristotle’s De anima in Greek. But he was well aware that Averroës on the
immortality of the soul diverged from the Stagirite. According to Marenbon,
even if Pomponazzi had been attracted to Averroism on this topic in his early
career, his assertion in his later work that the matter should be viewed as an
open question may have been more than a ploy in support of academic freedom
vis-à-vis recent strictures affecting Italian universities. It may have indicated a
real change of mind on Pomponazzi’s part—an interesting hypothesis, if one
that falls short of proof.
In this review, last is best. The single most original and illuminating
contribution to this volume is Isabel Iribarren’s study of Jean Gerson’s Latin
poem Josephina. As she shows, Gerson’s promotion of the cult of St. Joseph
began in one of his university sermons—preaching being an institutional duty
of Scholastic theologians. Gerson’s full-blown claim that Joseph was sanctified
in utero involved an attack on the authority of Bernard of Clairvaux, who
expressly rejects that idea, yoked to an elaborate six-part analysis of what
Iribarren calls “the epistemological foundations and moral justification for
doctrinal novelty” (260). By no means incidentally, Gerson made these
arguments quite consciously on the eve of and in the wake of the Battle of
Agincourt, raising anew the painful (for the French) issue of female vs. purely
male succession as the ostensible casus belli of the Hundred-Years War. In this
single brilliant case study, then, the majority of the contextual issues whose
highlighting and interaction are the raison d’être of this essay collection as a
whole come together, and then some.
In the light of Iribarren’s essay, and those of most of this volume’s other
contributors, not to mention the editors’ detailed historiographical Introduction, it is hard to take without a large grain of salt d’Avray’s closing remark
that what medieval intellectual history needs most is the rigorous application of
“systems analysis” along the lines of Niklas Luhmann’s Soziale Systeme (1984).
On the contrary, the real takeaway from this valuable collection is that the
topics studied by medieval intellectual historians continue to require treatment
in their own specific doctrinal, institutional, circumstantial, devotional, and
personal contexts, with the selection and interpretation of evidence unskewed
by theoretical desiderata or anachronistic schemata, and without the assumption
that what works for one case will work for all.
MARCIA L. COLISH
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

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The Church of God in Jesus Christ: A Catholic Ecclesiology. By ROCH A.
KERESZTY, O.CIST. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2019. Pp. 357. $34.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-81323173-0.
In the Preface, Roch Kereszty says that his motivation to write this book
“came from the experience that too few of the most faithful Catholics—let
alone non-Catholics—understand what the church is; and even less do they
know who the church is” (vii). The reader is thereby introduced to two
dominant themes of the book. Knowing what the Church is requires a truly
systematic ecclesiology, an investigation into the nature of the Church, not
simply a multiplication of models of the Church. But even the most incisive
investigation would be fruitless if it did not uncover also who the Church is—
that is, the personal reality of the Church, the way in which her full institutional
and historical reality is that of the one beloved of the Lord, the bride of Jesus
Christ and the mother of believers. (It is interesting to note that among Catholic
authors in general the Church is sometimes called “it” and sometimes “she.”
Kereszty uses both, seemingly interchangeably. But it might be possible to offer
a consistent practice in using “it” when referring to what the Church is and
“she” when referring to who the Church is.)
The book is divided into three parts. The first is an historical survey of ecclesiology. It is divided into eight chapters, but these may be grouped into three
eras: Scripture (chaps. 1-2), from the Fathers through the Counter-Reformation
(chaps. 3-5), and the modern era (chaps. 6-8).
Chapter 1, “The Beginnings of the Church,” touches briefly on the theme of
the Ecclesia ab Abel, that is, the soteriological and anthropological reasons for
saying that even those who lived before the making of the covenant and the
formation of the people might be considered part of the Church. The bulk of
the chapter is devoted to the presence of the Church in Israel. Kereszty
highlights different moments of covenant (with Abraham, with the people at
Sinai, with the Davidic line) as well as the way that God’s saving acts recounted
in the Old Testament find their fulfillment in the paschal mystery. Clearly, our
understanding of the Church will be skewed if we consider only its origin in the
acts of Christ; the specific acts of God throughout salvation history are essential
for understanding the nature of the Church.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (763-66) enumerates a variety of ways
in which we can say that the Church was instituted by Jesus Christ: in his
preaching the Good News, in his gathering of a “little flock” to whom he taught
a new way of acting and a way of prayer, in his establishment of the Twelve
with Peter as their head, and in his self-gift for our salvation. It is just such an
expansive view of the foundation of the Church that must inform a Catholic
ecclesiology—not, for example, an exclusive focus on the authority given to
Peter. Kereszty elaborates on this view in chapter 2 (“Church in the New
Testament”), the longest in the book. After a general overview, he presents in
separate sections the ecclesiologies of Matthew, of Luke/Acts, of the Johannine

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writings, and of Paul. Along the way he addresses what might be seen as
problems for Catholic ecclesiology in each of these sources. Fundamental is the
recognition that “every document of the New Testament presupposes the
existence of the church and is a product of the church” (24). The letters of Paul
receive most attention in this chapter. The chapter closes with a section entitled
“Is Paul’s Ecclesiology Catholic?,” which responds to those who would say that
structural authority and defined doctrines are later developments in
Christianity, and that the proto-Pauline epistles attest to the primacy of
charismatic gifts and the simple surrender of faith. Kereszty points out that Paul
both claims and recognizes apostolic authority, and that faith for him is
inseparable from faith in specific salvific acts.
The three chapters covering the Fathers, the medievals, and the era of the
Reformation make the standard points of such a survey, such as the sacramental
vision of the Church in Aquinas, the need for reform in the late medieval era,
and the Reformation-era controversy about whether the Church is really an
invisible-spiritual reality or a properly visible hierarchical society. One striking
theme in the chapter on the Fathers is the idea that the nature and life of the
Church “are intelligible only within a Trinitarian context” (47). This idea runs
throughout the book, and is noteworthy because it is possible to construe the
intelligibility of the Church in a Christological or an anthropological way as
well, and Kereszty is clearly subordinating these to the Trinitarian. Also
prominent among the themes in the Fathers is the sense of the Church as fertile,
as giving birth to believers in a way of which Mary is the archetype. This is
followed in the chapter on the medievals with a few pages on Bernard of
Clairvaux, who testifies to a spousal understanding of the Church. Kereszty also
points to Francis of Assisi as testifying to the universal mercy experienced in the
Church.
Arguments over the history of ecclesiology in the modern era focus on “what
really happened at Vatican II” and whether and to what extent the subsequent
pontificates—especially that of John Paul II—fulfilled or fell short of the
promise of the council. In part this is because there is considerable agreement
on the history of ecclesiology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before
Vatican II, and numerous battles over what has happened in the Church since
then. Kereszty devotes three short chapters to this history: ecclesiology before
and after Vatican I, ecclesiology at Vatican II, and ecclesiology after Vatican II.
The first tells the story of the nineteenth century by emphasizing the defensive
posture of the Church. There is only a brief mention of the real turn from
apologetics to theology among theologians at the time (Johann Adam Möhler,
John Henry Newman, Giovanni Perrone, Matthias Scheeben), although this is
an important prehistory to the twentieth-century renewal of ecclesiology. The
changes in context in the twentieth century—biblical, patristic, and liturgical
ressourcement; the growing reality of ecumenism; missiological challenges; a
less defensive posture with respect to the surrounding culture—helped to drive
the Church toward a more theological and less purely apologetical ecclesiology.
Kereszty gives a helpful summary of Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici corporis

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Christi, though it appears more as a stepping stone to Lumen gentium than a
completion of the ecclesiology that emerged from the late nineteenth century.
The chapter on eccesiology at Vatican II is largely a summary of Lumen
gentium, prefaced with a summary of the programs envisaged by John XXIII
and Paul VI for the council. The chapter on ecclesiology after the council
(subtitled “Crisis and Renewal”) covers a wide swath of postconciliar trends.
The theme seems to be that the Church in the past fifty-plus years has been
working out its self-understanding not so much through speculative theology as
through various engagements that emerged after the council. Some of them have
obvious ecclesiological ramifications (e.g., the growing role of the laity, the
fruits of ecumenical dialogue, the rise of bishops’ conferences), others less so
(e.g., an uncritical acceptance of the surrounding culture, liberation theology
and feminist theology, the growing ecological crisis). But this very fact raises an
interesting point: as we speak only of an implicit ecclesiology in the patristic
and medieval eras, so too must we attend to the implicit ecclesiology of our own
day. Too many Catholics—whether progressives or modern-day heirs to ultramontanism—confine their understanding of the Church to its structures of
authority. A truly fruitful understanding must focus also on the Church’s being,
nature, and mission—and these things can also be seen, by implication, in the
lived experience of the Church.
Part 2 of the book presents a systematic ecclesiology. The touchstone for any
contemporary Catholic ecclesiology must be the Second Vatican Council’s
dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium. Kereszty certainly recognizes this, yet he
does not structure his systematic ecclesiology along the lines of the constitution.
Instead, his eight chapters cover the four properties of the Church, the
participation of the Church in the munera of Christ, comprehensive notions of
the Church, reform and renewal, and the Church’s eschatological consummation. As is typical in ecclesiology of the past hundred years, the properties of
the Church are treated not principally as apologetical marks but as theological
properties. The question is not which Christian community best displays the
qualities of one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, but why the Church bears these
qualities.
Especially interesting in this systematic ecclesiology is the chapter on “comprehensive notions of the Church.” The topic could be regarded as one of the
most prominent questions emerging from the council. One (very simplistic) way
of reading twentieth-century Catholic ecclesiology is to highlight a putative
tension between the Church as body of Christ (associated with Mystici corporis
Christi) and the Church as people of God (associated with chapter 2 of Lumen
gentium). A very little further reading will discover the themes of the Church as
sacrament (before and at the council) and the Church as communion (especially
highlighted in the Second Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in
1985). And any student of Catholic theology in recent decades will recognize
the topic of “models of the Church,” proposed by Avery Dulles and expanded
ad infinitum. One approach of ecclesiology finds in this plethora of descriptions
of the Church a series of images, each of which emphasizes certain aspects of

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the Church; the quest might be to identify a balance of images that serves to
undergird what one wishes to say about the Church. Another approach—and
one closer to Kereszty’s purpose—strives to use these comprehensive notions to
articulate a definition of the Church.
Kereszty speaks of five comprehensive notions: sacrament, people of God
becoming the body of Christ, bride, mother, and independent metaphysical
subject. Three points stand out. First, there is no question here of people of God
versus body of Christ. As Kereszty sees it, “body of Christ” names the telos of
“people of God”—to see the Church as one necessarily involves seeing it as the
other as well. Second, the effort to see the Church as a whole is impoverished
if this does not include the realities of bride and mother. Kereszty brings out
very clearly the point that while “sacrament,” “people of God,” and “body of
Christ” express very well the unity between the Church and Christ, “bride” is
essential for appreciating the otherness of the Church to Christ, while “mother”
allows one to understand that the Church is not simply in relation to Christ, but
that she is generative. Third, the trajectory points toward the reality of the
Church as “an independent metaphysical subject.” This is a topic that is simply
not discussed in many approaches to ecclesiology, especially those that regard
the comprehensive notions as images.
Part 3 of the book consists of five prepublished articles on a set of seemingly
unconnected ecclesiological topics: the unity of the Church in Irenaeus, a
Catholic view of the mission of Israel, Church as “Bride” and “Mother,” a
response to Wolfhart Pannenberg on the papal office, and the relationship
between the infallibility of the Church and her Marian aspect. Two of these
articles are clearly occasioned by specific situations—Pannenberg’s response to
Pope John Paul II’s call in Ut unum sint for a dialogue about the exercise of the
papal office; Benedict XVI’s claim in Jesus of Nazareth that “Israel retains its
mission”; the inroads of feminist theology—and indeed one would be hard
pressed to claim that Kereszty is giving us a necessary supplement to the
systematic ecclesiology of part 2. However, in the hands of an author with such
an integrated theological perspective these “occasional” pieces provide a very
valuable enrichment of themes discussed elsewhere in the book. The essay on
Irenaeus complements and expands the cursory overview of patristic themes in
chapter 3. The essay on the Church as “Bride” and “Mother” in Bernard not
only exhibits Kereszty’s Cistercian sources and sensibilities, but adds considerable depth to the claim in chapter 14 that the consideration of the
subjectivity of the Church forces one to think about her according to precisely
these images. The essay on infallibility tackles the “anti-dogmatic” prejudice of
some Christians by interpreting it as an essential part of the Marian, not simply
the Petrine, aspect of the Church: “Whereas most contemporary theology treats
the church’s infallibility as required by the effectiveness of God’s revelation,
patristic and medieval theology sees the incorruptible permanence of the church
in the divine truth as a requirement of the church’s virginal and, ultimately,
Marian nature” (323).

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Kereszty presents the book as a whole vision of ecclesiology necessitated by
the needs of our day. It may clearly be used as well as a set of profound and
timely meditations, but it could also well serve as a textbook for a course on
ecclesiology. Kereszty has given us a measured and integrated ecclesiology that
displays the best of his ressourcement and Cistercian roots.
GREGORY F. LANAVE
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

The Wayfarer’s End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture
and Sacred Doctrine. By SHAWN M. COLBERG. Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2020. Pp. 301. $75.00
(hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3291-1.
In his influential study, St. Thomas Aquinas: The Person and his Work, JeanPierre Torrell, O.P., lamented what he regarded as the unhealthy trend of
contemporary research to separate Aquinas’s systematic or magisterial works
from his biblical commentaries. Such a move, Torrell remarked, rests upon the
unjustified assumption that it is only in works such as the Summa theologiae or
the Sentences commentary that the fullness of Aquinas’s theological synthesis is
to be found. By contrast, his biblical commentaries are viewed merely as
ancillary tools, with limited theological relevance, when it comes to grasping his
magisterial teaching. Torrell argued that in light of the textual and historical
evidence such an interpretation cannot stand. Biblical teaching, he noted, was
Aquinas’s ordinary labor. It served to animate, frame, and give meaning to his
systematic speculation. It is therefore necessary, indeed imperative, in Torrell’s
opinion, that we begin to see Aquinas’s systematic works as integrally related
to, and in many respects crowned by, his corpus of biblical exegesis. Yet despite
Torrell’s intervention, little effort has been made to explore systematically how
Aquinas’s biblical exegesis shapes his theology, including his thinking on
justification and reward. One notable exception is Charles Raith II’s Aquinas
and Calvin on Romans: God’s Justification and Our Participation (Oxford:
OUP, 2014); however, beyond this little has been produced.
It is against this background that Shawn M. Colberg’s recent study, The
Wayfarer’s End: Bonaventure and Aquinas on Divine Rewards in Scripture and
Sacred Doctrine is to be warmly welcomed. Seeking to take Torrell’s proposal
seriously, Colberg’s study is devoted to the question of the role of human agency
in relation to divine reward, and advances the thesis that the discussion of these
subjects in Aquinas’s systematic works finds its principium in his reading of the
biblical witness. In particular, Colberg tells us, this is true of the Summa

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theologiae and its much-celebrated discussion of merit and reward. The same
principle of Scripture inspiring systematic reflection on reward, he argues, is
also to be found at work in St. Bonaventure. Indeed, expositing the scriptural
teaching on reward, merit, and human salvation is for both thinkers the
“primary task of sacra doctrina” (230). It is how Aquinas and Bonaventure
approach this task and the various differences of emphasis which emerge
between them that form the primary directive of Colberg’s work.
What is key for both thinkers’ magisterial teaching on reward, Colberg
argues, is that the scriptural witness confirms an active role for human beings
in their justification. Divine grace may be the absolute sine qua non of human
salvation, but God has nonetheless “revealed a role for human beings to play in
their journey to union with God” (240). “Sharing a common approach towards
reward texts,” both Bonaventure and Aquinas “affirm, though distinctively, that
human beings play meaningful roles in pursuing their eternal salvation” (243).
The distinctiveness of each, Colberg informs us, arises from their differing
approaches toward how the soul journeys through grace towards a state of merit
and reward, and how, in turn, this is grounded within the way their respective
mendicant spiritualties shape their reading of the scriptural witness. For Bonaventure, inspired by his exegesis of Luke and John, the soul’s role in relation to
reward and merit is primarily articulated in terms of a process of Christocentric
illumination and the restoration of the soul’s identity as capax Dei—a position
illustrated most clearly by Bonaventure’s mystical texts, such as the Itinerarium
mentis in Deum and the Lignum vitae (59-74). For Aquinas, by contrast, the
narrative of reward and merit is primarily articulated in terms of the infusion
of grace grounded in the sacramental life, the theological virtues—in particular
charity—and the consummation of these in the beatitudes (121-37).
Colberg divides his study into six chapters. The first two explore how
Bonaventure and Aquinas understand reward within their systematic works.
Here Colberg chooses to focus his attention on Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary and Breviloquium, while for Aquinas he selects the Summa theologiae.
In the third chapter, he turns to consider how Bonaventure and Aquinas
understand reward within their various biblical commentaries. In chapter 4, we
are offered a systematic and highly informative account of how reward and
Christian perfection were understood during the mendicant controversies of the
1250s and 1260s. Here Colberg illustrates how both Aquinas’s and
Bonaventure’s efforts to combat the antimendicant party at Paris, and the
Franciscan and Dominican doctrines of evangelical perfection, played a
fundamental role in shaping their thinking on divine reward, mercy, and justice.
Chapter 5 offers a lucid discussion of the similarities and differences between
Aquinas’s and Bonaventure’s understanding of reward and human agency
within the economy of grace and revelation. Finally, an extensive appendix
offers a detailed exegesis of Aquinas’s thinking on reward as it is found in the
Pauline corpus. Here texts from Aquinas’s commentaries on Romans, 1 and 2
Corinthians, Galatians, and the minor Pauline epistles are discussed.

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Particularly valuable (but perhaps too brief) is Colberg’s discussion of
Bonaventure’s acceptio model of human agency in relation to divine reward and
Aquinas’s subtly different ordinatio model (232-34). A careful discussion of the
similarities and differences between these two positions and how they derive
from their respective reading of key biblical passages reveals that while
Bonaventure and Aquinas may offer subtly different interpretations of how
divine reward works, particularly in terms of its timing, nature, and effects, they
nonetheless share a common and deep-rooted intuition: no human action is
worthy of reward unless it is first proceeded by an infusion of sanctifying grace
(234-40). Both thinkers take as axiomatic that Scripture confirms that, while
God does indeed reward human agency under grace, nonetheless it is the
invitation to the journey of reward and merit through God’s grace that permits
this merit to be accrued.
Deeply attentive to many of the key systematic and scriptural elements at
work within Aquinas’s and Bonaventure’s thinking on divine reward, Colberg’s
study casts light on a subject that has been sorely neglected, both by Thomist
and Bonaventurian scholars. We wonder, however, whether Colberg’s
articulation of the relationship between reward and divine aid for both thinkers
is a little under-developed in places. For example, the role of the virtues and
the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Aquinas’s thought do not seem to feature very
prominently in Colberg’s discussion. Yet it is clear—from both Aquinas’s
biblical and his magisterial works—that these supernatural habits are absolutely
central to the wayfarer’s ability to merit “reward” under grace. A much fuller
engagement with the gifts would also have perhaps helped enrich Colberg’s
important material on the beatitudes and reward (121-26). Similarly, while
Colberg does touch upon the important role of affectus and wisdom in
Bonaventure’s thought, it would have been particularly valuable to see more
emphasis on how his understanding of the decidedly nonintellectual noetic and
apophatic spiritual praxis bestowed by charity stands at times at notable
variance with Aquinas’s thought on how charity impacts the soul’s noetic and
ability to participate in God’s salvific agency.
More important, it is notable that Colberg’s discussion of Aquinas’s thought
on merit and reward in his systematic works focuses almost exclusively on the
Summa theologiae, with little consideration being paid to the important
discussion of divine reward and merit in the Commentary on the Sentences (e.g.,
II Sent., d. 27, q. 1, aa. 3-6; III Sent., d. 18) and its connection with charity. It
seems that Colberg has not sufficiently pondered how charity, understood as
friendship between God and humankind based on God’s willingness to share
his beatitude with us, radically transforms the notion of justice that immediately
impacts on Aquinas’s concepts of merit and reward. Ordinary notions of justice,
merit, and retribution do not apply among friends. As Aquinas writes, “No work
of ours is able to merit anything by quantity of its own goodness, but from the
power of charity [sed ex vi caritatis], which causes those things that belong to
friends to be shared. Hence, however great is the good work done without
charity, it does not make it so that the one doing it has a debt of receiving

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anything from God, properly speaking” (IV Sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 4, ad 1
[Commentary on the Sentences, Book IV, Distinctions 14-25, trans. Beth
Mortensen (Lander, Wyo.: Aquinas Institute, 2017), 81]). Given our friendly
relations with God, he can, however, accept our works. It is in light of this, for
instance, that we need to understand Aquinas’s notion of acceptatio when
discussing making satisfaction: “Equality in making satisfaction to God is not
according to equivalence, but rather according to his acceptance [sed magis
secundum acceptationem ipsius]” (IV Sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 2 [Mortensen,
trans., 79]). Thus, it is not just for Bonaventure that acceptatio is an important
category. Aquinas, too, uses it in the Commentary on the Sentences, with
remnants in the Summa theologiae (such as in STh III, q. 85, a. 3, ad 2).
Colberg’s discussion of Bonaventure’s interpretation of how the soul
becomes deiform and participates through Christ in the narrative of salvation
history could have been enhanced by a much fuller engagement with
Bonaventure’s mature and radically Christocentric Collationes in Hexaëmeron.
The latter, as Ratzinger and McGinn have shown, offers a notably different
model of the human regressus back to God, and thereby divine reward, from
the earlier Sentences commentary and Breviloquium. Under the influence of
Joachite biblical exegesis and the notion of a final renovatio mundi, the
Hexaëmeron maintains that the fullness of God’s salvific action, specifically the
bestowal of the rewards of perfect Christic identity and evangelical perfection,
are to be realized here on earth prior to being achieved in eternity. One also
wonders whether Bonaventure’s Disputed Questions on Evangelical Perfection
and in particular the Collationes de septem donis, given their importance for his
thought on grace and divine aid, could have been more extensively used in
Colberg’s discussion of the Bonaventurian understanding of the Christian
regressus back to God.
These comments, however, do not take from the excellence of this work.
Clearly presented, coherently written, and seeded with ample footnotes and an
extensive use of the selected primary and secondary sources, Colberg’s study
represents an important milestone in the field of both Thomist and Bonaventurian studies, and indeed in the history of the doctrines of reward, merit,
and scriptural inspiration in general. Even the most educated Bonaventurian
and Thomist scholars stand to gain from an attentive reading of this study.
Bonaventurian scholars, for example, will particularly value Colberg’s careful
explanation of the basic stages and elements of the Seraphic Doctor’s thought
on sanctifying grace, merit, and justification, areas that have gone almost
entirely untouched in recent decades. Similarly, Thomist scholarship stands to
gain much from Colberg’s careful explanation of how Aquinas’s thought stands
very much indebted to the Pauline notions of reward and merit, something
which is often overlooked particularly when Aquinas’s thinking on this area is
brought into dialogue with his later Reformation critics. To this extent,
representing an important contribution to the elucidation of the medieval
understanding of divine reward, Colberg’s work will also be of particular
interest to contemporary systematic theologians—both Catholic and

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Protestant—and the current renewal of ecumenical conversations on grace and
salvation. Highlighting the centrality of the biblical witness to the thirteenthcentury Scholastic movement, Colberg shows that for both Bonaventure and
Aquinas faithfulness to the scriptural witness is central to the effort to elucidate
at a magisterial level the place of reward and human effort in salvation. We
hope that scholarship will build upon the important advancements made in
Colberg’s study.
RIK VAN NIEUWENHOVE and WILLIAM CROZIER
Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom

Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for Practitioners. Third Edition. Edited
by EDWARD J. FURTON. Philadelphia: Catholic Bioethics Center, 2020.
Pp. xvii + 753. $49.95 (softcover). ISBN 978-0-935372-70-0.
This work is not for beginners in the field of medical moral theology or
Catholic bioethics. It presumes that one is already working in the medical field
and knows some of the tools for appraising difficult moral questions about
health. This reviewer can only indicate what he considers some highlights. This
third edition contains studies by thirty-seven new authors, in addition to authors
of the second edition whose articles were updated (to varying degrees).
The volume consists of six parts with a total of thirty-nine chapters, some of
which are divided into many subchapters written by different authors. Part I,
“Foundational Principles,” focuses on fundamental moral theology, with a new
chapter on the Ethical and Religious Directives. Part II places new emphasis on
“Health Care Ethics Services,” and contains many articles on the importance of
bioethical committees and consultation services for hospitals and dioceses. Part
III addresses beginning-of life issues such as family planning. Part IV turns to
end-of-life issues with some very deep reflections on determining death, care of
the dying, advance directives, and solutions to controversies surrounding burial
of corpses or the fetal remains of those who perished in the womb, whether by
deliberate abortion or otherwise. Part V, “Selected Clinical Issues,” attempts to
unravel difficult problems, such as concerning organ donation and vaccination
development based on previously aborted fetuses or human experimentation,
and the interplay of patients with those who care for them. Finally, Part VI,
titled “Institutional Issues,” discusses, among other problems, the hospital care
of newborns, collaborative work with other hospitals, conscientious objections,
and gender dysphoria. Due to the size and scope of newer problems facing
Catholic bioethics and healthcare, not all pertinent difficulties are, or could
have been, included in this admittedly ample third edition.

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What happened that such a large amount of bioethical thinking was needed
in such a short period of time since the second edition, published in 2009?
Scientific discoveries and medical cure and care advances remind us that some
parts of ethical thinking are not absolute or stable because new dilemmas
emerge, although the cardinal and theological virtues remain the same.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, as well as common sense, teaches that one’s first
natural inclination that guides the desire for happiness is to remain and flourish
in existence notwithstanding certain limitations such as illness and death (STh
I-II, q. 94). This inclination is the basis for all healthcare and one of the first
principles of bioethics. Medical decisions are governed by the principle of
totality, that a part of the human body can be sacrificed for the survival and
well-being of the whole (STh II-II, q. 65, a. 1). But in practice, medical decisions
can be morally right or wrong insofar as they uphold or violate other principles
of human flourishing. The order, or teleology, of human nature, knowable by
reason and confirmed by divine revelation, contains standards, rules, precepts,
and commands, not merely ideals, that indicate what kinds of medical behavior
violate the moral domain of a person and the fundamental goods of human
nature. Some medical interventions are wrong, not because the Church says so
(as if they were simply edicts), but because certain natural goods are diminished,
impeded, or harmed within the human person, thereby undermining the dignity
of the human person as an image of God.
While “autonomy,” “beneficence,” “nonmalfeasance,” and “justice to
others” are standard value words that today’s hospitals apply to good health
care for individuals, these notions do not define what is to be done in a clinical
situation. The value of autonomy, for example, could lead a patient to desire
something such as euthanasia, which violates the autonomy of the Catholic
hospital and a doctor’s conscience. Some systems of bioethics have added health
maximalization, efficiency, and proportionality to the traditional principalism
of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, which influences most secular hospitals today. Chapter 36, by Paschal M. Corby, O.F.M.Conv., and Greg
Schleppenbach, shows the problems associated with secular bioethics from the
perspective of conscience (36.1-14). Throughout the manual, limits of clinical
intervention are drawn in ways that respect the dignity of the human person as
designed by God. The manual confronts certain medical practices, including
transgenderism (Jozef Zalot [37.1-15]) that have gone askew, morally speaking.
For those hospitals that lack bioethics committees, part II and sections of
part VI explain their importance and offer excellent advice on the details of
establishing these committees. This would include establishing protocols for
procedures in difficult dilemmas, improving services, defining reasonable
outcomes of the hospital’s vision, and so on. Discussions of the vision statement
for a hospital should convince all administrators, including bishops of dioceses,
of the importance of these committees. Birgitta Sujdak Mackiewicz suggests a
possible criticism of putting people on bioethics committees who have no
background in bioethics (6.21-28). An answer to this criticism could be that
issues of money and the common good may sometimes be better dealt with by

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people with experience and prudence than by experts in the moral teachings of
the Church.
Part III analyzes many moral difficulties concerning the beginning of life in
the womb. This section of the manual begins with Richard J. Fehring’s long
analysis (7.1-32) of Natural Family Planning (sometimes called Fertility
Awareness) and the various methods that are morally permissible to prevent
conception for legitimate reasons. Learning several of these methods may be
helpful to a couple dealing with deleterious health issues that may affect a
potential mother. Contraception, an act against the good of offspring, is treated
in the next chapter. A lack of the virtue of chastity is at the origin of the antilife
culture pervading the West. Motives for using the radical measures of
contraception to undermine the good, not only of offspring but of one’s
personal good of self-mastery, might include the desire for immediate
gratification, the demands of a career, or the desire for more income and leisure.
Contraception facilitates ersatz unions without marriage that are based on
emotion and sexual desire for its own sake. John M. Haas and Lester A.
Ruppersberger (8.1-22) outline the various methods of conception prevention,
some of which include pills that are potentially abortifacients. Abortifacient pills
account for millions of unknown deaths, to be added to the sixty million
recorded abortions since Roe v. Wade.
Part III proceeds to analyze solutions to problematic pregnancies. Weighing
burdens and benefits of medical procedures only begins to solve hardship cases,
since what is a benefit to a fetus may be a burden to a mother, and vice versa.
Some issues may involve death and life, while others involve harms (permanent,
long term, or relatively short term) and the role of pain and expenses, all of
which require bioethical prudence based on moral principles.
Cloning (E. Christian Brugger [9.13-22]) and embryonic experimentation,
as distinct from experimentation on “adult” stem cells that are also found in
fetuses or children (Brugger [9.23-38]), are simply out of the question morally
because both either directly or indirectly require killing at the beginning of life.
There are several other procedures whose morality has not yet been determined
by the Church. These include GIFT (Peter J. Cataldo [11.1-11]), a procedure
that has similarities to in vitro fertilization; craniotomy (Joshua M. Evans [15.114]); ectopic pregnancy solutions (salpingectomy versus salpingostomy and
methotrexate) (Elliott Louis Bedford and Travis Stephens [13.1-10]); and early
induction of labor (Cataldo, T. Murphy Goodwin, Robin Pierucci [14.1-17]).
Significant moral arguments could be made for or against these procedures, and
some of the debate concerns defining the moral objects of medical procedures.
The “New Natural Law” theory argues that many physical acts are indeterminate, and become determined by the immediate intention. On the other hand,
traditional Thomists teach that some acts have inherent purposes independent
of intentions, and these determine the moral objects of action. In these debates,
the use of the words “direct” and “indirect” to describe causality sometimes
seems to differ from the way these terms are traditionally understood.

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The argument over “Plan B,” using levonorgestrel, seems settled (Ethicists of
the NCBC and Catholic Medical Association [10.1-10]), yet one awaits a more
definitive decision from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
This is a means of preventing conception after rape which, even with certain
cautionary protocols in place, some authors are convinced is more probably a
potential abortifacient. It can render a womb inhospitable to an embryo, thereby
killing it, and thus disrespecting its dignity as an innocent human being.
Opposing views found in several articles published in The National Catholic
Bioethics Quarterly by Nicanor Austriaco are not mentioned. A better approach
might have been to discuss what a woman can morally do to protect herself
from rape. In other words, this study of what medical procedures are allowable
or not after rape neglects to show how and why a woman has a right to protect
herself from hostile and unwanted sexual acts.
Part IV, on end-of-life issues, gives important attention to brain death (James
M. Dubois [18.1-15] and Tadeusz Pacholoczyk and Stephen Hannan [19.119]). This section is also exceedingly important for questions of organ donation
as well as decisions about when to cease procedures such as the use of a
ventilator or artificial nutrition and hydration. The Church teaches that death
occurs when the soul is separated from the body. The problem, however, is that
no one can see this event happening, the soul being nonmaterial. The permanent
cessation of the heartbeat has ordinarily been the sign of death, even though
CPR can revive some seemingly dead persons.
Since the 1960s, “brain death” has become the more popular sign for
determining when a person is no longer alive, especially due to the need for
fresh organ donations from persons declared dead while their blood keeps
flowing. Cadavers with nonbeating hearts cannot supply kidneys, livers, and
hearts, as these organs would then be useless. For many decades now, vigorous
arguments regarding brain death have taken place among medical and
philosophical experts. In 2004, Pope St. John Paul II declared that whole brain
death could be a criterion for determining death as long as all conditions and
tests were universally agreed in the medical field and were met in practice.
However, tests have not in fact been uniform. In different states and countries
the determination of brain death has been made according to different views,
protocols, and civil laws. The debate thus comes down to the method of
determining true brain death—and in the Catholic world, it must be whole brain
death. Often brain death has been misdiagnosed, and some tests may actually
have contributed to the death of a dying person. Today, there are over twentysix tests that, when carefully applied, can produce moral certitude for doctors
that the whole brain is dead. Oxygenizing a brain-dead body does not keep a
person alive, but keeps the organs fresh and intact from warm ischemia and so
apt for donation. Nevertheless, there is a strong minority position against the
use of “brain death” to define death, which is not represented in this book.
Chapter 23 includes discussions of nutrition and hydration (Germain
Kopaczynski [23.7-13]), persistent vegetative state (Greg Burke and Kopaczynski [23.13-19]), pacemakers (Benedict Guevin [23.24-30]), and oxygen and

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the use of ventilators (John Skalko [23.30-39]), with regard to benefits and
burdens and, at the same time, proportionate or disproportionate means of
healthcare. Nutrition and hydration by tubal feeding, while seemingly an
extraordinary measure, is now considered ordinary means of sustaining health
by the Church, since food and drink are not medicines even if applied medically
by tubes. However, by reason of repeated infections, aspiration pneumonia, and
the inability to assimilate the nutrients, among other maladies that can occur at
the site of feeding, it can be withdrawn as futile. When these effects occur,
feeding and hydrating are no longer ordinary means of sustaining human life.
Additionally, if the patient keeps pulling tubes away, this indicates great
discomfort and so a major burden to the patient. In this case, such a procedure
becomes disproportionate, or in the category of nonobligatory extraordinary
means of health and life care. Likewise, “Do Not Resuscitate” orders (usually
by a cardioverter or defibrillator) are not considered suicide if a patient is
elderly and/or dying. The benefit of life is cancelled by introducing an added
burden of pain during or after the procedure. This is not considered euthanasia
by neglect, since the person is not killing himself, or being killed by the hospital,
because he is dying from some other proximate malady.
Changing the batteries of pacemakers presents similar decisions concerning
benefit or burden to someone dying. This is a prudential question, dependent
on the experience of what ordinarily can happen to patients when worn out
batteries are not changed—that is, it may be a proximate cause of death, along
with some fatal illness. Otherwise, changing the batteries appears to be ordinary
care.
The question of supplying oxygen to patients is different from tube feeding
because it is a definite medical intervention, while tube feeding, when appropriate, provides nutrition that is assimilated by the body naturally. There are
three distinct kinds of therapy. Assisted therapy involves a machine that assists
the patient’s own effort to take in oxygen. Substituted therapy, on the other
hand, does the breathing without the help of the patient. Finally, simple oxygen
supply does not replace a person’s lungs or assist them but merely supplies clean
air. Normally, the purpose of the first two processes is to keep a patient alive
until he is able to breathe on his own and leave the hospital. They are meant to
be temporary, but can become permanent, provided they do not become
burdensome to the patient. In the latter case, their continued use becomes futile,
and often very expensive, and so a doctor may tell the patient (or the person
with the patient’s durable power of attorney) that these are extraordinary means
of preserving life and may be discontinued, letting death take its course.
It is problematic, according to the NCBC ethicists (24.11-19), to set practical
health standards in a particular way, such as that offered by the “National
POLST Form” (Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment), or any other
kind of living will that specifies how or what treatments are to be done when a
patient can no longer make decisions. The problem is that medical interventions
evolve, bringing new and better procedures for comfort care, or even cure.
What may be considered extraordinary and disproportionate today may be easy

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and helpful tomorrow. In any case, someone may not want certain medical
interventions, but such negligence may in fact either become painful, or kill a
person by default. A better approach is to choose someone to have durable
power of attorney who understands Church teaching and has prudential
judgement so as to be able to interpret the patient’s legitimate wishes when
incapacitated and unable to make decisions concerning healthcare (Josef Zalot
[24.1-11]).
In part V’s attention to selected clinical issues, three studies stand out for this
reviewer: refusal of vaccinations (Furton [28.1-8]), researching with materials
illicitly gained from embryos and fetuses (Austriaco [29.1-9]), and human
genome editing (Kevin FitzGerald [30.1-15]). While each subject has its own
problems and solutions, they all concern the child, the embryo, or the fetus. In
the case of vaccinations, while parents have a right to refuse for their children
serum that was made from aborted fetuses and manufactured decades ago, the
Church does not teach that they sin by using the good that came from an evil
means. The problem was vetted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith and the Pontifical Academy of Life in 2005, which gave an explanation of
mediate material cooperation in evil. The harmful consequences of refusing
morally problematic vaccines that protect large populations from harmful
effects of diseases like rubella (German measles sometimes producing damaged
hearts and lungs) lead one to conclude that this remote material cooperation in
evil is acceptable.
Researchers who for even the best of purposes use materials illicitly gained
from aborted fetuses or stem cells from embryos must cease and desist because
of the scandal of using these materials. This is proximate material cooperation
in evil, as Austriaco explains. Another problem concerns new gene-editing
technology, which can be used in utero for preventing devastating diseases of
fetuses by removing a gene that causes malignant tumors—a therapeutic purpose. But this technology could have a nontherapeutic enhancement purpose as
well, so that persons who might be small of stature could become taller, or less
intelligent persons become more intelligent. Ethical thinking in this area is still
in its infancy. At its worst extreme, it smacks of the eugenics programs from
years gone by (one hopes, long gone) that were designed to create a super-race
of select human beings.
Many other bioethical moral problems are not taken up, such as conjoined
twins, adoption of embryos, chimeras, treatment of AIDS, harm to the brain
from watching pornography, drug addiction, or contested psychological and
psychiatric therapies for mental illnesses. In addition, the manual does not
contain a robust attempt to refute the false foundation for bioethical solutions
to major medical/moral problems that is given by the theory of proportionalism.
Editors must live with the limitations of space.
Usually, sacred teachings are firm and require assent of the mind and heart.
When it comes to medical moral theology or Catholic bioethics, practical
changes occur as science discovers new and newer ways of curing. Often, the
Church’s magisterium does not pronounce for decades concerning moral

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opinions about medical intervention, since it is not always clear what is the good
to be pursued and the evil to be avoided. This applies, for example, to the
adoption of embryos, some kinds of nontherapeutic enhancements, and
methods to save the lives of both mothers and fetuses. This latest manual will
be a great help to the medical profession and ethicists for the near future; in ten
years, the fourth edition will treat newer problems and discoveries. This area of
theology, unlike dogmatic theology, has many surprises and perplexities that
require patience and prayer to bring to light what is truly good or harmful for
the human person who suffers from bodily or psychological harm.
BASIL COLE, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s “Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate
Purpose”. By J. BUDZISZEWSKI. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2020. Pp. xxxvii + 666. $155.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-1-108-47799-4.
Readers of this journal are well familiar with J. Budziszewski’s ongoing
project of providing first-rate commentaries and accessible translations to
various sections of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. With this weighty
tome (over 600 pages), Budziszewski provides the third such volume, on the socalled treatise on happiness. In this book, we find an avid admirer of Thomas’s
text and a master teacher who revels in sharing the treasures of that text with
his audience. Budziszewski explains the book’s cover art as a reference to the
gospel story of the pearl of great price (xxxviii). Though it most obviously refers
to the perfect happiness to be sought and treasured, it just as easily depicts
Budziszewski’s cherishing the treasure of Thomas’s text. Budziszewski not only
guides his reader to the wisdom of the text, but also uses it as a springboard
from which to address dozens of perennial questions in philosophy and
theology.
Budziszewski claims in the Introduction that the book is for both scholars (of
Thomas and otherwise) and a more general audience (university students and
beyond). Despite his accurate repudiation of the claim that a book cannot be
for various such audiences, this book best serves students who are being
introduced to Thomas’s thought. The Introduction offers practical guidance on
matters such as his dialectical method and even how his texts are numerated, as
well as background information such as his use of sources like Augustine and
Aristotle. Yet Budziszewski’s main task here is to convince his audience that
Thomas’s thought can indeed inform our own contemporary reflection on
happiness, in part because that perspective can challenge modern myopia.

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In some senses, this third volume replicates the format of the prior volumes.
It contains the Summa text in its Blackfriars translation, side by side with a very
accessible translation from Budziszewski (he regretfully notes that the Latin text
is not supplied.) These translations are followed by sequential commentary on
the text at hand. Budziszewski examines every single portion of the text—each
objection, sed contra, etc.—with comments ranging from several lines to several
pages. He elaborates Thomas’s arguments by supplying implicit assumptions,
identifies other texts in his corpus relevant to the matter at hand, and references
thinkers upon whom Thomas relies. Budziszewski gets high marks for careful
attention to every detail of the text and complete command of the material. It
is true that this level of detail and the length of commentary on each text place
a not insignificant burden on the reader, especially given the likely audience.
Nevertheless, the reader cannot help sensing that Budziszewski’s encyclopedic
knowledge of Thomas’s text is surpassed only by his savoring of it.
Yet this third volume also offers something new in comparison to the two
previous commentaries, which may be the pearl of great price in this book. After
translations and commentary, Budziszewski includes a “Discussion” section for
each article. These range from less than a page to several pages. They provide a
window into Budziszewski’s classroom, and reveal a master teacher at work.
Each Discussion is easily imagined as an undergraduate class, and Budziszewski
uses them to address perennial questions in philosophy and theology, or to
address topics in spirituality, all in relation to texts from the treatise on
happiness. Taken together they could constitute an entire college course based
on the treatise on happiness, and we see how Budziszewski would teach it.
In the first question alone, with its eight articles, Budziszewski’s Discussions
lead students to engage E. O. Wilson’s rejection of intentional action, twentiethcentury mathematical theory of infinities, Epicurean pursuit of pleasure and
avoidance of pain, Jeremy Bentham’s and John Stuart Mill’s attempts to
quantify value, Augustine’s reflection on doing evil for no apparent reason, and
contemporary psychology’s account of “fast switching” (88) as corroborating
what has been labelled “virtual ordering” from Thomas’s thought on the last
end. Other Discussions offer more explicit spiritual nourishment, including
diagnosis of prevalent yet often unrecognized longing for honor at our places
of employment (159-60); a rejection of the prosperity gospel (149-50); worship
as a foretaste of the final end (392); and, the relationship between activity and
contemplation through reflection on Martha and Mary (507-8). In short, in
these Discussions Budziszewski uses the treatise on happiness as a platform to
teach students about—everything. They are written playfully at times, sometimes cheekily. The juxtaposition of Budziszewski’s commentary and Discussions speaks volumes about Thomas’s thought on happiness, and Budziszewski
himself. Thomas’s text can be plumbed in the most intricate and technical detail,
and Budziszewski is certainly up to this task. Yet this text also addresses
fundamental questions that are applicable to all, and that can be made readily
accessible to all. With this task, Budziszewski acquits himself equally well.

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It may help to compare and contrast Budziszewski’s book to a similar book
by one of the heroes of this journal, Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. One of my most
treasured material possessions, another pearl of great price, is a copy of Fr.
Pinckaers’ translation of and commentary on this treatise in the 2001 Cerf
edition, signed and gifted to me by the author himself. That volume contains
the Latin text and a French translation by Pinckaers (200 pp.), and line-by-line
commentary on the text (100 pp.). It also includes appendices with brief articles
on certain key topics in the treatise, again written by Pinckaers (50 pp.) The
similarities should be obvious. Both texts contain translations, detailed commentary, and further discussions. As masterful as Pinckaers’s text is, it does not
endeavor to break open Thomas’s thought for a broader audience, or to use that
text as a springboard to address perennial questions drawing on scores of
ancient and contemporary thinkers. Budziszewski’s contribution is particularly
evident on these fronts.
However, Pinckaers’s book is an example of, indeed a further advance in, a
theological project most famously exemplified by Sources of Christian Ethics,
but arguably begun as early as his seminal 1962 essay, “A Virtue Is Not a Habit.”
Rather than savoring each phrase from the treatise, Pinckaers uses it to alter
(indeed correct) the trajectory of moral theology, a discipline that virtually all
recognize had gone awry in the preconciliar Church. Pinckaers’s commentary
and discussions buttress his now famous ressourcement renewal of Catholic
moral theology by grounding it firmly in this classic text from Thomas. Thus
his book remains a “go to” source for scholars addressing even technical
questions in this treatise. This is a task not taken up by Budziszewski.
Arguably the most consistent theme of the present book is a case against what
Alasdair MacIntyre recently called the “dominant conception of happiness,”
namely, the “subjective” “psychological state” of “feeling good—enjoying life
and wanting the feeling to be maintained” (MacIntyre, Ethics and the Conflicts
of Modernity, 195). From the Introduction on, Budziszewski targets this
modern misconception of happiness. He takes it up repeatedly in various
Discussions, with treatments of the limited place of positive emotions (228), the
inadequacies of positive psychology (229-30), the misplaced focus on delight
(423), and the fatuity of any so-called “God pill” (444). Budziszewski the
teacher has a (sadly accurate) grasp of the regnant conception of happiness
today, and works tirelessly in this volume, with ample weaponry from Thomas’s
texts, to dislodge it.
One resource in that crusade, of which Budziszewski makes inadequate use,
is Thomas’s (Aristotelian) claim that true happiness is an activity. Of course
Budziszewski is aware of this fact, and appropriately notes it in his
commentaries on question 1, article 7 (117); and question 3, articles 1 (275)
and 2 (287) of the Prima secundae. He even briefly addresses the degrees of
perfection of charity, which is too often neglected in this context (549). But,
surprisingly for someone with such command of Thomas’s treatise on virtue
that he wrote a commentary on it, explicit recognition of the relationship

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between virtue and happiness is almost nowhere to be found until the very last
pages of the volume (647).
It is only at this late stage in the book that Budziszewski addresses several
contested issues in Thomistic moral theology today. He affirms the coexistence
of acquired and infused virtues in the same person (647, though he refers to the
former as “transformed”). He offers, as is common, John of St. Thomas’s
account of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, despite recent work contesting the
adequacy of this account. (Indeed, unlike John of St. Thomas he finds a place
in the boat for both acquired and infused virtues.) He surprisingly departs from
Thomas’s account of the beatitudes by making them perfections of the fruits of
the Holy Spirit (648), and wisely and beautifully ends this late treatment of
happiness and virtue with extended attention to the beatitudes (648-49), even
though he does not give an account of Thomas’s limited use of the beatitudes
in this treatise.
Budziszewski offers a splendid discussion of the spiritual body (487-92), as
well as a superb and accessible explanation why the beatific vision of God is
indeed enough to satisfy completely the human longing for fulfillment (contra
recent claims by Germain Grisez and Peter Ryan, S.J. [520]). When addressing
the vexing questions of the necessity of friends and the body for complete
happiness, a more extensive treatment of “overflow” (471-72) would have
helped Budziszewski’s overall excellent treatments. His frequent attention to
angels, rather than being some Scholastic (in the pejorative sense) fixation,
offers an antidote to modern myopia as to the wondrous splendor of the breadth
of God’s creation.
Budziszewski offers a rousing conclusion on how the love of God is
happiness even in this life, yet nonetheless is not without restlessness, thus
providing a final argument against a modern conception of happiness as positive
feelings. These pages are a fitting culmination of the book, offering a thoroughly
Thomistic account of happiness that is both accessible to students and spiritually
inspiring.
Thomistic theologians, and most especially teachers of theology, owe a great
debt to Budziszewski for this book. Its accessibility is such that even the table of
contents is annotated! But most importantly, we encounter here a scholar
deeply knowledgeable of the Angelic Doctor’s corpus who tenderly—though
challengingly—guides his readers on a tour of a text that can be off-putting in
format to the uninitiated, but that contains untold wisdom on perhaps the most
fundamental question of human life: “What is happiness?”
WILLIAM C. MATTISON III
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

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The Epiclesis Debate at the Council of Florence. By CHRISTIAAN KAPPES. Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. Pp. 418. $65.00
(cloth). 978-0-268-10637-9.
The “epiclesis debate” has been considered until recently as a major
stumbling block between Catholics and Orthodox. The Orthodox theologian
Paul Evdokimov wrote in 1969: “It would seem that, in the ecumenical
dialogue, the question of the epiclesis is as important at present as that of the
Filioque, since it is above all in the light of the epiclesis that the Filioque can be
correctly resituated within the whole problem” (L’Esprit Saint dans la tradition
orthodoxe [Paris, 1969], 101).
The question concerns the definition of the moment of the consecration of
the bread and wine at the Eucharist. While the Latin tradition identified the
institution narrative “This is my Body. . . . This is my Blood” as the unique
“consecratory form,” the Greeks insisted on the role of the “epiclesis,” that is,
the invocation to God to send the Holy Spirit, which in the Byzantine liturgy
follows the dominical words. This was an important controversy at the Council
of Florence in 1439, between the Dominican John Torquemada and the
metropolitan of Ephesus, Mark Eugenicus.
Christiaan Kappes, academic dean of the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of
Saints Cyril and Methodius in Pittsburgh, offers a fascinating analysis of this
debate at the Florentine Council, which “initiated the first magisterial pretense
to define the moment of consecration of the bread and wine at the Eucharist”
(25). His study focuses on the contribution of Mark of Ephesus and provides
the first English translation of his treatise, or Libellus, on the Eucharist. Since
“until now a replete and precise history of Mark of Ephesus’s contribution to
this historic debate has been wanting” (15), Kappes’s book “intends to remedy
a gaping lacuna, for not only did Mark provide the Latins and Greeks with a
Byzantine response to a thorny question of theology, but he actually supplied
each party with the necessary sources to overcome the apparent impasse and
arrive at a consensus on this question of such great import for Catholic and
Orthodox dogma” (ibid.).
Chapter 1 investigates the origins of the Florentine debate, in particular in
Nicholas Cabasilas, who “marked the historical point of departure for a GrecoLatin conflict on the nature and meaning of the epiclesis in late fourteenthcentury Thessalonica” (185). Cabasilas advocated the necessity of the epiclesis
in addition to the words of the institution, identifying such an epiclesis in the
“Supplices te rogamus” prayer of the Roman Canon. For him “the institution
narrative and the epiclesis are interdependent, even if it is not clear whether the
dominical words are merely a necessary condition or really an indeterminate
cause of Eucharistic change” (44). Some Greek theologians pointed out that the
epiclesis served for some sort of “perfection” of Eucharistic gifts, implying “an
in fieri consecration whereby a process of transformation took its terminus a
quo from the dominical words and its terminus ad quem at the epiclesis” (42).

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The same chapter analyzes the arguments used at this period by two Greek
Dominicans, Manuel Calecas and Andreas Chrysoberges, who denied any
necessity of the epiclesis, since it was not possible to categorize it in the
Scholastic schema of sacramentology as either a formal, a material, a final, or
an efficient cause of the Eucharistic substance. Indeed, for many Schoolmen,
“prayer was accidental to causality and has no bearing on confection of
sacraments” (169), with some Latins even demanding that the Greek entirely
excise the epiclesis from their anaphoras, “as if these had been heretical
insertions” (42).
Chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to the intellectual formation of Mark of
Ephesus and to the main aspects of his position in the epiclesis debate on the
eve of the council. From a bibliographical point of view, Kappes regrets that
“little analysis of the Ephesine’s theology can be found within the particular
realm of sacramental theology” (33) and that “cumulative testimonies
chronicled a crescendo in devaluing the Ephesine, which resulted in near-total
neglect of his theological production” (38). He demonstrates that even studies
by eminent Catholic scholars such as Louis Petit, Martin Jugie, and Sévérien
Salaville were not always free from apologetic prejudices.
In chapter 4, Kappes analyzes the arguments of Torquemada in his Cedula,
in particular his use of Ps.-Eusebius Emesenus, John Chrysostom, John
Damascene, Ps.-Dionysius, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine, as well as his
“scholastic arguments.” Kappes demonstrates that Torquemada “styled Byzantine commitments as being those of putative Armenians” (115). Indeed, much
of his argument “seemed to focus on refuting an extreme version of the
epiclesis-argument said to have been the Armenian position” (186). Another
interesting aspect of the chapter is how Torquemada’s doctrinal assertions were
actually directed not only against the Greek positions, but also against
Bonaventurians and Scotists defending a sacramental occasionalism.
Chapter 5, the core of the book, is dedicated to Mark of Ephesus’s Libellus
on the Eucharistic consecration, entitled “That not only are the divine gifts
hallowed from the articulation of the Lord’s phrases but, following these words,
[they are hallowed] by the prayer and blessing of the priest through the Holy
Spirit.” Kappes analyzes at length the liturgical arguments of Mark, based on
the epiclesis used in the liturgies of James, John Chrysostom, and Basil of
Caesarea. The Ephesine augmented his defense by relying on John Damascene’s
Mariological analogy of the Annunciation as a tool for understanding the modality of Eucharistic change. For Mark, “the key to understanding Eucharistic
change lay in the analogy of the Annunciation and Incarnation of the
Theotokos” (116). According to Kappes the controversy between Dominicans
and Franciscans was not without influence on Mark’s argumentation: “Mark
garnered arguments that happened to parallel the sacramentology of Bonaventure and Scotus, that is, occasionalism. Franciscans and Orthodox did not
accept that a creature could employ words to create new substances as if having
a power of a soul or form when acting on purely passive matter” (137).

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Chapter 6 is dedicated to Torquemada’s Sermo alter, “On the Matter and
Form of the Most Holy Eucharist,” a refutation of Mark’s Libellus.
Torquemada insists “that the Aristotelian doctrine of causality restricted the
active cause of a sacrament to a singular form for any one parcel of matter.”
According to this view, “the Greeks still needed to acknowledge that only one
active form, the dominical words, caused the Eucharist” (186). Analysis of
Torquemada’s use of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Ps.-Dionysius, John
Damascene, and Basil of Caesarea allows Kappes to affirm that “with the
numerous errors, misinterpretations, and omissions of evidence that can be
objectively imputed to Torquemada, any rigorous assessment of his treatment
of the liturgical data would conclude that his arguments were a failure in light
of modern liturgiology” and that the “Ephesine’s libellus was a document far
more reflective of a continuous Christian tradition, traditional vocabulary, and
patristic typology” (164).
Chapter 7 is dedicated to the contribution of Scholarius, who was absent at
the Florentine debate. In order to reconcile both positions, Scholarius identified
the epiclesis with one of the four causes of the sacrament, namely, the
intentional cause: “According to Scholarius’s solution, the Greek Church
considers anaphoras to specify an ecclesial intention within the epiclesis (in a
reconciliatory gesture to Aquinas). Without such an intention, as manifested in
public prayer, the action of Jesus and the Spirit cannot be guaranteed and,
therefore, the Eucharist will really or presumptively be invalid” (193). Kappes
alludes again to the debate between Dominicans and Franciscans: “Scholarius
was more sympathetic to Dominican sacramentology than to Scotist and their
highly critical occasionalism, whereby the priest functions only as an occasion
for God to act directly to the bread and wine” (194). However, according to
Kappes, “even today, a Scotistic solution is in fact still a viable option vis-à-vis
the Roman Catholic Church” (198).
Chapters 8 and 9 analyze the development of the Catholic magisterium on
the issue of the epiclesis: Benedict XII and Clement VI who, in the first part of
the fourteenth century, condemned a putative Armenian position that absolutely denied consecratory force to the dominical words; the Council of
Trent; Benedict XIII; Pius VII; and Pius XII.
Kappes alludes also to the Catholic Church’s recognition in 2001 of the
validity of the anaphora of Addai and Mari used in the East Syriac rite, “though
it lacks proper ‘form’, or the words of the institution” (147 and 198). To be
precise, it should be noted that the Guidelines for Admission to the Eucharist
between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East (2001) of the
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity do not say that the institution
narrative is lacking, but that “the words of Eucharistic Institution are indeed
present in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, not in a coherent narrative way
and ad litteram, but rather in a dispersed euchological way, that is, integrated
in successive prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession.”
Kappes concludes his study with a comment of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church (1993) which, according to him, “favors the classical Byzantine position

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in prejudice to latter-day Latin Schoolmen” (227), and has “overcome any prior
theological problems that justified historical suspicion of the Eucharistic
epiclesis” (150). Indeed, the Catechism states that “at the heart of the
Eucharistic celebration are the bread and wine that, by the words of Christ and
the invocation of the Holy Spirit, become Christ’s Body and Blood” (1333), and
that “in the epiclesis, the Church asks the Father to send his Holy Spirit (or the
power of his blessing) on the bread and wine, so that by his power they may
become the body and blood of Jesus Christ and so that those who take part in
the Eucharist may be one body and one spirit (some liturgical traditions put the
epiclesis after the anamnesis)” (1353). Kappes affirms with enthusiasm: “This
presentation fits exactly with the propositions that Scholarius used in order to
reconcile Thomistic sacramentology to Orthodox dogmatic commitments. . . .
After a period of over five hundred years of emphasizing sacramental points of
difference, the Roman Catholic Church, through its official teaching apparatus,
recognizes the genius and has adopted, albeit a somewhat modified version of,
Mark of Ephesus’s position. We can suspect that this is the fruit of irenic
ecumenism in the field of Orthodox-Catholic relations” (228).
From this ecumenical point of view, it would perhaps have been useful to
refer also to the 1982 document of the Joint International Commission for
Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church,
The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in the Light of the Mystery of
the Holy Trinity, which stated that “The Spirit transforms the sacred gifts into
the body and blood of Christ (metabole) in order to bring about the growth of
the body which is the church” (5), and also that “the Eucharistic mystery is
accomplished in the prayer which joins together the words by which the word
made flesh instituted the sacrament and the epiclesis in which the church, moved
by faith, entreats the Father, through the Son, to send the Spirit so that in the
unique offering of the incarnate Son, everything may be consummated in
unity”(6).
More generally, it would have been fruitful to read the epiclesis debate in
the broader context of the different liturgical “styles” in the East and in the
West, with their respective insistence on the in persona Ecclesiae or in persona
Christi, as evidenced by Yves Congar in I Believe in in the Holy Spirit (Je crois
en l’Esprit Saint, vol. 3 [Paris: Cerf, 1980], 294-351; English trans. [New York,
1983], 228-74): “Although the controversy was apparently about the moment
of consecration, it was in reality concerned by the agent of that consecration:
the priest as the representative of Christ in the sacramental action in which
Christ’s words were re-used, or the Holy Spirit as invoked in the epiclesis? This
is, however, the wrong way of postulating the problem, since it gives the wrong
emphasis to this controversial question” (228).
Indeed, explains Congar, the priest
represents not only Christ, the sovereign high priest, in whose
person he acts, but also the ecclesia, the community of
Christians, in whose person he acts also. He therefore acts in

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persona Christi and in persona Ecclesiae. One of these aspects
cannot be isolated from the other—the one is contained within
the other. An insistence on the Christological aspect—this has
occurred in the West—means that the in persona Ecclesiae is
situated within the in persona Christi, which is consequently seen
as the basis and the reason for the first. . . . If, on the other hand,
the pneumatological aspect is emphasized, as the Eastern
tradition loves do, the in persona Christi is more easily seen as
situated within the in persona Ecclesiae. (Ibid., 235-36)
According to these different, but noncontradictory, approaches, the whole
“style” of the Eastern rite is that of an epiclesis, using “deprecatory” formulae,
while the Western rite uses “declarative” forms. Congar concludes: “Finally, we
can say that the epiclesis confronts us less with a sacramental question, that is,
with a problem as to the ‘form’ of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and much
more with a question of Trinitarian theo-logy, or rather with a question of
liturgical expression of the economy in which the mystery of the Tri-unity of
God is revealed to us and is communicated to us” (ibid., 237-38).
My observations, however, do not detract from the quality of the enquiry.
One can be only thankful to Christiaan Kappes for this brilliant and challenging
study on the epiclesis debate at the Council of Florence. His study not only
highlights the recent ecumenical achievements reached on this topic, but will
undoubtedly be very helpful for further developments of the theological
dialogue between Orthodox and Catholics.
HYACINTHE DESTIVELLE, O.P.
Pontificia Università di San Tommaso d’Aquino
Rome, Italy

Robert Kilwardby. By JOSÉ FILIPE SILVA. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
Pp. xvi + 304. $99.00 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0-19-067475-5.
There is little question that the Dominican Robert Kilwardby deserves a
place in Oxford University Press’s “Great Medieval Thinkers” sesries under the
editorship of Brian Davies. Following the tragically early death of the gifted
Osmund Lewry, O.P., there have been few scholars devoting attention to the
only member of the Order of Preachers to have assumed the archbishopric of
Canterbury. It is appropriate, therefore, to acknowledge the contribution of
José Silva.
The book presents a comprehensive view of the current state of knowledge
respecting the life and impressive range of works of the English Dominican,

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including his metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, theology and (more
specifically) the Incarnation, focusing on the third book of Peter Lombard’s
Sentences. In the first chapter, entitled (curiously; all the chapter titles are active
participles) “Living,” Silva sketches what several decades of scholarship have
revealed of the life and works of Kilwardby, but there remain unresolved
questions respecting chronology as well as patrimony. He belongs to a school,
or perhaps better a movement, that falls under the title of “Augustinianism,”
the central teaching of which was a quite non-Augustinian title of “universal
hylomorphism,” the view that all beings—including spiritual substances such as
angels—are composed of the principles of matter and form. This view was
common among the Dominicans, at least until the triumph of Thomism. It is
for this reason, moreover, that the early Dominican masters such as Roland of
Cremona (†1236), Robert Bacon (†1248), and Richard Fishacre (†1248) are so
difficult to place vis-à-vis Kilwardby. To claim, however, that the
aforementioned thinkers may have been “among other figures who were critical
of Aquinas” (48) is to ignore the fact that all three had departed the scene before
Aquinas had even begun his theological studies, never mind his not yet having
written anything.
Kilwardby’s most popular and influential work, at least judging by the
number of extant manuscripts (eighteen complete and two partial) is De ortu
scientiarum, composed circa 1250 and probably at Oxford, according to the
work’s editor, Albert Judy. This treatise would seem to demarcate the end of
Kilwardby’s career as Arts master and the launch of his career as Master of the
Sacred Page, thus virtually ruling out inception under Richard Fishacre. Chief
among his theological writings is the Quaestiones in libros Sententiarum.
Thanks to the sponsorship of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, we
now have a critical edition of this impressive work, and according to the most
recent editor of the five volumes, Richard Schenk, O.P., we can date the work
between 1256 and 1260.
Crucial to this dating is the fact that it shows influences from both the
Sentences commentary of Bonaventure (ca. 1250-52) and the abbreviatio of
Richard Rufus, O.F.M., on the same work. Silva does not weigh in on the issue,
but the fact is that Kilwardby’s “commentary” has at best a distant relationship
to Lombard’s work, the latter serving only to call to mind various disputable
issues in the original Books of Sentences. In addition, not every distinction in
the Lombard text is represented. Lastly, according to Russell Friedman,
Kilwardby’s “commentary” does not seem to have any particular connection to
his attainment of the magisterium in theology, for which such a commentary
was a requirement at both Paris and Oxford. From the small number of
manuscripts—only two complete copies and two partial—one is led to the conclusion that there was no longer much demand for the work of a Dominican
unwilling to follow the via Thomistica. By way of contrast, Fishacre’s commentary, composed approximately a decade earlier, boasts sixteen copies, four of
them complete.

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The chapter that struck this reader as the most lucid and fully developed is
entitled “Behaving,” and rests in large measure on the scholarship of Anthony
Celano, who has devoted most of his career to the editing and study of
Kilwardby’s ethical thinking. As complete and compelling as the Dominican’s
treatment of the subject is, Silva makes it clear that Kilwardby “belongs to the
early stage of the reception of Aristotelian ethical theory.”
The final chapter is entitled “Incarnating,” which is not only odd but
misleading, as “to incarnate” has a transitive meaning in English. Kilwardby in
the second question of the third book of his questions on the Sentences raises
some intriguing questions: for example, whether the necessity of the
Incarnation is absolute or contingent—that is, contingent on the sin of Adam.
Two of his predecessors, Albertus Magnus and Richard Fishacre, had taken the
position that the Incarnation would have taken place whether or not Adam had
fallen, and even Aquinas in his Scriptum super Sententias embraced the idea
before later rejecting it in the name of the historical reality of the Fall.
Kilwardby gives the matter serious consideration, but concludes finally that the
incarnation of the Word would not have occurred absent man’s sin,
“notwithstanding the many congruencies [congruentiae] that would have
followed.”
More care might have been taken in proofreading the text, especially given
the fact that English is at best Silva’s second language. We find among mistranslations of Latin terms, for example, “conciliates” instead of “reconciles,”
“bibliographical” for “biographical,” “intension” for “intensification,”
“convenient” for “suitable,” “experiment” for “experience” (2), “ratio” for
“nature,” “fruition” for “enjoyment,” “[seminal] reasons” for “natures,”
“percepts” for “precepts,” and “affects” for “infects.” Mis-transcriptions of
Latin terms fare even worse: I counted at least twenty-five errors.
Part of the problem with the latter is the contentious issue of medieval Latin
orthography: is it advisable strictly to follow the spelling of the manuscripts
(notwithstanding the fact that the same word is not infrequently spelled
differently by different scribes) or to normalize the spelling? The Bayerische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, in its critical edition of Kilwardby’s Quaestiones
in libros Sententiarum has decided, wisely in my opinion, to follow the latter
practice. Gedeon Gál, O.F.M., in his introduction to the first volume of
Ockham’s Opera theologica, a work of obvious interest to philosophers and
theologians, put the argument for “normalizing” a text intended for such an
audience with his characteristic directness (not to mention exemplary Latinity)
thus: “Differentias orthographicas notare penitus negleximus, conscii nos
textum non ad usum philologorum sed ad usum philosophorum et theologorum
edituros” (“We have wholly avoided taking note of spelling differences, aware
that we who are in the business of editing texts do so, not for the use of
philologists, but for the use of philosophers and theologians”; see my
“Scholastic Texts and Orthography: A Response to Roland Hissette,” in
Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 41 [1999]: 149-51.) In Silva’s work,

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unfortunately, the different orthographies frequently occur sequentially in the
notes and can confuse the unaware reader.
R. JAMES LONG
Fairfield University
Fairfield, Connecticut