The Thomist 88 (2024): 1-39

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION:
PHYSICAL PREMOTION, ARISTOTELIAN PREMOTION,
OR A DIMENSION OF CREATION-CONSERVATION?
SIMON MARIA KOPF
ITI Catholic University
Trumau, Austria

T

HE QUESTION OF how two agents—creaturely and
divine—can bring about one action has been a theological conundrum for ages.1 Thomas Aquinas famously
states in the Summa contra gentiles—and history tells us that
this is certainly an understatement—that “some people . . . seem
to find it difficult to understand that natural effects are
attributed to God and a natural agent.”2 Indeed, a no less
reverent mind than Luis de Molina,3 to give just one historical
example, was troubled by Aquinas’s teaching in the Summa
theologiae that “one action does not proceed from two agents of
one order, but nothing hinders one and the same action from
proceeding from a primary and secondary agent.”4

1

In this article, I will use the term “action” (actio) in a broad sense, not restricted to
human action. In this broader sense, one could alternatively also speak of an operation
(operatio). So, for the purpose of this article, I will use “action” and “operation”
interchangeably. Since my aim is to explain how two agents can produce one action, the
focus will be furthermore on transeunt rather than immanent action.
2
ScG III, c. 70; emphasis added. Unless stated otherwise, all translations from the
Latin are mine.
3
Luis de Molina, Concordia XIV, 13, 26. For an English translation of the relevant
passage, see https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/translat/molina26.htm. For a discussion of
further, contemporary objections, see Simon Maria Kopf, Reframing Providence: New
Perspectives from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2023), 124-28 and 138-42.
4
STh I, q. 105, a. 5, ad 2.
1

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

Drawing a distinction between primary and secondary
causation, as suggested by the quotation above, is the Thomistic
stock response to questions regarding God’s involvement in
creaturely action. But despite being the trademark of a Thomistic approach, the distinction is less clear-cut and straightforward
than often assumed. Indeed, the history of interpreting Aquinas
is rich in Thomistic ways of spelling out this distinction.
The objective of this article is to explore Aquinas’s view on
God’s involvement in creaturely action by looking specifically at
his doctrine of divine application. What sort of action does God
perform in creaturely action? The aim is to find an interpretation that provides a rich enough toolkit to account for Aquinas’s express teaching, but that does not multiply ontological
entities beyond necessity.
To this end, I will first establish, in section I, the minimal
textual basis for a discussion of God’s activity in creaturely
action. In section II, I shall discuss three interpretations of
Aquinas: first Robert Matava’s recent contribution, then two
most influential expositions of the Thomistic account in the
twentieth century, namely, the interpretations advanced by
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange and Bernard Lonergan. Matava
presents a minimalist approach; Garrigou-Lagrange defends the
Thomistic standard view; and Lonergan arguably holds a middle
position. Finally, in section III, I will delineate the differences
in the metaphysics of creaturely action. I will argue that Aristotelian physical premotion provides a substantive alternative to
the traditional account of physical premotion—an alternative
that holds that divine application is motion and therefore does
not reduce the divina applicatio to a dimension of creationconservation.
I. THE TEACHING OF THOMAS AQUINAS
The central question for this section is as follows: Is God’s
primary causality restricted to the creation and conservation of
creaturely action or does God also act in creaturely action? To

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3

argue that Aquinas teaches a divine action in creaturely action, I
turn to his doctrine of divine application.5
A) The Doctrine of Divine Application
The doctrine of divine application states in its most fundamental form that God not only (a) creates and (b) conserves
creaturely powers in being but also (c) applies these powers to
act. The assertion of a divine application is therefore evidence
that, for Aquinas, God’s involvement in creatures’ actions goes
beyond their (a) creation and (b) conservation in being.
1. Summa contra gentiles
As Bernard McGinn and Bernard Lonergan have elaborated,6
the doctrine of divine application first appears in the Summa
contra gentiles. In his exposition of God’s agency in creaturely
action,7 Aquinas suggests distinguishing between the agent and
its power: the thing itself that acts (rem ipsam quae agit) and the
power by which it acts (virtutem qua agit). Each agent, then,
acts by virtue of its power.8
The basic statement, which, I take it,9 receives further plausibility and support from contemporary discussions concerning
dispositionalism and powers ontology, is relatively clear in

5

This section draws heavily and at times verbatim on my exposition of the doctrine
of divine application in Kopf, Reframing Providence, 133-38.
6
Bernard McGinn, “The Development of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas: On the
Reconciliation of Divine Providence and Contingent Action,” The Thomist 39 (1975):
741-52; Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St
Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe
and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 75-93.
7
ScG III, c. 67 and c. 70.
8
ScG III, c. 70.
9
For a discussion of powers in the context of, and their relevance for, Scholasticism,
see Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm:
Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 45-79; see also Simon Maria Kopf, “Teleology, Providence, and Powers,” in Neo-Aristotelian Metaphysics and the Theology of Nature, ed.
William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, and James Orr (London: Routledge, 2022),
383-407.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

Aquinas. An agent (agens) brings about an action (actio) by
virtue of its power (virtus). Causation, then, is the manifestation
of these powers. In the case of creatures, however, the agent is
not its power.10 The difference between God and creatures is
that creaturely agents have powers, while God is power. In
Scholastic terms, God alone is power by his essence. Unlike
God, creatures are not their powers, but derive their powers
from God. This is where the doctrine of divine application
comes into play. The power of creaturely agents is derived from
the power of God. Because Aquinas distinguishes between the
agent and its power, he can say that both the proximate
creaturely cause and God wholly and immediately cause one
and the same effect, because the agent ultimately acts by virtue
of the divine power. Its own power is a derived power—a
power caused, conserved, and applied to action by God.11
Aquinas writes:
The power of the inferior agent, however, depends on the power of the
superior agent, inasmuch as the superior agent [a] gives the power itself [dat
virtutem ipsam] to the inferior agent through which it acts; and [b] conserves
it [conservat eam], and also [c] applies it to act [applicat eam ad agendum].12

In other words, creatures are agents but have powers. God (a)
gives them creaturely powers and (b) conserves these powers in
being but also (c) applies them to act. Creaturely causation is
therefore a form of “caused causation.”13 God and creatures can
both wholly and immediately cause one and the same action
because creaturely agents act by virtue of God’s power. Whereas
God acts by an immediacy of power, the creature as proximate
10

A creature is not its power because it is not its essence—that whereby a thing is
what it is—at least not in the sense that it is an essence that does not receive existence. A
creature has an essence; it has an essence from another, namely, from God. Aquinas
makes a distinction between the essence (essentia), power (virtus), and operation
(operatio), or action, of creaturely agents: if the essence of an agent is from another (at
least in the sense that it receives existence), then the power and operation of that agent
must be from another, too (II Sent., d. 37, q. 2, a. 2). See Kopf, Reframing Providence,
131.
11
ScG III, c. 70.
12
Ibid.
13
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 88.

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5

cause acts by an immediacy of supposit, the acting subject or
individual substance.14
2. De potentia Dei
The doctrine of divine application finds its most detailed
expression in the disputed questions De potentia. It becomes apparent there that when Aquinas says “applying the power to
act” he does not mean the creation or conservation of the
power, but rather God’s moving the power to act. Aquinas
states:
But since no thing moves or acts of itself unless it is an unmoved mover; in the
third mode one thing is said to be the cause of another’s action to the extent
that [c] it moves it to act [movet eam ad agendum]; by this is not to be
understood [a] the bestowal [collatio] or [b] conservation of the active power,
but [c] the application of the power to action [applicatio virtutis ad
actionem].15

The account Aquinas presents in De potentia has a four-part
structure. Ignacio Silva has called the first two elements the
“founding moments” of God’s activity in creaturely action; the
second two elements he has termed “dynamic moments.”16
On the one hand, God (a) creates and (b) conserves all
creaturely powers in being. By virtue of these activities, God
bestows on all creatures the powers by which they act. God’s
creation and conservation of powers are thus the first and
second moments of God’s founding activity.17
On the other hand, God also (c) moves and applies these
powers to act. The example Aquinas uses to illustrate this appli14

ScG III, c. 70; on the distinction of supposit and power, see also De Pot., q. 3,
a. 7; STh I, q. 36, a. 3, ad 1 and ad 4; “in each action two things must be considered,
namely, [1] the supposit that acts [suppositum agens], and [2] the power by which it acts
[virtutem qua agit]” (STh I, q. 36, a. 3, ad 1).
15
De Pot., q. 3, a. 7.
16
Ignacio Silva, “Divine Action and Thomism: Why Thomas Aquinas’s Thought Is
Attractive Today,” Acta Philosophica 25 (2016): 71-74; Ignacio Silva, Providence and
Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Divine Action
(London: Routledge, 2022), 122-34.
17
De Pot., q. 3, a. 7.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

cation is a human person moving a sharp knife, thereby applying the sharpness of the knife to act, namely, to the act of
cutting. In this sense, the human person is the cause of the
cutting of the knife. The knife in turn relies on the power of
another to perform its action. Similarly, creaturely agents
depend on the power of God to perform their action.
Creaturely agents can act by their powers only if God applies
them to act. This is the third moment, and the first dynamic
moment, of God’s activity in creaturely action.18
The second dynamic moment is God’s (d) instrumental
application of creaturely powers. Every effect, insofar as it is,
participates in being as such (esse). But being as such is an effect
that only God can cause, on Aquinas’s view.19 Every creaturely
agent producing an effect must therefore participate as instrumental cause in God’s activity. Rudi te Velde comments:
Thomas attributes a double operation to the instrumental cause, one in virtue
of its own power and another in virtue of the participation in the power of the
principal cause. . . . [Therefore,] the second cause has a double operation, one
in virtue of its own nature and another in virtue of the immanence of the
power of the first cause.20

Instrumental causation here means that a principal cause makes
use of the powers of the instrument beyond what the instrument
could achieve on its own account and through its own powers.
The defining feature of an instrumental cause is thus that the
effect is disproportionate to its nature.21 To use Aquinas’s
18

Ibid.
Ibid.; for further explication of this point, see John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas
on Creatures as Causes of Esse,” International Philosophical Quarterly 40 (2000):
197-213; and Rudi A. te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas
(Leiden: Brill, 1995), 160-83.
20
Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 173; see also STh III, q. 62, a. 1, ad 2.
21
By implication, then, the effect of the third element of God’s agency in creaturely
action, namely, applying and moving the creaturely power to act in the quadripartite
structure, would appear to be proportionate to the creaturely cause. Gloria Frost
elaborates the difference thus: “The core of Aquinas’s views on instrumental causality
can be summarized in three key theses: (1) Dual action thesis: Instruments have a
twofold action, one of which is proper to the instrument according to its own inherent
forms and another action which goes beyond that which the instrument’s own native
19

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7

example, when sculpting wood to make an artifact, the
craftsman applies the power of the axe to act, but in a way that
goes beyond the capacity of the axe. It is not merely by the
applied sharpness of the axe that the craftsman produces the
artifact, but more importantly by his own power. In short, since
God is the only cause of being as such, but every effect in a way
participates in being, God is the principal agent of every
secondary cause.22 “So, therefore, God is the cause of every
action, inasmuch as any agent is an instrument of the divine
power operating.”23 Such instrumental causation is the fourth
moment, and second dynamic moment, of God’s activity in
creaturely action. Aquinas summarizes the position as follows:
In this manner, therefore, God is the cause of any action inasmuch as he [a]
gives the power to act [dat virtutem agendi], and inasmuch as he [b] conserves
it [conservat eam], and inasmuch as he [c] applies it to action [applicat
actioni], and inasmuch as [d] every other power acts by virtue of his power.24

powers can achieve. (2) Moved mover thesis: The instrument operates toward this
second action (i.e. the one which is beyond its own power) only in so far as it is moved
by the principal cause. (3) Borrowed power thesis: Through being moved, the instrument
receives a transitory power from the principal cause which enables it to work toward the
second action” (Gloria Frost, Aquinas on Efficient Causation and Causal Powers
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022], 208). By contrast, the characteristics of
causes that depend on another efficient cause to perform their action, though not in an
instrumental sense where the effect is disproportionate to the cause, as in the case of the
fourth element of God’s action in creaturely action, she describes thus: “(1) Correlative
. . . causes are each of a different nature. (2) Each cause supplies a different type of
power which is required for the production of the effect. (3) One nature and its power
is greater than the other nature and its power. The greater cause’s power has a more
universal scope than the lesser cause’s power. (3) The less perfect cause depends on the
more perfect one to exercise its power in the production of the effect” (ibid., 218). The
difference is here, as she points out, that the end for which the agent acts is its own.
Thus, unlike in cases of instrumental causation, the effect is in a sense proportionate to
the power of the agent, even though the agent depends on the power of another to
perform its action. See ibid., 207-27.
22
De Pot., q. 3, a. 7.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

In passing, it should be noted that when talking about the
fourth moment of God’s action, Aquinas speaks again of
motion:
For the instrument is in a manner the cause of the effect of the principal cause,
not through its own form or power, but to the extent that it participates
somewhat in the power of the principal cause through its motion [per motum
eius], just as the axe is not the cause of the thing crafted through its own form
or power, but through the power of the craftsman by which it is moved
[movetur] and in which it somehow participates.25

Thus, Aquinas reaches again the conclusion that God acts
immediately in creaturely action, namely, by an immediacy of
power; the proximate creaturely cause, however, has an immediacy of supposit to its effect.26
3. Summa theologiae
In the Summa theologiae Aquinas expresses the doctrine of
divine application in terms of form. Employing the four traditional kinds of causes—final, efficient, formal, and material—
Aquinas points out that end, agent, and form are all principles
of action: the end as that which moves the agent; the agent as
that which moves; and the form, or the power grounded in the
form, as that which the agent applies to action.27 “God not only
[a] gives forms [dat formas] to things, but also [b] conserves
them [conservat eas] in being, and [c] applies them to act
[applicat eas ad agendum], and is the end of all actions.”28
Aquinas then reiterates that if there are many ordered agents
(multa agentia ordinata), the second agent always acts in virtue
of the first, that is to say, in the power of the first (in virtute).
The reason for this, he argues, is “because the first agent moves
the second agent to act [primum agens movet secundum ad
agendum].”29 Secondary causes always act in the power of the
25

Ibid.
Ibid.
27
STh I, q. 105, a. 5.
28
Ibid., ad 3.
29
STh I, q. 105, a. 5.
26

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9

first cause, and this means, says Aquinas, that God moves secondary causes to act. This is the doctrine of divine application.
This brief exposition suffices to show that Aquinas teaches a
divine action in creaturely action.30 The doctrine of divine
application states in its most fundamental form that God not
only (a) creates and (b) conserves in being creaturely powers,
but also (c) applies and moves them to act. God’s involvement
in creaturely action goes beyond creation and conservation, as
God also applies and moves the created and conserved powers
to act. And, according to the more detailed quadripartite
structure presented in De potentia, God applies these powers to
act (c) according to or (d) beyond the nature of the creatures’
own powers. In both cases, Aquinas expresses the divine application of creaturely powers in terms of motion: God moves
and applies creaturely powers to act. In short, Aquinas teaches a
divine application and motion of all powers of creatures to act,
both in accordance with and beyond their nature. By these
created, conserved, and applied powers, then, creaturely agents
can act; however, these powers are nonetheless intrinsic, since
they are grounded in the (substantial) form of the creature.
II. THREE INTERPRETATIONS OF AQUINAS’S
DOCTRINE OF APPLICATION
Having laid a textual foundation with the information above,
I shall now turn to three interpretations of Aquinas’s doctrine of
divine application. In my exposition, I will start with a
minimalist approach, addressing the question of whether divine
application might be reducible to God’s creative act. I will then
show why motion, as the reduction of potency to act, is
essential for every creaturely action according to the traditional
Thomistic account. On this basis, I will finally discuss a third
interpretation that seeks to steer a middle course, one that
acknowledges the need for divine motion but denies an
additional uncreated motion to account for it.

30

For more details on the doctrine of divine application, see Kopf, Reframing
Providence, 128-46.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

A) Robert Matava: Application as a Dimension of CreationConservation
In his 2016 monograph on the controversy de auxiliis,
Robert Matava has challenged the standard interpretation of
divine application in terms of motion.31 His interesting take
provides a helpful way into the difficulties of interpreting
Aquinas. Matava suggests that the applicatio in Aquinas is best
understood as a dimension of creation-conservation. Matava
proposes viewing Aquinas’s application as an instance and mode
of creation.32 He says:
The idea of application, as an extension or implication of creation, reveals
how thoroughgoing a claim the doctrine of creation is: God’s causation of a
thing is total. Things depend on God all the way down, inclusive of their
operations. The claim that God applies creatures to action . . . is perhaps the
most radical claim of creation.33

Similarly to Aquinas’s express teaching that conservation is the
continuation of the act of creation,34 Matava submits that application should be understood as another mode and extended
dimension of creation. He suggests that one ought to interpret
divine application, like conservation, in terms of creation. For
31

Robert J. Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Bánez, Physical
Premotion and the Controversy de Auxiliis Revisited (Boston: Brill, 2016). Strictly
speaking, Matava’s thesis concerns specifically God’s involvement in human action. His
claim is “that Thomas understands God’s movement of the human free-choice capacity
{liber arbitrium} as an instance of God’s creative causality” (ibid., 242). In this way,
Matava seeks to remove, or circumvent, the traditional point of disagreement between
the opposing parties in the controversy de auxiliis: the theory of physical premotion.
For our purposes, I am only interested in his take on the doctrine of divine application.
As an interpretation of Aquinas’s applicatio, to be sure, his thesis is also a general one
concerning all creaturely operation.
32
Matava speaks of conservation and application as “instances of God’s creative
causality” (ibid., 250), as an “extension of their dependence on him in being” (ibid.,
254); motion in this context he interprets as an “instance of God’s creative causality”
(ibid., 248) and application as a “mode of his creative causality” (ibid., 255).
33
Ibid., 255.
34
STh I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4. Matava comments: “Aquinas’s claim that conservation is
the same reality as creation, just understood in a broader sense, may also be extended to
God’s application of creatures” (Matava, Divine Causality, 253).

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Matava, both conservation and application are dimensions of
the one divine creative act: “Divine application just is God’s
creative causality at work in the operations of creatures.”35
What are we to make of Matava’s take? For a start, there is
an important textual difference between conservation and
application. While Aquinas does say that conservation is the
continuation of creation, he does not say that application is a
dimension of creation.36 But, admittedly, neither does he speak
35

Matava, Divine Causality, 237. Matava explains: “This does not mean that
application should be reductively collapsed into creation (or conservation) any more
than conservation should be reductively collapsed into creation. But the purpose of
distinguishing application from creation and conservation is not to affirm a difference in
divine action, but rather to deny that the actual operation of creatures, while distinct
from God, is independent of him” (ibid., 236-37). Clearly, for Aquinas, the creaturely
operation is not independent of God, nor does the distinction of different moments of
one divine action constitute a multitude of actions in God, for every action is his essence
(see Kopf, Reframing Providence, 143-46). But the point in question is whether, and in
what sense, divine application goes beyond creation-conservation. Matava suggests not,
at least not as divine motion: “Divine causality can only be parsed into distinct ‘modes’
from a creaturely perspective. That is because time is the prism which refracts the clear
light of God’s esse-communicating action into the spectrum of creation, conservation
and application. Whereas creation marks the beginning of time, conservation and
application are only intelligible within the context of time. Conservation is the holding
in being, through a duration, of what existed before, while application is the motion
(change) of an existing being, and change implies before and after. Thus, time allows a
principled distinction to be made between creation in the strict sense . . . and a broader
understanding of God’s creative causality as conservation and application. The crucial
point, however, is that despite these distinctions, what God is up to in each case is
fundamentally the same: He is making to-be” (Matava, Divine Causality, 249-50).
36
I cannot here engage in any detail with the textual arguments Matava presents in
favor of his interpretation, which by and large, and despite good effort, fail to convince
me in the end. What I wish to mention here, in passing, is the fact that the aim of
Aquinas’s simile of light/color in the air, it seems to me, is to illustrate the difference
between causes of being and causes of becoming. This is, in my opinion, the reason why
similar examples come up in his discussion of creation, conservation, and application;
concluding from this that application is essentially creation-conservation seems to me,
without further evidence, to be a stretch. The texts in question are De Pot., q. 3, a 7,
ad 7; STh I, q. 8, a. 1; q. 104, a. 1, ad 4; q. 105, a. 5. In STh I, q. 105, a. 5, the context
of the simile is clearly conservation. In De Pot., q. 3, a. 7, ad 7, the simile illustrates
instrumental causation. Lonergan comments: “Now the favorite illustration of the esse
incompletum of a form or an idea appears to be color in aere. Heat is not merely in the
fire and in the object heated: it is also in the intervening space per modum naturae
completae; the air is really heated. But a color is in the object, and it is in the eye or

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

of “physical premotion,” as the traditional Thomistic
interpretation has it. Both are interpretations of Aquinas.
The main difficulty with Matava’s interpretation, as he
himself acknowledges,37 is that Aquinas explicitly and repeatedly speaks of “motion” when explicating his doctrine of divine
application. But creation—and arguably at least in some respect
conservation as well—is not motion or change:38 “creatio non
est mutatio.”39 Matava therefore advises reducing “the question
of change” to “the question about the being of change.” On his
view, application is reducible to creation because the “change”
implied by the doctrine of divine application is not change itself
but the very being of change. “Motion,” then, in this context
means creaturely participation in God’s creative making to be.40
In the context of divine application, ‘motion’ is best understood as a mode of
creation. If motion obtains within the created order, then God, as the
universal provider of being, must cause it. In this way, God can be said to
‘move’ creatures to act. But strictly speaking, God does not cause the changing
as such of things; rather, he causes the being as such of things, and change by
derivation, as a logical consequence of his causing the being of things. God’s
‘changing’ is his making change to be.41

So, Aquinas says motion, but does not mean motion. Motion
cannot really be ascribed to God’s action, unless perhaps metaphorically. Matava reduces application to the act of creation.
What God does is create things: he gives being to everything,
and only in virtue of giving being does God bring about change
in the world. In a sense, Matava grants that application is
motion, metaphorically speaking, but only because he interprets
both motion and application as a dimension of creation-

sense of vision, but the intervening air is not colored; hence the species coloris in aere is
per modum naturae incompletae, it is sola intentio” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 290
n. 104). In STh I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4 and in STh I, q. 8, a. 1 the context is again
conservation.
37
See Matava, Divine Causality, 246-47.
38
STh I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4.
39
STh I, q. 45, a. 2, ad 2.
40
Matava, Divine Causality, 251.
41
Ibid., 276.

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13

conservation: “Thomas understands divine motion as a kind of
broadly creative act.”42
In summary, Matava concedes that Aquinas speaks of motion
when explicating divine application. Nevertheless, Matava holds
that application is ultimately not motion but an instance and
mode of creation. According to his reading, “Aquinas appropriates the concept of motion to talk about God’s operation in the
operations of creatures,”43 but in using the motion idiom he
does not really refer to motion: “I think that in the final
analysis, ‘motion’ in these contexts is simply a way of referring
to God’s creative causality.”44
B) Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.: Physical Premotion
The Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange was a wellknown proponent of the Thomistic theory of physical premotion (praemotio physica) mentioned above. I will turn to him
for the exposition of the traditional (Dominican) Thomistic
interpretation.
The apparent point of agreement between Matava and
Garrigou-Lagrange is that not only creaturely being but also
action must depend on God:
Just as the participated and limited being of creatures depends upon the
causality of the first Being, who is the self-subsisting Being, so also does their
action: for there is no reality that can be excluded from His controlling
influence.45

The notion that both the being and action of all creatures must
depend on God appears to be a consensus between the two, for
Matava says, as quoted above, that “things depend on God all
the way down, inclusive of their operations.” Their fundamental
point of disagreement concerns the question of how to
42

Ibid., 262-63.
Ibid., 275.
44
Ibid., 247.
45
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, trans. Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B.
(London: Herder, 1939), 240-41; emphasis added.
43

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

safeguard this dependence of creaturely action, or operation, on
God. In contrast to Matava, Garrigou-Lagrange claims that
creation-conservation can only safeguard the subordination of
creaturely causes in being, but not in action.46 He states:
Without physical premotion we cannot safeguard in God the primacy of
causality or the subordination of secondary causes in their very action. . . .
Subordination of causes in their action consists in this, that the first cause
moves and applies secondary causes to act, and that the secondary causes act
only because they are moved by the primary cause.47

Contrary to Matava, Garrigou-Lagrange insists that the motion
of which Aquinas speaks must be real.48 What is needed in every
creaturely action is so-called physical premotion. The concept
of physical premotion is another interpretation of Aquinas, an
invention by later Thomists in response to, and excluding, rival
theological traditions. Three elements need to be considered for

46

Ibid., 298-99; see also STh I-II, q. 9, a 4. What is in question here is the very
causality of creaturely agents. On the one hand, if each and every action of secondary
causes were created ex nihilo, then they would be deprived of genuine causality. On the
other hand, if there is no divine motion, but merely creation and conservation of
creaturely powers, then the creaturely powers in potency to act will never be actualized.
A motion must actualize the creaturely power in potency, must reduce potency to act,
for creaturely powers cannot actualize themselves. If therefore divine application were
merely creation-conservation, this would safeguard the subordination in being, but not
in action: “Now just as the being of the creature is really dependent upon the divine
creative action, so also is the action of the creature really dependent upon the divine
action that is called motion” (Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 258; emphasis added).
47
Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 295-96.
48
“The Thomists use the world ‘premotion’,” says Garrigou-Lagrange, “solely for
the purpose of showing that the motion of which they speak is truly a motion that
applies the secondary cause to act” (ibid., 247). Thus, application as the third moment
of God’s action in and through creaturely action is really a motion. While he would
presumably acknowledge that God, in a sense, causes the “being of change,” if the being
of things changing rather than a hypostatization of change is meant here, this appears,
based on God’s creation and conservation, to be part of the fourth moment of God’s
activity, namely, God’s instrumental causation. Garrigou-Lagrange uses the following
analogy to express this: “this apple tree is the proper cause of this particular fruit,
although God is the proper cause of the being of this same fruit” (ibid., 281).

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

15

the present purpose: (1) the attribute “physical,” (2) the prefix
“pre-”, and, most of all, (3) the meaning of “motion.”49
First, “physical premotion” denotes a motion pertaining to
efficient, not to final, causality. The qualification “physical” sets
the motion in question in contrast to so-called moral motion.
Thus, it is a matter of the exercise of the act (physical), not the
specification of the act (moral). Second, the prefix “pre-”
expresses a priority of the motion in causality, not a priority in
time. If there were no priority in causality, then a given action
physically premoved would be divided up between divine and
creaturely agents, like two persons pulling a boat. This would
necessarily amount to a zero-sum game: the more God acts, the
less the creature acts, and vice versa. In other words, the prefix
“pre-” denotes the subordination of creaturely causality to God,
the universal primary cause.50
Third, Garrigou-Lagrange vigorously defends the reality of
the divine application as a motion, for two principal reasons,
both mentioned in the quotation above. The first reason is, on
the part of God, the priority of divine causation.51 Everything,
including creaturely actions, must depend upon, and be subordinated to, God as first cause and mover, whose causation
49

The importance of the controversial topic of predetermination to the theory of
physical premotion, as presented by Garrigou-Lagrange, must be acknowledged (as a
fourth element), but for the present purpose of comparing three interpretations of
Aquinas’s theory of divine application we may focus on the understanding of motion.
Garrigou-Lagrange comments: “Therefore the Thomists use the expression
‘predetermining physical premotion’ only for the purpose of excluding the theories of
simultaneous concurrence and indifferent premotion. If these theories had not been
proposed . . . the Thomists would have been satisfied to speak about divine motion as
St. Thomas did, for every motion as such is premotion, and every divine motion, as
divine motion, cannot receive a determination or perfection that is not virtually
included in the divine causality. We always come back to the same inevitable dilemma:
‘God determining or determined’” (ibid., 250). This latter claim has been contested,
among others, by Eleonore Stump, Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), 118-22.
50
Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 260-66 and 282.
51
“Just as water does not heat unless it is heated, so every secondary cause . . . acts
only if it is premoved by God, the very first cause. If it were otherwise, then this
something of reality in the transition to act, which is required for the performance of
. . . actions, would be withdrawn from God’s universal causality that includes everything
of reality and goodness external to Himself” (ibid., 260).

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

extends to everything. On the part of creatures there is a second
reason that corresponds to the first, namely, that powers in
potency to act need to be reduced to act, as the Scholastic
axiom has it. These two reasons together establish the subordination of creaturely action to divine action.52
In more detail, on the part of creatures, the argument states
that creaturely powers are in potency to act (posse agere), and in
order actually to act (actu agere) they must be moved to act:
“these powers, created and preserved in being by God, need to
be moved as to receive the complement of causality.”53 Creaturely powers are powers in potency to act that need actualization, need to be moved to act by God—and this is what is
called “divine application”. Divine application is the physical
premotion of every creaturely action:
Every cause that is not of itself actually in act,54 but only in potentiality to act,
needs to be physically premoved to act. . . . To refuse to admit this . . . is to
say that the greater comes from the less, the more perfect from the less
perfect; for actually to act is a greater perfection than being able to act. If,
therefore, the faculty to act were not moved, it would always remain in a state
of potency and would never act.55

In other words, if the actualization of the creaturely powers in
potency to act is not effected by God, then neither is there a
priority of divine causality, nor can the reduction of the creaturely powers from potency to act be explained.
The specific characteristic of physical premotion is that, to
account for the actualization of creaturely powers, the
traditional Thomistic view posits not only (1) God’s uncreated
action and (2) the action of the creature but also (3) a physical
premotion distinct from both (1) and (2). A defining feature of
physical premotion as presented by Garrigou-Lagrange is that it
is a “created motion received in the operative potency of the
creature so as to cause it to pass into act.”56 He states:
52

Ibid., 295-300.
Ibid., 257.
54
I.e., always in act, but never in potency.
55
Ibid., 296.
56
Ibid., 251; emphasis added.
53

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17

It is motion that is passively received in the secondary cause so as to induce it
to act. . . . This motion . . . is really distinct both from [1] God’s uncreated
action upon which it depends, and from [2] the [created] act to which it is
directed.57

According to the traditional theory of physical premotion as
presented by Garrigou-Lagrange, we have to distinguish between three really distinct entities: (1) a divine active motion,
(2) the creaturely action, and (3) a passive motion received by
the creature from God to move and apply the creaturely power
to act. On this view, divine application is therefore a created
passive motion distinct from both the uncreated action, or
active motion, of God and the creaturely action. As GarrigouLagrange shortly after reiterates:
We must not, therefore, confuse [3] the divine motion that is passively
received in the secondary cause, either with [1] the divine active motion which
is God Himself, or with [2] the action produced by the secondary cause.58

In summary, Garrigou-Lagrange presents and defends the
traditional Thomistic theory of physical premotion. He insists,
pace Matava, that divine application must be motion in the
strict sense, physical premotion properly speaking; a metaphorical interpretation of the motion idiom he holds to be
philosophically unacceptable, as it can neither safeguard the
priority of divine causation regarding creaturely action nor
explain the actualization of the creaturely powers in potency to
act. Hence, he contends that divine application in Aquinas
means physical premotion—a created motion that is really
distinct from both God’s creative action and the creaturely
action. Such praemotio physica, because it is historically
commonly associated with the Dominican Domingo Báñez, is
sometimes labelled “Báñezian premotion.”

57
58

Ibid., 256; the original reads “salutary” instead of “created” act.
Ibid., 259.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

C) Bernard Lonergan, S.J.: Aristotelian Premotion
In his watershed publications on operative grace, the Jesuit
Bernard Lonergan objects to the theory of physical premotion
defended, among others, by Garrigou-Lagrange, and develops
an alternative approach. In contrast to the opposed theory of
(what he calls) Báñezian (physical) premotion, Lonergan terms
his interpretation of Aquinas’s doctrine of divine application
“Aristotelian premotion.”59 In order to avoid controversy over
whether the version of physical premotion under discussion is in
fact Báñez’s position, I will drop the qualifier “Báñezian” and
simply speak of “physical premotion” when referring to the
discussed position.
Unlike Matava, Lonergan and Garrigou-Lagrange agree that
divine application is essentially motion, a reduction of potency
to act.60 Both are thus in agreement that agent and patient (and
their active and passive potencies, respectively) are necessary
but insufficient conditions for actual motion. As Lonergan puts
it, given the existence of mover and moved in absence of actual
motion, what accounts for the occurrence of actual motion must

59
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom. Lonergan’s approach is notably in opposition not
only to the Dominican Thomistic approach but also to the traditional Jesuit solution of
the controversy de auxiliis: Molina’s—or, for that matter, Suarez’s—concursus
simultaneus. Lonergan rejects both the notions of praemotio physica and concursus
simultaneus for the same reason: “St Thomas posits three actiones but only two
products; Durandus maintained that if there are only two products, there are only two
actiones; both Molina and Bañez were out to discover a third product that they might
have a third actio, and the former posited a concursus simultaneus, the latter a
concursus praevius. . . . The root of the whole trouble is that they take it for granted
that a third actio postulates a third product” (ibid., 449). Thus, Lonergan states
elsewhere that “neither Molinism nor Bannezianism is an interpretation of Aquinas”
(Bernard Lonergan, review of De Deo in operatione naturae vel voluntatis operante by
E. Iglesias, Theological Studies 7 [1946]: 609).
60
STh I, q. 2, a. 3: “for to move is nothing other than to bring something out from
potency to act [movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in
actum].” Texts cited in addition to those mentioned above are in particular passages
from STh I-II, q. 109, a. 1 and a. 9.

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

19

be something in addition to mover and moved—and this
additional condition we call “physical premotion.”61
The disagreement between Lonergan and Garrigou-Lagrange
concerns the nature of such premotion. Divine application is,
Lonergan argues, Aristotelian rather than traditional physical
premotion.62 By “Aristotelian premotion” Lonergan refers to
Aristotle’s teaching “that the transition of a situation from a
state of rest to a state of activity presupposes a previous motion
of some kind or other.”63 Lonergan comments on the relevant
passage in the Physics (8.2):
In proving the eternity of the world, Aristotle points out that the existence of
the mover and the moved is not sufficient to account for the actuality of a
motion. If mover and moved exist, motion is merely possible. For actual
motion it is further necessary that they be in such a situation, mutual relation,
or disposition, that the one can act on the other. . . . Bringing them together is
the premotion.64

On Lonergan’s view, as the italicized passage in the quotation
indicates, it is not so much the agent in potency to act that is
lacking actuality but rather the objective temporal situation:
although both the agent and the patient (including their active
and passive potencies, respectively) are present, first there is no
motion, then there is motion. Therefore, Aristotelian premotion, as conceived by Lonergan, concerns and is meant to
explain not so much creaturely action as such but rather
creaturely action in time, namely, the fact that first there is no
motion, then there is motion. What explains the difference is
premotion. Lonergan says that for this reason premotion is
61

“Granted the existence of mover and moved, of potentia activa and potentia
passiva; and, at the same time, granted the absence of actual motion; then the
emergence of actual motion cannot be accounted for by the mere continuance of the
existence of mover and moved. They already were existing and ex hypothesi no motion
took place. When, then, motion does take place, a new factor is introduced. This
introduction of a new factor is the premotion” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 378).
62
“Though St Thomas does not posit a real difference between posse agere and actu
agere, nonetheless he always maintains the well-known Aristotelian doctrine of physical
premotion” (ibid., 277).
63
Ibid., 285.
64
Ibid., 277; emphasis added.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

tempore prius, while the traditional version of physical premotion, as seen above, denies such a priority in time, maintaining instead that premotion can only be natura prius. Yet, if
the prefix “pre-” in “premotion” is here understood as a priority in time, this again raises the question of the subordination
of secondary causes to the primary cause, not only in being but
also in action, that Garrigou-Lagrange links with a priority of
motion in causality—a question I will address below. At this
point, it is important to note that according to the Aristotelian
premotion view it is the temporal difference in what Lonergan
calls the “objective situation” that needs explanation.65
Take as an example a water-soluble pill and a glass of water.
The existence of a pill and a glass of water on a table does not
account for the actual dissolution of the medicine; they merely
provide the potency—the passive and active powers of
manifestation partners which do not, and cannot, co-manifest
unless certain manifestation conditions are met. The pill
dissolves in water if and only if the mover and the moved have
the right mutual relation, disposition, and proximity—that is, in
this instance, if the water has the power to dissolve the pill, the
pill has the disposition of water solubility, no other relevant
powers interfere, and finally, if one puts the pill into the water.
“The existence of mover and moved does not suffice for more
than the possibility of motion,” says Lonergan; “for actual
motion they must be in the right situation, disposition,
relation.”66 Aristotelian premotion and thus divine application
refer, according to Lonergan, to this right situation, mutual
relation, disposition, and proximity—in short, to the right
conditions for the powers to co-manifest.67
Lonergan’s textual argument for Aristotelian premotion is as
follows.68 He argues that what Aquinas must have had in mind
when developing his doctrine of divine application is
Aristotelian premotion. For not only does Aquinas use in a
parallel passage in his Commentary on the Metaphysics the term
65

Ibid., 73-75 and 253.
Ibid., 291 n. 108.
67
Ibid., 79 and 277.
68
Ibid., 280-85; see also ibid., 75-79.
66

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21

applicatio—which shows that he used applicatio in this sense at
least once69—but more importantly, he apparently deduces
application from the Aristotelian cosmic scheme.70 For example,
in De potentia he states:
And because an inferior nature acting does not act unless being moved, in that
such inferior [natures] are changed in changing; the heaven, however, changes
without being changed, and nevertheless it is not moving unless being moved,
and so it does not end until we come to God: it follows by necessity that God
is the cause of the action of each thing by moving and applying the power to
act [ut movens et applicans virtutem ad agendum].71

The premise of the argument is that every motion must
eventually be traced back to God, the first unmoved mover; the
conclusion reached is that God moves and applies all creaturely
powers to act. For this reason, Lonergan infers: “Since God is
said to apply all things because he is first mover (in the
Aristotelian sense), therefore application cannot be anything but
physical premotion (in the Aristotelian sense).”72
The specific characteristic of Lonergan’s proposal is that
while application is Aristotelian premotion, divine application is
not simply Aristotelian premotion. As Lonergan points out,
there is an essential difference between Aquinas’s and Aristotle’s
God, which differentiates Aquinas’s divine application from
69

IX Metaphys., lect. 4.
Aquinas, when he first introduces applicatio as a technical term in the Summa
contra gentiles, writes in support of his claim that God is the cause of the operation of
every agent: “Whatever applies the active power to act, is said to be the cause of this
action. . . . But every application of a power to operation is principally and firstly from
God. For operative powers are applied to their proper operations through some motion.
. . . But the first principle of . . . motion is God. For he is the first mover, wholly
immobile. . . . Every operation, therefore, must be attributed to God as the first and
principal agent” (ScG III, c. 67). In this passage Aquinas employs the term applicatio to
express the fact that God as first mover is the cause of creaturely action in moving
creaturely powers to act. For, on the Aristotelian scheme, all creaturely powers must be
moved by God, the first mover: “operative powers,” as we read, “are [and must be]
applied to their proper operations through some motion.” God as the first mover is the
first principle of motion, wherefore he is the first and principal agent of motion in
secondary causes.
71
De Pot., q. 3, a. 7; emphasis added.
72
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 281.
70

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

Aristotelian premotion. For Lonergan, this specific difference
ultimately boils down to God’s providence in this context.73 For
Aquinas, God is not simply first mover, the cause of all motion;
rather, God is a providential God. Lonergan explains the
difference thus:
God is the cause of each particular motion inasmuch as his mind plans and his
will intends the endless premotions that makes up the dynamic pattern of the
universe. . . . It is not enough that things be kept moving by the moving
heavens; the order of the universe has to be maintained, and that is due not to
the heavens but to divine providence.74

In this passage, Lonergan argues that divine application is
Aristotelian premotion embedded in Aquinas’s doctrine of divine providence.75 Because God is an intellectual and volitional
agent, he intends and wills premotions. Put differently, God
loves and cares about his creation, wherefore his moving of
creatures is ultimately providential guidance. Divine application, then, is providentially guided premotion. Thus, what the
doctrine of divine application adds to Aristotelian premotion is
that God knows, wills, and providentially guides these motions.
For Lonergan, therefore, premotion is the particular relation,
disposition, and proximity between mover and moved that is
needed for the actualization of creaturely power. He points out
that Aquinas calls the plan of the divine ordering of all things to
their ends “providence”; the dispositions and order of seconddary causes executing this plan, however, he calls “fate.”76 Fate
in this specific sense, then, is a form of premotion, on Lonergan’s interpretation. Premotion refers to the individual disposition; fate, by contrast, means the totality of these dispositions of
all secondary causes executing the providential order. And these
premotions as intended by God are divine application.77

73

Ibid., 86.
Ibid., 286-87.
75
For Aquinas’s approach to providence, see Kopf, Reframing Providence, 99-235.
76
See STh I, q. 22 and q. 116.
77
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 296; see also ibid., 79-86 and 285-96.
74

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

23

Application is the causal certitude of providence terminating in the right
disposition, relation, proximity between the mover and the moved: without it
motion cannot take place now; with it motion automatically results. But . . .
fate is simply the dynamic pattern of such relations—the pattern through
which the design of the divine artisan unfolds in natural and human history;
again, without fate things cannot act, with it they do. Thus, fate and
application . . . reduce to the divine plan.78

In summary, Lonergan argues that Aquinas, in his doctrine of
divine application, appropriates the Aristotelian concept of premotion to express the fact that God moves all powers to act
through a divinely intended and willed motion—a motion notably resulting from, and being part of, the totality of secondary
causes executing his providential order, by a form of “caused
causation.” Application is thus divinely intended premotion.
Ultimately, therefore, as the quotation above shows, Lonergan
suggests “reducing” application (and fate) to providence as
God’s ordering of all creatures to their due ends.79
78
Ibid., 86. It is worth noting that fate is also the interpretative key Lonergan
proposes for the much-debated passage in De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7: “But that which
is done by God in a natural thing, by which it may actually act, is [there] as an intention
only [intentio sola], having a certain incomplete being [habens esse quoddam
incompletum], in the mode colors are in the air, and the power of art is in the
instrument of the artisan.” While traditional Thomists like Garrigou-Lagrange take this
passage as a proof-text for physical premotion (Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, 253)
and Matava sees it as an expression of God’s creative act (Matava, Divine Causality,
262-63), Lonergan reasons that with “fate” Aquinas had developed a “concept of some
real participation of the divine design that was distinct from the natural forms of things,
that was impressed upon them as they entered into the dynamic order of events. Thus,
the much disputed De potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7m, really presents nothing new; it asserts
that, besides the natural form permanent in any given natural object, actual activity
postulates some virtus artis, intentio, esse incompletum from the universal principle of
being” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 85). He goes on to say: “Thus the intentio of De
potentia, q. 3, a. 7, ad 7m, emerges into the clear light of day and proves to be but
another aspect of the application mentioned in the body of the same article. . . . The
intentio is fate, and fate is simply the dynamic pattern of such relations—the pattern
through which the design of the divine artisan unfolds in natural and human history;
again, without fate things cannot act, with it they do” (ibid., 86; see also ibid., 291-96).
79
This would explain why the doctrine of application first appears in the Summa
contra gentiles: “once St Thomas had grasped a theory of providence compatible with
Aristotelian terrestrial contingency, he began at once to argue that the creature’s
causation was caused not merely because of creation and of conservation but also
because of application” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 89).

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In light of the above discussion, and without proposing to
“reduce” divine application to the divine providential plan—for
the former is rather the central element of Aquinas’s doctrine of
providence that makes it more than a mere upholding or
conserving of creation—I would nonetheless like to suggest that
divine application is a motion, a divine ordering and bringing
together of secondary causes into the right mutual relation,
disposition, and proximity for motion and creaturely action to
occur. This view dovetails well with Aquinas’s doctrine of
providence, which provides the context for the divina applicatio. For Aquinas, apart from extraordinary miracles, secondary causes are the executors of providence,80 the latter being
defined as “the reason [or plan] of the order of things to an
end” (ratio ordinis rerum in finem),81 and hence an essential
element of God’s government, or the “execution of this order”
(executio huius ordinis).82 And these causes act by virtue of their
powers grounded in their (substantial) form—powers caused by
God as primary cause, by creating and conserving them in
being, as well as by applying them to act, and doing so instrumentally.83 Such causal powers tend to manifest themselves, but
they manifest, or co-manifest, only if certain manifestation
conditions are met. As Daniel De Haan observes, “hylomorphic
substances can only realize and exercise their powers within
hylomorphic systems comprised of the ongoing dynamic commerce of co-manifesting active and passive power[] partners of
powerful particulars.”84 This is because in real-world scenarios,
“substances are always dynamically nested within a complex
80

STh I, q. 22, a. 3, ad 2; see also ScG III, cc. 72, 76-77, 79, 96; STh I, q. 116, a. 2.
STh I, q. 22, a. 1.
82
STh I, q. 22, a. 3.
83
For more details, see Kopf, Reframing Providence, 103-46.
84
Daniel De Haan, “Nihil dat quod non habet: Thomistic Naturalism contra
Supernaturalism on the Origin of Species,” in Thomistic Evolution, ed. Nicanor
Austriaco (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming),
quoted here from the draft manuscript. Similarly, Frost observes: “Aquinas recognizes
that efficient causes do not operate in isolation from each other. . . . Each natural
efficient cause and its patient is plugged into a network of other efficient causes” (Frost,
Aquinas on Efficient Causation, 192; for a discussion of what this network of causes
looks like in Aquinas, see ibid., 191-227).
81

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25

matrix of co-manifesting active and passive powers with other
substances.”85 And for Aquinas, God’s providence consists precisely in the ordering of all created things to their due ends
(ordinare res in finem).86 For this reason, divine application
would appear to be the divine ordering or moving of secondary
causes that enables secondary causation, or the manifestation of
their intrinsic powers, by bringing them into the right mutual
relation, disposition, and proximity.
III. THE METAPHYSICS OF CREATURELY ACTION
Thus far I have argued, in section I, that Aquinas teaches a
divine application and motion of creaturely powers to act, and
suggested, in section II, that there might be a middle ground
between (a) rendering Aquinas’s motion idiom as metaphorical
talk and (b) positing a third entity distinct from God’s uncreated
action and a creature’s created action. On my proposed
reading,87 Lonergan acknowledges the need for a divine motion
of creaturely powers to act, neither seeking to reduce
application to creation-conservation nor viewing premotion as
an additional uncreated motion. In this third section, I will
specify the conditions under which Aristotelian premotion can
provide such a middle ground. To this end, I draw attention to
a few implications of Lonergan’s position for the metaphysics of
creaturely action.
Before doing so, however, we first need to clarify further the
relation between motion and action. With Garrigou-Lagrange
and Lonergan, I have suggested that divine application is really
motion. For Aquinas, motion as the reduction of potency to act
is an incomplete act. Motion, as understood by Aquinas, is an
imperfect act of a thing in potency to a further act. Motion is
thus a certain middle position between being only in potency
and only in act, respectively: what undergoes motion is in act,
and not simply in potency, although it was in potency in the
prior state, but it is currently not yet fully actualized; rather, it

85
86

De Haan, “Nihil dat quod non habet.”
STh I, q. 22, a. 4.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

has a potency and an order to further act, as a future end state.88
Aquinas explains:
So the imperfect act, therefore, has the character [ratio] of motion, both
insofar as it is compared, as potency, to further act, and insofar as it is
compared, as act, to something more imperfect. Hence, it is neither the
potency of a thing existing in potency nor is it the act of a thing existing in
act, but it is the act of a thing existing in potency.89

Agents cause their effects through action. Action is the exercise
or manifestation of the agent’s power. Thus, as we have seen, all
agents act by virtue of their powers. And typically, creaturely
agents act by causing motion, which the patient, the subject
being moved, undergoes. While action and passion are the same
motion for Aquinas—that is, it is one and the same motion that
the agent causes and the patient undergoes—they are not
identical, since “action” refers to the motion as depending on,
and arising from, the agent, and “passion” refers to the motion
as depending on, and existing in, the patient.90 For this reason,
Aquinas points out that motion is, as action, arising from the
agent but, as passion, existing in the patient.91 Thus, the motion
caused by the agent which the patient undergoes is located in
the patient. Gloria Frost succinctly summarizes Aquinas’s view
as follows:
87
Commentators disagree on the ultimate import of Lonergan’s thesis. For two
opposed readings, see Matava, Divine Causality, 213-41, esp. 235-39; and Matthew
Lamb, “The Mystery of Divine Predestination: Its Intelligibility according to Lonergan,”
in Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations, ed. Steven A. Long, Roger
W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White (Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2016), 214-25.
While Matava argues that the “inadequacy of Lonergan’s proposal stems from its
attempt to explain the divine causation of human free choices in terms of ‘Aristotelian
premotion’ arranged by God according to the pattern of fate, rather than understanding
God’s action in terms of creation” (Matava, Divine Causality, 214), Lamb says that
“Lonergan most certainly does see application as a further differentiation within the
context of creation and conservation” (Lamb, “The Mystery of Divine Predestination,”
219).
88
III Phys., lect. 2; for more details, see Frost, Aquinas on Efficient Causation, 21
and 153-88.
89
III Phys., lect. 2.
90
Frost, Aquinas on Efficient Causation, 21.
91
III Phys., lect. 5.

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

27

(1) a single actuality [i.e., motion] fulfills and completes both an agent’s active
potentiality [i.e., power] and its patient’s passive potentiality;
(2) this actuality [i.e., motion] exists in the patient—the fulfillment of an
agent’s active potentiality [i.e., power] is not an actuality existing in it [i.e., the
agent];
(3) there are two different ways in which an actuality [i.e., motion] can fulfill
and complete a potentiality: by existing in it or arising from it. Active
potentiality [i.e., power] is fulfilled in the latter way.92

With these preliminary notes in view, we can now proceed to
the differences concerning action.
A) The Real Distinction between “posse agere” and “actu agere”
There are two fundamental points of disagreement between
Lonergan and Garrigou-Lagrange, which I will state simply in
what follows, in order to make the fundamental assumptions
explicit, while not defending them in any detail. The first
concerns the real distinction between posse agere and actu agere.
Lonergan writes: “we agree with the [traditional] synthesis of
premotion . . ., but we think the explanation of the transition
from rest to activity found in In VIII Phys., lect. 2, to be more
germane to St Thomas than their distinction between posse
agere and actu agere.”93
Let us start with the terminology. As I mentioned in the
section dealing with Garrigou-Lagrange, “posse agere means
that a given agent is able to act yet not actually acting. Actu
agere means that the agent is not merely able to act but actually
acting.”94 To give an example, I have, right now, the ability to
speak German, but only if I say “Ich spreche Deutsch” do I
actually speak German. Because posse agere refers to a potency
to act, in absence of its actualization, posse agere and actu agere
are contradictory statements. They do not allow for a middle.
For example, assuming the existence of Peter, the two statements “Peter can act but is not actually acting” (posse agere) and
92

Frost, Aquinas on Efficient Causation, 171.
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 315; the original reads “Bannezian” instead of
“traditional.”
94
Ibid., 253.
93

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

“Peter is actually acting” (actu agere) cannot both be true at the
same time, and, given Peter’s power to act, neither can they
both be false—the truth of one statement, that Peter is acting,
implies the falsity of the other, that Peter is not acting, and vice
versa. Since contradictory statements cannot be verified in the
same situation, there must, Lonergan reasons, as mentioned
above, be a real difference in what he calls the “objective
situation” between posse agere and actu agere.95 The question is,
does this imply a real difference in the agent qua agent?
Lonergan writes:
Why is a real distinction between posse agere and actu agere so easily foisted
on St Thomas? Because Peter can act but is not acting and Peter is actually
acting are contradictory propositions. Therefore, there must be an objective
real difference involved by the transition from the truth of one proposition to
the truth of the other. That is perfectly true. What is overlooked is that the
emergence of the effect does supply such a real difference in the objective
field.96

Lonergan argues that the real difference between posse agere
and actu agere lies not (a) in the agent qua agent but (b) in the
objective situation. For example, the difference between God
not creating and God creating is not a change in God, but
simply his creation, or the being of creatures, as the effect of his
creative act. The question is, does this also apply to creaturely
agents and their actions? As seen above, action is the exercise of
an agent’s power. Agents act by virtue of their powers, and
creaturely agents do so typically by causing motion. The motion
caused by the agent arises from the agent but is located and
exists in the patient. Thus, Lonergan argues, it is first and
foremost the effect in the situation that makes the difference
between the capacity to act and the actual action. For Lonergan,
the real difference of action thus resides in the effect caused by
the agent, or in the motion existing in the patient acted upon
and undergoing the motion, and not in the agent as such. He
denies that the real difference lies in the creaturely agent qua

95
96

Ibid.
Ibid., 266-67.

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

29

agent.97 On his view, change, or motion, takes place in the
effect, not in the cause. Action does not imply a real change in
the agent.98 On Aquinas’s account, Lonergan says, there is “one
and the same actus actuating both the active and passive potency of the mover and the passive potency of the moved; and
this one and the same actus is not in the mover but from the
mover and in the moved [(ut ab agente in aliud procedens)].”99
Against this view, one could object with Steven Long that
Aristotelian premotion is insufficient because what is at stake is
not agency qua agency but creaturely agency; and creaturely
powers in potency to act need to be actualized precisely
because, unlike God, a creaturely agent is not its power, is not
its action.100 To this one may reply that Lonergan’s analysis, if
correct, applies not only to agents qua agents but primarily to
creaturely agents, namely, specifically to agents in time, which is
to say, if the agency involves succession (before and after). In
fact, Aristotelian premotion is needed only in the agens in
tempore:101 “Recall the nature of premotion: it is a condition of
activity in the agens in tempore. If there is action now and not
before, then there is some reason for the difference. That reason
is the premotion.”102 So, “the necessity of premotion is the necessity of an explanation of temporal difference.”103 The question is, then, does the transition between posse agere and actu
agere imply a change, or motion, in the agent (mover) or in the
patient (moved)? Garrigou-Lagrange’s version of physical premotion would seem to imply change in the agent, at least in
certain cases; Aristotelian premotion asserts a change only in the
patient. According to the latter concept, premotion is not
needed for causation as such, but only for causation in time. On
this view, the agent as agent needs no actualization other than

97

Ibid., 253.
See ibid., 67-73 and 254-77.
99
Ibid., 264.
100
Steven A. Long, “St. Thomas Aquinas, Divine Causality, and the Mystery of
Predestination,” in Long, Nutt, and White, eds., Thomism and Predestination, 67-73.
101
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 276, 311, 378 (esp. n. 158), 397.
102
Ibid., 397.
103
Ibid., 379.
98

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

to be brought into the right mutual relation, disposition, and
proximity with the patient.104 That is to say, in creatures, the
exercise of a power (action), needs a premotion to account for
the actualization of the power in potency to act, but this
increase in actuality is accounted for not by a further created
passive motion received in the agent, but rather by God’s
bringing the manifestation partners into the right mutual
relation, disposition, and proximity. Creaturely agents could
not act, could not cause any effect by virtue of their powers, if
their powers were not applied to act by God in this manner;
they need to be physically premoved, but in the Aristotelian
sense, embedded in the doctrine of providence.
A further unresolved issue concerns the fact that this middle
ground presupposes, as mentioned above, that Aristotelian premotion is premotion in time, which raises the question of how it
can safeguard the primacy of divine action. One way of addressing this issue is to say that Aristotelian premotion is not
merely a priority of motion in causation but also a priority in
time. In other words, secondary causation, as “caused causation,” cannot but be subordinate to God’s primary causation, all
the way down to each and every manifestation of creaturely
powers, or creaturely action. What Lonergan’s proposal adds is
that the moving to act of these creaturely powers, if and insofar
as these powers manifest in time, has a temporal dimension too.
This dimension should not, in my opinion, be set against the
subordination of the motion of secondary causes in causation.
Divine application is a divine action that goes beyond the creation and conservation of creaturely powers, and consists in the
ordering of these secondary causes to their end, by respectively
ordering them to each other in the temporal execution of the
providential order. Yet, this providential order itself, as the
divina ratio in God, is not temporal, although the execution is,
but, as we shall see below, even the execution is in an active
way in God, essentially depending on his creation, conservation,
and application. Thus, the priority of divine application is in
causation, and not simply in time, although the Aristotelian pre104

Ibid., 74-75.

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31

motions through which providence is executed temporally may
have a priority in time, if abstracted from the divine guidance.
In summary, the thesis that there is no real distinction between posse agere and actu agere in the creaturely agent qua
agent, but that the real difference is only in the objective situation, is a first noteworthy and indeed controversial presupposition of Lonergan’s middle course, thus questioning one of the
fundamental assumptions of the traditional version of physical
premotion.105
105

Here is a brief summary of Lonergan’s own reasoning. His view entails two
claims: (a) That there is a real difference between posse agere and actu agere in the
objective situation is, I think, a relatively straightforward claim. If, for example, Peter is
not only able to walk but is actually walking, then the difference between the two states
of Peter having the capacity to walk but not actually walking and Peter actually walking
is—at least—the effect: for instance, Peter’s arriving in time for dinner. (b) It is the
second claim that is controversial: there is no real distinction between posse agere and
actu agere in the agent qua agent. Here two cases need to be distinguished: (1) God and
(2) creatures. (b-1) At least in the case of God, Lonergan’s assumption is plausible, at
least on a classical theistic picture; the difference between God creating and God not
creating is his creation, the effect of God’s act of creation, not a change in God the
agent. In other words, if one wishes to use that terminology, in God as an agent there is
no real distinction between posse agere and actu agere first because there is no
potentiality in God, and second because divine action does not add anything to God’s
actuality. Lonergan reasons that if God is the unmoved mover, then agency qua agency
cannot imply that every mover be moved; that can only be a characteristic of creaturely
agency. Hence, the assumption that there is a real distinction between posse agere and
actu agere in the agent qua agent cannot be a universal principle (ibid., 253-54). In other
words, “to posit a real distinction between posse agere and actu agere in the agent
implies omne movens movetur. That clearly denies any motor immobilis and so the
possibility of any motion” (ibid., 265). On this point, there is agreement with the
traditional Thomistic interpretation: “Metaphysically, the only difference between God
causing X, and God not causing X, is not a change in God, but rather the being of the
creature” (Long, “St. Thomas Aquinas,” 60; see also ibid., 68-69). (b-2) So the
controversial question is whether there is a real distinction between posse agere and actu
agere in the creaturely agent—and thus above and beyond “the emergence of the effect .
. . in the objective field” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 260) discussed above.
According to Lonergan (ibid., 254-61), three possible scenarios need to be considered:
(i) The emergence of an actio might involve a real change in the subject. (ii) The
presence of an actio might involve a composition in the subject. (iii) The disappearance
of an actio might involve a real change in the subject. Against option (i) Lonergan
invokes Aquinas’s statement in De potentia (q. 7, a. 8; as translated in Lonergan, Grace
and Freedom, 259) that “there cannot be motion in (the being related) to something,
because . . . there is no movement as regards action except metaphorically and

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

B) Physical Premotion Is Not a Third Product
A second and related point of disagreement concerns the
claim, seen in our discussion of Garrigou-Lagrange, that
physical premotion is a created motion really distinct from both
God’s uncreated action and the creaturely action. Lonergan
says:
Suppose Peter to stand sword in hand and then to lunge forward in such a
way that the sword pierces Paul’s heart. In this process there are only two
products: [1] the motion of the sword and [2] the piercing of Paul’s heart. But
while the products are only two, the causations are three: [i] Peter causes the
motion of the sword; [ii] the sword pierces the heart of Paul; and, in the third
place, [iii] Peter causes the causation of the sword, for he applies it to the act
of piercing and he does so according to the precepts of the art of killing. The
sword is strictly an instrument, its very causation is caused.106

improperly; . . . which would not be the case if relation or action signified something
remaining in the subject.” Against option (ii) Lonergan cites a passage in De potentia
(q. 7, a. 8; as translated in Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 259) where Aquinas states
that “neither does action (enter into composition) with the agent.” Against option (iii)
Lonergan puts forward that Aquinas states in De potentia (q. 7, a. 9, ad 7; as translated
in Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 258) with regard to action that “there is nothing to
prevent an accident of this kind from ceasing to be without (involving) a change of that
(subject) in which it is.” If these options appear unconvincing, Lonergan argues (Grace
and Freedom, 267), one can conclude that actio is the difference between posse agere
and actu agere, as mentioned above: “one and the same actus [is] actuating both the
active potency of the mover and the passive potency of the moved; and this one and the
same actus is not in the mover but from the mover and in the moved” (ibid., 264). He
comments elsewhere: “The fallacy . . . lies in affirming that the real difference between
potentia agendi and ipsum agere is a reality added to the agent as agent; in fact, that
reality is the effect, added to the patient as patient (motus est in mobili, actio est in
passo), and predicated of the agent as agent only by extrinsic denomination” (Lonergan,
review of De Deo in operatione naturae, 607). According to Lonergan, Aristotle’s and
Aquinas’s mature theories of action are, despite their difference in terminology,
essentially identical: “on the Aristotelian view action is a relation of dependence in the
effect; on the Thomist view action is a formal content attributed to the cause as causing
[(ut ab agente in aliud procedens)]. . . . [But] both philosophers keenly realized that
causation must not be thought to involve any real change in the cause as cause; . . . the
objective difference between posse agere and actu agere is attained without any change
emerging in the cause as such” (Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 72).
106
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 87-88.

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

33

As outlined above, there seems to be general agreement between
traditional physical premotion and Aristotelian premotion
theorists that there are three actions (here in the quotation
called “causations”) involved, namely, (i) God’s action, (ii) the
creature’s action, and (iii) God’s action in creaturely action; but
there is disagreement between the two camps as to whether, to
account for these three actions, we need two or three
“products.”107 A second important implication of Lonergan’s
view is that, while Garrigou-Lagrange needs physical premotion
as (3) an additional created entity distinct from both (1) the
divine uncreated action and (2) the creaturely created action,
Aristotelian premotion works without postulating such a
tertium quid (or third “product,” as Lonergan calls it in the
quotation). In this regard, Matava agrees with Lonergan that divine application must not be understood as a created reality.108
On Matava’s view, God causes only the creaturely agent
(creation and conservation) and thus the “being of change”
(application); on Lonergan’s view, by contrast, God causes not
only the creaturely agent (creation and conservation) but also
the creaturely effect (application), by bringing the creaturely
agents into the right mutual relation, disposition, and proximity
(Aristotelian premotion); and likewise, on Garrigou-Lagrange’s
view, God causes not only the creaturely agent (creation and
conservation) but also the creaturely effect (application), but
this time by causing another entity or effect, a third product,
really distinct from both God’s action and the creaturely action
(traditional physical premotion).
The disagreement may be illustrated with the above example
of Peter killing Paul, by using a sword instrumentally. On the
one hand, three actions can be identified in this event: (i) Peter
moves the sword, (ii) the sword pierces Paul, and (iii) Peter kills
Paul. While both camps agree on the analysis of the first two
actions, they disagree about how to account for the third action.
Rather than postulating a third product, namely, a physical
premotion distinct from both of the other actions, as defenders

107
108

Ibid., 304.
Matava, Divine Causality, 240.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

of traditional physical premotion would have it, Aristotelian
premotion theorists say that one cause, Peter, operates in the
operation of another cause, the sword. There is no need to have
a third product, although a third action emerges from these two
products, because of the (instrumental) subordination of the
latter to the former.
If the transition from posse agere to actu agere does not
imply a change in the agent qua agent but only in the patient,
motion arising from the agent and existing in the patient, then
creaturely agents in potency to act can be reduced to act by
bringing them into the right relation, disposition, and proximity
with the patient. What accounts for God’s activity in creaturely
action, then, is not a third product but the concept of “caused
causation.”109 Divine application is a form of caused causation
that explains the actualization not of the agent as agent, but of
the effect, that is, the motion arising from the agent and existing
in the patient, through the manifestation conditions of the
respective manifestation partners.110
One of the main difficulties with Garrigou-Lagrange’s physical premotion is that as a created motion it does not, and
cannot, have the universal and transcendent nature of God’s
uncreated action. Only divine primary causation extends to all
secondary causes (universal divine action) and is the cause of
their very causal modality, causing them, as ultimate primary
cause, to be either necessary or contingent. As such, only divine
primary causation is, even as an irresistible form of causation,
compatible with contingent secondary causes. That is, only
divine primary causation can cause not only a specific effect but
also its causal modality, including a contingent effect, with
causal certitude (transcendent divine action).111 But since
physical premotion in the traditional sense is a created reality, it
necessarily has creaturely attributes.
Although Matava is skeptical about the details of the first
point discussed above, he wholeheartedly agrees with and en109

Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 88.
Ibid., 86-90; see also ibid., 79-82.
111
On God’s universal and transcendent causation, see Kopf, Reframing Providence,
164-178.
110

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35

dorses the second one, as previously mentioned, namely, that
premotion must not be a created reality. In fact, he turns the
same argument that Lonergan advances against traditional
physical premotion against Lonergan himself.112 Matava objects
that, on an Aristotelian premotion approach, creaturely action is
also necessitated by created antecedents: God infallibly wills
creaturely actions, including contingent ones, by created means.
But a created entity does not, and cannot, have, as we have
seen, the universal and transcendent nature of uncreated divine
action, which is essential on Aquinas’s account of providence.
That is to say, the objection states that Lonergan’s Aristotelian
premotion is liable to the same objection as traditional physical
premotion because even fate is a created reality, namely, the
total order of the dispositions of secondary causes.113 Thus,
Matava objects not only that Aristotelian premotions are
created secondary causes but also that “the whole providentially
ordered set of Aristotelian premotions [is] itself a created
[reality].”114 Therefore, mistakenly, “transcendence is implicitly
ascribed to a created reality.”115
To this objection, one can reply that Aquinas’s doctrine of
divine providence is based on an understanding of God as
transcendent cause:
112

Matava, Divine Causality, 239-41.
Ibid., 214-15 and 232-33; see also ibid., 228-35.
114
Ibid., 235; the original reads “antecedent to choice” instead of “reality.” Matava’s
first argument concerning Aristotelian premotions is as follows: (1) “Aristotelian
premotions are created realities.” (2) But “divine transcendence cannot be ascribed to
any created reality.” (3) Therefore, divine transcendence cannot be ascribed to
Aristotelian premotions (ibid., 231). A second argument concerning fate, rather than
isolated Aristotelian premotions, goes is follows: (1) “[T]he arrangement of the whole
set of Aristotelian premotions . . . is nothing other than fate.” (2) “[T]he whole
providentially arranged set of secondary causes antecedent to [creaturely action] as an
arranged set is itself a created [reality].” (3) Therefore, fate is a created reality. (4) But
divine transcendence cannot be ascribed to any created reality. (4) Therefore, divine
transcendence cannot be attributed to fate (ibid., 232). In both cases, the argument then
continues: Only a cause with the attribute of divine transcendence can cause all
secondary causes, including contingent ones, with infallible certitude. Therefore, neither
Aristotelian premotion nor fate can cause all secondary causes, including contingent
ones, with infallible certitude.
115
Ibid., 233.
113

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

God alone has the property of transcendence. . . . He exercises control
through the created antecedents—true enough; but that is not the infallible,
the irresistible, the efficacious, which has its ground not in the creature but in
the uncreated, which has its moment not in time but in the cooperation of
eternal uncreated action with created and temporal action.116

Put differently, it is the universal and transcendent divine
ordering of secondary causes that exhibits these specifically
divine characteristics, including transcendent causation, not the
secondary causes thus executing providence—whereby (and this
is essential) “the order ‘impressed’” on secondary causes, or
rather on the antecedents to their action, as the objection goes,
must not be taken to be itself “a created effect of God.”117 On
the one hand, the impressio Dei is arguably the divine giving of
natures.118 As John Wippel observes, “what ultimately causes
the form of a natural agent is also responsible for that agent’s
inclination to its given end.”119 Edward Feser concurs: “The act
of ordering a natural cause to its typical effect just is the
imparting to it of a certain nature or substantial form.”120 On
the other hand, the fact that fate, as the divine providential
ordering of creatures as existing in, or “impressed on,”
creatures executing this order, is in created things does not
entail that it is a created reality, as the objection insinuates.121 As
Aquinas maintains, “fate is in created causes themselves,
inasmuch as they are ordered by God to producing effects.”122
Therefore, fate is in things only in a passive way. This is because
government, even if executed through secondary causes, is
always actively in God. Fate is not simply a created reality, even
though the execution of providence is mediated through created
116

Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 117-18.
Matava, Divine Causality, 233.
118
For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Kopf, Reframing Providence,
221-25.
119
John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being
to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2000), 484-85.
120
Edward Feser, “Between Aristotle and William Paley: Aquinas’s Fifth Way,” Nova
et vetera (Eng. ed.) 11 (2013): 736.
121
See note 114, above.
122
STh I, q. 116, a. 2.
117

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37

realities.123 On Aquinas’s view, this divine providential ordering
is, in the form of the eternal ratio, immediate and immanent to
God, with all the relevant divine characteristics, while the
temporal execution of this divine ordering can be, and is for the
most part, mediated through secondary causes. Yet these
secondary causes are ordered the way they are because of, and
in accordance with, a divine reality, namely, the ratio of the
divine ordering immediate and immanent to God.124
God’s creation bestows on creatures their natures and
powers by which they act; conservation as the first effect of
divine government preserves these powers in being; finally,
application moves these intrinsic powers grounded in their
(substantial) form or nature to action. What makes this action
of application transcendent is not the secondary causes and
their powers and dispositions, not even in their totality, but the
divine ordering of them, which can be neither separated from
nor reduced to God’s creation-conservation. Hence, to the extent that the divine ordering of secondary causes is, as the
eternal divina ratio, a divine action, the divine application in
terms of Aristotelian premotion is, as divinely ordered Aristotelian premotions and unlike physical premotion in the traditional sense, a divine reality, not a created one, and thus
universal and transcendent. The execution of this divine
ordering in time requires, at least as far as secondary causes are
concerned, that the intrinsic powers of these secondary causes
executing providence are not only created and conserved but
also applied and moved to action by God. And just as creation
and conservation are universal and transcendent actions of God,
so, too, is divine application—the moving of the intrinsic
powers of secondary causes to action, by bringing them, by an
uncreated universal and transcendent divine action, into the
right mutual relation, disposition, and proximity.

123
124

STh I, q. 23, a. 2; q. 116, a. 2; see also STh I, q. 116, a. 3.
See Kopf, Reframing Providence, 108-20.

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SIMON MARIA KOPF

CONCLUSION
This article has addressed the question of how two agents—
divine and creaturely—can bring about one action. More
specifically, the question discussed in this article has been
whether, on Aquinas’s influential account, God’s involvement in
creaturely action should be viewed as physical premotion, Aristotelian premotion, or a dimension of creation-conservation.
In section I, I have argued that Aquinas teaches a divine activity in creaturely action. According to his doctrine of divine
application, God not only (a) creates and (b) conserves in being
creaturely powers but also (c) applies them to act. Moreover, I
have shown how, at least textually, motion, understood as the
reduction of creaturely powers to act, is deeply embedded in
Aquinas’s account of primary and secondary causation. The
exact relation between such motion and the concept of agency,
however, which I have treated in sections II and III, is
controversial.
Matava’s minimalist approach rightly emphasizes the
importance of grounding God’s action in a robust theology of
creation; but grounding is not reducing. Garrigou-Lagrange
objects that without physical premotion one can neither explain
the actualization of creaturely powers in potency nor safeguard
the subordination of secondary causes in acting rather than
merely in being. But positing physical premotion as a third and
created entity, Matava replies with Lonergan, is problematic,
for as created motion it cannot have the universal and
transcendent nature that God’s uncreated action has, and, they
would add, it is also unnecessary. Lonergan, by contrast, suggests linking application with providence. Viewing application
as a divinely ordered motion brought about by God’s universal
and transcendent causality through creaturely secondary causes,
I have suggested, appears prima facie to be a more holistic
concept than positing a tertium quid. I have also identified and
discussed some of the conditions of this middle ground.
A significant advantage of the Aristotelian premotion
interpretation is that it most carefully pays attention to
providence, which is the context of Aquinas’s treatment of

GOD’S INVOLVEMENT IN CREATURELY ACTION

39

divine application—that God providentially guides and cares for
his creation. On this view, it is not so much physical premotion
as a distinct created entity that safeguards God’s providence, but
rather the fact that, as uncreated universal and transcendent
cause, God providentially guides the entire order of secondary
causes by ordering them in such a manner towards each other
that the respective manifestation conditions of their intrinsic
powers are met, which explains how God works in creaturely
actions by applying their powers to action.125

125

This publication was made possible through the support of Grant 62684 from the
John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

The Thomist 88 (2024): 41-76

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS
MICHAEL PAKALUK
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

I

SHALL PROCEED in this article by using the method
recommended by John Henry Newman, of first considering
what one should hold about a topic in relation to what is
antecedently plausible to expect, and only afterwards looking
directly at the evidence. 1 The topic is this: What does St.
Thomas Aquinas argue for, and how should we understand his
claims, in his famous article on natural law—article 2 of
question 94 of the Prima secundae?
The topic is well-worn, but perhaps Newman’s method can
yield new insights. In particular, by adopting Newman’s
method, I intend to bring to the interpretation of that text
assumptions proper to the philosophical tradition in which St.
Thomas worked, and only assumptions of that kind. My target
for this project is the deep and highly influential exegesis of this
text by Germain Grisez.2 That exegesis, which does not begin
from “antecedent probabilities,” has been thought by some to
introduce premises that are Cartesian or Kantian, and alien to
an Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning.3 Whether that
1

On this method, taken from Richard Whately’s treatise on rhetoric, see Michael
Pakaluk, “A Philosopher,” in Juan Velez, ed., A Guide to John Henry Newman: His Life
and Thought (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022),
220-26.
2
See Germain Grisez, “The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on
the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2,” Natural Law Forum 10 (1965):
168-201.
3
See for example Fulvio Di Blasi, “The Role of God in the New Natural Law
Theory,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13 (2013): 35-45; and Matthew B.
41

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

claim is correct or not, the aim of this article is to establish an
alternative interpretation securely situated within a classical
framework, suitable to the requirements of a classical theory of
natural law. 4 Within a classical framework, we are led to
construe the natural law as a natural kind, and to see article 2 of
question 94 as setting the bases for both the unity of this kind,
and for discerning the natural articulations within it. One might
say that its chief concern is, to borrow Plato’s phrase (Phaedrus
265e), how to cleave this natural kind at its joints.
I. ANTECEDENT PROBABILITIES
We begin with the relevant antecedent probabilities. Suppose
someone were a moral theologian in the Christian and Aristotelian traditions who faced the following difficulty. He
believed that the moral life consists primarily of acquiring the
virtues and exercising them, on the broad grounds that beatitude is our last end; that beatitude is union with God; and that
we cannot become united with God, who is good, unless we too
become good, and this is what it is to acquire and exercise the
virtues.5 However, he also believed that the moral life could be
construed as an ordered or lawful life, on the broad grounds
that to acquire and exercise the virtues means acting “in
accordance with reason,” in Aristotle’s formula (Nicomachean
Ethics 1.7.1098a7), which he understood as generally implying
that, for any particular virtuous action, an ordering or mode of
regulation (Greek, taxis; Latin, ordinatio) can be found, such
that that virtuous action can be understood by its doer as
satisfying, conforming to, or realizing that mode of regulation.
Also, since he tended to construe reason as a power of grasping
universals, and anyway he was disposed to conceive of
O’Brien, “Elizabeth Anscombe and the New Natural Lawyers on Intentional Action,”
The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13 (2013): 47-56.
4
On which see Michael Pakaluk, “On What a Theory of Natural Law Is Supposed to
Be,” Revista persona y derecho (the law review of the University of Navarre) 82
(2020):167-200, https://doi.org/10.15581/011.82.007.
5
One may regard Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, book III, as a standard
presentation of this commonly held classical view.

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

43

individual actors as situated at least implicitly in communities,
he regarded these regulations or regulating precepts as capable
of being generalized and somehow systematized into something
resembling a body of law.6
Moreover, as an Aristotelian, he would be disposed to think
of any domain in the manner of a genus as at first undifferentiated: the universal precedes the specific (see Physics 1.1).
Therefore, he would think of human “virtue”—“the perfection
of a power” (cf. De caelo 1.11)—at first as a single, unified,
integrated perfection of a correspondingly unified power which
is the intellectual soul. Accordingly, he would be disposed to
refer to a good person as if through a single trait, such as simply
“virtuous” (Latin, virtuosus; Greek, epieikes), serious (studiosus,
spoudaios), or chastened (temperatus, sôphrôn).7 But then, similarly, he would think of order or lawfulness at first as a unified
expression of a consistent, rational mode of regulation among
members belonging to or conceived of as belonging to the same
community, that is, that there would also be a single trait or
way of acting, “righteousness” (in the manner of a iustus, or
nomimos and dikaios), which involved following “moral order”
or “law” (see Nic. Ethic. 5.1.1129b11-27). If that community
were the distributed community of oneself with any human
being one happens to encounter, considered as human—one’s
“neighbor”—then there would be an “order” or “law” for that
natural community also.8

6

In the Aristotelian tradition, in which statesmanship is construed as analogous to an
art (see Nicomachean Ethics 10.9), one would not be disposed to conceive of the
systematization of law merely as a hierarchy of generalizations. Rather, it would also
involve setting down rankings and giving priorities, setting out and delimiting the
boundaries of subsidiary powers or domains of judgment in which genuine discretion
operated, and giving description of due operations and processes. Law is not a
formalism.
7
As reflected indeed in Aristotle’s language in Nic. Ethic. 1.7.10908a16-18, where
he is clearly disposed initially to regard virtue as a single power.
8
“Friendship seems to be present by nature . . . especially among human beings . . .
one may observe, even in one’s travels, that every human being is akin to every other
and a friend” (Nic. Ethic. 8.9.1155a18-22), in the translation of Michael Pakaluk,
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX, Clarendon Aristotle Series (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1998).

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

If he looked at things in this way, how would he proceed in
an investigation into this moral or “natural” law? Of course, he
would first define and discuss the genus, law. Next, he would
ask what “diversity” there is in the genus, marking out the
“natural law” from other broad kinds of law. For him, an
investigation of diversity would properly be posed as a “one
versus many” question: Is there one law only, or are there many
laws? And what he meant in asking this would be whether there
is only one “body” of law, as we would say, or many “bodies”
of law. If many, he would still continue to think of law as unified, as in a codex or corpus of law, but it would have a
fundamental articulation.
Having now articulated the genus, “law in general,” into (let
us say) eternal, natural, human, and divine bodies of law, then,
when in his investigation he came to inquire into natural law in
particular, the question would arise once again: Does it have
diversity? And, once again, he would ask this as a “one versus
many” question. But of what would he be asking, whether it
was one or many? Not law in this case—if he believed that there
were not “bodies” of law, too, within natural law, perhaps
precisely because of the presumed “naturalness” of natural
law—but something else.
The reason he would proceed in this way in his investigation
is that as a follower of Aristotle he would regard it as good
method in general, in discussing any topic, first to discover that
which gives unity to the discussion (i.e., why he was engaged
after all in a single discussion, of single topic), by correctly
stating the genus that constitutes that topic, and only after that
to look for articulation, structure, diversity, or classification
within that unity. Diversification into species would indeed be
the standard and clearest manner of diversification; and yet
other sorts of structure might be appropriate to the topic.
Having done these things, he would next go on to raise
difficulties (dubitationes, aporiai) in connection with that topic,
and then resolve them (giving solutiones, luseis), making use of
his definition of the genus and his claims about that genus’s
articulation to do so, thereby showing the coherence of his

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

45

account, precisely in its serviceability in yielding clarity and
insight, especially any insight it gives into causes and principles.9
Since, as has been said, he regards, on the one hand, the
virtues, and, on the other hand, the regulating work of practical
reason—or law—as coordinated throughout, then, when he
began to look for structure within natural law, it might be
thought that the first place he would go for a model would be
the traditional doctrine of the cardinal virtues. 10 At least, he
would consider that others would be initially disposed to take
them as a model. After all, the cardinal virtues seem to be
virtues by nature and rooted in human nature, and acting virtuously seems to be somehow a matter of following nature.
Does the articulation of the natural law correspond, then, to the
articulation of the virtues? Virtues are perfections of a power;
therefore, they are habits. Since they qualify powers in the
manner of a habit, and are “in” them as a quality is in a subject,
they therefore are differentiated as is the power. Since active
power is properly differentiated into four powers—practical
reason, will, irascibility, and concupiscence—then, as there are
four qualifications of active power, there are four basic or
cardinal virtues.11
But is natural law, after all, a habit? To be sure, like any law
it is a mode of regulation, as that is of the essence of law. But
must a mode of regulation be a habit? In his investigation into
the natural law, then, the first thing he would need to do would
be to clarify whether the natural law is a habit. If it is not, then
it would not be diversified simply according to some mode of
diversification of the human soul. Habits are so diversified; but
presumably a mode of regulation would need to be dealt with
differently.
9
Most investigations in the Nicomachean Ethics follow this order. See Michael
Pakaluk, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 235-38.
10
The roots of the doctrine of cardinal virtues are in Plato’s Republic and Cicero’s
De officiis, but something like that doctrine is found in the Nicomachean Ethics too.
11
For the differentiation and enumeration of the virtues in an Aristotelian
framework, see Michael Pakaluk, “The Unity of the Nicomachean Ethics,” in Jon Miller,
ed., Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: A Critical Guide (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013), 23-44.

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

II. NATURAL LAW AS A NATURAL KIND
Let us pause and take stock. Up to this point, we have looked
at this question of the diversity within natural law from the
point of view of what Newman called “antecedent probabilities.” We have asked, given that someone was a Christian
moral theologian working in the Aristotelian tradition, how is it
likely that he would approach the question? Now, without
putting aside antecedent probabilities but rather allowing
ourselves to be guided by them, let us turn directly to evidence
itself, and in particular, the texts of St. Thomas—without doubt
a Christian moral theologian working in the Aristotelian tradition. What do we find when we look at his examination of law
and natural law (STh I-II, qq. 90-94)? We find indeed that his
first concern, in his discussion of the body of natural law in
article 1 of question 94, is to examine whether the natural law
is a habit.
Looking at the text itself, what would we say his reasons are
for doing so? What motives does he reveal there? As in many
texts of St. Thomas, he aims to accomplish two things at once in
this article. First, negatively, he wishes to rule out that natural
law is a habit, although he concedes that we adhere to it habitually. Second, positively, he wishes to insist that the regulation or
ordinatio which is natural law consists more precisely of
“precepts” (praecepta). His reasoning is that the natural law is a
work of human reason which, like other works of reason, such
as the propositions we articulate in doing philosophy, show a
complexity and a repeatable form. (It is a familiar theme in St.
Thomas that human reason must articulate truths even about
simple things in complex formulations.) Prior to this point in
the “Treatise on Law,” he had favored the word ordinatio for
the content of law, as that is the more general term and would
cover the eternal law of God also, which would be simple and
would not consist of precepts showing complexity, except
metaphorically. But now, in ruling out that the natural law is a
habit, he makes it clear that natural law as something human is
formulated as a precept. Therefore, it is no more a habit than
any utterance is a habit. Henceforward, then, the question of

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

47

“one versus many” within natural law must become a question
of diversity of precepts. Is there one precept, or many?
That is indeed how St. Thomas introduces the very next
article.12 We can say that article 2 of question 94 is ostensibly
devoted to distinguishing and perhaps even numbering the
precepts that properly are to count as constituting the natural
law. This seems a promising if provisional result—a first fruit of
approaching the article initially through antecedent probabilities
that are classical and Aristotelian in character, serving to
confirm the value of that approach.
We are immediately met by a difficulty, however. Let us state
it so as to put it aside for now; we will return to it later. We
know from elsewhere in the Summa that St. Thomas regards the
Decalogue as giving the precepts of the natural law: “The
precepts of the decalogue are the first principles of the Law:
and the natural reason assents to them at once, as to principles
that are most evident” (STh II-II, q. 122, a. 1).13 If article 2 of
question 94 is about the distinction and perhaps even enumeration of the precepts of natural law, then why, if he is
interested in distinguishing and perhaps enumeration, does he
not at any point answer the question posed in the article by
saying that there are ten precepts? Perhaps it would be enough
if in this article he merely gives the basis for that later enumeration? It is a long article, after all, as it stands. Moreover,
we know that St. Thomas, like Aristotle, prefers to leave a
discussion in an unfinished state, to be completed later, if it is
appropriate to do so—and he does after all devote question 100
of the Prima secundae and question 122 of the Secunda
secundae to completing this task. Therefore, the omission would
be understandable enough on his terms. So tentatively we put
the difficulty aside and proceed with this rough, anticipated
resolution.
When we go on to consider article 2 of question 94, we see
that, just like the preceding article, it accomplishes two things at
once: something positive and something negative. Positively, it
12

“Videtur quod lex naturalis non contineat plura praecepta, sed unum tantum.”
All translations from the Summa are taken from the English Dominican Fathers
translation (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947), unless otherwise noted.
13

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

sets down the proper bases for diversifying the natural law.
Negatively, it rejects various attempts to map parts of natural
law onto parts (“potential” parts) of human nature, which
arguably is an equally important task.
Let us consider the negative point first. For this, objection 2
turns out to be crucial, which proceeds on the premise that
“natural law is consequent to the nature of a man” (“lex
naturalis consequitur hominis naturam”). The objection puts
forward precisely a claim about the mapping of natural law to
parts of the human soul. Note St. Thomas’s reply: the objection
is correct only in the sense that the active powers of the human
soul “are relevant to the natural law insofar as they are
regulated by reason” (“secundum quod regulantur ratione,
pertinent ad legem naturalem”). But this is just to say: only
insofar as someone has acquired the virtues of those powers.
Therefore, we can say that by his exposition in the corpus of
this article, not simply does St. Thomas intend to sideline
powers of the soul as bases for diversifying precepts of the
natural law, but also he clears the way for his account of the
virtues to be the primary way of investigating the regulation of
the natural law over those powers of the soul. The reply to
objection 2 points us forward to the Secunda secundae.
This point deserves a little more attention. In the Prima
secundae St. Thomas is, after all, simply setting out the components of an account of the ethical life, whereas it is in the
Secunda secundae that he gives that account. Those components
include acts, habits (good habits being the virtues), law, and
grace. He therefore in the Secunda secundae has a choice—as he
effectively says in his prologue to that part—of either making
law subordinate to an account of virtue or construing virtue as
being in service to the law. Clearly, he does the former;14 and he
brings in what earlier he had circumscribed as “the natural law”
solely under the virtue of justice, and specifically as the precepts
associated with the virtue of justice (q. 122). In sum, in putting
aside the idea that “the natural law” should be divided up on

14

His plan, he says, is to take everything else as having been reduced to the virtues
(“tota materia morali ad considerationem virtutum reducta”).

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

49

the plan of, so to speak, “what makes the parts of the soul
good,” he also paves the way for assigning that role to the
virtues and therefore makes it possible to construe law
teleologically, as directed toward the genuine human good. 15
The argument of article 2 of question 94, therefore, needs to be
a project of limitation and containment, so that natural law can
be somehow encompassed within an account of the virtues, not
vice versa.
Another difficulty presents itself. Saint Thomas really is like
that supposititious moral theologian in the Aristotelian tradition
we considered, in that he holds, following Aristotle, that virtuous actions are “in accordance with reason,” and that this
entails more precisely that a virtuous person acts “as reason
ordains” or “as reason stipulates.”16 One might suppose that, in
this regulating aspect, where practical reason is at work
ordering, systematizing, planning, prioritizing, and putting our
actions in proper proportion, every act of every virtue should be
regarded as prescribed by natural law. Saint Thomas concedes
that this is true in an important respect (STh I-II, q. 94, a. 3).
Nonetheless, if the field of virtuous action and the field of
natural law were coextensive, then neither could encompass the
other. One needs, then, to find some stricter, more limited sense
of “the natural law,” which picks out a privileged set of
precepts. Therefore, a complete statement of the purpose of
article 2 would be that it aims to give the bases, first, for
including precepts within this stricter class, and, second, for
distinguishing and enumerating precepts within this stricter
class.
It is important to observe that, for a truly natural law, these
bases of delimiting, distinguishing, and enumerating must
themselves be “by nature” or “natural.” They cannot be a
matter of convention or human choice, not even a choice, for
example, of some elegant mode of classification which
15
On the importance of this teleological conception of natural law, see Michael
Pakaluk, “Two Conceptions of Natural Law,” Divinitas: Revista internazionale di ricerca
e di critica teologica n.s. 62 (2019): 321-38.
16
Aristotle’s language is hôs ho logos taxêi or legei; see Nicomachean Ethics
3.12.1119b18, 4.4.1125b35, 5.1.1138b20.

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

accomplishes some admirable purpose. What one identifies
cannot be merely a highly suitable or fitting classification, as
even the “highly suitable” still has a tincture of convention. One
might say that the delimitation, distinctions, and number of
precepts must be “already there” by nature—as when, if we
look in a zoo and someone asks how many types of primates are
contained in the zoo, and how many of each type, the answer is
“already there,” because a primate and kinds of primates are
natural kinds. No further choice is needed: simply give the
natural kinds appropriately, and the answers fall out.
When one puts the matter this way, one sees how
astonishing is St. Thomas’s view of the Decalogue, that these
commandments are the first principles of law which “natural
reason” (ratio naturalis) assents to immediately. When he holds
that the Decalogue is the natural law, what he is claiming is that
on Sinai God simply indicated again, in divine law, precepts that
already stood distinct and complete on their own to natural
reason as natural entities. On such a view, there would be
nothing conventional or arbitrary, and certainly nothing
partisan or sectarian, about the two tablets and ten precepts;
they are two and ten “by nature.” Kronecker’s famous dictum,
“God created the natural numbers, and everything else is the
work of man,” gives the spirit of this view.17 The Decalogue is
given by nature, and all the rest (such as the Corpus iuris civilis)
is the work of man, in cooperation with nature.
Not that Kronecker’s maxim can be simply transposed to the
Decalogue, since St. Thomas thinks that there are other
precepts, also true “by nature,” which however are not properly
included in “the natural law.” One example he gives is “Rise up
before the hoary head,” which one might construe as, “Show
respect for your elders” (STh I-II, q. 100, a. 1; q. 100, a. 11).18
Such a precept is based on the natural authority, mentioned by
17

More precisely, “Die ganzen Zahlen hat der liebe Gott gemacht, alles andere ist
Menschenwerk,” spoken in a lecture before the Berliner Naturforscher-Versammlung in
1886, according to the memorial essay, “Leopold Kronecker,” by H. Weber in
Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung, 1891/92, band 2 (Berlin: Georg
Reimer, 1893): 19, http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN37721857X_0002.
18
The full precept is “coram cano capite consurge, et honora personam senis.”

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

51

Aristotle and recognized by St. Thomas, that a markedly older
person has over any younger person, not necessarily a relative.
Greater age and, therefore, greater experience and the occasion
to have acquired greater virtue, including a claim to direct with
authority towards the common good, is something that is found
in someone by nature. It is not like political office, also deserving of honor, but which for instance could be held by a
young and unworthy person, perhaps acquired by conquest or
(as in a classical democracy) attained by lot. The honor due to a
holder of political office, such as honor paid to this-and-such
person, and not to the city or to God as the source of all
authority, is in part a matter of convention.19
Precepts such as “Rise up before the hoary head,” although
matters of natural law, are not properly included in “the natural
law” because they are not in the natural course of things evident
to everyone. That we should honor our mother and father is
evident to everyone; that we should rise up before the hoary
head is not. At least, that is the claim. By “the natural course of
things” in this context one means what human beings come to
know simply by making their way through life to maturity in
the natural setting of a human being, which is to be at work
within a family placed in political society.20
It is necessary to speak here of what one comes to know “in
the natural course of things” because that is the way to characterize what is known “by nature.” On St. Thomas’s view,
human beings, with respect to their speculative reason, are
regarded as teleologically aiming to acquire concepts and form
them into true statements expressive of knowledge about the
world. What everyone acquires in this way, unless there are
serious impediments, counts as our natural endowment towards
knowledge, not conceived of as “innate ideas” but as what one
is designed in God’s providence to acquire, given the human
condition, unless something impedes: this is “natural reason.”
19
It can be solely by convention that this-and-such person is “placed in a position of
dignity” (“aliquis ex hoc quod est in dignitate constitutus” [STh II-II, q. 102, a. 1, ad 2]).
20
In De regno, St. Thomas uses the curious phrase “a province or a city” (“provincia
vel civitas”) to indicate political society (e.g., I, c. 3); sometimes too when he has a
Roman example in mind he calls it a “republic” (e.g., I, c. 5).

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

Again, one must consider precisely what everyone comes to
know in this way, because everything about the natural law is by
nature, including its promulgation, and this natural endowment
would be how it is promulgated to everyone.
Therefore, the first thing that St. Thomas must do to clarify
the natural articulation of natural law is to provide a basis for
distinguishing those precepts naturally known to everyone from
those naturally known only to those with special insight (“the
wise”). Special insight involves being able to draw inferences
more extensively, having available the relevant supporting
premises, understanding the correct definitions of commonly
used terms, and knowing the definitions of what we call
“technical terms.” Why cannot an angel be circumscriptively in
a place? “Circumscriptively” is a technical term derived ultimately from Aristotle’s notion of place; it means, roughly, to be
such that every point on the surface on one body is within the
boundary of the surface of what would be a cavity in another
body, if it were surrounded by another body, and, being so, not
to be anywhere else.21 The term, then, applies only to bodies.
But the correct definition of “angel” is an immaterial intelligence composed solely of essence and existence: lacking
matter, then, an angel cannot be or have a body. Therefore, the
claim, made of any angel and any place, that the angel is
circumscriptively contained in that place, must be false. Anyone
who has studied St. Thomas’s treatise on angels would see
immediately that, given the correct meanings of the terms, the
claim is false, involving a contradiction.22 But we do not in the
ordinary course of things acquire that sort of knowledge of
21

A “place” is “the innermost boundary of what contains it” (Aristotle, Phys.
4.4.212a20). To be in a place circumscriptively, however, is to be “kept” there in the
sense that the place controls (“measures”) where something is; it is to be measured in
the same way that the place is measured (“commensuretur loco” [STh I, q. 52, a. 2]).
22
“So, then, it is evident [Sic igitur patet] that to be in a place appertains quite
differently to a body, to an angel, and to God. For a body is in a place in a
circumscribed fashion, since it is measured by the place. An angel, however, is not there
in a circumscribed fashion, since he is not measured by the place, but definitively,
because he is in a place in such a manner that he is not in another” (STh I, q. 52, a. 2).
Note “it is evident”: after the “substance” of angels has been clarified (STh I, q. 50),
then this implication becomes obvious.

CLEAVING THE NATURAL LAW AT ITS JOINTS

53

angels. Yet the claim that there are immaterial intelligences
composed solely of essence and existence serves, nevertheless,
as the “principle” of a science of angels, which goes on to show
that such beings grasp universals simply, are arranged in a
hierarchical ordering, and act upon things by those things’ being
in them rather than the reverse.
The precept, “Rise up before the hoary head,” can be dealt
with in a similar way. A markedly older person has a natural
authority over a younger. Justice requires rendering to each his
due. Everyone should wish to be just. Honor is due to those
with authority over us. Visible honor is due to those who visibly
have authority over us. A markedly older person has a visible
authority over a younger. Standing up is a natural, visible sign
of honor, and remaining seated upon the entrance of someone
visibly deserving of honor is a natural, visible sign of disrespect.
Therefore, it is obvious that a younger person ought not to
remain seated but should stand upon the entrance of a markedly
older person. More can be said to fill in the reasoning. But
anyone who has studied St. Thomas’s account of justice and
Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics would see immediately that the
precept is sound. However, in the ordinary course of things we
do not acquire that sort of refinement of justice, as shown by
the fact that presumably very few would find it surprising if a
young person did remain seated upon the entrance of a
markedly older person and needed to be instructed on the
point.23
This distinction, between that which is evident to all and that
which is evident only to “the wise,” that is, those with the
relevant understanding, which is not acquired in the natural
course of things for a human being—and certainly not by a
young person—serves then to mark off those precepts based in
nature that belong to “the natural law” strictly (absolute is St.
Thomas’s term [STh I-II, q. 100, a. 1]), on the grounds that they
are promulgated to all (i.e., because they are evident in the
23
Note that this example of St. Thomas is deftly chosen because it concerns the
proper behavior of a young person who has not become old enough to have come to
sense, “in the ordinary course of things,” how others ought to behave towards him as
older.

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

natural course of things to all) from those which, although they
can be maintained to belong to natural rather than human law,
are better counted as derivative or secondary precepts of natural
law.
III. WHAT UNIFIES THE NATURAL KIND
Now that this field of precepts within “the natural law” has
been delimited, it would follow to explain what unites them all,
as being naturally evident to everyone. Since St. Thomas believes the Decalogue gives the relevant class of precepts, his
question, materially, is what unites the precepts of the Decalogue. I believe we tend not even to ask this question, as we do
not see that it is a difficulty. The tradition that there are ten and
the story of Mt. Sinai provides, for us, enough of an account of
their being grouped together. Perhaps, too, because we have ten
fingers we presume that ten of something taken together makes
sense as being the largest easily memorized group. But such
conventions would not of course unite the precepts of the
Decalogue as constituting as it were a natural kind. Obviously
that we take their number to be ten does not imply that they
have anything in common by nature. For St. Thomas, their
unity as being naturally evident to all involves their all ruling
out salient practical contradictions involving goods naturally
known to all. Contradictions have the prospect of being evidently and obviously “wrong,” because nothing is so clear as the
incompatibility of a proposition with its contradictory opposite;
and these will be obviously “wrong” to all, if the propositions
contain terms which in the ordinary course of things are
grasped by all.
The following proviso needs to be kept in mind as regards
structure within what counts as law. Structure broadly is a
consequence of what St. Thomas calls determinatio. Determinatio is frequently a matter of mere specification. A more
general precept gives in a general way a class of acts that are
prohibited, and, if the class is divisible into species, then
comprehended under this law would be specific precepts, one
for each of the species, each prohibiting acts within that

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55

species.24 When this happens, the more general law is as it were
primary relative to any of the more specific precepts, which are
secondary and regarded as derived from, comprehended by, and
unified as falling under the more general precept. Thus, to find
a natural unity of the precepts of the Decalogue, it would
suffice to identify a naturally evident precept that is primary
relative to them, such that they are appropriately regarded as
determinationes of that precept. This is why St. Thomas begins
his next discussion (a new paragraph in the Dominican Fathers
translation) saying, “Now a certain order is to be found in those
things that are apprehended universally.” We might have
thought that any precept obvious to everyone would be on the
same footing as any other precept. But one stands higher than
they and therefore unites them.
This is how St. Thomas looks at what he calls “the first
precept of law” (“primum praeceptum legis”). It is naturally
known to all; it rules out practical contradictions; the precepts
of the Decalogue are determinationes of it; and, if those
precepts consist of terms that are also naturally known to all,
and only those precepts are, then his work is over and he has
shown that they compose a natural kind suitably called “the
natural law”—not that this work is completed in article 2 of
question 94, but only that, as we have put it, the sufficient bases
for this task would have been suitably set down there.
Hence the elegance of his beginning his discussion of this
basis by turning to the claim from metaphysics that “being” is
what first falls under our apprehension. Surely the principle that
nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the
same respect is by nature evident to anyone, for whom anything
else is evident at all. For St. Thomas it is the most evident
speculative principle: in his commentary on the Metaphysics, to
which he refers here, he follows Aristotle in calling this
24

Lawyerly language typically aims to give the species exhaustively, for practical
purposes. To take a chance example, from the D.C. Code, “A person commits the
offense of assault on a public vehicle inspection officer if that person assaults, impedes,
intimidates, or interferes with a public vehicle inspection officer while that officer is
engaged in or on account of the performance of his or her official duties” (§ 22–404.02;
emphasis added). Even “his or her” works in this way.

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

principle “firmest and most certain” (“firmissimum sive
certissimum”), about which one cannot err (“non possit aliquis
mentiri, sive errare”), and “self-evident” (“non est suppositum,
sed oportet per se esse notum” [IV Metaphys., lect. 6]). Because
of the convertibility of being and goodness, the corresponding
practical principle has a similar status. What this means for his
purposes here is that, so to speak, the logical form of
propositions being thrown into the form of a contradiction, a
practical as much as a theoretical contradiction, would in no
way detract from their being obvious to anyone, but just the
opposite. Also, these principles must be highest and most basic
in their respective domains. Hence, the practical principle
provides a basis for claiming that no other precepts besides
those that fall directly under it constitute the natural law,
because other precepts could be brought in only if there were
some precept even higher than this, which could unite all of
them as if different branches under that other precept.
In sum, because we can be assured that this practical precept
is indeed most basic and highest, we can be assured that solely
those precepts falling under it compose a natural kind suitably
called “natural law.” That this precept depends upon the ratio
of good provides the basis, at least, for an extended argument
that the Decalogue is an exhaustive presentation of the natural
law, which is what was needed.
We can begin to see that there are really three steps in the
corpus of article 2 of question 94:25 (i) to pick out a class of
precepts evident to everyone; (ii) to argue that one of these is
most basic in such a way that its determinations would count as
the natural law and nothing else does; and then (iii) to give the
bases for such determinations, while not giving the determinations proper, as this task will be completed in those other
articles and questions that consider the Decalogue.
Two incidental observations seem pertinent as regards the
second step before we go on to the third. First, St. Thomas does
not give “the first indemonstrable principle” here in the same
way that Aristotle gives it or in the way that St. Thomas himself
25

Corresponding to the three paragraphs in the Dominican Fathers’ translation.

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57

gives it in the Metaphysics commentary. The principle there is
given as “it is impossible for the same thing at the same time to
belong and not to belong, in the same respect” (“impossibile
eidem simul inesse et non inesse idem: sed addendum est, et
secundum idem” [IV Metaphys., lect. 6]). That is, it is presented
as a principle about being. But here it is given as a normative
principle about our practices of affirmation and denial:
“nothing is to be affirmed and denied at the same time” (“non
est simul affirmare et negare”), namely, in the same respect.
Surely St. Thomas does this in order to set up better an analogy
between this principle and what he regards as the corresponding
first principle of practical reason. And yet that he does so draws
attention to another characteristic of his method and exposition
in the Summa theologiae, namely, that when he can show or
suggest something relevant in passing, he does so, while still
retaining the simplicity and economy of exposition characteristic of the work. Here, what he shows in passing is how
unobjectionable and natural we find it to derive practical
precepts from natural inclinations. All of us have a natural
inclination to know;26 therefore, truth is a good for us, as the
good of the intellect; therefore, it is due to us; therefore, it is
due to us not to assert anything false; but a contradiction would
contain something false; therefore, a contradiction is not to be
asserted. That we embrace this precept, as a practical precept
about assertion, is shown not simply in our avoiding contradictions but also, for example, in our felt shame when we are
convicted of embracing one. Saint Thomas could easily have set
aside a whole paragraph to draw attention to this point, but he
merely shows it in passing, presumably because the corpus is
already longer than usual, and, besides, that point would be a
digression from the three-step argument to which we have
drawn attention and which he is pursuing with his usual
economy.
Second, he does not give the corresponding practical precept
in the same way as the speculative precept, although he could
26

See, for example, I Metaphys., lect. 1: “quaelibet res naturalem inclinationem
habet ad suam propriam operationem. . . . Propria autem operatio hominis inquantum
homo, est intelligere.”

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

have. He could have given the practical precept as “nothing is
to be pursued (viz., as good) and avoided (viz., as not good) at
the same time,” namely, in the same respect. But he gives it, of
course, as “good is to be pursued and bad is to be avoided.” As
given in this form, the speculative analogue would be something
like “truth is to be affirmed and falsehood is to be denied,” or
“affirm the true; deny the false.” Why should he break the strict
analogy and give the two principles in such different forms?
One possible reason is that we do not in fact ever act against,
by denying, an evident principle of speculative reason, but we
do act against the natural law frequently. No one, for instance,
is ever put in a position such that he finds it expedient to affirm
that the part is greater than the whole. Or if, in our geometrical
demonstrations (to use St. Thomas’s other example), we found
that what we had said implies that things equal to the same
thing are not equal to each other, we would never deny that
principle, or hold to our result nonetheless, but we would
invariably go back and withdraw something in our reasoning.
On the other hand, people will murder when it is expedient
despite a precept not to murder, and they will typically not
regard themselves as required to “correct” the violation of the
precept later, insofar as they can, by seeking corrective justice
for themselves. That is to say, the authority of the evident
speculative principle considered as an affirmation is so great
that to render the fundamental speculative precept as, in effect,
“do not contradict yourself,” is sufficient to direct someone to
withdraw something other than that precept in case of a
contradiction. But the practical precept, although evident,
because of our fallen nature must still be recommended in the
form of recommending the relevant good to be pursued, as if
one were insisting, “regard that person’s life correctly as a
good,” that is, do not destroy it as bad, and regard his murder
as bad.
Another possible reason is that, as he has in mind the
Decalogue as the natural kind which is “the precepts of the
natural law,” and he is aware that some precepts there are given
positively and others are given negatively, he does not want to
render the fundamental practical precept in such a way as to

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suggest that it solely rules out some types of action in the
manner of a side-constraint. He wants to leave it open that it
can positively enjoin others (while admittedly continuing to rule
out contrary actions, e.g., neglecting to honor one’s parents):
yet if he had rendered it in the form, “do not pursue and avoid
the same thing at the same time in the same respect,” it would
be open to being misconstrued as merely a principle of
consistency.
IV. ARTICULATIONS WITHIN THE NATURAL KIND
Let us proceed to the third step of his argument. We are
taking St. Thomas here to be arguing for the existence of
natural goods, corresponding to natural inclinations, which
serve as the “content” of the precepts of the natural law, just as
the very first practical principle had given its “form.” Therefore,
to conclude our discussion, we need to consider what goods he
introduces here, and how they contribute to his task, and then
we need to consider why he wants to bring in, as it seems, an
“order” of natural inclinations, and what that order is. Again,
we wish to continue to take the Decalogue, according to St.
Thomas’s own statements, as a natural kind, consisting
exhaustively of those precepts evident to all, which make up
“the natural law” considered strictly (absolute). Again, we
understand that St. Thomas’s task is simply to say enough to
establish that the goods referred to in those precepts, which are
the “content” of those precepts, are naturally known by all—as
only in this way can the precepts, too, be naturally known by
all.
As a preliminary point, we must consider that St. Thomas
regards all the precepts of the Decalogue as precepts specifically
of justice (see STh II-II, q. 122). However, as is clear from his
discussion of ius or “right,” he follows Aristotle in regarding the
virtue of justice as a matter of firmly willing what is “right”
(Greek, to dikaion), and ius is always a matter of the assignment
or exchange of goods as between at least two persons (see Nic.
Ethic. 5.1). Here is a good, brief expression of this view:

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the right in a work of justice, besides its relation to the agent, is set up by its
relation to others [constituitur per comparationem ad alium]. Because a man’s
work is said to be just when it is related to some other by way of some kind of
equality [respondet secundum aliquam aequalitatem alteri], for instance the
payment of the wage due for a service rendered. (STh II-II, q. 57, a. 1)

Therefore, any account of a precept which is a matter of justice
grasped by nature must give an account of our recognizing both
persons and things (possessions, belongings) as good: the
persons being those to whom the things are somehow adjusted
in relation to some standard of equality. 27 For example, the
precept “Do not steal” is based on the notion of right as
between two persons as regards their belongings, namely, that
one person’s being benefitted by a loss sustained by another in
what he owns is not “right,” because not equal, unless he
compensates that other person, ideally by an antecedently
agreed upon reciprocation of a distinct good, which the other is
pleased to accept in exchange, as equal to what he gave up—
that is, in a “voluntary commutative exchange”—or, failing that,
by restitution for theft in an “involuntary commutative
exchange.” Special cases of imposing an uncompensated loss on
another would be murder and adultery: murder, because it takes
away the life of the person whose good is contributed to by
possessions—it takes away the subject of goods rather than the
goods—and adultery, because it takes away or attacks a person,
not a thing, who belongs to another. Special cases of ius would
be those involving somehow making use of goods to attain an
equalization insofar as it is possible, not to others at arm’s
length in the market but to those responsible for one’s
existence, nurture, and education, such as one’s parents and,
ultimately, God.
We can make an inventory, then, and say that if St. Thomas
wishes to make it plausible that the precepts of the Decalogue
are naturally known to all, he needs to make it plausible, or say
enough to make it plausible, that, as other persons in a rela27
In the legal not philosophical tradition it was customary to trace the view that
there is a natural law back to Aristotle’s distinction in Nicomachean Ethics 5.7 between
natural and legal right. A good example would be John Fortescue, De laudibus legum
angliae (1616), chap. 16, “The Law of Nature in All Countries Is the Same.”

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61

tionship of ius, God, parents, and other persons are naturally
grasped as goods by all; also, that a spouse as a partner in
procreation is naturally grasped as a good by all; and, finally,
that “material possessions” necessary for life are grasped as
goods by all. He could have done this by drawing up such an
inventory and checking it off, so to speak, dealing with each
person or class of persons and each class of goods one-by-one,
and arguing that each is comprehended by what he calls
“natural reason.” In effect, he does this in question 122 of the
Secunda secundae. But here he takes a different approach.
Why does he do so? To see this, suppose that the third step
of his argument in the corpus of article 2 of question 94 (which
is the same as the last paragraph of the corpus in the Dominican
Fathers translation) were removed from its context and
presented on its own. How would one be disposed to interpret
it? Because we will need to consider it in detail, let us excerpt
this familiar text:
Quia vero bonum habet rationem finis,
malum autem rationem contrarii, inde
est quod omnia illa ad quae homo habet
naturalem inclinationem, ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona, et per
consequens ut opere prosequenda, et
contraria eorum ut mala et vitanda.

Since, however, good has the nature of
an end, and evil, the nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to
which man has a natural inclination, are
naturally apprehended by reason as
being good, and consequently as objects
of pursuit, and their contraries as evil,
and objects of avoidance.

Secundum igitur ordinem inclinationum
naturalium, est ordo praeceptorum legis
naturae.

Wherefore according to the order of
natural inclinations, is the order of the
precepts of the natural law.

Inest enim primo inclinatio homini ad
bonum secundum naturam in qua
communicat cum omnibus substantiis,
prout scilicet quaelibet substantia appetit conservationem sui esse secundum
suam naturam. Et secundum hanc
inclinationem, pertinent ad legem naturalem ea per quae vita hominis
conservatur, et contrarium impeditur.

Because in man there is first of all an
inclination to good in accordance with
the nature which he has in common
with all substances: inasmuch as every
substance seeks the preservation of its
own being, according to its nature: and
by reason of this inclination, whatever
is a means of preserving human life,
and of warding off its obstacles, belongs
to the natural law.

Secundo inest homini inclinatio ad
aliqua magis specialia, secundum

Secondly, there is in man an inclination
to things that pertain to him more

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

naturam in qua communicat cum ceteris
animalibus. Et secundum hoc, dicuntur
ea esse de lege naturali quae natura
omnia animalia docuit, ut est coniunctio maris et feminae, et educatio
liberorum, et similia.

specially, according to that nature
which he has in common with other
animals: and in virtue of this
inclination, those things are said to
belong to the natural law, “which
nature has taught to all animals”
[*Pandect. Just. I, tit. i], such as sexual
intercourse, education of offspring and
so forth.

Tertio modo inest homini inclinatio ad
bonum secundum naturam rationis,
quae est sibi propria, sicut homo habet
naturalem inclinationem ad hoc quod
veritatem cognoscat de Deo, et ad hoc
quod in societate vivat. Et secundum
hoc, ad legem naturalem pertinent ea
quae ad huiusmodi inclinationem spectant, utpote quod homo ignorantiam
vitet, quod alios non offendat cum
quibus debet conversari, et cetera
huiusmodi quae ad hoc spectant.

Thirdly, there is in man an inclination
to good, according to the nature of his
reason, which nature is proper to him:
thus man has a natural inclination to
know the truth about God, and to live
in society: and in this respect, whatever
pertains to this inclination belongs to
the natural law; for instance, to shun
ignorance, to avoid offending those
among whom one has to live, and other
such things regarding the above
inclination.

To interpret this passage correctly, we need to ask what
“according to the order of the natural inclinations” means
(“secundum ordinem inclinationum naturalium”). Does it mean
according to the order given by the words in the passage,
“first,” “second,” “third” (primo, secundo, tertio), or does it
mean according to the order corresponding to each natural
inclination? Does it mean the order in which the natural
inclinations are placed, or does it mean the order to which each
natural inclination gives rise? Does it mean an order imposed on
the inclinations, or an order which each inclination imposes? In
short, is the genitive objective, as it gives the things which are
ordered (the inclinations), or is it subjective, as it gives the
things (inclinations) to which order belongs or is properly
attributed?28

28
The former in this alternative corresponds roughly to (a) Ordnung, Gliederung,
Abstufung, Rangfolge, under “Ordo” in the online Thomas-Lexikon, while the latter
corresponds roughly to (b) Hinordnung, Beziehung (compiled by Ludwig Schütz, the
online edition of which was prepared by Enrique Alarcón, Pamplona, University of
Navarre, 2006).

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The proper way to answer this question is to see how St.
Thomas uses the ordinal terms, “first,” “second,” “third”
elsewhere, and to see whether he speaks of an order belonging
to an inclination elsewhere. If he typically uses the ordinal terms
to indicate an order in some full or important sense, then this
tips in favor of the first interpretation, but if he often uses those
terms simply to make a series of points, the order of which is
not itself important to his argument, or only incidentally
relevant, then this tips in favor of the second. Also, if he
separately speaks elsewhere of, say, an order of selfpreservation, an order of procreation, or a rational order, then
this tips in favor of the second interpretation, but, if not, then
the first interpretation should be taken to prevail.
As regards the ordinal terms, they are ubiquitous. Each
question in the Summa is preceded by a prologue that lists the
articles to be discussed under that question, and the articles are
always given by those ordinal terms. Question 94 of the Prima
secundae, for instance, lists six: primo, secundo, tertio, quarto,
quinto, and sexto. 29 Sometimes the order of the articles is
important for the unfolding of a topic within a question, but
often it is not. Importance would be shown mainly by dependence: does a later article depend on the preceding articles?
Dependence would be indicated by phrases such as “it has been
stated above” or “which we said” (“dictum est supra,” “quae
diximus”), referring to an earlier article in the question. In fact,
every article after the first in question 94 refers to an earlier
article; thus, in this case, the order is important. But most
questions do not have this strong order of dependence. Consider the very first question in the Prima secundae. It consists of
eight articles, but only three refer back in their corpora to an
earlier article (aa. 3, 5, 7). In any case, because the ordering of
articles is ubiquitous, no one would want to say that the
ordering is universally important, and certainly not that that
ordering had precedence over the content of the articles, or
should in general govern the interpretation of the articles. We
should prefer to say, and we do say, that it is St. Thomas’s
29

This fact will be invisible to those who read the Summa solely in translation.

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characteristic way of listing the articles he plans to discuss,
although we would admit that often the list gives the articles in
an expedient or even, for some articles, a pedagogically
necessary order of exposition.
Lists within the corpora of articles are also not uncommon,
using the same ordinal terms. These terms are often used even
when the order of things that are distinguished and listed is not
relevant to the discussion. These listings are so common as
themselves to count as practically speaking ubiquitous. Among
the articles of the Prima secundae alone, for instance, St.
Thomas gives ninety-five such lists extending at least to three
items (up to “in the third place,” tertio). Consider this handful
of examples drawn simply from the questions on law:
“Besides the natural and the human law it was necessary for the directing of
human conduct to have a Divine law. And this for four reasons” (q. 91, a. 4).
Then he gives primo through quarto, but it turns out that the order of these
reasons is not important.
“Now the perfection and imperfection of these two laws [Old and New] is to
be taken in connection with three conditions pertaining to law, as stated
above” (q. 91, a. 5). He uses primo through tertio to give the conditions—
directing to the common good, according to an order of justice, and inducing
men to observe its commandments (actually omitting one of the four)—but
the order of these conditions is unimportant.
In q. 95, a. 3, he discusses Isidore’s “description of the quality of positive
law.” Isidore gives nine qualities. In the corpus, St. Thomas says these can be
reduced to three. He lists the three using primo through tertio, but again their
order is clearly not important.

Sometimes an order is given simply to vindicate the
reasonability of a distinction. For example, to vindicate the
distinction among the first three precepts of the Decalogue, St.
Thomas says, “Now man owes three things to the head of the
community: first, fidelity; secondly, reverence; thirdly, service”
(q. 100, a. 5). These are given with primo through tertio. And
yet that these things owed fall in this order proves not to be
important for his discussion. Rather, that there is an order at all,
in the sense merely that they can be listed, supports a claim of
distinction. They are distinguished through being placed on a

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list: it is not that they are distinguished first and independently,
and then placed on a list.
Clearly, St. Thomas often uses ordinal terms simply to make
a series of points, the order of which is not itself important to
his argument, or only incidentally relevant. Therefore, from the
mere fact that he uses primo through tertio at this point in his
discussion, to list what he regards as the natural inclinations, we
are not justified in presuming that by the “order of natural
inclinations” he means the order that is given or constituted by
this list.
Obviously, his list of three natural inclinations does follow
an order. But strikingly it is not a teleological but a formal
order. That is, although the third inclination is “proper” to
human beings (viz., it is distinctive of them and therefore,
surely, indicative of their purpose or “function” [Greek, ergon]),
the first two inclinations are not presented as leading to it, in
the service of it, giving way to it in cases of conflict, or for the
sake of it. Rather, St. Thomas is clearly assuming a definition
such as “a human being is an individual substance of embodied
rational nature,” and then considering the three forms implicit
in the definition—substance, animal, rational—in order, from
most to least extensive.
It is clear why he uses a formal ordering. He had earlier
explained per se nota propositions as obvious given the
definition of a human being, or of an angel, as the case may be.
Now he has in view propositions of the form, “Conservation of
life is good for a man,” “Procreation is good for a man,” and
“Acting in accordance with reason is good for a man,” as
obviously true, given that someone knows what a man is, and
therefore understands what a man is naturally inclined towards,
that is, what counts as his goal or end, given such a form. If, in
contrast, St. Thomas were relying on a teleological not a formal
ordering, he would have needed to engage the doctrine of De
anima and explain why there is not a fourth, vegetative,
inclination, corresponding to the vegetative power of the
human soul. Such a teleological approach would bring his list of
the inclinations rather close to the list of the four powers of the
soul on which the theory of the cardinal virtues relies, and, as

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

we have seen, he is intent on establishing the independence of
an investigation of ethics through law from the theory of the
virtues.
On the other hand, the notion of “according to the order of”
something as meaning, according to the order produced or called
forth by that thing, is common in St. Thomas.
First of all, we should note that the phrase, simply, “order
of” (ordo + genitive) is used as much in the subjective sense by
St. Thomas as the objective, that is, as much to indicate the
order called forth by something as something that is itself
ordered. For example, the “order of justice” is the order
imposed by the virtue of justice, not the order in which the
virtue of justice is placed (STh I, q. 21, a. 4). The “order of
God’s wisdom and justice” is the order effected by those traits
in God, not the ordering of the trait of wisdom relative to the
trait of justice (STh I, q. 25, a. 5). The “order of generation,”
also referred to by St. Thomas as the “pathway of generation”
(via generationis), is a characteristic mode of the origination of
something within nature (STh I, q. 77, a. 4). The “order of a
universal cause,” just like the “order of divine governance,”
must from the nature of the case be the order effected by a
universal cause or by that governance (STh I, q. 103, a. 7).
Again, to say that indigestion occurs “apart from [praeter] the
order of the nutritive power,” according to St. Thomas, is to say
that, because of some impediment, indigestion is a phenomenon
distinct from the typical result of digestion, effected by that
power, and not properly attributed to it. It is unnecessary to
multiply examples further. Therefore, we see that it should be
at least an open question whether in St. Thomas the phrase
“order of” an inclination means the order produced by an
inclination or the order of that inclination to something else.30
Second, an inclinatio clearly generates an ordering according
to St. Thomas. This is clear in the case of self-love, which
corresponds to the first of the three inclinationes listed in article
30
Likewise, when it is a genitive plural that occurs after ordo, it is an open question
whether the plural is meant distributively or collectively—that is, whether it signifies the
orders produced by those inclinations, one by one, or the ordering among those
inclinations, considered together.

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67

2 of question 94. For example, St. Thomas says that to kill
oneself is illicit
because everything naturally loves itself, the result being that everything
naturally keeps itself in being, and resists corruptions so far as it can.
Wherefore suicide is contrary to the inclination of nature [contra
inclinationem naturalem], and to charity whereby every man should love
himself. Hence suicide is always a mortal sin, as being contrary to the natural
law [contra naturalem legem] and to charity. (STh II-II, q. 64, a. 5)

This same inclination makes a showing two articles later, in St.
Thomas’s discussion of killing in self-defense: “it is natural to
everything to keep itself in ‘being,’ as far as possible” (“cum hoc
sit cuilibet naturale quod se conservet in esse quantum potest”).
And yet there an order of self-love is introduced, as indicated by
the comparative construction, plus . . . quam: “one is bound to
take more care of one’s own life than of another’s” (“quia plus
tenetur homo vitae suae providere quam vitae alienae”) (STh IIII, q. 64, a. 7). Of course, this is what is known as the “order of
love” elsewhere,31 which St. Thomas regards as subsumed into
an “order of charity.”
In his account of the order of love, St. Thomas completely
follows Aristotle, who in the Nicomachean Ethics holds that, as
a rule, we ought to love more and prefer those who are closer
to us, and this in a structured, not an unstructured or vague way
(Aristotle, Nic. Ethic. 9.8; see IX Nic. Ethic., lect. 8). Saint
Thomas considers the view that the virtue of charity overrides
this order, such that we ought to love everyone equally,
presumably as God does. He rejects this view decisively:
“intensity [intensio] of love arises from the union of lover and
beloved . . . in matters pertaining to nature we should love our
kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens,
we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our
fellow-soldiers” (STh II-II, q. 26, a. 8). The sed contra of the
article even gives the fourth commandment as proof that “we
ought to love more specially [specialius] those who are united to
31

When St. Thomas on various occasions quotes St. Augustine, “virtus est ordo
amoris,” he means that a virtue can be conceived of as love, in the manner of a
principium, placing things into order (cf., e.g., STh II-II, q. 62, a. 2, ad 3).

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us by ties of blood.” In the corpus of the next article, St.
Thomas continues the theme, now arguing that in most respects
we should prefer our children over our parents: “a man loves
more that which is more closely connected with him, in which
way a man’s children are more lovable to him than his father.”
And so on. All of this is to say that the entirety of question 26
of the Secunda secundae gives an account of the relevant order
that springs from the natural inclinatio underlying selfpreservation and self-love. Charity complements but does not
negate this order.
The same natural inclination extends to how we administer
our possessions. Thus, an objection considered by St. Thomas
concerning the virtue of liberality contends that liberality is not
a virtue, because
it is a natural inclination for one to provide for oneself more than for others:
and yet it pertains to the liberal man to do the contrary, since, according to
the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 1), “it is the mark of a liberal man not to look to
himself, so that he leaves for himself the lesser things.” (STh II-II, q. 117, a. 1,
obj. 1)

In reply, St. Thomas says (again following Aristotle, Nic. Ethic.
9.8) that a liberal man cares more about himself than others, to
be sure, in spiritual goods, and in any case “it does not belong
to the liberal man even in temporal things to attend so much to
others as to lose sight of himself and those belonging to him,”
(STh II-II, q. 117, a. 1, ad 1). It follows, therefore, that someone
who did not regard possessions as goods at all would indeed be
acting contrary to the natural inclination and contrary to virtue.
Obviously, then, for St. Thomas, natural law precepts about
honoring one’s mother and father, preserving one’s own life
and after that the lives of one’s neighbor (which rules out
murder), and appropriately acquiring and conserving material
wealth (which rules out theft), are all assignable to an order of
love, the principium of which is the natural inclination of selfpreservation.
The order to which the inclination of procreation gives rise
is similarly indicated in St. Thomas’s discussion of the species of
lust, “simple fornication, adultery, incest, seduction, rape, and

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69

the vice against nature” (STh II-II, q. 154, a. 1). Corresponding
to each species, for St. Thomas, there would be a negative
precept of the natural law, ruling out acts of that kind: do not
fornicate, do not commit adultery, and so on. And these fall
within a scale, from less to more grave, although the scale is not
a simple one, with nonreproductive acts being most grave in
point of being contrary to nature, and adultery in contrast being
the most grave in point of being contrary to the right ordering,
in reason, of that inclination towards marriage for procreation
(STh II-II, q. 154, a. 12). Saint Thomas’s comments on simple
fornication are worth citing here amply:
we must take note that every sin committed directly against the life of a
human being [contra vitam hominis] is a mortal sin. Now simple fornication
implies an inordinateness that tends to injure the life of the offspring to be
born of this union. For we find in all animals where the upbringing of the
offspring needs care of both male and female, that these come together not
indeterminately, but the male with a certain female, whether one or several;
such is the case with all birds: while, on the other hand, among those animals,
where the female alone suffices for the offspring’s upbringing, the union is
indeterminate, as in the case of dogs and like animals. Now it is evident that
the upbringing of a human child requires not only the mother’s care for his
nourishment, but much more the care of his father as guide and guardian, and
under whom he progresses in goods both internal and external. For this
reason it is against the nature of a human being [contra naturam hominis] that
couplings be unsettled; rather, it is required that a man should be united to a
determinate woman and should abide with her a long time or even for a whole
lifetime. Hence it is that in the human race the male has a natural solicitude
for the certainty of offspring, because on him devolves the upbringing of the
child: and this certainly would cease if the union of sexes were indeterminate.
This union with a certain definite woman is called matrimony; that is why it is
said to belong to the natural law [ideo dicitur esse de iure naturali]. (STh II-II,
q. 154, a. 2; translation slightly modified)

The natural law precept enjoining matrimony and child raising
over a lifetime would of course extend to and imply other
supporting practices, of lesser importance, mixed with
conventions specific to cultures, such as rites of passage, coming
of age, courtship, seclusion of a newly married couple, rights of
establishing a household, and so on. This is to say, this entire
order consisting of practices directed towards marriage, and
negative precepts ruling out acts outside this order, is to be

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construed according to St. Thomas as an expression in rational
beings of the inclinatio toward reproduction. The species of lust
most clearly contrary to this order, as mentioned, is from one
point of view acts against nature and from another point of
view adultery:
[By committing adultery] a man is guilty of a twofold offense against chastity
and the good of human procreation. First, by accession to a woman who is not
joined to him in marriage, which is contrary to the good of the upbringing of
his own children. Secondly, by accession to a woman who is united to another
in marriage, and thus he hinders the good of another’s children. (STh II-II,
q. 154, a. 8)

In the reply to the second objection he also comments:
“Matrimony is especially ordered towards [ordinatum ad] the
good of human offspring. . . . But adultery is especially contrary
to matrimony, insofar as it violates matrimonial faith, which
each spouse owes to the other” (translation mine).
So far we have looked at the order of love traceable to the
inclinatio of self-love, and the order of human life related to
procreation, traceable to the inclinatio of reproduction. In each
case we see that the inclinatio implies an order of acts, practices, and precepts. But what do we say about the third inclinatio mentioned by St. Thomas? What is its order? What
delineated structure of preferences and practices may be
attributed to it?
The scope of this inclination is comprehensive, according to
St. Thomas, since it extends somehow to every act of virtue
considered as such:
since the rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man a
natural inclination to act according to reason: and this is to act according to
virtue. Consequently, considered thus, all acts of virtue are prescribed by the
natural law: since each one’s reason naturally dictates to him to act virtuously.
(STh I-II, q. 94, a. 3)

Thus, whatever order there is among the virtues or as expressed
by a virtue is attributable to this order. An example of order
among virtues would be, for instance, that debts should be
repaid to a friend (justice) before new gifts are given to a

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71

stranger (liberality); or, again, how the moral virtues are
ordered to contemplation (STh II-II, q. 180, a. 2).
But then too the domain corresponding to this inclination
shows a characteristic ordering towards God and knowledge of
the truth, and also toward the common good of political
society. So, for example, as “the intention of magnificence is the
production of a great work,” therefore “no end of human works
is so great as the honor of God: wherefore magnificence does a
great work especially in reference to the Divine honor” (STh IIII, q. 134, a. 2, ad 3). Again, fortitude is ordered towards “defending the common good by a just fight” (STh II-II, q. 123,
a. 5). Again, contemplation is ordered towards contemplation
of God: “The ultimate perfection of the human intellect is the
divine truth: and other truths perfect the intellect in relation to
the divine truth” (STh II-II, q. 180, a. 4, ad 4).
That is why “religion” considered as a moral not a
theological virtue ends up being a focal point of the order found
in the virtues:
due worship is paid to God, in so far as certain acts whereby God is
worshiped, such as the offering of sacrifices and so forth, are done out of
reverence for God. Hence it is evident that God is related to religion not as
matter or object, but as end: and consequently religion is not a theological
virtue whose object is the last end, but a moral virtue which is properly about
things referred to the end. (STh II-II, q. 81, a. 5)

That is why, for St. Thomas, the most conspicuous acts of
religion—setting aside time for divine things as in a Sabbath,
and offering sacrifice—pertain to the natural law considered
strictly:
It is a dictate of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by
offering them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like
those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his authority.
Now this is what we mean by a sacrifice, and consequently the offering of
sacrifice is of the natural law. (STh II-II, q. 85, a. 1)
Now it is a point of natural law that man should make an offering in God’s
honor out of the things he has received from God. (STh II-II, q. 86, a. 4)

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Of course, that the commandment about the Sabbath gives a
particular day in commemoration of something in the past is
something superadded, but that God as the source of blessings is
to be specially and commonly honored belongs to “the” natural
law (STh I-II, q. 100, a. 7, ad 5).
In the Summa, St. Thomas tends to take the social nature of
human beings, as rational animals, for granted. It is something
presupposed rather than argued for. However, in his commentary on the books of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics
(IX Nic. Ethic., lect. 11), and also in the opening of De regno,
St. Thomas affirms that as rational beings we have an
inclination to live with others, even beyond our need to do so
to acquire necessities and requisite skills. In De regno he draws
the additional inference that this order implies the order of
government (I De regno, c. 1).
To summarize this discussion of the meaning of inclinatio in
article 2 of question 94 of the Prima secundae: after finding that
St. Thomas often uses ordinal terms simply to list a series of
points, we found that elsewhere he refers to an order of selflove, an order of procreation, and a rational order (of the
virtues directed toward God), and, therefore, when St. Thomas
says, “according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order
of the precepts of the natural law,” it is most reasonable to take
him to be referring to these three orders, to which the three
mentioned natural inclinationes give rise.
CONCLUSION
We asked how the Decalogue could plausibly be construed as
a natural kind. Why should we count it as containing “the
natural law,” when the phrase “natural law” is taken strictly to
mean what is patently obvious to everyone, simply by the
endowment of “natural reason”? The “form” of these ten
precepts, as we saw, is given by the practical principle of
noncontradiction, in either its positive or its negative form. This
“form,” as we argued, for St. Thomas is as clear and as naturally
known as anything at all in the domain of practice. The
“content” is given by goods that are naturally known to all. But

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73

how can we have confidence that they are naturally known to
all? Because they are centrally embedded, and focal points, in
three orders of practice and of precept, which figure in
everyone’s life—the orders of self-love, procreation, and
virtuous sociability under God. A precept of “the” natural law
must furthermore present starkly an obvious practical
contradiction as regards what is due (debitum) by right (ius) to
another person, and it is precisely characteristic of each order
that it involves our relationship to other persons.
Thus, as regards the third order:
The precept to honor the Sabbath, that is, honor God by due sacrifice, rules
out a patent practical contradiction, which would arise from not rendering
what is due to the first source of all goods. (According to St. Thomas, the
preceding two commandments, against idolatry and irreverence, are meant to
clear the way for this precept and should be regarded as grouped with this.)
The precept to honor one’s parents mainly rules out the patent practical
contradiction—a fundamental failure too of a right relationship to society—
which would arise from not rendering what is due to the proximate source of
one’s life and most important goods.
The precept to avoid false witness rules out a practical contradiction which
would arise, as regards living together in society (which our use of speech
signifies), if we were to use language actually to undermine social relations.
(Presumably, this precept is placed after precepts against murder, theft, and
adultery, because these would be the most serious charges one could bring in
giving false witness.)

As regards the first order:
The precepts against murder and theft rule out the patent practical
contradiction that arises in violating the life and property of others, while
reasonably preferring one’s own.

As regards the second order:
The precept against adultery rules out the practical contradiction that arises
from naturally striving for procreation, but taking little care for one’s own
offspring, that of others, and marital faith.

As regards all three:

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The precepts against covetousness rule out a practical contradiction that
would arise from giving space to adventitious inclinations which are contrary
to the natural inclinations.

We do not of course find here, so far, anything approaching
a demonstration that each of the precepts of the Decalogue is
deservedly assigned to the putative natural kind, “the natural
law”—the case seems weakest for the precepts against
covetousness32—or that there is no other precept, equally patent
to everyone, not in the Decalogue, which has as good a claim to
count as belonging to such a natural kind.33 However, that the
goods adverted to in the precepts are central, available to
everyone, and patent, given the three orders, and that they enter
into claims of right—this does seem to be established. We said
that presumably this last paragraph of the corpus is meant only
to give the bases for such a demonstration. The rest of the
work, one can plausibly maintain, is largely carried out, insofar
as the simple and concise manner of the Summa allows, in
question 100 of the Prima secundae, and question 122 of the
Secunda secundae.
In article 2 of question 94, then, St. Thomas “cleaves the
natural law at its joints” by identifying the most patent goods in
each of three orders within human society, and the most
egregious violations of right therein, obvious (he believes) to all,
thereby setting up his two subsequent investigations of the
Decalogue as presenting a natural kind of precepts, constituting
“the natural law.”
What are some upshots of this article, if its argument is
correct, not simply as an interpretation of St. Thomas, but also
as an account of what the natural law truly is, or should
reasonably be regarded as being? One upshot, of course, is that
the so-called New Natural Law has misconstrued the natural
law by presenting it as seven or eight egoistic premises
32

Saint Thomas does give such a demonstration in STh II-II, q. 122, by holding that
the Decalogue rules out patent injustices involving act, word, and thought (or desire),
but the only injustices we can be said to desire involve a desire for material goods, or a
desire for intercourse.
33
Saint Thomas in passing mentions some precepts like this, such as “love God” and
“love your neighbor as yourself,” and “harm no one.”

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75

concerning putative “basic goods,” putatively all incomemensurable.34 Another upshot is that we are helped to see better
the role the Decalogue played for centuries in the AngloAmerican legal tradition, where it was regarded uncontroversially as a common foundation rather than a partisan
imposition.
Possibly, however, its main upshot is to provide a basis for
astute social criticism, which correctly relates the moral and
political orders. It would provide an interesting and it seems
novel basis for criticism of what is called “liberalism.”
Suppose it is true, as St. Thomas believes, that law-like
“orders” within human society, as shown in our practices and in
the character of our recourse to fundamental principles
(perhaps framed in the language of “rights”), are fundamentally
three in number. Suppose furthermore that as these orders
spring from natural inclinations notably distinct “in form,” it is
always open for us to regard each as separable from the others,
or to view only one of them as truly “counting,” for the
purposes of public law. (Taking only one to “count” would be a
matter of our identifying with just one aspect of our nature, as if
it were our whole nature.) On these suppositions, it seems, we
have a means for construing what has troubled many observers
under the heading of “the rise of commercial society” or “the
effects of the market.” Could it actually be the case, for
instance, that voluntary exchanges with a view to common selfimprovement, of themselves, tend to undermine civil society
and the family? On the argument of this article, this question
should be reformulated as: Should we expect that one of these
orders will tend to undermine the other two? This would be
unlikely, especially if this system or “order” were taken within a
particular society as governed by the whole of the Decalogue,
and not simply by those precepts of the Decalogue most
relevant to it.35
On the other hand, suppose one were to detach, from this
system or “order” directed to common self-improvement, that
34

John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
Note that the fifth and sixth commandments largely correspond to commercial
society’s triad of “life, liberty, and property.” And yet the differences are significant.
35

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MICHAEL PAKALUK

other system or “order” corresponding to the inclination to
procreate. Posit, let us say, an ideology of social contract which
ignores the family and presumes that independent adult men,
solely, contract into political society. Perhaps next posit a
“right” to contraception, based too on such an ideology, which
then tears from society any principled, public acknowledgement
of the natural inclination for procreation.
As a next step, suppose additionally that these developments
have taken place in a deliberately “laïque” society, that is, in a
society in which any remedy through public appeal to the most
fundamental order of creation as deriving from God is ruled
out, too, on principle.
In sum, posit principled, public contradictions to two of the
three systems or “orders” which are meant to be pursued by all
of us in common, presumably as naturally harmonized, in
political society. The result would be a distortion, a kind of
cancer, publicly manifested, in institutions and laws too, not
simply in culture, of this one aspect of our nature—thus
“commercial society,” as something to be deplored. It would
not be surprising if intuitively, in response to a sensed disorder,
various contrary ideologies were counterpoised, in an attempt
to remedy the problem—such as socialism as a remedy to what
seems a pursuit of private interest in isolation; global climate
ideology favored by some as a damper upon a seemingly
distended libido for ever increasing development and wealth; or
even simply a liberal ideology of “equality,” which insists that
everyone should care for everyone else equally, but which
denies the claim of local authorities and loves.
Natural law thus construed arguably provides a timely basis
for an analysis of social pathologies—which one cannot
properly assess and adjudge, if one’s focus is solely on happiness
properly understood and the virtues.

The Thomist 88 (2024): 77-97

SOME RECENT ARGUMENTS FOR CHRIST’S EARTHLY
BEATIFIC VISION AND AQUINAS’S OWN ARGUMENT IN
SUMMA THEOLOGIAE III, QQ. 9 AND 34
SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

T

HAT CHRIST HAS ALWAYS enjoyed the beatific vision
is a crucial part of the Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
However, since around the middle of the twentieth century, Christ’s possession of this vision prior to his entry into the
next life has been much disputed by Catholic theologians. Some
followers of Aquinas have offered further arguments in favor of
his conclusion, in addition to the argument he himself advanced
in the Summa theologiae. These newer arguments include one
from Christ’s self-consciousness, put forward by Thomas Joseph
White, O.P., in his collection of essays, The Incarnate Lord.1 As
White acknowledges, the argument is not to be found in Aquinas’s writings but is based on his principles.2 Moreover, in my
monograph, Did the Saviour See the Father?, while responding to
each of the objections normally put against the earthly Christ’s
beatific vision, I make my own positive argument for Aquinas’s
conclusion, based on Christ’s teaching role.3
In this article, I shall address the question of the value to be
accorded to such additions to Aquinas’s own argument on the
point. In order to make this assessment, it is first of all necessary

1

Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 236-74.
2
Ibid., 238-39.
3
Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the
Vision of God (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).
77

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

to be clear about the character and weight of Aquinas’s own
argument; this will occupy much of the article. All of this I
undertake in response to a different overall assessment of these
arguments—Aquinas’s, White’s, and my own—put forward by
Joshua Lim in a recent article in The Thomist.4
While genuinely appreciative of the content of the contributions made by White and me, Lim counsels theologians not to
lose sight of Aquinas’s own argument in the Summa theologiae.
Lim holds that, while Aquinas’s argument has the advantage over
ours of establishing that Christ enjoyed the beatific vision from
the very moment of conception, our work can be repurposed for
showing how Christ’s blessed knowledge then relates to his
earthly self-consciousness and teaching needs. After setting out
Lim’s general position in a little more detail, I shall respond in
two ways. First, I shall make some observations on his presentation of Aquinas’s argument in the Summa, asking whether it
can in fact bear all the weight he attributes to it. Second, in the
light of my own interpretation of Aquinas’s argument, I shall
make some observations on the relationship of the more recent
arguments to it, suggesting that they can play a more central role
in arguing for the earthly Christ’s beatific knowledge than Lim
allows.
Lim notes that in more recent times not only have there been
critics of Aquinas on the issue of Christ’s beatific vision, but there
have also been defenders of his conclusion. However, many
Thomists, he says, “typically give the argument of the Summa
theologiae a polite nod before hurrying on to more apparently
relevant ones.”5 He says that White and I “try to go beyond
[Aquinas’s] teaching by establishing the necessity of Christ’s
beatific vision with respect either to his earthly consciousness or
to his earthly teaching.”6 Lim takes these starting-points to
“detract from Thomas’s own argument, which is the more
fundamental, based on the humanity of Christ as such . . . Christ’s

4
Joshua Lim, “The Necessity of Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity: A ReReading of Summa Theologiae III, Q. 9,” The Thomist 86 (2022): 515-42.
5
Ibid., 518.
6
Ibid., 526.

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79

humanity as the head and instrumental source of all grace.”7
Lim’s “re-reading” of the Summa’s question on Christ’s
knowledge in general (STh III, q. 9) is intended “to ensure that
Thomas’s own argument, which offers a more fundamental
account of the necessity of that vision, is not too hastily passed
over,”8 either by critics or by supporters of Aquinas’s conclusion.
The relevant advantage of Aquinas’s more fundamental argument
in the Summa, according to Lim, is that it “goes well beyond
establishing the earthly necessity of Christ’s beatific vision” by
entailing the necessity of his vision “from the moment of
conception.”9 Lim charges that “recent critics have overlooked
this aspect of Thomas’s argument . . . on account not of a
shortcoming in the argument itself but rather of a failure on the
part of Thomas’s critics to notice the unique role that he accords
to Christ’s humanity in salvation.”10 As for the recent arguments
advanced in favor of Aquinas’s conclusion, Lim holds that, once
“we have grasped the necessity of Christ’s beatific vision from the
moment of conception, it becomes possible and even necessary
to investigate further how this relates to Christ’s earthly transmission of knowledge or his self-consciousness. It is here that the
works of White and Gaine, among others, play an important role
for contemporary Catholic theology.”11 In other words, once the
necessity of Christ’s beatific vision from conception has been
established by Aquinas’s own argument, my work and that of
White can be employed in a secondary way to show how that
vision relates to the earthly Christ’s self-consciousness (White)
and teaching (Gaine). Before commenting on the relationship of
these arguments to that of Aquinas, I shall first make some
observations on Lim’s construal of Aquinas’s argument in the
Summa.

7

Ibid., 520.
Ibid., 521.
9
Ibid., 529.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., 542.
8

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

I. RE-READING AQUINAS’S ARGUMENT
Lim rightly takes Aquinas to argue for Christ’s perfection in
grace and knowledge on a soteriological basis as necessary for the
redemption of the human race.12 He rightly sees Aquinas’s
argument as drawing both on his faith in Christ as the source of
grace and truth (John 1:16) and on the philosophical principle of
the “causality of the maximum.”13 According to the former,
Aquinas held that Christ is the universal source of grace for all
other humans (and intellectual creatures);14 according to the
latter principle, he held that “it is only the maximum in any genus
that can be a universal cause in that genus.”15 Aquinas concludes
from these premises that, in order for Christ to be the universal
source of grace, it was necessary that he possess grace preeminently as maximum in the genus such that he be the cause of
it in others. Furthermore, Lim holds that, if there were a time at
which Christ did not have the fullness of grace such that he was
head of the Church, he would not be the “immovable source of
grace.”16 Were he “movable,” Lim asserts, Christ could only have
been a “dispositive cause” of grace, presumably because he was
not in fact first in the genus. It seems that, if Christ had received
grace or its fullness only at a moment subsequent to conception,
12

For the soteriological basis of Aquinas’s approach, see further the excellent article
by Joshua Lim, “The Principle of Perfection in Thirteenth-Century Accounts of Christ’s
Human Knowledge,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 24 (2022): 352-79.
For the soteriological basis of the more recent arguments, see Simon Francis Gaine, O.P.,
“Must an Incarnate Divine Person Enjoy the Beatific Vision?,” in Thomas Aquinas and the
Crisis of Christology, ed. Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt
(Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2021), 126-38.
13
Aquinas draws the principle from Aristotle; see II Metaphys. lect., 2. On the
principle and its applications in Christology, see John Emery, O.P., “A Christology of
Communication: Christ’s Charity according to Thomas Aquinas (Fribourg, Switzerland:
unpublished Ph.D., 2017).
14
For Lim on Aquinas’s understanding that Christ is the cause of angelic grace, see
“Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 533, 537, 541. See also Simon Francis Gaine,
O.P., “Was Adam’s Grace Christ’s Grace?,” Angelicum 99 (2022): 635-53.
15
Lim, “Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 532. It should be noted that by
genus is meant in this case not a class subdivided into species but a set of things sharing
in a varied way some common feature.
16
Ibid., 534.

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he himself would not have been “immovable” in respect of grace,
but someone who was initially without grace or at least grew in
grace towards its fullness, and thus not its maximal cause.
For Lim, the same argument holds for the beatific vision as for
grace. Indeed, he says that Christ’s possession of the “maximum”
grace “includes the beatific vision.”17 Now Lim is aware that
Aquinas’s argument in article 2 of question 9, while concluding
that Christ must possess this vision “most excellently” (excellentissime)18 so as to cause it in others, has been subject to
scrutiny by more recent theologians. They have charged, for
example, that it does not establish whether Christ’s possession of
the vision must occur prior to his entry into the next life.19 But,
according to Lim, the moment that Christ receives the beatific
vision is directly entailed by its preeminence, where Christ’s
vision is immovable or “immobile.”
Lim says that “Thomas’s argument in the Compendium
theologiae brings out this point more explicitly than does the
Summa.”20 So for his crucial move Lim relies more on the text of
the Compendium than on that of the Summa. He says that
Aquinas concludes in the Compendium that it was necessary for
Christ to possess the beatific vision from conception, insofar as
his humanity is the “immovable and preeminent principle of
salvation.”21 In other words, for Christ the head to be the universal principle of the genus of those who are blessed with glory
of intellect, his human intellect must have had the perfection of
beatific knowledge from the first moment of his humanity’s
existence. Lim holds that, should Christ not have possessed the
perfection of blessed knowledge from conception, his humanity
would no longer be a universal principle in this respect, but
17

Ibid.
Aquinas seems to prefer not to say that Christ has the vision “maximally,” perhaps
in this case because he holds that there could always be, by God’s absolute power, a higher
degree of the beatific vision such that no act of vision is strictly maximal for every possible
world. See STh III, q. 10, a. 4, ad 3. Christ’s beatific vision is preeminent and most
excellent in the order God has in fact willed.
19
Lim, “Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 523.
20
Ibid., 539. The text is Comp. theol., I, c. 216.
21
Lim, “Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 533.
18

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

would require another principle prior and superior to it in the
genus. Lim supposes that, on Aquinas’s account, if Christ were to
have received his preeminent vision at a moment later than
conception, he would have progressed towards the vision and not
been “immovable” in respect to it. Without that immovable
perfection, his beatific vision would have lacked universal
influence as first in the genus. Lim concludes that “it is necessary
that Christ possess the beatific knowledge of the divine essence
from the moment the human nature is assumed to the Word, that
is, from the moment of conception.”22
For Lim, then, the causal universality of Christ’s beatific vision
directly entails its presence from conception, and Aquinas’s
argument thus guarantees the presence of the beatific vision in
Christ for the entirety of his human existence and not simply for
one part of it. There was thus no reason for Aquinas to argue
specifically for the presence of beatific knowledge during Christ’s
earthly ministry, as do White and I, because he had already
established that it must have been present from conception.23
While Lim in this way recommends Aquinas’s own more
powerful argument to Aquinas’s critics, he suggests that the
arguments advanced by White and me can be repurposed to relate
Christ’s beatific vision to his self-consciousness of identify and
mission and his teaching.24
In response to Lim, let us first clarify why Christ should have
needed grace and the beatific vision at conception in order to be
their “immovable” and universal cause. Lim is appealing to the
principle of the causality of the maximum as including the claim
that the first in the genus must always be immovable. However,
for Aquinas the principle applies not only in cases where the first
in the genus is immovable but also in cases where it is not.
Aquinas distinguishes the principle in two basic forms, one where
the first in the genus is a univocal cause and the other where it is

22

Ibid., 540.
Ibid., 529.
24
Ibid., 542.
23

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more an equivocal or analogous cause,25 and he gives stock
physical examples of each.26 In the univocal version, all members
of the genus, including the first, share the same relevant feature.
Aquinas’s example is the element of fire, which is maximally hot,
through which everything else in the genus is hot. In the
equivocal or analogous version, the first in the genus does not
share the same univocal feature in common with what comes
subsequent to it. Aquinas’s example is the sun, which is an
equivocal cause of all the earthly things it heats, without, he says,
being hot itself.27 Although he uses his examples flexibly, sometimes using the example of fire to illustrate the general principle
when treating an analogous cause and sometimes the example of
the sun to illustrate the maximality of a univocal cause,28 he
makes a definite distinction between the principle’s two forms.
On occasion Aquinas links the principle with the tracing back
of changes to an “immobile” or unchanging source of change.
Where the first cause is equivocal or analogous, it is always
immobile. Thus the sun is immobile in respect of heat as the
equivocal cause of all earthly heating. In proving the existence of
God, moreover, Aquinas argues from all change in the universe
to conclude to the source of all such change in an Unmoved
Mover, an analogous cause that is “immobile” in every way.29
Similarly, as regards the particular change of being cleansed from
sin, Aquinas says that Christ, the source of such cleansing, did not
himself need to be cleansed, “just as in every genus of change the
first mover is immobile as regards that change, and the first
source of alteration is itself unalterable” (“sicut et in quolibet
genere motus primum movens est immobile secundum illum
25

On the different kinds of causality involved, see Christopher A. Decaen, “An
Inductive Study of the Notion of Equivocal Causality in St. Thomas,” The Thomist 79
(2015): 213-63.
26
Lim, “Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 533 n. 45, rightly holds that one
need not accept the validity of a particular example given by Aquinas to accept the general
principle.
27
II Metaphys. lect., 2; I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 2. When Aquinas elsewhere describes the
sun as “hot,” he uses the word equivocally. See Decaen, “Equivocal Causality in St.
Thomas,” 218.
28
E.g., STh I, q. 2, a. 2; III, q. 7, a. 9.
29
STh I, q. 2, a. 2; q. 9.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

motum, sicut primum alterans est inalterabile”).30 Here Christ
can hardly be identified as a univocal cause since he does not
share with us the feature of being cleansed from sin. Likewise,
Christ’s eternal natural divine sonship is the cause of our filial
adoption in time and not univocal with it.31
As for the univocal version of the principle, Aquinas appears
more flexible with regard to the first member’s immovability.
Sometimes he treats the first in the genus as immobile, but at
other times he does not. Thus, while an equivocal or analogous
cause is necessarily immobile, a univocal cause need not be
immobile. For example, in the case of the glorification of the
body, an effect Christ shares univocally with all those who rise to
everlasting life, Christ’s body was not glorified from conception.
It is in the context of identifying Christ’s resurrection as the
univocal efficient cause of all other resurrection by explicit appeal
to the principle that “that which is first in whatever genus is the
cause of all that comes after it”32 that Aquinas treats Christ’s
resurrected body in respect of its glory as the exemplar cause of
the glorified bodies of the saints in heaven.33
In the case of Christ’s rising itself, we have an example of
something Aquinas places first in its genus but that was brought
about subsequent to Christ’s conception; nevertheless, he has no
trouble regarding the change involved in Christ’s rising as the
cause of all other resurrection. Christ is not “immobile” in respect
of his rising from the dead. Now it may be conceded that it could
make no sense at all for resurrection to take place without Christ
first being dead, ruling out resurrection at conception as a
genuine possibility, since Christ can scarcely have been dead
before he was conceived. However, that is not the case for the
glorification of the body itself. It would have involved no
contradiction for God to cause Christ to be glorified in body at
the moment of conception.34 However, despite this bodily glory
being bestowed only subsequently to conception, that is, at
30

STh III, q. 4, a. 6, ad 2. Cf. III, q. 22, a. 4.
III Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 2, s.c. 2.
32
STh III, q. 56, a. 1. See also IV Sent., d. 43, q. 1, a. 2.
33
STh III, q. 56, a. 1, ad 3.
34
See STh III, q. 14, aa. 1-2.
31

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Christ’s resurrection, Aquinas seems to have no trouble effectively treating it as first in the genus of bodily glory and the cause
of all other bodily glory, just as he treats Christ’s rising as first
cause of all other resurrection. A univocal cause, then, need not
be immobile. This does not mean, however, that such a cause can
never be immobile in respect of its genus, just that it need not be.
In the case of the habit of grace, the act of beatific vision, and
the light of glory that elevates the intellect to its act, we have
further examples of univocal effects that Christ shares with all
others in each genus. Since Christ’s habitual grace and glory of
soul are effects that are univocal with all that follows in each
genus, there is no absolute necessity that he possess them
immovably from conception, just as it was not necessary for him
so to possess bodily glory. But in each case Aquinas treats grace
and glory of soul as in fact possessed from conception such that
Christ is actually “immobile” in these respects. Aquinas evidently
has reasons of “fittingness” (convenientia) for understanding why
the univocal effects of Christ’s resurrection and glory of body
come where they do in God’s plan of salvation, that is, on the
third day after his passion, and it seems that he must have
supposed corresponding reasons for the presence of grace and
glory of soul, that is, the beatific vision, at Christ’s conception.
After all, he concludes in the Compendium that “it was fitting
that Christ, the author of human salvation, possess the full vision
of God from the beginning of his Incarnation, and not arrive at
it through a succession of time as other holy people arrive at it.”35
Thus, we may conclude that the principle that the first in the
genus must be “immobile” applies in respect of glory of soul
fittingly rather than by absolute necessity. We should note,
though, that while Lim quotes Aquinas’s passage from the
Compendium in order to fill out the argument from the Summa,
he does not in his own text advert to the element of fittingness in
the Compendium’s argument.
However, it is not clear to me that Aquinas’s argument in the
Summa is precisely the same as his argument in the Compendium.
As Lim is aware, Aquinas does not argue at any point in question
35

Comp. theol., I, c. 216.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

9 of the Tertia pars that the beatific vision was present from
conception, and this is why Lim turns back to the Compendium
for this crucial detail. However, that Aquinas did not touch on
the exact moment Christ received the beatific vision in question
9 was in fact intentional, because he evidently planned to treat it
in question 34 on the perfection of the child conceived, to which,
again, Lim does not advert. The purpose of article 2 of question
9 is only to argue for Christ’s beatific knowledge, not for when
it was first bestowed, and this is partly why recent critics have
been able to point out that its content does not establish that the
vision was given for his earthly lifetime.
What then is Aquinas’s argument in the Summa for Christ
possessing the beatific vision from conception? It is not, as Lim
supposes, that this timing was required for Christ to be the cause
of all else in the genus. Rather, the conclusion of question 34,
article 4 is argued from the fact that it was “not fitting” that
Christ should receive his immeasurable habitual grace at his
conception without its act. There are three distinct elements to
this argument, and we shall comment on each in turn: first, the
immeasurability or infinity of Christ’s habitual grace; second, the
identity of the act that is fitting to that immeasurable grace; third,
the presupposition that Christ’s habitual grace was received at
conception.
Regarding the first element, Aquinas is saying that it is the
infinity of Christ’s grace rather than his grace per se that makes
it unfitting for it to be without its act. In other words, Aquinas
would concede that, if Christ’s grace had been only finite according to some measure, then it need not have been unfitting for it
to be unaccompanied by its act. Habitual grace without its act
may have been fitting in those circumstances, had they obtained.
However, Aquinas has, when treating Christ’s coassumption of
grace, already established that nothing was in fact lacking to
Christ’s habitual grace such that it “was conferred on Christ’s
soul as to a certain universal principle of sanctification in human
nature.”36 Given this infinity of his habitual grace, linked to him

36

STh III q. 7, a. 11.

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being first in its genus, it is certainly fitting, according to Aquinas,
that this grace be accompanied by its act.
What, though, is it about an act that would make it fitting to
this immeasurable grace? Aquinas refers back to his previous
articles where he argued that Christ had free will and had merited
from conception. He had appealed to the fact that infants are
sanctified in baptism without their own act of faith but according
to the faith of their parents or the Church, while adults are
sanctified according to their own act. He treats the latter
sanctification as the more perfect, not only because what is done
“of itself” (per se) is more perfect than what is done through
another, but also because an act is more perfect than the habit
from which it proceeds.37 Hence he held that, in matters of sanctification, an act is more perfect than its habit alone. In the case
then of Christ’s sanctification, which is the most perfect in the
order of habitual grace such that he is the sanctifier of others, it
follows that he had a meritorious movement of free will towards
God, that is, a meritorious act proceeding from charity, at the
first moment he received grace. It is this that Aquinas presupposes
when he begins his response in article 4 by saying that it was not
fitting that Christ’s habitual grace be without its act.
But what kind of act exactly belongs to an immeasurable habit
of grace? Here we come to the second element of Aquinas’s
argument, the identity of the act, where Aquinas argues that this
act is the act of beatific vision, and here again his appeal is to the
abundance of habitual grace Christ enjoyed. Aquinas notes that
those “pilgrims” who possess grace in this life have it according
to a lower measure than those “comprehensors” who have arrived at the vision of God in the next life. Christ, however,
enjoyed a greater grace than all of these (the principle of his preeminent headship is at work), so his grace too, which is fittingly
ever in act, is always accompanied by the act of beatific vision.
Aquinas is not arguing simply that Christ was given the beatific
vision at some unspecified point, but, because habitual grace was
given at conception, the act of beatific vision that accompanied it

37

STh III, q. 34, a. 3. See also q. 34, a. 2.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

did so fittingly from conception.38 Here we turn to the third
element in Aquinas’s argument, which he takes from article 1 in
the same question, where he made the argument that Christ was
sanctified by grace at conception. Without that key part of the
argument, one might suppose that all Aquinas can conclude here
is that Christ enjoyed the act of beatific knowledge from
whatever moment he received habitual grace. Christ’s position in
the genus of grace allows Aquinas to conclude this much. In other
words, Christ would have been head of the Body from the
moment he received habitual grace, whenever that moment was.
We turn back now to article 1 to see how Aquinas argues that this
sanctification was in fact bestowed at conception. According to
Lim, it follows necessarily from Christ’s position as first in the
genus and cause of all other grace that he possessed the same
perfection immovably from conception. But is that how Aquinas
in fact argues in the Summa?
He begins his response in article 1 by saying that “the
abundance of grace sanctifying the soul of Christ was derived
from the union with the Word itself.” This soul was animating
Christ’s body and assumed to the Word at the moment of
conception. This was important for Aquinas because he holds
that the intellectual soul normally only arrives after the embryonic body has undergone sufficient formation. Since Christ’s
body was formed immediately by the power of the Holy Spirit
and not over time by the limited power of male sperm, it could
bear an intellectual soul from the very moment of conception.39
Aquinas’s argument then is simply that, since the hypostatic
union took place at the child’s conception, habitual grace was
derived from the hypostatic union, sanctifying the soul at that
same moment.40 This reflects the fact that, when previously
treating the coassumption of grace, Aquinas had responded to the
opinion that the habit of grace was somehow a disposition for the
hypostatic union by replying that for a number of reasons it was
not. Rather, habitual grace followed the union, though “not by
38

STh III, q. 34, a. 4.
STh III, q. 33, aa. 1-2.
40
STh III, q. 34, a. 1.
39

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order of time but of nature and intellect.”41 But if habitual grace
was derived from the grace of union in a nontemporal fashion,
Aquinas can easily count it as present from the moment of the
union itself. It is because this grace was bestowed at that moment,
and because it was unfitting that such an abundant grace be
without the act of beatific vision, that Aquinas can conclude in
article 4 that Christ beheld the divine essence from the same
moment of conception. What Aquinas does not do in the Summa
is single out the moment of conception because Christ’s
maximum of habitual grace required that he was from that
moment the universal cause of grace. Thus, while Lim says that
the “recent critics” overlook this aspect of Aquinas’s argument, I
do not think that they can be blamed for not noticing an element
of argumentation in the Summa that is just not there. Should Lim
need to claim that it is in principle part of the Summa’s argument,
he may need to “go beyond” Aquinas, as he says White and I do,42
in order to make his case. I realize that Lim may have a rejoinder
here, but it seems to me that he is asking Aquinas’s argument to
bear more weight than it can or was meant to.
II. THE VALUE OF MORE RECENT ARGUMENTS
Having commented on Lim’s construal of Aquinas’s argument, I want to move on to the relation of the more recent arguments, such as mine and White’s, to Aquinas’s own argument. Do
they have value in arguing for the fact of Christ’s earthly beatific
vision or must they be repurposed for a secondary exploration of
the relation of his blessed knowledge to his self-consciousness
and teaching? It seems to me that Lim is correct in thinking that
their contribution should be assessed in relation to the value of
Aquinas’s argument. However, what is at stake here is the character and weight of Aquinas’s argument. As we have seen, Lim
supposes that Aquinas’s argument about the moment of conception is sufficient to give a definitive answer to the critics who
have overlooked it. However, I suggest that the mark of
41
42

STh III, q. 7, a. 13.
Lim, “Beatific Knowledge in Christ’s Humanity,” 526.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

fittingness rather than necessity in both the Compendium and the
Summa means that neither argument nor both of them combined
can prove to Aquinas’s critics that it was absolutely necessary for
Christ to have enjoyed beatific knowledge from conception. In
fact, this mark of fittingness in Aquinas’s approach instead allows
the possibility of critics proposing alternative views of when it
was fitting for Christ to be blessed with the beatific vision. I
suggest that it is in this more open context that the contribution
of more recent arguments for the earthly Christ’s beatific
knowledge must be located.
We should note that Aquinas did not in his own day face a
challenge or objection proposing alternative moments in which
Christ received the beatific vision. Aquinas’s approach to
theology was in part shaped by the objections put to his own
teaching, and in his time there was a consensus among theologians that Christ always enjoyed the beatific vision. Hence there
was no pressing reason for him to develop his particular
argument in the Summa further than he did. More recently,
however, and consistent with the nonnecessary character of
Aquinas’s argument to conception, most critics have effectively
proposed that Christ’s beatific vision was received more
proximately in time to the glory of his body.
That theologians can ask such questions about what timing
was fitting for the presence of Christ’s glory of soul has more
fundamentally as its context the fact that Aquinas treats his
beatific knowledge, as well as his habitual grace, as perfections
“coassumed in the union” (STh III, qq. 7-15) rather than as
“consequences of the union” (STh III, qq. 16-26).43 In previous
works, Aquinas seems to have supposed that habitual grace and
the beatific vision followed from the hypostatic union by an
absolute necessity, and so would have followed necessarily at the
moment of conception.44 Had he still held that view when he
wrote the Summa, he would presumably have treated both under
“consequences of the union,” where he includes consequences
43

On this distinction, see Gaine, “Must an Incarnate Divine Person Enjoy the Beatific
Vision?,” 135-38.
44
III Sent., d. 13, proem.

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that follow by absolute necessity from what is assumed in the
union (e.g., Christ’s unity of personal being), as well as others
that also follow more broadly from what is coassumed.45 However, his decision to include under things freely coassumed not
only defects but also perfections, such as grace and knowledge,
indicates that he now held that these followed the union not by
metaphysical necessity but by free coassumption for the sake of
our salvation. Might God then not have freely caused these coassumed perfections to be derived from the union at some moment subsequent to conception, as Aquinas’s critics would hold?
Something not entirely dissimilar to this happened, it seems,
with regard to the glorification of Christ’s body at his
resurrection, which was then the cause of all other resurrection.
When treating of what was coassumed in the union, Aquinas is
clear that the Word “could have assumed human nature without
defects,” but voluntarily coassumed such things as bodily
mortality for our salvation.46 It is thus that Aquinas can explore
reasons why Christ coassumed at conception such mortality
rather than the glory of the body, which he received only at the
resurrection. In the case of the resurrection itself, it is clear that
his rising did not cause our rising to take place immediately upon
his. When treating his resurrection as the cause of ours, Aquinas
fields the objection that Christ’s rising cannot be the cause of
ours, because our resurrection did not take place immediately at
his resurrection, when an effect should follow immediately on a
sufficient cause. Aquinas responds that “Christ’s resurrection is
the cause of our resurrection through the power of the united
Word.”47 Thus the effect need not take place immediately upon
its cause, but the Word wills when the effect should take place
according to God’s plan, where we share in this life in Christ’s
passion first and then arrive to participate bodily in his resurrection in the next life. This suggests the possibility that, given
that Christ’s habitual grace is caused by the hypostatic union,
God could in principle dispose the effect of grace to follow its
45

See Gaine, “Must an Incarnate Divine Person Enjoy the Beatific Vision?,” 137.
STh III, q. 14, a. 2.
47
STh III, q. 56, a. 1, ad 1.
46

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

cause at some point subsequent to Christ’s conception. Moreover, God could likewise dispose things so that the act of beatific
vision followed from the hypostatic union at a point subsequent
to Christ’s conception or to the bestowal of habitual grace.
I am not aware of any critic of Aquinas in this debate who has
claimed that habitual grace was granted at some point later than
conception. At the same time, we cannot rule out the possibility
that God could create a world in which habitual grace would be
fittingly granted to an incarnate divine person at a point
subsequent to that person’s first moment of created existence.
But, as regards the world God has in fact created, Aquinas’s critics
have proposed no advantage to Christ being unsanctified (as
distinct from sinful as well as from sanctified) until some later
point after conception. Such a delay might in fact be unfitting as
conducive to thoughts of adoptionism or some form of
Pelagianism. What critics of Aquinas normally do is locate the
timing of Christ’s beatific vision at a point more proximate to his
entry into the next world.48 It is true that one critic, Thomas G.
Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap., has presented an argument, based on
Christ’s non-Nestorian constitution, that militates against Christ
ever enjoying the beatific vision, even in heaven.49 Most of
Aquinas’s critics, however, would accept that Christ’s headship
and universal causality require that he enjoy this specific vision at
48
Critics might appeal to St. John Paul II, Insegnamenti de Giovanni Paolo II, vol. 11/4
(Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991), 1783, who during the General Audience
on December 7, 1988 said in his catechesis on Christ’s final words before dying that his
soul then “entered into the fullness of the beatific vision” (“entra nella pienezza della
visione beatifica”). That this does not exclude Christ’s earlier vision is suggested by the
fact of previous papal teaching, for example, in Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, 75, that
Christ enjoyed it from conception. For St. John Paul, Christ’s entry into the fullness of
vision seems to have meant, in the context of catechesis on Christ’s suffering and death,
that from the point of death his vision no longer allowed for the possibility of suffering
as it had done prior to death. Cf. the knowledge of God on the Cross prior to death taught
by St. John Paul, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 26, which was interpreted as the beatific vision
by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Notificatio de operibus P. Jon Sobrino,
S. I., 5, 8.
49
Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia
17 (2004): 189-201; “The Beatific Vision and the Incarnate Son: Furthering the
Discussion,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 605-15. For a reply, see Gaine, Did the Saviour See
the Father?, 43-46.

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some point. They generally conceive of Christ as a pilgrim who
received the grace of faith at his conception (or this is at least
implied), and then fittingly received glory of soul as a comprehensor on his entry into the next life.50 Their position also
involves new or renewed objections to Aquinas’s conclusion that
Christ was always a comprehensor, claiming that his alleged faith,
limited knowledge, freedom of will, and suffering all excluded
the beatific vision from his earthly life.
It seems to me that, just as Aquinas’s theology was partly
shaped by objections, so should be the Thomism of his followers,
and that Lim, White, and I are in agreement on this. But while
Lim thinks that a restatement of Aquinas’s own argument is a
sufficient and definitive response to the newer views proposed by
Aquinas’s critics, White and I have perceived the need to meet
their new and renewed objections with new arguments, and I
suggest that this response presupposes a more accurate
assessment of what Aquinas’s own argument from fittingness and
those of his critics entail. Our arguments are then more closely
inserted into the debate about the timing of Christ’s vision than
Lim allows. They do not simply relate Christ’s beatific vision, as
established necessarily from conception by Aquinas’s argument,
to Christ’s subsequent self-consciousness and teaching, but
themselves contribute directly to the ongoing debate on the
moment at which Christ’s soul was blessed with glory.
White makes his contribution within the context of his wider
project, brought together in the various essays of The Incarnate
Lord, which makes a retrieval of Aquinas’s contribution in the
context of current Christology as shaped by such influential
figures as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Karl
Barth. White’s project is not restricted to the ressourcement of
the mere outline of a Chalcedonian Christology, but portrays its
details more robustly in Thomistic fashion. One example of this
is White’s argument for Christ’s earthly beatific vision as opposed
to faith. This he says “is not an argument Aquinas makes
explicitly . . . but is a conclusion that can be derived from his
50

For arguments against the possibility of a third way for Christ between faith and
vision, see Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father?, 119-23.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

Christological principles.”51 In Did the Saviour See the Father?,
beginning with the portrayal of Christ in Scripture as a teacher of
divine truth, I work in turn through each objection typically made
more recently against Christ’s earthly beatific vision, including
his alleged faith, thereby attempting to build up a positive
argument to help Catholic theologians approach a moral
certitude about Christ’s vision on earth.
All this leads us to seek further clarity about why theologians
can conclude, with Aquinas, that the beatific vision in fact
followed the hypostatic union nontemporally at the very moment
that union became a reality.52 Just as no critic of Aquinas (except,
it seems, Weinandy) denies that Christ was granted the beatific
vision at some point, no one in the debate, not even those who
argue for his vision while on earth, proposes that it was granted
at a particular moment during the course of his earthly life (e.g.,
his baptism). Again, we should not suppose that God is unable to
create a world where an incarnate divine person is fittingly
granted the beatific vision at some such point. Nevertheless, as
regards the order God has in fact willed, those who have argued
for Christ’s earthly beatific vision normally trace it back to
conception and find no reason to locate it later than this. Lim,
however, is concerned that the more recent arguments point to
the presence of the beatific vision only at some point later during
Christ’s earthly life. Nevertheless, the vision’s presence from
conception is not entirely irrelevant to the current debate and our
arguments.
Since White argues from the starting-point of Christ’s
consciousness of his identity and mission, Lim seems to take his
argument to secure Christ’s beatific vision only from whatever
moment Christ was conscious of such things. He may also
suppose that, despite the presence of Christ’s intellectual soul
from conception, White may allow that he could only be
conscious of such things after sufficient development of his

51

White, Incarnate Lord, 238-39.
It should be noted that this timing has the support of the papal magisterium. See,
for example, Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis Christi, 75, which was quoted in 2006 by
the CDF, Notificatio, 5, 8.
52

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physical and mental life. In that case it might be fitting for the
beatific vision to be given only at a time when sufficient development was finally taking place. However, it is surely the case that,
if the vision were given with the presence of the intellectual soul
at conception, Christ would in that beatific way have knowledge
of his identity and mission from the very same moment, prior to
however it might subsequently be expressed in other ways. I take
it that this is what White would say, given that there seems to be
no reason to delay the bestowal of the beatific vision to a later
point in Christ’s development, on the understanding that such
development can hardly be required for the soul to receive this
vision. Catholics hold that a soul without its body is able to enjoy
the beatific vision, and so a soul can surely receive the beatific
vision from the very beginning of life, prior to the ongoing
development of its embryonic body in the womb.
As with White, Lim takes my argument in Did the Saviour See
the Father? to be good for Christ’s earthly life but not from its
very beginning. Since it begins from Christ’s teaching in the
Gospel, it involves establishing his beatific vision only for the
time of his public teaching ministry, on the basis of the utility of
the vision for teaching about divine realities. However, my argument did also respond to a recent critic’s argument against
Christ’s possession of the beatific vision specifically from conception, as well as attempting to make positive sense of the utility
of Christ’s vision in the womb.
The objection came from Gerald O’Collins, S.J., another critic
of Aquinas’s position on Christ’s earthly beatific vision. In his
influential Christology textbook, he argues from the premise
that, although the human mind is not to be reduced to the brain,
our mental life is dependent on the functioning of the brain.
From this he concludes that the single-cell embryonic Christ
could not have supported such an advanced knowledge as the
beatific vision.53 I responded that, since the act of beatific vision
is a purely immaterial act, exercised in the next life even by souls
separated from their bodies, it is not dependent on the brain, the
53

Gerald O’Collins, S.J., Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of
Jesus (2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 267.

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SIMON FRANCIS GAINE, O.P.

bodily imagination, or its content. While O’Collins seems to
suppose that Christ’s brain could not have supported the beatific
vision until it had developed somewhat, in fact the material brain,
however much it develops, can contribute nothing of itself to the
immaterial vision of God.54 Its developed functioning may
support further expressions of Christ’s knowledge but not the act
of vision itself, which can thus be present from conception.
Moreover, beyond responding to O’Collins’s objection, my
argument considered what the beatific vision can contribute in a
positive way to the embryonic Christ. Aquinas holds, on the basis
of St. Paul’s transient entry into the third heaven, that he
fleetingly experienced knowledge of the divine essence. His
resulting abstraction from the senses explains what he reports
about not knowing whether he was in the body or not (2 Cor
12:3). This then raises the question of why a beatified Christ did
not experience the same abstraction throughout his earthly life.
Here I pointed out how Bernard Lonergan, S.J., perceived a
radical difference between Paul, who was caught up suddenly
from his life of natural knowledge through the senses, and Christ,
who enjoyed the beatific vision from conception, even before he
could acquire knowledge naturally.55 According to Lonergan,
Christ’s natural knowledge developed within the context of his
fundamental vision of God, which Lonergan identifies as the
integrating factor within Christ’s overall human consciousness.56
By agreeing with Lonergan at this point, I interpreted Christ’s
vision from conception as providing a horizon within which all
his other knowledge, including his judgments about the world
around him, could be nurtured without any tension, but rather
with an ordered harmony among his different kinds of
knowledge, whether natural or supernatural. To this extent my
argument recognizes a utility to the beatific vision’s presence
from the very beginning of Christ’s human existence. Of course,
54

Gaine, Did the Saviour See the Father?, 144-46.
Bernard Lonergan, S.J., The Incarnate Word (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2016), 578-79.
56
Ibid., 696-703. On Lonergan’s contribution to the question of Christ’s beatific
knowledge, see Jeremy D. Wilkins, Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of
Wisdom (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), 324-51.
55

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this timing cannot bear the same weight that Lim attributes to it,
given that Christ’s immobility in this respect is not absolutely
required to guarantee his first place in the genus of glory.
However, my argument does not entirely neglect Christ’s vision
from conception.
CONCLUSION
Lim astutely recognizes that my argument is a distinct
argument from the one put forward by Aquinas. Some colleagues
have assumed otherwise. One eminent Catholic theologian even
told me he would not need to read my book because he already
knew and had taught Aquinas’s argument. It seems to me,
however, that Lim is being too optimistic in supposing that
Aquinas’s argument alone can resolve today’s debate about the
timing of Christ’s beatific vision. In fact, the nature of Aquinas’s
argument creates space for other arguments to join the fray on
his side.

The Thomist 88 (2024): 99-103

THOMAS OSBORNE ON
THOMAS AQUINAS ON THE VIRTUES
CHRISTOPHER KACZOR
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, California

T

HOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.’s recent book Thomas
Aquinas on Virtue1 admirably summarizes Thomas’s
understanding of the virtues, both infused and acquired,
as expressed in his entire opera omnia, from the Commentary on
the Sentences through the Summa theologiae. Osborne writes,

in order to fully understand one of Thomas’s texts on a variety of issues, we
must attend to a text’s historical context and place in his wider account of
virtue. A partial approach obscures his dialectical method and can cause
confusion about the main lines of his teaching. (216)

Osborne’s book places the discussion of the virtues in dialogue
with both authors who were contemporaries of Thomas, like
Albert and Bonaventure, and earlier authors, like the Stoics,
Aristotle, and Augustine. Thomas’s teaching on virtue is a challenging topic in part because he addressed it in a wide variety of
works such as the Disputed Questions on Virtue, the Commentary
on the Gospel of Matthew, the Summa contra gentiles, the
Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the Summa
theologiae. Osborne’s work brings together all these sources and
more, offering an interpretation and harmonization of Thomas’s
writings on virtue, as well as putting this teaching in dialogue
with contemporary virtue ethics.

1

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. viii + 233 (hard). $99.99.
ISBN: 978-1-316-51174-9.
99

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CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

In the first chapter, Osborne explores the definition of virtue.
Aristotle defined virtue as “a voluntary habit consisting in a mean
relative to us, determined by reason, and as the wise human will
determine it.” Following Augustine of Hippo, Peter Lombard
defines a virtue as a “good quality of mind, by which we live
rightly, which no one uses badly, which God alone works in a
human” (10). This definition was widespread in the thirteenthcentury commentaries on the Sentences. It is not clear, at first
glance, how these two definitions of virtue are to be understood.
Thomas adopts the Augustinian definition but ends up
transforming it by harmonizing it with Aristotelian insights. His
treatment of virtue is open to new insights derived from the
recent rediscovery of a more complete Aristotle, but Thomas is
also careful to write in such a way that readers more familiar with
Lombard’s Augustinian discussion of virtue appreciate the
compatibility of Aristotelian and Augustinian definitions.
According to Osborne, it is best to understand Thomas as
defining virtue as a good operative habit, but Osborne notes how
Thomas puts this definition in harmony with the more common
definition from Lombard held by most theologians in the
thirteenth century. Osborne also notes that defining virtue as a
good operative habit may lead to misunderstandings for us today.
Many contemporary understandings of the term regard “habit”
as an animal reflex or unreflective conditioning. Thomas, by
contrast, situates virtue as a habit that arises from choice, and if
the habit is good, it is perfective of human nature—it is not a
mere extension of animal instinct.
In the second chapter, Osborne focuses on the distinction
between intellectual and moral virtue. It is important in this
context to distinguish skills from virtues. Skills can be used for
good or bad purposes. The skill of a surgeon can heal or harm.
The skilled surgeon may or may not be virtuous. By contrast, the
virtues cannot be put to bad purposes. Skills focus on external
production (factio) rather than immanent activity (actio).
Osborne argues that Thomas makes use of the Aristotelian definition of virtue to show that moral virtues, but not intellectual
virtues, perfectly fulfill the nature of virtue. Intellectual virtues
enable good intellectual acts, but they do not make their agents

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good. Only the moral virtues both enable good acts and make
their agents good. In other words, intellectual virtues do not
make their agents good as human beings. Someone may be good
as a mathematician, yet, because she may fail to achieve the goal
of human life, her intellectual virtue does not make her good qua
human. But are there not courageous people who also fail to
achieve their ultimate end? Following Aristotle, Thomas would
argue that the “courage” of the evil soldier is faux courage, a
simulacrum of the real thing, because acts of daring done by an
evil agent are not conducive to that agent’s happiness. Osborne
reminds readers that happiness is understood by Thomas not as
mere preference satisfaction (as a contemporary economist or
psychologist might understand the term) but as authentic human
flourishing (as an Aristotelian might understand the term).
Osborne’s account could have been supplemented with a treatment of these “faux” virtues, such as cunning as a simulacrum of
practical wisdom.
In the third chapter, the author tackles the historical divide
between Stoics who view the virtuous person as free of passions,
and Aristotelians who view the virtuous person as having passions
shaped by reason. Although Thomas does not neglect the
philosophical reasons for the Aristotelian position, his Christology also shapes his answer. He held, of course, that Jesus was
sinless and had all the virtues. Since Jesus showed the passions of
sadness (John 11:35) and anger (Matt 21:12-17), Augustine did
not view perfect virtue as requiring complete freedom from the
passions. Thomas agrees that the perfect God-man, Jesus of
Nazareth, experienced passions properly governed by reason
rather than a complete absence of passion. Moreover, Osborne
notes that according to Thomas even a virtuous person such as
St. Paul experienced disordered passions (89). In addition to
drawing on Aristotle and theological resources, Thomas adopts
the four cardinal virtues following Stoic authorities as the
architectonic principle of ordering the virtues in the Secunda
secundae. Nor, argues Osborne, can we ignore neo-Platonic
sources in Thomas’s teaching on the virtues. Aquinas adopts from
neo-Platonists the idea that development of virtue leads to

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CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

contemplation of the highest things (though a similar teaching is
also found in book 10 of the Nicomachean Ethics.)
Chapter 4 explores the distinction between natural and supernatural virtue. Thomas, argues Osborne, was perhaps the first to
advocate for the doctrine that practical wisdom, courage, justice,
and temperance come in both infused and acquired forms. The
acquired and infused virtues differ not only in terms of efficient
cause (infused virtues are given as gifts by God’s grace; acquired
virtues are gained through repeated human action) but also in
terms of ultimate end. The infused forms of these virtues have a
different mean than the acquired because the infused forms have
a supernatural end (perfect happiness as a gift of God’s grace)
while the acquired have a natural end (imperfect happiness as
achievable through human action). Human beings can gain the
infused virtues because of the obediential potency that they enjoy
to be recipients of God’s grace. This difference of ultimate end
makes a practical difference. For example, the mean for infused
temperance will be stricter than the mean for natural temperance.
The mean of infused temperance requires more fasting than the
mean of natural temperance. Osborne points out that, “whereas
the acquired moral virtue makes the agent and the act good with
respect to human nature, theological virtues make them good in
the order of grace. The infused virtues are related to grace in the
way that the acquired virtues are related to the natural light of
reason” (130). In the tradition, the discussion of acquired and
infused virtues is made more complex later by the introduction
of acquired faith, hope, and love. But this teaching is not found
in Thomas.
Chapter 5 moves into the contemporary discussion of virtue
ethics. Prompted by Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, contemporary
philosophers have sought to create an ethics of virtue as an
alternative to a deontological ethic of rules or a consequentialist
ethic of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Osborne
argues that advocates of modern virtue ethics—not so much
Anscombe and MacIntyre as later writers such as Julia Annas and
Michael Thompson—depart from the thought of Aquinas in
significant ways. Thomas does not consider virtue alone as the

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basis of his ethics. He does not explain the goodness of acts in
terms of virtues, but rather explains the goodness of virtues in
terms of acts which are themselves evaluated as in accordance
with reason’s judgment of their fittingness for contributing to the
final end of perfect happiness. Just as an ethic of rules alone can
devolve into sterile legalism, so an ethic of virtue alone risks
becoming moral relativism despite the demurrals of writers like
Martha Nussbaum in her essay “Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach.” Virtue ethics, as it is often understood,
cannot provide a full account of the ethical life. Thomas’s approach integrates an account of happiness, law and grace, and
passions considered not only in terms of contemporary empirical
science, but in terms of human nature. An historically accurate
account of Thomas’s ethics is incomplete without his account of
the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Osborne’s Thomas Aquinas on Virtue provides a judicious and
comprehensive account of Thomas’s teaching. It will be of great
use to professors and graduate students seeking to understand the
whole of this doctrine which is expressed in so many different
works in Thomas’s opera omnia. It will be, I believe, a standard
source for coming to grips with a central topic in Thomas’s
thought on the virtues.

The Thomist 88 (2024): 105-12

MERE THEOLOGICAL GARB? A REPLY TO THOMAS
OSBORNE, JR.’S THOMAS AQUINAS ON VIRTUE
JUSTIN M. ANDERSON
Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

I

T HAS BECOME commonplace today for any work on the
virtues to indicate the relatively recent reawakening of
interest in the subject, beginning with Elizabeth Anscombe,
Philippa Foot, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Of course, contemporary virtue ethics as an Anglophone analytic project of
practical philosophy has moved in many varied directions since
the publication of After Virtue in 1981. Few scholars, though,
have realized how instrumental Thomas Aquinas’s thought has
been in this revival. Some of the movement’s central philosophers explicitly utilized Aquinas. For example, in 1973-74
Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe’s husband, delivered a text
called The Virtues, which focused on a critical yet friendly
engagement with Aquinas’s understanding of virtue. And
Philippa Foot herself reminisced in 1977 that “it was reading
Aquinas on the individual virtues that first made me suspicious
of contemporary theories about the relation between ‘fact’ and
‘value.’”1 The reading of Aquinas has continued to be
counseled, even within a largely (but not completely) neoAristotelian philosophical revival. Terence Irwin endorses
Aquinas at the very outset of his neo-Aristotelian three-volume
The Development of Ethics, writing that “Aquinas offers the
best statement of the Aristotelian approach to moral philosophy
and of Aristotelian naturalism. The best way to examine this
1

Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2009), xiii.
105

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JUSTIN M. ANDERSON

approach and this naturalist position is to reflect on Aquinas’
version of them.”2 Such acclaim has even led some to enshrine
Aquinas, albeit perhaps hastily, among the forerunners of the
contemporary virtue ethic revival.
It is in this context that one ought best to receive Thomas M.
Osborne, Jr.’s latest book.3 Osborne has performed a significant
service for those who would join the great minds that have
returned to Aquinas’s account of virtue. This service lies in
offering, not an updating of the Angelic Doctor’s account of
virtue for contemporary perspectives, but a way back into
Aquinas’s mind. This means engaging Aquinas’s account of
virtue on its own terms and in its own historical context. That
such a service is necessary is, in some ways, a conclusion evident
only to those who have made the journey. (One could, however, glimpse an example of the need for it in Peter Geach’s
unfortunate rejection of Aquinas’s account of the unity of the
virtues.) Moreover, if Irwin is correct, then one must conclude
that Osborne has also provided us with a clear-headed account
of one of Aristotle’s best interpreters.
The book is organized into six chapters, with an introduction
and a conclusion. But the real pattern of the book is a march
through Aquinas’s treatment of “virtue in general” as presented
in questions 55-67 of the Prima secundae of the Summa theologiae. One would be wrong, however, to think of this as merely a
commentatorial approach. The book offers intriguing glimpses
into how Aquinas considers the same issue from multiple
approaches, as parallel passages are explored. Osborne is careful
to consider these texts chronologically, thereby revealing any
significant or even unexplained alterations in Aquinas’s response and reasoning. The reader is especially introduced to the
philosophical sources Aquinas engaged with as he moves
through his account. “The goal of this book,” the Introduction
states, “is to help the reader to learn from Thomas despite the
2

Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics: A Historical and Critical Study, vol. 1:
From Socrates to the Reformation. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 4.
3
Thomas Aquinas on Virtue. By Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2022. Pp. viii + 233 (hard). $99.99. ISBN: 978-1-316-51174-9.

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differences between his texts themselves and the contemporary
reader’s tendency to hold background assumptions that make it
difficult to assimilate what the various texts contain” (9). The
method used to achieve this end is getting to know “the relevant
texts, as well as . . . the philosophical and historical contexts”
(ibid.).
The first chapter is devoted to question 55, on the definition
of virtue. However, as its subsections require one to work
through concepts like habitus, one theme of this chapter is a
revisiting in several strategic places of Aquinas’s earlier tract on
habitus. Since habitus are grounded in powers of the soul,
Osborne considers not only Aquinas’s understanding of habits
and the difference between this and our own understanding, but
also a helpful discussion of potentia as both potency and power
(19). Aquinas’s understanding of virtue requires a healthy
anthropology, and so is grounded in its own form of ethical
naturalism. After working through the distinction of powers,
and their operative character, Osborne concludes the chapter by
specifying that virtue is a good operative habit gained by
cultivation or even, in some cases, caused by God. Unsurprisingly, Osborne does not shy away from introducing
Aquinas’s Augustinian-Lombardic definition of virtue which
could include this theological element.
Once the nature of virtue is defined, Aquinas, following
Aristotle, immediately distinguishes intellectual and moral
virtues. The second chapter largely corresponds to working
through the sources and discussions taken up in questions 5658. The first move must be to demonstrate that virtues are
necessary in both the intellect and the appetites. In so doing,
Osborne not only considers historical sources, but gives an
illuminating consideration of later Thomistic disputes (i.e.,
Medina, Capreolus, Cajetan) arising from the relevant sections
under consideration (49-51). Beginning then with question 57,
Osborne attends to the nature of both speculative and practical
intellectual virtue. Of course, it is the virtue of prudence that
emerges with some singular importance for one’s active life and
hence requires special attention in morals. The chapter

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JUSTIN M. ANDERSON

concludes with a section on prudence’s relation to moral virtue
(58). The chapter contains many interesting discussions which
we cannot cover here adequately. The most common interlocutor, however, is Aquinas’s other texts, which are presented
in a timely and interesting style, permitting more and newer
questions to arise than a straightforward reading of the Prima
secundae would have suggested.
The third chapter centers around the division of the moral
virtues based on questions 59-61. Central to the chapter is an
engagement with the Peripatetic and Stoic notions of passion
and Aquinas’s appropriation of an Aristotelian approach. The
moral virtues are distinguished between those that concern
passions (e.g., fortitude and temperance) and those that concern
operation (e.g., justice). Osborne brings forward detailed questions evoked by Aquinas’s presentation of the moral virtues,
especially around his curious justification for Aristotle’s statement regarding eleven fundamental virtues (106-8). On the
heels of that discussion, Aquinas takes up a Platonic division
passed down through both Stoics and early Christian writers,
namely, the cardinal virtues (61). Osborne’s treatment of this is
a fine example of how the book contains serious consideration
not only of remote sources, but also of Aquinas’s immediate
predecessors, such as the latter’s debate whether the cardinal
virtues are “general conditions” or constitute individual habits.
The final section takes serious account of an oft-neglected
passage: Aquinas’s invocation of the neo-Platonic idea of virtues
as political, purgative, purged, and exemplary virtue.
The fourth chapter considers both the infused and the
theological virtues. Consequently, it treats of Aquinas’s view of
both the relation of the supernatural to the natural, and the
relation of acquired and infused virtue. While nowhere does the
book feel artificially confined to philosophical considerations,
here the theological concerns are especially front and center.
Sanctifying grace, our need for it and its work in various facets
of life, a treatment of faith, hope and charity (q. 62), all drive
this point home. The second half of the chapter considers the
relationship between acquired and infused virtues (q. 63). By

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considering various philosophical approaches to efficient
causality in relation to virtue (144-47), Osborne shows how
Aquinas’s Aristotelian notion of causation entails a diverse
causation of the same virtues, infused and acquired. The
fundamental difference between these kinds of virtues is found
in their objects and rules according to their diverse ends (15053). The question of whether acquired and infused temperance
constitute one single virtue or separate virtues in the agent does
not provoke undue speculation (153). I will return to Osborne’s
general tack in such cases, a clear and positive facet of the book.
In a single chapter (chap. 5), the book deals with diverse
properties of virtue, focusing on questions 64-67. Each subsection here refers to a separate question and they are perhaps
the most straightforward of the book. First is the mean of virtue
as it relates to the various kinds of virtues (q. 64). The connection among the virtues gets the longest treatment understandably since here arises a critical point of interpretation.
Aquinas often writes of various sorts of virtues as imperfect or
perfect. Osborne rightly stresses the need to read Aquinas’s
statements in their contexts. Virtue is called perfect or imperfect
depending on a standard. Virtue without charity can never be
said to be perfect without serious qualification. By ignoring or
underestimating this theological demand, some philosophical
authors have misrepresented Aquinas’s account of virtue. This
has ramifications not only for supernatural life, but also for how
Aquinas thinks of natural, human goodness. Osborne writes,
“Given the effects of original sin, it is impossible to be naturally
good without healing grace” (178). The chapter’s final two
sections address the inequality among the virtues (q. 66) and the
duration of virtue even in the next life (q. 67). This final section
reminds us, writes Osborne, “that the Summa Theologiae is
after all a work of theology, even if it includes and depends on
philosophy” (190).
Having carefully completed an examination of Aquinas’s
treatment of virtue in general, the book closes with a turn
toward contemporary philosophical thought. It treats
contemporary virtue ethics, the role of virtue in Aquinas’s

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ethics, and contemporary science and naturalism. Osborne notes
the complaints of scholars who argue that Aquinas’s account of
virtue substantially differs from the modern project of
contemporary virtue ethics. This raises the question of what
role virtue does play in Aquinas’s ethic. Osborne suggests that
virtue has an organizing role in his ethic because it is entailed in
the definition of the human good. The operation of virtue
constitutes the ways human nature can be perfected, but virtue
is not the whole story in that perfection. The final section
concludes with a consideration of the ambiguous term
“naturalism” and the way contemporary science can (or cannot)
be compatible with Aquinas’s understanding. As Osborne states,
Aquinas’s account of virtue depends broadly on an account of
human nature “that has not been shown to be incompatible
with what we know through contemporary sciences but also has
not been shown to be obviously true by them” (208).
The book concludes with a brief summary of each chapter
and the underscoring of its mission: “in order to fully
understand one of Thomas’s texts on a variety of issues . . . we
must attend to a text’s historical context and place in his wider
account of virtue” (216).
The book is in general well-conceived, well-executed, and
well-produced. On the whole, I cannot imagine someone
interested in a thorough understanding of Aquinas’s approach
to virtue being anything but pleased. However, it bears
repeating that the book is not so much an attempt to bring
Aquinas into the twenty-first century as it is an attempt to bring
us back to his contextualized understanding in the thirteenth.
Indeed, that voyage is necessary if one is to make the way
forward. However, it is not an expedition without risk. First,
because Aquinas’s account is enshrouded in Scholastic language,
the reader should be prepared to wade into Scholastic
terminology. No author could define this terminology at every
turn; as a result, true beginners may find it difficult. Second, in
an attempt to name Aquinas’s historical sources, it is very
possible to omit some or ignore the conduit through which that
source became accessible to him. There were times I missed

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some of my favorites. Still, nowhere does the book claim to be
exhaustive. Philosophical sources seem to get the lion’s share of
the attention. So, there is certainly much more to be taken into
account before a full historical backdrop can be articulated.
Much of my own curiosity centered on how the book would
handle passages that have led to divergent readings. On this
score, the book is very even handed. Presentations on contentious passages are typically limited to what is clear from the
various texts. Osborne usually covers potential interpretations,
and perhaps gives the briefest hint of his own understanding.
Indeed, in the conclusion he warns readers not to attempt to
cull from passages answers to our own questions, questions
Aquinas never answered and in whose text we can find no
reasonable way to settle. Instead, we are encouraged to develop
Aquinas’s points in our own manner, just as he did with those of
his predecessors. Each of these qualities repeatedly appears in
the book; Osborne has the virtue of being a careful guide.
The monograph certainly engages in a holistic manner with
the entirety of Aquinas’s rationale. Even if especially attentive to
philosophical fonts, it never attempts to eschew the theological
sources or their import. Therefore, the book cannot be called—
happily from my perspective—simply a work of philosophy.
Nor does it outright pretend to be. Nevertheless, at times I
sensed a tension about how much the philosopher can claim
Aquinas for his discipline. Often it seemed that Aquinas was
presented as merely accepting ancient authorities, including
philosophers (2). To be fair, the book treats the relationship
between theology and philosophy in Aquinas, especially early
on, and states more than once that Aquinas was primarily a
theologian (3-4). But while doing that it also asserts that “in
doing theology [Thomas] practiced and developed a
philosophy” (4). In fact, for me the book serves as evidence that
this statement is not as precise as it could be. While one can
certainly point to philosophical influences in Aquinas’s work on
virtue, and while he seriously engages with these philosophical
sources and takes them up at times, very often his own
theological commitments entail that he alters what he received

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JUSTIN M. ANDERSON

from those philosophical fonts. This is true even when those
terms of reference on their face seem quite “philosophical.”
One might think, for example, of how the Christian doctrine of
creation alters Aquinas’s understanding of nature. Is the result
in such cases still a philosophical idea? Is the result a rationally
argued theology or a disguised philosophy in mere theological
robes? Moreover, there is a second concern here. Whose
account of philosophy are we employing: that of a thirteenthcentury theologian or that of a denizen of our twenty-first
century intellectual environs? To what extent, if at all, would
Aquinas have recognized his own work as philosophical? It is
not clear that there is scholarly agreement on such questions.4
In closing, I wish to be completely clear: I do not raise
doubts regarding the execution of this book. Instead, I have a
minor concern about how we characterize a work so finely
executed. Osborne’s work beneficially situates itself at the
(perhaps for us somewhat ambiguous) crossroads of
philosophical and theological scholarship on virtue. That is to
say, it is thoroughly Thomistic.

4
Contrast, for example, Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and
Philosophical Portrait, trans. Joseph G. Trabbic and Roger W. Nutt (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press; 2016), esp. 47-48; and Jan A. Aertsen,
“Aquinas’s Philosophy in Its Historical Setting,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleanore Stump (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), esp. 34-35.

The Thomist 88 (2024): 113-27

THOMAS AQUINAS ON VIRTUE:
DIRECTIONS FOR FURTHER INQUIRY
THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas

I

AM GRATEFUL for the opportunity these reviews provide
for reflecting on issues that extend beyond my book’s
narrower claims about Thomas’s understanding of virtue.
While his discussions of virtue remain important for anyone
wishing to teach and think more deeply about virtue, there is
widespread disagreement over how to further Thomas’s work,
and how to understand it in our present cultural and intellectual
context. Our understanding of the future possibilities for
Thomistic ethics depends on broader notions about the nature of
philosophy and theology, as well as their relationship to historical
methods and intellectual history.
As Justin Anderson rightly notes, my book does not provide
an adequate account of what philosophy is, how it is related to
theology, and how it differs from philosophy as practiced in
contemporary philosophy departments. I suggest that Thomas’s
philosophy, especially as contained in the Summa theologiae, is
simply the part of natural knowledge, scientific in the Aristotelian
sense, that is needed for theology, and that this natural
knowledge might be supplemented with what we have learned
from the contemporary sciences. Moreover, new editions of
historically significant texts allow us better to understand
Thomas’s philosophical and theological achievements. Finally,
Thomas’s account of virtue could be enriched through responding to new problems and incorporating aspects of nonWestern traditions of philosophical enquiry, such as Confucianism. Thomas’s philosophical ethics serves his Catholic theology,
113

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

which, unlike merely human knowledge, receives its principles
from a revelation that concluded before the death of the last
apostle.
Thomas’s philosophy serves theology simply because of the
way in which the scientific habit of knowing about God through
revelation, which for Thomas is theology, depends on natural
human scientific knowledge, which is what Thomas describes as
philosophy. Most of Thomas’s work aims to develop in the
reader a scientific habit of knowing true conclusions by means of
principles that are better known at least to us. Aristotle provides
a way of organizing the different sciences and learning the
relevant speculative sciences of nature and of being in general, as
well as the three moral sciences of ethics, household studies, and
politics. Studying Thomas’s texts is not like studying medieval
literature or even works of medieval popular devotion. His
arguments and claims are formed within a particular context, but
their relevance is not limited to the context. We can still evaluate
the validity of his arguments and the accuracy of his principles
that are derived from reason, experience, or sacred Scripture.
Thomistic philosophy may have more to learn from
interaction with relevant contemporary science than from contemporary philosophy or, more broadly, contemporary ways of
thinking. Contemporary philosophy is largely compartmentalized and has little influence on the practice of science or on the
general culture. Engagement with contemporary philosophy is
necessary to make Thomas’s account of virtue relevant to current
academic discussions, and may be helpful for developing further
conceptual precision. However, in itself, this work is culturally
and intellectually secondary when compared to engagement with
the contemporary sciences.
While contemporary sciences have some relevance to the
speculative philosophy that Thomas uses in the Summa
theologiae and may contribute to the study of human action, we
should not expect them to overturn or reverse what we find in
Thomas’s works. As Thomas notes, in the speculative study of
nature we start only with a confused universal.1 We first know
1

I Phys., lect. 1 (Leonine ed., 2:5-6); STh I, q. 85, a. 3.

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that a man is approaching us before we can determine who the
man is. Unlike in mathematics, in philosophy we do not know
what is better known in itself, but must start with what is better
known to us.2 Much hard work in philosophy consists in arriving
at the nondemonstrative grasp of definitions and principles. We
first know that the sun is darkened before we can begin an inquiry
that leads to the definition of a solar eclipse, which is needed for
the habit of scientific knowledge.3 Since Aristotle’s time, human
knowledge has increased not only in its knowledge of conclusions
and definitions, but also, in some cases, in the grasp of its
principles. However, such growth does not mean that we can
bypass the works of Aristotle or Thomas.
The difference between Thomas and his predecessors such as
Aristotle and Augustine is arguably not between different complete systems, but rather a greater precision in the understanding
of demonstrations and their principles. For example, Aristotle
correctly saw how the potency of prime matter addresses
problems presented by Parmenides, but he did not clearly see
how another kind of potency explains the relationship between a
nature or suppositum and its own act of existence. Thomas
deepens and extends the inquiry that Aristotle began. Similarly,
what we describe as Thomas’s philosophy can be understood as
a type of knowledge that can be extended or deepened even if its
basic contours are correct.
In his major works, Thomas uses Aristotle’s texts insofar as
they help him to understand what is relevant to theology. For
instance, in his account of cognition, he is concerned with the
way in which form is received without matter. The study of sense
organs would be to him a valuable philosophical inquiry, but it is
not relevant to his theological concerns. Contemporary science
has taught us much about the structure of sense organs and the
brain. Aristotle and Thomas would describe these achievements
as ultimately part of the genus of physical science, which is the

2
3

II De anima, c. 3 (Leonine ed., 45/1:77-78).
Cf. I Post Anal., lect. 4 (Leonine ed., 1*2:21-22).

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

same discipline that considers matter and form. However,
particular discoveries are much more likely to be mistaken than
are general principles, such as those about matter and form.
Furthermore, as a theologian Thomas is primarily concerned
with those parts of Aristotelian philosophy that are about the
soul, and not the structure of the sense organs or the brain. He
writes, “It pertains to theology to consider the nature of man on
the part of the soul, but not on the part of the body, except
according to the relationship which the soul has to the body.”4
Consequently, especially in his theological works Thomas is
concerned with precisely those areas of knowledge that are not
directly studied by our contemporary science.
Thomas believed that the study of Aristotle and other
philosophers was necessary for acquiring the intellectual habits
that theology requires. We might think that contemporary
Catholics should absorb contemporary philosophy and science in
the same way that Thomas incorporated Aristotle’s newly
available texts. However, this view is a faulty description of what
Thomas was doing. While it is true that Thomas had access to
previously unavailable texts from Aristotle, as well as from the
Aristotelian tradition of later neo-Platonists and Arabic thinkers,
he did not study these texts simply because they were newly
available. He engaged in a pre-existing philosophical tradition
that had been available in Greek and Arabic but not in Latin. He
embraced Aristotelianism to the extent that he considered much
of what Aristotle said to be true or at least plausible, and that the
acquisition of knowledge occurred as Aristotle described. If we
believe that Aristotle and his followers present a viable account
of knowledge and its basic principles, then we can understand
and evaluate Thomas’s arguments and claims as part of this
tradition. Thomas studied Aristotle because he believed that
Aristotle and his successors would help him acquire scientific
knowledge. The texts he studied were new, but he did not learn
from them because they were new.
4

“Naturam autem hominis considerare pertinent ad theologum ex parte animae, non
autem ex parte corporis, nisi secundum habitudinem quam habet corpus ad anima” (STh I,
q. 75, in principe).

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In a special way Thomas’s account of ethics is even less
dependent than his natural philosophy on those areas in which
his philosophy is surpassed by the discoveries of contemporary
science. First, as Aristotle noted, at least part of the study of ethics
is inexact and requires only a general account of the soul and its
powers.5 Second, ethics, unlike the speculative sciences, begins
with very general propositions and then applies them to more
particular actions.6 Third, ethics deals with properly human
actions, which come from the intellect and the will.7 The bodily
organs are relevant to ethics, since in this life the intellect and
will rely on sense organs. Moreover, many virtues belong to
powers whose operations are bodily. Some writers have
attempted to show how contemporary psychology, neuroscience,
and even cognitive science might enrich the Thomistic account of
virtue and human action.8 Thomas knew little about the brain.
His account of the humors and their influence on the bodily
nature needs to be replaced. Similarly, even though our contemporary psychological sciences contain numerous empirical
and conceptual difficulties, we have descriptions of psychological
conditions that are far more precise, albeit tentatively so, than
those that were available to Thomas. However, we should note
that these more relevant sciences often involve or incorporate
conceptual confusion that make it difficult to address the truth
and adequacy of their claims.9
If there is a radical discontinuity between contemporary
science and Thomas’s general theses in Aristotelian science, and
5

I Ethic., c. 19 (Leonine ed., 47/1:67-69).
I Ethic., c. 3 (Leonine ed., 47/1:11).
7
STh I-II, q. 1, a. 2
8
See for instance, Craig Steven Titus, Resilience and the Virtue of Fortitude: Aquinas
in Dialogue with the Psychosocial Sciences (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2006); Daniel De Haan, “Hylomorphism, New Mechanisms, and
Explanations in Biology, Neuroscience, and Psychology,” in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives
on Contemporary Science, ed. William M. R. Simpson, Robert C. Koons, Nicholas J. Teh
(New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 293-326.
9
M. R. Bennett and P. M. S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
6

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

if contemporary science provides a comprehensive account of
natural phenomena, then Thomists would have to reject many of
Thomas’s basic positions, including his hylomorphism and his
understanding of natural inclination. When interpreting and
evaluating Thomas’s own arguments, we would pay less attention
to these rejected theses. However, many Thomists deny that there
is a radical discontinuity between Aristotelian science and our
own, and they argue for the enduring truth of his general
principles in physics and metaphysics.10 This continuity from an
Aristotelian perspective is unsurprising, since Aristotle and his
followers think that the more general principles, although less
informative, are more certain. For instance, many still defend the
very general view that there are three principles of change,
namely, form, matter, and privation, even though everyone now
rejects Aristotle’s account of the heavenly bodies. Thomas
himself, although he accepted what were then the best accounts
of heavenly motion, noticed that these accounts were not full of
scientific demonstrations.11 The later discoveries did not falsify
Thomas’s general principles. For a Thomist, Thomas’s account of
hylomorphism has a different kind of explanatory value than his
account of the heavenly bodies. Hylomorphism is central and
more certain, albeit imprecise and less informative.
The stability of Thomas’s general principles historically may
have contributed to complacency regarding advances in science.
However, we should not blame those who were faced with the
daunting task of incorporating the many and varied developments of early modern science. It was difficult to evaluate the
plausibility of various claims and the wider conceptual schema
with which they were associated.12 The history of Thomism and
10
William A. Wallace, “Causality, Analogy, and Scientific Growth,” in idem, From a
Realist Point of View: Essays on the Philosophy of Science (Washington, D.C.: University
of America Press, 1979), 201-51; James A. Weisheipl, “Medieval Natural Philosophy and
Modern Science,” in idem, Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages, ed. William E. Carroll
(Washington, D..C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1985), 261-76.
11
II De Caelo, lect. 17 (Leonine ed., 3:186-87). For discussion, see Weisheipl,
“Medieval Natural Philosophy and Modern Science,” 269.
12
It can be instructive to consult Salvator Roselli, Summa Philosophica, vols. 2-4
(Madrid: Cano, 1788).

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Scholastic philosophy illustrates how limited engagement with
modern science has contributed to marginalization. The inability
to consider advances in scientific knowledge has historically
contributed to the decline of Aristotelian philosophy. While these
advances may be less relevant to theologians and philosophers,
the question of relevance itself needs further discussion.
The failure to incorporate contemporary scientific thought
should not be seen as a complete philosophical failure that
justifies disregarding the Thomistic tradition when studying
Thomas. Whether Scholasticism collapsed due to external pressures or internal difficulties depends, in part, on whether basic
Scholastic and Thomistic views were correct. The politically
motivated destruction of religious houses and theological
faculties, accompanied by the abandonment of Scholastic
philosophy, completed the divorce between philosophy and
science and the rejection of Scholasticism by the academic
establishment. Scholastic philosophy and theology arguably
collapsed in the eighteenth century not because of internal
difficulties, but due to ecclesiastical, political, and cultural
changes. We now inherit this historical context, which includes
(1) a canon of philosophy that includes in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries only figures outside of Scholasticism, (2) a
separation of philosophy from science, and (3) the relegation of
religious truths to personal preference. To understand what
Thomas can teach us, we need to consider both his context and
our own, without attempting to provide purely historical
explanations of knowledge and argumentation.
While avoiding historicism, we should recognize that
Thomas’s thought developed in a particular philosophical and
historical context, and that this context often helps us understand
what Thomas is saying. One motivation for writing my book was
the difficulty of correcting, in articles, what seemed to be a
fragmented interpretation of Thomas’s account of virtue resulting from isolated readings of texts, detached from each other
and their historical context. Similarly, Justin Anderson, in his
book Virtue and Grace in Thomas Aquinas, shows that Thomas

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

was able to develop an account of infused and acquired virtue
only after earlier thinkers had more precisely delineated the
relationship between the natural and the supernatural.13
Interestingly, Anderson notes that the texts and historical context
made available through twentieth-century research do not
substantially improve our understanding of Thomas’s views
compared to the Thomists from the fifteenth through the
eighteenth centuries. However, they do correct misinterpretations of Thomas in the twentieth century and provide
insight into the way Thomas develops his philosophy and
theology as part of a tradition that extends back centuries before
him and continues for many centuries afterward. In my recent
book, I attempted to demonstrate how reading Thomas without
considering the later Thomists is akin to reading Aristotle without
Thomas and other late ancient and Arabic commentaries.
Excellent textual and philosophical work can be done by reading
authors in isolation, but it is limited without the interpretive
tradition that guides the reader to important issues and
connections between them.
Contemporary Thomists have an advantage over their early
modern predecessors in having access to critical editions of
Thomas’s texts, as well as texts by authors who preceded him.
Few profound disagreements in the study of Thomas turn on the
text of a critical edition. However, comparing Thomas to these
earlier sources, now available, can help us understand why he
chooses the definitions or arguments he does. Although historical
studies do not provide insight into the quality and nature of his
arguments or whether his distinctions are justified, they do tell us
why he might be concerned with developing his thought on one
issue rather than another or what he meant by a particular term.
For example, contemporary scholars might wonder why Thomas
dedicates so little effort to differentiating between the operations
of acquired and infused moral virtue. The historical context
explains that he was among the first to make this distinction at

13

Justin M. Anderson, Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 65-107.

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all. Contemporary scholars often grapple with questions and
difficulties that arose only after Thomas’s time.
Since the end of the twentieth century, some Anglophone
scholars have neglected historical scholarship in their presentation of Thomas’s views. But we should read the earlier historians even if the historians themselves have philosophical and
theological views that are outdated or unjustified. For example,
Henri Bouillard’s philosophical speculations make his theological
conclusions irrelevant to most contemporary philosophers. But
Anderson shows his real contribution to our historical knowledge
of Thomas’s development concerning grace, which in turn sheds
light on how Bernard Lonergan traces Thomas’s theological
growth.14 Similarly, Marie-Dominique Chenu’s religious and
political views now have mostly historical interest. But his work
on the historical background to Thomas’s understanding of
theology as a science is necessary for understanding the context
of Thomas’s own views. Gregory Hrynkiw shows that even
Chenu’s understanding of the issues in Thomas would been
enriched by a more careful reading of Thomas de Vio Cajetan.15
Historical investigation of philosophical concepts and arguments
should address the soundness of the distinctions and the strength
of the arguments, and consider how they have been received and
developed by a tradition of thought.
If we accept Thomas’s general principles and account of
knowledge, we should use our understanding of Thomas himself
as an aid to greater understanding. In moral philosophy and
theology, this growth needs to occur in at least three ways. First,
we need to consider subject matter that would have been at least
nearly unthinkable to Thomas. Second, we should reply to
contemporary theological critics of Thomism. Third, we should
address non-Western traditions of philosophical speculation.
Christopher Kaczor is a good model for attempting to extend
Thomas’s thought to the study of contemporary topics. For
14

Ibid., 96-98, 105-7.
Gregory Hrynkiw, Cajetan on Sacred Doctrine (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2020), 19-36.
15

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

example, in his book Disputes in Bioethics: Abortion, Euthanasia,
and Other Controversies he considers material that would come
under the consideration of particular acts in the Secunda
secundae.16 Although Thomas’s organization of the material
around the virtues retains its relevance, Thomas does not discuss
artificially produced embryos and respirators. Moral problems
that involve these issues cannot be resolved merely by appealing
to Thomas’s own texts.
Anderson correctly points to a lacuna in my book, in that I do
not consider adequately contemporary theology. In part this is
due to my own professional specialization, and in part it is due
to my suspicion that contemporary theology fails as theology in
that it does not focus on the way in which its conclusions
demonstratively or plausibly follow from its principles. For
example, twentieth-century theological debates over the natural
desire for God often did not address the possible meanings of
“natural” or “desire,” and they rarely considered whether
Thomas’s arguments are demonstrative or plausible.17 Everyone
agreed that Thomas thinks that there is one supernatural ultimate
end for adult humans. The real question is over the relationship
of this end to connatural ends, whether the arguments for the
order to this end are plausible or demonstrative, and whether the
premises can be adequately known through natural reason. It
seems to me that Anderson and a few other theologians are
rectifying what has been a grave lacuna in contemporary
theology.
There is a further difficulty in that much contemporary
theology seems more like language studies or rhetoric than a
serious form of inquiry concerning God. In the sixteenth-century
theologians, and especially Jesuit theologians, were able to resist
a humanistic project of replacing Scholastic theology with the
study of biblical languages and the Fathers.18 This project was
16

Christopher Kaczor, Disputes in Bioethics: Abortion, Euthanasia, and Other
Controversies (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020).
17
See my “Natura Pura: Two Recent Works,” Nova et vetera (Eng. ed.) 11 (2013):
265-79.
18
Thomas M. Osborne Jr., “The Early Jesuits and Scholastic Theology,” in Ignatius of
Loyola and Thomas Aquinas: A Jesuit Ressourcement, ed. Justin M. Anderson, Matthew

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revived in the twentieth century, and has had the predicted
results.
Contemporary theology and contemporary applied ethics
share many difficulties inherited from their location in the culture
of advanced modernity. Perhaps the greatest difficulty for
Thomas’s account of the virtues is not the theoretical challenges
of contemporary science or philosophy, but the difficulty of
thinking about virtuous action in light of our current practices
and institutions. Alasdair MacIntyre has argued convincingly that
the most severe problems for a neo-Aristotelian ethics is the
contemporary lack of understanding what it means for a good to
be common.19 On his account, the failure is not so much in
philosophy as in the practices of modernity. In modern societies
the individual good is often understood prior to and apart from
the common good. Consequently, it is impossible to understand
the way in which virtue makes someone good as a member of the
political community. If MacIntyre is right, Thomas’s account of
the virtues will be convincing to the extent that our contemporary institutions are healthy. From MacIntyre’s perspective,
our social practices are deeply disordered. For MacIntyre,
philosophy and practice are intrinsically connected. A shift to a
sounder philosophy would in some way accompany or be
preceded by a shift to healthier practices.
The link between philosophy and social practice suggests that
it might be helpful to look at philosophical notions that arose in
premodern societies outside the West, such as premodern China.
MacIntyre has argued that there is incommensurability between
the Aristotelian and Confucian traditions of the virtues.20 In
Levering, and Aaron Pidel (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
forthcoming).
19
Alasdair MacIntyre, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire,
Practical Reasoning, and Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016),
166-205.
20
Alasdair MacIntyre, “Incommensurability, Truth, and the Conversation between
Confucians and Aristotelians about the Virtues,” in Culture and Modernity: East-West
Philosophic Perspectives, ed. Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991),
104-22.

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particular, he states that the Confucian virtue of propriety (li)
seems to have no corresponding Western analog. Nevertheless, it
appears to be central to premodern Chinese culture and thought.
Many philosophers have criticized MacIntyre’s claim about this
incommensurability, sometimes as if they think that incommensurability implies two sealed traditions that prevent meaningful
discussion.21 But for MacIntyre, the incommensurability of
traditions only means that they cannot easily be compared and
evaluated from some shared standpoint.22 If MacIntyre is correct,
Thomists and Confucians should attempt to consider some
broader approach that could incorporate what has been
understood by members of the incommensurable traditions. We
can see in my book how traditions can interact with each other.
During the past twenty to thirty years there has been not only
a dialogue between experts on Confucianism and virtue ethics,
but more particularly between the thought of Confucius and that
of Aristotle.23 Considerations of Thomas in light of Confucianism
have shown possible directions for research. Lee H. Yearley
wrote one of the earliest works in this genre, which was a
comparison of the virtue of courage in the thought of Thomas
and Mencius (ca. 372-289 B.C.), who was one of the most
important early Confucians.24 More recently, Catherine Hudak
Klancer wrote a monograph on the common good as understood
by Thomas and Zhu Xi (1130-1200), who was perhaps the most
influential founder of neo-Confucianism.25 Such inquiries might
shed light on ethics.
Perhaps because early Chinese writers do not have an
understanding of revelation comparable to that possessed by
21

For an example and references to the literature, see May Sim, Remastering Morals
with Aristotle and Confucius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 49-71.
22
Christopher Stephen Lutz, “Tradition as a Fragile Practice: Some Implications of
Alasdair MacIntyre’s Theory of Rationality for the Study of Philosophy,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2014): 619-40.
23
In addition to Sim, Remastering Morals, see also Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius
and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York: Routledge, 2007).
24
Lee. H. Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas: Theories of Virtue and Conceptions of
Courage (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY, 1990).
25
Catherine Hudak Klancer, Embracing Our Complexity: Thomas Aquinas and Zhu
Xi on Power and the Common Good (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2015).

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Jews, Christians, and Muslims, many contemporary scholars have
described Chinese thought as “naturalistic” in that it is not
religious. It is unclear that Chinese philosophy is more friendly
to contemporary naturalism than it is to Thomism. Jiyuan Yu
finds a close similarity between the role of God in Aristotle’s
ethics and the role of Heaven in Confucian ethics.26 Other
scholars have argued that the common ascription of contemporary naturalism to Chinese thought and Confucianism in
particular is unjustified.27 Their discovery of Chinese naturalism
may tell us more about Western scholars and those influenced by
them than about Chinese thought.
Despite possible similarities between the traditions, it is
difficult to translate the terminology of one tradition so that it
can be understood in another. For instance, the neo-Confucian
tradition seems to recognize the cardinal virtues of humaneness
(ren), righteousness (yi), ritual propriety (li), wisdom (zhi), and
sometimes trustworthiness (xin).28 It is unclear how these virtues
map on to the virtues that are described by Aristotle and Thomas,
although wisdom (zhi) might more or less correspond to
prudence (prudentia/phronesis).29 It seems to me that there are
also important similarities between Thomas’s account of justice
and the virtue of humaneness (ren). For example, humaneness,
like particular justice, can regulate the relationships between
individuals, and, like general or legal justice, it can inform other
virtues. Once Western philosophers have a solid grasp of
Thomas’s account of virtue, it may be helpful for them to learn
from neo-Confucians about the possibility of incorporating these
virtues into Thomas’s schema of virtues.
Despite the project’s appeal, it remains unclear how Thomistic
ethics can be developed through contact with non-Western
26

Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle, 180-85.
Joshua R. Brown and Alexus McLeod, Transcendence and Non-Naturalism in Early
Chinese Thought (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
28
Stephen C. Angle and Justin Tiwald, Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical
Introduction (Malden, Mass., and Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), 160-67.
29
Yearley, Mencius and Aquinas, 36-44.
27

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THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

philosophy, and the potential fruitfulness of such a project is
uncertain. If MacIntyre’s assertion about the incommensurability
of traditions holds true, it would require conceptual innovation
to devise a framework that could incorporate both traditions.
Furthermore, cooperation between groups of scholars would be
necessary, as it is nearly impossible for one philosopher to master
both traditions. Acquiring expertise in Thomas’s ethics alone is
challenging, as it requires linguistic and historical skills that most
philosophers currently lack. The difficulties faced by Western
students of Confucianism, particularly neo-Confucianism, are
even more significant. While there are communities in the West,
outside elite academic circles, that are influenced by classical
languages and traditional religions, members of such communities are unlikely to have knowledge of classical Chinese.
Understanding the thought of either Thomas or the neoConfucians demands even more effort for individuals formed
entirely within contemporary ideologies. Mastering both is
nearly impossible. However, the difficulty of the task need not
make it unfruitful.
Aristotle gave a very preliminary and general account of moral
philosophy. Thomas gives a more complete and precise account
alongside his theology in the Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae. For example, when discussing human action, he relies
heavily on Aristotle’s division between willing the end, deliberation, and willing the means, but he adds precision by
incorporating many other acts of the intellect and the will.
Similarly, when discussing the virtues, he includes what he finds
to be true in Aristotle, but he adds precision and completeness by
incorporating material from Stoics and neo-Platonists. Later
Thomists added to what Thomas wrote, and it is plausible that
today we can add to their achievements.
Human knowledge is necessary for theology. We would
expect any advances in basic themes in ethics to have an influence
on theological ethics. On the other hand, theology is a distinctive
discipline that is based on the deposit of faith, which has been
complete for almost two thousand years. Scholastic theology is a
tradition of knowing that improves through considering more
precise questions. Advances in theology will probably follow

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either from conceptual precisions or through attempts to address
new moral issues. Progress in theology cannot be achieved apart
from progress in philosophy, and in our current context Scholastic philosophy.
As human knowledge grows, we should expect that philosophical progress might become even more complex and arduous
than it was in the different historical contexts of Thomas and
Aristotle. Much general knowledge has been acquired, but there
is perhaps infinite scope for development. My hope is that there
will be more Thomists who are able to understand the Thomistic
tradition and consider in its light the fruits of historical research,
the discoveries of contemporary science, and newly available (for
us) premodern traditions.

BOOK REVIEWS
A Quest for the Historical Christ: “Scientia Christi” and the Modern Study of
Jesus. By ANTHONY GIAMBRONE, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2022. Pp. xi + 448. $34.95 (paper). ISBN
978-0-8132-3487-8.
In this sprawling and broadly erudite collection of fifteen articles and two
appendices (published individually between 2015 and 2021), Anthony
Giambrone provides a series of prolegomena to an authentically biblical
Christology, emulating the commitment to “historically informed exegetical
rigor” and “the truths of the Catholic faith” of his Dominican forbear MarieJoseph Lagrange (4). These essays represent “a personal search” and “an
exegete’s reasoned leap of faith” over Lessing’s “broad ugly ditch” (1-2). The
chapters are arranged in three groups of five: part I, “Historical Foundations”;
part II, “Theological Perspectives”; and part III, “Jesus and the Scriptures.”
Overall, I find parts I and II, as well as chapter 15 and both appendices, to be
of a high quality, but Chapters 11-14 to be comparatively weak.
Chapter 1, “Vera et sincera de Iesu,” deals with the background, interpretation, and reception of Dei Verbum 19, Vatican II’s solemn statement on
the historicity, apostolicity, and veracity of the four Gospels. Giambrone
explains how curial politics and the April 1964 issuance of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission’s Sancta Mater Ecclesia (which laid the groundwork for Dei
Verbum 19) provided the occasion for proactive biblical scholars such as Joseph
Fitzmyer, S.J., to undermine the council’s teaching on the historicity of the
Gospels even before the dogmatic constitution was promulgated (20-27). By
way of broader context, Giambrone highlights the roles that three Protestant
scholars have played in the study of the Gospels in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Rudolf Bultmann’s influential claim that the Gospels are not
biographies has given way to Richard Burridge’s demonstration of their affinity
to ancient bioi, and Richard Bauckham’s case for the presence of eyewitness
testimony in the early transmission of Jesus tradition “invites us to recover the
occluded teaching of Vatican II” (47).
In chapter 2, “The German Roots of Historical Jesus Research,” Giambrone
aims to “critically distance future scholarship” from the agenda and legacy of
Albert Schweitzer’s self-promoting Quest of the Historical Jesus (51). Via an
illuminative historical sketch, Giambrone argues that the “Three Quests”
framework promoted by “neo-Schweitzerians,” such as N. T. Wright, is “no
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longer convincing” and is in fact distortive—for example, in the way it reduces
Bultmann’s “massive midcentury movement” to a mere “interlude” (58).
Reading Lagrange’s Le sens du christianisme d’après l’exégèse allemande (1917)
as a “minority report,” Giambrone ably demonstrates that the whole course of
modern historical-Jesus research, with its various currents and countercurrents,
flows from the Radical Reformation (62-71).
Chapter 3, “The ‘Lying Historians’ and Luke 1-2,” reevaluates Luke’s
infancy narrative in relation to “ancient genre theory” (75), Luke’s express intention to provide “a reliable and well-researched diegesis [i.e., narrative]” (78),
and indirect evidence for his possible use of Judean sources (82-83). In order to
understand ancient historiography as the ancients themselves did, “we must
reconceive [it] as an aesthetical and ethical enterprise” (86). The strategy of
“rationalistic demythologization” was available to Luke, but he chose not to
employ it (90).
Chapter 4, “Memorializing Miracles in the World of the Gospels,” aims to
stimulate a “rapprochement between memory and material culture” in the study
of Gospel traditions (92). After discussing votive offerings, healing shrines, and
narrative memory (93-97), Giambrone examines the “pick up your mat”
healings in John 5:1-15 and Mark 2:1-12, suggesting that the pool of Bethesda
in Jerusalem and Simon Peter’s house in Capernaum must have served as lieux
de mémoire in the early transmission of Jesus tradition (98). The former may
originally have been a “Jewish variant” of the widespread Asclepius-Serapis
healing shrines (99-100), while the latter had a long “cultic afterlife” as an
ecclesial edifice (103). Giambrone offers no comment as to why Matthew has
completely removed Peter’s house from his account of the healing (9:1-8).
Chapter 5, “Eyewitness Historiography and the Resurrection,” treats the role
of eyewitness testimony in Luke-Acts vis-à-vis the canons and conventions of
Greek historiography. The resurrection of Jesus, which “holds massive
centrality for the entire story” (124), “posed a considerable historiographical
problem” for Luke (120). While Jesus’ ministry and execution were public
events (“not done in a corner”), the resurrection was more of “a private event”
(124), to which there were a limited number of witnesses (Acts 10:40-42).
Giambrone places Paul’s “unearthly” post-ascension vision of “the exalted
Lord” and his “status as a mystic in Luke’s presentation” over against “Peter’s
more earth-bound form of witness” (134-36). This point might have been more
carefully nuanced. Peter, who was present at the ascension, likewise testifies
publicly to Jesus as the exalted Lord and glorified servant (Acts 2:29-36;
3:13-14; 5:31-32), and Luke presents Peter as very much the mystic (10:9-21;
11:5-12; 12:6-11).
Part II opens with chapter 6, “Spirit and Power,” Giambrone’s historical
diagnosis of how modern biblical criticism lost its way. The Enlightenment’s
“rejection of all miracles” resulted in the eclipse of the res and in a truncated
mode of rationality in biblical scholarship and historical-Jesus research (142-47,
154). Lessing’s axiom—“contingent historical truths can never become the
proof for necessary truths of reason”—is the spade with which he dug his ditch.

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The emptying out of the literal-historical sense of Scripture is the ditch. For
Lessing, “the sensus litteralis is nontheological space; the recorded gesta are
religiously irrelevant deeds” (149). In order to restore a more robust use of
human rationality to biblical scholarship, Giambrone turns to Newman’s
“illative sense” as the via media between Kierkegaard’s leap and Lessing’s
rationalism (152-53). Furthermore, because modernity’s epistemological individualism, with its distaste for eyewitness testimony, has infected biblical
hermeneutics, we must recover “the social character of knowledge” (156).
Next, seizing upon Newman’s statement that “miracles are but a branch of
the evidences,” whereas “prophecy . . . is a growing evidence,” Giambrone
advocates strongly for “prophecy rather than signs” (157-59). When Scripture
confronts us with “the raw miracle of Jesus’ resurrection,” this tilts the matter
“to the Kierkegaardian side” and requires us to “make the jump or walk away”
(159). The fact that Jesus prophesied his own resurrection provides “new
evidence in its favor,” whereas its character as “sign” is a “stumbling block”
(ibid.). “Yet for those exegetes who have the historical mind of Christ and
whose eyes are opened,” Giambrone concludes, “the ditches dug by doubters
are only ‘difficulties,’ crossed lightly with a bound made easy by grace” (ibid.).
This last part strikes me as somewhat lopsided. Rather than pitting prophecy
against signs, we ought to disclose their interrelation. Whatever Newman meant
by his statement, to view miracles as “but a branch of the evidences” sounds like
a nonbiblical reductionism. The resurrection, moreover, is the least “raw” and
most significant of all miracles. Together with the crucifixion, it is the great
sign, the necessary lifting up of the Son of Man. Furthermore, Giambrone’s final
statement may be true of the individual’s act of faith, but our responsibility as
theologians and exegetes is to fill in Lessing’s ditch, not to play Evel Knievel.
Our “fill” must include a great ressourcement of the biblical and patristic notion
of the mysteria vitae Iesu (including the Johannine theology of “signs”) and a
deeper understanding of the proper relations between word and event,
Scripture and Tradition, sensus litteralis and sensus spiritualis, Old Testament
and New Testament.
Chapter 7, “The Revenge of Alexandrian Exegesis: Toward an Ecclesial
Hermeneutic,” begins Giambrone’s critique of the Early High Christology
School. Larry Hurtado’s “argument from worship”—that is, that early Christians would not have worshiped Jesus unless they thought he was divine—works
nicely, provided “the doctrine of a shared divine ousia is first in place.” Absent
this, Hurtado’s identification of Jesus as “God’s chief agent” (against the
background of “divine agent figures” in Judaism) tends toward subordinationism (165-66). Bauckham’s “divine identity” Christology is “a sophisticated
effort to dethrone metaphysics” in favor of narrative theology (172). By
focusing on the ascription to Jesus of “creative agency,” to the neglect of the
soteriological instrumentality of his humanity, Bauckham steers around the
“principled relationship between the economic and immanent orders” and the
“functional-ontic polarity” that give patristic-conciliar Christology its
metaphysical precision, thus incurring a “Monophysite risk” (171-76).

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Giambrone traces this and related problems back to Bauckham’s “theological
muse,” Jürgen Moltmann (176-82).
Chapter 8, “Interpretatio Iudaica,” explains that Jewish monotheism’s
aniconic and ethical character gave it a certain affinity to Greek philosophical
religion, and that “natural theology”—that is, reflection on the nature of the
gods/God—became “a passable bridge” between the two (196-99). The study
of New Testament Christology can benefit from the recognition that the “epic
encounter” between natural and revealed religion, and between “biblical and
metaphysical modes of thought,” was “already well underway and heading
toward its ultimate resolution before the New Testament had even been
written” (208).
Chapter 9, “Primitive Christology As Ancient Philosophy,” builds nicely on
the previous chapter. The recent rehabilitation of Pseudo-Dionysius as “an
integrally Pauline thinker” and of Thomas Aquinas as a serious exegete has
implications for how we read Paul and how we view the relationship between
primitive Christology and the development of Christological dogma (210-11).
Giambrone supplies a series of “prime hints of Greco-Roman philosophy’s
aboriginal role in the articulation of primitive Christology” (228), including:
Paul’s use of “prepositional metaphysics” in Romans 11:36 and 1 Corinthians
8:6 (224-26), the use of the terms ὑπόστασις and ἀπαύγασμα in Hebrews 1:3
(227-30, 234), and the Johannine Prologue’s transference of the Logos “out of
the mythical mode and into a historical order of predication” (230-33).
In his treatment of the Philippians Hymn and “divine Name theology,”
Giambrone’s aversion to “onto-unfriendly narrative theology” (222) seems to
override the manifest communicative intention of the inspired author. He takes
the clause, “he bestowed [ἐχαρίσατο] on him the name that is above every
name” (Phil 2:9), to refer to “an act of naming that transpires within [God] . . .
a primordial operation of immanent theology” (223). In context, however, this
clause indubitably refers to an economic event—that is, to one aspect of Christ’s
exaltation. The Philippians Hymn is, after all, a narrative.
In chapter 10, “Two Loci of Greco-Roman Jewish Monotheism,” Giambrone continues his critique of Early High Christology by noting that “properly
analyzing the early high New Testament claims of Christ’s divinity becomes
problematic when it forgets his created humanity as an integral part of the
picture” (252). After considering the Jerusalem temple as a “locus of mediation”
in various noncanonical sources (253-58) and Jesus as the new temple in the
Gospel of John (259-62), Giambrone concludes that it is only with reference to
Christ’s humanity that we can properly understand both the Logos’s descent
and the Son of Man’s exaltation (and sending of the Spirit), and only from this
same perspective that we can understand both the “Christological monotheism”
of John 10:30 and the “subordinationist word” of 14:28 (261-62). With this
excellent essay, part II concludes.
Chapter 11, “Scientia Christi: Three Theses,” introduces the main idea of
part III. By “knowledge of Christ” Giambrone means Jesus’ self-understanding,
especially as it is revealed in his interpretation of Israel’s Scriptures (266). As a

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label for this “theoretical cornerstone” of his work (11), Giambrone chooses
the Aristotelean term anagnorisis, “recognition,” and makes much of the idea
that this word means “reading” in the New Testament (275-76; cf. 336-37, 342,
352). In actual fact, however, ἀναγνώρισις never means “reading” and never
occurs in the New Testament. Giambrone has confused it with ἀνάγνωσις. In
any case, his three “theses” (actually, directives) are, first, that “recovering the
‘messianic consciousness’ of Jesus should not be abandoned” (267); second, that
“the regnant portrayal of Jesus as a thoroughly apocalyptic figure must be
abandoned or revised” (272); and third, that “contemporary exegesis must
recover a Chalcedonian hermeneutic” (278). To accomplish this last, “special
attention” must be given to “Christ’s created, mediating, instrumental human
nature” (281). Giambrone has good reason to harp on this point, which
addresses a common blind spot in New Testament scholarship.
Chapter 12, “Another Johannine Thunderbolt? The legatio baptistae and
‘the Poetic Christ,’” is not so much an argument as it is a discursive meditation—
namely, on the distinctive vox Iesu that is presumed to be at the root of all four
Gospels. This chapter is marred by baroque diction and exaggerated claims. An
example of the former is the reference to “the whole dexterous élan that
electrifies Jesus of Nazareth’s thought” (291). It is difficult enough to
understand how someone’s élan can be dexterous, much less what it means to
say that such dexterous élan “electrifies” that person’s thought. An example of
Giambrone’s exaggerated claims (one with hermeneutical consequences) is the
assertion that “Jesus speaks as though the Bible [i.e., the Old Testament] speaks
uniquely to, about, and for him” (298). Actually, there are numerous exceptions
(e.g., Mark 10:4-9; 10:19; 11:17; 12:26-34). One might take this as mere
hyperbole, had not Giambrone explicitly asserted it “as an Archimedean
Christological point” and “a firm historical datum” (298).
In chapter 13, “‘Why Do the Scribes Say?’ Scribal Expectations of an
Eschatological High Priest and the Interpretation of Jesus’ Transfiguration,”
Giambrone weaves a vast intertextual web from Second Temple sources in order
to demonstrate that Jesus took John the Baptist to be “the prophesied
eschatological priest . . . Elijah-Phineas-Servant,” and that “as the Davidic
Servant-Son-of-Man-Messiah, Jesus’ role was to take up John’s mantle to share
his fate and complete the priestly mission, and [that] this is what transpires at
the Transfiguration” (316, 318, 332). “In the absence of compelling
alternatives,” Giambrone interprets Mark 9:13—“Elijah has come, and they did
to him whatever they wanted, just as it is written”—first in connection with
Pseudo-Philo’s Liber antiquitatem biblicarum 48, and then as an allusion to
Sirach 48:10 (313-14, 317). But in the literary context of Mark’s Gospel—
where Antipas, Herodias, and John the Baptist are the antitypes of Ahab,
Jezebel, and Elijah respectively—the reference is more likely to 1 Kings 19:2 (as
noted in many commentaries). Giambrone’s “agglutinative scribal approach”
(332) raises hermeneutical issues about the relationship between the ideas that
canonical and noncanonical texts indicate to have been “hovering in the cultural
background” (314), on the one hand, and the inspired author’s communicative

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intention as embodied in the particular canonical text under consideration, on
the other. As Giambrone himself notes, “once started, the irrepressible
associative logic of scriptural aggregation is hard to hold down” (318). In other
words, associative logic too easily becomes free association.
Chapter 14, “Prosopological Exegesis and Christological Anagnorisis,” is a
“hypothetical reconstruction” of Jesus’ own “exegesis” of Psalm 110 (349).
Here Giambrone presupposes what he sets out to demonstrate, namely, that
Jesus’ approach to Scripture “generated vast webs of interpenetrating associations” (352). Although Jesus never mentions Melchizedek and quotes only verse
1 of Psalm 110 (Mark 12:35-37; 14:62), his “special interest” in this psalm is
due, in large part, to its reference to Melchizedek in verse 4 (346). The
Melchizedek text from Qumran Cave 11, a midrashic pastiche of Old Testament references, never cites Psalm 110, and yet it helps Giambrone identify the
“interlocking series of Scriptures” and the “rich cluster of intertextual
connections” that Jesus likewise “played with” (346). Meanwhile, the one
question that Jesus actually asks about Psalm 110—How can the Christ, whom
David speaks of as “Lord,” also be his “son”? (Mark 12:37)—plays no part in
Giambrone’s reconstruction.
In my opinion, chapters 13 and 14—which contain the “dogmatic heart” of
Giambrone’s project (11)—suffer from a lack of methodological rigor and
hermeneutical clarity. Following Augustine (De doctrina christiana 2.5.6), Dei
Verbum 12 teaches us that, “in order to perceive what God has willed to
communicate, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture must attentively investigate
what the sacred writers actually intended to signify” (my translation). In the two
examples cited above, Giambrone pays insufficiently careful attention to the
actual wording and expressed concerns of Jesus’ references to Scripture in Mark
9:13 and 12:37. The literal sense of such Gospel passages needs to exercise
more control over the process by which Giambrone gathers “a much larger web
of interwoven biblical [and nonbiblical] readings”—a web that he takes to
approximate Jesus’ own exegesis of the Old Testament and his “provocative
self-understanding” (346). Giambrone also needs to clarify how Dei Verbum
12’s canonical principle—“one must attend no less diligently to the content and
unity of the whole of Scripture”—applies to his “agglutinative” method, which
appears to draw upon canonical and noncanonical sources in the same manner.
Giambrone reverts to a more cautious mode of exegesis in chapter 15, “Jesus’
Prophetic Knowledge and the Gospels,” which is filled with valuable insights.
For example, he explores the “profound inner relation” between Jesus’ temple
prophecy and his passion predictions (364). John and Luke clarify this relation
in complementary ways that “represent the two sides of Jesus’ selfidentification,” divine and human. In John, “Jesus identifies himself as the
Temple—namely, the living presence of YHWH in the midst of his people,”
whereas in Luke, he “melds his personal history with the history of the people
[and] the city [of Jerusalem], a sort of deep solidarity that makes Israel’s national
story both the prequel and the sequel to his own” (366). With this fine chapter

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and the two appendices, which are likewise well written and insightful, the
volume ends on a high note.
GREGORY VALL
Notre Dame Seminary
New Orleans, Louisiana

The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform. By UWE
MICHAEL LANG. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. xi
+ 456 (hard). $120.00. ISBN: 978-1-108-83245-8.
I can imagine it is gratifying to an author when his accumulated scholarship
can come together in one splendid volume. I know it is gratifying to a reader
when he discovers a 1500-year history of the Ordo Missae, written with a new,
synthetic approach, that attends to classic texts of liturgical history, gently questions shortcomings, explains the current issues, attends to new methodologies
in order to nuance current opinion, and interweaves topical concerns into
historical narrative. A history must be more than a simple concatenation of dates
and facts. These must be woven into a narrative tapestry if they are to command
interest, and this is Fr. Michael Lang’s masterful accomplishment. He presents
liturgical development within a broader historical and theological context that
takes account of political, social, and cultural factors.
Lang’s subject is the Ordo Missae of the western Latin Church. He explains
its origin, its historical development, and its flowering as the Missale Romanum
of 1570. He stops at this date for three reasons. First, because the four hundred
years that followed brought only peripheral developments (and the modern
period has been dealt with by numerous other books). Second, most other
histories of the Mass are contained in works that cut a much broader swath than
he proposes. Lang has deliberately narrowed his focus upon the Roman Mass.
And third, the medieval period has received renewed attention from a current
generation of scholars. Attention to the Middle Ages is coming not only from
historians of liturgy, but from scholars interested in symbol, ritual, religion,
culture, sociolinguistics, language, music, architecture, rhetoric, affective piety,
and what some have called “vernaculars other than language.”
Books from a generation ago did not take any of these topics into account
because the history of liturgy was confined to text alone. Lang is giving the
reader access to scores of scholars who are taking a new look at the Middle Ages
because they are looking with less prejudice, and because the methodologies
have been blown wide open to treat more than text alone. He is uniting classic
history of liturgy with new information about music, architecture, symbol,
politics of the day, allegory, women’s studies, ways of embodying ideas, and so

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on. The seismic shift that occurred in the world of liturgical studies has resulted
in scholars no longer confining their attention to text alone, instead opening
themselves to research the performance and reception of liturgy.
What Lang has accomplished is to unite classic liturgiological history with
new results coming from updated methodologies. That is quite a task to ask of
any one scholar, but he proves himself up to it, as his extensive footnotes
demonstrate. The immensely useful bibliography should be mentioned. First,
both primary and secondary sources are included. Second, Robert Taft once
said that there are things a monoglot will miss because he is unaware of fields
of scholarship going on elsewhere, but Lang cites studies made in English,
French, German, Spanish, and Latin. The bibliography and footnotes make the
book a study guide for the liturgical student.
Any division into historical units is somewhat arbitrary, but there is always a
reason for making them, and Lang’s temporal divisions permit manageable
topical treatments. The pace is right. An author faces the challenge of deciding
how many pages to allot to a particular issue or development. Each of the
chapters could become its own book, but Lang has reason to fit them all together
into one readable volume. I would describe it as hitting a sweet spot between
two challenges: (a) being sufficiently detailed so as not to give a superficial
treatment, (b) moving along without getting bogged down.
He has set himself the task of dealing with the Latin Mass from its origin in
the Lord’s Supper up to the Council of Trent, with special attention to the
formative period leading up to Trent, which is frequently overlooked. Chapters
1-3 describe the roots of the Mass. The summary of scholarship about Jesus’s
Last Supper, and a treatment of the earliest Eucharistic prayers, is relevant to
any tradition, East or West. Then Lang narrows his focus to the western, Latin
liturgy specifically, which requires placing it in the religious, theological,
cultural, and political context of the European Middle Ages. Often enough,
these thousand years are blurred together in one large lump, as though there
were no significant features to notice over that span. Instead, Lang divides
chapters 4-8 into time periods (early formative, Carolingian, the Ottonian
revival, and the later Middle Ages immediately preceding Trent). This gives him
space to interweave topical concerns (the Christian Latin culture, the stational
liturgies in the city of Rome, liturgical books, the role of the papacy, and the
question of active participation). He displays his expertise in fields of study
beyond liturgy alone (rhetoric, culture, literary criticism, papacy, urban
Christianity). Chapter 9 is his in-depth examination of the Tridentine reform,
and here he stops, because Trent’s product, the Missale Romanum, has been his
objective. He wants the reader to understand where it came from, what its
structure is, its continuity across ages, and its value and importance.
Any student of liturgy knows this is a potential minefield. A narrative that
has dominated in liturgical history is that the Roman liturgy moved from early
dynamic development, through medieval decline, to early modern stagnation.
This was the impression I received when I began my studies. But Lang approaches his topic with exceptional fairness. This book is an apologetic for the

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so-called Tridentine Mass, but it is not a diatribe. People often throw stones in
stained-glass houses, and liturgical scholars can sometimes be first among them,
so it would be beneficial if a book like this could bring sanity to the discussion—
and I mean bring it to both the left and the right. As one can well imagine,
scholars tend to be sorted into liberal or conservative on a whole host of
questions, and one of the most refreshing features of Lang is that he avoids
being trapped by prejudice. In his footnotes, I could pick out the so-called liberal
scholar lying side-by-side with the so-called conservative scholar, often on the
same page, sometimes in the same footnote, with appreciation being given to
both for what they contribute to our overall understanding. Lang is truly
familiar with all the necessary literature. And he teaches the reader about not
only the history of the Mass, but also the scholarship that has been conducted
on the history of the Mass. This is valuable, first, for the scholar, who wants to
know who has argued what position, and where to go in order to do further
research; it is also valuable, second, for the student being initiated into the world
of liturgical scholarship.
This book sheds more light than heat, and Lang is quite possibly the most
even-handed liturgical historian I have ever read. Everyone has prejudices, but
Lang’s do not stop him from acknowledging all the significant scholarship, and
presenting it in a fair light even if he disagrees with some points. He uses phrases
like these to describe certain scholarship: “argues somewhat implausibly,” “we
must offer something supplemental and corrective,” “today this is a marginal
position,” “there is no evidence for the once popular theory,” and so forth.
When there is as yet no consensus among scholars, he admits it. And if the
consensus of scholarship today has concluded there is “little possibility in the
claim,” he may still mention it because the claim was important at the time. He
describes how the resolution unfolded because it may have affected the current
state of affairs. He wants to explain what others have said, what is at stake, what
objections scholars have made since, and occasionally gives his own direct
approval or rebuttal. All he insists on is that some of the landmarks of liturgical
scholarship need to be revisited with added data and fresh eyes. There are many
examples of other authors whom the left considers too conservative, or the right
considers too liberal, but whom Lang cites in order sometimes to concur and
sometimes to debate.
Anyone who tries to write a summary historical narrative will find it harder
than one thinks. Frequently syllabi in medieval liturgy units included nothing
but a survey of the liturgical books that appeared during that time. Lang does
introduce the books, but places them in their far more interesting narrative
home. That is what must be done to hold the reader’s interest: weave the facts
into a narrative tapestry, and include topics auxiliary to liturgy in order to give
a fair picture. Lang succeeds at this. After describing the situation, and after
describing scholars’ positions, Lang presents a summary so that the reader can
come away with a proper understanding. Every student of liturgy remembers
being told about the events Lang is treating, but the student cannot necessarily
fit them all together. When did Latin become the standard language of the

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West? Why was the Franciscan missal influential? What factors went into the
private Mass? This book clarifies, settles, and explains, and then makes a
summary of what we can safely know.
The book wants to show that the picture of development is more complex
than we have sometimes thought. Elements of decay and vitality existed sideby-side; historical development is marked by both change and continuity.
Although simplicity can sometimes be preferred over complexity, having a
simplistic understanding of a complex circumstance should never be preferred.
Knowing our past illuminates our present celebration and experience of the
sacramental rite that is at the heart of Catholic Christianity.
DAVID W. FAGERBERG
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna’s “Metaphysics of the
Healing.” By DANIEL D. DE HAAN. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Pp. xv + 426.
$181.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-90-04-43037-2.
Modality is a key element in Avicenna’s metaphysics. Necessity and
possibility connote being and are crucial in explaining both the renowned
distinction between essence and existence and the relation between the First
Principle or the Necessary Existent—both locutions are Avicenna’s own
terminology—and the world. In this respect, modality is also relevant for the
definition of metaphysics as theology. It is in the Metaphysics of the Book of the
Healing, the Ilāhiyyāt of the Kitāb al-Shifā’, that Avicenna fully accounts for this
doctrine, the essential elements of which are already introduced in the first book
or treatise (maqāla) of the Ilāhiyyāt. Daniel D. De Haan’s recent book offers a
detailed analysis of this treatise that is both a guide to reading the whole book
and an overview of Avicenna’s metaphysics. De Haan’s conviction—which he
defends with well-constructed arguments—is that the first treatise of Avicenna’s
work can be read as the program of the entire metaphysics elaborated by the
shaykh al-ra’īs: it unveils its structure and fundamental terminology and has, so
to speak, a generative role. In particular, De Haan believes that the notion of
“necessary” (wājib is identified with permanent existence; ḍarūrī indicates
logical necessity and therefore means both necessary existence and necessary
nonexistence [59]) is the nodal point that allows Avicenna to connect being qua
being (more literally: “the existent qua existent,” al-mawjūd bi-mā huwa
mawjūd)—that is, the subject of metaphysics—to the being of God, which
constitutes the object of enquiry or goal of metaphysics. In fact, in the first
treatise of the Metaphysics of the Book of the Healing Avicenna distinguishes

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between the subject or subject-matter (mawḍū‘) and the goal or object of
research of metaphysics (ġaraḍ; maṭlūb) and consequently explains the
articulation of metaphysics into a science of being (ontology) and a science of
God (theology). Although the two sciences are distinct, they cannot in fact be
thought of as separate, as if one were to exclude the other: as existent, the First
Principle is studied by metaphysics which is the investigation of the existent qua
existent (being qua being); and this even though, as divine, the First Principle
cannot be part of the subject of metaphysics: the existence of God is precisely
its goal or object of enquiry. Therefore, the distinction of a subject (mawḍū‘)
and an object of research (maṭlūb) or goal (ġaraḍ)—a distinction that Avicenna
originally outlines in the Posterior Analytics in order to explain the hierarchical
relations between the various disciplines—gives rise to a duplication in metaphysics: because of its subject (being and its properties) metaphysics is ontology;
because of its goal, it is theology. Metaphysics studies being, but the question
(maṭlūb; maqṣūd, mabḥūth 'an-hu) to which it must give an answer concerns the
divine Principle of being, the existence of which must be demonstrated or
established (ithbāt). The Principle of being cannot, therefore, be the subject of
metaphysics. Rather, metaphysics—“the science of divine things” (‘ilm alilāhiyyāt)—must demonstrate the existence of the Principle. Avicenna therefore
divides being in an absolute or indeterminate sense (being in general, which is
not a genus) from divine being. At the same time, he includes both in the same
area: in this respect, for Avicenna, God is not beyond being.
The reasons for this theory lie in the Aristotelian tradition and in the need
to define—this is Avicenna’s true starting point—the status of metaphysics as a
science. For there to be a science, according to the distinctions of Aristotle’s
Posterior Analytics, some precise conditions must be fulfilled: (1) one must
define its subject (for Aristotle the genus subjected—genos upokeimenon—to
scientific examination); (2) one must start from certain hypotheses or assertions
concerning this same subject; and (3) one must identify certain starting axioms
or “first principles,” principles that must allow one to identify deductively both
the various species of beings that fall within the subject of the science in question
and the accidents that necessarily belong to it. In the first place, therefore, to be
scientific an investigation must have its own subject, its own principles (and
questions) and, regarding its own subject, it must presuppose the existence of
this subject. That is to say, the subject of a given science cannot be the object of
demonstration in this same science: science assumes that its own subject exists
either because the existence of that subject has already been demonstrated
(thanks to previous scientific research) or because it is self-evident: the subject
of a given science is its proper starting point. According to the classical example
of the Aristotelian tradition that Avicenna himself takes up, physics studies the
genus of bodies and subjects it to research insofar as bodies are subject to motion
and rest: physics does not prove the existence of bodies, and starts from the
assumption that change exists.
But how, then, can one grant a scientific status to metaphysics? How can
metaphysics be a science if its subject—being (or “the existent qua existent”)—

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is not a genus? And how can metaphysics give a definition of its subject if being
is not definable? The definition—which in Aristotelian terms is the basis of all
scientific knowledge—is in fact given in terms of genus and specific difference.
If being is not a genus, how can it then be defined? And how can one indicate
the species that are subjected to scientific analysis?
The solution lies in a reworking of the Aristotelian ontological concepts:
indeterminate or absolute being that is indistinctly (i.e., unconditionally)
predicable of everything (e.g., of the cause as of the caused) is the subject of
metaphysics and, as it were, the genus. The being that exists on the condition
that certain predications of it that are contrary to its own definition are
excluded is the First Principle. This necessary and uncaused being constitutes
the object that is investigated by the science of metaphysics. In short: considered
outside all conditions, being constitutes the subject or starting point of
metaphysical enquiry; circumscribed as “principle,” it constitutes its research
horizon, that is to say, that which metaphysics—and no other science—can establish as existent. The consequent duplication of metaphysics, which comes to
be both ontology and theology, reveals that the First Principle is not the
principle of all being, but only of a part of it, namely, of being as caused. Nonetheless, this duplication also makes the fundamental attribute of necessity
evident: indeterminate or absolute being is indefinable and necessary (it is the
final point in the logical process of analysis); the principle of noncontradiction
that expresses it is also absolutely necessary and the First Principle of existence
is necessary in itself. In short, the concept of necessity explains—albeit
differently—both being and the being of God.
In his book—which is divided into four main parts—De Haan focuses on
exactly these issues. The first part, “The Logical Context of the Metaphysics of
the Healing,” discusses in two chapters the logical premises that have just been
outlined. The first chapter (“Logic, Knowledge, and Questions”) examines the
notions of conceptualization (taṣawwur) and assent (taṣdīq), which constitute
the answer to the two fundamental questions of scientific knowledge: “what is
a given thing?” and “whether” a given thing exists (conceptualization or conceptual representation in fact corresponds to essence, whereas assent always also
summons existence). These notions, although central to the Aristotelian
tradition, are essential for Avicenna’s reflection on metaphysics as a science.
Avicenna discusses these notions in the logical parts of his work (eminently the
Isagoge and the Book of Demonstration, i.e., Posterior Analytics) and in Ilāhiyyāt
I, 5 in relation to metaphysics. The second chapter, “Conceptualization, Assent,
and Scientific Knowledge,” deepens the discourse on these issues and presents
Avicenna’s theory of scientific definition and demonstration. For De Haan, the
first two chapters establish the “logical and epistemological framework”
necessary for reading Avicenna’s metaphysical treatise “as Avicenna intended it
to be read, namely as demonstrative philosophical science” (92).
Chapters 3 and 4—the two chapters of the second part on “The Scientific
Order of the Metaphysics of the Healing”—consider the crux of the matter:
how can one speak of metaphysics as a demonstrative science, what are its

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subject and goal, and what are its first principles? If in the first two chapters the
Avicennian text of reference is essentially that of the Posterior Analytics, with
these two chapters the actual discussion of the first treatise of the Metaphysics
of the Healing begins. The first two chapters of Avicenna’s text are dedicated,
in fact, to the question of metaphysics as a science. De Haan offers a detailed
analysis of Avicenna’s text, proposing a translation of several passages of it:
chapter 3 (“Subject and Goal of the Science of Metaphysics”), in particular,
deals with being qua being (“the neutrally nonmaterial being” [128]) as the
subject of metaphysics (Ilāhiyyāt I, 1 and I, 2). De Haan explains how being—
which is not a genus—is to be understood as a “quasi-genus” (132-33). The ten
Aristotelian categories are then “quasi-species” of being, and certain fundamental oppositions—anterior/posterior, act/potency, perfect/imperfect,
universal/particular and cause/effect—are its “quasi-accidents.” The aim or research object of metaphysics is the demonstration of God’s existence and thus
the understanding of it as Necessary Existence. In the last parts of the chapter
(142-49), De Haan analyzes I, 3 and I, 4 of Avicenna’s text.
Chapter 4 (“The Scientific First Principles of the Science of Metaphysics”)
discusses the first principles of metaphysics by offering an initial analysis of
Metaphysics 1.5-8.
The actual examination of these principles and the detailed reading of the
passages that refer to them in Ilāhiyyāt I, 5-8 are to be found in the four chapters
(5-8) that make up the third part of the book, “The Scientific Principles and the
Senses of Being,” which is the heart of De Haan’s study. In chapter 5 (“The
Four Senses of Being and the Scientific Principles of Metaphysics: A Formal
Approach”) De Haan examines the senses of being already identified by
Aristotle and al-Fārābī and presents how Avicenna integrates these various
senses into his first metaphysical principles (from 5.1.3 “Avicenna on the Four
Senses of Being” onward [201-19]). The lengthy chapter 6 (“The Four Senses
of Being and the Scientific Principles of Metaphysics: A Material Approach to
the Principles of Conceptualization”) takes an original look at some of the key
elements of Avicenna’s ontology—to which different studies have already
devoted considerable attention—and considers the first intentions or notions
that Avicenna places alongside the first principles, entrusting them with the role
of scientific definitions. These notions are four in number: De Haan examines
the being-existent (mawjūd), the thing (shay’), the one (wāḥid) and the necessary
(ḍarūrī/wājib: in metaphysics they both mean “the necessary as ontological
necessity” [261]). He also discusses the synonyms, like mā for shay’: wujūd hāṣṣ
corresponds to “the quidditative or essentialist meaning” of wujūd (244); it is a
“secondary and subsidiary way of amplifying the meaning of quiddity and true
nature” (248), or muthbat “established” and muḥaṣṣal “realized” for mawjūd
(242ff.). These notions have the same extension, even though they are distinct
because of their levels of intension: “one” means, for example, the indivisibility
of an existent, but everything that is existent is one; “necessary” means the
invariance or permanence of what is (and in this sense the necessary is “true”
or “real”) and everything that is is necessary. So it should be for the term “thing”

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(shay’) if it is true that all that is is something (but here a question opens up
concerning divine being: can it be said to be a thing?). An interesting part of the
chapter is devoted to the misinterpretations that pose “a proper or special mode
of existence to essences in themselves” (esp. 247-54).
By closely following Avicenna’s text, in chapter 7 (“The Four Senses of Being
and the Scientific Principles of Metaphysics: A Material Approach to the
Principles of Assent”) De Haan discusses the propositional principles of metaphysics, namely, those primary theses and axioms that are, together with the
primary notions, the foundations of metaphysics. Here De Haan identifies some
ontological statements that are at the basis of metaphysics; these indicate the
properties of the Necessary Existent, on the one hand, and those of “possible
existents” (“things that, when considered in themselves, their existence is not
necessary” [273]), on the other. These are statements such as “the possible
existent in itself has a cause” (to which corresponds that the necessary existent
is uncaused) or “the Necessary Existent in itself is absolutely simple” (and the
possible existent is composite). According to De Haan, Avicenna has no
“ontological argument”: in Ilāhiyyāt I, 6-7, the shaykh simply exposes or verifies
the properties of necessary and possible existents. He does not establish the
existence of God until VIII, 3. Nonetheless, at the apex of the ontological
statements is the principle of noncontradiction, expressed in the terms of the
excluded middle. The discourse thus ends up being about truth.
Chapter 8 (“Being per se and Being per accidens: On the Analogy and
Accidentality of Existence”), which concludes this third part, deals with two
crucial themes of ontology: analogy—this is how De Haan renders the term
tashkīk which some scholars render as “modulation” (see firstly A. Treiger)—
and the related theme of the accidentality of existence in possible entities. The
themes that contemporary research has variously insisted upon are thus
discussed: analogy explains Avicenna’s ontology. According to De Haan, in
analogical notions there is no “proportionally unified and distributed central
meaning” (299). What interests him in particular is the role to be attributed to
analogy in the investigation of the ten categories, as well as the sense in which,
in “possible existents” existence is accidental to essence. Being and existence are
not univocal and being is per accidens “in the widest sense of accident” (321):
“accidentality of existence can be described as a sort of nonconstitutive
accidental, since, according to Avicenna, existence is beyond, outside of, and
not included within the quidditative constitution of a thing’s essence or true
nature” (324).
In the fourth and final part of the text, “Basic and Fundamental Principles in
the Metaphysics of the Healing,” De Haan discusses the primary notions of
metaphysics in search of what would be the “most fundamental” notion. In
chapter 9 (“The Basic Primary Notions in Avicenna’s Metaphysics”) De Haan
defends the idea that “being/existence” and “necessary” are the most basic
notions in Avicenna’s metaphysics. The identity of existence and necessity, on
which De Haan insists, is a point already highlighted by scholarly research. He
expands on this in chapter 10 (“The Fundamental Primary Notion in Avicenna’s

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Metaphysics”)—the notion of “necessary” is for De Haan the truly fundamental
one. In short, the key to Avicennian metaphysics would not lie in the
modalization of ontology (the modal connotation of being), but instead in an
ontologization of modality. In Avicenna’s analysis, then, the primacy should
belong to logic rather than to metaphysics. In this sense, according to De Haan,
Avicenna sees metaphysics as a syllogistic demonstration: the lesser term is its
subject, that is, “being qua being,” and the greater term is its object of enquiry,
its goal, which is the being which is in itself necessarily existent. The first
intention or the “fundamental primary notion” of “necessary” is like a middle
term that allows the various questions of metaphysics to be linked with the
subject and horizon or goal of metaphysics.
Necessary Existence and the Doctrine of Being in Avicenna’s “Metaphysics of
the Healing” is a profound and detailed analysis of Avicenna’s metaphysics, both
of the text of the Metaphysics—where the role of the first programmatic Book
is highlighted—and of metaphysics itself as a discipline. It is a complex and
articulate book that considers and attempts to explain in a unified and
systematic manner various essential elements of Avicenna’s metaphysics, such
as the idea of metaphysics as a science, the distinction of essence and existence,
the analogy of being and the demonstration of God’s existence, not to mention
various terminological distinctions. In fact, in this book De Haan considers
anew some questions he had already addressed in his previous articles (see the
bibliography, 401). Certain choices could be questioned, for example, regarding
the translation of certain terms (e.g., ta’akkud al-wujūd as “invariance of
existence.” Even the choice of translating wujūd as “being” might be discussed:
De Haan is sometimes obliged to duplicate the translation by using “being and
existence.” Similarly certain theses raise questions. In particular, one might still
ask whether the primacy of the necessary (see chaps. 9 and 10)—evident in
theology, which is the science of the existent which is in itself “necessary
existent”—is really so. De Haan sees the necessary as the fundamental notion,
but the function it has—which is both theological and ontological—must also
be recognized in the other notions. The role of henology in particular could be
further emphasized: although it is a negative determination (it essentially means
indivisibility), like the necessary the concept of one appears to be modulated in
an absolute sense (which is only of the First Principle) and in a relative sense,
which is of the world. The Necessarily Existent is in fact purely being and
therefore simple and one, however, while the possibly existent is composite.
Another question concerns Avicenna perhaps more than De Haan: one might
ask, in fact, what room there is for a creative act on the part of God (the first
efficient cause of existence [see 375-79 on aitiology]) if being in itself is
necessary. But beyond these questions, which are inevitable for a text that aims,
as a sort of metacommentary, to rediscover the sense and the founding structure
of Avicenna’s work, one must congratulate the author on this intelligent,
thorough, and articulate reading that discusses not only Avicenna’s text but also
secondary literature, and reveals aspects of Avicenna’s ontology that have not
yet been fully examined. De Haan’s book is a very important and useful work

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for the interpretation of Avicenna’s metaphysical thought and opens up further
discussion and important research horizons.
OLGA L. LIZZINI
Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS-IREMAM
Aix-en-Provence, France

The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis. By MARK K.
SPENCER. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
2022. Pp. xviii + 454. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3520-2.
It is notoriously difficult to define the concept of a person precisely,
particularly in the realm of philosophical anthropology. Many thinkers maintain that there is an essential difference between a person and a human being,
citing as evidence the fact that what makes a human person cannot be fully
accounted for by the natural characteristics of the human species.
In this recent book, Mark Spencer puts forward an audacious perspective
that human persons cannot be reduced to any single aspect, whether it be
physical or mental, objective or subjective, solitary or social. To capture the
uniqueness of a human person, he argues that all these components must be
taken into account as indispensable elements. To accomplish this goal, Spencer
draws on the Catholic anthropological tradition, particularly phenomenology
and Scholasticism, to create a synthesis. As the Introduction demonstrates, this
is achievable because many of the traditional assertions are rooted in
experience. On the one hand, phenomenological reduction provides a powerful
theoretical instrument to reconstruct our authentic experience of how we are
subjectively given to ourselves as unique persons, which is the foundation of any
objective analysis. On the other hand, theories focusing on objective principles
strive to “save the phenomena” of person by “reasoning to the truth about
things on the basis of how they appear” (35). Consequently, Spencer believes
that phenomenology and Scholasticism will eventually converge in ideal
situations. In particular, he applies Balthasar’s aesthetic method to show how
the subjective and objective aspects can be unified into a direct aesthetic
perception of the human person as “a single, underlying, beautiful whole” (4).
The book is then divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the various
powers of the human person, which can be confirmed through both
phenomenological reduction and Scholastic analysis. In chapter 1, Spencer
follows Edith Stein’s guide to show how a Husserlian reduction of conscious
acts can reveal a hylomorphic structure that has been a fundamental part of
Scholasticism (42-43). For example, in an episode of joy, one not only directly
experiences a feeling of satisfaction, but also realizes that this satisfaction is

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caused by something other than the subjective feeling itself, such as the Andante
of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15. The feeling functions as the form of joy
while its content serves as its matter that needs to be actualized (51). Spencer
argues that the ubiquitous hylomorphic structure of experience demonstrates
that “I” as a human person is neither reducible to my conscious acts nor their
intentional contents or objects, since what is encountered in my direct
experience should be included in any comprehensive metaphysics (44).
Consequently, Spencer rejects any kind of materialism, including nonreductive
forms such as emergentism, which cannot adequately account for the formal
aspect of personal activities. The principles of hylomorphism of conscious acts
also lead to a metaphysics of powers in us because they are essentially related as
potentialities to various acts as their formal objects.
In chapter 2, Spencer examines the powers that we share with other living
things, including vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, and locomotive powers. He
provides a metaphysical analysis of the acts associated with these powers, which
is largely based on Aquinas’s classic account, as well as a phenomenological
interpretation of our interaction with the world, drawing heavily from MerleauPonty’s theory of perception. He offers not only a psychological interpretation
of the mechanisms of sense perception, however, but also an ontological
account of the nature of sensible beings. From the immaterial being of sensible
species in the media and our soul, he concludes that sensible objects must also
have an immaterial mode of being in order to cause sense perception, since
nothing can cause an actuality that it does not have (87). Appealing to Hildebrand’s aesthetics, Spencer further identifies sensible qualities as “messages” not
only from a sensible world, from other irreducible persons in the same world,
but also from God as absolute and unified beauty (101).
Spencer then moves on to the powers that are characteristic of persons in
chapters 3 through 6, which deal respectively with intellect, will, affectivity, and
some minor spiritual powers.
For Spencer, intellectual acts involve not only illumination, abstraction, and
conceptualization, but also aesthetic cognition, which allows us to experience
holistic beauty (kalon) as the source and goal of all cognition. As with sense
perception, these cognitive powers commit us to a realistic ontology, not only
of Aristotelian forms individualized in material things, but also of Platonic
Forms in which individual beings participate (137), and of a being that manifests
itself in aesthetic cognition before all concepts (158). This is because ideal
essences and holistic beauty are directly and perfectly given to us in our
intellectual experiences, and thus cannot be mere mental fictions, nor Scotus’s
formalities, nor imperfect forms immanent in material beings. This applies to
both the speculative intellect and the practical intellect.
Spencer’s account of the will begins with Aquinas’s conception of it as an
intellectual appetite that is open to contrary courses of action, thereby granting
it an essential freedom that is independent of our bodily powers. However, the
will can interact with the body by initiating new causal chains of bodily acts
(170). To accommodate this free action of the will, Spencer believes we need a

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physical world as described by quantum mechanics (175). This is not to reduce
willing to scientific experience; rather, as Max Scheler and others have
demonstrated through direct experience, we become aware of the resistance of
the world and our capacity to transcend the limitation of the body through a
free decision of the will—a capacity that renders us irreducible in that we lack
a stable identity. Here Spencer adopts a voluntarist interpretation of the freedom of will by emphasizing the priority of election in determining the meaning
of our actions.
Drawing on the personalist tradition, Spencer maintains that value
constitutes a distinct level of being and accounts for its axiological unity, such
as the holistic dignity or unique beauty of a person (210). It is spiritual
affectivity that allows us to be motivated by this inherent importance, value or
beauty. Unlike acts of will, “spiritual affects intend their objects in a receptive
way, insofar as those objects’ importance is felt” (219). This affective response
is more fundamental to a human person, because it guides our intellectual and
volitional acts.
In the final chapter of the first part, Spencer introduces further spiritual
powers of the soul, such as an aptitude for social behavior, spiritual perception
of immaterial realities, memory, and more. He emphasizes the real distinction
between the soul and its powers to highlight the irreducibility of the spiritual
powers. For this reason, he rejects any form of concurrentism regarding divine
causality, which is seen as incompatible with our experience of free will and
love. Instead, he appeals to Gregory Palamas’s conception of energeia as a
being’s self-diffusion to demonstrate how God and human persons share in each
other’s acts by giving themselves (265). This participation or communion is
referred to as sun-energeia, with its highest form being divinization or becoming
like God. Spencer believes that the concept sun-energeia defends both the
omnipotence of God and the irreplaceability of human personhood in
explaining divine causality in human spiritual acts.
In the second part of the book, Spencer attempts to develop a unified
definition of the human person by combining his earlier reflections on human
powers and acts. The human person is often defined as a rational substance
composed of soul and body. However, Spencer devotes the three chapters of
the second part to demonstrate that human personhood cannot be reduced to
either the body, or a rational substance, or even just the soul.
First, he cites the immortality of the human soul to argue that our
personhood will survive death, since spiritual acts such as intuiting immaterial
being’s existence do not require the presence of a physical body. However, it is
impossible to have acts or energeiai typical of human persons without retaining
one’s personhood. In this context, Spencer offers an original defense of
survivalism in Thomistic debates about the separated soul.
Spencer’s argument against defining a person in terms of substance is closely
related to a Scholastic debate concerning the unity and plurality of substantial
forms. He uses scientific and phenomenological evidence, such as the
malleability and evolution of the human body, and the independence of sexual

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arousal and passion, to support his pluralistic view that there are multiple
substances in a human person. Accordingly, “there is an irreducible plurality of
ways in which human powers are expressed in different kinds of bodies” (349).
The inherent plurality of a human person highlights why incarnation is
essential to human personhood, even though it can survive death. I experience
my body not only as object, but as a subject belonging to the world as a body
(361-62). A sun-energeia between spiritual and physical acts constitutes our
authentic experience in this world; its holistic beauty is irreducible neither to
the soul nor to the body. This also explains why a human person should be seen
as the incarnate image of God and the face (or prosopon) is a key element of
human personhood.
Spencer’s book provides an illuminating examination of how various strands
of Catholic thought, from Thomism to Scotism, from phenomenology to
analytic philosophy, can be synthesized into a unified understanding of the
human person that emphasizes its uniqueness and beauty. Despite the
abundance of information, appeal to divergent schools of thought, and intricate
terminology, the book is thoroughly researched and written in a lucid and
comprehensive manner. It is replete with content, and some of the explanations
unavoidably include controversies. In order to reconcile conflicting ideological
claims, some philosophers’ original intention is occasionally distorted; some
arguments are also advanced too hastily and contain gaps, particularly the
transition from phenomenological accounts of experience to a realist ontology.
Nevertheless, these shortcomings do not diminish the book’s worth as an
invaluable resource for anyone interested in exploring Catholic philosophical
anthropology.
TIANYUE WU
Peking University
Beijing, China

Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition. Edited by NELSON
MINNICH and MICHAEL ROOT. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2021. Pp. xix + 310 (hard). ISBN: 978-08132-3532-5.
The energies unleashed by the five-hundredth anniversary in 2017 of Martin
Luther’s posting (or not) of the 95 Theses continue to bear scholarly fruit, as
seen in this fine book. The chapters originated as papers given at an
international conference hosted at the Catholic University of America in the
summer of 2017. The Introductory section of the book includes several
greetings, notably one from His Holiness Pope Francis, in which the Holy

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Father expresses his hope that the work of the conference will yield a harvest
of “purification of memory” and “the growth of Christian unity.” Such hopes
became de rigueur in the heyday of post-Vatican II ecumenism, and it was surely
appropriate to invoke such hopes at the conference. Nevertheless, one might
well ask: Given the intransigence of ecclesial division in today’s “ecumenical ice
age,” does this volume suggest a future in which the healing of the wounds of
the past and a deepening sense of common identity in Christ will continue? On
this, more to follow.
The book is divided into five parts, the first of which begins with Cardinal
Kurt Koch’s energetic essay on the state of the reception of Luther in the
Catholic Church today. Everyone who reads this essay should be gratified to see
that the prefect of the Congregation for the Promotion of Christian Unity
exhibits an impressive familiarity with Martin Luther’s life and theology. The
cardinal notes the many ways in which the modern ecumenical dialogues have
challenged and led to a substantial revision of both Catholic and Protestant
perceptions of Luther and his Reformation. The reader sees how Luther has
become a conversation partner in Catholic theology today, challenging the
Catholic Church to embrace reform wherever there is deformation. At the same
time, the cardinal recognizes some of the ways Luther remains a problematic
figure, particularly in the area of ecclesiology. Koch’s essay is followed by
responses from the emeritus Lutheran bishop of Helsinki, Eero Huovinen, the
Catholic ecumenist Wolfgang Thönissen, and the Lutheran historian and
ecumenical theologian Kenneth Appold. Thönissen offers a brisk review of
modern Catholic scholarship on Luther, while Huovinen assesses the recent
U.S. Lutheran Catholic agreed Declaration on the Way, offering a wide-ranging
review of the state of the Lutheran-Catholic conversation, and expressing his
disappointment that Catholic references to the Lutheran churches typically take
the form of “ecclesial communities” or include the qualifier “not churches in
the proper sense.” The Finnish Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, it should be noted,
also proceeds apace and in some ways outpaces the conversation elsewhere.
Appold’s essay is a response to Thönissen, which, as he observes, surveys
ecumenically sensitive Catholic scholarship on Luther, without addressing some
of the more critical voices. Appold notes that Luther’s formulations were
problematic for sixteenth-century Catholics in part because his “formulations
are not only ‘new,’ they are new in a way that appears to discredit the old” (51).
Luther’s theology raised the Church’s reflexive hackles, when patient and
hermeneutically sensitive responses were needed. Is Catholicism today prepared
to offer such responses to new formulations of old truths?
Part 2 takes up the issue of justification, presumably the sine qua non of the
Reformation. The ecumenical theologian Theodor Dieter, a wise veteran of
decades of ecumenical dialogue and the emeritus director of Strasbourg’s
Institute for Ecumenical Research, contributes a brilliant essay that powerfully
explicates Luther’s doctrine of justification by setting him between two
theologians whose work he knew well: Gabriel Biel, and the unknown author
of the Theologia Deutsch. These two poles—one Scholastic the other mystical—

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provide a structure for making Luther’s approach to justification clear. Dieter
offers a nuanced treatment of Luther’s famous criticisms of Biel’s “nominalist”
theology, of which only a hint can be given here. Biel argued that initial
justification comes about through the sinner’s own decision of the will to love
God alone above all things and for God’s sake alone. The infusion of grace
follows, which enables the reconciled one to do meritorious good works.
Careful study of Scripture and spiritual experience led Luther to a different
conclusion: “he understands love for God as the complete dedication of the
whole person to God with all aspects of her being” (63). Dieter notes that this
position was ratified by Lutherans and Catholics in the Joint Declaration on the
Doctrine of Justification (1999). The neo-Platonic Theologia Deutsch, on the
other hand, provided Luther with the notion of a distinction between God’s
presence understood in an ontological sense and the sinner’s discovery that she
has her being in God in a participatory sense. Dieter sees Luther finding confirmation here of the sinner’s radical self-centeredness that seeks God as the
summum bonum with a love of use rather than a love of delight. This theme
informs Luther’s theology of the cross.
Following Dieter’s efforts, Timothy Wengert’s essay reveals some innerLutheran tensions between readings of Luther’s theology of justification that
find a center in theosis and those that focus on imputation. This, too, is related
to the meaning of Luther’s theology of the cross. Wengert notes that Luther can
speak of the “theology of glory” as a theologia illusoria. What does Luther
want? “Luther seeks not an irrational theology but rather an anti-rational one—
and specifically in this sense is he anti-ontological when it comes to the doctrine
of justification” (89). Here, perhaps, one will recall the 1963 Helsinki Assembly
of the Lutheran World Federation, which was unable to adopt an agreed
statement on justification. Indeed, the goal of widespread Lutheran agreement
on justification was not reached until the Joint Declaration was agreed to by the
churches in 1999. Wengert’s affirmation of Luther’s anti-rationalism here
should be understood as he himself puts it: not irrational, but anti-rational.
Why? Because, once again, sinners cannot rise up to know God as the highest
good apart from the preaching of Christ, and him crucified.
Michael Root’s essay takes up the vexed question of Luther’s impact on the
shaping of Catholic teaching, especially at the Council of Trent, where a
fulsome Catholic doctrine of justification was defined for the first time. On the
one hand, Root affirms, the council fathers as a group were not particularly well
informed about Luther’s theology, except through snippets extracted from his
writings. On the other hand, a few bishops, notably Girolamo Seripando, were
quite familiar with Luther’s teaching. The care with which the council fathers
articulated Catholic doctrine itself reveals some inner-Catholic tensions,
especially regarding congruent merit. Luther’s influence was nevertheless
reflected in the council’s work, but. as Root puts it, the Catholic teaching was
“framed in different ways, with different goals and answering to different
standards” (102). Root’s exploration of Trent’s work in light of Luther’s
influence is paralleled in some ways by Trent Pomplun’s exploration of Catholic

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responses to Luther’s rejection of Eucharistic sacrifice, which surveys a vast
number of works across several centuries.
Part 3, which includes Pomplun’s study, begins with Bruce Marshall’s
lengthy and substantive chapter on later medieval theologies of the Eucharist,
focusing on presence, sacrifice, and Mass intentions. Here Marshall bemoans,
as do several other writers in this volume, caricatures of the Middle Ages that
dismiss later medieval theology as plagued by a vague “nominalism” that
represented the decline and decay of later medieval Christian thought more
broadly (see 130-32). In the context of such characterizations, this essay
explores the rich and rewarding later medieval discussion of Eucharistic
presence. Like Dieter’s work mentioned above, this chapter defies neat
summary. Marshall’s review of later medieval debates over impanation versus
Eucharistic conversion is particularly helpful, especially his treatment of the
debates over the counterfactual question whether it would have been possible
for Eucharistic presence to occur by impanation rather than substantial
conversion. Instead of dismissing such debates as, say, evidence of the dead end
of “nominalist” debates over God’s ordered and absolute powers, Marshall
takes them as crucial for articulating the Church’s faith in the presumably
defined teaching of transubstantiation. More importantly for present purposes,
he leverages this discussion into a contextual analysis of Luther’s own teaching
on the Eucharist. Marshall’s essay is followed by Lee Palmer Wandel’s historical
consideration of Luther’s reception of the medieval Mass, which stresses its
crucial differences from the medieval practice (especially the canon), with the
action of the Mass migrating, so to speak, away from the medieval notion that
the mass is a prayer offered, as it were, from below to above, to Luther’s notion
of the divine service as one in which the crucial action is from above to below,
where the proclamation of Christ’s Eucharistic testament effects God’s real
presence. Given Marshall’s clear articulation and defense of the Mass as
meritorious, these two chapters leave much for readers to consider.
Part 4 treats ecclesiology, while part 5 turns to the question of the meaning
of Lutheran-Catholic ecumenism to Orthodoxy. Nelson Minnich’s lead essay
on models of the Church in the later Middle Ages is outstanding for its breadth
and clarity, especially given the complexity of the various papal schisms and the
tensions between conciliarist and papalist churchmen. Minnich also draws
attention to many and substantive treatments of ecclesiology written by
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Augustinian friars, noting that there is no
evidence Luther was familiar with these works. This observation might be taken
together with Eric Saak’s finding that Luther’s education had been somewhat
curtailed in comparison to Augustinian theologians in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries (Luther and the Reformation of the Later Middle Ages, 2017).
Dorothea Wendebourg’s essay notes that two lines of thought stand in tension
within Luther's ecclesiology. One is commonly known as the priesthood of all
believers, which posits a foundational equality between Christians, regardless of
their vocation. Some believers are chosen to carry out ministerial tasks, but
Luther does not ontologize the difference between the public ministry and the

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common priesthood. This line of thought has been predominant in Lutheran
ecclesiology and ministeriology. The second line of thought emphasizes Christ's
institution of the ministry. The Church and its ministry, therefore, are instituted
by Christ. No structure of the Church, however, can guarantee faithfulness to
the Gospel as the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Johanna Rahner
offers a Catholic reflection on Luther’s ecclesiology, noting that his work has to
be set in the context of the emergency conditions of the sixteenth century as he
and other Protestants saw them. This can be taken, she argues, as an argument
for extreme papalism.
Part 5 includes three shorter chapters, written by Yury Avvakumov, Nicolas
Kazarian, and Will Cohen. The brevity of this part of the book perhaps underscores the position of holy Orthodoxy on the sidelines of the Reformation-era
controversies. Avvakumov makes the intriguing observation that at the Leipzig
debate Luther invoked the Orthodox Churches as proof against Johann Eck’s
characterization of them as heretics and schismatics. For his part, Luther offered
what Avvakumov sees as an affirmation of the ecclesial other. One might
connect this to some recent scholarship on Luther's ecclesiology which finds
that he assumes the continuing structure of the historic Churches and
bishoprics, but without ceding to the Roman see primacy and universal jurisdiction de iure divino.
In sum, this is a fine volume filled with excellent essays that make important
new contributions to the state of knowledge. At the same time, this reviewer
notes a certain fatigue. Lutherans and Catholics now know one another well
enough to recognize not only what is admirable and acceptable from their
particular points of view, but also what is not. If the modern age of doctrinal
ecumenism has reached its end, as some seem to think, then perhaps the
friendship and mutual respect seen here will in the end prove more important
than a straightforward reconciliation of doctrinal divergences. Lutherans and
Catholics have become, it seems, good friends in Christ. The “growth of
Christian unity,” therefore, continues.
MICKEY L. MATTOX
Hillsdale College
Hillsdale, Michigan

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Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of
Exegetical Authority. By ANDREW CAIN. Oxford Early Christian Studies
Series. Edited by GILLIAN CLARK and ANDREW LOUTH. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 304 (hard). $100.00. ISBN: 978-0-19284719-5.
This monograph sets out to address a lacuna in Hieronymnian studies by
examining Jerome’s four commentaries on Pauline epistles (Galatians,
Ephesians, Philemon, and Titus). Cain adopts a thematic approach, meaning
that he focuses on what he considers to be the most salient aspects of these
works, including Jerome’s philological method, appropriation of Greek
exegetical material, and adoption of Pauline thought to support his own
theological positions. Given the thematic approach of this work, there is not a
single unifying argument that unfolds over the course of its seven chapters. Yet,
there is a scarlet thread running throughout the analysis that may be summed
up as follows: (1) by employing novel tools like nonexpository prefaces and an
ad fontes exegetical method, Jerome “effectively recalibrated and retooled Latin
biblical exegesis and created what was for all practical purposes a new species
of Pauline commentary in Latin” (227); and (2) Jerome used this “new species”
of commentary to lay claim to his status as a unique exegetical (and theological)
authority in the Church.
The introductory chapter examines the circumstances accompanying
Jerome’s composition of these four commentaries, and also essays some reasons
why these four letters were selected by Jerome. In this analysis, Cain correlates
the composition of each commentary with the life events of Jerome, explaining
his decisions as outgrowths of experience and reaction to negative experiences.
The second chapter offers an in-depth analysis of the prefaces of each
commentary, which total eight in all. The chapter opens with a few observations
about prefaces in general that contextualize them within the ancient Greek and
Roman literary world. As Cain observes, Jerome uses the preface as a platform
for his literary artifice and employs “traditional exordial topoi” in them in order
to bolster his image before his audience (49). For example, Jerome depicts
himself as an industrious scholar by mentioning how he worked late into the
night to produce his commentaries. In addition, Jerome eschews the purely
expository prologue, instead engaging in apologetic and polemical argumentation in order to justify his method of biblical interpretation. In this, Cain
argues that Jerome takes the ancient playwright Terence as his model to become
the first Latin biblical commentator “to use the preface for sometimes
exclusively non-expository purposes” (53). This insight serves as the framework
for the remainder of the chapter in which the thematic content of the prefaces
is considered. In this analysis, Cain demonstrates the manner in which Jerome
deploys various rhetorical tropes to establish and defend his own exegetical
authority. Further, Cain briefly presents the different methodologies of Jerome
and Victorinus within this framework; Jerome advocates for his ad fontes
methodology and his own expertise as an exegete by criticizing Victorinus’s lack

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of engagement with the Old Testament, and also insinuates that his
commentaries are not worthy of being read by omitting them from his list of
consulted sources.
Chapter 3 explores how Jerome developed his ad fontes methodology in the
four commentaries as a way of building a subtle but unmistakable argument that
Hebrew and Greek philology are essential to serious study of the Bible. The first
part of the chapter focuses on Jerome’s attitude toward the Vetus Latina (VL),
presenting several illustrative examples from his Pauline commentaries where
he criticizes the VL’s rendering of the Greek text. The second part of the chapter
considers Jerome’s concept of Hebraica veritas as articulated in his personal
letters and how it influences his Pauline commentaries. For Jerome, the concept
of Hebraica veritas not only entails using “the Hebrew text as the final arbiter
in all text-critical and interpretive matters relating to the Old Testament” (87),
but also requires consulting the Hebrew Bible when interpreting the New
Testament since it is the very source from which the Gospel writers drew (89).
Cain adduces a few examples of how Jerome incorporated Hebrew philology
into his Pauline commentaries as well as how he consulted the Hebrew Bible
(both the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch) in his examination of
Paul’s citations of the Old Testament.
Toward the end of this chapter, Cain relates this analysis of Jerome’s ad
fontes methodology to his broader argument that Jerome constructs his exegetical authority through these commentaries. By arguing that it is necessary to
work with the Greek and Hebrew of the biblical texts, Jerome implicitly put
himself forward as the model biblical scholar since he was virtually the only
fourth-century commentator who was able to employ this methodology
skillfully.
In chapter 4, Cain returns to the biographical context in which Jerome
composed these commentaries, arguing that he used them “as platforms for
promulgating, on the authority of Paul, his own peculiar brand of ascetic
spirituality” (103). This chapter begins with an examination of his ascetic
program as it is reflected in his personal correspondences, before then looking
at the Pauline commentaries, which were “a direct outgrowth of Jerome’s
private instruction of a rather small circle of religious women” (105). One of
the chief features of this ascetic teaching is the need for immersive reading and
study of the Bible that leads to the mortification of the body and rejection of
the world. Another aspect of the ascetic program that is amply addressed is
Jerome’s emphasis on the importance of chastity and virginity. Here Cain turns
his attention more squarely to the Pauline commentaries, which in his opinion
are characterized by Jerome’s tendency to allow “ascetic advocacy” to bleed into
his exegetical work such that he often imposes asceticized readings on the text
(108 and 115). Focusing on the commentary on Titus, the next section of the
chapter deals with Jerome’s promotion of the ideal of a monastic clergy. This
section sets his advocacy for a monastic clergy against the backdrop of his
negative evaluation of some of the ecclesial hierarchy and prominent Christians
in Rome, and enumerates several constitutive elements of his program of clerical

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asceticism: celibacy, abstinence from alcohol, shunning wealth, practicing
hospitality, and intense training in Scripture that enables the cleric’s defense of
orthodox doctrine and effective teaching. Cain observes how this program of
asceticism gave rise to various disputes with other Christian leaders in Rome,
and eventually was the foundation of his being accused of promulgating
Manichaean teachings.
In the fifth chapter, Cain examines the antiheretical statements found in
Jerome’s Pauline commentaries, dividing them into two broad categories: those
that are generic, ad hominem attacks, and those that specify and refute
erroneous doctrine by using the words of Scripture. In examining the former
category, Cain points to examples of Jerome attributing demonic inspiration to
the heretics, calling into question their moral character, and giving them various
epithets, such as “serpents” or “plagues.” Cain spends more time treating the
latter category, first by analyzing how Jerome receives Marcion as an emblematic arch-heretic due to his reliance on Origen’s commentaries, and then
by examining his statements against Arius, Photinus, the Ebionites, and
Apollinaris regarding Christological and anthropological errors. In his analysis,
Cain seeks to demonstrate how Jerome’s exegesis is influenced by dogmatic
concerns. One example, which is described as illustrative of Jerome’s
“eisegetical tendency,” is his interpretation of Titus 3:4-7 wherein he explains
that the Trinity is “very clearly revealed” (149-50). Another good example is
Galatians 1:15-16, which Jerome argues is mistakenly used in support of the
heretical doctrine of two natures (that people are fated to be either good or evil
from birth), and should instead be understood as referring to God’s
foreknowledge and love of the elect who freely choose righteousness and are
thus saved (158-59). Cain argues that Jerome puts forth this interpretation of
Galatians 1:15-16 because it has ramifications for his own ascetic theory; if the
opposition’s view of two natures were true, then his program of asceticism
would be futile since it would not change one’s nature or destiny.
Chapters 6 and 7 comprise an extended source-critical analysis of Jerome’s
Greek and Latin sources, respectively. In chapter 6, Cain treats each
commentary in its turn with the goal of evaluating the veracity of Jerome’s
statements regarding his use of sources in his prefaces, especially his claims to
have followed Origen. Given the fact that most of the commentaries Jerome
mentions are no longer extant, direct comparison is impossible in most cases,
and there are only two commentators with whom Cain is able to compare
Jerome: Eusebius of Emesa (only on Galatians) and Origen. In his comparison
between Jerome and Eusebius, Cain relies on nineteen extant fragments of
Eusebius’s commentary and is able to identify at least one close similarity
between the two commentators in their remarks on Galatians 1:13-14. In his
comparisons between Origen and Jerome, Cain relies on the citations of Origen
found in Rufinus’s Latin translation of Pamphilus’s Apology for Origen, except
in the case of the Ephesians commentaries for which there are surviving Greek
fragments in the catena manuscripts. Cain is able to adduce many convincing
close parallels that point to Jerome’s thoroughgoing reliance on Origen in his

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exegesis of Galatians, Ephesians, and Philemon. In contrast, Jerome’s
commentary on Titus, while still having some similarities with Origen’s,
paraphrases and compresses it while also adding much more of his own original
content. Cain closes this analysis by again returning to Jerome’s rhetorical
technique, suggesting that his conspicuous self-alignment with Greek sources is
a way of claiming exegetical authority. Further, Cain observes that when Jerome
presents multiple interpretive possibilities for a passage (called the variorum
approach), he does so without attributing them and places his own interpretation first. Cain concludes that this is a form of Roman rhetoric by which
Jerome, “through rhetorical sleight of hand,” privileges his own interpretation
over the others.
In chapter 7, Cain continues his source-critical investigation by surveying
references to Roman Republican and Imperial authors whom Jerome would
have regarded as classical, including Terence, Cicero, Sallust, Virgil, Horace,
Quintilian, and Seneca the Younger. These references are mostly adapted
allusions, and they are typically incorporated for aesthetic reasons, or to drive
home a point that has already been made. The chapter proceeds to investigate
Jerome’s borrowings from three Christian authors whom he regarded as
classical: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius. Cain provides a helpful side-byside comparison of the Latin texts of many of these proposed phraseological
and conceptual borrowings, most of which are quite convincing. He makes two
important conclusions regarding Jerome’s borrowings from Latin authors: first,
“None of them immediately contributes to the core exegetical content, or at
least not in the way the Greek commentaries do. Their basic function is either
utilitarian or aesthetic” (221); and second, where it is certain that such allusions
to Latin authors are present, it can be concluded that Greek allusions are not.
Overall, Cain is quite successful in his project of elucidating the thematic
content of Jerome’s Pauline commentaries, and this volume deserves attention
for its many illustrative text-based examples that serve to support its cogent
analysis of these various themes.
The only weakness of the study is that in the course of his analysis Cain
makes claims about Jerome’s inner, psychological motivations that go beyond
the evidence and are, at times, downright cynical. For example, in his discussion
of Jerome’s polemic against Victorinus, Cain concludes, “Undoubtedly one of
the factors motivating his polemical impulse was a deeply felt insecurity,”
without mentioning that Jerome likely genuinely believed that his own method
was essential for accessing the truth of the Scripture (71). While Cain eventually
does acknowledge Jerome’s belief in Hebraica veritas as it pertains to the truth
of Scripture (101), he does not consider that this might be a motivating factor
in Jerome’s use of rhetoric; rather, Jerome’s motivation is reduced to a desire
for authority in the face of insecurity. Another example is Jerome’s requests for
prayers from his students and the saints, which Cain regards solely as an
“inspired interpreter trope” designed to bolster his authority (63). While this
trope is indeed found in many ancient commentaries, it does not follow that his
request for prayers was a calculated ploy to give his commentaries greater

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authority; it is also possible, and I would argue more likely, that Jerome asked
for prayers because he believed in the efficacy of prayer. There are many other
such examples in this work, and collectively they depict Jerome in a rather
unsympathetic light.
A. JORDAN SCHMIDT, O.P.
Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, D.C.

Possibility and Necessity in the Time of Peter Abelard. By IRENE BININI. Leiden:
Brill, 2022. Pp. xii + 326 (hard). $166.00. ISBN: 978-90-04-47028-6.
Irene Binini’s book is a comprehensive survey of Abelard’s views on
possibility and necessity. It is an important contribution to our understanding
of Abelard’s logic and metaphysics, especially because of its use of state-of-theart research on other twelfth-century sources (many still unedited and available
only to those with strong paleographic skills and access to restricted collections),
which helps us better to see precisely where Abelard’s philosophy is innovative
and distinctive. In addition to consolidating and expanding upon the literature
devoted to this fascinating aspect of Abelard’s thought, the book is a spur for
further research into the logics, metaphysical systems, and epistemologies of
modality developed in continental European thought in a time when the full
corpus of Aristotle’s writings (even the logical ones) was not available.
The book aims to provide an overview of all aspects of Abelard’s reflections
on alethic modalities; it does not say much about whether Abelard has any wellworked views about epistemic and deontic modal statements. It is hard to find
fault with this, given the vast terrain that needs to be covered merely to trace
and reconstruct Abelard’s views about predicates such as “possible,”
“necessary,” “potential,” and “contingent.” Moreover, as Binini notes, while
Abelard makes the occasional remark that suggests he has some intuitions about,
say, epistemic modalities, it is not clear whether he has a full-fledged theory on
offer, given that his point of reference is Aristotle’s On Interpretation, which
also covers only the alethic modal predicates (see 8.1, p. 202).
Binini divides the book into three main parts. The first part aims to place
Abelard within his intellectual milieu. Chapter 1 explores the frameworks that
twelfth-century thinkers inherited from Aristotle and Boethius. Chapter 2
furthers this project by looking at how twelfth-century logicians thought about
the grammar and syntax of modal propositions. Of particular importance is
their notion of a “mode.” Chapter 3 surveys twelfth-century thinking about the
signification of modal terms like “possible,” “potential,” and “necessary.” It is
here as well that Binini introduces the reader to several of the common ways of

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grounding modal claims in reality. For instance, is a potentiality a kind of form
that inheres in a substance? Or is the metaphysical ground for a potentiality
something else?
In the second part of the book, Binini turns to the task of reconstructing
Abelard’s modal logic. Chapter 4 attends to Abelard’s specific way of
distinguishing between de re and de dicto senses of modal propositions, and she
shows that when analyzing difficult arguments involving premises that refer to
possibilities and necessities, Abelard tends to prefer de re readings over de dicto
ones. Chapter 5 turns to Abelard’s views about the existential import of modal
claims. In keeping with his antirealist proclivities, Abelard thinks that modal
claims can be grounded in actual, particular substances and their forms. There
is no need, for instance, to posit the existence of ghostly merely possible things
or possible worlds. Chapters 6 and 7 constitute the heart of part 2. In chapter
6 Binini outlines Abelard’s logic of modal propositions, laying out with the help
of a set of useful tables the complex web of logically equivalent sentences and
warranted syllogistic inferences. Chapter 7 addresses the wrinkle in the basic
theory that “determinate” modal propositions pose. In particular, Abelard and
his contemporaries were very interested in parsing modal claims with temporal
qualifications, such as “Socrates cannot sit so long as he is standing” or “a man
cannot see once he is blind.”
In the third and final main part of the book, Binini turns her attention to
metaphysical and epistemological issues. The key concept for Abelard is the
notion of nonrepugnancy with nature. Chapter 8 begins to elaborate on
Abelard’s notion of “nature” and the “natures” of things. It is here that we also
learn that Abelard refuses to reduce claims about necessity and possibility to one
primitive notion. Instead, both “possible” and “necessary” are treated as
primitives in his writings. This in and of itself is a striking discovery, especially
for those of us trained in standard contemporary modal logics. The central
chapter in part 3 is chapter 9, wherein we learn about how Abelard understands
possibility and impossibility in terms of whether some state of affairs is
repugnant to a thing’s nature or not. It is here that we see how Abelard’s
understanding of the natures of substances leads him to endorse some seemingly
incongruous counterfactual propositions, such as that a blind man can see or
that, contrary to the teachings of Porphyry, it is possible that humans are not
capable of laughing. Even more surprisingly, Abelard maintains that it is
possible for a human to be irrational. This is striking, given the Aristotelian idea
that rationality is an essential property of humans. Abelard’s solution suggests
that, if presented with a well-known twenty-first-century riddle he would
concede that, once properly parsed, Bertrand Russell truly could have been a
poached egg. (The key is to see that things tend to have complex natures, and
hence, the true proposition is not that Russell could have been an egg, but that
the thing that is [actually] Russell, or Russell’s “substance,” could have been an
egg, and not a human.) It is also in chapter 9 that we get glimpses into Abelard’s
views about what we can know about powers and possibilities of things, and
whether Abelard thinks that conceivability is a good guide to thinking about

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possibility. Chapter 10 surveys Abelard’s analyses of several well-known puzzles
about necessity, determinacy, and God’s foreknowledge of allegedly contingent
events. Binini argues that Abelard’s views about necessity are not as well worked
out as his views about possibilities. In the former cases, Abelard pursues several
strategies which do not seem to neatly cohere into a unified, systematic account
of what it means to be necessary. By contrast, Binini argues that Abelard’s
various discussions of possibilities and potentialities do coalesce around the core
notion of nonrepugnancy with nature.
Throughout her study, Binini makes use of a rich trove of anonymous Aristotelian commentaries and logical treatises written during Abelard’s heyday.
The compendiousness of this book will make it useful to many scholars, not
only of twelfth-century European logic and metaphysics, but also those
interested more broadly in medieval logic and medieval metaphysics. There is,
however, some repetitiveness in the book, and a thicket of cross-references.
While this makes it possible for readers to jump in and out at will (for instance,
if they wish to only round out their understanding of Abelard’s theory of the
syllogism or if they only wish to see how Abelard’s antirealist metaphysics
accounts for unrealized possibilities), it makes a start-to-finish reading a bit
choppy. Some of the redundancies probably cannot be helped, especially given
Binini’s decision to structure the book around our notion of how to parse up
the terrain of philosophical discourse about modality. Abelard is capable of
systematic thought. To see this, one need only scrutinize the surviving portions
of his Dialectica, a stand-alone presentation of Aristotelian logic (and the
metaphysics that underlies it). But his system is determined by the curriculum
laid out in the Aristotelian logical corpus inherited from late antiquity via
Boethius. Thus, for instance, Abelard will systematically work through terms,
and then sentences, and then arguments. Likewise, he will follow Porphyry and
discuss in systematic Porphyrian fashion genera, then species (and individual
substance), then differentia, then propria, and finally accidents. But this means
that his views about, say, the metaphysical grounds of possibility and necessity
are not treated thoroughly in any given place, but rather are scattered across his
written corpus. Moreover, lessons about inferences from a logical point of view
and the metaphysics behind it will be tightly intermeshed, whereas Binini’s
structure disentangles and isolates these threads.
Another sort of redundancy, however, probably could have been avoided.
Binini chooses to treat the tradition within which Abelard’s works appear
independently from Abelard’s theory. This is only partially successful, for she
cannot help but refer to the Aristotelian and Boethian tradition as well as the
views of his contemporaries when discussing Abelard’s own views in parts 2 and
3, and she often sketches Abelard’s own answers to several traditional puzzles
in part 1. It might have been more effective to organize material around several
of the problems that vexed Abelard and his contemporaries (e.g, whether de re
or de dicto readings should be privileged, the existential import of statements
about possibilities, whether the statistical model of possibility is true, whether

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bivalence entails logical determinism, and so forth) and then compare and
contrast the different solutions to a given issue all at once.
In general, the material presented in the book should be accessible to those
with limited training in twelfth-century philosophy, although there are two
occasions where a key passage is presented in Latin without an English
translation (130 and 273)—an unnecessary hurdle for nonspecialists that I hope
will be rectified in a revised edition. I anticipate that Binini’s book will be the
standard resource for scholars and students for the foreseeable future. Yet, as
Binini herself acknowledges, there is much more work to be done on these texts.
Thus, while this book will be a valuable resource to scholars for a long time,
one of its best features is the way that it will be the impetus and basis for future
discoveries.
ANDREW W. ARLIG
Brooklyn College, The City University of New York
New York, New York

Thinking Theologically about the Divine Ideas: Reexamining the “Summa” of
Thomas Aquinas. By BENJAMIN R. DESPAIN. Brill’s Studies in Catholic
Theology 11. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xi + 245. $139.00 (hard). ISBN:
978-90- 04-51150-7.
The doctrine of divine ideas has been getting quite a bit of attention in recent
years. In 2021 Oxford University Press published Mark A. McIntosh’s book The
Divine Ideas Tradition in Christian Mystical Theology, following on Cambridge
University Press’s publication of Divine Ideas by Thomas M. Ward (2020). The
Catholic University of America Press had already published, in 2008, Gregory
T. Doolan’s work Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes, and more
recently published an important book by Carl A. Vater, God’s Knowledge of the
World: Medieval Theories of Divine Ideas from Bonaventure to Ockham (2022).
Vater’s book contextualizes Aquinas’s treatment of the doctrine within the flow
of thirteenth-century theological reflection and in this serves as an essential
addition to what I was able to do (Vivian Boland, Ideas in God according to
Saint Thomas Aquinas: Sources and Synthesis [Brill, 1996]), to what Doolan’s
book offers, and to what we find in the book under review here.
A first point to note is the presence of the term “theologically” in the title of
DeSpain’s book. Against Doolan’s proposal to treat the doctrine purely
philosophically, DeSpain argues that such a methodology must fail to do justice
to Aquinas’s presentation and use of it. Of course there are philosophical aspects
to it, but it is not only as a philosophical tool that it is useful to Aquinas. The
divine ideas doctrine, DeSpain argues, is central to Aquinas’s theology—he can

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quote Marie-Dominique Chenu for whom the realm of the divine ideas is “the
real spiritual and scientific home of theology”—and it cannot be understood by
the application of an exclusively philosophical hermeneutic.
The “atomistic interpretive” approach—collating the texts in which the
doctrine is presented as well as appeals to it elsewhere in Aquinas’s writings—
is limited and in recent times tends to be a defensive strategy, seeking to show
that the doctrine has an essential place in Aquinas’s theological enterprise in the
face of contrary arguments. Doubts sown by later presentations of the doctrine
of divine ideas, presentations that sometimes border on caricatures, have often
put students of Aquinas on the back foot as they seek to respond to questions
and concerns about it. Free of such doubts, DeSpain wants to identify and
explain what he terms “the contribution of the doctrine’s more subtle gestures
to Aquinas’s works” (5).
The term “gestures” is an important one for DeSpain, although he never
really defines it. His aim is to treat the theological work of Aquinas as essentially
pedagogical, seeking to guide readers from the confession of faith to the wisdom
of sacra doctrina. In this pedagogy the doctrine of divine ideas is a type of
grammar that provides what he terms “gestures of contemplative fittingness”
that support the overall project of showing humanity’s dependence on God in
creation and salvation. He is not then claiming that Aquinas’s theology is really
all about the divine ideas, but he believes that the doctrine has what he terms
“a peripheral centrality”: it is not the focus of Aquinas’s theology but once that
focus is clear it is also seen that without this doctrine Aquinas’s vision would be
incomplete.
DeSpain’s argument unfolds in six movements. First (chap. 2) comes an
evaluation of the pedagogical design of Summa theologiae. Some of the standard
criticisms of the doctrine of divine ideas—that it is rationalistic, anti-Trinitarian,
even non-Christian—fail to take account of its context in Aquinas where it is
informed and reordered by the pattern of theological education which explains
the form of his theological discourse. Not a closed system, the Summa
nevertheless has a pedagogical unity, seeking to lead the reader from faith to
wisdom, and doing so always in terms of the Word of God as the expression of
the Father’s self-knowledge. DeSpain relies significantly on Josef Pieper in
presenting his case that the Summa is essentially a pedagogical project, a view
that is strengthened by the “apophatic turn” in the interpretation of Aquinas, of
which Pieper is not the only representative. Faith itself means accepting God as
our teacher in order to learn from God’s own knowledge, become wise thereby,
and so be saved (healed). The Summa is at the service of this learning and the
doctrine of divine ideas is therefore theologically motivated, intended to
enhance the reader’s movement toward the contemplative vision of God.
The next part of the argument, chapter 3, argues that Aquinas reordered the
doctrine in order to give it “theological validity.” The chapter begins with
reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer who rejected the doctrine as an attempt to get
“behind” the creating God, thereby locking God into a metaphysical system.
For Pieper, however, creation is the key to Aquinas’s thought and the doctrine

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of divine ideas has an essential place in his understanding of creation. The
doctrine protects the mystery which is at the heart of everything since, as Pieper
says, “we can never fully grasp these likenesses of the Divine Ideas precisely as
likeness” (quoted in DeSpain, 76). Within the context of the Summa’s overall
project, question 15 of the Prima pars, “on ideas,” is but a prelude to the
development and application of the doctrine later in the Summa. The first
questions that arise are what is meant by ideas in God, what it means to speak
of a plurality of ideas (with its perceived threat to Aquinas’s magnificent account
of divine simplicity) and finally to consider of what God can be said to have an
idea. DeSpain’s argument is that in reordering the doctrine Aquinas decisively
links it with God’s providence and sets it within the conditions of “faith seeking
understanding” which is the Summa’s focus.
In chapter 4, DeSpain engages with the first of what he terms “peripheral
gestures” of the doctrine, namely, its use in Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology. The
familiar theme of “fittingness” (convenientia) in Aquinas’s theological
methodology invites his reader to delve further into what DeSpain calls the
“peripheral and subtle gestures” of the doctrine (90). First though there is an
excursus on the vocabulary Aquinas uses in speaking of the ideas: idea, ratio,
forma, exemplar, similitudo, species. Where some see inconsistency or even
confusion, DeSpain sees pedagogical advantages in this “flexibility”: it allows
Aquinas’s more subtle gestures with the doctrine which facilitate the reader in
attending to the focal point in the discussions where they appear, and it means
he can introduce the doctrine where it is needed but where an explicit
consideration of “ideas” might be unhelpful or distracting. The relation between
the Word and the ideas thus grounds a Trinitarian rereading of the doctrine. All
is subject to the “logic of fittingness,” and DeSpain appeals to Gilles Emery’s
work on the unity of the treatise on God in the Prima pars as well as to Aquinas,
who not only relates the Word and the ideas but understands the Trinitarian
processions themselves as “exemplars” of the production of creatures.
Chapter 5 engages directly with the question of philosophy and theology in
Aquinas’s work, challenging the view that an exclusively philosophical doctrine
can be extracted from the theological context of the Summa. Bifurcating
theology and philosophy in Aquinas’s work is “a curious practice,” DeSpain says
(the phrase seems to originate with David Burrell). On one side, John Wippel
and Doolan, Etienne Gilson and James Ross, emphasize either the philosophical
and/or redundant character of the doctrine of divine ideas. On the other hand,
Mark D. Jordan regards many philosophical aspects of the doctrine as having
been abandoned by Aquinas in order to make it theologically acceptable.
However, the ideas become redundant here also because of Aquinas’s settled
view that the divine essence is the one sufficient and direct exemplar of all
created being. Each of these approaches relies on bifurcating Aquinas’s thought
along some point of division between theology and philosophy. By looking at
the fourth and fifth ways of proving the existence of God, DeSpain seeks to
show why an exclusively philosophical doctrine fails to support what Aquinas
is doing in the Summa. It is a theological pedagogy whose reach is always

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Christological and soteriological, and there is no realm of “ontotheology” in
Aquinas outside the domain of faith. Where the fourth way refers enigmatically
to the exemplar forms, the fifth way, according to De Spain (supported in this
by Doolan) includes a number of themes that Aquinas often makes use of in his
formal discussion of the divine ideas, namely, divine intelligence, providence
and natural law. This chapter ends with a consideration of providence since the
divine ideas relate not just to the origin of created things but to their entire
existence as things ordered to an end (150). In his account of the eternal law
Aquinas says that the divine wisdom, the source and goal of sacra doctrina,
means “art,” “exemplar,” and “idea” as creating all things, and means “law” as
moving them to their due ends (STh I-II, q. 93, a. 1). The divine ideas thus
inform the entire exitus-reditus of creation and redemption.
In chapters 6 and 7 DeSpain explores the presence of the doctrine of divine
ideas in Aquinas’s treatment of moral and theological virtues. He wants to
respond to the criticism, from Paul DeHart, that Aquinas does not consider the
ethical or anthropological implications of the doctrine, but also to illustrate
further the “peripheral centrality” of the doctrine across the full range of
Aquinas’s theological vision. Aquinas made use of a distinction of virtue, which
he found in Macrobius, in which the highest level is that of “exemplar” virtues
(STh I-II, q. 61, a. 5). For DeSpain this is another “peripheral gesture” to the
divine ideas since Macrobius, in effect, identifies these “exemplar virtues” with
the ideas. Chapter 7 then treats of the theological virtue of hope. It is a part of
Aquinas’s work that, DeSpain believes, challenges the “formulaic dichotomy
between metaphysics and theology” which is repeatedly projected onto his
thought (the dreaded “bifurcation”). There is a natural anticipation of this
virtue in the passion of hope, a physical and emotional response which perdures
into the higher actualizations of hope including the supernatural theological
virtue itself. The personal experience of being drawn into the fullness of
dynamic union with God is given a theological voice by the doctrine of the
divine ideas which is included in references to “divine norms,” “eternal ideas,”
and “eternal law” within Aquinas’s treatment of hope. And because the final
end is related to each person in a unique way, the movement of hope is a
movement towards the actualization of God’s eternal idea for each individual.
This is in Christ, the Word, the exemplar of all creation, so that the restoration
of creatures comes about by the same forma artis by which they are originally
created. DeSpain thus concludes that, for Aquinas, the true meaning of each
person is eternally conceived in the mind of God. This is an understanding that
is not controversial for the Christian believer: the argument here is that it is
supported theologically by the subtle gestures of the divine ideas within
Aquinas’s account of the theological virtue of hope.
The book concludes with a discussion of some of the hermeneutical
challenges involved in the process of theological ressourcement. Necessary as
they are, inquiries into intellectual history have positive and negative
implications, DeSpain says, as he revisits some of the difficulties that attend any
attempt to re-source the doctrine of divine ideas. He does not use the terms

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“aporia” or “mystery” which others might be tempted to apply here; instead he
notes the challenges the doctrine presents for the contemporary theological
identity that governs our reception of texts. In particular, if people expect from
Aquinas a definitive systematic account of the doctrine of divine ideas they will
be faced with well-known difficulties. What the Summa offers is not a system,
either philosophical or theological, but “a path to the vision of God rooted in
the revelation of humanity’s createdness” (206). Chenu spoke of the divine
ideas as the scientific and spiritual heart of Aquinas’s theology. For DeSpain it
is because of the breakdown of language before the face of God that
constructively reclaiming this doctrine is theologically important. The clearest
summary of his thesis is this: “If theologians and scholars are going to recover
a greater appreciation for Aquinas’s doctrine of the divine ideas, they must be
willing to alter the trajectory of their interpretations as Aquinas guides readers
along the network of subtle gestures to the divine ideas that shift and reshape
the doctrine through different contexts and innovative exchanges with other
heuristic networks within his thought that both recast the divine ideas, and
advance his reception and transmission of the doctrine” (175).
DeSpain himself works from an “heuristic network” other than that of many
interpreters of Aquinas, which gives added interest to his interpretation. A
clearer definition of the meaning of “gesture” would, nevertheless, have been
helpful and would facilitate dialogue among the various networks engaged in
studying Aquinas. It is clearly linked with the methodological principle of
convenientia, a well-known principle operative throughout Aquinas’s work but
here presented in ways that are fresh. The invitation to think “theologically”
about the divine ideas might seem unnecessary, but DeSpain shows why it is
important to emphasize this. He enriches the reception of this particular
doctrine achieved by earlier authors, and contributes in important ways to
reflection on the question of philosophy and theology in Aquinas. While his
choice is to consider only the Summa theologiae, it would be interesting to see
what “gestures” might yet be identifiable in other parts of the Corpus
Thomisticum. DeSpain’s work is a welcome addition to the growing
bibliography dealing with this doctrine.
VIVIAN BOLAND, O.P.
Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
Rome, Italy

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Revelations of Humanity: Anthropological Dimensions of Theological
Controversies. By RICHARD SCHENK, O.P., trans. MICHAEL MILLER.
Thomistic Ressourcement Series 20. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2022. Pp. xvi + 461. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN
978-0-8132-3552-3.
Richard Schenk, O.P., is an internationally respected theologian who
regularly publishes in English and German. He dedicates this book to the
director of his doctoral dissertation (1986), the prolific German theologian Leo
Cardinal Scheffczyk (1920-2005) on the centenary of his birth.
The volume is a compilation of twelve articles originally published separately
in German between 1993 and 2011. Divine charity is considered the decisive
datum for defining the human being. The abiding tension between seemingly
autarkic, yet in itself ambivalent, human existence and redemptive divinehuman relationality is the uniting leitmotif for the essays. They provocatively
ask the question whether discounting the possibility of such divine selfdisclosure mortally imperils the core of the humanum of humankind.
Intellectual veracity must admit divine-human relationship is always
“entangled” (5), but “harmony” between the two must be yearned for, lest the
human being fails himself or herself. It is conscience as a dynamic vehicle
towards self-transcendence—captured perhaps best by the ancient call “gnothi
se auton”—that impels the human spirit forward to its redeeming telos.
The first four essays discuss divine self-disclosure as charity. Schenk notes
“an insuperable tension between faith and evidence” (13) in the first essay (1139) and shows how Plato and Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Kant wrestle with
this incontrovertible reality. There is no denying that the definitory nature of
human existence is its open-ended transcendence. It finds a resolution—albeit a
tentative, open-ended one—in the acknowledgement of this facticity. Such
admitted distance, captured as Thomistic adaequatio, allows an “approximation
to the range of verifiability, unaware that the human being in statu viatoris is
sustained positively by the (supernatural) virtue of hope. This tension Schenk
applies to diverging Christian professions of faith. Regarding conscience,
Thomas is again the point of reference (40-82), with his concept of perplexus
supposito quodam. After surveying Gregory the Great, Abelard, Alexander of
Hales, Bonaventure, Walter of Bruges, and others, Schenk shows Thomas in
four different cases of perplexity of an erroneous conscience (conflict of
objective, judgement and intention, sinful intention, and as regards norm).
Thomas emphasizes the moral obligation to surmount ignorantia iuris. By virtue
of its binding nature, conscience is required dynamically to employ accusare,
excusare, instigare, and remordere. The third essay (83-109) ponders whether
the encyclical Fides et Ratio (1998) indeed expressed a preferential option for
Thomism, and reflects on Alasdair MacIntyre’s turn to the Doctor Angelicus in
Dependent Rational Animals (1999). Schenk sees both Thomas and MacIntyre
seconding Scheffczyk’s call to recognize the limits of human reason as a salutary
chance. Such realization overcomes the “hermeneutic turning point”

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inaugurated by Kant and Georg Hermes and appreciates afresh a “dogmatic
model.” The next essay (110-47) in this first cluster illuminates the influence of
Gottlieb Söhngen on the Habilitationschrift of his student Joseph Ratzinger/
Pope Benedict XVI. Schenk shows convincingly Söhngen’s sense of urgency to
overcome the theoretically instructive (propositional) method of preconciliar
theology, while Ratzinger argues that it must not yield to “a ‘contradictory
pluralism’.” Söhngen had been somewhat involved in the nature/grace debate
between Karl Barth and Erich Przywara. Over and against Thomas,
Bonaventure, Söhngen, and Ratzinger favor prioritizing the apophatic analogia
fidei vis-à-vis the analogia entis, thus bringing Ratzinger closer to Barth,
although not as much as Bonaventure or Söhngen would like. Pace Thomas, the
human similitudo Dei is more than merely structural or external. In the wake
of John Peckham, Bonaventure’s abiding Christocentrism leads to apprehending
in revelation ultimately an encounter with the divine Thou as expressed in Dei
Verbum, which was composed to no small degree under Ratzinger’s influence.
The second group of essays posits that amid all earthly tristitia (sadness), in
a real sense the human being can laugh, as he is already embraced by a good
creator who perplexingly suffers, despite his divine immutability. Thus,
anthropology and eschatology converge, without suspending the call to live the
supernatural virtue of hope. Here Schenk integrates the prophetic wisdom of
Vatican II (especially that of Gaudium et Spes) into his and Rahner’s and
Balthasar’s responses to contemporary interjections, such as Umberto Eco’s
celebrated The Name of the Rose (151-63). This essay is decidedly cheerful and
witty: it is not the agnostic, but the Christian who can laugh as he lives
inalienably in the glow of Easter.
In the final group of essays Schenk felicitously demonstrates how ecumenical
and interreligious dialogue can “reveal” facets of revelation. In this context, he
pleads for ecumenical honesty. For instance, the Lutheran and Catholic
understanding of the Eucharist cannot be facilely reconciled. And yet, Schenk
invites the reader to “learn” from partners in ecumenical dialogue. The fides
quae cannot be sacrificed even for the sake of genuine irenic intentions. Here
the focus is heavily on German Catholic-Protestant dialogue.
In this last section, Schenk marks out three areas in which he takes up the
cudgels against contemporary thought, areas in which theologians often prefer
the path of lesser political resistance or intellectual effort: sacrifice, the
pluralistic theory of religions, and the nature of sacrament.
With the background of the Shoah, Schenk recognizes the problematic
nature of sacrifice in contemporary discourse. This is compounded by a lack of
“a reliable pre-understanding” (295). Not only the Council of Trent, but human
cultural history in general provides orientation on this point. Schenk reminds
the reader that already his fellow Dominican Robert Kilwardby—while
discussing pre-Abrahamic critiques of sacrifice—saw non-Judeo-Christian
religiosity expressing a need for propitiation and “search for the mercy of God”
(304). Thomas develops his theory of atonement in dialogue with Maimonides.
Christ’s sacrifice is both fulfillment and end of all pre-Christian sacrifices.

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D’accord with Thomas and Rahner (perhaps a too favorable reading?), Schenk
sees Christ’s unsurpassable self-immolation as the “‘sacrificial victim’ fragrant,
‘in odorem suavitatis’ [in] . . . unparalleled acceptance by God” (337), and as
the ageless “sought-for liberation from disaster” (338). In a personalist turn,
Schenk emphasizes Christ’s “philanthropic” proexistence as perfectissimum
sacrificium. Modernity’s need for a deeper appreciation of sacrifice is seen
fulfilled in Balthasar’s perspective of kenosis and sacrifice as defining moments
of intra-Trinitarian life. Mechanical, impersonal ex opere operato thinking is
relativized, though its theological valence is not denied. “Death itself is not what
fulfills and perfects: rather the expected fulfillment by God is essentially
directed against death” (356-57). Following the Ecumenical Taskforce of
Lutheran and Catholic Theologians document (published in 1983), Schenk
considers the Lutheran-Catholic positions in this regard not as “denominational
antitheses” (357). Self-surrender as a Christian posture is rediscovered in its
positive relevance for every human being’s existence. One’s own subjectivity
finds fulfillment “in the proexistent character of Christ’s death” (359) in the
Eucharist. Schenk considers moral theology challenged to rediscover the social
dimension of human conduct. Oscar Romero’s last words prior to his
assassination are presented as a felicitous expression of this enhanced view of
sacrifice.
In the penultimate essay, Schenk dialogues with the different variants of
religious pluralism proposed by Paul Knitter, Raimon Panikkar, John Hick,
Perry Leukel-Schmidt, and even Keith Ward and Leonard Swidler. Regarding
Hick, who is considered “the least pluralistic” (380), Schenk asks: “Is
plausibility replaced here by an illusory logical compulsion?” (366). Confronted
with the alternatives of inclusivism, pluralism, and exclusivism, the pluralist
theory of religions nolens volens denies the universal significance of salvation
in Christ. Here Schenk is interested in lines of argumentation and genuinely
welcomes the chance for theoretical investigations. When John Henry Newman
laments that Scottish Calvinism devolves into “post-theistic Unitarianism”
(382), Schenk poses the question, why is a pluralistic argument necessarily
superior to any other perspective, if the mediatorship of Christ, his divine
preexistence, human and divine personhood, and the blessed Trinity are
superior ontological realities? What is the positive yield of a Christ “relativized
after Ebionite and Adoptionist models” (384)? Must not these approaches
acknowledge the high value of “the Gospel of Jesus Christ as good news for
‘every creature’” (386)?
The final contribution probes the nature of Catholic sacramentality vis-à-vis
Protestant statements, the Old Covenant, and the world religions. Already the
confrontation with native American religions and Jewish faith had the
Torquemada brothers subscribe to opposing views: Do non-Christian sacrifices
possess any salvific value? What is the basis for any critique of human sacrifice,
if not Christianity? Schenk discusses ancient Mayan sacrifices and René Girard.
He sees the relationship between biblical, more specifically Christocentric, and
nonbiblical sacrifices still in need of clarification. Further, for the dialogue intra

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muros Christianos one must discuss the Church herself as sacrament. Schenk
also explores a state of gracelessness and the doctrine of justification in the
context of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in Germany and warns against
“gloss[ing] over confessional differences” (394). He calls to mind Seripando’s
and Söhngen’s thoughts on the distinction between Law and Gospel and the
discussions surrounding the notion of the ecclesia ab Abel. Rhetorically he poses
the question: “Was Abel, this primordial figure of the church, something like a
Mayan?” (401), or were Old Covenant ceremonies never pleasing, as Fishacre
had argued? Augustine disagrees. The significance of the old rites lies in their
prefiguring and thus in their abolition by Christ (406). Schenk pleads refraining
from forced harmonizations in intra-Christian dialogue. “The death of Jesus on
the cross appeared as a critique of sacrifice and a sublimation of sacrifice
combined in one, a culmination and a cessation” (410).
Schenk does not shy away from contested issues, which he analyzes on
historical grounds, as well as the nuances and possible solutions medieval
thought may offer. He shows himself to be a scholar most familiar with the
Middle Ages, and therein again with the corpus Thomisticum. While some lines
of discussion certainly reflect the German context, this book reveals a cultured
mind constantly engaging towering figures of Christianity and presenting
academia with complex thoughts driving discussions to higher plateaux. It is
enriching to examine the long footnotes Schenk provides. It is interesting to
read Thomas and other great minds of the Christian tradition in general with
the background of the recent dramatic developments in the areas of the sciences
and technology and the attendant unification of humankind into one global
community. Alienated from natural revelation by such contraptions as the
smartphone, what are the means to reveal afresh to the human being his or her
God-given dignity and innate doxological purpose? This volume is a most
helpful thesaurus to respond to the spiritual needs of countless people. It
provides them with load-bearing orientation.
The book concludes with a rich bibliography and indices. Schenk is
consistently ecumenically sensitive and irenic. A philosophically trained
systematic theologian, he offers twelve precious vignettes allowing vistas into a
stable and coherent Catholic whole, namely, the Katholische Glaubenswelt
(Scheffczyk), while not simplifying issues. Schenk is an important transatlantic
bridge, sharing “the state of art” of Thomistic studies “on the continent.” The
footnotes are resplendent with little-known theological, philosophical, and
historical studies. This collection leads the reader to profound heights of
thought. This collection of Schenk’s essays, eminently erudite and cultured, is
most valuable for anyone teaching or studying fundamental theology.
EMERY DE GAÁL
University of Saint Mary of the Lake
Mundelein, Illinois

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Thomas d’Aquin, Dieu et la métaphysique. By THIERRY-DOMINIQUE
HUMBRECHT, O.P. Paris: Parole et Silence, 2021. Pp. 1432. € 45,00
(paper). ISBN: 978-2-88959-343-9.
In this massive work, Fr. Humbrecht seeks to articulate the structure of St.
Thomas’s metaphysical thought concerning God in a manner that is not only
historically sensitive but that allows St. Thomas’s reasoning to present itself on
its own terms. A brief review can only provide the reader with a summary
outline of the themes treated at length in this book. The volume is divided into
five major sections. The first and the fifth serve as synthetic bookends to the
central three, expository parts. For the sake of clarity, I will summarize the
themes of these expository sections in brief sequence below. Following that, I
will make some broader observations.
The first expository section is dedicated to the question concerning what is
often referred to as the two theologies (natural theology and sacred doctrine).
Humbrecht opens by considering various texts related to the distinction of and
relationship between metaphysics and sacred science, parsing the various
meanings and names attributed to metaphysics by St. Thomas, comparing him
with and contrasting him to his contemporaries and to later trends in
Scholasticism. This textual analysis enables the author to reiterate the wellknown position articulated by St. Thomas regarding God’s place solely as cause
of the subject of metaphysics, thereby belonging to metaphysics only in this
respect and not as falling directly under its primary subject (ens commune). This
entire section is animated by a salutary effort to refute the temptation to seek
out in St. Thomas a “natural theology” that would be separated from his
metaphysics, as well as from the data of faith itself. Of particular note is an
illuminating study concerning the theological nature of the Summa contra
gentiles. Near the end of this section, Humbrecht presents a rather surprising
(and perhaps somewhat questionable) analysis claiming that with the passage of
time the notion of subalternation decreased in importance for St. Thomas’s
conception of sacra doctrina. He also presents an interpretation of St. Thomas’s
oeuvre that draws attention to the decrease in importance played by the exitusreditus schema over St. Thomas’s career.
The second section takes up the question of being, esse, and above all how it
is said of God. Thus, Humbrecht is led to discuss the metaphysics of esse as act,
as well as the metaphysics of participation, variously discussing the Christian
context of St. Thomas’s metaphysics of esse. To the latter topic, he connects a
discussion of the relevant theme regarding analogy in its dual understanding as
being “horizontally” concerned with the various Aristotelian categories and
“vertically” with divine naming. Thus, he takes up the question concerning St.
Thomas’s reverential exegesis and integration of Aristotle’s account of the First
Cause in both the Physics and the Metaphysics; this section also contains
chapters devoted to the natural knowability, and, more importantly,
unknowability of God. Other important chapters in this section take up topics
concerning the relations of nature and grace, as well as faith and reason,

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providing textual support from Thomas for the hermeneutic that guides
Humbrecht’s overall project. (I will discuss this more below.) Of particular
merit in this section is his discussion of the preambles of faith.
The third section is devoted to St. Thomas’s understanding of the
dependence of all creatures upon God. Thus, the overall arc of this final
expository portion is oriented toward questions of creation and divine
providence and governance. It is here that Humbrecht takes up the twofold
composition of act and potency in finite, material beings, in particular to
consolidate what he already had emphasized concerning the preeminence of
esse as act. His brief account of the transcendentals provides some scaffolding
for this topic in relation to “vertical analogy” regarding God, though the matter
of this section leaves room for no small amount of further amplification. It is
here in particular that he provides an account of St. Thomas’s reasons for
reverentially rectifying Aristotle’s position concerning the First Cause’s efficient
causality of the world. The section closes with an account of providence and
divine omnipotence that emphasizes (perhaps too strongly in some ways,
though not without reason nor textual support) its supernatural character, even
in the order of knowledge, though reason retains a role in rendering account of
these topics. For readers interested in the topics of creation and providence in
particular, Humbrecht admirably structures his discussion around the lengthy
portions of Summa contra gentiles II and III devoted to these topics.
The methodology of the main chapters of the text contained in these three
expository sections is primarily textual-exegetical. In these chapters, the
author’s references to the broader academic literature, which is extensively
treated in his opening and closing chapters, becomes much more controlled as
he focuses on pivotal texts related to the particular work or theme under
consideration. This does not, of course, prevent him, in these expository
chapters, from engaging with the broader literature concerning debated points
of history and interpretation.
However, throughout these sections, he devotes a number of chapters to
thematic questions that require him to consider a kind of status quaestionis from
contemporary scholarly literature in each case. These “conceptual overview”
chapters present structural preparation for various themes that arise amid his
exegetical labors. Of particular note are the chapters devoted to analogy and
participation, the preambles of faith, the Gilsonian debate concerning “the
metaphysics of Exodus,” as well as two chapters devoted to a thorough
consideration of Gilson’s account (with important lines of consideration from
Fabro) concerning the metaphysics of actus essendi, and an important chapter
dedicated to the question of St. Thomas’s “reverential” reading of Aristotle as
regards the efficient causality of God in relation to the world. In all of these
conceptual chapters, along with the introductory and concluding sections,
Humbrecht, whose thought bears a marked Gilsonian stamp, richly and
critically engages with contemporary literature devoted to the interpretation of
St. Thomas, never showing himself wholly subservient to a particular outlook

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and always attempting (even if with some inevitable missteps) to allow St.
Thomas’s own writing to settle the matters at hand.
I wish, now, to offer a comment on the major substantive question that is in
the background of the entire work: what is the status of metaphysics, and
especially the metaphysical treatment of God, in St. Thomas’s own exercise of
philosophical and theological reflection? The hermeneutical method proposed
by Humbrecht deploys two different schemata for articulating the distinction
and coordination of reason and faith (always with an eye, specifically, to the
question concerning the nature of the metaphysical consideration of God). First,
one might broadly consider Thomist metaphysics within the framework of a
kind of modified “Chalcedonian schema” (103-7, 1311-19) providing the
general framework for two sciences that interpenetrate, without separation or
confusion, with faith maintaining its rule over the domain of reason.
However, as Humbrecht observes, this schema remains too general in its
explanatory value, requiring, secondly, further specifications concerning the
modalities under which metaphysics operates in the midst of this Chalcedonian
subordination, namely, by means of the critical integration of other
philosophers, by being constituted by sacra doctrina itself, and by way of
manifestation as theological reasoning utilizes reason and follows the latter’s
own requirements, though while still remaining under the sway of a broadly
theological task. The first modality (integration of others) would be that of, for
example, the various commentaries, which, although taken up by St. Thomas as
a task motivated by his theological labors, nonetheless were primarily concerned
with the articulation of the metaphysics found in the given author or text under
consideration. The second (constituted by theology) would be the method of
the Summa theologiae above all, though also that of many of the disputed
questions, the Compendium theologiae, the scriptural commentaries, parts of
the Summa contra gentiles, and so on. The third (manifestation within
theological labor) would be a mode of metaphysics found most forcefully in the
first three books of the Summa contra gentiles, which Humbrecht presents as
offering a theology-directed use of reason. He presents (with suitable
qualifications) illustrative examples of how various twentieth-century thinkers
emphasized particular modalities in their interpretation of St. Thomas’s
metaphysics as a whole: Louvain figures like Van Steenberghen and Wippel
giving preference to the first, at least tendentially; Gilson forcefully prioritizing
the second; Kretzmann somewhat transmuting the third into a case of the first;
various medievalists influenced by Vignaux placing the latter two under the
heading of the first.
Humbrecht attempts to approach the texts of St. Thomas from all three of
these angles, recognizing that each modality plays its role variously throughout
his works. This means that the interpreter of St. Thomas is faced with the
difficult task of reactualizing the content and spirit of the whole of his doctrine,
though in a form that would not be a free-floating and independent
reconstruction, reconstituted or reconstructed as a kind of separated doctrinal
synthesis. Metaphysics has a de iure autonomy from theology, though it was

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never constituted by St. Thomas in isolation from his theological tasks. And this
is even more true for “natural theology,” which never existed in isolated
separation either from metaphysics or, even more importantly for Humbrecht,
from sacra doctrina in St. Thomas’s own labors. In these assertions, one senses
a Gilsonian echo, though Humbrecht’s massive work is too variegated to be
reduced merely to that well-known theme of twentieth-century Thomism.
Ultimately, to the present reviewer’s eyes, though based upon multiple
methodological remarks throughout the work, Humbrecht’s thoroughgoing
concern is to remain as “Thomasian” as possible. This term, often used in
French works of the past several decades, signifies articulating St. Thomas’s own
thought, historically, in contrast to a detached, ahistorical “Thomist” doctrine,
in particular as problematized in the schemata of the later “Thomist school.”
Thus, the entire work aims to be historical-theological and historicalphilosophical, not lacking in speculative analysis but ultimately framed by the
desire to present the historical thought of St. Thomas, to reactualize it in the
telling. Amply articulated in the introductory and concluding sections, as well
as in the very methodology deployed in each section of the text, this animating
spirit clearly is summarized in the text’s own back-matter: “Il faut tout
reprendre, laisser parler les textes. Restituer, oui, reconstruire, non. Conditions
pour découvrir chez Thomas d’Aquin trois modalities de la métaphysique, autant
d’articulations différenciées entre raison et foi” (“Everything must be taken up
anew, allowing the texts to speak for themselves. To reconvey [the meaning],
yes; to reconstruct it [as though it existed in this form], no. These are the
conditions required for discovering in St. Thomas three modalities of
metaphysics as so many differentiated articulations of the relationship between
reason and faith”).
The weakness of this hermeneutic is that it risks a kind of historicism, for
one will feel a constant temptation to contrast negatively the historicalThomasian Thomas to the Thomist “non-Thomas,” opting for the former to the
exclusion of the latter, which is implicitly presented as being a kind of dead end.
Nonetheless, the great strength of this hermeneutic is that it enables the author
to attempt to render present anew the élan of St. Thomas’s own thought as it
unfolds in fieri rather than as a static and almost eternalized doctrine in facto
esse. It is not merely a question of historical sensitivity to the development of
his thought (which, however, is a concern throughout the work) but above all
an exercise of sensitivity to the very modality of St. Thomas’s thought as he
utilizes metaphysical reasoning in the midst of his theological labors. To this
end, Humbrecht’s study provides a model example for an always-necessary
corrective to a merely “Thomist-doctrinal” presentation of St. Thomas’s
thought, a synthesis that may cohere with St. Thomas’s objective positions but
that was never openly articulated in that particular synthetic form by the saint
himself.
For an American readership, the size of the book is a bit daunting. On the
whole, Humbrecht’s French should be accessible to a reader with a general
capacity for reading the tongue. This is particularly true for the sections

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throughout the text where the author is primarily concerned with providing an
exegesis of texts in St. Thomas. The reader who has a general knowledge of
Thomas’s thought will find such sections relatively easy to read without the
need of additional translation tools.
For all engaged in Thomist (or “Thomasian”) scholarship, the text is a
necessary addition to one’s library. It is arguable that no historically and
textually sensitive reading of St. Thomas’s metaphysics and philosophical
reflection on God should be undertaken without considering in detail
Humbrecht’s presentation. Even where one differs with him on this or that
point, he does yeoman’s work in rendering present anew the élan and content
of St. Thomas’s own thought.
MATTHEW K. MINERD
Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws. BY ANDRÉ LAKS. Princeton
University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 296 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-691-23313-0.
As André Laks notes in the first sentence of this book’s Introduction, his
interest in the Laws began some forty years ago. His bibliography lists fifteen of
his publications on this dialogue, beginning with Loi et persuasion: Sur la
structure de la pensée politique de Platon (typewritten thesis, Doctorat D´État,
1988). Since then, scholarly interest in this late (probably last) work of Plato
has grown enormously (as has attention to the Statesman, generally accepted as
a transitional work between the Republic and the Laws). Plato’s Second Republic
reflects Laks’s engagement with this literature as well as his careful analysis of
the central passages of the Laws. It will be indispensable to all students of Plato’s
political thought and of the history of political philosophy.
It is not comprehensive in scope (that would require a much longer tome),
but focuses on the themes of the Laws that are of greatest interest to many
students of political philosophy: the inevitable corruptibility of unchecked
power; the rule of law and the servitude it requires; the kind of mixed regime
prescribed by the Laws (from which our notion of “checks and balances”
emerges); the role played by persuasive legislative preambles in mitigating the
coercive nature of the law; and the sense in which the city proposed in the Laws
is nonideal and only second-best.
Laks acknowledges that “for all its importance in the emergence of
constitutionalism and republicanism” the Laws “accentuates rather than
alleviates the most unpleasant tendencies of the Republic.” “Everything yet
remains subordinate to the well-being of the political community. The control

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of artistic production is as absolute as ever; an unredeemable atheism . . . is
grounds for the death penalty. . . . If Socrates were to visit the city of the Laws
and there promote the principle of free discussion, he would be arrested,
expelled, and asked never to return” (7). Laks thus acknowledges the force of
Popper’s characterization of Plato as an enemy of “the open society.” But he
immediately adds: “On the other hand, the discussion of the political principles
that are put to work and articulated in Plato’s second constitution—expertise,
freedom, equality, friendship—can be detached up to a certain point from their
embodiment in particular norms and practices that can be legitimately criticized,
or for that matter defended, and evaluated in their own right” (7-8). I take Laks
to mean that the Laws has both repellent and appealing features, and we should
not let the former stop us from reflecting on the latter.
When the city constructed by the Laws is called second-best (by its principal
interlocutor, the Athenian stranger), this might be taken to mean that the ideal
polis depicted in the Republic remains best, in Plato’s mind. But Laks holds that
the relationship between the two dialogues is not quite so simple: “It is in the
Laws, not the Republic, that we find Plato’s picture of the really . . . best city”
(64). By this he means that in Plato’s mind the city of the Republic is not a real
possibility; it is only a “logical” possibility (45). There is, for Laks, no conflict
between the two works in this regard. In the Republic, as he reads it, we are told
that there is no contradiction in saying that someone has both absolute power
and philosophical wisdom. That claim is compatible with the statement of the
Athenian in the Laws that even if someone knows that the common good should
take precedence over his individual good, he will, given absolute political
power, eventually succumb to the forces of human nature and follow his
irrational passions rather than what reason and justice require (Laws 875c-d,
cited in Laks, 46).
There are two alternatives to this way of depicting the relationship between
the Republic and the Laws. (A) We might say that (1) in the Republic the ideal
city is not merely a logical possibility. For all we know, at some time or other,
an absolute ruler has existed or will exist who rules justly and wisely over the
whole course of his reign; at any rate, nothing in human nature prevents this.
But (2) in the Laws, Plato changed his mind, and came to see that absolute
power eventually corrupts even those who fully possess the virtues. (B) We
might accept the first part of (A) but not the second; even in the Laws, we might
say, Plato continues to believe that although absolute power normally tends,
over time, to erode a commitment to the common good, in ideal but achievable
conditions—conditions that need divine assistance for their realization—a
talented and properly educated human being will not become corrupt but will
in fact do a better job than any code of laws could.
Interpretation (B), it seems to me, is supported by the text: “if ever some
human being was born adequate in nature and by a divine dispensation were
able to obtain . . . the relevant knowledge and the power to endure, he would
not need any laws ruling him. For no law or order is stronger than knowledge
. . . but it should rule all things. But in fact it is so nowhere. . . . That is why one

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must choose what comes second: order and law” (Laws, 875c-d, trans. in Laks,
46-47).
Admittedly, it is difficult to decide between these three alternatives; this
review cannot pursue the issue further. But here is one point to keep in mind:
there is no reason to believe that Plato changed his mind, after writing the
Republic, about whether having a just soul is the greatest human good.
Accordingly, someone who combined absolute power with philosophical
wisdom would never see any reason to act unjustly. He would hold (with
Socrates in the Republic) that being just is both his greatest good and his greatest
pleasure; the just exercise of power would best serve not only others but also
himself. Since there is no evidence that Plato entertained second thoughts about
this, interpretation (B) above seems superior both to (A) and to the reading Laks
favors. The superiority of rule by philosophy to rule by law is upheld in the
Laws, and Plato thinks that rule by philosophy is a real (not just a logical)
possibility. At present, conditions for realizing such a regime do not exist. That,
as the Laws says, is why we must settle for the rule of law.
Laks describes the path from the Republic to the Laws thus: “The psychology
at work in the Laws . . . is not structurally different from that of the Republic,
but there is a change in the balance of power within the soul, and as well the
correlative inclusion of political power as a source of pleasure. Overall the
picture is much closer to that advocated by Thrasymachus in the first book of
the Republic than to Socrates’ paradigmatic countermodel in this dialogue:
human beings do crave, in the world as it is, for a power, which, when it is
excessive, and especially monarchic in the sense of undivided and unchecked,
necessarily leads to cognitive blindness and then to political disaster” (155).
But Plato could not have believed that “in the world as it is” all human beings
crave power. Socrates, he knew, did not. Further, when the philosophers
depicted in the Republic are ordered to return to the Cave and spend many years
governing the city, they would rather remain in the light of the Sun; they
consent to return because they recognize that justice demands it. The reluctance
of the philosophers to rule reflects Plato’s experience of the joys of the
philosophical life and his conviction that the thirst for power can dry up or at
least be greatly weakened.
Laks writes, immediately after the sentences quoted above: “Human reason
. . . cries out for reinforcement.” That of course is Plato’s doctrine, in the
Republic, in the Laws, and elsewhere. But he also believes that the spirited part
of the soul can become a powerful ally of reason, and that appetite can be
trained to cooperate with these other parts. Cultivating a just soul is not a
human impossibility. If Plato came to believe that human beings, once having
cultivated a just soul, will inevitably become unjust when given absolute power,
he would need to explain how this psychological transformation can occur in
someone who accepts the argument of the Republic that justice is the greatest
good. Nothing in his writings provides such an explanation.
We must be careful not to let what is now a widespread assumption—that
power eventually corrupts everyone—influence our way of reading him. Of

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course, Plato recognizes that the portrait of human nature painted by
Thrasymachus is an accurate depiction of the way many human beings feel and
behave. But even if that picture happened to be true of all human beings up to
the present (it is not—there have been good monarchs who did not become
tyrants), that would not show that in social conditions (not impossible to realize)
more favorable than those that presently obtain, a just ruler could arise whose
power would need no limitations.
I turn briefly now to several related themes of the Laws that interest Laks:
the value of the rule of law, the coercive nature of law, and the correlative need
for “preludes” to the laws.
The rule of law is a notion that features in one of the epigraphs Laks has
chosen for his book. It is a quotation from Rousseau’s Considerations on the
Government of Poland: “Putting the law over man is a problem in politics that
I liken to that of squaring the circle in geometry. Solve this problem
satisfactorily, and the government based on this solution will be good and free
from abuses. But until then, you may be sure that wherever you believe you
have made the law rule, it will be men who are ruling” (chap. 1, trans.
Gourevitch).
Rousseau’s point is that laws do not enforce themselves. They can be
neglected and flouted; those charged with interpreting them or enforcing them
can be corrupted. A population will be law-governed only if they are morally
educated to value the rule of law; and it is not easy for a sizable population to
be so educated. So, although giving unchecked power to one person or a small
group of rulers is risky, there is also a risk in republics that the rule of law will
become a sham as corruption becomes rampant and enforcement lax. There is
no way to achieve a just and benign political order in the absence of the right
kind of moral education of the citizenry. Plato’s scheme in the Republic requires
an extraordinary education of a few and a less rigorous training of many;
successful republics require a much wider diffusion of political and moral skills.
If little virtue can be expected of most people, both republics ruled by law and
philosophical monarchies are in trouble. Pessimists about human nature might
accuse the Laws of indulging in a dreamy utopianism little better than that of
the Republic. Squaring the circle is not possible (as we have learned since
Rousseau); nations (such pessimists say) are always dominated by self-seeking,
power-hungry partisans, never ruled by impartial law.
Finally, a brief remark on one of the most innovative features of the Laws:
it contains both an elaborate penal code and a proposal that legal commands be
preceded by “preambles” meant to persuade citizens to accept the underlying
rationale of the law’s commands. Laks takes Plato to be assuming that most
citizens of the second-best city of the Laws will not obey the law unless they
face the prospect of punishment for disobedience. This reading assigns the
preambles a rather minor role: “what preambles can at best achieve is to reduce
the constraint and increase the voluntariness with which the citizens will obey
a law” (109). Such citizens think that, on balance, they would fare best by
breaking the law—if only they could get away with it. In effect, Laks takes the

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preambles to provide citizens some reason, but not enough of a reason, to obey
the law. His reading of the Laws on punishment, like his reading of the dialogue
on absolute power, reflects his conviction that Plato has (I would say:
mysteriously) become more Thrasymachean and less Socratic.
So read, Plato misunderstands why legal systems, even the best, should
include the institution of punishment. A well-designed penal code gives citizens
confidence that compliance with the law will be widespread enough to achieve
the benefits of social cooperation. You will not be the only one who obeys the
law—many others will do so as well; by acting together, as legally required, we
will all be better off. The threat of punishment is a safeguard, providing an
additional inducement to cooperate with others, in case the preambles are less
effective than they can and ought to be. Since the Laws admits of this
interpretation, charity favors it.
RICHARD KRAUT
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois

Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) on God, Freedom, and Contingency: An Early
Modern Reformed Voice. By ANDREAS J. BECK. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
Pp. xvi + 616 (hard). ISBN: 978-90-04-50438-7.
This volume is a translation of a German-language monograph originally
published in 2007. In addition to the translation, this edition includes significant
revisions, especially in terms of the engagement with scholarship over the last
two decades on the relationship of early modern Reformed theology and
philosophy to medieval predecessors, as well as to contemporaries from other
confessional traditions.
Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) was a prominent, and perhaps the
preeminent, continental Reformed theologian at the transition from the eras of
early to high orthodoxy in the seventeenth century. Voetius was a pastor and
professor in the Netherlands, living and working mostly in and around Utrecht.
This study by Andreas J. Beck is the first book-length treatment of this
influential figure in English, and represents a major touchstone for future study
of Voetius himself as well as the history of Reformed orthodoxy and
Scholasticism.
Beck’s study serves as an introduction both to Voetius’s life and work in
general and to a specific and technical advancement in the scholarship
surrounding the doctrine of God and its significance for understandings of the
relationship between divine and creaturely causality. After a brief but significant
statement of methodology and approach, the study proceeds by surveying

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Voetius’s biography and works before moving on to explore his involvement in
various controversies—most notably the disputes over Cartesianism—and then
advancing through various theological loci of the doctrine of God: predicates
and attributes, divine knowledge, God’s will, his right and justice, divine power,
and the divine decree and human free choice. A synthetic and evaluative
summary concludes the volume.
Beck’s study is part of what is now a decades-long revisionist methodological
program—associated with the diverse contributions of scholars such as Heiko
Oberman, David C. Steinmetz, Richard Muller, and Willem van Asselt—
reassessing the relationship between the early Reformers and the medieval
period as well as their later heirs in the latter half of the sixteenth century,
through the seventeenth century, and into the age of Enlightenment. Older
scholarship tended sharply to delineate the reformers, particularly Luther and
Calvin, from both broader intellectual predecessors and later generations of
Protestant theologians. In this way the Reformation was often isolated and
treated as a kind of radical break with the surrounding intellectual trends.
More recently, however, a number of significant studies and research
programs have emphasized both the continuities and the discontinuities
between the medieval and Reformation eras, on the one hand, and between the
Reformation and post-Reformation periods, on the other. Such studies have
focused on particular doctrinal topics as well as methodological concerns and
intellectual influences. The uses of scriptural exegesis, the place of Scholastic
tools, and the topics of soteriology, theology proper, and ethics have all been
reconsidered in this more nuanced and contextually sensitive approach.
Beck’s work is a signal representative of the maturation and continued
development of such approaches. It seeks to place the work of Voetius within
the larger intellectual framework of his times, including not simply positive
influences of earlier Reformed figures like John Calvin, but also especially his
engagement with other figures, including Roman Catholic contemporaries like
Luis de Molina and Francisco Suárez as well as medieval thinkers, particularly
Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus.
One of the major research questions arising out of this revisionist and
corrective scholarship is the extent to which Protestant theologians were
influenced by medieval thinkers and schools, not only apologetically and
polemically but also positively and constructively. A dynamic dialogue has
emerged in the scholarship over the place of Thomism more generally and the
thought of Aquinas himself in relationship to Reformed orthodox theology in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A corollary of this has to do with the
same kind of question regarding the influence of Scotus as well as other
distinctive or characteristic medieval answers or approaches to particular
questions. While all sides generally agree that there are no representatives of a
purely Thomist or Scotist approach to theology writ large among the Protestant
Scholastics, there are disagreements over the relative dependence or reliance on
Aquinas or Scotus on particular issues or topics.

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Voetius is significant for this question in the scholarship because of his
stature in his own tradition, his erudition, and his influence on the course of
Reformed theology. He is in this sense an important representative figure of the
broader Reformed approaches to faith and reason, theology and philosophy,
and doctrinal formulation in the era of Reformed orthodoxy. If someone like
Voetius, whose confessional commitments and orthodox bona fides are
unquestioned, can be shown to have been influenced substantively by medieval
thinkers, then the validity of narratives that emphasize the radical discontinuity
between the Middle Ages and Reformed theology must at the very least be
reevaluated, if not discarded.
In Beck’s careful, detailed, and nuanced telling, we find in Voetius an
extremely learned, careful, and technically precise engagement with a host of
complex issues related to the doctrine of God and human causality. Voetius is
a scholar-theologian at the height of his powers in Beck’s analysis, and a leading
light of what might rightly be called the Reformed branch of the broader
movement of neo-Scholasticism.
In this way Reformed Scholasticism can be seen as an analogue to what has
been more broadly characterized as the Second Scholasticism of the early
modern period. Beck calls this “early modern or Baroque scholasticism,” and in
Voetius’s case this involves a significant element of his published work
appearing in the form of Scholastic disputations. These documents show a
remarkable facility and engagement with a variety of sources and authorities,
from the Church fathers and medieval doctors to Reformed and Lutheran
theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They also engage a wide
variety of questions and topics, including controversial movements and views,
including Socinianism, Arminianism, Cartesianism, and a variety of Roman
Catholic traditions. Beck’s exposition of Voetius’s disputes with Descartes as
well as with Cartesian elements within the Reformed camp is particularly
worthwhile.
Readers of this journal will be especially interested in how on Beck’s account
Voetius deploys various Thomistic and Scotistic tools and distinctions to
articulate his own characteristic doctrinal positions. On the nature of theology
as a theoretical or practical science, for example, Beck writes that Voetius’s
strong view that theology is a practical science that “aims at our union with and
enjoyment of God” establishes “a remarkable resemblance between the
understanding of Voetius and of Scotus, both of whom saw theology as a purely
practical science” (190-91). In at least a few cases, there appears to be some
development of Voetius’s own position, at least as Beck interprets the nuanced
inflections of the various points of doctrine. On the question of whether the
beatific vision is “an act of the intellect (as Aquinas holds), of the will (as Scotus
argued) or of both faculties,” Beck notes that “Voetius developed in his thinking
on this question as he himself reports on several occasions” (199). Initially
Voetius favored a Thomistic-intellectualist position, but later “clearly tends to
a more voluntarist, Scotist view” (199).

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Even as Voetius sides with Scotus against Aquinas on various specific points,
however, his entire theological enterprise is deeply shaped by Aquinas’s
thought. For instance, in the formal structure of his treatment of the doctrine
of God, Beck observes that subdivisions of topics in Voetius’s Syllabus
problematum theologicorum (1643) “betray a thematic orientation that follows
the structure of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae” (224). In some cases the
similarity is such that Voetius treats the same questions in the same order as
Aquinas does, albeit “without noting this correspondence” (227). On the
question of univocity, Beck once again interprets Voetius as aligned with Scotus
against Aquinas, and includes Voetius with other Reformed theologians “who
to some degree defend a nuanced, roughly Scotist form of univocity” (239). On
the characteristically Scotist formal distinction of being, however, Voetius sides
with the Thomists, albeit with the caveat that he is concerned to determine
“whether and how the position of the Scotists can be properly explained or at
the very least excused by applying certain terminological distinctions” (262). As
Beck writes, “With this statement, Voetius shows himself remarkably
sympathetic to the Scotist view” (ibid.).
One general way of describing Voetius’s relationship with Thomism and
Scotism is that he often (although not always) adopts a kind of Thomistic
framework or structure, which is then sometimes substantively elaborated in a
Scotistic fashion. For example, writes Beck, with respect to the distinction of
attributes, “Here we find Voetius adopting Thomist terminology, which he
nevertheless materially fills out in an alternative sense when he interprets God’s
essence and life as two distinct ‘moments’ in God according to our mode of
understanding. This represents a Scotist perspective, echoing the specifically
Scotist doctrine of distinct moments or stadia” (269).
Voetius’s willingness to appropriate dynamically traditional approaches to
questions, and synthesize them in characteristically distinct ways, demonstrates
both the breadth of his facility with a wide diversity of sources and a posture of
measured respectfulness for traditional authorities. In this way his attitude
toward the views of earlier Protestants are representative of a broader posture
towards older sources: “Although I will not censure Luther, Calvin, and other
doctors as their thankless students do, I am still not bound to embrace all they
ever said as the common teaching of our churches” (373).
Beck traces Voetius’s agile constructions and appropriation of Aquinas,
Scotus, and many others through specific doctrines concerning God’s
knowledge, will, right and justice, and power. Throughout these nuanced and
technical discussions, Beck is careful to articulate and explicate Voetius’s own
views, although he often emphasizes and highlights potential Scotistic accents.
Learned readers will have to determine for themselves the accuracy of such
characterizations, but even if one disagrees with some of Beck’s particular
conclusions, sympathetic readers will be struck by the carefulness of his
discussions, the clarity of his analysis, and the erudition of his study.
One final aspect of Beck’s study of Voetius is worth particular mention, as it
has to do with the cross-confessional nature of controversies over soteriology

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that were characteristic of not only the Protestant camps but also Roman
Catholic schools in the early modern period. The De auxiliis controversy has
analogues in the disputes among the Reformed about the validity of middle
knowledge and implications for soteriological teaching understood in a broadly
Augustinian framework. Voetius is writing in the aftermath of both the uneasy
conclusion of the controversy between Jesuits and Dominicans as well as the
determinations of the Synod of Dordt, which confessionally codified Reformed
teaching as opposed to the views of the Arminians and Remonstrants. His
engagement with the doctrine of middle knowledge shows that these disputes
were alive and vigorous well into the seventeenth century.
Beck’s study of Gisbert Voetius advances the scholarship not only of this
important and underappreciated Reformed theologian, but also the state of the
question on technical theological questions more broadly in the era of baroque
Scholasticism, particularly those related to methodology and the significance of
Scholastic disputations as primary sources, as well as explorations of creaturely
causality and freedom, divine foreknowledge and power, and the relationship
of God’s intellect and will. Beck’s work is indispensable for a better
understanding of the era of Reformed orthodoxy, its relationship to broader
Scholastic movements and contexts, and the role and significance of one of its
foremost representatives.
JORDAN J. BALLOR
Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research
Grand Rapids, Michigan