The Thomist 87 (2023): 355-413

THE BURNING COAL: THOMAS AQUINAS ON LOVING
AND EATING CHRIST IN THE EUCHARIST
DARIA SPEZZANO
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

T

HOMAS AQUINAS’S biographers record that, receiving
Viaticum in the last days of his life “with devotion and
tears,” he made an eloquent profession of his Eucharistic
faith and love. Asked whether he believed the consecrated Host
to be “truly the Son of God, who came forth from the womb of
the Virgin, hung on the arms of the cross, died and was raised
on the third day for us,” Thomas answered:

I truly believe and know for certain that this is true God and man, the Son of
God the Father and of the Virgin mother, and so I believe in my soul and confess in words what is stated by the priest about this most holy sacrament. . . . I
receive you, price of the redemption of my soul; I receive you, viaticum of my
pilgrimage, for the love of whom I have studied, kept vigil, and labored. You I
have preached and taught; I have never said anything against you.1

Thomas shifts in the second half of his profession to the familiar
second person; as he receives the Eucharist, he addresses it
directly, not in its appearances as sacrament, but in its reality as
Christ himself, union with whom is the only-desired reward for
all of Thomas’s earthly labors.
Thomas’s prayer is the grateful consummation of a wellattested lifelong devotion to Christ truly present in the Eucha1
William of Tocco, Ystoria Sancti Thome de Aquino 58 (C. Le Brun-Gouanvic, ed.,
Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco [1323]: Édition critique,
introduction et notes, Studies and Texts 127 [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval
Studies, 1996], 197-98).

355

356

DARIA SPEZZANO

rist. William of Tocco reports that at the elevation during Mass,
Thomas had the habit of addressing the Lord directly by reciting
the second part of the Te Deum, from “You, O Christ, are the
King of glory,” through its ending plea for redemption and
heavenly fulfilment: “Come, then, Lord and save your people,
bought with the price of your own blood, and bring us with
your saints to glory everlasting.”2 His final prayer to Christ in
the Eucharist reveals a depth of desire that can sometimes be
glimpsed even beneath the surface of his theological writings on
the sacrament.
Thomas’s Eucharistic theology is shaped not only by his conviction of the reality of Christ’s presence, but by his insight into
how this makes the Eucharist truly the “sacrament of charity.”
In this essay, I will argue that Thomas, while he is justly well
known for his metaphysical elaboration of the doctrine of transubstantiation, defends a strongly realist view of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist for mystagogical and spiritual, not simply
philosophical, reasons. In particular, I will attempt to show
why, contrary to the assessment of some recent scholars such as
Gary Macy and Louis-Marie Chauvet, Thomas’s attention to
Christ’s substantial presence in the Eucharist secures, rather
than undermines, the fullness of its signification. Furthermore, I
will argue that Thomas’s reasons for insisting on the metaphysical reality and abiding nature of Christ’s presence after the
consecration help to elucidate his claim, mostly unelaborated,
that “the actual receiving of the sacrament produces more fully
its effect than the desire for it alone.”3
I will begin by outlining some relevant questions raised in
recent scholarship, then discuss the context of Thomas’s claims
in his own theology of the Eucharist as both sign and reality. I
hope to show how Thomas’s realism provides the foundation
for an understanding of the sacrament as true spiritual food—as
Christ himself, given and intimately received in love—in which
2

William of Tocco, Ystoria, 198.
STh III, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3; cf. q. 79, a. 1, ad 1. Translations of the Summa theologiae
are based on S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Opera Omnia Iussu impensaque
Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vols. 4–12 (Rome: Leonine Commission, 1888-1906). Translations from Latin are my own unless otherwise noted.
3

THE BURNING COAL

357

charity functions as the keystone holding together the Eucharist
as true sign and as true presence. This central role of charity
reveals a sometimes underappreciated personalist dimension of
Thomas’s Eucharistic theology. As the true presence of Christ,
and therefore as the preeminent sign of the reality of God’s
abiding love, the Eucharist, enkindling charity in us, is for
Thomas the unifying and deifying sacrament par excellence.4
I. SCHOLASTIC PITFALLS?
THOMAS’S EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGY IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP
The role of sacramental signs in Thomas’s thought, not only
as the instrumental causes of grace, but as essential means for
engaging the human body, mind, and heart for fruitful reception of that grace, has not always been appreciated, in
comparison with the attention given to his more metaphysical
considerations. This is perhaps especially true in the case of the
Eucharist. And yet, as in his treatment of creation and the Incarnation, Thomas’s ontological arguments about the sacraments
are all at the service of his teaching on God’s loving and
personal communication of his goodness to human persons to
bring them into relationship with himself.
As is well known, Thomas devotes considerable space in his
treatise on the Eucharist in the Summa theologiae to an examination of transubstantiation, the Real Presence, and related
questions about the persisting accidents of bread and wine. The
clarity of his doctrine on these metaphysical matters earned for
him a privileged place of authority at Trent and in subsequent
magisterial teaching.5 Less importance has historically been
4

I am grateful to colleagues who provided very helpful suggestions on various
aspects of this essay, especially Boyd Coolman, Gary Culpepper, Bruce Marshall, Jeremy
Wilkins, and two anonymous peer reviewers.
5
However, in the period following Thomas’s death his teaching on
transubstantiation was not uniformly embraced by Scholastics even in the Dominican
Order, and was notably opposed in the Franciscan tradition. See David Burr,
“Eucharistic Presence and Conversion in Late Thirteenth-Century Thought,”
Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 74, no. 3 (1984): 26-27. This
opposition can be related in some cases to an underlying suspicion of Aristotelianism
(ibid., 105). Whereas for Thomas (and Bonaventure) transubstantiation was a way of

358

DARIA SPEZZANO

placed on his treatment of the sacrament qua sacramental sign.
Perhaps because of this, his teaching on the sacraments in general and the Eucharist in particular have sometimes been characterized by modern theologians as excessively metaphysical,
mechanistic, or nonpersonal.
At least two related loci of concern emerge in these critiques
of Thomas’s Eucharistic theology. The first is a perceived
inattention to the sacrament as symbol, in its scriptural,
liturgical, and relational context. Second, and as a consequence,
it is argued that the Scholastic distinction between the Eucharist
as sacrament (sacramentum tantum), as reality and sacrament
(res et sacramentum), and as reality alone (res tantum), led
Thomas to allow a metaphysics of Christ’s substantial presence
(the res et sacramentum) to override a theology of the Eucharist
as sign. What is more, especially in his insistence that Christ’s
presence remains in the Eucharist as long as the accidents persist, regardless of the recipient, Thomas purportedly emphasizes
the metaphysical stability of the res et sacramentum at the
expense of its connection to the Eucharist’s ultimate effects of
grace for human persons alone (the res tantum).
A) Problems with Signification
Louis-Marie Chauvet has been especially influential in
developing the thesis that Thomas’s treatment of the Eucharist
is excessively mechanistic or “productionist,” and lacking in an
adequate anthropological, historical, and scriptural foundation.
Chauvet presents these views in his widely read Symbol and
Sacrament, where he mounts a critique of Scholastic sacramental theology as represented by Thomas Aquinas for these
explaining Christ’s presence, for later Franciscan theologians who accepted the
“possibility of presence without conversion,” transubstantiation came to seem like more
of “a problem to be solved” and was ultimately rejected (ibid., 107). On opposition by
Ockham to Thomas’s teaching, see John T. Slotemaker, “Ontology, Theology and the
Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham,” The Saint Anselm Journal 9, no. 2
(2014): 1-20. For an in-depth discussion, see Marilyn McCord Adams, Some Later
Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and
William of Ockham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

THE BURNING COAL

359

reasons.6 Chauvet opposes his postmodern hermeneutic of
language and symbol, which he considers most suitable for
expressing grace as a relation between persons, to Scholasticism’s metaphysical approach, with its “productionist” focus
on the instrumental causality of grace.7 The latter is, by his
definition, alien in its categories to the realm of the symbolic
order, static rather than dynamic, and inadequate to the task of
elucidating the gracious relation between God and humankind.8
Chauvet is critical too of Thomas’s doctrine of transubstantiation, which “seems dangerous” especially because of the
notion that the Eucharist is perfected in the consecration of the
matter, rather than in its reception by the human subject, as is
the case in the other sacraments. Thomas argues this because
Christ is contained in this sacrament “in an absolute manner”
(that is, in his Real Presence); this, Chauvet contends, too easily

6
Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical
Press, 1995), 2-3.
7
Chauvet posits that while grace is the paradigmatic case of that which is “a nonobject, a non-value . . . the category of causality is always tied to the idea of production
or augmentation.” Thus, Scholastic sacramental thought, represented by Thomas, is
burdened by an inbuilt defect tied to its very mode of expression: “There is an
(apparently fundamental) heterogeneity between the language of grace and the
instrumental and productionist language of causality” (Symbol and Sacrament, 7). For a
helpful overview of the twentieth-century background of Chauvet’s thought in
alternative approaches to the sacraments focused on symbolism and liturgical
participation, see Reginald Lynch, O.P., The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as
Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Washington D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2017), 54-66, especially 55 n. 123.
8
“Because of its distinctive metaphysical bent . . . Western thought is unable to
represent to itself the relation between subjects or of subjects with God in any way other
than one according to a technical model of cause and effect” (Chauvet, Symbol and
Sacrament, 22). The focus of theology must shift, Chauvet contends, in the direction of
the believing subjects themselves (ibid., 41), renouncing the scheme of “explicative”
causality and embracing rather the symbolic scheme of language, of culture, of desire,
and thus setting up “a discourse from which the believing subject is inseparable” (ibid.,
43). According to Chauvet, Thomas’s sacramental theology, as an extension of a
Christology in which the humanity of Christ is understood as a conjoined instrument, is
static, failing to advert to the dynamism understood by the Fathers to be present in the
historical economy of grace that involves both God and neighbor in living relationship
(ibid., 456).

360

DARIA SPEZZANO

leads one to “conceive the esse of Christ in the Eucharist
without the relation of his ad-esse to the Church.”9
Chauvet considers a loss of the true meaning of the Eucharist
to be an inevitable consequence of Scholasticism’s metaphysical
focus on substance, as opposed to a symbolic approach in which
Christ’s presence is understood in terms of relation (as “beingfor, being-toward”).10 Because of an excessive focus on transubstantiation, he contends, attention to the symbolic value of the
bread and wine in their liturgical context of gift and sharing is
neglected by the Scholastics, who do not “take into account this
semantic richness of bread and wine in the Bible.” Rather, the
question of “how” the conversion happens is disconnected from
its purpose: Christ’s gift of himself to humanity, “a gift so much
a gift that he gives it in the form of food and drink.”11 Thomas’s
sacramental theology flows from his Christology, Chauvet observes, “a Christology fundamentally determined by the hypostatic union,” and is thus static and ahistorical. The dynamism
of sacramental theology was lost because by a loss of “insertion
into the historical movement of the ‘economy,’” the sacramentum has been “deprived . . . of its relation to the biblical
mysterium from which it originated.”12
B) Problems with the Threefold Paradigm
A related critique of Thomas’s Eucharistic theology is that
his metaphysical attention to Christ’s substantial presence in the
Eucharist (the res et sacramentum) not only undermines its sign
value (as sacramentum tantum), but also detracts from a proper
understanding of the relationship of sacramental reception to
the ultimate effect of the Eucharist (the res tantum). Like other
medieval theologians, Thomas received from the Augustinian
tradition the notion of grace, charity, and unity as the res
tantum, or ultimate reality, of the Eucharist. Thomas draws

9

Ibid., 388-89. See STh III, q. 73, a. 1, ad 3.
Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 392.
11
Ibid., 393.
12
Ibid., 456.
10

THE BURNING COAL

361

upon a threefold Scholastic distinction which had become
traditional by the thirteenth century.13 The final effect of the
sacrament in believers is the res tantum—the “reality alone”
towards which all the symbolism of the Eucharist points, and
which is not itself a sign of anything else. The res tantum is
mediated by the res et sacramentum of the Eucharist, that which
is both reality and sacrament or sign—the substantial presence
of Christ’s Body and Blood. Both realities are symbolized by the
sacramentum tantum, that which is sacrament or sign only—the
accidents of bread and wine in the Eucharistic rite.
In this tripartite scheme, the true presence is both res and
sacramentum because it is both a reality signified by the species
of bread and wine and itself further signifies the Eucharist’s res
tantum. Furthermore, because Christ himself is the res of the res
et sacramentum, his presence is not only sign but also direct
cause of the res tantum of grace, charity, and unity. Boyd
Coolman remarks insightfully that the threefold paradigm
created a space for the living Christ to be present, not as an inert “thing,” not
as a miraculous but static factum of his true body and blood, but as the active
personal agent of salvation, the direct and immediate source of saving power
and spiritual life. . . . The sacramental “space,” as it were, that opened up
between the presence of Christ himself (res et sacramentum) and the salvific
effect (res tantum) of his saving activity becomes the sacramental “theatre” of
the dramatic encounter between believers and Christ . . . the ecclesial
incubator and generator.14

Peter Lombard, drawing especially from the Victorine tradition,
shaped the tripartite formula in the twelfth century by adding
that the twofold res of the sacrament can be distinguished, in
13

On the development of this threefold distinction and its application to sacraments
other than the Eucharist see Boyd Taylor Coolman, “The Christo-Pneumatic-Ecclesial
Character of Twelfth-Century Sacramental Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of
Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015), 201-4. For a comprehensive analysis of its origin and
development from the time of the Berengarian controversy in the early eleventh century
up to the time of Thomas, see Ronald F. King, “The Origin and Evolution of a
Sacramental Formula: Sacramentum Tantum, Res et Sacramentum, Res Tantum,” The
Thomist 31 (1967): 21-82.
14
Coolman, “Christo-Pneumatic-Ecclesial Character,” 206.

362

DARIA SPEZZANO

that the res et sacramentum is both signified and contained in
the Eucharist, while the res tantum is signified but not contained.15 In the wake of ninth- and eleventh-century controversies about the mode of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the
threefold formula and Lombard’s distinction helped to focus
attention on what came to be called Christ’s substantial
presence in the sacrament, while also indicating its purpose not
as an end in itself, but as signifying and bringing about the
ultimate reality of the unity of his mystical body, the Church.
Some scholars, however, have argued that this paradigm was
not without its pitfalls, for an overemphasis on the distinctions
between different aspects of the Eucharist could lead to their
disconnection or even opposition. Theologians in the High
Middle Ages understood the ultimate unitive purpose of the
Real Presence to be achieved not by bodily sacramental eating
alone, but by spiritual reception of the res tantum of the Eucharist through faith and love. Indeed, spiritual reception of the
res tantum by desire was held to be possible even without
sacramental eating. Gary Macy and others have observed that
an increasing emphasis was placed in this period on the
possibility of spiritual communion alone, as sacramental
reception by the laity and even those in religious life became
less frequent.16 In Macy’s view, the teaching that reception of
the res tantum was the purpose of the sacrament “provided
theological support for the growing practice of ‘spiritual
communion,’” in which “spiritual eating” of the Eucharist
through union with Christ by faith and love substituted for
actual sacramental reception, especially among the laity.17 For
15

Peter Lombard, IV Sent., d. 8, c. 7.
The infrequency of sacramental reception in the early thirteenth century is attested
by the Fourth Lateran Council, canon 21, Omnis utriusque sexus. This canon decrees
that the faithful of both sexes should, after confession, “reverently receive the sacrament
of the Eucharist at least at Easter unless they think, for a good reason and on the advice
of their own priest, that they should abstain from receiving it for a time” (Norman P.
Tanner, S.J., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. [Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1990], 1:245).
17
Gary Macy, “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” in A
Companion to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages, ed. Ian Levy, Gary Macy, and Kristen
Van Ausdall (Leiden: Brill, 2012) 365-98, at 391.
16

THE BURNING COAL

363

instance, Macy notes that “Writing in the early thirteenth
century . . . William of Auxerre would describe sacramental
communion as the prerogative of the priest while the people
receive spiritually.”18 Such a focus on the res tantum, he argues,
lent “theological justification . . . for the infrequent sacramental
communion that marked this period.”19
Edward Kilmartin too sees a disconnection between the res et
sacramentum and the res tantum at this time, which he traces
back to Peter Lombard’s distinction between the reality “signified and contained,” and the reality “not contained,” with
deleterious consequences for a proper appreciation of sacramental communion. Kilmartin argues that “subsequent to P.
Lombard’s analysis, the grace of the sacrament of the Eucharist,
with few exceptions, was placed outside the sacrament itself as
the ‘thing signified but not contained.’”20 In Kilmartin’s view,
while Lombard’s influential doctrine highlighted Christ’s “somatic real presence,” it “obscured the eschatological dimension
of the actual event of the reception of the sacraments of the
body and blood.”21 That is, Kilmartin argues, a shift took place
after Lombard that moved the focus away from an earlier, more
integrated way of thinking eschatologically about “the saving
effect of the reception of Holy Communion . . . as a grace
radiating from the eucharistic body, which enables spiritual
communion with the glorified flesh of the risen Lord . . . in the
midst of the heavenly Church.”22 To distinguish the three dimensions of the Eucharist without adequately relating them, it
seems, could lead to their conceptual disjunction, with the
practical effect of devaluing sacramental reception. Such an
18

Ibid. Macy refers to William of Auxerre, Summa de officiis ecclesiasticis (Paris:
Bibliothèque nationale de France) lat. 15168, fol. 89v2.
19
Macy, “Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 391. Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski
identifies some negative and positive contemporary “readings” of this decline in
sacramental reception with greater devotional focus on the elevated host: Sr. Albert
Marie Surmanski, O.P., “Adoring and Eating: Reception of the Eucharist in the
Theology of Albert the Great,” Antiphon 20 (2016): 213-40, at 213-14.
20
Edward Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, ed. Robert J.
Daly (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1998) 63.
21
Ibid., 64.
22
Ibid., 64-65.

364

DARIA SPEZZANO

application of the threefold paradigm would not create, but
would rather dismantle, the “sacramental space” in which
Christ is present for believers as the “active personal agent of
salvation.”23
In addition to arguing that the Scholastic theology of the res
tantum contributed to undermining the frequency of sacramental reception in this period, Macy notes an increasing and
more philosophical focus on the res et sacramentum. Like
Chauvet, Macy thinks that this development, for Thomas at
least, trumps the sign value of the Eucharist. Macy argues that it
was in association with an “enhancement of the power of the
priesthood” after the Fourth Lateran Council that “this period
. . . saw a dramatic insistence on the presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. Christ was personally and truly present in every
Mass, and only the priest could make this presence possible.
The Eucharist became a moment of divine presence and clerical
power.”24 In addition, Lateran IV’s use of the language of
transubstantiation helped to stimulate a focus of thirteenthcentury theological debates on the Eucharistic change. As a
result, increased attention to the res et sacramentum of the Real
Presence included especially the use of Aristotelian metaphysics
to define more precisely how transubstantiation takes place, and
under what circumstances Christ’s Body and Blood becomes,
and stays, present. Macy points out that Thomas (and Albert the
Great) emphasized the continuance of Christ’s presence in the
Eucharist so long as the species remain, once the substantial
change has taken place. Albert, Macy claims, went “further than
any of his predecessors . . . in emphasizing the importance of
metaphysics over the theology of sign” by arguing that “the
body and blood must be present in the stomach of an animal or
infidel, a suggestion Alexander [of Hales], William [of
Melitona] and Bonaventure reject. It is no wonder that Albert
made this suggestion tentatively.”25 Macy goes on to say that
23

Coolman, “Christo-Pneumatic-Ecclesial Character,” 206.
Macy, “Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 370.
25
Ibid., 387. It should be noted however that the evidence for Albert’s and Thomas’s
opinion being so much in the minority is not as strong as Macy suggests. See below for
further discussion of this question. On Albert’s view of different modes of Eucharistic
24

THE BURNING COAL

365

Thomas too was in the minority in the thirteenth century with
his “full-fledged defense” of the opinion that once the bread
and wine have been substantially changed into Christ’s Body
and Blood, they remain, objectively speaking, wherever the
species are, regardless of the intentionality of the receiver. Macy
comments critically that for Thomas, as for Albert, “the
necessary metaphysical connection between the accidents of the
bread and wine and the substance of the Body and Blood
overrode the theological understanding of the Eucharist as a
true sign.”26
One must ask, then, whether these criticisms are apt. Does
Thomas’s insistence on Christ’s abiding substantial presence
emphasize the metaphysical reality of the res et sacramentum in
such a way as to undervalue the sign value of the Eucharist, as
Chauvet and Macy contend? And how does Thomas relate the
Eucharist as sign and reality to the res tantum? To address
Kilmartin’s concern, does the focus on Christ’s substantial
presence as “contained” in the sacrament obscure its relation to
the grace “not contained” (and potentially available apart from
the sacrament), undermining Thomas’s appreciation of the
eschatological dimension of actual sacramental reception? In
other words, does Thomas hold together the parts of the
threefold formula in their proper relation, unity, and balance,
so as properly to delineate what Coolman calls “the sacramental
‘theatre’ of the dramatic encounter between believers and
Christ”?

reception, with attention to developments in his thought, see Surmanski, “Adoring and
Eating,” 224-32.
26
Macy, “Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 389-90. Macy draws on the work of
Yves de Montcheuil, who compares Bonaventure and Aquinas on the question of
whether Christ ceases to be in the sacrament when it is touched by the lips of a sinner
(“La raison de la permanence du Christ sous les espèces Eucharistiques d’après Saint
Bonaventure et Saint Thomas,” in Mélanges théologiques [Paris: Aubier, 1946], 71–82).
He remarks that Thomas bases his reasoning on philosophical considerations of the
sacramental matter, while Bonaventure bases his on a “religious notion of the
sacrament: it is essential to a Christian sacrament to be destined for men, it is essential
to a Christian sacrament that the sensible element have sign value” (ibid., 81; my
translation). See below for further discussion.

366

DARIA SPEZZANO

C) Recent Thomist Responses
A number of recent studies have countered the charge by
Chauvet and others that for Thomas metaphysics trumps
symbol, Scripture, history, and relationality in the sacraments,
showing that Thomas foregrounds all of these especially in his
mature sacramental theology. His general definition in the
Summa theologiae of sacraments as “signs of sacred things
sanctifying men,” as John Yocum notes, differs from his earliest
definition in the Scriptum on the Sentences, which focused
primarily on the New Law sacraments only as causes of grace.27
Thomas’s broader, mature definition of a sacrament in general
as a sign simply speaking allows him to encompass both Old
Law and New Law sacraments, and also to distinguish them;
both are signs leading men to exercise the virtue of religion, but
only those of the New Law are both signs and causes of grace.
This development not only highlights the role of the sacraments
as ordained to worship, but also demonstrates their “historical
and social dimension” in the sweep of salvation history from
creation to the eschaton.28 Yocum notes that for Thomas Old
Law sacraments function as signs of the New; New Law
sacraments themselves anticipate figuratively the bliss of the
beatific vision, in which all need for sensible signs will pass
away. The sacraments are adapted to the human condition, and
bestowed within human history shaped by the narrative of
Scripture.29
In his careful examination of the development of Thomas’s
thought on sacramental causality, Bernhard Blankenhorn shows
effectively that in Thomas’s mature teaching on the sacraments
as instruments bestowing grace his use of metaphysics is deeply
shaped and directed by reflection on Scripture’s realistic claims
that the believer’s salvation comes through the power of the

27
John P. Yocum, “Sacraments in Aquinas,” in Aquinas on Doctrine: A Critical
Introduction, ed. Thomas Weinandy, Daniel Keating and John Yocum (New York: T&T
Clark, 2004), 159-81, at 160. See STh III, q. 60, a. 2.
28
Yocum, “Sacraments in Aquinas,” 164.
29
Ibid., 163-64, 167. See STh I-II, q. 101, a. 2; q. 103, a. 3.

THE BURNING COAL

367

mysteries of the Word made flesh.30 Far from turning grace into
a reified object or thing, the instrumental power of the sacraments flowing from the hypostatic union allows “a real participation in the efficacy of past historical events, a spiritual
contact with the power of Christ’s saving actions.”31 This is true
of all the sacraments, but the Eucharist especially, because of
the substantial presence, “applies the instrumental power of
Christ’s humanity and its work of justification in both corporeal
and spiritual ways.”32 For Thomas, grace is not a “thing
produced” but a relationship graciously bestowed by God as a
gift of love, “nothing other than a share in the divine nature,”
which brings human persons into union with him. This sacramental gift is given in the context of a genuine “psychological
and ontological encounter with the power of Jesus’ actions and
sufferings during his earthly lifetime.”33 Indeed, “it is precisely
metaphysics that enables the insertion of the sacraments into the
dynamism of salvation history, a precious goal for Chauvet.”34
Blankenhorn demonstrates in more detail elsewhere how
Thomas’s use of metaphysics in the treatise on the sacraments in
the Summa is set firmly within a scriptural view of salvation
history.35 By examining how Thomas employs texts from
Romans 6 earlier in the Summa, in conjunction with the exegesis of his Romans commentary, Blankenhorn shows that
“Aquinas’s doctrine of sacramental efficacy is the fruit of a
meditation on St. Paul, guided by the Fathers, in light of the
liturgical practice of the Church, with the help of Aristotelian,
Platonic, and original metaphysical tools.” Thomas’s
30
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., “The Instrumental Causality of the Sacraments:
Thomas Aquinas and Louis-Marie Chauvet,” Nova et vetera (Eng. edition) 4 (2006):
255-94.
31
Ibid., 290.
32
Ibid., 273.
33
Ibid., 291.
34
Ibid.
35
Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., “The Place of Romans 6 in Aquinas’s Doctrine of
Sacramental Causality: A Balance of History and Metaphysics,” 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)
136-49.

368

DARIA SPEZZANO

metaphysics of sacramental causality, in other words, supports a
kerygmatic teaching on the power of God’s gift of grace to
human persons in Jesus Christ; it is woven into a “subtle,
complex dialectic” with the scriptural, patristic and historical
sources which all enriched Thomas’s theological reflection.36
II. SIGNS SANCTIFYING MEN
As Thomas takes up the traditional threefold scheme, and
the associated distinction between sacramental and spiritual
eating, he integrates them into his larger teaching about human
sanctification through grace, charity, and Christ’s sacraments.37
He does insist, in contrast to some of his contemporaries, on the
permanently abiding ontological finality or “truth” of the
substantial presence after the consecration in all circumstances;
but this is not the only distinctive aspect of his Eucharistic
theology. While he teaches like others that there can be a
spiritual eating of the Eucharist by desire alone, in which the res
tantum is received without the sacrament, he argues that it is
better to eat both sacramentally and spiritually. The possibility
of a purely spiritual communion does not mean that “sacramental eating is . . . without purpose, because the actual
receiving of the sacrament produces more fully its effect than
the desire for it alone.”38 Thomas does not entirely explain why
this is so in any one place, except to say that an eating by desire
would be in vain if one were not to fulfill it when possible.39
As I will discuss below, Thomas’s view of sensible sacraments
as fitting instruments for our embodied nature is part of the
reason for this claim, though there is more to it than that in the

36

Ibid., 149.
On Thomas’s distinction between spiritual and sacramental eating, and its relation
to the threefold formula, see also Joseph Wawrykow, “The Sacraments in ThirteenthCentury Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans
Boersma and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 218-34;
226-28.
38
STh III, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3; cf. q. 79, a. 1, ad 1.
39
STh III, q. 80, a. 11.
37

THE BURNING COAL

369

case of the Eucharist.40 Sacramental baptism too produces fuller
effects than baptism of desire alone in adults.41 But because the
Eucharist contains Christ himself, Thomas emphasizes even
more the connection between sacramental reception of Christ’s
Eucharistic Body and its life-giving effects, using insights he
gained from reflection on Scripture in the light of patristic
teaching. He argues that one must approach the Eucharist with
an even greater reverence and devotion than any other
sacrament, for in sacramental reception one actually eats the
body of “the Son of God, who came forth from the womb of
the Virgin, hung on the arms of the cross, died and was raised
on the third day for us.”42 Sacramental reception of Christ’s true
Body thus requires especially serious discernment of one’s
worthiness of disposition. Thomas is aware that frequency of
sacramental communion has varied through history; he attributes the comparatively infrequent reception by the faithful in
his time to a decline in the fervor of faith and charity since the
early Church. Yet he is distinctive among his contemporaries in
encouraging sacramental reception as frequently as one is well
disposed, even daily, making no distinction in this between
clergy and laity.43
Why does Thomas adopt these somewhat distinctive
positions about the Eucharist? Is there a connection between
them? Does his insistence on the abiding presence of Christ help
to explain his teaching that there is a greater fullness of effect in
well-disposed sacramental reception than in reception that is
40

STh III, q. 60, a. 4.
STh III, q. 69, a. 5, ad 1. See below for further discussion.
42
William of Tocco, Ystoria, 197.
43
STh III, q. 80, a. 10. For a thorough discussion of Thomas’s distinctive emphasis
on frequent communion in its thirteenth-century context, see Andrew Hofer, O.P.,
“Frequent Communion for the Greater Glory of God: Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius of
Loyola,” in Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius Loyola: Resourcing the Jesuit Tradition, ed.
Justin Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Aaron Pidel, S.J. (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). Hofer shows that Thomas
strengthened his support for the possibility of frequent and even daily communion for
the well-disposed between the Scriptum and the Summa, and proposes that Thomas’s
teaching on this matter was a key source for Ignatius of Loyola’s legacy to the Jesuits of
encouraging frequent communion for the glory of God.
41

370

DARIA SPEZZANO

only spiritual, so that he encourages frequent communion? The
answer, I think, must take account of the full theological weight
he gives to each of the three dimensions of the Eucharist, within
one integrated vision of this “sacrament of charity” as a lifegiving personal encounter between Christ and the human
believer in the mystical body of the Church. Following his
patristic sources, Thomas takes seriously the notion of the Eucharist as a true “sign sanctifying men”44—involving the
signification of both the sacramentum tantum and the res et
sacramentum—and at the same time he holds a strongly realist
account of Christ’s abiding presence and the objective instrumental power of the Eucharist to communicate Christ’s life and
so bestow the res tantum. In Thomas’s Eucharistic theology, it is
only if the Eucharist is a true sign of the true presence that it
can truly be the sacrament of charity given to rational human
persons. Thomas’s concern to establish the abiding metaphysical
reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist does not sidetrack
or oppose the meaning of the Eucharist as a sign and cause of
communion, but rather anchors its signification and transformative power.
A) Sacraments and Anthropology
Thomas’s attention to the sign quality of the sacrament is
firmly rooted in his anthropology, and therefore in his understanding of the highest human end, to know and love God in
eternal life. Drawing on Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, and
Scripture, Thomas argues that sensible signs are fitting for
human persons, embodied spirits who access intelligible realities
through material ones.45 The signification of the sacrament is
determined by the words added to the visible elements and
actions; indeed, every aspect of the liturgical ritual contributes
to this signification.46 The sacraments are founded on the Incar-

44

STh III, q. 60, a. 2.
STh III, q. 60, a. 4. See Augustine, Tractates on John 80.3; and Dionysius, Celestial
Hierarchy 1.2.
46
E.g., STh III, q. 66, a. 10; q. 83.
45

THE BURNING COAL

371

nation, in which the Word’s assumption of human nature was
itself necessary for our salvation because of our embodied
spiritual nature. The sacraments “have a certain conformity” to
the Word incarnate, “in that the word is joined to the sensible
sign, just as in the mystery of the Incarnation the Word of God
is united to sensible flesh.”47 Exterior reception of the sacrament confers interior grace, bestowing a deifying “participation
in the divine nature,” and bringing about conformity to Christ.48
Reginald Lynch notes that, for Thomas, sign and cause are not
opposing or isolated categories of sacramentality; rather,
“Aquinas is able to describe the signate and causal value of the
sacraments as different dimensions of the same motive whole,
working under the direction of the same principal agent.”49 The
sacraments by signifying apply the saving power of Christ’s
Passion to those who receive them, communicating its effects as
extended instruments of his humanity, which itself is the
conjoined instrument of the Godhead.50
In accord with his integrated anthropology, Thomas thinks
that in all of the sacraments the Incarnate Word applies the
power of his Passion (suffered in his humanity) to both souls
and bodies. To souls he acts in his humanity as an instrumental
efficient cause of grace, and to bodies enlivened by graced souls
he acts as a kind of exemplar cause also. In a question on the
causality of the sacraments as instruments of Christ’s humanity,
Thomas explains Augustine’s teaching that “the Word, as he
was in the beginning with God, vivifies souls; as he was made
flesh, he vivifies bodies”:51
The Word, as he was in the beginning with God, vivifies souls as principal
agent, but his flesh, and the mysteries accomplished in it, operate
instrumentally for the life of the soul. For the life of the body, however, they

47

STh III, q. 60, a. 6.
STh III, q. 62, a. 1.
49
Lynch, Cleansing of the Heart, 87. On the development of Thomas’s views of
sacramental instrumentality see ibid., chaps. 2 and 3.
50
STh I-II, q. 112, a. 1, ad 2; STh III, q. 62, a. 5.
51
Augustine, Tractates on John 19.15. See Tractates on the Gospel of John 11-27, ed.
John Rettig (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988).
48

372

DARIA SPEZZANO

act not only instrumentally, but also through a certain exemplarity, as was said
above.52

Thomas refers here to his teaching in an earlier question that
Christ’s resurrection is the cause of ours.53 He quotes Augustine’s text elsewhere to explain, again, that Christ will vivify
bodies as judge in the resurrection through the instrumentality
of his humanity, for “the resurrection of Christ, and the
mysteries he completed in the flesh, are the cause of the future
resurrection of bodies.”54 However, while “the efficiency of
Christ's resurrection extends to the resurrection of the good and
wicked alike, its exemplarity extends properly only to the good,
who are made conformable to his sonship, according to Rom
8:29.”55 We can infer that when Thomas says that the sacraments act with a life-giving exemplarity for bodies he means
that their exemplar causality is at least proleptic, communicating the power of Christ’s resurrection, with an ultimate
eschatological effect in the glorification of the risen bodies of
the just who have been conformed to him by the grace of
adoption.
What difference does it make, then, to receive the effect of a
sacrament (the res tantum) only spiritually but not sacramentally? Thomas makes it clear that in all the sacraments,
founded on the Incarnation for embodied human persons,
spiritual reception alone has a lesser effect than a reception that
is both spiritual and sacramental. His teaching on this is most
explicit where he discusses the sacrament of baptism, although
similar principles apply a fortiori to the Eucharist as well. In
sincere reception of baptism (i.e., one that is both spiritual and
sacramental), the full effects of the sacrament are received—
justifying grace (the res tantum) with full remission of the debt
52

STh III, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1.
STh III, q. 56, a. 1.
54
Super Ioan., c. 5, lect. 4 (759, 762). All citations of the Commentary on John are
based on R. Cai, ed., S. Thomae Aquinatis Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura, 6th ed.
(Turin: Marietti, 1972); parenthetical numbers refer to paragraphs in this edition. Cf.
Quodl. X, q. 1, a. 2; Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 7 (discussed below).
55
STh III, q. 56, a. 1, ad 3.
53

THE BURNING COAL

373

of punishment (both eternal and temporal), and also the
spiritual character (the res et sacramentum). The latter
configures one to Christ by participation in his priesthood, with
the permanent spiritual power to receive other sacraments in
the external acts of Christian worship.56 Even in insincere
reception of the sacrament of baptism (i.e., one that is only
sacramental and not spiritual), one still receives the res et
sacramentum, and is “configured” to Christ by the character,
although not salvifically “conformed” to him by grace.57
On the other hand, in spiritual reception alone (i.e., in
baptism of desire), because one does not receive the sacrament,
one does not receive the res et sacramentum of the baptismal
character that incorporates a person in Christ as a visible
member of his body. Baptism of desire does incorporate one in
Christ “mentally” by grace.58 Yet, by desire alone, one will still
not receive the full effects of baptismal grace given by actual
reception of the sacrament to one who is well-disposed. One
can be saved by living faith in Christ’s Passion through baptism
of desire and so be freed from guilt and the debt of eternal
punishment.59 But a fuller remission of guilt, and of the full debt
of temporal punishment, as well as an increase in grace and
virtues, is bestowed by subsequent water baptism.60 In baptism
of desire, temporal punishment is still due for sins committed in
the body arising from attachment to temporal goods. A
catechumen who dies before reception of the sacrament will be
saved by desire for baptism, but “as by fire,” that is, by
purification in purgatory for the debt of temporal punishment

56

STh III, q. 63, a. 2. Baptismal character incorporates one into Christ permanently
and visibly as a member of his body, the Church. The character’s purpose, as Colman
O’Neill puts it, is “the making of valid sacramental signs” (Colman O’Neill, O.P., “The
Instrumentality of the Sacramental Character: An Interpretation of Summa Theologiae,
III, q. 63, a. 2,” Irish Theological Quarterly 25 (1958): 262-68, at 268.
57
Insincere baptism makes one only a dead member of Christ’s body, although when
insincerity ceases the person will receive the whole effect of baptism. STh III, q. 8, a. 3;
q. 69, a. 9, a. 10.
58
STh III, q. 69, a. 5.
59
STh III, q. 68, a. 1, ad 1; q. 68, a. 2.
60
STh III, q. 69, a. 1, ad 2; q. 69, a. 4, ad 2; q. 70, a. 4, ad 5.

374

DARIA SPEZZANO

accrued by sins in the body.61 By baptism of desire, Thomas
says, one “is regenerated in the heart though not in the body.”62
In his commentary on John 3:5 (“unless one is born again of
water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of
God”), Thomas gives three reasons why water is necessary for
full regeneration in baptism, in both body and soul. The first
has to do with the way sacraments were instituted to sanctify
the whole of human nature:
For man consists of soul and body, and if the Spirit alone were in his
regeneration, only what is spiritual in man would be shown to be regenerated
[ostenderetur regenerari]. Therefore in order that the flesh also be regenerated,
it is necessary that, in addition to the Spirit through whom the soul is
regenerated, there be also something corporal, through which the body is
regenerated, and this is water.63

It is by the signification of corporeal washing (“showing” bodily
regeneration by symbolic immersion into Christ’s death and
resurrection) that the sacrament causes the regeneration of the
body as well as of the soul. Sincere reception of the sacrament
applies Christ’s Passion to the person with all its effects for
body and soul; one is fully conformed to Christ, so that one is
“healed just as if he himself had suffered and died,” and “had
offered sufficient satisfaction for all his sins,” that is, for both
the eternal and the temporal debt of punishment.64 The
exception to this (baptism of blood in martyrdom) proves the
rule, because its fullness of effect results from conformation to
Christ’s Passion in both body (by imitation of Christ’s act) and
soul (by the fervor of charity).65
The other reasons Thomas gives in his John commentary for
why water baptism bestows full regeneration also have to do
with sacramental signification. First, as a means of human
instruction: water is used “for the sake of human understanding” that the sacrament washes clean from sin, since we
61

STh III, q. 68, a. 2, ad 2; q. 68, a. 3.
STh III, q. 68, a. 2, ad 1.
63
Super Ioan., c. 3, lect. 1 (443).
64
STh III, q. 69, a. 2.
65
STh III, q. 66, a. 11, a. 12.
62

THE BURNING COAL

375

naturally “know spiritual things through sensible things.” Also,
something material is used for the sake of “congruity of causes.”
This is a reason from fittingness: because “the cause of our
regeneration was the Incarnate Word . . . it was fitting that in
the sacraments, which have their efficacy from the power of the
incarnate Word, there be something corresponding to the
Word, and something corresponding to the flesh, or body.”66
The first of these reasons relates to Thomas’s view that, while
sincere sacramental reception bestows the total sacramental
effect in body and soul, the fullness of this sanctifying effect,
even in sacramental reception, depends further on how much
one cooperates with grace, by engagement of the mind and
heart with the sacramental signs.
Thomas gives considerable attention to the way in which
sacramental reception enables the soul, through the instrumentality of the senses, to engage most fruitfully with the material signs. Thomas develops in his later writings the position
that it is precisely by signifying grace that New Law sacraments
cause it (sacramenta significando causant).67 These sacraments
cause grace by signifying the gracious divine action of which
they are an instrument.68 Some Old Law sacraments, such as the
immolation of the paschal lamb, signified typologically the holiness of Christ; prefiguring his Passion, they were signs of the
faith by which the patriarchs could be justified.69 But only after
Christ’s Passion could justifying grace actually be conferred
through the instrumentality of external material signs.70
The sacraments fittingly cause grace by signifying because
they sanctify people, whose intellects and wills are involved and
are elevated by grace through the sacramental signs. The power
66

Super Ioan., c. 3, lect. 1 (443).
This formulation is not seen in the Scriptum, where he echoes Peter Lombard
(IV Sent., d. 1, c. 4), but is present, e.g., by the time of De Verit., q. 28, a. 2, ad 12; for
discussion on this point see Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith,
Reason, and Following Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 269-70.
68
STh III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 1.
69
STh III, q. 60, a. 2, ad 2. Cf. STh I-II, q. 103.
70
STh III, q. 62, a. 6. See Blankenhorn, “Instrumental Causality,” for a thorough
discussion of the development of Thomas’s thought on the instrumental causality of the
sacraments.
67

376

DARIA SPEZZANO

of New Law sacraments to cause grace comes from divine
institution, but as instruments of divine power they work in
their own proper way as signs, the suitable means by which
divine realities are encountered by embodied rational beings.
Like other medieval theologians, Thomas draws on Augustine
for an understanding of sacraments as visible words or signs of
an invisible reality.71 To describe the way in which spiritual
power is in the sacraments, he uses Augustine’s analogy for the
sacraments of a voice speaking words perceptible to the senses,
which move the hearer in virtue of the mental concept they
convey.72 The sacraments touch the senses and in the very act of
doing so produce effects on the soul, moving it by the power of
God, “for soul and body together constitute a unity.”73 As
discussed above, grace is not a “thing produced” by the
sacrament and transferred to persons; rather, it is the action of
God transforming persons from within, by giving them a share
in divine life and so a new relationship with himself.
The key here is that the notion of causing by signifying
involves engagement by the knowing and loving receiver of the
sign. This means that the recipient too has an instrumental
role—not in the causing of grace, which belongs to God alone,
but in the extent to which the grace takes effect, insofar as that
is dependent on his or her cooperation. Inherent in Thomas’s
very notion of sacrament as sign is that, precisely as such, the
sacrament engages the person in an interior dynamism toward
God, given supernatural finality by grace. God brings humans to
himself through the instrumental operation of their own bodily
senses and intellect and will under grace. In this dynamic both
human person and sacrament operate with instrumental power,
the sacrament signifying and the recipient engaging the
sacramental sign with all his faculties. Therefore, a sacrament
objectively and efficaciously bestows grace by the power of

71
See, e.g., Augustine, De civitate Dei 10.5. This text became widely known, as it
was quoted by Peter Lombard in IV Sent., d. 1, c. 2.
72
STh III, q. 62, a. 4, ad 1. Cf. Augustine, Tractates on John 80.3; De doctrina
christiana 2.3.
73
STh III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2.

THE BURNING COAL

377

God,74 but the fruitfulness of the sacrament in the individual
depends too on the instrumental causality of the person who
receives it. Like all instruments, the human person can be well
or ill-disposed, can cooperate or place obstacles to grace, and to
this extent can determine the effect of the sacrament in
himself.75
B) Disposition and Devotion
The fullness of sacramental effect takes hold in the recipient
who is well disposed to embrace the offered grace.76 The most
important aspect of this worthy disposition is devotion, the
internal act of the virtue of religion. Thomas describes a spectrum of the degrees to which the grace of baptism takes effect in
its recipients, depending on their level of devotion:
For some approach with greater, some with lesser, devotion. And therefore,
some receive more, some less, of the grace of newness; just as from the same
fire, he receives more heat who draws nearest to it, although the fire, in itself,
sends forth its heat equally to all.77

Devotion is “the will to give oneself readily to things concerning
the service of God”; it springs from charity and also feeds it,
increasing its warmth and making one ready to serve God with
the “friendly deeds” that make one grow in friendship with
him.78 Devotion springs especially from meditation on God’s
goodness and loving-kindness, and on the shortcomings that
make one need to lean on God. Such considerations arouse the
“spiritual fire” of charity.79 Because of our need to be led
through the sensible to the invisible, “matters relating to
74

STh III, q. 64, a. 1.
For a helpful discussion of thirteenth-century Scholastic views of the importance
of subjective disposition, focusing on Aquinas and the Eucharist in particular, see
Wawrykow, “The Sacraments in Thirteenth-Century Theology,” 223-24 and 227-28.
76
See also Daria Spezzano, “Conjoined to Christ’s Passion: The Deifying Asceticism
of the Sacraments according to Thomas Aquinas,” Antiphon 17 (2013): 73-86.
77
STh III, q. 69, a. 8. See also q. 69, a. 9.
78
STh II-II, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2.
79
STh II-II, q. 82, a. 3.
75

378

DARIA SPEZZANO

Christ’s humanity are the chief incentive to devotion” among all
the “supremely lovable” divine things. Thomas’s own devotion
to Christ Crucified emerges as he writes that the consideration
of Christ’s Passion above all leads one to both sorrow for sin
and joy in God’s loving-kindness.80 There can be a kind of
sorrow, too, that arises from longing for God; even the joy of
surrendering oneself to God’s goodness causes “a certain sorrow
in those who do not yet enjoy God fully, according to Ps 41:3,
‘My soul has thirsted after the strong living God,’ and
afterwards it is said, ‘My tears have become my bread’.”81
Noting Thomas’s own habit of weeping while at prayer, Paul
Murray remarks that he seems to speak “out of the depth of his
own contemplative experience” where he writes of tears shed in
devotion: “Tears are caused not only through sorrow, but also
through a certain tenderness of the affections, especially when
one considers something that gives joy mixed with pain.”82
Since the contemplation of the Passion is the greatest incentive to devotion, it is not surprising that in the Eucharist
such devotion is all the more important for worthy reception.
Indeed, “greater devotion is required in this sacrament than in
the others, for the reason that the entire Christ is contained
therein.”83 This devotion should be felt even by those not
participating, since, as the sacrament of the unity of the whole
Church, the Eucharist is offered for the salvation of all.84 On the
other hand, one who receives the sacrament without belief in
Christ’s true presence commits an especially grievous sin,
showing “contempt towards Christ who is in the sacrament.” As
in insincere baptism, one who eats without faith or unworthily
does receive the res et sacramentum of Christ’s Body, but
because in this sacrament Christ himself is present, the fault is
much more serious and harmful; it is, as it were, more personal.
The sin of unbelief, because it kills charity, “severs one from the
80

Ibid. and ad 2.
STh II-II, q. 82, a. 4.
82
Paul Murray, O.P., Aquinas at Prayer (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 27 n. 87; STh
II-II, q. 82, a. 4, ad 3.
83
STh III, q. 83, a. 4, ad 5.
84
Ibid., and q. 83, a. 3.
81

THE BURNING COAL

379

unity of the Church [and] makes him utterly unfit for receiving
this sacrament, because it is the sacrament of the Church’s
unity.”85 Any mortal sin is repugnant to union with Christ
himself, and with his mystical body, which are both signified in
the Eucharist.86 The unworthy recipient can be compared to
Judas, “because each outrages Christ with the sign of
friendship” while at the same time acting against his charity “of
which this sacrament is a sign”; sinners even resemble those
who slew Christ, because they commit a sin against Christ’s
Body, although not in its own species.87
The devotion required for fruitful sacramental reception of
Christ’s Body in the Eucharist is assisted by the manner of its
liturgical celebration: “Since the whole mystery of our salvation
is comprised in this sacrament . . . it is performed with greater
solemnity than the other sacraments.”88 It is notable how often
in Thomas’s detailed question on the Eucharistic rite he refers
to the way in which the various words, actions, and symbols
used in the liturgy function to arouse the devotion of the
participants.89 Everything in the “celebration of this mystery” is
85

STh III, q. 80, a. 5, ad 2.
STh III, q. 80, a. 4. As Paul Keller points out in reference to the question of
communion for the divorced and remarried, even spiritual communion is impossible for
one in a state of mortal sin. Paul Keller, O.P., “Is Spiritual Communion for Everyone?,”
Nova et vetera (Eng. edition) 12 (2014): 631-55, at 642ff. Keller refers in this regard to
an essay by Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., “Communion sacramentelle et
communion spirituelle,” Nova et vetera 86 (2011): 147-53.
87
STh III, q. 80, a. 5, ad 1-2.
88
STh III, q. 83, a. 4.
89
E.g., Thomas notes throughout STh III, q. 83 that the use of incense, the
consecration of vessels and church, the actions of the priest, the singing and words of
the prayers all show reverence to Christ who is truly present and increase the devotion
of the faithful. Before the consecration, for instance, “the people are first excited to
devotion in the Preface, then they are admonished to lift up their hearts to the Lord,
and therefore when the Preface is ended the people praise the divinity of Christ with
devotion, saying with the angels, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ and his humanity, saying with the
children, ‘blessed is he who comes’” (STh III, q. 83, a. 4). Fasting before reception also
increases devotion (STh III, q. 80, a. 8, ad 6). Sr. Thomas Augustine Becker, O.P.,
examines the many ways throughout the Summa that Thomas emphasizes the
importance of devotion and how he links it to the sacraments and ritual solemnity in
“The Role of Solemnitas in the Liturgy according to Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in
Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology, ed.
86

380

DARIA SPEZZANO

done in order to “represent Christ’s Passion, or the disposing of
his mystical body,” or for the sake of “the devotion and reverence due to this sacrament.”90 The Eucharist’s sign value, for
Thomas, consists especially in signifying God’s loving-kindness
in Christ truly present, and so eliciting the devotion and charity
of those who receive it.
III. THE SACRAMENTUM TANTUM:
SIGN OF SPIRITUAL NOURISHMENT
In the threefold paradigm as Thomas adopts it, the
signification of the sacraments has two aspects, or rather, one
twofold depth, which causes grace and assists in fruitful
reception by engaging the devotion of the recipient. The
symbols of bread and wine (the sacramentum tantum) signify
the reality of Christ’s Body and Blood (the res et sacramentum),
and both are signs of the Eucharist’s ultimate effect of grace,
charity and unity (the res tantum). Yet it might be argued that
the sacramentum tantum and the res et sacramentum must be
called signs in differing, albeit interdependent, ways. After all,
while the material sacramentum tantum touches the senses,
according to the proper definition of a sacramental sign, the res
et sacramentum is perceived only by faith. It is a “sign” only
insofar as it represents the res tantum to the intellect of the one
who already knows, by faith, that Christ is present under the
sacramental species. The signifying activity of the res et
sacramentum thus depends, in one way, on the signification of
the sacramentum tantum, while the latter only fully signifies the
effect of grace and charity which the sacrament causes by way
of signifying the res et sacramentum of Christ’s Body. For
Thomas, the signifying roles of the sacramentum tantum and
the res et sacramentum, while different in mode, are thus
integrally related in causing the res tantum of the Eucharist.
Therefore, the fullness of each one’s signification contributes, in
Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2009)
114-35.
90
STh III, q. 83, a. 5.

THE BURNING COAL

381

a reciprocal manner, to the fullness of effect characteristic of
devout sacramental reception. The recipient who most completely engages the sign value of the Eucharist as food not only
sees but also eats it, and does so with devotion because it
signifies that Christ is that food. So, she is most fully united to
Christ present as life-giving nourishment, and himself the
abiding sign of God’s love.
Thomas’s philosophical treatment of transubstantiation thus
anchors a reflection on the sanctifying power of the sacrament
that takes into account the human experience of symbols. The
persistence of the accidents is not only a metaphysical problem
to be solved; Thomas argues that Christ fittingly instituted the
Eucharist under the species of bread and wine, precisely for the
purpose of signification.91 And the meaning of all of the
Eucharistic symbolism he describes is transformed by the truth
of Christ’s substantial presence beneath these accidents. The
Eucharistic species carry with them a freight of symbolic values,
established by Thomas in the context of questions posed before
and after his treatment of transubstantiation, and anticipated in
his extensive reflection on the sacraments of the Old Law earlier
in the Summa. Thomas’s teaching here is shaped by a scriptural
typology based on salvation history and enriched by a variety of
papal, conciliar, and patristic sources. Charity is a unifying
thread that weaves in and out of this discussion, tying different
symbolic meanings together. Thomas’s analogy between the
spiritual and corporeal life is well known: the Eucharist provides spiritual food and refreshment, perfecting human life.92
The bread and wine signify the res et sacramentum by signifying
the spiritual nourishment of Christ’s Body and Blood, for,
“through the Eucharist we eat Christ,” and indeed, as Augustine
says, are changed into what we eat.93 Their separate reception
signifies Christ’s Passion, “in which the blood was separated
from the body,” and this contributes to signifying the double
effect of the sacrament in both body and soul. Christ’s Body, as
91

STh III, q. 74, a. 1; q. 75, a. 2 ad 3; q. 75, a. 5.
STh III, q. 73, a. 1.
93
STh III, q. 73, a. 5, ad 1; q. 73, a. 3, ad 2; cf., Augustine, Confessions 7.10.16 (PL
32:742).
92

382

DARIA SPEZZANO

bread, is received for the health of the body, and his Blood, as
wine, for the health of the soul, according to Leviticus 17:14,
“The life of all flesh is in the blood.”94
The sacramentum tantum also signifies the res tantum; the
bread and wine as nourishment signify the unity of Christ’s
mystical body the Church, bound together as grapes in wine or
grains in one loaf by charity. Thomas often refers to this image
of the unity of the body in 1 Corinthians 10:17 or in Romans
12:5 to explain why bread and wine are fitting species, as well
as to Augustine’s use of this image in connection with the idea
of the Eucharist as the vinculum caritatis.95 Wheat bread is used,
not only because it is commonly available, but to signify the
strengthening power of the sacrament, and because, unlike hard
barley bread, which “denotes the hardness of the Old Law,” the
softness of wheat symbolizes “Christ’s ‘sweet yoke’ and the
truth already manifested, and . . . a spiritual people.”96 Wine is
fitting matter, first because of Christ’s institution, but also
because of “the effect of the sacrament, which is spiritual,”
giving joy (the fruit of charity) to the heart (Ps 103:15). The
commingling of wine and water in the liturgical rite is done not
only because this was likely the custom among Jews of Christ’s
time, but because it has multiple symbolic meanings, pointing
both to the res et sacramentum and the res tantum: it represents
the blood and water flowing from the Lord’s side in the Passion,
and also the union of the people with Christ and the entrance
into everlasting life.97
Thomas’s awareness of the rich polyvalence of the sacramental symbols is evident in these examples, in which he weaves

94

STh III, q. 74, a. 1.
E.g., STh III, q. 73, a. 2; q. 74, a. 1; q. 79, a. 1; cf. Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (960).
For instance, Thomas quotes Augustine’s words: “O sacrament of piety! O sign of unity!
O bond of charity!” These words come from Augustine’s Tractate 26 on John, with
which Thomas seems to have been quite familiar. Augustine is commenting on John
6:52 (“the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”). Gilles Emery
provides further background for this metaphor in “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist
in St. Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et vetera (Eng. edition) 2 (2004): 43-60, at 44-46.
96
STh III, q. 74, a. 3, ad 1.
97
STh III, q. 74, aa. 6-8; q. 74, a. 8, ad 2.
95

THE BURNING COAL

383

together scriptural-historical considerations with spiritual exegesis. However, the foundational reason for the significance of
the bread and wine is their use by Christ in his institution of the
sacrament to signify his sacrifice in the historical context of
Passover, when, before he died, he commanded the disciples to
eat his body and drink his blood by eating and drinking these
elements of the Passover meal.98 Thomas repeatedly adverts to
this narrative of the Last Supper, for “it was fitting that when
the hour of his Passion had come, Christ should institute a new
sacrament after celebrating the old, as Pope Leo says (Serm.
58).”99 The Eucharist is both sacrament and sacrifice, because it
truly contains Christ; the primary Old Testament figure of the
Eucharist is therefore the sacrifice of the paschal lamb, because
it foreshadows Christ’s Passion, of which this sacrament is a
memorial. While each of the threefold dimensions of the Eucharist is prefigured typologically in multiple ways in the Old
Testament, the paschal lamb foreshadows them all, most
obviously in the case of Christ’s body as the slain lamb, but also
in that of the bread and wine, associated with the unleavened
bread of Passover (Exod 12:8).100 The first reason Thomas gives
for why the use of unleavened bread for the Eucharist is most
reasonable is that Christ instituted it during Passover (“on the
first day of the Azymes . . . on which there ought to be nothing
fermented in the houses of the Jews”).101
98

Yocum notes that, for Thomas, the meaning of sacraments is rooted primarily in
their divine institution rather than in their natural signification: “This means that, from
Thomas’ point of view, reflection on the Eucharist as a meal, and its meaning as rooted
in the anthropological phenomenon of meals in general, is of limited theological value.
Much more to the point is the history within which this particular meal has a place: the
Passover celebration which Christ shared with his disciples prior to his suffering on the
cross and which is a means of communicating his life” (“Sacraments in Aquinas,” 167).
Yocum’s point is well-taken, although I would argue that Thomas is alive to the way in
which Christ himself chooses the meal metaphor by his institution of the Eucharist
within that context to teach the disciples about his self-offering.
99
STh III, q. 73, a. 5.
100
STh III, q. 73, a. 6.
101
STh III, q. 74, a 4. The second is that leaven symbolizes corruption, and Christ’s
body was conceived without this; the third is that unleavened bread signifies the
sincerity of the faithful necessary in reception of the sacrament. He does not think,

384

DARIA SPEZZANO

A key Scripture text for Thomas here is 1 Corinthians 5:7-8:
“Christ our pasch has been sacrificed; therefore, let us feast . . .
with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” In his commentary on these verses, he ties the presence of the sacrifice to
the necessary disposition for reception: the faithful themselves
should be “unleavened bread,” without corruption, able to feast
in truth: “since the sacrificed Christ is our pasch, ‘let us feast,’
by eating Christ not only sacramentally . . . but spiritually,” that
is, by relishing his wisdom with spiritual joy.102 The Eucharist is
the celebration of the “true pasch” fulfilling salvation history,
and the source of spiritual nourishment signified in multiple
ways by the sacramentum tantum. It is therefore truly “our
daily bread,” giving daily strength like the manna in the desert,
for “just as bodily food is taken every day, so it is a good thing
to receive this sacrament every day,” as long as one can
approach it with the “great reverence and devotion” it requires.103 Thomas adds that in this sacrament one “receives
Christ himself, whose power endures forever . . . so, since a
person has daily need of Christ’s healing power, one may
commendably receive this sacrament every day.” Although reverence may hold one back from daily communion, the urging of
hope and love to receive is preferable, so long as one is properly
disposed.104
Andrew Hofer shows that, while Peter Lombard and Bonaventure stayed close to an Augustinian position of neutrality on
daily reception, Thomas moves in his mature thought to this
emphasis on its profit.105 On this question, Thomas is also more
permissive than his teacher Albert; Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski
notes that Albert, while he certainly promoted a warm devotion

however, that the Greek use of leavened bread is invalid, as it is established by ancient
custom and has its own patristic heritage of signification.
102
Super I Cor., c. 5, lect. 2 (247). All citations from Thomas’s commentaries on the
Pauline letters are based on R. Cai, ed., S. Thomae Aquinatis Super Epistolas S. Pauli
lectura, vols. 1-2, 8th ed. (Turin: Marietti, 1953); parenthetical numbers refer to
paragraphs in this edition.
103
STh III, q. 80, a. 10, corp. and ad 2.
104
STh III, q. 80, a. 10, ad 1 and 3.
105
Hofer, “Frequent Communion for the Greater Glory of God.”

THE BURNING COAL

385

to the Eucharist and acknowledged the benefit of more frequent
sacramental reception for the devout laity (e.g., holy women),
“is not in favor of daily communion.”106 Thomas, on the other
hand, holds that, because the appearances of the sacramentum
tantum signify nourishment, and because we have daily need of
Christ’s healing power and growth in love, the Eucharist is fittingly engaged by embodied human beings in daily sacramental
eating if possible. It is only because what is eaten and drunk has
really become Christ that the Eucharist provides such spiritual
nourishment. The Eucharist not only signifies Christ as our
food, it is Christ, sacrificed to be our food. The meaning of the
sacramentum tantum as food is transformed by the reality it
signifies.
IV. THE RES ET SACRAMENTUM:
ABIDING REALITY AND SIGN OF GOD’S LOVE
Eating that is both sacramental and spiritual has a fullness of
effect because it brings about the fullest union with the res et
sacramentum, Christ’s true substantial presence, embraced in
faith as reality and therefore as cause and sign of the res tantum
of grace, charity, and unity. As noted above, the res et
sacramentum is a “sign” in a way analogous but not identical to
the sacramentum tantum, because substantial presence known
by faith is not equivalent to physical presence known by the
senses. And yet, Thomas does treat the res et sacramentum as a
true sign, in the sense that the Incarnation itself is a sign or
demonstration of God’s love toward us. The most fundamental
reason Thomas thinks that it means something more to eat the
Body of Christ both spiritually and sacramentally is that Christ’s
presence in the sacrament is both reality and a sign of love and
union that is most complete when one actually takes the
sacrament into oneself, uniting oneself to Christ by receiving his
Body into one’s own, as food.
We can begin to see this in Thomas’s discussion of the
necessity of worthy disposition for sacramental eating. In
106

Surmanski, “Adoring and Eating,” 239.

386

DARIA SPEZZANO

response to an objection that sinners are permitted to look at
Christ in the Eucharist, so should be able to receive him by
sacramental eating, Thomas answers:
The body of Christ itself is not received by being seen, but only its sacrament,
because vision does not reach to the substance of Christ’s body but only to the
sacramental species, as was said above. But he who eats receives not only the
sacramental species, but also Christ who is under them.107

The special necessity of worthy disposition for sacramental
eating implies that there is a fullness of union with Christ that
can be had only when his Body is sacramentally received, a
fullness lacking in spiritual eating alone, even in the welldisposed. While one is united by faith and love to Christ’s
presence in Eucharistic adoration, one still does not receive his
Body, and so there is still not the fullest possible union. We can
gain more insight into why Thomas places such importance on
reception that is both sacramental and spiritual by examining
his explanations in question 75, article 1 of the Tertia pars, at
the outset of his discussion of transubstantiation, of why it is so
fitting in the first place that Christ’s Body is present in the
Eucharist “in very truth” and not only “as a figure or sign.”
Thomas thinks that it is both: the very truth of his presence is
what makes the Eucharist a true sign of the Father’s love.
A) The “res” of Christ’s Presence As “sacramentum” of God’s
Love
Unlike his earlier treatment in the Scriptum, Thomas
contextualizes his discussion of transubstantiation in the Summa
by prefacing it with an examination of the historically
controversial question of the “truth” of Christ’s presence, which
arose out of earlier Eucharistic controversies. He refutes
Berengar’s opinion that “Christ’s body and blood are not in this
sacrament except as in a sign, a thing to be rejected as heretical,
since it is contrary to Christ’s words.”108 The creed of the
107
108

STh III, q. 80, a. 4, ad 4; q. 83, a. 4, ad 5.
STh III, q. 75, a. 1.

THE BURNING COAL

387

Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had declared as dogma that
Christ’s “body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament
of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being
changed [transsubstantiatio] by divine power into the body, and
the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity
we may receive of Him what He has received of us.”109 Perhaps
to show the antiquity of the doctrine of the true presence,
though, Thomas draws here on patristic authorities for support,
with numerous texts he had first collected in his Catenae on
Luke and John. Hilary and Ambrose affirm that “there is no
room for doubt about the truth of Christ’s body and blood,”
and Berengar’s contention that Christ is present only as in a sign
contradicts Christ’s words in Luke 22:19 (“This is my body,
which will be given up for you”), on which Cyril of Alexandria
comments, “since [Christ] is the Truth he does not lie.”110
Thomas does not reject the idea that Christ is present as
signified, or indeed that his presence precisely as both reality
and sacrament has its own important sign value. This can be
seen in the three reasons Thomas gives in question 75, article 1
for why it is so fitting that Christ’s Body and Blood truly be in
the sacrament. First, the Eucharist is the sacrifice of the New
Law perfecting the Old which prefigured it; it is a sacrifice that
“has something more; namely, it contains Christ Crucified
himself, not only in signification or figure, but also in the truth
of the reality.” This identification of the Eucharist as a perfect
sacrifice, containing the victim himself, takes place in a wellestablished context in the Summa; it tells the reader that this is
a sacrament of Christ’s perfect charity and filial obedience,
which caused human salvation in the priestly self-offering of his
body, now made present again.111 Christ in his sacrificial true
presence as signified by the Old Testament sacrifices is itself a
sign of God’s loving plan for human salvation.
109

Twelfth Ecumenical Council Lateran IV, canon 1 (Heinrich Denzinger,
Enchiridion Symbolorum: A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations of
the Catholic Church [Latin-English], 43rd ed., ed. Peter Hünermann [San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2012], 802).
110
STh III, q. 75, a. 1. Cf. Cyril of Alexandria, In Lucam 22:19 (PG 72:912).
111
Cf. STh III, qq. 22, 48.

388

DARIA SPEZZANO

The second reason for the fittingness of Christ’s Real
Presence is therefore closely related to the first: the fact that
Christ is present in “truth”
belongs to [his] charity, out of which for our salvation he assumed a true body
of our nature. And because “it is most proper to friendship to live together
with friends,” as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix), he promises us his bodily
presence as a reward; Matthew 24:28, “Where the body is, there the eagles
will be gathered together.” In the meantime, neither does he deprive us of his
bodily presence in this pilgrimage, but through the truth of his body and
blood he conjoins us to himself in this sacrament. So he says (John 6:57):
“Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, remains in me, and I in him.”
Hence this sacrament is the sign of the greatest charity, and the raising up of
our hope, from such a familiar conjoining of Christ to us.112

Jean-Pierre Torrell remarks on this passage that the phrase “he
unites us to himself in this sacrament” shows Thomas’s mature
conception of Christ’s presence: Christ does not become present
in a localized sense (the doctrine of transubstantiation excludes
any such overly physical interpretation), but “it is we whom He
renders present to Himself.” Thomas’s composition of the
Office of Corpus Christi contributed to this development, as
well as to increasingly eschatological and affective elements in
his Eucharistic theology.113 The truth of the Real Presence
shows Christ’s supreme charity, the very motive for his Incarnation, in which eternal love took on matter.
For embodied humans, friendship desires both spiritual and
bodily presence; for this reason, Thomas calls the marital union
of body and soul the maxima amicitia.114 God’s friendship to us
in the Incarnation is greater still, and Christ’s perpetual self-gift
in the Eucharist is the sacrament of this friendship, applying the
benefits of the Incarnation to us. The focus in the text above is
on the gift of his bodily presence, conjoining us to him in
abiding friendship. This presence of his Body signifies much

112

STh III, q. 75, a. 1.
Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work,
trans., Robert Royal (rev. ed.; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2005), 135-36.
114
ScG III, c. 123.
113

THE BURNING COAL

389

more than that his corporeal accidents are present by means of
his substance; rather, it is a gift of personal presence, generously
given to “live together with his friends” despite his apparent
absence.115 Thomas, in his commentary on John 6:52 (“The
bread that I will give is my flesh”), remarks that “this sacrament
is nothing other than the application of our Lord’s passion to
us. For it was not fitting for Christ to be always with us in his
own presence, and so he wanted to supply this through this
sacrament.”116 In giving us his true Body and Blood to be eaten
in the sacrament, Christ in effect attains the purpose of the
Incarnation, completed in his paschal mystery—always to
“dwell among us,” to manifest and communicate God’s love for
us, saving us from sin, kindling our charity and uplifting our
hope.117
Finally, Christ’s substantial presence in the Eucharist, as an
extension of the Incarnation, perfects faith, the third of these
theological virtues: “as Christ [that is, in the Incarnation] shows
us his divinity invisibly, so in this sacrament he shows us his
flesh in an invisible mode.” To assent to and love the truth of
the Real Presence by faith is to believe and love the mystery of
the Incarnation itself. In answer to an objection that “it is the
spirit that gives life; the flesh is of no avail” (John 6:64),
Thomas responds with Augustine on John: “Let the spirit draw
near to this flesh . . . then the flesh will profit much. For if the
flesh is of no avail, the Word would not have been made flesh,
that it might dwell among us.”118
All of Thomas’s reasons for the fittingness of Christ’s true
presence in the Eucharist point to the ways in which, as res et
sacramentum, it functions as cause of grace and sign manifesting
God’s love in the Incarnate Word, eliciting knowledge and love
of God by the theological virtues, and so bringing about a union
with God and others which is the res tantum. Article 1, on the
115

Drawing on Aquinas, Bernard Prusak offers an understanding of Real Presence as
personal presence, in “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a
Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75 (2014): 231-59.
116
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (963).
117
STh III, q. 1, a. 1.
118
STh III, q. 75, a. 1, ad 1.

390

DARIA SPEZZANO

purpose of the Real Presence, placed at the beginning of the
question on transubstantiation, provides the hermeneutical key
to its content. Far from focusing in an overly philosophical way
on the mechanics of the change, or reducing the meaning of the
sacrament to the production of a static substance, this question
is wholly oriented to supporting an understanding of Christ’s
personal and sacrificial presence as the means of communion
with God, an understanding that is congenial to contemporary
approaches to the Eucharist.119
B) Christ’s Presence As an Abiding Reality
But why is Thomas so insistent that the “truth” of the
Eucharist must be abiding? I noted above Macy’s critique of
Thomas’s argument that once the bread and wine have been
substantially changed into Christ’s Body and Blood, the Real
Presence remains, objectively speaking, wherever the species
are, regardless of the intentionality of the receiver. This is a
corollary to Thomas’s argument that the Eucharist is completed
in the consecration of the matter rather than in its use by the
recipient.120 I have argued that Thomas is alive to the essential
role of sacramental signs engaging the mind and heart, and so
disagree with Macy’s claim that for Thomas, “the metaphysics
of the Eucharist outweigh the importance of the intentionality
of the believer,” or the meaning of the Eucharist “as a true
sign.”121 I propose instead that in making such a strong case for
Christ’s substantial presence in the sacrament as abiding under
all circumstances in which the accidents remain, Thomas is
employing metaphysics precisely to explain the Eucharist’s
signification. While Macy and Chauvet seem to oppose metaphysics and sign, Thomas sees them as integrally related aspects
of the same reality; the “truth” of the Eucharist as sign flows
from and manifests the ontological reality of Christ’s presence
that metaphysics describes. It is because the presence of the
119

On this, see Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence,’” 233.
STh III, q. 78, a. 1.
121
Macy, “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 389-90.
120

THE BURNING COAL

391

Incarnate Word is itself a sign of God’s love, which is never
withdrawn, that it is so necessary to insist on its abiding truth.
To underline Thomas’s insistence on the abiding presence of
Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist, regardless of the
receiver, Macy refers in particular to the famously obscure disputed question quid sumit mus.122 When Scholastic theologians
debated the metaphysical permanence of Christ’s presence, they
proposed a number of standard test cases: what happens when
the Eucharist is eaten by a sinner, an unbeliever, or an animal
who cannot rationally access its symbolic value—for instance,
by a mouse that nibbles on the consecrated host?123 Many held
that in some or all of these cases the substance of the Body and
Blood would not remain, ceasing to exist under the species of
bread and wine, and some posited that instead there would be a
reversion to the substance of bread.124 These opinions were
thought to preserve the dignity of Christ’s true body, as well as
122
Macy’s discussion of medieval scholastic opinions on this topic can be found in
“Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 378-90.
123
For a good though brief recent discussion of this question, see Brett Salkeld,
Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2019) 133-35. A classic treatment of this question in early Scholasticism is
Artur Landgraf, “Die in der Frühscholastik klassische Frage ‘Quid sumit mus’,” in Divus
Thomas; Jahrbuch für Philosophie und speckulative Theologie 30, series 3 (1952): 33-50.
Also see, Gary Macy, “Of Mice and Manna: Quid Mus Sumit as a Pastoral Question,”
Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 58 (1991): 157-66.
124
Bonaventure, e.g., held that Christ’s presence would remain when eaten by a
sinner (IV Sent., d. 9, a. 2, q. 1), but the most probable opinion, to avoid “offense to
pious ears,” is that it does not remain in the stomach of an animal but reverts to the
substance of bread (IV Sent., d. 13, a. 2, q. 1) (Commentaria in quatuor libros
sententiarum Magister Petri Lombardi, vol. 4 in Doctoris seraphicis S. Bonaventurae
Opera omnia, ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae [Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae,
1889]). The position that Christ’s presence would depart had some patristic precedent,
e.g., Cyprian: “When one, who himself was defiled, dared with the rest to receive
secretly a part of the sacrifice celebrated by the priest he could not eat nor handle the
holy [body] of the Lord, but found in his hands when opened that he had a cinder. Thus
by the experience of one it was shown that the Lord withdraws when He is denied; nor
does that which is received benefit the undeserving for salvation, since saving grace is
changed by the departure of the sanctity into a cinder” (On the Lapsed, 26 [trans.
Robert Ernest Wallis, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, ed. Alexander Roberts, James
Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co.,
1886)]).

392

DARIA SPEZZANO

the relation of the sacrament to human use.125 Thomas refers to
this disagreement himself in question 80, article 3 of the Tertia
pars, rejecting these opinions in favor of the view that under all
circumstances Christ, having become substantially present,
would remain so as long as the species persist. It must be said
that Thomas was not in as much of a minority in the thirteenth
century as Macy proposes; a similar opinion is given not only by
Albert but also by Peter of Tarentais (Pope Innocent V), the
Summa fratris Alexandri, and others, and later on becomes
common.126 Thomas argues that the “error” in the opinion that
125
Macy draws in part on the work of Yves de Montcheuil, who compares
Bonaventure and Aquinas on the question of whether Christ ceases to be in the
sacrament when it is touched by the lips of a sinner or an animal (“La raison de la
permanence du Christ sous les espèces Eucharistiques d’après Saint Bonaventure et Saint
Thomas,” in Mélanges théologiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 71-82. De Montcheuil
remarks that Thomas bases his reasoning on philosophical considerations of the
sacramental matter, while Bonaventure bases his on a “religious notion of the
sacrament: it is essential to a Christian sacrament to be destined for men, it is essential
to a Christian sacrament that the sensible element have sign value” (ibid., 81; my
translation).
126
I am grateful to Bruce Marshall for pointing out that the editors of Bonaventure’s
Opera omnia note a number of opinions in agreement with Thomas (4:309): the
Summa fratris Alexandri IV, q. 11, m. 2. a. 2; Albertus Magnus, IV Sent., d. 13, a. 38;
d. 9, a. 5; Peter of Tarentaise, IV Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 6; Duns Scotus, Reportatio IV
Sent., d. 8, q. 3, n. 2; and other later commentators. Some texts on which Macy relies
are not clear in their rejection of the idea that the mouse, though never eating
sacramentally, still objectively eats the Body that remains substantially under the
accidents as long as they remain. To deny that the Body is “present” symbolically for
animals is not the same as to deny that it is objectively present regardless of the recipient
(cf. Macy, “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 381). Alexander of
Hales in his disputed questions, for instance, certainly says that the mouse cannot eat
sacramentally, in the sense of attaining to the res of the sacrament, but does not actually
rule out the premise (in an objection) that the Body of Christ remains substantially
wherever the species are. He identifies what the mouse does as “a kind of carnal eating,
though properly not even carnal eating, because there is no division of substance, but
there is nothing but division of the accidents alone” (“quodam modo manducatio
carnalis, et adhuc, proprie non est ibi manducatio carnalis, quia non est ibi division
substantiae, cum non sit ibi nisi division accidentium solum”) (Alexander of Hales,
Quaestiones disputatae Antequam esset Frater, q. 51, d. 7, memb. 3 [ed. Collegium S.
Bonaventurae (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1960), p. 970, no. 208]). Cf.
idem., Glossa in quatuor libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi, d. 13, a. 8 (ed. Collegium
S. Bonaventurae [Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1957] 204). This position

THE BURNING COAL

393

Christ’s presence would depart from the sacrament arises from
ignorance of the distinction between corporeal and spiritual
eating. In all these situations, the true Body of Christ is eaten,
objectively, but, on the part of the sinner, infidel, or rodent, the
spiritual res tantum is not received.
It is instructive that the reason for this is different in each
case, and depends on the extent to which the recipient can
access the full sign value of the sacrament. Only humans who
are capable of belief and devotion for this sacrament can eat
Christ spiritually as well as sacramentally, and the engagement
of their will is even more important than that of their intellect;
those who are lacking the use of their reason may still have
some devotion for the sacrament, and can benefit from receiving it.127 On the other hand, the believing mortal sinner
does eat sacramentally, recognizing it as the Body of Christ, but
he does not eat spiritually. His sin has left him in a state of dead
faith without charity, imperfectly incorporated into Christ’s
body.128 Indeed, his reception is itself a mortal sin, because he
falsely professes to attain what it ultimately signifies: unity with
Christ and his mystical body (the res tantum).129 Sin hinders
charity and is the graver the more one holds Christ in
contempt.130 The mortal sinner thus engages the sign only
partially, with his intellect but not his will. If eating is a sign of
union, his act of eating is a distortion of the sign, an act of false
friendship like that of Judas, the secret sinner.131 Apart from the
does not suppose a reversion to the substance of bread, and seems to me to differ little
from Thomas’s opinion that the mouse eats not sacramentally but only accidentally (see
below). In the Summa fratris Alexandri, this text of Alexander is quoted and affirmed.
Then, in a following and separate question, it is deemed most probable that the Body of
Christ does enter into an irrational animal’s stomach because it is inseparably under the
species so long as the form of bread is retained. In other words, this opinion is not
thought to contradict the first. Alexandri Alensis Angli Summae Theologiae: Pars Quarta,
q. 11, memb. 2, a. 2 ([Coloniæ Agrippinæ : Sumptibus Ioannis Gymnici, sub
Monocerote, 1622], 380).
127
STh III, q. 80, a. 9.
128
STh III, q. 80, a. 4; also see q. 8, a. 3, ad 2.
129
STh III, q. 80, a. 4.
130
STh III, q. 80, a. 5.
131
STh III, q. 81, a. 2.

394

DARIA SPEZZANO

condemnation he earns, he cannot receive the signified res
tantum, because without the wisdom born of charity he cannot
spiritually taste Christ with “savored knowledge” as the one
who in loving-kindness died for him, and so cannot attain him
in the union of love. Yet, as with Judas at the Last Supper,
Christ does not withhold his Body and Blood from the sinner
who eats him sacramentally.
Nor does Christ withdraw from the infidel who eats the
sacrament, even though this act shows great contempt: “so far
as is in him he lessens the holiness of the sacrament, and the
power of Christ acting in it, and this is to despise the sacrament
in itself.”132 This charge of contempt would presumably apply to
an unbeliever who “intends to receive what the Church
receives,” though he “believes it to be nothing.”133 Unlike the
believing sinner, the unbeliever who eats the sacrament thinking
it is ordinary food does not, on his part, eat sacramentally.
Although, as a human person, he is capable of eating
sacramentally by understanding its signification, he does not
believe it is Christ’s Body, and may even wish to mock this
belief, so does not access the meaning of the sign. However,
Thomas does think that, objectively speaking, he is eating
Christ’s Body in the sacrament, and in that sense can be said to
eat sacramentally—that is, “if the word ‘sacramentally’ qualify
the verb on the part of the thing eaten. But if it qualify the verb
on the part of the one eating, then, properly speaking, he does
not eat sacramentally, because he uses what he takes, not as a
sacrament, but as simple food.”134 The key point for Thomas is
that Christ’s Body continues to be substantially present, objectively speaking, as long as the species remain.
Likewise, even if the consecrated host is eaten by a mouse or
a dog, “the substance of Christ’s body would not cease to be
under the species, so long as those species remain, that is, so
long as the substance of bread would have remained,” and to
maintain otherwise “detracts from the truth of the sacrament.”
132

STh III, q. 80, a. 5, ad 2.
IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 3, ad 3; STh III q. 80, a. 3, ad 2.
134
STh III, q. 80, a. 3, ad 2.
133

THE BURNING COAL

395

But the irrational animal, on its part, eats Christ only “accidently” (per accidens), since it is “incapable of using a sacrament.”135 That is, the mouse can never access it as a sacrament
by engaging it as a sign, but it can still use the species as food,
because they retain their properties of taste, nourishment, and
so on.136 The unbeliever—and even the believer—who eats a
consecrated host unknowingly and so neither (on his part)
sacramentally nor spiritually, eats like a mouse, per accidens.137
These examples are instructive in demonstrating Thomas’s
attention to the crucial role of the recipient’s subjective
engagement with the sign of the Eucharist, and in clarifying the
difference between merely sacramental and spiritual eating, but
even more so in underlining Thomas’s conviction that,
objectively speaking, Christ does not withdraw his substantial
presence from the (intact) consecrated host in any circumstance.
The opinion that he does is “erroneous,” because it “takes away
from the truth of this sacrament . . . to which it pertains that as
long as the species remain, the body of Christ under them does
not cease to exist.”138 Thomas insists on this, in order to
safeguard the “truth” of the sacrament, even in spite of common
pious objections to the thought of Christ’s Body being eaten by
an unworthy human or irrational animal, passing into the
human stomach, or being thrown into the mire. These all seem
to place Christ, unfittingly, into an undignified or disgusting
situation. Thomas very often accepts arguments from
135

STh III, q. 80, a. 3, ad 3.
That is, the mouse, with no potential to receive sacramentally, still eats the
accidents of bread, which maintain the capacity to nourish (STh III, q. 77, a. 3).
137
STh III, q. 80, a. 3, ad 3: The irrational animal “eats Christ's body accidentally,
and not sacramentally, just as if anyone not knowing a host to be consecrated were to
consume it.” In his commentary on 1 Cor 11:23-26, which is parallel in many ways to
the material on the Eucharist in the Summa, Thomas clarifies that a believer who eats
the consecrated host unknowingly, an infidel, and a mouse all eat per accidens (Super 1
Cor., c. 11, lect. 7 [698]).
138
STh III, q. 80, a. 3. Also see Super 1 Cor., c. 11, lect. 7 (694). Thomas points out
that Paul’s warning to those who would “eat this bread or drink the chalice of the Lord
unworthily” and so “drink judgement to himself, not discerning the body of the Lord”
(1 Cor 11:27-29) makes no sense if it were true that the Body of Christ ceases to be
under the sacrament as soon as it is touched by the lips of a sinner.
136

396

DARIA SPEZZANO

fittingness, but he does not do so here. His reasons, I think, do
not derive simply from a commitment to the “necessary
metaphysical connection between the accidents of the bread and
wine and the substance of the Body and Blood” that “overrode
the theological understanding of the Eucharist as a true sign.”139
On the contrary, if one considers what Thomas means by “the
truth of the sacrament,” it becomes clear that he takes full
theological measure of the Eucharist’s signification of its reality
not only as sacramentum tantum but as res et sacramentum.
What truth about the sacrament would be lost if one were to
suppose that Christ would withdraw his presence under various
conditions, to preserve his dignity? Thomas’s response to these
objections from piety is not only to reiterate the permanence of
the substantial change140 but, essentially, to argue that the
dignity of the one who became incarnate precisely to give himself as food for our salvation cannot be affected by any created
cause, whether natural (digestion, consumption by animals) or
moral (human sinners and unbelievers). “God abominates a
sinner more than an irrational animal incapable of moral fault,
in which there is nothing but what God made,” yet “Christ’s
body is eaten by sinners,” so it can also be by animals.141 These
things “cause no indignity to Christ, who willed to be crucified
by sinners.”142 Precisely because the lips of sinners (or animals)
touch only the species under which Christ’s Body is in truth, his
Body “contracts no impurity” when they eat it. Indeed, “he
gives in this an example of meekness and humility.”143 One
might say that Christ’s dignity is shown all the more because he
willed to humble himself in this way. Although of course proper
reverence must be shown for the dignity of the sacrament—and
one sins gravely in failing to do so144—nothing can actually take
139

Macy, “Theology of the Eucharist in the High Middle Ages,” 389-90.
At least without another reverse transubstantiation; IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 2,
qcla. 1.
141
IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 3, s.c.
142
STh III, q. 80, a. 3, ad 3.
143
IV Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 2, qcla. 1, ad 3.
144
STh III, q. 80, a. 5, ad 3. On canon law dealing with safeguards for reverent
treatment of the Eucharist, see Ian Christopher Levy, “The Eucharist and Canon Law in
140

THE BURNING COAL

397

away from the dignity of the Incarnate Word who is present in
it, nor cause him to withdraw his presence.
To draw out the analogy with the Incarnation, the belief that
Christ’s presence might be withdrawn in such a case may have
seemed to Thomas like a kind of Docetism, which holds
heretically that the Word suffered only in appearance and not
truly in flesh; some Docetists taught that the Word departed
from Christ in the indignity of the crucifixion. As Paul Gondreau has shown, Thomas is aware of the dangers of Docetism,
writing in his Commentary on John that the view that Christ
assumed “only imaginary flesh” undermines the “truth of the
Incarnation.”145 Gondreau remarks especially on the antiDocetism implicit in Thomas’s commentary on the Bread of Life
discourse in John 6: “the realism of the Eucharist, the true
nourishment of our souls, requires the realism of the humanity
of Christ.”146 Like other theologians, Thomas thinks that
spiritual eating is achieved only by union with Christ in faith
and love. However, he also wants to insist on the “truth” of the
sacrament, which would be undermined if the substantial
presence of the Body and Blood were not an objective and
especially an abiding reality.
The abiding nature of the res et sacramentum makes it a true
sign of the res tantum, the grace, charity, and unity that flow
from God’s unfailing love in Christ. Thomas first addresses the
question of the permanence of Christ’s substantial presence in
question 76, article 6 of the Tertia pars, in the midst of his
discussion on the mode of Christ’s existence in the Eucharist
after transubstantiation. There too he rejects the opinion that
the High Middle Ages,” in Levy, Macy, Van Ausdall, eds., A Companion to the
Eucharist in the Middle Ages, 399-445.
145
In his exegesis of John 1:14, “the Word became flesh,” Thomas writes that these
words “show the truth of the Incarnation against the Manichaeans,” who said that the
Word assumed “only imaginary flesh” (Super Ioan., c. 1, lect. 7 [169]). Paul Gondreau
demonstrates that Thomas’s anti-docetism is especially evident in his Commentary on
John (“Anti-Docetism in Aquinas’s Super Ioannem: St. Thomas as Defender of the Full
Humanity of Christ,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais
and Matthew Levering [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2005], 254-76, at 255).
146
Gondreau, “Anti-Docetism,” 273.

398

DARIA SPEZZANO

Christ might cease to exist under the consecrated sacrament at
any time except when the species cease to exist. He draws a
parallel between God’s presence in creation and transubstantiation: Christ, as God, “has unfailing and incorruptible
being,” and just as God only ceases to be in a corruptible
creature when that creature’s existence ceases, so Christ is in the
sacrament until the species cease to exist and so are no longer in
relationship to him. This argument seems strictly metaphysical
at first, yet with its analogy to creation it points to a deeper
realization about the gratuity of this divine gift. The explanation
leaves open the question of why Christ puts himself into this
permanent relationship with the species in the first place, for no
such continuance can be necessitated of him as God except one
that he wills himself. In creation, God’s love alone is the reason
for his remaining causally present to any creature (i.e., by
upholding that creature in being, by a participation in the divine
existence).147 We can extrapolate that, likewise, once transubstantiation has taken place, Christ’s substantial presence
irreversibly exists under the accidental species so long as they
remain, not out of any metaphysical “necessity” impossibly
binding the immortal nature of the divine Word, but implicitly,
because of his loving will by institution of the sacrament that
the consecrated species should remain in relationship to him so
long as they exist. Like Christ’s substantial presence itself, the
permanence of that presence is a fitting sign of God’s abiding
love in Christ.
An answer to one of the objections in article 6 lends further
support to this interpretation. The objection is based on the
scriptural image of the Paschal Lamb as a “figure of this
sacrament,” which Thomas himself employs: according to the
command of Exodus 12:10, nothing of the lamb was to remain
until the morning; therefore, the objection runs, since “the truth
ought to correspond with the figure . . . if this sacrament is
reserved until the morning, neither will the body of Christ be
there.” Thomas responds that the truth exceeds the figure,
implying that he thinks the permanence of Christ’s presence is
147

STh I, q. 20, a. 2.

THE BURNING COAL

399

part of the perfection of the New Law. For the substance of his
rebuttal, though, he responds in Cyril of Alexandria’s words:
“Some are so foolish as to say that the mystical blessing departs
from the sacrament, if any of its fragments remain until the next
day: for Christ's consecrated body is not changed, and the
power of the blessing, and the life-giving grace is perpetually in
it.”
This text is part of a passage from Cyril, commenting on
Luke 22:19 (“This is my Body”), with which Thomas seems to
have been very familiar, and which appears in its entirety in
Thomas’s Catena on Luke.148 Thomas has already quoted Cyril’s
directly preceding lines in question 75, article 1 (“Do not doubt
that this is true . . . since [Christ] is the Truth he does not lie”).
The Truth has said, “This is my Body,” and so in the following
lines of this text Cyril argues that the life-giving blessing
available in the Eucharist flows from the Incarnation itself: “For
the life-giving power of God the Father is the only-begotten
Word, which was made flesh not ceasing to be the Word, but
making the flesh life-giving.” The “mystical blessing” of Christ’s
Body does not depart from the sacrament any more than the
Word abandons his flesh. Rather, the power of incorruptible life
that belongs to the divine Word is communicated to his human
flesh, and so to those who receive it in the Eucharist, for “God,
condescending to our weakness, pours into the offerings the
power of life, changing them into the truth of his own flesh,
that the body of life, like a life-giving seed, may be found in
us.”149 The abiding substantial res of the Word made flesh for
life-giving food in the Eucharist is the sacramentum of his
unfailing gift of grace for our salvation.

148

S. Thomae Aquinatis Catena aurea in quatuor Evangelia, 4 vols., ed. A. Guarenti
(Turin: Marietti, 1953). English Translation: Catena aurea: Commentary on the Four
Gospels Collected out of the Works of the Early Church Fathers, ed. J. H. Newman,
trans. M. Pattison, J. D. Dalgairns, and T. D. Ryder (Oxford: Parker, 1841; repr.,
Southampton: Saint Austin Press, 1997).
149
See Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Lucam (PG 72:907-12).

400

DARIA SPEZZANO

V. THE RES TANTUM: THE FIRE OF CHARITY
When he discusses the effects of the Eucharist in question
79, Thomas takes up Cyril’s commentary on Luke 22 again, and
applies Cyril’s view of the life-giving power of Christ’s true
Body and Blood as sign and cause of the res tantum. Thomas’s
“instrumental realism of the flesh of the Incarnate Word,”150
drawn from his patristic sources, is the final clue as to why the
fullness of the Eucharist’s effect can only be had by an eating
that is both spiritual and sacramental. Thomas connects the
effects of the Eucharist closely in various ways to Christ’s
substantial presence. Question 79 is remarkable for the use he
makes of texts from the Fathers, especially from the Greek
tradition, many of which may be found in close proximity in his
earlier catenae on Luke 22 and John 6.151
In article 1, Thomas refers again to Cyril’s commentary on
Luke 22:19, as he argues that grace is bestowed in the Eucharist, “first of all and principally,” because Christ is contained
in the sacrament. By “coming visibly into the world” in the
Incarnation, Christ “bestowed the life of grace upon the world”;
so also, Thomas says,
by coming sacramentally into man, he causes the life of grace, according to
John 6:58: “He who eats me, will live by me.” Hence Cyril says [on Luke
22:19]: “the life-giving Word of God, uniting himself with his own flesh,
made it life-giving. Therefore it was fitting that he should be united with our

150

Gondreau, “Anti-Docetism,” 275.
Louis J. Bataillon discusses many parallels between the Catena and the first
section of the Tertia pars (STh III, qq. 1-59) on the mysteries of Christ’s life, noting that,
“This use of the rich patristic documentation of the Catena shows well how Thomas
was more and more aware of the importance of the tradition of the Fathers in his
theology” (Louis J. Bataillon, “Saint Thomas et les Pères: De la Catena à la Tertia Pars,”
in Ordo sapientiae et amoris: Hommage au professeur Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., ed.
Carlos-Josaphat Pinto, O.P. (Fribourg: Éditions universitaires, 1993), 15-36, at 25. A
recent and ambitious project by Martin Morard and others to research the patristic
sources of the Catena and make it available in electronic format is in progress and can
be found at Martin Morard, “Catena aurea electronica,” Sacra Pagina,
https://big.hypotheses.org/catena-aurea.
151

THE BURNING COAL

401

bodies through his sacred flesh and precious blood, which we receive in a lifegiving blessing in the bread and wine.”152

The use of Cyril’s text again underlines the instrumental realism
of Thomas’s Eucharistic theology, as he makes a close causal
connection between the res et sacramentum of Christ’s Body
and Blood (as both sign and reality) and the res tantum of lifegiving grace it confers.153 He draws a parallel between Christ’s
bestowal of grace by coming into the world in the Incarnation
and by coming into humans by sacramental reception of the
Eucharist. By bodily union with Christ’s own flesh in the
Eucharist, we can be united spiritually with him in his divinity,
in the life of grace. Because the Eucharist represents Christ’s
Passion, it “works in us the effect which Christ’s Passion
worked in the world.” The Eucharist signifies the Passion and
truly represents it by making present the very Body and Blood
sacrificially offered by Christ who was crucified for the
152

STh III, q. 79, a. 1.
The influence of Cyril on Thomas’s Christology and in particular in his view of
how the sacraments communicate the life-giving power of his Word through the
instrumentality of his humanity is fairly widely recognized. For a valuable discussion of
the contribution of the Greek Fathers, including Cyril, to Thomas’s treatise on the
Eucharist in the Summa, see Joseph Wawrykow, “The Greek Fathers in the Eucharistic
Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, ed. Michael
Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press,
2019), 274-302. Wawrykow underlines, in the quotations that Thomas selects from
Cyril, the stress on the “life-giving power of the eucharistic Christ” truly present (28688). See also Blankenhorn, “The Place of Romans 6,” 139, 141, where the author
discusses this in the context of Thomas’s theology of baptism, with reference to Cyril’s
influence via John of Damascus’s De fide orthodoxa. Blankenhorn makes the point that
Thomas synthesizes Cyril’s Christology, with its emphasis on all the actions and
sufferings of Christ as divinizing and life-giving, with Aristotelian formal causality, so
that Thomas “can explain the significance of particular historical events on a
metaphysical plane. Formal causality thus enables Thomas to synthesize history and
metaphysics, to explain why the particular historical events of Christ’s life have
particular metaphysical significance. Because of formal causality, the metaphysics of
grace is utterly marked by history, that is, the single grace of forgiveness and
justification at once bears the spiritual marks or similitudes of Christ’s Passion and
Resurrection” (ibid., 142). See also Austin Dominic Litke, O.P., “Christological
Ressourcement: The Development of St. Thomas’s Doctrine of Instrumentality,”
Angelicum 91 (2014): 149-65.
153

402

DARIA SPEZZANO

forgiveness of our sins. Thomas quotes John Chrysostom on
John 19:34: “When you draw near to the awe-inspiring chalice,
approach as if you were going to drink from Christ’s own
side.”154
As discussed above, Thomas thinks that devout reception of
any sacrament has a fuller effect than spiritual reception alone,
for both body and soul. This is especially true for the Eucharist,
because Christ is substantially present; one is united, body and
soul, to Christ himself, receiving “not only the sacramental
species, but also Christ himself who is under them.”155 Thomas
makes this point again in question 79, article 1: “This sacrament
has power of itself to confer grace. . . . It is from the efficacy of
its power that even from the desire for it one can obtain grace
to be enlivened spiritually. It remains that when the sacrament
itself is really eaten, grace is increased, and the spiritual life
perfected,” specifically (as opposed to the perfection for
resisting outward assaults that one finds in confirmation), “so
that one may become perfect in oneself by being conjoined to
God.”156 Like baptism, the Eucharist sacramentally received has
effects on both body and soul. The effect of grace in this
sacrament flows too “into the body while in the present life,”
and “in the life to come our body will share in the incorruption
and the glory of the soul.”157 Each of the sacraments is ordered
to some special effect necessary in the Christian life; while grace
in itself perfects the soul on the level of its nature, and the
infused virtues and gifts perfect its powers, the grace given in
each sacrament, actually received, has in addition the special
effect of conferring “divine help in attaining the end of that
sacrament.”158 The Eucharist, especially when sacramentally received, confers a growth in grace that perfects soul and body for
union with God, not only in this life, but in the future life of

154

STh III, q. 79, a. 1; Catena in Ioan., c. 19, lect. 10. Cf. John Chrysostom, Homily
85 on John (PG 59:463).
155
STh III, q. 80, a. 4, ad 4.
156
STh III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 1.
157
STh III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 3.
158
STh III, q. 62, a. 2.

THE BURNING COAL

403

glory, earned for us by the Passion of Christ whom it
contains.159
It is charity that perfects the soul for union with God in this
life and the next, and so the effect of the Eucharist is especially
related to this infused virtue. The common medieval notion of
the Eucharist as the “sacrament of charity” has for Thomas a
particular Christological density. While all sacraments apply the
power of the Passion, the Eucharist is “the sacrament of Christ’s
Passion according as one is made perfect in union with Christ
who suffered,” and that is why it is “the sacrament of charity,
which is ‘the bond of perfection’ (Col 3:14).”160 We have seen
that Thomas’s arguments for the fittingness of Christ’s substantial presence center around the way in which it manifests
Christ’s charity, out of which he suffered. In the Eucharist one
is perfected by being actually united to Christ in his sacrificial
charity, and by this union made more like him in his charity.
Thomas quotes in a number of places Augustine’s words about
the Eucharist from the Confessions: “I am the food of the
mature; grow, and you will eat me. But you will not change me
into yourself; you will be changed into me.”161 As the “food of
the mature,” the Eucharist, in a special way, transforms one into
the likeness of Christ in his charity; it is the sacrament of both
Christ’s love and ours. The Eucharist is called the “mystery of
faith” in the liturgy, as the object of faith, because it contains
Christ’s true Body. But it is the sacrament of charity both
“figuratively and effectively”; that is, both as the sign of God’s
charity in Christ and the cause of Christ-like charity in us.162
Thomas’s treatment of charity earlier in the Summa gives us
insight into the meaning of this effect. He defines charity in two
related ways: as an infused virtue that is a participation by the
will in the Holy Spirit; and as friendship with God, founded on
his communication of beatitude to us, by giving us fellowship
with his Son.163 These two are related; the Holy Spirit is the
159

STh III, q. 79, a. 2.
STh III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3.
161
STh III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 2; Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 7 (972).
162
STh III, q. 78, a. 3, ad 6.
163
STh II-II, q. 23 a. 1; q. 23, a. 3, ad 3; q. 24 a. 2; q. 24, a. 5, ad 3; q. 24, a. 7.
160

404

DARIA SPEZZANO

bond of Love between Father and Son, by which the Father also
loves creatures and draws them to his goodness.164 God
communicates his beatitude to us by loving us, because God’s
love causally “infuses and creates goodness” in all creatures, but
by a special love in the gift of grace God draws rational
creatures above the condition of their nature to a “participation
in the divine Good,” so that they can share his own happiness in
eternal life.165 The virtue of charity flows from grace, which
Thomas defines as a deifying participation of the divine
nature.166 A participation in the Holy Spirit by charity deifies
the will, directing it to the divine good and uniting us to God
and others, so as to allow us to “possess and enjoy” the
indwelling Trinity even in this life, and to bring us to share the
Son’s own end of beatitude.167 Charity gives a foretaste of this
beatitude, reaching its fullness in heaven.168 Charity is the glue
uniting Christ’s mystical body in fellowship with the Son, made
perfect in glory. When Thomas says that the Eucharist is the
sacrament of charity, he is saying that it accomplishes all these
things. That is why charity is a central link among the other
ways in which Thomas describes the res tantum of the
Eucharist: as grace, communion, and the unity of the mystical
body fully realized in heaven.169
164

STh I, q. 37, a. 2.
STh I, q. 20, a. 2; STh I-II, q. 110, a. 1.
166
STh I-II, q. 110, a. 4; q. 112, a. 2.
167
STh I, q. 43, a. 3. In the background here is Thomas’s teaching on the divine
missions of the Son and Spirit into the soul in the gift of sanctifying grace, by which the
soul’s powers of intellect and will are assimilated to the divine persons as the “known in
the knower, and the beloved in the lover.” The infused virtue of charity assimilates the
will to the Holy Spirit, and gifts of infused wisdom (including not only the Spirit’s gift
of wisdom but faith and every intellectual perfection) assimilate the intellect to the Son.
These infused habits make the person capable of the supernatural activities of knowing
and loving God that move her towards beatitude. See STh I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2. For a
thorough treatment of the Trinitarian missions and their effects, see Gilles Emery, The
Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),
360-412. On the role of the missions and assimilation to the divine persons in
deification, see Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification according to St.
Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2015).
168
STh II-II, q. 24, a. 8.
169
STh III, q. 73, a. 2; q. 73, a. 3 ad 3; q. 73, a. 4; q. 80, a. 4; q. 83, a. 4, ad 3.
165

THE BURNING COAL

405

The Eucharist, therefore, because it truly contains not only
the gift of grace but the Giver, is the sign or sacrament of
Christ’s charity, and the sign and cause of ours. Thomas’s
sacramental realism is especially clear where he describes how
the flesh of the Word in the Eucharist communicates deifying
grace and charity. In question 79, article 1 he uses a striking
image, taken from John Damascene’s De fide orthodoxa:
This sacrament confers grace spiritually, with the virtue of charity. So
Damascene (De fide 4.13) compares this sacrament to the burning coal which
Isaiah saw (Isaiah 6:6): “For a burning coal is not simply wood, but wood
united to fire; so also the bread of communion is not simple bread but bread
united to divinity.”170

In this text the Damascene, drawing from a common patristic
metaphor, is likening the Eucharist to the burning and purifying
coal taken from the altar of the temple and placed on the lips of
the prophet Isaiah. John explains that the coal of the Eucharist
burns with divinity because “it is the deified body of the Lord
itself,” which communicates deification to others.171 Thomas
uses the metaphor of a burning coal (or of iron in fire) more
widely throughout the Summa and in his other writings to
express the notion of participation in the divine perfections, and
especially the participation in the divine nature by grace that
flows from Christ’s deified humanity to his members.172 In using
Damascene’s image here, then, he is indicating that it is

170

STh III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 2.
John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4.13 (PG 94:1135-54). Thomas knew this
work in the twelfth-century Latin translation by Burgundio of Pisa, and “would seem to
have known well the chapter in de fide about Eucharist” (Wawrykow, “Greek Fathers in
the Eucharistic Theology of Aquinas,” 277).
172
On this, see Spezzano, Glory of God’s Grace, 173, 179-80. The image of iron in
fire is found in a quotation from Theophylactus (PG 123:1311) in the Catena in Ioan.
c. 6, lect. 9, on John 6:58: “We do not eat God simply, for he is impalpable and
incorporeal; nor also do we eat simply the flesh of man, which could profit us nothing.
But because God has united flesh to himself, that flesh is vivifying; not that it has
changed its nature into God’s, but, just as heated iron remains iron, while it manifests
the action of the heat, so the flesh of the Lord is vivifying, as the flesh of the Word of
God.”
171

406

DARIA SPEZZANO

especially through communion with the Word’s deified flesh in
the Eucharist that one receives deifying grace and charity.
Thomas draws on this tradition of instrumental realism in his
commentary on the Bread of Life discourse in John 6, a text
frequently cited in the Summa’s treatment of the Eucharist. In
his commentary, he discusses the benefits of an eating that is
both sacramental and spiritual. Thomas often quotes Augustine’s Tractates on John, and like Augustine gives considerable
attention to spiritual eating of the “bread of life” through faith
and love.173 Augustine’s focus is on the res tantum: Christ’s flesh
is his mystical body, in which one can live as a member by faith
and love.174 Thomas follows Augustine closely in his reading of
John 6:51 (“I am the living bread which came down from
heaven”); this refers to the divine Word who has power to give
eternal life.175 But when he gets to John 6:52, he offers an
added explanation, with the help again of John Damascene, of
why Christ says “the bread I will give is my flesh”:
He had said [before] that he was the living bread; and lest we think he is so
only as the Word, or in his soul alone, he shows that even his flesh is lifegiving, for it is an instrument of his divinity. Thus since an instrument acts by
virtue of its agent, just as the divinity of Christ is life-giving, so too as
Damascene says, his flesh gives life by the power of the Word to which it is
joined. Hence Christ healed the sick by his touch. So what he said above, “I
am the living bread,” pertained to the power of the Word; but what he is
saying here pertains to communion in his body, namely to the sacrament of
the Eucharist.176

Because one is “touched” by Christ’s deified flesh in receiving it,
the Eucharist “produces spiritual life in us now, and will later
produce eternal life.”177 So, the Eucharist transmits the deifying
power of Christ’s flesh, uniting those who eat it to the Godhead
by transforming them into what they eat, for “this is a food
173

E.g., Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (950), on John 6:47 (“He who believes in me has
eternal life”).
174
Augustine, Tractates on John 26.13.
175
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (957-59).
176
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (959). See John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 3.15 and
3.17.
177
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 6 (963).

THE BURNING COAL

407

capable of making man divine and inebriating him with
divinity.”178
As always, Thomas emphasizes the necessity for spiritual
eating of the Eucharist when opposed to one that is only
sacramental, yet he still assumes the priority of an eating of the
“bread of life” (John 6:35) that is both spiritual and
sacramental:
Because the flesh of Christ is united to the Word of God, it also is life-giving.
So too his body, sacramentally eaten, is life-giving; for through the mysteries
which Christ accomplished in his flesh, he gives life to the world. So the flesh
of Christ, according to the word of the Lord, is bread, not of ordinary life, but
of that life which is not taken away by death.179

Thomas adds that those who receive the Word made flesh
within themselves will have both spiritual and corporeal life, for
Christ will “raise them up on the last day.” With the same
quotation from Augustine that he uses in the Summa to argue
that Christ’s bodily resurrection is the cause of ours and that the
sacraments instrumentally communicate this effect to us,
Thomas explains, “it is the Word who raises up souls, and it is
the Word made flesh who gives life to bodies.”180 Here the
instrumental exemplar causality of the Incarnate Word is extended in a surpassing way to the Eucharist. Because the Word
is present in this sacrament “not only in his divinity, but also in
the reality of his flesh, he is the cause of the resurrection not
just of souls but of bodies also . . . so the usefulness of eating it
is clear.”181 The incorruptibility which belongs to the divine
Word—and which makes it so fitting that he remain in the
consecrated Eucharist in an abiding manner—is communicated
instrumentally through his deified flesh to those who receive
him.

178

Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 7 (972). A quotation of Theophylactus (PG 123:1310),
found in the Catena in Ioan., c. 6, lect. 8, on John 6:52.
179
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 4 (914).
180
Augustine, Tractates on John, 19.15ff. STh III, q. 56, a. 1; q. 62, a. 5, ad 1. See
also Comp. Theol. I, c. 239; Super 1 Cor., c. 15, lect. 2 (913).
181
Super Ioan., c. 6, lect. 7 (973).

408

DARIA SPEZZANO

In all his sacramental realism, though, Thomas is not
forgetful of the role of the signification of the species. To return
to question 79, article 1 on the conferral of grace in the Eucharist, while Thomas first notes that it causes grace because
Christ is contained, he goes on to describe how the spiritual life,
charity, and unity flowing from grace are signified by the
sacramentum tantum. Since Christ’s Body and Blood in the
Eucharist are given as food and drink, they symbolize the
spiritual nourishment and delight of grace; Thomas quotes
Chrysostom on John again: “When we desire it, he lets us feel
him, and eat him, and embrace him.”182 The species of bread
and wine, chosen by Christ to represent his Body and Blood,
symbolize the unity and charity of the mystical body, according
to Augustine: “O sacrament of piety! O sign of unity! O bond of
charity!”183 The sacramental species signify the grace, charity,
and unity that flow from Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist,
and in turn contribute to those effects, helping to engage the
recipient more deeply precisely by signifying that Christ is not
just present, he is present out of sacrificial love as saving
spiritual food. Thomas never leaves the sacramentum tantum
behind in his sacramental realism. There is one twofold signification of the res tantum to which both the sacramentum tantum and res et sacramentum contribute in different ways, and
this signification is fullest when the species are actually eaten.
Thomas’s emphasis on eating both sacramentally and
spiritually allows him to give full play to a Cyrillian
instrumental realism that emphasizes the objective life-giving
power of the Word’s deified flesh in the res et sacramentum for
both body and soul, without falling prey to any diminishment of
the ultimate priority of the res tantum, nor neglecting the role
of the sacramentum tantum or of the recipient in engaging the
sign. Thomas is not proposing, any more than is Cyril himself, a
“physicalist soteriology governed by a quasi-automatic transfer

182
183

Chrysostom, Homily 46 on John (PG 59:260).
Augustine, Tractates on John 26.13.

THE BURNING COAL

409

of divine life through contact with Christ’s flesh.”184 Indeed,
like Cyril, Thomas gives full weight to the necessary role of
human response in the appropriation of divine life.185 After he
introduces the metaphor of the burning coal in question 79,
article 1 (in the response to the second objection) to describe
the deified and deifying Body of the Lord, he goes on to
describe how it communicates the effects of charity to its
recipients not only by bestowing grace, but by thereby eliciting
their own cooperative and experiential response:
Through this sacrament, as far as its power is concerned, not only is the habit
of grace and of virtue conferred, but it is also excited into act, according to 2
Corinthians 5:14: “The charity of Christ urges us.” Hence it is that by the
power of this sacrament, the soul is spiritually restored, by being spiritually
gladdened, and as it were inebriated with the sweetness of the divine
goodness, according to Song 5:1: “Eat, friends, and drink, and be inebriated,
most dearly beloved.”186

The recipient actively cooperates in these acts of charity,
inspired by the Holy Spirit and by the “sweetness of the divine
goodness” in Christ truly present.
The more charity is in act, the more it brings about all of
charity’s effects. In the subsequent articles of question 79,
Thomas gives some of them. The Eucharist forgives and satisfies
for venial sin, “according to the measure of one’s devotion and
fervor,” and lessens concupiscence; it gives spiritual refreshment
and delight; it unites one to Christ and to his members, so as to
receive the benefits of the Lord’s Passion and offer efficacious
prayers for others in the body.187 We can add to these the
effects of active charity that Thomas discusses elsewhere: the
fire of charity inflames and incites us to acts of love;188 it merits
beatitude, and disposes one more and more for a greater share
184

Daniel Keating, “Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation of Divine Life,” in The
Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, ed. Thomas Weinandy and
Daniel Keating (New York: T&T Clark, 2003), 149-86, at 170.
185
Ibid., 170ff.
186
STh III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 2.
187
STh III, q. 79, aa. 4-8.
188
E.g., STh II-II, q. 24, a. 10; Super Ioan., c. 20, lect. 1 (2473).

410

DARIA SPEZZANO

in glory.189 Thomas quotes Damascene again in the sed contra of
question 79, article 8, where he discusses whether venial sins
hinder the effect of the sacrament:
Damascene says (De fide orthodoxa 4.13): “The fire of that desire which is in
us, being taken up from this coal, that is, from the fiery ignition of this
sacrament, will burn up our sins, and illuminate our hearts, that by
participation of the divine fire we may be kindled into fire and deified.”190

Thomas explains that the distraction of venial sins can hinder
the “fire of our desire or love” and so diminish the effect of the
sacrament; though one may still obtain grace and charity, “a
certain actual refreshment of spiritual sweetness” will be
lacking. Thomas refers to the same text of Damascene in one
last place in the Summa’s questions on the Eucharist: he
remarks that Damascene says this sacrament has the name of
“communion” “because we communicate with Christ through
it, both because we participate in his flesh and divinity, and
because we communicate with and are united to one another
through it.”191 The deification effected by reception of the
burning coal of Christ’s true Body and Blood not only
transforms individuals by setting them on fire with charity, but
as a result has the ecclesial effect of communion.
CONCLUSION
At the end of his Commentary on John, Thomas compares
the Eucharist to the lakeside breakfast Christ cooks for his
friends. Christ prepares three things for the Church’s banquet:
Christ carried the burning coals of charity from heaven to earth: “a new
commandment I give you: that you love one another” (John 13:34); “I come
189

STh I, q. 12, a. 6; cf. STh II-II q. 180, a. 8, ad 1; III q. 55, a. 1, ad 3; q. 79 a. 2.
STh III, q. 79, a. 8.
191
STh III, q. 73, a. 4; and by the Damascene “it is called Assumption, because by it
we assume the divinity of the Son.” It is perhaps worth noting that in a parallel article in
the Scriptum (IV Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 3) John of Damascus does not appear, nor
does the idea that through the Eucharist we participate in Christ’s “flesh and divinity.”
See John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa 4.13.
190

THE BURNING COAL

411

to cast fire upon the earth” (Luke 12:49). Likewise, he prepared the fish, laid
over the burning coals, which is Christ himself: for the roasted fish is the
suffering Christ [nam piscis assus, Christus passus], who was laid out on the
burning coals, when out of the fiery heat of his love for us, he was immolated
on the cross. Eph 5:1-2: “Christ loved us and handed himself over for us, a
fragrant offering and sacrifice to God; likewise: be imitators of God as his
beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us.”192

The hot coals of Christ’s own charity light the fire of his holocaust on the Cross; as a result, Thomas says, we receive “the
bread which nourishes us, that is himself.”193 Christ offers his
deified humanity to us as the burning coal glowing with charity,
transformed into bread baked in a furnace of sacrificial love.
It is perhaps not surprising, then, that while Thomas always
insists on the necessity of spiritual eating by faith and love to
receive the res tantum, and on the possibility of receiving this by
desire alone, he thinks it best to eat both sacramentally and
spiritually, and as often as one is well-disposed. Thomas’s view
of sacraments as instruments for our embodied nature leads him
to hold this view in general. But in the Eucharist especially, he
draws a close connection between the sacramentum tantum, the
abiding res et sacramentum of the true presence, and the res
tantum of deifying grace and charity. While all the sacraments
confer grace, in the Eucharist Christ himself is contained—not
only present, but present as one who has given his own body as
life-giving spiritual food. This food could be offered in no other
way than by his own holocaust of love—and this superabundant
sacrificial gift especially causes and stirs up charity within us,
bringing about unity with him in his mystical body.
In response to the critiques of some contemporary scholars,
such as Gary Macy and Louis-Marie Chauvet, I have argued
that Thomas’s careful philosophical attention to the abiding
truth of Christ’s presence brought about by transubstantiation
does not undermine a truly sacramental theology of the
Eucharist as a sign given to people for communion. On the
contrary, his metaphysics is at the service of a theological

192
193

Super Ioan., c. 21, lect. 2 (2599).
Ibid.

412

DARIA SPEZZANO

argument for the power of the true presence as both sign and
cause of charity in us. Sign and reality are not in opposition to
each other; the Eucharist is a true sign for the sanctification of
people, manifesting the surpassing reality of Christ’s deifying
self-gift. To answer Kilmartin’s concern that an emphasis on the
Real Presence obscures the “eschatological dimension” of
sacramental reception as saving “spiritual communion with the
glorified flesh of the risen Lord,” Christ’s loving Eucharistic gift
of his own resurrected body is for Thomas the supreme lifegiving food for our own resurrection in body and soul. It is
truly nourishment for glory in communion with Christ and his
body, the Church. As a result, the notion of the Eucharist as the
sacrament of charity becomes for Thomas an important locus of
his Christological, soteriological, and ecclesiological teaching.
In the post-pandemic Church, when many Catholics have
not returned to Mass or continue to watch it at home under the
mistaken impression that spiritual and sacramental communion
are equivalent, Thomas offers a timely reminder that devout
sacramental reception is the most effective nourishment for the
maxima amicitia possible between the human person and God
in this life. Thomas’s own example witnesses to the way that
sacramental reception can nurture loving friendship with God.
While Thomas’s Scholastic mode of expression differs from that
of some Eucharistic mystics, his deep devotion and desire for
full union with Christ in the Eucharist, expressed in his final
profession of faith, is the same. Perhaps this is the deepest reason why Thomas encourages even daily reception of the Eucharist for those well-disposed; to receive frequently belongs to
love, he says, to abstain sometimes belongs to reverent fear, and
both are good; but, “love and hope . . . are preferable to
fear.”194
For Thomas, frequent and familiar conjoining with Christ,
by a reception of the Eucharist that is both spiritual and
sacramental, teaches one to know and love his sacrificial
presence. To the objective efficacy of the sacrament this adds a
dimension of devotion that enkindles charity into act and so
194

STh III, q. 80, a. 10, ad 3.

THE BURNING COAL

413

deifies, transforming one in both body and soul for eternal life.
To receive this gift is to acknowledge the Father’s goodness and
generosity in communicating his beatitude to us, for “it is
proper to friendship to live together with friends.”195 As for
John of Damascus and other Church Fathers before him, the
true presence of Christ’s deified flesh in the Eucharist is for
Thomas a proclamation of the Incarnation, of the love of God
who became flesh for us to be the “price of our redemption,”196
not only providing material sacraments for our embodied
nature but desiring to remain with us in order to transform us
into himself.
The Real Presence is not an end in itself; as in all things the
incarnate Word is mediator of the Father’s love, a love
communicated by the Holy Spirit to draw all to union with
himself. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the Trinitarian God’s
charity and so of ours; it communicates the Father’s eternal love
through Love Incarnate—the true presence of Christ’s deified
humanity—by the gift of participation in the love of the Holy
Spirit. Eating Christ himself, who has become truly present in
order to be consumed in devout sacramental communion, has
the fullest effect because he is the source of life for both body
and soul, humbly known, loved, and received. Thomas evidently tasted this fullness not only in theory but by experience.
Full and frequent bodily and spiritual union with the Incarnate
Word truly present in the Eucharist realizes most perfectly the
purpose of the entire sacramental economy given to the human
race: to communicate generously a vivifying and deifying share
in the Father’s abiding love.

195
196

Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.5. Quoted by Aquinas in STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1, obj. 1.
STh III, q. 48, a. 4, ad 3.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 415-49

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL: BEAUTY AND THE
TRINITY IN THE THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS
DANIEL PARKINSON
Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom

T

HE TRANSCENDENTALS are elaborated by Thomas
Aquinas as “additions” to being (ens), such that “the one”
(unum), “the true” (verum), and “the good” (bonum) are
all explicitly said to be “convertible” with being in reality, and
“add” to it only in idea, by expressing something not explicit in
the term “being” itself.1 They are those perfections in which all
existing things participate as a necessary condition of their
existence, and the coextension of the transcendentals with being
means that they are also convertible with one another.
Therefore, Aquinas states that the true and the good, for
instance, are convertible with one another in subject, and differ
from one another only logically.2
In his most extensive discussions of “the beautiful”
(pulchrum), Aquinas states in very similar terms that it is
identical with goodness in a thing, differing only logically
because it adds to the good a relation to the cognitive power.3
Likewise, beauty and goodness are said to be convertible with
1

For example, STh I, q. 5, a. 1; q. 11, a. 1; q. 11, a. 1, ad 3; q. 16, a. 3; q. 16, a. 4.
All translations are taken from The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans.
Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 2nd and revised ed., 21 vols. (London:
Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920-22). See also De Verit., q. 1, a. 1. All English
translations of De veritate are taken from, Truth, trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J., James
V. McGlynn, S.J., and Robert W. Schmidt, S.J., 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1994).
2
STh II-II, q. 109, a. 2, ad 1.
3
For example, STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; STh I-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3.
415

416

DANIEL PARKINSON

one another.4 And yet, according to Jan Aertsen, the discussion
of the beautiful is a marginal concern for Aquinas.5 For instance, in contrast to the other transcendentals, he does not
offer a systematic treatise or a separate quaestio on the subject.
Furthermore, not only is pulchrum never listed among the
names of the transcendentals, but Aertsen questions whether it
is even possible for it to have a systematic place in such lists.6
He notes that when the two relational transcendentals of truth
and goodness are derived, a special place is given to the soul’s
“transcendental openness” to being through the two spiritual
powers of intellect and will.7 However, Aquinas does not
delineate a third power to which beauty might correspond as its
proper object. More fundamentally, the ontological perspective
of question 1, article 1 of the disputed questions De veritate
requires that transcendentals make an addition to being, by
expressing a general mode of being not explicit in the term ens
itself. Aertsen notes that, although it is striking that the identity
and difference between beauty and goodness is formulated in
terms that Aquinas usually employs in connection with the
transcendentals, he nonetheless never explicates the beautiful as
expressing a general mode of being qua being.8 Instead, he only
ever asserts that it adds to the good a relation to the cognitive
power.9 Because “it is the true that adds to being the relation to
knowledge,”10 Aertsen argues, the beautiful is not an addition to

4
In De Div. Nom. IV, c. 22 (590): “pulchrum convertitur cum bono” (ed. C. Pera
[Turin: Marietti, 1950]). Parenthetical numbers in citations of this text refer to
paragraph numbers in this edition.
5
Jan A. Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages: A Forgotten Transcendental?,”
Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 69-97, at 72.
6
For example, De Verit., q. 1, a. 1; q. 21, aa. 1 and 3.
7
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 75.
8
Ibid., 83.
9
For example, STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; STh I-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3.
10
Whether the beautiful adds a relation to the cognitive powers of the soul in
precisely the same way as happens in the order of the true is highly debateable. For
example, on the difference between a “cognitive” and “aesthetic” attitude of the mind
towards being, see Armand A. Maurer, About Beauty: A Thomistic Interpretation
(Houston, Tex.: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1983), esp. 32-38. A similar argument is

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

417

being as such, but merely “expresses a mode of the good,”11 and
that fundamentally “the good and the beautiful are identical.’12
However, this reduction of the beautiful to a mode of the
good is unsatisfactory. For Aquinas, the good names the
desirability of being—and therefore God, who is ipsum esse
subsistens, the preeminent source of all created perfections—as
that which perfects and completes another.13 To a large extent
the appetibility of the good characterizes it according to what
we might call the logic of “possessability,” whereby being is
seen in terms of the perfection that all seek for themselves.14
This is an important dimension in the consideration of finite
beings, which realize their ends in the passage from potency to
act. However, in subsuming the beautiful under the category of
the good, there is a danger that the soul’s engagement with
being, and God, is susceptible to being construed along merely
self-interested lines. But it is precisely this perspective that is
resisted in those instances in which Aquinas discusses the nature
of the beautiful, and in this respect Aertsen misinterprets the
crucial distinction between beauty and goodness in question 22
of De veritate.15 The present argument will situate this
made by Jacques Maritain in Art and Scholasticism, trans. J. F. Scanlan (London: Sheed
& Ward, 1946), esp. 19-21, 125 n. 55.
11
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 83-84.
12
Ibid., 81.
13
See STh I, q. 5, a.1; q. 6, a. 1; De Verit., q. 21, a. 1.
14
See STh I, q. 20, a. 1; De Verit., q. 21, a. 1. I am grateful to one of the reviewers of
this paper for suggesting the term “possessability” (rather than “possessive”), as an
attribute by which to distinguish between the good and the beautiful, such that the
beautiful is uniquely characterized as not involving the logic of possession.
15
De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12. See Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 75 n. 22.
Aertsen’s position is particularly singled out because he has offered the most systematic
argument in recent times against the distinct transcendental status of “the beautiful” in
the thought of Aquinas. See also Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the
Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), esp. 335-59.
Indeed, Christopher Scott Sevier has argued that Aertsen’s objections have yet to receive
an “adequate rebuttal,” and therefore, like Aertsen, he concludes that the best way to
think about beauty is as a “mode of the good” (Aquinas on Beauty [Lanham, Md.:
Lexington Books, 2015], 126 and 56, respectively). For a persuasive argument in favor
of the transcendentality of beauty in Aquinas, which approaches the question from a

418

DANIEL PARKINSON

remarkable text within a wider framework to demonstrate that,
despite the absence of certain explicit formulae, the distinct
transcendentality of beauty—its unique “addition” to being—is
implicit in the way in which Aquinas distinguishes it from the
good, and that this is fully consonant with his thought as a
whole. Indeed, whereas the good, on the one hand, expresses
the fact that God is the end and perfection of the creature,
beauty, on the other hand, as a distinct transcendental, expresses the fact that God is intrinsically love-worthy for his own
sake, and as such “possesses the admiration of all creatures.”16
The argument will be presented in four steps. First, the
unique character of beauty as nonperfective in relation to the
soul places it within a radically different order from the other
“relational” transcendentals—truth and goodness. The real
question is not how it fits alongside them, but rather how it
casts a different light upon the whole order in which they are
comprised.17 Second, the fundamental importance of the Augustinian triad of modus-species-ordo18 in Aquinas’s distinction
between beauty and goodness explains why he so frequently
discusses the former in the context of the latter, and indicates
different perspective than the one offered in this article, see David C. Schindler, “Love
and Beauty: The ‘Forgotten Transcendental’ in Thomas Aquinas,” Communio 44
(2017): 334-56.
16
STh I, q. 26, a. 4.
17
This idea of a nonperfective ratio will be explored as much more than merely a
negation or privation.
18
This triad is central to Augustine’s doctrine of creation, and it appears either as
modus, species, ordo in early texts such as De natura boni 3, or as mensura, numerus,
pondus in other texts such as De Genesi ad litteram 4.3.7-4.7.14. It is frequently linked
with the text of Wisdom 11:21 (“But you have arranged all things by measure and
number and weight”), which shows its importance for Augustine’s doctrine of creation.
Indeed, these three metaphysical principles are fundamental to his conception of the
ontological goodness of all creatures, and in De natura boni 3 Augustine argues that
where they are absent there is no nature, such that all nature is constituted as good by
modus, species, and ordo. For an extensive discussion of this theme see W. J. Roche,
“Measure, Number and Weight in St. Augustine,” New Scholasticism 15 (1941):
350-76; and for the significance of this triad in relation to beauty and the doctrine of
the Trinity see Carol Harrison, “Measure, Number and Weight in Saint Augustine’s
Aesthetics,” Augustinianum 28 (1988): 591-602.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

419

the implicit “addition to being” that beauty makes—and
therefore its distinct transcendental status—as the admirability
of being. Third, the Dionysian dual formula of proportio or
consonantia and claritas relates to the modus-species-ordo triad
in such a way that it signposts the generic, elastic, and specific
aspects of the ratio of the beautiful, and begins to illuminate its
unique ordo in contrast to the good. Fourth, Aquinas’s
Trinitarian theology further elucidates the ordo of the beautiful
as the unique transcendental relation to being by which human
beings share in God’s joyful vision of creation, as it participates
in the wondrous proportions of divine beauty. The whole
transcendental order that culminates in the good is transposed
into a radically different mood in the nonperfective ordo of the
beautiful, so that beauty is an alternative perspective upon the
whole triadic structure of being; it embraces this same order of
being, but relates to it as simply perfect in and for itself, that is,
without regard for how it can be perfective of another. In a fifth
and final section, I will offer a brief explanation of why the
“addition to being” made by the beautiful remains implicit and
unsystematized in Aquinas’s thought. The argument of this essay
proceeds largely from the consideration of the logical consequences of Aquinas’s distinction between beauty and goodness
according to the Augustinian triad of modus-species-ordo, and it
is a necessary precursor to resolving the anthropological
question raised by Aertsen concerning the correspondence of
beauty to the faculties of the soul.
I
The distinct transcendentality of the beautiful depends upon
whether it “adds” something to being (ens) by making explicit a
general “mode of being” that is consequent upon every being
considered in relation to another.19 That it ought to be regarded
as a relational transcendental is clear from Aquinas’s definition
of beauty in terms of its proper effect: “beautiful things are
19

De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.

420

DANIEL PARKINSON

those which please when seen.”20 This per posteriori definition
parallels Aquinas’s preferred definition of the good as “what all
things desire.”21 However, as mentioned above, Aquinas only
ever states the addition that beauty makes to goodness, as
opposed to being qua being. Therefore, it is necessary to
highlight the distinctions that Aquinas makes between beauty
and goodness.
An important generic difference can be initially observed,
which occurs in a reply to an objection to his argument that all
things naturally tend to the good:
By the very fact of tending to good a thing at the same time tends to the
beautiful. . . . It tends to the beautiful inasmuch as it is proportioned
[modificatum] and specified [specificatum] in itself [in seipso]. These notes are
included in the essential character of good [ratione boni], but good adds a
relationship of what is perfective in regard to other things [sed bonum addit
ordinem perfectivi ad alia].22

Aquinas argues that beauty and goodness are identical in terms
of mode (modificatum) and species (specificatum), but distinct in
terms of order (ordinem). This triad will be systematically explored below, but a generic distinction is immediately apparent:
the good adds to the concept of the beautiful a relationship by
which a being is perfective of other beings. Thus, the tendency
towards goodness and beauty is a movement toward the same
reality in seipso, but insofar as this reality is related to as
perfective of others it is considered to be good, whereas when it
is regarded as beautiful it is not related to as something that is
perfective of others. This distinguishes beauty from both
20
STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1: “pulchra enim dicuntur quae visa placent.” See STh I, q. 67,
a. 1 for the semantic range of the word visio, which includes “knowledge obtained
through the intellect.”
21
For example, STh I, q. 5, a. 1; q. 5, a. 4, ad 1; De Verit., q. 1, a. 1; q. 21, a. 1.
22
De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12. Aertsen references this text on two occasions, but
each time he omits the key phrase, “but good adds a relationship of what is perfective in
regard to other things,” and so, unsurprisingly, he concludes that beauty is “subsumed
under the notion of good” in this text, for he neglects to include the vital distinction
Aquinas makes between the two in terms of the nonperfective character of beauty. See
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 75 n. 22; and 92.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

421

goodness and truth in a general sense, and precisely in terms of
the addition to being that they make.
For example, in the first article of the preceding question in
De veritate, Aquinas explains how the terms “good,” “true,”
and “one” can add anything to the term “being.”23 The good
cannot add to being extrinsically, he argues, because no real
being exists outside of the essence of being in general. Neither
can it add to being as the ten categories do, which narrow down
being by limiting and determining it to a definite manner of
being, because the good, like being, is divided into the ten
categories. Rather, the good can only add something conceptual
to being. Aquinas specifies that negation and a certain kind of
relation are the two modalities of that which is merely
conceptual, and that the term “one” adds a negation and
signifies “undivided being,” whereas the terms “true” and
“good” are predicated positively, and add a conceptual relation
to being. A merely conceptual relation refers to something that
“is said to be related which is not dependent upon that to which
it is referred, but vice versa,” as in the case of knowledge, for
instance, which depends upon an object that is in no way
dependent upon the one in whom it produces knowledge.24 The
relation by which knowledge is referred to its object is “real,”
but the relation by which the object is referred to the
knowledge it produces is only “conceptual,” and Aquinas states
that this “holds true of all other things which stand to one
another as measure and thing measured or as perfective and
perfectible.”25 Significantly, this distinction between “real” and
“conceptual” relations indicates that a given reality can be
encountered as perfective in relation to others—as in the order
of the good—while not being dependent upon that relation, nor
having its significance in reality exhausted by it. This is vitally
important for understanding the ratio of the beautiful; this
point will be developed below.

23

De Verit., q. 21, a. 1.
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
24

422

DANIEL PARKINSON

Having made these distinctions, Aquinas arrives at the
following general definition: “The true and the good must
therefore add to the concept of being a relationship of that
which perfects.”26 They differ from one another because a being
can be perfective in two ways, namely, according to the formal
character of its species and the act of being by which it subsists
in that species. According to the first aspect, the intellect is
perfected by a being in perceiving its formal and specific
character. A being is not in the intellect according to its natural
existence in this way—for the act by which a being exists cannot
be in the intellect—but its intelligible character can inform the
intellect, and this is the “mode of perfecting that the true adds
to being,” for “every being is called true inasmuch as it is
conformed or conformable to intellect.”27 According to the
second aspect, the good names the way in which “a being is
perfective of another not only according to its specific character
but also according to the existence which it has in reality,”
because “inasmuch as one being by reason of its act of existing
is such as to perfect and complete another, it stands to that
other as an end,” and thus the good is rightly defined as “that
which all things desire.”28 Crucially, this signals a sharp generic
distinction in Aquinas’s thought between truth and goodness,
on the one hand, and beauty, on the other, and precisely
according to what these former terms “add” to the concept of
being. In their own way, both the true and the good add a
relationship of that which perfects to the concept of being, but
this is excluded from the character of the beautiful by Aquinas.
If transcendentals are distinguished by their addition to being,
then this generic distinction is significant enough to indicate
that the beautiful expresses a radically different transcendental
relation to being, for relational transcendentals express a unique

26

Ibid.; cf. De Verit., q. 21, a. 3: ‘Both the true and good have the essential character
[ratio] of that which perfects.”
27
De Verit., q. 21, a. 1.
28
Ibid.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

423

mode consequent upon every being considered “in relation to
another” (in ordine ad aliud).29
It remains the case that Aquinas does not distinguish a third
spiritual power alongside the intellect and will to which
aesthetic experience corresponds. This, it might be argued,
necessarily precludes beauty from being recognized as a distinct
relational transcendental.30 Although the perspectives of the two
articles from De veritate (q. 1, a. 1; q. 21, a. 1) are slightly
different, it is evident that the “two aspects” mentioned in the
latter text, by which any being can be perfective of another,
correspond to the twofold “agreement” (convenientiam) of the
soul with being, mentioned in the former text, through the two
powers of intellect and will. In fact, Aquinas uses the same
“conformity” definition of truth and the same Aristotelian
definition of goodness (quod omnia appetunt) in both texts to
illustrate his meaning. However, the absence of a third power of
the soul ought not to preclude the beautiful from being recognized as a relational transcendental, because beauty does not
belong in the order by which being is perfective of another.31
There is, therefore, no need to try and find a place for it within
this order.
Rather, in its general character as nonperfective, beauty
offers a radically different perspective upon this entire transcendental order, and this possibility is suggested by Aquinas’s
distinction between “real” and “conceptual” relations in his
elaboration of the true and the good. Whereas the true and the
29

De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.
For example, see Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 94.
31
Francis J. Kovach argues that beauty corresponds to the two powers of intellect
and will taken “jointly, and not separately” (“The Transcendentality of Beauty in
Thomas Aquinas,” in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter: Ihr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung,
ed. Paul Wilpert and Willehad P. Eckert [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1961], 386-92,
391). For a similar argument, see Piotr Jaroszyński, Beauty and Being: Thomistic
Perspectives, trans. Hugh McDonald with the collaboration of the author (Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011), esp. 159-205. We might also observe
that both “the true” and “the one” relate to the intellect (see De Verit., q. 21, a. 3), so a
distinct faculty to which beauty corresponds is not necessarily a prerequisite to granting
it a distinct transcendental status.
30

424

DANIEL PARKINSON

good express a conceptual relation whereby being is perfective
of others, the beautiful signifies a relation to being that enters
more deeply into the intrinsic reality of beings in and for
themselves. This is further demonstrated by Aquinas’s specific
distinction between beauty and goodness in terms of the modusspecies-ordo triad. As was noted above, the two are equated in
terms of modus and species, but distinguished in terms of ordo.
A distinction in terms of this triad—which has a universal coextension with being—will now illustrate that the nonperfective
character of beauty in relation to others (in ordine ad aliud) is
indeed a general mode consequent upon every being (modus
generalis consequens omne ens),32 and therefore merits a distinct
transcendental status in contrast to the good. This is a particularly important distinction to make, because there is a long
tradition of interpreting the place of the beautiful in Aquinas’s
thought as merely “quaedam boni species.”33
II
The modus-species-ordo triad belongs within Aquinas’s
general account of perfection, a thoroughly ontological concept
in his thought, which explains its central importance in the
elaboration of the transcendentals. For example, he holds that
being (esse) is the “highest perfection of all”, higher even than
form, to which it stands as act to potency, because it is “the
actuality of all acts, and therefore the perfection of all perfections.”34 Similarly, he observes in the Summa theologiae that
“a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because
we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its

32

De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.
The phrase “species of the good” originates with Cajetan and his commentary on
STh I-II, q. 27, a. 3, ad 1, which can be found in S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia,
vol. 6 (Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1891), 192. For a refutation of this argument see
Kovach, “Transcendentality of Beauty,” 389-90.
34
De Pot., q. 7, a. 2, ad 9. All English translations of this work are taken from, On
the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (repr.; Westminster, Md.: The
Newman Press, 1952 [1932]).
33

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

425

perfection.”35 This “mode of perfection” belonging to all
existing beings consists in the three notes of mode, species, and
order. For example, Aquinas explains that “since everything is
what it is by its form (and since the form presupposes certain
things, and from the form certain things necessarily follow), in
order for a thing to be perfect and good it must have a form,
together with all that precedes and follows upon that form.”36
That which is presupposed by the form is the “determination or
commensuration of its principles, whether material or efficient,
and this is signified by the mode [modum].”37 The form itself is
“signified by the species [speciem]; for everything is placed in its
species by its form.”38 And finally, “upon the form follows an
inclination to the end, or to an action, or something of the sort;
for everything, in so far as it is in act, acts and tends towards
that which is in accordance with its form; and this belongs to
weight and order [ordinem].”39
These three notes are not themselves “subsistences,” but
through them other things are formally constituted as beings.40
Thus, “according to every being of a thing” is its mode, species,
and order, so that “a man has a mode, species, and order, as a
man; another mode, species, and order, as he is white, virtuous,
learned, and so on; according to everything predicated of
him.”41 The ontological ubiquity of the triad is also clear from
its connection to the threefold causality by which every creature
is related to God: “because it is referred to God as its efficient
cause, it has the measure [modum] set for it by God. Referred to
God as its exemplary cause, it has species [speciem]. Referred to
Him as its end, it has order [ordinem].”42 Consequently, it is
integral to Aquinas’s delineation of the transcendentals. Every

35

STh I, q. 4, a. 1.
STh I, q. 5, a. 5.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid., ad 2.
41
STh I, q. 5, a. 5, ad 3.
42
De Verit., q. 21, a. 6, s.c. 3.
36

426

DANIEL PARKINSON

creature is “existing by its measure [modum], knowable by its
species [speciem], and oriented by its order [ordinem].”43 The
one arises from the “mode” or “measure” of a thing.44 From
“the species alone” is constituted the essence of the true, for
“the true is perfective according to the specific character
alone.”45 Likewise, given that “in definitions the addition or
subtraction of anything constitutes a different species,” the
essence of the good is constituted “from the species plus the
measure,” which is “perfective not only in regard to species but
also in regard to the act of being,”46 and “its status as
perfective” is signified by “order.”47
This brief outline of the threefold “mode of perfection”
attendant upon every being immediately suggests the importance of Aquinas’s distinction between beauty and goodness
in De veritate.48 According to its mode and species (modificatum
et specificatum) a thing is both beautiful and good in itself (in
seipso). Thus, the two notions are identical in terms of their
foundation in form (species) and that which is presupposed by a
form (modus).49 They differ only in the kind of relation that
follows upon that form (ordo): to the beautiful, the good “adds
a relationship [ordinem] of what is perfective in regard to other
things,”50 and “beauty adds to goodness a relation [ordinem] to
the cognitive faculty.”51 It is striking that Aquinas denotes this
43

De Verit., q. 21, a. 6, s.c. 4.
De Verit., q. 21, a. 6, obj. 2. Although this idea is presented in an objection, it is
implicitly affirmed in the corresponding reply: “Good does not differ from being and
the one because the notions are opposed but because the notion of good includes those
of being and the one and adds something to them” (De Verit., q. 21, a. 6, ad 2)
45
De Verit., q. 21, a. 6, ad 3.
46
Ibid.
47
De Verit., q. 21, a. 6.
48
De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12.
49
Cf. STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1: “Beauty and goodness in a thing [in subiecto] are
identical fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form
[formam]; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty.”
50
De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12.
51
STh I-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3: “pulchrum addit supra bonum, quondam ordinem ad
vim cognoscitivam.” And In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 5 (356): “pulchrum addit supra
bonum, ordinem ad vim cognoscitivam illud esse huiusmodi”; cf. STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1.
44

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

427

difference with the term ordinem, because it is the very same
word he uses to characterize the nature of the relational
transcendentals in their expression of a general mode
consequent upon every being in ordine ad aliud.52 Given the
ontological import and ubiquity of this threefold “mode of
perfection,” a difference in ordo requires that beauty and
goodness must each possess their own distinct transcendental
status, for they express different modes consequent upon every
being in ordine ad aliud.
The importance of this difference is further demonstrated by
the way in which ordo is included along with modus and species
in the ratio of the good.53 Aquinas elucidates this inclusion by
briefly exploring the ways in which names can imply relations.
The ratio boni implies a relation, not because the name good
itself signifies only a relation, but because it signifies something
that has a relation along with the relation itself, and the relation
implied by the word good is that by which the thing itself stands
toward another as that which perfects. That which is called
good itself is perfective in accordance with both its specific
character and its act of being, as an end that perfects the means
to that end, and these two aspects of the thing in itself are
signified by the terms modus and species. Since creatures are not
their own act of existing, they must have a received existence
which is limited and determined according to the measure of
the thing in which it is received. Thus, “species belongs to the
very specific character which, having existence in a subject, is
received in a determined measure, since everything which is in a
subject is in it according to the measure [modum] of the subject.”54 Consequently, every good possesses ordo “in its status as
perfective”—the relation which the name good implies—and,
importantly, species and modus are “causes of that relation.”55
Thus, the difference between the good and the beautiful in term

52

De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.
De Verit., q. 21, a. 6.
54
Ibid.
55
Ibid.
53

428

DANIEL PARKINSON

of ordo is a difference between two different kinds of relation
caused by the modus and species of every being.
This explains why Aquinas so often discusses the beautiful in
the context of the good. The beautiful is structurally identical to
the good because both have a ratio consisting in the modusspecies-ordo triad. By contrast, the one arises as a negation from
the idea of modus alone, and the true as that which perfects
according to species alone. The good is ultimate in the order of
transcendental names taken in themselves absolutely, because its
ratio consists in the full triadic structure of mode, species, and
order. The good “includes more notes” and is “constituted by a
sort of addition” to the other transcendentals.56 But the good is
ultimate only insofar as being is considered as perfective in
relation to another. Differing in ordo from the good, the
beautiful signifies a distinct way of relating to the whole
transcendental order of being. Indeed, the relation implied by
the word good and signified by the term ordo is caused by the
“act of being” (modus) and the “specific character” (species) of a
thing. These two aspects denote the basic composition of
existence and essence in all created beings.57 That the beautiful
includes these two notes in its own ratio establishes its coextension with being. Moreover, its distinction from the good,
in terms of the unique ordo caused by the act of being and
specific character of any being, implies that beauty expresses a
unique mode consequent upon every being considered in
relation to others. The whole transcendental structure is
transposed into a radically different mood in the nonperfective
ordo of the beautiful, so that beauty is ultimate in another sense
to the good, or rather, it is an alternative perspective upon the
whole triadic structure of being. It embraces this same order of
being but relates to it as simply perfect in and for itself, without
regard for how being can be perfective of another. The beautiful
is its own perfection and must be admired and delighted in for
its own sake.

56
57

De Verit., q. 21, a. 3.
See STh I, q. 3, a. 4.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

429

That the beautiful uniquely expresses the nonperfective
admirability of being is suggested by the way in which Aquinas
excludes the character of desirability from its distinctive ratio in
his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This may
sound counterintuitive, but it will become clear that what
Aquinas is denying is not that the beautiful is an object of love,
but only that it is sought as a means to one’s own perfection. In
an objection he raises while discussing the Trinitarian appropriations, Aquinas notes the close linguistic connection between
the good (kalos) and the beautiful (kallos) in ancient Greek. The
objection appeals to the authority of Dionysius and states that it
seems that all desire beauty and goodness.58 The force of the
objection is that, given the fact that goodness is appropriated to
the Holy Spirit and not to the Son, species or beauty ought not
to be appropriated to the Son either, if, like goodness, it is an
object of desire.59 However, Aquinas argues in his reply that,
like truth, beauty does not properly possess the aspect of desirableness (rationem appetibilis), except insofar as it assumes
the rationem boni, but rather, that the proper ratio of the
beautiful itself is splendor or radiance (claritatem), which is why
it is said to have a likeness to the property of the Son.60
58
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 4.10.708A (Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, with a foreword, notes, and translation
collaboration by Paul Rorem, preface by René Roques, and intro. by Jaroslav Pelikan,
Jean Leclercq, and Karlfried Froehlich, Classics of Western Spirituality [New York:
Paulist Press, 1987], 79)
59
I Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, obj. 4: “secundum Dionysium, pulchrum et bonum se
consequuntur. Unde videtur quod omnia pulchrum et bonum appetunt; unde secundum
nomen in Graeco etiam propinqua sunt, quia bonum dicitur calos, pulchrum callos. Sed
bonitas non appropriatur filio, sed spiritui sancto. Ergo nec species vel pulchritudo.”
60
I Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4: “quod pulchritudo non habet rationem appetibilis
nisi inquantum induit rationem boni: sic enim et verum appetibile est: sed secundum
rationem propriam habet claritatem et ea quae dicta sunt, quae cum propriis filii
similitudinem habent.” It is curious how Aertsen fails to incorporate this reply into his
argument. For instance, he highlights Aquinas’s explanation that the beautiful and the
good are discussed in close connection with one another in In De Div. Nom., c. 4,
lect. 1 (266), because the beautiful, like the good, can share in the ratio of desirability.
He concludes, on the basis of this text, that Aquinas simply expresses the dominant idea
in Dionysius’s exposition of the beautiful, namely, that it is identical with the good, as is

430

DANIEL PARKINSON

It is remarkable that Aquinas makes this distinction between
beauty and goodness as he considers their extremely close etymological connection. His exclusion of the rationem appetibilis
from the proper ratio of the beautiful is particularly significant
when his distinction between being and goodness in the Summa
theologiae is considered.61 There he argues that goodness and
being are identical in reality (secundum rem), but distinct
logically (secundum rationem). Goodness is “what all desire,”
and the term bonum presents this “aspect of desirableness”
(rationem appetibilis) which is not expressed merely by the term
ens itself. In a fairly terse argument, Aquinas reasons that
because a thing is desirable only insofar as it is perfect (for all
desire their own perfection), and because perfection is reducible
to actuality, which, in turn, is reducible to that which makes all
things actual, namely, existence (esse), bonum and ens are
identical secundum rem. The only difference between the two,
then, is that the good presents this “aspect of desirableness”
(rationem appetibilis) not explicit in the latter.62 But according
to Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences, it is precisely this
addition to being made by the good that does not belong to the
proper ratio of beauty. Although he never includes beauty in his
lists of the transcendentals, nor explicitly states that the
beautiful makes an addition to being, Aquinas consistently
expressed by the bringing together of the two in the Greek term kalokagathia. It is at
this point that Aertsen cites Aquinas’s consideration of the close etymological
connection between “the good” (kalos) and “the beautiful” (kallos) in I Sent., d. 31,
q. 2, a. 1, obj. 4, but he fails to reference the crucial reply to this objection, in which
Aquinas asserts that the rationem appetibilis does not belong properly to the beautiful as
such. Aertsen thus concludes, erroneously, that we cannot say that the beautiful is
distinct from the good. But if he is to be followed on this point, then the true must also
be denied a distinct transcendental status, for it too can assume the ratio of desirableness
(see STh I, q. 79, a. 11, ad 2). However, if Aquinas’s distinction between the good and
the beautiful in the reply to this objection is noted, all that needs to be said in response
to Aertsen is that the beautiful can, of course, become an object of desire when
considered in the order of the good, because it is convertible with the other
transcendentals whilst being conceptually distinct. See Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle
Ages,” 81.
61
STh I, q. 5, a. 1.
62
See STh I, q. 16, a. 3: “bonum addit rationem appetibilis supra ens.”

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

431

differentiates beauty from goodness, and precisely according to
those terms he uses to articulate the “addition to being” made
by the latter. Accordingly, beauty and goodness cannot be
merely synonymous, and in this sense, the distinct transcendentality of beauty as an “addition” to being is implicit.
Whereas the perfection of being is considered under the aspect
of desirability in the order of the good, it is simply considered
under the aspect of admirability in the order of the beautiful.
This is consonant with the discussions of the beautiful in the
Summa theologiae. For example, Aquinas argues that beauty
and goodness are identical in a thing, for they are both based
upon form, but
goodness properly relates to the appetite (goodness being what all things
desire); and therefore it has the aspect of an end (the appetite being a kind of
movement towards a thing). On the other hand, beauty relates to the cognitive
faculty; for beautiful things are those which please when seen.63

The relation of goodness and beauty to distinct faculties is
crucial here. On the one hand, Aquinas states that the good is
an end to which the appetite moves. This appetibility of being
characterizes the order of the good in terms of the logic of possessability. As was noted above, Aquinas argues that, “inasmuch
as one being by reason of its act of existing is such as to perfect
and complete another, it stands to that other as an end,” and
thus the good is rightly defined as “that which all things
desire.”64 If the good names a regard for being under the aspect
of desirability, it does so as something to be possessed, in order
that a thing can be perfected and completed by a certain being,
and pleasure or delight result from that possession.
Aquinas’s distinction here makes it clear that the case is quite
different in the order of the beautiful. For beauty is not an end
related to the appetite in the order of final causality. This
distinguishes the beautiful just as much as the other transcendentals from the good, for “the one and the true do not
63
64

STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1.
De Verit., q. 21, a. 1. See also STh I, q. 20, a. 1.

432

DANIEL PARKINSON

have the character of an end as does good; and so they do not
have the character of the appetible either.”65 The unique ordo of
the beautiful relates, instead, to the cognitive faculty and has the
nature of a formal cause. Significantly, then, the beautiful causes
pleasure not in being possessed, as in the order of the good, but
in being seen.66 As Aquinas puts it elsewhere:
since good is what all seek, the notion of good is that which calms the desire;
while the notion of the beautiful is that which calms the desire, by being seen
or known. . . . Thus it is evident that beauty adds to goodness a relation
[ordinem] to the cognitive faculty: so that good means that which simply
pleases the appetite; while the beautiful is something pleasant to apprehend.67

This pleasure in the beautiful, as a joy that arises not from
possession, as in the order of the good, but simply from contemplation, illustrates the unique, nonperfective character of
beauty as the admirability of being. Aquinas may not explicitly
state that this is the “addition to being” made by the beautiful,
but it is implicit in the various distinctions he makes between
beauty and goodness according to the modus-species-ordo triad.
III
The relation to the cognitive faculty is what the beautiful
“adds” to the good, and because this difference between the
good and the beautiful consists in a distinction according to the
modus-species-ordo triad, it was argued above that this is also
the implicit “addition” that beauty makes to being. Aquinas
does not in fact elaborate the nature of the relationship to the
cognitive faculty that beauty adds to goodness. Nonetheless, the
unique ratio of the beautiful becomes clearer in the context of
his Trinitarian theology. Indeed, as mentioned above, he defines
the proper character of beauty in terms of claritas when he
discusses the Trinitarian “appropriations” in his commentary on

65

De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 5.
STh I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1.
67
STh I-II, q. 27, a. 1, ad 3.
66

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

433

Peter Lombard’s Sentences.68 According to Aertsen, this is the
characteristic that “specifies the place of the beautiful.”69 When
Aquinas reprises the question of the Trinitarian appropriations
in the Summa theologiae, and asks whether it is fitting to
appropriate species or beauty to the Son, he lists claritas along
with two other “conditions” that belong to the proper nature of
the beautiful: perfection/integrity and harmony/proportion.70 In
order to elaborate more fully the implicit “addition to being”
that beauty makes—namely, its expression of the admirability of
being—it is necessary to examine how these three aesthetic
conditions relate to the modus-species-ordo triad. Such an
examination suggests that perfection or integrity, harmony or
proportion, and splendor or radiance, respectively, are what
might be called the “generic,” “elastic,” and “specific” aspects of
the ratio of the beautiful. This analysis will, in turn, lay the
groundwork for situating the ratio of the beautiful more deeply
within Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology.
When he discusses the traditional Trinitarian appropriations
in the Summa theologiae,71 one of the questions Aquinas asks is
whether it is fitting for Hilary of Poitiers to appropriate the attributes of eternity, species, and use to the divine persons.72
Following Augustine, Aquinas takes species to be synonymous
with beauty (pulchritudo),73 and explains why it has a likeness to
the property of the Son according to the three aesthetic
“conditions” of integrity (integritas) or perfection (perfectio),
proportion (proportio) or harmony (consonantia), and splendor
or radiance (claritas). First, integrity or perfection has a likeness
to the Son who suffers no impairment, but truly has within
himself the nature of the Father in a perfect way. Second,
68

I Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4.
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 93-94. The word claritas certainly means
much more than “clarity” for Aquinas. See Mark D. Jordan, “The Evidence of the
Transcendentals and the Place of Beauty in Thomas Aquinas,” International
Philosophical Quarterly 29 (1989): 393-407, esp. 397-99
70
STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
71
Ibid.
72
Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate 2.1.
73
Augustine, De Trinitate 6.10.11-12.
69

434

DANIEL PARKINSON

proportion or harmony agrees with the property of the Son
who is the image of the Father, because an image is beautiful if
it is a perfect representation, and Aquinas states, in the words of
Augustine, that in this respect there is a wondrous fittingness
(tanta convenientia) between the Father and the Son. Third,
claritas agrees with the property of the Son who is the Word,
the light and splendor of the intellect, and the art of the
omnipotent God.
The first of these conditions, namely, that the Son is
beautiful because he truly and perfectly possesses the nature of
the Father, does not collapse the distinction that has been made
between beauty and goodness, whereby the former, unlike the
latter, is considered neither as perfective nor as defined by the
logic of possessability. As has been demonstrated, the beautiful
is defined by Aquinas in terms of the modus-species-ordo triad,
which defines the threefold mode of perfection pertaining to all
beings. If the good consists in an ordo whereby the perfection of
beings, in terms of modus and species, can be possessed by
another, then the beautiful is no less based upon that very same
perfection. However, in the ordo of the beautiful, this perfection is related to by others not as something to be possessed
themselves, but as something to be admired and delighted in, so
to speak, at a distance. Thus, in the case of the Son, insofar as
he possesses the fullness of the Father’s nature, he is perfect. If
this perfection is considered as something that can be possessed
to some extent by another, then it is considered according to
the order of the good. However, the connection between the
Son’s possession of the Father’s nature and perfection, and his
being beautiful, consists in the fact that the perfection he
possesses is admired and delighted in by another as something
perfect in and for itself, regardless of how it might be perfective
of that other. The perfection possessed by the Son is what
makes him beautiful, but the point is that he is beautiful to
others, who, when admiring his beauty, do not have his
perfection in mind as something to be possessed themselves. As
an aesthetic condition, perfection is a generic attribute that the
beautiful shares with the other relational transcendentals, for

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

435

“the true and good have the essential character of that which
perfects or of perfections.”74 Although this generic condition is
not mentioned elsewhere as a constitutive attribute of the
beautiful by Aquinas, its occurrence here confirms that beauty
shares in the same transcendental status as truth and goodness
in being an ontological perfection.75
Instead, Aquinas most frequently defines beauty according to
the Dionysian formula of proportio/consonantia and claritas—a
dual formulation that combines the two main traditions of
Greek aesthetics, namely, the Pythagorean conception of beauty
as based on a relationship of parts and harmony, and the
Neoplatonic conception of light and brilliance, by which simple
things are said to be beautiful too—and he often refers to the
authority of Dionysius when he restricts the features of the
beautiful to these two aspects.76 Indeed, in the fourth lectio of
his commentary on The Divine Names, Aquinas accepts this
formula as defining the ratio of the beautiful.77 Moreover, it is
striking that almost immediately after stating this fact, Aquinas
formulates the ratio of the beautiful, according to the dual
formula of proportio/consonantia and claritas, in a way that
corresponds significantly with the modus-species-ordo triad. He
states that the beautiful and the good are the same in subject,
because claritas and consonantia are contained in the ratio of
both, but that they differ logically, because the beautiful adds to

74
De Verit., q. 21, a. 3; cf. STh I, q. 6, a. 3, ad 1: “One does not include the idea of
perfection, but only of indivision.”
75
Aertsen argues that Aquinas often restricts the ratio of the beautiful to the two
characteristics of proportio/consonantia and claritas, not only because of the authority of
Dionysius, but also because perfectio or integritas is a generic condition that binds the
beautiful to the good as good. However, he asserts this upon the basis of the fact that
the mark of the good is that it is desirable, and something is desirable insofar as it is
perfect. But it has been demonstrated that the beautiful does not possess the
characteristic of being appetible or of being perfective in relation to others. See Aertsen,
“Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 91.
76
For example, STh II-II, q. 145, a. 2; cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names
4.7.701C.
77
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 5 (339).

436

DANIEL PARKINSON

the good an order to the cognitive power.78 In this way, the
Augustinian triad and the Dionysian dual formula are brought
together in order to articulate the ratio of the beautiful, in
distinction from the good, in a formulation that is structurally
identical to the one found in the first article of question 22 of
De veritate.79 Accordingly, it would seem that consonantia and
claritas correspond with modus and species: both pairs of terms
are included alongside ordo within the same triadic formulation,
by which the good and the beautiful are distinguished. In both
cases, Aquinas states the identity of the good and the beautiful
according to one of the two pairs, and then differentiates them
according to the note of ordo.
That claritas and species correspond with one another in this
way is corroborated elsewhere in Aquinas’s work. For instance,
when he explains the threefold mode of perfection in terms of
the modus-species-ordo triad, Aquinas states that species is what
signifies the form of a thing, as outlined above.80 Likewise, in
his commentary on The Divine Names, Aquinas makes a very
similar connection, arguing that form is what determines the
character of a thing, and that this belongs to claritatem.81
Consequently, the only note within the modus-species-ordo
triad to which consonantia could then be connected is modus,
and Aertsen has argued that this link is corroborated elsewhere
in Aquinas’s work.82 For instance, Aquinas’s standard example
of beauty as a harmony (consonantia) of internal relations is
78
Ibid. (356): “Quamvis autem pulchrum et bonum sint idem subiecto, quia tam
claritas quam consonantia sub ratione boni continentur, tamen ratione differeunt: nam
pulchrum addit supra bonum, ordinem ad vim cognoscitivam illud esse huiusmodi.” For
an important discussion of what illud refers to in this formulation, see Brendan Thomas
Sammon, The God Who Is Beauty: Beauty As a Divine Name in Thomas Aquinas and
Dionysius the Areopagite, Princeton Theological Monographs (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick
Publications, 2013), 311-12.
79
De Verit., q. 22, a. 1, ad 12.
80
STh I, q. 5, a. 5.
81
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 6 (367): “Forma autem a qua dependet propria ratio
rei, pertinent ad claritatem.” For the link between claritas and form in Aquinas’s
thought, see Jordan, “The Evidence of the Transcendentals,” 403.
82
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 93.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

437

that a man is called beautiful because of the due proportio or
“commensuration” of his members.83 Aertsen argues, “Thomas
frequently uses commensuratio as a synonym of proportio,”84
which is significant because the “commensuration” of internal
principles is precisely that which signifies modus in Aquinas’s
elaboration of the threefold mode of perfection, as outlined
above.85 But if consonantia and claritas function in the place of
modus and species, respectively, alongside ordo in the triadic
formulation of the ratio of the beautiful,86 then Aquinas also
links consonantia with ordo in the same commentary.87 For example, he argues that while forma is linked with claritas, the
ordo to an end pertains to consonantia.88 Likewise, he argues
that there is a twofold consonantia in things, namely, their
order in relation to God and their order in relation to one
another.89 Therefore, in its correspondence with both ordo and
modus, the term proportio/consonantia can be characterized as
an elastic aesthetic condition; in the order of the beautiful, it
relates to that which is presupposed by form, and to that which
follows upon a form. By contrast, because the term claritas only
relates to the note of species within the Augustinian triad, it can
be characterized as the specific aesthetic condition.90 Finally, as
noted above, perfectio/integritas should be characterized as a
generic condition of the beautiful, one that is held in common
83

In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 5 (339); c. 4, lect. 22 (589); I Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1.
Aertsen, “Beauty in the Middle Ages,” 93 n. 73; cf. In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 21
(554).
85
STh I, q. 5, a. 5.
86
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 5 (356).
87
Sammon also highlights that, for Aquinas, claritas is the ground of form in a thing,
and that consonantia pertains both to the oneness of a thing (which, as seen above,
relates to the note of modus), and also to its order to particular ends (The God Who Is
Beauty, 313-16).
88
In De Div. Nom., c. 4, lect. 6 (367): “Forma autem a qua dependet propria ratio
rei, pertinet ad claritatem; ordo autem ad finem, ad consonantiam.”
89
In De Div. Nom., c. 5, lect. 5 (340): “Est autem duplex consonantia in rebus:
prima quidem, secundum ordinem creaturarum ad Deum . . . secunda autem
consonantia est in rebus secundum ordinationem earum ad invicem.”
90
Indeed, claritas defines the proper ratio of the beautiful for Aquinas. See I Sent.,
d. 31, q. 2, a. 1, ad 4.
84

438

DANIEL PARKINSON

with the other relational transcendentals of truth and goodness,
which merely marks it out as a transcendental perfection of
being.
These links between the Augustinian triad of modus-speciesordo and the Dionysian dual formula of proportio/consonantia
and claritas, and particularly the way in which proportio/
consonantia emerges as an elastic condition that is linked to the
notes of both modus and ordo, significantly illuminates the
difference between the beautiful and the good in Aquinas’s
thought. In the order of the good there is an external ordo that
exists between beings, whereby being is considered as perfective
of another as an end. This is signified by the term ordo alone, so
that there is a separate term for the individual act of existence
(modus) by which something subsists in a particular species, and
another term (ordo) for the relation that follows upon that act
of existence. In the order of the good, the term ordo introduces
a new perspective by which a being can be referred beyond itself
for some use. By contrast, in the order of the beautiful, there is
an ordo that relates to the individual reality and intrinsic value
of a given being, whereby being is regarded as nonperfective
and nonappetible, and is admired in nonpossession for its own
sake. Thus, Aquinas links the terms proportio or consonantia
with both the modus of the individual act of existing in the
beautiful thing, and also with the ordo that follows upon the
encounter with the beauty of this being. The elastic use of these
terms reflects the fact that the beautiful is ordered to nothing
other than itself, as something that exists for its own sake, and
any ordo that exists between the beautiful and another is one of
invitation into this individual reality in and for itself. The
perfection that the beautiful possesses is its own ordo, and one
is admitted without taking anything from it. To say that beauty
names the admirability of being, then, is to give expression to
that aspect whereby the perfection of being serves no extrinsic
purpose, but instead gives pleasure simply by the fact that it
exists.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

439

IV
The link between the Augustinian triad and the Dionysian
dual formula in Aquinas’s thought has begun to illuminate the
ratio of the beautiful, especially in relation to the difference
between the beautiful and the good in terms of ordo, and the
way in which the elastic aesthetic condition of proportio/
consonantia uniquely relates the two notes of ordo and modus.
This can be developed further by situating Aquinas’s conceptualization of beauty more deeply within the context of his
Trinitarian theology. Indeed, as was noted above, the three
aesthetic conditions occur within the wider context of his
discussion of the Trinitarian appropriations of eternity, species,
and use to the divine persons of the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, respectively. A further link can be made between
this triad of eternity-species-use and the modus-species-ordo
triad, and once this link has been made, a richer conception of
the ratio of the beautiful is enabled in two important ways.
The eternity-species-use triad does not originate with
Aquinas. His purpose is to justify its traditional appropriation to
the persons of the Trinity by Hilary of Poitiers.91 However, the
explanation he gives is highly suggestive of the fact that it
corresponds with the modus-species-ordo triad, not least because of the explicit occurrence of the term species and its
equation with beauty (pulchritudo).92 Indeed, the whole framework within which Aquinas elucidates the transcendentals is
present, and over the course of the same article the term one
and the mode of efficient causality are appropriated to the
Father, the term true and the mode of formal causality are
appropriated to the Son, and the term good and the mode of
final causality are appropriated to the Holy Spirit. As was
demonstrated above, the modus-species-ordo triad is integrally
related to these three transcendental names and their corresponding modes of causality. Similarly, Aquinas begins the

91
92

See Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate 2.1.
STh I, q. 39, a. 8.

440

DANIEL PARKINSON

article by stating that God must be considered according to the
mode derived from creatures, and that in considering any
creature there are four points that present themselves in due
order: “Firstly, the thing itself taken absolutely is considered as
a being. Secondly, it is considered as one. Thirdly, its intrinsic
power of operation and causality is considered. The fourth
point of consideration embraces its relation to its effects.”93 This
very much echoes Aquinas’s statement of the order of the
“transcendental names,” and the second, third, and fourth
points of consideration seem to correspond quite naturally to
the modus-species-ordo triad. What is especially important is the
fact that Aquinas discusses the appropriation of eternity, species,
and use according to the first point, namely, in relation to God
considered absolutely in his being. The modus-species-ordo triad
is integral to each being qua being, because it constitutes the
threefold mode of perfection by which all things are formally
constituted as beings.94 Thus, the ontological perspective of the
first point of consideration in the Trinitarian appropriations
justifies connecting eternity, species, and use with the Augustinian triad, because these terms arise from an understanding of
God in terms of his being, and after the mode of creatures. This
is also confirmed by the justification given for the appropriations of eternity and use.
The word eternity signifies “a being without a principle” and
has a likeness to the property of the Father who is a “principle
without a principle.”95 This very much echoes Aquinas’s explanation of modus, which signifies the fact that a “form
presupposes determination or commensuration of its principles,
whether material or efficient,” so that the perfection of form or
species “presupposes” a certain mode.96 The presupposition of
mode by form is remotely analogous to the eternal “presupposition” of the Father by the Son. The actualization of
species by a received and measured (modus) act of existing
93

Ibid.
STh I, q. 5, a. 5, ad 2.
95
STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
96
STh I, q. 5, a. 5.
94

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

441

analogically participates in the eternal procession of the Son as
the infinitely perfect species and image of the Father’s measure
and existence. Just as existence is not temporally prior to
essence in a being, but only logically so, as that which actuates a
particular essence, similarly, the Son is coeternal with the
Father, but in such a way that the Father is logically
presupposed as the source of the Son’s eternity. Furthermore,
the correspondence of eternity with modus is corroborated by
the fact that the latter signifies the commensuration of efficient
principles that are presupposed by a form, and Aquinas
appropriates efficient causality to the Father and formal causality to the Son in this article.97
In justifying the appropriation of use to the Holy Spirit,
Aquinas argues that the term ought to be taken in a wide sense
to include the idea of enjoyment, “according as to use is to
employ something at the beck of the will, and to enjoy means to
use joyfully.”98 This agrees with the property of the Holy Spirit
in two ways. First, as Love, use is that “whereby the Father and
the Son enjoy each other.” Second, as Gift, and the “sweetness
of the Begetter and the Begotten,” who “pours out upon us
mere creatures His immense bounty and wealth,” use is that “by
which we enjoy God.”99 This echoes Aquinas’s explanation of
ordo as that which “follows upon” form as an “inclination to
the end.”100 Again, a remote analogy can be observed between
Aquinas’s definition of ordo as that which follows upon modus
and species, and the procession of the Holy Spirit as the second
procession within the Godhead following upon the procession
of the Son (species) from the Father (modus). As a certain end
follows upon modus and species, the Holy Spirit is the proper
ordo of love between the Father and the Son.
Thus, the two triads of modus-species-ordo and eternityspecies-use correspond with one another. Importantly, this
opens two ways in which the ratio of the beautiful can be
97

STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
Ibid.
99
STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
100
STh I, q. 5, a. 5.
98

442

DANIEL PARKINSON

brought to fuller expression through Aquinas’s Trinitarian
theology. First, because ordo and use correspond with one
another, the difference between the beautiful and the good in
terms of ordo can be elaborated in the light of Aquinas’s
twofold appropriation of use to the Holy Spirit, in order to
articulate the sense in which the nonperfective admiration of
beauty is the transcendental relation by which human beings
participate in God’s vision of creation. Second, the elastic
aesthetic condition of proportio/consonantia, which relates to
modus and ordo, can now be related to use and eternity, in
order to articulate the sense in which the beautiful comes to
light as an experience of the gratuity and fittingness of all
creaturely being, as it analogically participates in the proportions of divine beauty, namely, the “tanta convenientia”101
between the Father and the Son, enjoyed in the love and joy of
the Holy Spirit. Aquinas’s twofold appropriation of use to the
Holy Spirit will be considered first.
The first sense of use, in Aquinas’s explanation of its
appropriation, refers to the immanent divine life “whereby the
Father and the Son enjoy each other” in the love of the Holy
Spirit, and the second sense refers to the economy by which
creatures are drawn into the “bounty and wealth” of that love,
and come to enjoy God as a gift.102 The two, love and gift, can
be distinguished inasmuch as the first refers to the perfection of
God who exists within and for himself, and the second refers to
God insofar as he is perfective of creatures. This second sense of
use closely parallels the ordo of the good, in which being as the
likeness of divine goodness is related to another as perfective.
But it should be recalled that Aquinas makes a distinction
between “real” and “conceptual” relations when he discusses
the ratio boni in terms of the modus-species-ordo triad.103 The
ordo of the good is a conceptual relation that follows upon the
existence of a being that is not exhausted by this relation, and
the distinction between “conceptual” and “real” relations
101

STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
Ibid.
103
De Verit., q. 21, a. 1.
102

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

443

suggests the possibility of another ordo that relates to this reality
within its own terms and for its own sake. This is exactly what
is suggested by the first sense of use, which refers to the “real”
relations of the divine persons whereby God exists for himself
in the unity of perfect love, in contrast to the second sense of
use, which refers to the “conceptual” relation whereby God is
related to creatures.104
This first sense of use parallels the ordo of the beautiful in
relation to being because, accordingly, God is considered not as
perfective of another, but as an intrinsically perfect end in
himself. Although he is perfective in relation to others, God is
in no way exhausted or defined by that relation, and in this way
he is beautiful. Furthermore, since God is not defined by his
relation to creation, and because he is always already eternally
replete in the perfection and love of the Trinitarian life, creation exists purely as a gift and as something that has significance
in and of itself. It does not exist as something that is perfective
in relation to God, but is a gift given for its own sake, that it
might share in the divine perfection. Accordingly, God regards
created being as nonperfective and therefore as beautiful. Upon
the basis of God’s supereminent beauty, an intrinsic beauty and
value is bestowed upon all finite being; because God is
beautiful, creation is beautiful, and in the experience of beauty,
human beings are admitted into this divine vision of creaturely
being, regardless of the way in which it might be perfective of
another. Thus, the two orders of the beautiful and the good are
grounded in the twofold ordo or use of the divine perfection,
which is also reflected in Aquinas’s distinction between real and
conceptual relations. To admire the beauty of being is not to
consider beings as related beyond themselves for some extrinsic
purpose, whereby they might be perfective of another. Instead,
it is rather to enter into their intrinsic reality and value, that is,
their ontological status as a pure gift, given by God simply that
they might participate in the perfection of existence. In this

104
For the asymmetric relation between God and creation see STh I, q. 13, a. 7;
q. 45, a. 3, ad 1.

444

DANIEL PARKINSON

way, the ratio of the beautiful, as the admirability of being, is
grounded in the divine vision of creation: to see the beauty of
creatures is to behold them in the way that God beholds them.
But the ratio of the beautiful is not only grounded in God’s
vision of creation. The second consequence of the correspondence between the two triads of modus-species-ordo and
eternity-species-use is that it becomes possible to ground the
order of beauty within the immanent Trinitarian processions in
the divine life. Aquinas explains that the primary appropriation
of use to the Holy Spirit, namely, as love—which corresponds
to the order of the beautiful—refers to that “whereby the Father
and the Son enjoy each other.”105 It is striking that this sense of
use refers to the same reality that Aquinas mentions in order to
demonstrate the meaning of proportio or consonantia as a
condition of beauty, that is, the tanta convenientia between the
Father and the Son.106 If proportio or consonantia is an elastic
aesthetic condition that refers to both ordo and modus in the
Augustinian triad, and in such a way that makes clear that the
beautiful is ordered to nothing extrinsic to its own intrinsic
reality and perfection, which is admired and enjoyed in and for
itself, then a parallel emerges in this aesthetic consideration of
use in the divine life. Namely, proportio corresponds with both
the use of the Holy Spirit, and with the eternity of the Father in
relation to the Son, to whom beauty or species is specifically
appropriated. In this appropriation, perfectio belongs to the Son
in a generic and substantial way insofar as he does not lack
anything of the Father’s nature. The condition of proportio
belongs to the Son in an elastic and relational way insofar as it
refers to both the Father whose perfect image he is, and also to
the Holy Spirit in whom he and the Father enjoy one another.
Finally, claritas belongs to the Son in a specific and intellectual
way because in his identity as the Word he is the “art” of God
and the light and splendor of the human intellect. Just as
Aquinas argues that perfection consists in form (species) and

105
106

STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
Ibid.

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

445

that which is related to form—whether it is that which is
presupposed by form (modus), or that which follows form
(ordo)—he also appropriates the perfectio of beauty (species) to
the Son, which consists in what is proper to that “form” or
“art” itself, namely, claritas, and also that which is related and
proportioned to that form—namely, the presupposed modus of
the Father and the ordo of love in the Holy Spirit.
This means that the experience of beauty can be located at
the most fundamental metaphysical level. There is a proportio
or convenientiam107 between the soul and being whereby human
beings admire the intrinsic beauty of finite being, and are
thereby admitted into the ordo or use of God’s regard for
creation. But this delight is rooted in a deeper proportio or
tanta convenientia,108 whereby the intrinsic beauty of creatures
is an analogical participation in the beauty and proportio of the
Father’s modus in relation to the species of the Son, enjoyed in
the ordo of the Holy Spirit. Just as God’s eternally replete perfection and beauty is the basis upon which he beholds creation
as nonperfective in relation to himself, and therefore as
beautiful, likewise, the analogical participation of all finite being
in that divine beauty is the ontological basis upon which beauty
makes an appearance in the world to be beheld by human
beings. In other words, the admiration of finite beauty is an
analogical participation in the divine being, in that eternal act
by which the Father lovingly beholds the Son in the Holy
Spirit.109 As Brendan Thomas Sammon puts it, as the archetype
of beauty, “the Son’s dynamic is normative for all events of
beauty. This dynamic is repeated in a creaturely context when
any beautiful thing participates beauty. What makes the
participant beauty-filled, one might say, is a procession from

107

Cf. De Verit., q. 1, a. 1.
STh I, q. 39, a. 8.
109
Sevier helpfully highlights the fact that the common sense of species in the Middle
Ages was that of “appearance” or “aspect,” which derived from the word specio, “to
look,” such that we can say that the Son is the “projection” or “manifestation” of the
Father’s beauty (Aquinas on Beauty, 105-6).
108

446

DANIEL PARKINSON

beauty itself as a creaturely recapitulation of the Son’s
procession.”110
Indeed, Aquinas’s wider use of the related terms of modus,
proportio, and convenientia confirms this, and reveals that this
analogical participation in divine beauty consists in the delightful fittingness of existence (esse) to essence in finite being.
Thus, Umberto Eco argues that, for Aquinas, the two related
terms modus and proportio express a “relation of fitness”
between the two fundamental metaphysical principles of
existence and essence.111 For instance, Aquinas argues in the
Summa contra gentiles that there is a proportion wherever we
find two things that “complement” one another, which is a
proportion of potentiality to act, so that “being [esse] itself is
the complement of the existing substance, for each and every
thing is in act through having being.”112 Likewise, the corresponding term modus is used by Aquinas to express this same
sense of complementarity or convenientia. He states that
the beings which share “to be” from the First Being, do not share in it
according to a universal mode of being as it is found in the First Principle;
they participate in it in a particular way, according to a certain determinate
mode [modum] of being which belongs [convenit] to this given genus or this
given species.113

Thus, the terms modus and proportio signify the fittingness of
existence and essence to one another. They express the fact that
being (esse) is proportioned and fitted to essence, and that there
is a becoming aspect to all finite beings as the recipient of an
individual act of existence that is complementary to its instantiation in a particular species or form.
110

Sammon, The God Who Is Beauty, 349.
Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Bredin (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 84; Eco offers an extensive and helpful
discussion of the various uses of “proportion” in Aquinas’s thought (ibid., 82-98).
112
ScG II, c. 53 (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Two:
Creation, trans. with an introduction and notes by James F. Anderson (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975).
113
De Sub. Separ., c. 8 (Thomas Aquinas, Treatise on Separate Substances, trans.
Francis J. Lescoe [West Hartford, Conn.: Saint Joseph College, 1959]).
111

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

447

Being (ipsum esse) does not subsist itself, but is given away in
particular beings; it is “complete and simple, yet nonsubsistent.”114 It is the most perfect of all things, but “existence
is considered a formal principle, and as something received; and
not as that which exists.”115 The terms modus and proportio
denote the convenientia of this self-donation of being into
particular beings, and this lies at the heart of the analogical
participation of finite being in the procession of the Son from
the Father. The Father is the eternity and modus presupposed
by the Son, and just as modus and proportio signify the fittingness of the orientation of being (ipsum esse) to be given away in
beings (ens), the Father is eternally and infinitely proportioned
to his self-donation in the Son. The Father’s being is one that
“belongs” to the Son. This is the tanta convenientia, the wonderful proportion, in which all creaturely beauty analogically
participates as a limited but fitting proportion between esse and
essence. And the unique delight aroused in the experience of
finite beauty answers to the ordo of love in the Holy Spirit, in
whom the Father’s being is entirely given again, as the one in
whom he and the Son enjoy one another.
This fittingness is the admirability of being that is experienced in the beautiful, the convenientia of all finite being as
gift, participating in the eternal fittingness and determination of
the Father’s self-donation in the Son, eternally enjoyed in the
delight and love of the Holy Spirit. As David Bentley Hart
argues, the generation of the Son, which is infinitely and
eternally traversed in the Spirit as peace and delight, is the “true
interval of difference” in which the whole of creation participates.116 Beauty does not merely “adorn” the spaces of
creation—its internal differentiation and its distinction from its
divine source—rather, beauty is “the true form of that distance,

114

De Pot., q. 1, a. 1.
STh I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3.
116
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 248.
115

448

DANIEL PARKINSON

constituting it, as the grammar of difference.”117 The admirability of the beautiful is the convenientia of this distance,
the wonder and delight that created being simply exists. This
fittingness itself is expressed by the aesthetic term proportio or
consonantia, and its manifestation to the one perceiving its
beauty is expressed by the term claritas. In the experience of the
beautiful per se, this fittingness is not experienced as something
good for oneself, but as something good in and for itself.
Nevertheless, it is a reality into which one can be admitted, but
only as an admirer.
V
Aquinas does not include “the beautiful” in any of his lists of
the transcendentals, nor does he ever specify the “addition to
being” that beauty makes, which is of criteriological importance
for a transcendental according to the first article of De veritate.
Therefore, the distinct transcendental status of beauty is not an
explicit aspect of his thought. However, if one follows the
logical consequences of his distinction between beauty and
goodness, according to the modus-species-ordo triad, then it is
necessary to acknowledge that there is an implicit “addition to
being” made by the beautiful, such that it merits a distinct
transcendental status. Beauty is not simply reducible to the
good, because the two differ in terms of ordo. Neither can the
beautiful simply be the true and the good taken together,
because truth and goodness add to being a relationship of that
which perfects, and Aquinas excludes this from the ratio of the
beautiful. The beautiful, therefore, must be recognized as a
distinct transcendental in the thought of Aquinas, not because
117

Ibid., 18. A similar point is made by Sammon: the Son is beautiful because he
truly and perfectly possesses the nature of the Father, but as a distinct image of the
Father’s beauty he does not merely reduplicate the Father. Similarly, in the realm of
created beings, “the beautiful thing qua beautiful has truly and perfectly the nature of
beauty though in a way that neither merely reduplicates beauty nor is identical to beauty
itself . . . a beautiful thing communicates a distinction in beauty even as it communicates
the true and perfect nature of beauty” (The God Who Is Beauty, 349).

THE IMPLICIT TRANSCENDENTAL

449

he explicitly states this to be the case in the same terms with
which he delineates the other transcendentals, but because it is
implicit in the logic of his distinction between beauty and
goodness. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that this accords
with Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology, which might not be
systematized thematically around the transcendentality of the
beautiful in an explicit manner, yet nonetheless possesses a deep
resonance with that theme.
This might simply beg the question as to why these issues
remain implicit and not explicit in Aquinas’s work. It is
certainly plausible that he labored under the weight of the
medieval tradition, which almost universally recognized only
“the one,” “the true,” and “the good” as distinct transcendental
properties, which correspond, respectively, with the threefold
mode of efficient, formal, and final causality, and the three
divine persons.118 Likewise, in following Aristotle’s limitation of
the powers of the soul to the intellect and will, Aquinas may
have felt a certain degree of reticence in claiming too much for
the beautiful, since there was not a faculty of the soul to which
it could correspond in his anthropology. This might also be the
reason why Aquinas does not specify in any great detail the
precise nature of the relation to the cognitive power that beauty
adds to goodness. However, despite the relative scarcity of the
material he devotes to discussions of the beautiful, and the
unsystematic nature of those discussions, it is clear that he has
seen something essential, which provides the foundation for
developing more explicit accounts of “the beautiful.”119

118

See Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals, esp. 201-334.
I am very grateful to Simon Oliver, Rik Van Nieuwenhove, and David C.
Schindler for their generous encouragement and support, and for reading earlier drafts
of this article.
119

The Thomist 87 (2023): 451-62

THE FITTINGNESS OF MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH
JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

T

HIS ARTICLE WILL consider the fittingness of Mary’s
virginity in birth, in three sections. First, to establish the
definitiveness of the doctrine, I will conduct a brief review of early patristic teaching on Mary’s virginitas in partu,
with an appended observation about the most recent confirmation of the doctrine in the teaching of the Second Vatican
Council. Second, I will consider some potential difficulties with
the teaching, as the problems might be more obvious than the
fittingness. Finally, in response to the potential difficulties, I
will note the three reasons that St. Thomas Aquinas gives for
Mary’s virginity in birth in the Summa theologiae, and I will
propose the addition of a fourth Thomistic reason. This last
reason, which appeals to the fact that Christ had the beatific
vision from the moment of his conception, is the principal point
I wish to present. The rest provides context for my modest
contribution.
I. EARLY PATRISTIC WITNESSES AND THE
MOST RECENT CONFIRMATION
Mary’s perpetual virginity has been held from the beginning
of the Church’s life. Not to be flippant, but obviously Mary
knew that she was perpetually a virgin. And her virginity in
birth is affirmed rather graphically in an early apocryphal
gospel. The Protoevangelium of James (ca. 145) recounts a tale
of the midwife who was serving Mary informing one Salome
451

452

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

that Mary had miraculously remained a virgin in birth. In
anticipation of Thomas the Apostle, Salome said that unless she
verified this fact with her own fingers, she would not believe.
She was so bold as to do so, whereupon her hand started to
burn and she repented of her boldness and lack of faith; she was
healed only when she held the Christ child.1
The explicitness of this early witness, though not canonical,
is significant in that it establishes that the idea of Mary’s
virginity in birth was in circulation.2 This strengthens the claims
of authors like Joseph Plumpe that Ignatius of Antioch (d. ca.
110) and Justin Martyr (d. 165) “intimate and presuppose”
Mary’s virginity in birth, even though they do not make the
assertion explicitly.3 That explicit assertion would come some
fifty years later in Irenaeus (d. ca. 202)4 and Clement of

1
The Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas, trans. Ronald Hock, chaps. 19-20
(Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polebridge Press, 1995), 67-69.
2
Joseph Plumpe opines that it shows that the idea was much debated—affirmed and
denied. There are two other lesser known and possibly earlier works, the Ascension of
Isaiah and the Odes of Solomon, that also affirm Mary’s virginity in birth. See Joseph
Plumpe, “Notes: Some Little-Known Early Witnesses to Mary’s Virginitas in Partu,”
Theological Studies 9 (1948): 572ff.
3
Ibid., 567.
4
Irenaeus, Demonstratio apostolicae praedicationis, c. 54 (ed. K. Ter Mekerttschian
and S. G. Wilson, Patrologia Orientalis 61.12.5 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1917], 700):
“Praetera de nativitate eius propheta alibi dicit: ‘Antequam parturiret, peperit;
antequam veniret partus eius, peperit masculum [Is 66, 7].’ Ipse nuntiavit modum
insperatum inopinumque nascendi ex virgine” (“Besides, concerning his birth, the
prophet says elsewhere, ‘Before she was in labor, she gave birth; before her labor came,
she give birth to a male child’ [Isa 66:7]. He reported unexpected and unforeseen
manner of being born of the virgin”). See Plumpe for the larger interpretive context
(“Notes,” 569-70). All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
Plumpe (ibid., 569), maintains that Origen (d. ca. 253) too articulates Mary’s
virginity in partu, although he notes that Origen contradicts this opinion elsewhere. The
evidence in favor of in partu is weak, however, and David Hunter is not convinced
(David Hunter, “Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth-Century
Rome,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1 [1993]: 62 n. 57). Origen, In Leuiticum
homiliae 8, para. 2 (ed. W. Baehrens, Clavis Patrum Latinorum 198.3.A [Turnhout:
Brepols, 1920]), 395, l. 4): “De Maria autem dicitur quia ‘virgo’ concepit et peperit”
(“But it is said of Mary that a virgin conceived and gave birth”).

MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH

453

Alexandria (d. ca. 215).5 Other great figures, like Gregory of
Nazianzus (d. 390), Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395), Ambrose
(d. 397), Jerome (d. 420), and Augustine (d. 430), would follow
suit with an explicit articulation of the teaching.6
We then come to magisterial authorities. Leo the Great’s
letter of 449 affirming the virginitas in partu was approved by
the Council of Chalcedon in 451.7 After Leo, Pope Hormisdas
would repeat the teaching. Subsequently, the Council of
Constantinople II (553) described Mary as aeiparthenos, “evervirgin.”8 Although more skeptical commentators note that Constantinople did not specify explicitly that aeiparthenos included
virginity in birth, the preceding affirmations over four hundred
years hardly leave that in doubt.9 Two more popes, Pelagius I

5
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.16 (ed. L. Früchtel, O. Stählin, and U. Treu,
Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 17 [Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970], 66):
“Ἀλλ’, ὡς ἔοικεν, τοῖς πολλοῖς καὶ μέχρι νῦν δοκεῖ ἡ Μαριὰμ λεχὼ εἶναι διὰ τὴν τοῦ παιδίου
γέννησιν, οὐκ οὖσα λεχώ (καὶ γὰρ μετὰ τὸ τεκεῖν αὐτὴν μαιωθεῖσάν φασί τινες παρθένον
εὑρεθῆναι)” (“But, as appears, many even down to our own time regard Mary, on
account of the birth of her child, as having been in the puerperal state, although she was
not. For some say that, after she brought forth, she was found, when examined, to be a
virgin”). English translation taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts
and James Donaldson, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1971), 551. Brian A.
Graebe, Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of Vatican II
(Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 22 n. 23, has “Stromata 7 and 16”
instead of 7.16.
6
See Graebe, Vessel of Honor, 24-31.
7
See ibid., 33.
8
Council of Constantinople II, canon 6: “If anyone says that the glorious holy Mary,
ever-virgin [ἀειπαρθένον] is not Mother of God in the true sense . . . let him be
anathema.” The English translation is taken from Compendium of Creeds, Definitions,
and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter
Hünermann, trans. Josef and Jacques Dupuis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 149,
no. 427.
“Ever-virgin” appears also in canon 14. See Graebe, Vessel of Honor, 34 and Hunter,
“Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary,” 57.
9
Ambrose may be the first Latin author to assert Mary’s virginity in birth in writing.
See his De institutione uirginis et sanctae Mariae uirginitate perpetua ad Eusebium 8.52
(l. 10) (ed. M. Adriaen and P. A. Ballerini, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 12
[Turnhout: Brepols, 1957]: “Porta igitur Maria, per quam Christus intrauit in hunc
mundum, quando uirginali fusus est partu, et genitalia uirginitatis claustra non soluit”
(“Therefore, Mary was the door through which Christ entered into this world, when he

454

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

and Gregory the Great, would explicitly affirm Mary’s virginity
in birth; and the Lateran Council of 649—not an ecumenical
council—would articulate the threefold teaching that Mary’s
virginity was preserved before birth, in birth, and after birth.10
Finally, in 1555—while the Council of Trent, an ecumenical
council, was in session—Pope Paul IV defended Mary’s virginity
in partu, and the catechism authorized by that same council
teaches explicitly that Mary remained a virgin even in giving
birth to Christ.11
Evidence regarding the constancy of the teaching down to
our own times can be seen in Lumen Gentium, which declares
that “the birth of Our Lord . . . did not diminish His mother’s
virginal integrity but sanctified it.”12 This has an augmented
significance because the doctrine was challenged and reinterpreted by a number of authors in the mid-twentieth century.
In Vessel of Honor: The Virgin Birth and the Ecclesiology of
Vatican II, Brian Graebe writes that “the years between 1952
and 1964 represent arguably the most significant—and
unquestionably the most tumultuous—period in the history of
the doctrine of virginitas in partu.”13 While, in my judgment,
this period could not possibly rival the significance of the early
patristic period in establishing the doctrine, a tumult was
certainly produced by some contemporary authors who doubted
was brought forth by a virginal birth, and he did not open the genital gates of
virginity”). See Hunter, “Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary,” 47.
10
Council of the Lateran, canon 3: “Si quis secundum sanctos Patres non confitetur
proprie et secundum veritatem Dei genetricem sanctam semperque virginem et
immaculatam Mariam, utpote ipsum Deum Verbum specialiter et veraciter, qui a Deo
Patre ante omnia saecula natus est, in ultimis saeculorum absque semine concepisse ex
Spiritu Sancto, et incorruptibiliter eam genuisse, indissolubili permanente et post partum
eiusdem virginitate, condemnatus sit” (“If anyone does not, following the holy Fathers,
confess properly and truly that holy Mary, ever virgin and immaculate, is Mother of
God, since in this latter age she conceived really and truly without human seed from the
Holy Spirit, God the Word himself, who before the ages was born of God the Father,
and gave birth to him without corruption, her virginity remaining equally inviolate after
his birth, let him be condemned”) (Denzinger-Hünermann, 174, no. 503).
11
See Denzinger-Hünermann, 437, no. 1880; and Graebe, Vessel of Honor, 51.
12
Lumen Gentium 57, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_
council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html.
13
Graebe, Vessel of Honor, 55.

MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH

455

the ancient understanding of Mary’s virginitas in partu, such as
Albert Mitterer, Jean Galot, Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, and
Gerhard Müller, who would later serve as prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.14
II. POTENTIAL DIFFICULTIES WITH THE DOCTRINE
When we think of Mary’s perpetual virginity, it is easy to
allow our attention to be drawn to her virginity before and after
giving birth to Jesus, since these are conditions that ordinary
human beings experience. Mary’s virginity in birth, by contrast,
can seem strange and even misogynistic. The teaching could
seem to spring from an aversion to the material body such as we
find in Docetism, which denies that God truly took human flesh
to himself. Indeed, with respect to declaring Mary’s virginity in
birth, Plumpe discerns an “apparent diffidence” among the
earliest Fathers precisely out of concern not to provide support
to Docetism.15 Quite on the other side of diffidence, Tertullian
explicitly denies Mary’s virginity in birth as a way to refute the
Gnostic understanding of Christ.16 And Augustine reports that
Jovinian denied the virginitas in partu because he found it to be
too close to the Manichean view that Christ was a phantom.17
14

Ibid., 56-73, 105-8.
Plumpe, “Notes,” 568.
16
Tertullian, De carne Christi 23 (l. 10) (ed. E. Kroymann, Corpus Christianorum
Series Latina 2 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1954]): “Peperit enim, quae ex sua carne, et non
peperit, quae non ex uiri semine, et uirgo, quantum a uiro, non uirgo, quantum a partu”
(“For she, who gave birth from her flesh and did not give birth from the seed of a man,
was a virgin with respect to a man but not a virgin with respect to birth”).
17
Augustine, Contra Iulianum 1 (ed. M. Schanz, Clavis Patrum Latinorum 351
[Turnhout: Brepols, 1969], col. 643, l. 31): “hoc de manichaeorum nomine et crimine
faciebat etiam iouinianus, negans mariae sanctae uirginitatem, quae fuerat dum
conciperet, permansisse dum pareret: tanquam christum cum manichaeis phantasma
crederemus, si matris incorrupta uirginitate diceremus exortum” (“This charge of
Manichaeism was also brought by Jovinian, who denied that Mary’s holy virginity,
which had existed when she conceived, remained while she was giving birth, as if we
believed with the Manichaeans that Christ was a phantasm when we say that in His
birth His mother’s virginity remained inviolate”). The English translation is taken from
Against Julian, trans. Matthew Schumacher, The Fathers of the Church 16 (New York:
Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1957), 6.
15

456

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

This aversion to corporeality could seem to pertain especially
to the female human body, and more especially to sexual
powers of the female human body. One could certainly encounter this objection today. For instance, a woman’s period
has been widely regarded as a source of impurity in ancient and
primitive societies. As an illustration, we read in Leviticus 12
that it shall be determined of a woman that “at the time of her
menstruation, she shall be unclean” (v. 2), and “she shall not
touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary, until
the days of her purifying are completed” (v. 4). After a month
or two of purification, she must bring an offering to the priest
(vv. 4-6), “and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she
shall be clean” (v. 8).18 Moreover, as National Public Radio
documents, in Nepal even today there are “menstruation sheds”
for women in their period, where they can be isolated so as to
protect the rest of the population from contamination.19 The
journalist Danielle Preiss relates this particular incident:
“Koshila Khatri, 27, talks about a time when the dishes she ate
from while menstruating were accidentally brought into the
house. Then a tiger killed two of the family’s goats. Khatri isn’t
David Hunter notes that the Manichees had a Docetic Christology (Hunter,
“Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary,” 57).
Jovinian and Helvidius share the infamous privilege of being known for denying
Mary’s perpetual virginity toward the end of the fourth century. Jovinian is of greater
interest to this article, because he denied Mary’s virginity in birth. See Hunter,
“Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary.”
18
For the larger context of menstruation in Leviticus, see Mary Douglas, Leviticus As
Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 164, 176, 178-80.
19
Danielle Preiss, “Why It’s Hard to Ban the Menstrual Shed,” All Things
Considered, 13 May 2019, https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/13/
721450261/why-its-so-hard-to-stop-women-from-sleeping-in-a-menstrual-shed.
Although Mary was without sin or impurity, Joseph and Mary offered a pair of
turtledoves or two young pigeons for the purification of Jesus and Mary, as Luke (2:22,
24) reports: “And when the time came for their purification according to the law of
Moses, they [Joseph and Mary] brought him [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to
the Lord . . . and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, ‘a
pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.’” Had the priest recognized their purity and
protested, Mary might have replied with the words that her Son would later speak to
John the Baptist when he hesitated to baptize him: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting
for us to fulfil all righteousness” (Matt 3:15).

MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH

457

totally sure whether to blame this attack on menstruation.”
Here we have a victim of misogynistic superstition.
If now, among the more enlightened, a woman’s period is
recognized to be no spiritual or physical threat but rather simply
a natural process of the body and indeed a sign of a woman’s
unique wondrous power to bear new human life, should we
have doubts about the teaching of Mary’s virginity in birth? No.
Aquinas’s understanding of the glorified human body helps us
to see how the doctrine of virginity in birth does not come from
an aversion to the human body but is rather an affirmation of its
ultimate end in beatitude that comes through Christ’s humanity.
An examination of this truth can be helpful to believers, for
while any believing Catholic would accept the declared teaching
as true, it will be held firmly and joyfully if its truth is perceived
as luminous. To that end, I will now (1) review the three
reasons that Aquinas gives for Mary’s virginity in birth and (2)
consider the four characteristics of the glorified body—subtlety,
agility, brightness, and impassibility—focusing on subtlety, in
order to add a fourth, Thomistic, reason of fittingness for
Mary’s virginity in birth.
III. THOMAS AQUINAS ON MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH
A) Aquinas’s Three Reasons
In question 28, article 2 of the Tertia pars, Aquinas teaches
that it was fitting that Mary remain a virgin in birth for three
reasons. First, this accords with Christ’s being the Word of
God. That is, the most perfect example of a birth is the eternal
birth of God the Son from God the Father.20 And this birth is
nothing other than the Word’s proceeding in the divine intellect
in the Father’s act of knowing himself.21 Now, a word is conceived in the mind without corruption, and it proceeds within
the mind without corruption, and thus “to show that [Christ’s]
20

STh I, q. 33, a. 3. For the Summa theologiae, I use Latin text of the Leonine
edition in Opera omnia, vols. 4-12 (Rome: Ex typographia polyglotta, 1888-1906).
21
STh I, q. 27, aa. 1-2.

458

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

body was [the body] of the Word of God himself, it was fitting
that he should be born of the incorrupt womb of a virgin.”22
Second, since Christ came to take away our corruption, it would
be unfitting for him to corrupt his mother’s virginity by his
birth. Third, since Christ commanded us to honor father and
mother, it would be unfitting for him to diminish his mother’s
honor by his birth. The consistent principle here is the
avoidance of corruption—first on account of the Son’s perfect
divinity, and then twice on account of Mary’s dignity.
Seven questions later in the Tertia pars, Aquinas makes clear
that he views Mary’s freedom from pain in giving birth as
linked to this incorruption.23 The absence of pain is
theologically significant as it manifests that Mary was free from
the curse of Eve, who heard the Lord announce to her, “I will
greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall
bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). Mary’s freedom from pain
indicates that she was conceived in the prelapsarian state of
original justice; her virginity in birth, as we shall see now,
points ahead to the glory of beatitude with which Christ can
endow our human bodies.
B) A Fourth Reason for Mary’s Virginity “in partu”
We may add one more reason, by considering the properties
of the glorified body. This fourth reason clarifies the principle
of incorruption in the three reasons that Aquinas laid out.
In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas notes that Hugh of St.
Victor maintained that Christ assumed the properties of a
glorified body from the moment of his birth. That is, Christ
manifested subtlety in his birth by coming forth from a virginal
womb while it remained chastely closed, he showed agility by
walking on the waves of the sea, he exhibited brightness in his
22

STh III, q. 28, a. 2: “Nam verbum non solum in corde absque corruptione
concipitur, sed etiam absque corruptione ex corde procedit. Unde, ut ostenderetur quod
illud corpus esset ipsius verbi Dei, conveniens fuit ut de incorrupto virginis utero
nasceretur.” Graebe, Vessel of Honor, 46, notes that the first reason Aquinas supplies
borrows from Hilary, and the second reason is taken from Augustine.
23
STh III, q. 35, a. 6.

MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH

459

Transfiguration, and he demonstrated impassibility at the Last
Supper when he gave his body to be consumed by the disciples
without its being divided.24 “The name subtlety,” Aquinas clarifies, “is taken from the power to penetrate.”25 The glorified
body is able to penetrate and pass through things not because
the body has become immaterial or rarified—as various heretics
have held—but because of the glorified soul’s dominion over
the body: the “glorified body is said to be spiritual, as altogether
subject to the spirit”; the body is subject to the soul as “matter
[is subject] to form” and is thus subject to the soul “for other
works of the soul inasmuch as the soul is the mover [of the
body].”26 So, the subtlety of a physical body is on account of a
right ordering of nature, not a distortion of nature.
Aquinas, however, rejects Hugh’s opinion that Christ assumed the properties of a glorified body from the moment of
his birth, since these glorified properties are incompatible with
passibility, which Christ assumed until his resurrection—as was
evident in his suffering.27 Rather, explains Aquinas, “all these
things were done miraculously through divine power.”28 They
were done miraculously because Christ did not have these
glorified properties habitually. Regarding this lack, Aquinas

24
STh III, q. 45, a. 1, ad 3; q. 81, a. 3. He mentions these four properties also in
III Sent., d. 16, q. 2, a. 2; III Sent., d. 21, q. 2, a. 3, ad 5; IV Sent., d. 11, q. 3, a. 3; In
Matt., c. 17, lect. 1; IV Sent., d. 49, q. 4, a. 5, qcla. 3, ad 1; In ad Heb., c. 6, lect. 1; and
Comp. Theol. I, c. 168, but in the last three cases without examples. In STh III, q. 45, a.
2 he mentions subtlety, agility, and brightness; in STh III, q. 28, a. 2, ad 3, subtlety and
agility; and in IV Sent., d. 44, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 1, subtlety.
25
IV Sent., d. 44, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 1: “nomen subtilitatis a virtute penetrandi est
assumptum.” For the commentary on the fourth book of the Sentences, I use the Latin
text of the Parma edition: Commentum in quatuor libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri
Lombardi, Opera omnia, vols. 6-7 (Parma: Petrus Fiaccadori, 1856-58).
26
IV Sent., d. 44, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 1: “corpus gloriosum spirituale dicitur, quasi
omnino spiritui subjectum. . . . prout subjicitur sibi ut materia formae, et deinde
subjicitur ei ad alia opera animae, prout anima est motor.”
27
III Sent., d. 16, q. 2, a. 2.
28
STh III, q. 28, a. 2, ad 3: “omnia ista facta sunt miraculose per virtutem divinam.”
Aquinas explicitly identifies the Transfiguration and walking on the water as miracles in
STh III, q. 45, a. 2.

460

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

identifies precisely what was missing: There was no “overflow
of glory from the soul to the body.”29
Even so, this miracle accomplished through divine power
was fitting, because Christ had the beatific vision. He was both
a comprehensor and a wayfarer.30 The only reason why Christ
did not enjoy the four properties of a glorified body was that he
laid them aside so that he could suffer and die to save us.31 The
fittingness of this miracle is evident in Aquinas’s quotation of
Gregory the Great, who pairs the virgin birth with Christ’s
entering the upper room through locked doors: “Whence
Gregory says in his Homilies: ‘that body of the Lord that
emerged to human eyes from the closed womb of the Virgin
through his birth, entered to the disciples through closed
doors.’”32
After his resurrection, Christ’s body was indeed glorified,
and he could thus enter through closed doors on account of his
property of subtlety. He was fittingly born without opening his
mother’s womb, but this was not on account of his body’s
subtlety; rather, it was accomplished miraculously through
divine power. It was fitting, but miraculous.
In question 45, article 2 of the Tertia pars, Aquinas examines
the homologous case of the Transfiguration in greater detail.
His analysis there, concerning the fitting but miraculous
manifestation of Christ’s brightness before his resurrection,
elucidates the case of Christ’s fitting but miraculous subtlety in
birth. Applying Aquinas’s insights on brightness to subtlety, we
can conclude that in the virgin birth, Christ manifested subtlety
of glory “with respect to essence but not with respect to mode

29

STh III, q. 28, a. 2, ad 3: “nec fiebat talis redundantia gloriae ab anima ad corpus.”
STh I, q. 62, a. 9, ad 3.
31
In STh III, q. 14, a. 3, Aquinas clarifies that Christ did not contract defects on
account of sin, but rather he willed to take them on. Once he had them, he would suffer
them unless he acted to suspend them miraculously by his divine power.
32
IV Sent., d. 44, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 1: “Unde Gregorius in Homil. dicit: illud
corpus Domini intravit ad discipulos januis clausis, quod ad humanos oculos per
nativitatem suam clauso exiit utero Virginis.”
30

MARY’S VIRGINITY IN BIRTH

461

of being.”33 The reason why it is not subtlety of glory with
respect to mode of being is that “the glory of his soul did not
overflow to his body.”34 The glory of his soul would have
overflowed to his body from the moment of his conception
were it not for “a certain divine dispensation”—the point of
which was “that he might fulfill the mysteries of our
redemption in a passible body.”35 Now, Christ still had the
“power to draw glory from his soul to his body,” as exemplified
in the virgin birth and the Transfiguration, but in these
miraculous cases, he did not do so as if “in a glorified body.”36
For subtlety, agility, brightness, and impassibility overflow from
the soul into a glorified body “as a certain permanent quality
affecting the body.”37 In fitting but miraculous cases before the
resurrection, there is no permanent quality but rather a miracle
worked “through the mode of a transient passion.”38 The
miraculous subtlety effecting the virgin birth was “of glory” but
not “of a glorious body.”39 This was a proleptic manifestation:
Christ’s subtlety in the virgin birth “represented” the future
subtlety of his body.40
Mary’s giving birth without losing her virginity, then, is an
affirmation of Christ’s beatitude. This is the insight I wish to
mine in order to add a fourth reason of fittingness for virginity
in birth. Why does Christ exercise divine power to act with
subtlety in his birth? Let us recall Aquinas’s three reasons: a
Word should not produce corruption, the Savior from
corruption should not produce corruption, and God’s mother
above all others ought to be spared corruption. A fourth reason
could be that Christ had the beatific vision, which is normally
33

STh III, q. 45, a. 2: “quantum ad essentiam, non tamen quantum ad modum
essendi.”
34
Ibid.: “gloria animae non redundaret ad corpus.”
35
Ibid.: “ex quadam dispensatione divina . . . ut in corpore passibili nostrae redemptionis expleret mysteria.”
36
Ibid.: “potestas . . . derivandi gloriam animae ad corpus. . . . in corpore
glorificato.”
37
Ibid.: “sicut quaedam qualitas permanens corpus afficiens.”
38
Ibid.: “per modum passionis transeuntis.”
39
STh III, q. 45, a. 2, ad 1: “gloriae, sed . . . corporis gloriosi.”
40
STh III, q. 45, a. 2, ad 3: “repraesentabat.”

462

JOHN BAPTIST KU, O.P.

accompanied by subtlety. For our sake, Christ laid subtlety
aside; however, he made an exception in the case of his birth
from his virgin mother. And this event—which could seem to
have Docetic or misogynistic overtones—is rather a revelation
of the dignity of Christ and his mother, and is a fact that
challenges us to consider the human body, not only as it is
weighed down with so much suffering in this world, but also as
it will be subtle, impassible, agile, and luminous when the seed
of grace blossoms into glory. If our view of human nature is
dominated by the effects of sin, we may easily regard the
doctrine of Mary’s virginity in birth as an offense of some
kind—against nature, against women, against peaceful
acceptance of sexuality. The doctrine of Mary’s virginity in
partu thus pushes back on the effects of sin on our worldview.
The virgin birth shows, furthermore, the fittingness of
Christ’s having the beatific vision from the moment of his
conception. For if Christ did not have the beatific vision from
the moment of his conception, then his being born without
opening the womb would be a strange phenomenon. By
contrast, with the beatific vision from the moment of his
conception, it is fitting that Christ be born as if he had subtlety,
which he would indeed have had, had he not laid aside the
properties of a glorified body in order to die for our sins.
CONCLUSION
With this insight, the intelligibility of the mystery of Mary’s
virginity in birth can shine forth as an affirmation of Christ’s
glory and Mary’s dignity as the true Mother of God. This
doctrine is not the fruit of an aversion to the human body,
especially the female human body, and more especially the
sexual powers of the female human body. Rather Mary’s
perpetual virginity provokes us to reflect on the effect of grace
on the human body, and challenges us to believe that we are
made for glory.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 463-83

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE
SUMMA THEOLOGIAE
INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

I

N THE SECOND HALF of the sixteenth century, in the
wake of decrees of the Council of Trent calling for more
frequent preaching by bishops and parish priests, a new type
of exegetical tool was developed for pastors who sought to
draw on the theological insights of St. Thomas Aquinas in their
preaching.1 While the Tridentine call for a renewal of preaching
and the production of exegetical tools for preachers were
rooted in pastoral currents dating back to the thirteenth

1

See Council of Trent, Session 24 (November 11, 1563), Decree on Reform, canon
4, in Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington,
D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 2:763: “It is the desire of the council that
the office of preaching, which particularly belongs to bishops, should be exercised as
often as possible for the salvation of the people. . . . Bishops are to announce the sacred
scripture and the law of God in their own church either personally or, if they are
legitimately prevented, through others whom they appoint to the office of preaching; in
other churches this is to be done by the parish priest or, if these are prevented, by others
appointed by the bishop. . . . This is to be done in the city or in any parts of the diocese
that the bishop considers expedient, at least on every Sunday and solemn feast, and
daily or at least three times a week during the seasons of fasting, namely Lent and
Advent, if they consider this should be done, and as often at other times as they judge
appropriate.” In canon 7, the council called for a certain type of preaching to be done
during the liturgy itself (Tanner, ed., Decrees, 2:764): “Similarly, during mass or the
celebration of office on every feast or solemnity they should explain the divine
commandments and precepts of salvation in the vernacular, and should be zealous to
implant them in the hearts of all (leaving aside useless questions) and educate them in
the law of the Lord.”
463

464

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

century, 2 the development of liturgical indexes linking texts
from Thomas with the lectionary is a significant development
that has been previously overlooked in scholarship on preaching
and Thomism.3
2

See, e.g., Fourth Lateran Council (November 30, 1215), canon 10, in Tanner, ed.,
Decrees, 1:239-40: “Among the various things that are conducive to the salvation of the
christian people, the nourishment of God’s word is recognized to be especially
necessary. . . . It often happens that bishops by themselves are not sufficient to minister
the word of God to the people, especially in large and scattered dioceses, whether this is
because of their many occupations or bodily infirmities or because of incursions of the
enemy or for other reasons—let us not say for lack of knowledge, which in bishops is to
be altogether condemned and is not to be tolerated in the future. We therefore decree
by this general constitution that bishops are to appoint suitable men to carry out with
profit this duty of sacred preaching, men who are powerful in word and deed and who
will visit with care the peoples entrusted to them in place of the bishops, since these by
themselves are unable to do it, and will build them up by word and example.” For a
broad overview of medieval preaching, see Beverly Mayne Kienzle, ed., The Sermon,
Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 81-83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). For a
discussion of methods of teaching the faith through sermons in northern France on the
eve of the Reformation, see Hervé Martin, Le métier de prédicateur en France septentrionale à la fin du Moyen Age, 1350-1520 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1988), 295-320.
3
To my knowledge, liturgical indexes to the Summa theologiae have not yet received
scholarly attention beyond a brief discussion in Kent Emery, Jr., and Louis E. Jordan,
“Familia Praedicatoria in the University of Notre Dame Library: Manuscripts,
Incunables and Sixteenth-Century Books Containing Texts and Images of the Order of
Preachers,” in Christ among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr., and Joseph
Wawrykow (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 493-591, at 522.
Although the use of texts from Thomas in Reformation-era preaching (including in the
preaching of the seventeenth-century Puritan preacher Thomas Goodwin) is
occasionally discussed in Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the
Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2002), no attention is given to the methods by which preachers would have
drawn on Thomas’s writings. Emily Michelson, The Pulpit and the Press in Reformation
Italy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013) analyzes the role of printed
books in the preparation and diffusion of homilies and notes the attention given in in
sixteenth-century preaching manuals to Thomas’s Catena aurea (see pp. 48, 167) and
various forms of preaching tables or indexes (see pp. 151-52) but does not mention
Thomistic liturgical indexes. Despite their breadth and depth, the essays in two recent
volumes on the historical reception of Thomas do not mention liturgical indexes: see
Lidia Lanza and Marco Toste, eds., Summistae: The Commentary Tradition on Thomas
Aquinas’ “Summa Theologiae” from the 15th to the 17th Centuries, Ancient and Medieval
Philosophy - Series 1 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2021); Matthew Levering and
Marcus Plested, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas (Oxford:

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

465

Beginning in 1569, shortly after the 1567 declaration of
Thomas as the fifth Doctor of the Church,4 Thomistic scholars
began to publish liturgical indexes that collated articles of the
Summa theologiae with the readings of the Sundays and Feasts
of the Liturgical Year.5 Over the course of the next four hundred years, various iterations of the liturgical index pro-vided
preachers with suggestions of articles of the Summa that could
help them to preach about the Epistle and Gospel pericopes
assigned for each liturgical celebration, drawing not only on the
ideas of Thomas but also on his authority as a Doctor of the
Church. 6 By exploring the origins and development of this
Oxford University Press, 2021). For discussion of the use of Thomas as a source for
preaching in the era before the development of the sixteenth-century liturgical indexes,
see Peter Francis Howard, Beyond the Written Word: Preaching and Theology in the
Florence of Archbishop Antoninus, 1427-1459, Quaderni di Rinascimento 28 (Florence:
L.S. Olschki, 1995), 47, 60, 92, 122, 132.
4
See Pius V, Mirabilis Deus (April 11, 1567), in Laertius Cherubini and Angelo
Cherubino, eds., Magnum bullarium romanum: A Pio quarto usque ad Innocentium IX
(Lyon: Arnaud and Borde, 1673), 2:222-23. Regarding the liturgical significance of the
1567 decree and its relationship to liturgical devotion to Thomas within the Roman
Curia, see John W. O’Malley, “The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A
Neglected Document and Its Import,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 35 (1981):
1-27, at 6-7: “In actual fact this document does not ‘declare’ Thomas anything. It simply
prescribes that Thomas is to be given the same liturgical standing as the four Latin
doctors. Thomas was the first saint to receive such honors, and the document was
immediately and correctly interpreted as a declaration.”
5
In addition to tools that helped preachers prepare homilies based on the lectionary,
vernacular translations of the readings for Mass accompanied by explanatory passages
were also widely available; see Michelson, Pulpit and the Press in Reformation Italy,
153-54. The Epistole et evagelii che si leggono tutto l’anno alla Messa, secondo l’uso
della Santa Romana Chiesa, translated and annotated by the Italian Dominican Remigio
of Florence, first published in 1567 and appearing in twenty-four editions in the
sixteenth century, was particularly influential; see Edoardo Barbieri, “The Bible in
Contention: Roman Prohibitions and Italian Biblical Texts for the Mass,” in Negotiating
Conflict and Controversy in the Early Modern Book World, ed. Alexander Samuel
Wilkinson and Graeme Kemp (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 48-70. Notably, despite being
prepared by a Dominican, the volume followed the Roman lectionary rather than the
Dominican lectionary.
6
For instance, the Italian bishop Agostino Valier’s 1574 treatise on preaching draws
special attention to Thomas in the context of a discussion of the use of arguments from
authority in preaching: “Magna est etiam auctoritas Doctorum qui scholastici

466

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

practice and examining several liturgical indexes in detail, we
can gain insights into how the works of Thomas were presented
for the use of preachers who sought to share the insights of the
Angelic Doctor with their congregations.
In this article, I will first give a brief account of medieval
resources for liturgical preaching. I will then trace the development of liturgical indexes of the Summa theologiae from the
sixteenth through the twentieth century. I will conclude with a
theological exegesis of the references provided in one version of
the index for the Mass at Dawn of Christmas Day.
I. MEDIEVAL RESOURCES FOR LITURGICAL PREACHING
The sixteenth-century liturgical indexes of the Summa
theologiae built on a foundation of theological resources for
liturgical preaching developed by Dominicans and Franciscans
in the Middle Ages.7 As Mary and Richard Rouse have shown,
the advent of new modes of preaching by Cistercians,
Dominicans, and Franciscans in the thirteenth century played a
decisive role in the development of new modes of presenting
texts in a way that would make them more easily utilized for the
purpose of preaching. 8 In addition to the famous Dominican
appellantur, præsertim beati Thomæ Aquinatis, quem sancta Concilia, Tridentinum in
primis, magna veneratione dignum iudicavit, eorumque auctoritas valet plurimum ad
confirmanda veræ religionis dogmata et ad falsa et perniciosa refellenda” (“The
scholastic doctors have great authority, especially blessed Thomas Aquinas, whom the
sacred councils, especially the Council of Trent, have judged worthy of great
veneration; their authority is most efficacious for confirming the dogmas of true religion
and refuting what is false and pernicious”). See Agostino Valier, De rhetorica
ecclesiastica libri III, I.46, ed. Manuel López-Muñoz, Renaissance Society of America
(Leiden: Brill, 2016), 81. Despite highlighting the importance of Thomas and citing
texts from Thomas throughout his treatise, Valier does not mention the availability of
Thomistic liturgical indexes.
7
For general overviews of medieval preaching tools, see Laura Light, “The New
Thirteenth-Century Bible and the Challenge of Heresy,” Viator 18 (1987): 275-88; D.
L. D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
8
See especially Mary A. Rouse and Richard H. Rouse, “Statim invenire: Schools,
Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page,” in idem, Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

467

biblical concordances initially overseen by Hugh of St. Cher,9
the thirteenth century saw the appearance of alphabetical
subject indexes developed especially by the Cistercians and
Franciscans that aimed at making the content of particular
manuscripts more easily accessible.10 According to the Rouses,
“the use of alphabetical order was a tacit recognition of the fact
that each user of a work will bring to it his own preconceived
rational order, which may differ from those of other users and
from that of the writer himself.” 11 The preparation of these
indexes engaged the most astute theological minds of the
thirteenth century: important Dominican contributions to this
development included Robert Kilwardby’s tabulae on Peter
Lombard’s Sentences and on the works of St. Augustine, as well
as Thomas’s tabula on the Ethics of Aristotle.12
In addition to alphabetically arranged indexes, the early
thirteenth century also saw the development of indexes arranged according to the cycle of liturgical pericopes of the
lectionary. 13 In their catalog of Dominican manuscripts and
early printed books at the University of Notre Dame library,

Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, Publications in Medieval Studies 17 (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 191-219; idem, “The Development of Research
Tools in the Thirteenth Century,” in Authentic Witnesses, 221-55; idem, “The Impact of
the Dominicans on Books at the University of Paris, 1217-1350,” in The Medieval
Dominicans: Books, Buildings, Music and Liturgy, ed. Eleanor J. Giraud and Christian
T. Leitmeir (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 31-50.
9
See Richard H. Rouse and Mary A. Rouse, “The Verbal Concordance to the
Scriptures,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 44 (1974): 5-30.
10
Rouse and Rouse, “Development of Research Tools,” 226-36.
11
Rouse and Rouse, “Statim invenire,” 204.
12
See Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s
Sentences (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 84-85.
13
For overviews of medieval lectionaries, see Aimé Georges Martimort, Les lectures
liturgiques et leurs livres, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 64 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1992); Innocent Smith, “Lectionary: Christianity: Medieval Times and
Reformation Era,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter,
2018), 16:3-5. While further research is needed on the breadth of medieval and early
modern lectionaries, important digital resources for studying this phenomenon are
available at the Usuarium database (https://usuarium.elte.hu/) and the ThALES database
(http://www.lectionary.eu/).

468

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

Kent Emery and Louis E. Jordan describe four Dominican
manuscripts and books that give an indication of the development of this phenomenon from the late thirteenth through the
early sixteenth century.14 A late thirteenth- or early fourteenthcentury manuscript of the Summa de abstinentia by Nicolaus
de Byardo (likely a Dominican friar) includes a reference table
spread over five folio pages which links the subjects he treats in
his book with the lectionary readings for the Sundays and feasts
of the liturgical year.15 A 1478 printing of the Lenten sermons
of Leonardi de Utino, O.P. (d. 1469) includes “an extensive alphabetical topical index, an index of scriptural authorities, and
an index applying the materials of the Lenten sermons to the
Sundays throughout the liturgical year.” 16 A fifteenth-century
edition of a moral manual for preachers composed by Johannes
Herolt, O.P. (d. 1468) likewise includes “a table ordering
materials collected from the sermons for preaching on the
Sundays of the liturgical year.” 17 Finally, a 1537 edition of
Thomas’s Catena aurea provides two sets of indexes collating
Thomas’s patristic sources with the liturgy.18
II. LITURGICAL INDEXES FOR THE DOMINICAN LECTIONARY
In the second half of the sixteenth century, a new type of
index was developed that collated the articles of the Summa
theologiae with the Mass lectionary then employed by the Do14

Emery and Jordan, “Familia praedicatoria.”
Ibid., 498-99. Emery and Jordan refer to the manuscript under its former
shelfmark “Ms. 15”; it now has the shelfmark Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame,
Hesburgh Library, cod. Lat. b. 5; see David T. Gura, A Descriptive Catalogue of the
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s
College (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 175-78.
16
Emery and Jordan, “Familia praedicatoria,” 504.
17
Ibid., 504-5.
18
Ibid., 520-21: “At the end of the running commentaries on Matthew, Mark and
Luke are tables indicating the folio numbers where Thomas treats the Gospel pericopes
for the temporal cycle of the liturgical year; a global index for all four running
commentaries for both the temporal and sanctoral sequences follows Thomas's
commentary on the Gospel of John.”
15

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

469

minican liturgy. In the sixteenth century, the Order of Preachers
still maintained a distinctive form of the Latin liturgy that had
been codified in the mid-thirteenth century by Humbert of
Romans. 19 The Dominican liturgy’s pericopes for the Epistle
and Gospel differed in important respects from those of the
Missal of the Roman Curia promulgated in a lightly revised
form by Pius V in 1570 as the Missale Romanum.20 Although
there was much overlap of content between the Roman and
Dominican lectionaries, the Dominican lectionary provided a
different order for many of the readings; as Maura O’Carroll
observes, “the difference in pericopes lay not so much in Scripture content, as in their liturgical timing.”21 For the First Sunday
of Advent, for instance, both the Roman and Dominican missals
provide Romans 13:11-14 as the epistle, but the Dominican
missal gives Matthew 21:1-9 for the Gospel whereas the Missale
Romanum gives Luke 21:25-33, a text which the Dominican
missal employs instead on the Second Sunday in Advent. Table
1 indicates the readings provided for the four Sundays of
Advent in the two lectionaries.
Table 1 — Lectionary Readings for the Four Sundays of Advent22
Occasion
Missale O.P. (before 1601) Missale Romanum
First Sunday of
Rom 13:11-14
Rom 13:11-14
Advent
Matt 21:1-9
Luke 21:25-33
Second Sunday of
Rom 15:4-13
Rom 15:4-13
Advent
Luke 21:25-33
Matt 11:2-10
Third Sunday of
1 Cor 4:1-5
Phil 4:4-7
Advent
Matt 11:2-10
John 1:19b-28
Fourth Sunday of
Phil 4:4-7
1 Cor 4:1-5
Advent
John 1:19b-28
Luke 3:1-6
19
See Innocent Smith, “Dominican Chant and Dominican Identity,” Religions 5
(2014): 961-71, doi:10.3390/rel5040961.
20
For a brief overview of the medieval and early modern versions of the Roman
Missal, see Innocent Smith, “Missale Romanum,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its
Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 19:425-28.
21
Maura O’Carroll, “The Lectionary for the Proper of the Year in the Dominican
and Franciscan Rites of the Thirteenth Century,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 49
(1979): 79-103, at 84.
22
This table is adapted from ibid., 85.

470

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

In 1569, the Antwerp printer Christopher Plantin (ca. 152089) published an edition of the Summa theologiae that has been
described as a “landmark edition . . . [that] set a standard that
other late sixteenth-century publishers of Thomas’s work attempted to surpass.”23 Prepared by a group of theologians from
Leuven, including the Dominican Antonius de Conceptione
(d. 1585), this printing of the Summa included a set of five
general indexes: (1) an index of scriptural authorities, (2) an
index of passages where Thomas deals with various topics such
as abstinentia or amor, (3) an index of “memorable teachings”
(doctrinas memorabiles) of Thomas, (4) an index of passages
where Thomas provides clear statements about topics which
had become controversial in the Reformation era (claram et
solidam refutationem praecipuorum aliquot dogmatum, quae
hodie ab haereticis asseruntur), and finally, (5) an index of
passages in the Summa collated with the Epistles and Gospels of
the Sundays and feasts of the liturgical year.
Table 2 — 1569 Plantin Index: First Sunday of Advent24
Dominica Prima Adventus.
Epist. Rom. 13.
NOX PRAECESSIT. De veteri et nova lege, 1.2. q. 107.
Evang. Matth. 21.
ECCE REX TUUS VENIT TIBI MANSUETUS. De causa efficiente passionem Christi,
Par. 3. q. 47.

For each Sunday and major feast day, the Index quintus of
the 1569 Plantin Summa provides one or occasionally several
23

Emery and Jordan, “Familia praedicatoria,” 522. Thomas Aquinas, Summa totius
theologiae (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1569). For an overview of Plantin’s editions
of the works of St. Thomas, see Léon Voet and Jenny Voet-Grisolle, “Thomas ab
Aquino,” in The Plantin Press (1555–1589): A Bibliography of the Works Printed and
Published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and Leiden (Amsterdam: Van Hoeve,
1980-83), 5:2195-218.
24
The typography of this and the following tables has been lightly adapted from
their original sources. The lemma for each set of Summa references appears in small
caps, and “&” is expanded to “et.” I have left in place the slightly inconsistent manner
of references to the Summa itself. The full text of the 1569 Index may be consulted at
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/en/view/bsb10686166?page=603.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

471

passages from the Summa that are linked by the editors with
specific verses of the liturgical pericopes. For the Epistle of the
First Sunday of Advent, Romans 13:11-14, the Index highlights
the words “Nox praecessit” (Rom 13:12), and suggests question
107 of the Prima secundae, which treats of the Old Law and
New Law. Although this question of the Summa does not
appeal to the authority of Romans 13, the editors link Paul’s
exhortation to abandon vice and put on Christ with Thomas’s
discussion of the perfection of the New Law. For the Gospel
pericope, Matthew 21:1-9, which describes Jesus’s entrance into
Jerusalem on a donkey, the Index suggests question 47 of the
Tertia pars, which discusses the efficient cause of Christ’s
passion. Although it may seem surprising to modern sensibilities
about Advent and Christmas, the editors of the Index draw the
attention of the preacher to the Passion of Christ, which is the
culmination of Christ’s entrance to Jerusalem.
After the printing of the 1569 edition of the Summa, other
publishers began to reprint the material collected by Plantin and
his editors. 25 In 1575, Plantin released a new printing of the
Summa theologiae with a revised edition of the five indexes.26 In
the updated version of the liturgical Index quintus, the entries
for each pericope were significantly expanded: in the 1569
printing, this liturgical index took up just five folio pages, while
the 1575 index spanned twenty-one.27 Instead of just one reference for each reading of the First Sunday of Advent, the 1575
version provides eleven references for the Epistle and five for
the Gospel.

25
In 1575, the five indexes of the 1569 Plantin edition were republished in Lyons
with the addition of an index of apparent contradictions in Thomas’s writings. This
volume reprinted the 1569 Plantin liturgical index without expansion; see Sex
copiosissimi indices (Lyon: Philippi Tinghi Florentini, 1575).
26
Thomas Aquinas, Summa totius theologiae (Antwerp: Christopher Plantin, 1575).
This edition is not included in Emery and Jordan’s catalog but is an important link in
the chain of liturgical indexes of the Summa. The full text of the 1575 liturgical index is
available at https://books.google.com/books?id=-jR9KRpUeugC&pg=RA15-PT3.
27
Cf. Voet and Voet-Grisolle, “Thomas ab Aquino,” 2198, 2206. Voet and VoetGrisolle do not draw attention to the expansion of the index in the 1575 edition.

472

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

Table 3 — 1575 Plantin Index: First Sunday of Advent
Dominica 1a Adventus, Epist. Rom. 13.
CUM CREDIMUS. De fide 2-2ae. q. 1a. et sequentibus.
An credere sit necessarium ad salutem. 2-2ae. q. 2. ar. 3.o[mnia].
An credibilia sint per certos articulos distinguenda. 2-2ae. q. 1a. ar. 6.
An hi articuli fidei convenienter enumerentur. 2-2ae. q. 1. ar. 8.
An convenienter in symbolo fidei ponantur, ubi supra [2-2ae. q. 1.] ar. 9.
Fide credenda esse, quae nobis sunt evangelizata, et a Conciliis atque
Pontifice definita. 2-2ae. q. 1 a. 9. 10 et q. 5. 3.
NOX PRAECESSIT. De veteri et nova lege. 1-2ae. q. 107.
NON IN COMMESSATIONIBUS, ET EBRIETATIBUS. De gula. 2-2. q. 148. De
ebreieta 2-2. q. 150.
NON IN CUBILIBUS ET IMPUDICITIIS. De castita[te]. 2-2. q. 151. De luxuria 2-2.
q. 153.
IN CONTENTIONE, ET AEMULATIONE. De discordia. 2-2. q. 37. De
contentione. 2-2. q. 38. De invidia. 2-2. q. 36.
INDUIMINI DOMINUM IESUM. Quomodo quis dicatur induere Christum. 3a.
q. 69.9.1m.
Evangel. Matth. 21.
ECCE REX TUUS VENIT TIBI. De adventu Christi in carnem. 3a. q. 1a. et seq.
Utrum pro redemptione generis humani fuerit necessarium Deum incarnari.
3a. q. 1. art. 2.
Utrum si homo non peccasset, Deus incarnatus fuisset. 3a. q. 1. art. 3. De
causa efficiente passionem Christi. 3a. q. 47.
TURBAE AUTEM QUAE PRAECEDEBANT, ET QUAE SEQUEBANTUR. Cur utraque
turba, et praecedens et subsequens Christum, clamabat osanna. 3a.
q. 45.3.c.

In the 1575 Plantin index, both references from the 1569
edition are retained within a broader range of references for
each pericope. In some cases, the 1575 index refers to an entire
question, but sometimes it specifies an article or a response to
an objection. In addition to the reference to the Old and New
Law regarding Romans 13, for instance, the revised index
highlights Thomas’s writings on faith in light of Paul’s statement
that “our salvation is closer to us now than when we first
believed” (Rom 13:11) and identifies Thomas’s treatments of
each vice proscribed by Paul. With respect to the Gospel
pericope, the 1575 index broadens the focus from the efficient
cause of the Passion of Christ to the “coming of Christ in the
flesh,” while retaining the reference to Thomas’s treatment of
the Passion.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

473

After the appearance of the expanded edition of the liturgical
index in the 1575 Plantin edition, some publishers began to
copy the new index immediately, while others continued to
print the more limited 1569 version. In 1576, another publisher
in Antwerp released an edition of the Summa theologiae that
contained the expanded 1575 index,28 while in 1581 a publisher
in Lyon released an edition that included the 1569 version.29
Publishers in Venice and Rome included the expanded version
in editions of the Summa or in independently published handbooks of indexes to the Summa in 1585,30 1586,31 and 1588.32
Alongside these various reproductions of the shorter and
longer Plantin indexes, in 1596 the Giunti family in Venice
collaborated with Francesco de Franceschi (active in Venice
from the 1560s through the 1620s) to publish a further expanded version of the liturgical index, now labeled as an “Index
Praedicabilium.”33 While clearly based on the 1575 index, the
1596 Giunti edition makes two major changes. First, rather
than separating the texts for Sundays and feast days of saints
into two sections, it intersperses the texts provided for feast
days such as St. Andrew (November 30) with the Sundays of the
year. Second, it includes texts for the weekdays of Lent,
although these texts are restricted to those that treat of the
Gospel, while the Lenten weekdays epistles are ignored.

28
Thomas Aquinas, Summa sacrae theologiae (Antwerp: Viduam et Haeredes Ioannis
Stelfii, 1576), https://books.google.com/books?id=Ej02Fpnv14MC.
29
Tommaso Caietano, Opuscula omnia R. D. D. Thomae de Vio Caetani (Lyon,
1581), https://books.google.com/books?id=3k4z0utlQqYC. No publisher is cited on the
title page, but the volume includes the printing mark of the Giunti family.
30
Thomas Aquinas, Tertia pars summae theologicae (Venice: G. Bindoni, 1585),
https://books.google.com/books?id=ALoUsyG_SR0C.
31
Quinque novi indices (Rome: In Ædibus populi romani, 1586), https://
books.google.com/books?id=831RAAAAcAAJ.
32
Sex copiosissimi indices (Venice: Apud Iuntas, 1588), https://books.google.com
/books?id=NRzTWsogL04C.
33
Thomas Aquinas, Summa totius theologiae (Venice: Apud Iuntas, 1596).
https://books.google.com/books?id=cSOUSoQW8vwC. On the title page, the printer is
listed “Apud Franciscum de Franciscis Senensem,” but “Apud Iuntas” appears at the
back of the volume.

474

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

III. LITURGICAL INDEXES FOR THE ROMAN LECTIONARY
At the turn of the seventeenth century, perhaps inspired by
the broadening use of the Roman Missal in the wake of the
Council of Trent, the 1601 General Chapter of Rome decided
to adapt the lectionary of the Dominican liturgy to bring it into
closer conformity with the lectionary of the Roman rite.34 Although the Order of Preachers continued to maintain many
distinctive liturgical practices, especially in the Ordo missae and
melodies for the liturgical chants, beginning with the missal of
1603 the Dominican liturgy used essentially the same pericopes
as the Roman Missal.
After the adoption of the Roman lectionary by the Order of
Preachers, publishers continued for a time to print versions of
the liturgical index still paired with the older Dominican
lectionary. A 1604 edition of the Summa published at Cologne
maintained the 1575 Plantin version of the liturgical index, 35
whereas a 1612 edition published at Venice maintained the
1596 expanded index.36 As late as 1623, the 1575 Plantin index
was reprinted at Lyon.37 It is possible that these versions of the
index were maintained due to the expense involved in resetting
the text, particularly in the case of the 1612 Venice edition
which is identical to the 1596 edition printed by the same
publisher. On the other hand, the earlier indexes may have still
been useful for preachers following various liturgical traditions
that were relatively similar to the Dominican liturgy.
The first version of the liturgical index linked to the Roman
liturgy was published by the printer Denis de la Noüe (15841660?) in Paris in 1617 as part of an edition of the Summa
34
Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis praedicatorum, ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert
(Rome: In domo generalitia, 1902), 6:30. Cf. William R. Bonniwell, A History of the
Dominican Liturgy 1215-1945, 2nd ed. (New York: J. F. Wagner, 1945), 311-25.
35
Thomas Aquinas, Tertia pars summae theologicae (Cologne: Antonii Hierati,
1604), https://books.google.com/books?id=9SNLAAAAcAAJ.
36
Thomas Aquinas, Summa totius theologiae (Venice: Giunta, 1612),
https://books.google.com/books?id=OIO8XbsuxmgC.
37
Quinque novi indices (Lyon: Antonii Pillehotte, 1623), https://books.google.com
/books?id=xT4M-befvbgC.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

475

theologiae. 38 The 1617 de la Noüe index was clearly adapted
from the 1575 Plantin index (or one of its copies) rather than
the 1596 Giunta index, as it omits the texts for the weekdays of
Lent. In the case of the First Sunday of Advent, the 1617 de la
Noüe index maintained the same texts as the 1575 Plantin
index for the identical Epistle of Romans 13:11-14, and transferred the material for the Second Sunday of Advent from the
1575 Plantin index to the First Sunday to account for the
reading of the pericope Luke 21:25-33 on the First Sunday
rather than the Second Sunday of Advent. In the case of the
Fourth Sunday of Advent, however, it was necessary to provide
new texts, as the Roman pericope of Luke 3:1-6 did not have an
immediate parallel at hand in the older Dominican missal.
Among the other texts provided for this Sunday, the 1617 de la
Noüe index points to the treatment of the Incarnation in
question 1 of the Tertia pars, a text that was cited in
conjunction with Matthew 21 in the 1575 index, but which had
lost its place due to the absence of Matthew 21 from the Advent
cycle of the Roman lectionary.
Table 4 — 1617 Liturgical Index: Fourth Sunday of Advent
Dominica 4a Adventum
Evang. Luc. 3.
PRAEDICANS BAPTISMUM POENITENTIAE. De baptismo Ioannis, 3a
q. 28.o[mnia].
IN REMISSIONEM PECCATORUM. An baptismus Ioannis contulerit gratiam, 3a
qu. 28.3.o[mnia].
ET VENIT IN OMNEM REGIONEM IORDANIS. Quare S. Ioannem decuit austeram
vitam ducere, non Christum, 3a qu. 40.2.1m.
ET VIDEBIT OMNIS CARO SALUTARE DEI. De Incarnatione, 3a q. 1 et seq. De
Christi conversatione, 3a q. 40.o[mnia].

Over the succeeding centuries, liturgical indexes of the
Summa were printed in various forms by a variety of publishers.
We will here only attempt to give a partial list. In 1652, another
edition of the Summa was published at Paris with the 1617 de
38
Thomas Aquinas, Summae theologicae . . . tertia pars (Paris: Dionysii de la Noüe,
1617), https://books.google.com/books?id=XpxiAjoMzB0C&d.

476

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

la Noüe index.39 In 1663, a new edition of the Summa with a
liturgical index and a separate edition of indexes for the Summa
were published by different publishers at Lyon, each following
the 1617 model.40 In 1702, a Summa with a liturgical index was
printed at Lyon. 41 In 1773, a liturgical index with additional
texts for the weekdays of Lent appeared at Rome.42 In 1797, the
1617 de la Noüe index without Lenten weekdays appeared at
Madrid.43
In 1860, Jacques Paul Migne (1800-1875) included the
liturgical index in his Summa theologiae published at Paris. 44
Migne’s edition for the most part reproduces the 1617 selection
of texts, but also provides readings for selected ferial days of
Lent, while not providing the full selection offered by the 1773
edition.45 In 1873, the Vivès edition of Thomas’s Opera omnia
included the liturgical index in the final volume of the
Summa.46 In this edition, the editor observes that the liturgical
index might be fruitfully used in conjunction with the scriptural
index also offered in the volume.47 The Vivès edition follows
the Migne edition in offering texts for selected Lenten
39
Thomas Aquinas, Summae theologicae. . . tertia pars (Paris: Sebastianum Cramoisy
& Gabrielem Cramoisy, 1652), https://books.google.com/books?id=Bi7teeiXRYgC.
40
Thomas Aquinas, Tertia pars summae theologicae (Lyon: Ioan. Girin & Francisci
Comba, 1663), https://books.google.com/books?id=d6AVAxyqRl0C. Indices omnes in
D. Thomae Summam theologicam (Lyon: Viduae Petri Bailly et Petri Bailly, 1663),
https://books.google.com/books?id=Bs3OAKPh7Z4C.
41
Thomas Aquinas, Supplementi tertiae partis summae theologicae (Lyon: Anisson &
Pousuel, 1702), https://books.google.com/books?id=1010jmXDdkQC.
42
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Rome, 1773), https://books.google.com
/books?id=E5MJAEhnhrcC.
43
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Madrid: Josephi Doblado, 1797), https://
books.google.com/books?id=bAl4r1rqmzkC.
44
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Paris: Migne, 1860), https://
books.google.com/books?id=n0O3qISVVtAC.
45
While Migne’s selected ferial days do not convey the same material as the related
ferial days in the 1773 index, they are related to the 1773 index in some ways. For
instance, the Migne edition repeats the material offered for the Gospel pericope of
Matthew 25 that is found in the 1773 edition for All Souls Day.
46
Thomas Aquinas, Supplementum tertiae partis (Paris: Ludovicum Vivès, 1873),
https://books.google.com/books?id=rl0-AAAAYAAJ.
47
Ibid., 667.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

477

weekdays.48 In 1887, an edition published at Rome presenting
the Leonine text in a smaller format included a liturgical index
on the model of the 1617 edition that omitted the selected
Lenten ferial days.49 Likewise, an 1891 edition printed at Turin
by Marietti omitted the Lenten texts.50
The liturgical index continued to appear in the twentieth
century. In 1932, Marietti reprinted their 1891 index with the
same material and pagination. 51 In 1948, an English-language
adaptation of the liturgical index appeared in the edition of the
Summa published by Benziger Brothers in New York. This
edition maintained the now-traditional text of the index for the
Sundays of the year, slightly adapting the mode of presentation
of the texts and omitting the feast days.52 Finally, as late as 1965
the third edition of the Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos Summa
theologiae included a liturgical index on the model of the 1617
edition.53
IV. THEOLOGICAL EXEGESIS OF THE EPISTLE FOR THE
NATIVITY OF CHRIST IN THE 1617 INDEX
In the 1617 liturgical index, the earliest version arranged
according to the Roman lectionary, selections from the Summa
48
Even after the promulgation of a new Mass formula for the Immaculate
Conception by Pius IX on September 25, 1863, which replaced the Genealogy of
Matthew (Matt 1:1-16) pericope found in earlier sources with a pericope drawn from
Luke’s account of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-28), the Vivès edition merely reprinted
the selections for the Matthew Gospel pericope rather than providing readings for the
Luke pericope. Subsequent versions of the liturgical index likewise neglected to update
this section. For an edition of the Missale Romanum printed at Vienna in 1862
containing the pre-1863 formulary on pp. 300-301 in addition to the 1863 formulary in
a section of “Missae propriae recentiores pro archdioecesi Viennesi” added at the end of
the volume, see https://books.google.com/books?id=wfq2iarsgXAC.
49
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Rome: Senatus, 1886-87), 6:352-86.
50
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Turin: Marietti, 1891), 6:389-429.
51
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica (Turin: Marietti, 1932), 6:389-429.
52
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, First complete American edition (New York:
Benziger Brothers, 1948), 3:3725-49.
53
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,
1961-65), 5:918-55.

478

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

theologiae are provided for the Mass at Dawn, with the
pericopes of Titus 3:4-7 and Luke 11:1-14.54 I will now offer a
more in-depth consideration of the Summa passages proposed
for the Titus reading.
Table 5 — 1617 Liturgical Index: The Nativity of Christ
In die Nativitatis Christi
Epist. Tit. 2 [sic]55
APPARUIT BENIGNITAS ET HUMANITAS. De infinita Dei bonitate, 1a, q. 6 et 3a
qu. 1a art. 2.
NON EX OPERIBUS QUAE FECIMUS NOS. An ergo homo non possit mereri vitam
aeternam, 2-2ae, q. 114, 3, o[mnia].
SED SECUNDUM MISERICORDIAM SUAM. De Dei misericordia, 1a, q. 21.
Quomodo vita aeterna fit gratia sive misericordia, 1-2ae, q. 114.3.2m.
Quomodo nascamur omnes filii irae et peccato obnoxii, 2-2ae, quaestion.
81.1 et 3.
PER LAVACRUM REGENERATIONIS. Cur Christus voluerit dare hominibus
gratiam susceptione sacramentorum, 3a q. 62.o[mnia].
Quomodo baptismus dicatur lavacrum regerationis, 3a quaest. 66.1.1m. et
5.c.

For the first verse of the pericope, Titus 3:4, the index highlights the words “the goodness and kindness appeared.” The
index points to two passages from Thomas which suggest the
infinite goodness of God: question 6 of the Prima pars, and
question 1, article 1 of the Tertia pars. The index suggests that
all of the articles from the earlier question are worth considering for the subject at hand. Question 6 of the Prima pars
addresses four questions: (1) Whether goodness belongs to
God? (2) Whether God is the supreme good? (3) Whether he
alone is essentially good? (4) Whether all things are good by the
divine goodness? None of these articles refer to Christ specifically but describe the goodness of God and of the Trinity. The
54

Thomas Aquinas, Summae theologicae . . . tertia pars (Paris: Dionysii de la Noüe,
1617), https://books.google.com/books?id=XpxiAjoMzB0C&pg=RA14-PA10. The
indices in this edition are unpaginated.
55
The incorrect labelling of the Titus reading as chapter 2 rather than chapter 3 is
repeated in some later printings of the index, including the 1652 Paris edition (p. 486)
and the 1663 Lyon edition (unpaginated). See notes 38 and 39 above for further
bibliographical details.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

479

Index seems to put them forward as a way of emphasizing that
in the Incarnation we encounter not only the humanity of Jesus
Christ, but divine goodness itself.
The compilers of the Index recognize that preaching on the
Incarnation need not focus only on the themes discussed in
Thomas’s treatment of the Incarnation but should contextualize
the goodness of the Incarnation within God’s eternal goodness.
To effectively proclaim the goodness of Christ, it will be helpful
for the preacher to understand the broader questions brought
up in the articles of question 6 of the Prima pars: God is the
supreme good, the only being that is good essentially and not by
participation, whereas all other things that are good are good by
participation in divine goodness. In this context, the preacher
will be able to use more effectively the material provided by the
editors from the more strictly Christological Tertia pars. In this
case, the editors highlight not an entire question but a specific
article: “Whether it was fitting that God should become incarnate?” The editors have chosen a text that perfectly dovetails
with the consideration of God’s goodness in general by focusing
on the Incarnation as a communication of God’s goodness to
creatures:
But the very nature of God is goodness, as is clear from Dionysius (Div. Nom.
i). Hence, what belongs to the essence of goodness befits God. But it belongs
to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others, as is plain from
Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv). Hence it belongs to the essence of the highest good
to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and this is
brought about chiefly by “His so joining created nature to Himself that one
Person is made up of these three—the Word, a soul and flesh,” as Augustine
says (De Trin. xiii). Hence it is manifest that it was fitting that God should
become incarnate.56

After emphasizing the diffusiveness of God’s goodness as the
central element of the fittingness of the Incarnation, the editors
next turn their attention to Titus 3:5. Passages from the Summa
are provided for three sets of words from the same verse: (1)
“not from works that we have done,” (2) “but according to his
56

STh III, q. 1, a. 1.

480

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

mercy,” and (3) “through the bath of regeneration.” In the first
case, the editors focus the preacher’s attention on question 114,
article 3 of the Prima secundae, which distinguishes between
condign merit and congruous merit in the context of treating
the question of whether a man in grace can merit eternal life
condignly. Notably, Thomas does not appeal to Titus 3:5 in this
article, although he makes use of the words ex operibus iustitiae
from Titus 3:5 elsewhere in passages discussing predestination
(STh I, q. 23, a. 5, s.c.) and the question of whether any merits
preceded the Incarnation (STh III, q. 2, a. 11, s.c.), the latter of
which might be especially relevant for a preacher preparing a
homily for Christmas day. This is a reminder that the liturgical
index does not function simply as an index of scriptural
citations. In fact, in the Index primus of the 1617 Summa,
which lists places where Thomas cites various scriptural verses,
the editors provide three passages in which Thomas uses Titus
3:5 (STh I-II, q. 98, a. 4; STh III, q. 2, a. 11; and STh III, q. 24,
a. 3).57 This suggests that the editors of the liturgical index may
have expected it to be used in conjunction with the scriptural
index provided in the same volume in order to find a broader
range of relevant preaching material. On the other hand, some
entries in the liturgical index do make direct connections
between scriptural verses read in the lectionary and verses cited
in the Summa. For instance, in addition to being cited in the
liturgical entry for Christmas, question 114, article 3 of the
Prima secundae appears in the 1617 liturgical index for the
57

In contrast to the liturgical Index quintus, which was substantially expanded and
modified in later editions, the original 1569 Plantin Summa edition of the scriptural
Index primus provides identical references for Titus 3:5 to those found in the 1617
Summa. A 1948 index of scriptural verses cited by Thomas includes a fuller range of
references to Titus 3:5 in the Summa: STh I, q. 23, a. 5, s.c.; STh III, q. 2, a. 11, s.c.;
STh III, q. 62, a. 1; STh III, q. 65, a. 1; STh III, q. 69, a. 4, s.c.; STh III, q. 84, a. 10, ad
1. See Indices auctoritatum et rerum occurentium in Summa theologiae et Summa contra
gentiles et in annexis commentariis Thomae de Vio Caietani et Francisci de Sylvestris
Ferrariensis item in praefationibus, notulis atque appendicibus editorum id est indices in
integros tomos IV-XIV cura et studio fratrum praedicatorum, Sancti Thomae Aquinatis
Doctoris Angelici opera omnia iussu edita Leonis XIII P.M. 16 (Rome: Apud Sedem
Commisionis Leoninae, 1948), p. 126.

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

481

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, where it is linked to the
lectionary reading Romans 8:18-23.58 In this case, the editors of
the liturgical index are likely inspired by Thomas’s use of
Romans 8:18 in the first objection of the article, although they
specify that the entire article is relevant for the occasion. In
addition to its appearance in the liturgical index, the same
article is also cited in the Index quartus of the 1617 Summa, in
which the editors provide “clear and firm refutations of the
principle dogmas which are asserted today by heretics.”59 In the
Index quartus, the article is listed under the heading Opera bona
esse meritoria vitae aeternae (good works are meritorious of
eternal life). The multiple appearances of this article in the various indexes of the 1617 Summa show that the editors provided
multiple pathways by which readers might be referred to this
passage from Thomas, depending on whether they were
searching for references based on scriptural citations, liturgical
readings, or the relevance of Thomistic teaching to contemporary controversies between Catholics and Protestants.
In the second case (“but according to his mercy”), the editors
expound God’s mercy by proposing three different texts. First,
they put forward question 21 of the Prima pars, which contains
four articles treating the justice and mercy of God. Next, the
editors make a reference to a specific reply to an objection, that
is, the reply to the second objection in question 114, article 3 of
the Prima secundae, which they summarize with the words
“How eternal life is grace or mercy.” This passage, which had
already been referenced with respect to the possibility of
meriting eternal life, now invites the preacher to consider again
the question of merit and eternal life in connection with the
58
“Dominica 4a post Pentecost. Epist. Rom. 8. Existimo quod non sint condignae
passiones.] An ergo opera iustorum non sint meritoria vitae aeternae, I-IIe. quaest.
114.3.o[mnia]. De magnitudine gloriae, supra in Evang. Dominicae 2e post Pentecost.
De patientia, 2-2e q. 136.”
59
“Index quartus, in Summam S. Thomae indicans claram et solidam refutationem
praecipuorum dogmatum quae hodie ab haereticis asseruntur, plurimum in hac
postrema editione locupletatus.” Like the liturgical Index quintus, the Index quartus in
the 1617 Summa is considerably expanded in comparison with the earliest version of
the Index quartus found in the 1569 Plantin Summa discussed above.

482

INNOCENT SMITH, O.P.

consideration of God’s mercy. Finally, the editors call attention
to articles 1 and 3 of question 81 of the Prima secundae, with
the gloss “How we are all born as children of wrath and liable
to sin.” These articles discuss the transmission of original sin
from our first parent to all those born by human generation. It
is interesting to note that while the Index does not by any
means shy away from a consideration of original sin, it situates
it after a prior consideration of God’s goodness and mercy.
The Index concludes its presentation of the Titus pericope
with two passages for “through the bath of regeneration.” First,
the index proposes question 62 of the Tertia pars, which gives a
general consideration of the sacraments as instrumental efficient
causes of grace. Next, the index points to two texts from
question 66 of the Tertia pars: the replay to objection 1 in
article 1, and the body of article 5. Each of these texts is proposed in order to focus the attention of the preacher on baptism
as a regenerating washing, in order to explicate the text of the
pericope. For the editors of the Index, then, the Epistle for
Christmas is not merely an isolated chance to speak about the
birth of Christ, but a source for assisting the preacher to
connect the mystery of Christ’s Incarnation with a broad set of
considerations including God’s goodness, God’s mercy, and the
sacramental system instituted by God for the regeneration of
human beings.
CONCLUSION
Although they have been ignored in scholarly literature on
the reception of the theology of Thomas Aquinas, liturgical
indexes to the Summa theologiae were an innovative and widely
available tool that aided preachers to draw on the thought of
Thomas in the preparation of homilies. Further analysis is
needed to understand fully the interrelationships of the various
versions of the index as well the extent to which they were used
by preachers throughout the centuries. Nevertheless, the
continuous appearance from the sixteenth through the twentieth century of Thomistic liturgical indexes adapted to various

LITURGICAL PREACHING AND THE SUMMA

483

lectionary systems and presenting various ranges of texts
indicates that publishers took great care to make these tools
available to preachers. While no versions of the Thomistic
liturgical index have yet been developed for the three-year
lectionary promulgated after the Second Vatican Council, it is
significant that the Homiletic Directory published in 2014 by
the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the
Sacraments presents a similar type of index that pairs texts from
the Catechism of the Catholic Church with the three-year
lectionary.60 In addition to their value for understanding the historical reception of the thought of Thomas in pastoral contexts,
liturgical indexes should be given further consideration as a
resource for the renewal of preaching in the con-temporary
Church, so that preachers may ever more fruitfully carry out
their duty of explaining “the mysteries of the faith and the
norms of Christian life . . . from the sacred text during the
course of the liturgical year.”61

60

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, “Homiletic Directory,” https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents
/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20140629_direttorio-omiletico_en.html. As the Homiletic Directory
notes in §158, some editions of the Roman Catechism published after the Council of
Trent “included a Praxis Catechismi which divided the contents of the Roman
Catechism according to the Gospels for the Sundays of the year.” For an analysis of the
index presented in the Homiletic Directory, see Mirosław Chmielewski, “Catechetical
Dimension of the Homily against the Background of the Homiletic Directory: Selected
Aspects,” Roczniki teologiczne 64 (2017): 151-67.
61
Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §52; cf. Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 767
§1.

BOOK REVIEWS
The True Christian Life: Thomistic Reflections on Divinization, Prudence,
Religion, and Prayer. By AMBROISE GARDEIL, O.P. Translated by
MATTHEW K. MINERD. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2022. Pp. xxvii + 289. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-08132-3453-3.
Ambroise Gardeil was an enormously influential Thomist theologian, active
in the first part of the twentieth century, who largely disappeared from the
theological map after Vatican II. This English edition of The True Christian Life
is an effort to contribute to the “retrieval of Gardeil,” as Matthew Levering
explains in the Foreword to the volume, not by setting Gardeil in opposition to
Vatican II, but rather by reading his work “in light of the whole Catholic
tradition and in light of our biblical faith” (xvii). As a work of retrieval—of
genuine ressourcement—this volume admirably succeeds. Gardeil is shown to
be a careful and insightful commentator on St. Thomas, wonderfully opening
up for the reader an insightful and grace-filled account of the divine life and its
attendant virtues.
The reader, however, is presented with three layers of Introduction (a foreword, a preface, and an introduction) before getting to Gardeil’s own writing.
Matthew Levering’s illuminating description of Gardeil’s theological contribution in the Foreword outlines his thought from other published works (not
the volume in hand), while Matthew Minerd’s Preface very helpfully opens up
Gardeil’s thought as expressed in the three articles in this volume. A long
Introduction then follows, written by Gardeil’s nephew and fellow Dominican,
Henri-Dominique Gardeil, that accompanied the original publication of this
work in 1935. The goal of this Introduction is to place the three articles of the
present volume within the larger project that Gardeil outlined but never
completed (the analytical outline of that larger program is included as an
appendix).
With this threefold orientation in hand, the reader is ready to engage what
are really three distinct “articles” of varying length. The first article, “The
Fundamental Idea of the Christian Life,” presents a brilliant, compact account
of God’s grand design for us: our divinization and transformation into Christ
through the indwelling of the Trinity. Framed by a quotation from Leo the
Great, “Recognize, O Christian, your dignity,” Gardeil sets out to identify “a
correct idea of this life, going all the way to its foundations” (50). He is
485

486

BOOK REVIEWS

convinced that many Christians have only a partial understanding of the
Christian life, and so do “not live knowingly” (51). Gardeil entertains three
possible candidates for a true idea of the Christian life—the self-serving idea,
the superior form of moral conduct, and the religious idea—but finds each of
them falling well short of the mark. Instead, he proposes what he considers to
be the true and full idea of the Christian life: “The originality of our Christian
lives is built upon the idea of a life shared with God, bound together in
friendship and nourished on a gracious communication in the secrets of the
divine life” (57). Such a life does not focus on externals but “flows out as from
a wellspring . . . all the way to eternal life. Our God is no longer outside but,
rather, is within us” (59).
Gardeil does not hold back when describing the excellence of this life of God
in us (and us in God). He claims boldly that “the Christian life is the divine
life—I mean the life that God Himself lives—communicated to man, adapted
to his faculties, and finally, vitally lived by him” (59-60). This is a high, exalted
view of the Christian life that Gardeil believes is available to all believers. He
recognizes that this divine life as lived by us occurs in what he calls “two
degrees,” by which he means (1) the fullness of this divine life in the blessed life
of the age to come, and (2) life here in this age that is still on the way, the life
of the wayfarer. It is noteworthy that Gardeil begins his account with the blessed
life, because for him this defines the true goal that we enter into in part even
now. Gardeil offers an exalted view of what divinized life will look like in its
completion, expressed in bold language that seems to echo the bolder claims of
Maximus the Confessor. In the blessed life of the age to come, the faithful will
have their intellects “divinized, deiformed” (63). Then Gardeil offers this
remarkable summary: “Plunged into God, both by the root of his divinized
being and by the terminus of his activity, as well as by the very act that unites
his power to its terminus, the blessed person, on his creaturely level, quite
literally lives the entire life of God” (64).
Gardeil rejects the commonplace view that the life of the wayfarer is “just an
earthly life in its present tenor,” with the divine life only coming into play in
the age to come. Instead, he maintains that “the Christian life is eternal life
already begun. From here-below, it is a divine life” (65). This divine life is
certainly adapted to our condition as wayfarers, but despite the real limitations
of our present condition, God gives us the divine energy to love him truly in
this life. Graced with the theological virtues, we begin to live this divine life
even now. Following the patristic dictum, Gardeil recognizes that “grace does
not make us into God” (73). Nonetheless, through grace we become divinized
and deiform even in this life. By presenting this full-bodied understanding of
divinization, Gardeil not only closely follows the path of St. Thomas but he
reflects and expands the teaching of the Greek and Latin Fathers. In sum, this
short article on our divinization is a theological gem. It also displays the falsity
of the view that the doctrine of deification was at best an exotic flower in the
Western theological tradition. Here we find at the heart of Thomism a finely

BOOK REVIEWS

487

tuned and exalted account of divinization—the effective indwelling of the
Trinity in the believer—as the true “idea” of the Christian life.
In the second article—“Our Personal and Supernatural Self-Government”—
Gardeil sets out to show the wisdom of God in giving to us an internal governing
principle that brings order out of internal chaos and enables us to recognize and
choose the particular good in each situation. Gardeil presents supernatural
prudence, “infused into our reason by the Holy Spirit” (81), as a moral virtue
that “establishes a synergistic coordination of all our efforts on behalf of the
good” (84). Many Christians shy away from this virtue, he believes, and take
refuge in “a simplified line of conduct, abandoning themselves to the general
inspirations of God’s love” (88). He thinks we should not accept “this defeat”
but instead should grasp the gift by which God enables us to govern ourselves
through his gift of infused prudence. For Gardeil, this prudence “is a tactician
of the first order” (88) and makes us capable of “onsite adaptation” that no
manual of cases (casuistry) can match (89).
Standing back from his topic, Gardeil sees in St. Thomas “two divine
governments” that are meant to work in tandem. One is supernatural prudence
by which we are active in self-government; the other is government by the Holy
Spirit through the gifts of the Spirit—and here we are passive, yielding to the
work of the Spirit’s gifts and promptings (97). Both of these proceed from
charity and should work together in a balanced harmony. The remainder of the
article is occupied with the particular acts of supernatural prudence
(deliberation, judgment, realization), and with the results of the operation of
this virtue. The end result of this divinely given self-government, for Gardeil, is
growth of the divine life in us and greater configuration to the image of Jesus
Christ (144).
The third and final article (and by far the longest), “Our Personal and
Supernatural Self-Education by the Virtue of Religion,” is an explanation and
defense of the virtue of religion according to St. Thomas. The main problem
Gardeil addresses here is the tendency to dismiss the virtue of religion as
something primitive, and “to reabsorb the whole of religion into the divine life
and the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit” (147). His aim, then,
is to display the properly moral character of this virtue and its value as a debt
of justice owed to God. To this end, he contends that “religion” as a virtue is
“the indispensable auxiliary for the theological virtues and for the gifts of the
Holy Spirit in the realization of holiness” (148). This is a significant claim, and
he makes a persuasive case that the virtue of religion remains an essential
auxiliary for our attainment of holiness. Given that we live in an age that has
largely jettisoned any sense of what we owe to God, the recovery of this virtue
is probably more needed in our time that it was when this work was written.
Gardeil undertakes an in-depth study of this virtue, showing it to be a
properly moral virtue that renders a debt of justice to God, and that
preeminently gives rise to worship (161). It may seem more pious to attribute

488

BOOK REVIEWS

all our relating to God to love (charity), but Gardeil insists that something is
lost in the full range of our relationship with God when the fundamental debt
of justice is cast aside. He acknowledges that the moral virtues are governed by
the theological virtues and serve their greater good, but he maintains that the
virtue of religion preserves its own competency and importance in the service
of our love toward God: “The virtue of religion relates our acts, works, and
goods to God whereas the theological virtues embrace God himself, through
thought and love—this is the difference between them” (174).
To conclude his commentary on the virtue of religion, Gardeil gives a
detailed account—general and particular—of the two auxiliary virtues most
closely related to the virtue of religion, namely, devotion and prayer. Here we
see something of the traditional Scholastic approach, breaking down these
virtues into their parts, activities, results, and so on. There is a great wealth of
insight found in Gardeil’s treatment here.
If there is a critique to be made of how Gardeil presents the supernatural
virtues (theological and moral), it is the tendency to present them—and their
beautiful interconnection—in an almost utopian way, as if we were already
living a life of glory. Here is his summary of the virtuous man: “How beautiful
he is, our just man, thus balanced and unified by the integrated impulse of his
manifold tendencies toward the good inspired in him by charity and developed
in him by prudence. What an admirable sight! What a divine splendor!” Gardeil
suggests that before such a man, we like Peter would like to “pitch our tents
upon this Tabor” (140). Gardeil himself seems aware of this tendency toward
exaggeration, and asks the reader, “Are we dreaming?” (142). He defends this
transfigured vision of the virtuous man by recourse to the biographies of the
saints who exemplify these virtues. Perhaps this is true in some cases, but the
majority of saints’ biographies typically show a great deal more struggle and
inward tumult than Gardeil tends to present. And the autobiographies of the
saints seem always to display, not so much a glorious transfigured life on Mount
Tabor, but ongoing inward struggle in the pursuit of holiness. This leads to a
further “absence” in his treatment of the spiritual life and the governing virtues:
there is no mention of Satan or the reality of spiritual warfare in his account of
the inner man and the struggle to attain a life of virtue. Given how prominent
the spiritual battle against the devil is in much traditional teaching on holiness
(and in the lives of the saints), one wonders why it does not have a place in the
account Gardeil offers for how prudence governs the inner life of the Christian.
Nevertheless, The True Christian Life is replete with wisdom, insight, and truths
that need recovery and retrieval in our own time. We should be grateful to those
who labored to make this excellent work available to the English-speaking
world.
DANIEL A. KEATING
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

BOOK REVIEWS

489

Glory of the Logos in the Flesh: Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. By
MICHAEL MARIA WALDSTEIN. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2021. Pp.
xiii + 883. $45.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-932589-76-4.
Michael Waldstein is presently Professor of New Testament at Franciscan
University in Steubenville, Ohio. A scholar with wide-ranging interests in
Scripture and theology, he might be best known for his definitive English
translation of Saint John Paul II’s catecheses that have become known as the
Theology of the Body (TOB). That work was published in 2006 under the title
Man and Woman He Created Them. The present volume, he tells his readers, is
“a more developed version of the introduction to my translation of TOB” (1 n.
1). And more developed it certainly is, covering much of the same ground but
in a text that is over six times longer than the already lengthy introduction to
Man and Woman.
When Karol Wojtyła was unexpectedly elevated to the Chair of Peter in 1978
after the very short ministry of John Paul I, a debate broke out in the scholarly
world. The debate was over whether the Polish prelate and academic could be
better described as a phenomenologist or a Thomist, and both camps put
forward pointed arguments for their claim. Waldstein clearly has a dog in this
fight. He locates Wojtyła/John Paul II squarely in the Aristotelian Thomist
tradition. It was from the Angelic Doctor and his more experiential and mystical
appropriation by the Mystical Doctor, John of the Cross, that Wojtyła received
his intellectual formation and lifelong trajectory as a thinker. His later
engagement with Kant and Scheler provided some further enrichment of that
already settled foundation—nothing more.
Waldstein divides the book into three sections. The first deals with the
“debate about the breadth of reason” in the Western intellectual tradition,
contrasting the pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness through reason (Logos)
in classical Greek philosophy and Christian theology with the instrumentalization of reason in the pursuit of technical power since the scientific revolution
in the West. The second section deals more directly with Karol Wojtyła/John
Paul II’s conception of the breadth of reason in his prepapal work in philosophy
and theology and in the TOB itself. Each of these first two sections opens with
an initial chapter which provides the point of departure for what follows and
then is further subdivided into three critical chapters and three constructive
chapters. The critical chapters consider the narrowing of reason’s scope through
the scientific revolution and its impact on modern philosophy exemplified in
the work of people like Descartes, Kant, and Scheler. The constructive chapters
contrast this with an examination of reason (Logos) in Plato, Aristotle, and in
patristic and medieval Christian theology, and the way Wojtyła/John Paul II uses
this expansive realist understanding of reason in his own work. Waldstein likens
these two major sections to concentric circles delimiting the wider and more
proximate intellectual context of the TOB. A third and final section offers

490

BOOK REVIEWS

readers a “map” of the TOB itself in the form of a summary with the addition
of John Paul II’s own headings from the original Polish text (unearthed through
arduous archival work). This, Waldstein believes, helps dispel the false impression of endless repetition or lack of argument that even some scholars carry
away from their reading of the catecheses.
The first and largest of the concentric circles deals with the scope of reason
in Western thought. Waldstein takes as his point of departure the controversy
over contraception surrounding the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae.
He sees the bitter opposition to the document as generated by a widespread
acceptance of the scientific reduction of reason to technological power used to
subjugate nature understood mechanistically, which had become dominant in
the West. The result is the irrelevance of nature as a moral category enshrined
in the “naturalistic fallacy” which divorces the “ought” of moral obligation from
the “is” of being. Conversely, it is the understanding of nature being ordered to
specific ends that enables the encyclical and the TOB which develops Pope Paul
VI’s reasoning more fully, to see conjugal love as inseparably unitive and
procreative or “unitively procreative” (59). As Waldstein repeatedly affirms
(e.g., 410, 522), nature and person must be understood together rather than
dichotomized.
The critical section of part 1 (chaps. 2-4) offers a fascinating genealogy for
the now dominant scientific reason. Waldstein offers a sympathetic reading of
Luther, highlighting the similarity of his nuptial hermeneutic with that of John
Paul II but noting that this is ultimately subverted by the Reformer’s reliance on
Ockham’s nominalism and voluntarism, which see divine and human causality
as competitive and thus can find no space for love in the human response to
grace. He continues with an examination of the reduction of reason to power
in modern science and the resultant enthronement of mechanics and
displacement of reason and virtue as the privileged forms of human knowledge.
He then traces this trajectory through Catholic phenomenological personalists
prior to Wojtyła, such as Dietrich von Hildebrand and Herbert Doms. In spite
of the former’s defense of the person against collectivism and materialism and
his vociferous support of Humanae Vitae, Hildebrand (and Doms even more
so) participates in the “hollowing of nature” (199) ushered in by the scientific
revolution. Love and procreation are only extrinsically related rather than
inseparably united.
The constructive section of part 1 (chaps. 5-7) seems to go farthest afield
from the center of Waldstein’s project. By way of contrast to the narrowing of
reason in the modern scientific paradigm, Waldstein offers a lengthy dive into
the concept of Logos developed by Socrates in Plato’s Republic, showing that
love formed by reason is open to all being and ultimately open to the infinite.
This is followed by an examination of nature in Aristotle’s Physics demonstrating its fundamental intelligibility and ordering to the good. The final
chapter takes on De Koninck’s critique of modern personalism. After surveying
the notion of the common good in patristic theology, Thomas Aquinas, and
John Paul II, Waldstein is able to show that, rightly understood, these goods are

BOOK REVIEWS

491

not competitive: the good of the person is ordered to and perfected in the
common good both now and eschatologically.
Moving closer to the center of the project, part 2 considers the breadth of
reason in John Paul II. The point of departure here is Wojtyła’s book on the
reception of the Second Vatican Council, Sources of Renewal. The council, says
Waldstein, is “the center around which his thought came to revolve” (347).
Waldstein vociferously disagrees with Buttigione’s judgment that Wojtyła sees
the heart of the council’s teaching in the freedom and rights of conscience. For
him, this smacks of Kant’s autonomous individualism. Instead, “Wojtyła points
to Trinitarian communion as the true heart of the Council” (373). This leads
directly into the critical section (chaps. 2-4). In his critical period, Kant proffers
an anti-Trinitarian personalism of individual autonomy which casts sexual
relations as a “human rights violation” not fully overcome even in marriage
(406). Scheler’s phenomenology, reacting against Kant, at the same time,
mirrors Kant in making the individual person the ultimate value—even to the
point of self-deification. He thus “rejects gift, dependence, and sonship as
radically as Kant does” (472). Both divorce moral judgment and action from
the reality of the world. Waldstein then offers a close reading of Wojtyła’s
Habilitation thesis on Scheler which has not yet been translated into English.
Waldstein cites Wojtyła’s own conclusion that a Christian theologian “who
makes use of phenomenological experience in his work, cannot be a
Phenomenologist” (505). Waldstein helpfully notes that this “applies to
Phenomenology as understood by Husserl and Scheler in the degree that they
develop a philosophy of essences detached from real being” (ibid.).
The constructive section of part 2 (chaps. 5-7) deals more directly with
Wojtyła/John Paul II. Waldstein offers a lengthy and clear analysis of Wojtyła’s
philosophical opus Person and Act, contrasting its ideas with those of Kant and
Scheler, while underscoring their congruence with Aquinas. Turning to
Wojtyła’s early work in theology, Waldstein demonstrates decisively that the
Doctor of Fontiveros is indeed a formative source (fons) for the intellectual
career of the Polish thinker. From the great Spanish mystic, Wojtyła derived his
characteristic foci on the unique subjectivity of the person grasped through the
lived experience of faith and the centrality of Trinitarian communion which
became the “two pillars of Wojtyła’s theological vision” that would deeply
inform the TOB (560). Waldstein then turns to a potential and actual objection
to John Paul II’s claim in the TOB that: “Man becomes the image of God . . .
in the act of communion” (595, citing TOB 9:3). This idea, the objection holds,
had already been considered and rejected by Augustine and Aquinas in favor of
what Waldstein calls “the analogy of the word.” Against this objection,
Waldstein marshals three interrelated arguments. First, the analogy of the word
“is an account of the Church’s faith from natural reason and not itself part of
the faith” (639). Second, the analogy of mutual love “is not a philosophical

492

BOOK REVIEWS

argument but directly revealed” (650). And third, the two analogies are best
understood as complementary.
The third part of the book offers a “map” of the TOB. That is, it offers a
comparatively short summary of John Paul II’s catecheses. Though less than
one-fifth of the length of the catecheses themselves, this map still runs close to
one hundred pages of fairly dense summary. Those already familiar with the
TOB will find the summary clear and useful, especially with the headings added
from the original Polish text that do bring the structure and argument into
clearer view. Those looking for a simple “Cliff Notes” style summary or an
easily digestible overview may be disappointed.
A volume of this length and scope is bound to be uneven at times in quality
and argument, and Waldstein’s tome is no exception. In spite of commendable
efforts to cross-reference ideas to make the various essays better cohere, there
are disjuncts. At times he overstates positions in one place only to qualify or
walk them back in another. For example, in places he dichotomizes Kant and
Wojtyła: “He rejects Kant’s thesis that the human person is an end and replaces
it with the thesis that the human person has or should have ends” (310). Yet
later he will acknowledge Wojtyła’s critical appropriation of Kant’s personalism
even while exploding his autonomous individualism from within (556). Arguing
against Ana Maria Tymieniecka’s effort to airbrush Wojtyła’s Thomistic
metaphysics of the person out of the English translation of The Acting Person,
he minimizes Wojtyła’s debt to Scheler (510-11) yet elsewhere concedes his
indebtedness to him for the account of the lived experience of “self-dominion”
(455) or phenomenology as “openness to receive what is given” (469). At times
the analysis takes on a kind of free-association feel as Waldstein glides through
texts, genres, and authors without indicating to his reader where he is going or
why. Some chapters end rather abruptly with little or no conclusion. Many
readers might wish for a more developed argumentative structure to weave the
material together, even though this would add to the book’s already massive
size.
Nevertheless, the breadth of Waldstein’s reading matches that of his scope
and subject matter. He moves easily from Scripture to classical mythology to
texts from literature, philosophy, and theology. This impressive breadth is
matched by a skill set that enables him to treat individual texts with care and
precision in a remarkable variety of original languages. And the payoff of this
impressive undertaking by such a gifted scholar is some genuinely striking
insights, such as the positioning of Wojtyła’s Thomistic personalism as a
virtuous mean between Kant’s formalism and Scheler’s emotionalism, holding
together the uniqueness of the personal acting subject with objective moral
truth. Rightly understood, conscience bridges the gap between is and ought,
transforming “the experience of the theoretical truth about the good into the
practical judgment” (546). The thrust of Waldstein’s argument to claim
Wojtyła/John Paul II as a Thomist (though one enriched by personalist and
phenomenological insights) is a well-demonstrated and a genuine contribution
to the scholarly literature.

BOOK REVIEWS

493

Scholars and advanced students will greatly benefit from the treasury of
knowledge and depth of insight in this volume. Its value as a research tool is
greatly enhanced by generous indices. Both as a commentary to stand alongside
Waldstein’s masterful English translation of the TOB, and as a contribution to
the theological discussion on the nature of reason, this volume is well worth
reading.
JOHN S. GRABOWSKI
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Mind and World in Aristotle’s “De Anima.” By SEAN KELSEY. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xii + 181 (hardback). ISBN 9781-108-83291-5.
In Sean Kelsey’s book, Aristotle asks the question, “what is it about the Mind
that makes it such as to know the World,” and “the nub of [Aristotle’s] answer
to it is that in a way Mind is World—in his language, ‘psuchē in a way is all
beings’” (1, quoting De anima 3.8.431b21; translations of Aristotle are by
Kelsey unless otherwise indicated). This might suggest that Aristotle is a
precursor of Bishop Berkeley, but Kelsey adds as clarification that by “in a way”
Aristotle means “potentially” (dunamei) and by “all beings” Aristotle intends
“the forms of all beings” (1-3). Kelsey finds the key to unlocking Aristotle’s
meaning in the following lines: “The result is that psuchē is just like the hand:
indeed, for the hand is tool of tools, and intelligence (nous) form of forms, and
sensibility (aisthētikē) form of sensibilia” (De anima 3.8.432a1-3). Kelsey’s
entire book is in essence an extended exegesis of this hand/mind analogy.
The book has three parts. Part 1 (“Questions”) sets the stage. Chapter 1
(“Objectives”) explicates Aristotle’s question: “by being what does it belong
naturally to psuchē to know all beings?” Chapter 2 (“Problems”) considers
whether knowledge for Aristotle is “like by like” and a kind of “alteration” in
such a way that psuchē can successfully discriminate objects and arrive at the
truth. Chapter 3 (“Solutions”) addresses these problems by analyzing De anima
2.5, which, though it is ostensibly concerned with sensibility, also has import
for intelligence. Part 2 (“Angles”) focuses on the two main ideas involved in the
“admittedly enigmatic” hand/mind analogy. Kelsey argues that a “form of
forms” means something that makes its objects forms, “i.e. makes them
intelligible,” and that “that form is intelligence itself.” He remarks that this
seems to imply “that every intelligible being is intelligent and that every

494

BOOK REVIEWS

perceptible being sentient—which is simply absurd” (67). In order to make
sense of this implication Kelsey examines in chapter 4 (“Affinities”) in what
sense a faculty of awareness is “like” its object. In chapter 5 (“Measures”) he
argues that “measures for knowing objects of some genus are prior to—enter
into the very idea of—certain particular forms of objects of that genus” (19-20).
Part 3 (“Proposals”) employs the ideas of affinities and measures to interpret
Aristotle’s theory of sensibility and intelligence. In chapter 6 (“Sensibility”)
Kelsey argues that sensibility is “the ‘standard’ in relation to which perceptible
qualities are the particular sorts of quality they are” (21). In chapter 7
(“Intelligibility”) he explicates Aristotle’s identity thesis as the claim that an
intelligible object is the same as the activity of understanding it. And in chapter
8 (“Intelligence”) he explains the special sense in which intelligence is a kind of
“measure.” The activity of intelligence consists in making its objects intelligible
by separating them from matter. The clarity and distinctness of intelligent
activity “are (as it were) the very form of its objects,” that is, that in which the
intelligibility of its objects consists (22). This leads Kelsey to a controversial
conclusion. In a way Aristotle agrees with Protagoras that man is the measure
of all things, but with a special qualification: “except not just any man, but Man
himself, and particular men only, if and so far as they come up to the mark set
by their nature” (23). Thus, Aristotle endorses a form of anthropocentric species
relativism in contrast to the individual relativism of Protagoras. On Kelsey’s
interpretation “for Aristotle, there is a kind of priority—the priority of measure
to measured—of sensibility and intelligence to perceptible and intelligible
beings” (159). Hence, Aristotle is “an idealist of sorts about intelligible beings”
since he makes essences, insofar as they are intelligible in fulfillment, “ideas, i.e.
activities or operations of intelligence” (164).
Before examining Kelsey’s central argument for this controversial
conclusion, I should remark that his book is in many ways a well-wrought
scholarly monograph. The thesis is clearly stated, and the main argument is
summarized in both the introduction and conclusion with major steps signposted throughout. All claims are supported with textual evidence, and obvious
objections are anticipated and answered. Kelsey refers to important secondary
literature in different languages (albeit with only a single fleeting reference to
Aquinas). It is meticulously edited, with no errors I could detect. On the other
hand, the book would not serve as a general introduction to Aristotle’s
psychology, because it is narrowly concerned with how perception and intellect
are related to their objects, and does not show how this issue of epistemology
is related to the overall aim of De anima: namely, to study all the attributes of
psuchē (De anima 1.1402a7-10). The presentation is often technical with subtle
distinctions and close interpretations of difficult texts. This is a work for the
cognoscenti, not for beginners or the faint of heart.
The linchpin of Kelsey’s interpretation is the claim that mind is the “form”
of its objects in the sense of being their measure, although he admits (100) that
Aristotle uses the vocabulary of “measure” (metrein) only once in De anima
(3.11.434a9—and this in a special context involving deliberative imagination).

BOOK REVIEWS

495

Moreover, although Aristotle in the Metaphysics calls knowledge and
perception the “measure” of things, he adds, “They are measured rather than
measure other things” (Metaphys. 10.1.1053b31-3 [my translation]; cf.
Metaphys. 10.6.1057a9-12). Since, however, “mind is measure” is Kelsey’s
fundamental claim, it will be the focus of the rest of this review.
The concept of measure applies primarily in the category of quantity, where
a measure is a unit whereby particular quantities can be counted; for example,
a foot-length is used to measure someone’s height (e.g., five feet). Kelsey
emphasizes that “measures of quantity are conceptually prior to the particular
quantities they measure” (90); for example, a foot is prior to a particular fivefoot length. (But is the foot-length prior in this way to the particular length
without qualification or only qua five-foot length?) The concept of measure
applies analogically to other categories including quality (Metaphys.
10.1.1052b18-25, b4-6). Aristotle thinks of perceptible qualities as lying on
spectra bounded by contrary extremes: for example, colors fall between black
and white, and there is a middle point on the spectrum such that colors are dark
or light depending on whether they fall on the side closer to black or the side
closer to white. Finally, different species of color are defined in terms of ratios
that are defined by reference to the mean. For example, if one color is 3:2 and
another is 4:3, we can infer that both are dark but the former is darker, that is,
farther from the mean than the latter. Kelsey persuasively argues that in this
way the mean serves as a sort of measure by which we can compare colors with
each other (20).
But Aristotle also states that “sensibility is as it were a sort of mean between
contraries in perceptible objects” (De anima 2.11.424a4-5). Kelsey understands
this to imply that “sensibility is a standard in relation to which particular
perceptible qualities are the sorts of qualities they are: for example, dark or
light, cold or hot, low or high, and so on” (113). In other words, sensibility is
“‘the measure’ of these qualities, inasmuch as the character of those qualities—
where they lie on a spectrum—is defined in terms of their relation to it” (116).
Kelsey admits that this interpretation “is tantamount to a kind of
Protagoreanism,” but qualifies this as a general claim about human sensibility
(117-18). Kelsey takes his interpretation to be “clinched” by Meteorology
4.4.382a18-20 (117): “it is clear that we have defined (hōrikamen) hard and
soft absolutely in relation to touch, using touch as a mean.” A problem with this
is that the term Kelsey translates “defined” can also be translated “determined,”
so that we determine (i.e., discern) whether objects are darker or lighter (or
harder or softer, and so forth) by reference to our perceptible mean state. On
this view, instead of claiming that human sensibility is a standard by which
perceptible qualities are defined, Aristotle may intend the more cautious claim
that it is a reliable indicator of perceptible qualities. Kelsey does not provide a
convincing case that Aristotle means the former rather than the latter.

496

BOOK REVIEWS

A more general problem for Kelsey’s anthropocentric interpretation (118) is
Aristotle’s recognition that in some cases other animals have a more accurate
sensibility than humans: for example, “we [humans] do not employ this sense
[i.e. smell] with precision, on the contrary we are worse off than many animals.
For human beings smell poorly, and they perceive no odor unless it is painful
or pleasant, which indicates that our sense-organ does not operate precisely”
(De anima 2.9.421a9-13 [my translation]). This passage weighs against the
thesis that that perceptible qualities are generally defined in relation to human
sensibility.
Kelsey takes a similar approach to intelligence (nous). “I take for granted that
intelligence functions as a kind of rule (kanōn) or ‘measure,’ a kind of standard
‘with which primarily’ we discern the essence of things” (145; cf. 123). This is
a bit of a stretch, since intelligence does not involve any obvious counterpart to
the unit of quantity or even the mean state of quality (cf. 152). In a rather surprising move, Kelsey offers a Cartesian interpretation: “what makes intelligence
the ‘measure’ of its object is the clarity and distinction which belongs to them
both” (153). Intelligence makes essences intelligible by “separating them from
matter” (132), and the measure of its success is whether the outcome is
“(relative to us) clear and distinct,” which Kelsey admits is a “subjective”
standard (154). Kelsey conjoins this point with Aristotle’s identity thesis that
the activity of understanding is identical with its object (137-39; cf. Metaphys.
9.9.1075a4-5; 130, 137; cf. De anima 3.4.430a2-5). As Kelsey sums up,
Aristotle argues “that there is nothing intelligible that is not without matter, that
there is nothing without matter that is not being understood, and that there is
nothing being understood that is not the same as the activity of understanding
it” (140-41). But this entails that an intelligible object is also an activity of
intelligence. Hence, “everything intelligible is also intelligent” in the sense that
it “attains its own most perfect realization in activities of intelligence” (131,
141, in connection with De anima 3.4.430a3-7). Given the measure thesis and
the identity thesis, Kelsey concludes, “the clarity and distinctness which is the
‘form’ of [intelligent] activity is likewise (in a way) the ‘form of its object,”
which, he remarks, is tantamount to a form of idealism (164).
Although this is not the place for extensive criticism of Kelsey’s interpretation, two problems deserve brief mention. First, he claims that intelligible
objects are activities of intelligence because “to be intelligible (noēton) is to be
being understood (nooumenon)” (163). However, it is more probable that
noēton means ‘a possible object of understanding’ whereas nooumenon means
‘an actual object of understanding’. The latter is evidently the meaning of
Metaphys. 12.7.1072b22-3: “The understanding (nous) understands itself in
virtue of participating in the object of understanding (noēton); for it becomes
an object of understanding in making contact and understanding [this object],
so that understanding and object of understanding are the same. That which is
capable of receiving the object of understanding (noēton), i.e., substance, is
understanding (nous), and it is active when it possesses it.” This passage
indicates that both the understanding and the object of understanding may be

BOOK REVIEWS

497

in a potential or actual state, and it is when both are actual that they become
the same: “the act of understanding (noēsis) is one with the [actual] object of
understanding (nooumenon)” (Metaphys. 12.9.1075a4-5 [my translations]).
This presents a problem for Kelsey’s general claim that to be intelligible is to be
an activity of intelligence. Second, Aristotle’s frequent remark that we should
start from what is “poorly knowable” (phaulōs gnōston) but knowable to us and
proceed to the knowledge of what is knowable “in itself by nature” implies that
objects are intelligible in an objective sense alien to Kelsey’s interpretation (see
Metaphys. 7.3.1029b3-11; this is quoted by Kelsey on page 156 but an
important part is missing).
To sum up, Kelsey stakes out an original interpretation and defends it
forcefully. Even those who are not convinced will gain valuable insights,
especially concerning Aristotle’s concept of measure and his emphasis on
intelligence as active process rather a mere passive reception of forms. It is a
must read for any scholar of Aristotle’s epistemology.
FRED D. MILLER, JR.
West Virginia University
Morgantown, West Virginia

The Christian Structure of Politics: On the “De regno” of Thomas Aquinas. By
WILLIAM MCCORMICK, S.J. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2022. Pp. xiii + 272. $75.00 (hardback); $34.95
(paperback). ISBN 978-0-8132-3447-2.
The five chapters of William McCormick’s The Christian Structure of Politics
are divided into two parts. The first four are devoted to a detailed, nuanced,
and sympathetic commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s De regno; the last one
outlines an argument for how the doctrine of De regno is particularly apt for
approaching the problem of Christianity and politics within modern liberal
regimes.
Before addressing each of these parts of the book directly, however, it may
be helpful to review briefly the story of De regno, for it has a complicated history
that has resulted in a complicated legacy of commentary as well. The view of
the work that has emerged in modern times and now seems to be relatively
stable is that Thomas intended the work for one of the Cypriot kings but left it
unfinished. His reasons for abandoning the work are not clear, but one
possibility is that the king to whom Thomas intended to address the work died.
In any case, De regno was then extended and “completed” by Ptolemy of Lucca

498

BOOK REVIEWS

as De regimine principum. Often students of Thomas were unaware of the
compositional history of De regimine principum, which of course led to
considerable confusion, especially since De regno continued to circulate
independently of De regimine principum. To the relief of all, De regno has now
been rescued from De regimine principum, and a critical edition of De regno
was published in 1979 by Dondaine, who relied particularly on the 1949
historical spadework of Eschmann. McCormick treats only De regno in The
Christian Structure of Politics, but De regimine principum and Ptolemy’s
political thought generally have been studied in our time especially by James
Blythe.
McCormick freely admits that he owes much to the historical inquiries of
Eschmann and Dondaine, but they—especially Eschmann—tended to interpret
De regno as a collection of fragments and emphasized its unfinished qualities.
McCormick reads it much more generously than his predecessors, tending to
downplay what might appear to some as lacunae, and indeed often interpreting
gaps and silences in the text as implicit provocations for further inquiry.
McCormick thereby treats De regno as far as possible as a relatively complete
statement of Thomas’s mind on those questions of politics raised within it. As a
result, McCormick’s readers are able to learn much more about Christianity and
political governance than they might have from a consideration of the earlier
scholarship alone. In addition to improving our understanding of De regno
itself, McCormick’s approach enables us to engage better the enduring
questions of the relationship between Christianity and politics. Indeed,
McCormick is able to use De regno to shed light upon the fundamental political
questions of our age.
The four chapters that form McCormick’s commentary on De regno are
divided into four topics that correspond to four sets of chapters from Thomas’s
text. The first chapter treats Thomas’s discussion of Aristotelian political naturalism as it is expounded in book 1, chapters 1-2; the second chapter turns to
Thomas’s treatment of the “Augustinian” criticisms of fallen politics, which is
found in De regno 1.3-6; the third chapter takes up the topic of earthly and
eternal rewards of kingship as they are explained in 1.7-12; and the fourth chapter is aptly titled “The Politics of Revelation” and considers De regno 2.1-8.
Not the least of the many advantages of this commentary section of the
volume is McCormick’s attentiveness to the genre of De regno, namely, the
speculum principum—“a mirror of princes” or “a mirror for princes.” Specula
were not treatises or disputed questions or summae but a genre distinct unto
themselves. Students of politics today are mostly familiar with this genre
through The Prince of Machiavelli, but Machiavelli’s speculum is an antispeculum, as it were, aiming at how to make a prince appropriately “bad,”
whereas Thomas’s is a traditional speculum aiming at how to make a prince
“good.” By confronting seriously De regno’s genre, McCormick is able to keep
in front of his readers the fact that the teaching of the text is, at least in part,
aimed at a king who is presumably not a theoretical scholar but a practical
person concerned primarily with mundane matters such as war, and who,

BOOK REVIEWS

499

perhaps, is even tempted to tyranny. McCormick could have stated more clearly
that specula also had a second intended audience, consisting of more sophisticated readers. That is to say, specula were written not only for the profit of
the king to whom they were addressed, but also, since they circulated publicly,
to political advisors, gentlemen, and even scholars. Just as Machiavelli’s
audience was not only Lorenzo, even so Thomas’s audience was not only the
king of Cyprus.
In McCormick’s interpretation, the first two sections of De regno—
corresponding to the first two chapters of The Christian Structure of Politics—
are to be read against each other or even understood as intentionally in tension
with each other. That is, the approving view of political life present in Aristotle’s
teaching on political naturalism (1.1-2) is interpreted as contrasting sharply with
Augustine’s generally unapproving view of political life as rooted in the
fallenness of human nature (1.3-6). In approaching this tension, McCormick
states that he is especially influenced by the work of Nederman, who suggested
that medieval Christian political thought was largely dominated by the tension
between Aristotle and Augustine, and that often Cicero was used as a sort of
mediating thinker between the two extremes. One opportunity that McCormick
may have missed by proceeding in this way is that of making a more thorough
investigation of an argument from Avicenna in the opening chapter of De regno.
Avicenna’s argument—used without attribution by Thomas—is a strange one to
include, not only because De regno is dedicated to a king of Cyprus but also
because Avicenna appeals in the argument to human need or mere necessity;
indeed, the argument presumably goes back to the derisive criticism of the “city
of sows” of book 2 of Plato’s Republic. McCormick also does not acknowledge
Albertus Magnus as an important source for Thomas in this part of De regno.
To be sure, Albert’s large commentary on the Politics of Aristotle is thought to
have been completed independently of Thomas’s incomplete commentary on
the same work, but Thomas was very much involved in the production of
Albert’s enormous and valuable commentary on the Ethics. Of course, one
cannot cover everything in a single book, but one does not want to permit the
contrast of Aristotle and Augustine, which is now so common in our understanding of medieval Christian political thought that McCormick eventually
refers to it as “cliché” (221, 231), to cause one to overlook other potentially
important and intriguing sources.
These issues, however, will hardly prevent McCormick’s four chapters of
commentary on De regno from becoming the new standard of interpretation for
the text, for McCormick reads more carefully and far more thoughtfully than
other commentators on the work. The objections to his commentary
presumably will be that he does not exhibit much concern for the fact that the
text is incomplete, and that he does not make an extensive attempt to read De
regno against the Summa theologiae. He can answer the latter concern easily
enough by saying that he is not trying to offer an interpretation of the whole of

500

BOOK REVIEWS

Thomas’s political teachings, but only those treated in De regno. He might
respond to the first concern by pointing out that among Thomas’s unfinished
works are his Super Boetium De Trinitate, his commentaries on Aristotle’s
Politics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption, and Meteorology, and
even his Summa theologiae; if we were to give only minimal attention to such
works because Thomas left them unfinished, we would be demoting a great deal
of Thomas’s writings indeed. More important than such rejoinders, however,
will be the insight of the old saying that “the proof of the pudding is in the
tasting,” for McCormick is able, by refusing to fret too much about the
incompleteness and alleged inadequacies of De regno, to offer more profound
insights and comments on the text than his fellow commentators.
More controversial will be the second goal of The Christian Structure of
Politics, namely, McCormick’s attempt to use the principles derived from De
regno as a means of approaching contemporary debates surrounding the
relationship between the Church and the modern political regimes of the West.
McCormick is very ambitious in attempting to address this second goal of his
book within the confines of a single chapter. His strategy is divided into four
steps. First, he abstracts the essential teachings that have emerged from his
careful reading of De regno, all of which pertain to the question of the
relationship between the spiritual and the temporal. The most fundamental of
these seems to be “Gelasian dualism,” which is how McCormick refers to
Thomas’s teaching that the spiritual and temporal ends of humanity are distinct
but that the spiritual end is higher than the temporal. After he has extracted and
explicated Thomas’s teaching on the spiritual and the temporal ends, Second,
McCormick clarifies Thomas’s position by contrasting it with the positions of
John of Paris, who in effect denies the primacy of the spiritual, and of Giles of
Rome, who in effect denies the principle of dualism. Third, McCormick
borrows the distinction of Levy’s Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom
regarding the rationalist and pluralist tendencies within modern liberalism. In
Levy’s understanding, rationalism predominates in modern social contract
theories while pluralism is predominant within those regimes that accept and
indeed encourage the development of structures to stand between the
constitution and the people—including religious institutions such as the
Church. Finally, McCormick shows that, rather clearly, the Thomistic position
derived from De regno has little opportunity for engaging rationalist liberalism
but may find some opportunity for engaging with pluralist liberalism. He
accepts, however, that even with respect to the latter form of modern liberalism,
the room for engagement is surely bounded, for although Thomas’s Gelasian
dualism admits that there are two ends to be described in a teleological view of
human nature, it does not admit of an unlimited number. More importantly,
the highest end for the Christian is obviously the spiritual, but acknowledging
the supremacy of the spiritual goes further than even pluralist liberalism is
willing to go.
Thus, with respect to the second goal of The Christian Structure of Politics—
the achieving of some sort of rapprochement between Thomistic political

BOOK REVIEWS

501

thought and modern democratic liberalism—one notes in McCormick’s volume
the sort of hopes and longings one associates with Jacques Maritain or John
Courtney Murray. McCormick, however, is ultimately more sober or realistic
about such hopes being realized in our troubled age. Sounding something like
Plato, in the final pages of his volume McCormick appeals to “a spirituality of
politics” existing at least for now only in speeches and prayers, and not to a
regime that could actually come into being anytime soon.
DOUGLAS KRIES
Gonzaga University
Spokane, Washington

The Center Is Jesus Christ Himself: Essays on Revelation, Scripture and
Evangelization in Honor of Robert P. Imbelli. Edited by ANDREW
MESZAROS. Foreword by Cardinal TIMOTHY M. DOLAN. Preface by
Bishop JAMES MASSA. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2021. Pp. 352. $75.00 (hardback). ISBN 978-0-81323410-6.
Father Robert Imbelli wrote a December 2021 article in the Church Life
Journal entitled “Remembering and Misremembering Vatican II,” in which he
defended the irreplaceable role of Christ’s revelation for Catholic theology and
Christian life.
For if God does not truly reveal himself, there is no foundation for the
Church. It becomes only a human association and organization.
Furthermore, if God has not given himself definitively in Christ, there is
no basis for the liturgy. It becomes a merely human gathering, bereft of
transcendent reference.
Distinctive to Dei Verbum’s presentation of revelation is that it is
explicitly Christocentric. Though it celebrates God’s revelation in the
course of the history of the people of Israel, it confesses that God’s
revelation attains its fullness in the person of Jesus Christ. It is this
Christ-centered understanding of God’s revelation and promise that
permeates the documents of Vatican II—prominent not only in
Sacrosanctum Concilium and Lumen Gentium, but also in Gaudium et
Spes.

Written toward the end of his professional career, the above quotation
summarizes several decades of Imbelli’s scholarship and, most importantly for
this book, his teaching. Contrary to certain trends in progressive or dissenting

502

BOOK REVIEWS

Christian theology, Imbelli has held that God has revealed himself definitively
to humanity in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the human race. This truth is
the decisive characteristic of the Church’s identity as rearticulated by the Second
Vatican Council.
The present volume of essays edited by Andrew Meszaros as a Festschrift for
Imbelli presents a remarkable unity of focus on the necessarily Christocentric—
or “Christic” as is used throughout this volume—character of both revelation
and the new evangelization. This Christic dimension shapes the imaginative and
intellectual resources of the Catholic theological tradition in such a manner that
it must continue to return to the Lord Jesus or lose its center. It was Imbelli’s
early defense of the 2000 CDF document “Dominus Iesus” that gave concrete
public expression to the theological direction that would shape his remaining
years as a priest, professor, and theologian. This direction culminated in the
2014 publication of Rekindling the Christic Imagination: Theological
Meditations for the New Evangelization, a work frequently referenced among
the fifteen essays that make up this volume.
In his introduction to the present volume, Meszaros indicates that Imbelli
discerned a crisis in the Church over the eclipse of the center of the Christian
faith; in Imbelli’s words, “That center is Jesus Christ himself.” These words
provide the title and shape of the book. Meszaros identifies a second thread
uniting Imbelli’s theological writings and teachings, namely, what he terms “the
Christian demeanor with which he addresses that crisis.” These words not only
present a vision of Imbelli’s legacy but also serve as the guiding thread of the
volume itself: addressing the crisis in Catholic theology especially since Vatican
II by recovering the Christological unity of divine revelation and the Church’s
mission. I will offer a brief summary of each of the fifteen chapters that comprise the volume.
Meszaros’s opening chapter is the only chapter dedicated primarily to
Imbelli’s own work. He expands Imbelli’s insights in dialogue with Newman to
show how imagination shapes our overall view of the truth. Meszaros offers a
thorough treatment of Imbelli’s writings to demonstrate a consistent argument
for the reception of Vatican II. First, Meszaros shows how Imbelli presents
Vatican II as primarily presupposing revelation in Christ. Second, he shows how
the Church needs to facilitate the imagination to recover this same centrality of
Christ.
Jared Wicks, S.J., offers an extended summary and analysis of an early text
of Joseph Ratzinger entitled “The Will of God Regarding Human Beings,” a
text originally prepared for the committee on revelation at Vatican II. Wicks
carefully presents Ratzinger’s contribution to the conciliar argumentation surrounding what would eventually become Dei Verbum. In this reading, Ratzinger
situated revelation first within God, then in Christ, and then in us—as opposed
to beginning with our reasoning about the world. By employing Bonaventure’s
idea of reductio, a “leading back to,” Ratzinger presents revelation as moving
from God, in Christ, to us with the purpose of leading us in Christ back to God.

BOOK REVIEWS

503

Wicks’s chapter happily includes an English translation of Ratzinger’s brief
document.
Frederick Lawrence considers the interplay of the will and the intellect in the
reception of divine revelation. Beginning with the works of von Balthasar and
Rahner, Lawrence develops Lonergan’s presentation of faith—in part against
Imbelli’s suggestion that the later Lonergan falls into a voluntarist account, one
that loses its Christic center with truth-laden claims. As Lawrence presents
Lonergan’s insights over time, the later Lonergan has not set aside the truthvalue of Christ’s revelation in his switch to a more voluntarist (love first, value
first) account of faith. Lawrence develops some interesting observations about
the sin-impacted character of our feeble attempts at human knowing and thus
opts for a more passive and passionate reception of the darkness of faith via
love. While undoubtedly surrender and love are necessary for faith, this
reviewer wonders whether darkness, rather than the illumination and renewal
of our minds, is a sufficient image of faith.
Khaled Anatolios presents Irenaeus of Lyon as an early exemplar of the
Catholic integration of faith and reason as called for in Pope Benedict’s
Regensburg address. Against the Gnostics who upheld the nonsensical and
irrational character of God, Anatolios shows that Irenaeus argues that a proper
account of creation allows for God to be manifested through creation. In other
words, no creation, no revelation. In a memorable phrase, Anatolios writes,
“[Irenaeus] sees the Catholic doctrine of creation as an embracing of creation’s
testimony to its creator and the doctrine of the Incarnation as indicating the
creator’s testimony to his creation” (92). The Christian faith thus accords with
reason and elevates human reason to share in divine reason.
Thomas Guarino makes a convincing case that Vatican II and the new
evangelization presuppose Aquinas’s doctrine of participation and analogy. He
argues that the conciliar Christocentricism is presented in a careful and nuanced
manner so that Christ stands as the prime analogate in which certain other
realities participate. Priesthood, mediation, and holiness are principally realized
in Christ and then shared in by others. Engaging with some of Imbelli’s writings,
Guarino helpfully shows how recognizing the role of Aquinas’s doctrine of
analogy avoids the confusion often at work in descriptions of how other
religions “share” in Christ’s redemptive work. Such sharing is not a proper
analogy—as it is in the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the
baptized. Most importantly, any claims of participation in saving realities—
proper and otherwise—are only intelligible insofar as Christ remains the prime
analogate.
Gerard O’Collins, S.J., recovers the Christic imagination by deploying
Augustine’s claim that Christ was “beautiful in laying down his life” as a lens
through which to consider Christ in the New Testament. O’Collins shows, first,
how Jesus links his Last Supper to the coming banquet of the final kingdom;
second, how Christ carries out acts of kindness during his passion in Luke; and,

504

BOOK REVIEWS

finally, how in John Jesus births the Church from his side as God had earlier
birthed Israel (Deut 32:18; Isa 42:14). In so doing, O’Collins reminds the
reader that rekindling the Christic imagination requires rekindling the biblical
imagination.
Matthew Levering likewise turns to the biblical witness for theological
renewal. By choosing three less-prominent passages from the Gospel of
Matthew (3:11; 12:28; 12:32), Levering places patristic, medieval,
Reformation, and contemporary exegesis in conversation with one another.
Levering shows how Jesus’ unique relationship to the divine Spirit—“he will
baptize you with the Holy Spirit”—manifests his identity as the divine Son now
indwelling a human nature. Thus, there is what Levering calls a “Matthean
(proto-)Trinitarian Christology” (152). Rooted in the biblical revelation
faithfully handed on in the ecclesial tradition, such Christological truths are
necessary to serve the new evangelization.
Nathaniel Peters presents an instructive and illuminating account of the
twelfth-century Cistercian monk theologian Isaac of Stella. By means of detailed
analysis of Isaac’s understanding of Trinitarian theology, the mystical body of
Christ, and the Eucharist, Peters shows how Isaac’s monastic theology was
deeply intellectual and organized while also being shaped directly by the biblical
and liturgical mysteries. Peters draws particular attention to the way that Isaac
emphasized the Spirit’s role in the mystical body of Christ in the Church as part
of the Eucharistic mystery.
Christopher Ruddy contributes an excellent reflection on the centrality of
theo-centric liturgy for Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s theological project. At the
heart of this project is the contrast between the idolatry of self-worship
(communal and/or individual) and the true worship of the Creator. Christ thus
faithfully and truly worships God eternally in the Father-Son dialogue and
invites us to enter into the same. Ruddy highlights three themes that flow from
this God-centered and Christ-centered worship: God must have priority in
worship; worship is a gift to be received rather than a task; and beauty is to be
found amidst brokenness. Ruddy suggests how Imbelli took up this same
Ratzingerian thread.
Ryan Connors offers a solid presentation of the Christic character of Pope
John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor. Drawing upon the work of Servais Pinckaers
and others, Connors defends the Christological dimension of Aquinas’s
treatment of the moral life and shows how this provides the background to
Veritatis Splendor’s focus on following Christ. Connors moreover shows how
the recovery of a virtue-based approach to morality allows for a sense of
excellence in the moral life as well as how the Christian moral life is not attained
by our own effort but received as a gift of Christ. Connors ends with a tribute
to Imbelli’s witness “to the centrality that Christ holds in the life of the Church”
(203).
Boyd Taylor Coolman writes a moving analysis of the role of compassion in
Hugh of St. Victor. He begins by noting the prevalence of refences to Christ’s
compassion (splangchna) in Paul and the Gospels. In Hugh, Coolman observes

BOOK REVIEWS

505

a bivalent character to affectivity: compassio for those in misery and
congratulatio for those in delight; or, in Paul’s exhortation, “Rejoice with those
who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). Interestingly, Hugh
shows how Christ enters into our suffering and also into our co-suffering so that
he might save us from both. Even more interestingly, Hugh shows how it is
congratulatio—or rejoicing—that most effectively overcomes our prideful and
envious egos since in rejoicing with those who rejoice we share in the other’s
good as our own and in our good as the other’s, especially as from God. The
recovery of the Christic imagination thus includes a recovery of our affections
in imitation of our incarnate Lord.
Brian Daley, S.J., masterfully summarizes and presents Augustine’s
instructions on preaching and evangelization in On Christian Doctrine/Teaching
and On Catechizing the Uninstructed. Daley focuses on how Augustine
consistently turns to the biblical story to show how God’s love and his incarnate
humility invites us to turn from pride and so through Christ’s humility to love
God, neighbor, and ourselves in God. Thus, Daley recovers, first, Christ as the
revelation of God’s love and, second, the ecclesial community as revealed in the
Bible as the proper receptor and practitioner of the Christological revelation.
In this way, Augustine places the whole Christ at the heart of biblical
interpretation and preaching.
Andrew Salzmann argues that a proper Christocentricism does not collapse
into a Christomonism—as some have alleged—but allows for a united and
distinctive role of the Holy Spirit. In support of this position, Salzmann offers
an intriguing investigation of Josiah Royce, the subject of Imbelli’s dissertation
at Yale. Salzmann suggests that Royce presents a voluntarist account of human
agency but one that avoids individualism by rooting the structure of the will
within the community. Jesus Christ thus inaugurates the perfect community, the
beloved community, in which the Holy Spirit unites all in love, or what Royce
terms “loyalty.” Beginning with this basic insight, Salzmann considers the
biblical witness of the Spirit’s anointing of Jesus as received within the ecclesial
tradition as a model for the way in which Spirit draws us into communion with
the Son and with the Father. This reviewer questions the adequacy of Royce’s
voluntarism to sustain the Christic character of the tradition that Imbelli
recovered more explicitly from Ratzinger and others in the tradition.
Angela Franks integrates Aquinas’s theology of the Trinitarian missions into
von Balthasar’s theology of mission both of Christ and the Christian. Franks
addresses how the new evangelization is needed to address the peculiar
deformities of what she describes as “liquid modernity” and resulting “liquid
selves.” To do so, Franks recovers both a philosophical and a theological
dimension to personhood. Against those who criticize von Balthasar as lacking
an account of personhood outside of Christ, Franks argues that he holds, first,
that personhood remains part of all human beings according to Boethius’s
famous definition and, second, that such personhood also is the fruit of our

506

BOOK REVIEWS

“yes” to God’s call in Christ and so to the reception of a new mission and a new
identity. Franks is surely correct to show that Christ alone offers us the fullness
of our personhood, mission, and identity. This reviewer wonders if there might
also be a natural or philosophical level to the moral response to the world that
needs to be recovered as well.
Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., in the final chapter, offers a penetrating
analysis of the creed of Chalcedon and its connection to evangelization. In
Weinandy’s brief yet erudite summary, Chalcedon teaches that “Jesus must be
truly the Son of God who truly exists as truly man” (303). Weinandy goes on to
show that this Christic and Trinitarian confession is what makes possible the
new evangelization. The new evangelization is nothing other than calling for
salvation in and through a personal relationship with Jesus and the resulting
Eucharistic ordering and communion, our new home and destiny.
The significance of this volume is that it shows the richness and fecundity of
a theological vision that begins in the uniqueness and universality of the lordship
of Jesus Christ. Fidelity to Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium does not
stunt theological scholarship but instead gives it a center that renders it possible,
and that center is Jesus Christ himself.
MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas. By FRAN O’ROURKE. Gainesville, Fla.: University
Press of Florida, 2022. Pp. 334 (hardback). $90.00. ISBN: 978-0-81306863-3.
Reflecting on the influence on artists of Jacques Maritain’s Thomistic
account of beauty, Yves Simon observed,
That an artist should be interested in scholasticism . . . and should use
the principles of this philosophy to understand and explain what is going
on in the vanguard of painting, music, and poetry in the twentieth
century, will remain one of the best surprises that ever confronted
historians of philosophy. (John Griffiths and Yves Simon, Jacques
Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures [New York: Magi Book, 1974],
5])

The friendships cultivated by Jacques and his wife Raissa with numerous writers
and artists, including Georges Rouault, Igor Stravinsky, and Jean Cocteau,
prompted many artists to be intrigued by Scholasticism. Perhaps no twentiethcentury artist was more of a student of Scholasticism than the Irish novelist

BOOK REVIEWS

507

James Joyce. From his Catholic education in Dublin through his own
independent reading of Aristotle and Aquinas, Joyce was imbued with
Scholasticism. The greatest of Joyce scholars, Richard Ellman, reports on a
conversation Joyce had with someone who had complained that Aquinas’s work
had nothing to do with them. To which Joyce responded peremptorily, “It has
everything to do with us” (44). Joyce is somewhat dismissive of modern
philosophers, especially in comparison to Aristotle, whom he calls the greatest
of philosophers. In many of his writings, from the early unfinished manuscript
Stephen Hero, through Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, right through the
hugely influential novel Ulysses, Joyce scatters references to Aquinas, often
going so far as to depict characters appealing to Aquinas in debates, sometimes
quoting him verbatim in Latin, or quarreling about how to interpret his texts.
The influence of Thomas Aquinas on Joyce was explored in Joyce and
Aquinas, a beautiful little book by the Jesuit William T. Noon (Yale University
Press, 1958). But Noon was not a philosopher; where he attends to big
questions in Aquinas’s texts, his focus is almost always theological. Moreover,
in his treatment of the sources of Joyce’s knowledge of Scholasticism, his work
is incomplete or even misleading. Fran O’Rourke’s new book, Joyce, Aristotle,
and Aquinas, remedies these shortcomings in Noon’s study. We know that Joyce
spent time during his stay in Paris writing out passages from Aristotle into a
notebook, what has come to be known as Joyce’s Early Commonplace Book. In
the last chapter, O’Rourke includes an annotated analysis of the quotations
from Aristotle that Joyce included in the Commonplace Book. O’Rourke goes
further in demonstrating how attentive Joyce was to, and in how many contexts
he had opportunities for, the study of Aristotle and Aquinas. Previous studies
have ignored the popularity of Thomistic philosophical handbooks, which
supplied not only explications of the texts and teachings of Aristotle and
Aquinas but also often compared them to modern philosophical alternatives.
O’Rourke’s mastery of the relevant sources—in the primary texts of Aristotle
and Aquinas; in the proximate, mediating texts available to Joyce; and in Joyce’s
own texts—render this a magisterial treatment, sensitive to both the obvious
and the subtle ways in which Aristotle and Aquinas surface in Joyce’s fiction. If
O’Rourke demonstrates that Joyce had greater access to Aristotle and Aquinas
than most previously have seen, he is also careful to point out the ways in which
Joyce misinterprets or departs from these sources.
The influence of Aquinas on Joyce is most evident from the famous
discussion of the nature of beauty in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
wherein the character Stephen Dedalus explicates the famous three marks of
the beautiful. While Noon and others hypothesize that Joyce had his knowledge
of beauty only through Maurice de Wulf’s Aesthetic Theory according to
Thomas Aquinas, O’Rourke shows that he likely learned of it from his
conversations with his Jesuit professor of Italian. Whatever the source, Joyce,
or at least his character Stephen, gives a peculiar twist to the marks of the

508

BOOK REVIEWS

beautiful, presenting them as stages in the knowledge of an object. Stephen says
we first apprehend an object as one thing, which he equates with the object’s
integritas; then we understand its composite structure, which is its consonantia
or proportio; finally, we apprehend the way the thing manifests its essence,
which is associated with claritas. Such an approach, as O’Rourke shows, is
foreign to the texts of Aquinas. Instead of stages of apprehension arrived at
through analysis, Aquinas supposes that the “intellect spontaneously recognizes
these qualities before analyzing them in detail” (186).
The peculiar approach to beauty in Portrait evinces Joyce’s fascination with
questions of knowledge and the identity of objects, especially personal identity.
One can find in his texts, particularly in Ulysses, a welter of modern positions,
from Locke’s reduction of identity to memory through Hume’s bundle theory
of the self to versions of Berkeley’s idealist thesis that “to be is to be perceived.”
The awareness of change haunts many of the characters. In Ulysses, the two
main characters are, once again, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, a secular
Jew, who is an outsider in Irish Catholic Dublin. At one point, Stephen muses
about his own identity: “Molecules all change. I am other I now.” But he is also
aware that a subject endures through the changes. Stephen states: “But I,
entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under unchanging forms”
(105). O’Rourke notes the similarity to Locke’s account of identity as rooted in
memory, but goes on to show that what differentiates the view is the addition
of the notion that the self exists “under unchanging forms,” as an entelechy, a
term that surfaces surprisingly often in Joyce (106). Indeed, Joyce’s
transcriptions in his Commonplace Book of passages from Aristotle come
predominantly from De anima. Particularly noteworthy here is Aristotle’s
statement on the soul as the first entelechy of naturally organic body. As much
as he is attentive to mutability and alteration, Stephen the character, and even
more so Joyce as author, are equally attentive to processes of growth and
development, for which the teleological language of soul is apt. Ellman
attributes to Joyce in Portrait the discovery of the gestation of the soul as a new
principle of order in modernist literature (99).
The richest philosophical sections of O’Rourke’s book concern the nature of
the soul and our knowledge of its existence. O’Rourke demonstrates the
presence in Joyce’s Ulysses of the most influential modern conceptions of
human knowledge and self-knowledge—from Locke to Berkeley and Hume.
These vie with an Aristotelian view. Coming up empty in the search for the soul
or self through an inspection of the contents of our consciousness, the modern
tradition repudiates knowledge of the soul, except as a kind of pure hypothesis:
Locke’s “I know not what” that underlies our conscious awareness and its
activities. As O’Rourke notes, for Aristotle and Aquinas, the human substance
is not known through an inspection of isolated sense data, the arena in which
Hume failed to find it. Instead, the soul is “observed in and through its
activities” (122). O’Rourke depicts Joyce’s characters as groping toward an
Aristotelian view but hampered in that quest by apparent unawareness of the

BOOK REVIEWS

509

distinction between accidental and substantial change and by an occasional error
in conflating potency with possibility.
On O’Rourke’s reading, the “enigma of self-identity . . . never ceases to
preoccupy” Joyce. With his literary deployment of stream of consciousness,
Joyce’s dramatic depiction of the self eagerly explores the complex subjective
conditions of our awareness, perhaps especially of our very sense of our own
identity. But Joyce’s vision does not lapse into a kind of idealism. Another
Aristotelian motif from De anima, namely that the soul is potentially all things,
is dear to Joyce. To borrow language from Charles Taylor, the self in Joyce’s
fiction is porous rather than buffered. Leopold Bloom, an outsider in Catholic
Dublin, is obsessed with the fragility of the self and sometimes inclined to a
Heraclitean view of the self. “Life is a stream,” he observes, “No-one is
anything” (73). Attending a funeral and channeling Dante, Bloom wonders to
himself: “how many! All these here once walked around Dublin.” Imagining the
dead speaking to the living, he muses, “As you are now so once were we.” He
speculates at one point, “What if we were all suddenly someone else” (108).
O’Rourke calls this a “manifest contradiction” and strictly speaking of course it
is (ibid.). But I take this to be a hyperbolic way of making a point that O’Rourke
himself makes. That we are potentially what others are now and our sense of
self is in part determined by how others see us, which is a way of underscoring
our inherently social nature.
If Stephen Dedalus, an aspiring writer, is in some obvious ways based on the
life of Joyce, Bloom is in other ways a stand-in for the novelist, perpetually
noticing affinities and coincidences between situations and characters. Like the
novelist, he is attentive to the “concrete richness of the ordinary” (199), to the
diverse dialects not just of different peoples but of individuals. Such discoveries
lead not to the dissolution of the self or to a radical incommensurability between
lives and characters. Joyce was aware of, and resistant to, certain elements of
modernity. As modern as his stories and his styles may be, Joyce resists what
one of his characters in Stephen Hero calls the “modern spirit” of “vivisection”
(17). Joyce seeks the universal in the particulars. Perhaps no other writer has
brought out the particularities of a single place (viz., the city of Dublin) better
than Joyce. Yet he insists that he could capture the whole of the human
condition, its universality, in that singular city.
Those who would reduce the self to an assemblage of sense data, memories,
and an underlying suppositum strip away the sense of the mystery of concrete
reality, particularly of the concrete reality of human persons. The general
principle that O’Rourke discerns in Joyce, that the “individuum est ineffabile”
(114), applies especially to persons. The mystery is also present in the strange
and surprising overlaps between characters and their storylines. Here O’Rourke
argues that the principle needed to appreciate Joyce’s literary predilections is
analogy, analogy of proportionality to be precise, which provides the novelist
with a way of discerning and depicting “similarity in difference and unity in

510

BOOK REVIEWS

diversity” (132). The principle of “analogical similarity enables the mind to
transcend duality and diversity, to perceive unity in bipolar tension”; through
analogy “opposites are not rescinded nor tension abandoned” but enabled to
display “mutual enrichment, allowing reciprocal comparisons and the exchange
of attributes” (161).
As O’Rourke astutely shows through careful analysis of a judiciously selected
set of passages from Joyce’s fiction, the philosophical thought of Aristotle and
Aquinas informs Joyce’s reflections on a wide array of topics, including
“authentic selfhood and authorial identity” (4). The poet W. B. Yeats once
remarked that “Joyce’s work incites to philosophy” (7). Yet that does not mean
that we should go to Joyce expecting extended philosophical arguments or that
what is of value in a literary work is its residue of philosophy. As O’Rourke
wisely notes, “a writer who overtly uses his medium to convey a philosophical
message will damage his art” (234). Too much emphasis on philosophy makes
for either bad literature or bad readings of literature. Joyce came of age as an
author in a period in which artistic and literary theory began to flourish, an era
in which theory seemed at least as important as the text or work of art itself.
Yet his accent on the mystery of concrete reality lends an anti-theoretical bent
to his writings. As he puts it in Finnegan’s Wake: “let us leave theories there and
return to here’s here” (109). That places Joyce comfortably within a broadly
Aristotelian approach to human action, one that had already been revived by
John Henry Newman, an important influence on Joyce, and that would soon
become a feature of an Anglo-American movement in ethics informed equally
by Aristotle and Wittgenstein.
THOMAS HIBBS
Baylor University
Waco, Texas

Infidels and Empires in a New World Order: Early Modern Spanish
Contributions to International Legal Thought. By DAVID M. LANTIGUA.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xiii + 374
(hardback). $110.00. ISBN: 978-1-108-49826-5.
David Lantigua’s book examines the contribution of sixteenth-century
Spanish—and specifically Dominican—thought to the development of
international law. His argument is that this contribution was fundamental and
has been insufficiently valued so far.
On the face it, this contention may appear strange because the central role
of the debate about the Indies at Valladolid between 1550 and 1551 has

BOOK REVIEWS

511

attracted a vast amount of scholarly interest. Furthermore, the Spanish writers
on both sides of the debate about Indian rights have been exhaustively
examined. But Lantigua’s claim is that there is more to be said from the
international-law perspective, as distinct from the historical. From the point of
view of those interested in the history of the Dominican order, their defense of
Indian rights was their finest hour: the role of Bartolomé de las Casas was
particularly important.
Lantigua’s claim steams straight into a problem because internationalrelations specialists and historians do not see this question in the same way. IR
practitioners give great importance to the concept of Westphalian sovereignty,
the notion of territorial state sovereignty which they imagine was set in stone
by the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, and which brought the Thirty Years’ War
to an end. Historians tend not to think in the same way. Lantigua does battle
with those who overvalue the Westphalian model, which can appear to be used
in anachronistic ways: arguing more from an historian’s point of view, he
performs a service by prioritizing the largely theologically based Spanish
writers.
This book draws on a very thorough knowledge of the secondary literature
and a secure employment of a large number of quotations from the primary
sources. For those reasons alone, it performs a very useful function for the
reader.
Lantigua divides his book into six chapters. The first is introductory and sets
out the research question he is pursuing by addressing relevant aspects of
medieval and early modern Catholic theological teaching and papal
pronouncements. He then considers the IR Westphalian interpretation. Details
are then given of the Valladolid debates and the role of the Amerindians in the
new world order opened up by the discovery (from the European point of view)
of the Americas.
Part 1 of the book is subdivided into three substantial chapters. The first is
entitled “Theocratic World Order and Religious Wars.” It takes a wide
perspective, bringing in the crusades and infidel rights. The claims of the papacy
as regards world order are seen in the context of the vast geographical
expansion of Spanish and Portuguese rule. Attention is given to the issues raised
by religious wars. The second chapter, “Spanish Dominicans and the ‘Affair of
the Indies’,” goes into detail about the theological debates concerning conquest,
infidel rights, restitution, world order, unjust war, and the ethics of
evangelization. In the third chapter, entitled “The Politics of Natural Law at
Valladolid, 1550-1551,” Lantigua examines these debates with, as one would
expect, particular reference to the views of Las Casas. What was remarkable
was that these state-sponsored debates under the auspices of Emperor Charles
V took place at all. The fundamental issue of the rights under natural law of the
Amerindians was at stake. The opposing views, making use of Aristotelian ideas
of natural slavery, were strongly put, but the decision was made in favor of the

512

BOOK REVIEWS

natural rights of the Indians, placing them on the same level as Spaniards, a
remarkable result for an early colonial enterprise. The question was, how much
difference did this make to the condition of the native peoples in practice?
Part 2 of the book consists of two chapters. The first, called “From Infidel
Rights to Savages: Empires of Commerce and Natural Rights,” looks at the
Protestant imperial enterprises, notably those of the English and the Dutch.
These were justified in ways totally different from those of Spain and Portugal.
Whereas the Iberian empires always had Christian evangelization as a
justification, partly through papal involvement, the Protestant empires thought
in terms of trade and land colonization. Lantigua examines Protestant natural
law theory as regards the question of Indian rights. Perhaps the most important
chapter is the final one, “The Scholastic Law of Nations, Native Occupation
and Human Solidarity.” This discusses in particular the role of the ius gentium
(law of peoples), especially in its relationship to natural law. Theological and
juristic aspects are considered, notably Las Casas’s reliance on fourteenthcentury commentators on the Roman law. This shows just how rich the
intellectual treasury of late medieval theological and juristic thought was as a
source for early modern ideas. The early seventeenth-century Protestant
theorists of international law, Grotius and Albericus Gentilis, used the works of
these medieval lawyers as a foundation for their thought. The whole concept of
international law had late medieval, Roman, and canon law roots.
Lantigua’s conclusion sums up his overall argument: that the sixteenthcentury Spanish sources were fundamental for the origins of international law.
Again, he stresses the difference between the Iberian evangelical aspect of the
justification of the colonial project, and the commercial and land settlement
arguments put forward by Protestants. The question of infidel rights, first
understood in connection with contact with Moslems in the Mediterranean,
became a central driver of the development of international law, against the
background of intensive discussion of the requirements of natural law.
So, how should one assess Lantigua’s contribution to scholarship? The
subject-matter and the sources are, in themselves, very well known. What is new
is the way in which the author addresses his thesis in terms of a confrontation
with IR interpretations of the past—in this case, the origins of international law.
It has become increasingly clear to IR specialists that they have been working
with anachronistic models based on Westphalia. William Bain, for instance, has
seen this clearly. Historians (including legal historians) have been increasingly
talking to IR practitioners. Historians who deal with the late Middle Ages see
all sorts of problems associated with the importation of the term “international”
to apply to their period. Properly speaking the category of international law is
at home in a world viewed as a collection of territorial states with horizontal
relations with one another—from the early seventeenth century, in short. The
terminological shift took place from the ius gentium to the ius inter gentes (the
law between peoples). Late medieval juristic thought regarding the ius
commune, the combined Roman and canon law, was concerned with the

BOOK REVIEWS

513

vertical relationships between territorially sovereign powers, whether kingdoms
or city-republics, and the universal powers of emperor or pope.
A word of warning should be issued at this point. Westphalian IR
interpretations tend to contrast the secular state-based international order with
an earlier one dominated by universal imperial and papal powers. It was
perfectly true that such universal claims remained in Roman law and canonist
scholarship, but they did not undermine the emergence of territorially sovereign
powers in reality. The pope himself had very little territorial power; the Holy
Roman Emperor, as such, also had very little. Charles V ruled by a variety of
titles. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century jurists coped with this problem by an
imaginative use of the de iure-de facto solution, as Lantigua knows. I would also
say that legal historians also tend to take papal claims at face value. Papal
pretensions remained on the books but were overtaken by history, as Pius V
found when he excommunicated Elizabeth I of England and declared her
deposed.
What strikes the reader of this book is that it is often written in a tortuous
way. It can be clear but it often is not. The author’s thought often has to be
teased out of his sentences (which is not to deny the importance of much that
he says). There are also errors of fact. These tend to occur when Lantigua strays
into the medieval period. On p. 35 he states that Gregory VII “hoped to liberate
Byzantium from the Turks.” When Gregory wrote, part of the Byzantine empire
had indeed fallen to the Seljuk Turks in the aftermath of the battle of Manzikert.
But Constantinople remained in Christian hands, as it would do till 1453.
Gregory did, however, want to bring aid to the Eastern Christians in what was,
arguably, the first call for crusade. More seriously, Lantigua makes much of the
crusades as an example of missionary war. Over the centuries, crusading
developed in a number of wide-ranging ways including, in some places and at
some times, a missionary aspect. But the original crusades in the period from
1095 to 1204 were not missionary wars. The crusaders were not trying to
convert anyone. They were seeking to reconquer lands that had once been
Christian. The Holy Land, in particular, was seen as having been made Christian
forever by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Crusades were, in
effect, wars of defense from the Western Christian point of view; from the
Moslem side, they were seen as wars of aggression justifying holy war in defense
of lands made Moslem forever by the early conquests of Islam. On a minimal
point, the last university position of Baldus was at Pavia, not Padua (90). More
seriously, it is not clear what the author means by referring to “the merely
conciliarist roots of modern ideas about sovereignty” (91).
This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in the origins of
international law and the complexities of the issues raised by the debates about
the Indies. It contains highly significant contributions to the development of
ideas of human rights. The brave and unflinching role of Spanish Dominican
friars in defending the natural rights of Indians, derived from the common

514

BOOK REVIEWS

humanity they shared with their European conquerors, shines through more
brightly than ever through Lantigua’s book.
JOSEPH CANNING
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom

Augustine on Memory. By KEVIN G. GROVE. Oxford Studies in Historical
Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. xi + 265. $99.00
(hardback). ISBN: 978-0-19-758721-8.
Over the past few decades, there has been a shift of focus in Augustinian
studies concerning some important themes in his thought. This shift concerns
the sources from which scholars engage with Augustine’s positions on various
topics. In addition to the over-studied masterpieces— namely, Confessiones, De
Trinitate, De civitate Dei—interest has increasingly shifted to his pastoral
works, such as his sermons and letters, as valid research sources for examining
his thought. Kevin Grove joins this trend, taking up the study of memory from
the perspective of Augustine’s preaching.
The book is composed of three parts. Part 1, comprising chapters 1 and 2,
tackles the question of the “Beginning of Memory.” In chapter 1, Grove focuses
on Augustine’s earliest treatises and letters. Here, Augustine uses memory
language to describe various aspects of mediation within the human person.
Grove demonstrates that memory is central to Augustine’s philosophical and
theological anthropology, rendering the human person intelligible amid the
pushes and pulls of body and soul, of changing knowledge and enduring
wisdom. He notes that even though Augustine’s earliest writings on memory are
not systematic and are varied in literary form, the importance of memory
increases as he progresses in those writings. Grove convincingly shows that
whatever Augustine may have gained from ancient philosophy on the concept
of memory, that never determines his use of it as mediating the unity of the
human person. Augustine’s most productive partner for thinking about the
anthropological mediation of memory is the salvific mediation of Christ (30).
From Grove’s reading of the Confessions, it emerges that Christ Mediator is the
one who can unite the scattered fragments of human life, who can bridge
memory and expectation in all who are pulled in opposite directions by
multifarious distractions. In a nutshell, Grove makes a strong case that, for
Augustine, memory as an anthropological mediator fails to make the self
coherent amid the competing realities it faces. In the Confessions, memory’s
failure was the failure of any sense of self. It was, however, a failure that led to
Christ the true Mediator, the successful salvific Mediator. Ultimately, the

BOOK REVIEWS

515

trajectory of this chapter forms a link between memory and Christ the
Mediator, while shifting the discussion of memoria from philosophy to
preaching, and from the self to the whole.
This is precisely the approach that Grove takes up in the second chapter,
where he begins with Augustine as preacher of the Whole Christ. Having
underlined the importance of the psalms in Augustine’s life from Cassiciacum
in 386 to his deathbed in 430, Grove contends that the development of the
story of Christ’s mediation is the story of a preacher learning to speak about
Christ and then in Christ. Worthy of mention are the considerations on
Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos 21. Analyzing this text, Grove posits that,
in assuming human flesh, Christ also assumed a human voice and a human
death. He spoke in human words so that human beings might speak in his. He
died a human death so that humans might die in him. Grove insists that
mediation remains ongoing even though Christ has risen from the dead and
ascended into heaven (75), and transfiguration is a new term for that ongoing
mediation. The Lukan narration of Paul’s conversion in Acts 9:4 plays an
important role in the articulation of the doctrine of the Whole Christ, a
communal and daily reality manifest in the Catholic Church. Within the context
of Christ as Mediator (Totus Christus), Grove arrives at the true function of
memory and shows how Idithun, “the leaper across,” becomes the figure
through which Augustine exercises his congregation in shared memorial ascent
to Christ.
In part 2, Grove introduces and treats “The Work of Memory.” It is here
that he explores the ongoing exercise of the Whole Christ, as practiced by
Augustine and his congregation. Chapter 3, “Learning to Leap,” presents the
daily, ongoing spiritual exercise and dynamic activity of the Whole Christ.
Leaping is a strenuous and ongoing activity that forms an identity. It causes
Idithun, “one who leaps,” to remember God, to continue leaping, even though
he falls and becomes troubled; to move within the private retreat of his mind in
order to gain freedom from distraction and the exterior turmoil of human
affairs (91). Leaping also involves a certain form of kenosis. Idithun’s leaping
out of himself into Christ allows him to discover the way of healing offered to
the self by means of the Whole Christ. While leaping concerns remembering the
works of the Lord, it also involves forgetting into Christ. Here, Grove uses Phil
3:12-14 to show that the body of Christ is always forgetting. Forgetting frees
memory from being overwhelmed by preoccupations in order to open up to the
expectation of Christ as End. Grove concludes chapter 3 by insisting that by
means of memory in Christ, Augustine the preacher challenges the scholarly
presentations of him as an elderly bishop and thinker whose optimism about
humanity darkens as he ages. Remembering and forgetting become the
optimistic possibility of enjoying life and prayer together.
Chapter 4 explores the “Work of Remembering” by showing that, for
Augustine, memory in the Whole Christ is not merely an occasional exercise but

516

BOOK REVIEWS

constitutes existence in the Whole Christ. Grove emphasizes that the passage
from memory as occasional exercise to remembering as a defining character of
Christian existence is a major advance in memory’s role (140). In the exercise
of memory in the Whole Christ, the mystery of self is disclosed by the Christic
memory of the whole. The promise of memory becomes the source of great
hope, but the pain of its not yet being fulfilled is the work of mourning and
groaning. Thus, the eschatological reach of memory is not only made possible
in Christ, but is made simultaneously into a painful memory of how that body
is still on the way to the place where its head has already gone. The work of
remembering is the work of Christian existence.
Chapter 5 focuses on the “Work of Forgetting.” Grove shows how forgetting
takes on a positive connotation, as it is meant to help pilgrims to keep striving
towards their end in Christ. To indicate to what extent the Whole Christ is able
to exercise this type of forgetting, Grove explores how memory has a certain
need for forgetting. Using the images of Paul as runner (Phil 3:13-14), Lot’s
wife, the story of Israel’s Exodus, and the metaphor of the aging eagle that sheds
part of its beak to be able to eat, Grove exposes the ideas of forgetting forward
and backward. Paul’s athleticism, he contends, becomes the key to forgetting as
work (147). The cases of Lot’s wife and Israel show that memories of sin entrap
individuals and communities who can be locked in a false paradigm of their
selfhood. That is why forgetting emerges as necessary for keeping Christian
existence oriented toward its goal and not allowing one to slip back into the
repetition of former cycles of sin. Grove rightly indicates that Augustine’s
understanding of forgetting does not efface temptations but allows for the
Whole Christ not to be haunted by past temptations. Forgetting is the ongoing
work of enabling the Whole Christ, with respect to individual vocation and
station, to continue the pilgrimage together.
The second part of the book closes with chapter 6, which focuses on the
“Work of Memory” as participation in Christ, the heart of Christian existence.
Grove presents four binaries, each of which emerges in some way as a source of
struggle for Augustine. These binaries—lyre and psaltery (below and above),
labor and rest, solitude and communion, and praising and groaning—are a way
for Augustine to expose the life of grace in Christ in concrete applicable ways
for his congregation. The ongoing works of remembering and forgetting helps
the members of Christ learn together how to live the contradictions of human
life not as the despair of distention, but as hopeful extension into the fullness
of grace (182).
The third part, on the “End of Memory,” comprises chapters 7 and 8. In
chapter 7, Grove explores the fruits of the work of memory by discussing its
intellectual consequences. He shows how it plays out in Augustine’s taking up
of memory’s telos in De Trinitate. Reflecting on “Transitus and Trinity,” Grove
contends that the work of memory, in the Whole Christ, bridges the
psychological triad of the inner person and the reformation of the imago Dei of
Trinitarian participation. He further contends that one cannot rely solely on De
Trinitate for a Christological grounding of Trinitarian contemplation, as that

BOOK REVIEWS

517

work leaves only partially answered how precisely Christological community
matters (190). Memory in De Trinitate, Grove suggests, is a fruit and
consequence of the work of memory in the Whole Christ. Ultimately, by
revealing the profound continuity that exists between Augustine’s preaching
and De Trinitate and his mature contemplation about Christian doctrine and
the work of memory, Grove shows that the body of Christ is not secondary to
Augustine’s Trinitarian theology but the necessary precondition for it (212).
In the final chapter, Grove explores the consequences of the work of memory
through the use of Psalm 50 in Augustine’s preaching and especially at the end
of his life, making the case that the likeliest psalm text Augustine had at his
bedside was Psalm 50. Grove contends that Possidius, working within the
narrow conventions of ancient genres of biography, fails to dig deeper into the
psalms and thus misses Augustine’s relationship with the very texts pasted on
his walls around his deathbed (214). His presentation of Augustine’s meditation
on his sinfulness by praying the penitential psalms seems to reinforce the
darkness of the latter’s worldview, often expressed through so-called
Augustinian pessimism. Grove has the merit of pinpointing that the work of
memory suggests that it is time to revisit this pessimistic account of Augustine’s
worldview. He brilliantly demonstrates that the work of memory prepared
Augustine to read the penitential psalms with a positive end for memory and
for himself. Grove examines remembering backward and forward to show that,
for Augustine, memory is configured less to memorization than it is to life, to
existence mediated by Christ at its communal fullness forever. Ultimately, the
work of remembering and of forgetting ends in becoming Christ together (226).
Grove uses the tax-collector of the Lukan parable and the woman caught in
adultery to show how the sinner confronted by his or her offense is delivered
by Christ’s abiding help.
This book successfully demonstrates how the work of memory played an
important role in Augustine’s preaching, especially when the holy bishop
instructed his congregants that the life of grace could only unfold within the
Whole Christ. Grove’s terse and lively style, which runs effortlessly through the
key dimensions of Augustine’s thought on memory, is a great asset. All the
book’s sections are well articulated and will be useful to a range of readers. The
overall outcome is refined and orderly. Grove’s work is mostly successful in
achieving its stated goal. He offers several well-researched and theologically
interesting engagements with Augustine’s sermons and other texts as well as a
new approach to the study of memory in Augustine.
KOLAWOLE CHABI, O.S.A.
Pontificium Insititutum Patristicum Augustinianum
Rome, Italy