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266

In Memoriam: John Orme Mills OP

train to Oxford for a funeral, and the train stopped, as usual, a few hundred yards from the station. Patience was never John’s strongest suit, and so he stormed out of the train, proclaiming that he had a very important engagement and began walking up the track to the station. Then a workman ordered him to get into the driver’s cabin, in which he arrived rather sheepishly. He was almost prosecuted by the police but, the Daily Express reported, they forgave him, as everyone always did. The occasional dramas of John’s life brought anxiety and amusement to his brethren, but in the end he always laughed too, because John knew, deep down, that the only true drama is Christ’s victory in the Resurrection. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.’ John was an immensely compassionate person, deeply touched by other people’s sufferings and failures, full of mercy. He claimed to have learned this from his mother, who wept when she heard of the bombing of Nagasaki. John was compassionate, one might say, almost to the point of folly. If there was a beggar at the door, he would give away everything that he had, and even things that he didn’t have. Sometimes he had to be protected from exploitation by the merciless. Perhaps his happiest time was when he was a much loved Prior in Newcastle (1998–2001) in daily touch with the sufferings of the poor. Maybe even his folly was Christlike, the extravagant, holy folly of Christ who did not ‘not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but took the form of a servant.’ (Phil. 2.6) Once John had been bowled over by the true drama of every human life, Christ’s Easter victory, then of course he simply had to communicate it to others. And so it wasn’t surprising that he applied to join the Order of Preachers in 1970, aged forty. There was some hesitation in accepting him. Some people thought that he was too old to begin a completely new way of life. But John was always young of heart. He passionately wished to share the good news of Christ’s triumph by any means. He was the first person to be appointed the Order’s Promoter of the Means of Social Communication. In 1978, he moved to Rome and tried to help the Order preach through the new technologies. Typically, he did not even have his own private telephone, and we had several surreal conversations as he shouted down from a phone in a corridor of S Sabina, competing with other conversations on a shared line. He founded the Dominican Centre for the Media, and was president of Multimedia International. He was brought back to England in 1983 to edit New Blackfriars. He brought to it his passion for clarity. The Word of God must be communicated through precise, lively words. He was very demanding with his authors, over three hundred of them in his time as editor, vigorously pruning and rewriting their articles, which did not always C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

In Memoriam: John Orme Mills OP 267

please them. Typically, his final edition of NB in March 1991, was on the topic ‘How does God speak to us?’ This was his abiding concern, how does God speak to us now? How can we share God’s life giving word? Being John, his time as editor was not always free of excitement. When I was chair of the Board, he used to storm into my room almost every month and hurl down a letter of resignation, until I suggested the name of a possible successor. ‘Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.’ Through all John’s ups and downs, the joy always shone through in the end. The Resurrection is the victory of God’s joy. Maybe it was this joy that led him to love Meister Eckhart. Eckhart described God’s joy as being like the exuberance of a horse galloping around a field and kicking its heels for joy. John was named President of the Eckhart Society in 2000, and his last project was a book on his beloved master. God enjoys us, and in God’s grace we enjoy each other. John enjoyed his friends as we enjoyed him, which is why he had so many. I received an email last night from one of his close friends, our Dominican brother Christoph, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna. He wrote: ‘Yes, he was – and is and remains – a very good friend. At a certain time in my life he played an important role through the wise advice he gave me and through the support I received from him in difficult years. Now I hope he is helping from “the other side”, being at home with the Lord.’ Let us pray that John now be caught up fully into Christ’s victory over sin and death, and that he enters the joy of his God where we hope one day to join him. Timothy Radcliffe OP Blackfriars 64 St Giles Oxford OX1 3LY [email protected]

C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

Amidst Fractured Faith and the Fragility of Reason

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Benedict XVI’s controversial Regensburg Address, he expressed a similar hope in the need for ‘faith and reason coming together in a new way’.2 In fact, towards the end of his lecture, Benedict announces: ‘The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur – this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time’.3 I, too, seek the interweaving of faith and reason. However, leery of a position preoccupied with reason’s grandeur, I will examine and argue for the additional need to acknowledge a fractured faith and the fragility of reason. Here one balances a hermeneutic of suspicion with a profound moral conviction that faith and reason, while distinct as Gaudium et Spes notes,4 remain integral for the fullness of the other. If one hopes to speak of the grandeur of reason, one needs to point to the Divine that remains the ultimate quest and aim of one’s investigations and hopes. However, in light of mass atrocities and other human-devised horrors perpetrated in the name of reason or ‘God’, one must approach all theological and philosophical investigations with heightened humility and openness to the opposing views of the Other. Therefore, I will argue that the best way to engage ‘the whole breadth of reason’ is to remain in close, sympathetic dialogue with the challenges and evidence of what seems to gainsay reason’s grandeur without being mired by what Benedict rightfully rebukes as the ‘selfimposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable’.5 I will also seek to flesh out a ‘Biblical faith’, which will not be bereft of elements of rupture, doubt, and loss and contend why such a path is spiritually and theologically relevant and beneficial in our world today. A few questions will form the core of this essay: What is the relationship between admitting a fractured faith and recognising the fragility of reason? Why would such admissions ultimately strengthen one’s religious identity and provide fertile grounds for ecumenism and interfaith dialogue? As a Catholic theologian, why would I contend that such a stance is more in tune with both the spirit of the gospels and the most promising recent developments of Catholic social teaching? 2 Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,’ Lecture given at the Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006. http://www.vatican.va/holy father/benedict xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf benxvi spe 20060912 university-regensburg en.html. Accessed 10 June 2009. For Benedict’s clarification of the use of the quotation that stirred so much controversy, see his footnote number 3. 3 Ibid. 4 In Gaudium et Spes, we read: ‘This sacred Synod, therefore, recalling the teaching of the First Vatican Council, declares that there are ‘two orders of knowledge’ which are distinct, namely faith and reason’ [Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican II, (New York: Guild Press, 1966), p. 265 (59)]. 5 Ibid. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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Purging Religious Triumphalism after Auschwitz While one must be clear to distinguish between the Logos6 from which human reason aspires to and is inspired by, it is of the terrestrial, flawed, and fragile reason of humanity that is my focus. Ultimately, what is the value and meaning of a Christian asserting the ‘grandeur of reason’ in light of the horrors and miseries that plague our world? Do not such assertions ring hollow in the extant treatment and attitude of many Christians towards the non-Christian? In fact, such care to avoid grandstanding language is also to heed the voice of Jewish Holocaust theologians like Irving Greenberg who have warned Christians against a sense of triumphalism that is vacuous and insensitive after Auschwitz. In the context of a Christian supercessionism that falsely interprets the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and other calamitous events in Jewish history, Greenberg writes: In their triumphalism, Christians overlooked the extent to which theirs was a one-sided and partial reading of the biblical tradition in the light of their redemptive experience; they ignored the possibility that God had supplied the Jews with a different interpretive key. Instead, Christians concluded that Jews had to be superficially deaf and dumb or willfully devilish to resist Christian understandings. From this conclusion, it was not a big jump to medieval Christianity’s demonizing and dehumanization of the Jews, and from there, to the Holocaust.7

As Greenberg states above, Christians concluded – based on their apparently logical interpretation of events – that Jewish life and existence after Christ could have no viable meaning. More dangerously, they cited God’s hand in events of destruction, misery, and catastrophic suffering. Through misreading the signs of the times, many Christians produce(d) a haughty, closed, and falsely-triumphant faith.

Reading the Signs of Loss, Silence, and Mass Atrocity Only the Father knows ‘about the day or hour’ (Mk 13:32). Other things, too, the Father no doubt knows – which we do not. In The Catechism of the Catholic Church, we read that: ‘Faith is certain. It is 6 In the Regensburg Address, Benedict seeks to recover a ‘rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry’ through his discussion of the Logos, which, as God, means ‘both reason and word – a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason.’ 7 Irving Greenberg, ‘Covenants of Redemption’ in For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2004), p. 224. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. . .’ Quoting John Henry Newman a few lines below, the Catechism adds: ‘Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt’.8 Perhaps. In the chilling work Machete Season, we read how one Hutu of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 describes how Hutus and Tutsis participated together in choir rehearsal at Church on the Saturday before the genocide began, and after Sunday mass (which only Hutus attended because Tutsis were hiding by then), the Hutus ‘left the Lord and our prayers inside to rush home. We changed from our Sunday best into our workday clothes, we grabbed clubs and machetes, we went straight off to killing’.9 In our world today, if one does not doubt; if one does not struggle with the possibility of despair; one’s faith – as a number of Jewish thinkers have reminded us – may dangerously be removed from the lived experiences of so many. Vatican II called for a greater immersion between Church and society, in the concrete realities of this world. As Christine Firer Hinze writes: ‘Gaudium et Spes addressed the peoples of the modern world as a compassionate companion, eager to dialogue and to humbly share the wisdom about life’s meaning afforded by the gift of faith’.10 In writing of the process of maintaining one’s faith amidst a postAuschwitz world, Irving Greenberg writes: ‘if faith be wounded in the process, let it be recognized that after the Holocaust no faith is so whole as a broken faith’.11 I thus echo the language of Greenberg’s ‘wounded faith’ or Wiesel’s ‘broken faith’.12 Such a faith does not mean – how could it? – that this world is only condemned with genocides, mass starvation, catastrophic earthquakes, and cruel, enervating diseases. If such were the case, what precisely does one have faith in or for? In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict gives the title ‘Faith is Hope’ to the first section of the main body of the encyclical, and points out how faith and hope seem ‘interchangeable’ in many

8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, ‘Faith and Understanding,’ (New York: Doubleday, 1995), p. 48 (157). 9 Adalbert, interviewed by Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York: Picador, 2006), p. 140. 10 Christine Firer Hinze, ‘Straining Toward Solidarity in a Suffering World: Gaudium et Spes ‘After Forty Years’’, in William Madges, ed., Vatican II Forty Years Later, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006), pp. 166–7. 11 Irving Greenberg, as quoted in Alice and Roy Eckhardt, Long Day’s Journey Into Night: A Revised Retrospective on the Holocaust (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1988), p. 11. 12 ‘Yes, my faith was wounded and still is today,’ Eli Wiesel writes, ‘but it is because I still believe in God that I argue with him’ [Elie Wiesel, And the Sea is Never Full. Memoirs 1969 – trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), p. 70]. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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biblical passages.13 Such hope, according to Benedict, is borne by a faith in the risen Jesus that ‘offers’ us redemption.14 And yet, faith and hope must also be clarified. On one end of the spectrum, recall Dostoevsky’s comment in The House of the Dead: ‘No man can live without some goal to aspire towards. If he loses his goal, his hope, the resultant anguish will frequently turn him into a monster’.15 We also, however, are painfully cognisant of how hope and faith are often manipulated by others to prevent necessary action in the present. One chilling example is a quotation from Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen: ‘We were never taught how to give up hope, and this is why today we perish in gas chambers’.16 Any discussion of faith and hope needs to address both these polar positions but must not allow the manipulation of faith and hope in some instances to annul their necessity and value. Therefore, while the temptation to despair must (always?) be overcome and false hopes identified, one dreams and hopes and endures because of the flashes and lasting encounters of the beauty and goodness of this world; a beauty that can overwhelm as much as the ugliness; a beauty for which words are often lacking, enveloped in the sublime as much as in banal act of kindness. I, therefore, write of a fractured faith because of two opposing realities.17 The first is the certitude of my faith in a loving and merciful God who asks each one of us: ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ (John 6:67) and ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ (Mk 10:51). At the heart of both Gospel quotations are the responsibilities we have to establish the reign of God on earth, even amidst doubt, failure, and uncertainty. In the first quotation, Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse is rejected or not understood by the majority. For a moment, Jesus seems alone, floundering in irrelevance. Like Jesus’ birth in a manger, the scene is haunting if one reflects on the notion of a vulnerable God. And yet, it is a vulnerability that calls for a response, and asks if we, too, will not go away. The second quote reveals the importance of our need for God. Here the blind beggar Bartimaeus asks Jesus for sight (and mercy). Once Bartimaeus can see, he immediately follows Jesus, giving us a hint, as Ched Myers argues, that more than 13 Pope Benedict, Spe Salvi, Para. 2. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/ encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html. Accessed 10 June 2009. 14 Ibid., Par. 1. 15 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead, trans. David McDuff (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 305. 16 Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. Barbara Vedder (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 122. 17 For my analysis of the need for a fractured faith in the context of theodicy, see my ‘Testimonies of Mass Atrocity and the Search for a Viable Theodicy’, Bulletin ET, 18 (2007), pp. 88–99. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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physical sight is sought.18 Most importantly, we need to know what to ask for – another aspect of our human responsibility to discern what is essential despite conflicting and competing interests. In both passages, Christ – as victim and liberator – is the conduit through which answers are given. The second reality is the crushing fact that Christians, in the name of Christianity, have abused so many souls and bodies. How, and whether, these two realities (the problem of theodicy) can be resolved is a cross my faith continues to endure. Thus, my theology springs ultimately from the cry of the cross – but a cry that reverberates in an empty tomb with its stone rolled away. Whether my ‘fractured’ faith is substantially different from the ‘wounded’ or ‘broken’ faiths of a Wiesel and Greenberg, therefore, remains an open question. Recall how Thomas will not believe in the risen Christ unless he ‘see[s] the mark of the nails in his hands, and put[s his] finger in the mark of the nails and [his] hand in [Jesus’] side’ (John 20:25). While the disciples at Emmaus recognise Jesus in the breaking of the bread (Lk 24:30), Thomas recognises Jesus through his wounds. Thus, scars and wounds remain visible, even after healing, even amidst or after resurrection. Reflecting on this passage, we can get a further image of the possibility for a living, dynamic faith that remains fractured. Bartimaeus’ faith, indeed, healed him. He could see. But a faith no longer in need of healing is a faith either supernatural or unknowingly blind.

Instilling (if not Finding) Doubt and Faith in Catholic Social Teaching In the next two sections I want to situate myself within Catholic social teaching and within the biblical tradition. I will then seek to examine how and why the two criteria below (in light of the two realities discussed above) are essential in order to develop a meaningful relationship of faith and reason, and thus, a dynamic, integral Christianity. Obviously such a task requires systematic and comprehensive treatment, so it can only be sketched in here. The first criterion is the following: Christian theology is called to a sustained turning to the words and silences of the marginalised and victimised. The second criterion is that this turning must be accompanied by a Biblical and Christian tradition that is challenged and cleansed through dialogue and partnership in solidarity with the non-Christian Other19 . 18 Ched Myers, Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), p. 134. See also his Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992). 19 See also my ‘Healing the Distorted Face: Doctrinal Reinterpretation(s) and the Christian Response to the Other’, One in Christ, 42 (2008), pp. 302–317. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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Because the notion of the fragility of reason and a fractured faith may seem ‘new’ or antithetical to Catholic tradition, I want, albeit briefly, to locate my position as a post-Auschwitz and post-Vatican II Catholic. Writing of the neoscholastic approach towards faith and reason in pre-Vatican II encyclicals, David Hollenbach notes that for Johann Baptist Metz: ‘modern Catholic social teaching before the Council did not seek to mediate between faith and society but rather to defend the Christian tradition against the corrosive currents of modernity. . . Faith and reason were not seen envisioned as interacting or transforming each other. In the same way, Church and society were not seen as in dialogue to the mutual benefit of both’.20 Amidst our mutiglobalised and multipluralised world, where faiths and reasons and views of God or the Absolute coalesce and collide, there may be elements of our faith that cling to the rock of certainty. But even this certainty will need to be nuanced and developed further below in light of the criteria above. To return to the context of Vatican II for the moment though, David Hollenbach incorporates the term ‘dialogic universalism’ to describe the Council’s approach in Gaudium et Spes in situating itself amidst the tension of universality and particularity. Commenting upon the interaction of rational discourse and the concrete and specific milieus of the one(s) engaging in that discourse, Hollenbach writes: ‘This dependence of rational inquiry upon tradition is evident not only in ethics and theology but in other domains as well. At the same time, a dialogically universalist orientation is fully committed to respect for the dignity of those outside the communal tradition of the inquirer, in this case, those who are not Christian’.21 Reason, thus, remains both muddled and energised by the cultures that help to condition it. Then, though often grudgingly at first (and sometimes after the expenditure of much pride and claimed superiority), one’s rational discourse is encouraged to listen to and observe (and begin to absorb) the insights, challenges, and questions of the Other. In the midst of encountering a non-Christian’s joys and sorrows and his or her human and divinely-inspired words and deeds, the certainty of one’s faith, rightfully pauses and hesitates. The fragility of our humanity, and hence of reason, confronts us. Consider two distinct, but pertinent, examples: in the first instance – and despite some theologically challenging notions – how can we not react accept with appreciation when the Sufi Rumi sings: ‘Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God, / God is in the look of your eyes, / in the thought of looking, nearer to you than yourself, / or 20

David Hollenbach, ‘Commentary on Gaudium et spes’ in Kenneth R. Himes, ed., Modern Catholic Social Teaching: Commentaries and Interpretations (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 2005), p. 276. 21 Ibid., 278. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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things that have happened to you / There’s no need to go outside. / Be melting snow. / Wash yourself of yourself’?22 In the second instance, silence seems to be the Christian’s best and most compassionate response when hearing the Tibetan nun Beri Laga say that she survived her torture and captivity at the hands of the Communist Chinese because of her Buddhist faith: ‘I had prayed night and day to the Three Jewels to come through the ordeal; and my faith kept me going’.23 What Hollenbach refers to as ‘Dialogic Universalism’ may be the best way to make the Church and Catholic social teaching relevant in light of such voices – even as one seems faced with a sense of vulnerability, ambivalence, and appealing, but opposing, truth claims. It is for this reason that Catholic theologians, in particular, must try to retrieve or further analyse the roles that theological doubt, protest, and licit (as well as ‘illicit’) theological dissent24 have played in the history of the Church, in the development of Church doctrine, and in the Christian interaction – and judgement upon – the Other.

The Bible and a Stuttering Faith Despite containing stories of loss, failure, and turning away from God, the Bible, ultimately, resonates with hope and God’s aim to heal and embrace humanity in God’s perfect, encompassing love. Such an eschatological and soteriological frame thus encapsulates and influences how one reads the scenes of loss and failing. And yet, because of my demand that we remember the stories and victims of loss and atrocity in this world, one could say that my Biblical position situates itself particularly in solidarity with the cantus firmus of the cross; amidst the cries of the women of Jerusalem who were said to ‘eat their children’ according to Lamentations; and by the side of the unnamed Syrophoenician woman who was chased away by the disciples, and initially turned aside by Jesus in her quest for her daughter to be healed. Theologically, of course, we refer to such a stance as the preferential option for the poor, especially as Jon Sobrino continually defends it25 , though I would also add some of Stephen Pope’s 22 Rumi, ‘Be Melting Snow,’ The Essential Rumi. trans. Coleman Barks (New York: Quality Paperback Club, 1998), p. 13. 23 Quoted in Mary Craig, Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 206. 24 See, for example, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, ‘Norms of Illicit Dissent,’ in Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J., eds., Dissent in the Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 127–8. 25 Jon Sobrino, ‘Depth and Urgency of the Option for the Poor’ in No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic–Utopian Essays, trans. Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008), p. 26. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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clarifications.26 Regardless, when present amidst mass atrocity and at the sight of such rejection and suffering, words tend to falter and felicitous phrases become fragile and brittle. As Levinas writes: ‘The language of the Old Testament is so suspicious of the rhetoric which does not stutter that its chief prophet was ‘slow of speech and tongue.’ There is undoubtedly more to this than just the avowal of being limited in this defect: there is the awareness of a kergyma which does not forget the weight of the world, the inertia of men, and the deafness of understandings’.27 In this interweaving of faith and reason, we can perhaps refer to the stuttering certitude of faith, or as noted above, a fractured faith because one acknowledges that all theology should be said in fear and trembling. Such a position is exemplified in an example from the provocative tradition of piyyutim in the Jewish liturgy. Such are hymns or poetic embellishments spoken or sung before or after a standard liturgical piece of liturgical praise. In one example Anson Laytner writes that: Sandwiched between two pious assertions lies Issac bar Shalam’s bitter protest. ‘There is no God besides You,’ says the liturgy. – ‘There is none like You among the dumb,’ says Issac bar Shalam . . . . . In the prayer book, protest came to co-exist with faith: the celebration of the redemptive past became coeval with the lamentation of the unredeemed present.28

As Laytner argues, a theological position that does not address or remain in constant tension with these poles – expressing to God their ‘doubt and anger as well as their praise and thanksgiving’29 – contributes to the perceived conflict of faith and reason. A faith that acknowledges these tensions strengthens the reason it informs. And yet, do not the Gospels laud a faith that will move mountains and walk on water? It is the individual’s faith that is a key catalyst in his or her being healed by Christ. How then can I contend that a fractured faith is better aligned with the Christian ethos? Exemplary faith never remains free of some doubt, as embodied by the tax collector whom Jesus praises at the expense of certain 26 While ultimately supporting the value and beliefs inherent in the preferential option for the poor, Stephen Pope shows how there may be multiple ‘privileged locations’ where aspects of God’s goodness, mercy, and justice can be acknowledged and experienced. Poverty, or another form of marginalisation, is not the only privileged location. He gives as examples ‘the obstetrician who experiences each new birth as a precious gift from God, or an astrophysicist’s (or microbiologist’s) appreciation of the majesty of creation’ [Stephen Pope, ‘Proper and Improper Partiality and the Preferential Option for the Poor’, Theological Studies 54 (1993), p. 250]. 27 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Revelation in the Jewish Tradition’ in Beyond the Verse, trans. Gary D. Mole (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 134. 28 Ibid., 138–9. 29 Anson Laytner, Arguing With God: A Jewish Tradition (Northvale: Jason Aronson Inc., 1990), p. 238. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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scribes and Pharisees. We may also think of Jesus’ agony in the garden (Mk 14:33–6) or Mother Teresa’s private spiritual struggles30 – and all of our dark nights of the soul. Such a faith is humble and other-focused. Most doubt is in regards to oneself; not Christ. This doubt and humility are essential aspects of approaching and living out the certitudes of one’s faith in openness and meekness. It must, however, be asked: Is not a Christian’s faith whole because of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, so that it is inappropriate to speak of a fractured faith within Christian teaching? As Benedict writes in Spe Salvi: ‘Redemption is offered to is in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present’.31 While Christians claim that the hope for healing has been revealed in an intimate and particular way through Jesus, is it more theologically rich and spiritually honest – in light of the ongoing horrors of our world – to speak of the hope for healing but to highlight how we remain in a world that is essentially unredeemed? As Didier Pollefeyt writes: ‘Christians need to learn to live with the Jewish belief in the ‘No’ to Jesus for the sake of their own Christology. The way Jesus will come as the Christ and the Redeemer of the World will depend on the way Christians represent him in the present’.32 Following Christ should make us attune to the sick who need to be comforted and the lost who need to be found. It is the love of Christ that leads one to reconsider the notion that Christ has already healed us in this life so that we need not doubt or gripe any longer. Christ’s call to heal the Other necessarily calls us to listen to the Other and witness how healing and liberation remain flawed or illusive for so many. The reign of God may be among us, but so, too, are the silent and desperate cries of the marginalised. Such awareness tempers any triumphalist religious language.

The Presence of the Suffering Victim After much refining, theological and philosophical formulations must always be re-addressed in the presence of the suffering victim. While this is not the occasion to critique Greenberg’s well-known working principle regarding theological statements amidst the burning children33 , it is crucially within this context that one must reflect upon 30

Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light: The Revealing Private Writings of the Noble Prize Winner, ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 223. 31 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, Para. 1. 32 Didier Pollefeyt, ‘Christology After Auschwitz: A Catholic Perspective’ in Jesus Then & Now: Images of Jesus in History and Christology, eds. Marvin Meyer and Charles Hughes (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2001), p. 246. 33 See, for example, Steven T. Katz, ‘The Issue of Confirmation and Disconfirmation in Jewish Thought After the Shoah’, in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Impact of the Holocaust on Jewish Theology (New York: New York University Press 2005), pp. 51–2. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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the relationship and role of faith and reason.34 It is the encounter with absence, void, loss, and horror that undermines and pummels any sustainable notion of the grandeur of reason. While exceptions – stories of healings and miracles – can and need to be proclaimed, theologians must continually refer to those forgotten, the anonymous poor as Sobrino again reminds us of.35 Yes, Jesus finally healed the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, but other children that day – and many days since – were not so fortunate. As should be evident by now, any discussion of faith and reason must enter the perilous world of theodicy and anthropodicy and must sit with the women and the babies from the Book of Lamentations and with voices like Joseph Bau, who in his holocaust testimony, Dear God, Have you ever Gone Hungry?, writes how [Camp Kommandant Amon Goeth] caught a boy who was suffering from diarrhea and was unable to contain himself. He forced the boy to eat all of the excrement before killing him’.36 Bau does not know the boy so he is unnamed. We know such stories, ironically, are as numerous as the stars in the sky and sands of the seashore. They speak of a different type of covenant, among or between people or forces that constantly seek to belittle and wear down the ‘certitude’ of our faith. Testimonies that witness these ruptures within history challenge and undermine many of the fundamentals of a Christian’s faith, like the power of prayer, the sense of God’s active presence within our world, or the belief in Christ’s solidarity with victims of oppression – elements that should be certitudes. However, ironically and perhaps tragically, our deep and sensitive listening to the Other calls us to challenge that certitude in the name of that same faith. This is especially the case if one’s theological or ethical framework has been complicit or silent in the face of mass suffering and atrocity. A Christian who reads memoirs from the Holocaust, Argentinean Dirty War, Balkan wars, or Rwandan genocide37 to name but four historical ruptures – will be constantly reminded of the institutional and individual failures of Christians. As a Catholic Christian, I remain dumbfounded and shamed at how we have treated those with differing views, almost as much as I rejoice and hope in the peace 34

Referring to one of the points of the Pope’s address at Regensburg, I must say I consider the perceived relationship of theology in the academy of minor importance. In some ways, a humbled theology may become an ever-greater spiritually and rationally rich one. While issues of funding and grants (and so the retaining of theological jobs), matter to the majority of us, I want to speak of a faith and reason where it ultimately matters: in the presence of the suffering Other. 35 Jon Sobrino, ‘Depth and Urgency of the Option for the Poor’, p. 26. 36 Joseph Bau, Dear God, Have You Ever Gone Hungry?, trans. Shlomo Yurman (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1998), p. 115. 37 See, for example, the essays in Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, and Wendy Whitworth, eds., Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2004). C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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and joy we, through the workings of the Spirit, have brought, and will bring, to the world. Such a focus, which also seeks to unearth many overlooked or unknown tales of goodness and hope, will still likely lead to a merciless onslaught of doubt and silence. Writing of the massacres committed by Christian colonisers in the New World, Bartolomé de las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies cries out: ‘There is no way the written word can convey the full horror of the atrocities committed throughout the region; nor, even if it were to, would the reader credit the excesses that such an account would reveal’.38 While it may be easy (and convenient) for those of us who are Christian today to separate ourselves from the cruelty other Christians have unleashed – and are unleashing on others – we must ask ourselves: Are there fundamentals of our faith from Sacred Scripture, Church Pronouncements (or silences), and the writings of some key theologians that have contributed to dehumanising and unjust portrayals of non-Christians? Have such fundamentals implied or fostered the license to mock or destroy a non-Christian’s honour, life, and values? The belief of supersessionism, mined by many Christians from biblical and theological texts, would be one example.39 Because of a Christian’s love and zeal for a faith that nurtures and gives life; because of the outrage one feels at a faith that has been manipulated; because of the acceptance, if not kernel of doubt, that one’s faith has contributed to (or failed as an adequate response toward) these atrocities; we are called to a greater examination of our beliefs and practices. We must turn to the Other to listen to her experiences and interpretations of our doctrines and praxis. We must be open to conversion – not to another faith (though this may be valid for some), but to the conversion of our interpretation and practice of that religion. Note, too, that this is not a once-off act, but is part of our continual need for purification. As John Paul II writes in regards to the Catholic Church in Ut Unum Sint: ‘Because she feels herself constantly called to be renewed in the spirit of the Gospel, she does not cease to do penance’.40

38 Bartolomé de las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, trans. Nigel Griffin (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 73. 39 As Didier Pollefeyt writes: ‘A consequence of this theology of substitution is a moralistic, apologetic, and intolerant Christian attitude toward the Jewish people. . .’ [‘Christology after Auschwitz: A Catholic Perspective,’, 230]. See also Erich Zenger, ‘The Covenant that was Never Revoked: The Foundations of a Christian Theology of Judaism,’ in Philip A. Cunningham, Norbert J. Hofman, and Joseph Sievers, eds., The Catholic Church and the Jewish People, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), pp. 92– 112. 40 Pope John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, Para. 3. http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0221/ _INDEX.HTM. Accessed 10 June 2009. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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Spiritual Kenosis and Our Response to the Other In the Regensburg Address, Benedict XVI’s called for a rehellenisation of faith and reason. In speaking of a rehellenisation, I cannot help wonder why in this address there is not a concomitant (and ultimately more spiritually and theologically purifying) urging for Christians to immerse themselves in a deeper knowledge of Judaism; and, in our present, globalised Church, to sit at the feet of the churches of Latin America, Asia, and Africa.41 Thus, the calling for a rehellenisation that does not account for why theological positions of complicity or silence in the past have contributed to injustice is futile. The so-called postmodern challenge of universal truth, identity, and ethics should be both critiqued and embraced – critiqued because they may seem erroneously to attack crucial components of one’s Christian identity – and embraced because they can serve as purifiers in better embodying that identity. A Christian should welcome the questioning of any truth claims and listen to arguments that encompass – or flirt with – a radical relativism. Why? Because one’s faith, in an act of spiritual kenosis, may even have to empty of itself its professed love and passion for God. Many of us have wounded or killed precisely in a supposed zeal for God. As Levinas writes: ‘Loving the Torah even more than God means precisely having access to a personal God against whom one may rebel – that is to say, for Whom one may die’.42 It is in the name of our love for the Other and our response to the Other, which for Levinas is characterised by a movement unto God – a` -Dieu ’– that may lead us to this spiritual and theological rebellion against God but in the name of our love of God. In reflecting on how a false zeal for God has often led to ungodly acts, one does not have to think of the burning of heretics or the Crusades. Our everyday words and actions of religious pride and hypocrisy often hurt the ones we most love. This emptying, then, is to ensure, precisely, that in one’s defense and search for Truth, one’s commitment to God is manifest in our responsibility and interaction with the Other. It is an emptying that never loses sight of one’s responsibility for the Other. In the context of kenosis and the cross, we must not only highlight how Jesus was made vulnerable and susceptible to the abuse of others, 41 Referring to the rich and deep history of Christianity outside of Europe, Philip Jenkins observes: ‘Yet an awareness of the Christian past reminds us that through much of history, leading churches have framed the message in the context of non-Greek and non-European intellectual traditions. . .’ [The Lost History of Christianity: The ThousandYear Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How it Died (Oxford: Lion Book, 2008), p. 39]. 42 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Loving the Torah More than God,’ in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Seán Hand (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 145. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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but need to show how his emptying reveals a calling to follow his redemptive example – even if such a choice leads to the cross. In the essay ‘Judaism and Kenosis’, Levinas writes that ‘kenosis also has its full meaning in the sensibility of Judaism’.43 Referring to a God who is the protector of widows and orphans, he writes: ‘Most remarkably, here, that humility means mainly the proximity of God to human suffering’.44 Such, of course, has its resonance with the preferential option for the poor referred to above. However, in the essay ‘Judaism and Christianity’, which transcribes Levinas’ discussion with Bishop Klaus Hemmerle, Levinas has less laudatory remarks about Jesus’ kenotic emptiness on the cross. In the discussion, Bishop Hemmerle explains that all that God asks from us is to love and follow him. Referring to the defenselessness of Jesus in the face of evil and suffering, Hemmerle speaks of the ‘no defense of Jesus, which he took upon himself, so that in the innermost depths of his mission he could encounter me without defense’.45 Free from the acts of injustice and atrocity that characterise his oppressors, Jesus’ non-violent path towards God seems to lead us to the higher and more valuable way. And yet, in the context of the Shoah, Levinas responds: ‘. . .[K]enosis of powerlessness costs man too much! Christ without defense on the cross eventually found himself leading the armies of the Crusades! And he did not come down from the cross to stop the murderers’.46 Ironically, Christ’s powerlessness meant the cross – and the life of Christ – could be abused and manipulated to commit and even inspire acts of horror and misery. Where is the God of justice? Levinas seems to be asking. More provocatively, he seems to be questioning the moral and spiritual value of Christ as a fellow sufferer with humanity. In the context of theodicy, and the fear that God remains unjustly and immorally detached from the extreme horrors of this world, Jesus’ murder and rejection testify to a God who so loved the world to make himself vulnerable and susceptible to the misplaced and unjust actions of others. Because of a commitment to continue to reveal the most meaningful path for humanity, God would not be silent or impotent when confronting such horrors. Jesus’ life testifies that to God, humanity is worth any sacrifice and suffering. And yet, doubts and theological gaps proliferate. While Levinas’ challenge (echoing one of the criminals who was crucified with Jesus [Lk 23:32]) is acute, Christians often counter that justice will be served in a postmortem setting. In fact, it is because of my commitment to remember the many victims of mass atrocity 43 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Judaism and Kenosis’ in In the Time of Nations, trans. Michael B. Smith (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 101. 44 Ibid., 102. 45 Quoted in Levinas, ‘Judaism and Christianity,’ p. 148. 46 Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Judaism and Christianity,’ p. 150. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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and injustice that I refute those who make universal salvation a necessary end to establish an omnibenevolent God.47 On the contrary, while we must always stress the humanity of every individual (even those who have committed the grossest of crimes against life), we must remember that for Christians, every one will be judged and the memory and suffering of so many will never be forgotten. As Jürgen Moltmann writes (in response to Masao Abe’s karmic interpretation of Auschwitz), ‘. . .I must see [the events of Auschwitz] from the point of view of God’s justice. Then, on the one hand, I see a burden of guilt which cannot be carried; and on the other hand, I see the God who will not allow the murderers to triumph over their victims’.48 For Christians, then, judgement will come; but Levinas’ questioning of the kenosis of Christ also makes us wonder: in the light of the Shoah, will such justice come too late? In short, all of us are only replete with questions when we contemplate the complex interactions of human choices, acts, responsibility, free will, external and internal restrictions to that responsibility and free will, and the role of justice and a post-mortem existence. Will all the victims be healed? Will this healing ‘justify’ the horrific ordeals many were forced to endure in this life? Will it ‘justify’ the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Shoah? One certainly hopes and prays that healing can be possible for even the worst of those who were left broken and dehumanised in this world. While answers remain fractured, on Cavalry Jesus has shown a non-violent path as a way to face and ultimately defeat evil and injustice. The Shoah has rightly made Levinas skeptical of the value of such a path, and all Christians must reexamine such a profoundly disturbing but viable interpretation. Such acts of spiritual kenosis noted above are no doubt dangerous and risky. And yet, if we believe the Spirit is leading us closer to living a life that mirrors the Love of God; we must be open to such challenges. We must remain humbled by a faith and reason that are best described as much by their grandeur as their fragility.

Conclusion: Healing and Wholeness Amidst Fragility A fractured faith seeks healing. It is a journey and a process with the Spirit for wholeness, forever an illusive goal in this world. It is illusive because in the name of one’s faith there is a vocation 47 See, in particular the three essays of Thomas Talbott in Robin A. Parry and Christopher H. Partridge, eds., Universal Salvation: The Current Debate (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003), pp. 1–52. 48 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘God is Unselfish Love’ in John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1990), p. 123. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


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to reach out, heal, and remember the victims of this world. Amidst the horror and silence of so many marginalised and victimised, it is our fragility, temporality, and failures that overshadow any hope in the grandeur of reason. We, perhaps, can still sing of a ‘world charged with the grandeur of God’49 as Hopkins did, but be wary of transferring that notion too facilely to humanity. Recall the quotation from John Paul II which opened this essay: ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth’.50 It is a beautiful image, especially as he adds how ‘God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves’. Does speaking of the grandeur of reason sully such an image, perhaps making one think of Icarus in his hubris? Reason remains a gift from God and is inextricably tied to our search with and for God (the Logos). Like Benedict and John Paul II, I also support the notion that all of us are called by God in a search for Truth, which for a Christian, is only to echo with Augustine that ‘our heart is restless until it rests in you’.51 Speaking of the fragility of faith does not mean it is not beautiful, arresting, or powerful. We know that Leonardo Di Vinci’s Last Supper is fragile, but it still mesmerises, and so one can certainly speak of its grandeur. What, therefore, is the relationship between admitting a fractured faith and recognising the fragility of reason? If reason is informed by faith, and such a faith, ironically remains whole by acknowledging its potential to be fractured, then embracing the fragility of reason calls for a greater reliance on the need for faith. Such a stand knows the human potential to distort God’s word and covenant and so calls for a greater solidarity among all of us in our search and quest for justice and truth. Such admissions ultimately strengthen one’s religious identity and provide fertile grounds for ecumenism and interfaith dialogue which courageously and candidly seek to hone one’s faith through listening, interacting, and learning from the Other, while also perhaps, rethinking or even condemning some of our theological language and acts that have been the cause of division, distrust, or injustice. We need to attune ourselves to outside, external voices who utter what some of us on the inside are often afraid or too ‘pious’ to say. In Pan Chieh-Yü’s poem, ‘Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord’, we read: ‘O fan of white silk / clear as frost on the grass-blade, / You also 49

Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘God’s Grandeur,’ in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 6th Edition, Vol. 2, ed. M.H. Abrams (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), p. 1546. 50 John Paul II, ‘Faith and Reason’, p. 415. 51 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 3. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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are laid aside’.52 Speaking of the fragility of reason and a fractured faith must be contexualised with the dignity of the human person53 , for it is the belief in this dignity that ultimately lies at the heart of why I hesitate to use the phrase the grandeur of reason and instead emphasise our fragility and sense of being fractured. No human being is to be ‘laid aside’. Such an awareness is meant to lead to a greater reliance on our need for the Other and to respond to the needs of the Other. As my criteria emphasise, in solidarity with the poor and marginalised and reaching out to the Other as emphasised in the approach of Vatican II, the interweaving of faith and reason can lead us ever onward to find if not persevere in our ongoing search for meaning. Reason and faith viewed in this way, to borrow again John Paul’s imagery, can no doubt begin, if not to soar, then to struggle closer towards that Ultimate truth. In such a struggle, and in our recognition of the fragility of reason, one may even begin to perceive its grandeur. Peter Admirand Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin Bea House, Milltown Park Dublin 6 Ireland [email protected]

52 Pan Chieh-Yü, ‘Fan-Piece for Her Imperial Lord,’ trans. Ezra Pound in The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry, ed. Eliot Weinberger (New York: New Directions, 2003), p. 20. 53 John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, Para. 10. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html. Accesed 10 June 2009. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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1. The New Atheists – the War on Religion The scientist and media celebrity Richard Dawkins and the children’s writer Phillip Pullman are probably the most famous exponents of so-called New Atheism. In the past people who claimed to be atheists usually kept themselves to themselves; most of them would be cynical towards people they classified as ‘religious’, but they did not attempt to convert. Most acknowledged a sort of logic that if there was no ‘god’ then meaning, reason, proof, value all became relative. Other New Atheists include the journalist and literary critic Christopher Hitchens (who describes himself as an ‘anti-theist’), the philosopher and newspaper columnist A.C. Grayling, the journalist-writer Sam Harris, the novelist Martin Amis and the author and screen writer Ian McEwan. To name or classify someone as an atheist is dangerous. We are not necessarily in a position to pre-judge others; however, the New Atheists are characterized by a self-proclamation that they are atheists. Richard Dawkins and Phillip Pullman are an example of a contemporary intellectual trend amongst New Atheists, they have proposed in their writings that the exponents of all religions will eventually oppress and even kill their opponents, that religion per se should be done away with, as peaceably as possible.1 This anti-God, antireligion, proposition is essentially derived from two works: Pullman’s explicitly atheistic anti-Narnia mythology aimed at children entitled His Dark Materials,2 and Dawkins short anti-religion polemic, The God Delusion, which though lacking in any extended argument or considered systematic theo-logical analysis, has none the less sold, like Pullman’s work, millions of copies world-wide. Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion – as a fixed false belief.3 Whilst Pullman advocates the death of God, Dawkins jumps from point to point across numerous disciplines simply to propose that anyone who claims to believe in a ‘god’, or those who are religious, are deluding themselves: there is no God for Dawkins, and religion, for him, is always theistic, and therefore delusory, a psychological sickness. Dawkins’ opening chapter in The God Delusion is entitled ‘A 1 Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, Transworld Publishers, 2006); see specifically, Chp. 8, §,2 ‘The Dark Side of Absolutism’, pp. 323–325, and generally Chps. 8 & 9. Although recently some of these New Atheists have openly expressed support for using violence as a means of combating militant Islam, some of them also call for rescinding the tolerance of religious belief formerly characteristic of Western liberal democracies. 2 Phillip Pullman, His Dark Materials, consisting of Northern Lights (London: Scholastic, 1995), The Subtle Knife (London: Scholastic, 1997) and The Amber Spyglass (London: Scholastic, 2000). 3 Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), p. 5 and, Chp. 4 ‘Why There Almost Certainly is no God’ pp. 137–189, see specifically, pp. 157–158. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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Deeply Religious non-Believer’,4 in it he talks about a quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe that is common amongst scientists and rationalists.5 He appears to acknowledge this religious impulse in humanity and how even when scientists label themselves as atheists they cannot cease to be what they consider to be religious, however, he does distinguish between what he calls Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion; he argues that although Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawkins, invoke the name of God they are misunderstood by supernaturalists, they are using the term in an abstract manner.6 Superficial though their treatises are, Pullman and Dawkins do implicitly acknowledge, quite correctly, that something is wrong with religion, that religion can be considered as human generated. But are the New Atheists immune from being religious? Despite their disbelief in an objective God the belief system of the New Atheists is religious and bears the hallmarks of a religious mindset: Richard Dawkins, like Josef Stalin before him, is an evangelical atheist – he seeks to convert all to his religious perspective. John F. Haught has attempted to categorize the beliefs of the New Atheists. First, apart from nature and humans, there is nothing else; in addition, nature is to be seen as self-originating. Second, the universe has no point; therefore nothing exists but natural causality. Third, all features of humanity can be explained by recourse to Darwinian processes. Fourth, in religious terms, faith in God has produced only evil in society and in terms of ethics, morality does not necessitate belief in a ‘god’.7 This reductionist hermeneutic denies in effect personhood and the why of our consciousness– ‘The modernist world-view starts with the presupposition that the prime thing is inanimate cold matter just bouncing around with no values and then comes up with the problem of how by some weird series of coincidences this accidental little bit of delusory personhood happened to pop up inside our skulls, that’s the way round it goes. So for the modernist world-view, we are always the slightly weird exception to everything else – and the problem.8

4

Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), pp. 31–50. Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), pp. 32. 6 Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006), pp. 34. 7 John F. Haught (Senior Fellow of Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Centre, Georgetown University), God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), pp. xiii–ix. A characteristic here is that the religio-cultural belief system of the so-called New Atheists is typically Postmodern in that not all subscribe to all the unwritten clauses in this antitheistic proto-creed. Therefore some or all of what Haught asserts applies to the various New Atheists as individuals. 8 Revd Malcolm Guite, Chaplain of Girton College Cambridge, speaking on the BBC1 documentary, The Narnia Code, (broadcast on Thursday 16 April 2009, 23:35). This can be viewed at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jz2qp#broadcasts. 5

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Michael Guite, speaking here, succinctly extrapolates how what we are made of is not what we are: to focus only on our physical constitution – the unwinding of DNA in the genome, the interaction of chemicals that constitute inanimate matter – this denies the ‘irreducible mystery of my I-am-ness.’9 This I-am-ness is personhood and it is personhood, full humanity, which the reductive ‘enlightened’ New Atheists seek to deny – selectively. The Roman Catholic theologian Tina Beattie in, The New Atheists: the Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion,10 has produced a sound critique of the arrogance and the lack of systematic rigour in the anti-God agenda of the New Atheists. For example, Beattie sympathizes with the New Atheists hostility to fundamentalism, but argues that they have fallen into the trap of a self-generated, we may even assert self-righteous, fundamentalism. Despite their avowed atheism, the New Atheists belief in the innocence and goodness of their anti-theistic ‘pseudo-religious’ belief system, is not new. The aim of this paper is to explore how an Enlightenment theology of death is rooted in such religious atheism, a belief system that beguiles and deludes a particular group of people into believing that they are kind and considerate, liberal and good, while defining another group of people as non-human, or sub-human, and open to exploitation and destruction. This has led, inevitably, post-Reformation, to a revival of ancient Pagan sacrificial practices. Further I intend to show how although the New Atheists are quite correct in their criticism of human-centred religion they are blind to their own religiosity and the level of sacrificial death that the belief system their work has grown out of demands. The New Atheists are also as deluded as many clerical or priestly elites down the centuries into believing that their religio-cultural mindset is innocent and beneficial to humankind. Therefore I intend to demonstrate that underpinning this delusion is a proposition that religion is bad, atheism is worse, therefore religious atheism is to be seen as the worst of all positions.

2. Religion as Unbelief First we need to establish some working definitions – of the Enlightenment and of religion. Secular liberal humanists today will invoke the Enlightenment with confidence, with religious certainty, exhibiting a glazed-eyed emotionalism akin to veneration. In broad terms the Enlightenment was a period in Western philosophy and cultural life, essentially in the eighteenth century, in which reason 9

Guite, The Narnia Code (2009). Tina Beattie, The New Atheists: the Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion (London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 2007). 10


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was elevated to be the principal source and authenticity, the ground for all decision-making, all authority, indeed every aspect of human life. Intellectuals, by and large, during the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment rejected a religious perspective substituting with what they saw as humanity’s innate capacity to deal with life from its own strength through the faculty of reason: echoing the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras, this eighteenth-century white Western male oligarchic elite, confidently proclaimed that man was the measure of all.11 And a definition of religion? There is in effect no generally agreed definition of religion. The term is used with widely different meanings – especially by the New Atheists. Cicero defined religio as the giving of proper honour, respect and reverence to the divine, by which he meant the ‘gods’.12 According to Cicero such ‘religion’, was a dutiful honouring of the ‘gods’, as distinct from a ‘superstition’, an empty fear of them.13 Cicero’s definition implies an object – theistic religion will invoke God, or the ‘gods’, as the object of religious practice. But this object may only be in the mind of the believer. In addition, religion may embrace non-theistic belief systems from Buddism to Marxism, or from football to popular culture, all of which exhibit the characteristics often associated with objectively theistic religions. The Enlightenment was innately ‘religious’, and spawned religious systems from Deism to Freemasonry. Perhaps any philosophy of life that exhibits a world view of sorts and that embraces some notion of right and wrong is in some way implicitly religious. Certainly, according to Postmodern relativism, almost anything can count as ‘religion’, any lifestyle statement as ‘religious’. Karl Barth distinguished, dialectically, between religion and revelation. In stressing the sovereignty of God Barth denied, to a degree, knowledge of God through human effort. Therefore all religion was a human activity, human generated: for Barth God could only be ‘known’ by God’s self-revealing, through revelation, in Jesus Christ. And the truth of this could only be accepted by faith. Religion at its best was to be seen as a flawed human response to the self-revelation of the one true living God. Therefore Barth asserts that we live under the divine judgement, God’s judgement on all religion – ‘Apart from and without Jesus Christ we can say

11

‘Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not’. See, Sextus Empiricus (c. 2nd-3rd C. BC) in Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Mathematicians), §7.60. 12 Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Nature of the gods (trans and intro, Patrick Gerard Walsh; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 2.3.8; and Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume IV: The Fourteen Orations Against Marcus Antonius; The Treatise on Rhetorical Invention; The Orator; Topics; On Rhetorical Partitions, Etc (trans. C.D. Yonge; Dodo Press, 2008), 2.53.161. 13 Cicero, The Nature of the gods, 1.4.2. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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nothing at all about God and man and their relationship one with another’.14 The proposition from the New Atheists that all religions are of human invention and are self-serving is, therefore, in a Barthian context true. Likewise, the proposition from the New Atheists that all religions will oppress and even kill their opponents is, to a degree, true. If, like Barth, we are to regard religion, per se, as idolatrous, as unbelief, because it perpetually falls short of the unknowable aseity of the one true living God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, then what do we classify as religion? Is belief in God, or for that matter a ‘god’ (note the lower case ‘g’), an essential axiom of religion? No; for there is the phenomena of religious atheism. By comparison Barth saw the self-revealing of God – the paradoxical dialectic of an unveiling-veiling, as the abolition of all religion.15 This unveilingveiling dialectic implies that we can never get religion right, even if we claim to be Christian. Therefore the New Atheists don’t take their criticisms of religion far enough: they fail to criticise their own religion, their own religious atheism, their innate self reflective and self reverential religiosity – in a Feuerbachian context.

3. Enlightenment Death: Three Mega-Holocausts If the New Atheists proposition is correct, that all religions will oppress and even kill their opponents, and if we can look at church history and see how Christians, whether lay or a priestly elite, have defined and measured people by certain criteria, externalizing them and subjecting them to exclusion and ultimately to torture and death, and if this behaviour is innate to religious humanity, then although we will be able to point to this same proposition in, Western, Enlightenment, Modern and Postmodern religion – whether atheistic or theistic – we must start with its evidence in an explicitly Christian context.

i. A Pseudo-‘Christian’ Theology of Death An Enlightenment theology of death essentially grew out of the religious terrorism of the Reformation. We can look at Henry VIII’s 14 See, Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics (14 Vols; eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936–77). See: §17 The Revelation of God as the Abolition of Religion I/2, p. 280; §25 The Fulfilment of the Knowledge of God II/1, p. 3; §26 The Knowability of God II/1, p. 63; §. 27, ‘The Limits to the Knowledge of God’, II/1, The Doctrine of God, specifically, pp. 179–256. Specific reference is made to, I.2, p. 299 and IV.1, p. 45. 15 Barth, The Church Dogmatics I/2, §17 The Revelation of God as the Abolition of Religion I/2, p. 280. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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macho religio-political tyranny as almost comical but for the suffering and death it visited on the English people; the same can be said of Calvin’s dictatorial theocratic rule of Geneva, but we must look specifically at the actions of the Roman Catholic church: for example, the burning alive of men, women and children because they refused to stop reading the Bible in English (or translating, or printing and distributing the Bible in the vernacular). The belief was in the equality before God of the so-called heretics, therefore for his or her own good the soul of such an individual needed cleansing with fire, in addition there was the religio-political necessity to stop the spread of bible reading and study outside of the authority of the church’s control, which itself was related to the issue of indulgences and priestly power. In the 1520s the Inquisition in Seville would often hold a three-hour, intensely religious and emotional Mass, then go out and supervise an auto-da-Fe (literally an act of faith – the burning alive at the stake of usually 100 so-called heretics); the perpetrators were utterly convinced of the rightness of their actions, they acknowledged the full humanity of the victims and many of this priestly elite wept as they looked on. The religious roots of burning the victim alive at the stake were Pagan, as was the Protestant response – hanging, drawing and quartering. The roots of burning alive would appear superficially to lie with the wicker man amongst Celtic tribes and the middle Eastern and Indian dualist religions whose priests were convinced that whether alive or dead, certain people needed cleansing fire to redeem them, for the soul to escape the body. When this is translated to the curia and the Inquisition, or for that matter Protestant sects in the New World obsessed with the threat of witches and witchcraft, the protagonists had, in effect taken possession of the judgement and vengeance of God, hence usurping Christ’s righteousness, acting as if they were God: eritis sicut Deus. One of the last victims of this pseudo-‘Christian’ theology of death was Thomas Aitkenhead, a twenty-one year old Scottish student executed in 1697 for blasphemy in promulgating atheistic views and for denouncing the Bible.16 Secular liberal humanists today never cease to sanctify Aitkenhead and proclaim him as evidence of the primitive and superstitious nature of religion. For the followers of the Enlightenment reason replaced religion, reason without revelation, to a degree; it was within this atheistic pseudo-religious agenda that we can identify the origin of a theology of death. But whereas the victims of the Inquisition and other pre-Enlightenment ‘Christian’ theocracies were deemed equally human and in need of purification unto death to be saved (in varying 16 Thomas Aikenhead (1676–1697), a student from Edinburgh, was indicted in December 1696 and executed on 8 January 1697 for blasphemy; Aikenhead is recorded as having pleaded for mercy during the trial and attempted to recant his views but was sentenced to death by hanging. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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degrees according to the prevailing religious culture), the victims of an Enlightenment theology of death were deemed sub- or non-human and therefore as usable and disposable as the rest of creation.

ii. Slavery: ‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother’ It is generally acknowledged that the numbers executed by and through the Reformation were probably in the tens of thousands across Europe, though objective evidence and accurate written records are scarce. Post-Reformation, the level of death by the exponents of these human-centred religio-political belief systems has measured in the tens of millions. For example, there have been three Enlightenment-led mega-holocausts since the Reformation. Why holocausts? – because the destruction and slaughter has been on a mass scale. The first was the holocaust of the West Africans – slaves. Black men, women and children from West Africa were defined as sub-human, usable and disposable. Respectable society in Britain – with endorsement from the Church of England in certain quarters – deemed this ‘reasonable’, acceptable, and economically unavoidable, indeed highly beneficial to the British economy. It is important to remember that this trade already existed – black enslaving black, with Arabs travelling across the Sahara Desert to purchase the commodity. However, the British slave traders simply ratcheted-up this trade into a mega-holocaust, using the technological developments of the Enlightenment. The dehumanization of enslaved West Africans was enshrined in law. There were often violent clashes between slaves and overseers, especially in the docks. In one case (a test case as it would be termed today) in the seventeenth century, a sailor from a ship docked in Jamaica killed a black slave in a drunken dockside brawl. He was not charged with murder but with gross damage to the slave owner’s property. He had to pay compensation equivalent to the value of replacing the slave (indenture to the plantation owner for 10 years labour – however, he jumped ship and escaped). His crime was not considered to be the killing or murder of another human being. If a ship crossing from Africa to the West Indies was foundering in a storm the crew was allowed to do what they would on any other ship – ditch some of the cargo overboard to lighten the load and to save the ship. West African slaves were considered cargo not passengers, they were just another commodity – alive or dead they were thrown overboard to prevent the ship from foundering, they were claimed on insurance as cargo, not passengers, not human beings. As the body count climbed (more than 15 million), finally – after a couple of hundred years – people’s consciences fought for a ban: the slogan or catch phrase of the abolitionists was ‘Am I Not C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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a Man and a Brother’, which was antonymous of the dehumanization policy of the Enlightened Europeans. English philosophers from the Age of Reason saw the slave trade as justified, ‘reasonable’, and beneficial according to the criteria of the ruling oligarchic elite. Slavery in pre-Civil War America, as also was the annihilation of Native Americans in the mid-West in the late nineteenth century, is related to and part of this holocaust, which was defined essentially along similar racial lines, as are the numerous other examples of racist-driven apartheid or ethnic cleansing, whether theistically or atheistically grounded, characterised by this principle of dehumanization. The Church of England implicitly endorsed the slave trade: in the eighteenth-century Anglican priests refused to baptize the children of black African slaves in the Caribbean because it would imply equality with the slave masters. Ironically the Roman Catholic missions in the New World were against slavery. In 1537 Pope Paul III issued the encyclical, Sublimis Deus, proclaiming the Native American Indians to be truly human beings with the full intellectual and moral capacity to become Christian and therefore Rome outlawed slavery.17 During the Reformation there was a clash between Roman Catholic missionaries and the profit-driven venture capitalism of the colonialists and conquistadores. The Jesuit missionaries saw all peoples as needing to be converted and saved, all were equal before God. It was in the Protestant and Reformed churches that the colonialists and empire builders were to find a belief system to complement their dehumanizing greed. It is in the Protestant countries that the churches develop a belief system to justify slavery, by classifying the native peoples of Africa, Asia, the Americas, as sub-human or non-human. The principle of dehumanization continues today and is, ironically, taken up by the secular liberal humanists.

17 In contradiction to Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455), which granted the right of taking the ‘natives’ of newly discovered lands as perpetual slaves, because according to the Aristotelian derived anthropology humans were in three groups, Asian, Africans and Europeans, and therefore the ‘Indians’ of the New World were to be classified as ‘dumb brutes’ outside of and different from humanity, Sublimis Dei (1537) accepted them as fully and equally human because it was found that they could hear the Gospel and be converted to Christ. Sublimis Dei stated, ‘The enemy of the human race . . . invented a means . . . by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people . . . that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom we have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service . . . the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved.’ Extracts from, Sublimis Dei, encyclical on ‘The Enslavement and Evangelization of Indians’, issued by Pope Paul III, 29 May 1537, accessed at, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Paul03/p3subli.htm.


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iii. The Holocaust of the God’s Chosen People The second mega-holocaust inspired, to a degree, by the Enlightenment was the holocaust of the Jews: again, an oligarchic elite defined a particular group of people as sub-human and then non-human, disposable. In a few years this holocaust claimed at least 7 million lives. Again, those who ruled, who democratically passed the laws (the Nazis), considered this reasonable. If some men or women were considered useful as slave labour then they were worked to death. The others were simply, systematically, herded into the gas chambers, killed, then processed for whatever was of value. The National Socialist religion, essentially scripted in the late 1920s by Wilhelm Stapel, was derived from Pagan religion, from ancient German and Norse mythologies, selectively rewritten, adapted, to suit the National Socialist racist agenda; this multiplicity of ‘gods’ and ‘godlets’ denied the God of the Jews and sought to recast Jesus as a white Aryan Enlightened European. However, in addition to its Pagan religious roots National Socialist religion – or religio-politics – also has impeccable Enlightenment credentials: National Socialism evolved, to a degree, from nineteenth century German thinkers such as Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and implicitly from Hegel. But the churches also had their part in these mega-holocausts. The Methodist church in Germany initially praised Hitler because he had made the trains run on time. Lutheran Christian SS guards in the concentration camps held prayer meetings to thank their Lord for giving them the opportunity of solving the problem, as they saw it, of the Jews. Whether it was true or not, there was an apposite scene at the end of the BBC historical drama called Conspiracy, detailing the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference. The SS General Reinhard Heydrich, with Machiavellian skill, plots with his fellow Nazis the final solution (the annihilation of the Jews) and then sits down to listen sensitively to the most soul-piercingly beautiful music by Schubert (the 2nd movement of the String Quintet in C) as if nothing was wrong, as if what had been achieved was the highest of truth. This is what should surely be defined as delusory – that all humanity can find itself buoyed-up, especially by religious or artistic emotionalism, into believing wrong is right, evil is good.

iv. The Silence of the Aborted What of the third Enlightenment-inspired mega-holocaust? This is the holocaust of the unborn: the victims of abortion (and, related, embryonic stem cell harvesting). Again, a particular group of people are defined as sub-human or non-human and useable, disposable. The silence from this third holocaust is deafening: no child survives. Slavery C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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and discrimination against the Jews has always existed; Women have always sought to abort a so-called unwanted pregnancy – the ancient Celts, and the Anglo Saxons knew of certain plants where the leaves would trigger menstruation and therefore abort. However, since 1967 in Britain and 1973 in the USA this has received state sanctioning. There is a contemporary myth that all theology must be impersonal and academically disinterested. If you hold to this myth you will I hope forgive a personal testimony that makes the theological arguments highly pertinent? Prior to state sanctioning of the third Enlightenment mega-holocaust in Britain in 1967, a small number of children survived and knew, because their parents had the gall to tell them they had tried to kill them in the womb as unwanted. In the early 1950s my parents purchased under-the-counter medicine from a chemist’s shop/drug store to trigger an abortion, on the premise that they could not afford another child, and when this failed, ensured that I knew of this on numerous occasions as I grew up. I was one of the lucky few – many were born brain damaged. Since the late-1960s the holocaust has been complete – no child survives. Should I have been killed in the womb so as to silence all opposition? Though an embryo of a few weeks gestation may seem insignificant it holds the complete life and loves, strengths and weaknesses of a person – in potential. Should I, and many others, have never been? Everything that I am was there in my mother’s womb when my parents attempted to kill me 56 years ago. No, I was not a meaningless cluster of cells, take my word for it, my testimony is true, and no I wasn’t waiting for a soul to be given to me to make me human, neither was I waiting to be born so I could claim human rights or citizenship. Why has this third Enlightenment mega-holocaust arisen? Abortion is, for many, defined by the so-called ‘right to choose’, however, this is a misnomer: the woman’s right to choose actually lies in the initial decision whether to mate or not. Pregnancy goes with mating; it is not an unwanted side-effect. Western governments interpret a women’s ‘right to choose’ as relating to the decision of life or death over another human being, but do not extend this right to other citizens who seek to damage, exploit or destroy other, dehumanized, human beings. It is this existential autonomously defined ‘right to choose’ which, theologically, undergirds all three Enlightenment mega-holocausts: eritis sicut Deus – humanity acting as if it was God. If we are to defend a woman’s ‘right to choose’, then we have no moral basis to criticize the Nazi’s ‘right to choose’ whether the Jews lived or died? Neither have we any moral basis to criticize the ‘right to choose’ claimed by the British slave traders over our African brothers and sisters. We cannot pick and choose which crimes against humanity we endorse or repudiate. The ‘right to choose’, which is a gender based, non-inclusive, discriminatory, sectarian proposition, is a license to kill another human life. As a man many women would C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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say I have no right to comment, but I comment not as a man but as the survivor of an abortion. If I cannot speak, then the Jews who survived the holocaust must remain silent and not criticize the religiopolitical beliefs of their persecutors. The problem with the pro-choice lobby is that they are not ‘liberal’ or ‘inclusive’ enough: if they were ‘liberal’ and ‘inclusive’ they would grant equal human rights to the unborn and recognise the right to life from the moment of conception of a fully ensouled human life. Whatever the consequences, once life has started only God the creator, whose one complete sacrifice has atoned for our sins, has the right to end it – if we try to solve these problems ourselves we only make matters worse (Romans 7). Every abortion, every death of a child unborn, is a cry before God of innocent blood, wantonly spilled. These are my brothers and sisters in Christ, these my real blood relatives, for I survived but they were wasted: ‘Whoever destroys a life, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.’18

By comparison to this axiomatic wisdom from the Talmud, Stalin is reputed to have said that one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. We must not be blinded by the numbers: the scale of this third holocaust now out ranks the other two. A conservative body count for the Western world stands at 50 million since state sanctioned liberalisation in the late 1960s,19 but the West considers it reasonable behaviour – ‘reasonable’ according to the self-referential principles of the Enlightenment and the self-reverential beliefs of Postmodern relativism.

v. Defining Principles There are certain important defining principles to these three megaholocausts that we need to identify. 18

Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:8 (37a). The Talmud is considered an authoritative record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, Jewish ethics, customs, legends and stories. It consists of the Mishnah, a record of oral traditions, and the Gemara, which comments upon, interprets and applies these oral traditions. 19 Given that in Britain the last publically issued figure was 193,500 (2007), rising through 180,000 year on year since the mid-1990s, and given that the most recent statistic for the USA was 1.3 million (2005), given that these levels per head of population are similar across all countries in the Western world, then we may assume a figure of 2 million abortions per year. Assuming a base line in 1967 of zero (statistics are not available for the late 1960s but many women were queuing up to receive the new state sanctioned abortions), then given the exponential growth it is reasonable to propose a figure of 50 million children in the last 40 years. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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First, the principle of dehumanization is rooted in both prejudice and in scientific naturalism. According to scientific naturalism all matter is equal; there is no inherent difference between a fertilized egg and the greatest artistic or scientific genius. If this proposition is followed through then whatever consciousness we have is an accident of evolution. According to a Darwinian inspired, or grounded, scientific naturalism all flesh is equal – equally valid and equally invalid. However, the exponents of the principle of dehumanization fail to follow this through logically and invent prejudiced principles to separate out some humans from the herd as sub- or non-human.20 However, what of the victims within the Soviet state? Marxist-Leninist pseudo religious atheism wasted the lives of over 100 millions, for example in the farm collectivization programme of the 1930s, and in the Gulags, however, Marxism defined all people as equal: those who offended against the Soviet state (like those defined as heretical by the Roman Catholic church), were equally and fully human but in need of severe punishment and/or correction to redeem them before the state (or in Rome’s case, before the church). Marxist-Leninism did not, in principle, subscribe to the dehumanization principle. Second, each mega-holocaust operates peacefully and democratically within a nation state and its environs/colonies. The British Empire’s slave traders straddled the world exploiting and dehumanizing, imposing a pax britannica, aping the Roman Empire’s pax romana. The 1935 Nuremberg laws passed by the democratically elected National Socialist government defined the Aryan race and de-humanized, excluded, Jews and others from citizenship; Hitler wanted nothing more than to be left in peace to pursue his agenda of turning Europe into an Aryan colony free of sub- or non-humans, it was the allies that declared war. Therefore I have not included the victims of the two World Wars amongst other twentieth century conflicts here (all-out war has few principles, and an innate disrespect for life). The exponents of these three mega-holocausts invent dehumanizing religiopolitical criteria, and then merely want to go about their business peacefully without interference from outside. Third, that technology and scientific developments, issuing essentially from the Age of reason and the Enlightenment, have been essential in generating the high levels of death within each holocaust: modern medical procedures allow for the sheer scale of unborn children killed, likewise, the Nazis struggled during 1941 and 1942 to perfect the technology to facilitate the scale of killing and the 20 Richard Dawkins argues in the context of the stem-cell debate, that it is right to dissect, analyze and harvest stem-cells from people in their embryonic state because there is no innate value to life, and yet his web site and forum constantly beseech us to value adult and intellectual life: again, the selective dehumanization principle. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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processing of the corpses in the concentration camps. The Caribbean plantations and the slave triangle was built on early industrialization, the production and trafficking of goods over vast distances, the technological developments in sailing and navigation, all this contributed to the mass movement of millions of West African slaves. Fourth, onus probandi, the burden of proof, teleologically, should be for the perpetrators to prove that the object of their killing is not human, whereas West Africans, the Jews, or unborn children were effectively put in the position of having to prove that they are human and equal.

4. An Hypostatic Union without Confusion What we have identified so far is an underlying principle, that of denying humanity to others, objectifying others as sub-human, then non-human, allowing the protagonist to use, abuse and kill at will: this was applied to West Africans by the British slave traders, it was applied by the Nazis to the Jews (and the Slaves, Gypsies and homosexuals), and today by secular liberal humanists and the New Atheists to unborn children. There are of course many other examples of ethnic cleansing, tribal wars, and slavery that reflect this principle of dehumanization, however, given its current status as approved by Western societies and governments we need to consider what the theology is behind both the endorsement and the repudiation of this third Enlightenment mega-holocaust, and how these arguments relate to the other Enlightenment mega-holocausts.

i. Immediate Animation This dehumanization principle is endemic in humanity. We may argue that the Christian churches began to deny it – to assert the full humanity of all, in Christ. For example, the Apostle Paul extending the Gospel to the gentiles, or encouraging Philemon to take Onesimus, the runaway slave and convert, back on equal terms, whereby master and runaway slave were to stand within the church as one and the same.21 However, the church failed to develop this precedent for centuries; the churches failed to assert the complete unity of brotherhood and sisterhood throughout all humanity, throughout each and every life, as an immovably axiomatic principle. Theologians have taken various positions over the last two thousand years: reasserting full humanity – in the face of slavery, pogroms, infanticide, anything 21

The Letter to Philemon. See: specifically 1:15–16.


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which denigrates and dehumanizes – appears a never ending task. The seventh century Patristic theologian Maximus the Confessor (c.580– 662) worked out a systematic theological justification for the full humanity of each person from the point of conception, although this was in the context of the Incarnation, and in refuting the Monothelite controversy. Maximus’s ontology of the human is intertwined with his Christology: if Christ as God incarnate is fully human and at one with us then Jesus Christ must have been fully human from the point of conception.22 The second person of the Trinity was incarnated human, therefore there can not have been a time – when incarnated – that he was not human. Jesus Christ must have been human from the point of conception. There cannot have been a time after fertilization when Christ was not human but some form of sub-human animal life, and if there is a time after fertilization when we are not human (i.e. not ensouled), if we are not human from the moment of conception but Jesus Christ was, then we are not completely at one with Christ and therefore our salvation is imperilled because Christ does not fully share our humanity. This is apart from the fact that each and every human is genetically human from the point of conception. Humanity may attribute a different status to each human in the first few weeks of life in the womb, but this does not alter what they are before God: human ontology is divinely bequeathed, a gift, it is not selectively defined by the human will. In human terms the origin of each person had been established according to rather spurious grounds by Aristotle, amongst other ancient Greek philosopher-scientists.23 However, this position must be seen as flawed and wrong in the light of scriptural revelation and 22 On the question of the moment at which soul and body are united, Maximus wrote in the Second Ambigua to contradict earlier teachings (for example, the Origenist teaching that the soul exists before the body, also, the Aristotelian teaching that the body exist before the soul) and to deal with certain ambiguities in Gregory of Nazianzus’ writings. Maximus rejected both, asserting, Christologically, that soul is created by God and infused into the body in the very instant of conception. See: Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, 2, in, J.P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca (161 Vols.; Paris: Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–1666). See Ambigua 2.42, in, Vol. 91, 1324C. See also, 2.7, in, Vol. 91, 1101A; also, references to Maximus in Vol. 3 & 4. For a modern translation see, George C. Berthold (ed.) Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings (Classics of Western Spirituality; Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985). For modern scholarship on Maximus and these issues see, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2003), and, Adam G. Cooper, The Body in St Maximus Confessor: Holy Flesh, Wholly Deified (Series, Oxford Early Christian Studies; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). An excellent summary of these body-soul, conception, questions can be found in, John Saward, Redeemer in the Womb (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1993), pp. 3–21. 23 An Aristotelian proposition endorsed by Aquinas, was that the humanity and personhood was not there from the moment of conception, some other animal life was. Aquinas takes this further and asserts delayed ensoulment, or postponed animation (that the soul is only given to the human after several weeks of development in the womb). See: Saward, Redeemer in the Womb (1993), p. 13–21. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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theological argument. Maximus the Confessor asked what does the moment of the Incarnation reveal: It confirmed what he already believed on other grounds, namely, that the rational soul of man, which is not generated by the parents, is created immediately by God and infused into the body at the moment of conception (in modern jargon, the doctrine of ‘immediate animation’).24

For Maximus, contrary to a drift amongst many church theologians by the seventh century who were beginning to see a human as a soul using a body, he reasserted the scriptural axiom that all men and women are a unity of soul and body: a psychosomatic whole (i.e. from the NT Greek - psyche and soma). Maximus uses the term eidos holon, a ‘complete whole’, a ‘complete entity’, or, ekplerosis completeness. The Greek holos implies that something is simultaneously a whole and a part, hence Maximus’s uses of the term evokes dialectic and paradox – the soul and body are simultaneously parts and a whole, a complete entity, yet separately divisible and identifiable; holos also states that something is a whole in itself, altogether, as well as a part of a larger system:25 the psychosomatic unity of soul and body that is a person is autonomous, to a degree, yet exists and subsists in God. This wholeness is from the beginning, from the moment of conception: what is true for humanity is true for the Christ. What is true for Jesus born of Mary is true for all men and women. If Christ Jesus’ soul was not the result of immediate animation, then his humanity is optional; furthermore, Maximus identified that behind the theory of later ensoulment was a Manichee aversion, a loathing, a repugnance, for associating the higher elements of the human – the intellect, and so on – with the messiness of sex and bodily fluids.26 This Manichee aversion begins to deny the Incarnation, deny that the Word was made flesh: delayed ensoulment points to a Docetic Christ, a Christ who seems to be human, fleshly, but is really only inhabiting a human form temporarily. Delayed animation asserts a part-time Christ not fully at one with us. But more than this, a doctrine of immediate animation means that all the victims of the Enlightenment mega-holocausts are fully human and at one with 24

Saward, Redeemer in the Womb (1993), p. 8. In terms of twentieth century philosophy, a holon is simultaneously a whole and a part and refers to phenomena that are whole in themselves, but are also part of a larger system, a Holon is embedded in larger holons, which influence it whilst it influences the greater. A model of this is sub-atomic particles, molecules, matter and objects, and the universe. 26 Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 2.42, in, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. 91, 1337B1340B. In Postmodern secular liberal humanist terms this repugnance is translated into a refusal to accept that sexual intercourse is, in many ways, primarily about creating a new person, a new life: secular liberal humanists divorce pregnancy from the act of copulation. 25


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the rest of humanity and, importantly, with Christ, and not separated out into a non-human sub-species.

ii. The Full Humanity of the Child-Person from Conception Western liberal democracies generally define the start of a human life at the point of birth (though there is confusion about the state of a child in the womb depending on its age and development). The question of personhood doesn’t enter into the debate. Scripture defines the start of a human life as the moment of conception. The Psalmists proclaimed the full existence of a human life from the moment of conception, and how this life related to God: Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place.27

Furthermore, the very process of creation and gestation was blessed: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb . . . My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.28

The Prophet Jeremiah takes this further. God knew the child in full personhood: ‘Before I formed you in the womb’ the Lord commands, ‘I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.’29 John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit whilst in his mother’s womb – this was part of his full humanity.30 The Apostle Paul was set apart even from his mother’s womb.31 If this is true of John the Baptist and the Apostle Paul it is equally true of all people. It is equality before God that is the touchstone of the argument against the Enlightenment mega-holocausts; it is equality that the Western secular liberal humanists and the New Atheists claim to practice but they do not. Scripture shows us that theologically discriminating against, black or white, slave or free, male or female, born or unborn, or discriminating 27

Psalm 51:6. Psalm 139:13, & 15–16. 29 Jeremiah 1:5. 30 ‘Even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit’ Luke 1:15. ‘He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb.’ Luke 1:15–16. 31 ‘But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace . . .’ Galatians 1:15. 28


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on grounds of lifestyle or behaviour, is wrong before God in Christ: reductionist dehumanization should be seen as anathema, as a thing devoted to evil.

5. The Theological Roots of the Enlightenment Mega-Holocausts The theological roots of the three Enlightenment mega-holocausts can be found in Genesis 3: the Fall from grace, the descent into original sin – humanity has taken on to itself all decision making, having eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: Eve and Adam’s sin was to choose, to be invited by personified evil to claim the ‘right to choose’. This right to choose is self referential and issues from the Fall from grace – this ‘right to choose’ is at the heart of original sin. Humanity no longer lives in God’s grace, hence when it believes it is doing the good it is not, it fails (Romans 7). But it does not acknowledge this failure; it deludes itself by judging others. Therefore the theological roots of the Enlightenment megaholocausts lie in a theology of death where humanity, through original sin, deludes itself into believing it is doing the right, the good, when it is sinning and committing evil atrocities. This is so when enslaving and working to death West Africans, or when seeking to annihilate the Jews in gas chambers, or when killing the unborn. In many ways what has occurred since the Reformation is comparable in certain aspects with ancient Pagan child sacrifice. For example, Inca child sacrifice was undertaken with thought, consideration, and religious seriousness, it was undertaken with piety and surrounded with liturgical conviction, with utter conviction that the course undertaken was right (comparable with a Roman Catholic auto-da-Fe, or the Calvinistic Scottish elders executing Thomas Aitkenhead?).32 My mother was persuaded of the rightness of my father’s request that they should sacrifice me. When the under-the-counter medicines 32 Inca child sacrifice probably amounted to know more that 3 to 5 children per year. Evidence about Capacacha, the sacred Inca ceremony of human sacrifice, is essentially from two sources: the accounts written by Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and from each newly discovered mummy. The ritual sacrifices were intricate and of great importance. The sacrifice had to be of a child – for purity (including physical perfection). The worship of mountains as ‘gods’, and the elaborate burial procedures involved, elevated the status and ontology of the sacrificed child to that of a deity, at one with the ‘gods’. The sacrifice was usually that of a chieftain’s child or even the off-spring of the Inca Emperor – these people were considered to be descendants of the Sun ‘god’. The child to be sacrificed would be fed a maize alcohol (chicha) to numb pain from exposure and the altitude. Liturgical ritual at the place of the cairn on the mountain top led to the child being enveloped in ceremonial clothing and incarcerated in the cairn-tomb, guarded by sacred artefacts, and left to die of exposure. According to the Jesuitical records-accounts this was done to appease the ‘gods’, and to prevent the world collapsing into chaos.


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failed my father went back for more, after all, once these ‘gods’ have demanded sacrifice there is no appeasing them until they have drunk of a child’s blood. But the pharmacist was on his summer holiday – so my father had to wait for his return. This time my mother bled for two days. But I survived.33 I thank God that I know (both from my parents and from discussion with my mother’s friends) – after all is said and done I know how Isaac felt! Sacrifices – whether children or animals – were undertaken to appease the ‘gods’ and to prevent the end of the world on a communal scale. Whatever the aims an important part of Pre-Enlightenment Pagan sacrifice was that the child was fully human. By comparison the three Enlightenment sacrificial mega-holocausts work by reducing or denying the full humanity of the victims, although in the case of the sacrificial offering of the unborn, Postmodern relativism ensures this denial varies with each death, and any contradictions are ignored. For example, stem cells are harvested from what is defined as a sub- or non-human embryonic person, because they are considered to be of immense value to curing diseased and corrupted adults (the sacrifice of the embryonic person to prevent the end of the world of the adult, which is a central principle of Pagan sacrifice). However, not only are the stem cells of value because the embryonic person is fully human, they are harvested as of immense value because the embryo is actually super-human – it contains characteristics that transcend the merely mortal nature of adult humanity (which again confirms the Pagan religious ground underpinning such sacrificial practice). Whatever the individual aims these Enlightenment mega-holocausts are sacrificial because they are undertaken to stop the world ending. The third Enlightenment mega-holocaust is individualistic and lacks the communal element that characterized ancient Pagan sacrifice, though both seek to prevent the world of the individual or the community ending. The third mega-holocaust is characterized by autonomous consequentialist ethics; Inca child sacrifice was characterized by heteronomous communitarian ethics.

33 I have suffered from Ménières disease (tinnitus, vertigo and deafness) all my life. This is a disease which is supposed to come on in adults (usually in their twenties), it is not known in children. Because I was born at the end of January 1954, my conception would have been, for arguments sake, on 1 May 1953. If the chemist was on his summer holiday between my father’s first purchase and the subsequent second dose of the aborting medicine, this would point to some time between mid July and the end of August (this was the traditional time for the English middle class professionals to take their single annual holiday) in the 1950s. An unborn child’s brain-nervous system is highly sensitive and susceptible to environmental damage – especially from chemicals – during the period two-and-a-half months to four months into development in the womb: was this Ménières type disease inflicted on me by the aborting medicine?


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6. Cain and Abel The tide of secularization in the West over the last forty years has led to Christian groups once considered hostile to each other (Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, for instance) to huddle together in relative unity in the face of a Postmodern liberal humanist secular society that espouses an agenda obsessed with lifestyle and individual identity, by consumerism, a society justified not by Christ’s atoning sacrifice but by protectionist killing (in recent times, the Iraq-Afghanistan wars, abortion, stem-cell research, vivisection, suicide, euthanasia, etc.): the boundaries between the various theologies of death that constitute these Enlightenment mega-holocausts are, in Postmodern relativistic terms, blurred. This is a culture of death, which in the last forty years appears to have overturned and rejected, inverted, everything that was characteristic of a Christian society.34 In rejecting Christ’s propitiatory atoning sacrifice, in rejecting penal substitution, in rejecting the concept of punishment, and therefore the completeness of Christ’s death on the cross, the West has generated and endorsed the revival of Pagan sacrifice on an industrial scale. The exponents look to the splinter in the eye of the historic church whilst ignoring the tree trunk of Pagan sacrifice in their own eye. The churches may have been insufficient representatives of Christ’s atoning sacrifice in the past, but does not the secular liberal humanist delusion make their faults pale by comparison?35 How do we respond to this theology of death? The Swiss theologian Karl Barth outlined the eschatology of this in his second commentary on Romans in the context of the 1917 Marxist revolution that had just taken place in Russia, and in relation to Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor: where the revolutionary is not to be seen sympathetically as the Christ who stands before the Grand Inquisitor, but is, contrariwise, the Grand Inquisitor encountered by the Christ.

34 Pro-choice abortionists, particularly in the USA, call for plurality – the idea that different views should live alongside each other without attempting to contradict each other. Is the question of the third Enlightenment mega-holocaust, as with the first two (The Slave Trade and the Holocaust), simply a question of opinion? No. The measure is the level of death subscribed to – the level of protectionist killing. The Slave Trade and the Holocaust of the Jews demanded a level of death rarely seen before; the same is true with abortion since state sanctioning. The resulting delusion inverts the truth. The abolitionists – for example William Wilberforce - opposed the enslavement and death of Africans from an Evangelical perspective; the pro-life lobby often oppose abortion from a Roman Catholic-Evangelical perspective: in both cases abolitionists and anti-abortionists oppose death, oppose protectionist killing, arguing for equality before God. The measure of right or wrong is in the level of death subscribed to. Pluralism, in this instance, merely endorses death. 35 Cf, Matthew 7:3–5 & Luke 6:41–42. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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‘The revolutionary must, however, own that in adopting his plan he allows himself to be overcome by evil. He forgets that he is not the One, that he is not the subject of the freedom, which he so earnestly desires, that, for all the strange brightness of his eyes, he is not the Christ who stands before the grand inquisitor, but is, contrariwise, the grand inquisitor encountered by the Christ. He too is claiming what no man can claim. He too is making of the right a thing. He too confronts other men with his supposed right. He too usurps a position which is not due to him, a legality which is fundamentally illegal, an authority which – as we have grimly experienced in Bolshevism, but also in the behaviour of far more delicate-minded innovators! – soon displays its essential tyranny.’36

Therefore we may postulate that when Catholics stood before Protestants and were executed (for instance in the Thirty Years War) they were at one with Christ. Likewise when Protestants, or so-called heretics, stood before the inquisition and were burned alive they were also at one with Christ – the perpetrators being of the devil because they usurped the righteousness of God and acted eritis sicut Deus? Are all such perpetrators, whether the British stave traders, the Nazi SS guards at the death camps, or today’s abortionists at one with Pilate in judging and condemning Jesus, or Herod in the Massacre of the Innocents?37 There is no space for compromise here – either we are the victims at one with Christ, or we are the perpetrators at one with Pilate and Herod. We are all either Cain or Abel: humanity, not God, defined this dualistic distinction. Like Cain’s sin, the Enlightenment holocausts are intertwined with pseudo-religious, selfjustification. In the Enlightenment mega-holocausts the protagonists focus on the base elements of the human – uncontrolled and indulgent passion – as Cain did in killing Abel. The story of Cain and Abel is about acceptable and unacceptable sacrifice, good and bad religion. Cain rejects God’s wisdom and makes a sacrifice of his brother: this human solution to the question of right religion has echoed through the Enlightenment mega-holocausts. Cain and his spiritual progeny exhibit selfishness, jealousy and aggression; they are divorced from the higher ‘human’ nature characterized by altruistic love, they reject God’s judgement on their innate religiosity, therefore they reject the wisdom of God. In so doing they dehumanize first the object of their religious hatred, then they dehumanize themselves (for example the exponents of apartheid in South Africa and in the United States in the decades after the Second World War). By dehumanizing, by classifying some people as sub- or non human, the elite merely dehumanize themselves. Therefore we may ask, ‘To what degree 36 Karl Barth The Epistle to the Romans (trans. Sir Edwyn Hoskyns, 1933), Oxford: OUP, 1968, p. 480. (German edition, Der Römerbrief (1919) p. 505. 37 John 18:31 and Matthew 2:16–18. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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do the protagonists close themselves off to the redeeming influence of the Holy Spirit?’ The measure is always death – the degree to which death, and dehumanization, is subscribed to and used as an attempt at protectionist self-justification. This is why – to explore the theo-logic in Barth’s axiom – the revolutionary is not the Christ, the lamb, the victim, before the Grand Inquisitor, but was the oppressor, dehumanizing his or her victims. Therefore, a crusade, or jihad, against such holocausts merely endorses this theology of death. It is wrong and anathema to firebomb abortion clinics, vivisection laboratories, it is evil to assassinate doctors who perform abortions. Such actions merely play into their hands: those who live by the sword die by the sword and no one is righteous. Being Pharisaic or puritanical merely generates self-righteousness and the impossibility of living up to the law. All we can do is speak out, even if this leads to censorship and persecution, to draw a line, to try to persuade people through argument, through God’s truth, to refuse to sanction the escalating body count in the multitudinous Enlightenment holocausts that have plagued the world for more than three hundred years.

7. Conclusion Humanity is excellent at convincing itself of the rightness of any course of action it wishes to follow and inventing religious justification for such action. We must always acknowledge that there is distance between God in Christ and our religion because we are Fallen. If religion is inexorably corrupted and we will all face eschatological judgement, then ethics is all that is left. We may assert we have faith in Christ but this does not necessarily validate our ethics (Matthew 7:21 & 25, specifically vv. 31–46). We must recognise this space – otherwise how do we explain the sins of the church? So what is the answer? There is only one answer, to repent and accept Christ’s forgiveness wrought through his atoning propitiatory sacrifice. We have barely begun to understand and accept the completeness of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. The punishment and the price for the alienation and distance caused by sin has been paid; it is the author of the Book of Isaiah writing hundreds of years before the Cross who perceived this axiomatic truth – ‘He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.’ (Isaiah 53:1–5) To paraphrase and extend the Apostle Paul’s incisive and inclusive eschatological sociology of the Cross, Christ’s punishment was in the place of, and related to all humanity, whether Greek or Jew, black or white, slave or free, male or female, but also born or unborn, all, regardless of culture, religion, lifestyle or behaviour. We C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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will all, equally and inclusively, be raised in judgement by, through and in Christ. We must trust in the blood of the lamb not in the blood of Enlightenment Pagan sacrifices. Paul Brazier Email: [email protected]


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in the Summa Theologiae. When we come to the third precept of the natural law, which is directed to that which is specifically human, namely man’s inclination to good according to the nature of his reason, we enter into the realm of politics. On account of the incarnate nature of human reason, the other natural human inclinations are also imbued with political significance. The inclination to procreation and the education of offspring, the focus of this article, when viewed through the lens of moral realism, entails a particular take on the politics of sexuality. Right reason, which is also incarnate reason, tells us that procreation and marriage have an intrinsic mutual ordination to each other. Heterosexual marriage is the unique locus in which children can both be procreated and be given the upbringing and education which is their right. Since society has a special purchase on children in order to ensure its future – and its future well-being – heterosexual marriage ought to enjoy a special legal status and protection. The corollary is that society can only undermine the conditions of its own well-being if it tries to tamper with the meaning of marriage as heretofore understood, namely, heterosexual marriage – one man, one woman. The notion of same-sex marriage is an oxymoron that violates the strictures of right reason.

The human experience of bodily inclinations It is crucial from the outset to bear in mind that human beings differ from all other animal species in that they possess the faculty of reason. It is precisely on account of this faculty that human beings not only experience various inclinations, they can also reflect upon them and interpret them. Thus, while we share in common with all other beings the inclination to self-preservation and while we share in common with all other animals the inclination to sexual intercourse and the education offspring, these inclinations and their resulting expressions are endowed with a meaning for us – on account of rationality – which they do not have for plants and other animals. In and of themselves human appetites or drives do not have meaning. In other words, appetites cannot interpret themselves. Interpretation is the task of reason. Animals experience hunger, but the natural purpose of hunger, namely self-preservation, is not understood by them; neither, by the same token, is the purpose of the sexual appetite, namely preservation of the species. Hunger is understood by human beings as a natural signal, as a function of self-preservation. We eat in order to satisfy this appetite, but we are also concerned when, for example, in case of sickness we lose our appetite. Recognizing the connection between eating and self-preservation we can force ourselves to eat, something which C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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would not occur in the case of other animals. Eating and drinking, moreover, when informed by reason, take on meanings which go well beyond simply preserving human life. A married couple celebrating their wedding anniversary may decide to do so by sharing a meal together. While they are indeed satisfying an appetite which fulfils the inclination to self-preservation, the meaning of what they are doing together clearly transcends the basic function of eating. Their eating and drinking is a celebration of life and love shared to date and the primary goal of nourishment becomes almost invisible. From culture to culture, moreover, the kind of food eaten, the manner of its preparation, the ways in which it is consumed, can vary considerably. And yet there are limits beyond which this variation cannot venture and these limits are set by the basic inclination to self-preservation. When we consider the relationship between sexuality and the preservation of the species, the same point can be made: reason reflecting on the inclination to sexual intercourse imbues it with a network of incredibly rich meanings. Sexual intercourse is not – or rather, ought not to be – simply a pleasurable act. It is indeed pleasurable for it has to be; it is this pleasure which helps to ensure the survival of all animal species by encouraging members to copulate. Nevertheless, for human beings, sexuality can be integrated into personal relationships. It can become a sign of personal commitment and self-giving; the act of sexual union can express a deep spiritual communion and so the passing on of human life can truly become the fruit of a communion of love. In so far as this kind of meaningfulness fails to enter into sexuality, however, sexual activity between humans descends to the level of animality. It becomes a means whereby humans debase that dignity which has been granted to them by virtue of rationality. Moreover, as Karol Wojtyła has rightly pointed out, any descent into a utilitarian attitude on the part of a couple will undermine the long-term viability of their relationship. As he puts it: “A woman and a man, if their ‘mutual love’ depends merely on pleasure or self-interest, will be tied to each other just as long as they remain a source of pleasure or profit for each other.”1

St Thomas on the precepts of the natural law The astute reader will have noticed that the foregoing observations are based on a reading of St Thomas’s delineation of first two of the precepts of the natural law in his Summa Theologiae, I-II, 94, 2. Thomas outlines these precepts as follows: 1 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T Willetts (London: Collins, 1981), p. 87. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars


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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. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law. 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. Secondly, there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals: and in virtue with this inclination, those things are said to belong to the natural law, which nature has taught to all animals, such as sexual intercourse, education of offspring and so forth. 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 the 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.

This profoundly rich text has unfortunately been rendered legend among many contemporary moral theologians on account of their gross misinterpretation of it. Their modus operandi has seemingly been simply to lift questions 90 to 95 – which themselves comprise only a small part of St Thomas’s treatment of law – out of their overall context and to treat them as if they constituted an isolated text in their own right on natural law theory. The above passage in particular has been much subjected to this kind of distortion. The slightest familiarity with the Summa Theologiae brings with it, however, an awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence of its manifold component parts. Indeed, one must go further and state that adequate interpretation of this most mature expression of Thomas’s thought requires a solid grasp of the rest of his intellectual corpus – in so far as this is possible for minds far less capable than his. Fixated upon matters sexual and obviously lacking familiarity with the philosophical anthropology which undergirds Thomas’s thought, Charles Curran notes in the latter “a definite tendency to identify the demands of natural law with physical and biological processes.”2 Echoing a widespread view, Curran believes that Thomas relies too much on Ulpian, who thought of humanity as being layered on top of 2 Charles Curran, Directions in Fundamental Moral Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), p. 127. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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animality.3 Richard M. Gula in an introductory text to moral theology provides a very clear and succinct account of this position, perhaps all the more valuable as it comes from one who is convinced of its validity: The interpretation of natural law which corresponds to the “order of nature,” or generic natural law, in St. Thomas is influenced by Ulpian’s definition of jus naturale: what nature has taught all animals. This way of understanding natural law emphasizes human physical and biological nature in determining morality. It suggests a “blueprint” or “maker’s instructions” theory of natural law which supports physicalism over personalism [. . .] “Physicalism,” [. . .] refers to the tendency in moral analysis to emphasize, or even absolutize, the physical and biological aspects of the human person and human actions independently of the function of reason and freedom.4

When read in the light of St Thomas’s Aristotelian understanding of human nature, however, S.T., I-II, 94, 2 takes on a completely different complexion.5 Following Aristotle, Thomas does not consider human beings to be completely unconnected to the rest of the physical world, in particular to the rest of living things. This point is clearly in evidence in S.T., I-II, 94, 2, when he states that “in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances” and that “there is in man an inclination to things that pertain to him more specially, according to that nature which he has in common with other animals.” Thomas accepts Aristotle’s threefold division of living things according to the kind of functions that specify them. Plants nourish themselves, grow, and reproduce; common sense therefore tells us that there is inscribed within their being a principle – more precisely, a life principle – whereby they perform these functions, for living plants are clearly radically different from dead plants. Aristotle calls this life principle the vegetative soul, “soul” being a most unfortunate translation for the Greek term psyche, which term is translated into Latin as anima. Beyond plant life there are living beings whose specifying feature is the life of sensation, ranging from those animals that enjoy only the basic sense of touch to those that possess all five sense faculties. Animals, however, also manifest those vegetative functions that specify plants to be the kind of being that they are. Since any particular living thing can possess only one life principle, one psyche, we must say that in the case of animals the functions proper to the vegetative 3

Ibid., p. 130. Richard M. Gula, S.S., Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations of Catholic Morality (NY: Paulist Press, 1989), p. 226. 5 In what follows I do engage in some interpretation; what I say has however a strong logical grounding in the thought of both Aristotle and St Thomas. 4



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soul are subsumed into the being of the sensitive soul. In being so subsumed, they are transformed, taking on a different quality. Thus, nourishment is accompanied by the exercise of the sense of taste, for example. The point that must be emphasised here is that it is the unitary sensate being that both nourishes itself and enjoys the pleasure that issues from the actualization of the sense faculty of taste. Finally, in this threefold division of living things, there are human beings, whose specifying feature is rationality. The life principle proper to human beings is the rational soul. If I want to travel to South America, on whose soil I have never, unfortunately, set foot, I can survey the various options available to me and plan my trip in the way that best suits my needs. Having done that, I can then forget about these plans until the date on which I am to travel. This is just one illustration of the way in which human rationality transcends the cognitional abilities of even the highest of the other animals. Just as the functions of the vegetative soul undergo a qualitative transformation when subsumed into the being of the sensitive soul, so too do the functions of both the vegetative and sensitive souls undergo a qualitative transformation when subsumed into the life of the rational soul. At this point we have of course returned to the reflections with which we began with regard to the human experience of the inclinations to self-preservation and to procreation and the education of offspring. The point to be emphasized is the substantial unity of human nature. Man is not composed of three souls – vegetative, sensitive, and rational – but, as Servais Pinckaers puts it, “of one single soul functioning vitally at these three levels as an interior principle of unification and convergence.”6

The natural law and sexual politics Man’s rational nature is the focus of the third precept of the natural law mentioned by St Thomas. On account of rationality we not only desire to know the end and meaning of human existence, that is to say, to know God, we also seek to order our life together in society. Political society is a function of rationality. This rationality is however embodied rationality; expressed otherwise, the human body and its functions are suffused with rationality – or 6 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Noble, O.P. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 438. Addressing the natural inclinations that correspond to these levels, Pinckaers later states that “they form a sheaf of closely linked yearnings and energies. We do indeed have to distinguish them, for the sake of analysis and clear perception, but we must never forget to regroup them again in a dynamic synthesis, for they act only together, as members of an organism” (ibid., p. 452). C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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rather, are suffused with rationality to the extent that we live up to our vocation as rational agents. The organisation of society is therefore not effected by disembodied rational souls; it is rather the work of incarnate reason and requires attention to the bodily welfare and needs of citizens. Hence the need for a healthcare system, for example, health and safety measures at places of work, speed limits on roads, laws governing the disposal of wastage, and so on. The fact that the inclination to sexual intercourse results in offspring is of particular interest for society, for this offspring in effect constitutes its future. Society has a vested interest in the sexual union of male and female. While the way in which this has been regulated in different societies throughout the course of history may have varied, as in the case of eating there are limits beyond which this variation cannot go and these limits are set by the inclination to sexual intercourse itself. (Some of these variations – such as polygamy – can be rejected on the grounds that they do not recognize the fundamental equality and dignity of all human beings.) Heterosexual union therefore has a strong political dimension and notions of marriage have indeed evolved as reason reflected on those conditions which conduce best to the well-being of society. In this context marriage is the term which we have come to employ to designate the public commitment between a man and woman, which commitment provides stable conditions for procreation and the education of offspring. Procreation thus has an intrinsic rational ordering to marriage.7 (This remains true even in the face of objections raised by the hard case of a woman who has had her uterus completely removed. Marriage in her case faces no rational obstacle for nature has been impeded in fulfilling its goal on account of human intervention. Clearly, however, signs of nature’s intent are still in evidence.) This intrinsic ordering between procreation and marriage is, moreover, mutual: those conditions alone are suitably ordered to the procreation of offspring that are rationally informed so as to provide for the

7 The attempt in recent times to establish a sexual utopia by severing the intrinsic link between sexual intercourse and marriage has arguably led to increased rates of marital breakdown and divorce, to astronomic numbers of unwanted pregnancies being translated into abortions, and to demands to legislate for same-sex unions. Writing in relation to abortion, Janet E. Smith states: “When contraceptives became widely available we had the igniting of a sexual revolution which separated having babies from having sex. When that separation happened, babies were no longer welcomed as the natural and right outcome of sexual intercourse, but were considered an accident of sexual intercourse, an inconvenient burden, so inconvenient that we argue that we need abortion to keep our lifestyles going” (“Children: The Supreme Gift of Marriage” in Faith and Challenges to the Family, ed. Russell Smith Braintree (The Pope John Center, 1994). Accessed, 8 February 2008, at p.3 of the following address: http://www.aodonline.org/ aodonline-sqlimages/shms/faculty/SmithJanet/Publications/Bioethics/Children.pdf C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars


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upbringing and education of offspring which is its right. Failure in this regard constitutes a violation of the norms of justice: every child has a right, when growing up, to the presence of his or her father. Violation of the norms of justice is thrown into even clearer light when we consider that children born to single mothers are statistically more likely to end up educationally disadvantaged, involved in crime, and in prison. While there exists a mutually intrinsic ordering between procreation and marriage, marriage nonetheless has a certain rational priority. For those stable conditions required for the healthiest possible upbringing of children and provided by heterosexual marriage alone need to be clearly established before begetting children. The birth of children will not magically establish such conditions, which are the fruit of collaboration, friendship, and affection forged over a period of time and, finally, cemented though vowed lifelong commitment. The fact that many do not acknowledge the validity of this comment in no way negates it: such a lack of acknowledgement simply points to the extent to which prudential reasoning has taken a hammering in contemporary society. Pre-marital, just as extramarital, sexual relations have an intrinsic ordering to the creation of conditions that fail to provide that stability which those potentially begotten of such acts can justly demand. They create conditions that those involved in such acts would hopefully wish to avoid if they possessed a little more wisdom – familial instability and unwanted pregnancies, pregnancies that all too often lead tragically to abortion and to the destructive psychological consequences that flow from it. Such emotional and psychological consequences of extra- and pre-marital sexual intercourse can hardly conduce to the flourishing of individuals and, by extension, to society at large.

Conclusion: the implications of the human inclination to procreation and education of offspring for same-sex unions Marriage of course is based upon many other values apart from procreation. It is indeed a communion of life and love. Other kinds of relationship, it is often argued, share in these values. To make this claim is to misunderstand the nature of heterosexual betrothed love. For heterosexual marriage is, as G.J. McAleer expresses it, “inescapably a call to participate in creation, to render the service of being deposed to the beginning of another person’s existence.”8 8 G.J. McAleer, Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body (NY: Fordham University Press, 2005), p. 130. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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In other words, the life-long commitment of a heterosexual couple is sacrificial in a way that no other kind of love can ever be. As such, it serves to foster the ecstatic nature of love by drawing man and wife away from their egocentric concerns in order to take care of the needs of a helpless other, the fruit of their union. This assault upon egoism is virtually contained in the sexual act itself when its intrinsic ordering to procreation, along with its appropriate marital context, is respected. When the intrinsic ordering of the sexual act is subverted, however, egoism is fostered. As John Paul II puts it, “When a man a woman entirely reject the idea that he may become a father and she a mother, when they deliberately exclude the possibility of parenthood from their relationship, the danger arises that objectively speaking, there will be nothing left except ‘utilisation for pleasure’, of which the object will be a person.”9 A fortiori in the case of same-sex couples, where the intrinsic ordination of the sexual organs is wholly subverted. The union of male and female goes beyond other kinds of relationship in that the communion of life and love proper to this kind of union fructifies in new human life. Since this new life assures the future of society it necessarily has a political significance; so too, by extension, does the union of male and female in marriage. Society rightly feels a need to legislate for heterosexual marriage for in doing so it attempts to protect its most basic unit, namely the family, in order to ensure its own well-being. By the same token it has no need to legislate for other kinds of union, for these do not and cannot have the same importance for it. Indeed, one could go further and point out that they are clearly different from heterosexual marriage in their fundamental nature in that they cannot issue in offspring as a sign of their communion of life and love, and they consequently cannot ensure the continuation of society. We ought not to pretend, therefore, that such unions can be put on an equal footing with heterosexual marriage. Any talk of inequality with regard to gay couples and of discrimination against them because society does not bless their “unions” with a legal status is, consequently, logically incoherent, for like is not being compared with like. The relationship that obtains between man and wife is of a radically different order to that of any other kind of human relationship. To accord gay unions the title of “marriage” is simply to confuse matters and constitutes an attempt to make reality a function of our vocabulary rather than to use words to express as well as humanly possible the reality at hand – albeit allowing for some degree of social construction based on that interpretation which is the work of reason. There is however 9

John Paul II, Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willetts (London: Collins, 1981),

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no getting over the limits imposed by the inclinations discerned by incarnate reason.10 Kevin O’ Reilly Milltown Institute School of Philosophy Milltown Park, Ireland [email protected]

10 In this article we have prescinded from the question of the morality of legislating for a state of affairs which facilitates a context in which immoral acts, namely homosexual acts, can be performed. A fuller treatment of the morality of same-sex unions from this perspective must await another occasion. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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Trinity as polytheistic. That Muhammad was no theologian emerges on every page of the Koran. He was a preacher and a leader, political and military as well as religious. However, modern scholarship is of the opinion that Abraham was a polytheist. That poses no problems for Christians but it does for Muslims by reason of their understanding of the meaning and location of revelation. The Islamic notion of revelation differs in essence from that of Christianity. When Heythrop College founded a degree course in ‘Abrahamic religions’ the advertisement made two statements. (see The Tablet 12 May 2007). Under the title ‘One Source, Three Faiths’ it asserted that Abraham was ‘the common source of the three traditions’, which might imply that divine revelation is to be found in Islam as it is in Judaism and Christianity. From a Christian viewpoint can that be correct? For Christians direct or supernatural revelation came only to the Jewish people and found its fulfilment in Christ in his person and his gospel. The second assertion was that ‘we should make a positive assessment of Islam to match what we have to say about Judaism’. However, the Christian belief is that the spiritual history of the Jewish people is unique. God chose the Jews, no other nation, to be the instrument of salvation for all mankind, achieved in Christ in the fullness of time. What, then, does it mean to be Abrahamic? Its meaning cannot be taken for granted; and both Judaism and Islam will each have its answer to the question. The notion provides grounds for serious and fruitful debate, both agreement and disagreement. In any adult society, national and international, debate between religions, where agreement and disagreement are expressed with reasons being provided and in a polite and respectful manner, should be as commonplace and acceptable as it is in the conduct of politics or culture. The Christian meaning is provided definitively by St Paul. Events in Galatia after he had preached there made him apply himself to the issue. Christians of Jewish origin had arrived in Galatia after him preaching ‘another gospel than that which we preached to you’ (Gal.1.7-8). According to these preachers, while faith in Christ had a role, justification was not complete without observing the works of the law, specifically the commandment of circumcision and the feasts of the Jewish calendar. This, stated Paul, undermined the unique role of Christ in the salvation story; and, responding to the preachers’ invocation of Abraham, he set out the Christian meaning of Abraham in the saving plan of God. ‘Christ brought us freedom from the curse of the law . . . The purpose of it all was that the blessing of Abraham should in Jesus Christ be extended to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith’ (3.13f). The blessing of Abraham, he states, is Christ Jesus. Nothing else. ‘Now the promises were pronounced to C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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Abraham and to his issue. It does not say ‘issues’ in the plural but in the singular: and the issue intended is Christ’ (3.16). The one and only issue of Abraham is Christ. Christ and only Christ is what Abraham was all about. ‘Faith in Christ is the ground on which the promised blessing is given, and given to those who have such faith’ (v.22). ‘Baptized into union with him, you have all put on Christ as a garment’ (v26). This then is the Galatian test of what it means to be Abrahamic. Does whatever is preached declare that faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour constitutes justification (2.15) and not anything else? If it does not, it is not Abrahamic because ‘It is the men of faith who are Abraham’s sons’ (3.7). Faith in what? ‘Faith in Christ Jesus’ Paul tells us (2.15). Justification is ‘only through faith in Christ Jesus’ (ditto). Taking this forward to the matter before us, Abraham is not therefore one source of three faiths. Christ was his ‘singular issue’ (3.16), Christ and only Christ. What counted with Abraham in God’s saving plan was ‘his faith in God’ (3.5), for which he was blessed (3.13). In the fullness of time that blessing was Christ Jesus, nothing else. Abraham in God’s saving plan is not a ‘source’ of anything else. Such an assertion is not ‘the gospel of Christ’ but ‘another gospel’ (1.6f). Making references to Abraham in a religious document like the Koran and citing him as an example of a prophet and believer in the oneness of God is not Abrahamic therefore in the Christian understanding of ‘Abrahamic’. Judaism led to Christ, therefore it was Abrahamic. Islam does not. Therefore, contrary to the Heythrop College course advertisement, Islam cannot be said to be Abrahamic in its Christian meaning, cannot be said ‘to match what we have to say about Judaism’. The assertion that Islam does match what we have to say about Judaism is not compatible with God’s saving plan. Of course Islam has a profound religious significance but no more and no less than any other non-Judaic/Christian religion. Likewise, Muhammad has no more significance, and no less, than the founder of any other non-Judaic/Christian religion. What does not lead to Christ is not Abrahamic. Indeed not only does Muhammad not lead his readers to Christ but he expressly would also lead them away from him. ‘The only true faith in God’s sight is Islam’ he declares (Koran 3.19). Muslims must never be denied the right to express that belief. But it is not Abrahamic in its Christian meaning and ‘It is not the gospel which we (Paul) preached’ (Gal.1.9). As the reader will be well aware, Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians with passion. In parts his language is intemperate. He was angry at what was being preached to them, he was driven by an overwhelming concern that his Galatian Christians might be turned from the true ‘good news’ of what Jesus Christ was to a false gospel. That was in the year 54 or 55 when he as staying in Ephesus towards C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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the conclusion of his second missionary journey. Just two years or so later when he was in Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, he wrote his letter to the Romans ‘longer than any other NT letter, more reflective in its outlook . . . more calmly reasoned that Galatians in treating the key question of justification and the Law’ in Raymond E. Brown’s words (1997). However, though the tone is different from that of Galatians, the message is precisely the same. In 9.6-9 Paul sets out what it means to be one of Abraham’s children’. He states: ‘Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children . . . . It is not the natural children who are God’s children but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.’ It is an uncompromising statement. Like Paul, we must ‘speak the truth in Christ’ (Rom.9.1). Ephesians 5.14 advises us how Christians should conduct dialogue and debate, namely: ‘Speak the truth in love, so that we may grow unto Christ in all things’. Christ is the promise made to Abraham. Because that is the truth, it devalues no one and nothing. However, it gives us who believe no grounds for boasting, ‘Boasting is excluded’ (ibid.3.27) because we have earned nothing. Jesus Christ is the pure gift of the Father. The Spirit has been poured out, not earned. Michael Knowles [email protected]


Aquinas’ Solution of Aristotle’s Incontinent Man and Augustine’s Two Wills 323

began with an investigation of the universe and its rules; only late (in the fifth century B.C.) did Greek philosophers turn to social and moral problems; nevertheless they applied rules of the universe to the rational conduct of human beings.3 Hence, Greek philosophy overlooked the problem of the will as rationally appetitive. In contrast Augustine was interested in the question of the will and he did know Aristotle’s work. Augustine as well as other Christian philosophers supposed that in corrupted human nature there is still some rightness which is necessary for searching the ultimate goal and on which are based all the other criteria of human being’s action. Later Christian philosophers discussed whether the rightness is in the intellect or in the will. Thus, the historical excursion aims to show the background of Aquinas’ approach and his presuppositions about the collaboration of reason and will in every human’s action which helps him to answer the question about the incontinent person with help of the concept of conscience.

Socrates – Aristotle’s Approach According to Socrates no one acts against what he/she believes to be best for him/her. If a person’s action is immoral it is only due to ignorance because he/she follows what he/she wrongly considers to be the best for him/her.4 The human being judges his/her action from the perspective of the action’s end because this end is the purpose of actions. Although the human being is able to achieve many ends in his/her life, the main end of his/her entire life could be only one. This end has to be considered the most appropriate for the human being as a human being, which means, to his/her soul. Everyone seeks happiness through his/her actions. Therefore happiness is the ultimate and the best end of all his/her actions. Thus, the misunderstanding of this end has as a consequence wrong or bad actions. The knowledge of this end is wisdom and the soul is strong due to its wisdom and knowledge.5 Therefore, to correct immoral actions means to improve the knowledge about that which really makes human beings happy. Aristotle agreed with Socrates that the main end of a human being is the only one and that is happiness. The other ends are desired only for the sake of this one.6 Additionally, he noted that this end is contemplation of God and that this end is indeed reachable by 3 Albrecht Dihle, The theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1982), pp. 36–37. 4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII, 2 (1145 b 21–30). 5 Plato, Euthydemus, 281b. 6 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I, 7 (1097 a 29–b 21).


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human beings.7 Nevertheless, Aristotle objected to the premise that a human being is able to act against his/her best knowledge when following his/her wrong passions. Aristotle called the human being who acts against his best knowledge incontinent (akratic) and he treated this problem in the 7th book of Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle accepted Socrates’ affirmation that nothing is more powerful than knowledge8 ; that no one follows what he/she determines to be bad for him/her. Nevertheless, knowledge is general in form, while the action is concerned with a particular end. General knowledge has to be applied to a concrete action with the help of a particular evaluation. This particular evaluation has to connect general knowledge with the concrete conclusion. For example, a diabetic knows that sweetness harms his/her health (this general knowledge is based on his/ her painful experience). If a diabetic evaluates this cake as sweet, he/she immediately concludes that this cake harms his/her health (and the result of the eating would be painful). Therefore, he/ she refuses to eat it. But the judgment of the incontinent diabetic is under pressure due to the appetite. That is why he/she connects his/her particular evaluation of the sweet cake with the other general knowledge. Even though he/she has the right knowledge, he/she connects it with the general knowledge that sweetness as a taste is good, so he/she concludes that the cake is good. The act follows the conclusion. However, after consuming the cake, he/she knows that he/she acted wrongly. Both general and particular judgment were right but the choice of the general knowledge was wrong because he/she should have connected the evaluation of the cake as sweet with the general knowledge that sweetness is unhealthy for him/her being a diabetic. According to Aristotle the incontinent human being holds the general knowledge but in a habitual way, hence this knowledge is not present actually in the process of his evaluation of the cake. The incontinent human being is like a drunken man who has the knowledge but is unable to use it. They both have the knowledge habitually, but not actually. The incontinent person also has habitual knowledge but the intensity of his/her passions prevents him/her from applying it. Nevertheless, the incontinent person is able to change his attitude because he/she has not lost sight of his/her main end, so he/she has not lost his criterion of the right action. For better understanding, Aristotle compared the incontinent with the intemperate person who judges a similar situation in the same way. However, the intemperate person holds only the general knowledge, and he/she is wrongly convinced that it is right for him/her to follow bodily pleasure. Unlike the incontinent person, the intemperate 7 8

Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics IX, 3 (1249 b 6–23). Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII, 2 (1145 b 28).



person has lost sight of his/her ultimate end and therefore he/she is convinced that his/her judging is right. So, it is impossible to persuade him to change his judgment9 . Therefore, if the weakness of the incontinent person consists in intemperance, then there would not be a difference in the actions of the intemperate and the incontinent person; actions of both will be intemperate. The difference would be only in the knowledge. The incontinent person knows about his/her own weakness. Thus, it is only necessary for him/her to exercise the opposite virtues to be able to use habitual knowledge effectively.

Augustine’s Problem of “Two Wills” Christian thinkers approved of the view of ancient philosophers that everyone desires what he/she knows to be good for him/her.10 They inquired as to how one could understand that one’s act is wrong. How could one be deemed to be immoral if his/her judgment is contaminated by wrong passions? If one has lost the end how then is he/she able to know it? Moreover Christian thinkers noticed, as Aristotle did, a special split in the conduct of a human being which is expressed in Rom 7:15: “I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate.” So they were, of necessity, preoccupied with the question of how it is possible that the same will wants and does not want the same thing at the same time. Augustine’s solution was influenced by his conception of the will. According to Augustine, the supreme end of the human being and that which makes him/her happy is the contemplation of unchangeable eternal truths which are the proper objects of the soul. On the other hand, as far as his/her corporal life is concerned, he/she depends on the sensual world. The soul is obligated, according to eternal truths, to govern the body. Human beings should use things of the sensual world wisely, that is, only in the measure in which they are necessary for the conservation of his/her life. Augustine distinguished a higher and lower reason to explain the ability of the soul to contemplate unchangeable eternal truths and to direct particular acts. The task of the higher reason is the contemplation of eternal truths, and the task of the lower reason is the understanding of and orientation within the sensual world. The task of the lower reason is to direct actions according to the eternal truths which are contemplated by the higher reason. Both reasons are aspects of the same reason; their distinction is only on account of their object. 9 10

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VII, 8 (1151 a 7–10). QD De veritate q. 24, a. 8.


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Although the reason determines the actions, the will actually decides which one will be chosen. Only free will that has the potential to choose; hence, human will must be free. And will inclines the soul toward a desired object. Thus, the will plays the main role in Augustine’s explanation of the right action. As the reason has turned away from eternal truths, the will lost the criterion for the right decision. Moreover, the will is under the governance of sensual reality insofar as the will is attracted by it. An evaluation of sensual reality is based on daily practice which is likely affected by custom and by convenience. Although eternal truths, which illuminate a human soul, keep commanding the soul to clarify itself by turning away from temporary goods to eternal truths, human being is under the governance of sensual passions as a result of original sin, the repetition of sin and the presence of the desirable. The soul is bound to temporary goods and is unable to “hear” a command of the eternal truths. If the soul is turned away from the eternal truths how could it be that the soul can know about eternal truths’ command to return to them? How might the soul release itself from captivity to temporary things? There is an immense gap between an evaluation of reality under pressure of the passions or under influence of customs and an evaluation in the light of the eternal truths. Augustine demonstrated it through the example of the children who would prefer the death of a person to the death of a beloved bird11 . Augustine’s solution is connected with will and this solution explains how it is possible that “I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate.” In spite of the fact that the soul has lost its view of eternal truths and its evaluation is affected by customs and passions, the human being still wants to act in the right way. According to Augustine the right will itself is one of the objects (goods) of will. Moreover, the right will, as an object, ranks among the highest objects of the will. He explains that the will wants itself in its rightness more than the other goods because the other goods can be used rightly only by the right will. This rightness is more valuable for the will than the other goods.12 And which will is right? That will is right which desires a right and honorable life and which desires to achieve the highest wisdom. And it is enough if the will desires only to be right.13 Thus, there has to be conserved a sense of rightness inside the human being which is connected with desire, which is an act of the will. After original sin, the will is captivated by the attraction of lower goods and tends toward them; but none of these sensual goods is able to satisfy the will. As long as the will is not content with its willing or does not approve of itself, the will, in a certain way, reflects an insufficiency in its desire for lower 11 12 13

Augustine, De libero arbitrio III, 5, 17 (PL 32, 1279). Augustine, De libero arbitrio I, 13, 28 (PL 32, 1236). Ibid., 1, 12, 25, (PL 32, 1234).



goods. This means that the will has to possess a right orientation towards the object of its proper desire and this orientation helps the will to evaluate the wrong tendencies. Augustine explains that, despite the losing of the original rightness, there remains an image of the beatitude and a view of wisdom in the human’s soul. Therefore, human being is able to see his/her summum bonum in the light of this view (this explains why the human being longs for beatitude and wisdom although he/she lacks the wisdom which gives him/her an understanding of the value of the wisdom)14 . According to Augustine, there is only one wisdom in which the human being sees his/her summum bonum.15 The inner conflict of the will, which was described by the tradition as the conflict of “two wills”, is produced by the will’s auto-reflection when the will is not content with its willing of lower goods. Then the will refutes its willing because it is not what the will really wants.16 Augustine affirms the human being never lost his power to want his/her summum bonum, nevertheless, the human being had lost the force and the ability to do it.17 Augustine describes this conflict of the wills in his book Confessions (8) as a fight of two wills. He underwent this experience during his searching for God.18 The problem of “two wills” was treated by other authors during the subsequent centuries, often in connection with Rom 7:15. Peter Lombard in his Sentences summarizes this tradition. We will see that St. Albert Great, St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas and other philosophers of the 13th century developed this topic from the point of view of their conception of conscience and synderesis.

Scholastic Tradition in 12–13th Century A different approach to the “problem of two wills” and to the rightness of soul in Western philosophy and theology in the 11th century was caused by the discovery of Aristotle’s philosophy as well as Arabian commentaries on Aristotle. The role of the reason in the explanation of human being’s action gradually increased. In the 12– 13th century, the discussion about the problem of “two wills” turned upon whether the rightness, after the original sin, was conserved in the right will or in the right reason. The solution was connected with 14

Ibid., 2, 9, 26, (PL 32, 1255). Ibid., 2, 9, 25, (PL 32, 1254). 16 Eleonore Stump, ‘Augustine on Free Will’, The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. E. Stump and N. Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 126. 17 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus ad Simplicianum libri duo 1,1,11 (PL 40,107). 18 Eric O. Springsted, The Act of Faith, Christian Faith and the Moral Self , (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2002), pp. 105. 15


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the conception of synderesis19 and conscience.20 For example, Peter of Poitiers21 proclaims that synderesis is an act of reason, which approves of or rejects inclinations of the will. He designates synderesis as a Greek expression for conscience. Consequently, William of Auvergne considers the possibility of the destruction of synderesis in the case of mortal sins and heresies.22 Philip the Chancellor and Alexander of Hales made an effort to demonstrate that synderesis is an innate habit of the principles, meaning that reason is naturally supplied by the principles which enables reason to judge rightly in human affairs. St. Bonaventure made a distinction between synderesis and conscience as two lasting aspects of rightness: conscience as the rightness of judging and synderesis is the rightness of will.23 And finally, St. Albert the Great presented synderesis as innate habits24 and the conscience as that which makes the decision whether to act or not.25 These latter two authors treated the conception of “synderesis” and “conscience” in their Commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, strictly speaking in the Distinctio 24 and 39 of the 2nd book. However, Peter Lombard raises here the question of “two wills”, but he does not write about conscience at all and he only mentions the question of synderesis (without using the term “synderesis”). He gathers, in his Sentences, the views of previous authorities. Thus, Peter Lombard had collated here all views about the problem of the genesis of sin (e.g., if the human being is created by God who created all 19 The concept “synderesis” (it would be better to say syneidésis because synderesis had arisen from the wrong transcription) was used for the first time by Jerome (347– 419) in his commentary on Ezekiel (Commentaria in Ezechielem prophetam 1,1, c. 1, PL 25,22b). Jerome explained Ezekiel’s vision of four animals (human, lion, ox, and eagle) in the manner of Plato as the four powers of the soul: reason, irascibility, concupiscence and conscience, although the conception “conscience” did not play a part in Plato’s description of the soul. According to Jerome conscience is a spark of reason called by Greek synderesis. Synderesis is, according to Jerome, the ability of the soul which was not touched by original sin; the soul is able to judge, what is right or wrong, because of conscience; and so the soul is able to direct the person’s actions. 20 James C. Doig, Aquinas’s Philosophical Commentary on the Ethics: A Historical Perspective, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2001), pp. 166–169. 21 Peter of Poitiers taught in Paris in 1167–1205. 22 James C. Doig, Aquinas’s Philosophical Commentary on the Ethics: A Historical Perspective, pp. 162. 23 Bonaventura, ‘Breviloquium 2, c. 11’, S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, sv. 5, Opuscula varia theologica, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, Quaracchi (Firenze: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1891), pp. 201–291. 24 Albert the Great, ‘Quaestio de ratione superiori et synderesi, a. 3’, Alberti Magni opera omnia, sv. 25/2, Quaestiones, ed. A. Friez, (W. Kübl a H. Anzulewitz, Münster: Aschendorff, 1993). 25 Albert the Great, ‘Quaestio de conscientia II, a. 1’, Alberti Magni opera omnia, sv. 25/2, Quaestiones: “Primus ergo actus rationis, qui est accipere particulare sub universali, non est conscientia, sed secundus, qui est decernere aliquid faciendum in particulari propter decretum synderesis in universali.” C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


things to be right, including the human being, he/she has to be given the capacity of right will; consequently it must be asked: how is it possible for him to commit sin?)26 and the problem of the will which is supposed to desire good but often wants that which is bad. Lombard’s solution of the problem is based on Augustine’s tradition of “two wills”.27 Aquinas, linked with this tradition, treats conscience and synderesis, as did his contemporaries, in his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. He kept the same structure as his contemporaries (for ex. Albert Great and Bonaventure). At the beginning, he treats synderesis, then Augustine’s higher and lower reason, and finally, there is an explanation of conscience. We have to notice that Aquinas keeps this structure in all his questions about conscience.28 So, Aquinas’ conception of “conscience” must be considered with the background of the above mentioned discussions.

Thomas Aquinas Aquinas agrees with the previous tradition that the human being, despite the destruction caused by original sin, still has to have the possibility of reaching his/her end. However, he underlines, under the influence of Aristotle and in spite of the importance of the will in the Augustinian tradition, the central role of reason. This does not mean that Thomas diminished the role of the will. Both the will and the reason are the highest powers of the soul and both govern every human’s action. Will is still the primary mover of all the other human powers and abilities, including reason. And will itself is moved by its own end, which is goodness.

a) The concept of the will Aquinas links his explanation of the intellect’s and the will’s collaboration to Aristotelian and Augustinian tradition. Aquinas followed previous tradition’s reference to the point of view that every human action tends to an end which is a good for this act. The actions are caused by inclinations of the appetitive faculties. The inclinations are organized by the natural order. Therefore, human beings are naturally inclined to the goods, which human being shares with all beings and which serve to conserve their lives. Then, human being is inclined to these goods, which he/she shares with animals and which are conducive to the making of a family, for example living with a partner 26 27 28

Peter Lombard, Liber Sententiarum II, d. 24, PL 192, 701–706. Ibid., d. 39, PL 192, 745–747. QD De veritate, q. 15 - q. 17; STh I, q. 79, a. 9, a. 12–13.


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or rearing children. A human being naturally evaluates higher the good which he/she shares with animals than those which he/she shares with all beings. Further, a human being evaluates as lower the goods, which he/she shares with animals than the goods, which properly belong to him/her as a human being, namely justice, cognition of the truth, etc29 . It is natural to subordinate the lower good to the higher. Hence, all the ends of particular actions could be coordinated in a way that all human acts could lead to the supreme end. This end is the object of the will as the rational appetitive faculty. There might be only one supreme end. Because happiness is always desirable for itself and never for another end, happiness is a perfect and ultimate end of human being.30 Other particular goods, the will desires on account of happiness, and they are useful as means for the sake of the happiness. Thus, the will is free from the particular goods apprehended in this or that thing because things are both good and useful only in relation to the ultimate and supreme end.

b) The concept of the reason The will is a motor for all the soul’s powers but the will also has to be moved; the will is moved by what is apprehended as a good, and this apprehension is the task of reason. The intellect forms a species of a thing under influence of the thing. The intellect presents the goodness of the knowing thing to the will. Nevertheless, the will does not want the species of the thing as it is in the intellect: the will wants the thing in its own act of being. If we are freezing, we are not satisfied by knowing what fire is we want the warmth of fire itself. The will desires not a presentation of the thing but the thing itself. How is the will able to surpass the thing’s presentation and how does it want the thing in its being? It is because there is connaturality between all our appetites and their ends, as it was mentioned above. The will is perfected by the being (esse) of things inasmuch as things are its goal, in contrast to reason, which is perfected by the species of things.31 Moreover, reason, which evaluates all things, is able to coordinate the means and the instrumental goods as far as these goods lead to the end. The cooperation between reason and will is described by St. Thomas in terms of intention. Will desires its own end as well as the other things for the sake of this end. Will desires the other things in the intention toward this end, and reason evaluates these things as 29 30 31

Thomas Aquinas, STh I-II, q. 94, a 2. Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Ethicorum, lb. 1, lc. 9. QD De veritate, q. 21, a. 1.



good or useful for the sake of this end. The intention is, therefore, the object of will, but it is reason which determines and chooses the things which serve for achieving this end.32 Thus, although reason causes any movement of the will, it is not in the Kantian sense. Reason does not move the will through a command; it moves the will through a representation of the good. Since everything may be a means on the way to the supreme end, everything may participate in the goodness of the supreme end. On the way to the supreme end, it is impossible to consider any things as totally negative. Aquinas often uses the example of health. If a human being desires health, then he/she would take advantage of bodily exercise, a healthy diet and a healthy regimen with the intention towards health. Inasmuch as a human being takes pleasure in health and in being healthy, he/she takes pleasure in bodily exercise, a healthy diet, and a healthy regimen and he/she evaluates them immediately as good for him/her, because he/she experiences healthiness through these means. Of course, if the human being is ill then a cure could be painful at first. It is only because of illness that the healthy diet or regimen (etc.) seems to be negative. Human being desires other things for the sake of the last end in a way similar to his/her desire for a bodily exercise, a healthy diet and a healthy regimen, for the sake of the health itself. Inasmuch as the will wills its own end, happiness, the will also desires the others things, and the will experiences in this things happiness. Therefore, a virtuous man takes pleasure in all actions which point to his end, while a man who is short of virtue experiences more difficulty or more pain in taking these actions. Virtuous man evaluates everything rightly for the sake of a certain co-naturality (connaturalitas) with his needs and the evaluation of these goods is given on the basis of the natural inclinations of the appetitive faculties. So, everything is good and enjoyable for a virtuous human being, inasmuch as it leads to the ultimate end. According to Aquinas, the will always follows only what reason judges to be good. Thus, a misunderstanding of the end could be given only by reason. A clue to the misunderstanding lies in the connection of the reason and the sensual faculties: An object of reason is a general concept. Nevertheless, the action is about a concrete thing and thus, the evaluation of reason must be about a concrete thing. Therefore, the reason’s evaluation has to be connected with a thing through the sense, Vis cogitativa (the same sense in animals is called vis aestimativa). With its help, animals are able to evaluate things as useful, pleasant, dangerous, unpleasant, etc., whereas human beings evaluate things as useful, pleasant, good, etc., with help of reason). The vis cogitativa works with phantasms in which the human being 32

QD De veritate, q. 22, a. 12.


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conserves all the precedent experience. For that reason, bad habits or customs might strongly influence the reason’s evaluation of things.33 Since it is reason which evaluates things as good, useful or bad, and this judgment of reason is followed by the movement of will, Aquinas could not accept Augustine’s point of view that the will would follow what is judged to be bad. The will never follows what reason understands as bad. So, the problem of two wills must be explicated from the point of view of reason. Reason errs either in knowledge of the end or in the evaluation of the means.

Does practical reason err in the knowledge of the end? Reason, which evaluates things and actions from the point of view of the ultimate end, is called practical. Although Aquinas sometimes compared its operations to those of speculative reason, there are some differences between them. The object of speculative reason is truth, while the object of practical reason is the rightness of the action. Speculative reason firstly apprehends the being (ens), and it shapes the other concepts within the framework of being. Speculative reason is perfected by science and addresses itself to the necessary affirmations. Practical reason firstly apprehends goodness and it evaluates things and actions in the framework of goodness. Practical reason is perfected by prudence in regard to contingent things. According to St. Thomas, as a follower of Aristotle, every reality in its nature is created in such way as to be able to fulfill its own purpose34 . As speculative reason is supplied with the habit of the first principles (e.g., – the whole is bigger than its parts) which makes the reason able to judge rightly and so attend to the truth, so the practical reason has to be supplied with the habit of first principles which makes the reason able to judge rightly in regard its operations. This means that practical reason must be supplied by the most common criterion which is the foundation of all other evaluations of things. This natural habit is just the synderesis, and its principle can be expressed by that word (Aquinas offered more expressions: “good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided”)35 . Nevertheless, this principle is not any command (as is for example Kant’s categorical imperative). This principle grounds the spontaneous judgment of the practical reason to follow the good as soon as practical reason has apprehended the good. The will is always free to follow a judgment based on this principle. Once a hungry man sees an apple he knows that he would like to eat it, but it does not mean that he takes it. 33 34 35

STh I-II, q. 72, a. 7, ad 2; STh I-II, q. 31 a. 7. QD De veritate, q. 15, a. 2. Ibid., q. 16, a. 2.



To summarize, synderesis is an innate habit of practical reason. Synderesis supplies practical reason with the first principles of judging. Synderesis might be developed by exercise into virtue: prudence. Prudence is based on synderesis in a similar way as sciences are based on the first principles of speculative reason. Prudence leads the others virtues because practical reason through prudence judges all actions and things to be good or bad according to the natural order, as was mentioned above. In this way synderesis is developed in the natural law which determines the rightness of the person’s operation.

Does practical reason err in the evaluation of the means? If the human being had erred in the knowledge of the ultimate end, the human being would have lost his/her criterion of acting (as Aristotle had taught), and evermore the human being would not have known about his/her wrongness and he/she would have done what he/she would wrongly consider to be the best for him/her. Due to synderesis (as Aquinas teaches) human being cannot completely lose his/her last end. So, human being always follows in some way what makes him/her happy. Thus, the split could be only on the part of the reason which evaluates the means. In this case, reason compares the individual object of the various human needs and tendencies and this evaluation could be influenced by the passions of the lower tendencies because of vis cogitativa. The human being is corrupted in the appetitive faculty and his/her right evaluation is drawn away to the contrary by reason of the passion. If the human being gives priority to the lower things over the higher, it is because he/she must apprehend it as higher and because his/her evaluation is perverted.36 It could be caused by reason of passion, or by a wrong understanding, or by reason of custom.37 Aquinas follows Aristotle in that there is only one way to restore the ability to judge rightly: to exercise the corresponding virtue until the human being can operate with ease and with pleasure, in other words, naturally.

Conscience and incontinent person To be able to correct one’s own conduct and to exercise right virtues, one needs first of all to get a criterion which helps him/her to reveal his/her wrong judgment. These means are, according to Aquinas, synderesis and conscience. This is the reason why Aquinas put his 36 37

STh I-II, q. 31, a. 7. STh. I-II, q. 94, a. 4.


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treatise on conscience and on synderesis in the place where Lombard described the means which the human being possesses for right action (Distinctio 24) without mentioning synderesis and conscience. The conscience is a help for “seeing” the sin. Aquinas defines conscience as “application of knowledge to an action”.38 This application is made by the practical reason, and could be in some way compared with a syllogism of speculative reason. In the case of speculative reason, the conclusion of a syllogism follows from the well-known general affirmation, which is contracted by the well-known and less general affirmation (e.g., every human being is mortal; Socrates is human; hence, Socrates is mortal). The most general judgments of speculative reason, which are the bases for all further syllogisms, are grounded on the first principles of speculative reason. Similarly, in the case of practical reason, the final evaluation results from the general judgments grounded on the general principles of synderesis, and from the judgment of a particular situation (eating sweets is harmful to me as diabetic; this cake is sweet, and I am diabetic; thus, this cake is harmful to me). As the rightness of syllogism is guaranteed by the habit of first principles in speculative matters, so it is with synderesis in practical matters. Although Aquinas proclaimed the process of evaluation of the practical reason to be similar to the syllogism, there is a difference. Judgment of speculative reason is logically deduced from two known judgments. In the case of practical reason, it is better to say that the practical reason judges the concrete case in the light of the synderesis or the natural law or a general knowledge of the end.39 To sum up, in the case of practical matters, practical reason judges things aright on account of connaturality with them.40 The judgments given only on the level of speculation do not enter directly into the evaluation until it becomes connatural through meditation41 and exercise of virtues. When a human being considers how he/she should act in his/her particular circumstances (in the moral sense), a human being generalizes his/her particular case. Because a human being considers how to act in his/her cases generally, it means that a human being is speculating and it is a task of the speculative 38 QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 1: “Nomen enim conscientiae significat applicationem scientiae ad aliquid, unde conscire dicitur quasi simul scire.” 39 Ignacius T. Eschmann, The Ethics of Saint Thomas Aquinas, (Toronto-OntarioCanada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997), pp. 186–188; Pauline Westerman, The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory, (Leiden-New York-Köln: E. J. Brill 1998), pp. 29. 40 STh. I-II, q. 58, a. 5; Rafael T. Caldera, Le jugement par inclination chez Saint T. Aquinas, (Paris: Librairie Philosophique, 1980), pp. 65. 41 Sententia libri Ethicorum, lb. 7, lc. 3: “ad hoc enim requiritur quod illa quae homo audit fiant ei quasi connaturalia, propter perfectam impressionem ipsorum intellectui, ad quod homo indiget tempore in quo intellectus per multiplices meditationes firmetur in eo quod accepit.” C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars


reason.42 And it might follow that he/she does not accepts it for her/his particular case. For example, smokers are not continent but intemperate in most cases. The smoker knows the threat of the consequences but he/she does not accept to be it his/her case. It does not help to argue with him/her (he/she knows it) but it helps to repeat how the smoking is dangerous. In this way, the smoker is able to accept the general knowledge to his/her case and to decide that he/she does not want to smoke. The smoker who unsuccessfully fights with smoking could be called incontinent. To sum up, a human being judges the thing to be good or bad in regard to his/her intention to fulfill his/her tendencies and needs. These evaluations are based on the grounds of the tendency of will towards human being’s last end, which is always understood under specific circumstances of the concrete historical, social and personal conditions.43 This means that a human being evaluates the things in regard to how he/she understands himself/herself, the world, a particular situation, etc. This understanding might be wrong and never would be perfect in any case, but synderesis guarantees that the ultimate end could never be totally lost. The human being is able to understand his most profound desire and find out his own end, and from this point of view, he/she is able to evaluate the goodness and usefulness of individual realities as the means to the end, in the context of his/her specific circumstances. The reason why Aquinas uses the likeness of evaluation’s process of the practical reason to the speculative syllogism is that it enables him to explain the possibility of two different conclusion of practical reason operating at the same time. He treats this case in his question De conscientia in QD De Veritate.44 He explains the possibilities of two different “syllogisms” of practical reason. Both “syllogisms” involve the application of synderesis to the same evaluation of the concrete situation. Aquinas’ example of evaluation of a concrete situation is “this married woman is desirable”45 . Nevertheless, while the one “syllogism” is made by reason itself, the other one might be subject to the influence of momentary passions, either concupiscence or anger. This syllogism, made by reason without interference of passion, is called conscience. This one, which is influenced by passions, 42 This is also why the kind of ethic judgment differs from the kind of judgment that would be derived solely from a particular or concrete situation. The judgments of ethic belong to the speculative science while the judgment as to matters of conduct is connaturalis. 43 QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 2, ad 2: “Vel dicendum quod cum dico conscientiam non implico scientiam solummodo stricte acceptam prout est tantum verorum, sed scientiam largo modo acceptam pro quacumque notitia, secundum quod omne quod novimus, communi usu loquendi scire dicimur.” 44 QD De Veritate, q. 17, a. 1, ad 4. 45 Ibid.; Thomas Aquinas, QD De malo, q. 3 a. 9, ad 7. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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is called the liberum arbitrium (free judgment). Aquinas explains that this “syllogism” is made in collaboration between the reason and the will and the will is connected with passions. The judgment of conscience is shaped only by reason, but the act of the liberum arbitrium is under the influence of the desirable things, which is present in the moment of the decision. So if the influence of the desirable thing is not under the control of virtue’s power, it can affect the human’s cognitive powers. And this is exactly the case of Aristotle’s incontinent person, who during an attack of passion “forgets” his original intention, although he/she knows it before and after this attack. Thus, incontinent man generally knows that sleeping with married women is fornication, which leaves him unhappy with consequences. And he knows that this desirable woman is married, hence sleeping with this woman is fornication and leaves him unhappy with consequences. Nevertheless, under momentary passion, he connects the evaluation of the concrete situation “this married woman is desirable” with the general judgment “everything desirable should be enjoyed” and thus, he enjoys. Nevertheless, Aquinas’ point of view is stronger in that his incontinent person has two syllogisms46 . This means that the incontinent person does not forget the general knowledge and the incontinent person knows what he/she should do in this situation, what he/she really desires. However, this application of knowledge is almost “forgotten” in the moment of decision. The goodness of the present thing is more vivid, because of the precedent experiences, than the remote end, which is present in the intention. In summary, there can be only two cases concerning the judgments of conscience and liberum arbitrium. Either the judgment of liberum arbitrium is the same as the judgment of conscience, or there is a discrepancy between both judgments. In the first case, it is not useful to speak about conscience, because there is only the judgment of reason which a person follows without hesitation. However, when there is a discrepancy inside in the reason it is useful to discern both judgments of reason, and then, we call the one conscience and the other the liberum arbitrium. To sum up, Aquinas affirms that the reason as conscience is the human being’s highest criterion for conduct, although the conscience could be wrong in respect to wrong knowing. Aquinas maintained his position in contrast to his teacher St. Albert the Great who had proclaimed that it is impossible to act against the authority of Commandments and of superiors.47 According to Aquinas, the ultimate end of the human being is present as the most profound desire and only his/her reason can discover the way to its fulfillment. 46 47

Sententia libri Ethicorum, lb. 7, lc. 3. QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 4.



Conclusion Aquinas’ conception of conscience was the culmination of all preceding traditions. St. Thomas Aquinas links back to the SocraticAristotelian line, but he also makes a connection with the Augustinian tradition. As we have seen, Aquinas’ conception of conscience and synderesis links to the Augustinian problem of the two wills through his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Distinctio 24 and 39 of the 2nd book). Hence, conscience helps him to solve this problem: how is it possible that one wants to do what one does not want to do? Aquinas rejects the possibility of the two wills and solves Augustine’s problem with differentiation of the reason’s actions. Thus, he correlates Augustine’s problem of “the two wills” with Aristotle’s problem of the incontinent man. Additionally, Augustine’s eternal truths, which illuminate higher reason, are the same as Aquinas’ natural law given by synderesis. Aquinas accepts that if the human being acts deliberately then he/she acts in accordance with higher reason because the task of higher reason is the ultimate end.48 This means that a human being acts in accord with his/her conscience. Aquinas also connects Augustine’s higher reason with Aristotle’s knowledge of the last end in his treatise about the conscience.49 Aquinas also has a link to preceding Christian tradition which holds that, in spite of human corruption caused by original sin, there is a remainder of original rightness. According to Aquinas, rightness is in reason as an innate habit – it is the habit of the first principles of speculative reason and of synderesis, the habit of practical reason. Nevertheless, Aquinas more than his predecessors faithfully follows Socrates-Aristotle’s line. Aquinas, as Socrates did, put emphasis on the fact that the human being does what he/she knows as best for him/her. Therefore, it is impossible that the human being would want what he/she does not want. In the case of Aristotle’s incontinent man, whom he mentioned,50 the original intention is “forgotten” for some time under vivid affection of the thing apprehended. However, because the reason is not completely under the influence of this affection, after ceasing of influence of passion, the reason is able to give the right judgment, and this act of reason is known as conscience. R. Saarinen in his book51 pointed out that Aquinas in STh I-II, 48

QD De veritate, q. 15, a. 3: “Et inde est quod consensus in actum attribuitur rationi superiori, quae finem ultimum inspicit.” 49 QD De veritate, q. 15, a. 3. 50 QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 4: “Et haec solutio potest accipi ex verbis Philosophi in VII Ethicorum ubi quasi eamdem quaestionem quaerit, utrum scilicet dicendus sit incontinens qui abscedit a ratione recta solum vel qui abscedit etiam a falsa;”. 51 Risto Saarinen, Weakness of the will in medieval thought : from Augustine to Buridan, pp. 119. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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q. 77, a. 2 and QD De malo q. 3, a. 9 summarized his commentary on Aristotle’s incontinent man. If we compare these articles with the answer in question De conscientia52 we can see that Aquinas in his answer only named (conscientia, liberum arbitrium) two different judgments considered in Saarinen’s mentioned book. Moreover, in QD De malo q.3, a.9 ad7, Aquinas used the same example as in the paper De conscientia53 , when incontinent man knows that this fornication is prohibited but he acts on it under the influence of passion54 . Thomas Aquinas affirmed that in regard to an action, there could be only one intention which is followed.55 Therefore, once the passions prevail, they influence the evaluation and the incontinent person is unable to hear the “voice of conscience”. Once the passions get stronger, the incontinent person loses his/her freedom not to act. The intention of the remote end may be very weak when confronted with the temptation of pleasure which has already been experienced in the past. In spite of the fact that a diabetic desires to be healthy, the taste of sweet is so vivid in his/her memory that he/she “forgets” his/her original intention. It does not mean that the incontinent person loses absolutely his/her freedom not to act. The incontinent person has not lost the criterion – the supreme end. Thus one is able to make weaker the intention of forbidden pleasure (by exercising the opposite virtue or avoiding the “dangerous” situation) or to make stronger the desire for the goal by its meditation. Aquinas differs from Aristotle’s conception of incontinent man in the point that nobody can be completely lost. In spite of the fact that after more repetitions of actions, experiences become customs or habits and the apprehension of the realities would be influenced by these customs and habits and thus conscience would be wrong, the synderesis is never extinguished, and therefore nobody could be hopelessly adrift. Hence, Aquinas’ whole concept of conscience as a solution of the problem of the incontinent person is based on a presupposition of the rightness of the reason. It is necessary to notice that a certain confusion, which is around the incontinent person, might be caused by different conceptions of the will and of the collaboration of the will with reason. There is Kant’s Copernican Revolution which demands the good will as the highest good – higher than happiness.56 Kant analyzes which will 52

QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 1, ad 4. QD De veritate, q. 17, a. 1, ad 4. 54 Thomas Aquinas, QD De malo, q. 3 a. 9, ad 7. 55 Thomas Aquinas, QD De malo, q. 3 a. 9. 56 Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals I, 369: “While such a will may not indeed be the sole and complete good, it must, nevertheless, be the highest good and condition of all the rest, even of the desire for happines.”(transl. by James W. Ellington). 53



could be called “good” and demonstrates that will which is determined only by a duty without influence of sensual inclination might be called “good”. Such duty might by given only by reason as a pure form – as a Categorical Imperative. Therefore, moral action is determined by the Categorical Imperative, while immoral action follows pleasure. Kant opened a gap between pleasure and duty. Thus, there are explanations of incontinent action as gaps between motivation (what one wants) and evaluation (what one judge to be good)57 or between reason and desire58 . Aquinas supposition of the reason’s rightness is also based on an analysis of the will. But he defines the will as a rational appetite. As an appetite, the will inclines to its goal – it is the supreme end of human beings. And because no desire can be vain and the will follows a good manifested by reason, reason has to be supplied by the innate habit (synderesis) which makes reason capable to do it. However, Kant demands that the will and reason be autonomous, without any supposition of goal which would determine them from outside. However, for example E. Levinas is also able to demonstrate that there is a desire in human being which could not be satisfied by anything from his/her world and which indicates that autonomy has to be surpassed by the Other.59 A bigger problem might be with the presupposition about reason’s innate habit as a necessary means for reaching of the supreme end. Followers of Hume’s conception of the will (E. Deway, E. Mach, Michael Smith, S. Blackburn etc.) would refuse the view that reason has ability to guide the will. Hume negates any influence of reason on will.60 On the contrary, he affirms that reason is a slave of passions. It is impossible to prove reason’s rightness, because it is the point of departure. If there is a doubt about the first principles of speculative reason, it is impossible to discuss this doubt because every discussion is based on the first principles. If there is a doubt about the synderesis of practical reason, it is vain to carry on any discussion about moral conduct because human being would have lost any criterion for right actions. We conclude that the conscience signifies the power of human reason whereby one can follow one’s own way independently, whatever the circumstance (either personal or historical). And so conscience is the highest criterion of a person’s action. Nevertheless, conscience can be wrong (very probably) and so the human 57 Serbic Tenenbaum, “The Judgment of a Weak Will”, in: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LIX, No. 4, December 1999. 58 Kirk Robinson, “Reason, Desire, and Weakness of Will”, in: American Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 28, No. 4, October 1991. 59 Emmanuel Levinas, Totalité et infini: essai sur l’extériorité, I, 1. 60 David Hume, Treatise, II, III, 1. C The author 2009 C The Dominican Council 2009 New Blackfriars

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being is obliged to keep on examining his/her intention (especially in circumstances where he/she disapproves of the command of his superior). Martina Stepinova OP, PhD Department of Philosophy CMTF University of Olomouc Universitni 22 Olomouc CZ 771 11 E-mail: [email protected]


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Structures of Virtue and Vice

within the larger field of contemporary Catholic ethics. Currently the concept does not bear the marks of significant developments within Catholic ethics post-Vatican II: the renewed focus on positive moral growth, and the retrieval of virtue as a central ethical methodology.2 In order to incorporate the insights of virtue ethics into a moral evaluation of social structures this article proposes and develops the concepts of structures of virtue and structures of vice. The article defends the thesis that the structures of virtue and structures of vice are more accurate than ‘structures of sin’ in capturing the moral quality of social structures. Part one of the article recapitulates the theological development of the structures of sin. The second part defines, and argues for the concepts of structures of virtue and structures of vice.

The Development of ‘Structures of Sin’ The seeds for a social analysis of sin and its effects were present in the church’s first social encyclical, Rerum novarum. Following the classical political tradition, Pope Leo XIII insisted that society’s purpose is to make men virtuous.3 However, industrialization, coupled with breakdown of the guild system led to the poverty of the masses, and “a general moral deterioration.” Leo proposed that civil society once was lifted up to better things by Christian values, and that again society could be cured by a return to Christian institutions.4 The connection between human virtue and social institutions was at the core of Leo’s argument for the construction of a more just economy. Just economic institutions, he reasoned, would help to form virtuous persons. The general connection between society, and human action and character largely went undeveloped in the church until Vatican II. Margaret Pfeil notes that some of the council fathers explicitly rejected the use of the concept of “social sin” in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum concilium.5 Instead, the Council made sporadic, but important, mentions of the moral influence of 2 See James Keenan, ‘Notes on Moral Theology: Fundamental Moral Theology at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’, Theological Studies 67 (2006), pp. 99–119, at p. 111. See also Gerard Mannion, “After the Council: Transformations in the Shape of Moral Theology and ‘the Church to Come’”, New Blackfriars 90 (2009), pp. 232–250. 3 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, in David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, eds., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), pp. 14–39, at p. 27. 4 Pope Leo XIII, Rerum novarum, p. 22. 5 Margaret Pfeil, ‘Magisterial Use of the Language of Social Sin’, Louvain Studies 27 (2002), pp. 132–152, at p. 134. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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society.6 Lumen gentium called the laity to “remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may favor rather than hinder the practice of virtue.”7 Likewise, Gaudium et spes noted that society had the potential to both strengthen authentically human qualities and the potential to induce persons to sin.8 The council clearly maintained that the social order profoundly influenced moral agents, for better and for ill.9 Society, therefore, should create conditions conducive to the practice of virtue and the concomitant formation of the common good. Vatican II marked a developing focus on the moral importance of society and its influence on the moral character of the person.

Latin America and the Situation of Sin Still, while the church’s social encyclicals and council documents provided the seeds for a theory connecting social structures and human character and action, it was the flowering of Latin American liberation theology that produced the first substantive treatment of this relationship. The 1968 Medellin Conference of the Latin American bishops was the landmark event in the institutional genesis of liberation theology. At Medellin the bishops condemned the ‘sinful situation’ in Latin America. This was the first magisterial articulation of the concept of structural and institutional sin. Personal sin, they argued, was crystallized in unjust social structures. The bishops explicitly named these impersonal social structures as sinful.10 In the second paragraph of the conference’s final document, the bishops underscored the structural nature of many sins in the Latin American context. “To all of this must be added the lack solidarity which, on the individual and social levels, leads to the committing of serious

6 Marciano Vidal argues this point in ‘Structural Sin: A New Category in Moral Theology?’, p. 183. Maurizio Ragazzi provides a helpful summary of magisterial use and development on the social and structural nature of sin. See his ‘The Concept of Social Sin in its Thomistic Roots’, Journal of Markets and Morality 7 (2004), pp. 363–408. 7 Lumen gentium, in Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., The Basic Sixteen Documents: Vatican Council II (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co, 1996), pp. 1–95, at chapter II, no. 36. 8 “When the structure of affairs is flawed by the consequence of sin, man, already born with a bend toward evil, finds there new inducements to sin, which cannot be overcome without strenuous efforts and the assistance of grace.” Gaudium et spes, in Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., The Basic Sixteen Documents: Vatican Council II (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co, 1996), pp. 163–282, no. 25. 9 See Anthony J. Carroll, SJ, ‘Church and Culture: Protestant and Catholic Modernities’, New Blackfriars 90 (2009), pp. 163–177, at pp. 164–169. 10 Second General Conference of Latin American Bishops, The Church in the PresentDay Transformation of Latin America in Light of the Council: Conclusions (Bogata: General Secretariat of CELAM, 1970), I: 2. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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sins, evident in the unjust structures which characterize the Latin American situation.”11 The solution to the situation of sin present in Latin America involved both conversion and structural change. The bishops understood conversion and structural change as interwoven. “The uniqueness of the Christian message does not so much consist in the affirmation of the necessity for structural change, as it does in the insistence on the conversion of men which will in turn bring about this change. We will not have a new continent without new and reformed structures, but, above all, there will be no new continent without new men, who know how to be truly free and responsible according to the light of the Gospel.”12 Neither conversion, nor structural change was found to be sufficient. While both conversion and structural change were affirmed, the bishops prioritized conversion. They maintained that the point of departure for moral transformation began with personal conversion. Personal conversion subsequently produced structural change. Justicia in mundo, the 1971 document of the Synod of Bishops, provided both further reflection, and ecumenical appropriation of the concept. There the bishops wrote of social structures which created systematic barriers to charity.13 These structures were overcome through an education in justice, in which the Christian was enabled to both critique her society, and militate against the manipulative aspects of society.14 The bishops argued that the liturgy and the sacraments were the primary practices by which an education in justice was accomplished. The sacraments of baptism, penance and the Eucharist were named as practices that formed just persons and their communities. Gustavo Gutierrez’s groundbreaking work on liberation theology, A Theology of Liberation, also published in 1971, drew on Medellin and further developed the social nature of sin. In language that closely resembled that of the Synod, Gutierrez argued that the entire political and economic system of Latin America was sinful because it was characterized by the breach of friendship between persons, and God and neighbor.15 While he focused on the institutional aspect of structural sin, Gutierrez also underscored that human agency produced these structures. “An unjust situation does not happen by chance; it is not something branded by a fatal destiny: there is human 11

Ibid., I: 2. Ibid., I: 3. 13 Synod of Bishops, 1971, Justicia in mundo, in David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, eds., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992), pp. 288–300, at p. 290. 14 Ibid., p. 296. 15 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, trans. and ed. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004), pp. 100–01. 12



responsibility behind it.”16 The structural nature of sin subsequently emerged as a central idea within the broad movement of liberation theology.17 The concept captured the sinfulness and violence caused by social structures. The oppression and exploitation of Latin American peoples was exposed as systematically present in institutions and the persons formed by those institutions. The Third General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate, held at Puebla, Mexico in 1979, marked another significant development of the concept. The Puebla document broke little new conceptual ground. However, the importance of the conference’s final document was the frequency that the bishops referred to the structural aspects of sin. Throughout the final document the bishops underscored the connection of the poverty and oppression experienced by millions on the continent to the economic, social, and political structures that were put in place by the powerful. The bishops decried the institutionalized situation of sin that reigned in Latin America. The specifically cited the sinful cultural “mechanisms that are imbued with materialism rather than authentic humanism.”18 They argued that the structurally rooted materialism of Latin America was sinful because it created and sustained poverty and injustice. Echoing Medellin the bishops proclaimed that sin was both personal and structural. The bishops observed that structural sin profoundly influenced personal moral development. “Culture is continually shaped and reshaped by the ongoing life and historical experience of peoples; and it is transmitted by tradition from generation to generation.”19 The bishops warned that the culture that was transmitted could either inculcate authentic values or disvalues; it could promote just structures or unjust structures. In light of the influence of culture and social structures on the development of individual persons, the bishops maintained that individual conversion was necessary and primary, but insufficient. Social structures also needed to be transformed in order to mitigate the deleterious effects of Latin American society.20 The 16

Ibid., p. 102. For example, Archbishop Oscar Romero often wrote and spoke of ‘institutionalized violence,’ ‘structures of sin’ and ‘social sin.’ See Oscar Romero, Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1985), pp. 68, 143, and 183. 18 Evangelization in Latin America’s Present and Future: Final Document of the Third General Conference of the Latin American Episcopate in Puebla and Beyond, ed. John Eagleston and Philip Scharper, trans. John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), no. 1264. 19 Ibid., nos. 385–396. 20 Ibid., nos. 436–438. See also no. 362. There the bishops write, “Evangelization should penetrate deeply into the hearts of human beings and peoples. Thus its dynamism aims at personal conversion and social transformation.” 17


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bishops proposed that the transformation of persons and structures should transpire through an infusing of evangelical values into Latin American society. The church calls for a new conversion on the level of cultural values, so that the structures of societal life may then be imbued with the spirit of the Gospel. And while it calls for a revitalization of evangelical values, it simultaneously urges a rapid and thoroughgoing transformation of structures. For by their very nature these structures are supposed to exert a restraining influence on the evil that arises in the human heart and manifests itself socially; and they are also meant to serve as conditioning pedagogical factors for an interior conversion on the plane of values.21

This marked a significant development in the bishop’s approach to structural sin. They proposed that Gospel values could transform society. These values were intended to have a dual effect. First, they were to transform the systemic injustices within Latin American society. Second, these structures were to function pedagogically. They were to convert Latin American persons to lives of justice.

John Paul II and Structures of Sin Pope John Paul II often wrote of the structures of sin, but three texts, in particular, are important for the development of the concept. While the pope referred to “sinful structures” in his opening homily at Puebla,22 his most extensive treatment of the concept was found in his 1983 apostolic exhortation, Reconcilatio et paenetentia. Reconcilatio et paenetentia also marked the most systematic magisterial treatment of the topic. The document afforded the pope the opportunity to respond to various articulations of the concept of structural sin that he found to be less than doctrinally accurate.23 Paragraph sixteen of the exhortation established three central points. First, all sin was personal. Only moral agents can be the subject of moral acts. Thus, while the person may be “influenced” by external social factors, she was still a free moral agent. Responsibility for sinful action, therefore, rests with the person, not the social structure. Second, “social sin” had three legitimate, on one illegitimate, meanings. According to John Paul, the concept of social sin rightly communicated the fact that every sin that affected others insofar as it “drags down with itself the church and, in some way, the whole

21 22 23

Ibid., no. 438. Ibid., no. 185. Pfeil, ‘Magisterial Uses of the Language of Social Sin’, p. 140.



world.”24 The “law of descent” was opposed by the “law of ascent,” by which good actions inspire the human community. Furthermore, social sins were those directly against one’s neighbor. These actions contradicted the law of love, the common good, and the virtue of justice. Finally, there was a category of analogical social sins. These sins existed between human communities. Blocs of nations and social classes were named as the principle actors here. Again, these collectives functioned analogically as agents, and therefore, their “social sins” were likewise analogical.25 The pope asserted that these social sins ultimately provided a moral challenge to the consciences of the individual moral agents that comprised the community. Third, the pope concluded paragraph sixteen with a condemnation of any definition of social sin that “contrasts social sin and personal sin.” He noted that such a dichotomy enervates, and possibly destroys the concept of personal sin, and replaces it with a theory of sin that was reduced to structurally determined social guilt and responsibility. In his condemnation the pope provided one final insight into the nature of social sin. He noted that social sin was “the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins.” This point was developed in greater depth in the 1987 social encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis. Because of its greater degree of ecclesial authority, Sollicitudo rei socialis firmly established the structures of sin in the Church’s social teaching. The encyclical presupposed the definition of social sin presented in Reconcilatio et paenetentia. Sollicitudo also closely followed The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDF) Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation. Originally published a year prior to Sollicitudo rei socialis, the instruction tempered the Church’s earlier critique of aspects of liberation theology.26 In its response to the liberationists’ development of structural sin, the CDF defined the concept of social structure. The definition reads: These are the sets of institutions and practices which people find already existing or which they create on the national and international 24 Pope John Paul II, Reconcilatio et paenetentia, no. 16. http://www.vatican.va/holy_ father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-etpaenitentia_en.html (accessed December 1, 2008). 25 The analogical nature of social sin is reminiscent of the Church’s teaching on original sin. The Catechism of the Catholic Church remarks that “original sin is called ‘sin’ only in an analogical sense: it is a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’-a state and not an act.” http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.html (accessed March 25, 2009). 26 See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation’, in Alfred T. Hennelly, ed., Liberation Theology: A Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), pp. 461–497, as well as the Congregation’s earlier instruction on liberation theology, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’”, in Alfred T. Hennelly, ed., Liberation Theology: A Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), pp. 393–414. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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level, and which orientate or organize economic, social, and political life. Being necessary in themselves, they often tend to become fixed and fossilized as mechanisms relatively independent of the human will, thereby paralyzing or distorting social development and causing injustice. However, they always depend on human responsibility; human beings can alter them, and they are not dependent on an alleged determinism of history.27

This definition filtered into John Paul’s thinking and enabled him to further refine the meaning of a sinful structure. Sollicitudo rei socialis referred to the “structures of sin,” instead of “social sin”. Like John Paul’s definition of “social sin”, “structures of sin” placed the locus of moral responsibility in the person. Furthermore, this modification of language enabled John Paul to explicitly engage the structural aspects of injustice. He defined structures of sin as: “The sum total of negative factors working against a true awareness of the universal common good, and the need to further it, gives the impression of creating, in persons and institutions, an obstacle which is difficult to overcome.”28 For the pope individual sinful acts created both culturally normative modes of being and acting and impersonal social institutions that subsequently influenced the actions of other moral agents. Unlike Reconcilatio et paenetentia, Sollicitudo rei socialis proposed an antidote to the structures of sin: solidarity. Solidarity was named as the virtue by which the structures of sin were “conquered.” It constituted a “diametrically opposed” attitude to the structures of sin insofar as it directed the person to commit herself to the common good.29 In addition, it could only take hold in a person with the aid of divine grace. In naming solidarity as the corrective to structures of sin John Paul further illumined the concept. Like solidarity, structures of sin were moral attitudes, akin to vices, that were willingly appropriated by the agent, from the society. John Paul’s inclusion of the law of ascent in Reconcilatio et paenetentia and solidarity in Sollicitudo rei socialis were important additions to the tradition’s theory of structures of sin. The introduction of these positive correlative concepts better reflected the spirit of moral theology post-Vatican II. These concepts attuned the agent not only 27 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation’, in Alfred T. Hennelly, ed., Liberation Theology: A Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), pp. 461–497, at p. 484. 28 John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, in David O’Brien and Thomas Shannon, eds., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), pp. 395–436, at no. 36. See Gaudiam et spes, no. 25, quoted above in note eight. See also Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ‘Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation’, in Alfred T. Hennelly, ed., Liberation Theology: A Documentary Heritage, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1995), pp. 393–414. See nos. 14 and 15. 29 Ibid., no. 38. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars


to avoid evildoing, but also to strive to do the good. Of special interest for the current study was the pope’s use of the language of virtue in his definition of solidarity. Unfortunately, John Paul did not flesh out the relationship of structures of sin and the virtues. Thus, one is left with the mere suggestion that virtues overcome the structures of sin. Four years later the pope promulgated Centessimus annus. Therein John Paul described how human persons were formed by the structures of sin in their society. Man receives from God his essential dignity and with it the capacity to transcend every social order so as to move toward truth and goodness. But he is also conditioned by the social structure in which he lives, by the education he has received and by his environment. These elements can either help or hinder his living in accordance with the truth. The decisions which create a human environment can give rise to specific structures of sin which impede the full realization of those who are in any way oppressed by them. To destroy such structures and replace them with more authentic forms of living in community is a task which demands courage and patience.30

Here again the pope’s use of the concept was primarily in the context of personal moral formation. The pope maintained that social structures educated the agent in the true and the good. Sinful structures drew persons from the true and the good. The human agent remained free, but was conditioned, primarily through education, by his the structures of his society. For example, in a society of institutional racism individual moral agents were ‘conditioned’ to be racist. In fact, in such a society the consciences of those individual moral agents will be formed to assent to the perceived ‘rightness’ of racism. The 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae marked John Paul’s final significant development of the concept. The passage below is noteworthy because a certain level of agency was ascribed to society. It is at the heart of the moral conscience that the eclipse of the sense of God and of man, with all its various and deadly consequences for life, is taking place. It is a question, above all, of the individual conscience, as it stands before God in its singleness and uniqueness. But it is also a question, in a certain sense, of the “moral conscience” of society: in a way it too is responsible, not only because it tolerates or fosters behavior contrary to life, but also because it encourages the “culture of death”, creating and consolidating actual “structures of sin” which go against life. The moral conscience, both individual and social, is today subjected, also as a result of the penetrating influence of the media,

30 Pope John Paul II, Centessimus annus, in David O’Brien and Thomas Shannon, eds., Catholic Social Thought: The Documentary Heritage (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), pp. 439–488, at no. 38. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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to an extremely serious and mortal danger: that of confusion between good and evil, precisely in relation to the fundamental right to life.31

Notice the modified focus of the passage. Evangelium vitae heightened the profile of the moral quality of the social structure. For the first time John Paul ascribed moral responsibility to a non-moral agent: “the moral conscience of society.” He qualified this claim with the Latin quodammodo, translated, “in some way.” The pope indicated that certain societies created structures that worked against the good of life. Insofar as a society freely created these structures it functions like a moral agent, and therefore, has a kind of moral responsibility. In keeping with previous papal statements, the passage showed an awareness of the role of social structures in forming the consciences of individual moral agents. The pope maintained that the individual conscience could not be understood when abstracted from the society’s conscience. The individual conscience was formed, in part, by the conscience of the society. This formation was mediated through social structures, such as the ‘culture of death.’ The conceptual development from Reconcilatio et paenetentia to Evangelium vitae was likely grounded in John Paul’s experience of the western world’s creation of a “culture of death.” John Paul realized that structures had the capacity to consistently produce unjust outcomes, and to profoundly condition the person’s moral development. Unfortunately, John Paul did not elaborate on how, and to what extent, culture acts. He did not explain the qualifier quodammodo. John Paul’s final word on the subject did not clarify his position, bur rather, only created further ambiguity.

Pope Benedict XVI and Structures of Sin The recent promulgation of Pope Benedict XVI’s first social encyclical, Caritas in veritate, makes possible an evaluation of his use and understanding of the moral nature of social structures. The pope has 31 Pope John Paul II, Evangelium vitae, no. 24. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html. (accessed January 10, 2009). The original Latin reads: “Ipsa in intima morali conscientia perficitur Dei hominisque sensus obscuratio, multiplicibus suis perniciosisque de vita consecutionibus. Ante omnia cuiusque conscientia in medio ponitur, quae una et non iterabilis sola Dei in conspectu stat (Cfr. Gaudium et Spes no. 16). At agitur quoque ratione quadam de societatis ‘conscientia morali’; ipsa quodammodo est responsalis non modo quia tolerat vel consuetudinibus vitae adversantibus favet, verum quia et ‘mortis culturam’ alit, quippe quae ipsas ‘structuras peccati’ adversum vitam efficiat et confirmet. Conscientia moralis, tum personalis tum socialis, etiam ob instrumentorum socialis communicationis praepotentes virtutes, pergravi mortiferoque periculo hodie subditur: permixtionis scilicet boni malique, quod attinet ad idem fundamentale vitae ius.” C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars


referred to the structures of sin once during his pontificate, while quoting his predecessor.32 Caritas in veritate neither includes the phrase ‘the structures of sin’ nor any of the derivative phrases that have been employed in the tradition.33 In fact, the word sin is found only three times in the entire encyclical.34 Following John Paul, Benedict recognizes that ‘instruments’ can produce harmful effects. And, he at least nominally recognizes that social structures can be permeated with sin when he recalls that “The Church’s wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin in social conditions and the structure of society.”35 However, Benedict hesitates to offer a substantive moral judgment of impersonal instruments, institutions, or structures. Instead, his moral focus is trained on the individuals who create and sustain certain instruments and structures. In a passage that betrays Benedict’s understanding of the ethical nature of impersonal structures he writes, Admittedly, the market can be a negative force, not because it is so by nature, but because a certain ideology can make it so. It must be remembered that the market does not exist in the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction. Economy and finance, as instruments, can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instruments per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.36

Throughout the encyclical there is a similar pattern of thought. The pope argues for the development and use of ethical structures, mechanisms, and institutions, while concomitantly underscoring that individuals create these realities.37 An emergent theme of the document is the limits of social structures, and the priority of individual agency, 32 The only usage of the concept by Pope Benedict XVI that I could find is located in ‘The Message of His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Sixteenth World Day of the Sick’, January 2008. “Mysteriously united to Christ, the one who suffers with love and meek self-abandonment to the will of God becomes a living offering for the salvation of the world. My beloved Predecessor also stated that: ‘The more a person is threatened by sin, the heavier the structures of sin which today’s world brings with it, the greater is the eloquence which human suffering possesses in itself . . .’.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/sick/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_ 20080111_world-day-of-the-sick-2008_en.html (accessed August 1, 2009). 33 Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html. (accessed July 7, 2009). 34 Ibid., no. 34. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., no. 36. 37 Ibid., nos. 42 and 68. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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in securing integral human development.38 Here Benedict’s thought contrasts to a degree with the Bishops at Medellin and Puebla, and even with that of the later John Paul. Two provisional conclusions can be made concerning Benedict’s influence on the development of the concept of structures of sin. First, while Benedict has continued to employ many of the concepts of his predecessor (solidarity is used 40 times in Caritas in veritate) ‘the structures of sin’ has been functionally abandoned, but not rejected. Second, Benedict has stunted the trajectory of papal thought that pointed to a moral analysis of impersonal social structures, and instead has reasserted the emphasis on the moral agents who create and sustain these structures.

An Argument for Renewal The concept of structural sin, and its variants, has enjoyed a prominent place both in liberation theology and in the magisterium’s social teaching. After having been the subject of intense and rapid development in the 1970’s and 80’s, the concept has stagnated recently. This is not to claim that the concept has fallen out of theological use. In fact, the recently published proceedings from The First Conference of Catholic Ethics in the World Church shows that the structural aspects of sin continue to have a particularly strong resonance among theologians from the global south.39 However, as I argue below, the concept has yet to be situated within the contemporary ethical landscape. Therefore, an updated version of the concept is needed. A precondition of this renewal is a more rigorous sociological analysis of the interplay between social structures, and personal moral character and human acts. Sociologist Michael Landon argues that the emergence of the concept of social sin in liberation theology was predicated on presupposed, and largely unarticulated social theories.40 If the concept of structures of sin is to have resonance in the twenty-first century it must be able to articulate the social theories that it presumes. As evidenced above, the church’s social teaching has traditionally recognized the dialectical relationship between social structures and personal moral character. However, this recognition has remained superficial. The incorporation of the language and 38

Ibid., nos. 11 and 20. See, for example: Humberto Miguel Yán˜ ez, ‘Opting for the Poor in the Face of Growing Poverty’, in Linda Hogan, ed., Applied Ethics in a World Church: The Padua Conference (New York: Orbis, 2008), pp. 13–20; and John Chathanatt, ‘An Ethical Analysis of Globalization from an Indian Perspective’, in Linda Hogan, ed., Applied Ethics in a World Church: The Padua Conference (New York: Orbis, 2008), pp. 21–31. 40 Michael Landon, ‘The Social Presuppositions of Early Liberation Theology’, Restoration Quarterly 47.1 (2005), pp. 13–31. 39



concepts of thinkers such as Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann would enable the tradition to more precisely define the moral nature and influence of structures and institutions. Berger’s and Luckmann’s theory of social and personal formation helpfully describes this complex relationship. In Social Construction of Reality Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann argued that there was a dialectical process by which society and persons were formed.41 Berger summarized the argument: “Externalization is the ongoing outpouring of human being into the world . . . objectification is the attainment by the products of this activity of a reality that confronts its original producers as a facticity external to and other than themselves. Internalization is the re-appropriation by men of this same reality, transforming it once again from structures of the objective world into structures of the subjective consciousness.”42 Notice that the bishops at Puebla and John Paul articulated a similar understanding of the moral formation of both culture and persons within a culture. Berger, the bishops, and the pope understood that in the process of externalization human persons were agents who constructed society and culture. The process of objectification was the movement from individual agency to the creation of a cultural-structural reality, such as consumerism. Finally, internalization constituted the agent’s formation by the structures of her culture. That is, the agent was a living embodiment of a culture’s values insofar as her character was formed by the culture within which she lived. Berger, echoing Aristotle and Aquinas, noted that social structures formed a “second nature” in the person.43 Again, the Latin American bishops and John Paul discussed the moral influence of culture in similar terms. Social structures must be scrutinized ethically because their profound effects on the lives of persons. Structures have the capacity to systematically promote the human good, the common good, and human happiness, or frustrate the realization of these goods. Furthermore, they have the capacity to form the moral character, and the conscience of the individual agent. Human persons are habitual creatures, and thus, acquire a second nature, or a set of characteristic habits of action. The free moral agent has the capacity to resist his given culture’s structures, and alter these structures through

41

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Anchor Books, 1967). 42 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), p. 4. 43 Ibid., p. 6. See also: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: The Modern Library Classics, 2001), book VII, 10, 1152a; and Thomas Aquinas, quoting the aforementioned Aristotle passage in Summa theologiae. 5 vols. trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, reprint, (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981), I–II 53.1, ad 1; 57.5; and 58.1. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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externalization.44 Still, the objectified structures of any society will continually exert influence and pressure on the agent. In John Paul’s language, sinful structures present “obstacles which are difficult to overcome.” Insofar as structures play a role in the moral formation of persons they play a role in the person’s movement to, or from, God and neighbor. Foremost in the moral analysis of social structures are questions of virtue and vice. Does a social structure produce just outcomes? Does an institution or instrument promote the common good? What kinds of persons does a given society cultivate? Are persons invited to habituate to justice, courage, temperance, mercy, and love? Any evaluation of these character-forming structures will draw on the long tradition of virtue ethics. Because culture plays such a significant role in the formation of an agent’s moral character one must ask whether “structures of sin” is sufficiently conceptually rich. As noted above, John Paul’s advertence to the virtue of solidarity as the means to “overcome” and “conquer” the structures of sin is instructive.45 It suggests two important points. First, the structures of sin do have a positive correlative concept. Second, that concept is a virtue.

Structures of Virtue and Structures of Vice Before the argument for structures of virtue and vice is developed, it is necessary to define a few concepts. A structure is an institution, a practice, a value laden narrative, or a paradigmatic figure that people find already existing or which they create on the national and global level, and which orientates or organizes economic, social, and political life. Once objectified, structures tend to become fixed and fossilized as mechanisms relatively independent of the human will, thereby promoting or paralyzing social development and causing either justice or injustice.46 44

See The Social Construction of Reality, pp. 60–61; and The Sacred Canopy, p. 4. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, nos. 37–40. 46 This definition is largely taken from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s ‘Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation.’ I have amended the definition to capture what I find to be the fullness of social structures. I have expanded the definition so that it can accommodate positive social structures that promote the human good. The Congregation’s definition of structures reads as follows: “These are the sets of institutions and practices which people find already existing or which they create on the national and international level, and which orientate or organize economic, social, and political life. Being necessary in themselves, they often tend to become fixed and fossilized as mechanisms relatively independent of the human will, thereby paralyzing or distorting social development and causing injustice. However, they always depend on human responsibility; human beings can alter them, and they are not dependent on an alleged determinism of history.”, p. 484. 45



Structures of virtue has a twofold definition. First, virtuous structures are those objectified social structures that in some way consistently function to promote the human good and human happiness. In the language of the Puebla document, these are mechanisms and institutions that are well-springs of justice. Second, these structures are the socially rooted moral habits willingly internalized by moral agents that consistently prescribe the human good, the common good, good moral character, and human happiness. Structures of vice are the social structures that in some way consistently function to prevent the human good, the common good, and human happiness, and, the socially rooted moral habits willingly internalized by moral agents that consistently prescribe sinful human acts, and produce human unhappiness. The twofold definition of these terms recognizes the twofold functioning of social structures. Berger’s language is again helpful. The first part of the definition recognizes the objectified nature of social structures. Social structures are impersonal mechanisms and institutions that function in their own right. While they are continually created anew by human agents, these structures attain a level of objective reality independent of their human creators. It is this objective reality that is morally evaluated. Insofar as structures attain an objective status, and insofar as they function quodammodo, these structures can and should be morally evaluated. Social structures are analogous to moral agents, and therefore can be said to have a certain moral character. At Medellin the Latin American bishops said as much when they condemned the ‘unjust structures’ that functioned throughout their continent. The second part of the definition articulates the formative nature of social structures. When internalized, these structures not only influence the person’s actions, but further, they shape a person’s moral character. Recall that the Catholic social tradition, beginning with Leo, including the bishops at Medellin and Puebla, and through John Paul, maintains that social structures have a pedagogical function. The Latin American bishops noted that structures imbued with Gospel values facilitated individual conversions. John Paul argued that while a person can transcend his social order, he is conditioned by it, and educated within it. Thus, a society marked by unjust institutions and conditions is a society that induces persons to lives of sin, and vice. In such a society heroic moral effort is required in order to avoid the acquisition of vices.47 In sum, the concept of structures of virtue 47 “Ignorance of the common good goes hand in hand with the exclusive and sometimes excessive pursuit of particular goods such as money, power or reputation, when viewed as absolutes to be sought for their own sakes: namely as idols. This is what created the ‘structures of sin’, all those places and circumstances in which habits are perverse and which demand proof of heroism on the part of all new arrivals if one is C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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and vice refer to two loci of moral analysis: the social structures themselves; and the moral agents that form social structures, and are formed by participation in social structures. The structures of virtue and vice constitutes an important development of the concept of the structures of sin for two reasons. First, the language of virtue and vice more accurately describes the reality of the so-called structures of sin. Recall the structures of sin listed in the writings of the Latin American bishops, Gustavo Gutierrez, John Paul II, and others. These authors name injustice, egotism, pride, materialism, selfishness, and shortsightedness as structures of sin. Yet, the aforementioned structures of sin are more accurately described as vices. They are character traits, not actions. For example, injustice is not an action per se, but instead, is a vice which produces discrete moral acts which are often sinful. This is not merely semantics, but a conceptual development. The language of virtue attunes the moral tradition to the fact that structures both function in characteristic ways, and cultivate a certain moral character in individuals. Second, virtue has been, and is once again, the dominant language of the Catholic moral tradition.48 However, the structures of sin neither includes, nor evokes, a positive correlative concept. The structures of sin is a concept better suited for the moral manuals than it is for twenty-first century theological ethics. The focus of the manuals was individual human acts, and sin.49 As a result, during the reign of the manuals Catholic moral theology was preoccupied with isolated acts of sin. The most prominent English language manual of the first quarter of the twentieth century succinctly captures the purpose of moral theology. “In moral theology we abstain as a rule from treating of what concerns perfection; it is our task to distinguish between what is sinful and what is not, for the use of the confessor in the sacred tribunal of Penance.”50 The manuals maintained a narrow focus on moral pathology. Thus, they lacked a substantive treatment of beatitude, virtue, and, in fact, any reference to “doing the good.” The concept of structures of sin unintentionally continues this truncated perspective.

to avoid acquiring such habits.” See Cor Unum ‘World Hunger, A Challenge for All: Development in Solidarity’, no. 25. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ corunum/documents/rc_pc_corunum_doc_04101996_world-hunger_en.html (accessed August 12, 2009). 48 Keenan, ‘Notes on Moral Theology: Fundamental Moral Theology at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century’, p. 111. 49 See, for example, Thomas Slater, A Manual of Moral Theology (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1908). Servais Pinckaers provides helpful commentary on reductive nature of the moral manuals in Sources of Christian Ethics, Sr. Mary Thomas Nobel, O.P., trans., (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1995), chapter 11. 50 Slater, p. 119. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars


The structures of virtue remedies this error by situating the concept in framework of virtue, with its rich tradition, and its ability to describe and prescribe moral excellence. For this reason, the structures of virtue resonate with the theological ethics of Thomas Aquinas. The concept provides a bridge between Aquinas’s foundational study of the virtues and contemporary studies in ethics that focus on social, economic, and political structures. Finally, this updating conceptualizes the positive role of social structures in moral formation. As explained above, the Catholic social tradition affirms the need for virtuous social structures in order for the building up of the common good. The tradition also affirms that virtuous social structures inculcate and facilitate the person’s acquisition of the virtues.

Conclusion This article has argued for new concepts in theological ethics; the structures of virtue and the structures of vice. These concepts capture the moral character of institutions, as well as socially embedded character traits of individual agents. Furthermore, these concepts avoid reductionism to either an anthropological individualism or deterministic structuralism. In this way these concepts find a natural home in the Catholic tradition insofar as they preserve both free moral agency, and the formative moral effects of human communities and cultures. Daniel J. Daly Saint Anselm College Box 1656 100 St. Anselm Dr. Manchester, NH 03102 USA Email: [email protected]


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what we are dealing with here, seems to be beyond what our minds can handle.”2 In only emphasizing the limits of our knowledge, the concept “mystery” functions as a proper counter to any tendency to a facile and over confident rationalism. If mystery, however, only signifies the limits of human knowledge, it can lead to agnosticism. While Christianity is not rationalistic in its knowledge of God, it is also not agnostic; for the salvation and fullness of life of the human being entails knowledge. Indeed, John’s gospel describes eternal life as the knowledge of the one true God and Jesus Christ whom the Father has sent (Jn 17: 3–4). The concept “mystery” is also sometimes invoked in the face of an apparent contradiction. In assessing the four-century-long disagreement on the question of grace and freedom between the Bañezian and Molinist schools, Jean Daniélou maintained that neither side had been able to overcome the contradiction inherent in holding both the absolute sovereignty of God and the capacity of free creatures for genuine choice. Daniélou judged that this impasse indicated that we were dealing with the mystery of God.3 Invoking the mystery of God when the terms of a theological debate cannot be reconciled can circumvent the theological process. John Wright has shown that the Bañezian and Molinist impasse was the result of the question being posed wrongly.4 This impasse did not indicate mystery. It suggested that Bañez and Molina had set up a false problem. Even more importantly, invoking the mystery of God when one is faced with a contradiction in one’s theology suggests that mystery as applied to God means contradiction. While mystery is sometimes employed to indicate the limits of our knowledge of God, or is appealed to when the solution to a theological problem is wanting, it is also often used to insist that the sovereign subjectivity of God, especially God’s will and its freedom, cannot be reined in by the human mind. While the incomprehensibility of God must be maintained, an overemphasis on the sovereignty of God’s will and its freedom can lead to an understanding of God’s freedom as absolute, which also leads to an understanding of mystery as contradiction. If mystery is equated with contradiction this has far reaching consequences for one’s doctrine of God. Thus if unintelligibility and contradiction are at the heart of mystery as predicated of God, then contradiction and unintelligibility would characterize the essence of God. And if contradiction and unintelligibility are

2

Ibid., p. 60. Jean Daniélou, God and the Ways of Knowing, trans. Walter Roberts (Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Company, 1957), p. 89. 4 John H. Wright, S.J., ‘The Eternal Plan of Divine Providence’, Theological Studies 27, no. 1 (1966), p. 29 n. 4. 3


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constitutive of the divine essence, then God cannot be understood as the fullness of being, life, wisdom, and love. This paper will address two central issues concerning the attribution of mystery to God. First, if Christianity is neither rationalistic nor agnostic concerning the knowledge of God, then what is the proper understanding of mystery when attributed to God? To respond to this question, my argument will creatively draw upon aspects of the work of Thomas Aquinas, the contemporary Thomist W. Norris Clarke, and Karl Rahner. Second, if the concept of mystery conditions all theological thinking, how can this understanding be applied systematically across the full range of theological reflection? A full answer to this latter question would require writing a systematic theology in which the major topics of theology are treated. Instead of undertaking such a task, which is obviously beyond the scope of this article, I will examine a particular instance of the use of mystery in treating a theological problem. I will examine Karl Rahner’s use of mystery in his treatment of the problem of reconciling the omnipotence and omnibenevolence of God with the reality of human suffering. In examining Rahner I will show that maintaining that God’s freedom is absolute in an effort to preserve the mystery of God, actually undermines the proper understanding of mystery. Here I will show how the divine will and God’s sovereignty must be understood in order to hold onto the proper understanding of mystery. These conclusions will serve as a guide for theologians as they employ the concept of mystery across the full range of theological reflection.

I. The Concept “Mystery” as Predicated of God It is true that the concept “mystery” when predicated of God indicates the limits of human knowledge. More precisely, it indicates that creatures cannot comprehend God. The question, however, becomes: why can we not comprehend God? There are three possibilities of why we cannot comprehend something.5 First, the object of our knowledge is incomprehensible because it is a contradiction (e.g. male sisters or square circles). It is incomprehensible because it is unknowable. Second, there are limitations on the capacity of this particular reality to reveal itself to us and limitations on our capacity to receive such a revelation.6 For example, we are unable to know, in any great detail, the character of the distant stars in the universe or whether there is intelligent life in other galaxies. In both cases, the immense distances 5 To comprehend something is to know it fully or to know it to the full extent that it is knowable. 6 Indeed, in some cases, without such a revelation we can merely hypothesize about the existence of a particular reality (e.g. the existence of other intelligent life in the universe). C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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make it impossible to bridge the gap between the knower and the object of knowledge. Third, and this is unique to God, the reality can reveal its essence (thus there is no limit on the capacity of the reality to reveal itself) and we can know its essence, but we cannot comprehend its essence. I would suggest that the central message of Christianity is that God has communicated God’s self to human beings so that human beings can share in God’s life. God has communicated God’s self to human beings without God ceasing to be infinite reality and without human beings ceasing to be finite existents. And the capacity of human beings to receive that self-communication is made possible by God. As Karl Rahner correctly maintains, “God’s self-communication is given not only as a gift, but also as the necessary condition which makes possible an acceptance of the gift which can allow the gift really to be God, and can prevent the gift in its acceptance from being changed from God into a finite and created gift which only represents God, but is not God himself.”7 We do have access to God. God has revealed God’s self and we do know God. Thus we cannot maintain that God is incomprehensible because God is a contradiction, or that God is incomprehensible because we do not have access to God; rather, God has communicated God’s self, but God remains incomprehensible. Let us turn to philosophical theology to elucidate how we can know God, while God remains incomprehensible. Since God, following Aquinas, is the subsisting act of existence or pure act, God is not potential and limited in any way. As such, God is unlimited act. Because a thing is knowable to the degree that it has actuality or to the degree that it is,8 God, as unlimited act, is supremely intelligible and supremely knowable. The proper metaphor then to employ when speaking of mystery is not darkness, which conveys contradiction and a lack of intelligibility, but light. For Aquinas, “the actuality of a thing is like a light within it.”9 If God is pure act, then God is “pure light”.10 Contradiction and darkness are not at the heart of mystery; the heart of mystery is intelligibility and light. If the ground of the concept of mystery is that God is unlimited act and as such is supremely intelligible and thus supremely knowable, then it would seem that intellectual creatures as ordered toward the totality of being as true (preeminently God) could know God. Does this not, however, lead to a rationalism in which God is measured by 7 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1984), p. 128. 8 See Aquinas, S.T. I q. 12 a. 7 corp. 9 Aquinas, Expositio in Librum De Causis, lect 6, n. 68. All translations of Aquinas are mine. 10 Ibid. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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human reason? St. Thomas Aquinas is particularly helpful in clarifying the intellectual creature’s knowledge of God and for treading a middle path between rationalism and agnosticism, between our capacity to know God, which is itself a gift of God, and our incapacity to comprehend God. Since, according to Thomas, all our knowledge of God begins from sense knowledge, we can only know, and thus name God, from God’s creatures. Even our knowledge of God through revelation is imbedded in and mediated by sensible images. A creature represents God not in terms of its likeness to another creature (in being of the same species or genus), but is like God in that it reflects something of God as its abiding source (excellens principium). The notion of causality operative here is not the impoverished Humean notion of causality, which reduces causality to “extrinsic antecedent-consequent sequences in time,”11 but the much richer Thomistic notion influenced by Aristotelian efficient causality and Neoplatonic participation metaphysics.12 Consequently, the foundation and condition of the possibility for the meaningfulness of our names or attributes of God is that God is the ultimate causal source of all the perfections we find in the world. In Thomas’ conception of efficient causality the cause actively produces the effect (either in whole or in part) such that without the cause in this particular instance or situation the effect would not be. Furthermore, if every act is of its nature a self-revelation then every act of efficient causality, at least in some minimal way, is a selfexpression.13 Thus the notion of efficient causality of God’s creative activity indicates that the universe is in some way a manifestation of the perfections that God is in God’s infinite simplicity.14 Here I would like to place Aquinas’ naming of God in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, which is in the context of the efficient causality of creation, into the larger context of grace. I would suggest that the Summa Theologiae must be read as a whole such that the 11 W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The Philosophical Approach to God: A New Thomistic Perspective, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007) p. 63. 12 See W. Norris Clarke, S.J., ‘The Limitation of Act by Potency in St. Thomas: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?’, in W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Explorations in Metaphysics: Being—God—Person (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 65–88 and ‘The Meaning of Participation in St. Thomas’, in ibid., pp. 89–101. 13 See Aquinas Summa contra Gentiles, III., 113, De Potentia, q. 2 art. 1., Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum, Bk. I, dist. 4, q. 1, a. 1; Summa Theologiae I. q. 19 a. 2. 14 It might be better here to refer to efficient causality as quasi-efficient causality to highlight the difference between inner worldly efficient causality and the efficient causality of God’s creative activity. This would allow us to insist both that God’s efficient causality in terms of God’s creative activity is an absolute beginning (“creation ex nihilo”) and to emphasize that the effect (i.e. creation) is distinct from God but not separate from God such that creatures are distinct limited participations in God as the infinite act of existence. Although Aquinas does not use this term, his participation metaphysics would support its use. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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attributes of God developed in the first part of the Summa Theologiae develop a deeper and richer meaning as Aquinas moves through the work developing the doctrines of Christianity in terms of the NeoPlatonic schema of all things coming from God (exitus) and all things returning to God through Christ (reditus). In this context the attributes would not simply be in terms of the order of creation but would be fully understood in terms of the grace of Christ. Thus the idea that the attributes of God find their ground in God as the ultimate causal source of all the perfections we find in the world is to be understood not simply in the order of creation, in terms of efficient causality, but also in the order of grace, in terms of quasi-formal causality.15 We can, for St. Thomas, only know God in this life through his effects as these effects are represented in creatures. We cannot then know what God is. Since we cannot know what God is (i.e. quidditative knowledge),16 we can only derive the attributes of God, which indicate the manner of God’s existence, from the fact that God is and that God is without limit.17 One type of attributes is the absolutely transcendental properties of being18 which are derived not from the

15 In creation God gives a gift (albeit creatures exist as distinct limited participations in the Infinite Act of Existence) and in grace God gives God’s self. In speaking here of God as the ultimate causal source of all the perfections we find in the world, we are not simply speaking of God bringing things into existence (creation), sustaining them into existence (conservation), and moving them to act according to their natures (divine governance), but also the effects of God giving God’s self to created persons, which would fall within God’s governance. These effects are the fruits of the spirit. The created effect in human beings of God’s self-communication (uncreated grace) is what is known as created grace. In Rahner’s thought the self-communication of God in quasi-formal causality is uncreated grace or the indwelling of the economic trinity and it is the primordial grace that creates as its effect and as the condition of its possibility created grace, which is a created determination of the subject and is the disposition for union with God (i.e. sanctifying grace). See Karl Rahner, ‘Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace,’ in Theological Investigations I: God, Christ, Mary and Grace, trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 341. 16 Aquinas’ view of quidditative knowledge is ably summarized by Gregory Rocca: “The quiddity of something is what something is. The definition is the intelligible meaning (ratio) that manifests or signifies the quiddity of something, revealing that thing’s essence; and the definition is not just any meaning but the essential, categorical meaning specific to the entity in question. A lapidary sentence provides a summary statement: ‘A thing’s definition is the meaning which the name signifies’ (meta 4.16.733). Quidditative knowledge, then, is essential, specific, definitional knowledge.” Gregory P. Rocca, O.P., Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), p. 30. 17 God is in no way limited because God is God’s essence and as such God receives God’s esse from no one. God has no potency and God participates in nothing. See S.T. I. q. 3 a. 4 corp. 18 I have borrowed the language of “absolutely transcendental properties” and “transcendental relative properties” from Norris Clarke in order to describe Aquinas’ treatment of attributes in terms of the transcendentals and in terms of the divine operation. See Clarke, The Philosophical Approach to God, pp. 83–88. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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categories which express different ways of being specific to creatures which are determined by space and time (i.e. quantity, quality, etc.), but what is common to every being in so far as it is (i.e. the transcendentals). The transcendentals are not extraneous additions to being but are included in being as intrinsic to being, expressing a mode of being not expressed by the term ‘being’ (these include the one, the true, and the good).19 The meaning of these attributes, according to Norris Clarke “is so closely linked with the meaning and intelligibility of being itself that no real being is conceivable which could lack them and still remain intelligible.”20 While the first type of attributes pertains to the divine substance the second type pertains to the divine operation itself.21 The second type of attributes (i.e. the transcendental relative properties of being) is not derived from the very fact that something is, thus they are not co-extensive with all being; rather, they are perfections analogously derived from the human being and thus God as the infinite and perfect source of all being must possess these perfections (e.g. knowledge, love, providence, etc.). While Aquinas denies that we know what God is and thus he denies that these attributes give us quidditative knowledge of God’s essence, he does not simply end with a negative theology. He does not end up in agnosticism. In his more mature treatment of naming in the De Potentia and the Summa Theologiae,22 Aquinas maintains in response to the negative theology of Moses Maimonides and Alain of Lille, that we can make affirmative judgments about God but not know what (i.e. quidditative knowledge of the essence of God) we are talking about. In his introductory remarks to his treatment of the divine attributes in question three of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas says that “we cannot know what God is (quid sit) but what God is not (quid non sit).” Thus “we cannot consider God’s mode of being (quomodo sit), but what God’s mode of being is not (quomodo non sit).”23 This method of considering what God’s “mode of being is not” is the method of remotio or the via negativa. In the via negativa or remotio 19 “That which the intellect first conceives as in a way, the most evident, and to which it reduces all its concepts, is being. Consequently, all other conceptions of the intellect [i.e. the other transcendentals] are had by additions to being.” St. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1 a. 1 corp. 20 Clarke, The Philosophical Approach to God, p. 83. 21 S.T. I. q. 14 introduction. 22 For an excellent account of Aquinas’ development from his early discussions in the Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum and Summa contra Gentiles to his later account in the De Potentia and Summa Theologiae, see John F. Wippel “Quidditative Knowledge of God” in his John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), pp. 215–242. 23 S.T. I. q. 3 introduction. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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one removes “from God those things that are not appropriate to God; namely composition, motion, and similar things.”24 The via negativa in Aquinas is often appealed to in order to indicate the limits of our knowledge of God. This does not, however, mean that all the attributes of God are negative attributes. In the Summa Theologiae, after predicating simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinity, immutability, eternity, and unity of God, Aquinas reflects on the nature of these predications (I. q. 13 a. 2). He distinguishes between negative predications, relative predications, and positive predications. Negative predications (e.g. incorporeal, immeasurable, infinite) cannot be signified of God substantially and as such simply remove something from God. Relative predications (e.g. Lord, efficient cause, end) cannot be signified of God substantially and express creatures’ relation to God.25 In establishing that we can predicate positively and substantially of God, Aquinas attacks two positions that deny that we can make affirmative judgments about God. He attacks Moses Maimonides’ over emphasis on the negative character of our predications. If our predications simply have a negative character and thus only indicate what God is not, then when we say “God is living” all that this would mean is that God is not inanimate.26 To say that God is not inanimate, however, does not distinguish God from a plant or animal or any other living thing. Therefore, the predicate “living” as applied to God cannot be understood simply negatively. It has to be a positive predication that attributes a perfection to God. God is not simply living in the sense of being not inanimate; rather, God is the perfection or fullness of life. Aquinas also rejects Alain of Lille’s position that all divine predications are to be understood only in causal terms (as such all divine predications are relative predications). For Alain of Lille, when we predicate goodness of God all we are saying is that God causes good things. This leads to a similar form of agnosticism. In this view divine predications are true only in a secondary sense. The particular attribute ultimately signifies nothing more than that God is cause. If God is the source of all goodness and all bodies, then, following the logic of Alain of Lille, to say that God is good and to say that God is a body are equivalent. If we accepted Alain of Lille’s position, we would, at best, have no way to order our predications, and, at worst, we would be led into error as in the example of God being predicated as a body.

24

Ibid. Aquinas maintains that relative names signify God’s relation “to another (alium) or better another’s relation to God’s self.” (S.T. I. q. 13 a. 2 corp.) 26 S.T. I. q. 13 a. 2 corp. 25


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Aquinas’ distinction between the res significata27 (the perfection signified by the particular attribute) and the modus significandi28 (the modes of expressing the perfection which bear the mark of their origin in our experience) allows him to retain the via negativa. Thus it allows him to avoid any limitation of divine transcendence, while maintaining that we can still make true judgments about God in the form of positive or substantial predications. Since God as the perfect and infinite source of creation possesses within Godself all the perfections of creatures, the perfection signified by the particular attribute (res significata) belongs more properly (proprie) to God and thus can be truly ascribed to God because the perfection itself does 27

The term “res”, which literally means “thing”, can be misleading here because it seems to be referring to the thing signified or the concrete referent of the attribute in a given judgment, but res significata simply refers to the attribute itself. 28 Aquinas’ account of the modus signficandi can easily cause confusion. What the term precisely signifies is the mode of expressing the res significata. While we can predicate attributes of God that unqualifiedly designate a perfection (i.e. being, goodness, wisdom, etc.) our modes of expressing these perfections (i.e. abstract and concrete names) are imperfect in trying to signify the perfections of God in God’s infinite simplicity. These modes of expressing these perfections betray their origin in our experience of finite and thus composed creatures in which the attribute and the subject of the attribute are not identical. God’s essence (essentia), however, is God’s existence (esse). Since God’s perfections do not accidentally inhere in God, but are God the attribute and the subject of the attribute are identical. The only ways we, as finite creatures, can express the divine perfection is through abstract and concrete names. Through our use of abstract names (e.g. goodness), we can indicate that God is the attribute in God’s simplicity. We can thus avoid any connotation of composition conveyed by the concrete name. Abstract names, however, are imperfect because they do not indicate that the perfection subsists. They do not convey “that which is, but that by which something is.” (S.C.G. I. 30) Concrete names (e.g. good), on the other hand, can be used to indicate that the perfection is or subsists, but here the perfection as concrete and determinate modifies a composed creature and thus fails to express the divine simplicity. Thus “in every name said by us, so far as concerns the mode of signification, there is found an imperfection which is not appropriate to God even though the attribute (res significata) in some eminent way befits God.” (S.C.G. I. 30) Although this is the precise meaning of modus significandi, there are two other elements that are implicitly involved in the modus significandi and are always explicitly operative in Aquinas’ analysis of the modus significandi. (See S.C.G. I. 30; S.T. I. q. 13 a. 1 ad. 2; De Potentia q. 7 a. 5 ad. 2; the latter does not explicitly treat the relationship between abstract and concrete names, as do the former texts, but simply maintains that the modes of signification are imperfect because they denote a definite form, which nevertheless is invoking the problem of concrete names.) The first element (mode of being) refers to the presupposition of all knowing and thus all naming and that is the imperfect way in which the res significata is concretely realized in the modes of being of particular finite things. The second (mode of knowing), follows upon the first and refers to the way we imperfectly come to know the res significata through its imperfect finite instantiation in particular finite things. For we only know the attributes through their finite instantiations in the world and we fall back upon these finite instantiation to exemplify anew the meaning of the res significata. Therefore, these two aspects are implicit elements within the intelligibility of the term modus significandi. (See S.T. I. q. 13 a. 1 corp.; S.T. I. q. 45 a. 2 ad. 2; De Potentia, q. 7 a. 5 corp.) Hence the foundation of the modes of expressing is the mode of knowing and the foundation of the mode of knowing is the modes of being. Thus all three elements are involved in Aquinas’ conception of the modus significandi. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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not include any imperfection.29 The mode of signification, however, in its origin in human experience belongs to creatures and it is to this that the theologian must apply the via negativa (remotio). Thus the theologian must not only deny (via negativa) that the perfection is in God in the limited and finite way the human being experiences, understands, and expresses this perfection, but must also maintain that this perfection is in God in an utterly perfect way that transcends our imperfect experience of the perfection (via eminentiae). Aquinas allows us a way to avoid both rationalism and agnosticism by showing how we can make positive or affirmative statements about God, but not fully know what (i.e. quidditative knowledge) we are talking about such that God remains incomprehensible in God’s infinite fullness. Thus we can say that God exists, is true, good, one, omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, etc., but the full meaning of these predications eludes us. If we can make affirmative judgments about God, but not fully know what we are talking about, does this mean that our concepts are empty and thus meaningless? While the full meaning of these predications eludes us, we can apprehend or have a dim sense of their meaning through the analogy of proper proportionality. In contrast to univocal terms, which are applied to many different subjects and have the same precise meaning with clearly determined limits, and equivocal terms, which have the same sound or written sign but have a completely different meaning (e.g. the bank of a river and the bank to put one’s money), analogical terms are applied to different subjects with a meaning that is partly the same and partly different. The analogy of proper proportionality is a type of analogy that expresses literally and properly “some real intrinsic similarity found diversely but proportionately in all the analogates.”30 These real similarities are found in the order of activity and not in the order of forms or essences, precisely because words used analogically range over many different forms or essences. Thus while we can truly say that “fido knows,” “John knows,” and “God knows,” “their ways of knowing are irreducibly different based on their diverse natures.”31 We recognize a similarity in the activity of the dog, the human being, and God, but knowing is exercised in vastly different modes by the dog, a human being, and God. The “similarity lies on the side of the type of activity (knowing) common to all; the difference, on the side of the different ways the diverse subjects exercise this same kind of activity, according to their respective natures.”32 In univocal 29

S.T. I. q. 13 a. 3 corp. Clarke, The Philosophical Approach to God, p. 72. 31 W. Norris Clarke, S.J., The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), p. 49. 32 Ibid., p. 49. 30


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predication the predicate exclusively determines the meaning of the term. For example, the predicate “white” is not modified by the subject it inheres in whether this be a house, a fence, a car, or a human being. In analogical predication the predicate not only modifies the subject, but the subject modifies the meaning of the predicate. While univocal terms have a rigid and determinate meaning, analogical terms are systematically indeterminate and open-ended. Analogical terms are “flexible or stretch concepts which shift their meaning more or less with different applications, taking on the contours of each yet always holding on to some bond of similarity strong enough to warrant unifying all the various applications under a common idea or meaning, expressed by the same linguistic term.”33 It is the open ended and flexible character of these terms that allows us to use them when speaking of God. They allow us to make true judgments about God while maintaining that God is incomprehensible. And while any similarity between Creator and creatures is characterized by an even greater dissimilarity,34 analogical terms allow us to have some dim sense of the meaning of the attributes we predicate of God. We recognize that human knowing involves grasping an intelligible content and we have some sense of how we do this. When we say that “God knows” we are also indicating that God grasps an intelligible content, but we do not have an idea of what it is for God in one act of understanding that is identical with God’s act of existence to know God’s self, the whole existing universe, and all the possible ways that God’s goodness can be communicated. God’s knowledge is incomprehensible for us. To love is to will the good of another or oneself. When we say “God loves” we are saying that God wills God’s goodness for God’s self as end and for God’s creatures as gratuitously related to God as their end.35 We do not, however, know what it is for God in one act of love that is identical with God’s act of existence to love God’s self and all creation. We have some faint sense of the meaning of “God is love” from our experience of willing the good of others and others willing our good. We have a much greater sense, though far from comprehensive, of the meaning of the attribution “God is love” from the revelation of the depth of God’s love in the Father sending his only Son into the world so that we may have eternal life. Thus, while we do not comprehend God and the attributes that we predicate of 33

Ibid., p. 47. This is a paraphrase of the famous formula from the Fourth Lateran Council – “For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them.” Norman P. Tanner, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils Vol. I (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), Fourth Lateran Council, Constitution 2, p. 232. 35 See S.T. I. q. 6 a. 3, S.T. I. q. 20 a. 1 ad. 3. 34


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God are incomprehensible, this does not indicate that these attributes are empty and devoid of meaning. The incomprehensibility of God is a permanent aspect of our relation to God because God is not only incomprehensible for us in this life but is also incomprehensible in the beatific vision. While finite creatures are capable through God’s activity in the light of glory to see or know the divine essence in the beatific vision, we cannot comprehend the divine essence.36 We cannot comprehend God because, even in the beatific vision, we cannot know God to the full extent that God is knowable. Intellectual creatures know the divine essence in the vision of God, yet we do not know infinitely.37 In the vision of God, we will share in God’s life and joy and this will be our supreme fulfillment; yet God will remain incomprehensible. More precisely, in experiencing God in union we will even more fully experience the incomprehensibility of God. Our experience and articulation of our experience will not be meaningless because it is incomprehensible. It will be the fulfillment of our meaning. While the order of vision and the order of grace are distinct they are continuous.38 In the order of grace, our judgments that God is true, good, etc., are incomprehensible but we have some sense of the meaning of these terms through our experience of God’s communication of God’s self (i.e. grace) in this life. In summary, we can say that mystery does not simply indicate the limits of human knowledge of God. Such a weak understanding of mystery would inevitably lead to agnosticism; for it would not make clear that human knowledge is limited vis-à-vis God not because God is unintelligible or contradictory, but because God as pure act is inexhaustibly intelligible. It is because God is infinite and inexhaustibly intelligible that God transcends the capacities of the finite intellect. Thus it is not darkness and opacity at the heart of mystery. On the contrary, infinite light and intelligibility are at the heart of mystery. Furthermore, God is mystery conditions the full spectrum of the divine–human relationship (i.e. the order of grace and the order of vision) because God is forever incomprehensible for created intellects. Whether we are speaking about this life or the beatific vision 36 The light of glory is an ontological determination of the knower that disposes her to receive the vision. This determination is the effect of the self-communication of God in the person’s interiority. If the ontological communication of God to the creature is the condition of the possibility of the beatific vision, then God is the giver of the gift of vision, the giving of the gift, and the gift itself. 37 In the beatific vision, since the mode of the object is not the mode of the knower the human being in vision knows God as infinite and as infinitely knowable but does not know infinitely. See S.T. I. q. 12 a. 7 ad 3. 38 As Rahner correctly maintains, “What grace and vision of God mean are two phases of one and the same event which are conditioned by man’s free historicity and temporality. They are two phases of God’s single self-communication to man.” Foundations of Christian Faith, p. 118. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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the created intellect cannot know infinitely (i.e. cannot know as God knows).39 Although the concept of mystery must be grounded in what God is in God’s self; namely, infinite intelligibility, mystery is not an attribute about God in God’s self, but our relation to God. Thus it is a relative attribute. God is not a mystery to God’s self; for God through an infinite act of understanding, by which proceeds the Word, perfectly comprehends God’s self; rather, God is a mystery to intellectual creatures. Mystery, then, when attributed to God has a twofold meaning: (1) God is infinitely knowable; (2) the creature as an obediential potency to the beatific vision can know God but cannot comprehend God even in the vision of God.40

II. Applying the Concept “Mystery” Across the Full Range of Theological Reflection While it is very important that mystery is properly conceptualized in any theology, it is crucial that this concept is applied systematically across the full range of theological reflection. In the second part of this paper, I would like to turn to Karl Rahner. Rahner is particularly instructive in this regard for four reasons. First, while Rahner properly defines mystery and that definition conditions a great deal of his thought, he undermines his notion of mystery when he deals with the question of God and human suffering. Rahner was a conspicuously systematic thinker and so examining how he fails, at least in this instance, provides a good example of the difficulty in applying the proper understanding of mystery across the full range of theological reflection. Second, Rahner further exemplifies the negative effects on one’s doctrine of God of equating mystery with contradiction. Third, Rahner is an example of how absolutizing the divine freedom in order to safeguard the notion of God as mystery actually undermines the notion of God as mystery. Finally, examining how Rahner fails to apply the proper understanding of mystery” across the full range 39 The mystery or incomprehensibility of God, then “follows from the essential infinity of God which makes it impossible for a finite created intellect to exhaust the possibilities of knowledge and truth contained in this absolute fullness of being.” Karl Rahner, ‘The Hiddenness of God’, in Theological Investigations XVI: Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, trans. David Morland, O.S.B. (New York: Crossroad, 1983), p. 229. 40 Obediential potency, following the work of Karl Rahner, is the nature of the human being. The human being is a ‘potency’ because the human being as open to the totality of being, including God, is an openness, passive capacity, or receptivity for the selfcommunication of God. To preserve the gratuity of God’s self-communication the modifier ‘obedential’ is employed. ‘Obediential’ indicates that this human nature is obedient to the special influence of God and that the human being would still be meaningful even if God did not communicate God’s self. As such God’s creation of human beings does not demand that God give God’s self to them. God’s self-communication is truly gratuitous. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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of theological reflection is instructive as to what must be kept in mind to allow mystery to condition the full range of theological reflection. In his article “Why does God allow us to suffer?” Rahner briefly examines the various theistic solutions to the problem of suffering.41 He argues that while all of them have an element of truth, none of them provides a final solution to the problem. To show why all the apparent solutions not only fall short, but must fall short, Rahner introduces his theory that knowledge must give way to love in the face of the incomprehensible God in the beatific vision. For Rahner, because a plurality does not ground a unity the plurality of powers (i.e. sense powers, knowledge, and love) of the human being is only intelligible in terms of a prior unity.42 Thus the powers are equally original in their emergence from the basic act of the subject and they are involved in a perichoresis as determined by their transcendental end (i.e. truth and goodness). This order indicates that the completion and perfection of knowledge is love. For the object toward which the human spirit and its powers has been ordered transcends knowledge, so that “the real essence of knowledge is love, in which knowledge goes beyond itself and man freely surrenders himself to incomprehensibility.”43 Thus “the mystery [incomprehensibility of God], being essential to the ‘object’ to which the intellect is primarily ordained, forces it either to consume itself in protest or to transform itself in the self-surrender by which it accepts the mystery as such, that is, in love, and so attains its proper perfection.”44 Therefore, the point that knowledge is striving to reach is incomprehensibility in which knowledge transcends itself, and in doing so both preserves and transforms itself, by surrendering itself to the more comprehensive act of love. Rahner’s view that knowledge must give way to love in the face of the incomprehensible God in the beatific vision, allows him to maintain that the various intellectual attempts to solve the problem of God and human suffering do not and cannot provide a final solution to 41 Karl Rahner, ‘Why does God Allow Us to Suffer?’ in Theological Investigations, v. 19: Faith and Ministry, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), pp. 194–208. 42 A plurality cannot ground a unity. What grounds a plurality is precisely that which two or more things do not hold in common. As such that which they do not hold in common cannot ground the unity between them. When we distinguish A and B, we say that A is not B. This distinction or ‘not’ cannot ground the unity of A and B. A and B cannot be united unless they emerge from a prior unity or unless B as distinct from A emerges from A. If you are going to have unity and plurality, then the plurality has to originate from a prior unity. 43 Karl Rahner, ‘Thomas Aquinas on the Incomprehensibility of God’, in Celebrating the Medieval Heritage: A Colloquy on the Thought of Aquinas and Bonaventure, ed. David Tracy, Journal of Religion 58 (Supplement, 1978), p. 124. 44 Karl Rahner, ‘The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology’, in Theological Investigations IV: More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 44. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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the problem. We cannot find a final solution to the question of why God allows us to suffer because “the incomprehensibility of suffering is part of the incomprehensibility of God.”45 Only in an act of love will human beings arrive at a final answer and that answer will be God in God’s self. Understood in this way, the inability to answer the question “why does God allow us to suffer?” is “no longer the scandal in our existence, to be removed as quickly as possible, which must be elucidated as clearly as possible, but an element in the incomprehensibility that penetrates, challenges, and lays claim to our whole life.”46 As Rahner further develops this thesis, however, he undermines his understanding of mystery, which throughout his works is synonymous with ‘incomprehensibility,’ as inexhaustible intelligibility. He does this in two ways. First, mystery (i.e. incomprehensibility) is grounded in contradiction. Second, he overemphasizes the divine freedom as underivable (unableitbaren). Rahner suggests that mystery (i.e. incomprehensibility) is rooted in contradiction in the following remarks: The incomprehensibility of suffering is part of the incomprehensibility of God. Not in the sense that we could deduce it as necessary and thus inevitably as clarified from something else that we already know of God. If this were so it would not be at all incomprehensible. But the very fact that it is really and eternally incomprehensible means that suffering is truly a manifestation of God’s incomprehensibility in his nature and in his freedom. In his nature because despite what might be described as the terrible amorality of suffering (at least on the part of children and innocent people), we have to acknowledge the pure goodness of God, which needs no acquittal before our tribunal. In his freedom, because this, too, if it wills the suffering of the creature, is incomprehensible, since it could achieve without suffering the sacred aims of the freedom that wills suffering. Suffering, then, is the form (as such, again, underivable) in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.47

Notice in this quotation that the divine nature is incomprehensible because of the contradiction between the suffering of the innocent that we experience and the goodness of God, which we know through faith. Similarly, the divine freedom is incomprehensible because of the contradiction that an omnibenevolent God could fulfill the divine purpose without suffering yet wills the suffering of the creature. What then typifies mystery for Rahner in his article on suffering? Contradiction!

45 46 47

Karl Rahner, ‘Why does God Allow Us to Suffer?’ p. 206. Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 206.


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Rahner also indirectly undermines the notion of mystery or incomprehensibility as inexhaustible intelligibility by understanding the divine freedom as underivable: This mystery of God’s incomprehensibility, however, is not merely the mystery of a being to be understood as static, but is also the mystery of God’s freedom, of his underivable disposition [unableitbaren Verfügung], which has not to be justified before any other authority [Instanz]. It is to this that man surrenders himself even when he loves God face to face in eternal life and abandons himself unconditionally to God’s incomprehensibility. God is loved in his freedom, God himself and not only what we have grasped of him in what must remain eternally no more than a fleeting glance.48

If the divine will has no deeper grounds and is as Rahner suggests underivable (unableitbaren), then the meaning of mystery will ultimately slide toward impenetrable darkness. If the divine will is not necessarily ordered toward the Infinite Good, then God’s freedom, in having no grounds other than itself, inevitably becomes absolute with no ordered relation to the Good. If this is true, God’s will could be completely arbitrary and God could do terrible things. Indeed, Rahner’s absolutizing of God’s freedom allows him to maintain that even though God could achieve God’s sacred aims without suffering God wills the suffering of God’s creatures: “suffering is truly a manifestation of God’s incomprehensibility in his nature and in his freedom . . . . In his freedom, because this, too, if it wills the suffering of the creature, is incomprehensible, since it could achieve without suffering the sacred aims of the freedom that wills suffering.”49 Notice here, as has been mentioned, that incomprehensibility means contradiction and unintelligibility because God’s actions do not make sense; for if God could achieve God’s purpose without suffering why would God will human suffering? If you understand mystery as that which is shrouded in impenetrable darkness, then this will affect how you understand the divine will and its freedom. If unintelligibility and contradiction are at the heart of mystery, then the divine will and its freedom will not be rooted in the light of being as intelligible. And if the divine will is not rooted in the light of being as intelligible, then you open the door for a divine will that is arbitrary and capricious. It is important to notice how one’s understanding of God’s freedom affects one’s understanding of the mystery of God and conversely how one’s understanding of the mystery of God affects one’s understanding of God’s freedom and informs one’s doctrine of God.

48 49

Ibid., p. 206. Ibid., p. 206.


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Now let us return to the central question of part two, namely, how can the understanding of mystery outlined in part one be applied across the full range of theological reflection? At this point the answer can be merely prescriptive based on the example of Karl Rahner. A full answer would require writing a systematic theology in which the major topics of theology are treated. Nevertheless, while this is programmatic it is substantive because the case of Karl Rahner deals with God’s activity vis-à-vis the world. On this it must be suggested that to uphold the proper understanding of God as mystery one must see God’s activity as conditioned by the intelligibility of existence that God is as pure act. In other words, what grounds the infinite knowability and intelligibility of God and God’s activity, for created spirits, is that the divine will is conditioned by the intelligibility of God’s being. More precisely, absolutizing God’s freedom does not preserve a proper understanding of God as mystery, but mystery as attributed to God is preserved only if we understand the divine will in an ordered relation to the divine intellect contemplating the divine being as communicable (i.e. the divine goodness). The example of Rahner is instructive in several respects. First, it shows how careful theologians must be when appealing to mystery. If mystery is equated with contradiction, this will have profound negative consequences for one’s doctrine of God such that God could be capricious. While Rahner properly defined mystery but failed to apply this understanding systematically throughout his thought, many theologians who do not define mystery implicitly suggest that mystery means unintelligibility or contradiction when they appeal to mystery at the moment their theology runs into contradictions. If theologians employ the concept “mystery” when their shabby theological equipment begins to deteriorate50 they need to explain why they cannot penetrate the subject matter further and thus indicate the range and limits of human knowledge in respect to the theological topic under consideration. In such an account, they need to insure that inexhaustible intelligibility, not contradiction, is the reason for the limits of their knowledge.51 Second, it reveals the interrelatedness of the various attributes of God such that how one understands mystery will affect one’s understanding of other attributes (i.e. divine will, 50 This phrase has in mind T.S. Eliot’s lines from East Coker of the Four Quartets “a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating.” T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1952), p. 128. 51 An example of such an application of this understanding of mystery to a theological problem can be found in my “The Mystery of God and the Suffering of Human Beings”, Heythrop Journal L (2009), pp. 846–863. Here I show the range and limits of human knowledge of God and preserve the mystery of God in response to the problem of reconciling human suffering with the Christian belief in a God of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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goodness, and intellect) and how one understands the other attributes will affect one’s concept of mystery. This again suggests that theologians should not only properly conceptualize what they mean by mystery but pay careful attention to how it is being applied across the full range of theological topics. Third, it makes clear that when applying the concept of mystery across the full range of theological reflection one must recognize that for created persons what grounds the infinite knowability and intelligibility of God’s activity is that the divine will is conditioned by the intelligibility of God’s being whose ground is the divine being as communicable (i.e. the divine goodness). The divine will is not absolute but is relative to the intelligibility of God’s being.

III. Conclusion The knowledge of God is integral to our salvation, for the knowledge of God, according to John’s gospel, is eternal life. Knowledge presumes knowability or intelligibility. Hence, when we speak of the mystery of God we must be speaking of infinite knowability and intelligibility. The intelligibility of God, however, exceeds the capacity of the finite intellect even in the vision of God. Thomas Aquinas helps us to avoid both rationalism and agnosticism by holding onto our capacity to know God, which itself is a gift of God, while recognizing that human beings are forever incapable of comprehending God. The concept “mystery” as applied to God neither means we are dealing with a reality that is unknowable because a contradiction is present nor does it simply express the limits of human knowledge; rather, it has two aspects: 1) God is infinitely knowable and thus infinitely intelligible and 2) the creature as an obediential potency to the beatific vision can know God but cannot comprehend God even in the vision of God. In part two, we saw, by learning from the failure of Karl Rahner, that insisting upon God’s freedom as absolute does not preserve the mystery of God, but undermines the proper understanding of mystery as applied to God. To allow the concept of mystery to condition all of our theological reflection, we must understand the divine will as relative to the divine intellect contemplating the divine being as communicable (i.e. the divine goodness). The divine will is not absolute, but is in an ordered relation to the divine intellect contemplating the divine goodness to be communicated. To speak of the ordered relation of God’s immanent operations of knowing and willing leads us into the order of processions in the inner life of the Trinity; for the Son and Spirit (for St. Thomas) proceed eternally as the term of the immanent operations of knowing and willing. God by one act of knowing knows all that God knows and in that act the Father speaks the eternal Word and all of creation. C The author 2010 C The Dominican Council 2010 New Blackfriars

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Following (in the order of nature not time) the divine act of knowing, God in one act of will, loves all that God loves, and in that act the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. Preserving the mystery of God across the full range of theological reflection requires that we recognize the ordered relation of God’s immanent operations in the inner Trinitarian life such that God’s will follows upon (in the order of nature not time) and is informed by God’s intellect. It is only in recognizing this that God who is mystery to us can be our final end and salvation. Richard W. Miller, Ph.D. Creighton University Department of Theology 2500 California Plaza Omaha, NE 68178-0302 U.S.A Email: [email protected]


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act of consecration? Nonetheless, this is a valuable reference work for students and scholars. RICHARD FINN OP PRAYING WITH CONFIDENCE: AQUINAS ON THE LORD’S PRAYER by Paul Murray OP (Continuum, London, 2010) Pp. xiii + 105, £10.99

In this book Paul Murray, a contemporary spiritual master, expounds the teaching of an earlier Dominican spiritual master, whose writings can be a bit daunting for the majority of Christians, let alone for the merely curious spiritual seeker. It is a vital part of the resurgence of interest in St Thomas that he should be appreciated as a preacher, and as a spiritual master, for these are hallmarks of a Dominican saint. St Thomas was canonized because he contemplated Wisdom and handed on the fruit of his contemplation of sacra doctrina. It is this holy teaching that Murray shares with us again in this little volume. Just as St Thomas drew on other commentators, notably Augustine and Origen to explain the Lord’s Prayer, Murray also draws on other Dominicans to illuminate his text. In this way, it is the work of a community, a ‘holy preaching’, in the best Dominican tradition. The author has done an excellent job of pulling together St Thomas’ writings on the Lord’s Prayer for they are found not in a single treatise but in seven different texts. He helpfully explains the history and context of these texts in the ‘Appendix’. In the main text, Murray follows St Thomas’ own practice and we are led to consider the Lord’s Prayer one brief phrase at a time. Readers who are not accustomed to the scholastic method of analysis may be astonished by how much St Thomas derives from the first two words alone, but the result is not academic nit-picking or dry distinctions but the illuminating insights of a saint who has prayed over every precious word taught by the incarnate Word. So, we are led into a Thomistic lectio divina of the Lord’s Prayer in which spirituality and theology cannot be separated. St Thomas’s well-known Summa theologiæ is famously structured as a series of questions, objections, and responses, and any reader of it knows how very relevant are the questions he poses, and how apt the answers he gives. So too in this consideration of the Lord’s Prayer, many of the objections to petitionary prayer, and erroneous ideas about prayer and the spiritual life, are answered, and so we are taught to pray. Moreover, we are taught to live well, for St Thomas brilliantly shows how the Lord’s Prayer begins with the goal of life, namely God, and then shows how we can attain that goal with hope and confidence by loving ourselves in God (see p. 37). Therefore, we are more fully human and more free the more we love and desire God above all else. However, in all this, and particularly in St Thomas’s treatment of the phrase, ‘forgive us our trespasses’ (chapter 7), his humanity stands out in the depth of his understanding of human weakness and of our need of God’s grace and compassion. Similarly, Murray highlights some of the difficulties of living the Christian life such as forgiving our enemies, coping with suffering, and distraction in prayer, and he shares St Thomas’s eminently practical and compassionate responses to such struggles. St Thomas says that prayer should “last long enough to arouse fervour of interior desire”. This book is just long enough to be read with ease, and to stir up our desire to pray with confidence and hope, but it also contains such richness that it will amply reward many meditative revisits. LAWRENCE LEW OP C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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CALVIN AT THE CENTRE by Paul Helm (Oxford University Press, 2009) Pp.x + 368, £68.00

There is an old bumper sticker that contains a light-hearted prayer for protection: “God, save me from your followers!” In a fourth and (confessedly) final book on Calvin, Paul Helm turns again to the great French reformer to save him from his followers and from detractors of various sorts. According to Helm, Calvin at the Centre deepens and extends the “approach to Calvin’s thought” found in Helm’s 2004 book, John Calvin’s Ideas. In both books, Helm offers closely argued readings of Calvin’s positions on a wide range of difficult issues. His method for doing this is, in a sense, historical, as it relies on comparisons among Calvin and his forebears and successors. Yet Helm is cordially indifferent to questions of actual historical influence flowing to or from Calvin. For example, Helm finds it useful to read Anselm and Descartes alongside Calvin, whether or not either figure bears real genealogical connections to Calvin. Helm is content to use historical comparisons to set Calvin in relief against non-Calvinian positions and to explore intellectual affinities that bring forward characteristic features of Helm’s genuine Calvin. In this sense, he places Calvin at the “centre” between patristic and medieval theologians on the one hand and modern and early modern thinkers on the other. In particular, Helm toggles between the venerable trio of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, who allow Helm to illuminate the traditional cast of Calvin’s thought, and a wide variety of later Calvinists (with Kant and Descartes also included), who permit him to show, by contrast, what Helm believes to be the biblical, humane – and misunderstood – character of Calvin’s theology. Helm’s apologetic focus does not prevent him from offering in this book a series of fresh and remarkably creative essays. It rather provides a structure within which to portray the bold thrusts of Calvin’s thought while, at the same time, attending to underappreciated moves that kept Calvin tethered to the Bible, the church, and the larger Western theological tradition. In ten very substantial chapters, Helm continues the exposition of Calvin begun in his earlier book. He begins with “The Knowledge of God and of Ourselves” in chapter one, navigating between Augustinian and Cartesian conceptions of self-knowledge to argue for a distinctive Calvinian position based on the ineluctably moral, “immediately reciprocal”, quality of God- and self-knowledge. Chapters three (“Scripture, Reason, and Grace”), eight (“Calvin the Compatibilist”), and ten (“Pure Nature and Common Grace”) are also philosophically focused. Here Helm explores reason, determinism, and human nature (respectively) by placing Calvin between earlier figures like Aquinas, the Stoics, and Augustine and later ones like Pierre Bayle, John Gill, Jonathan Edwards, and Dutch Calvinists such as Herman Bavinck. On the whole, Calvin’s philosophical ideas appear in these chapters to be less extreme, and more positive in their assessment of human capacities, than familiar characterizations of Calvin suggest. Edwards, Bavinck, Bayle, and others, then, are foils to Calvin’s bold but sensitive viae mediae. Chapters four (“The Visibility of God”), five (“Providence and Predestination”), six (“The Atonement”), seven (“Duplex Gratia”), and nine (“Intermediate States”) treat theological topics. Anselm features prominently in the chapter on atonement. Aquinas lurks in the background in several discussions, but Augustine is, for good reason, the most important pre-Calvinian source in these chapters. Helm ranges widely to find modern and early modern interlocutors for Calvin. These include Peter Vermigli on soul sleep and the Eucharist, Turretin on justification and sanctification, the Puritans on the atonement and predestination, and Karl Barth on the hiddenness of God. Because of his firm and admirable control of Reformed theology, Helm succeeds in bringing an eclectic group of figures to bear on illuminating presentations of Calvin’s theological ideas. Helm locates Calvin in the sensible middle ground of long-standing controversial discussions, C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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conceding enough to retain the sharpness of Calvin’s ideas (for example on divine unknowability) while separating them carefully from later misconstruals (positing a Calvinian basis for modern agnosticism, for example). Helm also devotes a chapter to natural philosophy (chapter two: “Descartes and Reformed Theology”). His somewhat tentative argument is that Cartesianism might have “provided the philosophical underpinning for the Reformed theological curriculum” (p. 40) in the era of Reformed Orthodoxy even though it did not. As Helm notes, Cartesianism briefly made inroads among Dutch Reformed theologians and Genevan scholars in the seventeenth century. In the end, though, the “Reformed Aristotelianism” of theologians like Gisbert Voetius carried the day. Helm’s interest in this material, however, is not simply historiographic. The point is to dissociate Calvin from the (to Helm’s mind) rigid and retrograde scholasticism of his followers by suggesting that “Calvin’s stance is sufficiently elastic as regards philosophy to permit an eclectic approach” (p. 63). In this way Helm turns an unpromising counter-factual (could Reformed orthodoxy have accommodated Cartesianism?) into an oblique argument for a kind of Calvinian scientific progressivism. Drawing on an impressive range of canonical and lesser-known figures and also on a deep knowledge of Calvin’s writings, Helm offers a moderate portrait of Calvin. Calvin comes into focus as a philosophically astute reformer who never became a philosopher; a forceful, clear-minded biblical interpreter who never became a theologian; a catholic with Thomistic affinities who opposed Rome; a champion of biblical faith but not a scholastic; a modern but not a modernist. This portrait depends on what Helm calls a “cumulative case” (p. 3) for a wellcentred Calvin. Interested readers will find a great deal to learn and like in the agile but substantial essays accumulated in this volume. They will also get help in deciding whether a renovated Calvin may yet “speak to us afresh” (p. 3) or whether Calvin’s theological legacy is – as essay after essay suggests – central in another way: as symptomatic of the confusions that destabilized the Western church at the time of the Reformation, and which persist in many forms today. MICHAEL C. LEGASPI THE POSSIBILITY OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY: MAURICE BLONDEL AT THE INTERSECTION OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY by Adam C. English (Routledge , London and New York, 2007) Pp. x + 144, £80 / $145 hbk

Few detailed studies exist in English of Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel. He is best known for his highly controversial 1893 L’action, in which he demonstrated the incoherence of any analysis of human action that sought to deny its ultimate grounding in absolute, divine action. In this lucid, concise, well-researched, and carefully-argued study, Adam English extends our horizons forwards through Blondel’s later and less well-known oeuvre, in particular his later trilogy on thought, being, and action. For much of his life, Blondel was swimming against two tides: the caustic secularism of the Third Republic philosophes, who regarded philosophy as a self-validating, nihilistic discourse, and the neo-Thomism of his own Church, which saw philosophy’s function as being to interpret data already provided by revelation. Neither could countenance the possibility that philosophy might lead to knowledge of God. On the contrary, protested Blondel, if the philosopher commences not with ideas but with action, the reverse is proven: that the soul harbours within itself a will to be, which necessarily closes the gap between the will that wills objects in the abstract (the volonté voulante) and the will that chooses the concrete purposes actually willed in reality (the volonté voulue), and C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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as such originates in divine action. This can even be seen as a new ontological proof for God’s existence from action. Whether Christian philosophy was possible, and if so what form it took, was debated extensively in the period 1928 to 1936, and this debate is helpfully reviewed on pp. 26–30. But as English shows, Blondel came to see that this focus alone assumed too readily that humans will action and the unification of their personhood in God. Hence the importance of his later works, in which he shifts from descriptive phenomenology into ontology and deontology. In La pensée, Blondel delineates the intentional, purposeful structure that thought identifies in the universe. Like the will, thought contains two potentially divergent aspects: the noetic (approximating to the notional) and the pneumatic (approximating to the real). Both are incorporated into his transnaturalism, which he saw as avoiding the dangers of polarization continually inherent in the supernatural-natural view of reality. Rather, all created being tends centripetally towards God’s own being in Christ, in whom all things hold together. In order not to be seen itself as a new variety of pantheism, this must be regarded in light of Blondel’s later methodological turn from immanence to implication. The former had been understood as giving too much ground to uninterrogated experience, whereas a method of implication is rooted in the deeper soil of interpretation and intelligibility. Moreover, English shows that Blondel, unlike de Lubac, by no means denied the existence of pure nature. For Blondel, ‘to see our “pure” nature is to see ourselves as we really are: selfish and weak. It is to make a pure evaluation without blinders. [He] uses pure nature to counter any temptation of an autonomous and natural philosophy or a Pelagian soteriology.’ (p. 45) This negative view of pure nature as inachievement provides an important counterweight to de Lubac’s negative construal of the concept. Notwithstanding Blondel’s view of humanity as adhering or attracted to the divine, it demonstrates his strong wish to continue to conceive the real, material context of human action, and a view of the incorporation of the believer into the divine life as enacted, albeit imperfectly, in present life rather than awaited passively in future resurrected life. The second and third portions of the trilogy can, although important, be delinˆ et les eˆ tres, Blondel makes clear the centrality in his eated more briefly. In L’Etre ontology of mystery. For Blondel, mystery was entirely concrete: the activity of the absolute within the relative itself. As such, mystery could be discovered and entered into. By means of this concept, he distanced himself from the widespread intuitionism that stemmed from Rosmini and was predicated on a univocal view of being. For the same reason, he adopted an analogia creationis in preference to an analogia entis, situating his entire ontology within divine creative action. Blondel’s revised L’action, forming the final instalment of his trilogy, enables him to present action as personal, social, and divine power. Through the concept of ‘agnition’, he again places centre stage the willing actor, in whose person are synthesized poesis, practice, and contemplation. English states: ‘God is most properly depicted as actus purus, the wellspring of all force and the efficient cause (causa efficiens) of everything that moves and has being.’ God is therefore not so much distant cause but mediator, in Laberthonnière’s words the ‘very movement of life as principle and end’ (pp. 95–6). Christ’s primary office is to act as this supreme mediator. Although such ‘panchristism’ could be seen to smack of Scotism, we might push further the mitigating insight offered that the (Teilhardian) view of Christ as Alpha and Omega posits Christ giving to the created order both its end and its beginning, rather than being reducible to the created order, in a fashion wholly compatible with a high doctrine of God as actus purus. DAVID GRUMETT C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS: ESSAYS IN APPLYING LONERGAN’S THOUGHT by Andrew Beards (Continuum, London and New York, 2010) Pp. x + 272, £65.00

Andrew Beards is an internationally renowned scholar who specialises in the philosophy and theology of Bernard Lonergan. Among his various writings are Objectivity and Human Understanding (1997), Method in Metaphysics: Lonergan and the Future of Analytical Philosophy (2008) and Philosophy: The Quest for Truth and Meaning (2010). The present book is a collection of nine essays published previously but which he hopes hereby will reach a wider audience. Each essay in its own way makes a contribution to the general conversation in philosophy and to Lonergan studies in particular. Beards caps this fascinating anthology with a brief Epilogue in which he offers some further reflections to bring things up to date. At the end of the book, there is an extensive and useful index of authors and themes. The essays are grouped around five themes: knowing and consciousness, the philosophy of language, post-Continental philosophy, philosophical ethics, and philosophical theology. Although the subject matter is demanding, Beards’s lucid prose and occasional wit, together with his confident mastery of the subject, helps the reader to glide through. Hugo Meynell, who directed his doctoral thesis and to whom this collection is dedicated, rightly observes that Beards’s erudition is ‘formidable’ yet his style ‘serene, limpid and unpretentious . . . a model for philosophical exposition’. Many scholars bemoan the lack of engagement between Lonergan’s thought and that of other philosophers and theologians. In the present collection, Beards attempts to help remedy this; his provocatively pro-Lonergan stance – never naively espoused but always carefully established – should lure many scholars from other traditions into the debate. Indeed, his fundamental thesis is that to deny or negate the basic position outlined is to eschew or to contradict the actual operational structure of human knowing, willing, and loving. In the earlier essays such as ‘Self-Refutation and Self-Knowledge,’ ‘John Searle ¨ and Human Consciousness,’ ‘Ubersicht as Oversight: Problems in Wittgenstein’s later Philosophy,’ and ‘Anti-Realism and Critical Realism: Dummett and Lonergan’, Beards wades into analytical philosophy in order to engage with Mackie, Hintikka, Wittgenstein, Searle, MacIntyre, Dummett, Quine, and Putnam. He deploys to brilliant effect Lonergan’s account in Insight of the self-appropriated structure of the subject, using it as a critical tool, a kind of X-ray machine, to expose both the valid positions as well as the counter-positions present in the other philosophies. At the same time, he makes applications of Lonergan’s thought that advance Lonergan scholarship. For instance, in the essay ‘MacIntyre, Critical Realism and Animal Consciousness,’ he brings together disparate remarks in the Lonergan corpus in order to contrast animal and human ‘knowing’. Using Insight – as well as an appeal to his own experiences with the family dog, Bella – Beards ably dismisses the claim made by some that what differentiates humans from animals is language, rather than such intentional operations as raising questions, having insights, and making judgements. Beards is well versed not only in Anglo-American philosophy but also in recent continental thought. In ‘Badiou’s Metaphysical Basis for Ethics,’ he discusses the current revival of metaphysics in the continental tradition in the light of an extensive, albeit critical, exploration of Badiou’s anthropology. In ‘Moral Conversion and Problems in Proportionalism,’ he argues convincingly from a critical-realist viewpoint how utilitarian, consequentialist, and proportionalist thinking in ethics is the result of flawed epistemologies such as idealism and relativism. In this essay, he also ventilates the fascinating issue of Lonergan’s reaction to Humanae Vitae and his stance on contraception. C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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The final two essays constitute something of a tour de force. In ‘Christianity, Interculturality and Salvation: Some Perspectives from Lonergan,’ Beards begins with an analysis of Lonergan’s much vaunted assertion of the shift in Western culture from classicism to historical mindedness. Lonergan, he avers, was not offering an explanatory account: he was painting with broad brush-strokes, something many commentators fail to observe. This is why Lonergan does not really develop what Ratzinger has underlined: that the Church herself is a cultural subject such that the task of inculturation is always one of ‘inter-culturation,’ At the same time, Beards ingeniously shows how Lonergan’s richly nuanced account of conversion as intellectual, moral, and religious, would confirm Ratzinger’s mistrust of Rahner’s ‘anonymous Christian’ thesis. Using the example of Helen Keller, referred to by Lonergan in Method, Beards maintains that conversion to Christ is not merely a cognitive shift (from implicit or unthematic knowledge to explicit and thematic) but something far more life changing, nay, dramatic. Many Rahnerian scholars presently contest the interrelationship of Rahner’s philosophy and theology, arguing that his theology can be ‘free-wheeling,’ without his philosophy. Beards is thus not alone in finding aspects of Rahner’s philosophy problematic, but he argues that problems with Rahner’s philosophy do indeed lead to problems with his theology. In this respect, the final essay in the collection, ‘Rahner’s Philosophy: A Lonerganian Critique’, is important. In his analysis of Spirit in the World and Foundations of Christian Faith, Beards uses Lonergan’s impressive account of cognitional and volitional operations to mount a devastating critique that leaves Rahner’s philosophy vanquished, both by its oversight of insight – its inattention to basic human psychology – and by its uncritical and selective assumption of elements of neo-Scholastic philosophy. It is precisely here that Lonergan’s method becomes a critical tool once again as Beards shows how for Rahner ‘being conscious’ and ‘knowing’ – so clearly delineated and differentiated in Lonergan – are often equated, appearing on occasion to be used interchangeably. One consequence of this is to undermine his celebrated notion of the Vorgriff , the pre-apprehension of Being, or implicit knowledge of God. In a sparkling account appealing to Chapter Sixteen of Insight, Beards shows how this oversight impacts upon Rahner’s anthropology, and in particular, his account of the survival after death of the human spirit or soul. This book will be controversial. Yet despite its penetrating analysis, Beards always shows a deep respect for his interlocutors. It is this that makes this wideranging collection applying Lonergan’s thought to various philosophies well worth the effort. PHILIP EGAN HANNAH’S CHILD: A THEOLOGIAN’S MEMOIR by Stanley Hauerwas (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company , Grand Rapids MI and SCM Canterbury Press, Norwich, 2010) Pp. xii + 288, $24.99 / £19.99

No contemporary theologian is perhaps more uncomfortable with fame than Stanley Hauerwas. Although gaining in influence for a number of decades, one publication, Time Magazine, would go so far in 2001 as to name him America’s most influential theologian. Although Hauerwas likely felt more comfortable with the invitation to offer the 2000–01 Gifford Lectures, he still found himself confronted by reservations over giving a set of lectures intended by their benefactor to “‘promote and diffuse Natural Theology’” (p. 262). Some suggest that Hauerwas’ discomfort with such forms of fame is driven by his propensity to play the role of the contrarian. For example, in To Change the World (2009), James Davison Hunter characterized Hauerwas as “relentlessly C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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negative” (p. 164). One must admit that at times this son of a Texas bricklayer almost seems to revel in his ability to foster discomfort beneath the skin of individuals with well-defined perceptions of what is good, decent, and even holy. However, perhaps Hauerwas’ memoir, Hannah’s Child, will bring those critics a step closer to realizing that an unrelenting commitment to the Church and those who love her is what truly defines Hauerwas’ vocation as a theologian. While Hauerwas’ bricklaying father proved to have an important influence on his life, a dimension of his mother’s role in his life is the one memorialized in the title of this work. Hauerwas’ parents married late and endured a number of challenges and even tragedies in relation to their efforts to have children. Having read Hannah’s prayer in the Old Testament, Hauerwas’ mother offered a similar petition. Hauerwas thus opens his memoir by acknowledging that “I vividly remember my mother telling me that I was destined to be one of God’s dedicated” (p. 3). Like Samuel, Hauerwas has “played a Samuel-like role and challenged the religious establishment of the day” (p. 4). Although Hauerwas initially believed he was called to be a minister, he found that his vocation was to serve as a theologian in the academy. In the end, he claimed that this calling is one defined by efforts to “make the connections necessary to articulate clearly what it means to say that what we believe is true” (p. 157). Like Samuel, at times these connections have proven unsettling to the religious establishment. The story of Hauerwas’ development as a theologian proves to be largely chronological in nature. He begins with the story of how his mother understood his calling in life and concludes by discussing his struggles to maintain this calling under the weight of fame. Chapters are divided roughly by the time he spent as a student at Southwestern University and Yale University, and then as a faculty member at Augustana College, the University of Notre Dame, and Duke University. Each one of these institutions exercised a formative impact upon his life. For example, Hauerwas acknowledges “I am not sure if I became a Christian at Yale, but I certainly began to be a theologian because of what I learned there” (p. 49). At Notre Dame, Hauerwas contends, “I began the slow, agonizing, and happy process that has made me a Christian” (p. 95). As a result, these chapters also introduce us to the influence that scholars such as John Howard Yoder and Alasdair MacIntyre had on Hauerwas and his work. While this memoir is largely chronological in terms of its organization, perhaps the larger theme that holds it all together is Hauerwas’ appreciation for the friends who have left their imprint on his life. These people, while often encountered in the academy, largely learned what it means to be a friend in the Church. Such an influence is imprinted in equal measure on Hauerwas’ own life. For example, while in South Bend, Indiana, Hauerwas acknowledges he and his son, Adam, were Christians “because of the people at Sacred Heart [the basilica on campus at Notre Dame] and Broadway [United Methodist Church] who welcomed us into their lives and made us participants in the drama of our salvation” (p. 144). As a result, Hauerwas even turned to his fellow congregants at Broadway for advice when he was struggling with whether to leave Notre Dame for Duke. Woven into these pages are the lessons Hauerwas has learned from people like Adam, his wife Paula Gilbert, friends from South Bend such as David Burrell, and friends from Durham, North Carolina such as Stuart Henry. Despite the immeasurable joy that the gift of Christian friendship has offered Hauerwas over the course of his life, his memoir also accounts a measure of great pain emanating from his marriage to Anne Harley. Married just prior to his enrolment at Yale University, Hauerwas and Harley were married throughout the course of time he spent as a student and then through his years at Augustana and Notre Dame. Anne, afflicted with mental illness, left Hauerwas shortly after they moved to Durham, ending twenty-four years of marriage. The details in between are painful to read and must have been even more painful to write. At the end C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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of his marriage to Harley, Hauerwas writes, “I was exhausted. Adam was gone [a student at Haverford College]. When Anne declared that she intended to leave me, she did not seem to be crazy. I finally told her to do what she had to do” (p. 200). Hauerwas is thus to be commended for reminding all of us that the formative details in our lives are both joyful and painful in nature. Together, such details converge to form our calling in life. In addition to the influential roles that both friendship and pain played in Hauerwas’ life, we are also confronted with the reality that the fame that has found Hauerwas (regardless of what he might think of it) has come in part through hard work. This commitment to hard work for Hauerwas is one that reaches all the way back to his father. Laying brick is hard work. However, we must remember that Hauerwas’ father practiced his craft under the punishing sun in Dallas, Texas. Hauerwas acknowledges, “I loved working for my father. I loved the bond hard work established between workers” (p. 29). Hauerwas writes theology much like he learned to lay brick. He arrives at the office early and takes just as much joy in putting in a full day of effort as he does in the well-crafted fruits of his labor. For him, the product and the process are much more closely linked than most individuals think. This well-habituated inclination is perhaps what kept Hauerwas going through the trying moments that came with the conclusion of his marriage to Anne Harley. Discussing these details, Hauerwas writes: “The marriage was finally over. I was not sure what that meant, but I would do what I had always done. I would put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I got up the next morning and did what I always did. I went to work” (p. 200). Despite the self-awareness Hauerwas offers in this immeasurably valuable memoir, moments do surface where I wonder if a small form of charity escapes him. Those moments, although few and far between, seem to surface in relation to administrators with whom Hauerwas worked. For example, Hauerwas claimed Dennis Campbell, the Dean of Duke University Divinity School during much of Hauerwas’ tenure, “was ambitious, but it was not clear that his talent befitted his ambition. He wanted to be dean, but it did not seem he wanted to be dean for any reason but to be dean” (p. 174). Like anyone who serves in such a role, Campbell was likely to make decisions that reflected compromise rather than conviction. Some administrative decisions are wrong. However, others prove to be the best possible outcomes forged in conflicted sets of circumstances. One can only speculate how Hauerwas would respond in such circumstances, given that some necessary decisions simply cannot reflect the full measure of our ideals. In the end Hannah’s Child is necessary reading for anyone concerned with the Church, the academy, and the relationship they share in the work of theology. We would all do well to follow in Hauerwas’ footsteps by showing “how we live together in marriage, how and why we have children, how we learn to be friends, and how we care for the mentally disabled are the ways a people must live if we are to be an alternative to war” (p. 274). Although some may persist in their view that such convictions are negative, Hannah’s Child reminds us all that our first calling is to be the Church regardless of what the world may think. This memoir is an admirable window into the life of a theologian who will leave his imprint for generations to come. TODD C. REAM THE SHAPE OF PARTICIPATION: A THEOLOGY OF CHURCH PRACTICES by L. Roger Owens (Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2010) Pp. x + 197, £14.21

Roger Owens’ efforts to describe what constitutes the church as God’s life in the world is an ambitious project. His conviction that ‘the church’s participation C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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in God is none other than Christ’s practicing himself as the embodied practices of the church’ (p. 183) requires a lot of unpacking: space is at a premium in this slim volume. He clarifies and develops this point by sticking closely to the questions that have led this discussion to arise: what makes the church different from any other voluntary association? How do the practices of the church relate to what God is doing in the world? The challenge that Owens has set himself is to answer these questions in ways that avoid the reductionism he sees in many contemporary ecclesiologies, which he believes to be commonly essentialist and thus taking insufficient account of our embodied, creaturely nature. In particular, he aims to demonstrate how Christ is meaningfully in this material world. The modern ecclesiologies under inspection take one of two forms: overly abstract formal doctrines, that pay little attention to living communities and risk portraying the church as a rather static presence of God, or overly interiorized pietisms that sequester the centre of faith into a private personal realm where the importance of public communal action and embodied living is unclear at best. Neither of these takes creatureliness seriously enough for Owens. He is concerned to readdress this deficiency by calling the emphasis back to the Chalcedonian orthodoxy that is the church’s touchstone for understanding human and divine inter-relation. This being the case, the church must be both human and divine in a way analogous to, though not identical with, Christ’s hypostatic union: it must acknowledge its proper humanity as it acknowledges the humanity of Christ and it must acknowledge its divine nature as it acknowledges the divinity of Christ. Owens’ chief argument against essentialist ecclesiologies is that they cannot give an account of the material and shape of the church. Bodies have particular and visible shapes and the body of Christ must therefore have a particular shape in this world. For Owens church practices, specifically the Eucharist and preaching, are God sharing his life, communicating with humanity. These practices constitute the church because God communicates through them in a form humanity can understand. In his discussion of the Eucharist, Owens employs McCabe’s account of the sacrament as a new language that brings an end to exclusion. Sharing in the body and blood gives new tools of communication. These tools are the divine life given in a form humans can accept. Because God is not limited like us, this new divine language opens up space for all and overcomes human predispositions for exclusivity. Christ’s body is present and unites all to him. In preaching, what is proclaimed is not a transmitting of something that is absent. Rather it is the same Word made flesh present in words heard and enacted. Owens argues for preaching as a central church practice on the grounds that it is not an independent trade of the pastor but an activity of the whole church. The preaching of the pastor is not the beginning of proclamation because the church, which already exists, calls for this preaching. All members preach, but the pastor’s preaching is a specialised division of this. That Owens felt the need to argue for preaching as legitimately a central practice demonstrates sensitivity to the status it holds in various traditions. Given Owens’ commitment to arguing for the material, visible, and concrete nature of the church it would have been beneficial to explore some specific examples of where these material, visible, and concrete communities disagree in practice. The discussions of Eucharist and preaching would have been fertile soil for this. That being said, the breadth of engagement with a diverse range of interlocutors is a striking feature of this book. There are so many that the book cannot do justice to them all whilst maintaining the shape of its argument. In particular Schleiermacher suffers a somewhat summary treatment, which occludes many of the interesting questions that led him to make the moves he did. More recent interlocutors, Gustafson and Milbank particularly, receive fairer treatment. The C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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attention paid to ancient writers however is very refreshing, particularly in a book on ecclesiology, which represents a challenge to the myopia of modern ecclesiologies. Furthermore the book clings tenaciously to its roots in living worshiping congregation and community. Evidence from Owens’ own church, where he is copastor, and from the specific history of his Methodist tradition, informs and elucidates what participation in the life of God looks like with regard to the concrete practices of the church. This rooting in a real community will make this book revitalising for ministers and priests. Those with an interest in ecumenism will find less here than may be expected from a book on ecclesiology but may find other sources within that will broaden their horizons. On the whole this is a constructive, instructive and well-developed piece of theology. The thought worlds that have dominated this area of theology have been successfully brought into question and the subject has been reconnected with roots in the ancient church and Chalcedonian thinking that is the benchmark of all Christian speech and practice. There is more work to do in this area, more than this text could attempt, particularly attention to the relationship between the church’s participation in God and the rest of creation, but the debate has moved on considerably from where it was. Other theologians would do well to investigate the fields of enquiry opened up by this book because they impact on all areas of theology, given that it is concerned fundamentally with how God is in the world. A.D.R. HAYES LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF FAITH edited by John Sullivan (Matthew James Publishing , 2010) £14.95

“To live is to change,” writes John Henry Newman, “and to be perfect is to have changed often.” This may appear to be a challenging declaration but, in proposing that faith is to be regarded as a dynamic, evolving, and vigorous virtue that is open to change, it would be consistent with the sentiments of this book. In subscribing to the view that faith is a journey, the reader will, I think, come to appreciate how, as one seeks a greater understanding of God, faith will thrive, not on inflexible adherence to rules, but on one’s openness to change. This is a welcome book that should appeal to a wide readership. It includes a variety of perspectives from both Roman Catholic and Church of England contributors. Thus, whilst the title of the book refers to ‘faith’, its primary interest is in the Christian faith. It brings together, in both an eclectic and an ecumenical way, a broad collection of views that will be of interest to families, parishes and schools. Ostensibly, its scope would appear to be too diverse to satisfy the professional scholar, yet, paradoxically, in its range, it offers a stimulating exegesis of the place and nature of faith development. Implicit in such a wide-ranging book, are contradictions and conflicts, but these serve to provide a comprehensive and inclusive picture of the language of faith in a variety of contexts. Within the Catholic tradition, of course, there are inevitable tensions at the interface between the teaching church – as represented by the office of the magisterium – and the learning church. Significantly, learning is a key recurring theme that runs through the book. Throughout, Sullivan, in conjunction with the other contributors, provides a discriminating exploration of concepts such as evangelisation, catechesis, and religious education. With a refined discernment, he elegantly elaborates upon their similarities and differences. He skilfully and convincingly argues that, whilst C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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there may be tensions between education and evangelisation, there is an overlap where the two are in harmony. He proposes that, whilst inherently there is a complex and multi-faceted relationship between them, there is also a great deal more coherence and compatibility than is often assumed. Identifying different languages of faith, Sullivan distinguishes between subjective and objective dimensions. Thus, there is also a place here for personal reflection in both family and pastoral contexts, illustrating the importance of communication in the development of faith in the experiences of people in everyday life. In a globalised, post-modern world, characterised by moral relativism, secularism, consumerism. and materialism, these are challenging times for those of faith. In the light of rapid social and technological change, there is dissatisfaction and impatience with the educational status quo. It is pertinent, therefore, that this book should address the need for a radical review of faith learning. One implication of these developments is the compelling assertion that education should be regarded as a lifelong activity. Within this context, it seems to me, schools, colleges, and universities are challenged to adapt to the notion of life-long learning, in which, in the language of the Second Vatican Council, “we journey toward the consummation of human history” (Gaudium et Spes 45). The range and quality of the discourse is impressive. Daniel O’Leary’s characteristic enthusiasm, for example, is inspirational. His homely language is a fine counterbalance to the more erudite musings of other contributors. His approach is intuitive rather than cerebral: his is a language of celebration. For O’Leary, God is a God of love and compassion. One should not neglect to mention also Peter Shepherd’s timely and welcome chapter, which explores the complexities of communicating faith not only in Church of England schools but also in other Christian (including Catholic) schools. This book is recommended for all those who are engaged in learning and teaching faith. The term ‘discipleship’ may be construed in a variety of ways but, essentially, a disciple is a learner, a pupil of a teacher, one who submits him or herself to a discipline of learning. We are reminded, too, that as disciples of Christ we have a duty to give witness. The book is concerned with the pedagogy of faith, which is informed by the communication of God’s revelation. Thus, the Christian disciple sets out to ‘follow Christ and learns more and more within the Church to think like Him, to judge like Him, to act in conformity with His commandments, and to hope as He invites us to’ (Catechesi Tradendae 20). Although at times Sullivan can be over-wordy, protracted, and prolix, there is much in this book to be commended. For the pedant, however, it would have been appreciated if the book had been subject to a more rigorous proof-reading so that words and phrases such as ‘practicing’ (p. 20), ‘comprised of’ (p. 21), ‘an inbuilt crap detector’ (p. 30), ‘fulfill’ (p. 151), ‘it’s also and amphetamine’ (p. 213) and ‘some many month after it actually happened’ (p. 267) could have been revised. Overall, though, these are minor blemishes in a very enjoyable book. It makes a clear statement that there is no such thing as a value-free and neutral perspective. It demonstrates that communicating faith is a complex process that is subject to development and formation. The conversation is conducted with poise and balance. Predictably, Sullivan is thoughtful, reflective, and studious. Affirming a faith perspective in the face of contemporary challenges, he displays his scholarship with a modest humility and the book is informed and “underpinned by prayer and attentiveness to God’s holy spirit” (p. 180). DAVID FINCHAM C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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DO WE NEED RELIGION? ON THE EXPERIENCE OF SELFTRANSCENDENCE by Hans Joas (Paradigm, Boulder, 2008) Pp. x + 152, £45.00 hbk / £22.99 pbk

In contemporary Britain and in the mass media in particular, religion has taken a battering. Of late, it has come to be treated as disreputable and divisive. The celebration in 2009 of the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species were occasions employed to celebrate the hegemony of science over religion. Oddly, despite a rapidly growing interest in religion in sociology and philosophy, there has been a curious silence within these disciplines over the imperialising and polemical ventures from some zealots within the natural sciences. One reason might be a sense of déjà vu in sociological circles. Methodological disputes occurred in the late nineteenth century over the autonomy of the cultural sciences from the explanatory claims of the natural sciences. Culture was to be characterised in terms of understanding and empathy, and religion was a beneficiary of these stipulations. The rise of post-modernity also marked a long retreat from deference to the absolute claims of reason that have been invoked to discredit religion. Set in the context of these culture wars, where religion is very much a site of battle, this collection of essays is to be warmly welcomed. As the Max Weber professor at the University of Erfurt, Germany and also holding a chair in sociology at the University of Chicago and there, a member of the influential Committee on Social Thought, Joas, a Catholic, is well qualified to offer an unexpected defence of the need for religion. His range of publications is formidable, covering European values, war, social actions and human nature, and the American sociologist, G. H. Mead. Strangely little on German sociology and religion comes over the English Channel, hence this collection is especially welcome. Its eleven essays were written between 1998 and 2003 and they still have a topicality. In his preface, Joas acknowledges the stimulus provided by Cardinal Lehmann in publishing the collection. He has been well served by his translator, Alex Skinner. The collection is in three parts: on religious experience; on ‘between theology and social science’; and on human dignity. The first essay, which provides the title to the collection, was the ‘main lecture’ for a combined congress of Catholics and Protestants held in Berlin in 2003 with 100,0000 taking part. This first essay starts brilliantly with reference to a poem by Bertolt Brecht, written in 1943. Entitled ‘Embarrassing Incident’, it refers to the deep discomfort felt in Hollywood, when celebrations for Brecht’s friend and colleague Alfred Döblin were marred by his announcement to those gathered that he, a well known Jewish intellectual, had become a Catholic (pp. 3–5). The issue of whether Brecht or Döblin was weak over this conversion is well put. All the time, Joas complicates assumptions that modernity and secularisation combine to strangulate religion. Somehow, rendering religion extinct never quite succeeds, for the issue of self-transcendence remains, of openings to God, but also to what is to be designated as a sacred, or as a religion, for as Joas notes, all the time the self faces its finitude but also the impulse to go beyond this limitation. He makes a surprisingly good defence of the need for faith (pp. 15–18). In his second essay on ‘religion in the age of contingency’, where Berger makes frequent appearances, Joas makes a striking point that faith has to emerge from ‘the self-intimidation anchored in secularization theory’ (p. 33). This is a very pertinent point to make in the context of the United Kingdom, where faith is presented as a discredit, not a credit. The third essay in this first section dwells on Castoriadis. The second part of the collection is by far the most interesting and substantial, containing essays on key texts in the sociology of religion, and on Milbank, C 2011 The Author C 2011 The Dominican Council New Blackfriars

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Taylor, Ricoeur, and Habermas. Those seeking a concise account of the sociology of religion need look no further than chapter 4. As he rightly suggests in dealing with religion, sociology runs along a narrow ridge between proclamations of disinterest in issues of belief and what he terms ‘cryptotheology’ (p. 62). Chapter 5 provides a rare sociological response to Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory. At a time of multi-disciplinary dialogue, Milbank’s study achieved widespread prestige in theology; in sociological circles it was completely ignored, being treated as an opaque, idiosyncratic caricature of the discipline. The futility of that study illustrates the perils of mere cleverness. Listing six steps of objections, Joas concludes ‘that Milbank, by offering such a distorted picture, cuts himself off, not merely from the rich tradition of sociological theory but also from the empirical research based on it’ (p. 76). By contrast, the sixth essay, on Taylor, provides a valuable contextualisation of his Catholicism. It is a gentle, searching piece. Chapters 7–8 illustrate the importance of religion in the humanities. Aptly titled, ‘God in France: Paul Ricoeur as theoretical mediator’, Joas reflects on this deeply Christian philosopher who so helped to advance understandings of the application of hermeneutics to text. The embarrassment at the prospect of a Christian being elected to the Collège de France (echoing the start of chapter 1) is well brought out. Ricouer’s contribution to phenomenology and faith is well appraised to show ‘with tremendous sensitivity how religious self-discovery is possible through the reading of the sacred text, how the book becomes a mirror for the reader’ (p. 99). Joas is especially good at turning the need for religion into an imperative of belief and to that degree, invaluably opens out new horizons for theological deliberation. These changing shifts in opportunity are well brought out in chapter 8, where Joas’ close links with Germany come to the fore in an important essay on Habermas and his ‘late’ discovery of religion. His speech in 2001 at Frankfurt, as Joas suggests, wrought a paradigm shift and the invention of a new term, the ‘post-secular’, whose implications have been subject to much recent debate. The term marks recognition of the inconvenient persistence of religion and the necessity of the state and intellectuals to accommodate to this realisation. A need to recognise the significance of the Judeo-Christian tradition recasts secularisation. Instead of seeking to destroy this tradition, Habermas argues that secular assumptions need to be recast to ‘salvage’ understandings and thus, as Joas suggests, ‘acknowledging the daily translation that believers have to perform and to reciprocate’ (p. 108). Part 3 contains three essays, on Avishai Margalit, on debate on bioethics (useful) and on ‘Human Dignity: the Religion of Modernity?’. This last essay has some useful comments on Durkheim and the sacralisation of the individual. There is much to learn from this collection, which is very concisely written and unexpected in its insights. KIERAN FLANAGAN


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