The Thomist 74 (2010):

 

THEOLOGICAL FAITH ENLIGHTENING SACRED THEOLOGY:

RENEWING THEOLOGY BY RECOVERING ITS UNITY AS SACRA DOCTRINA⁽¹⁾

Reinhard Hütter

Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

Es ist mit der Wissenschaft über Gott die Gefahr verbunden, daß sie unser tiefstes Innere Gott entfremde, anstatt es Ihm zu nähern.⁽²⁾
                                                                                                                                                                                             Ceslaus Maria Schneider

Nihil est pauperius et miserius mente quae caret Deo et de Deo philosophatur et disputat.⁽³⁾

John Climacus

THE FOLLOWING considerations arise from an indisputable, albeit regrettable fact: the pervasive fragmentation of contemporary Catholic theology and the consequent urgent need of renewal. Such renewal will have to come about by way of recovering theology's inner unity. And the latter requires nothing less than allowing theology's soul-- supernatural, divine faith--to inform again the whole body of theology. The authority of America's foremost Catholic theologian, the late Avery

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Cardinal Dulles, S.J., shall suffice as a warrant for the way I characterize the present state of Catholic theology. In his important essay, "Wisdom as the Source of Unity for Theology," published shortly before his death, he observes:

Over the past fifty years we have all heard the repeated complaint, amounting sometimes to a lamentation, that theology has lost its unity. Like Humpty Dumpty it has suffered a great fall, and all the pope's theologians have not succeeded in putting it together again. Theology is splintered into subdisciplines that insist on their own autonomy without regard for one another. Biblical studies go in one direction, historical scholarship goes in another, ethics in a third, and spirituality in a fourth.

In addition to this fragmentation of disciplines, there is a growing breach between past and present. The classic statements of the faith are studied historically, in relation to the circumstances in which they arose. If their contemporary relevance is not denied, they are reinterpreted for today in ways that preserve little if anything of their original content. The Magisterium, which has traditionally been the guardian of theological orthodoxy, is simply ignored by some theologians and bitterly criticized by others. Dogmatic theology, which seeks to ground itself in official Catholic teaching, is shunned as being servile and unprogressive. . . . Each theologian is expected to be creative and is encouraged to say something novel and surprising. A theologian who reaffirms the tradition and fails to challenge the received doctrine is considered timid and retrograde.⁽⁴⁾

Cardinal Dulles' analysis is true in every respect. Furthermore, his constructive proposal is as salient as it is salutary in retrieving Thomas's three kinds of wisdom as the source of unity for theology: philosophical wisdom, theological wisdom, and infused wisdom. While philosophical wisdom arises from the natural capacity of the human intellect to investigate the structures of reality, infused wisdom, the immediate gift of the Holy Spirit, enables the believer to form right judgments by means of a divinely given connaturality. Theological wisdom, finally, considers all reality in light of revelation and is thus constitutive

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of theology as sacra doctrina.⁽⁵⁾ In the following, I wish to build upon Dulles's proposal by expanding it in one important regard: the crucial connection between theological wisdom and the infused, supernatural virtue of faith. Such an attempt is not as far-fetched as it might at first seem. The most recent magisterial teaching--Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe salvi--encourages a genuine recovery of the supernatural character of the faith. By drawing out the implications of such a recovery for Catholic theology as a unified sapiential theology, the internal unity of which arises from its essential correlation to supernatural faith, I intend to receive this magisterial teaching as an impulse for a genuinely Thomist contribution to the renewal of contemporary Catholic theology.

It is worthwhile to quote at length the pertinent passage from Spe salvi:

In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope. . . . "Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen." For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium--faith is the "substance" of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. . . . [T]hrough faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say "in embryo"--and thus according to the "substance"--there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this

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presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this "thing" which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not "appear"), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. . . . Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a "proof" of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a "not yet." (§7)⁽⁶⁾

In this crucial passage, the source for the renewal of contemporary Catholic theology is as plainly stated as is the name of the doctor communis who in his theology offers the very resources for such a renewal. To put the encyclical's teaching on faith into Thomas's somewhat more technical language: Faith is an infused habitus, that is, a stable supernatural disposition of the human spirit, indeed, the effect of the "new being" of sanctifying grace in believers, through which eternal life takes root in us such that reason is led to assent to what it does not see, and in consequence of which the human person is enabled to attain the transcendent God who is the First Truth.⁽⁷⁾ It is this attaining of the transcendent God who is the First Truth that makes supernatural faith "theological" in the proper sense of the word. For in virtue of the infused habitus of faith, "'in embryo'--and thus according to the 'substance'--there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life." This is what the Thomist tradition calls the "theological life," "la vie théologale."⁽⁸⁾

When Catholic theology becomes again intrinsically ordered to and informed by the supernatural dynamic and content of theological faith, it will recover its unity as sacra doctrina and thereby will undergo a salutary renewal. In this regard, I would like to submit, Thomism--which constantly teaches the essential correlation between theological faith and the sapiential character

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of theology, between the simple understanding of faith and the discursive and contemplative operation of theological wisdom--is in an advantageous position to make a salient contribution to such a contemporary renewal of Catholic theology.⁽⁹⁾

In order to avoid the danger of vague and largely unsupported generalizations about contemporary Catholic theology, however, I shall build upon and advance Dulles's proposal by way of examining two paradigmatic sketches of the nature and task of Catholic theology. I shall first consider a programmatic post-Vatican II revision of the nature of Catholic dogmatic theology. The author is the already-then-noted German Catholic dogmatic theologian Walter Kasper, now cardinal and former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Kasper's treatise originated in a lecture he presented at the first postconciliar Conference of German Dogmatic Theologians, which met in Munich, 2-5 January 1967. The German original was published the same year under the title "Die Methoden der Dogmatik--Einheit und Vielheit" ("The Methods of Dogmatic Theology--Unity and Plurality").⁽¹⁰⁾ In 1969 an English translation appeared, although its title omitted what is most indicative of

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Kasper's program: "Unity and Plurality."⁽¹¹⁾ This elimination was unfortunate, because Kasper is quite explicitly concerned with recovering the inner unity of dogmatic theology and thereby contributing to the integration of all branches of Catholic theology.⁽¹²⁾

In the foreword to his treatise, Kasper emphasizes that this work claims to be nothing more than "a preliminary probe."⁽¹³⁾ Yet precisely because of its experimental and preliminary character, Kasper's opuscule represents an instructive and indeed paradigmatic example of what, in the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council, was widely regarded as an overdue fresh theological venture.⁽¹⁴⁾

In a second step, I shall turn to an equally brief programmatic treatise, "The Work of Theology,"⁽¹⁵⁾ of the Spanish Dominican Francisco P. Muñiz, who taught at the Angelicum in Rome.

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Translated by the American Dominican John Reid, Muñiz's humbly titled "Work" was published in English in 1953, during those theologically and ecclesiastically complicated years leading up to the Second Vatican Council. Thus fifteen years before Kasper's treatise appeared in English and about ten years before the council, Muñiz's preoccupation with the unity of theology, with theology as a proper whole (totum), and his creative use of Thomas's metaphysics of the totum potestativum, was made available to an English-speaking theological readership.

One could hardly imagine two treatises on the renewal of Catholic theology more different in rhetorical posture, intellectual orientation, and theological patrimony. Each bears the traces of the particular intellectual moment in which it was conceived in the history of Catholic theology. Muñiz's treatise embodies in an unencumbered way the conceptual rigor of Scholastic discourse, to which we have largely grown unaccustomed in the last fifty years. Kasper's treatise embraces in an equally unencumbered way the later Heidegger's consistent historicizing of being and Gadamer's version of a tradition-dependent universal hermeneutics, two philosophical interventions of undoubted importance that, however, forty years later--and especially outside of the confines of the German intellectual context--convey an indisputable datedness. Moreover, the all-too-conventional post-Vatican II hermeneutics of discontinuity, which is as superficial as it is erroneous, would most likely dismiss Muñiz's approach as a typical instantiation of a static, unhistorical metaphysical and theological framework and embrace Kasper's program as a properly dynamic and historically sensitive stance. Among other things, I hope to show that such a contrastive reading of pre- and post-Vatican II accounts of the nature of theology misses the real issues at stake, robs itself of a most salutary theological patrimony, and does justice neither to Kasper nor to Muñiz.

In what follows, I examine what Kasper and Muñiz have to say about (a) the nature and task of theology; (b) the nature of faith; (c) the relationship between faith and theology; (d) the impact of their variant understandings of the nature of faith on their

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respective accounts of theology; and finally (e) whether and, if so, how each programmatic proposal can be received in light of Spe salvi's teaching on supernatural, divine faith.

 

I

Walter Kasper's Methods of Dogmatic Theology is divided into five sections: (I) "The Present Crisis," (II) "The Historical Background," (III) "Theology's Starting Point," (IV) "History and Theology," and (V) "The Goal of Methodology." In the first section, "The Present Crisis," Kasper characterizes the intellectual situation of the 1960s as a "crisis of faith" in which "the fundamental principles of faith itself and the possibility of saying anything about God" (1)⁽¹⁶⁾ have been called into question. He understands Vatican II as addressing this critical situation with a call for "a new theology, a dogmatic methodology that was more biblically and pastorally oriented" (2). This new theology is to be fueled by "the new spirit which pervades [the Second Vatican Council's] statements and declarations. Dogmatic theology as a whole is presented as being more dynamic, more catholic, more oriented to this world and the future; moreover, in many respects, it is portrayed as something possessing less certainty than heretofore" (3).

According to Kasper, there is an urgent need for such a new theology, for he sees a real crisis threatening the foundations of theology, a crisis caused primarily by rapidly accelerating new developments: "Justifiable criticism of the a-worldliness of theology in the past now threatens to drive us to the other extreme, to give rise to a secular theology which has no real tradition" (ibid.). In order to check the move to this extreme, Kasper explicitly recalls the traditional, sapiential understanding of theology:

Theology belongs to the realm which tradition sums up under the word sapientia (wisdom). Through it we savor (sapere), we come to know, "the glory of God

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shining on the face of Christ Jesus" (2 Cor 4, 6). This is the type of experience which is proper to theology, and the modern-day emphasis on truth requires that this experience be given a new, more intensive form of methodological self-verification. For even though theology cannot simply appropriate one or other of the secular methods, it is not a purely whimsical process either. Theology, too, must be rigorous and serious. It, too, must draw reasonable conclusions. It, too, must use exactness in posing and answering questions. Theology, too, has its methods. (5)

Hence, in contrast to the newly emerging "secular theology," Kasper very much regards theology as a methodical inquiry into the truth, an inquiry in which tradition is an essential ingredient. To put it into MacIntyrean terms, for Kasper theology is irreversibly tradition-constituted: "Only tradition, dominated as it is by the quest for truth, can put us on the road where the search for truth is made" (6-7). The concept of ecclesial-doctrinal tradition that Kasper introduces and consistently applies throughout his treatise is deeply shaped by his interpretation of the doctrine of tradition held by the nineteenth-century Roman school.⁽¹⁷⁾ More importantly, however, Kasper normatively contextualizes and thus interprets his understanding of ecclesial-doctrinal tradition further by way of a more comprehensive and indeed foundational philosophical-hermeneutical understanding of tradition that is explicitly indebted to Heidegger's late philosophy:

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Tradition discloses the truth and touches off the quest for it, but at the same time it also hides the truth. The answers of tradition can never fully handle the questions to which tradition gives rise; indeed, they often obstruct these questions and maintain a stranglehold on them. Historical reflection on the questions of the past leads inevitably to further exploration of the new and more radical possibilities of comprehending truth. Tradition sets us on the road to seek truth and, in so doing, it opens up new pathways for future theology. (7-8)⁽¹⁸⁾

This passage demonstrates as well as any other the fundamental, ontological historicity Kasper assumes to obtain in regard to the human act of understanding in general.⁽¹⁹⁾

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Thus it is that a philosophical hermeneutics inspired by Heidegger and Gadamer, in conjunction with what the German biblical exegesis of the 1950s and 1960s regarded as the newly recovered biblical notion of truth, provides the warrant for holding truth to be a fundamentally historical phenomenon and ultimately an eschatological promise:

Truth and fidelity are closely tied together. A thing is true if it actually turns out to be what it purports to be. A thing is true if it has permanence and stability, if it stands the test of time. Thus the biblical notion of truth is characterized by its temporal orientation. It is concerned with things that have happened or will happen, not with things that are what they are by nature. In the biblical view, truth is an historical phenomenon and, ultimately, an eschatological promise. (53)

This authentic biblical notion of truth, purportedly retrieved just recently by the efforts of historical-critical exegesis, gives rise to a profound questioning of the received central concepts of theology:

In these revolutionary days we simply must probe all our theological concepts in depth, asking how relevant and how meaningful they are for our concrete practice of the faith. Even the central concepts of theology--grace, salvation, sin, God--have become empty words to a large extent. They do not say anything to men, and they have no foundation in the realm of experience. They often seem to represent a set of values which cannot be discovered experientially in the Christian's life of faith in history. (52)⁽²⁰⁾

It is important to note that Kasper in no way intends to endorse relativism or skepticism. He rather argues exclusively in favor of substituting what he calls a "static framework" with a historical framework of metaphysical structures.⁽²¹⁾ He has no

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interest in theology being dissolved into a "historical soup" (56) which he regards as the inevitable result of any radical attempt to historicize existence to such a degree that all perduring metaphysical norms would prove illusory. Rather, he very much wants to understand the "end of metaphysics" along the lines of the later Schelling and the later Heidegger: "The end of metaphysics can only mean that we are salvaging the intrinsic historicity of metaphysical thought from the false trap of a philosophia perennis and a theologia perennis" (57).

A genuinely historical outlook, Kasper emphasizes, cannot, after all, afford to jettison metaphysical categories in toto. And while theology is embedded in the same comprehensive historicity of being and thinking as fully as philosophy, "theology cannot dispense with universally valid metaphysical categories any more than philosophy can" (58). If one wonders how, according to Kasper's comprehensive historical-hermeneutical program, theology comes by such universally valid metaphysical categories, one might have recourse to the universality of the eschatological promise as the normative transhistorical point of reference for a theology that is "historical through and through" (ibid.). In order for theology not to fall into the trap of fideism ("apodictically propounding a particular truth as a universally valid truth" [ibid.]), the universality of this promise must be preserved in the concrete engagement of theology with all other ways and kinds of thinking: "If theology is not to retire into freely chosen isolation, then it must be able to show that its statements concretize, outstrip and fulfill the elements of anticipation and longing that stand out in the basic structures of every history" (58-59).

It is far from clear how such an illustration could show that the metaphysical categories entailed in theology are indeed true⁽²²⁾ and

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how such an illustration would protect theology from ending up in the very "historical soup" Kasper is rightly concerned about. It is, however, patent what the overarching goal of such a philosophical theology of history is: "to show that Christ is truly the concretum universale . . . the unique and irreducible concretization of history's universal essence" (59, 61).⁽²³⁾ This concretum universale constitutes the irreducible normative aspect of dogmatic theology that keeps it from becoming an exclusively historical enterprise. Consequently, "[t]he historical and speculative methods of dogmatic theology are two aspects of a single historical-hermeneutical process" (63). If we ask which of the two aspects governs the other, Kasper does not hesitate to draw a not-altogether-unproblematic, albeit perfectly consistent conclusion from his programmatic approach: there indeed is a speculative aspect of dogmatic theology, but "[s]peculative thought must be viewed as concrete, historical thought" (ibid.). The reason for this is that "dogma can only be regarded as a relative, historical reality of pure functional significance" (25). The two poles or terms in relation to which dogma is relative are, on the one hand, "the pristine Word of God" and, on the other hand, "the questioning process of a given era" (ibid.). Kasper

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stresses that "Dogma itself, and the speculative reflection of dogmatic theology, must be viewed in terms of these two overriding considerations which go beyond them" (ibid.). Consequently, dogmatic theology is a hermeneutical activity that stands between the poles of "the Word of revelation in Scripture and the present-day realities of Christian proclamation" (ibid.).⁽²⁴⁾ Hence, "[t]he aim of speculative theology is to comprehend faith's universal claim in a concrete intellectual situation" (62). With explicit reference to Johann Sebastian Drey, Kasper conceives dogmatic theology as the "transmission of the faith to an ever enduring present" (64).⁽²⁵⁾

The point has arrived where it is apposite to ask how Kasper conceives of "faith." Analogous to theology, faith for Kasper has an historical as well as a normative aspect. The normative aspect

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of faith, the ultimate Christological and eschatological mystery of God, pertains to faith's existential certitudo super omnia. The historical aspect of the faith pertains to the concrete, historically configured articles of faith by way of which faith's universal claim takes concrete historical shape.⁽²⁶⁾ It is faith's normative aspect, its unshakable existential certitude in relationship to the concretum universale, Jesus Christ, that sets the theologian free to engage in an unrestrained questioning process of fides quaerens intellectum "beyond the ready-made concepts to the underlying reality" (ibid.).⁽²⁷⁾ Therefore, "[s]trong in the faith and supported by the Church, the theologian is free to ask whatever he will. . . . [H]e can savor the delight of questioning everything" (64-65). "The wonder of faith is that its certitudo super omnia permits and even calls for such a questioning process" (64). In Kasper's own words, as already quoted above, "[e]ven the central concepts of theology--grace, salvation, sin, God--have become empty words to a large extent" (52). Such provocative formulations make it difficult not to wonder whether such an unrestrained interrogative process should not indeed include a radical questioning of the very concept itself of the "articles of faith." But on these very articles seems to depend--according to Kasper--faith's universal claim in a concrete intellectual situation. One wonders: Might not such a radical comprehensive questioning of all central concepts for which faith's certitude seems to liberate the dogmatic theologian undo the last traces of any propositional content of the

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faith itself (which depends upon revealed principles and their correlative concepts that essentially transcend history: God, salvation, grace, and sin) and thereby lay bare the very nature of the concept of faith on which Kasper's account seems to rely?

The only notion of faith that seems to be essentially invulnerable to such a radical questioning process is faith as an existential relation (in the form of a conviction) to a singular transhistorical datum in history--the kerygma of Jesus Christ. Because of the strong substantive resonances between Kasper's concept of faith and a peculiar Lutheran, existential-hermeneutical understanding of faith dominant in the Germany of the 1950s and 1960s (Fuchs, Bultmann, Ebeling--all of whom Kasper refers to at various places in his treatise), it might not only be permissible but indeed salient at this point to recall the continuation of the crucial passage from Spe salvi cited above:

To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of "substance," in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent--at least in Germany--in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see.) This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of "conviction" but the objective sense of "proof." (§7)

One might wonder to what degree the notion of faith Kasper advances in his programmatic sketch on the nature and task of dogmatic theology is adversely affected by conceiving faith primarily as the subjective conviction of an essentially future truth that broke into history in the death and resurrection of Christ. Due to his pervasive emphasis on the "not yet" (while acknowledging marginally [i.e., in a footnote] an "already now"),

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it seems Kasper's predominantly existential-eschatological understanding of faith lacks the specific supernatural character that according to Spe salvi is essential to the faith:

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a "proof" of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a "not yet." The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future. (Ibid.)

While Kasper clearly does not want to jettison completely this "already" of the faith, he seems to be unable to account for it fully inside his pervasive historical-eschatological framework, which is governed by "the one eschatological mystery of God which unfolds in history" (54).⁽²⁸⁾ Faith is for Kasper first and foremost the conviction of the kerygma's truth as an eschatological promise; in such a notion of faith there obtains necessarily a foregrounding if not privileging of the "not yet." A faith thus conceived seeking understanding must unceasingly give rise to historically contingent and contextually situated explications and interpretations of the kerygma. The radical questioning in turn of earlier explications and interpretations by the selfsame faith seeking understanding seems to come at little cost because faith's existential certitude remains unaffected by any of these time-contingent and context-dependent construals of meaning. All that the questioning undertaken by this faith seeking understanding can deconstruct and, in turn, construct anew are historically contingent interpretations of revelation--never the normative, eschatological core of faith itself. Hence, for Kasper there is no necessary intrinsic transhistorical correlation between the faith and its object on the one side and, on the other side, the propositions of the articles of the faith as conveyed in the creeds

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and in dogma. Faith is the "convictio" of a kerygma that seems to transcend any propositionality because it rests solely in a person and his story, the concretum universale, Jesus Christ. The prima veritas is God's future eschatological mystery, to which the kerygma points; and tradition is the historically concrete application of the kerygma. Therefore, dogma is always relative to its particular time. All propositions are functions of the promise of a future that is not yet at hand, hence historically conditioned by this future and therefore to be interpreted in light of it. Because there is no perennial supernatural given of the faith, there can be no contemplation of the faith that rises above the flux of history toward God. Consequently, theology cannot per se acquire a sapiential character that views all historical change in light of God's transcendent, eternal wisdom. The gift of truth has been promised, but not yet given.

It is hard, if not impossible, to see how a theological program of this kind could account for and accommodate the following statement from Spe salvi:

"[I]n embryo"--and thus according to the "substance"--there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this "thing" which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not "appear"), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. (§7)

Because for Kasper faith is not a supernaturally given, objective disposition of the intellect (and hence essentially incapable of a contemplation that would transcend the vagaries of historical reception, interpretation, reinterpretation, and renewed radical questioning of received construals), the theological enterprise cannot be correlated to the deliveries of the faith that essentially transcend the vagaries of historically conditioned understanding. Hence, the single historical-hermeneutical process becomes inevitably a comprehensive teleological process and theology consequently a comprehensive historical-hermeneutical enterprise

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in service of the common heritage of human thought. Precisely by losing itself in this process, Kasper claims, theology will truly find itself--by showing "how its faith overcomes the world."⁽²⁹⁾

The unifying impact of dogmatic theology on the other theological disciplines rests on its historical-hermeneutical function (within the eschatological horizon of univeral history) of bringing the normativity of the kerygma to bear on the present. It is the correlation between the kerygmatic center of "a positive, historical revelation"⁽³⁰⁾ and the contemporary existential questions of life's meaning that keeps this historical-hermeneutical dynamic alive. The gift of truth has its root in the kerygma and its fulfillment in the eschatological mystery of God.⁽³¹⁾ However, "in between" kerygma and eschaton, the hermeutically gleaned and doctrinally affirmed truth of the kerygma is always relative to the particular historical situation of its reception.

Kasper's way of correlating history and truth in the wake of the later Schelling and the later Heidegger constitutes a novum in the history of theology. This fact can easily be illustrated by contrasting Kasper with the theologian who first brought the development of doctrine into explicit conceptual form: John Henry Newman. Kasper counts Newman among those theologians who "were viewed with suspicion and censured to a greater or lesser degree" in the aftermath of the "tragic controversy over Modernism" (20). However, contrary to the well-known tenets of theological Modernism, the catholic Newman clearly states in The Idea of a University:

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Induction is the instrument of Physics, and deduction only is the instrument of Theology. There the simple question is, What is revealed? all doctrinal knowledge flows from one fountain head. If we are able to enlarge our view and multiply our propositions, it must be merely by the comparison and adjustment of the original truths; if we would solve new questions, it must be by consulting old answers. The notion of doctrinal knowledge absolutely novel, and of simple addition from without, is intolerable to Catholic ears, and never was entertained by any one who was even approaching to an understanding of our creed. Revelation is all in all in doctrine; the Apostles its sole depository, the inferential method its sole instrument, and ecclesiastical authority its sole sanction. The Divine Voice has spoken once and for all, and the only question is about its meaning. . . . Christian Truth is purely of revelation; that revelation we can but explain, we cannot increase, except relatively to our own apprehension.⁽³²⁾

Kasper would have to reject Newman's understanding of Catholic theology as an all-too-typical expression of an outdated, because metaphysically erroneous, theologia perennis. However, if faith is indeed an infused disposition by way of which "we carry . . . within us [a whole true life], a certain perception of [which] has even now come into existence" (Spe salvi §7), then the light of faith corresponds to the gift of revelation in such a way that by way of the contemplation of the given of revelation the light of faith does indeed lead deeper and deeper into what revelation has given to faith.⁽³³⁾ What would a conception of theology look like that--instead of being united by the synthetic, hermeneutical-speculative exertions of dogmatic theology and practiced in correlation to an existential-eschatological faith--was theological wisdom that in each of its parts (biblical, historical, dogmatic, liturgical, spiritual) was informed by the theological faith, the "whole true life in us," the supernatural life of grace in the faithful?

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II

One specific instantiation of an answer to the above question is The Work of Theology, by Francisco P. Muñiz, O.P. This opuscule, as dense as it is carefully organized and argued, must be understood as one of the smaller fruits of a genuine revival of Thomist theology around the middle of the last century. As such it belongs to the labor of at least two generations of Thomists who were sifting out, after Leo XIII's 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris, the kernel of Thomist theology and philosophy from the husks of a philosophically quite varied neo-Scholasticism. It is important to remember that this neo-Scholasticism was dominated by Jesuit institutions and publications that were not directly inspired by Thomas. Instead, Thomas was filtered through the philosophical and theological frameworks of Suarez, Vásquez, Molina, and others, who interpreted his thought in a philosophically heterogeneous milieu. Muñiz's treatise is an intentional recovery of Thomas's own understanding of the nature and task of theology. However, the treatise is not organized along the via inventionis, culminating in a primarily historical reconstruction of Thomas's genuine account. Rather, Muñiz follows the via doctrinae from principles to conclusions. His treatise falls into two main sections of unequal length.

In the first, rather brief section, "Theology as a Kind of Potential Whole," Muñiz puts to a new constructive use Thomas's metaphysical distinction between three types of whole (totum): universal whole (totum universale), integral whole (totum integrale), and potential whole (totum potestativum).⁽³⁴⁾ Muñiz

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considers these types of wholes in order to identify the type that allows a genuine retrieval of Thomas's proper understanding of the unity of sacred theology in all of its parts:

We call a universal whole one which enters into each and every one of its parts with its complete nature and with all its power; so, for example, animal is a universal whole in relation to horse and to man, because the entire essence of animality as well as all of its force or perfection are found both in horse and in man. Horse and man are said to be and in fact are subjective parts of animal.

The integral whole is found to occupy the opposite extreme, since it enters into each and every one of its parts, neither in its nature nor in its power, but rather results from all the parts taken together. This is evident in a house or in the human organism, the essence and power of which are merely in actual contact with all of the parts, and not in any way one or several parts taken by themselves. . . .

Between these two types stands the totum potestativum or potential whole, which enters into its individual parts with its complete nature--wherein it agrees with the universal whole--but not with its total power--wherein it resembles the integral whole. (1-2)⁽³⁵⁾

Thomas's favorite example for the potential whole is the human soul, which has three functions: vegetative, sensitive, and intellective. Consider Muñiz's succinct explanation:

It is the same human soul and the whole human soul which vegetates, which senses, and which enjoys intellectual knowledge. Thus the whole human soul is active in each of its functions. But its complete power is not active in each function, for in the function of vegetating, the sense and intellective powers play no part; and in the function of sensing the vegetative and intellective powers remain inactive, and so on. . . . It is clear from this illustration that a potential whole, from part of the essence, bears a strong and necessary similarity to the universal whole, but on the part of power, it approaches the terms of the integral whole. Therefore, it is properly designated by St. Thomas as a mean between the other two. (2-3)

As the human soul "includes within its powers a multiplicity and variety of operations" (3), so does sacred theology in virtue of its various potential parts. There is a further crucial characteristic, though, of the totum potestativum: potential parts participate

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more or less in the power of the whole. Consequently there must obtain among these potential parts an order of super- and subordination that reflects the degree to which the potential parts participate in the power of the whole. To put it differently, every potential whole entails a specific hierarchical order of its potential parts. Where this order of super- and subordination among the parts does not obtain, we are not dealing with a potential whole, but either another type of whole (universal or integral) or simply an agglomeration of heterogeneous elements.

If sacred theology were a totum universale, the whole would enter each and every one of its parts--that is, each of the subdisciplines--with theology's complete nature and power. The consequence would be a compartmentalization of sacred theology into independent subdisciplines that are all fully and sufficiently theological on their own.

If, on the contrary, theology were a totum integrale, the whole would result from all the parts, that is, from all subdisciplines of sacred theology taken together. Consequently, all subdisciplines would essentially remain pretheological academic disciplines until they are brought together in a grand theological synthesis. The practitioners of these subdisciplines would not have to hold themselves accountable theologically, but would defer such accountability to the eventual grand theological synthesis for which they provide strictly pretheological building blocks. The consequence would be a compartmentalization of theology into subdisciplines that remain essentially pretheological academic displines.

Hence, only as a totum potestativum can sacred theology avoid these two undesirable and indeed detrimental alternatives, both extant in contemporary Catholic theology. In the case of the totum potestativum the whole enters each and every part, each subdiscipline, but not with its total power. Consequently, while all subdisciplines are genuinely theological, they are not independently theological as would be the case if theology were a totum universale. Rather, the parts of the totum potestativum are essentially ordered and correlated parts. All subdisciplines

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have the whole potentially in them to different degrees and so contribute to the realization of the whole in different ways:

[T]he potential parts of Theology are the various activities, functions, or offices which it exercises with regard to its object. In each of these parts the complete nature of Theology must be preserved not, however, all of its force (tota ejus virtus). The whole essence of Theology must be retained, since it is entirely one and the same habit which elicits each and every one of the several activities, but not the complete power of Theology, because this complete power is not actuated in each activity. (7)

Sacred theology being a totum potestativum entails an order of super- and subordination between its various subdisciplines and consequently a mutual but asymmetrical theological accountability among them.

In the second, larger section of the work, "The Potential Parts of Theology," Muñiz sketches first the nature of theology according to modern authors, then the nature of theology according to Thomas, and finally the potential parts of theology according to Thomas. This modus procedendi serves the purpose of distinguishing Thomas's superior account from what Muñiz regards as the overly restrictive understanding of theology developed by "modern theologians"--theologians who comprise a range of representatives from Baroque to neo-Scholasticism. What distinguishes them collectively from Thomas and the Dominican Thomist commentatorial tradition is that they regard theology exclusively as a science which deduces conclusions. According to Muñiz, these modern theologians correlate faith and theology by way of the following analogy: faith is to theology as understanding is to science. Faith is a simple assent that embraces truths explicitly revealed, while theology is a discourse that focuses exclusively on truths implicitly and virtually revealed (revelabilia).⁽³⁶⁾ Contrary to these modern Scholastic theologians,

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Muñiz argues--rightly, I think--that according to Thomas the relationship between faith and theology is to be conceived by way of the relationship between understanding and wisdom (instead of understanding and science): as understanding is to wisdom, so faith is to theology.⁽³⁷⁾ In consequence, theology's total and adequate object is every explicitly as well as implicitly revealed truth. Theology's scientific deductive component, the concern with truths implicitly and virtually revealed (revelabilia), has its proper and rightful place within a larger revelatory and sapiential whole.

The introduction of the concept of wisdom (sapientia) is crucial in Muñiz's recovery of Thomas and in many ways anticipates Dulles's constructive proposal briefly adumbrated above.⁽³⁸⁾

Wisdom . . . has two distinct functions: first, that of explaining and defending principles; and secondly, that of inferring conclusions. In the exercise of the first function, wisdom attains the object which is proper to understanding, namely, principles or truths which are per se and immediately evident. In the exercise of its other function, wisdom attains the object which is proper to science, namely, truths that are known mediately or by demonstration. Therefore, the object of wisdom is broader (amplius) than the objects both of understanding and of science taken separately. It is broader than the object of understanding because it extends to conclusions, which the habit of first principles does not touch; it is equally wider than the object of science, because it embraces principles, which science does not attain. (19) . . .

Understanding grasps principles by simple assent, without any discourse; wisdom, however, is concerned with the same principles, but in a discursive and argumentative mode. . . . Now, then, if Theology be conceived as wisdom in relation to faith, by this very fact it must be admitted that the theological habit should not only draw conclusions from the truths of faith, but also should explain and defend these very truths. . . . From this it follows that the total or adequate material object of Theology is not truth which is only virtually revealed, but every revealed truth whatsoever, whether formally and explicitly or mediately and virtually revealed. In a word, it embraces both principles and conclusions. Therefore, the object of Theology is broader in scope than is the object of faith. (20)

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Therefore, according to Thomas, "Theology is at once an explication, a defense, and an unfolding of faith itself, objectively considered" (21). Explication and unfolding of the faith, objectively considered, are the two discursive operations of theology that identify its essential correlation to the supernatural faith. Faith and theology differ only in that faith as understanding is concerned with what has been immediately and explicitly revealed, while theology as discursive operation of the mind is concerned with truths that have been revealed immediately and formally as well as those that have been revealed mediately and virtually.⁽³⁹⁾

Yet how is theology as discursive wisdom guided, or, technically put, what is the light sub quo of theology? Muñiz puts it succinctly: "The light sub quo of Theology in its total extension is the natural light of reason, exercised under the light of divine revelation, or under the positive direction of the faith; it is 'reason guided by faith'" (23).⁽⁴⁰⁾ And so Muñiz arrives at the following definition of theology: "Discursive wisdom, exercised under the light of divine revelation, on every truth revealed by God either immediately and formally or mediately and virtually" (28). First, theology is called wisdom because it both concerns itself with principles and deduces conclusions. It is a form of contemplation that learns to see all things in light of the first principles. Second, theology is discursive wisdom, because it thereby distinguishes itself from faith on the one side and the infused gift of wisdom on the other. Third, theology is exercised under the light of divine revelation which essentially distinguishes it from purely human

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wisdom, which is metaphysics in its highest mode, that is, natural theology.⁽⁴¹⁾

Muñiz draws directly on Thomas's teaching when he states the three things that are believed in every act of theological faith:

(1) an objective or ontological supernatural truth, a certain Divine mystery; (2) this truth has been revealed by God, for we assent to it in virtue of this divine revelation; (3) the fact or existence of Divine Revelation manifesting the aforesaid truth. (32)

What then is the precise nature of the correlation of sapiential theology to supernatural faith? Muñiz specifies: The truths believed by the habit of supernatural faith are the very principles of theology:

Therefore, Sacred Theology--in its sapiential function--should undertake to explain and defend those three things, which are believed as principles in every act of faith: (1) the fact of divine revelation, (2) the connection between God's revelation and the truth which is believed to have been revealed, and (3) the revealed truth itself. (32)

Hence, by way of its principles, theology participates in a certain way in supernatural faith itself, and therefore faith is the indispensible and supernatural foundation of theology as sacra doctrina.⁽⁴²⁾ Conceived in this way, sapiential theology is essentially one single whole, but it has what Muñiz calls potential parts: apologetics, positive theology (biblical, symbolic, patristic), and Scholastic speculation.

The difference between the subdisciplines of contemporary theology forty-five years after Vatican II (and also after the integrative hermeneutical function of dogmatic theology has arguably

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disappeared into thin air) and Muñiz's Thomistically conceived sapiential theology is the difference between on the one hand a totum integrale, that is, a practically oriented gathering of various extrinsically related and essentially pretheological subdisciplines, none of which are ordered to and informed by the supernatural faith in an actual, let alone intrinsic way, and on the other hand a totum potestativum, a single discursive wisdom, the potential parts of which are integrally ordered in relation to each other and the whole of which is intrinsically ordered to and informed by supernatural faith. The crucial difference between a largely disintegrated and compartmentalized contemporary Catholic theology and a Thomistically conceived sapiential theology is the difference between a totum integrale that remains formally unaffected by supernatural faith and a totum potestativum that is intrinsically informed by supernatural faith.

There is another important difference between Kasper's and Muñiz's proposals. By enclosing all theological disciplines under the historical-hermeneutical category of interpretive science, Kasper de facto isolates theology. As an essentially historical-hermeneutical science, theology is by definition prevented from any substantive interaction with the natural sciences, let alone with philosophy. Kasper does not perceive this to be a problem, since according to the ontologically conceived historicism he advances all sciences (including philosophy and the natural sciences) are essentially historical sciences. There would indeed not be much of a problem with this part of the proposal if the natural sciences and philosophy had indeed adopted such an understanding of themselves, which, however, seems hardly to be the case.⁽⁴³⁾

Following Thomas, Muñiz, in contrast to Kasper, insists on three different functions of sacred theology in respect to all other sciences. First, theology judges all human sciences, both as regards

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their principles and as regards their conclusions. Second, theology orders or directs all the philosophical sciences. Third, theology uses all of them. To contemporary ears such a notion of theology sounds most likely presumptuous, as well as utopian. However, if properly correlated to supernatural faith and thus understood first and foremost as surpassing wisdom, the three functions of theology sound neither presumptuous nor utopian, but simply appropriate. Wisdom judges all human sciences, both as regards their principles and as regards their conclusions. Wisdom orders or directs all the philosophical sciences. Wisdom uses all of them. Since, in the Thomist understanding, theology is most truly wisdom⁽⁴⁴⁾--clearly more so than metaphysics--the three functions mentioned above must indeed all be attributed to sapiential theology. Hence it is only on the basis of the gift of divine faith and theology's most thorough and consistent illumination by this supernatural gift that one can conceive it at all possible that sacred theology might indeed fulfill the task that, according to Muñiz, Thomas envisions for it:

Sacred Theology considers God as He is the first existing Truth (prima veritas in essendo), the cause and norm of all created truth. Hence it belongs to Theology to judge all created truth. "Whatever is found in other sciences contrary to a truth of this science must be condemned as entirely false." (37)⁽⁴⁵⁾

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It is obvious that Muñiz's understanding of sacred theology ad mentem sancti Thomae cannot simply be adopted as if nothing had happened theologically in the last fifty-five years, a time during which much of Catholic theology has placed itself on one of two horns of the dilemma between conceiving of its unity as that of a totum universale and conceiving it as that of a totum integrale. However, it is arguably apposite to the present state of a pervasive fragmentation, compartmentalization, and over-historicization of Catholic theology to remember that Muñiz's genuinely Thomist proposal offers a compellingly coherent account of the integral unity of sacred theology that is not only fully compatible with the understanding of theological faith taught explicitly in Spe salvi, but indeed allows for a comprehensive theological reception of this teaching in the service of renewing Catholic theology by recovering its unity as sacra doctrina--to be precise, its unity as a totum potestativum.

III

These reflections on the essential correlation of sacred theology to supernatural faith build upon and advance Avery Cardinal Dulles's retrieval of the sapiential dimension of Catholic theology in order to overcome its pervasive fragmentation. The first crucial point of reference that invites, indeed urges, this further step to be taken is Pope Benedict XVI's teaching on supernatural faith in Spe salvi:

Faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. . . . [T]hrough faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say "in embryo"--and thus according to the "substance"--there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life. (§7)

The second crucial point of reference for this further step to be taken is a well-known teaching of Thomas Aquinas that has been essential for Dominican spirituality and central to the Thomist doctrine of supernatural faith and of sacra doctrina. In his

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discussion of the missions of the divine persons in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas famously states:

There is one special mode belonging to the rational creature wherein God is said to be present as the object known is in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself, according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature, but also to dwell therein as in His own temple. (STh I, q. 43, a. 3)⁽⁴⁶⁾

Because of the simultaneously supernatural infusion of the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love the Christian is able to achieve an initial, intentional union with the triune God, which indeed is a "pati divina," a "suffering of divine things."⁽⁴⁷⁾ God as

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First Truth constitutes both the medium (the mediating formal object or formal object quo) and the distinct subject (the terminative formal object or formal object quod) of theological faith.⁽⁴⁸⁾ Simultaneously, faith as human understanding, by way of acts of judgment, operates with the indispensable help of the instrument of propositions (secondary material objects), that is, a divinely received doctrina the ultimate source and center of which is Christ.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Through the instrumentality of the propositions (enuntiabile), faith truly attains God as First Truth. Wisdom is nothing but the analogical extension of faith's own understanding by way of a discursive reasoning that arises from and returns back to contemplation.

There are at least three distinct salient strengths of sapiential theology as retrieved by Muñiz ad mentem sancti Thomae.

First, because the beginning and end of sapiential theology are essentially transhistorical (because essentially correlated to the intentional union of the believer with God), this theology can afford to accommodate all the genuine concerns of Kasper's proposal without having to adopt its comprehensive historical-

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hermeneutical approach and its correlative constrained concept of faith. Kasper introduces the kerygma as the normative point of reference and the eschaton as the normative frame of reference in order to check the inherently historicizing and thus relativizing tendency of a comprehensively historical-hermeneutical approach. However, these twin transhistorical points of reference, kerygma and eschaton, remain too weak to fulfill the assigned function of a normative integration because neither one of them informs faith "already now" in a substantively transhistorical way. Faith is not conceived of as essentially supernatural and infused, with the consequence that faith does not directly and objectively attend to the First Truth by way of the revealed transhistorical principles--the beginning of the divine life in us--which would inform it substantively and to which all of theology is essentially correlated in what amounts to a categorically transhistorical relation.⁽⁵⁰⁾

Second, by understanding the unity of theology as that of a totum potestativum, Muñiz is able (1) to conceive each branch of theology as a distinct actualization of the totum of sacra doctrina, (2) to regard each particular discursive actualization in essential correlation to theological faith, (3) to suppose a distinct order of super- and subordination and hence of theological interdependence and accountability between the branches of theology, and (4) to anchor the essentially transhistorical character of sacra doctrina in the principles of theological faith itself. The genuinely historical character of biblical exegesis and historical theology is far from being suffocated or suppressed by being informed by the transhistorical principles of theological faith. Sapiential theology or sacra doctrina conceived of as a totum potestativum allows the various parts of sacred theology to

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do their genuine work and to contribute to the whole. Each part, in virtue of being part of the whole, is essentially correlated to supernatural faith and therefore essentially contemplative, that is, sapiential. Each part, however, will be sapiential in a different way that is ordered in relation to the other parts and thereby realizes the whole to a different degree. Unlike Kasper, Muñiz does not need to rely on dogmatic or systematic theology to integrate into a theological synthesis various pretheological parts of theology that have long ceased to understand themselves as informed by supernatural faith and hence as sapiential.⁽⁵¹⁾

Instantiations of sacred theology that remain essentially correlated to supernatural faith are not completely absent from the Catholic theology of the last forty-five years, nor are they necessarily instantiations of Thomistic theology. Dominican theologians, however, are prime candidates for examples of this theology, be it in biblical theology (Adrian Schenker, Ceslaus Spicq, and Pierre Benoit), historical theology (Jean-Pierre Torrell, Guy Bedouelle), dogmatic theology (Jean-Hervé Nicolas, Gilles Emery, Benoît-Dominique de la Soujeole, Charles Morerod, and Serge-Thomas Bonino), or moral theology (Servais Pinckaers). What makes these Dominican (and in most cases Thomist) instantiations unique is that the correlation of sacred theology to the supernatural faith is always noticeable, if not explicitly reflected. If we were to allow simply an implicit correlation, a much wider field of instantiations would open up. But in such cases the correlation is connatural and not carried and passed on by an explicit reflective theological awareness, as is the case in the various Dominican Thomist schools. Where such an explicit reflective theological awareness is missing the correlation remains

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at best fragile because it depends solely on a particular theologian's de facto correlation.⁽⁵²⁾

Third, wherever in contemporary Catholic theology faith is not regarded as a supernatural, infused habit, the loss of access to the theological substance of patristic biblical exegesis, as well as to a proper theological interpretation of the sacra pagina itself, becomes a tangibly disconcerting reality. For the analogy of faith, which is a requisite for such a proper theological interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, presupposes the light of faith, which is the supernatural quality of the disposition of faith. Muñiz's retrieval of Thomas's concept of sacra doctrina stands in remarkable proximity to the explicit teaching of the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) about the essential correlation between the light of faith, the study of the sacred page, and the inner unity of sacred theology:

Sacred theology rests on the written word of God, together with sacred tradition, as its primary and perpetual foundation. By scrutinizing in the light of faith all truth stored up in the mystery of Christ, theology is most powerfully strengthened and constantly rejuvenated by that word. For the Sacred Scriptures contain the word of God and since they are inspired really are the word of God; and so the study of the sacred page is, as it were, the soul of sacred theology. (DV 24 [emphasis added])⁽⁵³⁾

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The sacred page can only be received and hence read as such--as sacred page--in the light of faith, that is, by way of theological faith. Consequently, in the study of the sacred page the essential correlation of sacred theology to theological faith becomes most obvious, and is most fundamentally at stake. No supernatural faith, no lumen fidei; no lumen fidei, no analogy of faith; no analogy of faith, no theological study of the sacred page; no theological study of the sacred page, no sacra doctrina.⁽⁵⁴⁾ In short, the sapiential character of theology, which is essentially correlated to supernatural faith, guarantees the permanent rootedness of all parts of theology in the written word of God and in sacred tradition.

Finally, if anything, it is sapiential theology that liberates the theologian for a genuine engagement of all kinds of intellectual disciplines of enquiry--historical, hermeneutical, or empirical. Wisdom, after all, uses all human sciences. Sapiential theology thus reconceived would look remarkably different from the present accommodation of Catholic theology to the liberal nineteenth-century model of the modern Berlin-type research university, with its Procrustean bed cutting the body of theology into four heterogeneous parts (exegetical, historical, normative [systematics and ethics], and practical). But since this Procrustean bed has turned out to be the tomb of theology, a Thomistic effort at renewing the unity of sacred theology by retrieving its essential

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correlation to the supernatural faith would be nothing less than a proper Thomistic participation in the raising of the Lazarus of theology to the integral unity of a new and authentic sapiential life.⁽⁵⁵⁾

---

 

1. An earlier version of this essay was presented on 17 October 2009, at the first "Thomistic Circles" Conference on "Thomism and the Renewal of Theology" at the new Academic Center of the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.

2.  "The science of God is accompanied by the danger that its pursuit estranges our innermost self from God instead of bringing it closer to Him."

3.  "There is nothing more miserable and desolate than a mind bereft of God that speaks of and philosophizes about God."

4.  Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., "Wisdom as the Source of Unity in Theology," in Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, eds., Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship: Essays in Honor of Matthew L. Lamb (Naples, Fl.: Sapientia Press, 2007), 59-71, at 59f.

5.  Thomas never discusses the three kinds of wisdom together in one single place of his vast oeuvre. For a discussion of philosophical wisdom, see I Metaph., lect. 1-2; for a discussion of theological wisdom, see STh I, q. 1, a. 6; and for a discussion of infused wisdom, see STh II-II, q. 45. In the twentieth century, French Thomists took Thomas's teaching on the three kinds of wisdom to offer the best possible access to the intricate interplay of sacred theology and metaphysics in Thomas's thought. See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Le sens du mystère et le clair-obscur intellectual: Nature et surnaturel (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1934); and Marie-Dominique Philippe, Les trois sagesses: Entretiens avec Frédéric Lenoir (Paris: Fayard, 1994).

6. This as well as all further quotations from Spe salvi are taken from the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html (accessed 12 May 2010).

7.  STh II-II, q. 4, a. 1.

8.  See M.-M. Labourdette, O.P., "La vie théologale selon saint Thomas," Revue Thomiste 58 (1958): 597-622.

9.  Instantiations of such Thomistic contributions to a renewal of Catholic theology indeed already exist. Arguably, one of them is Jean-Hervé Nicolas, O.P., Synthèse dogmatique: De la Trinité à la Trinité (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires; Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1985), with a preface by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Romanus Cessario, O.P., aptly characterizes Nicolas's magnum opus as taking the proper course between the reductive alternatives of theological rationalism and theological positivism: "Theology, after all, according to the Thomist viewpoint, develops out of faith's seeking to deepen its understanding of revealed truth. Rationalism reduces theology to a purely human enterprise. Practitioners of this kind of theology perceive themselves either as peers of secular professors in academic circles or the religious counterparts of other learned professions, like social work or psychology. Whatever are the merits of the science of religious studies, theology in service of the Church requires more than academic credentials to communicate a revealed doctrine. Theological positivism, on the other hand, which relies on authoritarian pronouncements to support Church doctrine, closes off the theological project by replacing demonstration with the weakest form of argument, authority. Its practitioners find satisfaction with repetition of what the Church teaches, but recoil from the hard work of making that teaching intelligible to contemporary hearers. Father Nicolas offers the theologian a model to avoid these unfortunate and disserviceable alternatives" ("Theology at Fribourg," The Thomist 51 [1987]: 325-66, at 339).

10.  Walter Kasper, Die Methoden der Dogmatik--Einheit und Vielheit (Munich: Kösel, 1967).

11.  Walter Kasper, The Methods of Dogmatic Theology, trans. John Drury (Glen Rock, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1969).

12.  "There is a growing splintering of methods within one and the same discipline and by one and the same theologian. At one point the dogmatic theologian may utilize exegetical, historical and philosophical arguments; at another point he may adopt a pastoral, an anthropological, or a sociological approach. But if dogmatic theology is to avoid dilettantism, if it is to remain a scientific discipline, then it must look for the one dogmatic method" (Kasper, The Methods of Dogmatic Theology, 1f.). Kasper's express goal of his treatise is "to arrive at a single, unified epistemological process that is proper to theology" (ibid., 21).

13.  Ibid., vii.

14.  I do not know how forty years later Cardinal Kasper would assess this brief work. (For a complete bibliography of Walter Cardinal Kasper's very impressive opera, see the Festschrift in honor of his seventy-fifth birthday, introduced with a personal salutation by Pope Benedict XVI, Gott denken und bezeugen, ed. George Augustine and Klaus Krämer [Freiburg: Herder, 2008].) While there are tangible influences of Kasper's important earlier scholarly work upon this treatise, in the following I will be unable to do full justice to the complex ways in which Kasper's opuscule depends on and departs from his doctoral dissertation on the concept of tradition in the nineteenth-century Roman school and his Tübingen Habilitationsschrift on the philosophy and theology of history in the later period of Schelling's thought: Walter Kasper, Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule (Giovanni Perrone, Carlo Passaglia, Clemens Schrader), Die Überlieferung in der neueren Theologie 5 (Freiburg: Herder, 1962); idem, Das Absolute in der Geschichte. Philosophie und Theologie der Geschichte in der Spätphilosophie Schellings (Mainz: Grünewald, 1965). See also his important early essay, "Grundlinien einer Theologie der Geschichte," Theologische Quartalschrift 144 (1964): 129-69.

15.  Francisco P. Muñiz, O.P., The Work of Theology, trans. John P. Reid, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Thomist Press, 1953).

16.  Parenthetical Arabic page numbers in this section refer to pages in Kasper, Methods of Dogmatic Theology.

17.  We might not go completely wrong in finding echoes of Kasper's interpretation of Passaglia's and Schrader's interpretation of tradition in his own programmatic and eschatologically determined vision: "Die Tradition 'ist' nicht, sie geschieht, sie ereignet sich. Die Tradition ist der Akt, der von Christus im Heiligen Geist getragen ist, der durch den Dienst der Kirche geschieht, in dem und durch den allein das einmal gesprochene Wort aktuell wird, Da-sein besitzt für uns und aufsteht für unseren Glauben [Tradition 'is' not; it occurs, it takes place. Tradition is the act which is sustained by Christ in the Holy Spirit, which takes place through the Church's ministry, and in and by which alone the Word, after it has been spoken, becomes real, has existence for us, and supports our faith]" (Kasper, Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule, 331). In short, objective tradition exists in the Church always only in the traditioning act as it occurs again and again--carried out by Christ and the Holy Spirit by way of the Church's ministry. The most recent and comprehensively normative event of this kind was for Kasper the Second Vatican Council. All previous tradition has existence only insofar as it is integral to this Spirit-suffused traditioning event.

18.  Kasper explicitly acknowledges the profound influence of Heidegger's late philosophy in several places in his treatise. At the time of its composition, Heidegger's late philosophy held German intellectuals under a spell that retrospectively is as instructive as it is disconcerting. Few Catholic philosophers, among them most notably Robert Spaemann and Ferdinand Ulrich, resisted this bewitchment from the outset. It was only with the ascendancy of the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Habermas) that a spell-breaking, though no less problematic, intellectual alternative developed in the post-WWII intellectual discourse in Germany. While the generation of Catholic theologians to which Kasper (as well as Karl Cardinal Lehmann) belong shows a tangible indebtedness to Heidegger's thought (the Catholic philosophical reception of Heidegger is associated with the names of Bernhard Welte; Max Müller; Karl Rahner, S.J.; and Johannes B. Lotz, S.J.), the subsequent generation of Catholic theologians in Germany (Kasper refers to this development in his treatise as "secular theology") fell to an even greater degree under the spell of the Frankfurt School and adopted as the philosophical point of reference for Catholic theology a Marx-inspired critical theory instead of a Heidegger-inspired history of being. In short, what happened was the (in)famous transition out of the frying pan into the fire. The abandonment of the philosophia perennis upon which Catholic theology had drawn prior to Vatican II had as a consequence the ever-more rapid replacement of one philosophical point of reference or framework with another. So the journey went from Heidegger and Gadamer to Adorno, Horkheimer, and Habermas, and from there in more recent years to Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Irigaray. Pope John Paul II's encyclical Fides et ratio has encouraged a more sober and penetrating reflection pertaining to the question of what kind of philosophy indeed meets best the exigencies of inquiring in essentially nonreductive ways into the truth of the human being and the world as a whole and thus best serves Catholic theology.

19.  "The notion of historicity posited here involves more than the purely subjective historicity of man himself; it embraces reality as a whole and being as such. Thus it includes society, institutions, and the world" (7 n. 6). "[N]ature and being only become real within the all-embracing cloak of history" (55). This comprehensive philosophical claim aptly puts into a nutshell Heidegger's late philosophy, his ontological historicism which can be usefully encountered in his Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957) and Nietzsche, vol. 2 (Pfullingen: Neske, 1961). For an instructive introduction to the later Heidegger's thinking, see Julian Young, Heidegger's Later Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). In order to offer some background and backing to the notion of the history of being that he endorses, Kasper refers to the standard Heideggerian introduction to Heidegger's thought by Otto Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers (Pfullingen: Neske, 1963) and to works of two eminent representatives of what has been called the "Catholic Heidegger-school": Max Müller and Bernhard Welte.

20.  In which remedy does Kasper put his hope? "If all our theological statements are viewed as historical explications and interpretations of Christ's salvific promise, then men will be able to comprehend and assimilate the truths of faith once again" (54).

21.  "Theology views everything within the framework of a universal, eschatological promise. Thus, from the start, it is historical through and through" (58).

22. To be fair to Kasper's comprehensive historical-hermeneutical framework, this would not be a valid concern for him, for he regards the relationship itself of theology to philosophy as a historical process. Hence, "however much theology may need metaphysical categories, it cannot tie itself to a specific metaphysics if it is to remain true to itself" (60). It is clear that according to Kasper metaphysics is itself nothing but concrete historical thought. And therefore, "the use of hellenic [lowercased in original?] notions was a necessary hermeneutic process at that point in history" (ibid.). Because of the genuinely historical character of metaphysics, Kasper's program seems to entail that the central truths promulgated in the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas (and configured comprehensively in "hellenic notions") can only be retrieved in an hermeneutical process that is essentially extrinsic to these hellenistically conceived dogmas themselves. For the hellenic notions do not seem to be reflective of human "ratio" per se, and in principle and per se intelligible to human beings at all times an in all places, but are rather reflective of a particular historical instantiation of human "ratio" in specific time-bound philosophical tenets.

23.  The inspiration behind this claim is quite obviously Schelling's late philosophy of history. In Kasper's reading, this philosophy of history acquires a distinctly Christological character: "Die Dialektik wird so in der Spätphilosophie Schellings zur Dialogik, und dieser geschichtliche Dialog bleibt offen, weist auf eine Zukunft hin, die nur in hoffendem Glauben vorweggenommen werden kann; nicht das Wissen des Wissens ist das Letzte für den Menschen, sondern docta ignorantia im Akt eines sich in die Zukunft hinausstreckenden Glaubens. Vermittelt und getragen wird die Geschichte von Christus, in dem alles Bestand hat und auf den alles hin erschaffen ist (Kol 1,16f) [Thus in Schelling's late philosophy dialectics turns into dialogics, and this historical dialogue remains open and points to a future that can be anticipated only by a faith that hopes; the ultimate goal of the human being is not self-reflective knowledge, but rather the docta ignorantia of a faith that stretches itself out toward the future. History is mediated and sustained by Christ, in whom all things hold together and with respect to whom all things were created]" (Das Absolute in der Geschichte, 22).

24.  By advancing this understanding of dogmatic theology, Kasper seems to approximate, if not to adopt, Karl Barth's understanding of the place and role of dogmatic theology, most exhaustively developed in his prolegomena to the monumental Church Dogmatics, in the opening sections of vol. 1/1 and the concluding sections of vol. 1/2. See Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik, vol. 1/1, 10th ed. (Zurich: TVZ, 1981), §§ 1-2; and vol. 1/2, 7th ed. (Zurich: TVZ, 1983), §§ 22-24. With respect to the precise role and understanding of dogma itself Kasper differs slightly, but importantly, from Barth's understanding. While Barth understands dogma in an exclusively eschatological sense (Kirchliche Dogmatik 1/1:284), Kasper stresses that "dogma shares the eschatological-definitive character of Christian revelation, and its historical cast. Dogma exemplifies the trait of 'already here' and 'yet to come' which characterize the whole existence of the Church in this world" (25 n. 6).

25.  Johann Sebastian Drey (1777-1853) was an influential Catholic theologian who held a professorship of dogmatic theology and the history of dogma on the Catholic faculty of the University of Tübingen from 1817 to 1846. Drey was one of the most important representatives of a Catholic Enlightenment in conversation with Lessing, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. He is regarded as the founder of modern Catholic apologetics and fundamental theology, and as the intellectual initiator of the Catholic "Tübingen School." For an introduction to Drey's thought, see Max Seckler's informative essay, "Ein Tübinger Entwurf: Johann Sebastian Drey und die Theologie," in idem, Im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Kirche: Theologie als schöpferische Auslegung der Wirklichkeit (Freiburg: Herder, 1980), 178-98. Kasper understands his own program very much as a continuation of this tradition, which represents to him the best of Catholic theology of its day: "In the first half of the nineteenth century, theologians in Tübingen, Münster, Munich and Vienna strove to develop a theology that was both ecclesial (in the best sense of the word) and imbued with a sound theological liberalism. It was a theology produced by original minds who were at ease in the intellectual currents of their time. Men like Möhler and Döllinger championed the cause of the Church, but they were open-minded men who were recognized and respected by other contemporary scholars" (19).

26.  Kasper offers an instructive clarification of the nature of the articles of faith by interpreting some central assertions of the Vatican I Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius "in an historical perspective" (62): "1. The articles of faith prove to be the universal, concrete embodiment and fulfillment of history's questions. They are comprehended 'ex eorum quae naturaliter cognoscit analogia.' 2. The articles of faith prove to be capable of protecting man's freedom and of answering his questions about the meaning of human life; they are comprehended 'e nexu cum fine hominis ultimo.' 3. Faith becomes intrinsically comprehensible through a reductio in mysterium. All its individual statements are resolved, christologically and eschatologically, into the unique mystery of God. Faith is comprehended 'e mysteriorum nexu inter se' (DS 3016)" (63).

27.  The only possible candidates for the "ready-made concepts" that stand in the way of the underlying reality that come to mind are the allegedly now outdated metaphysical concepts by way of which the articles of faith themselves are configured.

28.  This understanding of faith seems to correspond rather well to what Kasper calls "our newly won realization that the Church is an eschatological entity, a reality in the making, a promise as yet unfulfilled, an instrument of service, not an end in itself" (24).

29.  "Theology can preserve its identity only if it has the courage to immerse itself in the alien realm of philosophy--not to commit suicide there or to degenerate into a philosophy of religion, but to truly find itself. In losing itself, theology will be able to show how its faith overcomes the world (1 Jn 5, 4). In other words, theology cannot be reflected in the common heritage of human thought unless it moves this heritage beyond itself" (60).

30.  "Theology is grounded on a positive, historical revelation which is accessible to us only through the historical testimonies of the apostolic and (in a different way) the post-apostolic Church. Thus the historical argument from authority is constitutive for theology" (33).

31.  "Kerygma, which theology serves, is essentially recollection and eschatological, prognostic promise also" (43).

32.  John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Idea of a University, The New Edition of the Works of John Henry Newman, ed. Charles Frederick Harrold (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947), 197f.

33.  The "given of revelation" is a central, but unfortunately somewhat forgotten, concept of the Dominican Thomist tradition (building directly upon Thomas's discussion of the virtue of faith in STh II-II, q. 1, aa. 4 and 6): certain principles have been given in the supernaturally infused faith as definitive starting points and sign posts for sacra doctrina. See Ambroise Gardeil, O.P., Le donné révélé et la théologie, 2d ed. (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1932).

34.  On the role of the distinction between totum universale, totum integrale, and totum potestativum in Thomas's metaphysics, see Ludger Oeing-Hanhoff, Ens et unum convertuntur: Stellung und Gehalt des Grundsatzes in der Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquin, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 37/3 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1953), 156-78. For an astute application of Muñiz's treatise in the context of ecumenism, see Richard Schenk, O.P., "Eine Ökumene des Einspruchs. Systematische Überlegungen zum heutigen ökumenischen Prozeß aus einer römisch-katholischen Sicht," in Hans Otte and Richard Schenk, eds., Die Reunionsgespräche im Niedersachsen des 17. Jahrhunderts: Royas y Spinola - Molan - Leibniz, Studien zur Kirchengeschichte Niedersachsens 37 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 225-50, at 237, 246.

35.  Parenthetical page numbers in this section refer to pages in Muñiz's The Work of Theology.

36.  It is worth observing at this point that both Kasper and Muñiz critically distance themselves from this increasingly narrow rationalistic performance of Scholastic theology in the modern period: Kasper in order to reconceptualize the constitutive framework of theology, Muñiz in order to find in Thomas a wider and more nuanced understanding of theology that would allow to correct and improve the tradition of sacred theology from within.

37.  On this matter there is a deep agreement between Muñiz and Kasper, for the latter observes: "Faith is never simply an affirmation of belief. As a human act, it is something understood and accepted; it is incipient theology" (The Methods of Dogmatic Theology, 12).

38.  Dulles, "Wisdom as the Source of Unity for Theology," 61-68.

39.  "The true distinction between faith and Theology lies in this, that faith is concerned only with what has been immediately and explicitly revealed, and Theology is concerned with truths which have been revealed both immediately and formally as well as mediately and virtually" (ibid.).

40. "Sacred Theology is a habit which stands mid-way between faith and natural Theology, which is a part of philosophy. Therefore, it will have a light which is a mean between the light of faith and that of natural Theology. Now the light of faith is the supernatural light of divine revelation; while the light of natural Theology is that of pure reason. Therefore, the intermediate light is one which partakes both of revelation and of reason: it is the natural light of reason exercised under the light of divine revelation" (22).

41.  For a recent compelling argument for the auxiliary indispensability of philosophical wisdom for the theological task, see Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Naples, Fl.: Sapientia Press, 2009).

42.  Profoundly faithful to Thomas's understanding of sacra doctrina, Muñiz in fact adopts the explicit defense by John of St. Thomas against Vásquez of the position that theological faith is indeed the indispensable supernatural foundation of sacred theology. See John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus I, disp. 2 (ed. the monks of Solesmes [Paris, Tournai; Rome: Desclée, 1931], vol. 1, 350ff.).

43.  The only discipline in which Kasper's historical-hermeneutical paradigm seems to have taken a hold for good is Catholic dogmatic theology--which by now, though, has quite obviously lost to a surprisingly large degree its integrative hermeneutical, let alone normative function, and--as Dulles has so aptly described--operates as just one increasingly specialized subdiscipline parallel to all the other compartmentalized subdisciplines of theology.

44.  STh I, q. 1, a. 6: "This doctrine is wisdom above all human wisdom; not merely in any one order, but absolutely. For since it is the part of a wise man to arrange and to judge, and since lesser matters should be judged in the light of some higher principle, he is said to be wise in any one order who considers the highest principle in that order: thus in the order of building, he who plans the form of the house is called wise and architect, in opposition to the inferior laborers who trim the wood and make ready the stones: 'As a wise architect, I have laid the foundation' (1 Corinthians 3:10). Again, in the order of all human life, the prudent man is called wise, inasmuch as he directs his acts to a fitting end: 'Wisdom is prudence to a man' (Proverbs 10:23). Therefore he who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most of all called wise. Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as Augustine says (De Trin. xii, 14). But sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as the highest cause--not only so far as He can be known through creatures just as philosophers knew Him . . . but also as far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others. Hence sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom" (translations of the Summa Theologiae are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, originally published in 1911).

45.  The internal quotation is from STh I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2.

46. STh I, q. 43, a. 3: "Super istum modum autem communem, est unus specialis, qui convenit creaturae rationali, in qua Deus dicitur esse sicut cognitum in cognoscente et amatum in amante. Et quia, cognoscendo et amando, creatura rationalis sua operatione attingit ad ipsum Deum, secundum istum specialem modum Deus non solum dicitur esse in creatura rationali, sed etiam habitare in ea sicut in templo suo."

47. I am here primarily concerned with the fact of the divine indwelling. Pertaining to the question of how precisely Thomas understood the nature and mode of this divine indwelling similarly to as well as differently from his Scholastic predecessors, see the instructive study by Francis L. B. Cunningham, O.P., The Indwelling of the Trinity: A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Theory of St. Thomas Aquinas (Dubuque, Iowa: Priory Press, 1955); and pertaining to the defense and development of Thomas's doctrine in the Thomist commentatorial tradition, see Ambrose Gardeil, O.P., La structure de l'ame et l'expérience mystique, vol. 2 (Paris: Libraire Victor Lecoffre, 1927), 6-60; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., The Love of God and the Cross of Jesus, trans. Sr. Jean Marie, vol. 1 (St. Louis, Ill.: Herder, 1947 [repr. 1957]), 136-73; and idem, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. Sr. M. Timothea Doyle, O.P., vol. 1 (St. Louis and London: Herder, 1947), 101-5.The particular way I put the matter in the text follows John of St. Thomas's interpretation in Cursus Theologicus I, q. 43, disp. 17, a. 3 (the monks of Solesmes, eds., vol. 4, 364-376, esp. 370ff.). Noteworthy is John of St. Thomas's beautiful interpretation of Thomas's reference to the Dionysian rendition of "patiens divina" (De Divinis nom., ch. 2) in STh II-II, q. 45, a. 2: "Pati autem divina, et experimentalem cognitionem de Deo habere, non solum pertinet ad statum gloriae, ubi intuitive Deus videtur, sed etiam ad statum viae: ubi adhuc Hierotheus erat, et ubi Deus, etsi obscure et per fidem cognitus, tamen quasi experimentali quodam tactu cognoscitur, etsi non visu. Sicut animam nostram non videmus, et tamen experimentiâ animationis sentimus quasi objectum praesens, quia et informat nos realiter, et informationis indicia nobis praesentat: sic Deus suae intimae presentiae, quam habet ut agens et principium totius esse per immensitatem, nobis specialiter per gratiam demonstrat tamquam objectum intime et experimentaliter cognoscibile, hîc occulte et per indicia, in patria per visionem, sed tamen jam nobis specialiter et realiter praesens, et quasi stans post parietem [However, to suffer divine things and to have experiential knowledge of God, does not only pertain to the state of glory, where God is seen intuitively, but also to the state of pilgrimage; where Hierotheus was, there also was God, even if perceived obscurely and by faith, nevertheless, so to speak, known experientially by a kind of touch, although not by sight. Just as we do not perceive our soul, we, nevertheless, through the very experience of being animated by it, sense it like an object at hand, for the soul really forms us and presents to us the signs of us being thus formed. Likewise, in a special way by grace, God shows to us his innermost presence (which he himself possesses as the agent and principle of all esse in his immensity) like an object that can be intimately and experientially known, on earth obscurely and by way of signs, in the fatherland by way of vision; but even now God is present to us in a particular way, just as if standing behind a partition wall]" (the monks of Solesmes, eds., 370).

48. For an astute discussion of this important distinction between the formal object quod and the formal object quo of theological faith (a distinction introduced by the Dominican Thomist commentatorial tradition based on STh II-II, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2), see M.-M. Labourdette, O.P., "La vie théologale selon saint Thomas," Revue Thomiste 58 (1958): 597-622, esp. 607-13.

49.  Cessario offers the important reminder that for Thomas, "[o]f course, Christ himself stands at the center of this entire process. For it is Christ who teaches both angels and men, and who alone fully communicates divine Truth to the world. The articles of faith serve as instruments of this universal outpouring of doctrine from God, which culminates in the offer of truth and friendship that Jesus extends as a free gift" (Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Faith and the Theological Life [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996], 69).

50.  Kasper is aware of and writes about the "analysis fidei" in his earlier work (Die Lehre von der Tradition in der Römischen Schule, 64, 398), but in this treatise, the reference point for faith is not the "already now" ("'[I]n embryo'--and thus according to the 'substance'--there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life" [Spe salvi §7]), but rather the future "yet to come." The essentially eschatological orientation of the faith allows it to be correlated to the historicizing of being as reflected in different but analogous ways in the later Schelling and the later Heidegger.

51.  Dulles offers an apt characterization of the burden contemporary Catholic systematic theology is not able bear, the burden of attempting a theological integration and synthesis that cannot be achieved as long as the parts are essentially pretheological and therefore heterogeneous: "In many Catholic faculties dogmatic theology has been replaced by the traditional Protestant discipline of 'systematic theology'--a discipline that seeks to synthesize the results of religious experience and positive historical research in the light of some freely chosen philosophical system, be it idealist, existentialist, phenomenologist, pragmatist, or whatever" (Dulles, "Wisdom as the Source of Unity for Theology," 60).

52. What has not been addressed in this essay at all, but what is an indispensible component of a revival of the unity of Catholic theology by way of a recovery of its character as sacra doctrina is, first, the question of an overall coherent curriculum that would reflect the unity of sacred theology as a totum potestativum; second, the role a coherent philosophical formation would play in such a curriculum; and third, the institutional setting in which such a curriculum could be realized. (Regarding the latter--the institutions by way of which such curricula are carried out and sustained--see my essay "God, the University, and the Missing Link--Wisdom" [The Thomist 73 [2009]: 241-77], in which I consider the important recent interventions by two eminent Thomist philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre and Benedict Ashley, O.P.). One place that not only has great potential in addressing all three components successfully but also has indeed a mandate to do so is the Dominican studium.

53. The translation is taken from the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html (accessed 12 May 2010). ("Sacra theologia in verbo Dei scripto, una cum sacra traditione, tamquam in perenni fundamento innititur, in eoque ipsa firmissime roboratur semperque iuvenescit, omnem veritatem in mysterio Christi conditam sub lumine fidei perscrutando. Sacrae autem scripturae verbum Dei continent et, quia inspiratae, vere verbum Dei sunt; ideoque sacrae paginae studium sit veluti anima sacrae theologiae" [Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. II: Trent - Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (London: Sheed & Ward Ltd.; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 980]). Above I have called supernatural, infused faith "theology's soul." In the quoted passage from Dei Verbum, however, the study of the sacred page is suggested to be--veluti--the very soul of theology. Do these two designations contradict each other? I do not think so. They rather imply each other. The word of God that is contained in the Sacred Scriptures can only be rightly received and understood in the light of faith, the lumen fidei. If we hold the rational soul (and what else could be the proper analogue for thinking about theology's soul?) to be a composite of esse and essence, would it go too far to understand the composition of theology's soul in such a way that the light of faith designates its esse and the study of the sacred page its essence?

54.  It is for this very reason that articles 9 ("Whether Holy Scripture should use metaphors?") and 10 ("Whether in Holy Scripture a word may have several senses?") are absolutely indispensible components of the first question of the Summa Theologiae, where Thomas discusses the nature and extent of sacra doctrina. Take away articles 9 and 10 and sacra doctrina has received a mortal blow.

55.  I would like to thank two anonymous peer reviewers of a previous version of this essay for their helpful comments, criticisms, and suggestions.