GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 86 (2022)
ARTICLES
Benson, Joshua C., Celebrating Saint Bonaventure Eight Hundred Years after
His Birth ..................................................................................... 663
Bobier, Christopher A., Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Cognition
and Emotion ............................................................................... 219
Boersma, Gerald P., Divine Contemplation as “Inchoate Beatitude” in Aquinas
................................................................................................... 445
Clem, Stewart, Pain Management, Theological Ethics, and the Problem of
Redemptive Suffering: A Thomistic Analysis ................................. 91
Fisher, Kendall A., Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Incompleteness of the
Human Soul.................................................................................. 53
Higgins, Michael, “Towards a Real Gratuitousness”: The Gratuitous as
Necessary and Due in Aquinas .................................................... 629
Jensen, Steven J., The Fatal Flaw of New Natural-Law Action Theory ....... 543
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., Divine Spiration in the Theology of Ss. Gregory
Nazianzen and Thomas Aquinas .................................................. 373
Lim, Joshua, The Necessity of Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity: A
Re-Reading of Summa theologiae III, q. 9 ................................... 515
Maddeford, Aaron, Obedience, Conscience, and propria voluntas in St.
Thomas....................................................................................... 417
Marcelli-Chu, Monica, Moved by the Spirit: Patterning the Gifts on the
Passions in Aquinas ..................................................................... 273
Mazur, Piotr Stanisław, The Principle operari sequitur esse in Karol Wojtyła’s
Study of Person and Act .............................................................. 119
McLaughlin, Thomas, Energy and Form........................................................ 1
O’Reilly, Kevin E., O.P., “The Light of Thy Countenance, O Lord, Is Signed
upon Us”: Psalm 4:7 and the Christological Foundations of the
Natural Law................................................................................ 335
Olver, Jordan, Love of Friendship and Love of Concupiscence .................. 573
Uffenheimer, Elisabeth, Verba et facta ludrica et jocosa: Thomas Aquinas on
the Moral Limits of Playful Enjoyment........................................ 245
Wood, Jacob W., From Pure Nature to Wounded Nature: Aquinas on the
Effects of Original Sin ................................................................. 173

REVIEWS
Anatolios, Khaled, Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian
Theology of Salvation (Daniel A. Keating) ................................... 139
Anderson, Justin M., Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
(David Elliot) .............................................................................. 299
Brock, Stephen L., The Light That Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas’s
Metaphysics of the Natural Law (R. E. Houser) ........................... 329
Catalano, Joseph S., The Saint and the Atheist: Thomas Aquinas and Jean-Paul
Sartre (Mark K. Spencer)............................................................. 168
Daly, Daniel J., The Structures of Virtue and Vice (J. Brian Benestad) ......... 505
Dodds, Michael J., O.P., The One Creator God in Thomas Aquinas and
Contemporary Theology (Emmanuel Durand, O.P.)..................... 333
Eberl, Jason T., The Nature of Human Persons: Metaphysics and Bioethics
(David Albert Jones) ................................................................... 164
Hampton, Alexander J. B., and John Peter Kenney, Christian Platonism: A
History (Ilaria L. E. Ramelli) ....................................................... 684
Hoffmann, Tobias, Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy
(Richard Cross) ........................................................................... 671
Hrynkiw, Gregory, Cajetan on Sacred Doctrine (Thomas M. Osborne, Jr.)
................................................................................................... 498
Hütter, Reinhard, John Henry Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits: A
Guide for Our Times (Benjamin J. King) ...................................... 160
Kantzer Komline, Han-luen, Augustine on the Will: A Theological Account
(David Vincent Meconi, S.J.)....................................................... 321
Keys, Mary M., Pride, Politics, and Humility in Augustine’s “City of God”
(Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.) ............................................................. 677
Kupczak, Jarosław, Before “Amoris Laetitia”: The Sources of the Controversy
(Kevin L. Flannery, S.J.) .............................................................. 501
Levering, Matthew, and Marcus Plested, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the
Reception of Aquinas (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) ................................ 493
Levering, Matthew, Piotr Roszak, and Jörgen Vijgen, eds., Reading Job with
St. Thomas Aquinas (Michael C. Legaspi) .................................... 143
Löwe, Can Laurens, Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act
(Colleen McCluskey) .................................................................. 674
Plested, Marcus, and Matthew Levering, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the
Reception of Aquinas (Guy Mansini, O.S.B.) ................................ 493
Prudlo, Donald S., Thomas Aquinas: A Historical, Theological, and
Environmental Portrait (Ann W. Astell)....................................... 153
Raab, Christian, O.S.B., Understanding the Religious Priesthood: History,
Controversy, Theology (Gabriel B. O’Donnell, O.P.) ................... 509

REVIEWS (con.)

Rist, John M., What Is a Person? Realities, Constructs, Illusions (Christopher
Kaczor) ....................................................................................... 157
Roszak, Piotr, Matthew Levering, and Jörgen Vijgen, eds., Reading Job with
St. Thomas Aquinas (Michael C. Legaspi) .................................... 143
Schumacher, Lydia, ed., The Summa Halensis: Sources and Contexts (Joshua
C. Benson) .................................................................................. 312
Smith, Randall B., Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of
Medieval Paris: Preaching, Prologues, and Biblical Commentary
(Lesley Smith) ............................................................................. 681
Snead, O. Carter, What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in
Public Bioethics (Helen M. Alvaré) .............................................. 148
Torrance, Alexis, Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology: Attaining the
Fullness of Christ (Matthew C. Briel) .......................................... 303
Vijgen, Jörgen, Matthew Levering, and Piotr Roszak, eds., Reading Job with
St. Thomas Aquinas (Michael C. Legaspi) .................................... 143
Wood, Adam, Thomas Aquinas on the Immateriality of the Human Intellect
(Daniel D. De Haan) ................................................................... 307
Wynn, Mark R., Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues: Living between Heaven
and Earth (Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung) .................................... 324
Zachhuber, Johannes, The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient
Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to
John of Damascus (Andrew Radde-Gallwitz) ............................... 317

The Thomist 86 (2022): 515-42

THE NECESSITY OF BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE
IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY:
A RE-READING OF SUMMA THEOLOGIAE III, Q. 9
JOSHUA LIM
Thomas Aquinas College
Northfield, Massachusetts

I

T IS WELL-KNOWN that, since the latter half of the twentieth century, there has been a growing discomfort among
Catholic theologians with the teaching of Christ’s earthly
beatific knowledge.1 According to the traditional teaching, the
soul of Christ, from the moment of conception, fully enjoyed the
beatific vision of the divine essence. That is, Christ in his earthly
life was not only a viator but simultaneously a comprehensor. In
light of both modern historical biblical scholarship, which has
heightened our sense of the particular historical conditions of
Christ’s earthly existence, as well as modern psychology, which
has considerably deepened our understanding of the complexities
of the human psyche, Christ as understood by St. Thomas
Aquinas, and the tradition more generally, appears less and less
human.2

1

For a concise introduction to the modern situation regarding Christ’s earthly vision,
see Simon Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God
(London: Bloomsbury, T&T Clark, 2015), 3-14.
2
Jean Galot, “La Christ terrestre et la vision,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 432: “The
perfection attributed to the knowledge of Christ is such that it does not sufficiently respect
the distinction between the divine and human nature. . . . We immediately perceive the
risk of monophysitism, more specifically, the difficulty of recognizing the inherent
finitude of human knowledge and of avoiding all confusion with the perfection of divine
knowledge.” All translations from French sources in this article are my own.

515

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JOSHUA LIM

The tendency away from the traditional doctrine reached its
apex in the 1980s, when, as one theologian noted, the doctrine of
Christ’s beatific vision, formerly held by all, could be described as
“frequently denied, rarely affirmed.”3 It was during this time, in
order to quell any possibility of a resurgence in the traditional
doctrine, that Jean Galot penned what is perhaps its most incisive
critique in his article, “La Christ terrestre et la vision.”4 Galot
sought to remind his readers of the most serious objections
against the traditional teaching. To this end, he highlights the
central role of the dubious a priori and extrascriptural “principle
of perfection,” taken for granted by the medieval Scholastics,
from which all of Christ’s perfection in knowledge is deduced.
According to Galot, this principle has the effect of precluding
“the realization of the concrete conditions in which the human
thought of Jesus developed.”5 Given the nonbiblical character of
this principle, it appears possible to identify clearly the fundamental source of Thomas’s error.
Thomists have responded to Galot’s critique in various ways.
Some, having ceded the point, have attempted in turn to correct
what they perceive to be unwarranted extrascriptural excesses in
3
Bertrand de Margerie, “De la science du Christ: Science, prescience et conscience,
même prépascales, du Christ redempteur,” Doctor communis 36 (1983): 124, quoted in
Galot, “La Christ terrestre et la vision,” 429.
4
Galot, “La Christ terrestre et la vision,” 429-50.
5
Ibid., 430-31: “The attribution of this triple knowledge to Christ does not arise from
a study of the evangelical texts, but from a principle of perfection from which one seeks to
develop all its consequences. As the Son of God incarnate, it is thought that Jesus must
possess all the possible perfection of knowledge. In him must be verified all types of
knowledge found in creatures; consequently, the highest form of knowledge, which
consists in the beatific vision, could not be refused to him.” For a history of the teaching in
the medieval period see William J. Forster, “The Beatific Knowledge of Christ in the
Theology of the 12th and 13th Centuries” (dissertation, Angelicum, Rome, 1958);
Laurence S. Vaughan, “The Acquired Knowledge of Christ according to the Theologians
of the 12th and 13th Centuries,” (dissertation, Angelicum, Rome, 1957); Jean-Pierre
Torrell, “Le savoir acquis du Christ selon les théologiens médiévaux,” Revue thomiste 101
(2001): 355-408. For Thomas’s unique development and application of the “principle of
perfection” with respect to his contemporaries see my article, “The Principle of Perfection
in Thirteenth-Century Accounts of Christ’s Human Knowledge,” International Journal of
Systematic Theology 24 (2022): 352-79.

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

517

Thomas’s doctrine. Thus, prominent French-speaking Thomists
such as Marie-Joseph Nicholas and Jean-Pierre Torrell variously
attempted in the 1980s and 1990s to “re-construct” Thomas’s
teaching on Christ’s knowledge on a more solid, explicitly biblical foundation. 6 Among English-speaking Thomists, Thomas
Weinandy has been the most vocal critic of the Thomist doctrine,
arguing instead for a more modest approach to Christ’s human
knowledge based first and foremost on the requisite authenticity
of Christ’s preresurrectional human life as depicted in the Gospel
narratives.7
Contrary to the aims of Galot’s article, however, Thomas’s
teaching has seen a surprising resurgence in recent decades. 8
Most notably, two Dominican theologians, Thomas Joseph
White and Simon Gaine, have offered compelling arguments for
the necessity of Christ’s beatific vision based on the exigencies of
his earthly mission (whether in terms of his self-consciousness of
his identity and mission or in terms of the communication of
6
See Marie-Joseph Nicholas, “Voir Dieu dans la ‘charnelle condition,’” Revue
thomiste 36 (1983): 384-94; Jean-Pierre Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du
Christ: Une relecture des questions 9–12 de la ‘tertia pars’ de la Somme de théologie,” in
Saint Thomas au XXe siècle: Colloque du centenaire de la “Revue thomiste” (1893-1992);
Toulouse, 25-28 Mars 1993 (1994): 394-409.
7
See Thomas Weinandy, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004):
189-201; “The Beatific Vision and the Incarnate Son: Furthering the Discussion,” The
Thomist 70 (2006): 605-15; “The Human Acts of Christ and the Acts That Are the
Sacraments,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral
Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter, Romanus Cessario, and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 151-68.
8
Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father?; Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord: A
Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of Amerca
Press, 2017). See also Charles Rochas, La science bienheureuse du Christ simul viator et
comprehensor: Selon les commentaires bibliques et la Summa theologiae de saint Thomas
d’Aquin (Paris: Cerf, 2019); Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas
Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). One might also point to Bernard
Lonergan, who, as Gaine notes, was one of the few prominent theologians in the latter
half of the previous century to defend the traditional doctrine. See also Jeremy D. Wilkins,
Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 316-51.

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JOSHUA LIM

truth through his earthly preaching and teaching). 9 What is
noteworthy is that, within the context of the contemporary debate, proponents and detractors alike see the necessity of Christ’s
beatific knowledge as hinging on its role in Christ’s pre-glorified
or earthly self-consciousness and teaching. Thus, proponents
argue that absent the beatific vision Christ would neither have
been able to teach and communicate the divine truth, nor would
he have had the requisite filial self-consciousness to accomplish
his mission. Meanwhile, detractors argue that the beatific vison is
in no way necessary for Christ’s earthly consciousness and
teaching; rather, its affirmation results in a distortion of Christ’s
human nature as one truly like unto us, that is, as viator only.
Notably, Thomas’s own argument from perfection seems to
play little to no role in the contemporary debate. It is not difficult
to see why. Rather than begin from the role of Christ’s beatific
vision, whether in his earthly teaching or in the unity of his
earthly self-consciousness, Thomas’s argument indeed appears to
rely too heavily on the philosophical language of act and potency,
cause and effect, and most of all, the notion of perfection. On
account of the apparent irrelevance of Thomas’s own argument,
many Thomists typically give the argument of the Summa
theologiae a polite nod before hurrying on to more apparently
relevant ones. Thus, proponents and detractors alike seem to
agree, at least implicitly, that the truth or falsity of Thomas’s doctrine can and, perhaps must, be judged apart from his principal
and sole argument from perfection.
Yet it cannot be a matter of indifference how we understand
Thomas’s argument. It is worthwhile to step back from the
contemporary debate (which focuses on the utility of Christ’s
knowledge in his preglorified, earthly ministry) and reconsider

9
Thomas Weinandy has criticized Thomas Joseph White’s view as Nestorian
inasmuch as, for White, the earthly beatific vision is posited as mediating between and
ultimately uniting the human and divine will. Weinandy also detects a “whiff” of
Nestorianism in Thomas’s original argument. Cf. “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” 191
n. 2. We leave to the side this more recent debate which turns on the attempt to ground
the beatific vision of Christ’s humanity in the ‘ontology’ of the hypostatic union.

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

519

Thomas’s argument from perfection. As we shall see, Thomas’s
account of Christ’s beatific vision has as its starting point, not an
abstract, a priori “principle of perfection,” but a notion of perfection that is grounded in and determined by broader and more
fundamental soteriological concerns. 10 To be sure, Thomas’s
concern is to provide a causal (and in this way philosophical)
account of Christ’s knowledge, but far from being an a priori
metaphysical argument, Thomas’s account is one that is based
squarely in the revealed datum that Christ, in his humanity, is the
sole and universal way to God.11
In this respect, Thomas’s argument is not merely about
knowledge as such, but about what must be true of Christ’s
humanity if indeed he is the universal head and Savior of the
Church. The sort of perfection that Thomas posits as necessary
for Christ’s role as Savior is not defined in abstraction from the
revealed economy but is rather grounded in it. If Christ as man
(in his glorified state as much as in his preglorified, earthly
existence) is to be the author of our salvation (i.e., the universal
source of grace), then it is necessary that his human nature be a
suitable instrument. This means that he must, as universal
principle and cause of grace, possess in his own humanity all the
grace of which he is the source: the universal cause in any genus
must be a maximum in that genus.12 Far from what the philosophical character of his argument might suggest, Thomas is
10

On this point, see Simon Gaine, “Must an Incarnate Divine Person Enjoy the Beatific
Vision?,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology, ed. Michael A. Dauphinais,
Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria
University, 2021): 126-38.
11
See Gilles Emery, “Le Christ mediateur,” in “Christus–Gottes schöpferisches Wort”:
Feschrift für Christoph Kardinal Schönborn zum 65. Geburtstag (Freiberg: Verlag Herder
GmbH, 2010): 337-55.
12
The philosophical principle at work is the causality of the maximum. On this
principle, well-known for its appearance in Thomas’s fourth way, see V. de Couesnongle,
“La causalité du maximum: L’utilisation par saint Thomas d’un passage d’Aristote,” Revue
des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 38 (1954): 433-44; “La causalité du
maximum: Pourquoi saint Thomas a-t-il mal cité Aristote?,” Revue des sciences
philosophiques et théologiques 38 (1954): 658-80.

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JOSHUA LIM

fundamentally concerned with the question of the perfection of
Christ’s humanity in order to give an account of how his
humanity can be said to be “the source of grace from which all
receive.” It is precisely because Christ has the perfection of grace
within the genus of grace that he is able, in his humanity, to be
the universal source of grace for all men.
This article is divided into two parts. In the first part, I review
contemporary Thomist arguments for and against the necessity of
the beatific character of Christ’s earthly vision. Here, I show how
contemporary debates tend to focus almost exclusively on the
question of the role of Christ’s knowledge for his preglorified or
earthly existence and mission. While this is certainly a worthwhile and even necessary consideration in its own right, I argue
that approaches that begin with the question of earthly utility
tend to detract from Thomas’s own argument, which is the more
fundamental, based on the humanity of Christ as such. In
accounting for Christ’s beatific vision beginning from the
question of its earthly utility, detractors and proponents alike
unwittingly relocate the crux of the debate away from what
Thomas arguably regarded as the fundamental principle: Christ’s
humanity as the head and instrumental source of all grace.
In the second part, I offer a positive account of Thomas’s
argument. I begin by comparing Thomas’s treatment of the role
of Adam’s knowledge with that of Christ’s knowledge in order to
show that Thomas’s decision to speak in terms of the perfection
of Christ’s humanity rather than in terms of earthly utility is in no
way unintentional. For Thomas, the consideration of Christ in
his human nature as the head of the Church and of his humanity
as the instrument of salvation precedes considerations of the acta
et passa of his earthly ministry. For the role of Christ’s humanity
goes beyond the external governance and teaching that belonged
to Adam. Specifically, Thomas distinguishes Christ’s work from
that of others insofar as he is, in his humanity, the source of the
interior influx of grace. Thomas’s appeal to Christ’s human perfection is to be understood as based not in a philosophical a priori
(pace Galot) but in the revelation of Christ’s humanity as the
preeminent source of all grace and truth. While philosophical
principles are certainly present in his argument, they are

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

521

nevertheless subservient to the revealed data. In so presenting
Thomas’s view, my aim is not to displace contemporary arguments for Christ’s earthly beatific vision but to ensure that
Thomas’s own argument, which offers a more fundamental
account of the necessity of that vision, is not too hastily passed
over.
I. CONTEMPORARY THOMIST ARGUMENTS
As mentioned above, those involved in the contemporary debate over Christ’s beatific vision implicitly distinguish Thomas’s
position (that Christ had the vision) from his argument for it
(why Christ had the vision). The contemporary debate concerns
the former aspect, while the latter is often mentioned only in
passing. 13 The reason for this distinction is simple: it is not
immediately obvious how Thomas’s argument addresses the
central question of whether Christ, of necessity, possessed the
vision during his preglorified, earthly life.14 In contrast, Thomas’s
argument appears to establish Christ’s beatific vision in complete

13

See, for instance, Thomas Weinandy, “The Human Acts of Christ That Are the Acts
of the Sacraments,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the
Moral Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2010), 155 n. 11; idem, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,”
200 n. 19; White, Incarnate Lord, 238 n. 2; Guy Mansini, “Understanding St. Thomas on
Christ’s Immediate Knowledge of God,” The Thomist 59 (1995): 96.
14
See Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ,” 401-2. Torrell makes sense
of Thomas’s argument by suggesting that Thomas accepts the beatific knowledge itself as
a datum of faith, such that he can only supply an argument for it from fittingness.
“[Thomas] supposes that the vision rests on the datum of faith concerning Christ and the
single piece of proof that he gives manifestly overstates the text on which it depends.
Thomas argues as if Hebrews 2:10 speaks of the earthly Jesus, even though this verse
speaks of Christ, that is to say of Jesus resurrected, entered into the share of the glory of
the Father. If this belongs to him who brings us to the vision—which is incontestable—, it
is necessary therefore that he already possess it. But Thomas neglects to make clear the
moment when Jesus has become the Christ, and it is here that his reasoning loses its
probative power.”

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JOSHUA LIM

abstraction from the concrete historical and psychological conditions of his humanity.
Thomas’s argument from the Summa (STh III, q. 9, a. 2) is
worth quoting in full:
A being in potency is reduced to act through a being in act. For it is necessary
that that which heats other things be itself hot. But man is in potency to the
knowledge of the blessed, which consists in the vision of God. And he is ordered
to this as to an end. For the rational creature is capable of that blessed
knowledge inasmuch as it is [created] ad imaginem Dei. But man is brought to
this end of beatitude through the humanity of Christ, according to Hebrews
2[:10], “it became him, for whom and through whom are all things, in leading
many sons to glory, to be perfected [consummari] as the Author of their salvation through the Passion.”15 And therefore, it was necessary that the very
knowledge consisting in the vision of God belong pre-eminently [excellentissime] to Christ the man, since the cause must always be greater than what is
caused.16

15
The Vulgate has “consummare” instead of “consummari.” The former more closely
translates the active infinitive “τελειῶσαι.” Thomas consistently quotes this passage using
the passive infinitive “consummari.” The result of Thomas’s choice of “consummari” is
that God is perfected as the author of salvation by the Passion. Compare this to the
Vulgate, where God perfects the author of salvation through the Passion: “It became him,
for whom and through whom are all things . . . to perfect the author of their salvation
through the Passion.” Both readings are theologically defensible. Thomas’s broader point
vis-à-vis Christ’s headship is unaffected by the difference in translation. For other uses of
Hebrews 2:10 by Thomas see De Verit., q. 26, a. 10, ad 7; ScG IV, c. 34. A more detailed
exposition of Hebrews 2:10 can be found in Super Heb., c. 2, lect. 3. There, Thomas
explains that Christ is fittingly called the author of our salvation insofar as he is the
natural Son and the splendor of glory (splendor gloriae). Thomas also explicitly links this
to the predestination of Christ.
16
STh III, q. 9, a. 2: “Respondeo dicendum quod illud quod est in potentia, reducitur
in actum per id quod est actu, oportet enim esse calidum id per quod alia calefiunt. Homo
autem est in potentia ad scientiam beatorum, quae in visione Dei consistit, et ad eam
ordinatur sicut ad finem, est enim creatura rationalis capax illius beatae cognitionis,
inquantum est ad imaginem Dei. Ad hunc autem finem beatitudinis homines reducuntur
per Christi humanitatem, secundum illud Heb. II, decebat eum propter quem omnia et per
quem omnia, qui multos filios in gloriam adduxerat, auctorem salutis eorum per passionem consummari. Et ideo oportuit quod cognitio ipsa in Dei visione consistens
excellentissime Christo homini conveniret, quia semper causam oportet esse potiorem
causato.”

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

523

Besides the language of potency and act, cause and caused, there
is the troubling appeal to perfection which takes as its proof a
text from the Epistle to the Hebrews. More troubling still, as
Torrell notes, is that the text Thomas cites only appears to establish successfully the “incontestable” fact that Christ’s humanity is the way by which we arrive at the beatific vision; it fails
to establish the more relevant question of whether this must occur
prior to his glorification. The logical force of Thomas’s argument, it seems, only has strength inasmuch as it abstracts from the
concrete conditions of Christ’s earthly existence.
In replying to such criticisms, Thomists typically attempt to
demonstrate the necessity and reality of Christ’s earthly beatific
vision on the basis of his earthly consciousness and teaching.
Thus, in some way or other, the beatific vision is necessary either
as the basis for the external and human communication of divine
truth to others or for the requisite filial human self-consciousness
for Christ’s proper fulfillment of the divine mission through his
human actions.17 Beyond accounting for Christ’s earthly vision,
such an approach has the advantage of providing an account
more agreeable to modern sensibilities for Thomas’s teaching on
Christ’s infused knowledge (which also relies explicitly on the
problematic “principle of perfection”). 18 Since, unlike typical
human knowledge, beatific knowledge is immediate and unconceptualizable, it becomes necessary to posit lower types of
knowledge (the infused and acquired) to fill in what would

17

Paweł Klimczak speaks of Christ’s infused and beatific knowledge largely in terms of
their function in his earthly life, but he also devotes a section to Christ’s interior teaching.
See Paweł Klimczak, Christus Magister: Le Christ maître dans les commentaires
évangéliques de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2013), 178-83.
18
See, for example, Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ,” 396:
“[Thomas] was led to posit the existence of the beatific vision by reason of the
incommunicability of the uncreated knowledge.” Further on, Torrell writes, “With the
beatific vision we therefore find a problem analogous to that of uncreated knowledge: it is
a knowledge which the human soul of Christ cannot use (disposer). He can neither think
nor speak it in a human fashion” (397).

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JOSHUA LIM

otherwise be incomplete.19 Thus, while all agree that some kind
of limited infused or prophetic knowledge is necessary in Christ’s
earthly life, it is nevertheless unclear whether the earthly beatific
vision, in conjunction with the infused knowledge, plays any
necessary role.
Those who argue against Christ’s earthly beatific vision point
to the obvious fact that the beatific knowledge, as incommunicable, does not and cannot play any immediate role in the
earthly transmission of Christ’s human knowledge.20 After all,
nowhere in Scripture do we read of Christ communicating the
beatific vision as such in his earthly ministry. From this, critics
conclude to its absence. Instead of beatific knowledge, they posit
a type of infused knowledge (e.g., Torrell posits a “christic”
knowledge analogous to prophetic knowledge) that is clearly
warranted by the Gospel narratives.21 Such a knowledge supplies
the content necessary for Christ’s earthly teaching and
preaching.22 Furthermore, the substitution of infused prophetic
19
See White, Incarnate Lord, 257; Simon Francis Gaine, “Is There Still a Place For
Christ’s Infused Knowledge in Catholic Theology and Exegesis?,” Nova et vetera (Eng.
ed.) 16 (2018): 605. Both White and Gaine point to John of St. Thomas as the originator
of the explanation of infused knowledge as corresponding to the need of a knowledge of
divine things proportioned to the human mind. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus
theologicus in summam theologicam D. Thomae, vol. 8 (Paris: Vivès, 1886), q. 9, d. 11,
a. 2, no. 15.
20
This is arguably the problematic that governs Jacques Maritain’s account of Christ’s
grace and knowledge See Jacques Maritain, On the Grace and Humanity of Jesus, trans.
Joseph W. Evans (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969).
21
This includes, for instance, Christ’s knowledge of the secrets of men’s hearts, of
what occurs at a distance, of the future, and so on.
22
In fact, this is how many interpreters understand Thomas’s argument for infused
knowledge, even if it is nowhere in Thomas’s text. The infused intelligible species form
the more proximate basis for Christ’s communication of divine truth in a human mode.
Here, too, interpreters depart from Thomas’s own argumentation. One result of such an
approach is that it is no longer clear why Christ must have possessed the infused
knowledge of all things. Naturally, even the most ardent defenders of Thomas’s teaching
on the beatific vision join with his critics in abandoning Thomas’s teaching on Christ’s
infused knowledge of all things. For more on this see my forthcoming article,
“Re-thinking Aquinas on Christ’s Infused knowledge,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 21
(2023).

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knowledge for beatific knowledge avoids many complications
that otherwise arise. For instance, it seems to avoid a certain
docetism according to which Christ only seems to be like us,
without really being like us in all things.23 How could Christ have
functioned with what, according to some interpreters, is a
paralyzing knowledge of the divine essence?24 As comprehensor,
it is argued, Christ would not have been able fully to experience
human existence in its profoundest depth; for his whole life
would have been suffused at every moment with the ineffable joy
of heaven. Above all, critics point to the biblical account of
Christ’s Passion and his cry of dereliction, both of which suggest
an immensity of suffering hardly compatible with an enjoyment
of the beatific vision.25 Based on the biblical record as well as the
modern emphasis on the complexities of the human psyche,26 it
seems necessary to reject as incredible any portrayal of the earthly
Christ who enjoyed the beatific vision.
While pushing back against Galot and others, proponents of
Thomas’s doctrine nevertheless propose arguments for Christ’s
beatific vision that are based primarily on its utility in his earthly
life. Thus, while acknowledging Thomas’s argument, White and
23

Karl Rahner, “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and Self-Consciousness of
Christ,” in Theological Investigations 5, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (Baltimore: Helicon,
1966), 206.
24
See, for instance, J-M, Nicolas, Synthèse dogmatique: De la Trinité à la Trinité,
(Paris and Fribourg, 1985), 390; Romanus Cessario, “Incarnate Wisdom and the
Immediacy of Christ’s Salvific Knowledge,” in Problemi teologici alla luce dell’Aquinate
(Atti del IX Congresso Tomistico Internazionale), Studi Tomistici 44 (Vatican City:
Libreria editrice vaticana, 1991), 338. Cessario writes, “The beatific vision remains
paralyzing, and no creature can act as a result of it.”
25
Torrell additionally points to problems that the doctrine introduces into Thomas’s
otherwise coherent Aristotelian psychology. See Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science
du Christ,” 400-402. On the cry of dereliction, see White, “Did God Abandon Jesus? The
Dereliction on the Cross,” in Incarnate Lord, 308-39.
26
On the basis of the incommunicability of the vision, Jacques Maritain goes as far as
to divide Christ’s consciousness into two parts: the supraconscious and the conscious. It is
only according to the former that Christ enjoyed the vision. See Maritain, On the Grace
and Humanity of Jesus, 54-61.

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Gaine both attempt to go beyond his teaching by establishing the
necessity of Christ’s beatific vision with respect either to his
earthly consciousness or to his earthly teaching.27 White points to
the ontological and psychological constitution of Christ’s humanity as requiring, according to a soteriological fittingness, a
human “translation” of the divine knowledge, which is further
translated into his earthly ministry through an infused
“prophetic” knowledge.28 Here, the vision serves as to guarantee
the certitude of Christ’s prophetic knowledge, which would
otherwise be indistinguishable from theological faith. In this
regard, the vision serves a Christological role by providing the
condition for the unity of the person “in and through the duality
of his natures.” 29 Without this vision, White argues, Christ’s
human action would have been divorced from his personal action
as Son of God, for it would not have been immediately subject to
the divine will.30 Only through the beatific vision can Christ’s
human operations in his earthly existence be directed towards
fulfilling the redemptive task in a manner that befits the Incarnate
Word.31 Through this knowledge alone can Christ as man be said
to possess an indefectible knowledge of the Father’s will “so as to
express it in a human way.”32
27

See Galot, “Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” 434.
White is very much aware that his argument is distinct from that of Thomas. See
White, Incarnate Lord, 238-39 n. 2. Bernard Lonergan also seeks to understand Christ’s
knowledge through an investigation of the ontological and psychological constitution of
Christ. See Bernard Lonergan, The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ,
vol 7, ed. Michael Shields, Frederick Crowe, S.J., and Robert Doran S.J. (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2002), 190-285.
29
White, Incarnate Lord, 238. Gaine provides a similar argument; see Gaine, Did the
Saviour See the Father? 71-102.
30
See White, Incarnate Lord, 239. White explains, “if the human action of Jesus is to
be the personal action of the Son of God, it must be immediately subject to the activity of
the divine will which it expresses. This requires that the human intellect of Jesus possess
the vision of God.”
31
See ibid., 256. In this, White argues against Galot’s principle of perfection by
highlighting that the vision is necessary “for reasons essential to the divine economy.”
32
Ibid., 271. This is not to say that White’s argument is invalid or inconsonant with
Thomas’s teaching but merely to highlight a difference between them. More broadly, my
28

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While White focuses on the necessity of the beatific vision for
Christ’s filial consciousness, Simon Gaine ties the necessity of the
beatific vision more immediately to Christ’s earthly teaching. The
beatific knowledge is necessary, he argues, insofar as it provides a
necessary “line of revelatory continuity” between the divine
knowledge and Christ’s human teaching.33 Gaine writes, “it is by
the beatific vision that his divine knowledge is communicated to
his human mind, on the basis of which his human teaching of the
disciples about divine realities can take place.”34 Inasmuch as the
beatific knowledge is inexpressible in human language, it requires
the infused knowledge: “Jesus’s teaching is communicated in
human language, categories, images, and narratives, all of which
must presuppose a communicable knowledge somehow

present argument can be read as being fundamentally compatible with White’s insights.
See esp. Incarnate Lord, chaps. 5, 8, and 9.
33
Simon Francis Gaine, “Is There Still a Place For Christ’s Infused Knowledge in
Catholic Theology and Exegesis?,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 16 (2018): 604.
34
Ibid., 605. Gaine also recognizes the distinctive nature of Thomas’s argument. See
ibid., 602: “Aquinas argued that the Saviour himself enjoyed the knowledge of the blessed
for the saving purpose of sharing that same beatifying knowledge with us. In other words,
our heavenly beatific vision will have been caused by his beatific vision, the members of
his body benefitting from what the Head of the body enjoys preeminently.” See also
Simon Francis Gaine, “Thomas Aquinas and John Owen on the Beatific Vision: A Reply to
Suzanne McDonald,” New Blackfriars 97, no. 1070 (2016): 432-46. In this latter article,
Gaine highlights the instrumental role that Christ’s beatific vision plays precisely as head.
“The point is that this light of glory, like grace, is mediated to the members of the Body by
the Head, the light of glory of the saints being a participation in the light of glory enjoyed
by the Head. In other words, the saints’ beatific vision is a participation in Christ’s own
beatific vision. The beatific vision is no less mediated to the saints by Christ the Head than
is the grace bestowed on the faithful in this life. Thus Christ does not simply mediate the
possibility of the beatific vision, as McDonald would have Aquinas’s view, but he mediates
the actual realisation of the beatific vision itself through a participation in his own light of
glory” (439). Gaine mentions Thomas’s argument, but his own argument does not directly
build on it. See also Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father? 5, 17-18, 70, 87; for the most
part Gaine’s treatment of the beatific vision is in terms of the continuity between Christ’s
human and divine minds for the sake of the earthly Christ’s teaching. See Gaine, “Must an
Incarnate Divine Person Enjoy the Beatific Vision?,” 130.

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proportionate to the workings of his human mind.” 35 The
existence and necessity of the infused knowledge does not however render the beatific knowledge superfluous, since the former
depends on the latter. For Gaine, as much as for White, the necessity of Christ’s beatific vision is spelled out primarily as fulfilling a condition necessary for Christ’s earthly teaching and
work.
The speculative developments of Thomas’s teaching by White
and Gaine present thoughtful and compelling arguments for
Christ’s earthly beatific vision. Yet, inasmuch as they are responding to contemporary concerns, they tend to go beyond the
text of Thomas. This is, of course, both important and necessary.
Yet it is also essential that we not lose sight of Thomas’s own
argument in the process. As we shall see below, Thomas’s
argument, which is based on the perfection of Christ’s humanity,
takes as its fundamental starting point the central soteriological
role of Christ’s humanity as such. It thereby provides a more
fundamental argument not only for the necessity of Christ’s
preglorified earthly vision, but for Christ’s vision insofar as he is
man, which is to say from the first moment of conception.36
II. THOMAS’S ARGUMENT FOR CHRIST’S BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE
As Galot argues, the key problem for Thomas’s argument is
his appeal to perfection. It appears that Thomas’s reading of the
35

Gaine, “Is There Still a Place for Christ’s Infused Knowledge in Catholic Theology
and Exegesis?,” 605: “This is because, in addition to the need for continuity across divine
and human minds, there is also need for continuity across knowledge that is inexpressible
and knowledge that is expressible. . . . The beatific vision, however, though it supplies the
human mind with knowledge of divine things, does so, according to Aquinas, in a way
transcendently disproportionate to the workings of the human mind.”
36
See Gaine’s note on John of St. Thomas’s assessment of the argument from
perfection for Christ’s infused knowledge: “Though Poinsot counted Aquinas’s argument
from perfection as the ‘best’ one of the three, perhaps regarding it as straightforwardly
best in terms of proof, he seems nevertheless to have regarded his own arguments as at
least having the advantage of being clearer in regard to the actual workings of knowledge
and meritorious activity in Christ’s earthly life” (ibid.).

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evangelical texts through the lens of an a priori “principle of
perfection” caused him to overlook the necessary distinction
between the earthly and glorified states of Christ’s humanity.
Was Thomas blind to this distinction? That is, was Thomas
unaware that it is not enough merely to provide a general
argument for the necessity of the beatific vision in Christ’s
humanity (which all agree must be said of the glorified humanity),
but that an additional argument is necessary to establish the
vision in Christ’s preglorified existence? We must respond in the
negative. Thomas’s argument intends to show the necessity of
Christ’s beatific knowledge from the moment of conception—
which necessarily includes his preglorified earthly life. Notably,
the argument goes well beyond establishing the earthly necessity
of Christ’s beatific vision to the necessity of that vision inasmuch
as Christ is, in his humanity, the universal source of grace. As
such, Thomas’s argument is meant to hold regardless of the state
of Christ’s humanity. If recent critics have overlooked this aspect
of Thomas’s argument, it is on account not of a shortcoming in
the argument itself but rather of a failure on the part of Thomas’s
critics to notice the unique role that he accords to Christ’s
humanity in salvation.
A) The Argument for Adam’s Perfect Knowledge from Its Earthly
Utility
As mentioned, Thomas’s argument for Christ’s beatific
knowledge is not primarily contingent upon its function in his
earthly life.37 There are several indications in Thomas’s corpus
that he was not blind to the possibility of arguing for Christ’s
knowledge in just this manner; that he did not do so, then,
underscores the fact that he sought to posit a different basis for
the necessity of Christ’s beatific knowledge.
37
It is noteworthy that Thomas, in discussing Christ’s life in STh III, qq. 27-59
(especially q. 46, on Christ’s doctrine), does not readily advert to his treatment of Christ’s
perfection in knowledge (STh III, qq. 9-12).

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The strongest clue is seen in Thomas’s argument for the relative perfection of Adam’s knowledge earlier in the Summa theologiae (STh I, q. 94, a. 3). The argument is explicitly based on the
earthly function of Adam’s knowledge. Thomas sees Adam’s
natural and supernatural knowledge as corresponding to the
distinct function that the first man plays in instructing and
governing humanity in and toward the truth. With regard to
instruction, Thomas explains the reason behind Adam’s knowledge of all natural things: “For no one is able to instruct others
unless he possesses knowledge. And therefore, the first man was
instituted by God in such a way so as to have knowledge of all
those things in which man is naturally instructed.”38 Likewise
with regard to Adam’s role as the leader (gubernator) of the
human race, Thomas posits supernatural knowledge. Adam’s
governing entailed ordering the human race to its supernatural
end. “For in order to govern one’s own life and that of others,”
he explains, “not only is knowledge of things which are naturally
knowable required, but also the knowledge of those things which
exceed natural knowledge.”39 The role of knowledge in Adam is
accounted for explicitly in terms of Adam’s role as instructor and
leader of the human race and thus in terms of his perfection in
natural and supernatural (infused) knowledge. That this knowledge has to do with its earthly function in Adam (i.e., governance
and human instruction) is made all the clearer by the fact that
Thomas explicitly excludes the knowledge of things that are
unnecessary to this end. Thus, we are told that Adam did not
need to know the number of stones in a river. 40 By contrast,
Thomas is unwilling to deny such trivial knowledge in Christ.41
Thomas could have easily come up with similar arguments for
Christ’s human knowledge. In fact, given the clarity of Thomas’s
arguments with regard to Adam, it is strange that he did not.
38

STh I, q. 94, a. 3.
Ibid.
40
Ibid.
41
See De Verit., q. 20, a. 4, arg. 11 and ad 11. On this point, see my forthcoming
article, “Re-Thinking Aquinas on Christ’s Infused Knowledge.”
39

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Further, a glance at contemporary treatments of Christ’s knowledge in the Summa fratris Alexandri as well as in Saint Bonaventure’s Scriptum strongly suggests that Thomas’s departure
from his contemporaries in not explicitly appealing to the
Adamic parallel was not unintentional. 42 Clearly, Thomas does
not consider Christ’s humanity to fulfill the same role as Adam’s.
More specifically, Christ’s human knowledge does not exist
solely for its function in his earthly life (whether for the sake of
his personal unity, or as a link bridging his divine knowledge with
his human teaching). Certainly, Thomas’s doctrine has implications for Christ’s human consciousness and his earthly
transmission of knowledge, but these are, at best, secondary
reasons and not the fundamental reason for Christ’s beatific
knowledge. For this, we must look again to Thomas’s argument.
B) Christ’s Headship and the Necessity of the Beatific Vision
According to critics, if Thomas wished to argue for Christ’s
earthly beatific vision, he ought to have presented an argument
that shows specifically why Christ, in his human nature, had to
possess this knowledge during his earthly life. As we shall see,
however, Thomas’s argument, which concerns the instrumental
role of Christ’s humanity, is only secondarily concerned with the

42

Here, Thomas intentionally abandons a category of Christ’s knowledge treated by
others: the Adamic knowledge of innocence. In fact, unlike his contemporaries, Thomas
rarely compares Christ to Adam with respect to knowledge. The one exception is De
Verit., q. 20, a. 6, where Thomas simply posits the superiority of Christ’s infused
knowledge with respect to Adam. Nevertheless, this is far from an attribution of an
Adamic knowledge to Christ. Reference to Adamic knowledge is found in Alexander of
Hales, Glossa in IV libros Sententiarum, lib. III, d. 13, nn. 10, 26 (Bibliotheca franciscana
scholastica medii aevi, 14 [Florence: Quaracchi, 1954], 131 and 136-37); Summa fratris,
lib. III, inq. un., tract. 3, q. 1, tit. 2; Albert the Great, De incarnatione, tract. 4, q. 1, a. 3;
Albert the Great, III Sent., d. 13, a. 10, sol.; and Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 14, a. 3, q. 1.
For more on this, see my article, “The Principle of Perfection in Thirteenth-Century
Accounts of Christ’s Human Knowledge,” The International Journal of Systematic
Theology 24 (2022): 352-79.

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question of the earthly utility of that vision. Thomas considered
his argument for the necessity of Christ’s beatific knowledge as
arising from the instrumental role his human nature plays in
redemption.
According to Thomas, Christ’s perfection in grace and
knowledge are necessary precisely toward this end. In order that
Christ be the universal source of grace it is necessary that his
grace be possessed in a preeminent manner, that is, as a
maximum in the genus of grace. For it is only the maximum in a
given genus that can be a universal cause in that genus. 43
Thomas’s argument in the Compendium theologiae brings out
this point more explicitly than does the Summa:
Therefore, since we say that Christ is the author of human salvation, it is
necessary to say that such [beatific] knowledge belonged to him as befits the
author [of salvation]. For the principle must be immovable [immobile] and
pre-eminent [praestantissimum] in power. Therefore, it was fitting that that
vision of God in which the beatitude and eternal salvation of men consists,
belong to Christ more excellently [excellentius] than to others, as to an
immovable principle. But this difference is found between what is movable and
immovable. What is movable does not have its own perfection from the
beginning, inasmuch as it is movable, but acquires it through the succession of
time; but the immovable as such, always obtains its perfection from the first
moment that it exists. Therefore, it was fitting that Christ, the author of human
salvation, possess, from the beginning of his Incarnation, the full vision of God,
not having arrived at it through the succession of time as is the case with other
saints.44

43

This is the philosophical principle sometimes called “the causality of the maximum,”
which appears in Thomas’s fourth way for God’s existence. On the importance of this
principle in Thomas’s account of Christ’s perfection see my article, “The Principle of
Perfection in Thirteenth-Century Accounts of Christ’s Human Knowledge.”
44
Comp. theol. I, c. 216: “Quia igitur Christum dicimus esse humanae salutis
auctorem, necesse est dicere, quod talis cognitio sic animae Christi conveniat ut decet
auctorem. Principium autem et immobile esse oportet, et virtute praestantissimum.
Conveniens igitur fuit ut illa Dei visio in qua beatitudo hominum et salus aeterna consistit,
excellentius prae ceteris Christo conveniat, et tanquam immobili principio. Haec autem
differentia invenitur mobilium ad immobilia, quod mobilia propriam perfectionem non a
principio habent, inquantum mobilia sunt, sed eam per successionem temporis
assequuntur; immobilia vero, inquantum huiusmodi, semper obtinent suas perfectiones ex
quo esse incipiunt. Conveniens igitur fuit Christum humanae salutis auctorem ab ipso suae

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According to the Compendium, it is necessary that Christ possess
that of which salvation consists (namely, the beatific vision) from
the first moment of his human existence insofar as his humanity is
the immovable and preeminent principle of salvation. Thomas
does not have in mind just any principle of grace, he is concerned
with its universal principle. A universal principle or cause in a
genus must be perfect. But what is perfect in such a way so as to
be a universal principle must possess such perfection from the
first moment of its existence (otherwise, it would require yet
another principle in that genus and would no longer be
universal).45 Christ is just such a principle with respect to grace,
for it is from his fullness that all receive grace. Therefore, from
the first moment of Christ’s human existence (i.e., conception), it
is necessary that Christ have the fullness of grace.
The philosophical character of the argument is unmistakable.
Yet, this should not blind us to the fact that the minor is taken
from revelation. The argument highlights a frequently overlooked point that is, in fact, central to all of Thomas’s Christology: For Thomas, the humanity of Christ is the universal and
principal source of grace for all intellectual creatures.46 Thomas
simply accepts this as a datum of faith (based on John 1:16); it is
what determines his teaching on Christ’s beatific knowledge.47
incarnationis principio plenam Dei visionem possedisse, non autem per temporis
successionem pervenisse ad ipsam, ut sancti alii perveniunt,” (emphasis added). The
Compendium theologiae explicitly draws attention to the necessity of the immovability of
a first principle. Because Christ is the author of salvation, i.e., the cause of others being
blessed, he must possess that by which he brings others to beatitude perfectly, i.e.,
immovably.
45
The example that Thomas provides in the Tertia pars, as elsewhere (e.g., STh I, q. 2,
a. 3: “Quod autem dicitur maxime tale in aliquo genere, est causa omnium quae sunt illius
generis, sicut ignis, qui est maxime calidus, est causa omnium calidorum”), is the example
of heat. Of course, we do not need to consider fire to be the cause of all heat, as the
example supposes, in order to hold to the principle of the causality of the maximum.
46
See STh III, q. 8, a. 4.
47
In fact, pace Torrell, it is more accurate to see Thomas treating the teaching of
Christ’s humanity as the principle of grace as a datum of faith rather than the earthly
beatific vision. See Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ,” 401.

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That God has deigned to save mankind from sin by way of the
Incarnation is contingent upon the divine will alone. Thus, it can
be known by us only through divine revelation.48 Just as Thomas
famously teaches that the express purpose of the Incarnation
must be guided by what is revealed, namely, the salvation of sinners, he also teaches that precisely because God has foreordained
the salvation of mankind through the humanity of Christ, we
must regard this very humanity as the universal and sole principle
of grace for all men.49 Thus, Thomas tells us that although it
belongs to God alone to render souls blessed through a participation in himself, it nevertheless belongs to Christ, as the head
and author of salvation, not only to do works of grace as an
individual man, but also to lead (adducere) others to supernatural
beatitude.50
Accordingly, if there was a time that the man Christ existed
without the fullness of grace, through which he is constituted
head of the Church, then one would have to admit that Christ’s
humanity is not the universal principle of grace—a position that
Thomas is unwilling to countenance. According to such a view,
Christ, in his human nature, might have merited the grace on
account of which he is head (for instance, at his resurrection) but
at the expense of his no longer being the immovable source of
grace. This is to say that his humanity would be not the universal
principle of grace from which all receive grace but, as certain
other medievals held, simply a dispositive cause which prepares
others for the reception of grace immediately from God.51 In
order to maintain the central and universal role of Christ’s
humanity with respect to grace, it is necessary to posit his
possession of the “maximum” of grace, which, importantly,
includes the beatific vision, from the first moment of conception.
48

See STh III, q. 1, a. 3.
See ibid.
50
See STh III, q. 59, a. 2, ad 2.
51
As if the form of heat were not the cause of heat in things that are heated, but merely
disposes such things to the reception of the form of heat without itself communicating it.
Alternatively, we could dismiss the principle of the causality of the maximum and argue
that a universal cause in a genus need not be the maximum in that genus.
49

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It is helpful to see the way in which Thomas envisions Christ’s
headship in order to understand the necessity of Christ’s human
perfection. To speak of Christ as “author of salvation” is, for
Thomas, to speak of him as the head of the Church. It is
according to Christ’s headship most of all that Christ is the
universal source of salvation for others. Thomas explicates
Christ’s headship by reference to the bodily head. Christ is
“head” with regard to order, perfection, and power.52 He is head
according to order because Christ’s grace is nobler (altior) and
prior (prior) to the grace of others. This is due to the hypostatic
union. Even if Christ’s human grace is not the first according to
time, nevertheless, “all others receive grace with respect to his
grace.”53 Thomas grounds this teaching in the predestination of
Christ. He quotes Romans 8:29: “For whom he foreknew, these
he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in
order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”54
Insofar as we are predestined to be members of Christ’s body,
Christ’s predestination is understood as the cause of our own:
“Because [God] foreordained the Incarnation of Christ, he
simultaneously foreordained that he would be the cause of our
salvation.”55 On account of his soul’s proximity to the Word, the
source of grace, Christ is head according to perfection.56 This is
similar to the bodily head insofar as all five senses are contained
in the head while only the sense of touch is in the body; similarly,
52

STh III, q. 8, a. 1.
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
55
See STh III, q. 24, a. 4, corp. and ad 3. See also III Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 1; De
Verit., q. 29, a. 3, ad 6; q. 29, a. 4, corp. and ad 6.
56
This is based on the principle of propinquity: the nearer a thing is to the flowing
cause, the more perfectly it receives its effect. This principle furnishes the basis for the
principle of the causality of the maximum. Since Christ’s soul is nearest to the Word, it
possesses the maximum of grace. On account of this perfection, the soul of Christ is the
universal cause of grace for all who receive grace. The principle accounts for the
superiority of Christ’s beatific knowledge in comparison to other humans. See STh III,
q. 10, a. 4.
53

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the full perfection of grace is found united in Christ, while it
exists divided among his members. Once again, Thomas grounds
this account of fullness in the Johannine testimony: “We saw him
. . . full of grace and truth.”57
Last, and most important for our purposes, Christ’s perfection
in grace is related to his headship according to power. It is
precisely from his perfection and fullness of grace, as cause, that
Christ is able to transmit grace to others—not externally as is the
case with other men, but interiorly. 58 For it is from Christ’s
perfect fullness that “we all receive grace for grace” (John
1:16).59 This last principle brings us back to Thomas’s argument
for Christ’s beatific vision. Christ has the fullness of grace and
truth as the Only Begotten of the Father (John 1:14), from which
fullness all others receive grace (John 1:16). According to
Thomas, it is necessary that Christ be full of grace and truth in
order to communicate it interiorly to all the members of his
body. It is on account of Christ’s preeminence in grace and
knowledge from the moment of conception that he can be the
universal source of grace for others.60
There are several consequences to Thomas’s teaching. Since
Christ is the universal the principle of grace, his headship cannot
be restricted to time, place, or state.61 He is the head of those who
preceded him as much as of those who will exist after him. For,
according to a Scholastic dictum, the Church has never been
acephalous.62 Most importantly, Christ is not only head of those

57

Thomas treats the fullness of Christ’s grace in STh III, q. 7, a. 9.
In fact, Thomas uses the argument found in STh III, q. 9, a. 2 to argue for the
identity in habit of Christ’s singular and capital grace. See STh III, q. 8, a. 5.
59
This organization of Christ’s grace is a result of a long development ordering the
various graces to one another vis-à-vis John 1:14, 16. The pattern is found throughout
qq. 7 and 8 of the Tertia pars. See STh III, q. 8, a. 1.
60
STh III, q. 8, a. 5.
61
STh III, q. 8, a. 6.
62
See STh III, q. 49, a. 5, ad 1. Albert the Great, III Sent., d. 13, a. 8, s.c. 1: “Anselmus
dicit in libro Cur Deus homo, quod numquam a temporibus creationis hominis super
terram Ecclesia fuit acephala, id est, sine capite: ergo semper fuit caput.” Albert is likely
referring to Anselm, Cur Deus homo 2.16.
58

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

537

in via, but also of those in patria, that is, of comprehensores.63 In
fact, Thomas tells us that it is “first and principally” (primo et
principaliter) that Christ is the head of the blessed, “who are
united to him by glory.”64 This includes not only men but even
the angels, whom, as Thomas tells us elsewhere, Christ “purifies,
illuminates, and perfects” through his humanity.65 Christ is the
principle of grace for all, “since all receive grace through his
grace.”66 It is precisely because Christ is head that all of his action
and passion benefit the members of his body.67 “As if a man,”
Thomas writes, “through some meritorious work which he
accomplished by hand, should redeem himself from a sin which
he committed by his feet.”68 Thus, if Christ were not head from
the moment of his conception, then none of his earthly human
actions could have been meritorious for all of his members.
Christ’s salutary actions and sufferings can be applied to others
only because of the unity of the mystical body, which unity is
established from the first moment the human nature is assumed.69
It is from this soteriological standpoint that we can see how
this perfection is related to the hypostatic union. Christ’s headship is only possible on account of the sort of union that his humanity enjoys with the divinity. It is only as united to God that
Christ can act as head, communicating grace interiorly to others.
According to Thomas, the human nature of Christ is united to the
Godhead as a conjoined and animated instrument of the
63
At least one piece of biblical evidence for this is found in Christ’s second temptation.
Thomas seems to see it as the reason why Christ is able to command angels and demons,
and why the angels minister to Christ—for he is their head. See STh III, q. 59, a. 6.
64
STh III, q. 8, a. 3; see also STh III, q. 8, a. 4, ad 2. The inclusion of angels is
significant. Since the patriarchs did not enjoy the beatific vision prior to the descent into
hell, Christ, in his earthly life, would have been head of the comprehensors insofar as he
was head of the blessed angels. See STh III, q. 52, a. 5.
65
De Verit., q. 29, a. 5, s.c. 3.
66
STh III, q. 8, a. 1.
67
STh III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1.
68
STh III, q. 49, a. 1.
69
STh III, q. 48, a. 1.

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JOSHUA LIM

divinity.70 Thomas writes, “Just as iron burns on account of the
fire conjoined to it, so the actions of the humanity were salutary
on account of the divinity united to it, of which the very
humanity was like an organ.”71 That Christ is head of the Church
from the first moment of his human existence is inextricably
linked to the claim that his humanity is the conjoined instrument
of the divinity by virtue of the union. As a conjoined instrument,
Christ’s humanity is not only able to do works of grace, but is also
able to communicate grace interiorly to others. 72 In this his
human nature is distinguished from that of all other men, who
are extrinsic and separate instruments of God. “For they are
moved by God not only to operations proper to themselves, but
to operations common to every rational nature, for instance, to
understand truth, to love good, and to do justice.”73 While God
works in and through all men as instruments animated by rational
souls, he nevertheless works through Christ’s humanity in a
higher manner. It is on this account that Christ’s human
operations are called theandric (deivirilem).74 “The human nature
in Christ,” Thomas writes, “was assumed in order to do those
things instrumentally which are proper to God alone, as, for
example, to clean sins, to illuminate minds through grace, and to
lead men to the perfection of eternal life.”75
As an animate instrument it is necessary that Christ’s humanity possess the proper disposition so as to be used by the
principal agent.76 It is so disposed through habitual grace. Unlike
inanimate instruments which are acted upon but do not them70
For more on Thomas’s teaching on the humanity of Christ as the instrument of the
divinity see Theophil Tschipke, L’humanité du Christ comme instrument de salut de la
divinité (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2003).
71
De Verit., q. 29, a. 4. See also STh III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 4.
72
STh III, q. 8, a. 1, ad 1.
73
See ScG IV, c. 41.
74
For Christ’s theandric operations see III Sent., d. 13, q, 1, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 4; Comp.
Theol. I, c. 212; De Verit., q. 20, a. 5. In fact, this is the same rationale behind the causality
of Christ’s body vis-à-vis the resurrection. See STh III, q. 56, a. 1.
75
ScG IV, c. 41. See also STh III, q. 7, a. 1, obj. 3 and ad 3.
76
STh III, q. 7, a. 1, ad 3.

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539

selves act (the typical example that Thomas gives is of the axe),
the humanity of Christ, animated by a rational soul, requires the
due habit in order that it not only be acted upon, but also act.
“Wherefore,” Thomas tells us, “just as a servant requires a habit
so that he might execute the command of his master in due
manner; so too, the soul of Christ required a habit in order to do
the divine works perfectly.”77 The argument for the necessity of
Christ’s habitual grace on account of the instrumentality of his
humanity fits neatly with Thomas’s argument for Christ’s fullness
of grace. The humanity of Christ as instrument and head is
ordered to the redemption of sinners not only through his
exterior teaching but especially through the interior influx of
grace.
An examination of Christ’s human instrumentality provides a
helpful framework for understanding the key difference between
the purpose of the knowledge of Adam and that of Christ. As an
extrinsic and separate instrument of the divinity, the first man
had knowledge to aid in his governance and instruction of the
human race. Adam’s knowledge was directly ordered to his
twofold task. In contrast, Christ’s humanity, as a proper and
conjoined instrument of the divinity, possessed grace and
knowledge not only to instruct and govern, but also to do things
that exceed the power of any creature—that is, to do things
proper to God alone. This explains why Thomas does not argue
for the perfection of Christ’s knowledge on the basis of its mere
function in his earthly life. For Christ is greater than Adam. As
head, Christ communicates his grace and knowledge to others
through his earthly teaching, but, more profoundly still, he works
within the souls of men and is able to do so inasmuch as his
humanity is the conjoined instrument of the divinity.78 Thomas
specifically points to this interior flow of grace (interior effluxus
gratiae) as that which distinguishes Christ’s headship from that of
other men, who, like Adam, might also be called “head” purely
77
78

III Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4.
STh III, q. 8, a. 6.

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JOSHUA LIM

on account of external governance (ad exteriorem gubernationem). Yet, acting as this kind of instrument requires a
perfection exceeding that of Adam—it requires that the human
instrument possess in full (i.e., perfectly) that of which it is the
cause.
Based on the central role of Christ’s humanity in the divine
dispensation, Thomas teaches that all grace, both before and after
the Incarnation, must be mediated through the humanity of
Christ. The grace of union and the fullness of Christ’s habitual
grace must therefore be understood as ordered toward this
power, which belongs to Christ as man, to bestow grace inwardly
on others. It is the grace of union that explains Christ’s unique
fullness of grace; it is his fullness of grace, in turn, that is the basis
for his headship. “For the cause must always be greater than the
caused.” We cannot examine Christ’s humanity solely in terms of
his external instruction, or even in terms of what is necessary
solely for the unity of his human and divine action, but more
fundamentally in terms of the interior influx of grace which he, as
united to God, transmits to all the members of his body. This is
precisely how Thomas presents the perfection of Christ’s
knowledge, including his beatific knowledge. Understood in this
manner, it is necessary that Christ possess the beatific knowledge
of the divine essence from the moment the human nature is
assumed to the Word, that is, from the moment of conception.
For the very humanity of Christ must be as an immovable source
if it is to be the font of salvation for all humanity “irrespective of
time, place, or state.” Absent this perfection, it would be
impossible to account for the universal influence of the grace of
Christ.
CONCLUSION
It is not a lack of imagination that prevents Thomas from
relying on the earthly utility of Christ’s knowledge to establish
the necessity of the beatific vision; rather, it is because he considers Christ’s perfection in knowledge and grace to be necessary
for his humanity to be a universal cause of grace and truth. For

BEATIFIC KNOWLEDGE IN CHRIST’S HUMANITY

541

Christ, in his very humanity, was predestined as the source from
which all grace is received. Thomas’s argument for Christ’s
beatific knowledge cannot be understood without recourse to
Thomas’s teaching on Christ’s headship. Headship is central for
Thomas insofar as Christ’s humanity is the universal principle of
grace. He is the source of grace and the beatitude of glory not
only for viatores but also for comprehensores; he is the head not
only of men, but also of the blessed angels. Moreover, Christ’s
headship is inexplicable without recourse to the instrumentality
of his human nature. For it is only as the conjoined instrument of
the divinity that his human operations are theandric, and
therefore salutary for his body, the Church. 79 For as Thomas
writes, “Not only is grace given to Christ as an individual person,
but as he is head of the Church, in order that it might flow from
him to his members.”80 With respect to his beatific knowledge,
therefore, it is necessary that Christ possess it in actu from the
first moment of his conception in order for him to be, in his
human nature, the immovable and preeminent author of our
salvation. If at some point in his earthly life Christ did not possess
the beatific vision, this would mean, for Thomas, that Christ’s
humanity could not be the universal source of grace. Instead, the
humanity of Christ would be relegated to a particular, dispositive
cause of grace. At base, therefore, the teaching of the necessity of
the earthly Christ’s beatific knowledge is simply an extension of
Thomas’s understanding of Christ’s universal headship, which in
turn is an extension of Thomas’s teaching on the grace of union
or the Incarnation, which is ordered to the salvation of mankind.
In terms of the contemporary debate, the above account of
Thomas’s teaching has the effect of relocating the primary
question. It is not merely a question of whether Christ had the
beatific vision in his preglorified earthly life as opposed to his
glorified existence, but whether Christ as man is the universal
source of grace as head of the Church, which presupposes that he
79
80

See STh III, q. 56.
See STh III, q. 48, a. 1. See also STh III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1.

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JOSHUA LIM

is the instrument of the divinity, from the moment of his
conception.81 Of course, Thomas’s argument does not resolve the
remaining difficulty of imagining or accounting for the psychological state of Christ as both comprehensor and viator in his
earthly life; but this doctrine (just as the doctrine of the
Incarnation itself) does not stand or fall based on our capacity
successfully to imagine it.82 Once we have grasped the necessity
of Christ’s beatific vision from the moment of conception, it
becomes possible and even necessary to investigate further how
this relates to Christ’s earthly transmission of knowledge or his
self-consciousness. It is here that the works of White and Gaine,
among others, play an important role for contemporary Catholic
theology. Yet this inquiry remains secondary to the more fundamental understanding of Christ’s beatific vision inasmuch as it is
grounded in a solid Christological account of Christ’s humanity
as the instrument of the divinity and the source of all grace.

81

Weinandy challenges precisely this idea on the basis of the scriptural testimony,
where it seems that there is a progressive and dynamic aspect to Christ’s headship. See
“The Human Acts of Christ and the Acts That Are the Sacraments,” 151-68.
82
In other words, just as the truth of the hypostatic union does not depend on the
capacity of our imaginative powers, neither does the verity of Christ’s simultaneous
existence as viator and comprehensor. As Weinandy states, “The exact nature and
specificity of [Christ’s] human awareness and knowing is, it seems to me, part of the very
mystery of the Incarnation, which in itself can never be fully comprehended” (“Jesus’
Filial Vision of the Father,” 199).

The Thomist 86 (2022): 543-72

THE FATAL FLAW OF
NEW NATURAL LAW ACTION THEORY
STEVEN J. JENSEN
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas

T

HIS ARTICLE aims to diagnose the fatal flaw of new
natural law action theory. Several commentators have
claimed that new natural law action theorists are prone to
make convenient redescriptions of actions, justifying actions that
would otherwise be deemed immoral.1 Craniotomies, for instance, are redescribed as narrowing the baby’s head; blowing up
a spelunker is described not as killing him but as dispersing his
parts; shooting someone with a gun in self-defense is described
not as harming him but simply as stopping the attack; performing
a D&C on a live baby is described not as killing the baby but as
ending the pregnancy.2
1

See, for example, Jean Porter, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’ in Grisez’s Moral Theory,”
Theological Studies 57 (1996): 611-32; Matthew B. O’Brien and Robert Koons, “Objects
of Intention: A Hylomorphic Critique of the New Natural Law Theory,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86 (2012): 655-703; Steven J. Jensen, “Phoenix Rising
from the Ashes: Recent Attempts to Revive New Natural Law Action Theory,” The
National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 20 (2020): 525-44.
2
These examples can be found in Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., “Double Effect and a Certain
Type of Embryotomy,” Irish Theological Quarterly 44 (1977): 303-18; idem, “Who Is
Entitled to Double Effect?,” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 16 (1991): 475-94;
John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle, “‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’: A Reply to
Critics of Our Action Theory,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 1-44, at 25; Christopher
Tollefsen, “Is a Purely First-Person Account of Human Action Defensible?,” Ethical
Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 441-60, at 450; Germain Grisez, The Way of the
Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life (Quincy, Ill.: Franciscan Press, 1993), 473, 484;
Christopher Tollefsen, “Response to Robert Koons and Matthew O’Brien’s ‘Objects of
Intention: A Hylomorphic Critique of the New Natural Law Theory’,” American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2013): 751-78; idem, “Double Effect and Two Hard Cases in
Medical Ethics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2015): 407-20;
543

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

The real issue with new natural law action theory, however, is
not redescriptions. Indeed, its advocates will insist that they are
not redescribing actions but simply identifying their correct descriptions. The real issue runs deeper. Any penchant for peculiar
descriptions arises from the fatal flaw of focusing upon intending
effects rather than intending actions; all intention of action
(according to new natural law advocates) is only secondary,
reduced to some intention of an effect. For reasons that will
become clear, this starting point places a premium upon
descriptions rather than upon concrete realities.
I may have missed the mark when, in a recent article, I made
the following comment: “The new natural law action theory . . .
is not necessarily prone to fanciful redescriptions of actions. It
has no fatal flaw that leads its proponents to come up with
original descriptions. Rather, the theory simply leaves open the
possibility.”3 To the contrary, new natural law theorists begin
with a paradigm that leads to error.
So fundamental is this paradigm to their vision that they
cannot imagine giving a priority to the intention of actions as
opposed to the intention of effects. Their paradigm not only
prevents them from reaching the correct answers; from the
beginning, it prevents them from asking the right question. In a
recent article, for instance, Lawrence Masek aims to discover
what effect (or effects) agents intend while acting.4 Similarly,
Patrick Lee has published an article focusing upon what effects
are intended and what effects are foreseen.5
Already we have a problem. We do speak, loosely, of intending effects. Most properly, however, we intend actions and
not merely effects. According to new natural law action theory,
however, the order is inverted: most properly, we intend effects
Lawrence Masek, Intention, Character, and Double Effect (Notre Dame, Ind: University
of Notre Dame Press , 2018), 49-50; idem, “The Strict Definition of Intended Effects and
Two Questions for Critics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 95 (2021):
651-78, 670-73.
3
Jensen, “Phoenix Rising,” 544.
4
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects.”
5
Patrick Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,”
American Journal of Jurisprudence 62 (2017): 231-51.

FATAL FLAW

545

and only in a secondary way do we intend actions. The advocates
of new natural law invoke what they have come to call a strict
definition of intention, opposed to what they call broad accounts
of intention. As Masek explains the matter, “The strict definition
applies to effects, not actions.”6 He does admit that we can speak
of intending actions, but he is not concerned to provide a
definition of this usage of the word “intend.”
A strict definition of intention is integral to new natural law
action theory. Indeed, the criticisms in this article most properly
apply to the strict definition itself, rather than to a specific overall
theory. New natural law action theory is the most prominent
view that affirms a strict definition of intention, but someone
(Masek may fall into this category) who adopts the strict definition without fully endorsing new natural law action theory still
falls victim to the fatal flaw examined here. For convenience, we
will henceforth give the label “rigorists” to those who defend a
strict definition of intention. This paper targets all rigorists and
not just new natural law action theorists.
Patrick Lee also defends a strict definition, but his focus upon
effects (rather than actions) is less explicit. Even for Lee, however, actions are entirely reduced to the intention of effects.7
Once we have determined the effects intended, we then know
exactly what action is intended. The intention of actions is only
an afterthought. Other rigorists, such as Christopher Tollefsen,
express this doctrine by saying that we intend states of affairs.8
Whatever these are, they are not actions (although they may
include actions in abstract form).
Of course, the emphasis upon effects does not prevent
rigorists from speaking about intending actions of various sorts.
How could it be otherwise? The verb “intend” is naturally followed by an infinitive, which expresses action. Despite this concession to ordinary language, the strict definition of intention is
wedded to the intention of effects.
From this often unacknowledged starting point flow a multitude of consequences. The strict definition is at a loss to account
6

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 657.
Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 231-32.
8
Tollefsen, “First Person Account,” 453.
7

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

for a vast array of common intentions. What intended effect, for
instance, identifies the act of adultery? This starting point also
leads to a focus upon (sometimes counterintuitive) descriptions
rather than realities. Other consequences, not examined in this
article, also follow. One casualty of this starting point, for
instance, is the coherence of perverted faculty arguments (a topic
examined briefly below).
Before we examine these defects in greater detail, we will first
provide (in section I) a very cursory explanation of a strict view of
intention. Then we will examine two problems that follow upon
the focus upon effects (rather than actions). The first (in section
II), concerns a vast array of actions (such as adultery) that cannot
be described in terms of intended effects. The second (covered in
the remainder of the article), concerns the focus upon descriptions rather than realities. This problem first requires (in section
III) spelling out the difference between a multitude of
descriptions and the unified reality described. This distinction
must then be applied (in sections IV and V) to multiple cases,
which will help to catalog the rigorists’ predilection for descriptions over realities. Then the alternate focus upon actions
rather than descriptions must be explained (in section VII).
Finally (in section VIII), the link must be established between a
focus upon intending effects and a predilection for descriptions.
I. STRICT DEFINITION OF INTENTION, IN BRIEF
Broad accounts of intention differ from one another, sometimes quite remarkably, but they all have something in common,
something that makes them “broad.” They all maintain that
actions have something more to them—beyond their effects—
that enters into intention. Consequently, intention of actions is
broader than mere intention of effects. As Lee expresses it, these
broad accounts maintain that we choose actions that have content beyond intended effects.9
The strict view of intention has no room for this “something
more” because it is, as Tollefsen puts it, entirely a “first-person
9

Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 232.

FATAL FLAW

547

account.”10 This phrase could be benign. It might refer merely to
the idea that what an agent does depends upon what he plans to
do, upon what he has worked out in his deliberations. On the
other hand, it might not be benign. It might refer to the idea that
an internal state—typically called “intention”—entirely determines the character of an agent’s actions. Actions (on this
account) have no character of their own apart from this internal
subjective state.
Since intention entirely determines the character of actions,
the paramount question concerns the content of intention. What
does an agent intend? More precisely, what effects does an agent
intend? Another question becomes secondary: what actions does
the agent intend? Actions have no character independent of intention, so we must first determine the effects intended before we
can determine the content of action. Intention, then, does not
primarily concern actions; it primarily concerns effects.
According to the strict view of intention, the content of
intention includes the goal and those means needed to achieve
the goal.11 Since identifying the goal proves unproblematic, all
effort concentrates upon the question of what counts as a means.
The means are what are found needful for the goal; they are what
contribute to the goal.12
Suppose that a niece kills her uncle in order to gain an
inheritance. In the act of firing a gun, she not only kills her uncle,
she also makes a noise, wakes the neighbor, stains the carpet,
saddens the family of her victim, and so on. These multiple
descriptions are based upon the many effects of her one action.
From this array of actions, we must distinguish what the niece
intends from what she merely foresees but does not intend. For
this task, focusing upon effects intended can prove helpful.
10

Tollefsen, “First Person Account.”
Tollefsen, “First Person Account,” 444; idem, “Response to Koons and O’Brien,”
752; Christopher Tollefsen, “Terminating in the Body,” The National Catholic Bioethics
Quarterly 19 (2019): 203-20, 205; Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and
Foreseen Side Effects,” 232; Finnis, Grisez, and Boyle, “Direct and Indirect,” 1; Masek,
Intention, 43; idem, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 653.
12
Tollefsen, “Response to Koons and O’Brien,” 752; Finnis, Grisez, and Boyle,
“Direct and Indirect,” 40.
11

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

The niece intends death because that is her goal. What
contributes to this goal? The firing of the gun. In contrast, the
noise and the waking of the neighbor do not contribute to her
goal. Indeed, she might try to avoid waking the neighbor, perhaps by using a silencer. If someone claims that the niece wakes
the neighbor in order to kill her uncle, rigorists can reply (in
terms of effects) that the firing of the gun causes the neighbor to
wake; the neighbor waking does not cause the gun to fire.
For rigorists, “what contributes to the goal” turns out to be
ethereal. It depends not upon realities but upon descriptions. As
Tollefsen puts the matter, “States of affairs are chosen under a
description, and it is only as so chosen that they are part of an
agent’s intention.”13 Similarly, Finnis says, “The means are included in the proposal . . . under that description which makes
them intelligibly attractive as a means.”14 Or as Masek puts it,
“The strict definition includes only effects that are relevant in a
positive way to the agent’s decision to act.”15
Consider the case of someone defending herself against an
assailant. She fires a gun, which contributes to the goal of saving
her life. As it turns out, however, it contributes to the goal under
the description “stopping the attack” but not under the
description “injuring the assailant.”16 The action of firing the gun
is intelligibly attractive not because it injures the assailant but
because it stops the attack.
Similarly, in the case of craniotomy, the doctor performs the
craniotomy under the description “reducing the size of the baby’s
head,” not under the description “injuring the baby.”17 What
matters is what is needful to achieve the goal. More precisely,
what matters is the description under which it is needful. The
13

Tollefsen, “First Person Account,” 445.
John Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 68.
15
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 655.
16
Elisabeth Parish, “Two Theories of Action and the Permissibility of Abortion,” The
National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 20 (2020): 59-72, at 69; Grisez, Way of the Lord
Jesus 2:473; Tollefsen, “Response to Koons and O’Brien,” 758.
17
Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 245
n. 26; Tollefsen, “First Person Account,” 449-50; Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended
Effects,” 670-73.
14

FATAL FLAW

549

craniotomy is intelligibly attractive not insofar as it injures the
baby but insofar as it reduces the size of the baby’s head. This
emphasis upon descriptions rather than realities is no surprise.
After all, we are concerned with a first-person account.
For some of the discussions that will follow, it will be helpful
to consider briefly Masek’s attempt to capture, in a short phrase,
the essence of a strict definition of intention: “People intend an
effect if and only if they try to cause it, as an end or as a means.”18
This restatement, as Masek seems to acknowledge, might be
nothing beyond a rewording of the question. Someone asks,
“What do I intend while acting?” and rigorists reply, “You intend
what you try to cause.” Is this reply any different from saying,
“You intend what you intend (that is, try) to cause”? The word
“try” must mean something other than the common meaning of
performing an action that is as yet inefficacious (although this
meaning is found in Masek’s example of a child trying to open a
cookie jar). Rather, it seems to mean something like “aim,” which
is what “intend” means.
Masek suggests that the word “try” has certain advantages
over the word “intend.” It is more accessible, for instance, to
well-informed nonphilosophers. This accessibility provides a
standard according to which (thinks Masek) a strict view of
intention scores well.19 Furthermore, “trying” cannot be used for
future plans but must be used for the action being performed
right now. Masek, however, sometimes uses “try to cause” in
reference to a remote end rather than the immediate effect in the
action itself. A remote end is not the same as a future plan but
neither is it quite the same as the effect intended in action.
The word “try” does have another benefit over “intend,” although rigorists may not see it as a benefit. We speak of intending
both actions and effects, but we do not speak of “trying” effects.
Someone can intend the effect of death, but no one “tries” the
effect of death. The word “try” has an even stronger tendency
than the word “intend” to be followed by an infinitive. Effects
can be brought in only by speaking of “trying to cause.” This
18
19

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 653-54.
Ibid., 669-70.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

manner of speaking, however, is far from natural. The child is not
likely to say that he is trying to cause the lid to be off the jar;
rather, he will say that he is trying to open the cookie jar. Masek
himself sometimes drops “tries to cause” and replaces it with the
trying of some other action verb. He speaks, for instance, of
individuals trying to buy a car.20
The above description of the strict view of intention should
suffice, for it provides the essential features. Further details can
be filled in as we try to discover how the focus upon effects, as
opposed to actions, is a fundamental flaw.
II. A DEARTH OF ACTIONS
The first defect of the strict view of intention is the most
obvious: it simply does not work for a vast array of human
actions. The point becomes clear when rigorists respond to a
particular objection against the strict view.21 Adulterers and
thieves, according to the objection, do not (under a strict view)
intend to commit adultery or to steal. In response, the rigorists
note that a thief might be guilty of theft even if he does not intend
to commit theft.22 In other words, they concede the point:
according to the strict definition of intention, thieves do not
intend to commit theft; they are simply guilty of theft.
If thieves do not (strictly speaking) intend to commit theft,
then what do they intend in the act of stealing? More precisely,
what effect do they intend? Masek grants that “someone can
accept the strict definition and still say that my action is
intentional, or that I intend an act of theft, in the sense that I
intend to take something despite knowing that it belongs to
someone else.”23 Ultimately, however, Masek provides (for the

20

Ibid., 664.
Steven J. Jensen, “Causal Constraints on Intention,” The National Catholic Bioethics
Quarterly 14 (2014): 273-93, at 284.
22
Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 249-51;
Parish, “Two Theories of Action,” 70; Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,”
657-58.
23
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 657.
21

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thief) no effect intended but merely another description for the
action intended.
Can we discover some effect that the car thief intends? Perhaps he intends the effect of the car being in his possession.
Unfortunately, this intention is not precise enough. It is compatible, for instance, with the intention to buy the car. Perhaps
the thief intends to transfer the use of the car to himself against
the wishes of the proper owner. Unfortunately, “transferring
use” is an action, not an effect. Perhaps, then, he intends a
transference of use (the action considered in the abstract) that
does not conform with the wish of the proper owner. This
description gets close, but it does not quite seem to capture what
the thief has in mind. It omits, for instance, the notion of “taking”
(which is an action). Furthermore, this description is far from
what the thief would pose to himself.
Adulterers do not fare any better. What do they intend in the
act of adultery? More precisely, what effect do they intend? Do
they intend pleasure? Or, put differently, do they intend the
satisfaction of lust?24 Perhaps. Pleasure (or the satisfaction of lust)
can at least be an effect of their action. This answer, however, is
hardly satisfying. The goal of pleasure does not pick out the
distinct act of adultery. It might apply to many marital acts, to
fornication, rape, and so on.
Does the adulterer intend to have sexual intercourse? No,
because that is an action. Does the adulterer intend that his body,
as an effect of his intention, move in certain ways? Perhaps such a
contorted description can fit within the strict account, but it is
certainly not how the adulterer would propose his intention to
himself.
The problem with theft and adultery is not peculiar. Our days
are filled with intentions that cannot be crammed into the box of
strict intentions of effects. What does the niece intend, for
instance, when she tells the detective what she did on the day of
the murder? Does she intend that the detective come to have an
awareness of what she did? To some extent, she does (although
she also wants to conceal what she did); furthermore, this
24

Ibid., 657.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

awareness (in the detective) does seem to be an effect of her
action. Unfortunately, this description, which expresses only her
remote goal, hardly captures what she is about. She does not intend, for instance, that the awareness simply pop into the detective’s mind. Rather, she intends to convey the idea to him; that is,
she intends an action: to convey an idea. Does she intend that
certain sounds come to be in the air? It seems so, and these
sounds are effects of what she intends. Once again, however, this
description hardly captures her intention. Suppose that the
sounds come to be because a friend (standing nearby) utters
them. Then the niece would not have achieved what she wants,
which was to tell the detective what she did yesterday. Does she
want these sounds insofar as they arise from her own mouth?
Perhaps, but at this point she is swimming in water more fit for
the philosopher than for the well-informed nonphilosopher.
With little effort, examples can be multiplied. What do we
intend when we ride a bike? Simply the effect of being in another
place? Hardly. What do we intend when we eat ice cream?
Simply the effects of the ice cream being in our stomach? Hardly.
What do we intend when we mow the lawn? Simply that the lawn
be shorter?
The first problem with the strict account of intention, then, is
that it does not apply to many of our actions. For a significant
subset of actions, however, a strict definition of intention seems
more promising. Some actions are described largely in terms of
their effects. The action of heating, for instance, is identified
(even in its name) by the effect of heat; the act of killing is identified through the effect of death; the act of lifting is identified
through the effect of a raised object; and so on. For these actions,
the intention of the effect (in terms of which the action is
described) lines up pretty well with the intention of the action.
To focus on intending effects, then, need not seem so odd.
Indeed, it will often prove quite helpful.
Even for these actions, however, the intention of effects does
not quite fit the reality. When the niece kills her uncle, we do
readily say that she intends the effect of death. By itself, however,
this observation is inadequate. This description does not fully
capture what she intends in acting. It does not distinguish, for

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instance, her intention from a want or a wish. Perhaps the
nephew wants the uncle to be dead, but he would never go so far
as intending his death, that is, he would never intend to kill him.
He just hopes that he dies of a heart attack.
A complete description of what the niece intends includes not
only death. It includes, for instance, the person who dies. She
intends, we might say, the death of her uncle. Her uncle,
however, is not an effect (although, his death is an effect). Once
again, simply adding “of her uncle” does not distinguish the niece
from the nephew.
A more complete description would suggest that the niece
intends the death of her uncle insofar as it arises from herself.
This description might fit within the constraints of strict intention, and it does distinguish the niece from the nephew. The
niece herself, however, is not likely to propose such an awkward
intention to herself as she sets about pulling the trigger.
III. DESCRIPTIONS AND REALITIES
Despite these deficiencies, we might grant that strict intention
applies fairly well to this limited subset of actions. Nevertheless,
strict intention has other problems, even for these actions. The
focus upon effects rather than actions will (for reasons that will
be explained further along) lead to a corresponding focus upon
descriptions rather than realities. Masek rightly admonishes
those who accuse rigorists of “re-describing” actions.25 This way
of putting the matter presupposes a description, which can be
subsequently redescribed. The original description, however, is
precisely what rigorists are attempting to ferret out. The real
issue is not over redescriptions. Rather, it concerns a focus upon
diverse descriptions as opposed to unified realities.
The difference between descriptions and a unified reality is
made clear by a case concocted by Alexander Pruss, a proponent
of some version of the strict view (but not of new natural law
action theory):

25

Masek, Intention, 54.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

An eccentric, literalistic but always truthful magnate tells Sam he will donate to
famine relief, saving hundreds of lives, if and only if Sam follow his directions to
the iota. Sam is to purchase a gun, sneak at night into a zoo owned by the
magnate, and kill the first mammal he sees. Unfortunately the first mammal Sam
sees is the zookeeper, and he shoots her. When Sam is charged with murder, he
argues that he did not intend to kill the human there, but only to kill the
mammal.26

Pruss, of course, is speaking in terms of intending actions, but we
can easily transfer what he says into the terminology of effects.
Sam does not intend the death of a human being. He intends only
the death of a mammal. That is, after all, what he needs to
achieve his goal.
To say the least, this conclusion seems counterintuitive. A
well-informed nonphilosopher, for instance, is likely to judge
that Sam intends to kill a human being (or he intends the death of
a human being). After all, these two (the death of a human being
and the death of a mammal) seem to differ only in description
and not in reality.
The difficulty, in this case, is that one and the same reality has
multiple descriptions. One and the same death of the zookeeper
may be described as the death of a mammal or as the death of a
human being. The distinct descriptions arise from the way the
human mind knows reality. It separates in the mind (through an
action typically called abstraction) what is united in reality. In
reality, we have a single individual, the zookeeper, and a single
death. In our minds, we distinguish between a mammal and a
human being.
The first-person approach of a strict definition of intention
favors the distinction in the mind over the identity in reality,
which is why Pruss suggests that Sam did not intend to kill a
human being. According to the strict account, the means are
chosen under the description by which they are intelligibly
attractive. What is intelligibly attractive to Sam is the death of a
mammal; the death of a human being is presumably repugnant. In
reality, of course, the death of the mammal is identical with the
death of a human being. The descriptions, however—and not the
26

Alexander R. Pruss, “The Accomplishment of Plans: A New Version of the Principle
of Double Effect,” Philosophical Studies 165 (2013): 49-69, at 53-54.

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unified reality—provide the intelligible attraction. Such, at any
rate, is the position of the strict view of intention.
Despite this focus upon descriptions, rigorists can, at times,
carefully separate distinct realities. After all, what is distinct in
reality will also be distinct in description, although the converse
is not the case. Masek provides the example of two cyclists.27 The
first cyclist speeds up in order to increase wind resistance (with
the further goal of cooling off). The second cyclist increases
speed in order to catch up with the first cyclist. For the second
cyclist, increased wind resistance is something of an obstacle
(since it slows her down); consequently, the first cyclist intends to
increase wind resistance and the second cyclist does not.
The increase in speed (of the cyclists) and the increase of wind
(pushing against the cyclists) are clearly distinct in description.
They are also clearly distinct in reality. They do not constitute a
single change, like the death of the mammal and the death of the
human being; rather, the two changes are really distinct. The two
changes must be separate for several reasons. First, the cyclists
could speed up and yet not incur increased wind resistance.
Suppose, for instance, that a headwind happens to decrease at
just the same rate at which the cyclists speed up. Second, the
increased speed causes the increased wind resistance, which
could not be the case if the two were identical.28 We do not say
(for Sam) that the death of the mammal causes the death of the
human being, or vice versa.
IV. REACTIONS TO THE ZOOKEEPER CASE
The fatal flaw of the strict account of intention, then, does not
prevent rigorists from discovering distinct realities. Nevertheless,
the focus on distinct descriptions might handicap them in the
effort to sort out the reality. They may not always recognize
when they are dealing with differences in descriptions and when
they are dealing with differences in realities. At the very least,
their theory causes a dissonance, which is most evident in Pruss’s
27
28

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 653-55.
Pruss, “Accomplishment of Plans,” 60.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

zookeeper case, where the obvious unity of the reality conflicts
with the diversity in descriptions that appears relevant to a strict
account of intention. We should not be surprised, then, to
discover that Pruss’s case generates some odd reactions from
rigorists. They are loath to reach the counterintuitive conclusion
that their theory seems to demand. We will look at a couple of
these reactions before we proceed to investigate other cases in
which the discovery of the reality might be hampered by the fatal
flaw of the strict view of intention.
Masek’s discussion of this case is evasive.29 While in general he
is concerned to discover what effect is intended, for this case he
changes the target and asks whether Sam intends to break the rule
against murder, which is then interpreted as intending the death
of an organism that the agent (Sam) knows to be human. The
conclusion that Sam intends to break the rule against murder is
unproblematic, but it does not tell us whether Masek thinks that
Sam intends the death of a human being.
If Masek is consistent, it seems he should conclude that Sam
does not intend to kill a human being. He distinguishes, for
instance, between “trying” in the extensional sense and in the
intensional sense.30 In the extensional sense, Sam does try to
cause the death of a human being. In the intensional sense, it
seems, he does not. The relevant sense for Masek, however, is the
intensional sense. Furthermore, Masek says that—in the strict
view—intention includes only effects that are relevant to the
agent’s action in a positive way.31 For Sam, however, the death of
a human being is presumably negative. Only the death of a
mammal positively motivates his action.
Perhaps rigorists will insist that in this case the death of a
mammal is indeed the death of a human being, so when Sam tries
to cause the death of a mammal he also tries to cause the death of
a human being. This maneuver, however, shifts to the extensional
sense of trying. More importantly, if the rigorists insist that Sam
intends the death of a human being (since the death of a mammal
is identical with the death of a human being), they seem to be
29

Masek, Intention, 69-70.
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 654.
31
Ibid., 655.
30

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adopting a broad view of intention, which Masek calls “event
identity.”32 According to this view, an agent intends an effect not
only under the description of what makes it desirable; he intends
it under all descriptions that apply to one and the same identical
event. Sam intends the effect of death, for instance, under the
descriptions “the death of a mammal” and also under the
description “the death of a human being.” This view, thinks
Masek, is forced to lump together descriptions that intention is
able to separate.
Unlike Masek’s treatment, Patrick Lee’s treatment of the
zookeeper case is not evasive.33 We do not have to guess at his
conclusion. He argues that Sam intends (according to strict intention) not only to kill a mammal but also to kill a human being.
In short, Lee wishes to align a strict definition of intention with
common-sense intuitions. Because this conclusion does not
readily follow from the theory itself, Lee’s argument is rather
involved. In brief, Lee points out that the zookeeper is essentially
a human being and also a mammal. Consequently, by intending
to kill this concrete zookeeper, Sam must intend not only to kill a
mammal but also to kill a human being. In other words, Lee
seems to advocate some version of the event identity view.
Despite his efforts, Lee’s argument fails to account for other
intuitions. The zookeeper is not essentially a zookeeper, nor is
she essentially a female; nevertheless, Sam (according to our
intuitions) intends to kill a zookeeper and a female. Furthermore,
Lee’s insistence upon essential features of concrete effects seems
like an ad hoc adjustment to strict intention aimed at patching
over a counterintuitive conclusion.
Ultimately, then, Lee’s attempt to align a strict account of
intention with common-sense intuitions is unpersuasive. Perhaps
he should have settled with Masek’s approach, arguing simply
that Sam is indeed a murderer, even if he does not intend the
death of a human being. Then Lee could preserve at least our
moral intuitions, although he would forfeit our intuitions concerning the nature of intention.
32
33

Ibid., 663-64.
Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 246-49.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

V. THE CRANIOTOMY CASE
In the craniotomy case, the doctor (on account of cephalopelvic disproportion) uses forceps to crush the head of the baby,
who cannot otherwise be delivered. The doctor’s action can be
described as crushing a skull, as harming the baby, as reducing the
size of the baby’s head, as killing the baby, as saving the mother,
and so on. Do these multiple descriptions correspond to a single
effect in reality that has multiple descriptions, or do they involve
distinct effects? In some cases, the effects are clearly distinct. The
preservation of the life of the mother, for instance, is clearly
distinct from the effect of the death of the baby. In other cases,
the unity or diversity is not so clear. Is the narrowed head identical with the crushed skull? Is the crushed skull identical with
death of the baby? Is it identical with harm to the baby? We will
set aside the second of these three questions, since many theorists
who hold a broad account of intention grant that the death of the
baby is an effect distinct from that of the crushed skull.34
In answer to the first question, Tollefsen and Lee conclude
that the narrowed head is not identical with the crushed skull.35
The doctor need intend only to narrow the head and not to crush
the skull. They note that in some instances of cephalopelvic
disproportion the baby can be delivered without crushing the
skull; temporarily compressing the skull suffices. It follows that
the effect of a narrowed head is not identical to the effect of a
crushed skull.
Their reliance upon descriptions has separated Tollefsen and
Lee far from the reality. They now employ merely hypothetical
descriptions, descriptions that do not apply to the situation at
hand but to some other situation. The effect needed to end the
34
Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action
(Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998), 204-5; Christopher Kaczor, “Distinguishing Intention
from Foresight: What Is Included in a Means to an End?,” International Philosophical
Quarterly 41 (2001): 77-89, at 85; Thomas A. Cavanaugh, Double-Effect Reasoning:
Doing Good and Avoiding Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2006), 112-13; Jensen,
“Causal Constraints,” 281.
35
Tollefsen, “First Person Account,” 450; Lee, “Distinguishing between What Is
Intended and Foreseen Side Effects,” 245 n. 26.

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labor is a narrowing of the head sufficient to let the baby pass
through the mother’s pelvis. Sometimes, indeed, temporary
compression suffices for this narrowing. By the time the doctor is
performing a craniotomy, however, she has already attempted
this measure and found it insufficient. What she needs now is a
crushing. The “narrowed” head is now identical with a crushed
skull. Nevertheless, the despotism of descriptions so guides the
thought of Tollefsen and Lee that they deny (based upon
descriptions of other situations) the unified reality of the effect.
For them, the doctor does not perform a crushing but merely a
compressing.
When addressing the third question, Masek concludes that the
crushed skull and harm are distinct effects.36 They are distinct for
reasons similar to those discussed for the cyclists. The crushed
skull causes harm to the baby and a cause cannot be identical with
its effect. So similar are the two cases, thinks Masek, that he
cannot imagine separating the effects (of increased speed and
increased wind resistance) for the cyclists while identifying the
effects (of a crushed skull and harm) for the craniotomy case.37
Surely, however, the distinction between the two cases is not so
difficult to imagine.
The crushed skull certainly does cause the harm of death. It
also causes other harms, such as massive blood loss. A crushed
skull is not the same effect, in reality, as loss of blood. The two
descriptions correspond to two distinct effects. Perhaps the claim
of identity, however, does not concern these harms. Thomas
Cavanagh, for instance, seems to think that the effect of having a
crushed skull is itself a harm.38 This effect also causes other
harms, but these other harms should not distract us from the
harm of the crushed skull itself.
Suppose that Sam claims he never intended to harm the
zookeeper. He intended only to kill her. After all, the magnate
required only the effect of death; he did not require the effect of
harm. “What mattered to me,” Sam might say, “is that a mammal
was dead, not that a mammal (and a human being at that) was
36

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 672-74.
Ibid., 663.
38
Cavanaugh, Double-Effect Reasoning, 112-13.
37

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

harmed.” His claims are unpersuasive because we think that
death is itself harm. A single effect can be considered in diverse
ways, as we have seen. In this case, it might be considered as the
cessation of living activity and it also might be considered as harm
to the organism.
Another case in the literature provides a closer parallel to the
craniotomy.39 In order to test a new sword, a samurai warrior
waylays a passerby and makes a cut, clean through, from the
shoulder down to the opposite hip. When accused of killing the
passerby, the samurai protests that he never intended the effect of
death. He intended only to test the sword, making sure that it
could cut a person in half from the shoulder to the hip. It was this
cut—and not death—that he needed in order to achieve his goal.
The samurai seems to distinguish correctly between two
separate effects. The effect of being cut in half is not the exact
same effect as death. The death might occur, for instance, at a
slightly later time than the cut. But now suppose that the samurai
says that he never intended to harm the passerby. He intended
only the effect of being cut in half; the effect of harm did not in
any way help him achieve his goal. He might point out that being
cut in half is not itself harm because it causes harm. It causes
death, and it causes massive blood loss, and so on.
As with the craniotomy, we might concede that being cut in
half does indeed cause certain harms, such as death, and that
these harms are a distinct effect from being cut in half. At the
same time, however, we might insist that being cut in half is itself
a kind of harm (and a pretty serious one). The single effect in
reality has multiple descriptions in the mind.
The application to a third similar case is not difficult to see.
Spelunkers are trapped in a cave because one of their fellow
spelunkers blocks the only exit passage. They have enough
dynamite to blow their fellow spelunker to bits, thereby opening
the passage, but not enough dynamite to blow open a separate
exit. Joseph Boyle argues that when they blow up their
companion, they do not intend his death.40 Having one’s bodily
39

Thomas D. Sullivan and Gary Atkinson, “Benevolence and Absolute Prohibitions,”
International Philosophical Quarterly 25 (1985): 247-59, at 253.
40
Boyle, “Double Effect,” 307; Masek, Intention, 49-50

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parts dispersed is not the exact same effect as death. Perhaps
Boyle’s conclusion can be defended. Nevertheless, having one’s
bodily parts dispersed is identical, in reality, with a certain kind
of injury, although the two might still be distinct in description.
The well-informed nonphilosopher is not likely to be
confused over the real identity involved in these cases, although
he may be uncertain concerning its implications for intention,
which is a separate matter. Masek, however, in his argument
against the view he calls event identity, claims that it arbitrarily
identifies various actions (or various effects).41 The only evidence
he provides of this arbitrariness, however, is that identity can be a
tricky philosophical concept.42 Understanding Frege and Kripke
(in Naming and Necessity) as they discuss four different senses of
identity is difficult enough for a trained philosopher, and perhaps
nearly impossible for the well-informed nonphilosopher.
It is not clear what Masek hopes to accomplish by this argument. If difficult philosophical disputes become the standard,
then the well-informed nonphilosopher will be in deep waters
applying Masek’s own standard. What does the doctor “try to
cause”? Modern philosophers from David Hume to Bertrand
Russell have had arcane discussions of what it means to cause.
Philosophers have also disputed what it means to “try.”43 The
irony of Masek’s argument is that the nonphilosopher would
probably readily consent to various effects being identical. Only
by bringing in difficult philosophical analyses does Masek cast
doubt upon identity. In this case, as in many others, what is
straightforward to the nonphilosopher is (perhaps justifiably)
complicated and involved to the philosopher.
At any rate, if the argument works against the event identity
view, then it works equally well against strict accounts of intention. Rigorists distinguish between various effects. They distinguish between a crushed skull and harm, between speeding up
and increased wind resistance, between a crushed skull and a
41

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 669.
Ibid., 668.
43
Brian O’Shaughnessy, “Trying (As the Mental ‘Pineal Gland’),” Journal of
Philosophy 70 (1973): 365-86; Timothy Cleveland, Trying without Willing: An Essay in
the Philosophy of Mind (New York: Routledge, 2016).
42

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compressed skull, and so on. Distinction and identity, however,
are correlatives. Understanding one concept requires understanding the other. If the identity of effects is a hopelessly philosophically obscure concept, then the distinction of effects must
also be.
Of course, rigorists need not give a detailed account of the
meaning of “distinction” in order to rely on certain intuitions of
distinct effects, but then neither do so-called broad accounts need
to give a detailed account of identity. For both views, perhaps, a
detailed account would be ideal, but even in its absence the
well-informed nonphilosopher is likely (despite his inability to
understand Frege and Kripke) to recognize identity and distinction. He will not doubt that in reality the death of the
mammal is one and the same as the death of the human being, nor
will he question whether being cut in half is itself a kind of injury
(and not merely a cause of injury). At the same time, he will be
able to recognize that the descriptions are indeed distinct.
VII. THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTIONS
As has now become evident, a strict account of intention is
more concerned with distinction in descriptions than it is with
unity in reality. When needed, its advocates do distinguish
distinct effects in reality, such as in the cyclists example. What
matters to them, however, is not the distinction in reality but the
distinction in description, which naturally follows upon the
distinct realities. The strict account of intention, then, is
concerned with intending descriptions, not with intending
realities. It remains to see how this focus upon descriptions
follows from the fatal flaw of the strict account.
I have suggested, in the past, that this focus upon descriptions
is merely a matter of convenience, a means by which rigorists can
redescribe actions to fit their prior moral intuitions.44 Nothing
about their view, I argued, constrains them to focus upon descriptions rather than realities. Their action theory could equally
well focus upon realities as upon descriptions. The focus upon
44

Jensen, “Phoenix Rising,” 526-27, 544.

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descriptions is simply a choice that rigorists sometimes make and
sometimes fail to make.
On this point, I may have been misled. Despite the unity of
certain effects (such as a crushed skull and harm), rigorists insist
that intention is directed to descriptions of these effects, not to
the effects themselves. The propensity toward descriptions remains, even when the effects are clearly identical (in reality). The
underlying cause of the rigorists’ predilection for descriptions has
not been removed. Even when dealing with identical realities,
they consistently focus upon intending effects rather than
actions. This disregard for actions is the primary culprit encouraging a multiplicity of (sometimes convenient) descriptions.
It is the fatal flaw of a strict view of intention.
According to Aristotle, actions involve an agent that brings
about a change in some subject.45 When fire heats water, for
instance, fire is the agent that brings about the change of
increased temperature within the subject of water. When the
niece kills her uncle, she is the agent that brings about the change
of death into the subject of the uncle.
Human actions are more complicated because they involve
multiple powers acting in concert. The niece, for instance, uses
her reason, her will, and the power to move her body (the
locomotive power). She uses her reason to understand the effect
of death and to recognize the causes she needs to achieve this
effect; she uses her will to desire death as a certain kind of good
and to move her body; she uses the locomotive power to point
the gun and pull the trigger.
This example, because it uses (beyond reason and will) only
the locomotive power, obscures an important feature of human
actions. Adultery is a more illuminating example. It also involves
the locomotive power, but in addition it engages the power of
reproduction. Because of this latter power—and not just because
of bodily movements—adultery is a sexual act. In this case, then,
the bodily power engaged (reproduction) plays a clear role in
defining the action, over and above the role played by the powers

45

Aristotle, Physics 3.3.202a12-202b29.

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of reason and will, over and above, that is, any intention of
effects.
Rigorists, recognizing (within human actions) the central role
of reason and will, which are the distinctive human powers,
ignore the importance of other powers. Their account includes
only reason, will, and the effects that are brought about. Actions
are defined (on their account) in terms of the effects produced,
but only as considered under the descriptions that reason
proposes as attractive to the will. No other powers enter their
account of human actions. Consequently, the action of adultery is
perplexing. It is a sexual act because it engages the power of
reproduction, but a strict view of intention has ignored the
importance of this power. It has focused only upon effects, but no
effects—intended by reason and will—define this action.
Returning to Aristotle, we can see that the act of adultery
involves a change arising from the power of reproduction. The
power of reproduction is directed to the change that is new life.
The male agent introduces new life into the female subject of the
change. With reason and will, however, this change need not be
intended. Indeed, it may be opposed (by means of contraception
or some such thing). The adulterer need not intend to bring about
the effect of new life. Rigorists, then, are at a loss to identify the
effect intended.
The effect is hidden within the power of reproduction, which
itself is directed to the effect of new life. With his reason and will,
the adulterer need not intend this effect. He need intend only to
apply the power (which is directed to this effect) to some subject.
Human beings can even direct the power to a completely inappropriate subject, in which the effect cannot be brought about.
Someone might direct his power of reproduction, for instance,
upon a sheep. Nevertheless, we still have an agent using some
power, which is directed to bring about a change in some subject.
As a quick aside, we might note a corollary to the difficulty of
identifying sexual acts. There follows a corresponding difficulty
understanding the morality of sexual actions. Rigorists, for
instance, are perplexed by perverted faculty arguments.46 Contra46

Melissa Moschella, “Sexual Ethics, Human Nature, and the “New” and “Old”

FATAL FLAW

565

ception, for instance, is often identified as evil because it
frustrates the purpose of the reproductive faculty. Similarly, lying
is said to be evil because it opposes the purpose of the power of
communication. The perplexity of the rigorists is no surprise. It
follows naturally from the fatal flaw of a strict view of intention.
If sexual actions are not identified in terms of a power applied to
some object, then neither can they be identified as evil by
reference to a perversion of this power.
The inadequacy of strict intention extends to a whole host of
actions (beyond sexual acts) because the powers engaged (within
our human actions) need not be limited to the formal powers of
the soul identified within Aristotelian/Thomistic philosophy.
Consider the example of the niece telling the detective what she
did on the day of the murder. What power does she engage in her
action? Clearly, she engages the locomotive power, but she also
engages what might be called the power to communicate or the
power to speak.
The power to communicate does not fall within the list of
powers of the soul. Nevertheless, it is distinct from powers on
this list through its direction toward the effect of introducing
ideas (found in the agent) within the subject of the listener. The
niece’s action (like the act of adultery) cannot be identified
simply in terms of an effect intended. Just as the act of adultery is
essentially defined in terms of the power of reproduction, so the
niece’s act of telling the detective about her day is essentially
defined in terms of the power of communication, a power that is
itself directed to a certain change in a certain subject.
Other “powers” also enter into human actions. The act of
buying a red sports car, for instance, is defined in terms of a
power (the power to buy and sell) directed upon a certain subject
(a red sports car). This power is not in the formal list of powers of
the soul. Nevertheless, it is directed to the distinct effect of a legal
change of ownership. This power, like the power to communicate, is partly defined by human conventions, for ownership
is itself a human convention. Within legal systems, individuals are
given the “power” to transfer ownership.
Natural Law Theories,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 19 (2019): 251-78.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

Reason and will are clearly integral to these conventional
powers, but they do not play a simplistic role of intending some
effect under a description. Rather, reason and will interact with
the locomotive power. Through this interaction, the power of
locomotion becomes the power to change the world around us.
With the addition of certain social conventions, this new power is
further transformed into the power to make various social
changes, such as buying and selling.
These diverse powers can make a crucial difference between
actions that appear similar with regard to their effects. In the
craniotomy case discussed above, for instance, the doctor aims to
save the life of the mother, but the baby dies (and is otherwise
harmed). In discussions of double effect, the typical contrast case
is that of a hysterectomy on a gravid cancerous uterus. The
woman is pregnant, but not so far along that the baby is viable. By
performing the hysterectomy, then, the baby will die. Like the
craniotomy case, this case involves the doctor saving the life of
the mother and the baby dying.
In what way do the two cases differ? The rigorists find no
significant difference. In both, the doctor intends to save the
mother. In neither does the doctor intend to harm the baby.
Broad accounts of intention, however, are concerned not only
with effects and the formalities under which they are intended;
they are concerned with powers directed upon objects. The
resulting actions do indeed differ significantly.
Many broad accounts distinguish the two cases by way of the
object upon which the doctor acts. In the craniotomy, the doctor
acts upon the baby, introducing the change of a crushed skull. In
the hysterectomy, the doctor acts upon the uterus, and the baby is
only indirectly implicated. In the craniotomy case, then, the
doctor must intend the action of crushing the skull of the baby,
which is a kind of harm. In the hysterectomy case, the doctor
intends no action upon the baby at all. The doctor does not
perform an action of changing the baby. All the more, then, he
does not perform an action of harming the baby. The harm to the
baby is not an object of his power. He does not take his power to
change and direct it upon the baby. Rather, he directs his power
onto the uterus of the woman. As often happens in life, the

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567

change he thereby introduces causes other changes, including
harm to the baby. In the two cases, then, the actions bear little
similarity to one another.
The picture that emerges is not filled with agents intending
effects. It is filled with agents engaging powers, which powers are
themselves directed toward some effect. A complete account of
intention, then, involves not only effects. It involves all three
elements of action: the agent, the effect, and the subject. The first
element (the agent) is typically manifested by some power of the
person. The second element (the effect) is often simply the effect
to which the power is directed; it need not be the effect intended
by reason and will. Rather, this effect enters intention only
obliquely, by way of the power engaged. For this reason, strict
intention proves inadequate to describe the intention of most of
our actions, from sexual intercourse to eating ice cream.
Within intention, the third element—the subject to which the
power is directed—is far from negligible. Sam directs his power
to change the world (which he directs in particular to the effect of
death) upon the subject of the zookeeper, who is indeed a human
being. Sam does not simply intend death, or even the death of a
mammal, or even the death of a human being. Rather, he intends
an action; he intends to bring about death in this human being.
The subject serves as a kind of material element, which brings the
effect into the concrete world. By itself, the power is directed
toward some effect in general. Through the subject, it is directed
toward a concrete effect in this individual.
The parallels that this picture presents with the view of
Thomas Aquinas are not difficult to see.47 Aquinas emphasizes
that the objects of actions determine their character. Intention for
some remote goal might modify or extend this character, but it
does not create this character. Intention for a proximate goal is
precisely the intention to engage some power upon some object.
The action takes its character from this power insofar as it is
directed upon this object.

47

See STh I-II, q. 18.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

VIII. HOW A FOCUS UPON EFFECTS
LEADS TO A FOCUS UPON DESCRIPTIONS
In the world of a strict account of intention, the will, as
formed by deliberative reason, interacts directly with effects. In
the real world, the will reaches out to effects only by way of some
action that arises from a power distinct from the will. Sam does
not immediately intend the death of a human being, of a
mammal, or of anything else. He intends to engage his power to
bring about death, which is the locomotive power specified to
causing some particular effect. He directs this power toward a
certain subject, the zookeeper. This power is guided by reason,
but it itself is not reason. It is a physical power directed to a very
physical effect.
Reason, with its ability to abstract, can direct to mere
abstractions; it can direct the will toward mere descriptions of
actions rather than toward the concrete actions themselves. In
contrast, physical powers are directed to concrete physical effects
residing in concrete physical individuals. Reason must reach
descriptions by way of powers. It must reach the descriptions,
then, by way of the concrete effect realized in this concrete
individual. With his reason and will, Sam wants the death of a
mammal. He must reach this mere description, however, by way
of the very physical power to bring about death, which he must
direct to a very concrete physical individual.
Similarly, the doctor wants the size of the baby’s head to be
narrowed. She reaches this description, however, by a very
physical power, which narrows the head by way of crushing. The
physical power is directed toward a crushed skull, which is also
an injury or harm. The will, following the abstractive power of
reason, may be attracted to this crushed skull only insofar as it is
a narrowing of the head. The crushed skull is not appealing
insofar as it is an injury.
What is appealing, however, is an action of crushing the skull,
which is indeed an action of harming. The act of harming may
not be inherently appealing, but it is appealing as a useful means
to achieve the desired goal. The will cannot get at descriptions in
themselves. It can get at a narrowed head only by way of action,

FATAL FLAW

569

for it has no direct access to effects. The required action, however, is an action of harming.
Perhaps the will desires this action only insofar as it brings
about the effect of a smaller head. Nevertheless, the will does
desire this action, and this action is an act of harming. The physical action—the application of this power to this object—does not
distinguish, as reason does, between different formalities of a
crushed skull, between the formality of being a smaller skull and
the formality of being an injury. The will must move out to this
particular action, which is directed to this injury, even though it
does not desire the injury as inherently good.
In the world of a strict definition of intention, reason and will
move directly to effects. The intervening power, with its action, is
lost from sight. Reason and will, then, are free to move out
toward effects simply under this or that description. They need
not worry about the act of injuring; they need concern themselves with the crushed skull, but not under the formality of
injury.
Once descriptions become the norm, rigorists become prone
to use what are merely hypothetical descriptions, as we have seen
Lee and Tollefsen do with regard to crushing and compressing a
skull.48 Similarly, Elisabeth Parish compares firing a gun in
self-defense with the use of pepper spray, because in some
circumstances people do defend themselves with pepper spray.
Unfortunately, this description is merely hypothetical to the case
at hand, since the person does not have pepper spray but only a
gun.49
Furthermore, the focus upon effects prevents rigorists from
understanding so-called broad accounts of intention, which
emphasize actions rather than effects. Another case of identity
and distinction illustrates the point. Masek gives the example of a
psychopath and a philanderer, both of whom buy a red sports
car. “The psychopath tries to buy a car with a color that evokes
blood, but the philanderer tries to buy a car with a color that
attracts attention.”50 According to Masek, the event identity view
48

Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 672-73.
Parish, “Two Theories of Action,” 69.
50
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 663-64.
49

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

blurs the distinction between these two cases. The exact nature of
the blurring is never explained, but presumably event identity
supposes that the intentions (in the two cases) are identical
despite the distinct descriptions.
Significantly, neither the psychopath nor the philanderer is
trying to cause—or intend—an effect; both are trying to perform
the action of buying. Masek describes both intentions in terms of
actions rather than effects, which is unsurprising since the actions
do not fall within that category amenable to the focus of the strict
view of intention upon effects. Nevertheless, Masek attempts to
find some effects that might distinguish their intentions. He looks
beyond the action itself toward possible remote goals. The
psychopath wants the effect of evoking (in his own mind or in
others) the image of blood; the philanderer wants the effect of
others paying attention to him. Broad accounts of intention,
claims Masek, blur the distinction between these two intentions.
With their focus upon actions rather than effects, however,
defenders of broad accounts are likely to recognize two identical
actions: both the psychopath and the philanderer buy a red sports
car. The two differ not in the action they perform but in the
motives that give rise to the actions. Sometimes, of course, we use
a broader notion of action; within action, we include motive as
well as what is immediately done. The action of buying a red
sports car with the further motive of evoking the image of blood is
indeed distinct from the action of buying a red sports car with the
further motive of drawing attention. Nothing prohibits broad
accounts from adopting this extended sense of action; nothing
prohibits them from recognizing that intention concerns not only
the immediate action but remote goals as well. In no way, then,
need they blur the difference between the two.
Masek, however, blurs the difference between the action
performed and the motive for some further effect. The strict
account of intention backs him into this corner. Since the action
itself (buying a red sports car) has no immediate defining effect,
Masek must have recourse to some further goal. This reaction is
so automatic—given the paradigm of intending effects rather
than actions—that Masek misses the point of the argument to
which he is responding. The initial argument did not have two

FATAL FLAW

571

individuals, a psychopath and a philanderer, but only one
individual, who buys a red sports car.51 The point of the argument had nothing to do with his motive for buying a red sports
car, a motive that Masek must introduce in order to find some
effect intended. The point was only to suggest that in buying a
red sports car, he is also buying (and intending to buy) a car the
color of blood.
Masek himself concedes the identity of a red car and a car the
color of blood.52 He does not concede, however, that this identity
has any implications for intention. It can affect intention only by
some further effect intended. Unless the buyer is like the
psychopath, then, he does not intend to buy a car that is the color
of blood. Neither—on this rigorist account—does he intend to
buy a red car, unless something particular about its being red
provides distinct motivation. If he does not care about the color
but only wants an inexpensive car, then he intends to buy a car
but not a red car. The diverse descriptions of the unified reality
enter intention only by way of some effect that can be intended.
***
Broad accounts of intention focus upon actions, not effects.
Actions intervene between the will (guided by reason) and the
effect desired. They arise from some power distinct from reason,
a power moving out to real concrete effects in real concrete
individuals. Multifarious descriptions are irrelevant to these
powers. Reason, using these powers, is tied to an action that
moves out to these concrete effects in concrete individuals.
Reason might be concerned with these effects on account of a
particular description, but it must move out to the action of the
power, which is not concerned with descriptions but with
realities. Sam must move out to the death of a mammal by way of
the power of introducing death, which is not directed to
descriptions but to particular individuals. Consequently, Sam

51
52

Jensen, “Causal Constraints,” 286.
Masek, “Strict Definition of Intended Effects,” 674 n. 49.

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STEVEN J. JENSEN

must intend the action of killing a human being. What effect he
may or may not intend is irrelevant.
On account of its fatal flaw, rigorists overlook the action and
the power that gives rise to the action. Reason, with its penchant
for abstract descriptions, is given complete reign. The reality of
actions is lost, and actions become, like clay, the plaything of
reason to be shaped by the imagination.

The Thomist 86 (2022): 573-628

LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF CONCUPISCENCE
JORDAN OLVER
Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College
Barry’s Bay, Ontario, Canada

W

E LOVE WINE and other lifeless things in a different
way than we love our friends. We love our friends for
their own sake, wishing good for them and being inherently pleased by their possession of it. We love wine and
other such things as objects to be used, enjoyed, or possessed by
someone we care about; we do not love them fundamentally as
subjects for whom we wish some good but as goods we wish for
some subject.
Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, drew attention to this
difference and, through it, identified friendship as essentially a
benevolent love, that is, one that wishes good for the loved one
for the loved one’s own sake.1 In the thirteenth century, theologians looked back to Aristotle, and presumably to experience
itself, and distinguished between two kinds of love: the kind of
love one has toward wine they called concupiscence or love of
1

Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea 8.2. 1155b27-1156a5 (ed. I. Bywanter [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1894]): “ἐπὶ μὲν τῇ τῶν ἀψύχων φιλήσει οὐ λέγεται φιλία: οὐ γάρ
ἐστιν ἀντιφίλησις, οὐδὲ βούλησις ἐκείνῳ ἀγαθοῦ (γελοῖον γὰρ ἴσως τῷ οἴνῳ βούλεσθαι
τἀγαθά, ἀλλ᾽ εἴπερ, σῴζεσθαι βούλεται αὐτόν, ἵνα αὐτὸς ἔχῃ): τῷ δὲ φίλῳ φασὶ δεῖν
βούλεσθαι τἀγαθὰ ἐκείνου ἕνεκα. τοὺς δὲ βουλομένους οὕτω τἀγαθὰ εὔνους λέγουσιν,
ἂν μὴ ταὐτὸ καὶ παρ᾽ ἐκείνου γίνηται” (“With respect to the love of lifeless things, the
word friendship is not used, for [in such love] there is neither a return of affection nor a
wishing of good for such a thing (for it would be ridiculous to wish goods for wine, but
if indeed [one wishes anything for wine], one wishes that it be preserved so that one
might have it). But people say that it is necessary to wish good things for a friend for
that friend’s own sake. Those, however, who in this way wish good [to another] they
call benevolent when this wishing does not occur [reciprocally] on the part of the other
person”).
573

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JORDAN OLVER

concupiscence; the kind one has toward a friend they called
friendship or love of friendship.
Thomas Aquinas received the distinction between love of
friendship and love of concupiscence from his Scholastic predecessors, and in a sense from Aristotle as well. He used the terms
love of friendship and love of concupiscence throughout his
career, and the distinction associated with them eventually came
to occupy a central role in his thought on love. Arguably, the
distinction became so central that without it one cannot present
his thought except in a vague manner, nor can one solve the
primary problem associated with his doctrine of love, namely,
how love of others for their own sake is possible.2
Scholars have often treated of the distinction between love of
friendship and love of concupiscence. Most treatments, however,
have been part of a broader inquiry; rarely has the distinction
been the proper object of study. The effect has been that
scholars have rarely considered the two loves as a controversial
topic, one over which to argue. 3 But differences in interpretation do exist, some being more obvious, others more subtle.
These differences exist in turn because Thomas’s understanding
of love of friendship and love of concupiscence is itself difficult
to discern. Thomas presents the two loves in a variety of ways,
and it is not clear how we are to reconcile these different accounts. Some dedicated studies, accordingly, are needed to

2

Staples of this discussion include: Pierre Rousselot, Pour l’histoire du problème de
l’amour au moyen âge, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des
Mittelalters 6/6 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1908); Louis-Bertrand Geiger, Le problème de
l’amour chez saint Thomas d’Aquin, Conférence Albert-le-Grand, 1952 (Montreal:
Institute d’études médiévales, 1952); Avital Wohlman, “Amour du bien propre et amour
de soi dans la doctrine Thomiste de l’amour,” Revue thomiste 81 (1981): 204-34; and
David M. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas,”
Mediaeval Studies 58 (1996): 1-47. For a more recent treatment, see Christopher J.
Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity and the Problem of Love (Steubenville, Ohio:
Emmaus Academic, 2019).
3
More recent works, however, have begun to treat the issue as controversial. See
Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 53-70; and Peter A. Kwasniewski, The Ecstasy of
Love in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2021),
121-42.

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575

address the various textual difficulties and consider the diverse
interpretations in the secondary literature.
This study aims to provide such a treatment. With the help
of the secondary literature, we will first set out the questions we
will seek to answer in our inquiry. Then, to provide a firmer
foundation for interpreting Thomas, we will survey his predecessors’ use of love of friendship and love of concupiscence.
Afterward, we will examine Thomas’s own use of the terms
throughout his career. Finally, we will return to the questions
raised and draw conclusions about how we ought to understand
the two loves and the distinction associated with them.
I. SCHOLARLY TREATMENT AND POSSIBLE INTERPRETATIONS
Twentieth- and twenty-first-century interpreters of Thomas
generally present love of friendship and love of concupiscence
in one of four ways. Some divide the two loves as otheroriented and self-oriented: love of friendship is a disinterested
love of others for their own sake while love of concupiscence is
a love of something wished for oneself.4 Others divide the loves
as being of persons and of things wished for persons: love of
friendship is of a person, whether oneself or another, for that
person’s own sake, while love of concupiscence is of some good
wished for a person.5 Still others divide the loves similarly but
4

Nicholas Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 162: “The love of desire (concupiscentia) loves something or someone for the sake of personal well-being, but the
love of friendship loves someone as another self, and wants good for the other in the
same way as for oneself ”; A. Malet, Personne et amour dans la théologie trinitaire de
saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1956), 133-37; Jean-Hervé Nicholas, “Amour de soi,
amour de Dieu, amour des autres,” Revue thomiste 56 (1956): 26, 36, and 38;
Rousselot, Pour l’histoire du problème de l’amour, 8-18.
5
Diana Fritz Cates, “Love: A Thomistic Analysis,” Journal of Moral Theology 1,
no. 2 (2012): 16: “Aquinas calls this sort of intellectual love amor concupiscentiae or
concupiscence-love. He refers to it also as relative love. . . . We can consent with a
relative love to something as good for another person”; and ibid., 17: “Aquinas
associates direct love with amor amicitiae. . . . The person whom we love in this way
can be our own self ”; H. D. Siminon, “Autour de la solution thomiste du problème de
l’amour,” in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 6 (Paris: J. Vrin,

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JORDAN OLVER

add that the loves are not distinct acts, but two aspects or tendencies found in every act of love: in each act, one tends with
love of friendship to some subject for whom one wishes some
good and with love of concupiscence to some good one wishes
for that subject. 6 Finally, some identify multiple senses of the
two loves. Most notably, Guy Mansini identifies: (1) a broad,
metaphysical sense, in which the loves are divided as being of a
subject and of some good wished for a subject; (2) a stricter
sense in which love of friendship is exclusively of others and
love of concupiscence is exclusively of goods wished for oneself;
and (3) a strictest sense in which love of friendship is a love of
another that bears upon an honorable good (bonum honestum)

1932), 263; M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, “Le désir et l’existence de Dieu,” Revue des
sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1924): 165-66; Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas
on the Passions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 122-25; James McEvoy,
“Amitié, attirance et amour chez S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue philosophique de Louvain
91 (1993): 387, and 391-92. McEvoy presents the distinction in such a way that it is
evident, even if not explicitly asserted in all its parts, that love of friendship extends to
self and love of concupiscence to goods wished for others.
Geiger normally treats love of concupiscence as self-oriented (see Le problème de
l’amour, 100 and 117), but he formally describes it as involving three things: “a subject
who desires, an object that is desired, [and] a good, distinct from this object, for whom
this [object] is desired” (ibid., 60 n. 30). This description leaves open the possibility that
the love might extend to things willed for others. Geiger identifies love of self as a love
not of concupiscence but of benevolence (ibid., 55).
6
David M. Gallagher, “Thomas Aquinas on Self-Love as the Basis for Love of
Others,” Acta philosophica 8 (1999): 27: “In any act of love, there is a person who is
loved—a love of friendship—and at the same time some good willed for that person—a
love of concupiscence. These two loves constitute one act . . . a single act directed to
two objects, a person and that person’s good.” See also David M. Gallagher, “Person
and Ethics in Thomas Aquinas,” Acta philosophica 4 (1995): 56-57; and Gallagher,
“Desire for Beatitude,” 14; Gregory Stevens, “The Disinterested Love of God according
to St. Thomas and Some of His Modern Interpreters,” The Thomist 16 (1953): 512-13;
Wohlman, “Amour du bien propre et amour de soi,” 211; Michael Sherwin, By
Knowledge and by Love (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2005), 67, 93, and 156; Anthony T. Flood, The Metaphysical Foundations of Love
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 2; Steven J. Jensen,
Sin: A Thomistic Psychology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2018), 88; Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 53; Kwasniewski, Ecstasy of Love,
124.

LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF CONCUPISCENCE

577

present in that other, while love of concupiscence is a selfseeking love of some utility or pleasure not yet possessed.7
Although diversity in presentation need not signify diversity
in understanding, it may, and we can be confident with respect
to this topic that, in some cases at least, it does. For our purposes, it is the possibilities of interpretation that matter. The
four general forms of presentation suggest different ways we
can understand the two loves and provide three important
questions for our study. First, we will want to know whether the
two loves are divided as (a) other-oriented and self-oriented or
as (b) being of persons and of goods wished for persons. Second,
we will want to know how the two loves relate. If they are
divided as other-oriented and self-oriented, they will be distinct
acts. If they are of persons and of goods wished for persons,
they may be two aspects found in every act, though certain ways
of understanding their objects could preclude this possibility.
Third, we will want to know whether there are multiple senses
of the two loves.
Because the question of how the loves relate depends on the
precise nature of their objects, we must ask further questions
about these objects. The secondary literature suggests four questions to consider in regard to love of concupiscence. First, is
love of concupiscence always, or sometimes, only of the useful
or pleasant good and not of the honorable? Second, is it always,
or sometimes, only of an absent good? 8 Third, is it only of
external goods, or is it also of inhering perfections?9 Fourth, if it
7
Guy Mansini, “Duplex Amor and the Structure of Love in Aquinas,” in Thomistica,
ed. by Eugene Manning, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, Supplementa 1
(Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 187-88. William Mattison adopts Mansini’s account (see
William C. Mattison III, “Movements of Love: A Thomistic Perspective on Agape and
Eros,” Journal of Moral Theology, 1, no. 2 [2012]: 36-37). Kevin White’s presentation is
also influenced by it (see Kevin White, “Wanting Something for Someone: Aquinas on
Complex Motions of Appetite,” The Review of Metaphysics 61 [Sept. 2007], 15-16).
8
Mansini’s third, strictest sense of love of concupiscence suggests these first two
questions.
9
Geiger identifies the object of love of concupiscence as something external and
distinct in subject from the one for whom it is willed, while intrinsic perfections appear
on his account to be loved with love of benevolence or perhaps love of complacency
(see Geiger, Le problème de l’amour, 60 n. 30, 100, and 115). Miner’s account suggests

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JORDAN OLVER

is of inhering perfections, is it of substantial existence properly
speaking, or is it not because substantial existence is included in
the object of love of friendship?10
In regard to love of friendship, the secondary literature suggests two questions. First, some scholars understand love of
friendship as bearing upon substantial existence in a special way,
while for others it bears more on the more complete good of
the person.11 Is the object of love of friendship, we may wonder,
the person as possessing substantial existence, the person as
possessing the complete good, or simply the person as such?
Second, in question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae Thomas
declares that the good that is the object of love of friendship is
good in a primary sense, but in his formal treatments of the
good in question 21 of the disputed questions De veritate and
question 5 of the Prima pars he explains the good through the
notions of the desirable, the end, and the perfect or the
perfective. While these notions seem readily applicable to the
object of love of concupiscence, it is not clear how, or even if,
a similar understanding of the object: “Amor concupiscentiae is the inclination that any
animal . . . has for various objects that are distinct from the animal. . . . Objects distinct
from the self are loved with amor concupiscentiae. We desire them instrumentally for
the sake of something else” (Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 123). Gallagher,
on the other hand, identifies love of concupiscence as being chiefly of accidents;
secondarily, it may be of external things, such as wine or even another person, willed as
a means to these chief objects (see Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 17).
10
Gallagher’s account suggests this question. In “Person and Ethics,” 59, Gallagher
explains that love of friendship is of “subsistent goods,” while love of concupiscence is
chiefly of “goods that inhere in persons such as health, knowledge, virtue,” each of
which is “a perfection of a subsisting being, metaphysically speaking a second perfection,
which in some way perfects the substance, which alone has only its first perfection.”
While Gallagher might hold that substantial existence, like external goods, is a secondary object of love of concupiscence, his explanation here at least raises the possibility
that because substantial existence is a part of the object of love of friendship, it might
not be an object of love of concupiscence properly speaking.
11
Miner and Sherwin understand love of friendship as bearing upon substantial
existence in a special way. Gallagher in some sense does as well. Cates and Malloy, on
the other hand, would say that love of friendship bears more on the more complete
good of the person. See Sherwin, By Knowledge and by Love, 93; Miner, Thomas
Aquinas on the Passions, 126; and Gallagher, “Person and Ethics,” 59-60; Cates, “Love,”
17; and Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 59-60. Malloy addresses Sherwin’s position
in ibid., 60 n. 73.

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they apply to that of love of friendship. In what sense, we may
ask, is the object of love of friendship good, and good in a
primary sense?12
The secondary literature also raises a more general question.
Some scholars assert or seem to imply that love of friendship
and love of concupiscence exist only at the level of rational
appetite, while others maintain that the two loves, or something
analogous to them, exists at the sensitive and natural levels as
well.13 Does the distinction between love of friendship and love
of concupiscence, we may wonder, pertain only to rational love,
or does it pertain to love as a whole?
These questions will guide our inquiry. Those that arise from
the general forms of presentation will play a structural role. The
first such question, whether love of friendship is exclusively of
others and love of concupiscence exclusively of goods wished
12

The secondary literature suggests this question indirectly inasmuch as we find in
the literature certain claims that we could take as providing an answer. Miner and
Sherwin, as noted, claim that love of friendship bears on substantial existence in a
special way while Stevens and McEvoy identify love of friendship’s object with the
notion of the end (Stevens, “Disinterested Love of God,” 512, and McEvoy, “Amitié,
attirance et amour,” 392). Perhaps, then, the object’s superiority is due to the superiority
of substantial existence over accidental existence or to the superiority of the end over
the means.
13
Wohlman explicitly denies that the distinction exists at anything other than the
rational level (Wohlman, “Amour du bien propre et amour de soi,” 212). Gallagher also
appears to restrict it to this level, for he always presents the distinction between the two
loves as one of rational love or dilectio (“Desire for Beatitude,” 13; “Person and Ethics,”
56; and “Self-Love,” 26). Santiago Ramirez explicitly denies the distinction's application
to sensitive love and considers the treatment of the two loves in STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4 to
pertain exclusively to rational love (Jacobus M. Ramirez, De passionibus animae: In I-II
“Summa theologiae” divi Thomae expositio (qq. XXII-XLVIII), Obras completas de
Santiago Ramirez, vol. 5 [Madrid: Instituto de filosofia Luis Vives, 1973]: 83-84). On
the other side are scholars such as Miner, Malloy, and Vincent Héris. Miner rejects
Ramirez’s interpretation of STh I-II, q. 26 as arbitrary and boldly asserts: “A horse loves
its feed with amor concupiscentiae. . . . It loves itself with the amor amicitiae” (Miner,
Thomas Aquinas on the Passions, 123 and n. 10). Malloy holds that while the distinction
“has its most proper seat” in rational love, it exists in an extended sense at the
subrational level (Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 58). Héris seems to hold a similar
position, for he interprets natural (noncognitive) love of God as an “inclination analogous to the love of friendship” (Vincent Héris, “L’amour naturel de Dieu d’après saint
Thomas,” in Mélanges thomistes [Kain: Le Saulchoir, 1923], 291).

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for self, will guide our examination of Thomas’s predecessors.
In our inquiry into Thomas’s treatment of the two loves
throughout his career, this question will continue to be important, but it will be asked at the service of the more fundamental
question of whether there are multiple senses of love of
friendship and love of concupiscence in Thomas’s thought. In
the third and final section, the question of the relation between
the two loves will play a central role inasmuch as we will there
give special attention to the nature of love’s twofold tendency.
II. LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF CONCUPISCENCE
BEFORE THOMAS
While Aristotle influenced Thomas’s understanding of love
of concupiscence and even more so of love of friendship,
Thomas properly received the distinction between these two
loves from his Scholastic predecessors. Investigating how they
understood it will cast light on Thomas’s own understanding. In
this section, we will first look at William of Auxerre. While
William may not have been the first to draw the distinction, his
use of the distinction seems to have been the most influential of
its early uses.14 Afterwards, we will look at Philip the Chancellor,
the Summa halesiana, Albert the Great, and Bonaventure.
In his Summa aurea, William presents the distinction as part
of his solution to the problem of natural love of God. Dividing
natural love into the voluntary and the involuntary, he explains
that the involuntary is of two kinds, one had in common with
other animals and one proper to us.15 Then turning to the other
form of natural love, he writes:
14
Praepositinus and Geoffrey of Poitiers may have preceded William. See Mansini,
“Duplex Amor,” 140 n. 4; and Thomas M. Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God in
Thirteenth-Century Ethics (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005),
224 n. 100, and 225 n. 112.
15
William of Auxerre, Summa aurea II, tr. 2, c. 4 (ed. Jean Ribaillier [Paris: Editions
du centre national de la recherché scientifique; Rome: Collegium Bonaventurae, 1982],
43). Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet dates William’s Summa aurea to between 1215 and 1220;
see M.-R. Gagnebet, “L’amour naturel de Dieu chez Saint Thomas et ses contemporains,”
Revue thomiste 48 (1948): 398.

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But voluntary love is divided into two, namely into concupiscence and into
friendship or benevolence. Concupiscence is the love by which we love all that
we desire to enjoy or wish to have, just as someone is said to love wine,
because he seeks to enjoy it. The love which is called friendship is that by
which we love all those whose good we will, that is, those whose goods we
rejoice over.16

The distinction, however, pertains not only to natural, voluntary love, but also to charity: “By each love,” adds William,
“whether by concupiscence or by benevolence, we love God
[both] through nature without the help of grace and through
grace.”17
Interpretation of William depends on three questions. The
first and most important is whether the division of voluntary
love is exhaustive. Prima facie, William’s claim that “voluntary
love is divided into two” suggests that it is exhaustive. If so,
then anything loved with a natural voluntary love must be loved
with one of these loves.
The second question concerns the scope of voluntary love.
Can we love our self and goods wished for others with a
voluntary love? If we can, then, provided that the division of
voluntary love is exhaustive, we must love our self with
friendship or benevolence-love, for we properly love our self as
someone “whose goods we rejoice over.” Likewise, we must
love goods wished for others with concupiscence-love, for
clearly we do not love such goods with benevolence.18
The third question is whether the terms friendship and
benevolence are interchangeable. In the Nicomachean Ethics
16
William of Auxerre, Summa aurea II, tr. 2, c. 4 (Ribaillier, ed., 43): “Dilectio
autem voluntaria dividitur in duas, scilicet in concupiscentiam et in amicitiam sive
benivolentiam. Concupiscentia est dilectio qua diligimus omne illud quo frui appetimus
vel quod habere volumus, sicut aliquis dicitur diligere vinum, quia appetit frui eo.
Dilectio que dicitur amicitia est qua diligimus omne illud cuius bonum volumus, id est
cuius bonis congratulamur.” For readability, I have translated the singular neuter illud as
“those.”
17
Ibid.: “Utraque dilectione, sive concupiscentia, sive benivolentia, diligimus Deum
per naturam sine adiutorio gratie et per gratiam.”
18
William’s definition of concupiscence-love, if taken strictly, precludes voluntary
love of goods wished for others. It is not clear, however, that he intends it to be taken
strictly.

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JORDAN OLVER

(8.2), from which William appears to be drawing, the terms are
not interchangeable: friendship is a kind of benevolence, one
that is mutually recognized and reciprocated by another person.
William himself, however, moves between the terms in a way
that suggests interchangeability, and the definition of friendshiplove he provides makes no mention of mutual recognition or
reciprocation, nor does it even require that the love be of
another person. If the terms are indeed interchangeable, and if
we can love our self with a natural voluntary love, then he is
using friendship in a broad sense that allows it to include love of
self. If, however, the terms are not simply interchangeable, then
presumably benevolence is broader and friendship names a kind
of benevolence. In this case, we might love our self with
benevolence but not with friendship, properly speaking.
It is difficult to answer these questions with certitude, though
we can say that the division seems exhaustive and friendship and
benevolence seem interchangeable. For our purposes, however,
the inherent logic of William’s distinction and how others understood his distinction are at least as important as how he himself understood it. Whatever William thought, concupiscencelove should extend to goods wished for others, provided that
concupiscence and benevolence give an exhaustive division of
modes of love. These goods are objects of love just as much as
wine is, for (1) they are desirable and pleasing to us, though as
something to be possessed not by our self but by another we
care about; and (2) our love for them is just as voluntary as it is
for wine wished for oneself. As for how others understood
William, Albert the Great thought William considered the self to
be loved with friendship-love. 19 Thomas also appears to have
interpreted William in this way.20
19

See below, n. 29.
In his treatments of natural love of God above self, Thomas normally presents, and
opposes, the position of “certain persons” who hold that by nature apart from grace, a
man or an angel would love itself with love of friendship more than God. Thomas seems
to have William principally in mind, for the position of these “certain persons” closely
resembles that of William. See II Sent., d. 3, q. 4, a. 1; III Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 3
(Scriptum super sententiis magistri Petri Lombardi, 4 vols., ed. Pierre Mandonnet and
Maria Fabianus Moos [Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929-47]); Quodl. I, q. 4, a. 3 (Quaestiones
20

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583

Philip the Chancellor seems primarily responsible for making
love of friendship (dilectio amicitae) and love of concupiscence
(dilectio concupiscentiae) the standard terms with which to express the distinction. In his treatment of angelic love of God in
the Summa de bono, written shortly after William’s Summa
aurea, Philip recounts the position of those who “distinguish
voluntary love into concupiscence and friendship.”21 “Love of
concupiscence,” he explains, “is that by which we will a thing
for ourselves, the love of friendship that by which we will the
good of, or for, that which we love.”22 Philip uses the plural to
speak of those who hold this position, but he clearly has
William particularly, if not exclusively, in mind. He presents
William’s concupiscence as self-oriented, but the definition he
gives of William’s friendship leaves open the possibility of it
being had towards oneself. Philip, however, does not appear to
make the distinction his own, for, as Mansini remarks, it seems
to play no role in his own solution.23 Because subsequent theologians adopted Philip’s solution to the problem of natural,
angelic love of God, his primary contribution to the history of
the distinction we are studying lies in establishing both the
distinction’s place in subsequent treatments of love of God
Quodlibetales, ed. Raymund Spiazzi [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1949]); and STh I,
q. 60, a. 5 (Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M., vol. 4-12 [Rome: Commisio Leonina,
1882-]).
In STh I, q. 60, a. 3, Thomas seems to understand William to have extended love of
friendship to self. There, Thomas distinguishes between two modes of love and then
notes that “certain persons” call these modes friendship and concupiscence. In what
follows, it is evident that an angel’s love of self is the former kind—what “certain persons” call friendship. Again, Thomas seems to have William primarily, if not exclusively,
in mind, for concupiscence and friendship are William’s terms; those who come after
William speak of love of concupiscence and love of friendship.
21
Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono (ed. Nikolaus Wicki, Corpus philosophorum Medii Aevi Opera philosophica Mediae Aetatis selecta, 2 [Bern: Franke, 1985],
1:89): “Distinguunt etiam dilectionem voluntariam in concupiscentiam et amicitiam.”
Gagnebet dates the Summa de bono to sometime after 1228 (Gagnebet, “L’amour
naturel de Dieu,” 400).
22
Summa de bono, 1:89: “Dilectio concupiscentie est qua nobis volumus rem,
dilectio amicitie qua volumus bonum eius vel ei quod diligimus.” I interpret eius and ei
as neuters and quod as picking up these rather than bonum.
23
Mansini, “Duplex Amor,” 156.

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JORDAN OLVER

above self and its expression in terms of love of friendship and
love of concupiscence.
We find William’s distinction, expressed with Philip’s terminology, in the Summa halesiana, a work begun by Alexander
of Hales but completed by later Franciscans.24 We first encounter the distinction in the treatment of the angels’ natural love of
self:
There is a love of friendship and a love of concupiscence. Love of
concupiscence is either with respect to the desired object [concupiscibilis] or
with respect to that for whom it is desired; love of friendship tends to
another—love of concupiscence does so as well [i.e. tend to another] by
reason of that which is desired, but not by reason of that for whom it is
desired, for someone desires something for oneself. Beyond this there is a love
of pleasingness.25

This presentation is peculiar in that it identifies two objects for
love of concupiscence: the desired good and the one for whom
it is desired. Since this love is then said to be of another only in
terms of what is desired, it seems that the one for whom the
good is desired is solely the self. The desired good, on the other
hand, appears restricted to something external. As for love of
friendship, we are told only that it “tends to another.” Whereas
William’s division of the two loves potentially allows for love of
friendship for self and other-oriented love of concupiscence, the
division here seemingly does not. The presentation is also
24

According to R. E. Houser and Timothy Noone, the Summa halesiana was “begun
by Alexander of Hales before his death in 1245 [and] completed by John of La Rochelle
and William of Middleton, and other Franciscans, perhaps including Bonaventure,
sometime after 1260” (Bonaventure, Commentary on the Sentences: Philosophy of God,
trans. by R. E. Houser and Timothy Noone [Saint Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan
Institute Publications, 2013], 88). Elsewhere, they identify the Summa halesiana as
being “mainly the work of John of La Rochelle . . . and William of Melitona”
(“Introduction,” in ibid., 20).
25
Alexander of Hales, Summa Theologica (Summa halesiana), lib. 2, p. 1, inq. 2,
tract. 3, sect. 2, q. 2, tit. 1, d. 2, m. 1, c. 1, a. 2, prob. 2, part. 1 (vol. 2 [Quaracchi:
Collegium s. Bonaventurae, 1924], 217): “Est dilectio amicitiae et est dilectio
concupiscentiae. Dilectio vero concupiscentiae est aut respectu concupiscibilis aut
respectu eius cui concupiscitur; dilectio amicitiae in alterum tendit; similiter et dilectio
concupiscentiae ratione eius quod concupiscitur, sed non ratione eius cui concupiscitur:
aliquis enim concupiscit aliquid sibi. Praeter hoc autem est dilectio placentiae.”

LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF CONCUPISCENCE

585

peculiar in that it mentions a third kind of love: the love of
pleasingness.
The distinction appears again later in the Summa halesiana’s
treatment of the first man, but it seems understood differently.
“Love of friendship,” we are told, “is that by which we seek
good for him whom we love on account of himself,” while
“love of concupiscence [is] that by which someone desires the
good because it is good for him or pleasant.”26 Love of concupiscence is again self-oriented, but it does not take a double
object, and nothing restricts it to external goods. Love of
friendship no longer exclusively “tends to another,” but, as we
soon discover, now extends to self, for it is with this love that
the first man loved himself.27 Since the two texts may not have
been written by the same author, it is probably best to take them
separately and not attempt to discern a common understanding.
While the Summa halesiana makes the distinction its own
and develops it, seemingly in different directions, Albert the
Great holds the distinction at arm’s length. Love of friendship
and love of concupiscence appear on several occasions in his
Commentary on the Sentences, and in no case does Albert
present the distinction as his own. In the first book, he presents
it as one that is poorly made by “certain persons” (quidam).28 In
book 2, he reports that, according to William of Auxerre, in
love of friendship, “I will the good for myself or another”
(emphasis added) whereas in love of concupiscence “I desire

26
Summa halesiana, lib. 2, p. 1, inq. 4, tract. 3, q. 3, tit. 1, c. 1 (2:731): “Dilectio
amicitiae est qua appetimus bonum illi quem diligimus propter ipsum . . . dilectio
concupiscentiae, qua quis affectat bonum, quia sibi bonum vel delectabile.”
27
Ibid. (2:732): “Potest ergo dici quod primus homo diligebat se propter se, scilicet
amore amicitiae.”
28
Albert the Great, I Sent., d. 1, H, a. 22 (Opera omnia, ed. Auguste Borgnet [Paris:
Vivès, 1890-99], 25:50): “Quidam dicunt aliter, et non ita bene distinguendo
dilectionem, scilicet amicitiae, et concupiscentiae.” It appears Albert wrote most of his
commentary while Regent Master in Paris (1245-48) but completed the final version of
book 4 in Cologne in 1249. See John A. Weisheipl, “The Life and Works of St. Albert
the Great,” in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. J. A.
Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies, 1980): 22-25.

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JORDAN OLVER

things so as to enjoy them.” 29 In book 3, again assigning the
distinction to “certain persons,” he explains that love of friendship loves something on account of itself whereas love of concupiscence loves things as good for oneself. 30 Later he asserts
that those (i.e., William and perhaps others) who say that one
loves oneself with love of friendship “do not speak well . . . for
friendship is a relation implying diversity of lover and loved.”31
The distinction also appears in Albert’s Summa theologica, but
this work postdates some, if not most, of Thomas’s writings.32
In general, we may say that Albert does not make the distinction
his own, that he consistently presents love of concupiscence as
self-oriented, and that, in the Commentary on the Sentences at
least, he understands William of Auxerre to have held that the
self is loved with love of friendship, which he, Albert, thinks is
an abuse of language—and this is probably the reason why he
does not adopt the distinction.
Bonaventure, unlike Albert the Great, embraces the distinction and, like the Summa halesiana, develops it.33 In the first
29

Albert the Great, II Sent., d. 3, K, a. 18 (Borgnet, ed., 27:98): “Dicendum, quod
hic sunt duae opiniones. Una est Antisiodorensis [William of Auxerre] . . . dicens quod
est duplex dilectio, scilicet amicitiae, et concupiscentiae. Amicitiae est in qua volo mihi
et alii bonum. Concupiscentiae autem, qua desidero res ut perfruar eis.”
30
Albert the Great, III Sent., d. 27, A, a. 1 (Borgnet, ed., 28:509): “apud
quosdam . . . et ideo illi distinguunt duplicem dilectionem, scilicet amicitiae et
concupiscentiae, et dicunt, quod dilectione amicitiae aliquid diligitur propter se, sed non
supra se: dilectione autem concupiscentiae quae naturalis est, nihil, sed omnia diliguntur
ut bona sibi.”
31
Albert the Great, III Sent., d. 28, A, a. 2 (Borgnet, ed., 28:537): “Similiter non est
bene dictum, quod aliquis se diligat dilectione amicitiae: quia amicitia relatio est,
quaerens diversitatem in dilgente et dilecto.”
32
Albert the Great, Summa theologica II, tr. 4, q. 14, m. 4, a. 2 (Borgnet ed.,
32:200). Gagnebet dates Albert’s Summa theologiae to around 1274 (Gagnebet,
“L’amour naturel de Dieu,” 403). See also, Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God, 230
n. 69.
33
Bonaventure composed his Commentary on the Sentences between 1250 and 1252
(Houser and Noone, “Introduction,” 16) while Thomas wrote his between 1252 and
1256 (G. Emery, “Brief Catalogue of the Works of Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in JeanPierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert
Royal [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005], 332).
Bonaventure did some revision after becoming a Master but probably not much given
his commitments; see Houser and Noone, “Introduction,” 16.

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book of his Commentary on the Sentences, asking whether
charity ought to be loved by charity, Bonaventure draws a triple
distinction:
There is a threefold love, namely, [1] of friendship, by which someone wishes
the good for someone, [2] of concupiscence, by which someone desires
something for himself, and [3] of complacency, by which someone rests and is
delighted in the thing desired, when it is present.34

Love of friendship wishes the good for someone (alicui). This
someone, it seems, may be oneself.35 Love of concupiscence is
self-oriented (as it is in the other thinkers presented), but here
appears to be specifically of something as not present. When the
good is present, love of complacency, which seemingly corresponds to the Summa halesiana’s love of pleasingness, replaces
love of concupiscence. Later in the work, however, love of
concupiscence appears to subsume love of complacency.36
In book 2, the distinction appears in the treatment of the
angels’ natural love of God but is explained only through examples.37 Bonaventure provides a proper explanation in book 3:
“by love of friendship those for whom we wish the good are
loved, but by love of concupiscence those things that we desire
are said to be loved.” 38 This explanation leaves open the
34

Bonaventure, I Sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2 (Opera omnia [Quaracchi: Collegium S.
Bonaventurae, 1882-1902], 1:297): “triplex est amor, scilicet amicitiae, quo aliquis
optat alicui bonum; concupiscentiae, quo aliquis sibi desiderat aliquid; et complacentiae,
quo aliquis requiescit et delectatur in re desiderata, cum praesens est.”
35
In response to the first objection, which recalls Augustine’s fourfold division of
those who are to be loved with charity, among which is the self, Bonaventure explains
that this division concerns love of friendship.
36
Love of complacency does not, to my knowledge, appear in the later books, and
the language of “accepting” applied to love of complacency in this text (“amore vero
complacentiae, scilicet quod diligens acceptat ipsam dilectionem, qua Deum diligit”) is
later applied to love of concupiscence: to love by love of concupiscence “est aliquod
bonum desiderare vel aliquod bonum acceptare” (Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 28, a. 1, q. 5,
ad 2 [Quaracchi ed., 3:631]).
37
Bonaventure, II Sent., d. 3, p. 2, a. 3 q. 1 (Quaracchi ed., 2:125): “Contingit enim,
aliquid diligi dilectione concupiscentiae, sicut aliquis amat vinum, vel amicitiae, sicut
aliquis amat socium.”
38
Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 28, a. 1, q. 5 (Quaracchi ed., 3:630): “Dilectione
amicitiae illa diliguntur, quibus optatur bonum; dilectione vero concupiscentiae illa

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possibility of both love of friendship for self and love of
concupiscence for goods wished for others. Elsewhere in book 3
Bonaventure asserts this latter possibility:
love of friendship in a certain way includes the love of concupiscence, for he
who is a friend to another, wishes the good for him, and when he wishes that
good for him, he also makes himself desire that very wished-for good and
makes himself adhere to the same.39

This passage is highly significant. Bonaventure not only declares
that love of concupiscence may be of goods wished for others,
but he identifies love of concupiscence as being included in love
of friendship. While the precise relation between the two loves
is not clear, the inclusion of one in the other points in the
direction of a conception of the loves as two aspects found in
every act of love.
In summary, we may say the following about the distinction
prior to Thomas. First, most of Thomas’s predecessors present
love of concupiscence as a love of something for oneself.
Bonaventure, however, explicitly extends it to goods wished for
others. While he is in a sense an outlier, his understanding is the
logical consequence of conceiving love of friendship and love of
concupiscence as providing an exhaustive division of ways we
might love something. Second, while Thomas’s predecessors
sometimes present love of friendship as being only of others,
they more commonly seem to conceive it as extending to self.
While the name poses an obstacle—and Albert thought that
those who extended this love to self were abusing language—
the extension seems, again, motivated by the conception of love
of friendship and love of concupiscence as providing an
exhaustive division.

dicunt diligi, quae desiderantur.” Other comments about the distinction appear in III
Sent., d. 26, a. 2, q. 3; d. 27, a. 2, q. 2; and d. 29, a. 1, q. 2, ad 4.
39
Bonaventure, III Sent., d. 27, a. 1, q. 2, ad 6 (Quaracchi ed., 3:595): “amor
amicitiae quodam modo includit amorem concupiscentiae. Qui enim est amicus alii,
optat ei aliquod bonum; et dum optat ei illud bonum, et ipsum bonum optatum facit
concupiscere et eidem facit adhaerere.”

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III. LOVE OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE OF CONCUPISCENCE
IN THOMAS
A) Early Career: “Commentary on the Sentences” (1252-56)
Love of friendship first appears in Thomas’s writings in
distinction 17 of book 1 of his Commentary on the Sentences.
In response to the question whether charity is to be loved with
charity, Thomas explains:
the habit or act of charity is not loved by love of friendship or benevolence
which is not able to be of lifeless things, as the philosopher says, but by the
love of a certain complacency, according to which we are said to love that
which we approve and which we will to exist.40

Like William of Auxerre, Thomas conceives love of friendship
in relation to the second chapter of book 8 of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics. Unlike William, he contrasts love of
friendship with love of complacency, not love of concupiscence.
This contrast suggests the influence of Bonaventure, who in
response to the same question likewise distinguishes love of
friendship from love of complacency. Bonaventure, however,
also mentions love of concupiscence, which Thomas does not.
Why Thomas neglects this love is not clear, but it might be
because, like Bonaventure in his corresponding account,
Thomas understands love of concupiscence to be of something
absent, and so of secondary importance for the question, for
charity’s love for charity is principally of something present.
The term love of concupiscence and the distinction between
this love and love of friendship first appears in book 2 and in
the distinction’s traditional place: the treatment of angelic love
of God. Reporting an opposed position, Thomas writes:

40
I Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 5 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 1:406): “Sic autem non
diligitur charitatis habitus vel actus dilectione amicitiae vel benevolentiae, quae
inanimatorum esse non potest, ut Philosophus, VIII Ethic., cap. 1, dicit; sed dilectione
cujusdam complacentiae, secundum quod diligere dicimur illud quod approbamus, et
quod esse volumus.”

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Certain persons distinguish love of concupiscence and [love] of friendship,
which two, if one diligently considers, differ according to two acts of the will,
namely, desire [appetere], which is of a thing not had, and love, which is of a
thing had, according to Augustine. . . . Love of concupiscence is therefore that
by which someone desires something to make it his own, which is good for
him in some way. . . . But love of friendship is that by which someone loves
the likeness of something he has in himself in another, willing the good of him
with whom he has the likeness.41

These persons, Thomas continues, maintain that while the
angels naturally love God with love of friendship, they do not
love him more than self with this love. This position he then
argues is false. The angels naturally love God more than self. By
their natural goods they have a likeness to him and so a love of
friendship for him, but it belongs to the notion of friendship
that the lover love the loved person more than any good that
comes from that person, and there is no good in the angel that
does not come from God.42
Thomas here presents love of concupiscence as a selforiented love of some absent good and love of friendship as a
distinct act that is of other persons and concerns something in
them that is similar to what one has in oneself. He does not,
however, present the distinction between the two loves as his
own, but rather as one drawn by “certain persons” (quidam). In
so doing, he resembles his teacher, Albert the Great. He also
resembles Albert in that he himself does not use the distinction,
at least not clearly; love of friendship appears in his presenta-

41
II Sent., d. 3, q. 4, a. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 2:126): “Quidam enim
distinguunt dilectionem concupiscentiae et amicitiae: quae duo si diligenter
consideremus, differunt secundum duos actus voluntatis, scilicet appetere, quod est rei
non habitae, et amare, quod est rei habitae, secundum Augustinum. . . . Est ergo dilectio
concupiscentiae qua quis aliquid desiderat ad concupiscendum, quod est sibi bonum
secundum aliquem modum. . . . Dilectio autem amicitiae est qua aliquis aliquid, vel
similitudinem ejus quod in se habet, amat in altero volens bonum ejus ad quem
similitudinem habet.” This text presents certain difficulties for translation; for part of it,
I have relied on the translation of Peter A. Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin, and Joseph
Bolin found in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Love and Charity: Readings from the
“Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2008).
42
II Sent., d. 3, q. 4, a. 1.

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tion of his own position but love of concupiscence does not.
Furthermore, like Albert, he understands love of friendship to
be governed by the notion of friendship.43
Thomas begins to use love of concupiscence as his own term
in book 3. A new understanding of the love accompanies this
use. Thomas opens his account of charity by asking what charity
is—whether it is a concupiscence, a friendship, and so on. He
answers that it is a friendship which as a love includes, among
other things, a concupiscence.44 In the following treatment of
the objects of charity, he uses this understanding to explain how
the virtues are loved with charity:
something may happen to be loved with charity in two ways: in one way as
that towards which the friendship of charity is terminated. . . . In another
way . . . as that towards which the love, or dilection, that is included in charity
is terminated.45

This latter, included love “is called love of concupiscence,” and
by this love “a friend is said to love the health of his friend, and

43
Cf. Mansini, “Duplex Amor,” 151-57. Mansini reads this text very differently from
me. This difference is due in part to our different readings of Thomas’s predecessors.
Mansini believes the distinction became obsolete after William of Auxerre and Thomas
here encounters it as “now useless baggage” (151-52); while Thomas does not here use
the distinction, he finds “a certain promise about it” (157) and will soon incorporate it
into his own thought. Mansini also believes that Thomas’s claim that a friend loves his
friend more than any good, that is, any utility or pleasure, he receives from his friend,
reveals that Thomas here sees “the distinction between amor amicitiae and amor
concupiscencetiae [as] nothing except a statement of the Aristotelian distinction between
virtue-friendship, on the one hand, and utility- or pleasure-friendship, on the other”
(155, with 171). I do not believe this text provides sufficient evidence for this
conclusion.
44
III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1.
45
III Sent., d. 28, a. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:904-5): “diligi aliquid ex
caritate contingit dupliciter. Uno modo, sicut id ad quod amicitia caritatis terminatur. . . .
Alio modo potest dici aliquid diligi ex caritate sicut ad quod terminatur amor seu
dilectio qui in caritate includitur.”

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in this way the virtues are loved from charity.” 46 A similar
explanation is then given for charity’s love of irrational things.47
Here Thomas’s account closely resembles Bonaventure’s.
Like Bonaventure, Thomas conceives love of concupiscence as
(1) extending to goods wished for others, and (2) being
included in another love. Bonaventure, however, identifies this
other love as love of friendship, while Thomas identifies it as
the friendship of charity. This difference may be merely
terminological. Perhaps Thomas considers friendship and love
of friendship to be the same, or to differ only as habit and act.
The term love of friendship makes its first appearance in
book 3 in the following distinction. Preparing to explain why
God is loved more than self, Thomas writes:
since the object of love is the good, someone is able to tend to the good of
something in two ways: in one way such that the good of that thing is referred
to another, as when someone desires the good of one thing for another, if
[that good] is not had, or is pleased if [that other] has it, just as someone loves
wine inasmuch as he desires the sweetness of wine and rejoices in enjoying it,
not in wine having it; and this love is called love of concupiscence by certain
persons. This love, however, does not rest [terminatur] in the thing said to be
loved, but is bent towards [reflectitur] that for which the good of the thing is
wished. In another way, love is borne to the good of something such that it
rests in the thing, inasmuch as the good that [that thing] has, it is pleased that
[that thing] has it, and the good that [that thing] does not have, it wishes for it;

46

III Sent., d. 28, a. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:905): “et hic amor ordinatur
ad amorem alicujus quod principaliter amatur et concupiscentiae dilectio dicitur, sicut
amicus dicitur amare sanitatem amici sui; et hoc modo virtutes ex caritate diliguntur.”
47
III Sent., d. 28, a. 2. In an earlier draft of this section of book 3, Thomas
understands love of concupiscence as self-oriented, as he does in book 2. Editing this
draft, he explicitly notes this understanding as something to be changed. See P.-M. Gils
in “Textes inédits de S. Thomas: Les premières rédactions du Scriptum super Tertio
Sententiarum,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 46 (1962): 612-15.
Malloy discusses this earlier draft in Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 65-66.
There is also a terminological change in book 3. Whereas in the earlier books,
Thomas speaks of the two loves in terms of dilectio, in book 3 he begins to use amor,
though not exclusively. In so doing, he again resembles Bonaventure who uses amor
about half the time. Prior to Bonaventure, the distinction is normally expressed in terms
of dilectio. After the Sentences commentary, Thomas principally uses amor.

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and this is love of benevolence, which is the principle of friendship, as the
Philosopher says.48

We may love something in two ways: as something in which our
love does not rest but refers to another, or as something in
which our love does rest. The latter mode of love, love of benevolence, may evidently be of oneself or others: the definition
allows it to be so, and subsequent usage provides confirmation. 49 The former mode of love may be of things presently
possessed or not presently possessed by the one to whom they
are referred. Evidently, it is also equally of goods wished for
another and goods wished for self, for we may refer goods to
either.
Thomas’s treatment of the two modes of love in this text is
relatively unproblematic, and significant in that it is the first of
several he will offer over the course of his career. The text is
also informative about his understanding of terms, but here
matters are more complicated. Thomas does not himself use the
term love of concupiscence to name the first mode of love; he
only notes that “certain persons” use it to name this mode.
Properly speaking, we cannot infer from this text that Thomas
himself understands love of concupiscence to be of goods
present or absent. Nor can we conclude with certainty that he
understands others to conceive love of concupiscence in this
48
III Sent., d. 29, a. 3 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:928): “cum objectum amoris
sit bonum, dupliciter aliquis tendere potest in bonum alicujus rei. Uno modo, ita quod
bonum illius rei ad alterum referat, sicut quod bonum unius rei optet alteri, si non habet;
vel complaceat sibi, si habet; sicut amat quis vinum in quantum dulcedinem vini
peroptat, et in hoc gaudet quod [ea fruitur, non quod vinum ipsam habet]; et hic amor
vocatur a quibusdam amor concupiscentiae. Amor autem iste non terminatur ad rem
quae dicitur amari, sed reflectitur ad rem illam cui optatur bonum illius rei. Alio modo
amor fertur in bonum alicujus rei ita quod ad rem ipsam terminatur, inquantum bonum
quod habet, complacet quod habeat, et bonum quod non habet optatur ei; et hic est
amor benevolentiae, qui est principium amicitiae, ut dicit Philosophus.” For parts of my
translation, I have again drawn on that of Kwasniewski, Bolin, and Bolin. The text in
brackets is taken from the Parma edition found on Corpus Thomisticum.
49
III Sent., d. 29, q. 1, a. 5 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:934): “sicut Deum plus
quam seipsum diligere debet benevolentiae dilectione, ita etiam plus se quam proximum”
(“just as one ought to love God more than self by love of benevolence, so also [one
ought to love, by love of benevolence,] oneself more than a neighbor”).

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way, for Thomas may be connecting the first mode with what
others call love of concupiscence on the grounds of a general,
but not perfect, correspondence.
That said, it probably is the case that Thomas both understands love of concupiscence to prescind from presence and
absence and understands others to have conceived it in this way.
His predecessors normally used love of concupiscence to name a
certain love of God. If God, as object of enjoyment, can only be
loved with love of concupiscence when he is absent, some other
love must replace love of concupiscence when God is present.
We do not normally hear mention of a third kind of love.
Bonaventure does initially speak of a love of complacency,
which is of the good as present, but he later seems to abandon it
and to have love of concupiscence take over its function.
Thomas appears to have followed a similar course. He mentions
love of complacency in book 1 and presents love of concupiscence as being of the “not had” in book 2, but he never
mentions love of complacency again, and in book 3 love of
concupiscence seems to take over love of complacency’s role as
that by which charity is loved with charity, for it is with love of
concupiscence that charity loves the virtues, and nothing
suggests that these virtues must be absent.50
The term love of friendship, notably, does not appear in
Thomas’s division of the two modes of love. It occurs later in
his conclusion that “by love of friendship God is naturally loved
by man more than self.” This conclusion unambiguously asserts
that God is loved with love of friendship. We could also read it
as asserting, or at least implying, that the self is also loved with
love of friendship. We should, however, be careful here. If the
self is loved with love of friendship, presumably love of
friendship is the same as the love of benevolence mentioned in
the earlier division of the two modes of love. But why then does
Thomas not identify the second mode of love as love of
friendship, which is the normal counterpart of love of
concupiscence? Further, if the two were the same, we would
50

Furthermore, in the following article (III Sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 2), Thomas compares
charity’s love of concupiscence to a friend’s love for the possessions of his friend.

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expect to find Thomas using love of friendship occasionally in
the following articles of the question, but we find him only
using love of benevolence.51 It seems, rather, that while Thomas
may be trying to indicate a connection between the second
mode of love and love of friendship by identifying the mode as
“love of benevolence which is the principle of friendship,” he
intentionally does not identify the second mode as love of
friendship.
Why would he not want to identify it as love of friendship?
The only remaining text in the Sentences commentary in which
Thomas uses the term love of friendship (III Sent., d. 32, q. 1,
a. 2) suggests an answer. Addressing whether God loves all
creatures, Thomas explains that because “the notion of
friendship requires that [one] will for [someone] the good that
one wills for oneself,” God “loves only the elect with love of
friendship.”52 As in the treatment of love of God above self in
book 2, Thomas moves from a claim about friendship to a
conclusion about love of friendship. Accordingly, he seems to
conceive love of friendship as precisely the love one has for a
51

See III Sent., d. 29, q. 1, aa. 5-7.
III Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 2 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:1004-5): “amicitia . . .
addit aliquid supra amorem, quia ad rationem amoris sufficit quod homo velit bonum
quodcumque alicui; ad rationem autem amicitiae oportet quod aliquis velit ei bonum
quod vult sibi, ut scilicet velit conversari cum ipso, et convivere in illis quae maxime
amat. Sic ergo Deus, communiter loquendo de dilectione, diligit omnia, inquantum vult
eis bonum aliquod, scilicet [bonum] naturale ipsorum; sed bonum quod ipse sibi vult,
scilicet visionem sui et fruitionem qua ipse beatus est, vult quidem omni creaturae
rationali voluntate antecedente, sed voluntate consequente solum electis, quae est
voluntas simpliciter. Et ideo solos electos diligit amore amicitiae, alia autem diligit
amore communiter dicto, inquantum sunt bona” (“friendship . . . adds something above
love, because for the notion of love it suffices that man will whatsoever good for
someone, but the notion of friendship requires that he will for [someone] the good that
he wills for himself, such that, namely, he might will to keep company and to spend his
days with [that someone] in those things that he loves most. Thus, speaking of love in a
general sense, God loves all things inasmuch as he wills some good for them, namely,
their natural [good], but the good that he wills for himself, namely, the vision of himself
and the enjoyment by which he is blessed, he wills for all rational creatures with an
antecedent will but only for the elect with a consequent will, which is will simply
speaking. Therefore, he loves only the elect with a love of friendship, but other things
he loves with love in a general sense, inasmuch as they are good”).
52

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JORDAN OLVER

friend. Love of benevolence, however, is broader, for in the
second reply we learn that with this love God loves not only the
elect, but also irrational creatures.53 Thus, the most likely reason
Thomas does not identify the second mode of love as love of
friendship is that this second mode includes love of self, but he
understands love of friendship as the love we have for a friend,
and one does not properly speaking have friendship with
oneself.
The final appearance of love of concupiscence in the Sentences commentary occurs in book 4 in a discussion of the
ultimate end. Thomas writes:
the lovable is twofold: one which is loved through the mode of benevolence,
when we will the good of someone on account of himself, just as we love
friends even if nothing happens to accrue to us from them; [and] another
which is loved by love of concupiscence, and this is either the good that is in
us or [is loved] because from it some good occurs to us, just as we love delight
or wine inasmuch as it causes delight.54

Thomas then explains that because the object of love of concupiscence is referred to something else, it cannot be the thing
ultimately loved; that which is loved with love of benevolence,
however, can.
The distinction here resembles that in distinction 29,
question 1, article 3 of the third book inasmuch as Thomas
53
III Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:1005): “quamvis
nos non diligamus creaturas inanimatas amore benevolentiae, quia eorum bonum non
est a nobis; Deus tamen eas diligit amore benevolentiae, quia per hoc quod eis bonum
vult, sunt et bonae sunt. Tamen Deus quamvis non amet aliquid concupiscendo sibi,
amat tamen concupiscendo alteri.” The objection argues that inanimate creatures can
only be loved with love of concupiscence, but God cannot love them even in this way
because he has no need for their good; the latter part of Thomas’s reply provides further
confirmation that he no longer considers love of concupiscence necessarily self-oriented.
54
IV Sent., d. 49, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 1, ad 3 (Thomas Aquinas, In quatuor libros
Sententiarum, in Doctoris angelici divi Thomae Aquinatis sacri ordinis f. f. praedicatorum
opera omnia, vol. 7-11, ed. Stanisla Fretté and Pauli Maré [Paris: Vives, 1873], 11:467):
“duplex est diligibile: unum quod diligitur per modum benevolentiae, quando volumus
bonum alicujus propter seipsum; sicut diligimus amicos, etiam si nihil ex eis nobis
debeat accidere. Aliud quod diligitur dilectione concupiscentiae; et hoc est vel bonum
quod in nobis est, vel quia ex eo in nobis aliquod bonum fit: sicut diligimus
delectationem, vel vinum, inquantum facit delectationem.”

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again speaks of love of benevolence where one might expect
him to speak of love of friendship and once more identifies love
of benevolence’s counterpart as love of concupiscence—though
now the identification is simply Thomas’s own. Presumably, he
understands love of benevolence as he does in the previous
book, that is, as extending not only to others, but also to self.
The definition given here does not preclude extension to self,
and if the love were only of others, many sinful loves that treat
the self as the ultimum dilectum would seemingly be impossible.
Matters are less clear with love of concupiscence. In book 3,
love of concupiscence extends to goods wished for others, but
here it appears as self-oriented. Has Thomas’s understanding of
love of concupiscence changed?
It seems better to say that it has not. If Thomas understood
love of concupiscence as exclusively self-oriented, his distinction
would not be exhaustive, but he seems to intend it as such.
Further, he has reason for avoiding a complete and precise
presentation; he is here concerned with identifying both the
external, perfective object and the resulting inhering perfection
as being loved with love of concupiscence. If he were to add
that love of concupiscence may also be of something for another,
his presentation would be further, and unduly, complicated. It
seems better to say, then, that Thomas understands love of
concupiscence as he does in the previous book but does not
present it according to his full conception, but according to that
part of it pertinent to his immediate concern.
In summary, we may say that Thomas initially conceives love
of concupiscence as a self-oriented love of something absent and
as a distinct act from love of friendship. His conception changes
when he begins to use the terms as his own in book 3 of the
Sentences commentary. Perhaps influenced by Bonaventure, he
there conceives love of concupiscence as extending to goods
wished for others. These goods include inhering perfections,
such as virtue and health. The disappearance of love of
complacency suggests these goods may be either present or
absent. Thomas probably continues to understand love of
concupiscence in this way in book 4, even though he there
presents it as self-oriented.

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As for love of friendship, Thomas speaks of this love a total
of eight times in four texts. Three uses of the term occur as part
of a presentation of the position of others. From the other uses,
we learn that we do not love charity with this love, that we and
the angels love God with it, and that by it God loves the elect.
Perhaps more notable than its uses are its absences, for these
raise important questions. Why does Thomas not identify
charity or the second mode of love in his twofold division as a
love of friendship? Why does he not pair love of friendship with
love of concupiscence, except on one occasion when presenting
the position of others?
Our survey of Thomas’s predecessors suggests the following
hypothesis. From his predecessors, Thomas is aware of two
ways of understanding the term love of friendship: as (1) the
love one has for a friend, or (2) the counterpart of love of
concupiscence which together with it provides a division of
ways we may love something. Bonaventure often conceives it in
the second sense, and if Thomas is looking to Bonaventure he
evidently likes much of what Bonaventure does with the two
loves. Thomas’s explanations of love of God above self and
God’s love of friendship for the elect suggests, however, that
Thomas wants to use love of friendship as his teacher Albert
does, that is, as precisely the love one has for a friend. He sees
the other, more common use of the term as conflicting with this
one, for if love of friendship and love of concupiscence exhaustively divide love, love of friendship must extend to oneself,
whom one does not properly speaking love as a friend. The
result is that Thomas keeps Bonaventure’s use of love of
friendship and love of concupiscence within conceptual arm’s
reach, but never explicitly presents love of friendship as being
of self, and only presents love of friendship and love of
concupiscence as dividing love when reporting the position of
others.

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B) Mid-Career: “Summa contra gentiles” and the “Commentary
on the Divine Names”
After the Commentary on the Sentences, Thomas’s thought
develops in two important ways. First, Thomas begins to
present love as a twofold tendency. In Summa contra gentiles I,
chapter 91, he explains that among operations of the soul love
appears unique in that it “alone seems borne to two objects,”
for “love wills something for someone”: one of these objects,
the someone for whom we wish something, is loved simply and
properly; the other object, the something we wish for someone,
is loved accidentally and improperly. 55 The terms love of
friendship and love of concupiscence do not appear here, but
Thomas clearly has the division associated with them in mind.
The terms, however, do appear later in the work. In book 2,
Thomas notes that Aristotle distinguishes “love of friendship
from love which is a passion.”56 In book 3, he explains that if
marriage were permitted to those closely related by blood, “the
love that is from a common origin and upbringing would be
joined to the love of concupiscence.”57
The second development is found in the connection Thomas
begins to draw between the division of two modes of love that
we encountered in book 3 of the Sentences commentary (d. 29,
q. 1, a. 3) and a division of the good that parallels a division of
being. In the Commentary on the Divine Names (c. 4, lect.

55
ScG I, c. 91 (Summa contra gentiles [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1934], p. 83):
“cum aliae operationes animae sint circa unum solum obiectum, solus amor ad duo
obiecta ferri videtur. . . . amor vero aliquid alicui vult. . . . Unde et ea quae
concupiscimus, simpliciter quidem et proprie desiderare dicimur, non autem amare, sed
potius nos ipsos, quibus ea concupiscimus: et ex hoc ipsa per accidens et improprie
dicuntur amari.” The Summa contra gentiles can be roughly dated to 1259-65. Given
what Torrell says about the work’s composition, it seems Thomas wrote the above in
1260 or 1261 (see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:102). Love of concupiscence, while
not explicitly mentioned in this passage, seems conceptually present.
56
ScG II, c. 81 (Marietti ed., p. 193): “Aristoteles . . . in VIII, amorem amicitiae ab
amatione, quae est passio, distinguit.” The reference is to Nic. Ethic. 8.5.1157b.
57
ScG III, c. 125 (Marietti ed., p. 378): “adiungeretur amor qui est ex communione
originis et connutritione, amori concupiscentiae.”

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9-10),58 he explains that since love is that by which we relate to
something as our good, love varies in accordance with the ways
something happens to be our good. The first way good varies
accords with the way being (ens) varies: just as being is said to
be “properly and truly that which subsists” while in another
sense it is said to be that by which something exists in a certain
way, as by whiteness something is white, so good is said in one
way to be “that subsisting in goodness” or that “subsisting thing
that has goodness” and in another way is said to be that by
which something is good, as by virtue man is good. Accordingly,
love tends to the good in two ways: that which is good in the
first way we love as something for whom we will the good; that
which is good in the second way we love as that by which
something might be good in the first way. With this latter love,
we love not only inhering perfections, but also substances
productive of such perfections. Certain persons call the first
mode of love love of friendship or love of benevolence and the
second love of concupiscence.59
58

Some date the Commentary on the Divine Names to 1261. Others date it to
Thomas’s stay in Rome between 1265 and 1268. Some evidence indicates that later
parts of the work could only have been written after 1266. See Torrell, Saint Thomas
Aquinas, 1:127; Emery, “Brief Catalogue,” 346; and “Additions and Corrections,” in
Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:434.
59
Thomas’s teaching on the two modes of love in lectio 9 is essentially identical to
that in lectio 10. In the interests of space, my presentation combines the two texts. In
De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 9 (In librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus expositio, ed.
Ceslai Pera [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1950], nos. 404-5): “cum amor importet
habitudinem appetitus ad bonum amantis, tot modis contingit aliquid amari, quot modis
contingit aliquid esse bonum alterius. Quod quidem, primo, contingit dupliciter; nam
bonum dupliciter dicitur, sicut et ens: dicitur enim, uno modo ens proprie et vere, quod
subsistit ut lapis et homo; alio modo quod non subsistit, sed eo aliquid est, sicut albedo
non subsistit, sed ea aliquid album est. Sic igitur bonum dupliciter dicitur: uno modo,
quasi aliquid in bonitate subsistens; alio modo, quasi bonitas alterius, quo scilicet alicui
bene sit. Sic igitur dupliciter aliquid amatur: uno modo, sub ratione subsistentis boni et
hoc vere et proprie amatur, cum scilicet volumus bonum esse ei; et hic amor, a multis
vocatur amor benevolentiae vel amicitiae; alio modo, per modum bonitatis inhaerentis,
secundum quod aliquid dicitur amari, non inquantum volumus quod ei bonum sit, sed
inquantum volumus quod eo alicui bonum sit, sicut dicimus amare scientiam vel
sanitatem. Nec est inconveniens si hoc etiam modo amemus aliqua quae per se
subsistunt, non quidem ratione substantiae eorum, sed ratione alicuius perfectionis
quam ex eis consequimur” (“since love signifies a disposition of the appetite towards the

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good of the lover, something is loved in as many ways as it happens to be the good of
another. This, firstly, happens in two ways, for good is said in two ways just as being is.
For in one way, being is properly and truly said to be that which subsists, as a rock or a
man [does]; in another way, [it is said to be] what does not subsist but that by which
something is, just as whiteness does not subsist, but by it something is white. Thus in
this manner the good is said in two ways: in one way, as if something subsisting in
goodness; in another, as if the goodness of another, by which, namely, it might be well
for something. Accordingly, something is loved in two ways. In one way, [something is
loved] under the notion of a subsisting good, and this is truly and properly loved, when,
namely, we will that there be good for it; and this love is called by many love of
benevolence or [love] of friendship. In another way, [something is loved] through the
mode of an inhering goodness, accordingly as something is said to be loved not
inasmuch as we will that there be some good for it, but inasmuch as we will that by it
there might be good for someone, as we say that one loves knowledge or health. Nor is
it unfitting if also in this way we love some things that subsist through themselves, not
indeed by reason of their substance but by reason of some perfection which we obtain
from them”). In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 10 (Marietti ed., nos. 428-29): “Sicut autem
ens dupliciter dicitur, scilicet de eo quod per se subsistit et de eo quod alteri inest, ita et
bonum: uno modo, dicitur de re subsistente quae habet bonitatem, sicut homo dicitur
bonus; alio modo, de eo quod inest alicui faciens ipsum bonum, sicut virtus dicitur
bonum hominis, quia ea homo est bonus; similiter enim albedo dicitur ens, non quia
ipsa sit subsistens in suo esse, sed quia ea aliquid est album. Tendit ergo amor dupliciter
in aliquid: uno modo, ut in bonum substantiale, quod quidem fit dum sic amamus
aliquid ut ei velimus bonum, sicut amamus hominem volentes bonum eius; alio modo,
amor tendit in aliquid, tamquam in bonum accidentale, sicut amamus virtutem, non
quidem ea ratione quod volumus eam esse bonam, sed ratione ut per eam boni simus.
Primum autem amoris modum, quidam nominant amorem amicitiae; secundum autem,
amorem concupiscentiae. Contingit autem, quandoque, quod etiam aliqua bona
subsistentia amamus hoc secundo modo amoris, quia non amamus ipsa secundum se, sed
secundum aliquod eorum accidens” (“Just as being is said in two ways, namely, of that
which subsists through itself and of that which is present in another, so also good is said
in one way of the subsisting thing that has goodness, as a man is said to be good, [and]
in another way of that which is present to something making it good, as virtue is said to
be the good of man because by it man is good, for similarly whiteness is said to be a
being not because it itself is subsisting in its own existence but because by it something is
white. Love therefore tends to something in two ways: in one way as to a substantial
good, which indeed occurs when we love something such that we will good for it, as we
love a man willing his good; in another way, love tends to something as to an accidental
good, as for example we love virtue, not indeed because we wish it to be good but
because through it we might be good. Certain persons name the first mode of love love
of friendship and the second love of concupiscence. But it happens sometimes that we
even love some subsisting goods by this second mode of love because we do not love
them according to themselves, but according to something accidental to them”).

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This treatment of the two modes of love is Thomas’s most
extensive and one of his most metaphysically profound. Beyond
the connection between the division of love and a division of
being, to which we will return later, there are two other notable
features. First, Thomas again presents love of friendship and
love of concupiscence as the terminology of others. While he is
willing to use these terms as his own, he tends to present them
as the terminology of others when they would name an exhaustive division of modes of love. Second, in lectio 9, it
emerges that the love that is “called by many persons love of
benevolence or [love] of friendship” includes love of self, for
Thomas subsequently identifies the self as one of the four kinds
of things loved in this way. Given the way the two loves relate,
it follows that the other love, that which certain persons call
love of concupiscence, may be of goods wished for self or
others.
This latter feature of the account, however, gives rise to a
puzzle. In lectio 10, Thomas’s presentation of the two loves sets
up an explanation of ecstasy in which the two modes of love
connected earlier with love of friendship and love of concupiscence are now respectively treated as other-oriented and
self-oriented.60 How are we to make sense of this change? We
cannot say that he is using love of concupiscence and love of
friendship in a new and stricter sense, for he is not using these
terms at all. Is he using a new distinction, one related to, but
different from, the one he has just finished presenting? It seems
best not to interpret the text in this way. Rather, as with the text
in book 4 of the Sentences commentary, it is better to read
Thomas as understanding the two loves as he did before but not
as expressing or applying them according to their full
conception. Strictly speaking, the one mode of love still extends
to self, but such love of self is irrelevant because ecstasy can
only be of something outside oneself. Similarly, the other mode
still extends to goods wished for others, but while there is a
certain ecstasy had towards such goods, this ecstasy is reducible
to and included in the ecstasy had towards the other for whom
60

In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 10 (Marietti ed., no. 430).

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603

we wish these goods. To draw explicit attention to this fact
would complicate the presentation and add little.61
C) Summa theologiae
The conception of love as twofold tendency appears again in
Thomas’s later works De perfectione and De caritate.62 In the
Summa theologiae, we encounter it in the opening article of his
first treatment of love (STh I, q. 20, a. 1). In the response to the
third objection, Thomas asserts that “the act of love always
tends to two things, namely, to the good that someone wills for
someone, and to him for whom he wills the good.”63 The inclusion here of “always” removes the ambiguity possibly found
in the other texts: love is not sometimes borne to one object
and sometimes to the other, nor sometimes to one and sometimes to both; it always tends to both objects, that is, in every
act. As in the other noted texts, Thomas does not identify the
twofold tendency with love of friendship and love of
concupiscence.
The terms do, however, appear in the following article,
though they are not correlated with the twofold tendency. An
objection argues that God cannot love all things because he
must love them with either love of concupiscence or love of

61

Cf. Mansini, “Duplex Amor,” 173-74; and Kwasniewski, Ecstasy of Love, 133-35.
De perfectione vitae spiritualis, c. 13 (Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M.,
vol. 41b [Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1969], 84-85): “motus amoris sive dilectionis in
duo tendit: scilicet in eum cui aliquis vult bonum, et in bonum quod optat eidem” (“the
motion of love or dilection tends to two [objects], namely, to him for whom someone
wills the good and to the good that one wishes for that same person”). For the dating of
this text, see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:85. Quaestio disputata de caritate, a. 7
(ed. P. A. Odetto, in Quaestiones disputatae, v. 2 [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1949],
p. 771): “cum amare sit velle bonum alicui, dupliciter dicitur aliquid amari: aut sicut id
cui volumus bonum, aut sicut bonum quod volumus alicui” (“since to love is to will the
good for someone, something is said to be loved in two ways: either as that for whom
we will good or as a good that we will for someone”). The twofold tendency is here
implicit. Torrell proposes 1271-72 as a date for De caritate but notes that “scholars are
far from agreement.” See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:201-7.
63
STh I, q. 20, a. 1, ad 3: “actus amoris semper tendit in duo: scilicet in bonum quod
quis vult aliciui; et in eum cui vult bonum.”
62

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friendship, but he can love them with neither: not with love of
concupiscence because he needs nothing, and not with love of
friendship “because it is not able to be had towards irrational
things, as is clear through the Philosopher in Nicomachean
Ethics VIII.”64 In his reply, Thomas agrees in regards to love of
friendship: God cannot love irrational creatures with love of
friendship because friendship requires mutual love and a sharing
in the works of life. He disagrees in regard to love of concupiscence. Because “we desire [concupiscimus] something for
both our self and others,” God loves irrational creatures “by a
love of concupiscence as it were,” for he orders their good to
the benefit of rational creatures.65 Thomas here understands the
two loves in the manner proposed above in regard to the
Sentences commentary: love of friendship is precisely the love
one has for a friend while love of concupiscence is the love one
has for a good wished for oneself or another.

64

STh I, q. 20, a. 2, obj. 3: “Praeterea, duplex est amor, scilicet concupiscentiae, et
amicitiae. Sed Deus creaturas irrationales non amat amore concupiscentiae, quia nullius
extra se eget: nec etiam amore amicitiae, quia non potest ad res irrationales haberi, ut
patet per philosophum, in VIII Ethic.”
65
STh I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3: “amicitia non potest haberi nisi ad rationales creaturas, in
quibus contingit esse redamationem, et communicationem in operibus vitae, et quibus
contingit bene evenire vel male, secundum fortunam et felicitatem: sicut et ad eas
proprie benevolentia est. Creaturae autem irrationales non possunt pertingere ad
amandum Deum, neque ad communicationem intellectualis et beatae vitae, qua Deus
vivit. Sic igitur Deus, proprie loquendo, non amat creaturas irrationales amore amicitiae,
sed amore quasi concupiscentiae; inquantum ordinat eas ad rationales creaturas, et
etiam ad seipsum; non quasi eis indigeat, sed propter suam bonitatem et nostram
utilitatem. Concupiscimus enim aliquid et nobis et aliis” (“Friendship is only able to be
had towards rational creatures with whom there may be mutual affection and a sharing
in the works of life and for whom things may come about well or badly according to
fortune and happiness, just as also towards these there is benevolence properly speaking.
Irrational creatures, however, are not able to love God or to share in the intellectual and
blessed life with which God lives. Thus, properly speaking, God does not love irrational
creatures by a love of friendship but by a love of concupiscence as it were, inasmuch as
he orders them to rational creatures and even to himself, not as if he might need them,
but on account of his goodness and our utility, for we desire something for both our self
and others”).

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Thomas treats love again in question 60 of the Prima pars.
Preparing to explain an angel’s love of self, he distinguishes two
ways something might be loved:
Since love is of the good, but the good is both in substance and in accident, as
is clear from Nicomachean Ethics I, something is loved in two ways: in one
way as a subsisting good; in another as an accidental or inhering good. That
which is loved as a subsisting good is loved as that for which someone wills
the good, but that which is desired for another is loved as an accidental or
inhering good, just as knowledge is loved, not that it might be good, but that
it might be had. And this mode of love certain persons name concupiscence,
but the first [they name] friendship.66

This account is similar to that in the Commentary on the Divine
Names: because the object of love is the good, a distinction in
modes of love follows a distinction in the good. Again, Thomas
does not himself give these modes of love names; he merely
connects them with names used by “certain persons,” in this
case friendship and concupiscence, the names used by William of
Auxerre. Thomas perhaps does so because, as suggested, he
wishes to understand love of friendship as precisely the love one
has for a friend, but if he were himself to identify the first mode
as friendship or love of friendship, it would follow from the
mode’s definition and subsequent use that friendship or love of
friendship could properly be of oneself.
Up to this point, Thomas’s treatment of the two loves
resembles that found in the Sentences commentary and later. We
find something new in the Prima secundae. In question 26,
article 4, within the broader treatment of love as a passion,
Thomas asks whether love may be fittingly divided into love of
friendship and love of concupiscence.67 He responds:
66
STh I, q. 60, a. 3: “cum amor sit boni, bonum autem sit et in substantia et in
accidente, ut patet I Ethic., dupliciter aliquid amatur: uno modo, ut bonum subsistens;
alio modo, ut bonum accidentale sive inhaerens. Illud quidem amatur ut bonum
subsistens, quod sic amatur ut ei aliquis velit bonum. Ut bonum vero accidentale seu
inhaerens amatur id quod desideratur alteri, sicut amatur scientia, non ut ipsa sit bona,
sed ut habeatur. Et hunc modum amoris quidam nominaverunt concupiscentiam:
primum vero amicitiam.”
67
Prior to this text, love of friendship appears explicitly, and love of concupiscence
implicitly, in STh I-II, q. 2, a. 7, ad 2: “beatitudo maxime amatur tanquam bonum

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as the Philosopher says in Rhetoric II, “to love is to will the good for someone.”
Thus the motion of love tends to two [things]: namely, to the good that someone wills for someone, either for himself or for another, and to that one [illud]
for whom he wills the good. Therefore, love of concupiscence is had toward
that good that someone wills for another; love of friendship is had toward
that one [illud] for whom someone wills the good.68

He then proceeds to explain the relation between the two loves:
This division, however, is according to prior and posterior, for that which is
loved by love of friendship is loved simply and through itself, but what is
loved by love of concupiscence is not loved simply and according to itself but
is loved for another. Just as being simply speaking [simpliciter] is that which
has existence, but being in a secondary sense [secundum quid] is that which is
in another, so the good, which is converted with being, is simply speaking that
which itself has goodness, but that which is the good of another is good in a
secondary sense. Consequently, the love by which something is loved such that
there might be good for it is love simply speaking, but the love by which
something is loved such that it might be the good of another is love in a
secondary sense.69

concupitum: amicus autem amatur tanquam id cui concupiscitur bonum; et sic etiam
homo amat seipsum. Unde non est eadem ratio amoris utrobique. Utrum autem amore
amicitiae aliquid homo supra se amet, erit locus considerandi cum de caritate agetur”
(“beatitude is preeminently loved as a concupiscible good, but a friend is loved as that
for whom the good is desired, and in this way also a man loves himself; whence there is
not the same notion of love in both cases. But whether by love of friendship man might
love something above himself there will be place to consider later when charity is
treated”).
68
STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4: “sicut Philosophus dicit in II Rhetoric., amare est velle alicui
bonum. Sic ergo motus amoris in duo tendit: scilicet in bonum quod quis vult alicui, vel
sibi vel alii; et in illud cui vult bonum. Ad illud ergo bonum quod quis vult alteri,
habetur amor concupiscentiae: ad illud autem cui aliquis vult bonum, habetur amor
amicitiae.”
69
Ibid.: “Haec autem divisio est secundum prius et posterius. Nam id quod amatur
amore amicitiae, simpliciter et per se amatur: quod autem amatur amore concupiscentaie, non simpliciter et secundum se amatur, sed amatur alteri. Sicut enim ens
simpliciter est quod habet esse, ens autem secundum quid quod est in alio; ita bonum,
quod convertitur cum ente, simpliciter quidem est quod ipsum habet bonitatem; quod
autem est bonum alterius, est bonum secundum quid. Et per consequens amor quo
amatur aliquid ut ei sit bonum, est amor simpliciter: amor autem quo amatur aliquid ut
sit bonum alterius, est amor secundum quid.”

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This presentation is arguably Thomas’s most important. It is his
only ex professo treatment of the two loves, and it is the culmination of the developments in his thought that appear in his
mid-career, for here he explicitly connects love’s twofold tendency with the division of the good paralleling a division of
being. From the perspective of terminology, however, this text
appears to be a departure from earlier treatments (III Sent.,
d. 32, q. 1, a. 2; STh I, q. 20, a. 2). There, Thomas presents
love of friendship as precisely the love one has for a friend, and
in accordance with this understanding he does not himself use
love of friendship to name part of an exhaustive division of love.
Now, however, he appears to use the term to name part of such
a division and by implication to accept a love of friendship for
self.
What are we to make of this apparent change? We could
read it as revealing, in a clearer way, an understanding of love of
friendship that has been present for some time. Perhaps Thomas
has understood love of friendship as extending to self since the
third book of the Sentences commentary. This interpretation
would require us to read Thomas’s repeated ascriptions of the
terms love of friendship and love of concupiscence to “certain
persons” as implying acceptance rather than reserve. Alternatively, we could interpret this text as signifying a change of
mind: while earlier Thomas was hesitant to accept a love of
friendship for self, now he is willing to embrace it. Lastly, as a
third possibility, we could interpret Thomas’s presentation here
as one in which he is trying to have it both ways with respect to
the different senses of love of friendship: that is, he wants to
draw on love of friendship’s connection with an exhaustive
division of love while still understanding love of friendship as
precisely the love one has for a friend. On this reading, love of
friendship is had toward someone for whom one wills the good,
but not towards every someone; strictly speaking, it is not had
toward oneself.
The interpretive problem posed by this passage in question
26 is complicated rather than clarified by Thomas’s use of love
of friendship and love of concupiscence in the following two
questions. Questions 27 and 28, on the causes and effects of

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love, contain one third of the uses of the terms love of
friendship and love of concupiscence that are clearly Thomas’s
own. In all of the uses in these questions, Thomas presents love
of friendship as a love of another and love of concupiscence as a
love of some good wished for one’s self.70 Thomas’s use of love
of concupiscence poses less difficulty. In the formal presentation
in question 26, love of concupiscence very much appears to
extend to goods wished for others, and there is no reason to
doubt this appearance since Thomas has clearly conceived the
love in this manner in earlier texts (viz., III Sent., d. 28, q. 1;
STh I, q. 20, a. 2). We should understand love of concupiscence
in the immediately following questions in light of this formal
presentation, that is, we should interpret Thomas’s presentations of love of concupiscence, in which it appears as self70

STh I-II, q. 27, a. 3: “in amore concupiscentiae amans proprie amat seipsum, cum
vult illud bonum quod concupiscit” (“in love of concupiscence the lover properly loves
himself when he wills that good that he desires”); STh I-II, q. 28, a. 1: “Cum enim
aliquis amat aliquid quasi concupiscens illud, apprehendit illud quasi pertinens ad suum
bene esse. Similiter cum aliquis amat aliquem amore amicitiae, vult ei bonum sicut et sibi
vult bonum” (“When someone loves something as if desiring it, he apprehends it as if
pertaining to his well-being. Similarly, when someone loves someone with love of
friendship, he wills the good for [that someone] just as he also wills the good for
himself ”); STh I-II, q. 28, a. 2: “Amor namque concupiscentiae non requiescit in
quacumque extrinseca aut superficiali adeptione vel fruitione amati: sed quaerit amatum
perfecte habere. . . . In amore vero amicitiae, amans est in amato, inquantum reputat
bona vel mala amici sicut sua” (“Love of concupiscence does not rest in whatsoever
extrinsic or superficial attainment or enjoyment of the beloved but seeks to have the
beloved perfectly. . . . But in love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved inasmuch as
[the lover] reputes the goods and evils of his friend as his own”); STh I-II, q. 28, a. 3:
“in amore concupiscentiae, quodammodo fertur amans extra seipsum. . . . Sed quia illud
extrinsecum bonum quaerit sibi habere, non exit simplicter extra se. . . . Sed in amore
amicitiae, affectus alicuius simpliciter exit extra se: quia vult amico bonum” (“in love of
concupiscence, the lover is in a certain way borne outside himself. . . . But because he
seeks to have that extrinsic good for himself, he does not go outside himself simply
speaking. . . . But in love of friendship, the affection of someone goes outside himself
simply speaking because he wills the good for his friend”); STh I-II, q. 28, a. 4: “in
amore concupiscentiae, qui intense aliquid concupiscit, movetur contra omne illud quod
repugnat conseutioni vel fruitione quietae eius quod amatur. . . . Amor autem amicitiae
quaerit bonum amici” (“in love of concupiscence, he who desires something intensely is
moved against all that is repugnant to the obtainment and enjoyment of rest in that
which he loves. . . . But the love of friendship seeks the good of the friend.”)

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oriented, as presentations of this love according to a part rather
than the whole of his full understanding. If, with respect to
these later texts, we were to ask him whether love of concupiscence is also of goods wished for others, his answer would
simply be “yes,” rather than “yes, but not in the sense presently
being used.” Perhaps we ought to say something similar about
love of friendship, but matters are less clear because we do not
have any clear, prior instances of Thomas extending love of
friendship to self.
After the treatise on love as a passion, Thomas speaks surprisingly little of love of friendship and love of concupiscence.
There are two texts in which the terms are noticeably absent.
The first is question 46, article 2 of the Prima secundae.
Examining the object of anger, Thomas distinguishes appetitive
tendency into the simple and the complex. While the tendency
of affections like desire, hope, delight, and sorrow is simple,
anger tends rather to a double object. In so tending, it resembles
love. It differs, however, in that “love . . . sometimes regard[s]
one object only, as when someone is said to love wine or
something of this sort” and in that “both of the objects that love
regards are good, for the lover wills the good for someone.”71
The other text is question 17, article 8 of the Secunda secundae.
Treating of hope, Thomas distinguishes between a perfect love
“by which someone is loved according to himself, namely as one
for whom someone wishes the good” and an imperfect love “by
which someone does not love something according to itself but
so that that good might be acquired by him.”72

71

STh I-II, q. 46, a. 2: “Est tamen duplex differentia attendenda circa hoc, irae ad
odium et ad amorem. Quarum prima est, quod ira semper respicit duo obiecta: amor
vero et odium quandoque respiciunt unum obiectum tantum, sicut cum dicitur aliquis
amare vinum vel aliquid huiusmodi, aut etiam odire. Secunda est, quia utrumque
obiectorum quod respicit amor, est bonum: vult enim amans bonum alicui, tanquam sibi
convenienti.”
72
STh II-II, q. 17, a. 8: “Perfectus quidem amor est quo aliquis secundum se amatur,
ut puta cui aliquis vult bonum: sicut homo amat amicum. Imperfectus amor est quo quis
amat aliquid non secundum ipsum, sed ut illud bonum sibi ipsi proveniat: sicut homo
amat rem quam concupiscit.”

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The terms do appear in question 66, article 6 of the Prima
secundae. Thomas uses love of concupiscence to name the love
of that which we hope to attain, and he connects love of
friendship with charity, that is, the love of God, which hope
generates.73 The terms also appear in the treatise on charity. In
question 26, article 3 of the Secunda secundae, Thomas identifies the love by which we wish to enjoy God as a love of
concupiscence and the love by which we love God in himself as
a love of friendship. The absence of the terms in this treatise,
however, is particularly noticeable. As in the Sentences commentary, Thomas conducts the discussion in terms of friendship
rather than love of friendship. The only other text in which we
find love of friendship is the opening article of the treatise
(STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1). Having asked whether charity is a
friendship, Thomas draws on the Nicomachean Ethics (8.2) and
explains that “not every love has the notion of friendship, but
[only] the love which is with benevolence.” He then contrasts
this love with that had towards wine or a horse. This latter love,
he says, “is not a love of friendship, but [rather a love] of a
certain concupiscence, for it is ridiculous to say that someone
has friendship towards wine or a horse.”74 As in earlier texts
(III Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 2; STh I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 2), the notion
of friendship controls Thomas’s use of the term love of friendship. Between friendship and love of friendship there is little or
no difference.

73
STh I-II, q. 66, a. 6, ad 2: “spes praesupponit amorem eius quod quis adipisci se
sperat, qui est amor concupiscentiae: quo quidem amore magis se amat qui concupiscit
bonum, quam aliquid aliud. Caritas autem importat amorem amicitiae, ad quam
pervenitur spe, ut supra dictum est.”
74
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1: “secundum Philosophum, in VIII Ethic., non quilibet amor
habet rationem amicitiae, sed amor qui est cum benevolentia . . . sicut dicimur amare
vinum aut equum aut aliquid huiusmodi, non est amor amicitiae, sed cuiusdam concupiscentiae: ridiculum enim est dicere quod aliquis habeat amicitiam ad vinum vel ad
equum.

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D) Other Late Texts
Love of friendship and love of concupiscence appear in
several other texts that can be dated with confidence or
probability to Thomas’s mature period. Three of these texts are
particularly notable. 75 In De spe, Thomas asserts that love is
twofold: one imperfect and the other perfect. The presentation
is substantially the same as that found in question 17, article 8
of the Secunda secundae: imperfect love is the sort had towards
a good one wishes for oneself while perfect love is that by
which someone is loved in himself. The accounts differ in that
Thomas here notes that imperfect love is “named concupiscence
by certain persons” while perfect love “is said to be love of
friendship,” presumably by the same persons.76
In his Commentary on the Gospel of John (c. 15, lect. 4),
Thomas writes:
love is twofold, namely, of friendship and of concupiscence; they differ in that
in love of concupiscence, those things that are outside of us we draw to
ourselves when by this love we love other things inasmuch as they are useful
or pleasant; but in love of friendship it is the other way around, for we draw
ourselves towards those things that are outside us.77

75
Less notable texts appear in De Malo, q. 1, a. 5; In Philip., c. 1, lect. 3; In Gal.,
c. 4, lect. 5. For the dating of these texts see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:201-7
and 250-57. The words amor and concupiscentiae also appear together in In Psalmo 13,
but the concupiscentia there is the sinful sort, and the two words do not function as a
term in the way that the love of concupiscence we are studying does.
76
De spe, a. 3 (ed. P. A. Odetto, in Quaestiones disputatae, v. 2 [Turin and Rome:
Marietti, 1949], p. 808). Torrell suggests Thomas composed the disputed questions on
the virtues near the end of his second teaching period in Paris (1268-72); see Torrell,
Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:205.
77
Super Ioan., c. 15, lect. 4 (Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, ed. Raphaelis Cai
[Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1952], 384 [n. 2036]): “duplex est amor: amicitiae scilicet
et concupiscentiae, sed differunt: quia in amore concupiscentiae, quae sunt nobis
extrinseca, ad nos ipsos trahimus, cum ipso amore diligamus alia, inquantum sunt nobis
utilia vel delectabilia; sed in amore amicitiae est e converso, quia nosmetipsos trahimus
ad ea quae sunt extra nos; quia ad eos quos isto amore diligimus, habemus nos sicut ad
nosmetipsos, communicantes eis quodammodo nosmetipsos.” Torrell dates this work to
somewhere between 1270-72; see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:198.

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Thomas then connects the two loves with likeness, explaining
that in regard to love of friendship likeness causes love while in
regard to love of concupiscence it causes hate. This is the only
text other than question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae in
which Thomas presents love of friendship and love of concupiscence as (1) terms of his own that (2) together signify a
division of love. Here, however, love of friendship is emphatically other-oriented while love of concupiscence appears as
a self-oriented love.78 One of three things is occurring: either
Thomas is not asserting a strict division of love, or he is not
presenting the two loves according to their complete sense, or
he is speaking loosely on both accounts.
Finally, in question 4, article 3 of Quodlibet I, Thomas
presents the position of “certain persons” who claim that
“according to love of friendship man naturally loves himself
more than God.” “Love of concupiscence,” he explains, “is that
by which we are said to love that which we desire to use or
enjoy, just as [we love] wine or something of this sort, but love
of friendship is that by which we love a friend, for whom we
wish the good.” He then rejects this position, asserting that such
natural love would be perverse if “someone by love of
friendship might love himself more than God.”79 This refutation

78
Thomas also here connects love of concupiscence with the useful and the pleasant,
but we should not read him as restricting it to these goods. He does not deny love of
concupiscence for honorable goods, and such a denial would make this presentation
conflict with others. Thomas’s present purpose, which is to explain why likeness
sometimes causes hate, likely accounts for the connection with the useful and the
pleasant. Because each person loves his own good more intensely than that of another,
hate can arise when two persons are alike in desiring a useful or pleasant good and one
person’s attainment of it is to the detriment of the other. Such conflict does not arise
when two are alike in desiring an honorable good. This context also likely explains why
Thomas here presents love of concupiscence as self-oriented.
79
Quodl. I, q. 4, a. 3 (Marietti ed., no. 9): “Dixerunt ergo quidam, quod . . .
secundum amorem amicitiae naturaliter homo plus diligit seipsum quam Deum. Est
enim amor concupiscentiae quo dicimur amare illud quo volumus uti vel frui, sicut
vinum, vel aliquod huiusmodi; amor autem amicitiae est quo dicimur amare amicum,
cui volumus bonum. Sed ista positio stare non potest. Dilectio enim naturalis est
quaedam naturalis inclinatio indita naturae a Deo. Nihil autem naturale est perversum.
Impossibile est ergo quod aliqua naturalis inclinatio vel dilectio sit perversa: perversa

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is the closest Thomas comes to asserting a love of friendship for
self. It is not clear, however, that he is using the term as he
believes it should be used. He may be simply refuting the
opposed position on its own terms.
IV. INTERPRETATION
We may now return to the questions raised at the outset.
Principally, we asked: (1) how love of friendship and love of
concupiscence stand with respect to self-orientation and otherorientation, (2) whether there are multiple senses of the two
loves in Thomas’s thought, and (3) how the two loves relate to
each other. The first question guided our inquiry into Thomas’s
predecessors. The second, together with the first, guided our
examination of Thomas’s treatment of the two loves throughout
his career. As the first question cannot be answered without the
second, we will begin by attempting to determine the signification of love of friendship and love of concupiscence,
thereby addressing both questions together. Several of the more
specific questions concerning the object of love of concupiscence will also find here occasion for consideration.
Afterwards, we will turn to Thomas’s teaching on love’s twofold
tendency and discern answers to our remaining questions.
A) Signification of “Love of Friendship” and “Love of
Concupiscence”
Thomas’s predecessors provided him with two ways of
understanding love of friendship. His teacher, Albert the Great,
understood love of friendship as the love one has for a friend.
William of Auxerre, the Summa halesiana, and Bonaventure
understood it as the counterpart of love of concupiscence,
which together with love of concupiscence provides a division
of the ways we might love something. This latter understanding
naturally gravitated towards the extension of love of friendship
autem dilectio est ut aliquis dilectione amicitiae diligat plus se quam Deum.” Torrell
dates Quodlibet I to Easter 1269; see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:209.

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to self. William may have so extended the love—Albert, at least,
thought that he did. The Summa halesiana did extend it, and
Bonaventure seems to have done so as well.
Thomas uses the term love of friendship approximately fortysix times in twenty-five texts throughout his career. Of these
uses, we can confidently identify thirty-five as his own. If we
confine ourselves to these instances, we can see a clear tendency
towards Albert the Great’s understanding. Three features of
Thomas’s usage evidence this tendency. First, when he identifies
particular objects as being loved with love of friendship, these
objects are always others. The self only appears as an object
when he is reporting the position of others, or, in the unique
case of Quodlibet I (q. 4, a. 3), refuting it. Second, in his early
and mid-career, he appears to avoid treating love of friendship
as the counterpart of love of concupiscence in such a way that
together they provide a division of love. When drawing a
division of love, he sometimes notes that others use love of
friendship to name one of the loves; other times, he uses love of
benevolence where one would expect to find love of friendship.
In his later career, beginning around the time of the Prima
secundae, he appears to become more comfortable with using
love of friendship and love of concupiscence to divide love, but
he tends to treat love of friendship as a love of others (as we see
in STh I-II, qq. 28-29; and in the Commentary on John). Third
and most importantly, near the beginning, and in the middle
and end of his career (viz., in III Sent., d. 32, q. 1, a. 2; STh I,
q. 20, a. 2, ad 3; and STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1), the notion of
friendship clearly controls how he speaks of love of friendship.
In these texts, love of friendship appears as precisely the love
found in friendship.
But while Thomas substantially agrees with Albert’s understanding of love of friendship, he differs from his teacher in his
attitude towards the alternative use of the term. Unlike Albert,
Thomas never criticizes others for extending love of friendship
to self. Three reasons suggest he in fact finds value in this
alternative use. First, his treatment of the two loves in the
Sentences commentary closely resembles Bonaventure’s; assuming he wrote with an eye to Bonaventure, he evidently liked

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much of what he found in Bonaventure’s use of love of friendship and love of concupiscence. Second, Thomas recognizes that
when the term is used in this alterative way, it names part of a
division of fundamental importance for love. Third and most
obviously, he appears to adopt this alternative usage in question
26, article 4 of the Prima secundae.
Does Thomas actually adopt the alternative use in this text?
In a way he does, but he does so, I believe, without abandoning
the understanding of the term love of friendship that we find
elsewhere. The Summa’s treatise on charity casts light on the
problem. In the opening article of this treatise, Thomas presents
charity as a friendship and treats love of friendship as the love
properly found in friendship. This conception of charity as
friendship later poses a difficulty when Thomas considers
charity’s love for our self and our body. Addressing charity for
self, he affirms the source of the difficulty, namely, that “friendship is not properly had towards oneself.” 80 In the following
article, however, speaking of charity for the body, he responds
to the objection that friendship requires reciprocity by explaining that “return of affection has a place in the friendship
which is with another, but not in the friendship which is with
oneself.” 81 These articles respectively reveal that Thomas (1)
considers friendship to be properly speaking only of others but
(2) is open to extending the term and applying it to that for
which we do not properly speaking have friendship but something greater.82 Given the near identity of friendship and love of
friendship that we find in the opening article, it seems we
should say something similar about love of friendship: properly
80

STh II-II, q. 25, a. 4: “amicitia proprie non habetur ad seipsum.”
STh II-II, q. 25, a. 5, ad 3: “reamatio habet locum in amicitia quae est ad alterum:
non autem in amicitia quae est ad seipsum.”
82
The claim that we have something greater than friendship appears in the previous
article. See also IX Nic. Ethic., lect. 4 (In decem libros Ethicorum Aristotelis ad
Nicomachum expositio, ed. Raymond Spiazzi [Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1964], no.
1812). Thomas here explains Aristotle’s dismissal of the question whether there is
friendship towards oneself as being due to the question being more a matter of
terminology than truth. It is primarily a matter of terminology because the
characteristics by which we identify one person as being a friend of another are found in
a superabundant manner in relation to oneself.
81

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speaking it is only of others, but it is permissible to extend the
term so that it includes love of self.
Accordingly, in question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae
Thomas could be using love of friendship in what he would
consider an extended and improper sense, one inclusive of love
of self. Or he could be using it properly and intend love of
friendship to name a part, but not the whole, of the love had for
“that for whom someone wishes the good.” Or he could be
understanding the term in neither way determinatively. In this
case, love of friendship is the love had toward that for whom
we wish the good, but it is for the whole of this group when it is
taken in an extended sense and for a part of this group when
taken in its proper sense. But however it is to be interpreted, I
do not think Thomas understands love of friendship to be of
self properly speaking. Such an understanding would conflict
with what we find both before and after this text, and we
should not posit diverse understandings of a term unless we
cannot otherwise make reasonable sense of the text.
Thomas’s use of love of concupiscence involves less difficulty.
The term does not have the Aristotelian connections that love of
friendship has; Thomas simply receives it from his Scholastic
predecessors. These predecessors normally used it to name a
love of something for oneself, but the way they combined it
with love of friendship to divide love suggested its extension to
goods wished for others, and we eventually find this extension
in Bonaventure’s account of charity. In the first half of the
Sentences commentary, Thomas understands love of concupiscence as self-oriented, but he changes his mind in book 3
and, like Bonaventure, conceives it as extending to goods
wished for others. Unlike the extension of love of friendship to
self, this extension involves no abuse of language, for as Thomas
later remarks, “we desire [concupismus] things both for ourselves and for others.”83 Later, Thomas often presents love of
concupiscence as self-oriented, but its other-oriented possibility
appears as well (in STh I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3: STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4).
We should not assume two understandings of love of
83

STh I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3: “Concupiscimus enim aliquid et nobis et aliis.”

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concupiscence when one will do. It is best to hold, then, that
from the third book of the Sentences commentary onwards,
Thomas understands love of concupiscence as a love of some
good wished for oneself or another, but he does not always
present this love according to his full conception.
The relation of love of concupiscence to the notions of
presence and absence, to the useful, pleasant, and honorable,
and to extrinsic and intrinsic goods is also relatively straightforward. Thomas initially speaks of a love of complacency and
understands love of concupiscence as being of an absent good.
But love of complacency, which presumably is of the good as
present, never appears again, and in book 3 of the Sentences
commentary love of concupiscence seemingly takes over its
function and becomes a love of goods both present and absent.
After the Sentences commentary, the extension of love of
concupiscence to the good as present becomes a conceptual
necessity. In the Commentary on the Divine Names (c. 4, lect. 9),
Thomas sets forth the understanding of the affections that he
will hold for the rest of his career.84 According to this understanding, love is of the good, while desire and delight are of the
good as absent and as present respectively. If love of concupiscence were only of the good as absent, it would be not a
kind of love; it would be desire. Furthermore, in question 26,
article 4 of the Prima secundae, Thomas connects love of concupiscence with the twofold tendency present in every act of
love. If love of concupiscence were only of the good as absent,
it could not be found in every act of love, for we sometimes
love those who presently possess the good we wish for them.85
84

For the problematic nature of Thomas’s approach to the affections in the
Sentences commentary, see Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 20-33.
85
The only text after the Sentences commentary that could be read as restricting love
of concupiscence to an absent good is STh I-II, q. 27, a. 3, in which Thomas explains
that the likeness of act to potency causes love of concupiscence. If an act-potency
relationship only existed when act is not present, the text would indeed imply that love
of concupiscence is of an absent good. But an act-potency relationship can exist even
after a potency is actualized: we find such a relationship in changeable substances
between form and matter and in all created being between existence and essence.
Accordingly, we do not need to read the text as restricting love of concupiscence to an
absent good. Nor should we; if we were to do so, the text would conflict with the

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As for the other notions, Thomas sometimes presents love of
concupiscence as being of intrinsic, honorable goods like charity
or created beatitude. Other times he presents it as being of the
useful and pleasant (as in STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3), and of
extrinsic goods, like God. Again, we should not posit diverse
understandings of a term unless there is strong reason for doing
so, and here there is less evidence for diverse conceptions than
there is with respect to self-orientation and other-orientation or
presence and absence.86 It is best to say, then, that love of concupiscence is of the good, whether that good be pleasant, useful,
honorable, intrinsic, or extrinsic.
While we cannot draw conclusions with utter certitude, the
above investigation of Thomas and his predecessors suggests
that Thomas does not understand love of friendship and love of
concupiscence according to any of the divisions proposed by the
secondary literature. He does not conceive them as dividing
love into other-oriented and self-oriented love, nor as dividing
love into love of some subject, whether oneself or another, and
love of some good wished for that subject. Rather he conceives
each in a very literal sense. Love of friendship is the love found
in friendship; it is the love one has for a friend. Love of
concupiscence is the love of that which we desire (concupimus);
since we can desire things both for our self and for others, love
of concupiscence can be of goods wished for self or others.
formal presentation of love of concupiscence given three articles earlier in STh I-II,
q. 26, a. 4.
86
Mansini’s proposal to explain Thomas’s diverse presentations ultimately rests on
the belief that the distinction between the two loves originates from the Aristotelian
three forms of friendship, with love of concupiscence expressing the love found in
friendships of utility and pleasure and love of friendship expressing that found in the
friendship of the good. It is for this reason that Mansini identifies the strictest sense of
love of concupiscence and love of friendship as he does and proposes that the other,
broader senses arise from it through progressive abstraction (188-89). I do not believe,
however, that the texts to which Mansini might appeal—notably, II Sent., d. 3, q. 4, a. 1;
STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4, ad 3; STh I-II, q. 27, a. 3; and Super Ioan., c. 15, lect. 4—provide
sufficient grounds for seeing the three forms of friendship as the source of Thomas’s
understanding of the two loves. Rather, I believe the primary influences on Thomas’s
understanding are Nic. Ethic. 8.2.1155b27-1156a5 and the treatments of the two loves
by William of Auxerre, Bonaventure, and Albert the Great.

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Similarly, just as we may desire useful, pleasant, and honorable
goods, and goods both extrinsic and intrinsic, so we may have
love of concupiscence for all such goods. Love of concupiscence,
however, is not concupiscence or desire, but the love that undergirds them; accordingly, it is not only of these goods as
absent, but also as present.
B) Love’s Twofold Tendency
Our remaining questions all bear some important relationship to Thomas’s conception of love as a twofold tendency.
We will, therefore, first determine the nature of this tendency,
and then, by means of this determination, address these
questions.
Thomas’s teaching on love’s twofold tendency emerges in his
mid-career, in book 1 of the Summa contra gentiles (c. 91). It
appears again in De perfectione (c. 13) and De caritate (a. 7),
and in question 20, article 1 of the Prima pars Thomas clarifies
it, affirming that love always tends to two objects. The teaching
culminates in question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae.
There Thomas finally connects it with the division of modes of
love he proposes in the Commentary on the Divine Names (c. 4,
lect. 9-10). He also identifies the objects as being loved with
love of friendship and love of concupiscence.
Proper understanding of the twofold tendency depends on
proper identification of its objects. Certain passages seem to
suggest that the division of the good that furnishes the objects
corresponds with the division of being into substance and
accidents. In question 60, article 3 of the Prima pars, Thomas
explains that “since love is of the good, but the good is in
substance and accident . . . something is loved in two ways: in
one way, as a subsisting good, in another as an accidental or
inhering good.”87 In the Commentary on the Divine Names (c. 4,
lect. 10), he says that “love tends to something in two ways, in
87

STh I, q. 60, a. 3: “cum amor sit boni, bonum autem sit et in substantia et in
accidente . . . dupliciter aliquid amatur: uno modo, ut bonum subsistens; alio modo, ut
bonum accidentale sive inhaerens.”

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one way, as to a substantial good . . . in another way . . . as to an
accidental good.”88 Accordingly, it might seem that the proper
objects of love of friendship and love of concupiscence are, respectively, the good found in substance and the good found in
the categories of the accidents. This interpretation, however,
necessitates that substantial existence, which is not a categorical
accident, but something in substance by which substance exists
actually, is not loved with love of concupiscence properly
speaking. This exclusion of substantial existence is problematic.
According to both the Sentences commentary and the Summa,
goods wished for a friend are loved with love of concupiscence.
But existence is a good, and in both the Sentences commentary
and the Summa, Thomas identifies existence as something we
wish for a friend.89
Closer inspection reveals that when Thomas correlates a
division of being with a division of the good, he never identifies
the division of being as that of substance and accident. While he
uses substance and accidents to exemplify the parts of the
division, he formally presents the division as being between that
“which subsists” or “has existence” and that which is present in
something making it to be in some way.90 In accordance with
88

In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 10 (Marietti ed., no. 428): “Tendit ergo amor
dupliciter in aliquid: uno modo, ut in bonum substantiale . . . alio modo . . . tamquam in
bonum accidentale.”
89
III Sent., d. 28, q. 1, a. 1 (Mandonnet and Moos, eds., 3:904): “amicitia facit ut
homo velit amicum esse et bona habere”; STh II-II, q. 25, a. 7: “Unusquisque enim
amicus primo quidem vult suum amicum esse et vivere.” Furthermore, by possessing the
perfection of substantial existence, the object of love of friendship is arguably able to
stand on its own as a good and be loved. If so, love of concupiscence will not be part of
this love, although it might necessarily follow it, with love of the subsisting good of the
other person giving rise to a love of concupiscence for the perfective accidents of that
person. The two loves, however, would be two acts, not two aspects found in a single
act.
90
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 9 (Marietti ed., no. 404): “bonum dupliciter dicitur,
sicut et ens: dicitur enim, uno modo ens proprie et vere, quod subsistit ut lapis et homo;
alio modo quod non subsistit, sed eo aliquid est, sicut albedo non subsistit, sed ea
aliquid album est” (“good is said in two ways just as being is, for in one way, being is
properly and truly said to be that which subsists, as a rock and a man [does]; in another
way, [it is said to be] what does not subsist but that by which something is, just as
whiteness does not subsist, but by it something is white”; In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 10

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this manner of division, he identifies one kind of good as
“something subsisting in goodness,” “the subsisting thing that
has goodness,” and “that which itself has goodness”; the other
he identifies as “the good of another, by which, namely, it might
be well for something,” “what is present in something making it
good,” and “the goodness of another.”91 Evidently, the idea is
that just as being is said in two ways, namely, as that which has
existence and that by which something exists in some way, so
something may be called good either because it has goodness or
because by it something is made good.
We find this division of the good elsewhere. In Thomas’s
treatment of the good in the Summa, he explains that the good
has the notion of the desirable, but “a given thing is desirable
inasmuch as it is perfect, for all desire their perfection.” 92
Evidently, both the perfect and perfection are desirable in some
sense and are therefore good. But the perfect is that which has
perfection while perfection is that by which something is perfect.
Accordingly, we may distinguish two senses of good: that which
has goodness or perfection and that by which something is good
or perfect.
In addition to being found elsewhere, this division of the
good also explains why love always tends to two objects.
Something is good inasmuch as it is perfect, but no creature
essentially possesses even its most basic perfection, namely,

(Marietti ed., no. 428): “ens dupliciter dicitur, scilicet de eo quod per se subsistit et de
eo quod alteri inest” (“being is said in two ways, namely, of that which subsists through
itself and of that which is present in another”); STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4: “ens simpliciter est
quod habet esse, ens autem secundum quid quod est in alio” (“being simply speaking is
that which has existence, but being in a secondary sense is that which exists in another”).
91
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 9 (Marietti ed., no. 404): “Sic igitur bonum dupliciter
dicitur: uno modo, quasi aliquid in bonitate subsistens; alio modo, quasi bonitas alterius,
quo scilicet alicui bene sit”; In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 10 (Marietti ed., no. 428): “ita
et bonum: uno modo, dicitur de re subsistente quae habet bonitatem . . . alio modo, de
eo quod inest alicui faciens ipsum bonum . . .”; STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4: “ita bonum, quod
convertitur cum ente, simpliciter quidem est quod ipsum habet bonitatem; quod autem
est bonum alterius, est bonum secundum quid.”
92
STh I, q. 5, a. 1: “Ratio enim boni in hoc consistit, quod aliquid sit appetibile. . . .
Manifestum est autem quod unumquodque est appetibile secundum quod est perfectum:
nam omnia appetunt suam perfectionem.”

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existence. In all created goods, a real distinction exists between
that which has goodness and the goodness or perfection by
which it is good. Love is of the good, and when love tends to
the created good, it must tend simultaneously to both parts of
this real distinction, for neither is good apart from the other.
Perfections can neither exist nor be desired apart from some
possessing subject—health, for instance, is not lovable simply as
such, but as something I or someone I care about might possess.93 Nor can the subject be loved apart from some perfection,
for in abstraction from perfection, the subject is not good. The
very nature of the created good, therefore, gives rise to a
twofold tendency in love.94
In accordance with this division of the good—a division that
has a clear foundation in the text, is present elsewhere, and can
explain why love always tends to two objects—I propose that
the twofold tendency of love is most precisely a tendency to (1)
some subject which is to have the good and to (2) that by which
that subject is made good. With this interpretation in hand, we
turn to the remaining questions concerning love of friendship
and love of concupiscence’s objects, relation, and existence at
the subrational level.
Our one remaining question concerning the object of love of
concupiscence is whether substantial existence falls within its
purview. It should, for, as noted, we love goods wished for a
friend with love of concupiscence, and existence is such a good.
The proposed interpretation of love’s twofold tendency provides confirmation. In question 26, article 4 of the Prima
secundae, Thomas identifies the object of love of concupiscence
as being that which is the “good of another” (bonum alterius).
The “good of another,” however, is good in the sense of
perfection or the perfective; it is that by which something is
93

See Jensen, Sin, 104: “Wanting the good in itself—apart from the subject for
whom it is good—is to want no good at all; it is the desire for what could be good, if it
were possessed by some subject.”
94
Since we acquire our notion of the good from creatures, this twofold tendency is
present even in our love for God, in whom we know there is no real distinction between
perfection and possessor. See Malloy, Aquinas on Beatific Charity, 57-62. The
unpublished article that Malloy references, “The Good That We Will,” is my own.

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623

made good in the sense of having perfection. The object of love
of concupiscence, then, is precisely the good in the sense of that
by which some subject we care about is made perfect. Accordingly, substantial existence must be an object of this love, for
substantial existence is the first perfection by which a subject is
good in any respect.
In regard to the object of love of friendship, we asked
whether this object is the person as possessing substantial
existence, the person as possessing the complete good, or simply
the person or subject as such. We also asked in what sense the
object is good, and good in a primary sense. In question 26,
article 4 of the Prima secundae, Thomas asserts that the object
of love of friendship is the good simpliciter, rather than secundum quid, because it is that which “has goodness.” According to
the above interpretation, this sense of the good is that of the
perfect. Consequently, because it is good in this sense, the object
of love of friendship cannot be the person or subject simply as
such. No subject considered absolutely is good in the sense of
the perfect, for no subject essentially possesses even its first and
most basic perfection, namely, substantial existence. Rather, the
object of love of friendship is something complex: it is the
subject as possessing perfection. Thomas’s treatment of the
object of anger in question 46, article 2 of the Prima secundae
confirms this interpretation. Love and anger are complex
tendencies in which the appetite seeks that some good or evil
befall, or be present in, something, but while anger “always
regards two objects,” love “sometimes regards one object only,
as when someone is said to love wine or something of this sort.”
Thomas does not here speak of love of friendship and love of
concupiscence, but the implication is that while love of concupiscence is a simple tendency, love of friendship is complex,
having a double object.
This understanding of the object provides the proper means
for connecting the primacy of the object as good with Thomas’s
treatments of the good in question 5 of the Prima pars and
question 21, article 1 of the disputed questions De veritate.
There, Thomas explains the good by means of the notions of
the desirable, the end, and the perfect or perfective. The notion

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JORDAN OLVER

of the end cannot be separated from the other notions and
uniquely assigned to the object of love of friendship, for
Thomas connects the notion of the end to that of the good by
the intermediacy of the desirable and the perfective. Rather, the
object of love of friendship has the notion of the good because
it has the notion of the perfect. This understanding of the object
may initially seem problematic, for those we love are often
imperfect in many ways. The possession of perfection found in
the object of love of friendship, however, is intentional rather
than real. The loving agent is moved by the idea of the loved
subject possessing its perfection; being pleased in this way by
the loved subject’s possession of the good, the agent desires to
bring about this possession if it is not really present or rejoices
over it if it is. Because the object of love of friendship has the
notion of the perfect, it also has the notion of the desirable, and
in a principal sense. While a perfection like health is in a way
desirable, it is only properly desirable as something to be
possessed by some subject one cares about. What is properly
desirable, and, therefore, properly an end and properly good, is
the subject in possession of its perfection.
The object of love of friendship, then, is the good in the
sense of that which has perfection, this consideration being according to intention rather than present state. The object is for
this reason good in a principal sense. Since substantial existence
does not make something good simply but good only in the
most minimal respect,95 the perfection that the subject is considered as possessing should not be uniquely identified with
substantial existence. We should identify the perfection, rather,
with the complete good of the subject, at least relatively
speaking.
As for the relation between the two loves, we may say that if
love of friendship is taken in an extended sense in which it
encompasses love of self, love of friendship and love of concupiscence are present in every act of love at the rational level.
Both are present because the notion of the good is complex,
involving both a subject and a perfection by which the subject is
95

STh I, q. 5, a. 1, ad 1.

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625

good. Since love is of the good, love must tend both to a subject
and to something by which the subject is made good, which in
creatures are always really distinct. Love of concupiscence
names love’s tendency to that by which the loved subject is
made perfect. Love of friendship, understood in an extended
sense, names love’s tendency to the subject, though not simply
but as possessing perfection—which the subject may not
presently have.
Finally, in regard to the question of the existence of the two
loves at the subrational level, we must say that love of
friendship cannot exist, properly speaking, at the level of
sensitive or natural appetite. Irrational animals and inanimate
things cannot be objects of this love. A friend is someone for
whom one wills the good, but in question 25, article 3 of the
Secunda secundae, Thomas explains that we cannot properly
will the good for irrational creatures because they cannot
properly have it, for lacking free-will no such creature is “lord
of using the good.” 96 Consequently, neither we nor irrational
creatures can have love of friendship for irrational creatures
properly speaking. Furthermore, irrational creatures cannot
properly love rational beings with a love of friendship, for
friendship involves a sharing in the works of life. 97 Because
friendship “operates from choice,” 98 love of friendship in its
proper sense must be a love at the rational level for another
rational being.
It is less clear that love of concupiscence exists only at the
rational level. As noted, Thomas seems to understand love of
friendship and love of concupiscence in a literal manner. While
friendship cannot properly exist at the subrational level, concupiscence can. It is even possible that Thomas uses love of
concupiscence to name a sensitive love in the Summa contra

96

STh II-II, q. 25, a. 3: “amicitia ad eum habetur cui volumus bonum. Non autem
proprie possum bonum velle creaturae irrationali: quia non est eius proprie habere
bonum, sed solum creaturae rationalis, quae est domina utendi bono quod habet per
liberum arbitrium.”
97
STh I, q. 20, a. 2, ad 3.
98
III Sent., d. 27, q. 2, a. 1.

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JORDAN OLVER

gentiles (ScG III, c. 125), for there it seems to name sexual
desire, or rather the love that undergirds it.
But even if love of friendship and love of concupiscence do
not properly exist at the natural and sensitive level, something
analogous to them must exist. Love at all levels of appetite is a
tendency towards the good, but the created good, to which all
creatures have a tendency, is complex. Neither natural nor
sensitive appetite can tend simply to a perfection or simply to a
subject, for neither perfection nor a subject is good in itself. The
tendency must be towards both—towards a perfection as possessed by a subject and the subject as possessing the perfection.
Inasmuch, then, as love of friendship and love of concupiscence
name love’s twofold tendency at the rational level, something
analogous to them must exist at the subrational level.99
CONCLUSION
The twofold tendency is a profound and central part of
Thomas’s teaching on love. Without it, we can neither understand his thought except in a vague manner nor explain how
genuine love of others is possible on Thomistic grounds. In
proportion to its importance, there is need for terminology with
which to speak of it efficiently. Thomas seems to provide this
99
Other, textual reasons can also be adduced. First, in STh I, q. 60, a. 5, Thomas
argues for love of God on the ground that “the natural inclination in these things which
are without reason demonstrates the natural inclination in the will of an intellectual
nature.” The love of God in question is the sort Thomas elsewhere identifies as love of
friendship. Consequently, the argument depends on the existence of something
analogous to love of friendship at the level of natural inclination.
Second, in Quodlibet I, q. 4, a. 3, ad 3, Thomas explains that the inclination of
nature is sometimes, but not always, curved back onto itself (recurva in se). Fire’s
tendency to an upper place, for example, is curved back, for “fire is moved upwards on
account of its conservation,” but its inclination to generate new fire is not curved back,
for it is “on account of the good of the generated . . . and further on account of the
common good which is the conservation of the species.” In the inclination of
noncognitive things, then, Thomas distinguishes between some good that is sought and
a subject for whose sake it is sought. Consequently, inasmuch as love of concupiscence
and love of friendship are appetitive tendencies to some perfective good wished for
some subject and some subject that is to have this good, something analogous to these
loves exists at the subrational level.

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627

terminology in question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae. In
light of this text, many contemporary Thomists understand love
of friendship and love of concupiscence to be the two tendencies found in every love. Accordingly, love of friendship and
love of concupiscence are important to them.
But when we go outside of this text, we find that Thomas’s
use of the terms love of friendship and love of concupiscence
rarely conforms with the understanding suggested there. Love
of concupiscence is sometimes of a good wished for another,
but Thomas more often presents it as a love of a good wished
for oneself. Love of friendship he normally presents as a love of
another person. As a result, some scholars present love of
friendship as a love of other and love of concupiscence as a love
of some good for oneself, while others claim that multiple
senses of the two loves are operative in Thomas’s thought.
I have proposed that we can best make sense of Thomas’s
text not by positing multiple senses of the distinction between
the two loves but by distinguishing two senses of love of
friendship and two manners of presentation. Thomas’s predecessors provide him with two ways of understanding love of
friendship. Thomas wishes to understand it as Albert the Great
does, as the love one has for a friend, but he recognizes the
utility of the conception found in William of Auxerre and
Bonaventure according to which love of friendship is the
counterpart of love of concupiscence and is one of two ways we
might love something. The result is that while Thomas understands love of friendship to be properly speaking the love one
has for a friend, he is not opposed to an extension of the term
in which it would include love of self. He perhaps even uses the
term in this extended sense in what is arguably his principal text
(STh I-II, q. 26, a. 4). As for love of concupiscence, Thomas
likewise has effectively one understanding of it throughout his
career. From the third book of the Sentences commentary
onwards, he understands it as the love of a good wished for
some subject, whether oneself or another. He does not, however,
always present love of concupiscence according to this full
conception, but sometimes according to only a part of it.

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While we cannot simply equate love of friendship and love
of concupiscence with the double tendency found in every act
of love, the two loves and the twofold tendency are closely
related. Love of concupiscence’s connection with love of friendship may have initially made Thomas hesitant to identify love of
concupiscence as part of this tendency, but the identification we
find in question 26, article 4 of the Prima secundae is essentially
compatible with the conception of love of concupiscence we
find elsewhere. In light of this identity, we can say that the
object of love of concupiscence is the good in the sense of the
perfective, or that by which some subject we care about is made
perfect. As the object of love is the good and the good always
involves something perfective, love of concupiscence, or something analogous to it, is present in every act of love.
Since love of friendship is properly speaking the love one has
for a friend, it is not found in every act of love, but only in
those acts at the rational level that are towards others. It does
not name the whole of the counterpart of love of concupiscence
in love’s twofold tendency, but a part of the whole. Still, its
object is, generically, the good in the sense of that which has
goodness. This notion of good is primary because it is complete
rather than partial: while perfection is in a sense desirable, it is
the subject in possession of its perfection that is desirable, and
therefore good, simply speaking. The object of love of friendship is thus not the subject in itself, but the subject as possessing
its perfection. Accordingly, we may identify the object of love of
friendship as that whose possession of the good is inherently
pleasing to us. Inasmuch as love of friendship names part of
love’s twofold tendency, something analogous to it must be
found at the levels of natural and sensitive appetite.

The Thomist 86 (2022): 629-62

“TOWARDS A REAL GRATUITOUSNESS”:
THE GRATUITOUS AS NECESSARY AND DUE IN AQUINAS
MICHAEL HIGGINS
St. Jerome Institute
Washington, D.C.

A

CCORDING TO Henri de Lubac, “one of the chief
motives that have led modern theology to develop its
hypothesis of ‘pure nature’” has been “the anxiety to
establish . . . the supernatural as being a totally free gift.”1 He
continues, “There can be no free gift unless the giver could
withhold it. . . . When I give a present to someone, if it were
not honestly possible for me to withhold it, then it would not
really be a present, and to the extent that I am bound by convention to make the gift it becomes a present only in an
improper sense.”2 If a gift is forced, if it is necessary, or if it is
owed, then it ceases to be free and it ceases to be gratuitous. If,
therefore, God is obligated to give us grace, or if it is somehow
necessary that he do so, then he gives without freedom and
without gratuity.3
De Lubac, however, goes on to criticize any too-easy application of these principles to God. In a chapter of The Mystery of
the Supernatural titled “Towards a Real Gratuitousness,” he
1

The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: The
Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999), 53.
2
De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 75.
3
This question of gratuity has haunted de Lubac’s proposal since its first appearance.
As Nicholas J. Healy writes, “Since the publication of Surnaturel in 1946, the sharpest
and most significant criticisms of de Lubac’s theological anthropology have been
articulated by Thomists who fear that he has compromised the gratuity of grace”
(“Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace: A Note on Some Recent Contributions to the
Debate,” Communio 35 [2008]: 535-64).
629

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

asks for something deeper. Specifically, advocates of “pure
nature” had proposed that, in order to safeguard the gratuity of
grace, we must hold that God could have created us with a
nature able to be satisfied without grace. De Lubac denies that
gratuity depends on the possible existence of such a counterfactual universe. He writes that “it is solely in relation to me, in
relation to us all, to our nature as it is, this actual mankind to
which we belong”—and not in relation to any me, to any us, to
any nature, or to any mankind which God might theoretically
have created in our stead—“that this question of gratuitousness
can be asked and answered.”4 De Lubac, in other words, wants
to hold that a gift can be gratuitous even when the receiver
could not be fulfilled without it: God creates us such that we
can only be happy with his grace, yet his gift of grace remains
gratuitous.
De Lubac, however, clarifies that God is in no way obligated
to offer us this gift. Because it is gratuitous, it is in no way due:
“The supernatural is not owed to nature,”5 and “There can be
no question here of . . . anything owed to nature, no question of
anything resembling a demand.”6 In a different vein, he writes
that the gift of grace is not only “contingent,” but even “supercontingent.”7 Because it is gratuitous, it cannot be necessary. He
denies, then, that the gratuity of grace depends on a hypothetical “pure nature.” Yet, at least in these passages, he agrees
with his critics that the gratuitous can only be gratuitous if it is
neither due nor necessary.8

4
De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 60. Lawrence Feingold speaks to this facet
of de Lubac’s proposal in The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas
Aquinas and His Interpreters (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2010), 313 and 385.
5
De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 94.
6
Ibid., 88.
7
Ibid., 82. De Lubac is quoting Chenu here: see Marie-Dominique Chenu, La
théologie au xiie siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1957), 157-58.
8
More recently, Feingold pits the gratuitous against both the necessary and the due
throughout The Natural Desire to See God. He writes, for example, that “the gratuitous
is incomprehensible without the opposing notion of nature’s due” (ibid., 225), and that
“the problem of the gratuitousness of grace and the vision of God lies entirely in
showing that they are not due to nature” (ibid., 378; emphasis in original in both

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631

There might seem to be little, if anything, amiss here. First of
all, most of our daily and nontechnical use of the word “gratuitous” seems to assume that the gratuitous is the nonnecessary,
or that for which there is no reason. “Gratuitous sex and
violence,” for example, refers to adult content which is not
necessary for the advancement of a plot or the development of a
character. More importantly for us, St. Thomas Aquinas seems
to oppose the gratuitous both to the necessary and to the due.
As he writes, “Necessity is opposed to gratuitous willing,”9 and
God “wills creatures to be produced neither naturally nor necessarily, but gratuitously.”10 Returning to de Lubac’s question, he
writes, “Grace, insofar as it is given gratuitously, excludes the
notion of debt.”11 To give out of necessity or out of duty is to
give without gratuity.
Some, however, have taken a different route. Some have
even drawn on Thomas to do so. Ferdinand Ulrich, for example, has argued that true gratuity is right at home with the
necessary and with the due—and with things like order, purpose, causality, and responsiveness. For Ulrich, the due and the
necessary are not at odds with gratuity; the due and the
necessary are a mark of the truest gratuity. And Ulrich presents
his proposal as a faithful—if certainly a creative—interpretation
of Thomas.12
passages). See also ibid., 224-29, 256-57, and 286-90. Feingold opposes gratuity to
necessity and to order on ibid., 134.
9
De Verit., q. 23, a. 4, s.c. 2.
10
De Pot., q. 10, a. 2, ad 6. See also In Ioan., c. 13, lect. 7 (1838); parenthetical
numbers refer to paragraphs in the Marietti edition.
11
STh I-II, q. 111, a. 1, ad 2. In Mystery of the Supernatural, 95, de Lubac cites this
text approvingly, and he sees it as evidence for his position.
12
For an extended meditation on gratuity in Ulrich, see Erik van Versendaal,
“Plenitudo fontalis: Love’s Groundless Yes and the Grateful Originality of Nature,”
Communio 46 (2019): 134-80. Van Versendaal does not speak much to the question of
necessity. Yet what Ulrich calls “the necessary sense of being” is, for him, a paradigm of
gratuity. See Ferdinand Ulrich, Homo abyssus: The Drama of the Question of Being,
trans. D. C. Schindler (Washington, D.C.: Humanum Academic Press, 2018), 61-96.
For a different attempt to rethink gratuity—and to draw out a “coincidence of absolute
gratuity with absolute exchange”—see John Milbank, “Can a Gift Be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysics,” Modern Theology 11 (1995): 119-61,
quotation on 135. While Milbank’s work is important, and while he engages with

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

My goal in what follows will be limited. I have no intention
of offering anything like a comprehensive account of gratuity in
Thomas. Nor do I hope to explain away the texts above, or
others like them, in which Thomas opposes the gratuitous either
to the necessary or to the due. Instead, I hope to draw attention
to two sets of texts from Thomas’s Trinitarian theology, and
one set of texts from his teaching on gratitude, in which he
points toward a sort of gratuity which is compatible both with
the necessary and with the due.
To be clear, in none of these texts does Thomas draw any
explicit conclusions concerning the meaning of gratuity. Still
less does he argue directly that the gratuitous is compatible with
the necessary or with the due. He does, however, register a
number of claims which carry implications for this question.
Even if he does not intentionally set out to do so, therefore, his
thought can offer us resources for moving “towards a real
gratuitousness.”13
In unearthing these resources, I hope to uncover principles
that can open new dimensions into questions of nature and

Thomas (see ibid., 140 and 143), he does so only briefly, and without any direct
reference to the questions we will consider here. We therefore will not discuss him
beyond this note. Yet we can at least mention that the conclusions we will draw here
might find in Milbank a fruitful complement.
13
Feingold indirectly suggests some of the disquieting consequences that would
follow if we merely opposed gratuity to duty and to justice. He refers to an argument
from Ockham, which he calls “abhorrent” (Natural Desire to See God, 381). Ockham
begins with the premise that “God is not a debtor to anyone, but whatever He does to
us is done from mere grace.” Ockham reasons, however, that God can therefore justly
damn someone who has always loved him. Because everything is “mere grace” and
utterly gratuitous—and because grace and gratuity are opposed to the due and to the
just—there is no hint of the due in God’s action. Yet, as Feingold points out, this God of
grace becomes an “arbitrary autocrat.” The point we can make is that, if one merely
opposes gratuity to duty and to order, then the purely gratuitous will inevitably become
the purely arbitrary—with horrifying results for the recipient of gratuity. If more
gratuity meant less order, then too much gratuity would become oppressive. Gratuity
would cease to be good simply: it would not be like truth or wisdom, which always get
better as they grow more present; it would be like heat, which is good to a point but
destructive after that point. Feingold himself, then, suggests that, if gratuity is to be the
gratuity of a gift—and so if gratuity is to be good, without qualification, for the
recipient—it must be wed somehow to the just, to the orderly, and to the due.

THE GRATUITOUS AS NECESSARY AND DUE

633

grace. More deeply, however, I hope to reflect on gratuity for
its own sake, and to offer support for a rethinking of gratuity
along the lines of what Ulrich has proposed. To be clear, this
second goal will be the primary one. I will not, therefore, apply
these reflections in any systematic way to questions of nature
and grace, nor to any of the immensely thorny difficulties surrounding them.14 I hope that these reflections might yield
insights into these questions around nature and grace—and into
other questions besides—and, throughout, I will briefly speak to
some basic ways in which they might do so. But my focus is on
the question of gratuity in itself.15
That said, we should note at least briefly just how important
this question is for the nature-grace debate. Again, de Lubac
deals with objections concerning gratuity by, at least in part,
deflecting them: he denies that, in his proposal, God gives out
of duty or necessity. His critics, however, may be right: his
proposal, when thought all the way through, may lead unavoidably to the conclusion that God’s gift of grace is shot
through with some sort of necessity and with some sort of
duty—a necessity and a duty, to be sure, that God chooses to
take upon himself, and that he was not bound or required to
take on, yet a necessity and a duty all the same. If, therefore,
14

For a survey of recent interventions in this debate, which remains very much alive,
see John Meinert, “St. Thomas Aquinas, Perseverance, and the Nature/Grace Debate,”
Angelicum 93 (2016): 823 n. 2.
15
Speaking more broadly, our reflections here will touch on two questions. First, a
historical or exegetical question: Are there openings in Thomas’s thought towards a
gratuity which is at home with the necessary and with the due? Second, a substantive
question: Is gratuity, in fact, at home with the necessary and with the due? The second
question may be more important in the abstract (and, again, figures like Ulrich and
Milbank have reflected on it very deeply). Here, however, we will mostly limit ourselves
to the first question. That said, there will be points where, in order to think through the
logic of Thomas’s texts (the first question), we will speak to the second question: we
will offer suggestions as to what this deeper gratuity might look like, and we will argue
(at least implicitly) that this deeper gratuity is, in fact, real (see especially our reflections
on meals and marriage at the end of section I). We might, in these brief excursions,
uncover some modest insights into the second, substantive question. We will only do so,
however, insofar as it helps (at least indirectly) to make sense of the texts from Thomas
which we are considering—and this task of understanding Thomas’s texts will remain
our priority throughout.

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

defenders of de Lubac were to respond to criticism merely by
asserting that, on de Lubac’s terms, God’s gift is touched neither
by necessity nor by duty, it would be difficult to advance the
conversation. A more fruitful route would be to admit that
there is a sort of necessity and duty at work here, but to show
that neither this duty nor this necessity is actually at odds with
gratuity: to show that God’s gift can be gratuitous and necessary
and due—or even that it can be necessary and due because it is
gratuitous. Some followers of de Lubac have gestured in this
direction.16 None, however, have argued that such a due and
necessary gratuity can be found in Thomas’s thought. I hope
here to do just that.17
To do so, I will spend section I working through the first set
of texts, which come from the disputed questions De potentia.
16

See Healy’s argument regarding friendship in “Henri de Lubac on Nature and
Grace,” 548.
17
Most of the texts in which we will ground our argument concern the Trinity, and
it is true that the relations within God are infinitely different from the relation between
God and the world. One might therefore object that these texts can tell us little about
the question of gratuity in God’s gift of grace. To respond, I should first reiterate that
my chief aim is not to intervene in the question of nature and grace, but to illuminate
something of the nature of gratuity for its own sake. Even if our synthesis of gratuity,
necessity, and duty were limited to God, it would still be relevant to this more basic
question. Second, and more deeply, in giving us grace, God adopts us into the sonship
of the Son (see STh III, q. 23, a. 1). Truths which hold in the Father’s eternal relation to
the Son, therefore, might at least be relevant to the gift of grace by which God initiates
us into that eternal relation. Indeed, Thomas is explicit that there is an analogy—and
not mere equivocity—between the Father’s eternal fatherhood in relation to the Son and
God’s fatherhood in relation to us through grace (see STh I, q. 33, a. 3; for more on this
passage, and for the analogy between eternal sonship and the sonship of grace and
glory, see Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca
Murphy [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 204-9; and Dominic Legge, The
Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017],
83-84). Of course, Thomas never specifies whether the synthesis of gratuity, necessity,
and duty found in the Father’s relationship to the Son is a point of analogous similarity
or of analogous difference between eternal sonship and graced sonship. Yet this analogy
at least opens up the possibility of some sort of similarity. Finally, and on a less deep
note, while many of our passages here will concern the Trinity, our most suggestive
texts will speak to gratitude among human beings. They will therefore make clear that
our synthesis of gratuity, necessity, and duty is not limited to the eternal life of God, but
finds echoes within creation as well.

THE GRATUITOUS AS NECESSARY AND DUE

635

Here Thomas addresses the question of gratuity most directly,
and it is here that I will be able to pivot toward even deeper
insights which he offers in his teaching on gratitude. In section
II, I will explore a second set of texts, this time from the
Summa, which speak less directly to the question of gratuity,
but which still carry implications for this question.18
I. GRATUITOUS LOVE
A) “Not Incompatible with Free Will”
The first set of texts revolve around the love between the
Father and the Son, while the second revolve around the
Father’s gift of the divine essence to the Son. The first thing to
say both about this love and about this giving is that they are
absolutely necessary. Indeed, everything in God is necessary:

18

Almost all of our texts involve, and some will revolve chiefly around, love. Some
will concern the divine persons’ love for each other. Others will focus on charity in
human beings. These two loves are obviously very different. Thomas teaches that charity
is a specific sort of love. Already by nature, all creatures love God more than themselves
(for some reflections on this point in Thomas, see D. C. Schindler, The Politics of the
Real: The Church between Liberalism and Integralism [Steubenville, Ohio: New Polity
Press, 2021], 210-14). Charity, however, goes beyond this natural love: it can only be
present if it is given as a grace. In charity, moreover, we love God not merely as the first
cause, but as he is in himself: we love him under the formality of his having called us to
a happiness which we cannot obtain by nature (see STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1). In giving us
charity, then, God gives us a gift which goes beyond anything we can accomplish by
nature: charity is gratuitous. Our natural love is not, at least in the same way: unlike
charity, it is baked into our nature (indeed, Thomas even refers to angels’ charity as
“gratuitous love,” and he opposes it to their natural love for God: see STh I, q. 63, a. 1,
ad 2). These points are important for questions pertaining to nature and grace: by
nature, we love God by natural love; by grace, we love him by charity. We will
therefore need to pay attention to whether Thomas is speaking of amor or of caritas,
lest we collapse the very relation between nature and grace which I hope these
reflections will illuminate. To that end, I will note the Latin at certain junctures. When I
do not, it is safe to assume that, where I use the language of “love” (either in a
translation of Thomas or in my own voice), I am speaking of amor, whereas when I use
the language of “charity” I am speaking of caritas.

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God must exist, and nothing in God could exist in any way
other than exactly as it is.19
To begin with the giving, it is in generating the Son that the
Father gives his essence to the Son. Yet this generation is not the
fruit of the Father’s will; it is the fruit of his nature. It therefore
could not possibly be any different from what it exactly is:
It is clear that whenever a thing has the will for its principle, it is possible for
it to be or not to be, to be such or otherwise, to be now or then. Now
everything of this description is a creature. . . . Wherefore if we suppose the
Son to be generated by the will, it must needs follow that he is a creature. For
this reason the Arians, who held the Son to be a creature, said that he was
generated by the will: whereas Catholics say that he was generated not by will
but by nature.20

If the divine generation were not necessary, then the divine Son
would cease to be divine. Similarly, if the procession of the
Holy Spirit were anything less than absolutely necessary, then
the Holy Spirit would be something less than fully divine.21 The
whole Christian faith hinges on the claim that, when the Father
gives his nature to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, his giving is
necessary.
Given Thomas’s firmness on this point—and given the
apparent conflict between gratuity and necessity—we might
expect there to be no room for gratuity in the processions of the
divine persons. To begin seeing some of the complications in
Thomas’s teaching here, however, we can turn briefly to a
passage where Thomas speaks not of gratuity, but of freedom.
Gratuity and freedom, of course, are not synonymous. Yet they
have at least one point in common: they both seem to be
opposed to necessity. As with gratuity, this opposition not only
haunts our commonplace ideas about freedom; it also pops up
in Thomas’s texts. As Thomas puts it, “free choice is said in
relation to the things that one wills not of necessity.”22
19
As we will see in n. 38 below, it is necessary not by compulsion, and not as a
means to an end, but per se.
20
De Pot., q. 2, a. 3.
21
See De Pot., q. 2, a. 3; q. 10, a. 2, ad 4; and STh I, q. 41, a. 2, ad 3.
22
ScG I, c. 88. Many other passages could be given.

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In De potentia, however, Thomas suggests something different. He does so in response the objection that, because the
Holy Spirit proceeds by way of will, he must proceed “by way
of freedom”; and, because he proceeds by way of freedom, he
cannot proceed necessarily—which means that he cannot be
divine.23 Thomas responds:
As Augustine teaches, the natural necessity under which the will is said to will
a thing of necessity—happiness, for instance—is not incompatible with free
will [libertati voluntatis]; but free-will is opposed to violence or compulsion.
Now there is no violence or compulsion when a thing is moved in accordance
with the order of its nature, but there is if its natural movement be hindered,
as when a heavy body is prevented from moving down towards the center.
Hence the will freely desires happiness, although it desires it necessarily: and
thus also God by his will loves himself freely [libere amat seipsum], although
he loves himself of necessity. Moreover, it is necessary that he love himself as
much as he is good, even as he understands himself as much as he exists.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father freely; not, however,
potentially, but necessarily. Nor was it possible for him to proceed so as to be
less than the Father: but it was necessary for him to be equal to the Father,
even as the Son who is the Father’s Word.24

The procession of the Holy Spirit is necessary: he cannot cease
proceeding from the Father, and he cannot proceed as anything
but equal to the Father. This necessity, however, is not imposed
on the Father from the outside; it arises from the Father’s nature. It is a “natural necessity.” And there is no conflict between
freedom and such internal or natural necessity. Freedom is
opposed not to necessity, but to “violence or compulsion.”
When necessity arises from within oneself, necessity can be
free.25
Again, our concern here is not first with freedom, but with
gratuity. It is true that Thomas never explicitly argues that gratuity is compatible with necessity. Yet we will see presently that
he lays out claims that imply as much. Indeed, these claims
23

De Pot., q. 10, a. 2, arg. 5.
De Pot., q. 10, a. 2, ad 5. Emphasis in this and all passages from Thomas to follow
is added.
25
See also ScG III, c. 138, where Thomas marries freedom to the “necessity that
results from interior inclination.”
24

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

come from the same question of De potentia in which this
passage appears. And, given that Thomas elsewhere teaches that
both the free and the gratuitous are unnecessary, this passage,
where he explicitly marries necessity to freedom, can complement and reinforce those passages in which he implicitly
marries necessity to gratuity. At the very least, this passage
makes clear that things that might appear to be at odds with
necessity, and that actually are at odds with some sorts of
necessity, need not be at odds with every sort of necessity. If,
therefore, “natural necessity” is at home with freedom, then it
might be equally at home with gratuity.
B) “Opposed to Mercenary Love”
Thomas suggests this point very strongly just two articles
later. He does so while discussing not the processions of the
divine persons, but the love between them. This love, however,
is just as necessary as these processions. To put the matter very
briefly, God does not merely choose to love his own goodness,
nor could he possibly refrain from loving this goodness. He
loves it necessarily. In giving the divine essence to the Son,
however, the Father necessarily gives the divine goodness to the
Son—for the divine essence is the divine goodness. The Son,
therefore, possesses—and is—the divine goodness which the
Father cannot but love, which means that the Father must
necessarily love the Son. Finally, the Son loves the divine
goodness just as necessarily as the Father does; and, because the
Father also is this goodness, the Son must love the Father as
well. Their love for each other is necessary.26
This point becomes important when Thomas asks whether
the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, or from the Son
as well. After spending the corpus outlining a number of
arguments for the filioque,27 Thomas addresses an objection that

26
Thomas comes to this conclusion by a different route in In Ioan., c. 5, lect. 3
(753).
27
For a summary of and background for these arguments, see Emery, Trinitarian
Theology, 269-79.

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turns on Richard of St. Victor’s distinction between “gratuitous
love” and “due love.”28 The objection runs,
Augustine proves that the Holy Spirit is love [amor]. Now the Father’s love of
the Son is gratuitous, since he loves the Son not as though he received
something from him, but only as giving him something: whereas the Son’s
love of the Father is a love that is due; because he loves the Father in that he
receives from him. Now the love which is due is distinct from the love that is
gratuitous. Hence, if the Holy Spirit is love proceeding from the Father and
Son, it follows that he is distinct from himself.29

If the Father’s love is gratuitous and the Son’s love is due, and if
gratuitous love is opposed to due love, then the Holy Spirit
cannot proceed both from the Father and from the Son. For due
love is distinct from gratuitous love, and the Holy Spirit cannot
be “distinct from himself.”
Thomas begins his response by writing, “If we are to come to
a right decision on this point, it seems hardly correct to speak of
anything being ‘due’ in the divine persons, since this word ‘due’
implies subjection and obligation of a kind, and such things cannot be in God.”30 These opening words are important. Again,
everything in the divine life is necessary. We might therefore
expect Thomas to take issue with the language of “gratuity” in
God. Yet he does not. Indeed, we will see that he speaks of
gratuity in God without batting an eye. Here, however, he flags
language that is inappropriate for God: he clarifies that the
language of “due” is “hardly correct [non omnino recte sonat].”
Thomas is not above criticizing language that Richard of St.
Victor had used. If, therefore, Thomas had harbored any concerns about the language of “gratuity” in God, it would have
been very easy for him to raise these concerns here. The fact
that he raises no such concerns, however, suggests that he has
no such concerns. He is unfazed by the prospect of some sort of
gratuity being present in God—even as everything in God is
necessary.

28

See Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, V.16-25.
De Pot., q. 10, a. 4, arg. 8.
30
De Pot., q. 10, a. 4, ad 8.
29

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

Thomas continues:
Richard of St. Victor, however, distinguishes between due and gratuitous love
[amoris gratuiti]: but by gratuitous love he means love not received from
another, and by due love, he means love received from another. In this sense,
there is nothing to hinder the same love from being gratuitous as the Father’s
and due as the Son’s: since it is the same love whereby the Father loves and
whereby the Son loves: yet this love the Son has from the Father, but the
Father from none.31

We just saw that the Father loves the Son necessarily: there is
no possibility that he might withhold his love from the Son. Yet
Thomas teaches here that this necessary love is also a gratuitous
love. Already in this first passage, therefore, Thomas accepts—
at least implicitly—a meaning of “gratuity” that is compatible
with necessity, and that is therefore at home in the triune God.
The gratuitous is not that which might not have been, which
exists for no reason, or which might be otherwise than it is. The
gratuitous is that which is not received from another. So long as
it is not received from another, even a necessary love can be
gratuitous.
Of course, Thomas is not giving direct expression to his own
thought here. Instead, he is echoing Richard of St. Victor. Even
Thomas’s decision to echo Richard, however, is itself an expression of his own thought. Thomas could easily have defused
the objection by clarifying that the categories “gratuitous” and
“due” are inappropriate for the Trinity, that the Holy Spirit as
Love can therefore be neither gratuitous nor due, and that this
language therefore presents us with no reason that the Holy
Spirit cannot proceed both from the Father and from the Son.
Such a tack would have allowed Thomas to accomplish his most
immediate goal here, which is to safeguard the coherence of the
filioque. Yet he does not take it. The fact that he could have
rejected Richard’s language altogether makes his acceptance of
that language more noteworthy. Again, Thomas is by no means
above breaking with Richard: he opens this very passage by
voicing misgivings around Richard’s language of “due.” Else31

De Pot., q. 10, a. 4, ad 8.

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641

where, he is more sharply critical of Richard.32 This wariness of
Richard more generally, however, makes all the more striking
his acceptance of Richard’s language of “gratuitous”—and his
acceptance of it without so much as a word of caution, despite
just having warned us about the language of “due.” Thomas is
not merely deferring to Richard’s authority, and he is not
merely reporting what other theologians have said. He is drawing on Richard, but he is also presenting, in his own voice, a
reading of gratuity that is compatible with necessity.33
That said, Thomas does not merely rubberstamp Richard’s
reading of gratuity. Instead, he goes on immediately to rework
it—and even to turn it on its head. Yet, in so doing, he opens
the door to an even deeper reading of gratuity. He does so in
response to the next objection:
The Holy Spirit is gratuitous love [amor gratuitus]: wherefore from him flow
the diversities of graces according to I Cor. 12:4: “There are diversities of
graces, but the same Spirit.” If, therefore, the Son’s love for the Father is not
gratuitous, then the Holy Spirit will not be the Son’s love, and thus he does
not proceed from him.34

When the three persons give us grace, they do so because of
their love for us—and the Holy Spirit is this love.35 The gift of
grace, however—as we saw de Lubac insist above—is gratuitous.
Because of his association with grace, therefore, the Holy Spirit
must be gratuitous Love. Yet, as we just saw, Thomas is willing
to define “gratuitous love” as unreceived love. But if gratuity is
unreceived, then the Son’s received love for the Father cannot

32

See STh I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2.
Remaining with the language of “due,” Thomas elsewhere allows some way in
which the Father’s love of the Son is due: in defending his position that God could have
created a creature better than the ones he actually creates, he argues that, whereas God
owes nothing to creatures, “equality to the Father is owed to the Son by nature [aequalitas paterna debetur sibi per naturam]” (I Sent., d. 44, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; see also d. 20, q. 1,
a. 3, qcla. 2, exp. text.; he uses the language of “requirit” in De Pot., q. 3, a. 16, ad 22).
If, therefore, gratuity is compatible with the necessity of the eternal Trinity, then it may
also be compatible with some sort of duty which is eternally present in God.
34
De Pot., q. 10, a. 4, arg. 9.
35
See Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 225-49.
33

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

be gratuitous. It seems, therefore, that gratuitous Love cannot
proceed from the Son—which would mean that the Holy Spirit
cannot proceed from the Son.
To be fair, Richard might have resources for responding to
this objection. Thomas, however, does not respond by digging
deeper into Richard’s categories. He responds by shifting the
categories:
The Holy Spirit is gratuitous love [gratuitus amor] only inasmuch as it is
opposed to mercenary love whereby a thing is loved not for itself but for the
sake of some benefit extrinsic to it. But if by gratuitous love we understand the
love that originates from another, it is not incompatible with the Holy Spirit
that he be gratuitous love, since the love whereby we love God through the
Holy Spirit originates in God’s benefits bestowed on us: and thus nothing
prevents even the love of the Son, who derives this love from another, from
being the Holy Spirit.36

Thomas assumes throughout this passage that the Holy Spirit is
gratuitous love. The objector argues that, because the Holy
Spirit is gratuitous, because the gratuitous is unreceived, and
because the Son’s love is received, it follows that the Holy Spirit
cannot be the Son’s love. As in our last passage, Thomas could
have responded by clarifying that the language of “gratuitous”
has no place in the God in whom all is necessary. Yet he does
not. Instead, he responds by assuming that the Son’s love is
gratuitous, and by arguing that its being received is no threat to
its being gratuitous. The Holy Spirit’s status as gratuitous love,
and so the gratuity of the Son’s eternal love for the Father, is
accepted without ever being called into question.
More importantly, Thomas says something new here about
the meaning of gratuity itself. In the previous passage, he had
followed Richard by proposing a gratuity that is open to necessity. Here, he goes beyond Richard by opening up gratuity
even further. On Richard’s terms, gratuity is opposed not to the
necessary but to the received and to the responsive: to love another from whom one receives, or to love in response to a gift
one has been given, is to love without gratuity. According to
36

De Pot., q. 10, a. 4, ad 9. “Love” here is amor throughout.

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Thomas, however, the gratuitous is opposed neither to the necessary nor to the received nor to the responsive. It is opposed
to the “mercenary.”37 I cannot love gratuitously if I love in order to receive some “extrinsic benefit”: if I love in order to use
my beloved or to profit from my love, then I am not loving gratuitously. I can, however, love gratuitously if I receive my love
from another: Thomas allows for a sense in which “by gratuitous love we understand the love that originates from another.”
If, for example, a lover’s gift awakens in the beloved a grateful
love in response, then this grateful love can be a gratuitous love.
So long as the receiver loves the giver not in order to receive
37

Thomas’s definition here of “mercenary love” as a love “whereby a thing is loved
not for itself but for the sake of some benefit extrinsic to it” could be filled out by other
passages where he defines it more narrowly: “Mercenary love is that whereby God is
loved for the sake of temporal goods” (STh II-II, q. 19, a. 4, ad 3). Thomas offers a
similarly narrow definition in every other passage where he uses the language of
“mercenary love”: see III Sent., d. 34, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 1, arg. 2; and In Psalmos 43. In
these passages, mercenary love is not just any sort of love which seeks just any sort of
extrinsic benefit; it is love for God which seeks temporal goods.
That said, in every other passage where Thomas speaks of mercenary love, he is
referring to our love for God. In our De potentia passage, he is referring to God’s love:
he is discussing “the love of the Son.” This difference might at least partially account for
the broader definition he gives. This more open definition also emerges if we look
beyond Thomas’s use of amor mercenarius and to his use of mercenarius more generally.
Sometimes, following John 10:12-13 (and echoing the narrower meaning of amor
mercenarius above), the mercenarius is a religious leader who acts for temporal gain (see
In Ioan., c. 10, lect. 3 [1403]; and Contra Impugn., 5.3). Yet “mercenarius” can also
have a less negative connotation: it refers to any laborer or wage-earner who receives
payment in return for his work (see STh I-II, q. 105, q. 4, ad 4; II-II, q. 62, a. 8, s.c.;
and III Polit., lect. 4). This use seems to fit with our De potentia passage: a mercenary is
someone who does work not merely for the work’s own sake, but for the extrinsic
benefit of payment. Similarly, in III Sent., d. 26, q. 2, a. 1, arg. 5, a “mercenary act” is
opposed to one which is “good for its own sake.” Finally, in ScG IV, c. 91, a
mercenarius is anyone who receives any sort of reward for what she has done: even the
blessed who receive the reward of heaven are mercenarii. We will, therefore, speak in
what follows of the “mercenary” in these broader terms, or as that which is ordered
towards an extrinsic benefit: for Thomas defines it in those terms on our main passage,
and, in doing so, he picks up on other passages where a similarly broad meaning is
operative. Yet we should also bear in mind those passages where Thomas defines it more
narrowly. For more on the “mercenary” in Thomas, see Gilbert C. Stockson III,
“Charity, Reward, and ‘Mer-cenary’ Intent in Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel” (Ph.D.
diss., Notre Dame, 2019).

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more gifts, but for the giver’s own sake, her grateful love can be
gratuitous. More to Thomas’s point, the Holy Spirit, as gratuitous Love, is able to proceed from the Son no less than from
the Father. Because the Son’s love for the Father is not mercenary, it can be gratuitous even as it is received.38
Most basically, we saw in the previous passage that Thomas
is willing to endorse, at least to some extent, Richard’s account
of gratuitous love in God. We see now that he is willing, in his
own voice, to propose a sort of gratuity that goes beyond
Richard. There ought therefore to be no doubt that, even as
Thomas is prompted by Richard in this second passage, he is
presenting us with his own thought. That said, it is true that
Thomas’s talk of “gratuitous love” in God is limited to two
fairly short passages in a single work, whereas Richard’s Trinitarian theology features “gratuitous love” more prominently. In
this sense, Richard certainly makes more use of gratuity in the
Trinity than Thomas does. Yet, at least in this passage, Thomas
points towards a gratuity which stretches further through the
Trinity than Richard’s does. According to Thomas, it is not only
the unoriginated love of the Father for the Son that is
gratuitous; the received love of the Son for the Father—and, the
logic seems to run, the received love of the Holy Spirit for
both39—is equally gratuitous. For Richard, the Son’s love is not
38
These points may open up a respect—which we can only suggest in the barest of
terms—in which gratuity and freedom, beyond being merely compatible with divine
necessity, actually touch on the center of divine necessity. When Thomas details the
very specific way in which the divine generation (along with everything else in God) is
necessary, he writes that it is not necessary as though “an efficient and compelling
cause” forced it to be as it is, and it is not necessary “as a means to an end.” Instead, it is
“necessary of itself [per se]” (STh I, q. 41, a. 2, ad 5). For Thomas, both unmercenary
gratuity and per se necessity preclude being a means to an extrinsic end: they both point
towards existence for one’s own sake. Finally, Thomas defines freedom in similar terms:
“he is free who exists for his own sake” (ScG IV, c. 22). It may be, therefore, that divine
necessity, divine gratuity, and divine freedom do not merely meet at their edges in a sort
of extrinsic compatibility. Instead, their centers might all ultimately converge. For all of
them point, in different ways, towards intrinsic goodness, or existence for one’s own
sake.
39
As Thomas puts it elsewhere, “the Holy Spirit loves himself by himself” (De 108
art., q. 59; see also q. 60). There would be much to sort out here, but the basic point is
that, if the Holy Spirit is gratuitous Love, and if he loves “by himself,” then he must

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gratuitous. For Thomas, it is. Gratuity marks both the Father’s
love for the Son and the Son’s love for the Father.40
C) “Duty to Give Something Gratis”
As in the first passage, Thomas affirms here that the Son’s
love for the Father, which is necessary, is also gratuitous. He
thereby again presents us with a gratuity that is at home with
necessity. Yet he also goes beyond the first passage: he opens up
space for a gratuity that is at home with the due. Returning to
the example of grateful love we used earlier, his argument
suggests that, even if grateful love were to be due—that is, even
if a loving gift ought to provoke a response of grateful love in
the recipient—it can still be gratuitous. So long as the receiver is
not loving so as to gain “some extrinsic benefit,” her love can be
gratuitous even if it ought to be there. That said, the good of
satisfying one’s duty could itself be an extrinsic benefit. If,
therefore, the recipient of a gift loved the giver only in order to
satisfy her debt to him, then her love might cease to be
gratuitous. But if she loved the giver for his own sake, and if she
happened thereby to fulfill her duty, but if she did so without
any regard for any duty she might be satisfying, then her due
love might also be gratuitous.
Thomas, of course, never explicitly draws this conclusion.
Yet he does explicitly define the gratuitous as the unmercenary,
and he explicitly argues that love can be gratuitous even when it
is received from another. If we take these claims seriously, and
love gratuitously. The love of all three persons, therefore, is gratuitous love. For more
on the role of the Holy Spirit in divine love, see Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 225-33.
40
If we define the gratuitous as the unmercenary, or as that which is done not for
some extrinsic benefit but for its own sake, then we can revisit the category of
“gratuitous sex and violence.” For it may ultimately be that the problem with most socalled “gratuitous sex and violence” is that it is not actually gratuitous. This sex and
violence may not advance the plot or develop any characters. Yet it also is not good or
beautiful in itself: it does not exist merely for its own sake. Instead, it exists in order to
appeal to the baser appetites of a potential audience, in the hopes that this audience will
pay money in return for empty titillation. Such “gratuitous” sex and violence, then, is
entirely instrumental: it is entirely ordered to an extrinsic benefit. It therefore should
not be called “gratuitous sex and violence,” but “mercenary sex and violence.”

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

if we think through their implications, we can begin to see a
way in which gratuitous love can be due love.
Thomas goes further down this path in his teaching on
gratitude.41 It is true that, even in the question of the Summa
that is devoted to gratitude, there are points at which Thomas
implicitly opposes the gratuitous to the due.42 He also teaches
that any gratuity at play here is at odds with violence or compulsion from the outside.43 Yet he also presents us with a gratuity which is at home with a certain sort of duty.
First of all, he writes that “Thanksgiving in the recipient corresponds to the favor [gratia] of the giver: so that when there is
greater favor on the part of the giver, greater thanks are due on
the part of the recipient. Now a favor is something bestowed
gratis.”44 Gratitude is a response to gratuity: the more gratuitously a gift is given, the more gratitude is due from the receiver. Thomas takes things further in the final article of this
question. When he asks whether the response of gratitude
should exceed the favor which was originally given, he writes
that
gratitude regards the favor received according to the intention of the benefactor, who seems be deserving of praise chiefly for having conferred the favor
gratis without being bound to do so. Wherefore the beneficiary is obligated,

41
We will not be able to give anything like a complete account of Thomas’s teaching
on gratitude. We will instead focus very narrowly on a few questions around gratuity
and duty which this teaching provokes. For a fuller account (which covers, among other
things, the place of gratitude within Thomas’s moral theology more broadly, the
different sorts of grateful responses due to different sorts of benefactors, and the
relation between gratitude and virtues like religion and piety), see Nathaniel A. Warne,
“Institutional Justice and the Virtue of Gratitude,” Anglican Theological Review 103
(2021): 287-90.
42
See STh II-II, q. 106 a. 2.
43
See STh II-II, q. 106, a. 1, ad 2.
44
STh II-II, q. 106, a. 2. Of course, Thomas here uses the word “gratis” here (and in
all of our Summa passages) and not “gratuitus.” The two words are certainly distinct,
and running through the distinctions between them could be fruitful. Doing so,
however, would take us too far afield. For our purposes, they are closely enough related
for us to treat them as interchangeable. For more on gratis and gratuitus, see John M. G.
Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2017), 581. We will see
Thomas use the language of “gratuitus” in a similar context below.

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under a moral duty, to give something gratis in return. Now he does not seem
to bestow something gratis, unless he exceeds the quantity of the favor
received: because so long as he repays less or an equivalent, he would seem to
do nothing gratis, but only to return what he has received. Therefore gratitude
always inclines, as far as possible, to pay back something more.45

We just saw that gratitude is a response to gratuity. Yet we see
now that the only fitting response to gratuity is—gratuity! The
only way to meet the obligation imposed by the duty of gratitude is to give gratuitously. As in De potentia, this grateful
thanks-giving is a response to a gratuitous gift: as we already
saw, gratuity can be received and responsive without ceasing to
be gratuitous. Yet now we see that gratuity can be due and
obligatory without ceasing to be gratuitous: again, “the beneficiary is obligated, under a moral duty, to give something gratis
in return.”46
Earlier in this question, Thomas had prepared for this point
by writing that “the natural order requires that he who has received a favor should be turned to his benefactor by the
repayment of gratitude.”47 Again, this repayment, by definition,
is gratuitous; yet this gratuitous repayment is required by the
natural order. Gratuity, order, and requirement all meet in
gratitude. Later in the same question, Thomas expresses this
point more concisely: “Gratitude is a part of justice.”48 Again,
gratitude means responding gratuitously to a gratuitous gift.
This gratuitous response, however, is not a sort of supererogatory option appended to justice; it is a part of justice. To fail to
give gratuitously in response to gratuity is to act unjustly: it is to
fail to act as one ought to act.
The same paradox emerges in the next question. When
Thomas is discussing ingratitude, he writes that “the debt of
45

STh II-II, q. 106, a. 6.
For more on a “moral duty,” see STh II-II, q. 80, a. 1. More deeply, this link
between gratitude and gratuity might be strengthened if we consider that the greatest
and most gratuitous of all gifts is literally named “thanksgiving”: eucharistia. It also
bears noting that it is “right and just” to offer this supremely gratuitous gift.
47
STh II-II, q. 106, a. 3.
48
STh II-II, q. 106, a. 5, ad 2. For more on gratitude and justice, see Warne,
“Institutional Justice,” 287-90.
46

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

gratitude requires a man to make a liberal return, which, however, he is not bound to do; wherefore if he fail to do so, he
does not sin mortally. It is nevertheless a venial sin.”49 First of
all, this repayment goes beyond that which we are strictly
bound to pay—yet we are required to make it. We have here
our paradox in a nutshell: we are required to go beyond that to
which we are bound. The second point is more basic: in failing
to give gratuitously, one does not revert to a sort of lowestcommon-denominator standard of morality, or to a sort of justbarely-moral behavior. It is not as though giving less than one
has received is sinful, giving equally but less than gratuitously is
morally neutral, and giving gratuitously is virtuous. Instead,
giving less than gratuitously is itself a sin. Not, it is true, a
mortal sin—but a sin all the same. Again, the moral law
demands that we give gratuitously.50
Thomas makes this last point even more strongly earlier in
the Secunda secundae. As he is cataloguing the parts of justice,
he writes that the first set of virtues annexed to justice—
religion, piety, and observance—respond to a debt so great it
can never be paid.51 Other parts of justice—liberality, affability,
and friendship—lead to “a greater rectitude, although without it
rectitude may be ensured”: these latter virtues add more rectitude to an act that would be sufficiently upright without them.

49

STh II-II, q. 107, a. 3.
There is perhaps a more subtle marriage of the gratuitous and the due in the gift
which provokes gratitude. As we just saw, “Thanksgiving in the recipient corresponds to
the favor of the giver. . . . Now a favor is something bestowed gratis” (STh II-II, q. 107,
a. 2). Gratitude, by definition, is a response to a gratuitous gift. Yet, when Thomas asks
whether we are bound to be grateful to all benefactors, he raises the objection that
“some favors are granted without grace, and are rudely, slowly, and grudgingly given”
(STh II-II, q. 107, a. 3, obj. 2). He responds that “if someone has given a favor, not as
he ought to have given it, the recipient ought not for that reason withhold his thanks.
Yet the thanks he owes is less than if the favor had been conferred duly [modo debito],
since the favor is less” (STh II-II, q. 107, a. 3, ad 2). The problem with a poorly given
gift is not merely that it is not given gratuitously; it is not even given duly. It violates not
only gratuity, but duty. When gratitude responds to a perfectly given gift, therefore, it is
responding not only to the gratuity of that gift, but to the due-ness of that gift. Duty and
gratuity meet in a well-given gift.
51
STh II-II, q. 80, a. 1.
50

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And, because they are not necessary for rectitude, Thomas
writes that there is “little of the nature of anything due in
them.” Not so gratitude. Gratitude, along with truth and vengeance, belongs to a different set of virtues: they concern a “due
[which] is so necessary that without it moral rectitude cannot be
ensured: and this has more of the character of the due.” In this
passage, then, Thomas introduces a subset of nonobligatory
“bonus” virtues: these virtues adorn acts that would still boast
sufficient rectitude without them. If gratitude—along with the
gratuity proper to gratitude—were not due in the strictest sense,
then Thomas could easily have included it among these cherryon-top virtues. Yet he does not. Instead, he contrasts gratitude
to these superfluous virtues: he numbers it among virtues that
are necessary if there is to be any rectitude at all, and that are
therefore due in the strictest sense.52 Again, the moral law
demands gratitude—which means that the moral law demands
gratuity.53
Returning to the more basic point, but moving to a very
different context, we see the same coincidence of gratuity and
duty in a final text where Thomas discusses gratitude. In his
commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, he writes that
virtuous men promptly express gratitude to their benefactors as if it were a
sacred duty to make them a return in this way: for repaying a favor is
characteristic of gratitude. It is fitting [oportet] that a man should be of service
to one who has done him a favor, i.e., bestowed a gratuitous kindness
52

The specific sort of necessity at play here (the necessity of a means to an end)
could be similar to the “necessity” entailed in de Lubac’s gift of grace: it is necessary
that we have gratitude if we would have rectitude; it is necessary that God give us grace
if he would fulfill the nature he has created. The fact that the gratuity of gratitude is
compatible with this sort of necessity, therefore, might again speak to questions of
nature and grace.
53
Of course, liberality, affability, and friendship might be more intimately involved
with rectitude than the language I have used (“bonus” and “cherry-on-top”) suggests.
The point is merely that gratitude is due, and is required for rectitude, in a way that
they are not. That said, it remains that even these virtues which have “little of the nature
of anything due in them” are parts of justice. Thomas even breaks with Tully, on whom
he otherwise draws in this article, by including them as parts of justice (see the corpus
and ad 2). The fact that justice can stretch out to virtues that go beyond the due may
itself be meaningful for our larger question here.

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[gratuitum beneficium], and that he be not content to give only as much as he
received but that in return he begins to offer more than he got so that he
himself may do a favor.54

In a shift from the other texts on gratitude we have considered,
Thomas defines a favor not as “gratis,” but as “gratuitum”: a
favor is a “gratuitous kindness.” And he continues that, if one
has received such a gratuitous kindness, then one must respond
with one’s own gratuitous kindness. To be sure, the word
Thomas uses here, “oportet,” does not suggest absolute necessity. Instead, it conveys a sense of duty, obligation, or fittingness. Yet all of these notes go to the heart of our concern here,
for the language of oportet suggests that, when one receives a
gratuitous kindness, it is fitting, obligatory, and due to respond
gratuitously. The gratuitous is not opposed to the fitting, the
obligatory, or the due. Nor does the gratuitous merely exceed
the fitting, the obligatory, or the due. Instead, the gratuitous is
demanded by the fitting, by the obligatory, and by the due. If
we would respond fittingly to gratuity, if we would meet the
obligation imposed by gratuity, and if we would do all that we
must do in response to gratuity, then we must give gratuitously
in return.55
D) An Infinite Debt
Thomas, however, raises an objection to the dynamic we are
considering here. Just before arguing that the response of grati54

V Nic. Ethic., lect. 3.
The original claim from Aristotle on which Thomas is commenting is itself
remarkable: “this is characteristic of grace: we should [δεῖ] serve in return one who has
shown grace to us [χαρισαμένῳ], and should another time take the initiative in showing
it [χαριζόμενον]” (Nicomachean Ethics 5.5). The words Aristotle uses, χαρισαμένῳ and
χαριζόμενον, both suggest gratuity. According to Aristotle, then, one is obligated to act
gratuitously in response to gratuity. This point can return us to questions of nature and
grace. Aristotle, using natural reason, was already able to discover a certain coincidence
of the gratuitous and the due. If, therefore, nature encounters an even deeper
coincidence of the gratuitous and the due in the gift of grace, then this paradoxical
coincidence will not violate nature. Instead, it will map onto, and it will fulfill, a truth
which natural reason had already discovered.
55

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tude should exceed the favor received, he has the objector argue
that
if one person repays another more than he has received by his favor, by that
very fact he gives him something in his turn, as it were. But the latter owes
him repayment for the favor which in his turn the former has conferred on
him. Therefore, he that first conferred a favor will be bound to a yet greater
repayment, and so on indefinitely.56

Gratitude is a gratuitous response. Yet, if the receiver gives
gratuitously in response to the original gift, then the original
giver will himself be bound to respond gratefully—and therefore gratuitously—to the receiver’s grateful response. Yet this
second gift from the original giver will require that the original
receiver give a second gratuitous gift in response to the giver’s
second gift—which will place the burden back on the original
giver, who will now have to give a third gratuitous gift. And on
and on. We will be caught in a never-ending and ever-escalating
cycle of gratuity.
Thomas responds: “The debt of gratitude flows from charity
[ex caritate], which the more it is paid the more it is due,
according to Romans 13:8, ‘Owe no man anything, but to love
one another [invicem diligatis].’ Wherefore it is not unreasonable if the obligation of gratitude has no limit.”57 Contrary to what we might think, charity does not merely exceed
debt and duty, and it does not begin where debt and duty end.
Instead, it carries its own sort of debt and duty. Yet it is a debt
and a duty unlike any other. Payment of this debt does not
release one from one’s duty; it increases one’s duty. To satisfy
this debt is to assume a greater debt—which, because the debtor
is in love, is precisely what the debtor wants.58 Charity, and the
gratitude that flows from it, imposes a limitless debt. One can
only meet that debt if one gives gratuitously. Yet, the more
gratuitously one gives, the greater one’s debt. The more the gift
56

STh II-II, q. 106, a. 6, arg. 2.
STh II-II, q. 106, a. 6, ad 2.
58
As Thomas puts it, “The debt of gratitude flows from the debt of love [amoris],
and from the latter no man should wish to be free” (STh II-II, q. 107, a. 1, ad 3).
57

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is gratuitous, the more it is due; the more due, the more
gratuitous.59
This point can bring us back to our original questions around
nature and grace. Someone skeptical of de Lubac’s proposal
might concede that gratuity and duty meet in gratitude. Yet she
might counter that, when God gives us grace, he gives without
gratitude. Any synthesis of gratuity and duty found in gratitude,
therefore, might seem to be irrelevant to God’s gift of grace. We
will respond to this objection more fully in a moment. For now,
we can note that, in light of our current passage, even the
person who initiates a gift without any gratitude, and without
any duty or debt, can still be required to give gratuitously. If I
give a gift to my daughter, I might not be giving because I am
grateful to her, I might not be giving in response to anything
59

It is perhaps important that, in this passage, where we find our most thorough
interpenetration of the gratuitous and the due, Thomas is discussing not merely amor
but caritas. Indeed, he even suggests that any debt entailed in gratitude (and so the debt
Thomas discusses in the corpus of STh II-II, q. 106, a. 6 as well) is grounded in charity.
As we saw in n. 18 above, caritas comes as a gratuitous gift over and above the natural
love which is already ingredient in nature. It is extra-gratuitous. On the one hand, then,
it is important that Aristotle (as we just saw in n. 55) already saw that some sort of duegratuity and gratuitous-duty is already demanded by gratitude as an acquired (or
natural) virtue, in which amor is present. Yet it is only with the gift of grace, and with
the advent of caritas—that is, it is only when love is most gratuitous—that gratuity is
most thoroughly soaked in the due. As love grows more gratuitous in shifting from amor
to caritas, it does not break further away from the due; it becomes enmeshed more
deeply in the due.
Remaining with the logic of charity, Thomas’s teaching that the debt of gratitude
“flows from charity” might help us to unpack why this debt is limitless. For charity is
love directed towards God as our supernatural end (STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1). Gratitude
which “flows from charity,” therefore, would be gratitude first to God. The debt we
owe to God, however, is limitless: no matter how much we give in our grateful
responses, we can never repay it (see STh II-II, q. 80, a. 1; and q. 106, a. 1, ad 1). In
charity, however, we not only love God. Instead, in loving God as our supernatural end,
we love all human beings—including any human benefactors to whom we may owe a
lesser debt of gratitude—insofar as they are ordained to the same supernatural end (see
STh II-II, q. 25, a. 1). In charity, therefore, our love for our benefactors is encompassed
by our love for God—which may mean that the finite debt-of-gratitude we owe our
human benefactors is encompassed by the infinite debt-of-gratitude we owe God. It may
therefore be fitting that, because this gratitude “flows from charity,” the debt it imposes
should “have no limit.”

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particularly beautiful that she’s done, and I might not have any
duty to give her this specific gift. In initiating this gift, I give
gratuitously and without any duty. Yet, if my daughter were to
respond by gratefully offering her own gratuitous gift to me, I
then would be bound to respond gratuitously to her gratuity. If
she responds gratefully to my gift—which is how she ought to
respond, to the point that any lesser response would be sinful—
then my un-due, un-necessary, and un-grateful gift will have
initiated a process that ultimately imposes on me a duty to give
gratuitously. For Thomas, to give gratuitously to one who receives and responds gratefully—that is, to give gratuitously to
one who meets the moral duty imposed on her by my gift, or to
a receiver who responds as she ought to respond—is to bind
oneself to give gratuitously in answer to the receiver’s gratuitous
response. An unprovoked gift is not itself an expression of duty.
Yet, when all goes as it ought to go, it implicates the giver in a
web of due gratuity and gratuitous duty.
That said, if the initiator in this example gives duly and
gratuitously, then he only does so because he must give
gratuitously in response to the receiver’s gratuitous response.
Even here, due-gratuity is a matter of the giver’s gratitude, and
so the parallels to God’s gift are very dim. Putting these
subtleties aside, however, the most important point is that,
when I give out of gratitude, I give a gift gratuitously and I give
a gift I am required to give: I am obligated to act gratuitously.
The obligation is no threat to the gratuity and the gratuity is no
threat to the obligation. For Thomas, then, there is no reason in
principle that a due gift cannot be gratuitous or that a gratuitous
gift cannot be due.
E) Gratuity Is Included
To take a step further into this question, I want to reflect on
a series of realities that Thomas, at least in this context, never
considers. Attending to these realities will allow us to extend
the logic he lays out in his teaching on gratitude, and it will
allow us to take a step closer to the question of nature and
grace.

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We can begin with something very simple: a meal. Part of
what defines a meal is that it goes beyond strict necessity. It
demands all sorts of gratuitous flourishes: the setting of the
table, often with a focus on beauty; attention not just to the
consumption of calories, but to the flavor, pairing, arrangement,
and visible presentation of the food; finally, and perhaps most
importantly, the conversation that animates a shared meal.60
Indeed, conversation itself goes beyond the mere transfer of
information insofar as it includes such gratuitous touches as
personal attention, free self-revelation, vulnerability, and humor. A meal is a better meal the more it includes these gratuitous elements, and a meal would no longer be a meal—it
would become mere metabolism, or the feeding of animals—if it
lacked all of them. In order for a meal to be a meal, it is
necessary and due that it include gratuity.61
Going even further, part of what distinguishes a feast from a
meal is, as it were, a gratuitous gratuity. A family meal on a
Tuesday night in January goes beyond mere shared metabolism;
a feast on Easter Sunday goes beyond an everyday meal.62
Extravagance enters into the essence of a feast. So too,
importantly, does order: in the rhythm of the courses, in the
seating arrangement, in the rituals of songs or prayer, and so
on. In a feast, order and gratuity meet. Returning to gratuity, a
60
As Alexander Schmemann writes, “Centuries of secularism have failed to
transform eating into something strictly utilitarian. Food is still treated with reverence.
A meal is still a rite—the last ‘natural sacrament’ of family and friendship, of life that is
more than ‘eating and drinking’” (For the Life of the World [Crestwood, N.Y.: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995], 16).
61
This is not to say that a meal ceases to be a meal if some of these features are
absent: almost every family needs to avail themselves of microwavable dinners at certain
points. But, when things are not perfect, even small things—such as lighting a candle at
the table while the food is microwaving, or praying over the hastily prepared victuals—
can make the meal more of a meal. Indeed, if none of those elements were present—if,
for example, the food were served with an obvious lack of attention to its flavor and
presentation, or if there were no conversation at all (and no wordless sharing of selves)
as food was being eaten, but instead a stilted silence—then something would likely be
felt to be awkward or uncomfortable or wrong about the experience. It would not be
just a good thing (eating) with all that “extra stuff” taken away. Something would be
missing that ought to be present in a meal.
62
For more on feasts, see Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 52-55.

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feast can only hit the mark if it goes above and beyond; it can
only be fully itself if it exceeds. If a feast is not somehow
extravagant, then something will be missing from it. A giver of a
feast can only act duly if he acts gratuitously.63
Shifting gears a bit, we might also think of marriage. In
marrying, one certainly assumes a whole host of duties towards
one’s spouse. Yet, if a marriage becomes merely a matter of
duty, then the marriage dies.64 One spouse might rightly say to
another: “If you’re only here because you have a duty to be
with me, or because you want to make me happy, then you
cannot make me happy. I can only be happy if I know you want
to be with me: not because it is your duty to be with me, but
simply because you want to be with me for my own sake. It is
your duty to be with me and to make me happy; but you cannot
fully fulfill your duty if you love me in order to fulfill a bare
duty.” To use Thomas’s language, one cannot be satisfied with a
“mercenary” lover, even if the “extrinsic benefit” sought by
one’s lover is the fulfillment of his duty—which, in the grand
scheme of things, is a relatively noble aim. In a marriage, one
can only be satisfied if one is loved for one’s own sake: one can
only be fulfilled by gratuitous love. A spouse would fail to meet
his duty if he merely did his duty because it was his duty; he can

63
These conditions hold even in conditions of (at least relative) poverty. One thinks
of the Cratchits’ Christmas dinner which the Ghost of Christmas Present shows to
Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. The Cratchits wear their best clothes, even though they
are shabby; they use their best stemware, even though it is chipped; Mrs. Cratchit goes
above and beyond in making an extravagant pudding, even though it is too small for so
large a family. If one were to invoke the related category of hospitality, one might think
of Eumaeus, the even poorer swineherd, in book 14 of The Odyssey. For a deeper
meditation on eating and feasting (and for ways in which gratuity might enter into even
the feeding of animals), see Erik van Versendaal, “Reason for Being: Festivity,
Perfection, and the ‘Very Good,’” Communio 44 (2017): 502-58. As for conversation,
D. C. Schindler has argued that, because conversation is gratuitous, “Gratuity is part of
the fundamental meaning of education” (“On the Universality of the University: A
Response to Jean-Luc Marion,” Communio 40 [2013]: 94). Educators, therefore, can
only fulfill their duty if they generate gratuitous conversation.
64
Sigrid Undset offers a deep reflection on the brokenness of a merely dutiful
marriage—even when one is perfectly scrupulous in fulfilling all of one’s duties—
through Lavrans’s relationship to Ragnfrid in Kristin Lavransdatter.

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only fulfill his duty if he goes beyond his duty. The gratuitous is
due.65
Again, Thomas never offers such reflections on feasts or
marriage, and so these final points have brought us beyond
anything he says explicitly. Yet they might be able to bring us
back to the questions of nature and grace with which we began.
As far as I know, it is with reference to gratitude that Thomas
himself most deeply marries the gratuitous to the due. Now, at
least for Thomas, when God gives us grace, he does not give
gratefully.66 He does, however, invite us to an eternal wedding
feast, and he calls us to be his Bride.67 Attention to the nature of
feasts and of marriage suggests that these realities can only be
what they ought to be if they are gratuitous. Their essence
includes gratuity. If they fail to be gratuitous, they do not
merely fail to go above and beyond what they ought to be; they
cease to be what they are at all. Thomas is willing to make a
similar point concerning a reality—gratitude—that is not
present in God’s gift of grace. There therefore seems to be, at
the very least, some room in Thomas’s thought for a similar
due-and-necessary-gratuity in realities that are associated with
God’s gift of grace, but that Thomas himself does not present in
such terms. Whatever else they might suggest, our passages on
65

Of course, there are periods in any marriage during which one feels estranged
from one’s spouse, and during which one may need to fall back on one’s duty in order
to remain faithful through a dark time. Such periods can be very long. There would be a
deep problem, however, if acting out of mere duty were to become a sort of baseline
that one accepted as normal (or even as noble), instead of a wounded situation from
which one hoped for, and sought, healing. For some deep reflections on love and duty
(or love and law), see Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State of Life, trans. Sister
Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983), 25-32.
66
For a different take on this point, see St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of
Love, trans. E. Allison Peers (New York: Triumph Books, 1991), 101.
67
He also adopts us as his sons, and there might be ways in which fatherhood (like
marriage) requires that a father gratuitously go beyond bare “duty”: even if a father
were to go to his son’s every soccer game and every recital, the son might not be
satisfied if he could tell that the father was there merely because he had to be there.
Finally, in John 15:15, Christ calls us friends. Healy, in order to shed light on gratuity
in God’s gift of grace, appeals to the logic of friendship: see “Henri de Lubac on Nature
and Grace,” 548. Feasts and marriage, therefore, might be but a few of the realities
whose logic marries the gratuitous and the due.

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gratitude make clear that, in principle, there is no contradiction
between gratuity and duty—just as our passages on gratuitous
love in the Trinity imply that, in principle, there is no
contradiction between gratuity and necessity.
These points about gratuity, duty, and necessity, then, might
offer new insights into questions of nature and grace. Yet, as I
said at the outset, my aim here is not mercenary: I am not
chiefly interested in using Thomas’s passages on gratuity in
order to achieve the extrinsic benefit of scoring a point in the
nature-grace debate. I am chiefly interested in finding in
Thomas resources for a deeper reading of gratuity, which is a
task worth doing for its own sake. In order to continue on this
task, we can turn now to the role of gratuitous gift in his
Trinitarian theology.
II. A GRATUITOUS GIFT
Our second set of texts comes at these questions a bit less
directly, and they will yield more tentative conclusions. Yet, at
the very least, these texts can reinforce the points we have
already made. We can begin with a text from the Summa’s
Trinitarian questions, where Thomas defines a gift:
A gift is properly an unreturnable giving, as Aristotle says—that is, a thing
which is not given with the intention of a return—and in this way it contains
the idea of a gratuitous gift. Now, the reason that a gift is gratuitous is love
[amor]; since therefore do we give something to anyone gratuitously
forasmuch as we wish him well. So what we first give him is the love whereby
we wish him well. Hence it is manifest that love has the nature of a first gift,
through which all gratuitous gifts are given.68

First of all, when Thomas says that a gift is “unreturnable,” he
does not mean that a giver gives, as we might say, “for keeps.”
It is not merely a permanent giving.69 It is a giving in which the
68
STh I, q. 38, a. 2. See also I Sent., d. 18, q. 1, aa. 2-3. For more on this passage,
and for more on “gift” in Thomas’s Trinitarian theology, see Emery, Trinitarian
Theology, 249-58.
69
It is also a permanent giving. As Thomas writes, “When something is given to
someone only for a time, this is not a true gift; but it is true when something is given to

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giver seeks nothing for himself in return for his gift. In a bribe
or a sale, the giver expects to gain something. In a gift, he does
not. A gift is not given so that the giver can get something in
return; it is given for the sake of the recipient—and it is
therefore given gratuitously.
This note of “unreturnable” recalls De potentia’s language of
“mercenary.” In both texts, gratuity requires that the giver give
not in order to gain. And, in both texts, after defining the
gratuitous as the non-self-seeking, Thomas affirms that gratuity
is present in God. As we saw above, he affirms this point very
openly in De potentia. As we will see now, he does so implicitly
in the Summa. For, within the very question in which he defines
a gift in terms of gratuity, Thomas affirms that gift is present in
God. When he asks whether “gift” is a personal name in God,
he encounters the objection that “no personal name belongs to
the divine essence. But the divine essence is the gift which the
Father gives to the Son, as Hilary says. Therefore ‘gift’ is not a
personal name.”70 In response, Thomas recalls a point he had
laid out in his response to the previous objection: he had argued
there that a giver can only give something if it first belongs to
him, and he had presented three different ways in which one
thing can belong to another. The first way is by “identity”: “in
that sense ‘gift’ is the same as ‘the giver.’”71 Thus, “the divine
essence is the Father’s gift in the first sense: it belongs to the
Father by way of identity.”72
Putting aside certain details, we can focus on the main point:
Thomas teaches that, when the Father gives the divine essence
to the Son, this giving is a gift. This claim, moreover, comes just
one article before Thomas defines a gift as a gratuitous giving. It
is therefore hard to believe either that Thomas had forgotten
that gift is eternally present in God when he defined a gift as
gratuitous, or that he had forgotten that a gift is gratuitous
when he affirmed that gift is eternally present in God. It is with
be had forever” (In Ioan., c. 19, lect. 4 [1914]). In our current text, however,
“unreturnable” has a different meaning.
70
STh I, q. 38, a. 1, obj. 2.
71
STh I, q. 38, a. 1, ad 1.
72
STh I, q. 38, a. 1, ad 2.

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the gratuity of a gift front and center that Thomas affirms that,
from eternity, the divine essence is “the Father’s gift.”
This point is important for us because, as we saw in section I,
Thomas teaches that the Father’s giving is absolutely necessary.
Indeed, our passage comes just three questions before Thomas
devotes an article to underscoring the necessity of the Father’s
giving.73 Again, it seems a stretch to speculate that Thomas had
forgotten the gift-language of question 38 when he came to the
necessity of the divine generation in question 41. Thomas
knows that the Father’s giving is necessary when he affirms that
it is a gratuitous gift, and he knows that it is a gratuitous gift
when he affirms that it is necessary.74
All told, twenty-one times in nine texts Thomas speaks of the
divine generation as a gift from the Father to the Son.75 In none
of these texts does Thomas pause to remind us that a gift, by
definition, is a gratuitous giving. He also does not conclude
that, because the divine essence is a gift, it must be given
gratuitously. Yet, again, he speaks of the divine essence as a gift
within the very question where he defines a gift in terms of
gratuity. He also does so five questions before this passage on
gratuity,76 and he does so again four questions after it.77 Even
more, we saw in section I that, in De potentia—which was
written within a few years of the Prima pars78—Thomas explicitly proposed a definition of gratuity that is opposed not to
the necessary or to the due but to the mercenary. We also saw
him affirm that the relations of the divine persons are marked
by this gratuity. It therefore seems at least plausible that
Thomas is open to a similar definition of gratuity in these

73

See STh I, q. 41, a. 2.
Indeed, Thomas reiterates that the Father’s giving is a gift just one question after
the article dedicated to necessity: see STh I, q. 42, a. 4, ad 1.
75
See I Sent., d. 16, q. 1, a. 4, exp. text.; Cat. aur. in Ioan., c. 14, lect. 8; ScG IV 8;
De Pot., q. 10, a. 1, ad 9; In Phil., c. 2, lect. 3; STh I, q. 33, a. 1, ad 2; q. 42, a. 4, ad 1;
III, q. 7, a. 11, ad 1; and In Ioan., c. 14, lect. 8 (1971).
76
See STh I, q. 33, a. 1, ad 2.
77
See STh I, q. 42, a. 4, ad 1.
78
See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:333 and 335.
74

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

passages from the Summa—and that he is therefore open to
some sort of gratuitous necessity and necessary gratuity.
We should not speculate too much here. Nothing we have
said proves that, in his teaching on gift, Thomas intended to
imply that gratuity is present in God. Still less does it prove that
he had any intention of implying that gratuity is compatible
with necessity. None of this even proves that Thomas was
conscious that his claims carried these implications. The point
worth stressing, however, is that his claims do, in fact, carry
these implications. We have had to connect some dots in order
to see as much, but these dots are there, and they are clustered
closely enough together to be connected fairly easily—and they
can therefore reinforce the passages in De potentia where
Thomas explicitly affirms that gratuity is present in God.79
CONCLUSION
Having spent this whole article talking about what gratuity is
not—that it is opposed neither to the necessary nor to the due—
we are left with an obvious question: Can we say what gratuity
is? We will have to be more tentative here, and Thomas might
suggest different facets of an answer in different texts. In De
potentia, where he opposes the gratuitous to the mercenary, he
seems to suggest that the gratuitous is that which is done for its
own sake. This point is already important. It might be tempting
to define the gratuitous as that which exists for no reason.
Thomas, however, suggests that it exists for no extrinsic reason.
The gratuitous does have a reason: in the Summa’s passage on
79

Without exploring this point in detail, we can at least suggest that similar
conclusions might be buried in other areas of Thomas’s thought. One might consider,
for example, the category of the conveniens, or the “fitting.” Gratuity is often opposed
not only to the due and to the necessary, but to the fitting as well. The fitting is what is
called for or appropriate in a given situation; the gratuitous goes beyond what is merely
called for or merely appropriate. The fitting, we might say, “fits” into the space opened
up for it: it does neither too much nor too little. The gratuitous overflows beyond any
such space. Thomas, however, teaches that God’s most gratuitous actions—the
Incarnation and Passion—are supremely fitting (see STh III, q. 1, a. 1; q. 46, aa. 3-4 and
9-11). God acts fittingly when he acts gratuitously. The gratuitous, then, might be
compatible not only with the necessary and with the due, but with the fitting as well.

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gift, Thomas teaches that “the reason that a gift is gratuitous is
love.”80 Taking these passages together, we might say that the
gratuitous is that which is done out of love and for its own sake.
The passages on gratitude take things further. In them,
Thomas seems to suggest that the gratuitous goes beyond
whatever is strictly required or called for. He seems, in other
words, to oppose the gratuitous to the necessary and to the due.
Paradoxically, however, he also suggests that, at least in some
circumstances, we are required to go beyond what is merely required; we are called to go beyond what is strictly called for. In
this sense, our redefinition of gratuity also entails a redefinition
of the due and of the necessary: the due and the necessary,
paradoxically, can sometimes include the excessive and the
exuberant. The due can require more than is due; the necessary
can demand more than is necessary.
Remaining with gratuity, there is a sense in which, after all
our exploring, we come back to where we started. For our
commonplace notions concerning gratuity turn out to be right:
the gratuitous does, in fact, go beyond the necessary and the
due. At the same time, our commonplace notions would need to
be radically rethought: for it turns out that the gratuitous—at
least in some circumstances—is itself due and necessary. Based
on our texts as whole, then, we might provisionally define gratuity as follows: the gratuitous exists for its own sake, it is
grounded in love, and it goes beyond the necessary and the
due—even as it is sometimes required by the necessary and the
due.
We should stress, however, that this definition is provisional.
There could be other passages where Thomas fills out the
definition further by unfolding other dimensions of this deeper
gratuity. Even more, there are passages where Thomas works
with a nonparadoxical account of gratuity, and where he
opposes the gratuitous to the necessary and to the due. We
cannot take up the question of how—or of whether—these
latter texts can be reconciled with the texts we have highlighted
here. All I really hope to have shown is that there are, in fact,
80

STh I, q. 38, a. 2.

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MICHAEL HIGGINS

multiple strains of Thomas’s thought on this question, and that
Thomas does not merely oppose the gratuitous to the necessary
and to the due. Instead, there are at least some passages where
he proposes a gratuity that is right at home with the necessary
and with the due, even as it exceeds them. These passages
might, at the end of the day, outweigh those in which Thomas
seems to operate with a less paradoxical account of gratuity.
Things could also tilt the other way: it could turn out that these
passages are dwarfed by those where Thomas opposes the gratuitous to the necessary and to the due. Yet, even in the latter
case, the passages we have considered would still be enough to
show that there are openings in Thomas to a deeper and
paradoxical gratuity: a gratuity that may take us deeper into
questions of nature and grace, and a gratuity that may open up
equally rich insights into other similarly urgent and basic
questions.

The Thomist 86 (2022): 663-70

CELEBRATING SAINT BONAVENTURE
EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS AFTER HIS BIRTH
JOSHUA C. BENSON
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

O

NCE IN CONVERSATION with a colleague (a
Thomist, who shall remain nameless), he remarked with
surprise that scholarship on Bonaventure, like scholarship on Aquinas, seemed to constitute its own world. Scholarship on great figures like Bonaventure does form a world, even
a universe, one that includes both the scholarly universe of the
moment and that same universe extended backwards in time. In
2020, The Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University
published Saint Bonaventure: Friar, Teacher, Minister, Bishop. A
Celebration of the Eighth Centenary of His Birth1—but in order
better to assess this work, a brief overview of some major
celebratory volumes published in Bonaventure’s honor may be
helpful.
In 1874, the sixth centenary of Bonaventure’s death, Fidelis
a Fanna published Ratio novae collectionis operum omnium . . .
S. Bonaventurae (Turin, 1874). This volume provided a foretaste of and rationale for the edition of Bonaventure’s Opera
omnia published between 1882 and 1902 at Quaracchi (outside
of Florence). A new appreciation for Bonaventure arose from
that edition since it included texts, such as his three sets of
1

Saint Bonaventure: Friar, Teacher, Minister, Bishop. A Celebration of the Eighth
Centenary of His Birth, ed. Timothy J. Johnson, Katherine Wrisley-Shelby, and Marie
Kolbe Zamora, Essays from “Frater, Magister, Minister, et Episcopus: The Works and
Worlds of St. Bonaventure, an International Conference hosted by the Franciscan
Institute at St. Bonaventure University” (St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute
Publications, 2020).
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disputed questions, that had been forgotten since perhaps the
fourteenth century, and it eliminated from Bonaventure’s corpus many other texts (especially of “spirituality”) with which he
had long been associated. As that edition and a new Bonaventure emerged into print, medieval studies emerged more
fully as a discipline, infused with energy by Pope Leo XIII’s
Aeterni Patris (1879). The twentieth century’s greatest scholars
began a close study of Bonaventure with the new edition in
hand, among them Etienne Gilson and a Franciscan friar he
helped establish at St. Bonaventure College near Olean, New
York, Philotheus Boehner. These two men helped found the
two most important intellectual centers in North America for
the study of medieval thought: the Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies in Toronto and The Franciscan Institute of
St. Bonaventure College (later University). While Gilson is
famous to many, Boehner is better known to students of
Franciscana, since he helped establish the critical edition of
William of Ockham’s works and a series to translate the works
of Bonaventure at The Franciscan Institute. Both series are still
in print and are still essential to teaching and research in the
Franciscan tradition.
From 1874 and the foretaste of a new Bonaventure, we must
leap to 1974, when a series of celebrations for the seventh centenary of Bonaventure’s death resulted in two great collections
of scholarly essays. A five-volume collection entitled S.
Bonaventura 1274-1974, published by the same college that
edited Bonaventure’s Opera omnia, includes contributions by an
incredibly distinguished list of scholars. The first volume opens
with a citation from Étienne Gilson; the fourth volume with a
previously unpublished note of Philotheus Boehner, who had
died suddenly on May 22, 1955. The five volumes were arranged topically, covering Bonaventure’s portrayal in art, his
life and writings, philosophy, theology, and a final volume that
provides a massive bibliography. The volumes are still an essential reference point for scholars, given the exceptional quality of
the participants: among them Louis Jacques Bataillon, Jacques
Guy Bougerol, Palémon Glorieux, James McEvoy, Bernard
McGinn, Anton Pegis, Walter Principe, Michael Schmaus,

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Fernand Van Steenberghen, Paul Vignaux, and Grover Zinn.
The volumes seemed to be a who’s who, not just of the
Bonaventurean world, but of the medieval scholarly world.
Another collection, entitled San Bonaventura maestro di vita
francescana e di sapienza christiana, published in 1976, arose
from a major gathering in Rome for the seventh centenary of
Bonaventure’s death. Paul VI gave the initial address. Published
in three volumes, the first volume includes nearly one thousand
pages on Bonaventure’s life and general issues in his thought.
Volumes 2 and 3 are briefer and contain essays focused on
specific theological and philosophical themes. These volumes
also include a distinguished international list of scholars (some
of whom also contributed to S. Bonaventura): Camille Bérubé,
Ignatius Brady, Jean Châttilon, Ewert Cousins, Luigi Pellegrini,
and Wayne Hellmann—a friar who sought to work with a
theologian named Joseph Ratzinger but who finished his
dissertation in 1974 under the direction of Werner Dettlof (a
contributor to both collections of essays).
These collections emanating from 1974 (and others
published in that year) signal the end, in some ways, of that
major blast of energy that began with Fidelis a Fanna and the
new edition of Bonaventure’s works. While major works of
scholarship on Bonaventure emerged after 1974, the next major
blast of energy to celebrate Bonaventure came in 2017. Why
2017? For the simple reason that Bonaventure may have been
born in 1217. The evidence is not compelling. Bonaventure was
more likely born in or near to 1221 (see Jay Hammond,
“Dating Bonaventure’s Inception as Regent Master,” Franciscan
Studies 67 [2009]: 179-226, at 199-200). But apparently no one
wanted to wait for 2021 and compete with the seventh
centenary of Dante’s death, so at least three major celebrations
with subsequent publications occurred in 2017: a commemorative volume in the journal Antonianum (2018:2) dealing with
various issues in the reception of Bonaventure (among other
things); a large volume stemming from a celebratory gathering
in Rome published as Deus summe cognoscibilis: The Current
Theological Relevance of Saint Bonaventure (Peeters, 2018) (and
so, focused mainly on theological topics); and the volume under

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review here, Saint Bonaventure: Friar, Teacher, Minister, Bishop
(hereafter FTMB), marking a celebration at The Franciscan
Institute at St. Bonaventure University. All three volumes display the continuing international interest in Bonaventure.
FTMB and Deus summe are roughly the same size (at around
700 pages each). FTMB stands out for the range of topics addressed and the variety of perspectives offered on Bonaventure.
In this way the volume imitates the range of 1974’s five-volume
S. Bonaventurae.
The editors divide FTMB into two parts, each of which is
headed by a keynote address. Wayne Hellmann, the only person
in this volume who also contributed to the 1974 celebrations,
delivered the first keynote, “Sacraments: Healing unto Glory,”
while Emmanuel Falque offered the second, “The Entrance of
God into Theology: Confrontation with Étienne Gilson.” The
introduction to the volume remarks that these two essays
“provide an intellectual trajectory that, in one way or another,
is manifest in all of the essays contained in this volume” (1).
This remark is worth further assessment but requires acquaintance with the two authors first.
Wayne Hellmann is a Conventual Franciscan friar, educated
in Rome and Germany, who for many years taught at St. Louis
University in the department of theological studies. (Full disclosure: he was my dissertation director.) Perhaps his most important contribution to Franciscana is collaborative: Hellmann
is one of the principal editors of the landmark series of translations Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, published initially in
three volumes by New City Press from 1999-2001 (now
augmented by a fourth volume). His dissertation, written in
German, was translated in 2001 by one of his own students, Jay
Hammond (who also contributes an essay to FTMB). Hellman’s
essay here builds on another piece of collaborative work:
selections from book 4 of Bonaventure’s Commentary on the
Sentences, translated with introduction and notes by Hellmann,
Timothy LeCroy, and Luke Townsend (Franciscan Institute
Publications, 2016). More than these publications, though,
Hellmann is important for his inspiration and guidance of
students. At least twelve of the forty-four essays included here

BONAVENTURE’S EIGHTH CENTENARY

667

are written by students of Hellmann or students of students of
Hellmann. Taking his contributions as a whole, one might say
that Hellmann has continued a major part of the legacy Boehner
helped found at The Franciscan Institute: teaching the Franciscan tradition and making it more widely available through
translation (indeed, in the same translation series Boehner
helped establish). Hellmann’s essay displays his concern to read
Bonaventure closely and to link him to contemporary theological concerns, here emanating from Pope Francis’s Laudato
Si and cosmological reflection on the sacraments.
Emmanuel Falque is a very different sort of scholar. Falque is
a French phenomenologist of the “third generation,” who takes
his inspiration from Merleau-Ponty rather than Husserl or
Heidegger (see Transforming the Theological Turn: Phenomenology with Emmanuel Falque, ed. Martin Koci and Jason Alvis
[Rowman and Littlefield, 2020], xvi-xvii). Falque is a prolific
writer, perhaps most widely known for his contributions to the
“theological turn” in phenomenology, through which he has
challenged the strict separation of theology and philosophy,
above all in his Crossing the Rubicon: The Borderlands of
Philosophy and Theology. Almost all his major works (a
“philosophic triduum” among them) now exist in translation,
and numerous articles and books in English and French grapple
with his complex and rich thought. Falque has engaged Bonaventure throughout his career, especially in his first book, now
in a revised English translation: Saint Bonaventure and the
Entrance of God into Theology (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2018). The book originated as Falque’s thesis at the
University of Paris, supervised by Jean-Luc Marion. This translation includes a new preface and a new opening “Confrontation with Étienne Gilson,” an essay that anticipates portions
of Falque’s keynote in FTMB. That keynote allows Falque to
reintroduce questions of the relationship of philosophy and
theology in Bonaventure’s thought and in philosophy and
theology today.
Hellmann and Falque are two very different thinkers and
writers. The introduction to the volume is not simply being
hyperbolic, however, when it suggests that the trajectories of

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these two essays are related to all of the essays in the volume.
The clear differences between Hellmann and Falque, both of
method and of concern, result in a rather eclectic volume
(something certain readers will lament and others may
celebrate). It is easier for me to see how essays resonate with
Hellmann’s concerns. However, Falque’s concerns (and those
which I might tie to his) are present in a significant portion of
the essays.
After Hellmann’s keynote for part 1, five groups of essays
follow, under the headings: “Who was Bonaventure?,” “Bonaventure’s Theological Influences,” “Methodology, Illumination
and Theology according to Bonaventure,” “Bonaventure on
Ethics, Evil and Marginality,” and “New Insights into Old
Texts.” It is easy to see the connections to history and texts as
relating well to Hellmann’s interests, especially those that look
back to the Victorines and the Summa halensis. But there is
something of Falque in these essays too, especially in the
concern to utilize new methods to study Bonaventure’s texts, as
in the contribution of Nicholas Youmans on Bonaventure’s
generalate, and in the concern to engage Bonaventure’s
thoughts on theology and philosophy closely. Anyone interested
in the list of topics for part 1 will find an essay or essays of
particular interest. I particularly appreciated Alfredo Cento’s
essay on Bonaventure’s canonization, since this is an oftenneglected part of his history. Bonaventure does not receive
much citation in Catholic moral thought, and so the essays
directly contributing to that section and other essays that address moral concerns are a useful addition to the literature.
Part 2 offers four groups of essays after Falque’s keynote:
“Bonaventure on Christology, The Eucharist and the Spiritual
Life,” “Bonaventure on Preaching and Scripture,” “Bonaventure’s Enduring Theological Legacy: Past and Present,” and
“20th-Century Philosophical Considerations.” A significant
portion of these essays relate well to Falque, especially the last
section where critical comparison between Bonaventure and
Heidegger takes center stage. Essays on Bonaventure’s theological legacy also show some of Falque’s interest, perhaps
especially in Fernando Valdivieso’s “Bonaventure’s Challenge to

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Contemporary Moral Philosophy.” Hellmann’s historical interests also shine in this section, as Timothy Johnson puts Bonaventure and Luther into conversation, and Trent Pomplun takes
the reader on a tour of “Baroque Bonaventureans on the
Primary Reason for the Incarnation.” This section, like the first,
provides numerous essays that will pique the interest of
scholars.
At one level, an objective reader can say that there is no
comparison between the volumes stemming from the 2017
celebrations and those stemming from the 1974 celebrations.
The prestigious scholars from 1974 are almost all gone. Anyone
working today, as Falque himself recognizes in his own critical
essay on Gilson, rests on the shoulders of those giants—though
no one should be confined to simply repeating their insights.
Looked at collectively, those 1974 volumes now seem like the
end of something, the end of an enormous burst of energy,
perhaps given its greatest push by Leo XIII, a pope who praised
the very scholia of Bonaventure’s Opera omnia (notes and
essays often comparing Aquinas and Bonaventure) that Gilson
firmly rejected. The scholarship produced by that burst of energy will have a perennial value, even if not all of it was of equal
worth. Many of those older essays were the first crack at
something, or the first time that something had been synthesized. We are now at a very different stage. FTMB feels more
like a new beginning: new methods, new concerns, new
readings, specific investigations of old sources and old themes.
For that very reason, FTMB is not a book I would recommend
to someone new to Bonaventure: it is not meant to serve as an
introduction to Bonaventure. It is a celebration, a marker of a
moment in time, a beginning whose end cannot yet be seen.
As scholars move forward from this beginning, I wish to call
attention to the source of all these endeavors: Bonaventure’s
current Opera omnia, produced in the nineteenth century. It is
badly in need of updating. We still possess no census of Bonaventure’s manuscripts. The edition does not provide enough
detail about its editorial choices, and editorial methods have
changed enormously since the completion of those volumes.
Scholarly knowledge of the University of Paris and of its many

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JOSHUA C. BENSON

figures has also grown enormously (the nineteenth-century
editors knew nothing of the “pecia” system, for instance)—
making not only the edition but its notes badly in need of
reassessment and updating. As a new beginning in scholarship
advances, I hope that some will join scholars like Aleksander
Horowski, who has taken up the challenge to begin again at the
source: the critical evaluation of the Opera omnia and a return
to the manuscripts of the Seraphic Doctor.

BOOK REVIEWS
Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy. By TOBIAS HOFFMANN.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 292. $99.99
(hard). ISBN: 978-1-107-15538-1.
This excellent book achieves at least two interrelated goals, both suggested
by its title: it gives a thorough account of theories of free will as found in the
thirteenth century, continuing as far as Ockham (with backward glances to
Anselm, Bernard, and Lombard); and it gives a detailed account of the
question of the origin of evil in the morally bad choices of (as Hoffmann’s
authors supposed) a being who was initially not subject to intellectual error.
Both topics are hard, the second especially so. But Hoffmann is an expert
guide, and is able both to cast new light on the more-or-less well-known
material that constitutes the first part of his project, and to give a clear and
compelling account of the largely novel material that can be found in the
second part of it.
Hoffmann begins with a discussion of the ways in which Aristotle’s
thinking on choice was incorporated into Western discussions, starting with
the translation of John of Damascus’s eclectic De fide orthodoxa (which
included a great deal of Aristotelian psychology with the addition of the
notion of a rational will), and continuing with the direct access to relevant
parts of the Nicomachean Ethics. This latter coincided with, and partly
contributed to, what Hoffmann labels the “psychological turn” around the
1220s. Earlier medieval accounts of will were fundamentally theological in
character. But Hoffmann notes that thinkers of the early thirteenth century
suddenly became interested in action theory and moral psychology as objects
worthy of study in themselves. (In this he follows, with due acknowledgement,
his former student, Jamie Spiering, who has worked on the topic in Philip the
Chancellor and others.) And what immediately followed the psychological
turn was a largely intellectualist account, according to which free agency is
explained (in Hoffmann’s helpful definition) “mainly with reference to the
intellect” (5). The story follows a familiar trajectory: intellectualism prevails
until it gets condemned (in Paris at least) by Stephen Tempier in 1270, and
again with greater force in 1277. Specifically, as Hoffmann notes, the core
issue was what he helpfully labels “judgment-volition conformity” (61): that
the will automatically wills in accordance with judgment. The worry, of

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course, was that judgment-volition conformity entails some kind of
determinism.
Now, even the most ardent intellectualists generally allow that the
judgment of means (to an end) is in some sense contingent: the output, the
judgment, is not determined by the input (reasons in favor of this or that
means). So, one of the primary problems for the intellectualist lies in determining how the intellectual process of deliberation is contingent. According to
Hoffmann, for instance, Aquinas claims that “one wills in proportion to one’s
judgment,” and Hoffmann follows by noting that “the fact that this rather
than that cognitive judgment actually becomes a judgment of choice depends
on an affective commitment” (47). Aquinas is therefore a “moderate
intellectualist” (54). But as Hoffmann notes, there is no explanation within
Aquinas’s system for the activity of the will here.
The year 1277 in fact saw two distinct condemnations, both in March: 219
errors of the arts masters, and 51 propositions from Giles of Rome’s Sentences
commentary. In terms of long-term significance, article 24 of this latter list
(that “there is no evil in the will unless there is error in reason”) turned out to
be particularly important, since in 1285, when Giles appealed to the new
pope, the Parisian theology masters conceded the previously condemned
proposition—the so-called propositio magistralis.
This odd chain of events allowed the initial imposition of some kind of
voluntarism to be somewhat tempered. A key figure here is Henry of Ghent,
one of the movers behind the first of these 1277 condemnations: the will is a
self-mover (else it would be determined ab extra). The remarkable Franciscan
Peter Olivi allows, in line with this, that it is possible for the will to choose its
own end. But the propositio magistralis opened the way for intellectualism to
return. Key among the adherents of this kind of theory is Godfrey of
Fontaines, who takes the metaphysical impossibility of the self-motion of
something part-free to show that psychological voluntarism must be false. But
according to Hoffmann, even in Godfrey the will has some kind of role: “to
apply an object to the intellect” for consideration (117). So, again, as in
Aquinas, there is in Hoffmann’s judgment some irreducible and unexplained
contingency in the will’s activity.
The story continues on through Duns Scotus, Hervaeus Natalis, Durand of
St.-Pourçain, and Peter Auriol, with greater or lesser emphasis on the will,
until we arrive at William of Ockham, “the most modern . . . of the thinkers
here considered” (151). According to Ockham, for an object to be willed, it is
not required even that the object possess “some aspect of the good” (155).
The thinking is plain enough: both intellectualists and voluntarists (in Hoffmann’s analysis, at least) ultimately make choice “primitive, unexplainable”
(159). There is no contrastive account of choice (why this was chosen rather
than that); perhaps there is no noncontrastive account either. As so often,
Ockham simply draws out implications already present in the work of his
predecessors.

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Following this narrative logic, the rest of the work discusses the origin of
evil choices, reprising many of the thinkers discussed in the first half of the
book. On the face of it, the situation is harder for the intellectualists: “if a
sinful act presupposes a cognitive deficiency, then angels cannot sin” (199).
For some of the more intellectualist theologians, indeed, some sort of
cognitive deficiency was required. Aquinas, for instance, at least in his later
work, attributes to the angels some kind of “lack of consideration”: they
“overlooked the divine rule by which their will was to be regulated” (209).
But primal sin is a problem for voluntarists too: if the will is responsible, with
no intellectual error, how is the angels’ choice not irrational? Henry has the
most intriguing account: Lucifer took innocent delight in his role, superior to
the other angels, but then took “inordinate glory in it” (224). And this defect
in the will “caused the intellect to err” (225). Scotus has the most ingenious
account (something to which Hoffmann has drawn attention in previous
publications): the will is a “collative power,” capable of putting together
distinct concepts. In Lucifer’s case, while the intellect could not form a
complex judgment affirming Lucifer’s equality with God, the will could, since
the will is not circumscribed by the logically possible in the way that the
intellect is. And if the will can form the relevant complex, it can also will it.
A final chapter deals with the equally intriguing topic of diabolic obstinacy
in sin. But rather than summarize this, I would like to focus on what strikes
me as the only real difficulty in the account, because the discussion of Scotus’s
view of the fall raises it rather sharply. Early on, Hoffmann makes an observation in relation to his definitions of “intellectualism” and “voluntarism”:
“Medieval thinkers consistently held that, properly speaking, it is not the
intellect and will that act, but rather the person who acts by intellect and will.
Nevertheless, once the emphasis is on the relative contributions of intellect
and will in free agency, it becomes convenient to speak loosely as if the
intellect knows, understands, considers, judges, and deliberates, and the will
desires, chooses, and enjoys” (5–6). It is easy to see what Hoffmann is
thinking: talking in this way can avoid awkward clarifications and circumlocution. But the difference is more than just a manner of speaking. In some
cases, it is not readily possible to translate the one form of talk into the other.
I will take a couple of simple examples.
Consider, first of all, the extensive discussions of the possibility (or
otherwise) of the will’s self-motion. Godfrey of Fontaines maintains that
something simple, such as a soul or a will, could not move itself. But the
argument is germane to the intellectualism/voluntarism question only if it is
held that it is the will itself that is the agent of choice.
A more extreme example of the difficulty arises with Hoffmann’s account
of Scotus on Lucifer’s primal sin. As Scotus sees it, the will is a collative
power: both intellect and will can combine concepts into some syntactic
complex; but unlike the intellect, the will can combine incompatible concepts
into complexes. But how might we spell this distinction out if we treat these
powers (intellect and will) not as themselves agents but merely as the powers

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of an agent, in the way Hoffmann proposes? Is it that a rational being has one
power in virtue of which it can only combine compatible concepts into
complexes (intellect), and another power in virtue of which it can combine
both compatible and incompatible concepts into complexes (will)? And is this
second power also the one in virtue of which a rational being wills things? I
do not suppose that the way of talking implied in giving positive answers to
these questions is absolutely unintelligible. But it seems that we would need to
do a great deal more work to show just how it is comprehensible.
RICHARD CROSS
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Human Act. By CAN LAURENS
LÖWE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. vii + 225.
$99.99 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-108-83364-6.
Thomas Aquinas’s account of human action is of perennial interest to
scholars of medieval philosophy. The secondary literature on this topic is
voluminous. Thus, one might wonder whether there is anything new to say.
This recent book by Can Laurens Löwe answers that question with an
emphatic affirmative.
The innovative aspect of Löwe’s work is the view that Aquinas held a
thoroughly hylomorphic account of human action. Of course, the basic
framework of human nature is hylomorphic in character; on Aquinas’s view,
human beings possess a particular kind of soul (the form) that configures
matter (to use Eleonore Stump’s useful phrase) and (in Löwe’s words)
determines the particular powers within human beings (14). Furthermore, in
Aquinas’s account of choice in question 13 of the Prima secundae, he argues
that choice is formally an act of intellect while materially an act of the will.
Löwe’s discussion not only delves much deeper into what Aquinas means by
this claim but also argues that the human act itself has a hylomorphic structure
for Aquinas.
The book is divided into three parts. In the brief part 1, Löwe provides the
general framework that will be important for his account and introduces some
central notions such as powers, acts, and passions that all play a role in the
hylomorphic structure of human acts. He then proceeds to the heart of his
account, the hylomorphic components that account for human action. In part
2, he discusses what he calls choice hylomorphism, which forms the
foundation for a human act, while in part 3, he concentrates on what he calls
act hylomorphism. He ends the book with a brief chapter comparing

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Aquinas’s explanation of action with those of philosophers working on action
theory in the nonhistorical literature. He argues that Aquinas’s account avoids
many of the difficulties that current accounts face, making it, on his view, an
attractive alternative (198). He is willing to grant that Aquinas’s account faces
its own difficulties—in particular, a commitment to dualism insofar as he
holds that the powers of the rational soul that produce human acts are
nonphysical (201). Löwe thinks that one need not be committed to dualism in
order to support act hylomorphism and sketches briefly how this might work.
Although he is not able to develop this defense in this book, he argues the
possibility of an answer implies that Aquinas’s account ought to be taken
seriously by contemporary theorists (202).
On Löwe’s interpretation, the human act is a hylomorphic composite of an
act of use (the form) plus the commanded act (the matter). What explains the
particular act performed by the agent is the hylomorphic structure of the
choice that precedes the human act. Löwe acknowledges briefly the activities
that precede choice, for example, volition for the end, intention, deliberation
(if needed), and consent (31). Nevertheless, his focus is on choice and the
human act itself because he is interested in both the ontology of and the
explanation (the aetiology, in his words) for the human act, the latter of
which, he argues, Aquinas identifies as choice.
The content of a choice is determined by a judgment of the power of
reason. This judgment generates an assent by reason to a particular alternative
for action, presenting this alternative to the volitional power (the will) as its
object. In doing so, reason exerts both formal and final causation on the will
(86-89). The judgment of choice enables the will to move itself with efficient
causation to incline toward the object presented by reason (97-98). The
judgment of choice constitutes what Löwe calls an external form (because it is
external to the will). On the basis of this external form, the will generates the
choice. Thus, choice has a hylomorphic structure that consists of a volition of
the will (the material component) and the content of that volition, that is, the
object toward which the will inclines. Löwe calls this inclination the intentional directedness toward a particular alternative, which has been derived
from the judgment but is different in nature. This is the (internal) form of the
choice (111-13). Choice in turn sets in motion the human act, which is a
hylomorphic construction of an act of use (i.e., the form, which is a volition of
the will) plus the commanded (bodily or mental) act (i.e., the matter). The act
of use follows from an act of command, which constitutes another extrinsic
form originating in reason. Command is the act of reason that is generated as
a result of the choice (138-39).
Thus, human acts are hylomorphic constructions that are themselves
produced by choices, which are also hylomorphic constructions. The details of
how these hylomorphic constructions operate is extraordinarily complicated,
far too complex to explain in any detail in this short review. For example, the
notion of remaining virtually in a power applies at several points along the
chain of events. Use is an immanent act while the bodily commanded act is

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transeunt. In a corporeal human act, use and the commanded act are both
inherently and durationally heterogeneous, while in a mental human act use
and the commanded act are inherently homogeneous but durationally
heterogeneous. It can be rather tricky to keep these (and other) distinctions
straight, but fortunately Löwe provides detailed explanations and helpful
examples of these notions and their roles in the causal chain producing human
actions.
Löwe has an impressive command of both Aquinas’s corpus and the
appropriate secondary literature. His detailed interpretation is well supported
by references to the relevant texts, with the Latin included in the notes. Every
individual component of the account is documented by close readings of
passages from across Aquinas’s corpus with careful explication of the technical
notions and ideas. Engagement with the relevant secondary literature on
Aquinas is constant throughout his discussion.
Furthermore, Löwe is well versed in the current literature on human
agency. He often incorporates technical ideas from this body of literature
(suitably cited and described) into his explanations of Aquinas’s ideas. Such an
approach runs the risk of anachronism, but Löwe demonstrates how current
ideas can help to explicate the often-obscure notions found in Aquinas’s own
discussions.
I will end this review with some points I found surprising. First, a minor
point, but one that might startle those familiar with the literature on Aquinas’s
account. I found it surprising that Löwe translated appetitus as “striving”
instead of the standard “appetite” or “inclination.” This is obviously a minor
point, but, at least in my view, the English word “strive” has connotations not
found in the Latin. The more standard translations also better preserve the
sense of appetitus as a technical term.
More surprising to me was the failure to mention an additional factor in
Aquinas’s account of human acts, namely, the passions of the sensory appetite.
Löwe discusses the general idea of a passion as an exercise of a passive power
insofar as it is moved (18). This proves to be an important idea in his
discussion of act and choice hylomorphism. But as far as I can tell, he never
acknowledges the role played by the particular passions located in the sensory
appetite.
Of course, Löwe is correct that ultimately intellect and will are the powers
that drive human action, but the passions can affect the operations of reason
and will, whether well or badly, which in turn can impact the particular action
chosen by the agent. It is true that, on Aquinas’s account, the passions are not
able to determine the activities of the rational powers if those powers are
functional. Still, I would have thought that such a thorough account of human
action as the one presented by Löwe would have acknowledged the influence
of the passions at least in a footnote. Perhaps he did so, and I missed it, but I
saw no such mention. This is especially surprising given Löwe’s acknowledgment that the metaphysics of Aquinas’s account is an important foundation for
his ethical theory (see 30-33).

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As Löwe notes, human beings engage not only in physical acts but in mental acts as well. In his discussion of the structure of mental acts, Löwe focuses
on reminiscing, which is an act of sensory cognition grounded in recollection.
This discussion was fascinating, but I wondered whether an analogous explanation would apply to the operations of intellective cognition. Löwe briefly
mentions intellective cognition in a footnote in chapter 1; his worry there is
whether Aquinas can maintain a distinction between the volitional act of use
and the mental act itself, given that both acts are nonphysical. Such a
distinction would be necessary to maintain the hylomorphic account. It is not
clear to me that Aquinas cannot maintain a distinction between them, given
that the act of use is volitional and the mental act itself is not, but clearly this
is a topic for future investigation.
Finally, Löwe argues that, for Aquinas, choice explains why we are moral
agents subject to praise and blame. This is because we choose our actions
freely. Thus, choice accounts for the freedom of human action. Löwe argues
that the need to account for this freedom explains why Aquinas privileges
choice in his theory of action (see 31-33 and 139). I concur that for Aquinas,
free choice is a necessary condition for moral responsibility, as Löwe notes.
But I would like to suggest that for Aquinas choice is pivotal in another respect: which particular action is performed is determined by choice. To adopt
one of Löwe’s reoccurring examples, the fact that I take a walk instead of
engaging in yoga is also a function of choice over and above its status as free.
This book makes an innovative and impressive contribution to the field of
Thomistic studies of human agency. It will, however, most likely be of interest
primarily to scholars who have at least a passing familiarity with Aquinas’s
account of action. Although Löwe provides detailed discussion and many wellchosen examples, the discussion is dense and highly technical. Nevertheless, it
is also highly original and engaging.
COLLEEN MCCLUSKEY
Saint Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri

Pride, Politics, and Humility in Augustine’s “City of God”. By MARY M. KEYS.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. 253. $99.99
(hard). ISBN: 978-1-009-20107-0.
This book represents a careful reading of Augustine’s City of God through
the optic of virtuous humility and its antithesis, sinful pride, especially in the
political sphere. The author proceeds by commenting sequentially on each of

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the twenty-two books of Augustine’s magnum opus, adhering closely to this
“rhetorical dialectic,” pride-humility.
For Keys, “Augustine’s humility is the virtue or excellence by which human
beings willingly acknowledge their dependence on God and their essential
equality with their fellow human beings and strive to live accordingly with
right worship, justice, moderation and mercy.” Pride, on the other hand,
“resists rightful subordination to God and disdains equality with one’s fellow
human beings.” In the political sphere, pride “propels to domination, war, and
oppressive, inequitable peace” (10).
In her treatment of the first five books, Keys shows how pride opposes
“what is by nature right in human affairs” (16). Here she traces Augustine’s
treatment of the harmful effects of pride on Roman political history. For
example, pride blinds pagan leadership to the horrors of war. In book II,
Augustine challenges Roman historian Sallust’s claims about the respect for
natural right and justice that allegedly characterized Rome’s polity. He does so
by citing Sallust’s own words to show that this was not the case. In book III,
Augustine continues to refer to Sallust’s account of Roman history to contend
that pride negatively impacted social and familial relationships in preChristian Rome. Keys suggests that Augustine’s treatment of virtuous moderation in book IV closely parallels his concept of humility. Augustine employs
moderation as a counterpoint to pride and its moral and political
consequence, domination, in order to propose a close parallel between the
harmony of a virtuous family and a moderately sized kingdom, which Rome
was not content to be. Roman pagan religion is reintroduced into Augustine’s
analysis for nurturing this prideful ambition on the part of Rome’s political
leaders. At this point, too, Augustine nods in the direction of a later, fuller
account of Christ as the exemplar of humility which promotes a different,
Christian polity. Love of glory led Roman leaders to the folly of imperialism, a
theme which Augustine explores in book V. Here he contrasts the humility of
Christian heroes, the martyrs, with the vainglory of Rome’s pagan heroes and
emperors.
Civil religion forms the principal theme of books VI-VII. Keys points out
that this theme is the prelude to Augustine’s engagement with Plato and his
followers in book VIII. She notes that the rhetorical dialectic of pride-humility
is for the most part lacking in these books, although they nevertheless play
significant roles in the development of that dialectic (46). Hence, books VIIIX mark the “first peak” of Augustine’s defense of virtuous humility against
vicious pride (70). Following treatments of Socrates, Plato, and the Platonists
in book VIII, Augustine turns in books IX and X to Apuleius, Plotinus, and
Porphyry. Keys notes Augustine’s “pilgrim framework” in these books, which
contain lengthy debates on natural theology, including a discussion of the false
humility of daemon worship. She treats each “Platonist” philosopher sequentially, and in book IX observes Augustine’s contrast of the futility of
daemon worship with the humility of the true mediator between God and
man, who is Christ. Keys then claims that book X “is pivotal to and a pinnacle

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of Augustine’s rhetorical dialectic in The City of God” (87). In this book
Augustine faults Platonic philosophy, especially in Porphyry, for limiting
divinity’s power while it elevates the mind excessively in the pursuit of
happiness. Such philosophers eschew true humility evidenced in the corporeal
humanity of Christ as the way to salvation. However, Augustine’s condemnation of Platonic philosophy on these grounds is not absolute. He indicates
ways in which the great Platonic achievements in ethics, logic, and metaphysics “give rise to true, if imperfect, forms of philosophic humility” (88).
In book XI, Augustine turns to the origin of the two cities, earthly and
heavenly, and weaves this treatment into the rhetorical dialectic of pridehumility. Keys observes that Augustine does not treat these cities as polarities,
but stresses the mixed nature of citizenship in the heavenly city on account of
the flawed condition of human beings living in the world (107). Hence, the
cities are entangled with one another in the saeculum. It is in these books that
Augustine develops his metaphysics and epistemology of humility and pride.
Humility depends for its foundation upon an acknowledgement of creatureliness and a rightly ordered love. Pride is understood “only as a defection, a
turning away from ‘that which supremely is’ . . . toward oneself and one’s own
power, and so toward lesser being” (128). Human humility is motivated by
the creation of man and woman as recorded in Genesis.
Following his treatment of the origin and ends of the two cities and the
beginning of the human race, Augustine turns his attention in books XIII-XIV
to the fall of the first human beings and the propagation of human death. Keys
notes that Augustine treats humility in this context as “fertile soil for life”
while pride “pollutes the ground and withers life at its roots” (140). Even
though she observes that pride (superbia) occurs only once in book XIII, and
humility (humilitas) not at all, she nevertheless argues that humility remains in
the background. However, book XIV, which is about original sin and death, is
a “book about pride” (153). It also contains a strong discourse on humility.
Pride is identified as the source in human beings of “an unnatural beingtoward-death.” Humility is held up as restoring human beings and divinizing
them by participation in God. Augustine holds that the human race should be
bound together by concord and peace. Christ exemplifies humility while the
devil is possessed by pride.
In books XV-XVIII Augustine treats humility and pride in the context of
human history, principally as recorded in Scripture. His overall intention in
these books is to inspire readers, through the use of exemplars, to choose to
imitate humility in cooperation with divine grace. Keys points out that “he
also underscores the limited but nonnegligible benefits citizens can offer to
social life and politics in this world” (171). She pays particular attention to
Augustine’s surprising treatment in book XVIII to the ways in which cities and
nations recall “the blessings they have received from remarkable benefactors”
(195). Book XVIII concludes with a brief but significant treatment of Jesus the
Mediator, the supreme exemplar of humility.

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Keys insists that book XIX is “pivotal” to Augustine’s overall argument in
relation to humility and pride. Humility is presented as the key to the
attainment of happiness. The peace which is the hope of the prideful
individual negatively contrasts with the peace of a just fellowship under God.
In book XX, Augustine turns to the final judgment of human beings. The
proud are portrayed as trampling on the dignity of the humble. Jesus’
assumption of a human body and soul and his voluntary submission to death
bestows on suffering a redemptive value. Augustine thus treats three motives
that human beings have for practicing humility: epistemological, moral, and
theological.
In book XXI, Augustine faces the reality of the desperate end of those who
live for themselves and not for God. Pride plays a key role in their demise.
Augustine introduces humility in terms of the universal human need for
mercy, and sees hope in the humble attitudes of those who repent of their sins.
He also emphasizes “recognition of the possibility of miracles and the rich
humanity of openness to being in wonder” (220). This latter theme carries
over into book XXII, the final book of his work, where he also continues the
treatment begun in book XXI of the summum bonum and carries it over into
his discussion of the fulfillment of all people and nations in the city of God.
This is humility’s triumph whereby the citizens of the city of God enjoy the
bliss of God’s own life, attained as a common good and as a grace.
Keys has given us a supremely readable account of Augustine’s City of God.
Her book, with its thoroughgoing treatment of the rhetorical dialectic of
pride-humility, resumes the principal philosophical, scriptural, and theological
arguments of Augustine’s work. Keys’s book represents an original contribution which nevertheless summarizes the best English-language scholarship
on that work while it also focuses attention on the wider oeuvre of the bishop
of Hippo. As such it is valuable both to novices in the study of the City of God
and to students of the history of political theory and philosophy who are
looking for an appropriate optic to read Augustine’s magnum opus. My one
criticism is that Keys’s research is largely limited to English scholarship. For
example, she would have found useful Notker Baumann’s 2009 monograph,
Die Demut als Grundlage aller Tugenden bei Augustinus. Nevertheless, the
range of her grasp of Augustinian scholarship is remarkably broad. This book
is essential reading for all students of the City of God. Its treatment of
humility and pride in Augustine’s thought is thorough as is Keys’s placement
of this rhetorical dialectic in the context of the political thought expressed in
Augustine’s work.
ROBERT DODARO, O.S.A.
Pontifical Faculty of Theology at St. Augustine Seminary
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of Medieval Paris: Preaching,
Prologues, and Biblical Commentary. By RANDALL B. SMITH. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. x + 452. $99.99
(hardback). ISBN 978-1-1088-4115-3.
At the end of the Introduction to this substantial work, Randall B. Smith
admits that he is
aware that different readers will likely use [this book] in different ways.
Some will be interested only in Thomas, others only in Bonaventure.
Some may be interested only in the historical and cultural “preliminaries” part, others only in the chapters on the relationship
between preaching and biblical commentary in the thirteenth century.
Still others may pick up the book simply to read about a particular
prologue. So although the chapters are meant to form a coherent
whole, I have also done my best to organize the book so that it can be
more easily accessed as a reference tool. . . . Although I have tried to
keep unnecessary repetition to a minimum, crafting each chapter to be
able to stand on its own in this way made some repetition unavoidable.
The goal has been to produce a book whose parts are as useful as
possible for a wide range of scholars with varied interests in the
subjects covered. (21).

This admirable statement nevertheless offers small comfort to the conscientious reviewer, faced with more than 450 larger-format pages in (what
appears to be) a rather small, dense font. Smith has produced a heroic work,
but how many readers will tackle the whole thing is a matter for doubt. In
many ways, that would be a shame, since the piling up of evidence and
examples and the sheer volume of medieval prologue material makes for an
immersive dive into exegetical practice, especially for those unused to its
conventions.
Smith’s aim is to emphasize the links between preaching and biblical
commentary in the work of thirteenth-century Parisian, Scholastic theologians.
He wants medievalists to remember that the university chairs of thirteenthcentury theologians were, metaphorically speaking, three-legged stools whose
limbs were biblical exegesis, disputation, and (crucially, for Smith) preaching.
This triple formulation is taken from twelfth-century scholars such as Peter
the Chanter, who describes biblical commentary as the foundations, disputation as the walls, and preaching as the roof of the house of faith which
teachers set out to build in their students and themselves. Clearly, Smith is
right to recall the importance of this triad, and to remind readers of the place
of preaching, especially for members of the mendicant Orders who supply his
material here. Whether it was the conventions used in preaching that led the
way for developments in disputation and commentary, however, or the
influence was another way round, I was not quite so convinced. Indeed, in his
conclusion (424) Smith seems rather to backtrack from what I understood to
be the assertion of the rest of the book: “I have not drawn conclusions about

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causality or lines of influence, preferring rather to restrict my comments to
‘habits of mind’.” Instead, he shifts to a broader aim, to reclaim a wider
definition of “Scholastic,” which he thinks has too often been used solely to
define the argumentative speculative theology of the Paris schools rather than
the more inclusive intellectual culture to which the metaphor of building the
house of faith gestures.
The meat of the book is the examination of a group of prologues to a
variety of works by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. Smith’s argument is
that there is a link between the form and manner of production of these
prologues and the sermo modernus style of Parisian preaching. The sermo
modernus was a break from the older homiletic mode of proceeding in which
the preacher went through the day’s scriptural passage one phrase or verse at a
time. In the “modern sermon” method, the preacher began with a biblical
verse apparently unconnected to the day’s reading, using it as a kind of
thematic introduction to what was to come. The preacher’s skill was shown
firstly in the choice of this additional text that would illuminate the nonliteral,
“spiritual,” meanings of the reading of the day, and then in the clarity with
which he expounded those meanings. Smith argues that the proficiency
acquired in the preparation of inceptio and resumptio sermons required of all
new theological masters at Paris gave them an expertise that they also employed when creating prologues to their various other works, exegetical and
thematic. In this way, he claims, the conventions of the new preaching had
much wider effects on exegesis. While I agree entirely about the importance of
preaching, I was not so sure of the argument about the direction of travel of
the influence on show—or indeed, whether there is a single direction of travel
at all.
The book is thus divided into three parts: an introduction to the university
culture of the second half of the thirteenth century; detailed studies of each of
the Aquinas prologues; and detailed studies of each of the Bonaventure
prologues. For readers interested in any of these individual works, Smith pulls
together a mass of scholarship and translation, together with his own careful
exposition of each of them. It has clearly been a labor of love. For the benefit
of readers who may wish to know if their own particular field of interest is
covered, the works under consideration are as follows:
For Aquinas: the prologue to Rigans montes (Aquinas’s Inceptio
sermon); the prologue to Hic est liber (Aquinas’s Resumptio sermon);
the prologues written as a student for his commentaries on Jeremiah,
Lamentations, and Isaiah; the prologue to his Sentences commentary;
the prologue on Contra impugnantes; the prologue to his commentary
on Boethius, De Trinitate; the prologue to his commentary on the
Pauline Epistles; the prologue to his commentary on the Psalms; the
prologue to the commentary on the Gospel of John.
For Bonaventure: the prologue to Omnium artifex (Bonaventure’s
Inceptio sermon); the prologue to his Resumptio sermon (an early

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version of De Reductione artium ad theologiam); the prologue to his
Sentences commentary; the prologue to the commentary on the Gospel
of John; the prologue to the commentary on the Gospel of Luke; the
prologue to the Breviloquium; the prologue to the collationes on the
Ten Commandments; the prologue to the collationes on the Seven
Gifts of the Holy Spirit; the prologue on the collationes on the
Hexaëmeron.

Smith has written previously on Aquinas’s preaching and is steeped in his
thought and scholarly approach. His admiration for Aquinas’s clarity and
method of proceeding is not disguised. Nonetheless, that does not prevent him
from appreciating Bonaventure’s somewhat different gifts, and indeed from
celebrating the great Franciscan’s stunning literary talent. Often, devotees of
one of these thirteenth-century giants seem to have taken sides against the
other, so it is refreshing to see Smith finding himself in enjoyable thrall to
Bonaventure’s luxuriant language. In fact, Smith’s detailed celebration of the
Latin made me wonder whether or not Bonaventure was in some degree
trapped by his own gifts. His remarkable, (usually) triadic phrase-making, with
its alliterations, rhyme and scansion, all of which, as Smith notes, may help
readers and hearers remember the theological points that Bonaventure is
trying to convey, at times seem to take on a life of their own, beyond the
exposition of the text. He is so caught up in the medium that the message can
seem somewhat distant or esoteric.
What I missed in this book, lost a little in the mass of detail, was a broader
imagination of just how the relationship between biblical commentary and
preaching worked—the chicken-and-egg problem of what conclusions were
acceptable in exegesis and where they came from. Alan of Lille famously said
that Scripture had a wax nose, which could be pulled any which way, once it
had been softened up. The exposition of these prologues, and of the distinctiones and other teaching and preaching aids called in evidence,
exemplifies this in spades. Just where do these interpretations come from, and
who decides whether or not they are “right”? Part of the answer to this
question is certainly to be found in the importance of form or genre in
medieval theological teaching—something often forgotten today: what could
be claimed in disputation was not always what could be expounded in the
lecture room nor, even more, could be preached from the pulpit. In this way,
Smith’s insistence on looking at prologues as a particular form of medieval
theological writing is absolutely correct—and I was only disappointed that the
wider question is not ever really discussed here.
My other wish was for a consideration of what sort of religion these
sermons, with their multiple three-point structure and their complex language,
purveyed, and to whom. What is their relationship to the lists of jokes and
proverbs we know were also provided for Franciscan preaching in particular,
or the descriptions of the troubadour nature of their communication with a
vast variety of audiences and congregations? The material Smith uses here is
firmly rooted in modern published sources and, though understandable, that is

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unfortunate. It means the book has little or no sense of the original form of
these materials, where the unsettled quality and character of manuscript
transmission gives a different, more provisional view of medieval academic
life. Smith has done scholars a real service in putting these prologues together,
to be compared side-by-side. He is right to remind his readers that preaching,
disputation and exegesis were all part of a medieval theologian’s duty. But
preaching to whom, and how, and what—those are questions left for another
day.
LESLEY SMITH
Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford
Oxford, United Kingdom

Christian Platonism: A History. Edited by Alexander J. B. Hampton and John
Peter Kenney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. xvi
+ 497. $130.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-1-108-59034-1.
It is gratifying to find a volume devoted to Christian Platonism. The
validity of this category is sometimes denied, especially with reference to
patristic Platonism. In the Introduction, by editors Alexander J. B. Hampton
and John Peter Kenney, the Harnackian model of a pure biblical Christianity
as opposed to its Hellenization is rightly called into question. The volume is
divided into three sections. Section I, “Concepts,” contains six chapters, from
the perennial value of Platonism to participation. Section II, “History,” offers
nine chapters that range from the Bible and early Christianity through the
Renaissance to modernity. Section III, “Engagements,” contains six chapters
that study such topics as natural science, the environmental crisis, and art. Of
the twenty-four contributors, only three are women. In the interest of space, I
must be very selective and cannot refer to my own scholarship in support of
my points or agreements/doubts expressed, but they are all buttressed by
arguments, either published or in process.
Lloyd Gerson reflects on the perennial value of Platonism—what I would
call Platonism as philosophia perennis. Gerson rightly notes that patristic
Christians who “wanted to reflect philosophically on their religion did so
almost exclusively within a Platonic context” (15). Aristotle was received as
propaedeutic to Plato. Gerson lists Aristotle as a Platonist (22; see his book,
Aristotle and Other Platonists). Aquinas Christianized Platonic metaphysics
(32). Something similar, I note, happened with the allegedly Aristotelian Liber
de causis, based on Plotinus and Proclus. Plato’s language of Good, One,
Being and Nous and beyond Being and Nous, and overflowing, was received
by Origen, Nyssen, Dionysius, and others as terms of God. I agree that Plato’s

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ethical intellectualism has a metaphysical foundation (19), which can also be
found in patristic Platonism, in evil as nonbeing—one of the pillars of the
doctrine of apokatastasis, it can be added, in Origen, Evagrius, the early
Augustine, Dionysius, and Eriugena. Gerson deals, among other things, with
Numenius and Plotinus: the latter’s debt to Aristotle is highlighted (25),
although Proclus seems to have charged Origen alone, not Plotinus (his fellowdisciple of Ammonius), with Aristotelian innovations. The One as ἔρως (26)
was joined to God as ἀγάπη by Origen, Nyssen, and Dionysius. The three
Neoplatonic movements, μονή–πρόοδος–ἐπιστροφή (27), were received, I
note, by patristic Platonists, such as Origen, Dionysius, and Eriugena, who
consciously dovetailed or replaced ἐπιστροφή with apokatastasis. The unityplurality relation (28, based on Proclus, Elements of Theology 1) is connected
with the principle “all in all (but οἰκείως),” present in late “pagan” and
Christian Platonism. “Having rejected the solution of Proclus, the problem
that Damascius revealed appeared to indicate a plausible need for Christian
revelation,” although Porphyry presented Christian revelation as irreconcilable
with Platonism (30). It seems to me not accidental that some identify
Damascius with Ps.-Dionysius after converting to Christianity, for there is a
continuity between their ideas. Platonists are indifferent to history, Christians
not (31)—because of Christ’s incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. This
is, I note, a charge against Origen, along with that of postulating many resurrections, although Origen insisted on the centrality and historical unicity of
such events—even if they are repeated in the hearts of believers—one
crucifixion being sufficient for the salvation of all rational creatures in all ages.
The clash over history is also, I find, the reason why the Christian Platonist
Dionysius uses the present tense when speaking of God and seems to some not
to support apokatastasis because he did not use the future tense.
In chapter I.2, John Dillon and Daniel Tolan investigate the notion of the
Ideas as thoughts of God. This theory is traced back to Xenocrates, Alcimus,
Antiochus of Ascalon, Philo, Alcinous, and other early imperial Platonists such
as Plutarch and Atticus. Clement, whose theory of the Ideas as God’s thoughts
Origen arguably knew, is somewhat overlooked, but Origen’s view is
examined within his attack, not on Plato’s ideas—exemplarism surfaces
throughout Origen’s oeuvre—but on the theory that the Ideas are not in the
divine mind (and/or the Stoics’ Ideas, I might add, given Origen’s frequent
polemics against Stoic metaphysics), based on the Athenian reading of the
Timaeus’s Demiurge as different from God. Origen’s On First Principles 2.2.3,
on Wisdom’s creation through species and rationes corresponding to
εἴδη/ἰδέαι and λόγοι and his Commentary on the Gospel of John 1.19.114-16,
on creation assimilated to that of a house or ship, are rightly taken into account. I find this a middle way between the eternity of creatures and an
artisanal creation by God also denied in a fragment reported by Eusebius from
Origen’s lost Commentary of Genesis. In the Commentary on the Gospel of
John 1.19.114-16, the mention of “alpha and omega” suggests that Origen
was mindful of Clement. Indeed, Dillon and Tolan correctly mention Philo

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and Clement as antecedents; I would add Bardaisan. I only doubt the
Clement-Origen dichotomy (49), as both state that the Father is only One and
the Son is One-All. Certainly, Origen claims that the Father is beyond νοῦς
and οὐσία, but also is νοῦς and οὐσία. This, I think, develops Resp. 509B (cited
in Cels. 6.64) and posits equality and sameness of divinity and eternity (and
οὐσία: this is more controversial but arguable). Maximus’s λόγοι (50) derive
from Origen, and their link with God’s will in divine creation and
knowledge—a move to preserve God’s transcendence—was anticipated, I
note, by Ammonius and Pantaenus, received by Origen.
In chapter I.3, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz reflects on God One and Trinity. I
think the novelty of Origen is paramount in the doctrine of one God in three
hypostases, so much so that Origen arguably impacted even “pagan”
Platonism. Radde-Gallwitz studies the relation between Trinity and Triad; I
think the main discrimen is the latter’s hierarchic structure. Radde-Gallwitz is
correct that Christian theories of the Trinity rested on Platonism. Origen and
Augustine testify to the importance of Platonism in their conception of God as
immaterial. Radde-Gallwitz counters the Arianism-as-Platonism trope that
joins Origen, Arius, and Eunomius. There is another narrative maintaining
that Christianity shifted from the intelligible-sensible distinction to the
creator-creatures distinction: Radde-Gallwitz contests it, as I did. Nyssen had
both; even in his last work, Homilies on the Song of Songs 3, Nyssen
maintained that the former is supreme. I concur that “presuming an irreconcilable conflict between Platonism and Christianity” (68) in Gregory is
misleading. Dionysius posited God as beyond intelligible being (ibid.), I
suspect because he depended on both Origen and Proclus, arguably joining
them in a double-reference scheme, as he often does. I agree that pro-Nicene
theology is based not only on Platonism, but also on Scripture—because, I
add, these were Christian Platonists and the opposition of the Bible to
Platonism/Hellenism is misleading, Scripture being often already Hellenized
from books of the OT to the NT, not to mention its Platonizing reading from
Philo to Origen.
In chapter I.4, Kevin Corrigan observes that “Christian Platonism” is
problematic, but “Platonizing Christianity” suggests Harnack’s thesis. I find
“Christian Platonism” no more problematic than “Islamic Platonism” or
“pagan Platonism” (the last problematic because of “pagan,” a label often
rejected in history of religions). That Demiurge and Chora are coeval is
“anathema to Christianity” (82): this is true, but not of all Christians, not
Justin or (if Christian) Calcidius. Corrigan gives three examples, focusing on
Plotinus, of how “Platonic ‘pagan’ thought was decisively influenced” by
Christian Platonism (85). I agree and have argued for other instances, for
example in Plotinus, Porphyry, and Proclus. The soul-body relation is closer
than previously thought (98), as I had argued. For Gregory of Nyssa, the
preexistence of soul without the preexistence of body contravenes
fundamental principles of Platonic thought (96). Origen, I note, claimed
analogously that his interpretation of creatio ex nihilo was supported by Plato.

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Both Origen and Plotinus were disciples of Ammonius Saccas (90): I concur,
although the footnote refers to scholarship arguing that they did not study
under one Ammonius. I agree about the identification of hypostases with
ἀρχαί in Περὶ ἀρχῶν (90), for which I argued at length. Double creation in
Gregory and Evagrius (95) is another element in this interesting chapter.
In chapter I.6, Rudi te Velde explores “Aquinas and His Neoplatonic
Sources” on the Platonic category of participation. Besides Dionysius, Augustine and Boethius, I add that Origen used it often—and strategically with
respect to his Logos Christology. I observe that the four conditions of
Christian creation that te Velde checks for compatibility with Neoplatonism
are all present in Origen: creatio ex nihilo, the world as nondivine, creation by
a free God, the world’s diversity as positive (although resulting from the Fall,
for Origen it is an expression of freewill and will result in universal
restoration).
Section II begins with Mark Edwards, who studies in II.1 the Bible and
early Christian Platonism. An important role in philosophical exegesis was
played by allegoresis. Philo influenced Origen here—as in much else. The goal
of the Christian ascent is not the One or the Good, but God (157)—of course,
as Christian Platonism. This did not prevent Platonic transcendence from
being an inspiration to Christian apophaticism. No Catholic attempted to
show that the Trinity is like the Neoplatonic Triad (160): the difference, I
think, is primarily hierarchy, and Origen and especially Nyssen refrained from
embracing it; Synesius, Neoplatonic bishop, is ambiguous, but is he included
in the “Catholics”?
In chapter II.2, Kenney studies Christian Platonism in late antiquity,
offering an overview, necessarily incomplete (e.g., little on Origen, no
mention of Synesius) and with scanty literature: he lauds “advances” in this
field (162), but cites very few. And patristic Platonism still needs much
painstaking research. I agree, as would Beierwaltes, that Platonism grounded
Christian transcendentalism. Origen integrated Platonism with Scripture,
posited the Logos as seat of the intelligibles, and theorized creatio ex nihilo in
parallel with Platonist interpretations of the Timaeus in which the Demiurge
produced the Receptacle (173). Origen’s theology of freedom is rightly
highlighted. Henotheism (166) was central to Christian appreciation of Plato.
The role of “pagan” philosophy in Christian self-definition is correctly
acknowledged (162). The use of the Chaldaean Oracles was not a “failure of
nerve” by Platonists (164) but, I add, denotes a revelation not so different
from Scripture: both needed philosophical exegesis. Scripture’s deeper
meaning is disclosed through philosophical allegoresis, already used by Stoics
and Platonists. For Augustine, Platonism is notionally the soundest philosophy
although insufficient to salvation (179). The Cappadocians, Ambrose, and
Augustine are indebted to earlier Christian Platonism and Nyssen revisited
Origen’s theology in light of Nicaea and Plotinus (176). I add that Nyssen did
not correct Origen, and Plotinus was likely known partially to Origen too.
Origen is said to display a “hierarchism” (176) that should be nuanced, but it

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is correct that hierarchism was “endemic to Platonism.” Among the “few
ancient Christians who studied formally as members of a Platonist school”
besides Origen, who studied at Ammonius’ like Plotinus (166), I would add
Synesius (who attended Hypatia’s school) and perhaps Dionysius, with his
arguable double-reference strategy (e.g., he uses θεουργία for liturgy and
replaces ἐπιστροφή with ἀποκατάστασις) and his possible formation in
Athens, where he absorbed Proclus’s thought.
In chapter II.4, Torstein Tollefsen treats Christian Platonism in Byzantium,
concentrating on Ps.-Dionysius, Maximus, and Palamas. That they were “not
conscious of being Platonists” (206) might be true of Maximus and Palamas,
probably not of Dionysius. Tollefsen highlights God’s radical transcendence,
the Forms/λόγοι, the theory of procession/reversion—which I note Christian
Platonists such as Dionysius and Eriugena arguably joined to apokatastasis
intentionally. For Maximus, the Logos is incarnate both in Jesus and in Scripture’s words and hidden meanings (as he is for Origen). Created substances
are not eternal (218). This, I note, is the same position as Origen’s: the FormsLogoi are eternal in God’s mind but creatures’ substances are created at a
certain point. Divine Names does give the impression that the world has no
temporal beginning and is everlasting (211). This is why, I suspect, it seems
that Dionysius excludes apokatastasis as he speaks of it in the present, but this
is because God is beyond time and Dionysius joins apokatastasis to
ἐπιστροφή. In Palamas, the δύναμις-ἐνέργεια theory (221) derives from the
Cappadocians, who in turn arguably derived it from Origen (and probably
Iamblichus).
In chapter II.5, Stephen Gersh examines Ficino as the paradigm of Renaissance Christian Platonism, offering a brilliant account of Ficino’s engagement
with the Platonic tradition. Ficino found profound convergences between
Plato and Scripture—as did Origen, Nyssen, Augustine, and others. The
ancient theological tradition was perfected by Plato, interpreted by Plotinus,
and transmitted by Ficino’s translations. He did not take up metensomatosis—
like Origen, I note: they knew Plato expounded it only mythically and never
as a theory of his own. Both accepted a voluntary, not ontological change:
vicious people become like animals in their behavior, not by transmigration.
As Origen assumed both a common inspiration by the Logos and Plato’s
dependence on Jewish Scripture to explain the convergences between Plato
and Christianity, so does Ficino explain such convergences by assuming that
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, and Proclus knew John’s Gospel and Dionysius.
The latter was in fact unknown to Origen but John was commented on by
Amelius and Origen. Ficino thought that Origen’s Platonism was the truest
form of Platonism, explicitly said that Plotinus was a disciple of the Christian
Ammonius with Origen, and deemed Dionysius the pinnacle of both Platonism
and theology (237): I find this in line with Dionysius’s aforementioned
double-reference scheme. Ficino appreciated the theory of the divine Logos
containing all the paradigms of creatures, citing Philo, Amelius, and
Iamblichus. This exemplarism was supported by Philo, imperial Platonists,

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arguably Bardaisan, and Origen. Ficino found in Platonists, including Plotinus,
traces of the Trinity—although the Triad, as noted above, was hierarchical.
Derek Michaud (II.7) tackles Christian Platonism in early modernity,
mostly in the Cambridge Platonists. He uses Douglas Hedley’s edited
Cambridge Platonism online sourcebook. Cudworth adduced “Clement and
Origen . . . the Christian Platonist tradition” (288). Apokatastasis is not
discussed but intimated: Conway thought, “our fallen condition cannot result
in eternal damnation” (293). Apokatastasis, I remark, was important in the
Cambridge Platonists—not surprisingly, as it was central in Origen.
In chapter II.8, Douglas Hedley examines the deep influence of Platonism
on Romanticism: the Platonic legacy in Leibniz (including the Monads as
“fulgurations of the Divinity”) and Shaftesbury, the influence of Boehme,
Hamann, Jacobi, and the Muenster circle, and the impact of Platonic politics
on De Maistre. Hedley assumes, like De Maistre (and Ficino), that Origen was
clearly a Platonist (310).
Among others, there are suggestive chapters in sections II and III by
Catherine Pickstock on Christian love and Platonic friendship, Lydia
Schumacher on Christian Platonism in the mediaeval West (a partial reception,
often not in Greek), and Stephen Clark, on multiplicity and unity. I definitely
agree with Clark: “Plotinus’ Platonism, I suggest, is closer to the Christian
version, despite some ambiguities, than most Christian scholars have
recognized” (472). Further research on the Origen-Plotinus comparison is
needed. The same is the case with Porphyry, who studied with Plotinus and
Origen. The rhetorical question, “Does this constitute a real difference
between the Plotinian and the Christian view of Origen’s creative activity?”
(481), invites a negative answer with which I concur. Exemplarism in creation,
like much else, is remarkably similar in Origen and Plotinus.
There are some typos: for example, “Move” for “Mover” (23); “Porphyry’s
of first principles” for “Porphyry’s triad of first principles” (56); “we will
better positioned” for “we will be” (58); a possible repetition of Enn.
VI.7.[38]4-5 and its interpretation (96; 97); “the Platonism” for “Platonism”
(170), “related all other humans” for “to all” (219), “the mind form above”
for “from” (223), “he arguable embraces” for “arguably” (297), and missing
cross-references such as “see p. 000 above” (235 etc.).
This dense volume is very welcome and should be complemented and
deepened by a detailed study of patristic Platonism and monographic treatments of, and commentaries on, single thinkers and works.
ILARIA L. E. RAMELLI
Durham University / Sacred Heart University, Angelicum / Cambridge University
Durham, United Kingdom / Milan, Rome, Italy / Cambridge, United Kingdom