The Thomist 87 (2023): 519-46

THE DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION:
A MANIFEST CONTRADICTION IN AQUINAS?
JOHN O’CALLAGHAN
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

M

ISERICORS DOMINUS et iustus et Deus noster
miseretur.”1 In his discussion of the divine attributes
of justitia and misericordia2 in question 21 of the
Prima pars,3 Thomas Aquinas considers (in article 4) the
problem of whether justitia and misericordia are found in all
God’s acts. His answer is that they are. However, a difficulty
arises that suggests Aquinas’s account might be incoherent. The
problem is that an act of mercy presupposes as its object a
subject that suffers a prior defectus addressed by the act, but in
God’s creative act there is no subject presupposed to the act of
creation, and, thus, no defectus addressed by the act of creation.
I will argue that, despite appearances, Aquinas’s account of the
act of creation as a divine act of misericordia is not incoherent.
The resolution of this difficulty helps us to understand something Aquinas wants to argue concerning divine misericordia,
namely, that it is through misericordia that God from the very
beginning of creation calls creatures to himself, and not only

1

Ps 114:5 (Vulg.).
I will move indifferently between the Latin misericordia and the English mercy,
although I will later explain in the body of the text a difficulty with using the term
mercy.
3
STh I, q. 21 (S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Opera Omnia Iussu impensaque
Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vols. 4-12 [Rome: Leonine Commission, 1888-1906]). All
translations from Latin are mine.
2

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that he addresses the defectus that arises in human life subsequent to creation as a result of human sinfulness.
I. A FIRST DIFFICULTY: IUSTITIA OR JUSTICE
In order to appreciate the difficulty of attributing mercy to
the act of creation, it is important to understand how Aquinas
first solves a difficulty with attributing justice to the act of
creation. In article 1 of question 21, Aquinas attributes distributive justice to God, insofar as God acts to provide for his
creatures what is due to them according to their natures. He
writes, “Hence Dionysius says . . . ‘it is necessary to see that
God is truly just, that he gives to each and every existing thing
what is proper to it according its standing [dignitatem], and
preserves the nature of each with proper order and power.’”4
However, this distributive justice to creatures does not pertain
to the immediate effect of being created, since the distribution
of goods to a creature presupposes that the creature already
exists to have goods distributed to it. If existence as an effect is
not due to a creature, then it seems that the act of creation does
not manifest God’s justice.
Aquinas addresses this problem straightforwardly. While it is
true that being created is not due to a creature as a debt,
Aquinas asserts that the ratio of justice consists in an agent
acting according to a due order and proportion to achieve an
end. Moreover, because all things are ordered and proportioned
to God as end, ordered by God’s goodness and wisdom, all
God’s acts involving creatures must be just. It is precisely by
creation that all created things are directed, ordered, and
proportioned by God’s wisdom and goodness to God as end.
Thus, the element of what is “due” is preserved not with respect
to the creature that is created, but with respect to God himself
as creator. Aquinas thus argues that creation is primarily an act
of justice of God to himself. “For it is due [or appropriate] to
4
“Unde dicit Dionysius, VIII cap. de Div. Nom., oportet videre in hoc veram Dei
esse iustitiam, quod omnibus tribuit propria, secundum uniuscuiusque existentium dignitatem; et uniuscuiusque naturam in proprio salvat ordine et virtute” (STh I, q. 21, a. 1).

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God that he should implement in things that which expresses
his will and wisdom and which manifests his goodness, and
according to this God’s justice regards what is fitting to him,
insofar as he renders to himself what is due to himself.”5 Thus,
creation does manifest God’s justice. However, the effect of
justice in creation is not God’s justice to the creature created,
but his justice to himself. In the Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas
says that this cannot be justice in its proper sense, because the
latter requires some debt of necessity. It is, he writes “justice in
a larger sense” (“large iustitia accepta”).6
It is because of this primary sense of God’s justice to himself
that God acts justly in a secondary way to provide for his
creatures, once created, what is due to them given the created
natures they possess. “And so also God acts justly when he gives
to each that which is due to it according to the ratio of its
nature and condition. But this debt depends upon the first,
because he owes to each what is ordained to it according to the
order of divine wisdom.”7 God owed it to himself to create,
without creation being necessitated. The sense of “owed it to
himself” here would be the sense we have in mind in English
when we say, “I owe it to myself to . . .”. However, once the
nature of the creature is created, God owes to the creature what
is appropriate to its nature as he created it, fulfilling in the
creature the end he gave himself in creating it according to his
wisdom. Aquinas begins his response in article 1 by
5

“Debitum enim est Deo, ut impleatur in rebus id quod eius sapientia et voluntas
habet, et quod suam bonitatem manifestat, et secundum hoc iustitia Dei respicit
decentiam ipsius, secundum quam reddit sibi quod sibi debetur” (ibid.).
6
“Sicut igitur creaturarum productio non potest dici fuisse ex debito iustitiae quo
Deus creaturae sit debitor, ita nec ex tali iustitiae debito quo suae bonitati sit debitor, si
iustitia proprie accipiatur. Large tamen iustitia accepta, potest dici in creatione rerum
iustitia, inquantum divinam condecet bonitatem” (ScG II, c. 28). (S. Thomae Aquinatis
Doctoris Angelici Opera Omnia Iussu impensaque Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vols. 13-15
[Rome: Leonine Commission, 1918-30]).
7
“Et sic etiam Deus operatur iustitiam, quando dat unicuique quod ei debetur
secundum rationem suae naturae et conditionis. Sed hoc debitum dependet ex primo,
quia hoc unicuique debetur, quod est ordinatum ad ipsum secundum ordinem divinae
sapientiae” (STh I, q. 21, a. 1, ad 3).

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straightforwardly denying the application of commutative justice to God. In article 4, however, he attributes distributive justice to God, subsequent to the effect of creation in the creature.
In the body of the article Aquinas does not call this primary
justice of God to himself in the act of creation “metaphorical”
justice. However, he appears to be relying upon his understanding of the point Aristotle makes in the Nichomachean
Ethics (5.11.1138b.5-6) that justice towards oneself is a kind of
metaphorical justice by likeness, insofar as one’s parts act in
their due order to one another. Aquinas himself discusses this
metaphorical justice towards oneself in the Secunda secundae
(STh II-II, q. 58, a. 2). He explains that it ordinarily seems that
justice must involve another supposit, another being, because
justice imports the notion of equality, and equality is essentially
a relation to another being. That is how equality differs from
identity. However, one can speak of the distinction of one’s
parts and powers acting in relation to one another. But to speak
of powers acting, rather than the substance acting, is to speak
metaphorically. Properly speaking, it is substances that act.
Thus, one can speak metaphorically of the justice within oneself, insofar as one’s parts and powers are well ordered toward
one another as distinctive principles of operation. This internal
justice of the human supposit clearly harkens back to Plato’s
theory of the justice of a human being’s parts as exhibiting a
kind of harmony—the concupiscible, the irascible, and the
rational—to one another. Indeed, Aquinas explicitly mentions
those three parts in his discussion, although without mentioning
Plato. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle had described this
sort of internal justice as involving likeness and metaphor.
God does not have parts (STh I, q. 3). Nevertheless, Aquinas
has established that “justice” can be applied metaphorically to a
substance in relation to itself, and the connection of the metaphorical justice of God both to himself and to the effect that is
creation is made clear where Aquinas writes, “The justice of
God is from eternity according to eternal will and purpose, and
justice chiefly consists in this. However, it is not eternal as

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regards the effect, because nothing is coeternal with God.”8 In
this passage, Aquinas argues that because of the difference
between the eternity of divine justice and the lack of eternity in
creation, divine justice is related to the order of God’s will and
eternal purpose, not to its effect in creation, the point he had
made much earlier (STh I, q. 21). Here, what is playing the role
of parts ordered one to another are God’s will, wisdom, and
goodness, again despite the fact that in reality there is no distinction in God between such parts. The distinction is in the
way we speak.
Before turning to the problem of misericordia, it is important
not to misunderstand Aquinas’s appeal to “metaphorical justice.” Earlier (STh I, q. 1, a. 9, obj. 1), Aquinas had asked
whether it is appropriate for sacred doctrine to use metaphor to
speak of divine things insofar as metaphor appeals to images
and is akin to poetry. His response was that while poetry
employs images in order to please, sacred doctrine employs
them from necessity to communicate truth concerning divine
matters in the least misleading way. In the Secunda secundae
(STh II-II, q. 58, a. 2), Aquinas raises the issue of the “metaphorical justice” of a human being to himself or herself in a way
that is not tied to the necessity of sacra doctrina (despite the fact
that it arises within the Summa). The qualification he makes
that, strictly speaking, the parts and powers of a substance do
not act, but rather the substance acts in virtue of its parts and
powers, is a point that he regularly makes about human action;
it has nothing strictly to do with sacra doctrina. As seen in
Aristotle’s application of the justice of an individual to himself
or herself, the metaphor occurs in a strictly philosophical
context—the Nicomachean Ethics. That is the way that Aquinas
uses the point in the body of the article, discussing whether one
can be just toward oneself. It is a way of speaking that we
engage in employing a metaphor, a way of speaking that is not
in fact necessary, although there is no error in adopting it. With
8
“iustitia Dei est ab aeterno secundum voluntatem et propositum aeternum, et in
hoc pracipue iustitia consistit. Quamvis secundum effectum non sit ab aeterno, quia
nihil est Deo coaeternum” (STh II-II, q. 58, a. 2, ad 3).

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

the metaphor, we assert that the parts and powers of the agent
are well ordered toward one another in the act of the agent,
who is strictly speaking the one who acts, not his or her parts.
However, as extended to God, metaphorical terms, as
opposed to univocal or even analogical terms, are necessary
because they are the best instruments of language in which to
assert literal truths9 about the divine. That the effect of creation,
the existence of creatures, involves metaphorical justice rather
than distributive justice thus marks a real distinction among all
God’s effects. It marks the distinction between creation as such,
which initiates the manifestation of God’s will and wisdom, and
those effects that subsequently fulfill the manifestation of God’s
will and wisdom. In the human case, the truth can be communicated without the metaphor, although it is useful to employ the
metaphor. However, in the divine case the metaphor cannot be
paraphrased away. It is rather necessary in order to say
something true about God that could not be said in ordinary
nonmetaphorical language.
II. ANOTHER DIFFICULTY: MISERICORDIA OR MERCY
What then of mercy? Can it be attributed to the effect of
creation? Here Aquinas seems to face roughly the same problem
he had faced with justice, for it seems that mercy requires a
subject to be merciful to. Discussing misericordia in general in
question 30 of the Secunda secundae, Aquinas uses Augustine’s
definition of misericordia in De civitate Dei: misericordia is
heartfelt compassion at the suffering of another by which we
are compelled to alleviate the suffering to the extent possible.10
9

For what is meant by the “literal [literalis] sense” in Aquinas, see STh I, q. 13, a. 3
and esp. STh I, q. 1, a. 10, corp. and ad 3. The significant point is that in Aquinas the
literal sense of a text does not exclude the use of image and metaphor, as it typically
does in the contemporary use of the English term literal. For Aquinas, metaphorical
statements if true are not “literally false” but true in some other sense, and are in fact
literally true because they communicate something about reality through the use of an
image.
10
As quoted in Aquinas, “misericordia est alienae miseriae in nostro corde
compassio, qua utique, si possumus, subvenire compellimur” (STh II-II, q. 30, a. 1).

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In the general discussion, Aquinas explicitly argues that the suffering of another that prompts misericordia involves a malum,
or defect, in a pre-existing subject.
Before proceeding, it is important to note that the English
term “mercy” is not generally a particularly felicitous translation
of the Latin “misericordia.” The contemporary secular philosophical discussion of mercy is almost exclusively confined to
questions of refraining from doing harm to another, whether
reducing just punishment (accompanied or not by forgiveness)
or simply refraining from harming someone when one has the
power to harm and the inclination to harm. The paradigmatic
sense of the term in that discussion is what is meant by someone
“being at the mercy of.” In the latter case, there may be no
question of justice, as it may involve someone making a plea for
mercy from another who has unjustly attacked one, as for
example a pirate or a mob killer. Emphasis is placed upon the
phrase “at the mercy of” to isolate this sense: the petitioner is
“at the mercy of” the powerful with the inclination to harm,
whether the power to harm would be exercised justly or not.
The central question of the contemporary discussion tends to
concern what constraints questions of justice might place upon
mercy so conceived. For example, is forgiveness of justly imposed punishment in pursuit of reconciliation between offender
and offended a violation of justice, insofar as such acts of
“mercy” limit and lessen the administration of justice through
punishment?11
Augustine’s actual text is “Quid est autem misericordia, nisi alienae miseriae quaedam in
nostro corde compassio, qua utique, si possumus, subvenire compellimur?” (Augustinius, S. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Ad Marcellinum De Civitate Dei Contra
Paagnos [PL 41:261C]). Notice the slight variation in Aquinas’s quotation of Augustine—from a rhetorical question in Augustine’s actual text to an asserted definition.
11
Among the many general discussions of mercy in contemporary philosophy, see, as
exemplary instances, J. G. Murphy and J. Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988); C. Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical
Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); M. C. Nussbaum, Anger
and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2018). For a historical overview of this sense of mercy, see A. Tuckness and J. M.
Parrish, The Decline of Mercy in Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

By contrast, Aquinas discusses the first sense of reducing
justly imposed punishment under the heading of clementia, a
virtue falling under temperantia generally, in question 157 of
the Secunda secundae, not misericordia in question 30. In
question 157, Aquinas’s arguments are heavily influenced by
stoicism and Seneca’s De clementia, the letter that Seneca wrote
to Nero urging him to rein in his anger in punishing his enemies
in order to achieve a temperate character in his rule. Mercy
taken as clementia bears upon and pursues the good of the one
who punishes, not the one who is punished, although it may
have a suitable effect upon the latter per accidens. The second
sense of mercy—refraining from doing harm, whether the harm
is conceived of as justly or unjustly imposed—bears no
resemblance at all to Aquinas’s discussions either of clementia
or of misericordia.
In religious and liturgical contexts “mercy” can mean God’s
refraining from punishing the sinful or assistance to one who is
suffering that is prompted by the experience of compassion on
the part of the one who extends mercy. It is the latter sense on
which Aquinas focuses in his discussion of human misericordia
(STh II-II, q. 30) and which he extends to the discussion of
divine misericordia (STh I, q. 21)—coming to the assistance of
those who suffer. Both senses are found in the Old Testament,
especially in the Psalms, whereas the latter sense tends to
dominate in the New Testament (while not entirely excluding
the former). Thus, despite being commonly translated into Eng2014). For mercy broadly construed as refraining from doing another harm, see
A. Perry, “Mercy,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 46 (2018): 60-89. For mercy as
misericordia as used in this article, see my discussions in “Misericordia in Aquinas: A
Test Case for Theological and Natural Virtues,” in Jaarboek Thomas Institute Utrecht
(2013); “The Quality of Mercy: Misericordia and Three Forms of Forgiveness in
Aquinas,” in The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of Moral
Virtues, ed. H. Schoot and H. Goris (Louvain: Peeters, 2017), 201-20; “Fearless Mercy
beyond Justice: Aquinas and Nussbaum’s Pity Tradition,” in Beyond the Self: Virtue
Ethics and the Problem of Culture, ed. R. Hain (Baylor, Tex.: Baylor University Press,
2019), 43-66; and especially, “Mercy beyond Justice: The Tragedy of Shylock and
Antonio,” Plenary Address in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical
Association (2018): 31-53.

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lish as “mercy,” the reality signified by “misericordia” that is of
interest to Aquinas is very different from the reality signified by
“mercy” in most contemporary secular philosophical discussion.
In one sense, Aquinas has no difficulty arguing that misericordia can be attributed to God, even though God as impassible
does not experience any passion, which is suggested by the
general definition. Aquinas attributes misericordia to God on
account of his general effect of alleviating suffering among
those who suffer. Indeed, Aquinas argues that the alleviation of
suffering includes even the damned in hell, who through God’s
misericordia are not punished as much as they may deserve.12
The narrow case involving hell and punishment does bear a
resemblance to the contemporary philosophical discussion of
mercy. However, the general definition from Augustine bears
upon any kind of suffering, not just the suffering of punishment,
and so divine mercy as misericordia should not be thought of as
limited to the judicial setting of divine punishment. Furthermore, because God is impassible and does not suffer passions,
particularly the passions of pleasure and pain associated with
the body on which the cardinal virtue of temperantia bears, the
misericordia extended to the damned in hell ought not to be
seen as an exercise of clementia, which reins in the passions of
excessive anger and cruelty in the one who punishes. Rather, it
is an exercise of God’s coming to the assistance of those who
suffer, even those who suffer justly in being punished with
damnation.
For Aquinas, the form of this attribution of misericordia to
the divine is a standard analogical extension of the predication
of the perfection signified by a term, a term ordinarily applied
to creatures but without the accompanying imperfect mode
exemplified in creatures, in this case mercy without an
accompanying passion.13 Aquinas’s argument for this analogical
extension, the effect of alleviating suffering, simply underscores
the necessity that there be some pre-existing subject distinct
12
“Et tamen in damnatione reproborum apparet misericordia, non quidem totaliter
relaxans, sed aliqualiter allevians, dum punit citra condignum” (STh I, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1).
13
STh I, q. 13, aa. 5-6.

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

from God to which God can extend misericordia by alleviating
the malum.
However, that necessity of a pre-existing subject is precisely
the problem. In the case of misericordia in the act of creation
bringing about the very existence of things, there are no preexisting subjects suffering a malum that God’s act of creation
could alleviate.
Now, it might be replied that Aquinas could make use of a
notion of metaphorical misericordia, as he had made use of the
notion of metaphorical justice to solve the problem of creation
and divine justice. In the case of a human being, misericordia
might be applied metaphorically to oneself. In his general
discussion of human misericordia, Aquinas does draw an explicit
parallel with the point from Aristotle about metaphorical
justice: “Strictly speaking misericordia is for another and not for
oneself, except according to a certain likeness, just like justice
insofar as diverse parts are considered in a human being, as is
said in Ethics V.”14 Aquinas concludes that in the human case
one can be said to be merciful to oneself because of the complexity of one’s parts, one of which presumably is suffering and
is assisted by another. For example, the hand might be pressed
onto a wound to stop its bleeding (of course it must be acknowledged that it is in fact the human being who acts, not the
hand). Or one might drink a glass of bourbon to soothe one’s
anguish over the loss of a loved one.
However, this solution will not work for divine mercy, for at
least two reasons. In the first place, the misericordia that
Aquinas attributes to God is attributed not metaphorically but
by analogy. It does not appeal to a similitude as metaphorical
justice does in speaking of how the really distinct parts of a
human being may embody justice toward one another. Recall
that in the metaphorical justice attributed to God in terms of

14
“proprie misericordia est ad alterum, non autem ad seipsum, nisi secundum
quandam similitudinem, sicut et iustitia, secundum quod in homine considerantur
diversae partes, ut dicitur in V Ethic.” (STh II-II, q. 30, a. 1).

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the logical distinction15 between God’s will, wisdom, and goodness, these attributes are treated “as if” they were parts.
However, misericordia is simply attributed to God in terms of
its effect, without signifying the compassion that it signifies in
application to human beings. Predicating an attribute of God in
terms of God’s effects, without the mode of its existence in
creatures, is precisely a case of analogical, not metaphorical,
extension of a term to God.16
What distinguishes the ratio of misericordia from several
other attributes predicated of God, including justice, goodness,
and liberality, is that whereas all these attributes provide some
good, misericordia provides a good specifically with respect to a
malum or defect that ought not to be present. In the discussion
of God’s mercy, Aquinas writes:
But it ought to be considered that the perfections to be bestowed upon things
pertain to the divine goodness, justice, liberality and mercy, but according to
diverse rationes. For the communication of a perfection, absolutely
considered, pertains to goodness . . . but insofar as perfections are given to
things by God according to the proportion of things, that pertains to
justice. . . . However, insofar as perfections are not attributed to things for
God’s use, that pertains to [his] liberality. And finally, insofar as perfections
are given by God to things to expel any defect, this pertains to misericordia.17

So, by Aquinas’s own account, in the attribution of misericordia
to God the notion of a defect and its attendant subject cannot
be eliminated. However, since God suffers from no defect in
15

By “logical distinction” here I am referring to the distinction Aquinas has in mind
among diverse rationes, while discussing in STh I, q. 13, a. 4 terms applied to God and
whether they are synonymous.
16
STh I, qq. 3 and 5.
17
“Sed considerandum est quod elargiri perfectiones rebus, pertinet quidem et ad
bonitatem divinam, et ad iustitiam, et ad liberalitatem, et misericordiam, tamen
secundum aliam et aliam rationem. Communicatio enim perfectionum, absolute
considerata, pertinet ad bonitatem, ut supra ostensum est. Sed inquantum perfectiones
rebus a Deo dantur secundum earum proportionem, pertinet ad iustitiam, ut dictum est
supra. Inquantum vero non attribuit rebus perfectiones propter utilitatem suam, sed
solum propter suam bonitatem, pertinet ad liberalitatem. Inquantum vero perfectiones
datae rebus a Deo, omnem defectum expellunt, pertinet ad misericordiam” (STh I,
q. 21, a. 3).

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

virtue of himself or of a part of himself, being pure act and
having no parts, misericordia simply cannot be directed in any
sense by God to himself, as had been the case with justice—
neither univocally, nor analogically, nor even metaphorically.
So, it seems it must be directed to another being, to some being
other than God, even in the act of creation.
Aquinas is well aware of this problem. He states it as the
fourth objection in question 21, article 4 of the Prima pars, on
whether justice and mercy are found in every work of God. The
objection asserts, “Moreover, justice is to repay that which is
owed, while miscericordia assists the miserable, and so both justice and misericordia presuppose some-thing in their works. But
creation presupposes no-thing, [that is, nothing]. Therefore, in
creation there is neither justice nor misericordia.”18 With respect
to justice, Aquinas’s response to this objection simply restates
what he argues in general in the response—the ratio of justice is
preserved insofar as a reality is produced in being in a manner
that is due in the sense of fitting to the divine wisdom and
goodness.
However, it is here, with respect to misericordia, that a much
more difficult problem seems to arise for Aquinas precisely in
his response. He writes, “the ratio of misericordia is preserved
insofar as a thing is changed from nonbeing to being.” The
Latin at the end of that statement is “res de non esse in esse
mutatur.”19 It seems the subject that is suffering is the thing, the
individual that, according to the response, is in a state of
nonbeing. The defect or malum is the nonbeing of that subject.
The suffering of that defect in that subject is alleviated by God’s
creative act which supplies for it the perfection of being, being

18

“Praeterea, iustitiae est reddere debitum, misericordiae autem sublevare miseriam,
et sic tam iustitia quam misericordia aliquid praesupponit in suo opere. Sed creatio nihil
praesupponit. Ergo in creatione neque misericordia est, neque iustitia” (STh I, q. 21,
a. 4, obj. 4).
19
“Et secundum hoc etiam salvatur ibi ratio iustitiae, inquantum res in esse
producitur, secundum quod convenit divinae sapientiae et bonitati. Et salvatur
quodammodo ratio misericordiae, inquantum res de non esse in esse mutatur” (STh I,
q. 21, a. 4, ad 4).

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as a subject, in this instance being as a substance. Thus, while no
subject to which being is due is necessary in order to attribute
justice to God in the effect of creation, in the case of divine
misericordia Aquinas appears committed to positing a subject
prior to the effect of creation, albeit a nonexisting subject that is
changed, mutatur, from nonbeing to being. Here Aquinas seems
to be committed to the view that there is some individual that is
identically the same prior to its existence and after its being
caused to exist, identically the same subject as between its state
of nonbeing and its state of being. By God’s creative act this
individual undergoes a change, a mutatio from the state of nonbeing to the state of being.
On its face this assertion is not patently absurd. One might
posit a realm of pure possibles, among which there are possible
individuals that undergo or may undergo such metaphysical
changes as from nonbeing to being, from possible existence to
actual existence, or not undergo such changes, although they
could—my second son, golden mountains, and the like. Considering Aquinas’s claim in isolation, then, we might think that
he is committed to such a realm of pure possibility prior to the
actuality of being. Consider the difference between my second
son Danny who was possible and is actual versus my fourteenth
son, as yet unknown and unnamed, who is merely possible. The
individual Danny who was merely possible and in the state of
nonbeing is identical to the individual Danny who is actual and
in the state of being. Vis-à-vis divine misericordia, Danny was
mercifully delivered from the suffering of nonbeing by God’s
creative act. Surely, however, it is possible that I could have a
fourteenth son, although I do not actually. Call my fourteenth
son Randy. Pity then poor Randy, who languishes suffering in
the realm of nonbeing but pure possibility, left there by God to
suffer, along with my one-hundred and nineteenth son
Jonathan, and so on ad infinitum—the realm of nonbeing as an
infinite realm of suffering even only with respect to my possible
but nonactual children, not to mention the nonactual children
of other actual human beings. Should I not mourn them in their
suffering? Or should I rejoice that it is part of God’s will, wisdom, and goodness to leave them in this eternal suffering of

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infinite extent? These thoughts are fantastical and border on the
morally perverse and absurd.
In fact, placed within the larger context of Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation, the metaphysical positing of possible individuals prior to the act of creation that change through
creation is patently absurd as the basis for attributing misericordia to God in the specific effect of causing the creature to be.
It is a constant of Aquinas’s metaphysics of creation that “creatio non est mutatio,” that is, creation is not a change. Aquinas
holds this position from the Commentary on the Sentences,20
through De potentia Dei,21 the Summa contra gentiles,22 and
even the Summa theologiae in question 45 of the Prima pars—a
mere twenty-four questions after this claim about God’s
misericordia in creation in question 21. The whole of chapter
17 of book 2 of the Summa contra gentiles is explicitly devoted
to arguing “Quod creatio non est motus neque mutatio.” In
addition, question 3, article 1 of De potentia, on whether God
can create from nothing, is by and large devoted to arguing that
creatio ex nihilo does not involve some metaphysically prior
thing or subject receiving being after a state of nonbeing. Any
possibility prior to creation for a being to exist must be resolved
into either the noncontradiction of terms in an assertion or the
active power of God, but decidedly not some subject waiting in
a state of nonbeing to be changed into the state of being. In the
very next article Aquinas explicitly asks “utrum creatio sit
mutatio.” From the context it is absolutely clear that the
question is not whether creation involves a change in God as
God acts to create, but whether it is a change in the subject of
creation, the being that is created. No, he argues, it is not.
Yet, in discussing God’s misericordia, Aquinas appears to
contradict himself precisely in the absurd suggestion that
creation involves “res de non esse in esse mutatur.” It also
20

II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, passim (Scriptum super libros sententiarum magistri Petri
Lombardi Episcopi Parisiensis [Paris: Sumptibus P. Lethielleux, 1929-47]).
21
De Pot., q. 3, aa. 1-2 (S. Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Quaestiones
Disputatae [Turin: Marietti, 1953]).
22
ScG II, c. 17.

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533

appears absurd given that he explicitly argues that very point in
the Summa itself in question 45 of the Prima pars, a mere
twenty-four questions after his assert in question 21. However,
it is difficult to believe that this apparent contradiction in
Aquinas is inadvertent, given the constancy with which he holds
and argues that creation is not a change and does not involve a
metaphysically prior subject that receives being.
III. RESOLVING THE DIFFICULTY: THE MISERICORDIA OF GOD
If what appears to be a contradictory assertion is deliberate,
what is one to make of it? At the very least I think we can say
that it manifests Aquinas’s theological resolve to place divine
mercy at the heart of God’s action ad extra from the very
beginning in the moment of creation—the alpha, not just the
omega. In question 21 of the Prima pars, Aquinas argues that in
God’s works the effect of divine misericordia is always prior to
divine iustitia, that divine iustitia is founded upon divine
misericordia, while divine misericordia surpasses divine iustitia
which itself aims at misericordia as its end. “Moreover, every
work of divine justice always presupposes a work of [divine]
mercy and has its foundation in [mercy].”23 “It is clear that
mercy does not take away from justice but is a certain fullness of
justice. Hence, it is said in James 2 that ‘mercy exalts itself
above judgment.’”24 It is important to keep in mind that the
distinction of priority of misericordia to iustitia here is on the
part of God’s effect in creation, not on the part of God’s act of
creation, where there is no such distinction. So, if Aquinas is
going to attribute justice to God in creation, a fortiori he must
find a way of attributing misericordia to creation.
The apparently contradictory assertion of creation involving
a mutatio is reminiscent of another problem Aquinas faces
23

“Opus autem divinae iustitiae semper praesupponit opus misericordiae, et in eo
fundatur” (STh I, q. 21, a. 4).
24
“Ex quo patet quod misericordia non tollit iustitiam, sed est quaedam iustitiae
plenitudo. Unde dicitur Iac. II, quod misericordia superexaltat iudicium” (STh I, q. 21,
a. 3, ad 2).

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

about creation in De potentia Dei. A number of objections
throughout the articles of question 3 focus upon paradoxes of
change and becoming to argue that there could not have been a
first moment of time, and so the world could not have been
created ex nihilo, or that the world must be coeternal with God,
or that it is impossible for angels to exist before the corporeal
world.25 The substance of Aquinas’s response in the questions is
to distinguish a temporal notion of before and after from a
metaphysical notion of before and after as causal dependency
which does not require temporal priority. Then, specifically
addressing the question of whether creation involves a change,
Aquinas writes:
But this is not properly speaking a change, but only by likeness, just as we may
imagine time itself as a quasi-subject of those things which happen in time.
However, in creation there is nothing common according to the ways
specified above. For neither is there some common subject actually existing,
nor potentially. Also, there is no identical time, if we speak of the creation of
the universe, for before the world there was no time. However, a common
subject can be thought to exist according to imagination, as namely we
imagine one common time when the world was not and after which the world
was caused to be. This [imagination] is just like that in which we are able to
imagine a magnitude beyond the universe although there is no such real
magnitude. And so, before the beginning of the world there was no time, even
though it is possible to imagine it. Thus, properly speaking according to the
truth of the matter, creation does not have the ratio of a change, but only
according to a certain act of imagination—that is, not properly speaking, but
by likeness.26

25

De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, obj. 10 and 11; a. 14, obj. 6; a. 17, obj. 20; a. 19, obj. 5.
“Sed haec non proprie vocatur mutatio, sed per similitudinem, prout ipsum tempus imaginamur quasi subiectum eorum quae in tempore aguntur. In creatione autem
non est aliquid commune aliquo praedictorum modorum. Neque enim est aliquod
commune subiectum actu existens, neque potentia. Tempus etiam non est idem, si loquamur de creatione universi; nam ante mundum tempus non erat. Invenitur tamen
aliquod commune subiectum esse secundum imaginationem tantum, prout scilicet imaginamur unum tempus commune dum mundus non erat, et postquam mundus in esse
productus est. Sicut enim extra universum non est aliqua realis magnitudo, possumus
tamen eam imaginari; ita et ante principium mundi non fuit aliquod tempus, quamvis sit
possibile ipsum imaginari: et quantum ad hoc creatio secundum veritatem, proprie
loquendo, non habet rationem mutationis, sed solum secundum imaginationem
26

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535

To deal with the various paradoxes of the objections, Aquinas
simply distinguishes real time from this imaginary time that we
are capable of projecting, as if it were continuous with the real
time that began to exist with the existence of creation. It is, as
he explains, comparable to how one might think imaginatively
of dimensions of space outside the boundary of space. Such
imagination with respect to time is useful for undergirding the
ways we speak about causality, which, when analyzed, indicate a
dependency of effect upon cause, but not necessarily a temporal
priority of cause to effect. So, the image of time before real time
helps to communicate the causal dependency of all of creation
upon God’s creative act, without that causal dependence expressing in reality a temporal priority of cause to effect. The
passage draws the conclusion that creation is not in fact a
change, “properly speaking,” but only by “likeness” to material
change, that is, metaphorically.
Something similar is happening with Aquinas’s willingness to
say that creation involves a change from nonbeing to being as a
way of understanding the merciful effect of creation. The
nonbeing of the subject is an imaginary projection of the mind,
for in reality there can be no subject that does not exist
according to Aquinas. Indeed, he writes that speaking of the
nonbeing of a creature is according to “our manner of understanding” and specifically with respect to this problem about
misericordia that “creation presupposes nothing in the nature of
things but does in the knowledge of God.” I can imagine
anything that does exist as not-existing, as “residing” as if in a
condition of nonexistence. Indeed, I can speak of any object
that does exist and intelligibly, though falsely, speak of it as not
existing, or I can truly assert that it no longer exists having
ceased to exist, or truly assert that once it did not exist, and so
on. The fool has said in his heart, falsely though not meaning-

quamdam; non proprie, sed similitudinarie” (De Pot., q. 3, a. 2; see also q. 3, a. 1,
ad 10).

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

lessly, that there is no God.27 In addition, in our manner of
thought and speech, we can use a proper name to assert that
some being that once existed no longer does so. So, my thought
and speech are not limited in their scope only to objects that
actually exist, nor is my imagination. Given the ability aided by
imagination to speak of things that no longer exist, to speak of
time before the beginning of time, and space outside the
boundary of space, even though these latter cannot possibly
exist, there is no reason to think we cannot similarly employ the
imagination to speak as if there were individual things that
never existed. Our imagination is an aid to making true assertions concerning what has never existed, what may never exist,
and even what cannot possibly exist, as for example that a human being that is a quintessence of dust is an impossible being.
Now, stipulate that “Randy” names anything that satisfies
the definite description “my fourteenth son.” The imagination is
an aid in speaking of Randy and asserting that Randy does not
exist. But imagining Randy, my true statement that Randy does
not exist is not about my imagination or any “mental” image
that I form to assist in my making the true assertion. As Aquinas
says of imaginary time and imaginary space, there is no individual Randy of whom nonexistence is predicated that can be
said to be identical to or continuous with any individual of
whom existence is predicated. In short, the use of the imagination to speak of nonexistence does not posit some realm of
nonbeing filled with subjects who change from that realm to the
realm of being and are identical subjects between the two
realms.
However, if this appeal to the imagination, our way of
understanding, or the knowledge of God, simply transposes the
realm of individualized pure possibilities into our minds or
God’s, that is as muddled a way of thinking as it was when this
realm appeared to be an independent realm of pure possibility.
My image or thought of my wife is not my wife in some other
27
Of course, this last example is one in which the imagination should not be
employed to make the false but meaningful assertion of nonexistence, lest one be
tempted toward anthropomorphism in thinking about God.

DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION

537

state. When I have an image of my wife or think of her, it is her
that I am imagining and thinking of, not the image or thought.
When I imagine or think of kissing her, there is no kiss in my
imagination that suffers nonbeing by being in the mind alone,28
and there certainly is no individual that is my fourteenth son
suffering misery in the mind of God until we conceive him and
he becomes actual by God’s creative act.29
This appeal to the mind, human or divine, must be understood in the way we understand what Aquinas says about how
things change in coming to be known. When I come to know
Bazaine’s stained-glass windows in the church of Saint-Severin
in Paris, it follows as a simple matter of grammar and logic that
Bazaine’s stained-glass windows in Saint-Severin have come to
be known by me. That truth gives expression to our manner of
understanding and speaking in the shift from the active to the
passive voice. However, it expresses no actuality to be
attributed to the stained-glass windows. The fate of the stainedglass is quite different if I clean and polish it, and we say
Bazaine’s stained-glass windows have been cleaned and polished
by me. That does signify an actuality of the stained-glass,
despite the use of the passive voice. The difference comes from
the difference between the act of knowing X and the act of
cleaning and polishing X. Some passive-voice predications attribute something real to the subject of predication, but others
do not, particularly predications involving intentional verbs like
imagine, think, know, desire. Even when it is true that my
28

This denial that what is “in” the mind is or could be identical as a subject to some
being that does or could exist in reality beyond the mind is at the heart of Aquinas’s
denial of the so-called Ontological Argument. For Aquinas “existence in the mind” is
not a mode of existence for a subject or individual that might also have another mode of
existence should it come to exist “outside the mind in reality.” On “being in the mind”
in general for Aquinas, see my Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More
Perfect Form of Existence (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003),
159-94.
29
For Aquinas’s account of creation and the workings of nature see STh I, q. 105,
a. 5; and De Pot., q. 3, aa. 7-8. See also Alfred Freddoso, “God’s General Concurrence
with Secondary Causes: Why Conservation is Not Enough,” Philosophical Perspectives 5
(1991): 553-85.

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

fiancée is desired by me as my future spouse, no real property is
being attributed to her, no actuality. Saying that some X exists
in the mind or imagination of some thinker Y is not a way of
attributing shadowy though unreal existence to X; it is a way of
characterizing the thought of Y, that is, that Y is thinking in a
certain way.
In the passage quoted above from De potentia Dei, Aquinas
concludes, “thus, properly speaking according to the truth of
the matter, creation does not have the ratio of a change, but
only according to a certain act of imagination—that is, not
properly speaking, but by likeness.” Again, explicitly replying to
an argument in the Summa contra gentiles (ScG II, c. 37) that
the world must be eternal, because the world is “made” and
making involves a motion through time, he writes:
For creation is only said to be a change according to a metaphor, as a creature
is considered to be after not being, for the same reason among those things in
which no transmutation is found something is said to arise from another, only
because one of them follows another, as for example day follows night. Nor
can the ratio of motion be introduced from this that something is able to be
created, for that which in no manner is, is not related to some manner or
mode of existence such that one could conclude that when it begins to be it is
now related to another manner or mode of existence than it was before.30

So, the day is said to arise out of the night. However, there is no
underlying identical subject that was in the condition of being
night that has changed to being in the condition of day, no preexisting stuff that the day was drawn out of or from which it
arose. In particular, notice that the passage ends by explicitly
denying that because it is possible for something to be created,
possibility should be understood as involving some mode or
manner of existence for what is said to be possible. It “in no
manner is” and so it is “not related to some manner or mode of
30
“Nam creatio mutatio dici non potest nisi secundum metaphoram, prout creatum
consideratur habere esse post non esse: ratione cuius aliquid ex alio fieri dicitur etiam
eorum quae invicem transmutationem non habent, ex hoc solo quod unum eorum est
post alterum, sicut dies ex nocte. Nec ratio motus inducta ad hoc aliquid facere potest:
nam quod nullo modo est, non se habet aliquo modo; ut possit concludi quod, quando
incipit esse, alio modo se habeat nunc et prius” (ScG II, c. 37).

DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION

539

existence” that would allow one to say such a manner or mode
of existence had changed.31
Aquinas holds that we can speak of some being that exists as
not existing, just as we can imagine a time before the beginning
of time or a space outside of the boundary of space. What does
not follow from that statement or act of imagination is that that
very being ever was or could be in a state of nonexistence.
There are no beings that do not exist. That some particular
being does exist but need not do so says something about the
power of God, not about a prior condition of nonbeing for that
very being. To speak of change or a motion or a common
subject between nonbeing and being involves likeness and metaphor to communicate that truth about reality. However, the use
of metaphor in the assertion does not suggest that there is no
metaphysical truth expressed by it. The truth expressed is
simply not the metaphysical assertion one might think would be
made, were one not to employ the metaphor. It is not only sacra
doctrina that uses a likeness or a metaphor because it is
necessary and useful,32 but also at times metaphysics.
In contemporary English, the uses of the terms “literal” and
“metaphorical” are used in opposition, such that a statement
employing a metaphor is understood to be “literally false,” but
true perhaps in some other unspecified sense.33 However, for
Aquinas, following Augustine, metaphor can be employed in
literal (literalis) statements to make true assertions about states
of affairs in reality, events or happenings, and processes—in
general about what exists. In contemporary English, we are
likely to say that a statement that involves the use of a metaphor
is not “literally” true. “It’s raining buckets out there” will cause
some officious interlocutor to respond, “Well, that’s not

31
In general, Aquinas resolves such possibility, not into subjects of the possibility,
but into the noncontradiction of terms in a statement or the power of agents that are
capable of making or creating. See De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 2; and q. 3, a. 17, ad 10.
32
STh I, q. 1, a. 9, ad 2.
33
See the “spiritual rain” scene with Rex Mottrom in Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead
Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), 192.

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

literally true, but I see your point.” However, that is not how
Aquinas understands metaphor and literal truth.
Using a term metaphorically goes outside of its primary
(proprie)34 use by taking an image derived from the ordinary use
and applying it in another context. For Aquinas, it differs from
using a term analogously, because the latter does not rely upon
an image taken from material beings to extend a term past its
ordinary use. For example, calling a soldier in battle a lion,
rather than brave, takes the image of a lion and how it acts and
applies that image to the soldier, who might otherwise be truly
and simply or properly called brave.35 However, something of
the depth of his bravery would be lost without the image of the
metaphor. On the other hand, “wise” could be applied metaphorically to God by employing the image of a wise judge
sitting on a bench. However, that image would limit the sense
of God’s wisdom, which Aquinas thinks extends to all of God’s
knowledge, well beyond questions of judicial determinations,
even to his knowledge of himself and of what he does, including
the entire order of Providence. So, one uses it without relying
upon the image and applies it to God, in which case it is used
analogously. But the key is that both the metaphors and the
analogy are used to make assertions about the way the world
and reality truly are. Aquinas argues that among other things
the use of metaphor in talk about God prompts us to seek
34
Unfortunately, translators of Aquinas often translate “proprie” as “literal” with the
result that Aquinas seems to say that metaphor as such is nonliteral. Those who make
this mistake typically do not notice then when having to translate “literalis” as “literal,”
they commit Aquinas to the position that the metaphors of Holy Scripture cannot be
included in what Aquinas, following Augustine, calls the “literal sense” of Scripture,
despite Aquinas’s claims to the contrary. See STh I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 3. A better translation
of “proprie” would be “common” or “ordinary” as in “the common or ordinary use of
the term,” in which case metaphor and analogy would involve “an uncommon and not
ordinary use of the term,” which does not suggest that they are potentially false. A
referee for this article suggested simply using “proper”; I tend to resist that translation
since it can suggest that somehow metaphor and analogy are, as departures from the
“proper” use of a term, somehow improper.
35
And yet, “brave” itself said of human beings might have begun its life in metaphor.
As far as etymologists can determine it derives from the Italian “bravo” originally
meaning wild or savage. See https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=brave.

DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION

541

understanding of the reality it signifies36 about God beyond
what we would otherwise pursue. The question then becomes
what truth the speaker or writer is trying to communicate with
the metaphor or analogy, using the terms outside of their
primary use.37
The takeaway from this discussion of Aquinas on metaphor
is that a metaphorical assertion concerning reality, if true, is as
true as any other assertion not employing a metaphor is true
about reality. The point is that in these contexts where
metaphor is “necessary,” the depth of the reality one is speaking
about is better captured with the metaphor than without.
Applied to the notion that a contradiction might be formed
between two statements, because one appears to deny what the
other asserts, the fact that one assertion employs a metaphor
should not be taken to be grounds for responding, “Well, that’s
literally a contradiction, but true in some other sense.” It should
be grounds for recognizing there is no contradiction involved at
all in the joint assertion of the two statements.
So, the metaphors employed in the discussion of creation are
likenesses and metaphors that give expression to truth, not
falsehood. It is not false to say the day arose out of the night
because the saying involves a metaphor. It is a true statement
that employs a metaphor to express the truth. It prompts us,
however, to understand the truth communicated through the
image and the use of the imagination. Similarly, to say of a
being that is created that it changed from a condition of
nonbeing to being is not false because it involves a metaphor. It
expresses something metaphysically true with a metaphor.
Thus, the fact that we assert that in creation a being was
changed from the condition of nonbeing to being does, according to Aquinas, assert something true about divine mercy by
employing a metaphor. Take Edith Piaf. She once existed. But
36

STh I, q. 1, a. 9, ad 2.
In this paragraph I have paraphrased what Aquinas writes about metaphor and analogy in STh I, q. 1, aa. 9-10; and q. 13, aa. 3-6. For the specific point about literal
statements involving metaphors see STh I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 3. For the point about metaphor involving an image and analogy not employing one, see STh I, q. 13, a. 3, ad 1.
37

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

she need never have existed. We can say of her that she need
not have been. Yet she did exist. A way of marking this, her
contingent existence, is to think of her as not existing prior to
her existence and to assert that by creation she was changed
from nonexistence to existence. However, to be clear, that is a
manner of speaking or understanding that marks or signifies
Edith Piaf’s actual existence as dependent upon God’s creative
act. She is not sufficient unto herself for her own existence. The
statement does not posit an individual subject identical and continuous between two conditions, nonexistence and existence.
That Edith Piaf is not sufficient for her own existence is a
defectus, considered in relation to God, who is sufficient unto
himself for his own existence. In her existence, like any creature
she falls away from or apart from God’s perfection of being
sufficient unto himself for his own existence. In this context,
however, defectus does not mean a fault or failure. Unfortunately, “defect” in English typically implies failure or fault.
The contrast term is “perfect” which typically suggests no
failure or fault. However, perfectus in Latin simply means
complete, particularly complete as the term of a process. It can
also simply mean complete or full in being without a preceding
process. That is the way in which God is perfect, according to
Aquinas (STh I, q. 4). But then it can also be used comparatively, as one might say that God is more perfect than the angels
and the angels are more perfect than human beings, because
more complete or full in the actuality of being. However, in not
being as perfect as God, angels are not imperfect, flawed, or
failed gods, nor are human beings imperfect, flawed, or failed
angels. Thus, the notion of being less perfect or “falling away
from” the completeness of something, which etymologically is
what “defectus” means, need not imply fault or failure either. It
can simply mean not as actual, not as full of being or actuality.
And in developmental beings, it can also mean not yet complete
as the type of being that it is, without suggesting failure of fault.
In this context then, “defectus” simply means a falling away
from the perfect infinite existence of God. For Aquinas, to say
that God is perfect is to say that he possesses, indeed is the
fullness of being or existence without limit. Comparatively,

DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION

543

creatures are not thus perfect, because they are finite, that is,
limited imitations of divine perfection.38 They “fall away from”
the infinite perfection of divine being. But an angel, human
being, or worm, is not a failed god for falling away from the
perfect actuality of God.
In addition, when a creature fulfills its own species-specific
capacities for being (traditionally called “second act” by Aristotelians), fulfills capacities had by nature though not actual
simply by nature, it pursues perfection as the kind of being that
it is—perfection within its kind, not across kinds or comparatively. That God enables a creature to pursue and complete that
perfection for itself is an expression of divine justice, because, as
discussed above, it is fulfilling God’s will, wisdom, and goodness in creating it as the kind of creature it is. However, when
such a creature cannot pursue the perfection of its capacities,
what is ordinarily simply a defectus, a lack of complete being for
it, becomes a malum, a defectus that is a suffering, a lack of
being that ought to be present. Misericordia, human or divine,
addresses that malum by providing the being with the assistance
it needs to overcome the malum and pursue the perfection.
However, none of this misericordia, human or divine,
involves the effect of creation itself, since it presupposes the
actual existence of the creature as the type of creature it is. In
that respect this misericordia presupposes divine iustitia, the
iustitia whereby God fulfills for his creatures what he commits
to in creating them. We have seen, however, that Aquinas
argues that the effect of divine iustitia in creation presupposes
the effect of divine misericordia that is the creation of the
creature. So, one can make a distinction of reason between the
effect of misericordia subsequent to divine iustitia and the effect
of divine misericordia that is creation as such.
We have seen that Aquinas, in order to assert that that effect,
creation, is truly the effect of divine misericordia, thinks it is
necessary to use the metaphor of being changed from nonbeing
to being. So, what does that metaphor prompt us to try to
38

STh I, q. 4, passim.

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JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

understand about the effect in creation that is misericordia?
Consider that in the ordinary case of a capacity presupposing
the existence of the creature with that capacity, the creature in
fulfilling its capacities for more complete being, often assisted
by the misericordia of others, including divine misericordia,
participates more in being than it otherwise does when those
natural capacities exist merely in potentiality ordered toward
fulfillment. For example, a human being with an intellect moves
from potentially understanding X to actually understanding X.
In that way, the fulfillment of a substance’s capacities for
development moves it closer to God, who is being itself
subsisting—that is, it increases its participation in the being and
goodness of God.39 A capacity or power as an existing thing is
in one respect being, but as in potentiality to fulfillment in act it
is in that respect nonbeing—it is, as it were, a mix, or better a
medium between being and nonbeing that allows for development and completion in being by becoming fully actual,
including becoming fully actual through its own proper
operation. Aquinas holds that a potentiality, like a power for
some actuality but also for the generation of a substance, stands
as it were midway between nonbeing and actuality, a kind of
being as existing that is not yet fully actual, and so a being that
is also relative nonbeing.40 So, the misericordia that assists in
completing and perfecting the relative nonbeing of a capacity,
or power, draws the being with that capacity closer to God,
draws it closer to God from its condition of relative nonbeing.
Metaphysically speaking, misericordia, whether human or
divine, draws a creature closer in being to God.41
Now, however, we can see the necessity of the image in the
effect of creation of the creature itself, the image of changing it
39

See STh I, qq. 4-6; ScG II, cc. 18-20; De Pot., q. 21, a. 4.
“Ens enim in potentia est quasi medium inter purum non ens et ens in actu.” See I
Phys., lect. 9; also, STh I, q. 11, a. 2, ad 1. For the best current discussion of this
midway status of a power, between pure nonbeing and being in act, see Gloria Frost,
Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2022), 84-89.
41
See ScG III, cc. 19-20; also STh I, q. 44, a. 4.
40

DIVINE MERCY OF CREATION

545

from nonbeing to being. Here we can no longer speak of
misericordia, whether human or divine. The effect of creation in
a creature is an expression of divine mercy tout court. To
express that truth Aquinas employs the metaphor of being
changed from nonbeing to being, because it is necessary to
signify that in creation God draws the creature as such to
himself. In the ordinary case, divine misericordia addresses a
defectus that is a malum, some aspect of being that the already
existing creature ought to have in virtue of what it is with the
capacities it has. The defectus is a defectus in a pre-existing
subject, the substance and the particular capacity for development that exists in it as a subject. The capacity for development
is in a state of relative nonbeing and through misericordia is
brought to a state of being, a state of actuality where before
there was only potentiality for that actuality. Through that misericordia God draws the creature closer to himself by bringing
it to a more complete state of being that is proper to it as the
kind of being it is—a subject in a state of relative nonbeing is
brought to the fullness of being for it, which is good for it,
overcoming some malum for it. This misericordia is that which
follows divine justice toward a creature already in existence.
However, this ordinary case provides the image for the
extraordinary case of creation, the misericordia that precedes
and is the foundation of divine justice in creatures. Misericordia
brings a creature closer to the fullness of being that is God.
Though strictly speaking (proprie) there is no pre-existing
subject that changes in creation, nonetheless, considering some
actual, that is, existing creature, and imagining it in a state of
nonexistence, and then changing by creation, captures the ratio
of misericordia as that which brings a being closer to the fullness
of being that is God. The very existence of the subject now, the
being of the substance itself, and not simply the relative
nonbeing of a capacity not yet actualized, is the first effect of
divine misericordia whereby the creature itself in its entire
substantial existence is brought into being and thereby
primevally brought closer to God by God alone, the effect alone
of the divine mercy. It is for this reason that the effect of divine
mercy in creation is prior to the effect of divine justice in

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creation as discussed earlier, and explains why, as we saw
above, the effect of divine justice is that all things are
proportioned and ordered by God’s wisdom to God as their
end. In other words, the effect of divine justice in creation is the
fulfillment of the prior effect of divine mercy in creation, as
Aquinas does in fact argue in that discussion.
Thus, not only is there no contradiction in Aquinas’s arguing
that divine mercy involves a mutatio whereby a creature is
changed from nonbeing to being, but for Aquinas the metaphor
involved in asserting that there is such a change communicates
to us a very important truth about God that we would not
otherwise consider, much less seek to understand. It communicates to us that because all that exists other than God, in
every manner in which it exists, is the effect of divine creation,
all that exists other than God, in every manner in which it
exists, is the effect of divine mercy. However, even though
Aquinas uses a metaphor to talk about the effect of divine mercy
in creation, it remains the case that mercy as attributed to God,
not to God’s effect, is not metaphorical. The metaphor is said of
the effect, not the cause. Unlike attributing justice to God
himself in the act of creation, which does involve metaphor,
attributing mercy to God in that act does not.
CONCLUSION
Far from embodying a contradiction or incoherence in
Aquinas’s thought, his use of the metaphor of a change from
nonbeing to being gives expression to the metaphysical truth
that all that exists subsequent to the effect of creation, including
the effect in us of divine justice, is founded upon this primeval
effect of divine misericordia. “Reminiscere miserationum tuarum Domine et misericordiarum tuarum quia a saeculo sunt.”42
Divine mercy is not simply the Omega of existence, but
originally its Alpha. Divine mercy is all in all.

42
Ps 24(25):6: “Remember O Lord your mercies, your mercies that are from the
beginning of the ages.”

The Thomist 87 (2023): 547-600

MAN’S CAPACITY FOR ECCLESIAL COMMUNION
AARON D. HENDERSON
Alcuin Institute for Catholic Culture
Tulsa, Oklahoma

A

S A COROLLARY of the truth that Christ is the only
way to the Father,1 that Jesus is the only name given to
mankind by which we must be saved,2 the Christian faith
has always held that the Church is likewise necessary for salvation.3 The Second Vatican Council, adhering to this tradition,
taught that the Church is the universal sacrament of salvation,
the sign and instrument of the salvation wrought in Christ.4 For
her part, the Church has received a missionary mandate from
her master; she cannot but work for the salvation of souls.
Human beings for their part are called to be incorporated into
1
John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father,
but by me.” All biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version, Catholic
Edition, unless otherwise indicated.
2
Acts 4:12: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under
heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
3
To provide but one example, consider this teaching of the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215), reflecting the words of St. Cyprian: “There is indeed one universal Church of
the faithful outside of which no one at all is saved” (Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium
of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed., ed.
Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash [San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2012], 266 [§ 802]).
4
One thinks most immediately perhaps of Lumen Gentium 1: “Since the Church, in
Christ, is in the nature of a sacrament—a sign and instrument, that is, of communion
with God and of unity among all men—she here purposes, for the benefit of the faithful
and of the whole world, to set forth, as clearly as possible, and in the tradition laid
down by earlier Councils, her own nature and universal mission.” Texts from the
Second Vatican Council are taken from Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., Vatican II: The
Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (rev. ed.; Northport, N.Y.: Costello Publishing
Company, 1996), unless otherwise indicated.

547

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AARON D. HENDERSON

Christ’s mystical body. They cannot be lukewarm to the call of
the Church any more than they can be indifferent to the radical
claims of her founder and spouse. “Hence they could not be
saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as
necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter
it, or to remain in it.”5 The Church is meant for all men, and all
men are meant, by the grace of God, for the Church.
The truth of the necessity of the Church for salvation presupposes that human beings are susceptible of becoming members of Christ’s mystical body, that they are capable in some
sense of ecclesial communion. We might call this a capacity or
passive potency.6 But what is the nature of this potency? My
argument is that obediential potency is the principle in human
nature whereby man is capable of ecclesial communion.
We will begin with a brief defense of obediential potency as
central to the Thomistic understanding of the nature-grace
relation.7 Second, we will discuss man as a social animal, for it is
only because human nature has a natural inclination and natural
passive potency for social life that it has an obediential potency
for ecclesial life. This will involve a discussion of friendship,
both natural and supernatural. Third, after briefly examining
the Old Testament people of God as prefiguring the Church, we
will examine the Church herself and human nature’s capacity
for ecclesial membership. Charles Cardinal Journet will be of
service to us at this stage, since he seems to posit that man has a
hidden, inward, mysterious capacity for ecclesial membership.
Finally, we will explore the consequences of this thesis for the
Church’s evangelical work. I will argue that the traditional8
Thomistic understanding of the nature-grace relation, which has

5

LG 14.
It is a potency also in angels, who are likewise members of the mystical body. See
STh III, q. 8, a. 4.
7
For a fuller account, see Steven A. Long, “Obediential Potency, Human
Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for God,” International Philosophical Quarterly 37
(1997): 45-63; and Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God according to St.
Thomas and His Interpreters, 2nd ed. (Naples, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2010), 101-65.
8
See below, n. 36.
6

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549

obediential potency as a central feature, serves to bolster the
Church’s missionary activity.
I. OBEDIENTIAL POTENCY AS CENTRAL
TO THE NATURE-GRACE RELATION
A) A Biblical and Augustinian Principle
The term “obediential potency” (potentia obedientiae or
obedientialis) seems at first blush to be abstruse Scholastic jargon,9 and many today are hesitant to face the contemporary
world with what they judge to be ill-fitted tools.10 The term,
however, arose to give voice to the simple notion that all creatures stand open, docile, obedient to whatever God may will to
do in or through them.11 Explained in this way, we may say
with some confidence that this is a “thoroughly biblical notion.”12 To provide but one example, in Matthew 8:27,13 Jesus

9

That is not to say that potentia obedientiae is the only suitable term for this
principle. Long, for instance (“Obediential Potency, Human Knowledge, and the
Natural Desire for God,” 51), uses the language of the human intellect’s “natural
spiritual translucence” to the divine light. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange speaks about an
“obediential or elevable capacity” (capacitas obedientialis seu elevabilis). See Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, trans. Matthew K. Minerd
(Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2022), 573-616.
10
Jean Daniélou famously said about Thomism (or “Scholastic theology” more
generally) that it is inadequate, in its concepts and in its language, to the task of
speaking to modern man. See Jean Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée
religieuse,” Études 249 (1946): 5-21 (Eng. trans. by Anna Mathie Lenshek in Jean
Daniélou, S.J., “Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” Josephinum Journal of
Theology 18 [2011]: 51-62).
11
While we do not discuss it below, this “through them” is significant, especially for
sacramental theology. See IV Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4, where St. Thomas uses
obediential potency to explain sacramental instrumentality. See also 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), esp. 128-43.
12
Lawrence Feingold makes this claim in “Man as Imago Dei and Capax Dei: Man’s
Specific Obediential Potency,” in Reason and the Rule of Faith: Conversations in the
Tradition with John Paul II, ed. Christopher J. Thompson and Steven A. Long (New
York: University Press of America, 2011), 197-215, at 198.

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miraculously calms the storm and the sea, to the amazement of
those aboard the ship. Saint Thomas Aquinas thinks that this
pericope testifies to the capacity of creatures to be moved by
God ad nutum, at God’s command or nod. Just as the body
obeys the soul and moves immediately at its nod, so do all
things obey their creator. “For the wind and sea obey him,
because every creature obeys its Creator,”14 St. Thomas says.
We have here the constitutive elements of obediential potency,
namely, (1) God’s active agency, whereby God can bring about
in his creation whatever he wills, and (2) the creature’s profound capacity to obey at once the word of its creator. Florent
Gaboriau keenly observes that St. Thomas’s commentary on
Matthew 8:27 can be read alongside other texts (e.g., STh III,
q. 1, a. 3, ad 3) in which St. Thomas likewise uses the phrase ad
nutum to explain creaturely obedience in the context of human
nature’s capacity for the hypostatic union.15
Obediential potency is also arguably of Augustinian provenance. In De Genesi ad litteram, St. Augustine begins by
speaking about the natural order that God has created, an order
in which human beings are created in the image and likeness of
God and created male and female (Gen 1:26-27).16 He wants to
identify the potency or capacity in Adam’s rib that allowed it to
be transformed into a woman, Eve. Is it according to what he
calls rationes seminales? The natural order has its own laws,
“according to which both the spirit of life which is a creature
has drives and urges . . . and also the elements of this material
world have their distinct energies and qualities, which determine what each is or is not capable of, what can or cannot be

13
“And the men marveled, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea
obey him?’”
14
Super Matt., c. 8, lect. 3: “Quia venti et mare obediunt ei: quia omnis creatura suo
Creatori obedit” (Marietti ed.; trans. Jeremy Holmes and Beth Mortensen [Lander,
Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013], no. 729).
15
Florent Gaboriau, Saint Thomas d’Aquin en dialogue (Paris: FAC éditions, 1993),
52.
16
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 9.17.31 (trans. Edmund Hill, On Genesis, Works
of St. Augustine I/13 (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2002).

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551

made from which.”17 As Gerald Boersma explains, “Augustine
describes the innate structures or ‘natural laws’ woven deeply
into the fabric of creaturely existence.”18 Lawrence Feingold is
justified, then, in saying, “St. Augustine’s use of the notion of
‘seminal reasons’ (rationes seminales) here is basically equivalent
to ‘natural potency’ in the vocabulary of St. Thomas.”19 These
rationes seminales, as Boersma says, “allow for the unfolding of
contingent being according to its nature and teleology.”20 We
are speaking here of the natural order and the natural perfection or “unfolding” of creatures. But is the transformation of
Adam’s rib into Eve an instance of such natural creaturely
unfolding?
Not content to speak only of rationes seminales in this context, St. Augustine proceeds to speak of things that God can
work in creatures above their natures, above the natural order
he has made:
But over and above this natural course and operation of things, the power of
the creator has in itself the capacity to make from all these things something
other than what their seminal formulae [rationes seminales], so to say,
prescribe—not however anything with which he did not so program them that
it could be made from them at least by him.21

This quotation evinces the same truth we saw in Matthew 8,
namely, that all creatures obey their creator, that God can work
in a way that does not pertain strictly speaking to the natural
potency (ratio seminalis) of the creature. Indeed, God can work
above the order of nature to do the miraculous, to bring about
the wonders we see in sacred Scripture: the budding of Aaron’s
rod, the gift of a child to a barren Sarah or Rebekah, the gift of
speech to Balaam’s ass. More proximate to St. Augustine’s
17

Ibid. 9.17.32.
Gerald P. Boersma, “The rationes seminales in Augustine’s Theology of Creation,”
Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 18 (2020): 413-41, at 430. Saint Thomas also says in III Sent.,
d. 1, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4 that natural potency pertains to the seminal reason (“pertinet ad
rationem seminalem”).
19
Feingold, Natural Desire, 108 n. 22. See STh I, q. 115, a. 2.
20
Boersma, “Rationes seminales,” 430.
21
Augustine, De Gen. ad litt. 9.17.32.
18

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AARON D. HENDERSON

concern, it is this potency that explains the capacity of Adam’s
rib to be miraculously transformed into Eve.
Lest one think that St. Augustine limits this capacity in the
creature to the miraculous, he extends the point to the working
of grace:
So, then, God has in himself the hidden causes of certain deeds and events,
which he did not insert in things he had made; and he does not activate them
by that work of providence by which he set up natures in order for them to
be, but that work of providence by which he administers as he may wish the
natures he established as he wished. Among these causes too is the grace by
which sinners are saved.22

God moves creatures in accord with their natures to some
natural perfection. But creatures also have an openness whereby
they can receive whatever God wills, even something above
their natures. Feingold sees in this text the basic substance of
the doctrine of obediential potency. He comments,
St. Augustine has clearly enunciated the notion of obediential potency without
giving it a technical name. Nevertheless, the way he describes it already
suggests the technical name that will be given it in the thirteenth century, for
he characterizes it as a potency in the creature to obey the will of God above
the natural order constituted by the “seminal reasons” that God has inserted
into nature.23

We can add to Feingold’s observation that St. Augustine’s language here of “ut voluerit . . . ut voluit,” by which the latter
intends to highlight the divine freedom in creation and recreation in grace, will be an essential part of the definition of
obediential potency.
Following St. Augustine are various medieval recipients of
the idea who expressed it in terms of a potentia obedientiae,
among whom are Philip the Chancellor, Alexander of Hales,

22
23

Ibid. 9.18.33.
Feingold, Natural Desire, 109.

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553

and St. Albert the Great.24 Saint Thomas is the inheritor of an
intellectual tradition.
B) Obediential Potency in St. Thomas
Saint Thomas himself uses “obediential potency” in his corpus, as Thomas Joseph White puts it, “in a myriad of fluid and
analogical senses, to denote far more than the miraculous
domain of God’s working.”25 Admittedly, the Angelic Doctor
does use obediential potency to explain the creature’s capacity
for the miraculous.26 He does not, however, thereby restrict it
to the miraculous. Rather, as an examination of the over twenty
instances27 in which St. Thomas uses the principle bears out, he
uses it both to explain various miracles and to explain man’s
capacity for essentially supernatural realities such as grace and
glory. A single text will suffice for our purposes.
Question 1, article 10 of the disputed questions De
Virtutibus asks whether there are infused virtues. An objector

24

Saint Albert teaches in his commentary on Pseudo-Dionysius’s Divine Names that,
just as prime matter has an obediential potency for the form of glory, so does the human
intellect have an obediential potency for the beatific vision. See In Div. nom., c. 1, n. 27,
ad 7 (Opera omnia, vol. 37/1, ed. Paulus Simon [Münster Monasterii Westfalorum
Aschendorff, 1972], 13b, ll. 58-64).
25
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The Enduring Significance of the Dominican
Doctrine of Grace: The Case of Obediential Potency,” in Dominicans and the Challenge
of Thomism, ed. Michal Paluch and Piotr Lichacz (Warsaw: Instytut Tomistyczny,
2012), 143-56, at 146.
26
Saint Thomas follows his predecessors in using obediential potency to account for
things such as the transformation of Adam’s rib into Eve (III Sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 2,
qcla. 3, ad 3), wood into a calf (III Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1), and even bread and wine into
the Body and Blood of Christ (IV Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4).
27
I Sent., d. 42, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4; II Sent., d. 15, q. 3, a. 1, ad 8; d. 18, q. 1, a. 2;
d. 19, q. 1, a. 5; III Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4; d. 2, q. 1, a. 1; d. 2, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 3,
ad 3; d. 3, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1; IV Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, ad 4; d. 11, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 3, ad 3;
d. 17, q. 1, a. 5, qcla. 1, corp. and ad 1; d. 48, q. 2, a. 1 ad 3; De Verit., q. 8, a. 4,
ad 13; q. 8, a. 12, ad 4; q. 12, a. 3, ad 18; q. 29, a. 3, ad 3; De Pot., q. 1, a. 3, ad 1 and
ad 5; q. 6, a. 1, ad 18; De Virtut., q. 1, a. 10, ad 13; STh III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3; q. 11, a. 1.
Jorge Laporta points out these distinct examples in an appendix to his La destinée de la
nature humaine selon Thomas d’Aquin, Études de philosophie médiévale 55 (Paris:
J. Vrin, 1965).

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mounts a formidable argument, namely, that since the potentia
we possess to receive supernatural virtues is in us before their
acquisition and not by way of infusion, neither are the virtues
themselves which actualize our potency infused.28 The operative
principle here can be found in Aristotle’s Physics: act and
potency are in the same genus. A further explication of this
principle is the truth, consistently affirmed by St. Thomas, that
to every natural passive potency there corresponds a natural
active potency, a natural agent capable of actualizing it.29 To
this formidable objection, which employs a true and universal
principle, St. Thomas responds:
It should be said that when something passive is fashioned to acquire different
perfections from different ordered agents, there is a difference and order of
passive powers in the recipient responding to the difference and order of the
active powers of the agents, because the passive power responds to the active.
Thus, it is that water or earth have a potency according to which they are
moved by fire, and another insofar as they are fashioned to be moved by a
heavenly body, and yet another according to which they can be moved by
God. For water or earth can become something in virtue of a supernatural
agent that they cannot become by the power of a natural agent. For this
reason we say that in every creature there is an obediential potency, insofar as
every creature obeys God in receiving whatever God wills. There is in the soul
[Sic igitur et in anima] a potency fashioned to be actuated by a connatural
agent, and in this way it is in potency to acquired virtues. In another way there
is a potency in the soul which is fashioned to be actuated only by the divine
power, and in this way the infused virtues are potentially in the soul.30

28
De Virtut., q. 1, a. 10, obj. 13: “Praeterea, homo ante acquisitionem virtutis est in
potentia ad virtutes. Sed potentia et actus sunt unius generis: omne enim genus dividitur
per potentiam et actum, ut patet in III Physic. Cum ergo potentia ad virtutem non sit ex
infusione, videtur quod nec virtus ex infusione sit.”
29
See Feingold, Natural Desire, 123-31.
30
“Ad decimumtertium dicendum, quod quando aliquod passivum natum est
consequi diversas perfectiones a diversis agentibus ordinatis, secundum differentiam et
ordinem potentiarum activarum in agentibus, est differentia et ordo potentiarum passivarum in passivo; quia potentiae passivae respondet potentia activa: sicut patet quod
aqua vel terra habet aliquam potentiam secundum quam nata est moveri ab igne; et
aliam secundum quam nata est moveri a corpore caelesti; et ulterius aliam secundum
quam nata est moveri a Deo. Sicut enim ex aqua vel terra potest aliquid fieri virtute
corporis caelestis, quod non potest fieri virtute ignis; ita ex eis potest aliquid fieri virtute
supernaturalis agentis quod non potest fieri virtute alicuius naturalis agentis; et

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There are two main readings of this text.31 The first is to read
obediential potency as referring only to miracles. This
interpretation can be seen in figures such as Henri de Lubac,32
Jorge Laporta,33 and the later Étienne Gilson.34 Another
secundum hoc dicimus, quod in tota creatura est quaedam obedientialis potentia, prout
tota creatura obedit Deo ad suscipiendum in se quidquid Deus voluerit. Sic igitur et in
anima est aliquid in potentia, quod natum est reduci in actum ab agente connaturali; et
hoc modo sunt in potentia in ipsa virtutes acquisitae. Alio modo aliquid est in potentia
in anima quod non est natum educi in actum nisi per virtutem divinam; et sic sunt in
potentia in anima virtutes infusae” (Disputed Questions on Virtue, trans. Ralph
McInerny [South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999]).
31
A third is provided by Jacob W. Wood in To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas
and Henri de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of American Press, 2019), 346. Though Wood’s account is certainly
worth engaging, I do not consider it here because it involves a reworking of St.
Thomas’s doctrine of obediential potency.
32
De Lubac argues that Cardinal Cajetan, who considers obediential potency of great
import in explicating the nature-grace relation, ultimately “reduces the case of the
supernatural destiny of created spirit to a particular instance of miracle” (Henri de
Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Rosemary Sheed [New York: Crossroad
Publishing, 1998], 143).
33
Laporta is strong in his denial that St. Thomas ever used obediential potency to
describe man’s capacity for essentially supernatural perfections. “Never did Thomas cite
grace and glory as examples of the realization of an obediential potency” (“Jamais
Thomas n’a cité la grâce et la gloire comme exemples de la réalisation d’une puissance
obédientielle”) (Laporta, La destinée de la nature humaine, 144).
34
Gilson’s eventual reduction of obediential potency to susceptibility to miraculous
transmutation is especially disheartening in light of his beautiful and quite profound
defense of the principle in his earlier work. See Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval
Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931-1932), trans. A. H. C. Downes (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 381: “Since they are created they can still obey
the will of their Creator if it pleases Him to enlarge their destiny; and it is precisely the
nature of the intellect to be able to be thus enlarged without any alteration in its
essence, nay, rather, with fulfilment of its essence. The capacity that lies in human
nature for beatific vision is thus something more than a word; the capacity is part of
human nature itself made to the image of God, from Whom it derives its power of
knowing. The capacity for grace is also something more than a word; if human souls
were not susceptible of grace God Himself could not bestow it. But when all is said we
must observe the limits of nature. It will obey ad nutum if God so commands, but it can
do no more than obey. There is nothing in it at all that already belongs to the
supernatural, nothing to attract it, still less anything that demands it; the obediential
power, no matter how real it may be, remains absolutely passive; above all, it expresses
the distinctive character of a Christian nature, open that is to say towards its Creator.”

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interpretation, represented for our purposes by Mark Johnson,
sees obediential potency as the principle whereby the soul is
capable of essentially supernatural perfections such as infused
virtues. Johnson writes, contra Laporta,
It is unlikely that St. Thomas does not intend here to explain man’s potency
for the infused virtue as obediential. Indeed, St. Thomas rather seems to think
that the notion of obediential potency is the best way to answer the difficulty,
for, having explained that passive potency corresponds to the active power, he
is able to detect in man a passive potency whose corresponding agent is God
alone. He is thus able [to] assert that man is in potency to the infused virtues
without having to posit the infusion of the potency for those virtues, for being
a creature, man is immediately subject to the virtus divina, and can be acted
upon by God, the most active of all agents.35

This became the dominant view in the Thomistic tradition,36
namely, that grace and other essentially supernatural37 perfections such as the theological virtues are educed from the obediential potency of the soul. God can bring about in human beings
whatever he wills. The only thing limiting this obedience to
divine power is contradiction.38 While this obedience pertains to
35

Mark F. Johnson, “St. Thomas, Obediential Potency, and the Infused Virtues: De
virtutibus in communi, a. 10, ad 13,” in Thomistica, ed. E. Manning, Recherches de
théologie ancienne et médiévale, supplementa, vol. 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 34.
36
Garrigou-Lagrange considers the traditional Thomistic position to be that “grace is
neither created nor concreated but is educed from the obediential potency of the soul”
(Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Grace: Commentary on the Summa Theologica of St.
Thomas, Ia IIae, Q. 109–114, trans. The Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery
[St. Louis: Herder, 1952], 307). He says that this understanding is based on various
texts in St. Thomas, but principally STh I-II, q. 110, a. 2, ad 3; q. 113, a. 9; De Verit.,
q. 27, a. 3, ad 9; and De Virtut., q. 1, a. 10, ad 2 and ad 13.
37
This language of the essentially supernatural (quoad substantiam vel essentiam) is
used in the Thomistic tradition to distinguish that which exceeds the nature and natural
powers of every created or creatable thing, and that which is supernatural only with
respect to the manner of its production (quoad modum). The former is obviously what
concerns us here. See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Sense of Mystery: Clarity
and Obscurity in the Intellectual Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, Ohio:
Emmaus Academic, 2017), 209.
38
Feingold, Natural Desire, 106: “Is there a limit to this potency? It is as wide as
God’s omnipotence itself. God’s omnipotence stretches to all being. However, even
God’s omnipotence cannot realize something contradictory, for such a ‘thing’ cannot be.

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every created being, human beings are unique among God’s
creatures. They are, in virtue of the intellectual nature, made in
God’s image.39 They are capable of entering into relationships
of knowledge and love with other created persons and with
God.
Just as man has a natural passive potency for the acquired
virtues, so too does he have an obediential potency for those
virtues that bring supernatural perfection to him, and which can
be educed or drawn forth only by the God to whom the
intellectual creature is obedient in a more profound manner
than is the lower creation.40
Before proceeding to the next section, two points need
clarification. The first concerns the relationship and distinction
between natural passive potency and obediential potency. The
second concerns the analogical use of obediential potency to
indicate either a capacity existing in every created thing or a
capacity specific to intellectual or spiritual nature.

Thus the only limit to obediential potency in general is contradiction. All creatures are
open to receive, above their nature, whatever is not intrinsically contradictory.” Helpful
at this point are the distinctions St. Thomas makes in De Pot., q. 1, a. 3 between the
various senses of the possible and the impossible. See Emmanuel Durand, O.P., “God’s
Power and the Impossible: Who Delineates Them?,” Nova et vetera (Eng ed.) 20
(2022): 159-78, esp. 172ff., where he speaks of obediential potency.
39
See STh I, q. 93, a. 3, where St. Thomas says that the imago chiefly consists in the
intellectual nature.
40
Long makes a helpful point concerning a more proper sense of “obedience” to
God in the intellectual creature: “The aforementioned mode of created obedience to
divine power seems a deeper and more proper sense of ‘obedience.’ To obey merely in
the sense of being transformed, so that the original subject of obedience no longer
exists, is clearly an inferior form of obedience. . . . While the sensible examples of the
lower stratum of ‘obediential potency’ proliferate, it bears recollecting that, for Thomas,
there are more species of angels than of physical things and that the sense of ‘obedience,’ for Thomas, is interior motion conforming to intellective command (command is
an act of the intellect and not of the will). Thus, obedience properly speaking is not a
voluntarist posit, and so it would be strange were ‘obediential potency’ to be reducible
to the lowest instance of obedience wherein things are miraculously transformed to
other things (a use of ‘obedience’ seemingly by extrinsic attribution) rather than
interiorly elevated through their passive potency to activation by a nobler principle”
(Steven A. Long, Creation ad imaginem Dei: The Obediential Potency of the Human
Person to Grace and Glory,” Nova et vetera [Eng. ed.] 14 [2016]: 1175-92, at 1187-88.

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We have already mentioned, however obliquely, the relationship between natural passive potency and obediential potency.
Both are passive potencies, and thus there may be a temptation
to confuse them. Nevertheless, St. Thomas carefully differentiates them, saying of the former that it always corresponds to
a natural active potency;41 that its actualization brings natural
perfection to the creature involved;42 and that it is always
fulfilled, at least as far as the species is concerned.43 Obediential
potency, on the other hand, corresponds to the divine power,
which can work anything in the creature that is not a contradiction;44 its actualization either effects miraculous change or
brings supernatural perfection to a creature;45 and it need not be
fulfilled by God, and thus if it is fulfilled this is at God’s good
pleasure.46 One can see readily enough how positing a natural
passive potency in man for grace and the beatific vision might
imply that grace and glory could be effectuated by some natural
agent, that these would constitute natural perfection for the
human person, and that these would be owed to human beings.
Clearly articulating the relationship and distinction between
natural passive potency and obediential potency, therefore, is of
great import.
Regarding the analogical use of obediential potency, we can
speak first of a potency for the miraculous. Again, myriad examples were employed by St. Thomas’s predecessors and by the
Angelic Doctor himself. The only limiting principle here, because God is infinitely powerful, is contradiction. God can
miraculously transform Adam’s rib into Eve, but not without
the rib ceasing to be a rib.

41

See III Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1.
See De Verit., q. 8, a. 4, ad 13, which operates on the understanding that the
angelic intellect would be (naturally) imperfect if the whole of its natural passive
potency were not actualized.
43
See III Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4.
44
See STh I, q. 25, a. 3.
45
See STh III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3.
46
See STh III, q. 11, a. 1, where St. Thomas speaks about the natural passive potency
and obediential potency proper to Christ’s soul being perfected by infused knowledge.
42

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There is next what in the Thomistic tradition came to be
called “specific obediential potency,” that is to say, obediential
potency proper to particular natures. If generic obediential
potency accounts for the creature’s susceptibility to miraculous
transmutation, specific obediential potency “refers to a specific
range of actuation that the active agency of God can bring forth
from a nature.”47 For intellectual nature, whether in angels or in
humans, receiving supernatural gifts such as grace and infused
virtues poses no contradiction, whereas it would pose a
contradiction for a rock, or for any subhuman creature. Nonrepugnance or noncontradiction in this context is not a wholly
negative principle. Obediential potency is indeed formally a
nonrepugnance, at least according to the traditional Thomistic
conception, but “by reason of its subject and materially, it is
completely identified with the essence of the soul and its
faculties, whether passive or active, which can be elevated to the
order of grace.”48 A dog cannot even in principle become a
sharer in the divine nature, whereas for human beings this is
possible with God’s gracious help. Thus specific obediential
potency, central to the mystery of divine grace, accounts for
how grace can be at once something freely given and something
that renders us pleasing to God. Though the obediential
potency of the soul from which grace is educed is nothing more
than a nonaversion according to its formal reason, materially it
is the essence of the soul itself as capable of being elevated,
caught up into the eternal life and love of God.
II. MAN AS A SOCIAL ANIMAL
A) Natural Potency for Social Life
Saint Thomas teaches that man is naturally open to, and
inclined toward, social life. He appropriates Aristotle’s teaching
that man is ζῷον πολιτικόν,49 a city-dwelling animal, a political
47

Long, “Creation ad imaginem Dei,” 1186.
Garrigou-Lagrange, Grace, 309.
49
Aristotle, Politics 1.1.1153a2-3.
48

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being, though he generally speaks of man being a social animal
(animal sociale).50 This teaching is explained well in the following text from the Summa contra gentiles:
Man is naturally a civil or social animal [animal politicum, vel sociale]. This is
evident from the fact that one man does not suffice for himself if he lives
alone, because the things are few in which nature makes adequate provision
for man, since she gave him his reason by means of which he might provide
himself with all necessaries of life, such as food, clothes, and so forth—for the
production of which one man is not enough. Hence man has a natural
inclination for social life.51

Though man is not constituted by his relations to other persons,52 he is perfected by them. “Since man by nature is a social
50

For example, in STh I, q. 96, a. 4. See Edgar Scully, “The Place of the State in
Society according to Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 45 (1981): 407-29, at 407. Saint
Thomas owes much also to Cicero, both in the latter’s account of inclinatio more
generally and in his account of the natural inclination to social life more particularly.
See chapter 17 of Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr.
Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1995). “Thus,” writes Cicero, “we are disposed by nature to form groups,
assemblies, cities. The world . . . is somewhat like a city or commonwealth shared by
men and gods, and each one of us is a part of this world” (Cicero, De finibus bonorum
et malorum, 3.19, as quoted in Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 406).
51
ScG III, c. 85: “Homo naturaliter est animal politicum, vel sociale. Quod quidem
ex hoc apparet quod unus homo non sufficit sibi si solus vivat, propterea quod natura in
paucis homini providit sufficienter, dans ei rationem, per quam posset sibi omnia
necessaria ad vitam praeparare, sicut cibum, indumenta, et alia huiusmodi ad quae
omnia operanda non sufficit unus homo. Unde naturaliter est inditum homini ut in
societate vivat” (trans. Vernon J. Bourke [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1975]).
52
With regard to the human person as constituted by his relativity toward the other,
one thinks among other things of Joseph Ratzinger’s article, “Concerning the Notion of
Person in Theology,” Communio 17 (1990): 439-54. There are reasons to think,
however, that if a divine person signifies a relation as subsisting (see STh I, q. 29, a. 4),
it is otherwise for a created person. For, as Long says, “to have being from another
necessarily presupposes having being—for there is no real relation without the being of
the things really related. Lacking the being of the creature, there is simply nothing to be
related. Thus the relation of the creature to God is an effect of the creature’s being, not
something prior to it: because, prior to the creature, there is only God who has no real
determined relation to the creature” (Steven A. Long, “Pruning the Vine of La Nouvelle
Theologie in the Garden of Thomism: Regarding the Thomistic Corrective to ‘La

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animal,” St. Thomas says, “he needs assistance from other men
in order to obtain his own end.”53 Human beings are not meant
to be alone, nor can they secure properly human flourishing
without others.
Man has a natural inclination for social life because he
possesses powers of intellection and volition that allow him to
enter into relations of knowledge and love with other persons.
As evidence that man is a social animal, we may point to an
operation proper to him: speech. Man is able by his operation
to be in touch with intelligible truth, for which purpose he was
given intelligence and reason both to discern and to discover the
truth, as well as sensitive powers to assist in this discovery.
“Also,” St. Thomas says, “to him is given the use of speech, so
that by making use of it, one who has conceived the truth in his
mind may be able to impart it to another, so that men may thus
assist one another in the knowledge of truth even as in other
necessaries of life, since man is by nature a social animal.”54 It is
necessary for human flourishing that men communicate or declare the truth to one another. This communication makes
possible the formation of communions of life and love. All
human beings possess a natural capacity to form such communions. The more proximate example is the family, a communion of life and love necessary for human flourishing and for
the continuance of the human race.55
Nouvelle Theologie,’” Angelicum 93 [2016]: 135-55, at 142). In short, we are not
constituted even by our relation to God; we are constituted by God.
53
ScG III, c. 117: “Cum homo sit naturaliter animal sociale, indiget ab aliis
hominibus adiuvari ad consequendum proprium finem.”
54
ScG III, c. 147: “datus est etiam ei loquelae usus, per cuius officium veritatem
quam aliquis mente concipit, alteri manifestare possit; ut sic homines seipsos iuvent in
cognitione veritatis, sicut et in aliis rebus necessariis vitae, cum sit homo animal
naturaliter sociale.”
55
Relevant here is the relation between private or individual good and common
good. See STh II-II, q. 47, a. 10, ad 2, which relates individual human flourishing to the
family and state. “It can be demonstrated,” Pinckaers says, “that this inclination [to live
in society] finds its first realization in family affection, extends to other communities,
and finally gives birth to the love of the human race, the caritas generis humani of which
Cicero speaks (De finibus bonorum et malorum 5.23)” (Pinckaers, Sources of Christian
Ethics, 433-34).

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Neither can political society be preserved without honest
communication between men. Saint Thomas teaches this when
explaining that truth is a part of justice: “Since man is a social
animal, one man naturally owes another whatever is necessary
for the preservation of human society. Now it would be impossible for men to live together, unless they believed one
another, as declaring the truth one to another. Hence the virtue
of truth does, in a manner, regard something as being due.”56 A
social relational context, a communicatio, which always includes the declaration of truth, is essential for establishing
friendship.57 It will be helpful to look at friendship in order to
see more concretely how human beings come together socially.
Indeed, friendship is vital not only for holding political society
together, but also, in the case of supernatural friendship or
charity, for holding the Church together. The Church is, after
all, as Guy Mansini says, “the communion of friends with and in
Christ, the communion of charity.”58
B) Saint Thomas on Friendship
As with his teaching on man as a social or political animal,
St. Thomas appropriates the Philosopher’s teaching on friendship, contained primarily in books 8 and 9 of the Nicomachean
Ethics.59 The latter begins by explaining that friendship is neces56
STh II-II, q. 109, a. 3, ad 1: “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod quia homo est
animal sociale, naturaliter unus homo debet alteri id sine quo societas humana
conservari non posset. Non autem possent homines ad invicem convivere nisi sibi
invicem crederent, tanquam sibi invicem veritatem manifestantibus. Et ideo virtus
veritatis aliquo modo attendit rationem debiti.” Quotations from the Summa theologiae
are taken from the Leonine edition and the translation by Laurence Shapcote, O.P.;
edition and translation revised by the Aquinas Institute [Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas
Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012]).
57
There is some debate as to the precise meaning of communicatio vis-à-vis
friendship in the thought of St. Thomas. See Joseph Bobik, “Aquinas on Communicatio,
the Foundation of Friendship and Caritas,” Modern Schoolman 64 (1986): 1-18.
58
Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Ecclesiology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2021), 201.
59
One can hardly overstate the importance of his doctrine. As Michael Pakaluk
explains, “Aristotle’s treatment of friendship, like his treatments of so many other

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sary, not only for individuals60 but for societies. It is valued
above every kind of material gain. Those who have acquired
power and wealth need a way to exercise beneficence, as well as
friends to help safeguard their prosperity. Those in poverty take
refuge in friendship when they have nothing else. Young and
old alike need it, the former so that they might remain on the
right path, the latter so that they might be ministered to in their
weakness. It exists among family members and among citizens
of a state. Legislators prize friendship above justice, for it holds
men together and expels faction. In addition to being necessary
for individuals and for the proper functioning of the social
order, friendship is something good and noble. We praise those
who love their friends and celebrate those who have acquired
many.61

subjects, constituted a great advance over anything produced by his predecessors and
was to serve as a kind of reference point for future work on the subject. Much of the
subsequent work on friendship in the Western tradition can be understood either as
building upon and supplementing Aristotle’s views or as reacting against them” (Michael
Pakaluk, Other Selves: Philosophers on Friendship [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, 1991], 28). As an example of Aristotle’s considerable influence, consider
Cicero, whom we mentioned above because of his contributions to the discussions of
natural inclination and friendship. Cicero had read Plato’s Lysis, Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics, and had studied in some depth a work on friendship written by
Theophrastus, Aristotle’s chief pupil. See the introduction to Laelius: On Friendship, in
Cicero: On the Good Life, trans. Michael Grant (London: Penguin Books, 1971), 173.
60
Saint Thomas teaches that even the happy man (felix) needs friends, not because
he needs to make use of them, nor because he requires them for his own delight, since
he has this in the operation of virtue. He needs them, instead, so that he might be able
to do good to them, see them do good, and be aided by them in the exercise of virtue.
STh I-II, q. 4, a. 8: “felix indiget amicis, non quidem propter utilitatem, cum sit sibi
sufficiens; nec propter delectationem, quia habet in seipso delectationem perfectam in
operatione virtutis; sed propter bonam operationem, ut scilicet eis benefaciat, et ut eos
inspiciens benefacere delectetur, et ut etiam ab eis in benefaciendo adiuvetur.” Daniel
Schwartz comments: “The happy life demands the permanent availability of the
resources which allow virtuous operation. Friendship is said to be one such resource:
without friends the continuity of virtuous operation would be impaired; one would be
likely to lose enthusiasm for and interest in the activity of virtuous living” (Daniel
Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, Oxford Philosophical Monographs [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2007], 4).
61
See Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.1.1155a3-28.

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There is, however, uncertainty regarding the nature of
friendship. Aristotle notes that some see friendship as established on the basis of likeness; others say the contrary, that between similar individuals there is mutual opposition. Some try
to ground friendship in nature, asserting again that like seeks
after like, while others are convinced that harmony results from
opposites. Finally, some philosophers posit but one kind of
friendship.62
Saint Thomas sees in Aristotle’s response to these questions
an explication of the definition of friendship. He identifies four
parts of the definition. First, the aforementioned questions can
be clarified by reflecting on the object of love, which is
something lovable. Here Aristotle makes a threefold division:
(1) that which is good in itself, (2) that which is pleasurable, and
(3) that which is useful. The last seems to be ordered to the
good in itself or to pleasure; it is a means to an end. Saint
Thomas explains that “these do not differ in kind as three equal
species of a genus but are classified by priority and posteriority.”63 The kinds of friendship will correspond to this threefold
division of things lovable.
The second part of the definition identifies two essential
qualities of friendship. Aristotle uses the example of wine to
show why it cannot be an object of friendship. First, because
wine is not capable of loving in return. Second, because we do
not will good for the wine as such, nor for any other inanimate
thing. If we desire that the wine be preserved, it is not for the
sake of the wine itself, but for our own sake. We want to imbibe
the wine, and for this reason want it to be preserved. Friendship, on the contrary, involves willing another’s good, a good
that corresponds to his nature.
The third part of the definition refers to a change in the one
loved. It is possible to be benevolent toward another without
friendship resulting. What is required is what the wine mentioned above cannot provide: love in return. Saint Thomas ex62

See ibid. 8.1.1155a-b16.
VIII Ethic., lect. 3 (trans. C. I. Litzinger [Notre Dame, Ind.: Dumb Ox Books,
1993], no. 1563).
63

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plains further, “The reason is that we say friendship is benevolence with corresponding requital inasmuch as the one loving
is loved in return, for friendship has a kind of exchange of love
after the manner of commutative justice.”64 Friendship requires
mutuality, reciprocity.
Friendship cannot be established if benevolence is hidden.
This, then, is the fourth part of the definition. Mutual knowledge is a condition for mutual love. Perhaps Socrates hears of
some just man far away. Socrates has love for the just man,
wishes him well, and the like. While we might call Socrates
benevolent, we cannot call him a friend of this stranger.
Aristotle concludes by putting together the parts of the
definition: “Therefore, it is necessary for friendship that men
wish good to one another, that this fact be recognized by each,
and that it be for the sake of one of the reasons previously mentioned [namely, the good itself, pleasure, or utility].”65 Friendship can thus be established on the basis of three lovable things:
the good itself, pleasure, or utility, yielding friendship of virtue,
friendship of pleasure, and friendship of utility respectively.
Our focus here will be on virtuous friendship, the kind
established between virtuous men. This Aristotle calls “perfect
friendship.” This kind of friendship is stable, founded as it is in
virtue, which is a permanent habit.66 A friend is loved for his
own sake, not for any perceived benefit or pleasure. Virtuous
friendship takes whatever good is present in the imperfect forms
of friendship and perfects it. As Aristotle explains,
It is reasonable for such friendship to be long lasting, because absolutely all
the qualities necessary for friendship are joined together in it. Every friendship
is for the sake of good or pleasure, either absolutely or to the one loving and
according to a kind of likeness. But all the preceding qualities are found in this
friendship essentially; and those who are alike according to this friendship
have the remaining goods too, because what is without qualification good is
also unreservedly pleasurable.67
64

VIII Ethic., lect. 2 (Litzinger, trans., no. 1559).
Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.2.1156a3-5 (as quoted by Aquinas in VIII Ethic., lect. 2
[Litzinger, trans.])
66
Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 8.3.1156b11-12.
67
Ibid. 8.3.1156b17-23.
65

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Perfect friendship contains things that are most lovable, and
thus most intensely loved. This friendship, therefore, is the
noblest. Unfortunately, friendships of this kind are rare. Virtuous men are scarce, and without virtuous men this perfect
friendship cannot be established. Moreover, friendship takes
time and familiarity. One person must judge the other to be
lovable and trustworthy.68 The desire might arise quickly, but
the friendship itself is not so easily achieved.69
The time and intimacy requisite for virtuous friendship
entails communicating, gathering around a common good, and
sharing in a common life. It is for this reason that St. Thomas
calls living with one’s friends the principal act of friendship.70
Friendship involves, as we said above, communicatio71 and
communio.
While friendship can evidently be found among equals,
Aristotle says that it may also be found at times among unequal
persons: a father with a son, an older person with a younger
person, a husband with a wife, a ruler with his subject. Unity is
fostered in these cases when love is given proportionately. Thus,
a ruler must be loved more than he loves his subject. Unlike
justice, the goal of which is equality, friendship must begin with
some kind of fundamental equality.72 If the disparity between
two persons is immense, therefore, there can be no friendship.
For Aristotle, this means that friendship between man and God
is impossible, unless perhaps some communicatio be given that

68

Ibid. 8.3.1156b25-29.
Ibid. 8.3.1156b33-35.
70
VIII Ethic., lect. 5 (Litzinger, trans., no. 1600).
71
Bobik (“Aquinas on Communicatio,” 13-14) explains three uses of communicatio
in St. Thomas’s teaching on friendship: “There is, first, ‘communicatio’ as designating a
social relational context which is the foundation out of which friendship arises (or, at
least, can arise). Secondly, there is ‘communicatio’ as designating the activities of friendship. Thirdly, there is ‘communicatio’ as designating the activity of offering a gift which
provides a foundation (where there was none) out of which friendship can arise.
Without this provided foundation, friendship could never arise. Indeed, without a
foundation, no friendship can arise.”
72
See VIII Ethic., lect. 7 (Litzinger, trans., no. 1632).
69

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567

can serve as a foundation for friendship. By nature, however,
there is no proportion.
C) Charity as Divine Friendship
Saint Thomas begins his discussion of charity in the Summa
theologiae by identifying it with friendship.73 He grounds his
teaching especially in John 15:15, “I will not now call you
servants . . . but my friends.” Because Christ says this by reason
of charity, charity must be friendship. Saint Thomas gives a
summary of Aristotle’s doctrine in book 8 of the Ethics.
Friendship is love that is accompanied by benevolence, willing
the good of the other for his own sake. If we cannot will good
to the other, as in the case of wine or a horse, then friendship
cannot be extended to it. But willing good to another is
insufficient. Friendship must be founded on some kind of
communicatio. It is at this point that St. Thomas makes a claim
that would be quite incredible to Aristotle. The latter ruled out
friendship between men and God on account of the (infinite)
ontological distance between them. Saint Thomas writes,
Accordingly, since there is communication between man and God, inasmuch
as He communicates His happiness to us, some kind of friendship must needs
be based on this same communication, of which it is written (1 Cor. 1:9):
“God is faithful: by Whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son.”
The love which is based on this communication, is charity: wherefore it is
evident that charity is the friendship of man for God.74

Saint Thomas’s communicatio here is comparable to Aristotle’s
koinonia, and pregnant with the elements we explicated:
73

See Jean-Pierre Torrell, Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomistic
Ressourcement Series 2, trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2011), 45, where he claims that “Thomas was the first to
formally identify charity as friendship.”
74
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 1: “Cum igitur sit aliqua communicatio hominis ad Deum
secundum quod nobis suam beatitudinem communicat, super hac communicatione
oportet aliquam amicitiam fundari. De qua quidem communicatione dicitur I ad Cor.
I, fidelis Deus, per quem vocati estis in societatem filii eius. Amor autem super hac
communicatione fundatus est caritas. Unde manifestum est quod caritas amicitia
quaedam est hominis ad Deum.”

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persons gathered around a common good, communication, and
sharing a common life. “This,” according to Jean-Pierre Torrell,
“entails what Thomas calls a conversatio (cum versari: ‘live
with’), a certain common life in which the essential characteristic of friendship is present.”75 We share a common life with
God when he communicates his beatitude to us. If friendship is
vital to human communities, like a glue holding the social order
together, supernatural friendship or charity, founded on God’s
gracious communicatio in Christ, is the very life and soul of the
Church, the (created) principle of her unity.
III. THE CHURCH AND MAN’S MEMBERSHIP THEREIN
A) Israel as Prefiguring and Anticipating the Church
Though the natural potency for social life pertains to human
nature as such, prescinding from consideration of its concrete
condition or state, we exist in an order in which human nature
is fallen and in need of restoration and healing.76 We are all too
aware that human relationships and communities can and do
fall prey to sin and selfishness; all too frequent is the experience
of man, in tyrannical fashion, subordinating the common good
to his own private good.77 The first couple’s fall could have

75

Torrell, Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas, 48.
Saint Thomas discusses the effects of sin on human nature in STh I-II, q. 85.
77
See De Regno I, cc. 2 and 4. Regarding the fundamental relation and order
between particular good and common good, see STh I-II, q. 19, a. 10, where St. Thomas
says that a man’s will is not right (recta) in willing a particular good unless he refer it to
the common good. Indeed, the notion of the common good is fundamental and formal
as we consider natural and supernatural community. For the notion of the common
good, see Charles De Koninck, La primauté du bien commun, contre les personalistes
(Québec: Éditions de l’Université Laval, 1943), trans. and ed. Ralph McInerny in The
Writings of Charles De Koninck, vol. 2 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame
Press, 2009). Helpful also are the following articles, both inspired by St. Thomas and De
Koninck: Steven A. Long, “Understanding the Common Good,” Nova et vetera (Eng.
ed.) 16 (2018): 1135-52; Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., “What Makes the Common Good
Common? Key Points from Charles De Koninck,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 20 (2022):
739-52.
76

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signaled the end of the story, had God not deigned to pursue us
mightily with offers of his grace.
Throughout salvation history we see God establishing covenants with sinful human beings in order that he might bless
them and show forth his mercy. He becomes the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and elects a people for his own
possession.78 God establishes a nation that is set apart from all
others as his servant, son, and friend. The Bible, then, is concerned not merely with individuals (Abraham, Moses, David,
and the like), but with the entire people God has chosen.79
Individualism is foreign to the biblical narrative.
The Old Testament displays the notion of corporate personality,80 and consequently of corporate election. The foundation for Israel’s corporate election is human nature: that nature
has a natural potency for and inclination toward social life, but
beyond that we see that the entire people is elected and destined
for covenant friendship with God. This friendship exists on
account of the communicatio made by God in the law and the
78

For more on this notion of “people” in sacred Scripture, see chapter four of
Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., Introduction to the Mystery of the Church,
trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2014).
79
Helpful here are Guy Mansini’s reflections on the antecedent probabilities of
revelation and a Church. The latter probability is bound up with the social or political
nature of man. Mansini, Ecclesiology, 20: “Do we think that God would, or even could,
deal with us one by one? Ahistorically? Atemporally? Each man taken as a pure monad,
unrelated to any other? He does not deal even with the angels in that way, but illumines
one through another. No. We must expect some society, constituted by the word of
God and enduring through the ages to the end of the world. A patriarch may do for a
family, as we see in the last half of the Book of Genesis. For a people, however, we want
a prophet, and the organized people he speaks to. For a people, we want something like
Moses.” In proffering arguments ex convenientia for God bestowing the Old Law at the
time of Moses, St. Thomas says that household precepts were fitting at the time of
Abraham and his kinsmen, but law, since it is a general precept (praeceptum commune),
was appropriate when Abraham’s descendants had multiplied and become a people
under Moses. See STh I-II, q. 98, a. 6, ad 2.
80
For more on corporate personality, see H. Wheeler Robinson, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1981); idem, The Religious Ideas of
the Old Testament (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1952 [1913]), esp. 87-91;
Jean de Fraine, S.J., Adam and the Family of Man (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House,
1965).

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prophets. It is not the perfect communicatio of God’s truth and
happiness made available in Jesus Christ and his Church,81 but
God does set Israel apart as his elect people, as his first-born
son.82 Furthermore, Israel is gratuitously elected unto being a
sign and instrument of salvation for all.83
Thus we have in the Old Testament a plan of communal
salvation, founded on the human capacity for social life and
friendship. Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole puts it well: “God
brings men together with himself and, as a necessary corollary,
with one another. Salvation is the recovered unity of the human
race, and being established as a People is a very expressive sign
of this.”84 But the human race is not being restored merely to a
natural unity, compromised by the sin of our first parents,
however wonderful this natural restoration might be. Human
beings are ultimately meant to share a supernatural unity. This
supernatural unity is prefigured and anticipated by Israel. The
Church is the new people of God, inheriting in greater measure
the dignity and vocation of Israel.85 The promise is received by
Israel, but it is perfectly fulfilled in Christ and gives birth to the
Church.86
81

One thinks here of Heb 1:1-2, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to
our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom
he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.”
82
See, for instance, God’s words to Moses in Exod 4:22, “And you shall say to
Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my first-born son, and I say to you, ‘Let my son
go that he may serve me’; if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay your first-born
son.’”
83
We see this early in the biblical narrative with the threefold promise made to
Abraham (Gen 12:1). Jesus Christ is the seed of Abraham through whom the Abrahamic
promises are fulfilled, the offspring through whom all peoples are blessed. Saint Paul
argues on this basis in Gal 3:16, “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his
offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many; but, referring to one,
‘And to your offspring,’ which is Christ.”
84
La Soujeole, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, 210.
85
Consider 1 Pet 2:9, which takes God’s words to Israel and applies them to the
Church: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own
people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.”
86
La Soujeole, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, 211.

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B) The Church as Israel Fulfilled
When it comes to the New Testament people of God, there
is a rich interplay of continuities and discontinuities with Israel.
The Church, like Israel, is elected or chosen gratuitously by
God. But the Church is not limited to a particular nation; the
whole human race is chosen. Nor does the Church prepare
human beings for a salvation yet to come, but announces and
communicates the salvation already won in Christ.87 Like Israel,
the Church has a vocation or mission: to witness to the one true
God. But the Church proclaims the one true God taking flesh in
Jesus of Nazareth. The Incarnate Word is the Messiah and has
already accomplished our salvation. The Church’s mission is to
communicate Christ’s salvation to the whole human race.
Finally, the Church, like Israel, is bound to God in a covenant.
But the Old Covenant was conditional and required the fidelity
of the people. Israel’s fidelity, however, was inconstant. As La
Soujeole explains,
Now Israel’s history is the history of its infidelities, or, if one prefers, the
history of an impossible fidelity. It is an entirely different matter with the new
(not “renewed”) covenant concluded by Christ in his Blood. This is an eternal
(Heb 13:20), unfailing (Mt 16:18 and 28:20) covenant with “the many” or
the multitude (Mk 14:24; Mt 26:28), that renders the first one void.88

There is thus continuity amidst radical newness. There will be
no “new” people of God after the Church. The Church is the
eschatological people of God, the definitive messianic community of salvation. The race, having begun in one man, is now
restored and elevated in one man, the new Adam, and the communion of salvation he establishes.

87
STh III, q. 61, a. 4: “As the ancient Fathers were saved through faith in Christ’s
future coming, so are we saved through faith in Christ’s past birth and Passion” (“Sicut
antiqui patres salvati sunt per fidem Christi venturi, ita et nos salvamur per fidem
Christi iam nati et passi”).
88
La Soujeole, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church, 212.

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C) Obediential Potency and Ecclesial Communion
In light of the foregoing, I propose the following way of understanding man’s openness to ecclesial membership. Human
beings are by nature political or social animals. The social
nature of the human person “folds back into” or proceeds from
the substantial rational nature and its order toward common
good (and, speculatively, toward universal truth). We are in the
realm here of natural potencies. Furthermore, there are more
determined orderings of the human person which imply particular obediential potencies. For example, the natural institution of marriage, the natural marital relation, constitutes a
specific obediential potency for the sacramentum. Marriage has
existed from the beginning as an institution uniting man and
woman, making of two “one flesh.” In Christ, this natural
institution is raised to the level of a sacrament whereby the
baptized couple enters into a covenantal union that represents
and participates in the union between Christ and the Church.
Likewise, there seems to be a sense in which the social nature of
man proceeding from the embodied intersubjectivity of a rational creature is a distinctive obediential potency for membership in the Church.
We find further evidence to support this thesis in question
65, article 1 of the Tertia pars, where Saint Thomas shows the
fittingness of seven ecclesial sacraments, which correspond well
to human nature, to the good of man that is both personal and
communal. Saint Thomas writes, “Now a man attains perfection
in the corporeal life in two ways: first, in regard to his own
person; second, in regard to the whole community of the
society in which he lives, for man is by nature a social animal.”89
In the supernatural order, five sacraments pertain to man’s
spiritual life and health. Two sacraments pertain more directly
to man’s perfection with regard to the whole community: holy
orders and matrimony. The former bestows power on men to
89
STh III, q. 65, a. 1: “In vita autem corporali dupliciter aliquis perficitur, uno
modo, quantum ad personam propriam; alio modo, per respectum ad totam
communitatem societatis in qua vivit, quia homo naturaliter est animal sociale.”

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rule the community and to exercise public acts; the latter allows
for the procreation and upbringing of children, human persons
called like their parents to enter the Church and to build up the
kingdom of God. The whole ratio of this article is that there
exists some likeness (conformitatem) between the natural human life, both personal and political or social, and the supernatural life, both personal and communal, of those who are
members of the Church. The openness that human beings
possess to enter the Church and be perfected by her sacraments,
both personally and with an eye to the order of the community,
is not simply speaking natural but obediential.
D) Corroboration from Cardinal Journet
Charles Cardinal Journet teaches about man’s obediential
potency for ecclesial membership in his L’Église du Verbe
incarné.90 For example, when speaking about man’s twofold
motion toward God, namely, through the temporal community
and through the spiritual community, he cites St. Thomas’s
words to the effect that man is not ordained to the political
community according to everything he is or has, but all that
man is and does and has ought to be referred to God.91 Journet
comments:
Without quitting the plane of philosophy it thus becomes evident that the civil
community is of itself unfitted to rule the entire being of the men it brings
together; it rules only their life as citizens and the inner reserves of their
90
Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné: Essai de théologie speculative, Œuvres
completes de Charles Journet, vols. 1–5 (Saint-Maurice: Éditions Saint-Augustin, 19982005). Volume 1, which concerns the apostolic hierarchy (La hiérarchie apostolique),
was published in English as Charles Journet, The Church of the Word Incarnate: An
Essay in Speculative Theology, trans. A. H. C. Downes, vol. 1, The Apostolic Hierarchy
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1955). Translations from volumes other than the first are
my own. In addition, there exists in English an abridgement of the first two volumes of
L’Église du Verbe incarné: The Theology of the Church, trans. Victor Szczurek, O. Praem
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004). Originally published in French as Théologie de
l’Église (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958).
91
STh I-II, q. 21, a. 4, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod homo non ordinatur ad
communitatem politicam secundum se totum, et secundum omnia sua. . . . Sed totum
quod homo est, et quod potest et habet, ordinandum est ad Deum.

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nature lie beyond its grasp. It is precisely in virtue of this part of themselves,
the part that remains inaccessible to the civil community and by which they
are capable of God by grace, that men are called to enter into a higher
community. The same men, composed of soul and body, whom the State, on
account of their natural capacities, claims for civil life, are claimed by the
Church, on account of a more inward obediential capacity, for the life of the
heavenly city, the life of “this Jerusalem, whose Prince is God, whose citizens
are the angels and all the saints whether reigning in glory in their fatherland
or still pilgrims on earth, according to the word of the Apostle [Eph. ii. 19]:
‘You are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God’.” It is a
supernatural city which Christ has begun to gather up around Himself and
incorporate into His own Body, a visible extension of His being, of which He
remains to-day the Head though He is ascended into Heaven and cannot
corporeally touch our miseries (save under the eucharistic veils).92

Man has a natural capacity for civil life and an obediential
capacity for life in the city of God, the kingdom of God present
even now in mystery.93 Men possess an obediential potency for
life in the Church on earth, which is a foretaste and down
payment of that perfect life in the heavenly Church.
Journet also explicates the difference between natural passive
potency and obediential potency.94 The former, as we said, can
be actualized by a natural agent, whereas the latter can be
actualized by God alone. We are meant for a certain natural
perfection and for life in civil society. But God has also called us

92
Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, 198. The quote employed by Journet is
from De Virtut., q. 1, a. 9.
93
This last clause employs the language of LG 3: “To carry out the will of the
Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth and revealed to us the
mystery of that kingdom. . . . The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ
now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.”
94
These, as we said above, must be clearly distinguished, and indeed they are in St.
Thomas. Natural passive potency, he teaches, has its very nature (ratio) from its relation
to the pertinent natural active principle (see STh I, q. 80, a. 2), whereas obediential
potency has its very ratio from its relation to the first agent, who can do with the
creature whatever he wills. Man’s obediential openness is thus only analogously
potentia. For again, while natural passive potencies indicate orderings to proportionate
goods, obediential potency does not. Instead, obediential potency is simply a creaturely
openness to whatever God may deign to do in the creature; it has reference to the
divine power and not to any particular good or act.

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above these natural goods to supernatural perfection in his
grace and life in the heavenly city. Journet writes,
It is enough to respect the depth of the mystery in man to understand that he
has to move towards God in two different ways. By reason of his natural
powers, actualized by his acquired virtues, he will move towards his
connatural ends, and will therefore enter into civil communities. By reason of
the obediential power of his spirit, actualized by grace and the infused virtues,
he will acquire wings on which he may rise to the city of the angels, of Christ,
and of the divine Persons.95

This celestial city is already present, as Journet himself admits,
in the Church here below, the pilgrim Church.96 Journet seems
to be saying, therefore, that the very principle that renders man
susceptible of receiving supernatural grace and infused virtue is
the principle whereby he is able to enter into the Church. A
natural analogue exists in the civil communities to which man is
ordered by reason of his natural powers. It is on account of his
natural capacity for human society that man stands obedientially
open, under God’s active agency, to the supernatural or divine
society of the Church.
Drawing out the aspects of the relationship between civil
society and the Church, Journet says that to both may be applied the term “perfect society” (société parfaite), though “certainly not in a univocal manner, but in a proportional and
analogical manner.” He continues,
There is only a similitude of proportionality and analogy: a) between the
spiritual common good of the life of grace and glory, which alone is the
ultimate end, and the temporal common good of culture, which is only a less
valuable, provisional end; b) between the supernatural virtue communicated
to Christ and the apostles to found and sustain the Church, in which the fallen
world is reconciled with God, and the natural virtue communicated to men in
order to found and sustain their cities; c) between fully Christian charity, the
internal bond of the Church, and the convergence of wills in view of purely
human interests, the internal bond of the State; d) between the natural passive
95

Journet, Church of the Word Incarnate, 200.
Hence, belonging in some manner to the Church on earth is necessary for
salvation. See Charles Morerod, O.P., “‘No Salvation outside the Church’: Understanding the Doctrine with St. Thomas Aquinas and Charles Journet,” The Thomist 75
(2011): 517-36.
96

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potency of man with regard to human happiness, and the passive obediential
potency or passive capacity to be elevated, if God wills, to heavenly
beatitude.97

If human beings constitute both societies, the natural and the
supernatural, they can be called the material cause of both,
though in different respects. Journet makes the requisite distinctions, saying of the material cause of the Church, “[it is] not
the natural passive capacity of men to be gathered together into
territorial communities in view of their momentary interests,
but their obediential capacity to be gathered together into a
unique community, intrinsically aterritorial, in view of their
ultimate happiness.”98 For Journet, then, obediential potency is
the capacity whereby men (and angels)99 are capable of
becoming members of the Church, of building up the body of

97
Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné, 3:1919: “Il n’y a qu’une similitude de
proportionnalité et d’analogie entre: a) le bien commun spirituel de la vie de la grâce et
de la gloire, qui seul est fin ultime; et le bien commun temporal de la culture qui n’est
qu’une fin infravalente et provisoire; b) entre la vertu surnaturelle communiquée au
Christ et aux apôtres pour fonder et soutenir l’Église, en qui le monde déchu est
réconcilié avec Dieu; et la vertu naturelle communiquée aux hommes pour fonder et
soutenir leur cités; c) entre la charité pleinement chrétienne, lien interne de l’Église, et la
convergence des volontés en vue d’intérêts purement humains, lien interne de l’État; d)
entre la puissance passive naturelle de l’homme à l’égard du bonheur humain, et la
puissance passive obédientielle ou capacité passive de l’homme d’être élevé, si Dieu le
veut, jusqu’à la beatitude céleste.”
98
Ibid., 3:1922: “est non pas la capacité passive naturelle des hommes à être
rassemblés en communautés territoriales en vue de leurs intérêts d’un moment, mais leur
capacité obédientielle à être rassemblés en une communauté unique, intrinsèquement
aterritoriale en vue de leur beatitude suprême.” Journet’s use of “aterritoriale” here
should not be taken to mean that the human beings themselves that constitute the
Church can participate fully in her life without being members of a particular church (a
parish, say, which itself is ordered to the life of the diocese, and so on), nor as a denial
of the relationship between visible and invisible elements in the Church. Here again the
notion of the common good is formal, as well as the mysterious relation between the
particular church and the universal Church. See chapter 8 of Journet’s Theology of the
Church.
99
Journet (L’Église du Verbe incarné, 4:303-4) teaches that obediential potency is
that whereby both men and angels are able to receive the influx of Christ and be
gathered, despite their natural differences, into the one mystical body of Christ.

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Christ.100 This obediential potency obtains because there is
analogical community between human society and the supernatural society that is the Church; it exists because human
beings are already naturally constituted as intellectual creatures
meant for communion.
Granted that “human society” is not a unitary organism, it
does comprise “natural” relations among persons and thus may
be said to constitute an obediential potency for the grace of
belonging to the Church. This obediential potency to which we
are referring is not a capacity to be incorporated into simply any
communion of grace-filled persons, which presumably could
exist even before or without the Word assuming human flesh.101
It is an obediential openness to be received into the communion
mediated by the Incarnate Word.102 For again, Christ is the new
head of the human race; it is into his mystical body that the
whole human race is called. We noted above that obediential
potency involves a creaturely openness to whatever God may
deign to give, assuming there is no contradiction, and that it
concerns the power of God, which alone can actualize this
mysterious potency. Human beings of any order would possess
obediential potency, since “what constitutes the obediential
potency for grace and glory in man is in fact what principally
constitutes the imago Dei—namely, the intellectual nature
itself.”103 However, there is in this order not the same latitude
to add the qualifier, “should God deign to give.” For indeed, we
100

See ibid., 3:1570.
Journet says (Theology of the Church, 16) concerning the communion of grace
before the fall (in the “age of the Father,” as he calls it), “The grace of the age of the
Father, the grace of the first Adam, the grace of innocence, would have been, in a
certain sense, better than ours, and the first state of the people of God preferable to the
Church. But, in a wider perspective, one sees that it is our grace that is the better, and
the Church, assembled around the Second Adam, will surpass in splendor the first state
of the people of God, who were assembled around the first Adam.”
102
Fittingly, St. Thomas teaches that there is an obediential potency in human nature
to be assumed into personal union with the Word, as well as an obediential potency to
receive habitual grace (which, in the case of Christ, is also in the humanity assumed).
See Journet, L’Église du Verbe incarné, 2:52, where he speaks about our mysterious
obediential potency to become members of Jesus Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit.
103
Long, “Creation ad imaginem Dei,” 1175.
101

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know through divine revelation that God has given, he has
freely bestowed his grace upon us and elevated human nature.
More than this, God has become flesh in the person of Jesus
Christ and called us into his mystical body. This is the Good
News. Furthermore, even now Christ possesses a human nature,
which is the instrument of his divinity,104 and stands as head of
the human race. Christ, as the new and perfect Adam, reveals of
what human nature is capable with God’s gracious aid, namely,
the life of grace and the theological virtues, also entering the
Church which is the enduring sociological sign of this
supernatural life.105
E) Obediential Potency and Human Religiosity
Our proposal is consonant with, and inextricably related to,
the truth of human religiosity. Human beings are by nature re-

104

See STh III, q. 7, a. 1, ad 3.
One thinks here of Gaudium et Spes 22: “The truth is that only in the mystery of
the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was
a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by
the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man
himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” Feingold (Natural Desire, 443-44)
comments in a way quite germane to our discussion: “Christ reveals man to himself
above all by revealing the hidden dimension of his specific capacity to obey a divine
call—a call to be elevated to a supernatural image and likeness of God, and to a
supernatural communion with Him. Christ reveals to man his specific obediential
potency to ‘ascend higher,’ and he calls him to ascend. Philosophy can never discover
the mysterious dimensions of our obediential potency to be raised up to share in the
divine life, nor, much less, God’s plan to actually fulfill that potency. What it can do,
however, is investigate the natural dimensions of our being made in God’s image: our
natural ability to know and love God, our social nature, our capacity for communion,
our natural religiosity, our free will, and our natural desire to see God. These serve as
praeambula fidei with regard to supernatural anthropology.” For more on this conciliar
text in light of Thomistic theological anthropology, see Thomas Joseph White, O.P.,
“The ‘Pure Nature’ of Christology: Human Nature and Gaudium et Spes 22,” Nova et
vetera (Eng ed.) 8 (2010): 283-322. A modified version of this article appears in chapter
two of The Incarnate Lord: A Study in Thomistic Christology (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2015).
105

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ligious beings.106 That is to say, they are meant to render in
justice what is due to God, not for his benefit or perfection but
for theirs. True, in this vale of tears concrete religious expressions are often incomplete or even perverse. Nevertheless,
man possesses an ineffaceable religious inclination, a capacity
for religion and its acts. This “religious dimension of the human
person,” as Thomas Joseph White says, “is intrinsically open to
an elevation to a higher form of divine life that derives from
supernatural grace. In other words, human religiosity is inherently capable of being elevated ‘passively’ or ‘obedientially’
so as to enter into a life of graced religiosity.”107 Human
religion, furthermore, whether natural or supernatural, is
communal. Man has an obediential potency for the grace of
belonging to the Church because he is by virtue of his spiritual
nature a social and religious animal. He is called to communion
with his fellow human beings and with God.
All human beings, insofar as they constitute one human race,
are in a natural potency to form a communion or communions
of life and love. Human beings have a natural inclination for
social life and are perfected precisely in being in communion
with other persons. We saw this concretely in the example of
friendship. The aforementioned potency subsists in individuals,
but only according as they are understood as related to one
another in knowledge and love. In the supernatural order, all
human beings, insofar as they constitute one human race, are in
obediential potency to being members of the communion of the
Church. This obediential potency subsists in individuals, but
only according as they are understood as called to be in relation
to one another in faith and charity. This obediential potency
can therefore be predicated of humanity as such. Obediential
potency is thus a category immediately and not just proximately
relevant to understanding the Church and ecclesial membership.
In Christ, the new and perfect Adam, human beings are called
106
For St. Thomas’s view of religion, which he considers to be a potential part of
justice, see STh II-II, q. 81.
107
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “Sacraments and Philosophy,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Sacramental Theology, ed. Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 575-89, at 579.

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into the unity of his mystical body and, because they are social
and religious beings in virtue of their intellectual nature, they
possess an obediential potency for ecclesial membership. This is
an extension of the notion of obediential potency, but one
certainly congruent with what we established above.
IV. CONSEQUENCES FOR THE CHURCH’S MISSIONARY ACTIVITY
A) The Church’s Mission and Its Post-Conciliar Waning
This understanding of the human person and his openness to
ecclesial communion has consequences for the Church’s evangelical work. As we said above, the Church is bound by the
commission of her Lord and head to make disciples of all
nations and to bring them into the household of God through
the sacrament of baptism. Human beings for their part have
need of the Church, for she is the universal sacrament of
salvation.108 The Second Vatican Council taught that Christ and
his bride are necessary for salvation.109
Basing itself upon scripture and tradition, it teaches that the Church, a pilgrim
now on earth, is necessary for salvation; the one Christ is mediator and the
way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He
himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mk. 16:16;
Jn. 3:5), and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church
which men enter through baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be
saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by
God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it.110

The Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church, Ad
Gentes, mentions the Church as a universal sacrament of
108

Indeed, where Christ acts, so too does the Church act. If every human being who
is saved is saved through Christ, it is true to say also that they are saved through his
Church. See Thomas Joseph White, “The Universal Mediation of Christ and NonChristian Religions,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 14 (2016): 177-98.
109
See Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., “Nature, Mission, and Structure of the Church,”
in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 25-36.
110
LG 14.

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salvation from the very start.111 The Church is intrinsically
missionary, missionary by virtue of the foundation and commission she received from the Lord.112
Having been divinely sent to the nations that she might be “the universal
sacrament of salvation,” the Church, in obedience to the command of her
founder (Mk. 16:15) and because it is demanded by her own essential
universality, strives to preach the Gospel to all men. The apostles, on whom
the Church was founded, following the footsteps of Christ “preached the
word of truth and begot churches.” It is the duty of their successors to carry
on this work so that “the word of God may run and be glorified” (2 Th. 3:1),
and the kingdom of God proclaimed and renewed throughout the whole
world.113

Despite this intention of the council to emphasize the
universal mission of the Church, evangelical efforts waned significantly in the postconciliar period. This is a multifaceted
problem. Nevertheless, one factor undoubtedly at play is the appropriation of doctrines that, however implicitly and unintentionally on the part of their proponents, work to undermine the
Church’s missionary efforts. In short, there are ways of conceiving the human person and the Church that make it rather
difficult to see why the former should be ordered to the latter.
We will examine two figures whose doctrines seem to lead to
doubt concerning whether belonging to the Church makes any
real difference before God. Our goal here is to show that
Thomistic theological anthropology works to serve and bolster,
rather than to forsake and undermine, the missionary activity of
the Church. More specifically, we will see that obediential
potency helps to safeguard what we ought to maintain about
human beings vis-à-vis the Church, namely, that each and every
human person, if he is to find salvation, must draw near to the
head and the body, bridegroom and bride, the sacrament of the

111
See Francis Cardinal George’s reflections on Ad Gentes in Lamb and Levering,
eds., Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, 287-310.
112
See Andrew Meszaros, “The Thomistic Underpinnings of Ad Gentes,” Nova et
vetera (Eng. ed.) 13 (2015): 875-901.
113
AG 1.

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divine life in its source and the sacrament of the divine life
communicated.114
B) Karl Rahner
Mansini explicates a difficulty that comes from the theological anthropology of Karl Rahner.115 He begins by recalling
Rahner’s explication of Vorgriff, “a ‘pre-apprehension’ of being
as a transcendental condition of the possibility of knowing any
of the beings in our experience and of which being we speak in
categories or concepts of which we are conscious.”116
Furthermore, insofar as this “pre-apprehension of being in its
unlimited breadth . . . is also at the same time an always
operative ordination unto absolute being, unto God,” knowing
“the things of the world involves some kind of knowing or
being-unto God as one of the conditions of this knowledge.”117
In like manner, when we respond to some finite good in the
world, we are always necessarily responding to the absolute
Good, to God.
But because in this concrete order God willed to bestow
eternal life upon human beings, there is a further consideration,
a further condition on our subjectivity. Mansini explains:
This divine decision, according to Rahner, conditions our subjectivity, our
knowing and loving, from the first instant we exist. This a priori conditioning
of subjectivity (that is, a conditioning prior to any exercise of our mind and
will) as ordered to the God of grace Rahner calls the “supernatural
existential.” The supernatural existential is not conceived in the old scholastic
categories of grace, habitual and actual, prevenient and consequent. It is
conceived after the pattern of the “existentials” that Martin Heidegger
recognized, such factors determining the exercise of our freedom as
“thrownness” (our originally already being conditioned by a determinate place
and time not of our own choosing) or “being unto death” (our always
114
This is the language of Charles Journet in “Le mystère de la sacramentalité: Le
Christ, l’Église, les sept sacrements,” Nova et vetera 49 (1974): 161-214.
115
Mansini explains the works of Jacques Dupuis and Hans Urs von Balthasar as
well, but his treatment of them is not quite germane to our discussion.
116
Mansini, Ecclesiology, 282.
117
Ibid.

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subliminal awareness of our mortality). The supernatural existential amounts
in practice to a constant offer of grace that conditions our human freedom, an
availability of grace ready to be given to us.118

The supernatural existential for Rahner is not habitual or actual
grace, though it does have some likeness to the former inasmuch as it is steady and enduring, “in contrast to the punctual
and intermittent character of actual graces. Rahner comes to
describe the existential as God’s self-communication, or grace
itself, but in the mode of offer.”119 Because human existence has
this abiding structural feature, man is always the event of God’s
self-communication.120
These notions of Vorgriff and the supernatural existential are
also intimately related to Rahner’s notion of obediential
potency. In Hörer des Wortes it appears as the capacity to receive a possible revelation from God.121 To his credit, Rahner
emphasizes the gratuity of God’s speaking, should he deign to
speak, and the ontological humility of the human recipient. But
even here there are articulations (of obediential potency as an
orientation toward the historical event of a revelation,122 say, or
as “a positive openness for an eventual revelation of God”)123
that may trouble one committed to the traditional Thomistic
notion of obediential potency as not only wholly passive but, at
least formally, a nonrepugnance to God’s active agency.
Rahner identifies obediential potency with human nature as
such.124 To be human, to be spirit in the world, means to be
118

Ibid., 283.
Christopher Malloy, “Rahner’s Supernatural Existential: What Is It?,” Freiburger
Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 63 (2016): 402-21, at 409.
120
See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of
Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), 127.
121
Karl Rahner, Hörer des Wortes: Zur Grundlegung einer Religionsphilosophie
(Munich: Verlag Kösel-Pustet, 1941). The first edition is available in English as Hearer
of the Word, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Continuum, 1994).
122
Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 9.
123
Ibid., 19.
124
See John P. Galvin, “The Invitation of Grace,” in A World of Grace: An
Introduction to the Themes and Foundations of Karl Rahner’s Theology, ed. Leo J.
O’Donovan (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 72. Consider Rahner’s words about
obediential potency in the context of the hypostatic union in Foundations, 218:
119

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AARON D. HENDERSON

oriented toward Infinite Mystery. Hence obediential potency’s
connection to Vorgriff, the preapprehension of being that makes
possible all knowing and willing. Our nature is unrestricted
openness toward being, as affirmed in the absolute range of the
Vorgriff, and thus obediential potency for the offer of grace.125
Obediential potency is also most proximately an openness to
this offer of grace, to the supernatural existential, which so
determines human being and experience that the human person
is always already awash in God’s grace.
In order to avoid what he perceives to be errors in Henri de
Lubac and like thinkers, as well as the supposed “extrinsicism”126 of many traditional Thomistic articulations of the
nature-grace relation, Rahner posits the aforementioned
supernatural existential, in conjunction with the correlative
doctrines of Vorgriff and obediential potency. Stephen Duffy
explains:
For Rahner, simply to view human openness, the obediential potency for
grace, as more than a mere nonrepugnance, but as a yearning or velleity for
God, is not sufficient. Rahner sees the openness as a conditioned orientation
to grace, a natural existential. It is this transcendental orientation of humanity

“Anyone who understands correctly what an obediential potency for hypostatic union
means, and what it really means to say that human nature can be assumed by the person
of the Word of God, and what such a capacity to be assumed consists in, and anyone
who understands that it is only a spiritual and personal reality that can be assumed by
God, he knows that this obediential potency cannot be an individual potency alongside
other potencies in the structure of human being, but rather is objectively identical with
man’s essence.” Rahner’s use of “obediential potency” vis-à-vis the hypostatic union is
also a topic ripe for discussion, especially since he thinks, contra the Thomist tradition,
that (1) human nature alone could be assumed by God and (2) the Word alone of the
divine persons can assume human nature. See chapter 5 of Dylan Schrader, A Thomistic
Christocentrism: Recovering the Carmelites of Salamanca on the Logic of the Incarnation
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021).
125
Galvin, “Invitation of Grace,” 73.
126
For a response to the accusation of nature-grace extrinsicism in the preconciliar
period, see David L. Augustine, “Extrinsicism?: Revisiting the Preconciliar Theology of
Nature and Grace,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 18 (2020): 791-816.

MAN’S CAPACITY FOR ECCLESIAL COMMUNION

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as such that provides the point of insertion for the supernatural existential of
historical humanity.127

One can grasp, then, the relation between these ideas of
Vorgriff, supernatural existential, and obediential potency in
Rahner, even if aspects of it remain underdetermined. And his
anthropology has implications for man’s relationship to Christ
and his Church.
For Rahner, man accepts God’s grace, always and necessarily
on offer, when he responds properly to some finite good, “for
then he is necessarily also responding to the God of grace, the
God as Christians know him to be, even if he knows nothing of
this God expressly and conceptually. When he does respond in
a morally upright and conscientious way to a created good, he
becomes really if anonymously and unbeknownst to himself a
Christian.”128 One can see rather easily the implications of
Rahner’s anthropology in this context.
Granted, Rahner does maintain that Jesus Christ is the fullest
categorical expression of God’s saving truth.129 In Christ we
find the harmonious meeting of our categorical and transcendental responses to God. Nevertheless, Mansini explains the
difficulty with Rahner’s understanding here:
Rahner tended to hollow out the necessary connection between an adequate
and saving “transcendental” response to God and its “categorical” expression

127

Stephen J. Duffy, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic
Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 91 n. 14.
128
Mansini, Ecclesiology, 283. “If it be true that the man who is the object of the
Church’s missionary endeavor is or can be already prior to it a man who is on the way
towards his salvation and finds it in certain circumstances without being reached by the
Church’s preaching, and if it be true at the same time that the salvation which he
achieves is the salvation of Christ, because there is no other, then it must be possible to
be not only an anonymous ‘theist’, but also an anonymous Christian, and this (since the
Church of Christ is not a purely interior reality) not in any merely intangible way, but
also with a certain making visible and tangible of the anonymous relationship” (Karl
Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 6, trans. Karl-H.
and Boniface Kruger [Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969], 390-98, at 391-92).
129
Rahner (Foundations, 195) thinks that the Savior “constitutes the climax of God’s
self-communication to the world.” The whole of history moves toward this goal or
climax of categorical revelation.

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in Jesus of Nazareth. It is possible to make an adequate response to the saving
God in the absence of any conceptual knowledge of and conscious
commitment to Jesus. We can make an adequate transcendental response to
the Christian God of grace through the categories of Hinduism or Buddhism
and even as an atheist.130

A human person can respond in a transcendentally adequate
way to the God of grace simply by following his own conscience, even if this conscience be erroneous. Mansini thinks
that Rahner is unduly optimistic about the salvation of nonChristians. This optimism can be seen in two presuppositions
Rahner explicates when giving his account of how Jesus is
present in non-Christian religions.131 The first is the supernatural salvific will of God operative in the world. “This
implies,” writes Rahner, “the possibility of supernatural
revelation and faith everywhere, and hence throughout the
whole length and breadth of the history of the human race.”132
The second is that “when a non-Christian attains salvation
through faith, hope and love, non-Christian religions cannot be
understood in such a way that they do not play a role, or play
only a negative role in the attainment of justification and salvation.”133 If Rahner styles himself as a faithful interpreter of
Lumen Gentium 16, which speaks of the possibility of salvation
for those who are invincibly or inculpably ignorant of Christ
and his Church but nevertheless cooperate with God’s grace, he
is arguably neglecting the council’s Pauline teaching in the same
paragraph that “very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have
become vain in their reasonings, have exchanged the truth of
God for a lie and served the world rather than the Creator (cf.

130

Mansini, Ecclesiology, 284.
For a fuller treatment, see “Christianity and Non-Christian Religions,” 97-134, in
Karl Raher, Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Karl-H. Kruger (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 1966).
132
Rahner, Foundations, 313.
133
Ibid., 314.
131

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587

Rom. 1:21 and 25).” The council does not share Rahner’s
undue optimism.134
Rahner may not have intended to undercut the Church’s
missionary activity, but this is regrettably what happened, and it
is not difficult to see why. Mansini puts it well:
Part of the appeal of Rahner’s proposal resided in the very genius of that
appellation, “anonymous Christian.” “What’s in a name?,” we may ask. If one
can be anonymously and namelessly a Christian in a non-Christian religion, is
it so important to name God the way Christians do, to name the Trinity and
Christ, and bother with evangelization and the church? Still, that does not
completely explain why Rahner’s theology had the negative impact it did on
missionary activity, while Pius IX’s teaching did not. Are they not both
assertions of the bare possibility of the salvation of non-Christians? That is
what Pius’s assertion is. But Rahner’s theory, grounded in his anthropology,
rather introduced the idea that being an anonymous Christian is the default
position for human beings. The infinite mystery of God has come so close to
us transcendentally in grace that we are, as it were, already home. It does not
matter that Rahner himself did not intend to unplug the missionary activity of
the church. But in fact, that is what happened, and the popular reception of
Rahner amounted to a view in which all religions are more or less equal as
vehicles of salvation, even if not as adequate expressions of the truth of
revelation.135

If most human beings are already Christians, albeit anonymously, if they are “already home,” then what need do they
have of the Church and her sacraments? Rahner’s views, far
from being limited to professional philosophers and theologians, have enjoyed a popular reception as well. Putting aside
his intentions, his work is in part responsible for “unplugging”
the missionary activity of the Church.
B) Henri de Lubac
De Lubac’s nature-grace thesis is likewise in danger of
undermining the Church’s evangelical mission. De Lubac in no
way intended to dampen the Church’s missionary zeal. On the
134
See Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its
Implications for the New Evangelization (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 2012).
135
Mansini, Ecclesiology, 285-86 (emphasis added).

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contrary, he saw the Church as of vital importance for the
human person. Indeed, one might perhaps be more inclined to
think that de Lubac so absolutizes the Church that no purely
human society is possible. But we will see that there is something analogous to the problem we saw above in Rahner’s
theological anthropology.136
After the Second Vatican Council, it was a fairly ubiquitous
judgment that de Lubac and company had carried the day, and
that the council itself bore authoritative witness to this fact. De
Lubac’s thought was so influential and convincing, however,
that problems soon emerged after the council. Edward Oakes
says it well:
After Vatican II, grace came to be seen as so intrinsic to man that the
supernatural gifts of revelation, the Church, and the sacraments seemed, at
best, merely symbolic reminders of an already realized redemption. Clearly the
time has come, after the doldrums of the post-Vatican II Church, for a
reassessment of Surnaturel.137

That is our intention here, namely, to show how de Lubac’s
nature-grace thesis implicitly undermines the Church’s universal
mission and to set forth the traditional Thomistic position as the
reasonable and desirable alternative.
As with Rahner, we can only explicate de Lubac’s teaching
briefly.138 For de Lubac, man has but one end, one essential or
ontological finality: the beatific vision. “My destiny is some136
It is worth noting that Rahner was responding and reacting in part to de Lubac
and the nature-grace debate, even if the former’s supernatural existential likely had its
origin in his Christological reflections. See Henry Shea, “Internal Difficulties in the
Theology of Karl Rahner,” Modern Theology 37 (2021): 637-61, at 640. Furthermore,
while it is not altogether rare to see authors accuse Rahner of undermining the Church’s
evangelical efforts (as we have seen in Mansini), it is not as common to see an analogous
claim made about de Lubac.
137
Back-cover endorsement of Surnaturel: A Controversy at the Heart of TwentiethCentury Thomistic Thought, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., trans. Robert Williams
and revised by Matthew Levering (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2009).
138
See ibid.; also, for a helpful introduction to the life and work of de Lubac,
especially on nature-grace issues, see David L. Schindler’s “Introduction” to De Lubac,
Mystery of the Supernatural.

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thing ontological,” he avers, “and not something I can change as
anything else changes its destination.”139 Moreover, this supernatural finality is deeply rooted in human nature. He goes so far
as to say that it is imprinted or inscribed upon man’s being prior
to the reception of divine grace: “My finality . . . is inscribed
upon my very being as it has been put into this universe by God.
And, by God’s will, I have no other genuine end, no end really
assigned to my nature or presented for my free acceptance
under any guise, except that of ‘seeing God.’”140 Man’s
supernatural finality is, then, determinative of human nature.
Feingold points out that this is a fundamental philosophical
principle for de Lubac, namely, that “the actual finality of a
thing is necessarily something which ontologically determines
the nature of the thing.”141 Indeed, de Lubac thinks that those
who posit a natural destiny for man have a distorted understanding of finality.142 They posit man’s supernatural finality as
a superadditum, something rather extrinsic, not inscribed in the
very depths of man’s being.
If man for de Lubac has but one supernatural finality, the socalled natural desire is an expression of this finality; we possess
this desire precisely because God has deigned to call us to the
beatific vision. As soon as man comes into this world, he has a
desire for what alone can constitute his ultimate end. De Lubac
explains:
As soon as I exist, in fact, all indetermination vanishes, and whatever might
have been the case “before,” or whatever might have been in any other
existence, no other finality now seems possible for me than that which is now
really inscribed in the depths of my nature; there is only one end, and
therefore I bear within me, consciously or otherwise, a “natural desire” for
it.143

139

De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 62.
Ibid., 55.
141
Feingold, Natural Desire, 298.
142
De Lubac often targets Cajetan on this score. For a response, see chapter 3 of
Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006).
143
De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 55-56.
140

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De Lubac goes to great lengths to highlight how intimately this
desire is bound up with man’s nature. He calls it not only a
desiderium naturale, but, drawing on St. Thomas’s language (in
STh I, q. 12, a. 1) a desiderium naturae, a desire of human
nature. The desire is thus not elicited but innate, “the innate
inclination of the faculty of the will itself (or of spiritual nature
itself).”144
For de Lubac, this natural desire is not some “accident” in
the human person, nor some historical contingency, nor something resulting from man’s “deliberate will.” It is instead the
divine “call” to supernatural beatitude. This call, which exists in
each individual man because God has willed to call humanity,
constitutes man’s being. De Lubac had communicated this
conviction to Maurice Blondel years earlier in strong language:
“How can a conscious spirit be anything other than an absolute
desire for God?”145 He never abandoned this thesis, incurporating it into Surnaturel and his subsequent works.146
“L’esprit est donc désir de Dieu,” he writes in Surnaturel,147 and
he expresses essentially the same teaching in The Mystery of the
Supernatural, saying, “The desire to see him is in us, it
constitutes us, and yet it comes to us as a completely free gift.
Such paradoxes should not surprise us, for they arise in every
mystery; they are the hallmark of a truth that is beyond our

144

Feingold, Natural Desire, 302.
Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the
Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 184. One can hardly overestimate the impact Blondel
had on de Lubac. For an account of Blondel’s teaching on natural desire, see Ryan A.
Longton, “A Reconsideration of Maurice Blondel and the ‘Natural’ Desire,” The
Heythrop Journal 56 (2015): 919-30. Longton considers Blondel’s position to be a
middle path between the neo-Thomist and Lubacian positions and thus a potential way
forward in the nature-grace debate.
146
That is not to say that there are no developments in de Lubac’s thesis. See Wood,
To Stir a Restless Heart for de Lubac’s influences from the so-called “Aegidian
tradition.” Wood argues that, in his mature work, de Lubac follows Fulgence Lafosse,
O.E.S.A. (1649-84).
147
“The spirit is thus the desire for God” (Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études
historiques, new ed., ed. Michel Sales, S.J. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991), 483.
145

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depth.”148 It is difficult to determine precisely what de Lubac
understands by this, but we may look to the implications of this
doctrine. De Lubac posits (with some ambiguity, as Feingold
points out)149 that a man in an order of providence in which he
is not called to supernatural beatitude would possess a nature
different from ours. “It only demonstrates . . . that in another
universe a being other than myself, with a nature similar to
mine, could have been given this humbler destiny. But, I repeat,
what has this other being really to do with me? What have I to
do with him?”150 This claim seems to call immediately into question the gratuity of grace, but it follows from what de Lubac
says regarding the natural desire that constitutes human nature.
Though de Lubac is not as explicit as Laporta151 and
others,152 it follows from his thesis concerning a natural desire
for the beatific vision that man also has a natural passive
potency for this supernatural end. This is because natural
passive potency and natural desire153 are correlative. Wherever
148

De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 167.
See Feingold, Natural Desire, 306.
150
De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 62 (emphasis added).
151
Laporta thinks that the actualization of an obediential potency never brings
essential perfection to the creature. Thus any supernatural perfection in the creature
must be due to the actualization of a natural passive potency; see Laporta, La Destinée,
143.
152
See Étienne Gilson, “Sur la problématique thomiste de la vision béatifique,”
Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 31 (1964): 67-88, at 87, in
which he is articulating what kind of potency the creature has for the supernatural. He
first mentions “natural passive potency” (puissance naturelle passive) but does not seem
totally comfortable with the attribution. Neither will he admit, of course, that it is an
obediential potency, since he reduces obediential potency to susceptibility to miraculous
transmutation. Some, such as Nicholas Healy, want to grant something like a specific
obediential potency in human nature, but without thereby granting that it is a
nonrepugnance. “At the heart of created nature,” he admits, “there is a kind of receptive
readiness, which we could call a ‘specific obediential potency,’ except that it is not
merely a passive non-repugnance, even though it is not a Rahnerian Vorgriff” (Nicholas
J. Healy, “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace: A Note on Some Recent Contributions
to the Debate,” Communio 35 (2008): 535-64, at 562).
153
In addition to desire, we may speak of natural inclination or appetite, assuming
we are speaking of something that precedes apprehension and knowledge. For more on
these terms in St. Thomas, see Sean B. Cunningham, “Natural Inclination in Aquinas”
(Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 2013).
149

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there exists a natural potency in the human soul, for instance,
there exists a natural inclination to some good.154 If de Lubac
can posit a natural passive potency for the supernatural without
much trepidation, it is because he thinks that the correspondence between natural passive and natural active potencies
obtains only in the subhuman world.155 On the contrary, for St.
Thomas the principle seems to be universal, to pertain to all
creatures.156
In addition to the concern that de Lubac’s position is not in
fact St. Thomas’s, it should be manifest why some find the
former’s nature-grace thesis problematic. A natural passive
potency for the beatific vision would seem to make that
supernatural vision due. A natural ordering to a supernatural
object would seem to forfeit the gratuity of grace and confuse
the natural and supernatural orders. Drawing out its implications further, de Lubac’s thesis would seem to make man naturally deific. These are all implications of de Lubac’s teaching for
human nature as such, and for individual human beings. There
must surely be further consequences for the human race as a
whole, or for human beings as called to be members of the
community of renewed humanity that is the Church.157
Just as de Lubac intended to secure the gratuity of grace and
the proper distinction between nature and the supernatural, so
did he intend to secure the necessity of the Church for salvation

154

See STh I, q. 80, a. 1, ad 3.
See De Lubac, Mystery of the Supernatural, 143, in which he accuses Cajetan of
reducing the case of the supernatural destiny of “created spirit” to a particular instance
of miracle and of reducing human nature to the subhuman.
156
See, for instance, ScG III, c. 45.
157
Interesting in this regard are these words from Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole
about de Lubac and his work on nature and the supernatural: “Fr. de Lubac’s study only
marginally includes properly Christological data, and ignores the ecclesiological
perspective” (Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, “The Debate about the Supernatural
and Contemporary Ecclesiology,” in Bonino, ed., Surnaturel: A Controversy, 311-24, at
311.
155

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and the urgency of the Church’s evangelical mission.158 One
might consider, for example, the seventh chapter of his
Catholicism, in which he is addressing the problem of salvation
through the Church. He does not go the route of Rahner and
speak of a supernatural existential and of anonymous Christians. He seems to avoid an undue optimism for the salvation of
non-Christians and to be aware of its dangers:
In any case we cannot but admire the attempts of so many missionaries to
show us, by dint of human and divine sympathy, the elements of true religion
which ennoble the cults even of the most inferior peoples. But if these
elements, though mingled with others, are found on all sides, if the darkness,
in certain cases at least, is so full of light, where is the obligation to seek the
additional light that the Church bestows on her children? If an implicit
Christianity is sufficient for the salvation of one who knows no other, why
should we go in quest of an explicit one? In short, if every man can be saved
through a religion that he unwittingly possesses, how can we require him to
acknowledge this religion explicitly by professing Christianity and submitting
to the Catholic Church?159

It is de Lubac’s conviction that the Church is the general help
and only normal way of salvation that prompts him to say, “As
long as the Church has not covered the whole earth and bound
all souls together, to increase is a very necessity of her nature.”160 The denial of her missionary mandate would be a
denial of her very being, of her “Idea,” to speak in Newman’s
terms.161
De Lubac speaks of the Church’s necessity in terms that will
be appropriated in some manner by Lumen Gentium.162 He
158
For a helpful treatment of key themes in de Lubac’s ecclesiology, see Susan K.
Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998).
159
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans.
Lancelot C. Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund, O.C.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1988), 221. This work, as Susan Wood says rightly (Spiritual Exegesis, 2),
“contains in seminal form the major themes of his theological career.”
160
De Lubac, Catholicism, 227.
161
Ibid.
162
For more on de Lubac’s influence on Vatican II, see Aaron Riches, “Henri de
Lubac and the Second Vatican Council,” in T & T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac,
ed. Jordan Hillebert (New York: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2017), 121-56.

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posits, for instance, a “positive” formulation of the ancient
dictum extra ecclesiam nulla salus: “And if it is thought that in
spite of all these considerations the formula ‘outside the
Church, no salvation’ has still an ugly sound, there is no reason
why it should not be put in a positive form and read . . . ‘it is by
the Catholic Church alone that you will be saved.’”163 He goes
so far as to say that the Church is the “‘natural place’ to which a
soul amenable to the suggestions of grace spontaneously
tends.”164 He clearly intends to affirm the missionary nature of
the Church and her connection to human nature and its
perfection. It is all the more unfortunate, then, that his
theological anthropology undermines his intention. For indeed,
as he himself admits, a correct understanding of the naturegrace relation must undergird our understanding of the Church
and her role.165
Even Rahner, who eventually rejected the traditional account
of obediential potency, saw the danger in positing an innate natural desire and a natural passive potency for the supernatural:
The paradox of a natural desire for the supernatural as a link between nature
and grace is conceivable and necessary if by “desire” is understood an
“openness” to the supernatural, and it is taught in every type of Catholic
theology, even if this often interprets the potentia obedientialis in too purely
formal and negative a way as a mere non-repugnance. But a “desire” which is
natural and at the same time, even if only objectively, inevitably attracts grace
to itself (the desire itself, not just God’s wisdom and his promise but the latter
through the former!), is a desire which “demands” grace, demands precisely
because it would otherwise be meaningless. But this is incompatible with the
unexactedness of grace.166

163

De Lubac, Catholicism, 236.
Ibid.
165
Henri de Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. Br. Richard
Arnandez, F.S.C. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 109: “A correct idea of the
distinction between nature and the supernatural and of their unity is also necessary for
an understanding of the Church and her role.”
166
Karl Rahner, “Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace,” in
Theological Investigations, vol. 1, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (London: Darton,
Longman, and Todd, 1961), 297-317, at 309-10.
164

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Rahner recognizes that a natural desire for a supernatural object
seems to make grace due to the creature. De Lubac’s account
arguably forfeits the gratuitousness of grace and the visio Dei;
we lose something of the uniqueness and transcendence of God
and are in danger of making man naturally deific. For who can
be ordered to God’s inner life naturally save God alone? The
traditional Thomistic account, on the contrary, emphasizes the
humility of the creature and the absolute gratuity of his graced
ordering to supernatural beatitude. Of his nature alone man is
ordered to an end proportioned to this nature, to a real, albeit
imperfect, beatitude. The beatific vision is due in no way to
imperfect beings, finite beings subject to defect.167
Further, the Church promises to those who approach the
font of baptism a new life in Christ, a new ordering to God, and
a new desire for him. Feingold explains,
An absolute and abiding desire for the beatific vision is the birthright of those
who have been constituted sons and daughters of God through the grace of
Baptism, and thus can yearn after their celestial inheritance, and the face of
their Father. How can one who has not yet become a son of God through
justification have an innate appetite for an inheritance that does not yet belong
to him? Thus the exclusion of an innate inclination for the beatific vision
better manifests the necessity of the sacraments and the supernatural virtue of
charity.168

What becomes of our evangelical efforts if we cannot coherently
retain the necessity of the Church and her sacraments?169 Drawing out the implications of de Lubac’s theological anthropology,
there is a danger of seeing the Church as nothing more than a
167

Nor would it be due to naturally indefectible creatures. The common reading of
St. Thomas’s teaching about the angels is that, on account of receiving perfect
intellective species, they are not capable of defect in the natural order, whereas, vis-à-vis
supernatural revelation which infinitely transcends any finite species, they are defectible.
See Raymond E. Marieb, “The Impeccability of the Angels regarding Their Natural
End,” The Thomist 28 (1964): 409-74.
168
Feingold, Natural Desire, 442-43.
169
We are not arguing that de Lubac himself denied the necessity of the sacraments
(as explicated by St. Thomas, e.g., in STh III, q. 61), but that his understanding of the
nature-grace relation has dire consequences for sacramental theology and for a host of
other things (e.g., ecclesiology).

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community of persons very much in the same state as those
outside the Church, insofar as all are ordered by their very
natures, by a desire constitutive of their very being, to the
beatific vision.170 In the traditional conception, on the other
hand, human nature possesses an obediential openness to God’s
active agency. The imago Dei is susceptible of being supernaturally perfected and elevated, the human person capable of
deification.171 The Church, consequently, is the communion of
all those who, not on account of merits but because of God’s
mercy, have been elevated and perfected by the grace of Christ
unto salvation. The faithful are characterized by a new, graced
desire for God, one whose trajectory, as it were, radically exceeds that of their natural desire, though the former superabundantly perfects and fulfills the latter.
It is not difficult to imagine how de Lubac might respond to
our accusation that his position undermines the Church’s
mission. If the whole world naturally desires God in the way he
understands, and if the Church alone can aid in the fulfillment
of this desire, then surely this is the strongest possible ground
for the necessity of the Church. The Church is so necessary for
human beings, in fact, that it is the “‘natural place’ to which a
soul amenable to the suggestions of grace spontaneously
tends.”172 Despite this insistence, however, it is not altogether
surprising that the appropriation of de Luabc’s theological

170
Again, so as to dispel all ambiguity, this is contrary to de Lubac’s ecclesiological
vision. The Church is for him the locus of human unity, both natural and supernatural.
Consider these words from his Catholicism, 53: “Humanity is one, organically one by
its divine structure; it is the Church’s mission to reveal to men that pristine unity that
they have lost, to restore and complete it.” And he says earlier (ibid., 25), “The
supernatural dignity of one who has been baptized rests, we know, on the natural
dignity of man,” and, furthermore, “the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, a
supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human race.”
This demands, however, that we explicate the natural and supernatural unities aright
and carefully articulate their relationship, and it is here that de Lubac arguably muddies
the waters.
171
For more on this, see Daria Spezzano, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification
according to St. Thomas Aquinas (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2015).
172
De Lubac, Catholicism, 236.

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anthropology might undermine the Church’s missionary efforts.
Indeed, as Oakes says in the quotation above, such appropriation arguably sheds light on aspects of the waning of evangelical zeal after Vatican II. After all, de Lubac’s understatement
of man’s ontological poverty vis-à-vis grace has consequences.
Because his account renders the ordination toward the supernatural to be unequivocally present without or apart from the
intercession of the Church, it conditions the view of the
Church’s mission itself.
De Lubac’s thesis carries with it the danger of feeding into a
mentality that sees salvation as contingent upon merely natural
goodness. As Feingold relates,
This view debases heaven by naturalizing it. We have to discover ever again a
radical wonder at the inconceivable dimension of the gift of our supernatural
vocation, which carries with it a true divinization, enabling man to enter into
the divine friendship, into a spousal relation with the Holy Trinity, into the
beatitude proper to God Himself. We must continue to repeat with Isaiah and
St. Paul (1 Cor. 2:9): “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into
the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him.”173

The traditional Thomistic account is capable of eliciting this
radical wonder, whereas de Lubac’s account ultimately is not.
For what precisely, drawing out the implications of de Lubac’s
view, does the Church offer to man? What, when we are
preaching the gospel to all nations, can we identify as ecclesial
riches such that the evangelical recipient is moved to seek them
in the Catholic Church? We cannot include a desire for the
heavenly homeland and for a supernatural inheritance, since
each person possesses this desire naturally. Nor can we include
an appetite or inclination for the inner life of God, for the
Trinitarian communion; this already constitutes him as a human
being. Is it merely a more distinct knowledge of man’s supernatural destiny that we are offering? If so, is this a sufficiently
strong ground to support the Church’s mission, a proposition
compelling enough to attract all men to her?

173

Feingold, Natural Desire, 443.

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We quoted Mansini above saying that Rahner’s theological
anthropology makes God come so close to human beings that
they seem to be already home. Something analogous is true here
with de Lubac. Human beings seem already to be participating
in the very reality of salvation that the Church is and exists to
communicate. Again, this is contra intentionem. Nevertheless,
the missionary activity of the Church is compromised.
CONCLUSION
What is the vision of the Church’s missionary activity with
obediential potency at the heart of the nature-grace relation? It
is one that affirms at once man’s ontological humility vis-à-vis
divine salvation and his mysterious ontological openness to it.
Notwithstanding the abovementioned difficulties in Rahner’s
articulation of obediential potency, he was right in Hearer of the
Word to posit an obediential potency in human nature to receive God’s free self-disclosure or revelation. By the natural
light of the human intellect, man can come to some analogical
knowledge of God as first cause of created realities and common good of the universe. It is precisely because man is
naturally constituted as a knowing creature that he has an
obediential openness to be elevated to a participation in divine
knowledge.174 Thus persons hearing the Gospel at once hear
something that resonates with human nature and calls them to a
radically new fulfillment in Christ. If the Church has the
mission of mediating to human beings the truth of Christ,175
human beings for their part have the capacity to receive it.
Having heard the word of Christ176 that calls them to con174
Ibid., 445: “Our natural capacity to know God ‘through the things that are made’
is the natural foundation for our specific obediential potency to become ‘hearers of the
Word’ when God supernaturally reveals Himself to us. The capacity to receive the
theological virtue of faith is rooted in our intellectual nature, which can naturally grasp
the praeambula fidei.”
175
For more on this, see Guy Mansini, O.S.B., “Ecclesial Mediation of Grace and
Truth,” The Thomist 75 (2011): 555-83.
176
Mansini says that, just as we are touched by Christ in the sacrament more than we
are by any priest, so in the proclamation of the Church and her ministers it is primarily

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599

version, human beings are capable of receiving the grace that
heals and elevates and perfects them. This grace orders them to
the heavenly homeland and perfect beatitude.
Furthermore, human beings, as social and religious creatures,
have an obediential potency for ecclesial communion.177 The
Church, in Christ, stands as the means of supernatural perfection and superabundant fulfillment for each person and for
the entire human race. The Church truly is the human race
renewed and reconstituted in the new Adam. Our incorporation
into this communion of renewed humanity is not a given of our
nature nor something to which we are naturally ordered.
Nevertheless, having been graciously invited by Christ, human
Christ whom we hear: “Just as the sacramental doings of the Church are such that they
can properly be the doings only of God, so the teachings of the Church are such that
they can properly be the teachings only of God. We should therefore say that when the
gospel is proclaimed, we hear Christ more than we do some evangelist” (ibid., 564).
177
In STh III, q. 8, a. 3 (“Whether Christ is the head of all men?”), St. Thomas uses
act and potency to speak of human persons related to the Church. Some are members of
the mystical body only in potentiality and will never be reduced to act, while others are
reduced at some time to act (according to the threefold class of faith, charity in this life,
and the fruition of the life to come). Those who are unbaptized, therefore, though not
actually in the Church, are in the Church in potentia. Saint Thomas says that this
potency is founded on two things: the power of Christ, sufficient to save all men; and
free will, by which they freely accept God’s offer of loving union (at least in the case of
adult converts). Obediential potency certainly seems implicit and necessary here, even if
St. Thomas is content to refer simply and generically to potentia. Journet (L’Église du
Verbe incarné, 3:1737) is more explicit in identifying this potency as obediential. He
says in the context of sacramental and oriented charity (i.e., charity directed by the
teaching authority of the Church), which is for him the created soul of the Church, that
the Church is fully actualized (en acte achevé) where the obediential potency of the
human subjects is fully actualized (pleinement actualisée).
For another application of obediential potency to the question of ecclesial
membership and salvation, see Lawrence Feingold, Touched by Christ: The Sacramental
Economy (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 641, where he is speaking of
the possibility of salvation for infants who die without baptism: “Every human being,
including the unborn child at any stage of development, is capax Dei on account of
being made in the image of God. All babies have a specific obediential potency proper to
the rational creature to obey God if He chooses to elevate them and calls them: ‘Friend,
go up higher’ (Luke 14:10). We can hope therefore that God, by extra-sacramental
means, will give sanctifying grace to infants before they die without Baptism, such that
they will not die with original sin and thus will not be deprived of the vision of God for
eternity.”

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beings have the capacity to partake of this mystical union
between Christ and his Church.
With this view of the Church and of the human person,
faithful children of the Church ought to be motivated to preach
the Gospel to the ends of the earth. There is nothing in human
nature as such that calls for or demands supernatural grace, nor
is there anything that brings the divine mystery so close to man
that he seems already to be within the bosom of the Church and
perhaps even in the heavenly homeland. Instead, in the depths
of human nature there exists an ontological openness to God’s
agency, so that with his gracious aid a stranger may become a
friend, a slave may become a son, a member of the body politic
may become a member of the mystical body of Christ. This is a
compelling evangelical message, namely, that the truths about
human nature, investigable by human reason, while possessing
an integrity and intelligibility even prescinding from the
supernatural order, serve as preambles of faith and preparations
for ecclesial life. There is thus a natural foothold, as it were, for
the goods of the supernatural order. More than this, however,
we are called to these goods of the supernatural order as to
goods entirely exceeding any proportion to our nature. In the
words of the Apostle: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath
prepared for them that love him.”178 This message safeguards
the gratuity of grace and the ontological humility of man while
at the same time revealing the unimaginable heights man can
reach in Christ. The classic Thomistic understanding of obediential potency, therefore, serves to safeguard and bolster rather
than to compromise and undermine the missionary activity of
the Church.

178
1 Cor. 2:9, Douay-Rheims. This verse was a favorite of St. Thomas, and for good
reason, since it highlights the gratuity of grace and the wonders of the divine generosity.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 601-10

ON THE GENEALOGY OF ORTHODOXY:
A RESPONSE TO THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S THE TRINITY
LEWIS AYRES
Durham University / Australian Catholic University
Durham, United Kingdom / Melbourne, Australia

T

HIS IS A BOOK of whose fundamental purpose I approve.
I take that fundamental purpose to be not only a defense
of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology as a rational
and persuasive articulation of the biblical witness and as a still
persuasive engagement with the philosophical questions that classical Trinitarian theology delivers to us, but also a thoroughgoing
exploration of why classical Trinitarian theology thrives only
with a deep attention to divine transcendence, simplicity, and
aseity. From beginning to end—from the initial chapters which
focus on ways in which the Scriptures speak of God, to the final
chapters’ questioning of some persistent emphases in modern
Trinitarian theology—we see the flowering of reflection on the
God who contains all but is uncontained (to speak in secondcentury terms). “Persuasive” is an important adjective here;
throughout, Fr. Thomas Joseph provides us with an exercise as
much in apologetics as in dogmatics. But I sense that “apologetic”
here seems to involve the production of a rational account that
removes objections and provides reasons that may stimulate
assent; to the character of appropriate apology I will return.
At the same time, I approve of the book for its directness. A
beautiful example is provided by the discussion of the modern
trend to speak of “immanent” and “economic” trinities. Father
Thomas Joseph peers over the top of the lectern at an aula full of
modern theologians—Rahner, Moltmann, and Balthasar are
sitting in the front row—as they nervously explain to him that
they have this wonderful new terminology which will make us all
601

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LEWIS AYRES

more attentive to Scripture, to the economy of revelation, and to
the divine self-limitation. Listening carefully, our lecturer points
out to the room that such language actually offers little help, and
actually causes multiple problems both for Trinitarian theology
and for a rightly ordered conception of the relations between
Creator and creation (Bulgakov has been hiding in the second
row, but now finds himself questioned quite severely). We are
pointed back to the traditional language of processions and
missions as a tried and tested way of approaching the matter, and
told just to stop it. One might certainly argue that a more extensive account of the philosophical shifts that lie behind modern
Trinitarian “revivals” would have helped the case, but this section
of the book offers us a clear and powerful undercutting of so
much that is often swallowed by “systematic” theologians as
supposedly necessary medicine.
And yet, I admit that I am now going to transgress in a typical
fashion: responding to an author by suggesting that he or she
should have written something different. I do so because I think
the questions I pose are important for promoting the very theological revival that Fr. Thomas Joseph seeks in all that he writes.
The more I delved into the book, the more two concerns forced
themselves upon me. First, the style of genealogy offered here
runs the risk of being one built too easily around Thomas’s sufficiency. Second, this style of genealogy (and the style of exposition
found in the nongenealogical sections of the book) also runs the
risk of speaking insufficiently of that which remains mysterious,
and consequently of failing to produce a sufficiently clear
apology for an essential dimension of good theological reasoning.
Taken together I worry that the style of the book does not take
full advantage of how theological genealogy may stimulate
dogmatic attention.
Not surprisingly, my basic question is one that patristic
scholars should perennially ask of Thomists: what is the status of
patristic thought in relationship to the synthesis of Thomas (or to
the synthesis of any other of the great medieval figures)? In this
particular case, a good number of chapters are devoted to
sketching the key developments of the period between Nicaea

ON THE GENEALOGY OF ORTHODOXY

603

and Dionysius (110-76), but with a clearly expressed, limited
objective: Fr. Thomas Joseph’s goal is only to show “that there is
a fundamental intellectual and historical continuity between the
New Testament revelation of the apostolic age and the subsequent doctrinal definitions of the Catholic Church” (110).
Nevertheless, one may ask how that should best be accomplished.
For many of those for whom Thomas’s thought is the terminus
ad quem it becomes very easy to view the patristic period as offering primarily foundational materials that either need or at least
greatly benefit from the philosophical precision applied within
Latin Scholastic culture. Similarly, it becomes easy to make central those aspects of early Trinitarian thought that most closely
reflect the topics one finds developed in Thomas. But doing so
may hide from us a richness and diversity that is itself an apology
for traditional Trinitarian theology.
We can usefully pose the question as one about the character
of what I will term the genealogy of orthodoxy. We tend to speak
of genealogy when we seek to uncover the origins of something
deserving of our suspicion if not rejection—genealogy unveiling
the repetition (or transfigured repetition) of an earlier evil. Into
this category fall, to give a recent example, Cyril O’Regan’s
monumental attempts to uncover the repetition of Gnostic (and
Marcionite) intellectual structures as intrinsic to modernity’s
reasoning. Such uncovering and naming is both (as O’Regan has
described it) an act of intellectual honesty and one of prophetic
resistance to that which has become the simply assumed.1
I suggest that we should also speak, in a positive tone, about
the genealogy of orthodoxy. By this I mean an account of the
intellectual and doxological history that constitutes the history of
Trinitarian orthodoxy. But how one should perform such a
genealogy in the context of modern historical forms of consciousness without descending into the sort of relativism which
1
O’Regan has explored this theme across a number of volumes, but for short
introductions see his “Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy,” Modern Theology 22 (2006):
609-50; and “Historiographic Sophistications: Marcionism as a Genealogical Category,”
Church Life December 29, 2020: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/marcionism-asa-genealogical-category/.

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sees different theologies as primarily expressive of different
cultural moments has been one of the most contested methodlogical questions in modern Catholic thought for centuries. Thus,
how one should “curate” the Church’s tradition is a topic of vital
importance for any theological revival in our day.2
Even sketching an adequate practice of theological genealogy
is too vast a topic for this response to Fr. Thomas Joseph’s book.
Nevertheless, allow me to make a few very general observations.
I suggest that a good genealogy should display the richness and
complexity of the intellectual traditions engaged and adapted
through the course of theological history. A good genealogy
should also resist modern forms of Tendenzkritik wherein power
is the universal human driver; it should be attentive to the
interplay of intellectual traditions in Christian thought (and reject
simple oppositions between, for example, the “Greek” and the
“Jewish”). A good genealogy should also be willing to embrace
the tension between identifying the particular positions evident
in a text and the wider narrative into which such particulars may
also be bundled. This last sentence opens on to a complex hermeneutical topic. Good genealogical practice must involve offering an account of the intelligibility of the cosmos, of continuities
in the nature of the human person, and a theological account of
God’s maintenance of meaning over time, of the Church’s faithfulness. Thus, any “good” theological genealogy must take full
advantage of the intellectual resources modern forms of historical
consciousness offer, even as those forms are adapted for the
needs of Christian thought. (Father Thomas Joseph makes a
similar point when he rightly notes the impossibility of any
“neutral” historical study of the Scriptures [66].)
I offer these brief remarks because I think good genealogy is
itself an apologetic exercise, showing Christian intellectual seriousness and the intellectual force and depth of the Christian
2
I have attempted to explore the theme of curation a little further in “Of Slowness
and Distance: Reflections on Philology and the Curation of Tradition in Catholic
Theology,” in Anthony Briggman and Ellen Scully, eds., New Narratives for Old: The
Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology. Essays in Honor of Michel René
Barnes (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 27-44.

ON THE GENEALOGY OF ORTHODOXY

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tradition. But, at the same time, good genealogy may also be a
means of promoting attention to the mysteries that lie at the heart
of Christian faith. Understanding how these two concerns may
intertwine—good genealogy as apologetic and good genealogy as
a revealing of attention to mystery—will bring us back to Fr.
Thomas Joseph. There is much rather naïve romanticisim about
premodern theologians in Balthasar’s famous early essay “Theology and Sanctity,” but his instincts are surely right when he
points to the perennial value of those whose writing is thoroughly
dogmatic in that it is focused above all on the contemplation and
elucidation of what has been revealed in Christ, on drawing
people to the riches of that gift, and on conceiving human (and
created) existence in the light of the revealed mystery.3 The
dogmatic writer is one whose intellectual powers are turned
toward these tasks above all, and yet one who knows that as
mysteries these realities are ultimately beyond our grasp and to
be adored more than understood. It is this that constitutes
Balthasar’s “theology at prayer [now] superseded by theology at
the desk.” Although Balthasar’s own presentations of historical
figures do not always exemplify attentive uncovering of the
particular questions that gave their texts birth, and the particular
forms of expression and thought central in such texts,4 he did
grasp that genealogies which draw out the different attempts of
the great theologians to attend to and speak appropriately of
Christianity’s central mysteries may have great dogmatic power.
In attending to changing articulations of the basic principles
of the Church’s Trinitarian faith through the centuries of the
patristic and medieval periods we see different forms of attention
to the inexhaustible mysteries concerning which we have been
given to speak. Common themes—at the heart of which are
principles defined by the conciliar tradition or in the penumbra
of that tradition—constitute a golden thread along which
3
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” in Explorations in Theology I: The
Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 181-209.
4
I am not at all convinced by Balthasar’s early account of how one should engage the
Church’s tradition, especially as it is found in the famous foreword to his Présence et
pensée: Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne, 1942).

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different articulations (and traditions of articulation) may be
located. These changing articulations, in their deepest forms, also
express the principle that the mystery of the divine life must be
shown to surpass our ability to grasp if we are to speak about it
well. Thomas’s place in such a story is, I would suggest, not so
much as the universal culminating rational synthesis, but as a
peculiarly rich illustration of this attention to mystery, and a
peculiarly rich intersection and synthesis of authorities and ideas
that we should now be invited to explore alongside his own
vision, and in the light of modern historical scholarship (with due
attention to the ways in which Thomas both incorporates those
authorities and sometimes misconstrues them).5 For some
Thomas will and should certainly stand as the model of theological reasoning; for others he may stand as a particularly rich
model alongside others. A richer genealogical procedure would
open both these possibilities to the reader.6
I am not saying that Fr. Thomas Joseph’s book somehow fails
to show historical sensitivity, but that it shows historical
sensitivity of a certain kind, a kind that permits the drawing of a
genealogy in which Thomas is the apex and all those before are
5

I hope that I will not be taken here as advocating for some sort of patristic
fundamentalism, treating the patristic authors as never open to supplementation (such a
position could hardly be sustained by a Catholic theologian), but rather as advocating for
a particular mode of holding up patristic theology as a necessary part of our theological
conversation. I have provided some pointers towards such an account in my “Seven
Theses on Patristics and Catholic Theology,” Modern Theology 38 (2022): 36-62.
6
In this sense good genealogy should take forward what was once theologia positiva,
understanding this, however, not as an exercise preliminary to dogmatics but as part of
it. Such a discipline need not involve any rejection of the principle that the Church teaches
with continuity and certainty. On this latter topic, Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The
Precarity of Wisdom: Modern Dominican Theology, Perspectivalism, and the Tasks of
Reconstruction,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the
Moral Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 92-123,
rightly criticizes ways in which Chenu (and others) tended towards a view of theology as
conditioned by history insufficiently able also to account for the stability of the Church's
teaching across generations. Congar's attempts in La tradition et les traditions to do so
meet with far more success, I would argue, yet are somewhat marred by his failure to
address the question head on. I do not mean that all dogmatics should be genealogical,
but that such a form of dogmatic attention has a great deal to contribute at this point in
the history of theology.

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607

preliminary to and provide building blocks for the great
synthesis. This is also a form of historical attentiveness that seeks
above all for the continuity across the centuries of a particular set
of rational (and gradually flowering) arguments. Such an approach places perhaps too little emphasis on the attentiveness to
the mystery of Christ revealed through the course of this history.7
There are a number of places in this volume where I felt that a
more expansive genealogy would have shown better continuity
in attention to divine mystery across different forms of theological expression. I will point to three.
A first example may flow from reflection on the manner in
which figures such as Basil of Caesarea and Augustine (to name
just two) consider the divine unity against the background of a
particular Pythagorean/Platonic metaphysics that asserts true
unity to precede number of any kind. It is against such a background that it becomes possible to say that while number appears
to obtain when one moves from Father to Son to Holy Spirit, we
are mistaken if we allow ourselves to think thus. Such arguments
(arguments rather different from those found in Thomas—see,
e.g., STh I, q. 30, a. 3) provide a point of departure rooted in a
very particular metaphysics which starkly distinguishes Creator
and creation. Attending to the differences between Nicene
strategies may help us to explore both continuities and the sort
of slow shifts that are intrinsic to the continuing vitality of
intellectual traditions. When we consider the differences between
the strategies of Thomas and Basil or Augustine (or, later, but
sharing a similar interest in the metaphysics of number, Cusanus)
we should see similar intersections between the propositional
claims inherent in Nicene theology and the realities of divine
mystery as these theologians take fundamental beliefs and try to
articulate them within related but distinct metaphysical contexts.
Something similar would be found were we to question in a
genealogical mode the modern fascination with the attempts to
define the difference between common and particular. It is a
7
I have not yet read Fr. Thomas Joseph’s new Principles of Catholic Theology
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023), where these
questions may be treated more directly.

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common tactic in modern Trinitarian summary to present the
discussions in the Cappadocians and Augustine of ousia/
hypostasis or persona/natura as preliminary to and fulfilled in
medieval discussions. What such modern accounts miss are the
questions that flow when one notes how infrequent those
discussions are in the Cappadocians and Augustine. What
functions do these discussions actually perform? How do relevant
patristic writers manage without such terminologies? What
advantages and disadvantages follow from this practice? How far
is this practice necessarily succeeded by more developed late
patristic and medieval accounts? My goal here is not to answer
such questions, but to suggest that, once again, answering them
would draw us to the intersections between the propositional
claims inherent in Nicene theology and the realities of divine
mystery, and force on us hard but important questions about
what it means to conceive the individuality of Father, Son, and
Spirit as “persons”; this is not a matter somehow resolved by the
account one finds in Thomas precisely insofar as the mystery of
the one and the three remains beyond our grasp.
Third, I want to turn to a particularly helpful aspect of Fr.
Thomas Joseph’s argument: his presentation of a certain
“psychological analogy” as intrinsic to Trinitarian reflection from
pre-Nicene authors onward. Readers of modern Trinitarian
reflection have become so used to thinking in terms of an opposition between “social” and “psychological” analogies that they
find it hard to attend to what patristic and medieval theologians
actually say. Father Thomas Joseph is following a far more
helpful line of argument when he presents reflection on the
inherent resources of the term Logos as enabling presentation of
the “Word” as God’s rational power and activity from the earliest
beginnings of Christian Trinitarianism (see, e.g., 115-19, 133-35,
167ff.). My quibble begins with the observation that in this
treatment the trajectory of all use of such “psychological”
language is a full account of the two processions conceived with
the resources offered by the terminology of love and knowledge.
Thomas’s use of such language is the apex of reflection, both
because of the systematic manner of his usage, and because he

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writes subsequently to Dionysius’s thoughts on analogy which
provide a clearer framework for Thomas’s account of theological
language. But what if we were to diversify our appreciation of the
tradition by noting that while this tradition of reflection is
certainly a constant, it takes multiple forms dependent on shifting
visions of how one should draw likenesses between features of
created rational existence and the divine? Exploring this tradition
thus would open for us a great deal of complexity within a common (and developing) tradition, a diversity that might help us
reflect on the complexity of how the mystery of the divine life is
best approached by the human mind.
Father Thomas Joseph’s work draws on scholarship across a
truly impressive range. I do not intend to suggest that he is
inattentive to historical development, but that much value may
be found in a rather different way of presenting the tradition, one
that itself may have great apologetic value in displaying both the
complexities of development and the constant movement of
theological speech toward a formed silence. Theology does not
move constantly thus because it has taken on too much, but
because, by displaying the reaching out of reason toward divine
mystery, theology reveals the very character of the world’s
intelligibility, the character of reason, and the interplay between
thought and worship. Here, I think, we find one of the most
important aspects of theological reason for which an apology
must be offered in late modernity: theology’s recognition that it
is called to go on struggling to speak rationally of that which of
necessity exceeds the grasp of created rationality.
In this vein I will end by returning to the beginning of Fr.
Thomas Joseph’s book. His discussion of what he terms the
“basic touchstones for Trinitarian doctrine” (67) in the New
Testament is useful and subtle—especially in the way that he
shows us a range of themes in the presentation of Christ pointing
us toward key aspects of later formed Trinitarian doctrine. I also
found helpful his insistence on the importance of both attending
to the fruits of modern biblical scholarship and reading the
Scriptures in the light of tradition. Yet the discussion we are given
restricts itself to this, to showing us the Scriptures (and Christ’s

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own self-presentation) as the point of departure for later
reflection, and as consonant with that later tradition. There is
very little in this massive volume that discusses the ways in which
patristic and medieval writers read their Scriptures, how classical
Trinitarian theology flowered in an exegetical culture steeped in
meditation on Christ’s titles, and in meditation on the metaphorical and terminological resources provided by the Hebrew
Scriptures—power, wisdom, word, name, light, and so forth.
These writers (in a variety of interrelated exegetical and speculative traditions) show us that through grace, through the gift of
faith, Christians are called to plumb the depths of Scripture, and
that in so doing they exhibit patterns of thought that are rational,
and yet that end in recognition of the divine mystery. For my
part, the best apology for Christian teaching and reasoning is one
that makes more central the subtle art and exact science of
speaking towards mystery.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 611-24

TRINITARIANISM AND THE “MYSTICAL”:
A RESPONSE TO THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S THE TRINITY
SARAH COAKLEY
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom

I

N MY HIGHLY appreciative commendation in advance of
the publication of his new book, I described Fr. Thomas
Joseph’s extraordinary volume on the Trinity as “learned,
wide ranging, and deeply provocative.”1 It is indeed all those
things, and more. But suffice it to say that the book becomes all
the more exciting and provocative on second and third
readings. Not only are its core arguments a great deal more
original—some would say even at points idiosyncratic—than
one might at first realize,2 but the book also evidences some
1
See the back cover of Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Trinity: On the Nature and
Mystery of the One God (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2022). In what follows I shall give pagination from this volume in simple parentheses,
and, in the spirit of friendship, refer to the author as “TJ.”
2
I shall allude to some of these intriguing “provocations” in what follows, but one
might mention here at the outset, in particular: (1) the presumption of a “false starts
and approximations” historiography of the Trinity from the biblical sources on, such
that a later Thomistic norm implicitly controls the (highly selective) discussion from the
outset (and despite what is concessively said about such a “normativity” at the very end
of the book [672-73]); (2) the concomitant presumption of the filioque as an essential
and originary feature of this “back-projected” vision of Trinitarian origins; (3) the core
normativity also given to Augustine’s “psychological analogies” for the Trinity (even
despite Augustine’s own notable hesitancy about the adequacy of any such analogies by
the end of his De Trinitate); (4) the use of Aquinas’s teaching on analogy as a normative
lens for explicating the (proposed) historic superiority of his own Trinitarian teaching—
both on the divine unity and on the “persons” as “subsistent relations”; (5) the
imposition thereby of a quasi-Hegelian genealogy of (purportedly errant, and
dialectically related) forms of Trinitarianism in comparison with the “Thomistic,” in
both Scholastic and modern eras. This last feature of the book represents its most

611

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SARAH COAKLEY

remarkable lacunae—not immediately obvious, again, on first
reading—that are as revealing as they are curious.3 One cannot
of course write about everything in the historic Trinitarian
traditions of the churches, even in a book as long and learned as
this one. But in what follows in this brief review I shall focus on
what I see as just one particular “blind-spot” in the book, which
I believe is not merely a contingent omission in relation to the
historical story of Trinitarian thought, but a matter of ongoing
and systematic importance in contemporary Trinitarian
discussion as well.4 That is the role of “mystical theology” in its
relation to historic Trinitarian thinking and believing—not just
in the “Eastern” Christian tradition, but by extension also in its
creative, exciting and original contribution, as I see it, but also the most “provocative”
dimension of its underlying historiographical and genealogical propulsion.
3
Under this category of “lacunae” might be listed, again succinctly: (1) the almost
complete neglect of Greek/Orthodox sources from after the era of the Cappadocians
(despite the short section on Dionysius [171-76], and the very brief allusions to later
Greek and other Orthodox authors [499-501], in relation to the filioque problem); (2)
the lack of any substantive discussion of the Council of Constantinople of 381 (it merits
only one passing allusion in the early historical narrative [150], and another in the
discussion of the Holy Spirit [490]), which means that the issue of the filioque is not
squarely and foremost faced as a problem of conciliar obedience (despite one brief
sentence on this matter [491]); (3) the demotion of focus on the painstaking ecumenical
attempts of recent decades to forge a new understanding between “Eastern” and
“Western” views of the Trinity to a very short and programmatic discussion (497-503),
itself made subservient to TJ’s account of the Spirit according to Aquinas; (4) the
surprising lack of interest in pursuing what, if anything, is brought to the history of
Trinitarianism, both “East” and “West,” by a specifically “mystical” and contemplative
approach to the Trinity (the focus of this short contribution).
4
I shall come back to this point at the end of this brief reflection: has TJ occluded a
strand in historic Trinitarianism that might have particular interest and application to
contemporary theological aporias about the Trinity? What we see at the moment, across
the ecumenical and international spectrum, is a confusion of conflicting voices on the
Trinity: some reasserting the popular “social Trinitarianism” of the 1980s and 1990s, in
the name of a preferred “Eastern” perspective on personal Trinitarian “communion”;
some reiterating Vladimir Lossky’s polemical view that the “Mystical Theology of the
Eastern Church” is somehow intrinsically superior to a “Western,” Scholastic,
alternative (this is not to be confused with my own position, adumbrated here); some
avidly reasserting a “pro-Nicene” view that conjoined the “East” and “West” in the early
centuries; some—like TJ—re-exploring the Western Scholastic tradition and giving it
new exposition and support; and others vehemently rejecting, in neo-Schleiermacherian
mode, any speculations at all about the inner life of God.

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613

crucial assimilations into the West. What is at stake here, I want
to ask, and in particular what might this mean for the core
themes of TJ’s remarkable study?
I pick on this issue for a number of connected reasons which,
we may note, are already signaled by TJ himself in his volume
as intrinsically important for his own undertaking. Let me then
start by adumbrating those key points, for they show us that TJ
is perhaps himself already aware of some implicit issue here in
need of further discussion.
First, TJ chooses to open his entire study (1-5) with a
reminder of the “three forms of wisdom” assumed and outlined
by Aquinas: that pertaining to philosophy, that to theology (the
exposition of revelation), and finally that to the “mystical”
grace of infused encounter with God through the Spirit.5 While
in one sense this triad is obviously arranged in an ascending
order of participatory response to God, the three “regulatory
functions” are, it is argued here, also mutual and in some sense
égal in relation to each other—for each constrains the others
(3).6 In other words, one cannot kick away the ladder of
philosophy when doing the work of theology; nor, by the same
token, can the “mystic” ever rise above the need for both of
these two other forms of wisdom (4), since—according to TJ—
the “mystics” are perennially subject to “religious delusion”
(ibid.). What the mystic does crucially provide, however, as TJ
himself acknowledges, is a distinctive “witness” to the
transformative power of God, and thereby the mystic “holds the
theologian accountable to the mystery of the living God” (ibid.,
5
TJ explains, of the third: “The gift of wisdom teaches us to learn—from the heart
of Christ, from the heart of God—who God is, and what he wills” (3). It is noteworthy
that TJ associates this “third” wisdom exclusively with love/affectus, given that
Aquinas’s own (quite dispersed) theory of “contemplation” is more complex than this
and also gives a notable pride of place to the passive intellect: see Rik van
Nieuwenhove, Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2021), seriatim, but esp. 126-46. Later in this essay I shall examine the threefold ascent
of Pseudo-Dionysius, which locates “mystical” encounter with the Trinitarian God in
the “ecstatic” nous, going out beyond itself (hyper noun).
6
Aquinas’s own renowned “mystical” encounters at the end of his life might of
course suggest slightly otherwise: as reported to his socius, Reginald of Piperno, all that
he had heretofore written fell away into insignificance, as if “straw.”

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emphasis added). It is this thought that I wish to pursue further
in what follows, not least because TJ himself so importantly
opens up this idea at the outset of his study.
Second, the entire architectonic structure of TJ’s book depends (or so I would urge), on how an understanding of the
“mystical” (or “ineffable”) apprehension of the divine implicitly
impinges on Aquinas’s theory of analogy itself, and thus on TJ’s
particular rendition of the importance of his Trinitarian
teaching according to this crucial rubric. For TJ’s assertion of
the intrinsic “normativity” of Aquinas’s approach to the Trinity
involves systematically applying his doctrine of analogy both to
the question of the unity of the divine substance and to the
question of the tripersonality of the divine “subsistent
relations.” This is really the core, and innovative, argument of
the book (which most ingeniously justifies—and further
bolsters—Aquinas’s own rendition of the Trinity in STh I,
qq. 27-43, from the earlier resources of STh I, q. 13); and from
this core argument spiral out, in TJ’s narrative, the various
negative or positive assessments of both earlier and later forms
of Trinitarian thinking with which it may be compared. Now,
this analogical understanding (in Aquinas’s sense) of how we
must speak “properly” of divine oneness and threeness of
course involves both a confidence about analogical “literalness”
(in the Thomist sense of language which is applied first and
foremost, and so proprie, of God), and a suitable acknowledgment of our human incapacity fully to grasp that which is God
at all (on account of his essential, uncreated ineffability).
According to TJ’s ingenious genealogy, then, Trinitarian theologians working either before or after Aquinas, both Scholastic
and modern, go wrong precisely when they veer either towards
univocity or towards equivocation (and/or Kantian nescience) in
this analogical balancing act; if they do so, he argues, they
thereby miss the mark altogether.7 So here we see, once more,
and secondly, that the “mystical” apprehension of God’s
ineffable transcendence is not a mere aside in TJ’s genealogy of
Trinitarian thinking, but seemingly at the core of its validity:
7

See 15-18, prospectively, and then 373-408, and the whole of part IV, 547-66.

TRINITARIANISM AND THE “MYSTICAL”

615

without its lessons, we are likely to veer perilously off the
Trinitarian rails in one direction or the other.
Third, then: it thus becomes important (at a certain turningpoint in his genealogical narrative of the history of Trinitarian
thinking [171-76]) for TJ to bring in the celebrated early sixthcentury author Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (author of the
first text named Mystical Theology) to support his view that
“mystical theology” fully aligns with this appropriately
“analogical” approach to the Trinity—or at least to claim that
Dionysius’s works anticipate this Thomist adage in some
important way. So Dionysius is a hero for TJ, ostensibly, as a
forerunner of Aquinas’s more developed views on analogy. To
be sure, TJ also needs to jump forward chronologically, in the
same chapter, to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 to effect
another of his “dialectical” balancing acts in order to prepare
the reader for the Thomistic insights to follow: first he covers
(his own rendition of) Dionysius, and then he complements his
views with the lessons of Lateran IV’s rejection of Joachim of
Fiore, in order to prepare for Aquinas on analogy and
prospectively indicate how “apophaticism” and Trinitarianism
can be fully and fruitfully combined.
But herein lies the rub—and we have now reached the systematic point I want to focus on in this short article: Is it really
the case that Pseudo-Dionysius represents merely an insightful
foretaste of Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy? Or does Dionysius
perhaps, and alternatively, represent a rather different approach
to the nexus of divine ineffability, theological language for God,
the Trinity, and the significance of the “mystical,” which—far
from being simply subsumable into Aquinas’s later account of
him—stands as a commanding alternative to the rather different
view that TJ propounds throughout his volume? And if so, what
might this mean for the fascinating typology of later Scholastic
and modern “errors” in Trinitarian thinking on which TJ
discourses throughout his book?
Let me lay just three considerations about the Dionysian
corpus very briefly on the table. To be sure, these points are
nowadays rendered bewilderingly problematic and contestable
by the multiple vying renditions of Dionysius’s “apophaticism”

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produced in the late modern period, which (to my mind) have
been overly distorted by unconscious importations of either
Kantian or Derridean philosophical tropes to the Dionysian
texts.8 Happily, however, I do not read TJ himself as falling into
any of these particular traps, given his own clarity about the
dangers of eliding patristic and Scholastic views of ineffability
with Kantian and post-Kantian views of noumenal nescience.
What is less clear is whether TJ has not himself erased
Dionysius’s very distinctive view of analogia (in the Greek) in
order to elide it with Aquinas’s different, and later, theory of
“analogy” as espoused in question 13 of the Prima pars.
Let me then propose just three aspects of the teaching of the
Dionysian corpus that appear to me to be distinctly different
from the later teaching of Aquinas, despite the unquestionable
and profound later influence of Pseudo-Dionysius upon
Aquinas. I am focusing here on those points which especially
make a difference to how Dionysius understands the precise
relation of “mystical theology,” the Trinity, and the rules of
theological language.9
First, does Dionysius propose a theory of analogy consonant
with the later position of Aquinas? Overall, the answer is surely
no. Nonetheless, Dionysius does make some initial and important distinctions between different kinds of language which we
apply to God, at different levels of “ascent,” and these we must

8
Particularly important here, amid recent secondary literature, is Timothy D.
Knepper, Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian
Corpus (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2014), which provides good reason to expose
many false modern and postmodern readings of Dionysius along these lines, including
influential readings by John Hick and Denys Turner in particular: see esp., ibid., 1-4,
69-71.
9
I am not of course the first person to attempt to clarify these differences, but my
short rendition here is a little different from some earlier, and more celebrated,
discussions: Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (1992;
repr. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005); Josef Pieper, The
Silence of St. Thomas, trans. J. Murray and D. O’Connor (South Bend, Ind.: St.
Augustine’s Press, 1999); Gregory P. Rocca, O.P., Speaking the Incomprehensible God
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004).

TRINITARIANISM AND THE “MYSTICAL”

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take carefully into account.10 Thus it is true that Dionysius’s
careful exposition in The Divine Names (chaps. 1-2)11 of the
relation of the one and the three in the Trinity broadly follows
the Cappadocians in explaining how God can be uniquely and
inexpressibly one, and yet at the same time distinguishable in
the Trinitarian “persons” in number and relation. Moreover, he
takes it as read, from both his pagan philosophical and his
Christian forebears, that the particular attributes for God called
“divine names” are those which fall into the special category of
the so-called intelligible attributes. But notably he underscores
that these “names,” no less than any other ways of talking about
God, are only to be authoritatively commended to us by
Scripture, rather than intrinsically generated philosophically by
the very idea of God; neither are they hypothesized—as in
Aquinas—as “pure perfection” terms that apply first and
foremost to God.12 The genre of careful argumentation about
the basic oneness and threeness of the Trinity that Dionysius
applies here in the opening sections of the Divine Names, along
with his exposition of the “intelligible” attributes of God, needs
further to be distinguished from his accompanying teaching—
manifest not only, en passant, in the Divine Names itself,13 but
more emphatically in his Mystical Theology14—that since God
is, in his terms, “beyond being,” the best language for God
overall is that which insists on the dissimilarity of any
10

The best brief (and recent) philosophical clarification of these different types of
theological language (“Theological Representations,” “Divine Names,” “Mystical
Theology”), according to Dionysius, is to be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy article, ‘Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’, by Kevin Corrigan and L.
Michael Harrington (2019), esp. 3-6.
11
Although I have drawn on the standard modern English translation of the
Dionysian corpus, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid
(London: SPCK, 1987), it is well known that the translation is questionable at many
points, and must be used with care. The contemporary Greek edition is Beate Regina
Suchla, ed., Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, vols. 1 and 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990,
1991).
12
See Divine Names, 1.1, 1.2.
13
See Divine Names, 1.6, 2.4: God is both completely ineffable, “beyond every
assertion and denial,” and yet best described by the use of “every name.”
14
Mystical Theology, 3.

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SARAH COAKLEY

comparisons or images for God from their creaturely application, rather than any supposed similarity.15 Far from recommending any developed doctrine of “analogy” in the later
Thomist sense, let alone carefully distinguishing “analogy” and
“metaphor” as Aquinas does, Dionysius appears to be supremely
commending what Aquinas would himself call “metaphor” in
the naming of God,16 to the point that Dionysius particularly
applauds those biblical tropes in which some proposed divine
behavior or characteristic is most obviously inappropriate to
God (e.g., even speaking of God as having a “hangover”).17 The
more bizarre and inappropriate the language for God, the better
we are reminded of the intrinsic divine ineffability and our
incapacity successfully to approach it linguistically or conceptually. Thus even when we introduce mutually corrective, or
mutually bombarding, images of this sort to help us understand
the doctrine of the Trinity,18 the same lesson applies: none of
these images will be more appropriate than any other. It must
be true, then, according to Dionysius’s teaching—as also in
some texts of the Cappadocians19—that there is more than one
15
Mystical Theology, 2. This principle applies even to the intelligible divine names,
since they too—although given to us by the authority of Scripture (Divine Names 1.2)—
also fall far short of the divine; they are not therefore more “proper” than other forms
of naming (see also Celestial Hierarchy, 2.3).
16
But not in the modern form of “recession from reality” (as Alvin Plantinga
memorably termed this post-Kantian temptation), or of correlative anti-realist “panmetaphorism” (as William Alston jibed): this is where John Hick and others have
misread Dionysius most seriously, as if he were merely an anticipation of a Gordon D.
Kaufman or a Sallie McFague (in the projectionist spirit of Feuerbach). We are not free
to “project” onto the deity whatever metaphors seem to us timely and relevant, since the
whole linguistic project in Dionysius is undergirded by a chastening spiritual journey
into true, divine reality, guided from the outset by the authority of Scripture and its
revelatory demands on us. See again Knepper, Negating Negation, esp. 1-4.
17
Mystical Theology, 3, alluding to Psalm 78:65.
18
E.g., “light,” “circle,” “seal,” used as “examples” in Divine Names, 2.4-2.6.
19
This is perhaps insufficiently commented upon in the standard textbooks (or
indeed at all in TJ’s The Trinity): see my recent exposition of Gregory of Nyssa’s
treatment of the Trinity in his late work, the Commentary on the Song of Songs, which
introduces numerous fascinating dimensions of his Trinitarian teaching that are not
present in his earlier dogmatic discourses: Sarah Coakley, “Gregory of Nyssa on
Spiritual Ascent and Trinitarian Orthodoxy: A Reconsideration of the Relation between

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619

genre of theological thinking that is required when explicating
the doctrine of the Trinity: there is the basic, lean, explicatory
account of how a God who is radically one, and to whom all the
“intelligible names” apply, can also be three “persons,” as intimated by Scripture and authoritatively given in the creeds (at
the level of “affirmation”); but there is also a necessary profusion of other “comparisons” or images for the Trinity (more
strictly “metaphors,” in the later Thomist sense), which by
definition can never adequately penetrate the mystery of the
Godhead, but serve their unique purpose even as they are then
serially discarded (here we are at the level of “denials”). But
what Dionysius never says is that the former task involves
“analogical” thinking and the latter “metaphorical.” In short,
Dionysius’s is ultimately a linguistic theory of self-corrective
metaphoric profusion, undergirded by scriptural and credal
authority, rather than by a strict doctrine of analogy in the
Thomist sense.
Second, there is a profound underlying metaphysical reason
for this position, as already noted. Because it is intrinsic to
Dionysius’s position (contra Aquinas) that God is “beyond
being,” as opposed to being “Being” itself, there are implications that immediately follow for his semantic theory of divine
naming, which apply no less (as I have argued here) to his
understanding of how to speak of God as Trinity. Thus it is that
Dionysius can famously urge, in his Mystical Theology, that we
must not only deny the positives we first affirm when we
attempt to speak of God, but more importantly also deny our
denials.20 This adage apparently goes even beyond the
Doctrine and Askesis,” in Giulio Maspero and Miguel Brugarolas, eds., Gregory of
Nyssa’s “In Canticum,” XII International Colloquium on Gregory of Nyssa (Leiden:
Brill, 2018), 360-75.
20
Mystical Theology, 1.2. There is much debate about what Dionysius means by a
“denial,” and significantly he uses two different Greek words for this: here, aphaeresis,
but elsewhere also apophasis, the former having the overtones of “thinking away from,”
the latter of directly “saying no.” See again Knepper, Negating Negation, 35-68, for an
important recent discussion of the meaning of these terms in Dionysius, again
challenging much that has been written on this topic from a modern, post-Kantian,
perspective. The point is that if we misread Dionysius’s “apophasis” as a straightforward
logical negation, we can make no sense of his “denial of a denial” except as a return to

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recommendation of Lateran IV (also strongly influenced by
Dionysius) that our denials should be more emphatic than our
affirmations (see TJ, The Trinity, 180), for there is a third
moment hereafter, on which everything depends retroactively,
so to speak—and that is the possibility of an “ecstatic” moment
of direct contemplative encounter with God in Godself.21 In
trying to understand how the practice of “contemplation”
assumed here undergirds and sustains Dionysius’s linguistic
theory of affirmations and negations, we go astray if we do not
see this threefold process as an actual journey of ascent (as
opposed to a mere linguistic theory), in which the mind (nous)
ultimately goes out beyond itself (hyper noun).22 Much hangs
here, of course, on what Dionysius means when he speaks of
linguistic “denial” in the first place: if we mistakenly read this as
a straightforward logical denial (“p” erased by “not p”), then we
miss the point about the spiritual practice involved in
systematically “thinking away” (aphaeresis) from affirmations,
and indeed also from their denials, en route to something higher
yet: the direct encounter with God-as-Trinity itself.

an affirmation; nor can we comprehend how this linguistic theory of denials is part of a
contemplative journey into direct encounter with the “ineffable” God.
21
Mystical Theology, 1; Mystical Theology, 3. And this is the Trinity (Mystical
Theology, 1) for Dionysius, not some place beyond it, as has often been hypothesized.
See the excellent article by John N. Jones, “The Status of the Trinity in Dionysian
Thought,” The Journal of Religion 80 (2000): 645-57, on this important exegetical
point, which is admittedly extremely hard to adjudicate within the Dionysian corpus.
But Dionysius in the Mystical Theology (1, 3) does indeed ask us to embrace the
paradox of a simultaneous (trans-noetic) encounter with the Trinity itself and the
complete inexpressibility of such an event.
22
Mystical Theology, 3. Note that this contemplative ecstasy is not described in
“affective” terms in Dionysius, but in the form of the mind’s going out of itself. (On this
compare TJ, The Trinity, 3, as cited at the start of this essay, who insists that such states
are only “affective”: this I would respectfully challenge.) The tradition of so-called
affective Dionysianism in the medieval West was indeed later to disjoin will (love) and
intellect, and to align contemplative and ecstatic states with the former; but that was not
the only possible reception of the Dionysian heritage in the West: St. John of the Cross,
for instance, locates contemplative infusion in the passive intellect (following Aquinas
here), but further teaches that sustained union involves the integrated response of all the
faculties (memory, understanding, and will).

TRINITARIANISM AND THE “MYSTICAL”

621

Third, and finally, it follows that there is an important
intrinsic connection, and yet also distinction, within Dionysian
thinking between the task of explicating a complex theory of
rules for speaking about God (both positively and negatively),
on the one hand, and the direct revelatory encounter with the
inexpressible triune reality, on the other. The reason is that
these occur at different levels of the three-stage ascent. But the
third stage not only transforms the “mystic’s” perception of
what the mind is capable of (in rising even “beyond” itself); it
also gives further justification to Dionysius’s view that anything
said of God must not only be formally “affirmed” and “denied,”
but also be transcended even beyond that very denial. Such is
the basis on which he propounds his linguistic theory of what I
have called mandatory “metaphoric profusion.” And this
founds, I believe, a rather specifically theorized tradition of
“mystical speech,” the authority of which continues to be
debated.23
I have said more than enough now to indicate why I believe
that the work of Pseudo-Dionysius should not be regarded
merely as an enticing anticipation of Aquinas’s theory of
analogy, and also—by extension—why I cannot see him as
proposing the sort of systematic application of analogical
thinking (again in Aquinas’s sense) to his own Trinitarianism.
The more systematic, and final, question I want to raise in
closing this short response to TJ is whether the alternative
approach that I see Dionysius (and his various “mystical”
descendants) as representing cannot allow for a rather particular
sort of speech about the Trinity that is not bound by Thomist
23

Mention must be made briefly here of Vladimir Lossky’s well-known claim, in The
Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1944; repr., Cambridge: James Clarke, 1968)
that Dionysius’s “Eastern mystical theology” is intrinsically superior to that of the
“West,” and specifically to the work of Aquinas, because it does not simply balance
affirmative and negative ways (as Lossky presumes of Western “negative theology”), but
moves “mystically” (and “apophatically”) beyond them. I hope it is clear that Lossky’s
view is not the one I am proposing here, given that Aquinas’s position also witnesses
vibrantly to the (third) “via eminentiae.” What I am drawing attention to, however, is
that TJ’s rendition of this “third way” seemingly reduces it merely to an “affective”
state, and thus draws nothing from it of substantive revelatory significance for our
understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, whether historically or in our own day.

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SARAH COAKLEY

analogical rules, nor limited solely to the technical credal Trinitarian language that it also takes for granted, but is more freely
produced in response to the life of contemplative practice itself.
It is clear, I hope, that there are many “mystical” authors in the
broadly Dionysian tradition, both East and West, who have
discoursed freely on the Trinity, and sometimes indeed with
serious suggestions of heterodoxy, in this mode. Here we enter
the ambiguous realm of what TJ calls both the necessary
“witness” of the saint to the transforming “mystery of God,”
and at the same time the dangerous potential of mystical “delusion.” My question, in concluding these reflections, is why TJ
does not regard such writers as worthy at least of some
sustained attention in his grand Trinitarian genealogy? Is it that
these “mystical” Trinitarians can tell us nothing suggestive,
creative, and even theologically content-laden for the history of
Trinitarian thought, and especially for today’s contentions
about it?
Surely there can be no doubt that many and various
“mystical” inheritors of the Dionysian corpus, both East and
West, do indeed witness in this way to forms of speech about
the Trinity that escape TJ’s core dialectical Scholastic trajectory
of analogical (good) versus univocal or equivocal (bad)?24 And
indeed—to complicate matters further—some of the texts that
belong in this “mystical”/Trinitarian category are written by
24

We may perhaps include in this “cloud of witnesses” at least the following, in all
their diversity of expression and either assumed (or questioned) “orthodoxy”: in the
West, the Victorines (Hugh and Richard of St Victor, Thomas Gallus), Bonaventure,
Isaac of Stella, the Rhineland and Flemish mystics (Marguerite Porete, Eckhart, Tauler,
van Ruysbroeck), the English mystics (The Cloud, Julian of Norwich), the reforming
Carmelites (Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross); in the East, John of Scythopolis,
Maximus Confessor, John of Damascus, Gregory Palamas. This list is far from
exhaustive: see Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang, eds., Re-Thinking Dionysius the
Areopgatie (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), for a more extensive account of
Dionysius’s rich reception in East and West. One should also add that there is arguably a
pre-Dionysian tradition of substantive reflections on the Trinity arising from the context
of prayer, contemplation, and scriptural meditation which stand alongside more formal
accounts of doctrinal exposition of the Trinity by the same authors: e.g., Origen’s De
oratione, Commentary on John and Homilies and Commentary on the Song of Songs;
and (as already mentioned) Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs.

TRINITARIANISM AND THE “MYSTICAL”

623

authors who, when employing other genres of writing, are quite
capable of expounding the doctrine of the Trinity in ways that
TJ finds easier to fit into his own preferred genealogy.25 But that
fact, in itself, should give us pause: for is it not incumbent on a
contemporary exegete to consider the full range of any
particular author’s reflections on the topic at stake (in this case,
the Trinity), and indeed the genre of it, and not simply on his or
her more “Scholastic” expositions? Is the “mystic” approach,
then, finally dispensable (not to say, at times, “delusive”), or can
it not be the necessary pinnacle of some important revelatory
insights?
This is of course an issue with which the Church has long
struggled, and it comes with inevitable ecclesiastical and
political baggage. But in the contemporary theological scene,
especially, as we see the recent fashion for “social Trinitarianism” widely riposted, and East/West ecumenical advances
on the filioque seemingly stalled, and new forms of mandatory
post-Kantian nescience about the inner-Trinitarian life
reasserted with some vigor, is there not every reason to reassess
the full range of historic genres of Trinitarian insight available
to us before casting a vote about the way forward? It has been
the burden of this short paper to suggest that, even on TJ’s own
best principles, and in the face of his remarkable creation of a
new and contemporary “Thomist” perspective on the Trinity,
“Dionysian” traditions of Trinitarianism, in particular, should
not be ignored, nor should they merely be subsumed into the
“Thomistic.” Indeed, as TJ himself avers at several points in the
book, other stories than his about Trinitarianism have been, and
should still be, told afresh.26 In the spirit of that proposed future
Trinitarian “ecumenism,” I have in this short response to a
remarkable book attempted to reopen up a particular space
25

I think particularly here of Bonaventure, who, in his Itinerarium, draws freely on
Dionysian themes and “metaphors,” in contrast with his more formal accounts of the
Trinity (critiqued by TJ) in his commentary on the Sentences. The same point might
perhaps also be raised in the modern period in relation to the Trinitarian work of Hans
Urs von Balthasar, who is also profoundly influenced by the Dionysian tradition, via
Maximus Confessor.
26
See 7, 671-72.

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SARAH COAKLEY

where East and West have met “ecstatically” in the past, and
indeed continue to engage in ways that arguably transcend the
bogged-down intra-ecclesiastical problems of the filioque: that
is, in that arena of claimed “mystical” encounter in which the
life of the Trinity comes to look different, not because it is
released either from credal and conciliar norms, or from
philosophical and theological “wisdom” in explicating their
force, but because in one important sense it is freed from being
in any way constraining of the life that flows from the Trinity
itself. As TJ himself puts it, the “mystic” holds the Church
accountable to its own Trinitarian truth.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 625-34

REFLECTIONS ON
THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S THE TRINITY
ANDREW LOUTH
Durham University
Durham, United Kingdom

T

HIS MASSIVE BOOK—nearly seven hundred pages of
text—is essentially an exposition and analysis of the
doctrine of the Trinity to be found in the writings of St.
Thomas Aquinas. It is prefaced by nearly one hundred fifty pages
of historical introduction, conceived in terms of the development
of Trinitarian doctrine up to Dionysius the Areopagite, with a
final hop to the Fourth Lateran Council, before embarking on
Aquinas himself. Aquinas’s Trinitarian doctrine is discussed in
two parts—each a little short of two hundred pages—the first on
the mystery of the divine nature, an exposition of his doctrine of
the one God (de Deo uno: STh I, qq. 1-26, though White
concentrates on qq. 1-14), the other on the “immanent
communion of the Persons,” on the doctrine of the threefold (or
Trinitarian) God (de Deo trino: STh I, qq. 27-43) The book
concludes with another long section (nearly one hundred fifty
pages), reflecting on challenges to a traditional Trinitarianism
such as Aquinas’s in twentieth-century theology—primarily those
of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Sergii Bulgakov,
with discussion as well of Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart
Pannenberg—in which White sets out to defend the principles of
classical, and especially Thomist, Trinitarianism against modern
misgivings. This is, in fact, one of the best parts of the book,
despite the demands of concision: White seeks to show in his
robust defence of Aquinas—with palpable success—how the
Angelic Doctor’s account provides an adequate response to the
problems faced by modern thinkers, without calling into question
625

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ANDREW LOUTH

fundamental aspects of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity
(e.g., the unity of the divine essence, or a coherent notion of what
distinguishes the persons from each other).
There is, however, a more general question that I want to
pursue in this essay, which tracks a worry that I had from the first
pages of White’s book, or indeed, from the subtitle of the book:
“On the Nature and Mystery of the One God.” Although the
term “mystery” occurs frequently in the book, White gives little
or no attention to clarifying what he means by the term. The
word frequently occurs as part of a hendiadys, for example in the
subtitle, and the trouble with hendiadys as a figure of speech is
how the two components relate: sometimes they seem quite
distinct—as in “nature and mystery”—and one wants to know
how they complement each other (in this case, what does mystery
add to nature, and vice versa?); but sometimes the words are
either synonyms, or one has a very undefined meaning, in which
case nothing is really added by the hendiadys, except possibly a
gesture to a kind of aura, enhancing, but not adding anything
very clear. There is another, seemingly related hendiadys, not
infrequently encountered in White’s book: “apophatic and
mystical.” “Seemingly” related, for “mystical,” though from the
same root as “mystery,” is not exactly an adjective derived from
the noun—that would be “mysterious,” which has rather
different connotations.
On the first page of the introduction White discusses
Aquinas’s doctrine of the three forms of wisdom, which pertain
to philosophy, theology, and the mystical life of union with God.
Each is unique and has its own integrity; they are also
hierarchical, compatible with one another, and inform or inspire
one another. Philosophy explores what can be discovered by
reason. Theology, as a study of revelation, goes beyond this, for
God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ as a mystery of three
persons, and theology seeks to understand this. A third form of
wisdom “pertains to the mystical grace of wisdom,” defined as “a
special gift of the Holy Spirit,” through which we “come to know
the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in an intimate
way, in the darkness of faith, by a deep union of love” (2). It
seems clear that “mystery” is not confined to the mystical life, for

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White is explicit in speaking of the “mystery of the Trinity” as
explored by theological wisdom. Elsewhere he makes clear that
even philosophical wisdom enters into the heart of “mystery”:
arguments for God’s existence, which consider the transcendental origins of the world, lead one to “a mystery at the
periphery of ordinary reality—or in the depths of this reality—
that calls out to our reason and reveals to us that reason itself
terminates in mystery” (210). In the passage we began with,
White goes on to speak of revelation offering to the philosopher
“new information” about God, and moreover asks if the mystery
of God is intrinsically intelligible—which seems a rhetorical
question, for White’s answer is that it certainly is. Indeed,
somewhat later on in the book, White speaks of the “rational
character of Christian mystery,” saying that the “mysteries of
faith . . . are genuine realities of the highest explanatory value,
but precisely because our knowledge of them depends upon the
gift of grace, we acquire access to them uniquely on account of
the noetic act we call supernatural faith” (347). This seems to
mean that revelation provides further premisses (not available to
reason alone), from which human reason can deduce further
knowledge about God, how he is constituted (as three persons in
one divine nature, and the nature of their relationships—the
filioque, for example, is something that can be deduced from
these revealed premisses), and his relationship to the world. It is,
then, not at all clear to me what the term “mystery” is intended
to convey, at least in the cases of philosophical and theological
wisdom. Another place where the question of the status of
revealed truth is raised occurs when discussing analogies in
relation to the derivation of the persons within the Godhead:
“knowledge of God’s internal mystery as Trinity is accessible to
us only in virtue of divine revelation” (411); nevertheless
“revelation is intrinsically intelligible” (411-12).
Nevertheless, the notion of mystery seems intrinsic to White’s
exposition of Trinitarian theology. As well as occurring in a
hendiadys, it frequently occurs in the form of “mystery of X.”
We have (this is not exhaustive): “mystery of divine nature,”
paralleled with, or revealed in, the “threefold personal mystery”
(217), or identified with the “mystery of divine simplicity” (243),

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ANDREW LOUTH

or beginning with divine simplicity (410). Further examples
include mention of the “mystery of the divine nature, which is
immaterial” (430), the “mystery of Trinitarian persons” (451),
perichoresis as related to the “mystery of God’s inner communion of persons” (514), and the way “the mystery of creation
is intimately linked to the mystery of divinization or sanctification by grace” (535). In the discussion of the Incarnation, the
term “mystery” occurs several times. “The Lord’s being among
us as a human being instantiates a new and perpetual presence of
God in history, in holiness and mysterious hiddenness” (630); the
“mystery of spiritual agony” of the Lord in the Garden of
Gethsemane (634); the “mystery of the crucifixion” (635, 643);
the way “the unchanging God of love manifests his eternal
mystery of interpersonal communion even here, at Golgotha, as
a mystery of re-creative love” (648); the “mystery of the cadaver
of the Word” on Holy Saturday, and related to that White’s
profound reflection that “Holy Saturday is not primarily a ‘day’
in human time . . . [but] as a Trinitarian event, continues to
unfold in its effects, even after the resurrection and exaltation of
Christ” (652). In these latter examples, we seem to sense the term
“mystery” gravitating towards its use in the “mysteries of the
Rosary.”
All this leaves me none the wiser about what is meant by
“mystery”; it seems entirely accessible to reason, which can on its
own border on the realm of mystery and needs no more than
premisses provided by revelation to enter into the realm of
theological mystery. From my own perspective, as a scholar of
the Greek Christian East, and as an Orthodox priest, something
seems to be missing here. In the latter half of the last century,
theologians were sometimes drawn to Gabriel Marcel’s distinction between “mystery” and “problem”: a problem is a
challenge to reason—once solved, the problem vanishes; a
“mystery” cannot be “solved,” it demands my engagement with
it, a seemingly inexhaustible engagement. White’s notion of
“mystery” seems rather to be an exalted problem, engaging
reason. What is meant by “mystery” was explored in Louis
Bouyer’s reflections on the meaning of μυστήριον (“mystery”),

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and the related adjective, μυστικός (“mystical”).1 Although this
terminology finds its origin in the ancient Greek mysteries,
Christian usage is governed by the apostle Paul’s reference to the
“mystery of Christ” (e.g., Col 4:3), a mystery now revealed in the
life of Christ, his death and resurrection. This is the hidden, or
inner, meaning of the Scriptures, for which the term mystikos
came to be used. Soon another meaning emerged, referring to the
inner reality of the Christian sacraments (in the East “the
mysteries,” also to the Eucharist specifically). The word also came
to refer to the inner meaning of Christian discipleship: the “life
hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Bouyer argued that these
meanings are interrelated, the scriptural meaning being
fundamental, the sacramental based on it, and the personal sense
dependent on both. Furthermore, this is not a tidbit of ancient
teaching, but characteristic of much modern Orthodox theology.
White makes little reference to Orthodox theology; he discusses
Bulgakov, and mentions in connection with the filioque Vladimir
Lossky and Dumitru Stă niloae; there is also an acerbic footnote
on Zizioulas (508 n. 6), with which I largely concur.
Lossky is, however, important for the notion of mystery and
the nature of the mystical, which is central to the only book he
published in his lifetime, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern
Church.2 Although Bouyer had yet to write about the mystical—
even his preliminary article—his ideas seem foreshadowed in
Lossky’s book. Lossky introduces his notion of the mystical by
speaking of “personal experience of the divine mysteries,”3 the
term “mysteries” bearing at least two connotations: both the
sacraments of the Church and mysterious truths about the
Godhead. That is no chance homonymy: the two meanings are
closely related for Lossky, and for the Orthodox Church, because
1
See Louis Bouyer, “‘Mystique’: Essai sur l’histoire d’un mot,” Supplément de la Vie
spirituelle 9 (1949): 3-23; English trans.: “‘Mysticism’: An Essay on the History of a
Word,” in Mystery and Mysticism (London: Blackfriars Publications, 1956), 119-37;
expanded into a book: Mysterion: Du mystère à la mystique (Paris: O.E.I.L., 1986).
2
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James
Clarke, 1957; French original: 1944). In my quotations I have changed “mysticism” to
“the mystical,” as better representing the meaning of the French la mystique.
3
Ibid., 8.

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ANDREW LOUTH

the mysterious truths about God are experienced and celebrated
in the divine mysteries, or sacraments, of the Church. Experience
of divine mysteries is not necessarily strange or unusual, but
involves “a profound change, an inner transformation of the
spirit.”4 Lossky sees this experience as lying at the heart of the
dogmas of the Church:
The main preoccupation, the issue at stake, in the questions which successively
arise respecting the Holy Spirit, grace and the Church herself . . . is always the
possibility, the manner, or the means of our union with God. All the history of
Christian dogma unfolds itself about this mystical centre, guarded by different
weapons against its many and diverse assailants in the course of successive ages.5

Furthermore, Lossky asserts:
In the Church and through the sacraments our nature enters into union with
the divine nature in the hypostasis of the Son, the Head of the mystical body.
Our humanity becomes consubstantial with the deified humanity, united with
the Person of Christ.6

The mysteries, in both senses of the term, are concerned with an
experienced union with God in Christ, mediated by the sacraments, or mysteries, and felt in the heart. Note, however, that
this experienced union is founded on “our humanity becom[ing]
consubstantial with the deified humanity . . . of Christ”: it is not
experience that gives a conviction of reality, but experience of
a—dogmatically defined—union, in this case expressed by the
assertion found in the Chalcedonian definition that Christ is
ὁμοούσιος ἡμῖν, consubstantial with us, just as he is ὁμοούσιος τῷ
πατρί, consubstantial with the Father. It is this that makes what
Lossky says about union with God sound so different from what
is generally associated with mysticism in the West: it is not
detached from dogma, but founded on the dogmatic truths of the
Christian tradition; it is not indifferent to Church organization,
hierarchy, and sacraments, but rooted in the structured life of the

4

Ibid.
Ibid., 10.
6
Ibid., 181.
5

REFLECTIONS

631

Church; it is not individualistic, but grows out of the experience
of the Eucharistic community.
Central to Lossky’s understanding of the mystical is the
apophatic, the place of negation or denial in Christian theology.
White speaks in his book of the “apophatic,” but in quite a
different way from Lossky. White follows a widespread
misinterpretation of Dionysius the Areopagite by speaking of
three ways, triplex via: the way of affirmation (or causality), the
way of denial of negation, and the way of eminence (via
causalitatis, via negationis, via eminentiae); three ways easily
assimilated to another, much more securely ancient, triplex via:
purification, illumination, and union. White’s (and Aquinas’s)
triplex via is based on the Latin version of Dionysius’s Divine
Names, book 7, chapter 3, which speaks of ascent to God per
causalitatem, per remotionem, per eminentiam—mangling the
Greek, which speaks of our ascent to God “in abstraction and
transcendence of all and in the cause of all” (just two ways, which
is the burden of the whole of Divine Names 7.3). This “three
ways” tradition suggests that the way of affirmation (of the cause
of the effects) is qualified by abstraction (elsewhere called
apophasis, or negation), and finally yields a resolution of
“eminence” or transcendence, that is, an affirmation purified by
denial. Lossky insists that kataphatic and apophatic theologies are
not to be understood as equal and opposite (as he argues they are
understood in the West), as if affirmative theology and negative
theology are to be held in balance—or, to change the metaphor,
constitute a kind of tacking, as in sailing, to keep one’s thought
about God on track. Rather, apophatic theology is more fundamental: it does not so much correct affirmative theology as
actually undergird it, for the deepest truth is that God is ineffable,
beyond name and concept. Lossky comments:
Indeed, not only does he [the theologian, the one who seeks God] go forth from
his own self . . . but he belongs wholly to the Unknowable, being deified in this
union with the uncreated. Here union means deification. At the same time,
while intimately united with God he knows Him only as Unknowable, in other

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ANDREW LOUTH

words as infinitely set apart by His nature, remaining even in union, inaccessible
in that which He is in His essential being.7

Lossky clearly understands the apophatic in a rather different
way from White, who seems to see the apophatic as qualifying a
kataphatic mode in much the way Lossky rejects; note his recurrent use of the expression “moderately apophatic” (653, 671,
688, etc.). Furthermore, Lossky’s understanding of the apophatic
has, too, a distinctly existential quality, as is evident from the
following passage:
We have had again and again, in the course of our study of the mystical theology
of the Eastern Church, to refer to the apophatic attitude which is characteristic
of its religious thought. As we have seen, the negations which draw attention to
the divine incomprehensibility are not prohibitions upon knowledge:
apophaticism, so far from being a limitation, enables us to transcend all
concepts, every sphere of philosophical speculation. It is a tendency towards an
ever-greater plenitude, in which knowledge is transformed into ignorance, the
theology of concepts into contemplation, dogmas into experience of ineffable
mysteries. It is, moreover, an existential theology involving man’s entire being,
which sets him upon the way of union, which obliges him to be changed, to
transform his nature that he may attain the true gnosis which is the
contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Now, this “change of heart,” this μετάνοια,
means repentance. The apophatic way of Eastern theology is the repentance of
the human person before the face of the living God.8

White’s book is a fine example of apodeictic theology, that is,
a theology that seeks to demonstrate what is entailed by God’s
revelation of himself in Christ. Such apodeictic theology can be
traced back to the very beginnings of Christian theology.
Nevertheless, in the early centuries it was not the only mode of
theology. The great theologians of the patristic period—Basil the
Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, and, in the
West, Ambrose and Augustine—were all trained rhetors and
brought their rhetorical expertise to their homilies and treatises.
Such discourses were intended to instruct and demonstrate, but
they were also intended to move the hearts and wills of those
who heard them. Later Greek theologians were less concerned to
7
8

Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 238-39.

REFLECTIONS

633

demonstrate—the major controversies were largely in the past,
or at least the Orthodox line was not in much doubt—as to
celebrate, to bring the minds and hearts of their hearers to awe
before the mysteries of the faith. This tendency became more
pronounced from the sixth century onward: Dionysius the
Areopagite was instrumental in cultivating it. He was followed by
St. Maximus the Confessor and St. John Damascene, especially
when it came to speaking of the mystery of the Trinity. While the
terms and concepts they employed hewed closely to the synodical
definitions of the faith, their language came to take on a certain
liturgical amplitude. Speculative theology came to seem quite out
of place in the presence of these mysteries evoked by the accounts
of these later Fathers. Overwhelmed by the mystery and majesty
of God they had no inclination to develop from the premisses of
revelation a structured system of theological knowledge. So St.
John Damascene introduces his account of Trinitarian theology
in his Exposition of the Orthodox Faith by asserting in these
words, largely apophatic (note the recurrent alpha-privative) and
redolent of the language of the Eastern Eucharistic liturgies:
that God is without beginning, without end, eternal and everlasting [αἰώνιός τε
καὶ ἀίδιος], uncreated, unchangeable, unalterable, simple, uncomposed,
bodiless, invisible, untouchable, uncircumscribed, infinite, ungraspable
(ἀπερίληπτος), incomprehensible, inconceivable, good, just, almighty, creator of
all creatures, ruling over all, all-seeing, caring for all, exercising authority,
judge: [all this] we both know and confess. And that God is one, or rather one
being, and that he is acknowledged and exists in three hypostases, Father, that
is, and Son and Holy Spirit.9

Later on, in a long chapter devoted to the Trinity, the Damascene
closes his exordium, also in a markedly apophatic vein, by
turning to a crucial moment in the divine economy, the risen
Lord’s last encounter with his disciples, as recorded by St
Matthew:
[We believe in] one being, one godhead . . . acknowledged in three perfect
hypostases and venerated with a single veneration, believed in and worshipped
by every rational creation, united without confusion and distinguished with no
9

Exp. fid. 2.

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ANDREW LOUTH

separation—which is a paradox. In Father and Son and Holy Spirit, in which
we are baptized. For so the Lord commanded the apostles to baptize, saying
“Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”10

All this, for St. John, was but a way of gesturing towards
something beyond any human comprehension.
Western Scholasticism, however, culminating in Aquinas,
refined a mode of theology at the heart of which was apodeictic
proof. This is a worthy tradition, to which White belongs. The
exploration of mystery in this essay—evoked, I have suggested,
somewhat haltingly in White’s The Trinity—seeks to draw
attention to another, and I would contend more fundamental,
mode of theology that puts mystery at the center: the mystery of
Christ, responded to and engaged in through prayerful adoration
of the Trinity, a mystery lived out in love of others. Standing
before the mystery of Christ is to be realized pre-eminently in the
Divine Liturgy, as a personal experience, “costing not less than
everything,” but personal, rather than individual, for we
participate in the liturgical worship of the Church, not as
individuals on our own, but as sharing in the communion,
koinonia, of the Holy Spirit, as members of the body of Christ,
caught up by the Son, as sons and daughters in the Son, in his
eternal act of return to the Father.

10

Exp. fid. 8.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 635-44

BEING TRINITARIAN:
A RESPONSE TO THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S THE TRINITY
IAN A. MCFARLAND
Candler School of Theology, Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia

T

HOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P., does not write small
books. In his dogmatic treatises (he has also written a
commentary on Exodus, as well as a general introduction
to Catholicism), he treats large topics—the Trinity in the
present case, incarnation and natural theology in earlier
monographs—and wants his readers to appreciate their depth
and scope. Yet if his books are demanding in terms of the time
required to move through them, the journey is eased by a clear
structure and a fluid, lapidary style. And while his exercises in
Thomistic ressourcement entail in every case sharp and serious
critique of modern Western theology both Protestant and
Catholic (as well as parallel streams in Eastern Orthodoxy),
opponents are taken seriously as raising important theological
concerns that they address with passion and ingenuity. Father
White’s contention is simply that careful engagement with the
broader Catholic tradition—and with the thought of St. Thomas
Aquinas in particular—addresses these concerns in a way that is
both apologetically more effective and theologically richer than
modern alternatives.
Within this basic framework, The Trinity functions on two
levels. First, it is a magisterial exposition of the Trinitarian
thought of Thomas Aquinas as laid out in the first part of the
Summa theologiae, including the treatise de Deo uno, which is
no less integral to Thomas’s Trinitarianism than is the subsequent de Deo trino. As this last clause suggests, the book is,
second, also a critique of those Trinitarian theologies in the past
635

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IAN A. MCFARLAND

century that have rejected the need for independent reflection
on the one divine nature found not only in Thomas, but also in
the great systematic treatises of Protestant Orthodoxy and early
modern Catholicism. Focusing especially on Barth, Rahner,
Bulgakov, Balthasar, and Moltmann, Fr. White contends that
these theologians’ near-exclusive focus on the divine economy
as the source of knowledge of God leads to a Trinitarianism
that is at once impoverished by a failure to draw on the riches
of patristic and medieval thought and ultimately incapable of
providing precisely what its proponents want: a soteriologically
coherent account of the triune God. In line with the perspective
evident in his earlier studies of natural theology and the
incarnation, Fr. White counters that a proper metaphysics is a
crucial component of the exposition of sacra doctrina. In the
case of Trinitarian doctrine, its absence (or, more accurately, its
displacement by the historicized metaphysics of German
idealism) ultimately makes it difficult to distinguish the persons
of the Godhead from their economic manifestations, resulting
in a theological drift toward either modalism or tritheism.
Father White’s exposition of Thomas is unfailingly clear and
persuasive. Likewise, his critique of the idealist-influenced
theologies characteristic of the “Trinitarian renaissance” seem
to me both fair and decisive, though not unprecedented. Indeed,
given that both Kathryn Tanner and Katherine Sonderegger
have developed doctrines of the Trinity in similar opposition to
the Hegelian tendencies of much late twentieth-century
Trinitarianism (the latter deliberately restoring the de Deo unode Deo trino sequence in the first two volumes of her Systematic
Theology), lack of engagement with their work was for me the
one noteworthy lacuna in this otherwise encyclopedic text.1 Still,
with respect to the four theses defended in the book’s four parts
(viz., the need to develop Trinitarian theology in its fully
Catholic context, the importance of a Trinitarian theology of
1
Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2001); and idem, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010). Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The
Doctrine of God, and vol. 2, The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: Processions and Persons
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2015-20)

BEING TRINITARIAN

637

the divine nature, the utility of the understanding of “person” as
“subsistent relation” in Trinitarian doctrine, and the necessity of
a proper distinction between the economy and the immanent
life of the Godhead) I have no significant disagreement.2
Yet while I have no quarrel with the content of Fr. White’s
particular dogmatic conclusions, I find his overall approach to
the topic problematic. Partly this is simply a matter of style. In
his initial review of the development of Trinitarian doctrine in
the patristic period, Fr. White identifies two approaches to the
doctrine of God among pre-Nicene theologians: the first he
calls “monological” because it focused on the transcendent
Creator acting through the Son and the Spirit, who “are
depicted as truly distinct, eternally pre-existent principles of
God’s internal identity”; the second he characterizes as
“‘economic Trinitarianism’, in which the Son and the Spirit are
distinguished clearly from the Father as personal agents who are
God, but who are also described . . . principally in relation to
their economic state.” 3 He argues that what eventually

2

The one substantive dogmatic point where I was not persuaded by Fr. White was
his Thomistic defense of the filioque. I do think he is absolutely right to argue that apart
from some account of oppositional relations between the Son and the Holy Spirit (viz.,
such that one proceeds from the other), the two persons cannot be distinguished in
properly Trinitarian terms (i.e., without the implication that they are distinct in
substance and thus not homoousioi with each other). At the same time, however, I do
not think he successfully answers the Orthodox critique that the Catholic position
entails the transfer of a personal property (viz., spiration) from the Father to the Son in
a way that violates the distinction between incommunicable hypostatic and
communicated essential properties in the Godhead. It seems to me that we are
confronted here with a genuine Trinitarian aporia: on the one hand, a genuinely
monotheistic Trinitarianism demands that the Son and the Spirit be distinguished by a
relation of mutual opposition between themselves as well as the Father; on the other,
honoring the distinction between person and nature blocks the only apparent
conceptual means for defining such a relation (viz., the Father’s communication of a
notional property—i.e., one not shared by all three divine persons—uniquely to the
Son). While the confession that the Spirit procedes through the Son provides a possible
strategy for dogmatic rapprochement, detailed explication of the force of this
preposition seems likely to veer in either a Catholic or Orthodox direction, such that
the aporia remains.
3
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One
God (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 114.

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IAN A. MCFARLAND

distinguished Nicene theologians from various rivals was the
ability “to articulate the compatibility and mutual coherence of
these models.”4 This seems to me a fair analysis, but it arguably
remains the case that any given Trinitarian theology will favor
one or the other approach. Precisely because of his concern to
emphasize the unity and transcendence of the divine nature over
against the tendency of so many modern Trinitarian theologies
to render the economy not simply revelatory but actually
constitutive of the divine identity, Fr. White’s exposition of the
Trinity turns in a decidedly “monological” direction in a way
that seems to me to overcompensate for the errors he rightly
seeks to correct and, indeed, tends to reinscribe those very
features of classical Trinitarian doctrine (viz., its tendency to
suggest an abstract and undifferentiated monotheism) that
stimulated the development of those theologies he seeks to
oppose.
Again, this unease arises within the context of broad-ranging
agreement with Fr. White’s Trinitarianism. Not only do I agree
that emphasis on divine transcendence (and thus discussion of
the divine nature) is vital to the coherence of Trinitarian
doctrine, but I find his Thomistic treatment of these matters in
part 2 of the book fully convincing. Moreover, I think his
account of the participation of the persons in the economy is
theologically compelling in its deft balancing of the principle of
the Trinity’s undivided external operations with due regard for
the distinctness of each divine person’s distinct mode of
participation in those operations. 5 In this context, he makes
astute use of the doctrine of appropriation, as well as of the
distinction between processions and missions on the one hand
and the two natures of the incarnate Word on the other, to
provide a framework within which he is able to take the
revelation of the Trinity in the economy with full seriousness
without eliding the difference between God’s economic activity
and immanent life.
4

Ibid., 115.
The discussion of Jesus’ incarnational activity in relation to the Father and the
Spirit (ibid., 623-26), is especially well done.
5

BEING TRINITARIAN

639

Yet if Fr. White’s claims about the economy are unimpeachable, the role the economy plays in his exposition seems
underdeveloped in light of his own insistence (following
Thomas) that the doctrine of the Trinity is a truth that is and
can be known only by revelation—that is, by reference to the
economy. From this perspective, it seems odd that explicit
discussion of the economy comes only in the final—and much
the shortest—of the book’s four parts, with the explanation that
“once we have thought about the mystery of God’s immanent
life as Trinity, it makes sense to ‘return’ to the data of revelation
and to think anew about how we encounter the Trinity in
creation and salvation history.” 6 This seems to me precisely
backwards, since it is only by virtue of our encounter with the
Trinity in salvation history that the doctrine arises in the first
place. But while references to the biblical data are certainly not
absent from the book’s first five hundred pages (most obviously,
chaps. 4-7 provide a summary of the New Testament foundations for Trinitarian thought), it is only once the character of
the relations between the persons has been established on other
grounds that we come to the (again, very fine) accounts of how
the shape of Jesus’ ministry in relation to the Father and the
Spirit reflect the triune reality of God.
Father White is very explicit about his reasons for this
ordering of topics: “we can understand the economic activity of
the Trinity only in light of the eternal communion of the
persons of the Trinity in their transcendence and unity of

6
Ibid., 545. Something of the problem here is visible in the following sentence: “the
Trinity can be revealed in a particularly profound way in and through the passion, death,
and resurrection of Christ” (ibid., 631). Surely “is revealed,” not “can be revealed” is
the proper formulation here, for where else can the Trinity be revealed except in and
through the events of Christ’s life, since it is precisely the incarnation of the second
person that renders the Trinitarian relationships knowable to human beings? Obviously,
Fr. White does not mean to suggest otherwise (and, moreover, gives a much better
formulation on the very next page, where he writes that “only because the Son is man
can his human actions of willing communicate and manifest the divine will to us”); but
the slip does seem to me to reveal something of the problems with rhetorical framing of
the book as a whole, in which the economy often comes across as secondary to and
merely illustrative of a knowledge of the Trinity acquired elsewhere.

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IAN A. MCFARLAND

action.”7 At one level, this claim is unimpeachable and has value
as a prophylactic against accounts of the Trinity where focus on
God’s activity in the world eclipses the priority of God’s
immanent and eternal triunity. Nevertheless, this (in itself quite
proper) point about the ontological priority of the divine ordo
essendi cannot be allowed to displace the basic features of the
Christian theological ordo cognoscendi, which demands a corresponding insistence that it is only in light of the economic
activity of the Trinity that we can speak of the eternal communion of persons in their transcendence and unity of action.
Obviously, in the actual composition of a theological treatise
one or the other element must come first, so once it is conceded
that reflection on God’s one nature provides a vital and
necessary context for Trinitarian thought there can be no
objection in principle about beginning an exposition of the
doctrine with the treatise de Deo uno rather than de Deo trino.
My disagreement with Fr. White is therefore not in his ordering
of the treatises.8 In fact (and as already noted) I am largely in
agreement with his account of the one divine nature. 9 My
concern has rather to do with his treatment of the divine
threeness and, more specifically, the way in which the account
of the Trinitarian relations in part 3 is developed largely in
abstraction from the kind of attention to the texture of the
biblical narrative displayed in part 4. Here again, my concern is
less with content than with emphasis, especially with respect to
Fr. White’s stress on the role of the “psychological analogy” in a
proper articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity. In much
Trinitarian discourse the phrase “psychological analogy” is used
7

Ibid., 573.
Of course, strictly speaking Fr. White (unlike Thomas) does not begin with de Deo
uno, but rather with an account of the development of Trinitarian doctrine that includes
specific attention to the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Nevertheless, this
material functions primarily as background that explains the genesis of Trinitarian
doctrine rather than contributing directly to the case for its coherence and intelligibility.
9
While I differ with Fr. White regarding the role that philosophy plays in Christian
reflection on the one God, since we agree that the Old Testament depiction of God has
“a dense and rich intellectual content” that “invite[s] us to theological reflection” on the
divine nature (ibid., 64), differences over the possibility and place of metaphysics as
prolegomena to theology would not seem decisive here.
8

BEING TRINITARIAN

641

to refer to the series of triads (e.g., lover, beloved, love; mind,
knowledge, love; memory, understanding, will) that Augustine
floats in the latter half of his De Trinitate as images of the
intradivine relations in human experience—all of which he
ultimately judged to be unsatisfactory.10 Father White’s deployment of the phrase is rather different. Referring specifically to
the procession of knowledge and love in the mind, it draws on
one of the Augustinian options, but Fr. White plays it for much
higher stakes, arguing that the analogy “provides us with a
unique resource for right thinking regarding the inner life and
mystery of the Trinity”; indeed, because the Trinitarian relations must be immaterial and immanent in God, “there is no
adequate alternative analogy.” 11 “Without the psychological
analogy . . . Trinitarian theology is compromised in its essential
nature.”12 Why? Because an adequate Trinitarian doctrine is one
that allows us “to know truly, if imperfectly, who God is in
himself eternally,”13 and only this analogy “allows us to explain
how God is truly revealed in the economy without being
constituted by the economy.”14
This is a very strong set of claims, none of which seems to
me to be compelling. It is one thing to join Augustine in
suggesting—with an appropriately light touch—a range of ways
in which the relations between the divine persons might be
imagined in terms of intramental processes, but quite another to
suggest that any one such analogy is indispensable to Trinitarian
theology. As one who stands more in what Fr. White describes
10
“Among all these things that I have said about that supreme trinity. . . . I dare not
claim that any of them is worthy of this unimaginable mystery” (Saint Augustine, De
Trinitate 15.6.50 [The Trinity, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park,
N.Y.: New City Press, 1991), 434]).
11
White, The Trinity, 14; cf. 422: “If . . . we are bound to think of God by analogy
to immanent activity, we can do so only from a similitude to immaterial procession,
since God is not material. . . . However, there are only two immaterial activities in
human creatures, those of understanding and love.”
12
Ibid., 424.
13
Ibid., 407.
14
Ibid., 452; cf. 439, where it is claimed that the divine processions “can be
understood properly only by resemblance to the immaterial life of knowledge and love
in human beings.”

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IAN A. MCFARLAND

as the school of “nominal minimalism,” I am much charier than
Fr. White with respect to claims about knowing the inner life of
God. Thus, while there are a number of particular features of
his psychological analogy that might give one pause (e.g., the
fact that “Love,” his analogous term for the Holy Spirit, unlike
“Word,” is nowhere in Scripture used as a name for a divine
person; or that in human understanding assimilation of the
truth precedes generation of a mental “word” and thus stands in
profound disanalogy with the begetting of the divine Word), the
more fundamental problem with the whole approach is that it is
subject to the same charge of anthropomorphism that Fr. White
levels against “economic” accounts. If the latter easily tend
toward tritheism, does not the model of a human subject
knowing and loving equally suggest subordinationism, given
that within the human mind word and love alike are accidental
actions of the human hypostasis rather than themselves distinct
hypostases? If Fr. White responds (in line with the decrees of
Lateran IV) that his positing of a similarity between the human
and divine presupposes a still greater dissimilarity, surely the
same appeal is open to Balthasar, Barth, or Rahner. At least in
their case the attempt is being made to ground claims about the
Trinity’s inner life directly in the “data of revelation” rather
than in speculation about God’s inner life conducted at
considerable remove from the biblical narrative.
In setting out his case for the psychological analogy, Fr.
White makes the following observation: “any theology that
makes use of economic and historical features of the humanity
of Jesus to determine the inner content of the distinction of
persons is risk-laden” because it risks anthropomorphism and
univocal predication.15 This is without question true, but it has
two obvious rejoinders. First, how does one even begin to talk
about the Trinity without referring to economic and historical
features of Jesus’ humanity? Even the most explicit of Jesus’
teaching about his relation to the Father and the Spirit are, after
all, historical features of his humanity. Second, what way of
talking about the Trinity is not risk laden? The psychological
15

Ibid., 531.

BEING TRINITARIAN

643

analogy is not without risks—indeed, the very same risks White
identifies with respect to economic approaches: anthropomorphism and univocal predication! These risks are not limited
to various forms of “economic Trinitarianism”; they are risks
associated with any talk about God.
Notwithstanding his critical engagement with postwar
Continental Trinitarianism, Fr. White’s aims in The Trinity are
fundamentally constructive: to find a means of rendering the
inner life of God intelligible as a necessary condition of
coherent confession of the Trinity. In line with Karen Kilby’s
now classic article, “Perichoresis and Projection,” I find this aim
problematic. At the conclusion of her devastating critique of
social Trinitarianism (which anticipates in many respects Fr.
White’s objections to recent Trinitarianism more broadly), Kilby
ventures the following: “My own proposal . . . is not that one
should move from the social back to, say, a psychological
approach—this would simply be to look for a different insight
[into God’s inner life]—but renounce the very idea that the
point of the doctrine is to give insight into God.”16 For Kilby
and myself (in line with the stance of “nominal minimalism”),
the point of Trinitarian doctrine is primarily regulative—“how
to deploy the ‘vocabulary’ of Christianity in an appropriate
way.”17 On this low-flying view, “as long as Christians continue
to believe in the divinity of Christ and the Spirit, and as long as
they continue to believe that God is one, then the doctrine is
alive and well.” 18 Nothing further is needed. Kilby acknowledges what I take it would be Fr. White’s immediate rejoinder:
“surely . . . if I am told that God is three persons in one
substance, I will inevitably try to make sense of this.”19 Kilby
grants the point, but responds that while there is certainly
nothing wrong in making the attempt, it is a secondary
question—and one that will always carry the risk of anthropomorphism and projection (i.e., univocal predication), whether
16
Karen Kilby, “Perichoresis and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrines of the
Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81, no. 956 (2000): 443.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid., 444.

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IAN A. MCFARLAND

or not the starting point is economic or monological. It follows
that the task of being Trinitarian is not a matter of finding the
right analogy for the inner life of God, but of recognizing that
all analogies will cause one’s Trinitarian theology to list in
certain heretical directions, thus calling for a constant exercise
of correction in which both monological and economic
perspectives have a role to play.

The Thomist 87 (2023): 645-57

ON THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S THE TRINITY
CYRIL O’REGAN
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

T

HOMAS JOSEPH WHITE’S The Trinity: On the Nature
and Mystery of the One God deserves all the praise that it
has thus far garnered. It has been referred to as
“magisterial,” “a theological feast,” “in a class of its own,” as
“encyclopedic.” All of these attributions are justified and absolutely appropriate with regard to a text that demonstrates
extraordinary philosophical and theological talent. To present a
fuller bouquet of plaudits I would like to add “laser-like focus,”
“analytic precision of the highest order,” and “relentless consistency in argument.” All of these gifts serve the complex task—I
am almost inclined to say evangelical mission—of

(a) presenting a rich account of the Thomistic doctrine of the Trinity that will
prove persuasive in our time of confusion (parts 2 and 3);
(b) doing justice to Nicaea and Constantinople and the theological tradition
(part 1); and
(c) functioning as a rebuttal of the “economic turn” in Trinitarian theology that
has held sway for decades and which has functioned to exclude philosophical
considerations of God independent of revelation and refusing to allow them a
role in Trinitarian theology (part 4).

I would like to open my remarks by recognizing the achievements of parts 1-3, on the one hand, and also make the claim that
while my focus on part 4 will hardly come as a surprise, given my
background, still I would like to put on the record my judgment
that while on the surface part 4 represents something of an
applicatio of the explicatio of the Thomistic Trinitarian theology
and its bases provided in and by the first three parts, that part 4
645

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CYRIL O’REGAN

is far more important than this and in a sense fuels the entire text
that is intended to be a theological intervention in theological
space much in the same manner as was White’s book on
Christology. In this respect, this book, as well as his previous
colossus, is a species of polemical theology.
As one might expect from a Thomist, White does not share
the allergy of modern contemporary theologians with regard to
the history of the formulation and interpretation of the doctrine
of the Trinity—especially in its Western forms—largely because
he does not think that philosophy functions as a free radical
setting the terms for particular theological outcomes. Rather,
philosophy—whether East or West, whether Gregory of Nazianzus or Augustine—functions in an ancillary capacity, albeit at
once an extraordinarily useful one in terms of clarification and
explication, but also a kind of testing of the limits of the standard
use of reason, given its transcendent object that can neither be
fulfilled perceptually nor exhausted conceptually. In part 1 White
makes sure to indicate the primacy of revelation and the necessity
of biblical interpretation, something that will also be to the fore
in his account of sacra doctrina in Aquinas in part 3. For White,
it is nothing short of slanderous to deny that for Aquinas revelation is the prius. Of course, the reading of Scripture throughout
the theological tradition itself leads to Trinitarian conclusions
that are contested, as well as Trinitarian emphases that do not
achieve consensus. Yet, for White, the capacity for dialogue of
faith and reason is illustrated throughout the broad theological
tradition, both East and West. This means that whatever the
situation in the late medieval period, whatever the diagnosis of
de Regnon at the end of the nineteenth century, and whatever
the prohibitions against philosophical reflection on or preliminaries to the doctrine of the Trinity in contemporary forms
of Trinitarian thought, Aquinas’s de Deo ut uno is not out of
alignment with the broad tradition. In fact, it represents the highwatermark of the Trinitarian tradition with respect to conceptual
precision and reflective mindfulness regarding the responsible use
of philosophy when dealing with the God of Jesus Christ. If in
one sense White’s defense of de Deo ut uno is unsurprising, the
extensiveness of its elaboration in part 2 is, and definitely distin-

ON WHITE’S THE TRINITY

647

guishes The Trinity from Gilles Emery’s classic work on Aquinas
and the Trinity. While in a text such as The Trinitarian Theology
of Saint Thomas Aquinas (2007), Emery’s account broadly proceeds according to White’s interpretive model of analogia entis
being inscribed within analogia fidei, Emery more nearly performs the model than makes it explicit. And though it turns out
that it is the divine attributes of unity, knowledge, and love that
will be called on to do the most work in an explicitly Trinitarian
context, eternity, simplicity, omnipotence, omniscience, immutability, and impassibility all have their own relevance when it
comes to filling out the theological picture of God as consisting
of one essence and three persons, entirely replete yet reaching
out to what is other in creation, redemption, and sanctification
of the world.
Part 4 is as much the telos of the entire text as an application
meant to redress the contemporary theological situation in
which, inside as well as outside Catholic theology, when not sidelined, the classical model of the Trinity, especially as exemplified
in its two main representatives, Augustine and Aquinas, has been
the object of vituperative criticism on systematic, historical, and
pastoral grounds. In this part of the text White operates in the
mode of intervention and more specifically in the mode of
redress. What compels the intervention can be spoken of as the
paradigm shift in contemporary Trinitarian theology that
essentially involves (a) the forfeiture of classical Trinitarian
grammar that received its most precise and nuanced formulation
in Aquinas by uncoupling the missions of the Trinity from the
Trinity in se and insisting on their absolute prerogatives and/or
(b) more particularly a compromise of the classical two-nature
Christology that can be regarded either cause or consequent of
the Trinitarian shift, and in any event the pivot and rivet of the
Trinitarian turn. Thus, if the overall horizon of concern is the reduction of the Trinity to its operations, the narrower focus on
the fate of the classical two-nature Christology, especially as that
Christology has been further defined as a two-will Christology in
the theological tradition and comes to be a central component of
Aquinas’s own Christology. Undoubtedly, the Christological
focus of The Trinity recalls—sometimes in detail—both what

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White’s prior book on Christology positively advances as the
Thomistic position as well as his critique of contemporary positions such as those of Barth, Rahner, and, first among equals, von
Balthasar.
Now, while the modern or contemporary theologians whom
White critically engages in the text, which include Rahner, Barth,
Moltmann, Pannenberg, Bulgakov, and von Balthasar, are
plausibly guilty of both problems identified above, part 4 concentrates on Rahner and Barth more nearly as examples of the
paradigm shift to the economy—though on the basis of his book
on Christology they deviate also from the classical Christological
model—with Moltmann, Pannenberg, Bulgakov, and von
Balthasar guilty of both albeit to very different degrees. It is not
unfair to say that White regards Rahner’s Grundaxiom, to the
effect that the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity and vice
versa, as theologically mischievous. It is so, on the one hand,
insofar as it is ambiguous: its criticisms regarding the priority
afforded the Trinity in se in the classical view can with some
justification be read either as a prohibition against talking about
the essence and persons of the Trinity or more venially as a
methodological shift of emphasis towards God for us without
necessarily proscribing discussion of the Trinity as the foundation
of the missions. In the latter case, at a minimum we are talking
about being encouraged to abide with the missions and only after
a great deal of deferring proceed to make judgments about the
grounds of divine action in the triune God. White does not
explicitly mention—as he well might have—Catherine LaCugna’s
God for Us: God and the Christian Life—which reads Rahner as
foundational for her own proscription against the immanent
Trinity and incoherently also Zizioulas’s relational ontology.
LaCugna (a) mainstreams Rahner’s diagnosis that in the Catholic
Church the Trinity has ceased to hold the imagination and excite
the intelligence and that Catholics are effectively “monotheists”
and (b) elaborates on hints in Rahner’s footnotes that the cause
of this forgetting may not simply have been the neo-Scholastics
whom he lamented, but the two magisterial Western Trinitarian
thinkers, Augustine and Aquinas. Here she seems to perform
something similar to what Heine is getting at when he says that

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the gift (poisonous) of German philosophy is its ability to
transform French aperçu into a system. Theology, it appears, has
the same gift.
White does not seem either to accept or reject Rahner’s
reflections on contemporary conditions of reception—perhaps
thinking that such sociological accounts are only marginally
theologically pertinent—but he definitely rejects the theological
proscription of discussion of the Trinity in se, which is more
pointedly categorical in LaCugna than in Rahner himself. On
methodological grounds White dismisses as jejune such causal
projections on Western figures such as Augustine and Aquinas
being poisoned sources of an inability to think Trinitarianly. On
substantive grounds Rahner/LaCugna fail also by not grasping
that philosophical reflections on divine unity common to
Augustine and Aquinas are intended to assist Christian thinkers
in articulating a notion of the Trinity that holds divine unity and
three persons together without compromising the unity or the
integrity of the persons who, of course, are constituted by their
relations to each other. White’s rejection of the proposal that
Augustine and Aquinas are ultimately responsible for the “defeat”
of the doctrine of the tradition is indicated in his lavish treatment
of Aquinas’s Trinitarian thought and, arguably, the privileging of
Augustine as an influence on Aquinas over other Trinitarian
precursors, even if, on White’s account, in his treatment of the
Trinity Aquinas integrates the best insights of the Trinitarian
tradition both East and West. White does not go into detail
regarding Rahner’s very small but incredibly influential book on
the Trinity. He does not discuss, for example, the last two chapters of the four-chapter book where Rahner outlines an economic
form of Trinitarianism in equal parts beholden to transcendental
philosophy and the givens of revelation. Presumably, the ground
for such avoidance is that detailed discussion of Rahner’s
influential text are not necessary for grasping White’s basic point
about the shifting of Trinitarian paradigm of which Rahner represents the basic sponsor rather than the final, more sophisticated, and more ramified result. In addition, White can take for
granted prior critiques of Rahner from a more Thomistic point
of view.

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If it is Rahner who most clearly points to the paradigm shift
in twentieth-century theology, Barth essentially anticipated it in
his discussion of revelation in volume 1 of Church Dogmatics,
enacted it throughout the subsequent volumes, and set the terms
for Trinitarian theologians in the Protestant tradition thereafter
and posed a challenge for a Catholic theologian such as von
Balthasar who wanted to give the analogia fidei its due. A lesser
theologian than White might have felt inclined to trace all the
problems that come in train consequent to the effective shift of
paradigm back to Barth. This he does not do. Though he does
suggest that there is more than a fair share of Hegelianism in
volume 1 of Church Dogmatics, he recurs to Hegel as an independent source of the paradigm shift, focusing in the main on
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. This is just the right move,
for three reasons. First, while three out of four of White’s major
twentieth-century Trinitarians in fact engage Barth, Bulgakov
does not. Second, while Moltmann, Pannenberg, and von
Balthasar engage Barth, they regard their engagement with Hegel
as basically independent, and in the case of Moltmann and
Pannenberg at least the engagement with Hegel serves as a
corrective of their debts to Barth. Third—and this is a point that
White could have made, though he does not in fact do so—the
Trinitarian paradigm shift is already stated, enacted, and
philosophically justified by Hegel in the first decades of the
nineteenth century, and was in fact entertained by a number of
Catholic theologians as perhaps a way forward beyond classical
Trinitarianism which did not seem to have sufficient cultural
purchase, only to be rejected by most Catholic theologians as a
species of pantheism or panentheism. Franz Anton Staudenmaier
(1800-1856), who came to see that the promises of the paradigm
shift were entirely illusory, is the crucial figure of enthusiasm and
repentance. White’s relation to Hegel is more straightforward
than that of Staudenmaier and involves no history of fascination.
In this respect, one could say that White finds a model more in
Staudenmaier than in Josef Kleutgen (1811-83), who from the
beginning of his career failed to see the attraction to speculative
forms of German thought and advocated in the contemporary

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sphere for a spirited promotion of Aquinas in both the systematic
and apologetic spheres.
In part 4 the main problem, for White, with regard to Hegel’s
account of the Trinity is that the Trinity in se is constituted by,
and not simply expressed in and through, creation, redemption,
and sanctification. This fundamentally inverts the standard order
of priority between the Trinity and the economy on the
ontological level and disqualifies divine aseity and, obviously in
train, attributes such as immutability and impassibility. Given the
fact that creation and redemption (especially in the aspect of
Cross, not resurrection)—are now internal Trinitarian moments,
White reasonably thinks that Hegel’s figuration of creation and
Cross are disclosive of two important consequences of Hegel’s
Trinitarian shift, though perhaps in equal part causative with
respect to it. Of the two specifiers of Hegelian malfeasance
creation gets considerably less coverage in The Trinity than the
theology of the Cross. Nonetheless, the basic objections to
Hegel’s view of creation are clear and are in line with both
nineteenth-century and contemporary Catholic critiques: while
Hegel thinks of creation as expressive of the eternal Trinitarian
realm, he denies its status as a free creation and upends the
classical philosophical principle of asymmetrical dependence,
that is, that the created world depends on God, God does not
depend on the world. Though Aquinas provides perhaps the most
succinct expression of this philosophical principle (STh I, q. 13,
a. 7), the principle is expressed in various ways throughout the
theological tradition. Athanasius and Augustine abide by it. So
also does Bonaventure. In addition, whatever the problems of
theological voluntarism in Scotus, so also does Scotus. In the
nineteenth century Staudenmaier in fact rebuts Hegel’s articulation of the new principle of reciprocal dependence in two different registers, the first a kind of internalist, non-Thomistic
critique in his great 1844 text on Hegel, Darstellung und Critique
des Hegelschen System and later in his Dogmatik in the 1850s, by
which time he had made his way back to Aquinas.
Far more important to White in The Trinity is Hegel’s
Christology. For White, Hegel’s dramatic Christology focused in
the Cross is superlatively kenotic and equally agonic. Given the

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Trinitarian horizon of his Christology, this has retrogressive
consequences regarding his understanding of the Trinity, while
raising concerns as to the extent to which the classical model of
the Trinity and the Christology it subtends have been subverted.
White’s conjectures to the effect that Hegel’s kenoticism may be
a version of that of Protestant Scholasticism is likely off base,
since it is clear that Hegel’s knowledge of Protestant theology is
quite fragmentary. Nonetheless, if the point is that Hegel’s view
of kenosis pertains to essence rather than to form, as is the case
with nineteenth-century German kenoticists such as Frank and
Thomasius who come after him, then one can only concur. This
brings me to White’s judgment that Hegel’s Christology represents a form of “inverted monophysiticism.” This seems to me to
be a perspicuous characterization of Hegel’s Christology. Simply
put, unlike monophysiticism in the early Church, where the
human nature of Christ tended to be supplanted by the divine
nature, we find in Hegel and, of course, subsequently in modern
and contemporary theologies influenced by Hegel, precisely the
opposite phenomenon, that is, that the divine nature is compacted into the human nature. Although White does not hoist
Hans Küng on this petard, he could not be more guilty. Though
Küng is better known as a Catholic theologian who endorses the
Enlightenment and its critique of the Church and the theological
tradition, one of his first publications is a huge book on Hegel
which, if it demonstrates no great scholarly ability, underscores
at the very end an essentialist view of kenosis in which the divine
is compacted into the human.
White is neither a Hegel scholar, nor he is interested in Hegel
per se. What he is interested in is Hegel as a point of origin for
modern and contemporary understandings of the Trinity, and
derivatively theologies of creation and Christology with which it
bears relations of interdependence. He deems this influence in
modern and contemporary Trinitarian theology to be entirely
noxious not only because as a matter of fact it leads to the
subversion of the classical Trinitarian model, but also because it
provides a view of the Trinity that is no more adequate to a
plausible and defensible doctrine of God, than adequate to a
plausible and defensible doctrine of creation and/or Christology.

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When it comes to the Hegel of Lectures on the Philosophy of
Religion, if anything, White is far more benevolent regarding
Hegel’s Trinitarian crimes and misdemeanors than he deserves.
Certainly, a nineteenth-century Catholic critic of Hegel such
Staudenmaier and a twentieth-century Orthodox critic such as
Iwan Iljin are not only far harsher, but pick out deviances from
the Trinitarian tradition not mentioned by White. One of
criticisms is that problems come into view already at the level of
the Trinity in se, and not simply at the level of the relationship
between the Trinity in se and the economy. For both of these
critics the divine Trinity that Hegel endorses is Sabellian, though
it might be said, following White’s talk of “inverted
monophysiticism,” that we are talking about an inverted species
of Sabellianism, given that the ontology it exhibits is developing
rather than static, as is the case in ancient species of Sabellianism:
the divine essence moves through lack to fulfillment, potentially
to actuality, towards a single personhood (Persönlichkeit). In
keeping with Hegel’s notion of reciprocal dependence between
God and the world, this personhood is provisional and is not fully
actual here and requires the development of the freedom and
knowledge of the human community across time and history. My
purpose here is not to dispute what White says about Hegel and
the Trinity—I think it is accurate as far as it goes—nor even to
supplement him. Rather I make the point because of the palpable
irony illustrated by some of those theologians who according to
White are caught in the Hegel’s line of influence. Just taking the
two most obvious examples of Moltmann and Pannenberg, in
both cases there is self-conscious correction for Hegel’s tendency
towards Sabellianism by insisting upon the tripersonal nature of
the Godhead. In the case of Moltmann, this correction is an overcorrection and laced with anti-Western Trinitarian prejudice,
such that his construction of the Trinity moves towards tritheism.
The Trinity is a hugely important book. Obviously, it will find
acclaim in Thomist circles. It will also be applauded more among
theological circles that have grown tired of the easy dismissal of
classical Trinitarian doctrine, and the Western version of the
classical doctrine in particular. Though the book exemplifies a
high level of civility, one gets the sense that there is little patience

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regarding self-inflected Catholic guilt regarding the Western version of classical Trinitarian doctrine. While not a card-carrying
Thomist—I more nearly figure myself as Augustinian—I can
endorse all of this. Still, this brilliant book invites any number of
questions, all of which circulate around the meta-question of
whether the book is hampered by its discernible, albeit low-key,
triumphalist tone. Let me put on the table five questions:
(1) Are all of Rahner’s criticisms of the proclivities of De Deo ut uno without
merit?
(2) Granting the Hegelian paradigm shift in contemporary Trinitarian theology
and granting also that it is lexically marked by making the economy constitutive
of the Trinity in se, is it fair to speak of all forms of Trinitarian theology in
dialogue with Hegel and think of the economy as expressive of the divine
Trinity as demonstrating a paradigm shift with regard to the Trinity?
(3) Relatedly, with regard to those suspected of “inverted monophysiticism,”
which presumably convicts them of ignoring divine immutability and
impassibility at the level of the Trinity in se, is it sufficient for conviction that
their Christology is kenotic, even if kenosis is formal rather than essentialist and
goes hand in hand with an embrace of a two-nature and even two-will
Christology, as is clearly the case in von Balthasar and perhaps also the case in
Pannenberg?
(4) Allowing for the commitment to truth, what is the extent of the rule of
charity for forms of Trinitarianism that are not Thomistic, but which evidence
a clear commitment to the conciliar tradition?
(5) With due admiration extended to the mastery of the Trinitarian tradition
evinced in The Trinity, the luminous nature of its presentation of the relation
between de Deo ut uno and de Deo trino in Aquinas, and the obvious merits of
much of the critique of modern forms of Trinitarian theology, does the commitment to consistency not get in the way of the commitment to completeness?

I will further specify each in turn.
With regard to (1), I open by reminding that I have sustained
much of White’s criticism of Rahner’s text on the Trinity,
particularly as this was developed by LaCugna, who may have
done Rahner a disservice by translating his more or less pastoral
recommendation that more attention be accorded the economy
into a competitive relation between the Trinity in se and its
economic expression. Still, one wonders why White wants to
defend the view that it is logically possible that any of the three
persons could have been incarnated over against Rahner’s view
that it necessarily had to be the Son. Here both White and Rahner

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are playing a modal logic game in which there are no winners.
Rahner risks aligning himself with Hegel and German Idealism in
general, and White with the theological voluntarism which he
cannot abide. Here is an example of where White’s interest in
maintaining that all of the divine attributes are operative when
one moves from de Deo ut uno to de Deo trino takes a step too
far in insisting that they will be in play in precisely the same way
as they have operated in their original natural theology or
metaphysical context and not subject to recalibration within the
entirely new context of a God who comes to us in the incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.
(2) When talking about his suspects regarding the shift in
Trinitarian paradigm away from the Trinity in se and towards the
economy with respect to which Hegel represents the supreme
instance (others include process theology and various forms of
political theology), White ambiguates between the terms
“constitution” and “expression.” Of course, as Hegel has laid
down in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, but also in the
Phenomenology, and his discussion of the religious and
philosophical syllogisms in the Encyclopaedia, the economy
cannot be constitutive of the Trinity unless it is first an expression
of it. Nonetheless, expression and constitution are not the same.
With the possible exception of Moltmann, it is not evident to me
that any of White’s other suspects, despite their obvious desire to
bring the immanent Trinity into closer alignment with the economy, actually suggest the Trinity in se depends on the economy
to be all that it can be. I single out von Balthasar in particular
here, since he is by far the most self-consciously traditional of the
group that includes himself, Barth, Moltmann, Pannenberg, and
Bulgakov.
(3) I have indicated already that I consider White’s concept of
“inverted monophysiticism” to be enormously useful. Whether it
is going to be useful in fact, however, depends upon its deployment which in turn depends on two things: (i) the decision to
consider kenosis in the context of Christology, which both
illustrates and conditions a theologian’s interpretation of the
Trinity as concerning the essence of the divine rather than its
form; and (ii) there is no express commitment to a two-nature

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Christology or even more particularly a two-nature Christology
as further specified by a two-will Christology. While, of course,
it is possible that despite a commitment to a formal view of
kenosis and a commitment to a two-will Christology that a
Christology might, nonetheless, be indicted as monophysite,
nonetheless, the bar is significantly raised. White does not set the
bar this high, and ignores the cases where the form of kenosis
invoked is formal and a two-will Christology is in operation. This
is plausibly the case in Barth. It is certainly the case in von
Balthasar. The rule of charity does not seem to be operating at
the absolutely highest level.
(4) Obviously, there is nothing wrong with consistency in
theological argumentation. There is simply not enough of it in
evidence in the contemporary theological landscape and White is
anxious to remind us of Aquinas’s gifts in this respect as well as
to exhibit this virtue in his own recommendation of Aquinas’s
Trinitarian thought. I have already pointed to one case in which
consistency (as well as fidelity to Aquinas) leads White astray, but
in part 4 there are any number of occasions on which White
comes near to suggesting that the purpose of revelation is less
God’s miraculous and unstinting love than illustrating the
relations between the divine persons in the economy. This is a
step too far. Surely, this is not the purpose of revelation, even if
God coming towards us will disclose these relations. In addition,
I wonder whether there is a lack of theological finesse illustrated
in the defense of the Augustinian-Thomistic view of the
appropriations which has unfairly been vilified in contemporary
Trinitarian theology, and where the contempt has in some
measure taken up residence in contemporary Catholic Trinitarian
theology. The doctrine of appropriations serves the necessary
theological function of ensuring that any act of the divine Trinity
involves all three persons even if it is concentrated in one. Still,
while necessary, is the Western position fully sufficient to the
actual missions as they are disclosed in Scripture? Is there no
further thinking to be done? Is the doctrine of appropriations
more a heuristic than a positive theological doctrine?
(5) Finally, but in line with (4), I would like to raise the
question of the relation between consistency in theological

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discourse and the aim at a form of theological completeness that
would be adequate to the reality (here the Christian God) that
inspires Christian theological discourse. Now, presumably not
simply in fact, but in principle, completeness eludes us. This is
something von Balthasar says, but in this he has Augustine as well
as Aquinas—indeed, the entire theological tradition, both East
and West—on his side. As a one-time philosopher who more than
dabbled in formal logic, I am reminded of Gödel’s theorem about
the impossibility in mathematical logic of reconciling consistency
and completeness in a formal system: if consistent, then not
complete; if complete, then not consistent. Since I am not going
to tease out the fine points of analogy I am putting into play, I
will simply confess that Gödel’s theorem is functioning as a trope.
Yet to remind as well as provoke: does Aquinas in his
extraordinary consistency not insist on epistemic humility when
it comes to our knowledge of God? And are not von Balthasar’s
gestures at completeness that sin against consistency necessary
also in a Church in which the aim cannot simply be to replace
error by truth, but to convert the heart, affections, and
imagination?

The Thomist 87 (2023): 659-82

ON WISDOM, MYSTERY, AND THE TRINITY: A REPLY
THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

I

WOULD LIKE to thank the editors of The Thomist for the
privilege of the exchange they have initiated here on my
recent book on the Trinity, and I would like to thank especially the various contributors who have provided a wide
range of insightful and erudite remarks. Each of these scholars
possesses in his or her own way a degree of learning and an
historical expertise that I do not, so that the invitation to respond to them all constructively in a succinct format is
inevitably daunting. I will limit myself here, then, to three
themes: Wisdom and Mystery; Genealogy and Thomism; and
Knowing and Experiencing the Trinity in History. In this way, I
seek to respond in some substantive way to the concerns of each
of the above authors, in regard to both their general themes and
some of their specific inquiries. I am grateful to them for their
theological magnanimity and studiousness, and hope to imitate,
albeit imperfectly, each of them in this regard.
I. ON WISDOM AND MYSTERY
Defined in a very general way, a mystery is something that
awakens our intellectual desire for greater understanding, explanation, and contemplation—not only because it is imperfectly understood by us, but also because it is superintelligible,
that is to say, it transcends our limited capacity for understanding as something intrinsically profound in intelligibility,
and even inexhaustibly so. The signs in us of the perception of
mystery are intellectual wonder and loving admiration, in the
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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

sense that when we come to know better something that is
intrinsically mysterious we also grow in admiration and wonder.
We can speak in this sense of the “mystery of life” to indicate
that even while we come to understand the intelligibility,
beauty, and goodness of human existence, we also wonder and
admire many elements of it that exceed our comprehension.
This all being said, the New Testament employs the term
“mystery” in a very distinct sense. Saint Paul speaks of this
mystery in Colossians 1:25-28, and correlates it to the notion of
wisdom:
I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for
you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and
generations but now made manifest to his saints. To them God chose to make
known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this
mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning
every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every
man mature in Christ.

This text suggests several interconnected senses of mystery: (1)
God in himself: the eternal Father who is revealed in his Son
and in his Spirit; (2) the incarnation of the Son and the filial
adoption in grace that is communicated by God to the saints;
(3) the glory of beatitude that results from this filial adoption,
for which we hope in this life.
Speaking in more formal theological language, then, we can
speak of the mystery of God that is unveiled to us in the
incarnation of the Word made flesh, and that is communicated
to us by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in the
Holy Spirit. Of course, this process occurs principally through
the Church, her liturgy, and her sacraments. It is also something
that has the power to possess our entire life in both its
contemplative and active dimensions, as a journey into God.
It is significant that Paul purposefully aligns this sense of the
encounter with the mystery of God (the inner life of the Father,
his Son, and the Holy Spirit) with the quest for wisdom. He
indicates here simultaneously the fulfillment of both the ancient
Hebraic-biblical concept of wisdom (creation as an emanation
from the uncreated wisdom of God), and the wisdom of

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Hellenistic philosophy (the rational and contemplative search
for ultimate explanation), while claiming that what both initiate
and aspire to imperfectly is only found perfectly and gratuitously in the revelation of the Father, made known to us in
the Son made man, Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit.
Both patristic and Scholastic authors of East and West made
generous use of this Pauline coordination of the twin notions of
mystery and wisdom.1 The search for wisdom terminates in the
encounter with the mystery of God, and God alone can fulfill
by grace the interminable human desire for contemplation and
for perfect understanding of what is ultimate in the order of
being. Far from being a divisive idea, this notion, found in
Aquinas’s thought, provides a sound basis for a historically
inclusive and broad-minded ecumenism of East and West.
That being said, there are notions specific to the Thomistic
tradition for thinking about wisdom in distinct ways, that is, as
(1) philosophical, (2) theological-doctrinal, and (3) mystical.
The three are irreducibly distinct but also inseparable within a
unified Christian life. This distinction of forms of wisdom is not
arbitrary, for reasons that I take to be indisputable. Evidently,
we wish to affirm that there is an incomprehensible mystery at
the ground of all being that we rightly name the Holy Trinity,
and that our genuine knowledge of this mystery is imperfect but
nevertheless real. Furthermore, let us grant that this knowledge
is dynamically unitive, that is to say, related to ongoing growth
in the love of God, and a contemplative desire for the vision of
God, as indeed it should be. The affirmation of a genuine philosophical wisdom regarding God is implied necessarily by this
idea, since what we receive in faith (the direct encounter with
1
To take one prominent example, consider Gregory of Nyssa in Against Eunomius
3.2, where he seeks to coordinate an analysis of God’s pre-existent wisdom with the
mystery of the incarnation as a manifestation of divine wisdom. Similar examples
abound, many of which are at least remotely similar to ideas one finds in Aquinas. See
also Against Eunomius 2.1, 2.2, 2.6, 2.11, which clearly denote the central mystery as
that of the Holy Trinity, but see it as something manifest in the “mysteries” of the
incarnation, the Cross, and the communication of grace to human persons (Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, trans. H. C. Ogle and H. A. Wilson; ed. P. Schaff and
H. Wace [Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893]).

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the wisdom of God in Christ, and the mystery of the Trinity)
cannot be sheerly external or unnaturally violent with regard to
our native desire to know the truth about being. Just because we
are capable of grace, so too we must be capable of asking the
question of what is ultimately underived in reality. The mystery
of the Trinity can only be revealed to a personal created being
that is capable of understanding even philosophically that life is
wonderous, or “mysterious,” and that the “mystery” of being
(its beauty and goodness) can be received in contemplation, and
not merely comprehended or dominated by human cognition.
The human quest for explanatory wisdom is one that ascends
toward what is “above” the human intellect, as explanatory of
all else yet incomprehensible in itself, and this is the sign also
(for theologians) that we are able to receive from God, without
violence to our nature, something we could not procure by our
own powers or understand merely on our own terms: the
epiphany of the inner life of God. Consequently, there exists
something like an innate aspiration to philosophical wisdom
that is proper to our rational nature, no matter how much we
may ignore it or thwart it, individually or collectively.
Nevertheless, this cannot be all, since we possess, by divine
revelation, true knowledge of what and who God is in himself,
as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This insight into the mystery of
God in himself occurs by grace and within faith but it truly does
attain in faith to the res or inner reality of God in himself (cf.
STh II-II, q. 1, a. 1). Even if we see through a glass darkly, we
do see, and this insight of faith receives its focus from Scripture,
read within sacred tradition, including in conciliar definitions or
dogmatic enunciations. These doctrines matter precisely because
they allow us to focus our gaze, through Scripture and the
liturgy, above the horizon of merely natural knowledge, so as to
gaze into the mystery of God in himself, as he has revealed
himself to us, in the prophecies of Israel, and in the apostolic
teaching, concerning the human life, death, and resurrection of
God incarnate. Theology, then, has an inward contour and “scientific” integrity as a body of knowledge regarding the mystery
of God as best we can come to know it in this life, over time.
This “science” is sapiential because it seeks to pass through

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arguments and explanations into contemplation of the mystery
of God in himself, by way of greater understanding, always in
the service of love and unitive contact with the Holy Trinity.
As this last comment intimates, theology when practiced well
in the Church must be open to mysticism, that is to say, to a
greater experiential and nonexperiential union with God that
anticipates the higher mode of knowledge of God that will
come to fruition after this life. In our current embodied state as
rational animals, we only come to know God as sensate,
cultural-linguistic creatures who think abstractly, who are
dependent upon the visible historical mediations of the Church,
her language, liturgy, and traditional notions, as well as the
sacraments (mysteries) instituted by Christ himself for our
sanctification. Nevertheless, through all these we tend toward a
higher mode of union. This occurs through love, but also in
special forms of knowledge, which can be called mystical, since
they incline our being and our spiritual powers more deeply
into anticipatory eschatological union with the mystery of God
even in this life.
On this point, Aquinas appeals in particular to the significance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.2 These seven gifts are
given in baptism, as a dimension of grace, along with the
theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. Prior to the gifts,
the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love already are
infused habits that orient us in this life toward a stable and evergrowing contemplative union with God.3 These theological
virtues are intrinsically oriented toward and come to fruition in
the beatifying vision of God, in the life to come.4 What the gifts
of the Holy Spirit add is a mode of perfection and intensification of the exercise of the theological virtues. With them, we
see better or more deeply, and we are able to love more
profoundly, by unitive intensity. Here we can mention only two
that pertain especially to contemplation: understanding (intellectus) and wisdom (sapientia), both of which have mystical
2

See STh I-II, q. 68.
STh I-II, q. 62.
4
See STh II-II, q. 1, a. 1; q. 4, a. 1; q. 17, a. 2; q. 23, aa. 1, 6, and 8.
3

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

connotations. “Understanding” for Aquinas is likened by
similitude, in the supernatural order, to Aristotle’s notion of
nous or insight (from De anima 3.6).5 The Holy Spirit can
elevate the gaze of the intellect through Scripture and
ecclesiastical doctrine (as well as liturgical prayer) into a deeper
gaze upon the reality of the mystery of Christ, and of the
Trinity. The Spirit alights upon the soul to elevate it into
friendship with God in a special way that cannot be maintained
by the soul’s own power, but that is a sheer gift. This gift can in
turn leave an abiding impression upon the soul and perhaps also
augment the intensive perfection of the habit of faith over time,
in a general way, so that the agency of the gifts translates into a
more intensive spiritual savoring or touching of the soul with
God by union, over time.6 Likewise, the movement of the mind
that is given by this form of insight is often accompanied by a
deeper union of love with the mystery known (in sapiential
charity). This sapientia is something Aquinas compares with
Aristotle’s notion of connatural love: we become like our
friends because our will becomes conformed over time to theirs
and theirs to ours, in a shared life. This in turn affects our
judgments about how to live wisely in accord with love.7 So too,
in a shared life with God the Father, and by friendship with
Christ, the soul becomes conformed more perfectly by love and
sound judgment to the eternal Word made flesh, by the inward
promptings of the Holy Spirit, who resides within the saints of
God’s Church (John 14:23-26).
All of this suggests that the mystics (who live by the inward
promptings of the Holy Spirit in an especial way) have need of
the scriptural, liturgical, and doctrinal teaching of the Church as
a precondition for their lives in Christ, and thus they remain
“accountable” to the common faith of the Catholic Church and
the official dogmatic and theological articulations of the faith.
5

STh II-II, q. 8, a. 1.
See STh II-II, q. 8, aa. 6-8.
7
STh II-II, q. 23, a. 5; q. 45, aa. 1, 2, and 4. In q. 23, a. 5 Aquinas references
Aristotle on the notion of conformity to friends in various forms of common life in
Nicomachean Ethics 8.12. See also Nicomachean Ethics 1.3 as it pertains, seemingly, to
STh II-II, q. 45, a. 2, as well as STh I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3.
6

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The membership of the theological guild meanwhile also seeks
unitive love with Christ, and can find inspiration from and be
challenged by the mystical authors. Philosophers are invited by
both to remain vulnerable to yet-more-ultimate explanations of
the mystery of life received from divine revelation, while those
who are inspired from above by the Holy Spirit remain accountable to the tasks of serious human reasoning, including
philosophical reasoning about God.
II. ON CATHOLIC SACRED DOCTRINE,
HISTORICAL GENEALOGY, AND THOMISM
On the view of theology I have just indicated, the theologian
should seek to understand and explain the Christian faith in
fidelity to Scripture, Tradition, and the magisterium, in such a
way as to remain open to the use of natural philosophical resources (including knowledge stemming from thorough historical study and the modern sciences), and should do so while
remaining open to and oriented toward experiential and
interior union with God. Some might conclude (erroneously)
that, based upon these Thomistic criteria, only those who are
Thomists might be considered genuine Catholic theologians.
However, Aquinas affirms something contrary to this in the first
quaestio of the Summa theologiae (STh I, q. 1) where he considers sacra doctrina as both a science and wisdom of God, the
Holy Trinity. There he observes that the first principles of the
science of theology are derived from Scripture read by the
Church collectively, as enunciated especially in the Nicene
creed. (He says something very similar in the Compendium of
Theology.8) Aquinas also notes in the same quaestio that theology is sapiential, that is to say, oriented toward contemplative
union with God, and that it must respect the integrity of
philosophical arguments (especially regarding God and human
nature) and may make use of them within theology, as a higher
science may integrate the principles and conclusions of a lower

8

See Comp. Theol. I, c. 246.

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

science into itself.9 On this reading, anyone engages in genuine
theological discourse who seeks to understand in faith the
mystery of Christ that is given to us in divine revelation and
safeguarded by the Church, her Tradition, and her pronouncements, so long as the theologian in question seeks also to be
attentive to the inherent exigencies of natural reason
(philosophical, historical, scientific) and the unitive or mystical
aspirations of theology. Thus any exercise in “Thomistic”
theology must, by Aquinas’s own criteria, assume that there are
non-Thomistic theologies, and that Thomistic contributions to
the theological search for God take place within a wider
ecclesiastical estuary of theological traditions and spiritual
practices that seek genuine knowledge and love of the Trinity.10
This perspective, however, does not lead to relativism in
regard to the various schools of theology—at least, it need and
should not. There is a native impulse in human nature toward
school-thought, and indeed we find schools of religious thought
not only in Catholic Christianity but also in other ecclesial
Christian traditions (for example, Palamitism, or Reformed
Scholasticism) and indeed in non-Christian religious traditions
(for example, theistic Vedantism, or Hanafism in Sunni Islam).
The specific character of a Catholic school of theology stems
from the fact that it seeks a particular way of combining (1) a
responsible reception and interpretation of Catholic doctrinal
intellectual traditions with (2) a profound and truthful philosophical vision of God, creation, and humanity and (3) an
orientation toward the practical spiritual life of union with
God. It must do so inevitably while also (4) engaging constructively with other ecclesiastical schools and their great
figures, to seek to negotiate what either should be retained or
disputed, in regard to their alternative or convergent theological
or philosophical assertions.

9

STh I, q. 1, aa. 1, 5, and 6.
I discuss this idea at further length in my recent book Principles of Catholic
Theology, book 1, On the Nature of Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2023).
10

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Theological schools of the kind just designated are numerous, but we might mention Augustinianism, Cappadocianism, Coptic Cyrillianism, versions of Byzantine Scholasticism
(such as that found in Maximus, Damascene, or Palamas), Bonaventurianism, Thomism, Scotism, Suarezianism, Rahnerianism,
or the thought of the Communio school characterized by figures
like de Lubac, Ratzinger, and von Balthasar. Many other
instances could be named.
At this juncture it is helpful to make two important observations. First, virtually everyone who over time promotes a
unified vision of Christian theology tends toward participation
in a certain school of thought. Certainly those just listed are
highly defined and many if not most theologians might refuse to
avail themselves of explicit alignment with any of them. But just
to the extent that a person is committed to normative doctrinal
claims and associated ways of interpreting these claims theologically, however apophatically, in alignment with a series of
judgments about philosophy, history, and the spiritual life, one
is acquiring a kind of universal view of theology, its inward
contours and possibilities, as a science and as a wisdom. Even
those who advance the position that “most or all classical
schools over-interpret on their own terms the doctrines of the
faith in ways that are epistemologically unwarranted” fall back
inevitably upon more fundamental views that they do think
must be maintained, based on the force of tradition, liturgy,
personal spiritual intuitions, or other adjacent criteria.
Minimalistic schools are not only still schools, but are in fact
often aligned to form a kind of socially interminable pressure
point upon more maximalist schools to seek uniformity of a
more generic kind against what are perceived as the dangers of
too highly specific (i.e., epistemologically unwarranted and
potentially divisive) forms of theological reasoning. There can
be good ecclesiological reasons for this, but the dynamic can
also arise for other reasons, including intellectual haziness,
spiritual fear of the unknown, or the triumphalist or jingoistic
desire to be right.
Advancing something like the thought of a school, thus, is in
some ways inevitable, but it is also important to note here a

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

second point. To advance theologically in a school as a kind of
subtradition within the Christian intellectual tradition does not
imply that one advocates for the eradication of a plurality of
schools or approaches to theology, nor should one imagine that
it could be thus. Clearly there are things that everyone needs to
agree upon, and there are also contributions specific theologians
make within the tradition that become virtually normative
within the common Tradition, such as Cyril’s teaching on the
hypostatic union or Aquinas’s teaching on the Eucharist, coming
out of the Catholic tradition. Nevertheless, there is always a de
facto pluralism of theological traditions in the Church, and this
has to be taken into account by all who seek to find unity and
truth in Catholic theological work. At the same time, precisely
because there is also a common ground of unity in theological
science, it is possible to seek greater unity and consensus by
privileging certain doctors or references (like the thought of
Augustine, or Aquinas) as potential sources of convergence or as
figures who help us make discernments. This process will lead
to inevitable disagreements, but that is fine. The Church contains internal theological disagreements and regulates these
from above over time by way of either clear magisterial pronouncements or practical magnanimity by permitting her
children to seek the truth through a plurality of intellectual
traditions and by way of a spiritual competition of arguments in
the shared holy pursuit of the undifferentiated truth.
What should we say in this light about historical genealogy?
Is it licit for a Thomist, or anyone else for that matter, to read
figures such as Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine,
Dionysius, or for that matter Aristotle, as teachers whose doctrines provide a possibility for or even an anticipation of the
theological teachings of Aquinas? And can one justifiably make
use in turn of Aquinas’s “Thomistic principles” in order to make
discernments about the value of ideas found subsequently in
historical figures such as Luther, Kant, Hegel, Bulgakov, or
Rahner?
Here we may make four brief observations.
First, in any historical genealogy that is to be placed in the
service of theology, there is an irreducible role for historical

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669

accuracy. Some historical interpretations contradict express
evidence, while others do not, and some interpretations of historical texts are more probable or reasonable than others.
Sometimes, however, texts are themselves inherently vague or
open to various subsequent contrasting interpretations. Augustine provides a famous instance of this, as does Aristotle—there
are many contestable forms of Augustinianism and of Aristotelianism.11 Likewise, a figure like Augustine makes some
affirmations that should be reinterpreted or rejected in light of
the subsequent Catholic magisterium. But one can proceed in
this way while both maintaining a passion for historical accuracy that allows the diversity and convergence of distinct
theological authors and traditions to come to the fore, and
seeking a greater unity in the faith among the great figures of
the past.
Second, we inevitably select a limited number of sources in
any genealogy, which already shows a set of value judgments
about what matters most, and in any historical study we tell we
provide normative views of what has emerged as the most
important theological result of past developments. In short, no
genealogy ever has been or ever could be innocent of
theologically normative judgments, even if every genealogy also
should seek to be historically accurate.
Third, the very idea that some notions are true and that
some schools of thought are preferable (in their principles,
analysis, conclusions, or spiritual practice) inevitably leads to
normative views of genealogy. Everyone has ideas of what really
matters most in theological history and these do not arise from
11

Many of Aquinas’s readings of Aristotle are both highly contestable and textually
defensible, and the same can be said of alternative readings of Aristotle found in
Averroes, a point of which both Aquinas and his contemporaries were very aware. The
texts of Aristotle are often in mere obediential potency to Thomism, historically considered. And this can be said in other ways of the texts of Augustine or Dionysius.
Generally speaking, it is not wise to bet against Aquinas in his interpretation of ancient
texts, as he can provide surprisingly plausible readings, even by the standards of contemporary historiography. Anecdotally, Anglican tutor in Oxford, a classicist who had
no ideological inclinations in this regard, once told me that he was inclined to think that
Aquinas had provided some of the clearest and best commentaries on Aristotle ever to
exist.

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

one’s historically attention to texts per se, but from one’s view
of what is true about reality, especially in regard to God, Christ,
and divine revelation. However, here a subtle point emerges.
Many past figures and their theological texts are in partial or
complete obediential potency to a variety of subsequent readings. One can read Aristotle, Augustine, or Dionysius, for
example, in the way Aquinas does or in the way Bonaventure
does. The point is not primarily about which of these two great
medieval doctors reads these three past figures more accurately
(though this also matters), but about the two distinct synthetic,
doctrinal ways that each of them appropriated past masters and
their insights, restating them in (arguably) yet more profound
and novel ways than had existed hitherto. One observes in this
process of interpretation and synthesis, as well as original
actualization, that there is both fidelity to the past and a newly
emergent, developmental vitality of insight. Likewise one can
seek to appropriate Aquinas or Bonaventure today as do various
theologians, such as Scheeben, Rahner, Ratzinger, or a variety
of contemporary Thomists.
What emerges from this historical process is a diversity of
“collections” of wisdom traditions in the Church. Again, this
should lead not to relativism but to more intensive, if respectful,
debate. In fact, one must debate about the truth (historical,
theological, philosophical, spiritual, and moral) precisely to help
adjudicate and advance the insight and spiritual acumen of the
life of the Church from within. The ancients debated, the medievals did so, and the moderns continue to do so. A theology
that is primarily either didactic or spiritual in aspiration must
also be at times polemical or dialectical in orientation, so as to
seek to provide new pathways toward the truth, and new ways
of advancing the theological heritage of traditions respectfully
and rightly received from the past. In all of this we should also
mention the ecumenical context of Catholic theological work.
The search for the truth in Catholic theology presupposes a
common conversation with all baptized Christians regarding the
truth of Christianity, and a common baptismal life of shared
discipleship of all those who seek to know and love God the

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Holy Trinity, in whom we share a common baptism, and a
common ecclesial existence.
III. ON KNOWING AND EXPERIENCING THE TRINITY IN HISTORY
This brings me to the final point, which is less methodological and more formally doctrinal. It is concerned with our
knowledge and experience of the mystery of the Trinity within
the economic sphere of human history. I take it that the eternal
processional life of the Holy Trinity is the ontological precondition for the temporal missions of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit. The Son can only be sent into the world by the Father
because he is, first and foremost, the eternally begotten Son and
Word of the Father. The Holy Spirit can only be sent into the
world by the Father and the Son because he is the eternally
spirated Spirit of the Father and the Son (proceeding through
and from the Word). The eternal relations of origin precede the
missions ontologically, and are not constituted by the latter.
The missions, however, do manifest, or render present within
history, the very persons in their eternal mutual relations. As
Aquinas notes, a mission just is an eternal procession with the
addition of an external effect.12 When the eternal Word becomes flesh, it is the very Word who becomes flesh, that is to
say, he who is eternally from the Father, as his only-begotten
Son.
In addition to this statement about the ontological priority of
the processions to the missions, however, I would like to add a
statement about the epistemological priority of the processions
to the missions, for us, in our coming to understand the Trinity.
It is undoubtedly true that we only come to know the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit personally, even quasi-experientially
(through the illumination of faith, hope, and love), because the
Father has first sent the Son and the Spirit into the world. The
Trinitarian missions are the presupposition of our coming to
know the Trinitarian God in himself. Nevertheless, it is only
when we gain understanding or insight in faith that Jesus Christ
12

See STh I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3.

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

is true God and true man, and that in his person he is uncreated, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light
from light, true God from true God, that we can in turn also
understand who has been sent, and what is present among us.
That is, we can come to understand that it is the eternal Son
and Word of the Father who is present among us, and that he is
God and Lord. And it is only really when we first come to
understand this that we can in turn understand that the Word is
hypostatically distinct from the Father (a distinct divine person)
and that he is one in being and nature with the Father, just as it
is only when we come to understand that the Holy Spirit is an
eternal person distinct from the Father and the Son, who is also
Lord and God (worshipped and glorified), that we come in turn
to understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each
personally distinct and that they are each truly the one God.
To begin to think like this is made possible by the primary
principles of insight into Scripture’s most basic “givens,” which
are expressed in creedal understanding, and it is from these
most basic insights that there begins to emerge Trinitarian reflection, including the clear distinction (originating with Augustine, based on his reading of Scripture) of eternal processions
and temporal missions.13 It is not an accident that the clear
theological distinction of eternal processions and temporal
missions first arose conceptionally after the Council of Nicaea
and within the context of anti-Arian polemics by pro-Nicene
thinkers. It is the very admission that the Son and the Holy
Spirit are each truly God and are truly personally distinct from
the Father that gives rise to the eventual intelligibility of the
doctrine of the temporal missions, and not the inverse.
Furthermore, we do not come to know the Holy Trinity only
by way of the historical life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. These mysteries—coupled with the revelation of the
sending of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost—do

13
Augustine sets out to develop the distinction in The Trinity, books 1-4 (trans.
E. Hill, ed. J. E. Rotelle [Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1991]). For a thematic
consideration of Augustine’s notion of divine sending, see Lewis Ayres, Augustine and
the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 181-87, 233-50.

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constitute the central and most essential way we come to know
the Holy Trinity. However it is important to note that we also
come to know the Trinity by: (1) the teachings of the Old
Testament, which the Fathers rightly noted contains a great deal
of proto-Trinitarian revelation that is brought to completion
and explicit clarity by the New Testament revelation; (2) the
verbal teachings of Jesus regarding the Father, himself, and the
Holy Spirit, and not merely his passion and resurrection; (3) the
teachings of the apostles, whose inspired words need not and do
not always correspond precisely to closely parallel antecedent
words or actions of Christ; (4) the sacraments and liturgical
traditions of the Church, which are of apostolic origin or
derivation; (5) the theological, spiritual, and mystical writings
of the saints, who typically assimilate the revelation most
intensively; and finally (6) creation itself insofar as it can be
“reread” in light of divine revelation to give us some insight
into the Trinitarian creator, who has created all things in the
intelligibility of his Word and the goodness of his Holy Spirit.
Given what I have just stated, it seems to me correct and
necessary to affirm, even today in light of the prevalence of
metaphysical skepticism on all sides, that the human person,
with the help of God’s grace, can reflect in coherent and true
ways on the immanent life of God, based on what God has
revealed about himself in these various formats. Here I would
defend the significance and centrality of the divine names (the
attributes rightly ascribed by analogical reasoning to the divine
nature, such as simplicity, goodness, eternity, and so on), and
the notion of eternal relations of origin in God (from the
Cappadocians and Augustine).
One could just stop there, and many do, resulting in a highly
apophatic but still distinctly Trinitarian theological form of
reflection. One can note that there is a unity of three persons
who are distinguished by relations of origin of some preexistent, eternal kind, which we know only very imperfectly.
This minimalistic standpoint is entirely permissible, doctrinally
and historically speaking, but if we survey the Catholic doctors
of the Church, including most Eastern Fathers, it is not a
majority standpoint. It is also anything but a required

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

standpoint, as if one were obliged to reject the explorations of
Athanasius, Damascene, Anselm, Bonaventure, or Aquinas in
order to remain theologically more insightful than they were.
(We may think helpfully here about what Chesterton said
regarding the democracy of the dead.)
I am, then, in the camp of those who think it is possible and
salutary to go further than those I would characterize as “minimalist,” by considering anew the medieval Western exploration
of Augustine’s psychological analogy (the twin eternal
processions of the Son and Spirit as pertaining to a similitude of
knowledge and love respectively). Indeed, I argue that this
similitude is significant precisely for the reason I have denoted
above. It is only if we have some way of understanding the
immanent eternal life of God as a truth of revelation (no matter
how apophatically, how opaquely) that we can coherently articulate a notion of the God of revelation, the Trinity of persons
who are the one God, according to an order or taxis of relations, Father, Word, and Spirit. Simply to affirm the reality of
eternal relations of origin and to enshrine it in a series of
metaphors is permissible but it is also intellectually and mystically anemic. Anselm, Bernard, Bonaventure, Albert, Aquinas,
Catherine, Scheeben, Newman, Elizabeth of the Trinity,
Ratzinger, and others think that we can see further here, with
the use of the psychological analogy, and I follow them in this.
The aim here is definitively not to construct some immanentistic fortress of self-satisfied human logic (which is a
laughable aim), but merely to articulate better our revealed and
mysterious knowledge of God the Holy Trinity, a knowledge
that is realistic. I take it that Aquinas does this with his proper
theological analogies of eternally generated Verbum and
eternally spirated Amor. These in turn help us gain insight into
the persons themselves, disposing us theologically to the
reception of the gifts of understanding and wisdom, which
impel us toward yet deeper intuitive and loving union with
God. Mysticism without intellectual content is as dangerous a
thing as arid speculation without love. It is in fact one very
distinct thing to point back to a number of profound theological
texts, patristic or modern. It is quite another thing to say

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something that is true in a constructive way, one that is
consistent with sound natural reasoning and intrinsically open
to and at the service of the inner spiritual life of Christian
believers.
Let me complete this section with a few more punctuated
thoughts that are logically related.
First, given what I have said above, the question Karl Rahner
poses of whether it is sheerly impossible for the Father or the
Holy Spirit to become incarnate is of some real consequence.14
What is at stake in this question is more than human fantasies
about possible worlds, or a logical game about human ways of
conceiving the divine essence and the divine will. Instead, I
think the question touches upon the very nature of God, and
the mystery of the Trinity itself. Consider in this regard that the
very mystery we celebrate and reverence is a mystery of the free
expression of God in history and of the gratuitous initiative of
God to save us by his own designs of wisdom and love through
the sending of his Son in our flesh. It is also a mystery of God in
himself, of God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, three who are one in their transcendent lordship and in
all that pertains to the nature of God. But if God the Holy
Trinity really is revealed in the incarnation of the Son, as one
God in three persons, and if God freely undertakes this
initiative gratuitously (by the divine power or in virtue of the
power of his creative love), then it follows necessarily that this
divine power of love is present equally and identically in all
three persons, who are Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Indeed, one
of the first things we must conclude from the incarnation is that
the Father has the loving power to effectuate the incarnation by
sending the Son into the world. Thus, even though only the
second person has become incarnate, due to divine fittingness, it
is also true that the Father and the Spirit possess the same
power to effectuate the mystery of the incarnation as does the

14
See Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. J. Donceel (London: Continuum, 2001),
28-30; cf. Aquinas, STh III, q. 3, aa. 5 and 8. See also the important speculative and
historical consideration of this question by Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology
of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

Son, and indeed they must, precisely because he has become
incarnate and because he who has become incarnate is one in
being and power with them. However, precisely because this
last statement is true, it necessarily follows that the Father and
the Holy Spirit possess the power to incarnate by love. Indeed,
to deny this claim is very close if not equivalent to the denial of
the unicity of the three persons, insofar as they all possess one
incomprehensible and transcendent nature in common as God.
If the Son reveals to us that he is one of the Trinity, crucified
(see John 8:28), he can only do so because there is a ground of
unity that he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit, present
precisely in the human crucifixion of the second person.
Why in the world then would Rahner argue that only the
Son has the power or capacity to incarnate and that the Father
and the Spirit do not? The answer is I think quite simple.
Rahner interprets the notion of “Word” to be attributed to the
eternal Son principally (and not secondarily, as the Scholastics
did) so as to denote the Son’s relation to creatures.15 “Word”
thus signifies principally and primarily the Father communicating himself to what is not God and within that which is not
God. This position is evidently very close to that of Hegel and
has I think unambiguously Sabellian overtones. The eternal
Word is always, already by definition for communication, for
incarnation, and for God’s self-communication to human
nature. Thus the Word as Word from all eternity is always,
already “on the verge” of the economy, as the almost necessary
moment of God’s Trinitarian self-revelation in what is not God.
As Rahner also notes, logically, it follows that if God creates, he
must incarnate in human nature, and the human being simply is
what God creates when he wishes to create in order to perfectly
realize his own self-communcation.16 Humanity appears, then,
15

See Rahner, Trinity, 29-33, contrasted with Aquinas in STh I, q. 34, a. 3.
Rahner, Trinity, 32-33: “Human nature in general is a possible object of the
creative knowledge and power of God, because and insofar as the Logos is by nature the
one who is ‘utterable’ (even into that which is not God); because he is the Father’s
Word, in which the Father can express himself, and, freely, empty himself into the nondivine; because, when this happens, that precisely is born which we call human
nature. . . . Man is possible because the exteriorization of the Logos is possible.”
16

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677

as a moment within the temporal unfolding of the life of God,
who eternally expresses himself in his Word by way incarnation.
The immanent Trinity just is the economic Trinity, and so on.
Of course, Rahner does not posit this divine unfolding in
history as something necessary, in the way Hegel does, but he
does remove the conditions of possibility for any real intelligibility of the immanent Trinity apart from, transcendent of,
or antecedent to this historical life of divine self-expression. The
Trinity that transcends the economy of human divinization
becomes literally unthinkable, or something very close to it. To
me this produces a very unhappy result and a dead end for
modern Trintarian theology.
What, then, about the Barthian or Balthasarian counteralternative? Kenoticism without Hegelianism is certainly possible. Calvin and Luther provide us with nontrivial instances of
it in early modernity, and there are Catholic counteralternatives. Barth clearly aspires to this possibility of a nonHegelian kenoticism in Church Dogmatics IV/1, and seeks to
find an alternative expression of kenotic Trinitarian Christology, one that does not historicize God, or oblige God to
sunder or surrender divine natural properties as a condition for
the incarnation.17 To do so he decides to place the preconditions for kenosis in the eternal life of God himself, so that
what happens to Christ in time, in the dereliction and descent
into hell on the Cross, is expressive by analogy or similitude of
what God always already was and is, in the eternal life of the
Father and the Son. I take it that von Balthasar also follows in
this path, albeit with greater indebtedness to the implausible
Sophia ontology of Bulgakov.18 God then is timeless and
eternal, transcendent of history. Yet there exists something in
17
See the profound analysis of the problems arising from Hegel in nineteenthcentury Lutheran kenoticism in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4 vols., trans. and ed.
G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936-75), IV/1:179210.
18
See in this regard Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic
Theory, vol. 4, The Action, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994),
313-15, 323-38, which follows Bulgakov and goes beyond Barth toward a more radical
form of intra-Trinitarian kenosis.

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

God’s eternal processions that anticipates or provides the
foundation for Christ’s human obedience, suffering, death, and
descent into hell.19 These latter human actions are not identical
with the eternal life of the Trinity and do not constitute it, but
they do render present a similitude of it in human form. The
humanity of God crucified is the living icon, to so speak, of the
eternal processional life of God. The inevitable question that
arises here, however, is whether Barth and von Balthasar glide
inadvertently (despite their clear affirmations and intentions to
the contrary) toward a reductively univocal conceptualization of
the divine and human natures and the two wills of Christ. For
now there is obedience not only in Christ as man, but also in
the eternal life of God, and also something like suffering or
separation, or kenosis, or self-emptying, or a history of mutual
freedom and consent. Are we confronted here with radical new
insights, never before evoked so clearly by the Catholic
intellectual tradition, or are we dealing with creative modern
theological thought experiments, which may entail problematic
anthropomorphic depictions of the inner life of God? In the
wake of precedent theological tradition it is not only fair to ask
the question, but even morally responsible.
19

See for example the vivid series of statements about intra-Trinitarian kenosis made
in Theo-Drama, 4:331: they begin from eternally kenotic generation and spiration, as
anticipatory of the kenosis of God in the creation of human freedom, in the covenant
with Israel, in the incarnation, and in the Cross and resurrection. Von Balthasar writes:
“if Jesus can be forsaken by the Father, the conditions for this ‘forsaking’ must lie within
the Trinity, in the absolute distance/distinction between the Hypostasis who surrenders
the Godhead and the Hypostasis who receives it. And while the distance/distinction
between these two is eternally confirmed and maintained (‘kept open’) by the
Hypostasis who proceeds from them [the Holy Spirit], it is transcended in the Godhead
that is the absolute gift they have in common” (ibid., 4:333). This statement provides an
emblematic example of the ambiguity that can be found in some of Von Balthasar’s
writing. It is possible to read such a phrase as a traditional restatement of Trinitarian
processional eternity, in which the three persons partake equally and identically of the
Godhead, and the various forms of Trinitarian benevolence or kenosis are various
expressions of eternal Trinitarian interpersonal communion and divine selfcommunication. But it is also equally plausible to read the same passage as the positing
of an eternal kenotic life in God that redefines each and every traditional notion in light
of the separation of the Cross, so that the economic human expression of the Son’s
suffering is appropriated so as to reconfigure radically all previous theological discourse.

ON WISDOM, MYSTERY, AND THE TRINITY

679

There are pathways toward differentiated consensus that are
available. The two natures and the two wills of Christ are not
only distinct (as Barth and von Balthasar each affirm). They are
also similar and dissimilar, or analogous (which again they both
affirm). The question is how one can come to an understanding
of the various ways in which the human actions and sufferings
of Christ resemble by proper similitude his eternal person and
the divine nature. To respond to this query, I maintain the
importance of the instruments of the tradition, such as the
Dionysian-Thomistic notion of analogical predication, the
divine names or attributes of the one divine nature, the use of
the notion of eternal relations of origin, and the carefully constructed analogical similitude of the psychological analogy: all
of these have an essential role to play in adjudicating how to
address this issue. Note that these are not distinctly Thomistic
points. They refer to principles common to the classical tradition, both East and West, and I follow Aquinas, who provides
only one highly coherent and insightful form of thinking, as a
way to maintain and advance understanding of these principles.
Meanwhile, I think it is fair to say, as a point of textual accuracy, that while Barth and von Balthasar are immeasurably
learned men they basically have little time for the systematic use
of the traditional notions just mentioned.20 I admit that despite
my admiration for both of them, I do consider this to be a significant deficiency in their thought. In fact, they both combine
what I might characterize as a powerful dose of apophatic
insistence on the unknowability of the divine essence with a
vivid Christological, human-centered depiction of the epiphany
of the inner life of God. This results in a historicization of God
that is possibly more profound than that of Rahner, since now
the inner life of the eternal Son is only “envisagable” in a
cruciform way. I say this even while maintaining, as mentioned
above, that for these authors what is revealed in the Cross and

20
Perhaps I should be convinced otherwise on this point, but what I read in Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 2, Truth of God, trans. A. J. Walker (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 2004), 125-70 seems to remove any doubt about his speculative convictions in
this regard.

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

the descent into hell is what is always, already eternally true in
God. The paradoxical tensions that emerge from this position
are genuinely intriguing, and perhaps even more profound than
that of any other school of thought that has hitherto emerged.
However, like many others in the theological guild, I still fail to
find them persuasive.
All of this being said, my own very limited theological reflection on the Trinitarian revelation of Christ, his incarnation,
human action, suffering and death, and resurrection, should be
read as a kind of Thomistic homage to Barth and von Balthasar,
even if it is genuinely polemical in many respects. This may
seem strange to say, or artificial, but it is nevertheless quite true.
This homage comes not in the form of an attempt to agree with
these figures on foundational principles, as I think they have
side-stepped key resources from the classical tradition of
Catholic Trinitarian theology. Nevertheless, I am undertaking,
in what I hope is a respectful way, to reenvisage in Thomistic
terms what I think their theologies rightly aspire to, and to do
so in a way that few Thomists before me have sought to do.
How is it, after all, that the mysteries of the life of Jesus reveal
the most Holy Trinity? How is the Trinity made known to us in
the suffering, death, descent into hell, and resurrection of
Christ? If one does not follow the path of Barth and von Balthasar past Golgotha, what other paths might be available to
encounter that event, even ones from which we might
eventually gain a better perspective into the mystery of God
crucified? And how can the mysteries of the life of Christ place
us, thus, in direct contact with the inner mystery of the Holy
Trinity and invoke in us a development of contemplative
knowledge and love in the service of union with God?
Beauty and goodness in our world are a manifestation of an
uncreated beauty and love, and it is true that only a
participation metaphysics of esse can fully acknowledge this, as
both Aquinas and von Balthasar assert. But this means that there
has to be a sense of what God is immanently, as he is in himself,
as a precondition or a dimension of our understanding of what
derives from God and as a condition for our understanding of
God as he is present in the world, in the missions of the

ON WISDOM, MYSTERY, AND THE TRINITY

681

persons-in-procession, manifest in Christ. This new presence of
God in his Son, incarnate, crucified, and resurrected, is
beautiful and good, and is an invitation to mystical experience
“here below” of the inner life of God. It is one that concords
with doctrinal truth, and with an aspiration even to know God
more perfectly in the beatific vision and in the fullness of filial
adoption by grace. My aim in seeking to study the economic
mission of the Son incarnate in Trinitarian terms, then, does not
stem simplistically from a rejection of the modern Germanic
theological tradition. Rather, it accepts Barth’s and von
Balthasar’s new questions and invitations, reconceived in
Thomistic terms. In that sense it is an homage to their
aspirations, if not to the thought-form of either as such.
CONCLUSION
Let me finish where I began, with a word of thanks to the
interlocutors in this symposium. Their reflections testify to a
shared life in service to the common good of the Church,
especially in the important domain of academic theology. The
Thomistic tradition has its place in this common life, and indeed
I believe we can even still speak rightly when we denote
Aquinas as a “common doctor” within the Western theological
tradition. Even for those who conscientiously choose not to
follow him consistently, in the name of a wider universalism of
investigation, it can be readily noted that his thought has the
power to preserve many key insights that we have received
down through the ages, and to explain and advance understanding of core principles of Christian philosophy and of
Catholic theology, understood as sacra doctrina, that is to say,
as both science and wisdom. Modern Thomists provide us with
a range of resources to think about how this process of
reflection might continue in our own historical epoch, as we
encounter new questions or advances from various modern
scientific, philosophical, theological, or historical domains. It is
helpful in this regard to have people in the Church, and in the
theological guild, who maintain a deeper historical and contemporary intellectual commitment to the study and promotion

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THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P.

of Thomism. However, Aquinas can also only function as a
common doctor (in the qualified and nuanced way to which I
am alluding) if his thought is employed by his students and
disciples as a vehicle for conversation and common truthseeking, not only with those convicted of his insights, but also
and perhaps especially with all those who participate in the
wider common search for Christian wisdom, both Catholic and
non-Catholic. I hope that despite my own limits, this exchange
can be one example of such a form of theological conversation
in the search for common truths. If we can speak together
constructively regarding God, the very mystery of the Holy
Trinity, then it would seem that we should be able in turn to
speak together regarding everything else, as seen in light of
God. This “catholic” or universal aspiration would seem to be a
very salutary one for all theologians, united across their distinct
traditions, within the kairos to come.

BOOK REVIEWS
Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven: Philosophical Problems,
Thomistic Solutions. By CHRISTOPHER M. BROWN. Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. Pp. xiii + 487. $75.00
(hard). ISBN 978-0-8132-3414-4.
This book’s stated task is to demonstrate how St. Thomas Aquinas’s
teachings can “provide the basis for solutions” to four apparent philosophical
problems with Christian teaching on eternal life by “calling into question
common contemporary theological or philosophical presuppositions” (1).
Employing the tools of analytic philosophy, the book has four “Parts.” After the
front matter and introduction, part 1 (7-85) offers an account of the
aforementioned four problems. Next, there is a detailed and extensive
presentation of Thomas’s teachings on the life of the blessed in heaven,
subdivided into the saints’ “essential” reward (part 2, 89-193) and their
“accidental” reward (part 3, 197-387). Part 4 (391-448) then shows how
Thomas’s positions address the specific challenges presented by the four
apparent problems, closing with a brief, overall conclusion. There is a selected
bibliography (449-60), an index of Scripture references (461-62) and a general
index (463-87) including both names and subjects. There is no index of the
citations from Thomas’s writings, which is unfortunate but understandable, due
to the large number of them. A summary of the contents of the four main
sections follows.
The treatment in part 1 of four principal kinds of problems with the Catholic
Christian teaching on eternal life is not a merely hypothetical collection of such
difficulties, since, for each type, Brown presents one or two writers from recent
decades who have articulated the problem and have proposed a solution. He
summarizes their views and deals with them in earnest. The four problems (with
their respective proponents) can be broadly expressed as the difficulty of
conceiving of heaven as: (a) both mystical/individual and social/communal
(Germain Grisez and Katherin Rogers); (b) at once other-worldly/spiritual and
also this-worldly/bodily (Lynne Rudder Baker); (c) both perfect and dynamic
(Eric Silverman and Paul Griffiths); and (d) everlastingly nontedious (Bernard
Williams and Brian Ribeiro).
In parts 2 and 3, the author covers Thomas’s teaching on the final beatitude
of the saints. The “essential” reward (part 2) primarily and fundamentally is
constituted by the soul’s direct vision, by divine assistance, of God himself,
683

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involving a concomitant participation in divine eternity, the proper accidents of
delight, joy, love, and right willing, and a perfect cognition of creatures. The
“accidental” reward (part 3) includes embodiment, the communion of saints,
and the aureoles and fruits (merited rewards for graced, virtuous acts). Brown
suggests that holding that animals and plants, as well as artifacts, may exist in a
new heavens and (or) new earth along with the blessed, as part of their reward,
might be consistent with Thomas’s principles (though he is also forthright about
Thomas’s texts that would not allow for such existence).
In part 4, Brown, making references to his explanations in parts 2 and 3,
then explains a “how a Thomist can fruitfully respond” (391) to each of the
four problems presented in part 1. The following briefly sketches just some of
the conclusions of those explanations (despite the inevitable oversimplification). Regarding the first apparent problem of heaven (reconciling its
individual and communal aspects), Brown shows that Thomas’s view that the
essential beatitude of the souls of the saints consists in the mystical/individual
union with God through the beatific vision (which Brown calls the “Augustinian
intuition”) is fully compatible with their desire for bodily completion in
resurrection and for communion with the other saints not yet in heaven. That
is because, in Thomas’s mature teaching, these latter desires are necessary not
for the essence of beatitude but for its well-being (bene esse); thus, they are
accidental, rather than essential, to the saints’ beatitude. Further, the proper
accidents of this beatific vision (including “volitional aspects” such as love, joy,
and delight), as well as the human operations of knowing, willing, and even
sensing (for those resurrected), which come into play in interrelation with
others, are all compatible with that visio Dei. The second apparent problem—
the purported difficulty of recognizing the continuity between a spiritual,
eternal, bodily life and the bodily life we now experience—is answered (in part)
by Thomas’s insistence (a) that human persons are both aeviternal (in that their
souls once created never cease existing) and temporal (in their corporeality and
in certain intellectual operations), and (b) that their bodily persistence is due to
God’s grace elevating and maintaining their nature in existence. One answer to
the third apparent difficulty—conceiving of heaven as both perfect and
dynamic—is that because, for Thomas, God’s perfection is not static but
perfectly and supereminently dynamic, the saint’s beatific vision of that
perfection likewise is not something “static,” even considered in itself. But even
were one for the sake of argument to concede such an operation to be “static,”
Thomas nevertheless holds that the saints may engage in other operations,
including intellectual operations and bodily operations (for the risen), that are
compatible with (though distinct from) the beatific vision, operations that are
expected as part of the reward of heaven. The fourth and final apparent
problem is that heaven would eventually become tedious unless human persons
were so radically changed in their nature that it is impossible to conceive of
them as the same kinds of creatures they were before such a transformation.
Brown shows how Thomas’s teaching about receiving sanctifying grace and
growth in the spiritual life takes into account the truth that at least some

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transformation is needed in this life, namely, by grace, for human persons to be
fit for happiness in the next.
As is typical of the analytic method, Brown’s expositions of arguments
(whether of recent philosophers or of Thomas) are provided in painstakingly
enumerated, logically structured sequences of premises, subconclusions, and
conclusions, with each sometimes spanning up to a page or more. The
arguments are then analyzed, with various parts being addressed on their merits,
as needed. Typically, the author does not find fault with the logical structure of
an argument but rather explores or calls into question one or more of the
premises or the presuppositions behind them. Although the use of the jargon
and symbols of logic is limited, the reader should be ready occasionally for an
unexplained technical expression (e.g., “modus tollens” [38]) or logical
operator (e.g., “~” [9 and 31]). The author often refers back to arguments only
by an initialism or to parts of arguments by number, usually requiring the reader
to look back at paragraphs on previous pages. While this style can allow for
clarity and economy of expression for analyzing intricate logical puzzles, it also
makes demands on the reader to be an active participant in tracking the
argumentation. While the presentation is necessarily painstaking, Brown’s
approach is not narrowly stolid or merely mechanical. He can occasionally be
penetrating in investigating Thomas’s teaching on a concept across various texts
(for example, when he speaks about the “subtlety” of the resurrected body
[294-97]).
While the book is primarily philosophical in its approach, it also engages
with what would ordinarily be considered theological sources. For example,
Brown will occasionally cite Catholic magisterial documents—and a few times,
the views of venerable figures in the Catholic tradition (e.g., Augustine)—as
lending support to Thomas’s position. He counts the consistency of Thomas’s
thought with the Catholic Christian tradition as a point in its favor (446).
Nevertheless, Brown makes appeals to such sources not as invocations of
religious authorities, but as articulations of classic or standard Catholic teaching
and belief.
As already mentioned, the book is, in part, an engagement with contemporary ideas and challenges concerning Catholic Christian teaching on
heavenly life. It does not aim at discovering the history or genesis of those ideas
and challenges, or at tracing how they may have developed. Similarly, when
describing Thomas’s teachings, Brown’s treatment does not explain their
historical antecedents or consider what concrete circumstances might have
occasioned developments in them over the course of his career. However,
Brown occasionally acknowledges such developments, as, for example, when
discussing Thomas’s ideas about the saints’ participation in eternity (175ff.).
Nevertheless, the exposition focuses chiefly on a detailed, organized, formal
presentation of the Angelic Doctor’s thought. In doing this, Brown refers to
textual evidence directly from Thomas’s own writings, often citing several
instances, sometimes from across the Common Doctor’s oeuvre. Overall, the
book cites a total of at least thirty-eight of Thomas’s works. There is only

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sporadic reference to secondary literature as ancillary explanation of Thomas’s
positions; however, when there is mention of a present-day controversary or
area of scholarly attention, Brown duly cites sources for reference. Such
citations of secondary literature, it may be remarked, whether in footnotes or
the selected bibliography, are all of works written in the English language (with
the exception of citations of Thomas’s works).
Overall, I offer one caution concerning Brown’s treatment of Thomas’s
thought, which is largely terminological. He states repeatedly that the separated
soul is a human person, and uses the term “human person” consistent with that
position: “although Saint Thomas makes it clear throughout his career that the
human person is not—never is—identical to the human soul, he thinks that a
human person S can be—and is during the interim state—composed of S’s soul
alone” (201). Brown explains that he holds for a “survivalist development of
Saint Thomas’s thought” (202 n. 15; emphasis added), admitting that this is a
“controversial” interpretation in a current scholarly discussion on the
“ontological status of human persons in the interim state.” Those familiar with
this survivalist versus corruptionist debate may not be surprised that a
purportedly Thomistic philosopher designates the separated soul as a “human
person.” This is not to say that Brown (or Brown’s Thomas, as it were) holds
the human person to be “identical to the human soul.” However, Brown’s
version of survivalism leads him to expressions that seem as though he is
affirming such to be the case. In particular, he frequently refers to the body as
a part of the “accidental reward” of the blessed, according to Thomas. It is true
that, for the mature Thomas, the body is not essential to the blessed soul’s
ultimate reward. Yet Brown also states repeatedly that, for Thomas, the body is
not essential to the human person’s heavenly reward. While this too may be a
defensible expression in accord with the principles of Thomas’s thought as
Brown develops it, such an expression nevertheless leaves unstated that, for
Thomas, the body is essential to the human person. This is unstated by Brown,
because it seems that his version of survivalism would not grant such a statement.
All this does not vitiate his results; it just means that readers must thoroughly
account for his development of Thomas’s thought, and its terminological
consequences, in their interpretation of Brown’s work.
In employing the thought of Thomas to respond to the four specific
challenges to Catholic belief, Brown succeeds in the task he set for himself,
showing how Thomas’s thought offers a plausible, thorough, and nuanced
account of eternal life, which both anticipates the apparent conundrums raised
and provides abundant resources for addressing them. However, although it
covers many topics in Thomas’s eschatology, the book would not serve as an
overview of it, even from a philosophical viewpoint (nor does it claim to do so).
For example, the topic of the final judgment (whether general or particular)
appears in only a few places. Nevertheless, the book could be a useful text as
part of a philosophy (or theology) course on matters of eschatology wherever
the Christian tradition is of interest. Professors, graduate students, and
advanced undergraduates should be able to profit from it. Those who study any

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of the four apparent problems considered, or Thomas’s teaching on eternal life,
will be well served to consult Brown’s logical dissections and analyses. The book
may also be a useful resource for anyone attempting a sophisticated and
thorough apologetical project on Christian views of the afterlife.
Those already familiar with Thomas’s writings, whether on these questions
or others, will not be surprised at how often they provide resources for
addressing current challenges to Catholic Christian conceptions of the life of
the world to come. Brown’s analysis and conclusions will not convince every
reader to accept Thomas’s thought on heaven. Furthermore, not all those who
study Thomas will be persuaded by the more adventurous of Brown’s
developments of Thomas’s doctrine. Nevertheless, the author’s efforts offer
contemporary scholarship a thoughtful exploration and useful application of
Thomas’s teachings on the life of the blessed.
BRYAN KROMHOLTZ, O.P.
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

Summistae: The Commentary Tradition on Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa
Theologiae” from the 15th to the 17th Centuries. Volume 58 of Ancient
and Medieval Philosophy–Series 1. Edited by LIDIA LANZA and MARCO
TOSTE. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2021. Pp. vii + 447. €120.00
(hard). ISBN 978-9-4627-0262-2.
This book makes a valuable contribution to a field of study that has not
always received the attention from scholars that it merits. The editors have
assembled a series of learned essays that treat specific instances in the “Thomist”
commentatorial tradition. “Thomist,” according to the editors’ usage, refers to
figures who have commented on the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas.
Otherwise put, “Thomist” is taken in its material sense. Thirteen chapters are
divided into two parts: part 1 is titled “Framing the Commentary Tradition”;
part 2 is “Discussions in the Commentary Tradition.” The editors have chosen
to limit their research and the research of their contributors to the fifteenth,
sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. This time frame includes a period that
once went by the name “Second Thomism,” although current scholarship
prefers to view the commentatorial tradition on Aquinas as a body of literature
that begins after his death and continues to the present moment. The
contributors to the volume represent a broad sampling of international scholars
whose university positions and other credentials give evidence of their standing
in the fields of medieval and renaissance studies.

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Since it is difficult to make general observations on a collection of selected
essays, each chapter will be mentioned sequentially. The editors themselves
admit that “the articles collected in the volume cover only a very small number
of questions of the STh, but they bear witness to the philosophical and
theological contribution of the commentaries to 16th- and 17th- century thought”
(76). Overall, the contributors to this volume and its editors have accomplished
their purpose with an excellence in research and presentation that makes the
purchase of the book indispensable for both students of Aquinas and scholars
of the late Middle Ages and the long Renaissance. One indication of the work’s
scholarly standards may be found in the bibliographical entries that accompany
each chapter. For instance, the bibliography for the first chapter, “The
Commentary Tradition of the Summa theologiae,” runs from pages 77 to 93.
The remaining chapters exhibit the same comprehensiveness with respect to
both the primary sources and the pertinent secondary literature for each
chapter’s specific topic.
The editors inform their readers early on that not every one of the
commentators mentioned in the volume adopted the same outlook with respect
to Aquinas and his Summa theologiae as did John Capreolus (d. 1444), the
fifteenth-century author of the Defensiones Divi Thomae, who has earned the
epithet “Prince of the Thomists.” Indeed, some of the commentators that appear
in Summistae were not at all concerned with vindicating or defending the views
of Aquinas. The question, however, of how much the commentators discussed
in this book remain faithful to the Summa theologiae and to what extent they
do so falls outside the scope of the editors’ purpose. To pursue this latter inquiry,
so the editors insist, “would be more appropriate in a volume on the history of
Thomism” (10). So while the essays in part 2 treat various questions that arise
within the Thomist commentatorial tradition, they reveal more about the
general tenor of Scholastic theology in the stipulated time frame than they do
about theological or philosophical positions that Aquinas does or does not hold
in his Summa theologiae.
This feature of the work is not a deficiency. Ample scholarly work exists to
help the contemporary student separate the Thomist sheep from the erring goats.
Few would deny that Cardinal Cajetan (d. 1535) was a Thomist. Fewer, on the
other hand, would argue that Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (d. 1332/1334) was.
The essays in this volume reveal the rich content of academic debate within
which the Thomist commentatorial tradition arose and to which it contributed.
Even a cursory review of the Thomist commentatorial tradition confirms that
the noneclectic commentators by and large defend the School’s positions. When,
on the other hand, a commentator otherwise loyal to Aquinas departed in a
significant way from one of the Thomist positions, the reaction of Thomists was
swift and sure. A good example of this minor eclecticism appears in the
sixteenth-century Thomist, Ambrosius Catharinus (Lancelot Politi) who died in
1553. He demurred from Thomist teaching on the Immaculate Conception and
followed the Scotistic argument. However, the pressure from his Thomist peers
to conform resulted in his retreat from a full-scale defense of the Scotist views.

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Other examples are found within the history of Thomism, broadly construed.
One might consider the admittedly complex figure Tommaso Campanella
(d.1639). His Apologeticum in controversia de conceptione beatae Virginis
published around 1625 borrowed arguments from Catharinus to defend the
Virgin’s Immaculate Conception. His opinion won him the favor of the Spanish
authorities under whose rule he was imprisoned in Naples for almost three
decades, but not that of his Dominican Thomist brothers, who already possessed
sufficient evidence from his writings on astrology and other occult matters to
put Campanella outside of both the Thomist commentatorial tradition and
perhaps the Dominican Order. The editors are correct not to try to establish a
rule about what makes for an author being a Thomist. Instead, they chose those
who have commented on the Summa theologiae, and have left to others the
unenviable task of separating authentic followers of Aquinas from those wellmeaning but eclectic authors who even may have flatly contradicted the views
of the Common Doctor.
Part 1 continues with an essay by two scholars, M. Brinzel and C. Schabel,
who provide a good sampling of the range of views espoused by Summa
commentators. In their essay on the authority of Aquinas and his Summa in the
late Middle Ages, they describe an episode in which some Franciscans
entertained the opinion that the pope made a mistake in canonizing Aquinas
and would likely be blamed for having made a heretic a saint. These Spiritual
Franciscans expressed chagrin about the way Aquinas both described the
poverty of Christ and took exception to the theological position that held that
the true followers of the Lord are forbidden to own anything. The essay’s
authors grant that Aquinas grew in his status as an “auctoritas,” an important
classification in a Church that relies on teaching to present the message of
salvation. At the same time, they observe that Aquinas has gained this status
even in the face of controversies that seem to emerge from his writings.
Furthermore, these scholars see purported ambiguity in Aquinas and various
interpretations of his texts as an essential feature in generating a commentatorial
tradition. I would grant that these factors may provide a material cause for the
Thomist commentatorial tradition. They do not, however, explain the place
that Aquinas holds in the Catholic Church’s hierarchy of recognized authorities.
In fact, overall in the volume, little is said about the role that the Catholic
Church plays in establishing Aquinas as her Common Doctor, especially after
the Council of Trent. Even references to Pope Pius V “who ‘legitimized’ Aquinas
as the scholastic author per [sic] excellence” (32 n. 109) come with a reminder
that this reforming pontiff was a Dominican.
In chapter 3, U. Zahnd inquires about the genesis of a genre, that is, the
commentatorial tradition itself. This article contains valuable information about
early Thomist commentators and discusses how the Summa theologiae gradually
replaced both Peter the Lombard’s Sentences as well as the commentaries this
textbook generated. The movement from Sentence commentary to Summa
developed differently in different parts of Europe. In chapter 4, M. Gaetano
continues this exposition with a carefully annotated essay—five pages of

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bibliography for twenty pages of text—that deals mainly with the teaching of
the Summa at the University of Padua. These aforementioned authors do
mention how, after the Council of Trent, academic authorities began to insist
that the Summa provide a guide and textbook for theological lectures. This
practice became known as theology done in via Sancti Thomae. At Padua,
Thomists first engaged creatively the dominant humanism of the day, with the
result that one can speak of a Renaissance Thomism, an engagement that
considerably affected the overall tenor of Thomism. For instance, Cajetan, who
studied at Padua, was influenced by the humanists, whereas the Salmanticenses,
although Thomist authors of the seventeenth century, were members of a
reform of Carmel that preferred austerity over typical Renaissance humanist
values. This preference influenced their commentaries.
Part 2 examines certain select discussions in the commentary tradition. A
review of this length can only signal the themes chosen. All in all, these various
discussions reveal the richness of the Thomist engagement with theological and
philosophical topics. I. Agostini writes on seventeenth-century Dominican
“theology” and debates about the proofs for God’s existence recorded in S.
Mariale’s Bibliotheca, a repertoire of Scholastic opinions. M. Mantovani
discusses the same topic and the “Five Ways” as treated by the sixteenth-century
Iberian commentators, most of whom were Dominicans. W. Duba investigates
the Lumen gloriae, the distinctive perfection of the created intellect that enables
it to see God without the aid of a psychic likeness (similitudo). Duba looks at
three Jesuit commentators, Molina (d. 1600), Vázquez (d. 1604), and Suárez (d.
1617). The author insightfully exposes a feature of what some authors call
eclectic Thomism: “Molina refutes every argument of Thomas and the Thomists,
yet still claims to adhere to it” (264). In other words, he denies nothing and
undermines everything. H. Hattab discusses the same early modern Thomists
and their discussions on Aquinas’s treatment of creation and subsistence. D.
Novotný and T. Machula take up the topic of angelic location as discussed in
sixteenth-century Dominican commentators. Jean-Luc Solère treats the
evolution in moral theology from invincible ignorance to tolerance, again with
reference to Jesuit teachers, Vázquez and Rodrigo de Arriaga (d. 1667). In brief,
Solère shows their influence on the French Protestant skeptic and defender of
religious tolerance, P. Bayle (d. 1706). A. Wagner opts for the theme of disbelief
that Aquinas treats in question 10 of the Secunda secundae and explores how
the text has been interpreted by his major commentators, both Dominican and
Jesuit. M. Toste examines a sixteenth-century debate about self-preservation
and self-sacrifice that provides a background to the later debates about person
and the common good. L. Lanza discusses a very interesting question in moral
theology. His essay exhibits various medieval and modern arguments on the
question of whether a prisoner lawfully condemned to death may escape licitly
from his punishment. This essay gives a good example of the way moral
theology develops during the period of nascent casuistry.
Helpful indices of manuscripts cited in the text and authors, both before the
nineteenth century and after, complete this scholarly achievement.

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Overall, this collection of essays provides a sampling of the fruitful
exchanges that Summa commentators carried on within the centuries indicated.
As the editors stipulate, it is not a history of Thomism. To appreciate the
Thomist commentatorial tradition formally considered, one would have to
relate the material in this volume to the Leonine revival of Thomism (1879) and
the papally approved Twenty-Four Theses issued in 1914. The work contained
in Summistae provides ample evidence for the dialectical nature of Scholastic
philosophy and theology. The aforementioned Roman documents, however,
which shape a great deal of twentieth-century Catholic thought and teaching,
clarify and set forth the principles and determinationes that make Aquinas’s
Summa theologiae the perennial guide for Catholic theology. To make this
concluding observation in no way intends to detract from the scholarship that
this worthwhile book exhibits. One suasion: Recall that the last complete
English translation of the Summa theologiae dates from 1964 to 1973. The vast
majority of the texts studied in this volume, as the Index of Manuscripts (42730) indicates, remain in Scholastic Latin.
ROMANUS CESSARIO, O.P.
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral Theology. By MATTHEW
LEVERING. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
2021. Pp viii + 360. $45.00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8028-7950-9.
In Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton, 2022) Lorraine
Daston examines the ancient connection between rules and imitation. Whether
learning the arts or languages, or more importantly the moral rectitude and
correctness of conduct, the paradigm or rule (paradigma, regula) is
indispensable. While emulation is not undertaken in the absence of rules
considered as prescriptions or laws, models of virtue worthy of imitation are
keys to what the Romans called humanitas.
For Daston the Rule of St. Benedict is a case in point. It is organized into
seventy-three chapters containing a plethora of precepts or prescriptions.
Nonetheless, the proximate regula is the Abbot, who is a measured-measure
under the light of Christ, but also a proximate measure in the order of imitation.
Otherwise, the Rule would become congeries of what we might call rules and
regulations. Indeed, such exhortations abound in New Testament, often in
parables such as that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), but also in direct
prescriptions: “Come follow me” (Luke 18:22); “Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:21); “A

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new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved
you” (John 13:34); “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
Daston poses the important question. “Why did model and paradigm not
only disappear from the list of synonyms for rule but actually become its
antonyms? How did it become possible, indeed self-evident, to oppose rules and
paradigms as immiscible ways of knowing, a leitmotif of twentieth century
philosophy.” She is somewhat lenient about casuistry since it preserves the need
to model what is the same or different in various cases for the purposes of
guiding conduct pertaining to judgment. In answer to her own question, she
concludes: “In the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and other
Enlightenment moral philosophers, conscience explicitly replaced casuistry.”
This, in turn, became the sanctuary of a rule that neither is heteronomous
imitation, nor bends by casuistical reasoning.
Thus understood, conscience is deeper and more sublime than what is
learned “by rote,” an expression taken from the Latin word rota—a wheel of
memorization. But what is conscience? Perhaps an intellectual light or a habit;
or a treasury of precepts; or, in an “existential,” vein as that which distinguishes
one person’s agency from that of another—the true self, so to speak. Where
does this leave the other modes of formation?
This brings us to Matthew Levering’s The Abuse of Conscience. He
characterizes his work as a “short history of, or sourcebook to, twentieth
century developments.” Rather than providing a new account of conscience, his
aim is “largely diagnostic,” namely, to chart the course of what he calls a “failed
revolution” in twentieth-century Catholic moral theology.
To make a long story short, from the sixteenth century on Catholic moral
theology largely centered on conscience, law, obligation, and casuistry. It was
an era of ever more abundant ecclesiastical law, as well as an urgent need to
moderate laxist and rigorist extremes in matters pertaining to confession.
Relying on the Scholastic, and mostly the Thomistic, tradition as it was
understood in the post-Tridentine centuries, Levering shows how moral
theologians were interested in the sources and channels of obligation as well as
their mitigating factors in particular cases. Casuistry aimed in part to relieve
conscience in some cases and but also to bind it in others by presenting a
minimal obligation.
In the wake of the Leonine revival of Thomism, many moral theologians
came to see that Thomas’s more consistent attention was given to the natural
and theological virtues in the moral life, which had been not so much ignored
altogether but consigned to the periphery. The same can be said of Thomas’s
attention to the rich theological resources in sacred Scripture, the imitation of
Christ, and in the eschatological mysteries. The issue was not the intrinsic defect
of casuistry but rather its pedagogical insufficiency.
On a sound reading of Thomas, law and conscience cannot alone do the
work of the virtues of prudence and charity. According to Levering, the two
most important voices were those of Michel Labourdette, O.P. (1908-90)
before the Second Vatican Council and Servais-Théodore Pinckaers, O.P

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(1925-2008) afterward. But they were not alone. The council called for “the
perfecting of moral theology” by means of more vivid contact with Scripture
and the Christian mysteries (Optatam Totius 16). For Levering, this is the
revolution that failed to happen. Especially in the mainline academic guild of
moral theology “the new postconciliar morality integrated some relatively
superficial discussion of Christ and the Holy Spirit into an even more
conscience-centered moral framework, now with an emphasis on responsible
freedom and human liberation from structures of oppression.”
Levering wants to diagnose how the slow-moving but persistent effort to
reform moral theology failed to achieve its goals. The first three chapters—
“Conscience and the Bible,” “Conscience and the Moral Manuals,” “Conscience
and the Thomists”—provide a condensed but very capable account of the
reasons for renewing moral theology from within the tradition. As a bonus,
Levering provides more than one hundred pages of notes that continue the story
in more granular detail. The pièce de resistance, however, is chapter 4,
“Conscience and German Thought,” which is the longest and most interesting
chapter. It is likely that readers of The Thomist are already familiar with the
material in the first three chapters, namely, the main theologians who called for
a reform within the scriptural, patristic, and Scholastic patrimony. It is in the
final chapter that Levering explains why that reform ran into some very choppy
waters.
In this chapter Levering treats Heidegger, Jaspers, Bonhoeffer, Barth, Rahner,
Fuchs, Häring, and Ratzinger. Admittedly, this is a strange set of characters to
hold together except by virtue their engagement in post-Nietzschean German
thought. Levering treats them in chronological order even though three of the
theologians (Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Ratzinger) are rather different from the
others, and in the case of Ratzinger quite different from Bonhoeffer and Barth
inasmuch as he insisted on preserving both the natural and the supernatural
foundations of conscience.
Levering’s overarching point is this. Had the reform of moral theology
remained within the compass of tradition(s), which is where it began, the task
was relatively easy to understand, namely, excavating coherently the full set of
sources of moral theology and communicating a refurbished moral paideia to
late-twentieth-century Christians. There was, however, an alternative program
that shared some of the sources and concerns of the traditional reform party
but aspired to deeper things. Levering characterizes it not merely as an authentic
anthropology but an anthropology of authenticity. Spelled out in different ways
by various theologians, conscience becomes more than a habit or an act of the
moral life but the foundation and basal expression of the human person in his
singularity and freedom.
Levering notes that in Heidegger’s reworking of Existentialism, “conscience
is an ontological reality, not something to do with intellectual judgment.” It
calls distracted Dasein to embrace the human being-thrown toward death. This
is our deepest potentiality, one that for Heidegger “unsettles its being-at-home
and makes conspicuous its singular being-in-the world.” It is not moral appraisal

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so much as acting with existential authenticity. As Jaspers explains: “Conscience
is the basis on which I must recognize or reject what is to have being for me,
the reality that interposes itself between my existence and my true self-being.”
Neither Heidegger nor Jaspers were theists, much less Christians. Levering’s
inclusion of Bonhoeffer and Barth is interesting in this regard. For his part,
Bonhoeffer reworks the premise that conscience is the human self in affirmation
of its thrownness. Such conscience exhibits the post-peccatum and apostate
approach to life by arrogating the place of God, as though by knowing the
judging ourself “we might reunify our being.” In a similar vein, Barth calls it a
“mad autonomism.” For Barth ordinary conscience has no morally constructive
role to play until and unless it is awakened by God’s command, in which case it
has a witnessing function—reminding us of God’s command directly addressed
to us. If I understand Levering correctly, the problem is not the theonomic or
Christocentric solution proposed by Bonhoeffer and Barth but rather that they
allow unredeemed conscience to be mere self-possession, and thus by default
merely natural. The ontologizing of conscience as selfhood remains undisturbed.
Levering’s survey of Catholic theologians is fascinating. Regarding the early
Rahner he writes: “Like Barth and Bonhoeffer, but without their insistent
Christocentrism,” Rahner suggests that we need to regard the individual human
being as “the object and goal of a moral command which is not identical with
the validity of general principles, but is a concrete, particular, individual
obligation.” Rahner identifies this not with prudence, which, on the basis of
antecedent truths of morality, decides in the particular case, but rather with
conscience. Hence, there is not only an expansion of conscience into the domain
of the concrete and particular but also a distance from the objective truth
provided by synderesis. Conscience, Levering observes, not only applies
universal norms to particular situations “but also apprehends what I, as an
utterly unique person, must do here and now.” Because a person is utterly
unique and unrepeatable the same holds for personal freedom. Conscience is
the reflection of existential interiority. This is the mark of its dignity, and
perhaps why conscience, for Rahner, cannot be equated or simply denominated
as primordial habit (synderesis) or as an act but rather represents the whole of
oneself in transcendental freedom.
In his postconciliar work Fuchs perhaps simplifies Rahner. He argues that
no norms are revealed by God but rather all of them are derived from natural
law as human norms. But these norms are actualized by the exercise of
conscience, which is the person “totally present to himself.” When the decision
of conscience makes itself apparent it compels from “the very depths of our
being.” Concrete and general norms are helpful, to be sure. But the historicity
and social complexities of every norm constitute limitations. Hard work must
be done to reach objectively valid judgments. Conscience is the is the
ineradicable personal dimension of this work, and it constitutes the hard-won
and deeply interior quest for moral maturity. Have the cardinal virtues become
otiose?

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Such is not true for Häring, for whom prudence remains a principal virtue
necessary for the application of conscience. Nonetheless, conscience is the
principle of “the inner unity and completeness of the psychic powers.” Häring
certainly remains theonomic, and hence he underscores the fundamental option
for or against God. Indeed, conscience is the heart moved by the Holy Spirit,
and it is made whole by faith. He proposes that conscience properly understood
as the living center of Christian ethics can make good on the work of the casuists,
who depended too much on conventional and legalistic assumptions.
For his part, Ratzinger underscores the incessant conflict between freedom
and authority, which in modern times renders the traditional morality of
absolute moral norms a kind of prison. What better get-out-of-jail card than
conscience, especially if conscience is understood as the very foundation of
personal dignity and liberty? Ratzinger adopts the middle position, which is to
hold that conscience receives truth from synderesis (which Ratzinger calls
anamnesis)—the habit of first principles. Conscience pertains to the act of
judging. In this sense, conscience serves prudence and the other virtues.
Otherwise, as Reinhold Hütter has put it, the gift of truth received in synderesis
is replaced by the “transcendental experience of freedom.” Is there a way back
to the middle position? Can we distinguish between the Rule of Self and SelfRuling?
RUSSELL HITTINGER
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Reading the Church Fathers with St. Thomas Aquinas: Historical and
Systematical Perspectives. Edited by PIOTR ROSZAK and JÖRGEN VIJGEN.
Bibliotheque de l’École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses 189.
Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2021. Pp. 520. €78.00 (paper). ISBN: 9782-5035-9320-3.
Recent years have seen a renewed appreciation and consideration of St.
Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation and use of Scripture in the scriptural
commentaries themselves, as well as in his summae. Volumes offering collected
essays on scriptural commentaries have emerged, and recently theologians such
as Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, working under the auspices of “biblical
Thomism,” have produced edited volumes such as Reading Sacred Scripture with
Thomas Aquinas (Brepols, 2015) and Towards a Biblical Thomism: Thomas
Aquinas and the Renewal of Biblical Theology (Eunsa, 2018). These
contributions unpack Thomas’s scriptural hermeneutics and interpretive tools
for readers while observing the application of these approaches to particular

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theological questions (e.g., Christ and the moral life). The works strive to
overcome artificial distinctions between speculative theology and biblical
exegesis, affirming instead the foundational and generative roles that Scripture
plays in proper expressions of sacra doctrina.
Roszak and Vijgen’s recent collection, Reading the Church Fathers with St.
Thomas Aquinas, extends the aims of biblical Thomism to include Thomas’s
reception, interpretation, and use of the Church Fathers. Rather than seeing
Thomas’s engagement with patristic authors as belonging to an entirely different
methodological order from his study of Scripture, the editors posit that
“Scripture and the Church Fathers are distinct but not separate sources because
it is through the Fathers that one is able to have access to the correct sense of
the biblical text” (9). They observe that Thomas works from the premise that
the Holy Spirit both authors sacred Scripture and inspires the interpreter to
plumb its depth. In those instances where the Fathers succeed in transmitting
the content of Scripture as received by the Church, their work itself, under the
direction of the Spirit, is understood as authoritative. Sacra doctrina is thus
tasked not only with elucidating Scripture; it must also convey the teachings of
the sancti doctores who have already excelled in handing on the content of
Scripture. Roszak and Vijgen conclude: “In other words, one cannot confine
the function of Scriptures to a past event in the history of the transmission of
the faith, which would then be followed by Tradition and the Church” (11).
Rather, as directed the Spirit, the tradition handed on by the early Christian
Fathers extends the communication of Scripture through its inspired
interpretation.
Affirming the deep continuity between divine revelation in sacred Scripture
and its patristic expression rests, according to the editors, on Thomas’s rejection
of a notion of revelation as a static event that does not require the active
participation of its recipients. God’s revelation, while itself a formal cause of
the human knowledge of salvation, finds its end only through a kind of efficient
and final causality wherein human beings are moved by grace to experience
God’s self-disclosure as a “participation in the knowledge of God and saints, a
provident God, incarnated in Christ as Mediator” (12). The subsequent
theological tradition is therefore not a series of accretions obscuring the pure
form of the biblical text. On the contrary, it is “something embedded in
Revelation—the product of faithful and integral responses to the authoritative
work of the Holy Spirit” (108). The editors acknowledge that Thomas
understands the Fathers as being quasi proprie and probabile; these human
readers of Scripture sometimes err and they sometimes advance disparate
opinions. Thus Thomas often sets the Fathers into comparative debates where
he respects their expositions of the biblical text while nevertheless locating their
discrete opinions within a wider theological field of vision. Roszak writes:
“Treating them as teachers of the faith, Thomas does not wish to remain
uncritical of their opinions but wants to evaluate them in literary terms, drawing
attention to historical circumstances and theological context” (112). Such
critical evaluation constitutes an essential part of a reverent reception of the

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Fathers in elucidating the biblical text. The editors summarize Thomas’s
theological efforts as “at the service of accepting God’s Word and developing
its potential, in which the Fathers are helpful” (128). The collected essays in the
volume further elucidate points at which Thomas finds the Fathers vital for
understanding and handing God’s revelation in sacred Scripture.
The volume’s thirteen essays offer a wide variety of perspectives on Thomas’s
reception and use of the Fathers. As with many compendiums, a challenge of
the volume is that it lacks explicit organization of topics by method, chronology,
or topic, leaving the reader to discern his own way through its content (the
editors do suggest an order [13-14]). Roszak’s “How Is the Patristic Method
Shaping sacra doctrina in Aquinas?” grounds the general purpose of the book
and establishes Thomas’s understanding of patristic authority, his evaluation of
its diverse expressions, and its deployment in constructive theological
arguments. The chapter sets the methodological direction of the volume,
arguing that Thomas fundamentally approaches the work of theology ad
mentem Patrum. The remaining chapters loosely treat either (1) Thomas’s use
of a particular Father, often on a specific question (Dahan on Jerome,
Conticello on Theophylact of Bulgaria, Cuddy on Isidore and Augustine on the
law, Harkins on the Damascene and Christ’s knowledge, and McDonough on
Augustine and Christ’s headship of the Church); or (2) Thomas’s application of
the patristic tradition to a given theological question (Bonino on angelology,
Sullivan on habitus, Wawrykow on grace, Klooster on the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, Hofer on religious life, Vijgen on penance, and Kromholtz on
eschatology). It should not surprise the reader that Thomas’s use of Augustine
emerges as a lodestone in several essays; one might group the essays by Sullivan,
Cuddy, Wawrykow, Klooster, and McDonough into a set that together provide
a panoramic of Thomas’s reception of various texts by Augustine, the
development of Augustine’s own thought, and the development of Thomas’s
theology based on his progressive encounter with Augustine’s works (e.g., on
habitus, grace, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit). An organizing principle such as
Thomas’s Christology and the grace that flows from Christ through the
sacramental life of the Church might also give an order to the chapters. One
could begin with chapters by Harkins and McDonough treating the patristic
influence on Thomas’s understanding of Christ’s knowledge and headship;
followed by discussions of grace, habitus, the gifts, and the law, by Wawrykow,
Sullivan, Klooster, and Cuddy respectively; and then culminate with studies of
religious life, the sacrament of penance, and eschatology by Hofer, Vijgen, and
Kromholtz. Such an ordo might further highlight the ways in which Thomas
sees the tradition of the antiqui doctores extending the content of Scripture into
systematic insights concerning the saving action of God in and through the
incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
In addition to Roszak’s methodological essay, a number of contributions
cultivate important new scholarship or consolidate gains through an integrative
summary. For example, Conticello’s chapter introduces the Latin medieval
reception of Theophylact, noting that Thomas drew on his writings in preparing

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the Catena aurea; the chapter underscores Thomas’s generative reception of the
patristic tradition for the sake of his own scriptural exposition. Bonino’s
treatment of Thomas’s treatise on angels (STh I, qq. 50-64) establishes a
working distinction between the way in which Scripture norms theological
reflection on the articles of faith and the way in which the Fathers may be placed
into theological debate on speculative questions such as the knowledge or grace
of angels (139). Bonino concludes that Thomas approaches the work of the
Church Fathers as a mirror and a model for the contemporary theologian; here
again, there is continuity rather than rupture between his treatment of Scripture
and patristic tradition (154). Hofer’s chapter on the influence of patristic
sources in his accounts of religious life provides a marvelous treatment of
Thomas’s rejection of anti-mendicant critiques of religious life. After
establishing the parameters of the anti-mendicant controversies (1252-59 and
1268-71) and Thomas’s responses in the polemics (including Contra
impugnantes, De perfectione, and Contra retrahentes) Hofer explores Thomas’s
use of Jerome to demonstrate the deviation of William of Saint-Amour and
Gerard of Abbeville from the patristic tradition and thus from Scripture.
Jerome’s denunciation of Jovinian and Vigilantius for setting the evangelical
counsels of poverty and chastity on par with wealth and marriage give Thomas
effective parallels to draw with the secular masters of his day; Hofer effectively
traces this line of argument through Thomas’s polemical works, sermons, and
into the treatise in the Summa on religious life (STh II-II, qq. 186-89). Hofer
also observes the roles of Augustine, Denys, and Gregory of the Great—sources
deployed by William and thus engaged by Thomas, and he extends this to
include Thomas’s appreciation for Gregory and Origen in the Summa. Noting
that Thomas looks to the lives of the saints as rationale for both the mendicant
life and theological practice, Hofer quotes Thomas quoting Gregory: “In the
life of the saints, we realize what we ought to understand in scripture” (334).
Taken as a unit, the chapters by Sullivan, Wawrykow, and Klooster offer
strong insight into the life of grace, underscoring that Thomas thought and
wrote ad mentem Patrum. For Sullivan, Thomas insists “that habitus is
necessary for human perfection—in this life and in the next, even when we are
united with God perfectly” (184). He concludes that Thomas’s reception and
integration of Maximus, Denys, and Augustine with an Aristotelian account of
habitus enables the category to be used for an expansive vision of the moral life.
Klooster’s chapter on the gifts dovetails with Sullivan. His account explores the
Summa theologiae treatment of the gifts and offers a complementary reading of
the gifts in the Matthew and Galatians commentaries (283-88). Noting
Thomas’s emerging appreciation for the late Augustine and the challenges of
semi-Pelagianism, Klooster suggests that Thomas’s theology of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit “is Augustinian in its origins and that it becomes even more so in
his mature theology of the Summa theologiae” (294). Klooster’s conclusion
parallels Wawrykow’s comprehensive treatment of the roles of the Fathers in
Thomas’s understanding of grace. Wawrykow establishes that the Summa’s
treatise on grace (STh I-II, qq. 109-14) is primarily indebted to Augustine, but

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he distinguishes between those sources of Augustine reported by the Lombard
which make their way into treatise on grace and those which Thomas identifies
himself, primarily coming from De correptione et gratia, De predestinatione
sanctorum, and De dono perseverantiae (248). These latter works exercise
enormous influence in Thomas’s understanding of grace, with new emphasis
being given to the grace of auxilium and God’s efficient movement of the graced
person to union with God. Wawrykow connects this use of the late Augustine
to Thomas’s understanding of the grace of Christ, concluding that “in the case
of Christ, the precedence goes to the grace of union; and the habitual grace of
Christ follows on the grace of union, in accordance with God’s plan for
salvation through Jesus Christ and what the Word incarnate as human wills,
suffers and does for human salvation” (267). Wawrykow concludes by noting
that, while Thomas’s understanding of the grace of Christ is both Augustinian
and rooted in the Latin West, it is also informed by insights from Cyril of
Alexandria, Denys, and the Damascene which distinguish it from other
contemporary Christologies.
Wawrykow’s chapter bridges the earlier discussions of habitus, grace, and
gifts with treatments of Christ’s life, preparing the reader for Harkins’s
discussion of Christ’s beatific knowledge as an effect of his grace. Harkins
credibly argues that Christ’s beatific vision—which Thomas claims Christ enjoys
from the moment of conception—follows from Thomas’s reading of Scripture,
as received through the Fathers and conciliar statements. Harkins notes that
Christ’s grace is twofold: (1) following from the union of natures in the person
of the Word and (2) as capital grace or the grace of headship which make Christ
head of the body, the Church (357). After careful attending to Thomas’s use of
Scripture (e.g., John 1:14, 16) and his reception of the Damascene, Harkins
concludes that Thomas’s understanding of Christ’s beatific vision “entails His
possessing the plenitude of grace and knowledge, as clearly revealed in Scripture
and authoritatively developed in the patristic and conciliar tradition” (369).
Here again, Harkins’s position prepares readers for the arguments advanced by
McDonough that Thomas’s view of Christ’s headship is thoroughly rooted in
Augustine. McDonough offers helpful reviews of Thomas’s scriptural
commentaries and appreciation for I Cor 12:27 (in addition to Col 2 and Eph
1); he notes that Thomas progressively comes to categorize Christ’s headship as
a feature of his humanity, following the notion of Christ’s humanity as a
properly conjoined instrument of his divinity. McDonough notes that Thomas’s
increasing appreciation for the efficient instrumental causality of Christ’s
humanity allows him to “propose a thoroughly realist account of the ‘infusion’
or ‘transfusion’ of grace from Christ to his members, setting to one side entirely
the Lombardian teaching that we receive a likeness of Christ’s grace only” (402).
Working in parallel with Harkins, McDonough affirms the personal plenitude
of grace in Christ by which the Church receives grace; he concludes: “Thus,
there is no real distinction between Christ’s personal grace (by which humanity
is made holy) and his capital grace (by which he makes us holy). The Church

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BOOK REVIEWS

truly receives Christ’s grace, and all the grace that animates the Church comes
from Christ” (403).
Perhaps the strongest achievement of Reading the Church Fathers with St.
Thomas Aquinas is the methodological connection it makes between biblical
exegesis and the use of the Fathers for sacra doctrina. Some chapters treat this
explicitly and others simply exposit Thomas’s seamless movement between
these two vital dimensions of receiving divine revelation. The volume adds
depth to the fields of biblical Thomism and Thomas’s use of the patristic
tradition. Students of either field will find value in this compendium. Further,
if they take seriously Thomas’s everyday tasks of commenting on Scripture and
tracing its reception in the tradition, then those chapters treating systematic loci
in Thomas’s thought promise to add depth to studies of Christian anthropology,
the moral life, grace, Christology, ecclesiology, and the sacraments. An
additional asset of the volume is that a majority of the chapters survey Thomas’s
thought across theological genres—setting biblical commentaries, summae,
sermons, as well as disputed and quodlibetal questions into conversation while
also observing chronological development among them. This kind of careful
contextualization achieves a more balanced approach to Thomas’s life’s work.
In many ways, Vijgen captures the book’s greatest value: “As such, these
functions do not only show us St. Thomas’ most admirable critical power but
also are, more importantly, signs of a profoundly spiritual attitude of humble
receptivity, necessary for doing theology” (428).
SHAWN M. COLBERG
Saint John’s School of Theology and Seminary
Collegeville, Minnesota

GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST
VOLUME 87 (2023)
ARTICLES
Ayres, Lewis, On the Genealogy of Orthodoxy: A Response to Thomas Joseph
White’s The Trinity...................................................................... 601
Blankenhorn, Bernhard, O.P., The sensus fidei and Synodality: Theological
Epistemology and the munus propheticum .................................. 311
Block, Benjamin M., Thomas Aquinas on Knowing the Essences of Material
Substance ...................................................................................... 87
Casarella, Peter, The Pneumatology of the Synodal Church ....................... 271
Cavadini, John C., Could “Synodality” Defeat “Co-Responsibility”? ......... 289
Coakley, Sarah, Trinitarianism and “the Mystical”: A Response to Thomas
Joseph White’s The Trinity .......................................................... 611
Di Noia, J. Augustine, O.P., S.T.Mag., Remembering George Lindbeck at the
Centenary of His Birth ................................................................ 131
Franks Angela, Christ As the Way of Synodality ......................................... 255
Gardner, Sr. Elinor, O.P., Punishment as Medicine in the Thought of St.
Thomas Aquinas ............................................................................. 1
Henderson, Aaron, Man’s Capacity for Ecclesial Communion ................... 547
Joel Johnson, Joel, Nature Does Nothing in Vain: Reexamining Aquinas’s
Fifth Way ...................................................................................... 43
Ku, John Baptist, O.P., The Fittingness of Mary’s Virginity in Birth ........... 451
LaNave, Gregory, Diachronic Synodality: Synodality within Tradition ....... 173
Louth, Andrew, Reflections on Thomas Joseph White’s The Trinity ........... 625
McFarland, Ian A., Being Trinitarian: A Response to Thomas Joseph White’s
The Trinity .................................................................................. 635
O’Callaghan, John, The Divine Mercy of Creation: A Manifest Contradiction
in Aquinas? ................................................................................. 519
O’Regan, Cyril, On Thomas Joseph White’s The Trinity ............................ 645
Parkinson, Daniel, The Implicit Transcendental: Beauty and the Trinity in the
Thought of Thomas Aquinas ....................................................... 415
Prügl, Thomas, Synodality and the Conciliar Tradition of the Church:
Medieval and Early Modern Experiences of Synodality ............... 191
Rowland, Tracy, Between the Theory and the Praxis of the Synodal Process
.................................................................................................. 233
Ruddy, Christopher, Synodality and the Second Vatican Council ............... 211
Smith, Innocent, O.P., Liturgical Preaching and the Summa theologiae ....... 463
Spezzano, Daria, The Burning Coal: Thomas Aquinas on Loving and Eating
Christ in the Eucharist ................................................................ 355
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., On Wisdom, Mystery, and the Trinity: A Reply
................................................................................................... 659

REVIEWS
Astorri, Paolo, Harald E. Braun, and Erik De Bom, eds., A Companion to the
Spanish Scholastics (Ulrich L. Lehner) ......................................... 347
Braun, Harald E., Erik De Bom, and Paolo Astorri, eds., A Companion to the
Spanish Scholastics (Ulrich L. Lehner) ......................................... 347
Brown, Christopher M., Eternal Life and Human Happiness in Heaven (Bryan
Kromholtz, O.P.) ......................................................................... 683
Dauphinais, Michael, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Robert P. Imbelli) .............. 339
De Bom, Erik, Harald E. Braun, and Paolo Astorri, eds., A Companion to the
Spanish Scholastics (Ulrich L. Lehner) ......................................... 347
Gardeil, Ambroise, O.P., The True Christian Life: Thomistic Reflections on
Divinization, Prudence, Religion, and Prayer (Daniel A. Keating) 485
Grove, Kevin G., Augustine on Memory (Kolawole Chabi, O.S.A.)............. 514
Gurtler, Gary, S.J., From the Alien to the Alone: A Study of Soul in Plotinus
(Lloyd P. Gerson) ........................................................................ 167
Heidgerken, Benjamin E., Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the
Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory over the Devil
(Andrew J. Summerson) .............................................................. 157
Hofer, Andrew, O.P., Michael Dauphinais, and Roger W. Nutt, eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Robert P. Imbelli) .............. 339
Kelsey, Sean, Mind and World in Aristotle’s “De anima” (Fred D. Miller, Jr.)
................................................................................................... 493
Lantigua, David M., Infidels and Empire in a New World Order: Early Modern
Spanish Contributions to International Legal Thought (Joseph
Canning)..................................................................................... 510
Lanza, Lidia, and Marco Toste, eds., Summistae: The Commentary Tradition
on Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologiae” from the 15th to the 17th
Centuries (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) ............................................. 687
Levering, Matthew, The Abuse of Conscience: A Century of Catholic Moral
Theology (Russell Hittinger) ........................................................ 691
McCormick, William, S.J., The Christian Structure of Politics: On the “De
regno” of Thomas Aquinas (Douglas Kries) .................................. 497
Meszaros, Andrew, ed., The Center Is Jesus Christ Himself: Essays on
Revelation, Scripture, and Evangelization in Honor of Robert M.
Imbelli (Michael A. Dauphinais).................................................. 501
Nutt, Roger W., Michael Dauphinais, and Andrew Hofer, O.P., eds., Thomas
Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology (Robert P. Imbelli) .............. 339
O’Rourke, Fran, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas (Thomas Hibbs) .................. 506
Roszak, Piotr, and Jörgen Vijgen, eds., Reading the Church Fathers with St.
Thomas Aquinas: Historical and Systematic Perspectives (Shawn M.
Colberg) ..................................................................................... 695

REVIEWS (con.)

Sullivan, Ezra, O.P., Habits and Holiness: Ethics, Theology, and Biopsychology
(Craig Steven Titus) .................................................................... 350
Toste, Marco, and Lidia Lanza, eds., Summistae: The Commentary Tradition
on Thomas Aquinas’ “Summa Theologiae” from the 15th to the 17th
Centuries (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) ............................................. 687
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation (Bernhard
Blankenhorn, O.P.) ...................................................................... 153
Vidu, Adonis, The Same God Who Works All Things: Inseparable Operations in
Trinitarian Theology (John Baptist Ku, O.P.) ................................ 162
Vijgen, Jörgen, and Piotr Roszak, eds., Reading the Church Fathers with St.
Thomas Aquinas: Historical and Systematic Perspectives (Shawn M.
Colberg) ..................................................................................... 695
Waldstein, Michael Maria, Glory of the Logos in the Flesh: Saint John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body (John S. Grabowski) .................................. 489
Wippel, John F., Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III (Cecilia Trifogli)
................................................................................................... 343