BOOK REVIEWS
The Inference That Makes Science. By ERNAN MCMULLIN. The Aquinas Lecture, 1992. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1992. Pp. iv + 112.
In this ambitious lecture Father Ernan McMullin recapitulates and refines a thesis that has guided his thought for the past forty years. In essence the thesis is this: precisely how science is made has eluded the best minds for centuries, and only in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, suitably emended by McMullin, has the puzzle finally been solved. "Retroduction" is the inference that makes science. Once this is understood, errors on what constitutes scientific method--those of Aristotle, Aquinas, Galileo, Newton, Bacon, Hume, et al.--can be rectified and one can see science for what it truly is: a complex process of theory appraisal that yields, not definitive truth, but well-established results to which assent can be given with at best "practical certainty," whatever that might be (pp. 91-96) .
Why McMullin should have chosen such a theme for an Aquinas Lecture is a question that defies reasonable answer. Surely one does not have to be so negative about the thought of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Galileo to advance one's ideas about science in the present day. What McMullin could easily have done, and he hints at this in the last two paragraphs of his lecture (pp. 97-93), is show how retroduction is itself simply a relaxed version of the demonstrative regress, the method actually endorsed by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Galileo. Such a retroductive version, fair enough, yields knowledge of a probable cause, the type of knowledge most typical of modern science. McMullin did not have to embark on the dangerous course of trying to prove that proof and certainty are forever beyond the grasp of science, or that never in the history of science has anyone established a definitive truth. That, in effect, is what McMullin has tried to do, and in the attempt to make the point he fumbles at almost every juncture throughout a very long lecture. To set the record straight more than a review is being requested; perhaps a book, and even that might not suffice for those whose minds are made up.
To understand the import of the lecture one must appreciate that it is but a brief episode in a debate over demonstration in science that has been going on since McMullin first came to the University of Notre Dame in 1954. I myself have published many books and articles that engage the very point of his lecture and provide the contra evidence to
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show elements of continuity in scientific method from Aristotle to the present. My last two volumes, in press at the same time as McMullin's Aquinas Lecture, answer in detail the aporiai he there raises.1 I need
1 Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof. The Background, Content, and Use of His Appropriated Treatises on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 137. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, xxiii ± 323 pp.; Galileo's Logical Treatises. A Translation, with Notes and Commentary, of His Appropriated Questions on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 138. Dordrecht Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992, xix + 239 pp.
only refer the interested reader to them for an extended and documented reply to his arguments.
Some idea of the flavor of our debate, however, can be gained from the following. To support his thesis, McMullin has to maintain that Aristotle's proof that the moon is a sphere (from its having phases) and that Galileo's proofs that there are mountains on the moon, that Jupiter has satellites, and that Venus circles the sun (all based on telescopic observations) are not strictly demonstrative, that is, they do not yield true and certain conclusions. He declines to answer a query I have often tendered whether he personally is certain on the basis of pre-spacecraft evidence that the moon is a sphere, that there are mountains on it, that Jupiter has satellites, and so on. Instead he offers the categorical response "that planetary science is not an apodictic science, indeed that no natural science is apodictic . . ." because hidden assumptions always underlie their "quasi-apodictic claims" (p. 107, n. 88, emphasis his) . Doublespeak aside, what that means is McMullin has bought into the simplistic notion that "all facts are theory laden," that science itself is not episteme but opinion (doxa) --highly confirmed opinion, but opinion nonetheless. Thus all of science is fallible and revisable, including the most fundamental discoveries on which the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century was based. Now few scientists, in my view, are prepared to accept McMullin's implied assessment that they are not really "knowers," only "retroducers," that question marks cloud their disciplines from day one, and that they must ever be powerless to work their way out of the cloud.
With regard to the Aquinas Lecture Series, one can only ask cui bono? To what end has this repudiation of Thomism been crafted? Is it proposed as an up-to-date version of "problems for Thomists" ? Hardly. There is an infinitude of ways to deny truth and certitude, and little is distinctive here--most has been said before. As to what is distinctive, McMullin's idiosyncratic blending of radical empiricism with idealistic realism needs far more than 112 pages to convince.
WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.
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The Foundations of Mysticism. Vol. I of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. By BERNARD MCGINN.
New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. xxii and 49. Index and bibliography. $39.00 (cloth) .
With this work Bernard McGinn delivers the first of a projected four volume History of Western Christian Mysticism. The Foundations includes, as one might expect, the Scriptural tradition, Neoplatonic philosophy, early Greek Fathers who influenced the Latins, as well as the early "Founders" Ambrose and Augustine. Judged by the quality of its start, this work promises to become a standard history for years to come. The author displays a stunning acquaintance with the sources of a subject that extends over full twenty centuries. Though "specialized" in the spirituality of the high and late Middle Ages (he has written substantial studies on Joachim de Fiore and Eckhart), the Chicago professor has admirably succeeded in mastering the mass of pertinent literature of this early period, as the 150 pages of notes and bibliography testify. His ideas are clearly presented, his evaluations of others critical yet generous, his overall judgment impressively balanced. Moreover, he ventures well beyond the usual territory. His work in-eludes subjects rarely discussed but often alluded to in the history of early Christian spirituality: e.g. Gnosticism, which appears here not as a "heresy ", but as a spiritual movement in its own right. The thorough discussion of Philo together with the introductory chapter on "The Jewish Matrix" (somewhat improperly entitled since it deals only with the Hebrew Bible) display an unusual appreciation of the underestimated influence of Jewish mysticism. One would have been happy to read more about Marius Victorinus, but is grateful to find him present at all.
A historical survey of this scope may easily degenerate into an enumeration of titles and trends, whereby ideas are treated as facts. Professor McGinn has judiciously avoided that. Entire sections of his history are rich monographs about spiritual systems treated for their intrinsic interest rather than as transitory moments of an indifferent history. The sections dealing with Origen, Evagrius, and Ambrose in particular deserve to be read as independent treatises. The long concluding chapter on Augustine also presents a marvelous synthesis, though one primarily written from the point of view of its later impact.
In a study of this nature the definition of its formal obj ect presents a unique problem. Before the late Middle Ages the concept of a purely private spiritual experience remained largely unknown in Christian
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spirituality and until the seventeenth century even the substantive "mysticism ", referring to a separate activity, did not exist. If what we now take to be characteristic were to serve as normative concept, almost all spiritual writers of the first Christian millennium and a good many after that would be excluded. Moreover, the subjective mystical experience remains inaccessible to the historian. McGinn has wisely confined his subject to the spiritual text in its social and ecclesiastical context. But this choice leads to a further, equally difficult question:
What constitutes a mystical text? Obviously not all religious or theological writings are mystical. Protestant theologians of the nineteenth century tended to consider a genuine Christian faith incompatible with mysticism, while prominent students of mysticism in this century (such as Underhill, Butler) remained highly suspicious of speculative theology, including the so-called "mystical" one. But friend and foe of mysticism agree that the mystical, however conceived, cannot simply be identified with the religious. Some scholars, such as von Hügel, distinguish the mystical from other aspects of religion, but leave its positive content vague and controvertible. Avoiding a precision which the nature of the subject precludes, McGinn nevertheless goes to the heart of the matter in referring to the mystical as to the dynamic power that drives the religious mind toward the experienced presence of God, without necessarily bringing it to the state of full union.
The author's position appears in the felicitous choice of the general title: The Presence of God. All religious life aims at entering into the presence of God. But "mystical" religious texts speak of a particular mode of divine presence, not ordinarily attained within common religious observance. "What differentiates it from other forms of religious consciousness is its presentation as both subj ectively and obj ectively more direct, even at times as immediate" (xix) . Obviously this does not remove all the problems. The history of the recent controversies about the concept (told in the very informative appendices, pp. 265-91) leaves no doubt about that. The author is aware of them and promises to confront them in his final volume. But his caution has not sufficed to exorcise altogether the subjectivist ghost hidden in the reference to experience. Thus, he confidently mentions that Plotinus enjoyed "mystical experiences" (44) and reopens the question "whether or not Origen was really a mystic or only a speculative theologian" (130) (though he effectively dispatches it by referring to the effect of Origen's writings) . At the end of this volume he returns to the controversy concerning Augustine's personal spiritual experience. Obviously the issue will remain with us as long as we have to apply modern concepts to traditional theories. Since these concepts are transferred by means of an ancient terminology (with a quite different
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meaning) the semantic ambiguity is likely to continue its confusion for a long time to come. At least McGinn is fully aware of the pitfalls and in principle avoids them, despite an occasional slip in practice.
It seems unbecoming to apply small criticism to a work so imposing by its insight, erudition, and balance. Unfortunately even the most admiring reviewer is expected to search for the imperfections of what appears well-nigh perfect. Comparing the various sections, then, in the light of the author's own high standards, the one on Plato appears weaker. The discussion is limited to a very sketchy analysis of the three loci classici in Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic VI, and to an argument of what the author calls Plato's "apophaticism" based on a Neoplatonic reading of the Parmenides. Such a reading of Plato, via Pseudo-Dionysius, unquestionably influenced all Christian negative theology. But negative theology, though not wholly absent from Plato's definition of the Good, is the very issue that divides Platonism from Neoplatonism. Some would consider the two page discussion of Gregory of Nyssa, the only Cappadocian here presented, disappointingly short. The author justifies this by his "lack of direct influence in the West" (p. 142) . But did Gregory not, directly or indirectly, influence the early Cistercians and possibly even Augustine? Can one truly claim that his impact, taken over the whole range of Latin spirituality, was less than that of Macanus, or even Evagrius? Finally, an error in the philosophical vocabulary may create needless confusion. The author indiscriminately uses the terms transcendent and transcendental (e.g., on pp. 48, 161), while the latter has become the standard term for referring to the apriori conditions for the possibility of a particular phenomenon, a meaning current among several critics mentioned in the appendices. What surpasses ordinary experience is transcendent. And there is a minor factual error: the first name of Malevez is Leopold.
One closes this book with a sense of anticipation and of gratitude. Bernard McGinn has enriched the knowledge of our spiritual tradition as no other work in recent memory has done. Only Louis Bouyer's The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers, the first volume of a History of Christian Spirituality, could withstand a comparison, but that early promise was not fulfilled by the later volumes. The Presence of God initiates a synthesis in scope and depth comparable only to the analysis of the Dictionnaire de spiritualité. Everything in this first volume fosters the hope that the author will succeed in his gigantic enterprise.
Louis DUPRÉ
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
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Christology and Spirituality. By WILLIAM THOMPSON. New York:
Crossroad, 1991. Pp. 240. $27.50 (hardcover) .
The title of this work would better reflect its content if it were to read Contemporary Christologies and the French School of Spirituality, because the author has retrieved the major insights of that school (as well as those of selected other " incarnational mystics ") in order to correct what he believes to be the imbalances in many contemporary christologies. Those imbalances, he proposes, are due to an overemphasis on methodology, critical history, and hermeneutics; the corrective supplied by the mystical heritage involves a return to, and a deeper appreciation of, contemplation, doxology, thanksgiving, praise, and ultimately--and especially--adoration. When this occurs, theology in general and christology in particular become forms of spirituality. Indeed, if mysticism is defined as "the consciously, deeply, radically, 'accomplished' living out of Christian spirituality" (5), which itself he defines as "attunement with the Spirit of Christ" (5), theology and christology are ultimately called to become forms of mysticism.
Many--if not most--of the themes that Thompson develops are rooted in the French School of spirituality (whose leading light was Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, founder of the French Oratory in the early seventeenth century) : the central focus upon adoration in Christian life, trinitarian christocentrism, a participative or "luminosity" model of truth, the significance of Mary as a christological source, the dynamic between clarity (theological precision) and love (or between "light" and "fire"), the narrative or "theomeditative" character of theology and christology, the relation between "service" and "servitude," the centrality (and ascetical nature) of Christian experience in theology, the dialectic between theory and practice in general (or contemplation and action in particular), and the importance of penetrating the "inner meaning" of the "mysteries" of the life of Jesus. These themes-- especially the central one of adoration--" reverberate" through the other members of the French School (Madeleine de Saint-Joseph, Jean-Jacques Olier, Charles de Condren, St. John Eudes), as well as through its modern and contemporary representatives (Therese of Lisieux, Friedrich von Hügel, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and John Wesley) .
Given their importance in Thompson's treatment, some words about three of these themes in particular are in order: adoration, experience, and practice. The review will conclude with a short discussion of some correctives that the author proposes to contemporary "christologies from below" (correctives again rooted in the French School) .
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Adoration, Thompson holds, is crucial for the Christian life because only through it can "we move beyond manipulation and narcissistic possessiveness in our relation to God; only by it can "we transcend the manipulative and the objectifying" (19) . In adoration, "the focus shifts from ourselves to the Other" (67) and we apprehend, affirm, and enjoy the giveness of God (103) . Following Von Hügel, to whom Thompson attributes the modern rehabilitation of the concept, the "concrete and real" experience of adoration "intensifies the experience of God's prevenience: the over-againstness of the religious experience, the 'grace' dimension" (103). "Adoration is what happens to love when it reaches sufficient depth" (111); it is what happens to contemplation when it reaches its "highest pitch" (136 . The saints and mystics are characterized by the adorational experience in a 'particularly intensified way;" they are "masters of adoration" (121) . Thompson again follows the French School when he stresses that the incarnation may best be understood as the "irruption within history of adoration and service" (50) . Although, as Berulle puts it, "from all eternity there had been a God infinitely adorable," there still "had not been an infinite adorer" before the incarnation (51). The author agrees that "Jesus' entire being as incarnate is adoration" (51), and that Jesus, as the "God adoring God, has revealed the adorable glory of God" (101) . Most vitally, the sovereign freedom and transcendence of God vis-a-vis the incarnation--so vital christologically-- can ultimately be recognized only by adoration: "where adoration weakens, so does incarnational faith," because the "personalization of God" in the incarnation, inextricably bound up with the supremely beautiful, sovereignly free subject, is compromised (165). Thompson returns again and again to these themes throughout the book, and adoration may well be the key concept in his whole attempt to retrieve the mystical tradition from contemporary christology.
As stated previously, Thompson understands the turn to spirituality to be essentially a turn "to the fullness of Christian experience" (188) . The critical work of reason in christology must always "stay close to the fullness of experience, promoting moments of luminosity and serving such luminosity" (187). In a special way, the "saints learn their theology from their experience" (123). He paraphrases Balthasar in giving a particularly powerful example of this: the mystical experience of the dark night of the soul can light
. . . up for us the death experience and 'tomb' experience of Jesus, about which otherwise we would know very little, . . . Jesus 'descent into hell' has light indirectly thrown upon it through the dark night experience of the mystim, whose stripping of narcissism and identification with the forgotten and 'damned' seems to be an 'experiential analogue' to Jesus, making sense only in the light of Jesus (125-6) .
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The author stresses that the turn to experience which is part and parcel of the turn to spirituality contains a strong and intrinsic ascetical dimension that must apply to the work of theology as well. This asceticism is "a disciplined manner of staying attuned to the lessons of Christian experience and the Christian narrative"; it is a "testing of experience" which highlights the fact that " experience is a dangerous reality, fraught with 'peril'" (a word related to it through the Latin periculum) (11) . Asceticism is a disciplined way of proving "the authentic from the inauthentic," in which the perils of experience are minimalized, and the benefits maximalized. This ascesis is that part of the spirituality of theology which pertains to
. . . the discipline of sustained theological conversations, the humility of submitting one's labors to the judgment of one's colleagues, [and] the labors of attempting to 'master' the various theological methodologies (12).
He even refers to this theological ascesis as the "stigmata of the intellect," which indicates "that learning is in the service of . . . crudform love, and not of one s own pet theories" (12) .
Chapter 9 is devoted to questions revolving around the relationship between contemplation and action. Thompson uses the term "practice" in the sense usually reserved for "praxis," defining it as "activity that has been reflected upon, learned from, refined" (173) ; . it is "humanly and Christianly meaningful doing" (175) . In "practice
theory and "activity" coalesce, the former involving a reflection on the latter. Theologies which stress this practical dimension--such as sociopolitical and feminist ones--are characterized by
. . . a willingness to stay attuned to the lessons of practical experience, a resulting 'discovery' of what isn't ' practical' or ' liberating ', a searching out of the causes for this in past and present, and the proposal of more liberating-practical' alternatives on the basis of human and Christian sources, past and present (174).
Theory and activity can only be kept "in fruitful union and communion by contemplation; it is indeed only in a "contemplative style of theology" that intellectual efforts are kept rooted in the fullness of experience, and so the turn to experience itself signifies "the turn to spirituality, mysticism, and the contemplative in theology and christology" (176) . And as contemplation inexorably leads to adoration, so too must practice. The author's strong trinitarian emphasis is also evident in this discussion, when he considers the Father, Son, and Spirit to be the "ground and enabler," respectively, of "Contemplation, Theory, and Practice" (179) .
Thompson feels that many modern and contemporary "christologies from below" could benefit from correctives offered from the tradition
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of spirituality, especially that of the French School. For instance, the emphasis in "christologies from below" on "explanation" needs to be balanced by the French School's emphasis upon "understanding "; their negative and pessimistic "hermeneutics of suspicion" by trust, optimism, and "affirmation "; the central concepts of the "Jesus of History" and the "Christ of Faith ", by the states of Jesus as "voyager" and "comprehensor "; the exclusive emphasis on the Bible, by a greater appreciation of the fathers (and "mothers ") of the Church as christological sources; their stress on service, by that of adoration; and finally the "fact-fetishism" of most "christologies from below" by a penetration of the interior meaning or depth dimension of the mysteries of Christ (76-8) . The chapter on the Virgin Mary as a christological source also clearly implies that modern and contemporary indifference to mariology in "christologies from below" leads to "massive christological inadequacy" (135) . For Thompson,
The Marian dimension now is the soteriological side of christology, its 'for us' dimension. In terms of grace: grace not only as offer, but as transforming reality, . . . The fact that grace is now effective in history through Mary highlights the historical dimension of Christian revelation, and with that, the ecclesial dimension. . . . 'Grace '--as offer, as received, as personally unique and intimate--is the 'Marian' dimension of christology. Or at least an important part of it (154-5) .
The author stresses throughout that the proper context for christology is a "trinitarian christocentrism," in which the dynamic between Father, Son, and Spirit is fully recognized in the particular event of incarnation. The trinitarian doctrine may be summarized as follows:
God as distinctly the Transcendent (= Father) God as individuatedly personable (= Son, to whom it thus belongs in sovereign freedom to become incarnate) God as individuatedly participable (=Spirit) (161).
Christological dangers arise when too great an emphasis is placed upon any one of the persons to the detriment of the others:
Father-christologies tend to become non-trinitarian monotheisms and low christologies without the 'balance' of Son-christologies. They also tend in the direction of deism and christologies that view Jesus as only a kind of model to be imitated without the Spirit-christologies. Son-christologies tend toward a 'Jesus-monism' or fetishism, without the balance of the Father-christologies, which bring out the universality of the divine ground. Without a Spirit-christology, Son-christologies tend to render our own participation in Jesus impossible; he becomes so singular that he is removed from sharing in the human condition. Spirit-christologies, as we can guess, can tend to collapse christology into salvation. They stress our own participation in God, but sometimes at the expense of the uniqueness of Jesus as the disclosure of God's own uniquely personal presence for us (41).
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The "christocentrism" that Thompson speaks of must recognize the absolute definitiveness and uniqueness of the "divinely personalized amorization" that has taken place in the incarnation. From this radical personalization of God necessarily follows the "scandal of particularity ", which includes Jesus' "maleness (sex and gender) ." We should not, he believes, "think that Jesus' humanity (and maleness) is 'insignificant ':"
A Logos asarkos approach to the Incarnation, which tries to detach
Jesus' divinity from his particular humanity, in the end depersonalizes
God and renders impossible the intimate and personal communion to
which we are invited by the Spirit (170).
Thompson himself recognizes that certain modern christologians may well find themselves "repulsed" (and others "thrilled ") when confronted with the "elevations and contemplations" of Berulle in particular and the mystical tradition in general (64) . Perhaps, he thinks, such theologians
will find the 'mystical ' interpretation a form of projection, lacking any historical basis in the text. Perhaps, too, not enough of the struggling, growing, perhaps unknowing humanity of it all, and of Jesus as well, might come through for this person. History, if you will, seems smothered in mystical dreaminess. And the concerns of political and liberation theologies? Where is there room for that in this highly individualistic reading of Jesus? And much more (64) .
"Repulsed" is certainly not the word that applies to this reviewer s reaction to the writings of the French School, nor to this book's attempt to reappropriate its insights for contemporary christology. But neither is "thrilled ". Thompson has rendered an important service by pointing out possible contributions of the mystical tradition to 'christologies from below', a service that should be appreciated by all. It is a service, however, that perhaps labors too heavily under the author's own affection for the French School, and results in what some might consider an equally one-sided "christology from above ", shorn of important insights of christological thinking during the past century.
EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, O.P.
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California
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La Doctrine de la Revelation Divine de Saint Thomas D'Aquin: Actes du Symposium sur la Pensée de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, recueil publié sous la direction de LÉON ELDERS, S.V.D. in Studi Tomistici 37. Pontificia Academia di S. Tommaso, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990. Pp. 278. 30,000.00 lire.
This collection of essays by distinguished scholars presents the acts of a conference on the doctrine of Revelation according to Saint Thomas Aquinas. The volume contains twelve papers, four in French, four in English and four in German. The contributors are, in alphabetical order: A. Blanco, G. Cottier, O.P., Ph. Delhaye, L. Elders, S.V.D., L. Hödl, B. McGregor, O.P., J. H. Nicolas, O.P., L. Scheffczyk. R. Schenk, O.P., J. Schumacher, P. Stöhr, and J. P. Torrell, O.P. The ground covered by their articles is as broad as the horizon of their authors. Aquinas's doctrine is confronted with problems ranging from the modernist crisis to those currently discussed in missiology.
In theology, when one associates Revelation with Thomism, one is forced to think of Father Garrigou-Lagrange's De Revelatione, truly a landmark in the history of modern theology. Reading it, one cannot help but to be impressed by the mastery and the clarity with which this eminent Dominican theologian of the antimodernist period disputes and refutes the arguments which threatened the Church at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, Garrigou-Lagrange's book has never been translated into modern languages. And yet, in a certain way, volume 37 of Studi Tomistici can substitute for it, since it deals with issues closely related to those which Garrigou-Lagrange addressed in his study of Revelation. It also recasts the discussion in the terms in which it is expressed in the theological field today. For this reason, this volume provides a valuable resource for the contemporary student of theology for whom the details of the modernist crisis in the early part of this century have not only faded with time, but also have be. come less pressing due to the complexity of the problematic which retains the attention of theologians in the post-Vatican II period.
The focus of this collection of papers is the epistemology of divine Revelation, to the point that this could be its subtitle. Ten of the twelve articles deal with this question. Only Delhaye's paper ventures outside of the field of epistemology to cover the topic of morals, while Hörl takes up the ecumenical question.
Scheffczyk's article provides a broad perspective on the evolution and the perenniality of the modernist/antimodernist problematic in theology. He shows that the root of the problem lies in the epistemology of the
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Enlightenment, i.e. in idealism, which imposed itself as the philosophy of the anticlerical nineteenth century. In the last part of his paper he demonstrates how Saint Thomas's theology provides the insights necessary to articulate the doctrinal unity which exists between the teaching on Revelation found in Vatican I and that of Vatican II. He draws the reader's attention to the notion of degrees of Revelation whose culminating point is indeed the beatific vision and which is prepared for by a historical unfolding. Schumacher and Stöhr also deal with the modernist's characterization of the traditional scholastic doctrine of Revelation as an imparting of propositions. Schumacher reviews the theory of Revelation of several of the modernist theologians . A common characteristic of these theories is an idealist epistemology that reduces the life of the intellect to its immanent part and thus renders impossible God's communication of intelligible truths without violating the laws of Nature. Stöhr, on the other hand, investigates current theological theories and shows how Rahner and Schillebeeckx encounter the same difficulty with the intelligible content of Revelation because of their attempts to reconcile the Gospel's claim of effectiveness in changing lives with idealist philosophy.
With respect to the main line of inquiry, Nicolas's paper deals explicitly with epistemology of Revelation. This study of the "epistemological aspects of Revelation" has two parts. In the first, Nicolas provides a commentary on S.Th. Ia q. 12, a. 12. He presents clearly the Thomistic argument for the knowledge of God from creatures, which he summarizes with a quotation from pseudo-Dionysius found in Saint Thomas's commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate: "Deum tanquam ignotum cognoscere." He articulates the interesting paradox between similitude and dissimilitude between God and His creatures, of which he gives a synthetic presentation: " Si L'exemplarité est une propriété de Ia cause efficiente, la ressemblance est une propriété de l'effet, mais cette ressemblance est imparfaite précisément dans Ia mesure où il est plus complètement effet" (p. 157) . In the second part of his paper, Nicolas treats the use of analogy in sacra doctrina, which he terms theological analogy in contrast to metaphysical analogy. He looks at analogy both at the level of concepts and at the level of judgment. First, he shows how human concepts are brought to a further actuality by Revelation, which extends their usage to an "analogicity" unforeseeable outside of the event of Revelation. In his treatment of analogy at the level of judgment, Nicolas expands on a view presented earlier, that is, the understanding of the three modi of theological predication as rules of predication. For Nicolas, the rules of negation and eminence are the necessary correctives to the use of causality in divine predication. He concludes by showing how this applies to the understanding of Trinitarian Revelation and theology.
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Elders and Torrell grace this collection of essays with their excellent studies of two indispensable elements of the Thomistic theology of Revelation: Scripture--on one hand--as a medium of Revelation, and prophecy--on the other hand--which makes it possible for God to reveal what is not evident for the human intellect and for men to realize that Scripture indeed contains an intelligible content and not only the recording of and the call to enter into an experiential encounter with God's self-Revelation. Elders's paper develops along the lines of the mutual relationship of Revelation and Sacred Scripture. In the beginning, he clearly states the crucial role of Saint Thomas's realist epistemology as the foundation of his theology of Sacred Scripture. The second and larger part of this study addresses the fascinating question of the multiplicity of the senses of Scripture. Fr. Elders presents Saint Thomas's argument as found in Quodi. VII, q. 6, which he offers as an ingenious answer to the question of what precisely is revealed in Scripture. He invites the reader to measure the contemporary attitude towards the Bible with the one that was common for most of the life of the Church. As Elders puts it with a quotation from de Lubac: "They felt that the literal sense of the text was not the only reason why the Bible had been given to them" (de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, I, 484, p. 140) . Elders also insists on the ecclesial dimension of Scripture, which alone permits the theologian to discover revealed meanings in texts whose content is an inspired account of historical events (p. 151) .
Torrell's paper presents a very enlightening commentary on the treatise on prophecy found at the end of the Secunda Pars of the Summa Theologiae. He shows how strongly rooted in Scripture Saint Thomas's theology is with respect to the structure of the treatise as well as to the material brought forward to explain the conclusions he reaches, which have great relevance for the contemporary debate concerning biblical sources. The most interesting part of his article is the comparison of prophetic knowledge with natural knowledge (pp. 181-85) . In this section of his paper, Torrell carefully follows the details of Saint Thomas's analysis in IIa IIae q. 173, a. 2. Prophecy remains human in its mode of knowing. Since human knowledge is realized by the illumination of the intelligible species by the agent intellect, God's intervention in either element does not destroy what constitutes the specificity of human knowledge, i.e., the abstraction of the intelligible from the sensible. However, as Torrell says it: "Ce qui est vraiment constitutif de charisme prophétique, c'est la lumière parce qu'elle permet le jugement: formale in cognitione prophetica est lumen divinum" (q. 171 a. 3 ad 3, p. 183) . Torrell reproaches Aquinas for not being a faithful enough follower of Aristotle in his acceptance of a divine intervention in imagination independently of the input of the senses. He thus writes:
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"De la sorte, l'immanence de la connaissance selon Aristote se trouve sérieusement compromise" (p. 186) . One could wonder if this reluctance to admit an intervention of God in the creation of a new phantasm does not originate in some kind of concession to the virulent criticisms which the modernists leveled against the traditional theology of Revelation in the Church rather than in the account the prophets have left us of the irruption of prophecy in their lives.
Cottier's paper turns to the other side of the epistemological question, that is, to the contribution of the human intellect in the reception of Revelation. In treating the grounds for the credibility of Revelation, the author follows closely the thought of Aquinas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, where Saint Thomas articulates the credibility of the doctrine of faith, not by proving it, but rather by showing that the reasons brought forward to object to its rationality are flawed. Cottier's main point is that there cannot be a real dialogue between faith and reason if reason is understood in terms of positivistic rationalism. He reminds us of Aquinas's emphasis on the too often forgotten quest for wisdom, a prerequisite for the human reason to be open to the possibility of faith. For this he explains that : "La ratio dont nous parlons tout au long de cet article est la raison métaphysique" (p. 221). He also points out how important signs are for Aquinas because: "Ils ont pour but de confirmer ce que Ia connaissance naturelle ne peut directement saisir" (p. 222) . To be accepted for what they are, signs require to be considered with an unwavering intellectual rectitude. In this domain one should note that: " depuis le temps de la Réforme l'Eglise est contestée pour ainsi dire a priori, même de la part des chrétiens; le regard porté sur elle est sans bienveillance et partiel" (p. 223) .
The question of whether there is an intelligible content in Revelation extends to Christology. Blanco addresses it in the form of a study of Saint Thomas's commentary on John 14, 6: "Ego sum Via et Veritas et Vita." It is because he is the Word that Christ is the Truth and the Life and because of his Incarnation that he is the Way. Christ is the summit of Revelation precisely because he is the Word of God. Saint Thomas's philosophy of knowledge and his understanding of the role of words in the communication of truth enable him to articulate a theology of Revelation that makes room for the disclosure of the divine mystery and the communication of knowledge: "Homo potest conceptum suum alteri homini revelare. Hoc autem est eum loqui" (Quoted p. 35) . Blanco insists that the word is a sign of what is in the soul and that this is why it enables interpersonal communication to take place. He spends much time dealing with Schillebeeckx's position on faith considered as hermeneutics of historical events. According to this view, the content of Revelation comes from human activity. Following Aquinas's treatment of faith, Blanco finds a role for sense ex-
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perience in the prompting of man to believe. "In order to believe in God who reveals himself, man accepts His word as the beginning of his own thought, as the source of knowledge, since he holds as true what this word communicates to him. In this way he will participate in the knowledge of which this word is an expression; he receives in his mind the divine Truth" (p. 45) . Blanco is aware of the need to balance this view with a sense of dialogue to which contemporary theology is sensitive. He points out that in the gift of prophecy God's use of the elements of the "mental world" of the prophet constitutes a form of dialogue.
Schenk's study of Saint Thomas's understanding of the traditional axiom " omnis Christi actio nostra est instructio " points out the need of a transformation of man's interior world to see in Christ a true and faithful revealer of God. He intends two things in doing so: first, to bring back into Christology the study of the deeds of Christ and, second, to restate the necessity of theological faith in order to carry out that study. In detailing the different ways in which Saint Thomas has understood and utilized this saying, Schenk shows the need to discern the bearing of the hypostatic union on our understanding of the deeds of Christ. Some actions show his divinity, some the truth of his humanity. In moving the scope of his study to the resurrection of Christ, Schenk follows Aquinas on the question of the insufficiency of these signs and the need for the gift of faith. This is a controversial point, especially in Protestant theology. For this reason, the author goes on to examine the theology of the cross as he finds it in Aquinas in order to show that only an explicit faith in the divinity of Christ allows the Christian to penetrate the fullness of what is revealed by the cross:
"This dimension of the cross, salvific by means of the humanity but non nisi ex virtute divinitatis, reflects a dimension of the whole earthly ministry. The theocentricity corresponds on the epistemological level to the non-manifest character of the claim posed by Jesus' deeds and doctrine" (p. 130) .
Finally, McGregor's paper takes the issue of content in Revelation to the field of missiology and addresses with warmth and courage the ultimate consequences of the modernist crisis. The doctrine of a content-free Revelation has as its complement the assumption of a possible revelation in non-Christian religions. In response, McGregor presents forcefully Aquinas's teaching of the need for an explicit faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation in order to be saved.
Both for its overall scope and for the detail with which it treats the critical issues in the theology of Revelation raised over the last hundred years, this 37th volume of Studi Tom istici is a valuable asset in the study of fundamental theology. However, one could have hoped that
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the years passed since Father Garrigou-Lagrange last published his De Revelatione would have allowed Thomistic scholars to retrieve and develop Aquinas's theological insights in their fullness. The danger of apologetics is that it can lead one to develop a teaching only along the lines set by those challenging the traditional teaching of the Church. In this particular instance, the Catholic apologists of the antimodernist period were led to overstress the epistemological dimension of the theology of Revelation, leaving unstated that for Saint Thomas the primary term of analysis in this question is the knowledge of God. The need of Revelation for Saint Thomas stems from the call to man to share in the beatific vision. A paper on the relation of finality between faith and the beatific vision would have underlined the originality and true significance of the Thomistic tradition in theology.
JOSEPH D'AMÉCOURT, F.J.
Saint John's Priory
Laredo, Texas
The Eternity of the World in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and his Contemporaries. Edited by J. B. M. WISSINK. Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, edited by A. ZIMMERMAN, vol. 27. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990. Pp. viii + 100. $28.75 (paper) .
This volume contains six short studies by five different scholars from the Netherlands on a topic accurately indicated by its title. These studies are a product of a symposium held by the Thomas Aquinas Workgroup, a scholarly association dedicated to investigating the thesis " that Aquinas first of all has to be understood as a theologian
and to "a rediscovery of the original Aquinas and his authentic thought" (p. vii) . The topic chosen for these studies is a suitable one for the aims of the Workgroup, for it is one that requires a clear distinction to be made between the realms of philosophy and theology, and it is one that has generated much interest and dispute--in the Middle Ages no less than today. This small collection of studies makes a contribution to scholarship, although there are weaknesses in some of the studies, as I shall note.
F. J. A. de Grijs (pp. 1-8) argues that Thomas's purpose in writing the De aeternitate mundi was theological rather than philosophical in that Thomas provides a meditation on the meaning of eternity. This meditation, so de Grijs argues, is not only about the temporal eternity of the world but is even more about God's eternity. It shows us how
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little we grasp of God's duration, or how we do not understand it rather than how we do understand it. J. A. Aertsen (pp. 9-19) responds to de Grijs by arguing that the work has a philosophical character. First, Aertsen explains, the fact that Thomas begins the De aeternitate mundi with the supposition on faith that the world had a temporal beginning in the past does not of itself (as de Grijs had thought) mean that the work is theological. Rather, it simply means that all believers agree that in fact the world had a temporal beginning, but the question at issue remains a philosophical one: could the world possibly have existed eternally in the past? Second, Aertsen points out that the reasoning in the De aeternitate mundi is much like that of Thomas's Disputed Question De potentia Dei, q. 3, a. 14, which has an explicitly philosophical character. Third, Thomas has already made it clear in his Commentary on the Sentences, bk. 2, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, that the doctrine of creation, excluding the part of the doctrine that the world had a temporal beginning, is philosophically knowable in principle and known to philosophers in fact. Since the fact of creation is philosophically knowable and can be demonstrated without prejudice to the question of eternity, it cannot be said that an eternal past existence is incompatible with creation. Hence, the question of the compatibility of being eternal and being created--the very question for the De aeternitate mundi--is regarded by Thomas as philosophical rather than as theological.
Aertsen's criticisms of de Grijs are sound, yet de Grijs's central point can be saved. De Grijs has been attempting to support a claim made earlier by the late James Weisheipl, O.P., who had argued that the De aeternitate mundi was a fundamentally theological work. Weisheipl's point, however, was not that the arguments in the work were theological in character but that the target of the work was theologians, especially those who followed Bonaventure in seeing an incompatibility between being created and being temporally eternal in the past. Theological arguments, according to Thomas, must be based upon revealed authority, but the arguments in the De aeternitate mundi are not based on such authority, and hence cannot be considered to be theological. Nevertheless, the arguments can have a theological purpose insofar as they remove a philosophical confusion in order to help theologians better understand creation.
P. van Veldhuijsen (pp. 20-38) provides a generally sound interpretation when he compares the doctrines of Bonaventure and Thomas on the possibility of an eternally created world. He is to be commended for seeing that the principal dispute between Bonaventure and Thomas is over the problem of whether something created out of nothing could also have existed eternally in the past, and that the dispute is not, as many scholars have thought, over the question of whether a past eternal temporal duration is possible or not. Yet van Veldhuijsen
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is open to criticism in claiming that Bonaventure regards the creation, and hence the temporal beginning, of the world as demonstrable. When Bonaventure treats the question of creation out of nothing formally he makes no claims for philosophy on the doctrine. Rather, he says that philosophers have in fact failed to understand creation out of nothing and that reason does not disagree with the faith. Note: he does not claim that reason proves the doctrine of faith, but only that reason is not in disagreement with faith--and he shows this by refuting the arguments in opponendo which pretend to disagree with the faith.
M. F. J. M. Hoenen (pp. 39-68) shows how Thomas's doctrine on the eternity of the world was reported by William de la Mare in his Correctorium Fratris Thomae and also in five of the responses to William, which are known as the Correctoria corruptorii. Hoenen brings to light which of the works of Thomas were involved in the dispute between William and his responders, how Thomas was quoted or reported on both sides, and what particular problems were argued about. It is interesting to note, for example, that Thomas's Aristotelian commentaries and his De aeternitate mundi were almost completely absent from this debate. Hoenen thinks that the omission of these works is decisive in showing that these works must not have been available to the debaters, for otherwise they surely would have been used in the debate. As Hoenen is attempting to show how Thomas was known to the debaters, it is unfortunate that he does not give a general assessment of how well Thomas was interpreted by them, although he does give some instances of how Thomas was misrepresented.
In a second contribution, P. van Veldhuijsen (pp. 69-81) gives a report of Richard of Middleton's criticisms of Thomas Aquinas on the topic of this volume. We are promised that Richard has an "original criticism" of Thomas and that Richard "gives an interpretation of Thomas on eternal creation and conservation that is essential for a clear understanding of Thomas's position." In fact, however, the position of Richard contains little that has not already been found in Bonaventure. Like Bonaventure, Richard sees the fundamental problem in the Thomistic position to be that creation is regarded as a mutatio or a jacere such that the created thing, precisely in order to be created, must have being temporally after non-being. Since Richard cannot accept the central Thomistic point that creation out of nothing is indifferent to temporal beginning or eternal duration, it is hard to see how Richard's doctrine is essential for a clear understanding of Thomas.
Finally, J. M. M. H. Thijssen (pp. 82-100) examines the response of Henry of Harclay (d. 1317) to Thomas Aquinas on eternity and infinity. Thijssen introduces his study with the general claim that the analysis of the infinite is "in itself a mathematical subject" (p. 83).
Now it is true that Henry treats the problem as a mathematical prob-
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lem, but Thomas follows Aristotle in seeing the problem of the infinite primarily as a problem in natural philosophy and only secondarily as a problem in mathematics. The natural philosopher realizes that the infinite is a kind of potential reality, of which more can always be taken, but never something actually infinite. The mathematician, however, who has abstracted from signate and common matter, might be tempted, as Henry was, to think of mathematical infinities as actual infinities. Henry, thinking about sets of numbers, is involved in the business of comparing smaller and larger infinite sets. For Henry such sets are actually infinite. But Thomas, thinking of past time as a natural philosopher would, argues that the reality of past time is a reality of successive events. That is, the events of the past are now not actual, and so it makes no sense to speak of the past as an actual infinity. Henry, as it turns out, reaches roughly the same conclusion as Thomas--that the world could have existed eternally in the past--but for very different reasons. Henry argues that mathematical infinities can be traversed; Thomas argues that past time is no longer actual and hence can not be thought to be an actual infinity, even if the world were eternal. Thijssen's study, though helpful, does not bring out this basic difference of method between Thomas and Henry.
Thijssen concludes his study with a brief explanation that Thomas of Wilton (fi. 1314-1320) shows a dependence upon Henry in presenting his own arguments on the eternity of the world, and that William of Alnwick (d. 1333) is dependent upon both Henry and Thomas. This intellectual relationship has been shown in much greater detail by Richard Dales in his fine book, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, which has appeared too recently, unfortunately, to have been available to Thijssen.
STEVEN BALDNER
St. Thomas More College
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
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Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology. Edited by SCOTT MACDONALD. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Pp. 328. $43.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.
The quality of these (mostly) new essays and the modest price make Being and Goodness recommendable, almost as two anthologies in one. This ambitious collection has a split personality: careful interpretations of medieval texts (in part I) are yoked to intriguing contributions to contemporary discussions in metaethics and philosophical theology (in part II).
Four essays by Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzman, or both, appear to be the heart and inspiration of this anthology. Their contributions are about 40% of the length of the volume; and their collaborative essay, "Being and Goodness" (the only reprinted essay included), provides both the collection's title and its theme, which is to enrich contemporary debate in philosophical theology and virtue ethics by mining the resources of the ancient and medieval tradition that "the terms 'being' and 'goodness' are the same in reference, differing only in
sense" (p. 99).
Other contributors (Scott MacDonald, Jan A. Aertsen, Ralph McInerny, Mark D. Jordan, and Jorge J. E. Gracia analyze medieval texts in the tradition from Augustine to Suarez; William E. Mann and Thomas V. Morris contribute essays in philosophical theology) do not integrate historical analysis and original speculation. The editor frames this collection with a fine introductory survey of the being/goodness tradition from Plato through the Middle Ages, a considerable (13 page) bibliography, and a new translation of Boethius's De hebdomadibus, which was an influential text in the tradition.
There are two distinct ways of conceiving the necessary connection between being and goodness. The "participation approach," which sees being as metaphysically and causally dependent upon goodness, tends to a theological and relational account of goodness: creatures are good only because they are created by God, who is goodness in itself. The "nature approach," on the other hand, derives from Aristotle and tends to neither a theological nor a relational account of goodness. It identifies the good with the end, or telos of a being: an existing thing is good when it fully actualizes its intrinsic nature. The tension between these approaches can lead to confusion or to fruitful synthesis. For example, Albert the Great took up contradictory accounts of goodness in part because he failed to distinguish the two senses of "end" (as intention and as nature) characteristic of the participation and
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nature approaches, according to MacDonald's "The Metaphysics of Goodness and the Doctrine of the Transcendentals." On the other hand, Aquinas successfully combined approaches in his exploration of the tension between the views that 'good' is a common name applicable to all beings (Aristotelian) and that only God is 'good' (Platonic), argues Jan A. Aertsen in "Good as Transcendental and the Transcendence of the Good."
Stump and Kretzmann begin "Being and Goodness" with a lucid summary and defense of Aquinas' s metaethics as a worthy contender for "the metaethical foundation that recent virtue-centered morality has been criticized for lacking" (p. 98) . Aquinas's view that goodness is a property which supervenes upon a natural property, the actualization of the individual's "substantial form," follows the nature approach. Their derivation of Aquinas's normative ethical rules from this metaethics responds to critics who claim virtue-theoretical approaches do not illumine the role of deontological rules in morality. They explore implications for theories of religious ethics (the divine-command theory is avoided) and certain solutions to the problem of evil; these explorations are relatively undeveloped, but intriguing.
Stump builds on this collaborative essay in her "Aquinas on Faith and Goodness" when she argues that Aquinas's being/goodness metaethics explains why God would want humans to accept propositions about God on faith rather than knowledge, why having faith is meritorious, and why epistemological weighing of evidence plays only a minor part in adult religious conversions. Stump's conclusions are based on her thesis that when one assents to the proposition "God exists" on faith, one is "metaphysically justified" in this belief because one hungers for perfect goodness, perfect goodness entails perfect being, and perfect being must exist in the actual world. That is, the being/goodness identity logically ensures that what one hungers for (perfect goodness) exists. (One is not "epistemically justified," however, in believing one is justified in believing God exists.) She promises that similar arguments will show we are metaphysically justified in accepting the other "propositions of faith," Christian claims which are appropriately accepted on faith (p. 199) . Yet this promise is implausible. If Stump were correct, all propositions of faith would be necessarily true because the only reason one is metaphysically justified in believing God exists is that the object of one's hunger necessarily exists, which is to say "God exists" is necessarily true. Yet surely some religiously important propositions about the acts of God are contingently true.
Norman Kretzmann in two essays discusses whether God is significantly free in choosing (1) whether to create and (2) what to create. Kretzmann claims that God necessarily (though "willingly ") creates,
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God necessarily creates persons with free will, but God otherwise exercises free will in selecting which creatures to create. Kretzmann argues (contra Aquinas) that from Aquinas's being/goodness metaethics and the "Dionysian Principle" (" Goodness is by its very nature diffusive of itself and [thereby] of being ") it follows that God necessarily creates because creativity is an aspect of God's nature. Kretzmann suggests this diffusion of God's goodness in creation essentially involves "representation" of God's goodness to an audience, to an interpreter who responds to God in personal relationship. Yet these claims are not sufficient to establish Kretzmann' s necessitarian views. Perhaps, as Peter Geach has argued, God's self-diffusive love is sufficiently expressed and received by the divine persons within the Trinitarian Godhead, leaving God undetermined whether to create at all. Here Kretzmann shifts his ground: he grants these "divine persons" respond to God's love, but notes they are not capable "of rej ecting as well as of participating in God's love" (p. 246) . Kretzmann's supposition is that (created, but not divine?) personhood entails libertarian freedom.
To the Leibnizian conundrum that God must create the best possible world, Kretzmann defends Aquinas's solution that possible worlds are comparable in value, but no possible world could be better than every other possible world. William E. Hann, in "The Best of All Possible Worlds" defends an alternative solution: that possible worlds are grouped in clusters by similarity, and that they are comparable within those clusters, but between the clusters possible worlds are incommensurable. Mann defends this hypothesis with the proposal that some life-plans are neither better, worse, nor equal to others. Possible worlds go into incommensurable clusters because agents can choose from such alternative life-plans. Both Kretzmann and Mann make important contributions to the possible worlds debate.
The being/goodness tradition is congenial to "perfect being theology" which derives the actual existence and other properties of God from a central assumption that God is the greatest possible being. In "Metaphysical Dependence, Independence, and Perfection" Thomas
V. Morris derives that central assumption of perfect-being theology from metaphysical claims which are attractive to any traditional theist, including theists who espouse a creation-theology (deriving the actual existence and other properties of God from the idea that God is the creator of everything which does or might exist) . He also argues (contra Mann) that perfect-being theology does not imply, by way of considerations of divine independence, the doctrine of divine simplicity (including spatial--, temporal--, or property-simplicity) .
Being and Goodness rewards with stimulating speculation in virtue-theoretic metaethics and philosophical theology, and with responses to
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a number of common criticisms of the being/goodness tradition. Except by Stump's and Kretzmann's essays, I am not encouraged to explore the medieval resources in the tradition, but I expect more encouragement will be forthcoming from the authors in this anthology.
ROBERT B. KRUSCHWITZ
Georgetown College
Georgetown, Kentucky
Being and Knowing: Reflections of a Thomist. By FREDERICK D. WILHELMSEN. Albany, N.Y.: Preserving Christian Publications, 1991. Pp. 282. $25.00 (cloth); $12.00 (paper) .
In this book Dr. Frederick D. Wilhelmsen has gathered many opuscula, most of them articles previously published in journals such as The Thomist. They are not, however, a random assortment of short works, herded together under a somewhat arbitrary rubric, as such collections are notoriously apt to be. They all fit happily under the heading, "Being and Knowing," and are arranged in an order that shows careful thought: the first chapter deals with the character of metaphysics, following chapters deal with the metaphysics of esse, then further chapters carry the principles already enunciated into various special fields (such as computers, the modern self, and communication), with two final chapters that take the reader into the borderland of philosophy and faith.
Wilhelmsen is well known as a vigorous exponent of what is called "existential Thomism." Although acknowledging the influence of Etienne Gilson, Wilhelmsen develops his thought in a way that is his own; he does not deserve to be hailed or dismissed on the basis of a handy tag. Certainly, for him, the doctrine of Thomas on esse is at the center, and radiates its light upon the whole of philosophy (not to say theology) . But not only does Wilhelmsen expound this doctrine with special clarity and trenchancy; he shows its illuminative power in many fields of special contemporary interest, not least in radical critique of modernity--of the Cartesian ego and of the demiurgic attitude towards the world.
Polemic purposes, both with respect to the whole modern démarche in philosophy and with respect to Thomisms of other stripes, are often present, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. He obviously stands in opposition to the deep assumptions underlying the Cartesian revolution and exercising sway over later thought. But he also finds much to
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fault in would-be Thomists who do not sufficiently subordinate essentia to esse or who adopt a transcendental approach. Chapters VIII and IX exemplify the former confrontation with regard to the modern ego and its self-consciousness. Chapter IV casts a disapproving eye upon the primacy of the question as this is upheld by some eminent transcendental Thomists.
An especially fine piece of work, in this reviewer's opinion, is Wilhelmsen's study in Chapter VI of the relation of creation. The author thinks along with St. Thomas in developing the paradox of two-way priority as between the creature as substance and its relation to the God who creates it. The result is a combination of sharpness in distinguishing and depth in penetrating the ingredients of the solution:
esse, divine and creaturely; esse and essentia; substance and accident; relation, real and mental--a masterly exposition of notions at the core of Thomistic metaphysics.
I would mention also, particularly for its provocative contrasting of the iconic with the ironic, Chapter X, "The Philosophy of Communication." Wilhelmsen shows that he is wide awake to the current cultural scene and familiar with those who represent it and shape it. Here and elsewhere we find the "creativity" which he sees, in Chapter One, as belonging to metaphysics.
Being and Knowing is a work that belongs on the shelves of all persons interested in Thomas and Thomism, in metaphysics, and in the philosophic ailments of our time and their cure. (One should also, at least parenthetically, congratulate the publishers, Preserving Christian Publications, for their effort to make more accessible such studies as those assembled in this volume. And perhaps one could be forgiven if one noted that such publications as this provide a much healthier stimulation than the pills which share the publisher's acronym.)
NORMAN FENTON, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.
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Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later. By JANET SMITH. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. xvi + 425.
This is an ambitious and important study. I will first offer an overview of the volume to indicate its scope and note some of its major features. I will then respond briefly to some of the maj or criticisms Smith makes of the argument against contraception advanced by Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and myself.
The work contains 8 chapters and 4 appendices. Chapters 3 and 4, as Smith says, "provide an analysis of Humanae Vitae itself and thus constitute the heart of the book" (p. xi) . Since this is so I will first summarize briefly Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 and then center attention on the two central chapters and the four appendices.
Chapters 1 and 2 provide the context for Humanae Vitae. The first chapter is devoted largely to an account of the so-called "Minority" and "Majority" documents of the Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate, while the second seeks to summarize Catholic teaching on Christian marriage prior to the encyclical. This summary draws principally from Pius XI's Casti Connubii and from nn. 47-52 of Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes. Smith takes up in some detail the issue of the "primacy" of procreation, concluding that Gaudium et Spes " seems to sidestep" this issue which, in her judgment, is irrelevant to the question of contraception. She thinks that this central document of Vatican II sent "mixed signals" on the question of contraception, although she believes that several passages "can very plausibly be read to support the position that contraception is portrayed as a violation not only of the procreative good of marriage but also of the values of conjugal love" (p. 66) .
Chapter 5 deals with a wide range of theological issues: the biblical foundations for the teaching found in Humanae Vitae, the relevance of the concept of munus for this teaching, the possibility of acting "in good conscience in a way contrary to its teaching, and the infallibility of the teaching. Of special value is the extended discussion of the concept expressed by the Latin term munus. Smith examines the rich meaning of this term in several magisterial documents, including Gaudium et Spes as well as Humanae Vitae. While a munus implies duties, it is essentially a noble, honor-bringing "gift" or "reward," signifying a vocation and sublime honor. Paul VI, in developing the integral vision of marriage in his encyclical, uses this concept to show that God, in giving to spouses the munus of handing on new life, has conferred on them the honor of sharing with him in the work of bring-
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ing new life into the world. Smith shows beautifully how the rich theological meaning of this term helps "illuminate and enrich" the teaching of the encyclical.
Chapters 6 and 7 investigate the arguments presented by dissenting theologians after Humanae Vitae to justify their repudiation of its teaching. In Chapter 6 Smith considers the views of Charles Curran and Bernard Haering, while in Chapter 7 she examines the proportionalist approach to moral issues developed by Joseph Fuchs, Richard McCormick and others. She provides intelligent criticism both of Curran and Haering and of proportionalist thought, focusing on the repudiation of specific moral absolutes.
In Chapter 8 Smith provides a very helpful summary of Pope John Paul II's understanding of the human person, human sexuality and marriage. In particular, she takes up his notion that in marriage and in the act proper to it man and woman make a "gift" of themselves to one another. Simultaneously to choose to give themselves to each other in the marital act and to contracept is then seen to involve an inner contradiction, a falsification of the "language of the body" (pp. 230-258) . Smith also takes up some of the major criticisms levelled against John Paul II's thought, in particular Lisa Sowle Cahill's, which charges him with an overromantic view of love and a failure to recognize that the personalist values he champions necessarily entail the conclusion that contraception is required if a woman is to be considered a person fully equal to a man (pp. 258-259) . Smith offers a trenchant rebuttal to Cahill's claims.
Chapters 3 and 4, as noted earlier, "constitute the heart of the book." Chapter 3 seeks to uncover the concept of natural law found in the encyclical and to show how Paul VI deals with arguments advanced to justify contraception, especially the argument based on the "totality" of marriage and of conjugal acts within marriage. Smith believes that the understanding of natural law at the heart of the encyclical is that of St. Thomas, to whose teaching Paul VI refers in a key footnote in n. 10 of his letter. According to Smith it is crucially important to recognize that "claims that organs have natural functions that deserve to be respected and that respecting these functions amounts to respecting an order established by God are central to the teaching of Humanae Vitae" (p. 75).
She centers attention on a key passage in n. 11 of the encyclical, where Paul VI says that according to the Church's understanding of natural law "it is necessary that each conjugal act [matrimonii usus] remain ordained in itself [per se destinatus] to the procreating of human life" (p. 78) . After analyzing this passage and comparing her translation of the Latin text with other translations, many made from the Italian, she concludes that it means that "couples must not tamper
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with the natural ordination of their marital acts" (p. 82) . She thinks that it "is going too far to say that it is intrinsically wrong to tamper with these organs simply because such tampering is a violation of their nature. Thus, an argument from natural ordination of organs is not the whole of the argument against contraception. And still again, what needs to be stressed is that it is not just the purpose or the nature of the generative organs that is violated through contraception; rather, it is the purpose of the conjugal act that is violated" (pp. 84-85) .
Smith, in short, considers inadequate the so-called "physiological" or "perverted faculty" argument, although she thinks that this "is part of any [valid] argument that contraception is intrinsically wrong" (p. 88) . She believes that contraception is morally wrong because it violates the purpose of the conjugal act, not of sexual organs as such, and holds that this is the position found in Humanae Vitae.
In Chapter 4 Smith sets forth four major arguments against contraception advanced by authors who defend the teaching of Humanae Vitae. In the previous chapter she had considered two alleged arguments and had found them wanting. One is the "physiological" argument to which reference has already been made (called "Version B" by Smith) . The other is the argument that contraception is immoral because it is artificial (" Version A"), an argument which, as she rightly notes, is not seriously proposed by anyone (pp. 86-87) .
The four arguments discussed in Chapter 4 are the following: (1) "Version C," or the "intrinsic worth of human life" argument, (2) "Version D," or the "special act of creation" argument, (3) "Version E," or the "contraception is contralife" argument, and (4) "Version F," or the "violation of the unitive meaning of the conjugal act" argument. Version C holds that contraception is immoral because it impedes the procreative power of actions ordained by their nature to the generation of human life. Its claim is that "human life is such a great good that not only should life itself be respected but so too should the actions that lead to the coming to be of human life" (p. 101) . According to this argument contraception is unnatural and immoral "because it does not acknowledge the great good that life is to Man" (pp. 101-102) . Among the proponents of this argument is Carlo Caffarra.
"Version D" holds that contraception is immoral because it "impedes the procreative power of actions that are ordained by their nature to assist God in performing His creative act, which brings forth a new human life" (p. 103) . This argument is rooted in n. 13 of Humanae Vitae, where Pope Paul VI states that anyone using God's gift of conjugal love and jeopardizing, even if partially, its significance and purpose, is defying the plan and holy will of God (p. 102) . This is another argument advanced by Caffarra.
"Version E" is the "contraception is contralife" argument advanced
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by Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and myself. Smith believes that this argument marks a radical departure from the natural law tradition insofar as it does not regard the natural orientation of organs and acts as morally determinative. Rather it holds that contraception is immoral because it entails a contralife will and that it is always immoral to have a contralife will (pp. 105-106) . Smith devotes Appendix IV to an extended critique of this argument.
"Version F," the "violation of the unitive meaning of the conjugal act" argument, holds that contraception is immoral because it falsifies the marital act. Contraception is, in essence, a lie (pp. 107-117) . A leading proponent of this argument is Pope John Paul II (whose thought, as we have seen, is examined at length in Chapter 8); others include Cormac Burke, Paul Quay, Mary Joyce, and John Kippley.
Smith believes that Versions C, D, and F are sound arguments and are rooted in the thought of Humanae Vitae. She thinks that Version E is "essentially true but inadequate" (p. 99) and marks a departure from "traditional natural law theory" (p. 105) .
Four Appendices are included. The first provides a fresh translation of Humanae Vitae from the Latin. The second is a "commentary" on the encyclical, whose "primary purpose" is to "provide a brief summary of the material [chiefly from previous magisterial documents] cited in the footnotes of Humanae Vitae" (p. 296) . In my opinion this second appendix provides a much needed service for readers of the encyclical. Appendix III, quite brief, is concerned with the modi that Pope Paul VI had inserted into the text of Gaudium et Spes.
Appendix IV is a "critique of the work of Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William E. May" (p. 340) . The first part of this appendix (pp. 341-352) deals with Grisez's 1964 volume Contraception and the Natural Law, while the second part (pp. 352-370) takes up these authors' 1988 essay, "'Every Marital Act Ought to Be Open to New Life': Toward a Clearer Understanding" (originally published in The Thomist 52 [1988] 365-426) . Smith believes that these authors (since I am among them I will henceforth use the first person plural to refer to the authors and their work) do not "employ the traditional arguments of the Church" (p. 353) . Moreover, she believes, we do not properly understand what contraception is. According to us it is not a sexual act, whereas Smith believes that it "is a perverted sexual act, i.e., a sexual act deprived of its proper telos" (p. 361) . But her maj or objection to our approach is that it shifts attention from the objective act of contraception to the subjective intentions of the agents. According to Smith, "Thomistic tradition holds that the external act can be evil, without reference to the will, insofar as it violates right reason" (p. 356) . For Aquinas and the Catholic tradition, she argues, the will
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becomes bad because it wills an act bad in itself, whereas for us the act becomes bad because it is chosen with a bad will (pp. 357-358) .
I will begin here by noting an anomaly in Smith's presentation of "Version C," the "intrinsic worth of human life" argument, in order to show that the "contraception is contralife" argument we develop is far from being, as Smith thinks, a departure from the Catholic tradition, but is rather rooted in that tradition. I will then reply to some of her major criticisms of our version of this argument.
According to Smith, "Version C" holds that contraception is immoral because it impedes the procreative power of actions that are ordained by their nature to the generation of human life (p. 101). Carlo Caffarra is identified as a proponent of this argument (and he is), and in n. 6, on p. 386, Smith cites an illuminating passage from Caffarra which, she thinks, illustrates Version C. It will help to cite the passage here:
in the corpus of law which was in force until 1917, the church used a
very strong expression with regard to whoever--married or not--had recourse to contraception: "tam quam homicida habeatur" [let him be considered one guilty of homicide] . The equivalence, or better, the analogy that canon law established for centuries between homicide and contraception, no longer surprises us if we do not look exclusively at the behaviour in the two cases, but rather at the intention or movement of the will that has recourse to contraception. Ultimately, in fact, the decision is rationalized and motivated by the judgment: "it is not good that a new human person should exist" . . . The anti-love inherent in contraception is identically antilife, since there is always implicit in it the refusal of the goodness of being, the refusal to exclaim: "How beautiful, how good it is that you should exist" (Carlo Caffarra, "Humanae Vitae: Venti Anni Dopo," in Humanae Vitae: 20 Anni Dopo [Milan: Edizioni Ares, 1988], pp. 183-195, at 192; emphasis added).
I cite this text, emphasizing portions, to show that the argument Caffarra gives in this passage is not Smith's Version C, insofar as here he says nothing about impeding the procreative power of actions ordained by their nature to new life, which, according to Smith, is the characteristic feature of Version C. Rather, Caffarra centers attention on the intention or movement of the will of contraceptors. Theirs is a contralife intention. Thus, it seems to me, Caffarra's argument in this passage illustrates what Smith calls "Version E," the "contraception is contralife" argument. What is anomalous about the matter is that Smith praises Version C as a sound argument--and cites this passage to illustrate it--but rej ects Version E as "inadequate" and a marked departure from the Catholic tradition. Yet Caffarra's argument in this passage clearly locates the immorality of contraception in the contralife will of those who contracept.
Smith's claim that this argument departs from the tradition is simply
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erroneous. The development we give to this argument is new, but ours is an effort to provide a fresh formulation of a major reason why the Catholic tradition has always rej ected contraception. We begin our version by reminding readers of the very canon to which Caffarra refers, the Si aliquis, which summarized the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and was included in the Church's universal law from the thirteenth century to 1917.
Moreover, the Roman Catechism, popularly known as the Catechism of the Council oj Trent, in treating the sacrament of matrimony, incorporated this tradition, saying: " Fit ut illorum sit scelus gravissimum qui, Matrimonio iuncti, medicamentis vel conceptum impediunt, vel partum abigunt, haec enim homicidarum impia conspiratio existimanda est" (Part II, ch. 7, n. 13) . Ironically, Smith, in her commentary on Humanae Vitae, n. 12, notes that Paul VI refers to this passage, and she cites it in the translation given by Robert Bradley, S.J., and Eugene Kevane. Yet she fails to note its significance for the "contraception is contralife" argument, which she insists departs from the Catholic tradition.
Smith believes that we err by shifting attention from the objective act of contraception to the subjective intention of the agents . According to her, we fail to recognize that the external act of contraception is evil because it violates right reason (cf. p. 356), not because the intent with which it is done is evil. Our approach, in other words, is subjectivistic.
Smith, unfortunately, has seriously misconstrued our argument. After introducing the subject, our first concern was to identify what the human act of contraception is, insofar as moral judgment bears upon human acts, and we identified it as an act chosen precisely to impede the beginning of new human life, i.e., as an act embodying a contralife choice or will (see "'Every Marital Act . . ," 369-371). Only after identifying what contraception is did we then state our thesis, namely, "that the contralife will that contraception involves also is morally evil" (ibid., 374), and we then devoted a major part of our article to demonstrating at length that an act embodying a contralife will must always be judged morally evil precisely because that kind of human act cannot conform to reason, i.e., to precepts of natural law (ibid., 374-384) . Smith simply passes over this critically important section of our essay. [A similar misconstrual of our argument has been made by Robert Connor in two essays, both entitled "Contraception and the Contralife Will," in Linacre Quarterly 57.4 (Nov. 1990) 78-93 and Gregorianum 72/4 (1991) 705-724.]
In the section of our essay in which we identify the act of contraception we center attention on the intention of those who contracept, in particular the choice that they make, precisely because contraception
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is a human act, and as such voluntary and willed. As St. Thomas repeatedly states, "moral acts receive their species from what is intended, not from what is outside the scope of one's intention" (" morales autem actus recipiunt speciem secundum id quod intenditur, non autem ab eo quod est praeter intentionem ": Sum ma Theologiae, 2-2, 64, 7; cf. 2-2, 39, 1) . We focus on the inner act of electio or choice insofar as the specifying object of this inner act of choice is the human act in question, namely, the act of contraception: "electio semper est humanorum actuum" (Summa Theologiae, 1-2, 13, 4) . In short, acts are morally significant and are morally assessed in terms of their kind or intrinsic character just insofar as they are willed and are expressions of the agent's free, self-determining choice. And, we argue, in contracepting one's choice is precisely to impede the beginning of a new life. One's choice is thus contralife.
Smith calls attention to an example we use to show that contraception is not a sexual act, namely, that of a dictator who has a fertility-reducing agent added to the water supply. We hold that the dictator is the one who contracepts, not the people who drink the water and subsequently engage in intercourse, insofar as the object of the dictator's free, self-determining choice is precisely to impede the beginning of new human life. This is what he does. Smith says that the dictator is not a contraceptor, although, paradoxically, she thinks him guilty of the sin of contraception (even though he does not contracept!), whereas the people who drink the water and then engage in intercourse are contraceptors but guiltlessly so. But surely the dictator is doing something that meets Pope Paul VI's definition of contraception in n. 14 of Humanae Vitae: he is doing something prior to intercourse, intending what he does as a means of impeding procreation.
Smith's work is a worthwhile and helpful study, one I will surely use in a course devoted to the philosophical and theological foundations of the encyclical and its teaching. Her translation from the Latin and her commentary, in which she painstakingly examines the references given in the footnotes of Humanae Vitae, are especially valuable. In addition, her rich analysis of the concept of munus, so central to the thought of the encyclical, and her discussion of many other matters, in particular the thought of Pope John Paul II, are greatly helpful to anyone interested in the truth. Her book needs to be read and studied carefully and merits a wide audience. I hope that in future editions she omits Appendix IV and recognizes that the argument against contraception because of its contralife character is rooted in the Catholic tradition and is far from being a novelty.
WILLIAM E. MAY
Pontifical John Paul 11 Institute
Washington, D. C.