Obedience, Conscience, and Propria Voluntas in St. Thomas

Reviewed by: Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski Raymond Hain Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics by J. Budziszewski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), xxvii + 295 pp. J. Budziszewski's Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics follows his similarly structured 2014 Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law. But while the earlier commentary, over 500 pages long, works straight through all of questions 90–97 of the prima secundae and is supplemented by an additional 250-page online commentary, this commentary is shorter, highly selective, and lacks a supplemental online commentary. And since the first half considers selected articles on the virtues in general, while the second half considers selected articles on justice, the Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics itself feels like a supplement to the earlier law commentary. After describing its overall content and structure, I will comment on how useful it might be for its intended audience: "scholars," "students" and "even . . . serious general readers" (xxi). The Commentary on Thomas Aquinas's Virtue Ethics includes the text of, and commentary on, eighteen articles from the Summa theologiae. Ten articles focus on the virtues in general: I-II, q. 55, a. 4 (Whether virtue is suitably defined?) I-II, q. 58, a. 4 (Whether there can be moral without intellectual virtue?) I-II, q. 58, a. 5 (Whether there can be intellectual without moral virtue?) [End Page 583] I-II, q. 61, a. 2 (Whether there are four cardinal virtues?) I-II, q. 61, a. 3 (Whether any other virtues should be called principal rather than these?) I-II, q. 62, a. 1 (Whether there are any theological virtues?) I-II, q. 63, a. 1 (Whether virtue is in us by nature?) I-II, q. 63, a. 2 (Whether any virtue is caused in us by habituation?) I-II, q. 65, a. 1 (Whether the moral virtues are connected with one another) I-II, q. 84, a. 4 (Whether the seven capital vices are suitably reckoned?) And the remaining eight articles focus on the virtue of justice: II-II, q. 30, a. 3 (Whether mercy is a virtue) II-II, q. 58, a. 1 (Whether justice is i described as being the perpetual and constant will to render to each one his right?) II-II, q. 60, a. 1 (Whether judgment is an act of justice?) II-II, q. 60, a. 2 (Whether it is lawful to judge?) II-II, q. 60, a. 5 (Whether we should always judge according to the written law?) II-II, q. 60, a. 6 (Whether judgment is rendered perverse by being usurped?) II-II, q. 80, a. 1 (Whether the virtues annexed to justice are suitably enumerated?) II-II, q. 122, a. 1 (Whether the precepts of the Decalogue are precepts of justice?) The text of each article is presented twice—once in the 1920 Blackfriars translation (now in the public domain and widely available) and once in a paraphrase by Budziszewski. Line-by-line commentary follows each portion of the text and is keyed to the sentences in the Blackfriars translation. Besides the text of the commentary itself, an eleven-page general introduction and an index are included as supporting material. Budziszewski is most interested in understanding the plain meaning of the text, and in working through Aquinas's sources, and there are almost no comments that engage contemporary scholars or critics of Aquinas. As he says, "Some may think I do not spend enough time quarreling with critics of St. Thomas. My conviction is that before we enter these quarrels, we had better make sure we understand him. If we do understand him, many of the criticisms fall away like dead leaves" (xxii). Serious general readers will find this commentary very helpful, especially [End Page 584] if they are coming to Aquinas for the first time. Consider this representative passage from ST I-II, q. 55, a. 4 that discusses the "matter" of virtues and Budziszewski's paraphrase (10–11): Text: [5] Now virtue has no matter "out of which" it is formed, as neither has any other accident; but it has matter "about which" it is concerned, and matter "in which...

Exalting the Meek Virtue of Humility in Aquinas

Reviewed by: The Primacy of God. The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology by R. Jared Staudt Robin Ward R. Jared Staudt The Primacy of God. The Virtue of Religion in Catholic Theology Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022 424 pages. Hardback. $49.95. St. Thomas Aquinas gives a characteristically succinct and apposite account of the virtue of religion in the Summa Theologiae, that nevertheless conceals an intriguing hinterland which has much potential for creative theological reflection. The classic Thomist definition of religion as a virtue is to consider it as a part of the virtue of justice, in that it pertains to the service of cult that humankind owes to God. However, St. Thomas readily admits that religion is a "potential" rather than an integral aspect of the cardinal virtue of justice, and he considers (while ultimately rejecting) the argument that it is in fact more easily understood as acting as if it were a theological virtue, orchestrating faith, hope and charity towards their end in God. Although Thomists of the stricter observance have characteristically insisted on maintaining Thomas' refusal to admit religion to the theological virtues, perhaps most economically summed up in Dom Odon Lottin's little work L'Ame du culte: La vertu de religion d'après S. Thomas d'Aquin, there has nevertheless been a willingness [End Page 128] to treat the virtue of religion in the taxonomy of the Christian life as something rather more than just the payment of a debt due. Without formally rejecting St. Thomas' position, we see for example in the great moral compendium of the Salmanticenses a distinctive treatment of religion as a precept of the first commandment of the decalogue, and in Tanqueray's innovative Synopsis Theologiae Moralis et Pastoralis of 1912 (incidentally one of the earliest seminary manuals to be organised around the virtues rather than the commandments) religion is treated separately between the theological and the cardinal virtues, indicating its distinctive role. More recently, even the idea that religion—the duty of worship owed by humankind to God—is a virtuous activity has come under intense critical scrutiny from opposing theological perspectives. First, Barthian Reformed theologians see religion as fundamentally prone to the idolatrous, and always in need of the redemptive light of revelation, within which thus purged it has a quiet and insignificant role to play as a thankful expression of what has been received purely by divine grace. Second, Catholic theologians most influenced by Karl Rahner place love of neighbour as the primary duty of the moral life, to which the obligations of religious cult are to be subordinated. It is therefore timely and important that Jared Staudt has chosen to repristinate the classic teaching about the primacy of religion in the moral life, the consequences of which are far reaching and of great importance for the work of liturgical formation, so that the people of God might come to an authentic participatio actuosa in the Christian cult. Staudt begins by dealing with justice in relation to God and does so with a thorough and satisfying account of how St. Thomas' understanding of justice as fundamentally orientated towards God remains robust and convincing in contradistinction to the Kantian exaltation of justice as fundamentally autonomous. In doing so, Staudt is careful to place the Thomist understanding of the debt of justice paid by religion in the context of salvation history, and in particular the unfolding of the obligation of religious cult through the apprehension of the natural law, the law of the Old Covenant and the law of Christ. This is no mere formalism: Staudt is clear that "True and perfect worship must stem from a filial union of the soul [End Page 129] with God by knowledge and love, creating a bond of friendship with him" (136). In the second section of the book, Staudt attends to the fundamental importance of the worship of Christ—Christ who as head of the Church offers perfect worship to his Father. He relates this oblation to the trinitarian character of Christian worship, and then applies this to the context of liturgical prayer, comparing the texts of the Roman Rite with those of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom...

The Thomist 73 (2009): 29-52 INFUSED VIRTUE AND THE EFFECTS OF ACQUIRED VICE: A TEST CASE FOR THE THOMISTIC THEORY OF INFUSED CARDINAL VIRTUES MICHAELS. SHERWIN, 0.P. University ofFribourg Fribourg, Switzerland SERVAIS PINCKAERS REPEATEDLY affirmed the importance of the infused cardinal virtues for the moral life.1 For Pinckaers, what is at stake in this doctrine is the difference that grace makes in the life of virtue. Grace transforms the source and character of moral excellence. "The first source of moral excellence is no longer located in the human person, but in God through Christ."2 In this reorientation, the most important moral virtues "are not 'acquired' by unaided human effort, but implanted in the human person by the Holy Spirit."3 Nevertheless, as dispositions residing in the powers of the human soul, the infused moral virtues are intimately the excellences of the agent himself. As such, they become the traits of character by means of which the Spirit teaches us the ways of holiness. "Thus, in the context of a gradual education guided by the light of the Gospel, an active cooperation between God and 1 Servais Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View (South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2001), 71-72; The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 180; "The Sources of the Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas," in The Ethics ofAquinas, ed. StephenJ. Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 23; "The Place ofPhilosophy in Moral Theology," in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, edited by John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 6768 . 2 Pinckaers, Morality: The Catholic View, 71. 3 Ibid. 29 30 MICHAEL S. SHERWIN, O.P. the human person can develop."4 Pinckaers, therefore, did not see Aquinas's doctrine on the infused moral virtues as a Scholastic vestige, but as something rooted in the scriptural account of moral development. "Some such theory seems necessary if we are to explain what the Scriptures teach concerning the way to live as followers of Christ."5 A cursory analysis of the way New Testament authors employ the Greek terms for the cardinal virtues seems to support their status as infused by God. Ephesians, for example, describes God as having lavished upon us grace that grants us "all wisdom and prudence [phronesis]" (Eph 1:8), while 2 Timothy (1:7) tells us that "God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power, love and temperance [sophrosyne]," where "power" (dynamis) is one of the New Testament equivalents for the pagan Greek word for courage.6 It is the strength (kratos) that comes from God and emboldens us to resist the devil (Eph 6:10). Lastly, although the New Testament authors radically reinterpret the meaning of justice (dikaiosyne), they affirm that Christ is our justice (1 Cor 1:30) and that in him we become the justice of God (2 Cor 5:21). Prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, therefore, are all described in the New Testament as given to us by God. In this the New Testament authors seem to be following an Old Testament theme that portrays God, through the mysterious action of his wisdom, as teaching the cardinal virtues: "if one loves justice, the fruits of [wisdom's] works are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice and courage, and nothing in life is more useful for humans than these" (Wis 8:7). These passages, however, while suggestive, are not of themselves probative. Indeed, many reject the doctrine of infused 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., 72. 6 One explanation for the virtual absence of the classical Greek term for courage (andreia) in the New Testament is that since its etymological root is the Greek word for man (aner, andros) the New Testament authors wanted to avoid the connotations of self-sufficiency that the term normally conveys. Instead, as Ceslas Spicq notes in his classic study of New Testament morality (Theologie morale du Nouveau Testament [Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1965), 354.)), when offering their theology of courage the New Testament authors appeal to a cluster of...

St. Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Temperance and Aristotle Leo Elders S.V.D. For some decades now, one can witness a renewed interest in the non-Aristotelian sources of the thought of St. Thomas, and in particular in his debt to the Fathers of the Church and neo-Platonist sources.1 Fully acknowledging the importance of these studies and St. Thomas's real indebtedness to these sources, the editors of a recent volume underscore—and rightfully so—that, "for this reason, Aquinas's theological use of Aristotle requires renewed attention, lest the study of Aquinas's theology become one-sided."2 It is in this same spirit that I will survey and analyze, after a brief introduction into temperance in the Greco-Roman world, the use of Aristotle in St. Thomas's treatise on temperance in the secunda secundae of his Summa theologiae [ST]. What a close reading of these questions and the use of Aristotle's arguments therein, and in particular from his Nicomachean Ethics [EN], will show, I hope, is the extent to which Aristotle is Aquinas's principal philosophical interlocutor. [End Page 465] Temperance in Ancient Greece and Rome In ancient Greece, the words sōphrōn (σώφρων) and sōphrosynē (σωφροσύνη) signified reservation and restraint in one's conduct and knowing one's place. To behave oneself in a temperate way is the opposite of being passionate.3 In particular, the young should be trained to adopt this attitude of self-restraint. In the Charmides of Plato, sōphrosynē is the beginning of spiritual health, and in the Republic, Plato formulates his doctrine of the four cardinal virtues as corresponding respectively to the mind and the three appetitive parts of the soul4. Aristotle treats temperance extensively in EN 3.10 as a virtue that has its seat in the irrational part of the soul and makes us attain the mean with regard to bodily pleasures. However, he excludes from this need of restraining our desires the delight we find in objects of vision and of hearing, and part also of the delight in odor. Natural appetites may go wrong in the direction of excess, which is a sort of self-indulgence. Here, the virtue of temperance should intervene. A temperate person moderates his desires. Temperance is a disposition of the appetitive part of the soul that makes it obey reason. If one possesses this virtue, his desires will be moderate and there will be no need to repress them. Reaching "the mean" is to desire in the right degree, the right time, the right manner, and so on.5 Aristotle endorses the view that some pleasures are good while others are bad.6 He confirms, therefore, the commonsense view of moderation and a generally accepted distinction between the different kinds of pleasure. The position of Epicurus on pleasure must be understood as a recommendation to seek moderate pleasures of taste, sex, vision, and hearing. He wrote about himself the following words: "I know not how to conceive the good, apart from these pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form."7 But, as J. M. Rist observes, Epicurus writes elsewhere that he [End Page 466] is not talking so much about the sensual pleasures as about freedom from bodily pain and mental affliction: sober reasoning brings us the happy life.8 Epicureanism became a missionary doctrine that spread through the Roman Empire in spite of the strong opposition it met from the Academy, the Peripatetics, and Stoicism, in particular from Chrysippus.9 The beginning of its decline was brought about by its denial of afterlife.10 As to the ethical doctrine of the Stoa, the four main moral virtues were strongly confirmed by Chrysippus: he considered them expressions of one and the same reason11 that unfolds itself into four directions, the four cardinal virtues. With regard to choosing desirable things, this central reason and activity of the hêgemonikon12 becomes sōphrosynē, self-control, which brings all our movements and impulses into conformity with reason. It is the expression of the harmony of the soul. For the Stoics, the connection between the virtues is so strong...

The Christological Character of the Beatific Vision: Hans Boersma’s Seeing God1 Michael Root WE LIVE TODAY in a universe vastly larger than that imagined by our ancient and medieval forebears in its spatial and temporal reach, but oddly shrunken in its metaphysical complexity. Not only have angels and incorruptible heavenly bodies disappeared from the functional ontology of Western society, but also more mundane realities have often ceased to play more than an ornamental role in secular thought: essences, transcendental truths, ends (whether natural or supernatural). For many, what you see is what you get, and all you will ever get. Such views inevitably creep into Christian attitudes. Our horizon narrows; our faith too often focuses on our present life. That the nature and purpose of our present life might be determined by an end, a goal or telos, beyond the limits of this life becomes a thought that crosses the mind now and then, but too often fails to take root. The faith becomes constrained within Charles Taylor’s “immanent frame.”2 Heaven, resurrection, eternal union with God and the saints are not denied, but they fade from significance. [End Page 127] Hans Boersma will have none of this in Seeing God. The loss of a sense of a telos inherent within things is a fundamental impoverishment of modern thought (20–22). The Christian life, in particular, is determined by the end set before us; our “identity lies in the future; we are what we become” (20). Boersma is not afraid to name that end; it is “seeing God,” the beatific vision. On the first page of the book, he asks why we should believe that “seeing God is the purpose of our life” (1), and he then lays out an argument affirming that belief. This affirmation must be applauded, even if some aspects of his conclusions are problematic.3 I The structure of the book is straightforward. An extended Introduction and opening chapter lay out why the beatific vision is important, tendencies in modern culture and theology that have undercut the significance of the beatific vision, and the background metaphysical commitments that Boersma believes are needed for a vigorous reassertion of the vision’s centrality. The bulk of the book is a consideration of, as the subtitle promises, “the beatific vision in Christian tradition,” beginning with Plotinus and running chronologically as far as recent Dutch Reformed theologians, with major attention given along the way to Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Gregory Palamas, Dante, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. The chapter on Edwards and the concluding chapter of the book lay out Boersma’s own proposal for understanding the vision. The historical survey is selective rather than comprehensive. The most significant chapters focus on figures and texts apparently chosen and interpreted with an eye toward Boersma’s larger argument about the nature of the vision. Some gaps in coverage are inevitable. The third of the book’s four parts is entitled “Beatific Vision in Protestant Theology,” but the figures [End Page 128] discussed are all Reformed; Lutherans and other non-Reformed Protestants make no appearance. More significantly, the Western Scholastic tradition of debate and teaching on the beatific vision, conflicted between 1235 and 1335 and then largely unified on doctrinal questions with variation on theological details, is represented only by Thomas Aquinas. The other medieval and Catholic figures considered (Bonaventure, Dante, Nicholas of Cusa, John of the Cross) are each treated only in relation to devotional or poetic texts. The theological consideration of such texts is certainly praiseworthy, but neglect of the explicit theological discussion of the topic is not. This tilt away from the Scholastic discussion distorts Boersma’s presentation. The views of individual authors are misrepresented4 and Aquinas’s significance for the Western tradition is both underestimated (his view on basic questions is not so much his alone, but the consensus of Catholic theology, embodied in doctrine)5 and overestimated (his [End Page 129] detailed views are not the only option available in line with the basic commitments he shares with other Scholastics). Boersma’s historical discussions lay bare what he thinks are significant problems in the way the vision is often discussed...

Understanding Modernity and Postmodernity ethics is an interesting and debatable task among scholars to decipher in order for us to have a clearer view of the distinct boundary between the two paradigms. specifically, the ethical explanation between these two theories is a demanding task to accomplish through the lens of only one or two scholars or philosophers of politics and ethics like Aristotle, Plato, and Thomas Aquinas among others. Amazingly, MacIntyre has written the After Virtue to explain the diverging philosophies between postmodern and modern ethics in this present era of a postmodern world. This reflection highlights Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics on Virtue, and MacIntyre's (1981, 1984) philosophical views on modernity and postmodernity ethics and moral virtues; and explains the connections between these theories' moral ethics base on MacIntyre's work on After Virtue. In doing so, this reflection 1) defines Virtue, and explains Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics on moral and intellectual Virtue; and 2) explains MacIntyre's (1981/1984) viewpoint on the Nature of Moral Disagreement Today and The Claims of Emotivism: and 3) analyzes and generates commentary analyses on the three examples of contemporary moral debate framed in terms of characteristics and well-known rival moral arguments (p. 6). In addition, this paper, also, connects Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics on Virtue to MacIntyre's moral virtues in After Virtue.

Reviewed by: Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective by Jean Porter Jason Heron Justice as a Virtue: A Thomistic Perspective by Jean Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), xiii + 286 pp. Students of Thomistic moral philosophy will be grateful to Jean Porter for her contribution to conversations regarding justice's place in both the virtue ethics tradition and modern liberal thought. It is gross understatement to say that justice is complex. But the complexity is amplified in our context, where justice is imagined as fairness in the organization of institutions and distributed goods. Add to this the effort one must spend when we attempt to speak in Aristotelian terms of the mean or when we try to describe justice as a personal perfection of the will, and one discerns Porter's motivations in offering us a Thomistic account of justice. Porter exposits Aquinas's account of justice as a virtue perfecting the will and rightly ordering our social relations. The upshot of this analysis is a rich treatment of justice as both an external moral ideal and the relationship of that ideal to the perfection of the person's will. Porter's objective in chapter 1 is twofold. First, to demonstrate the coherence and relevance of Aquinas's account of the virtues. And second, to set up the problem animating her inquiry: the fact that justice as a virtue stands apart from the other cardinal virtues, especially as an ideal. We typically conceive of virtues as habitual dispositions, internal to the agent and judged praiseworthy or blameworthy according to a "rational mean" that, while potentially functioning normatively, is also internal to the agent and her circumstances. Thus, the courageous or temperate person acts courageously or temperately according to very specific—maybe even unrepeatable—contingencies that require prudence, practice, and knowledge of what other courageous or temperate persons have done in similar situations. But when it comes to justice, we judge agents and their acts according to the "real mean" of the right (jus), which is necessarily external to the agent, her circumstances, her knowledge, and so on. In other words, the tension between justice's relationship to a "real mean" and the other virtues' relationship to a "rational mean" seems to throw us into unhelpful binaries: law/virtue, rules/ideals, universals/particulars, and the right / the good. But as Porter demonstrates, the tension between these binaries lessens when we recognize that the tension is not between two different ways of evaluating action. Rather, the divisions characterizing these binaries "track the fundamental division between the virtues of the passions, which observe a rational mean only, and justice, which observes a real mean" (41). The concept of a rational mean guiding our evaluation of courage and temperance is relatively straightforward (as a concept!), and is squarely at home in a conventional account of virtue. But the concept of a [End Page 608] real mean guiding our evaluation of justice is decidedly more complex and requires careful attention to the faculty perfected by the virtue. Thus, chapter 2 exposits the Thomistic doctrine of the will as the causal principle of voluntary action. The hope here is that if we adequately represent the faculty of the will, then we will have some insight into the virtue that is supposed to perfect it, even if that virtue seems oddly out of place among the rest of the perfective habits. Aquinas's account provides valuable insight into the rational agent's participation in the appetitive orientation of all natures toward their perfection. But in humans, we see this appetite exercised in a distinct way that makes action susceptible to personal and social reflection and evaluation. Human actions are susceptible to such evaluation because they are voluntary—the result of complex processes of deliberation and choice among myriad goods proposed to the rational appetite. At this point, Porter considers whether the will is completely subject to the dictatorial intellect. Her treatment of the issue unsurprisingly defends the liberty of the will. But in attempting to make this case without recourse to theology, one may wonder about the significance of her contribution to the infinite regress inherent within the question. Porter then asks: why must the...

Humbert of Romans on the Papacy before Lyons II (1274): A Study in Comparison with Thomas Aquinas and Pope Gregory X’s Extractiones Andrew Hofer O.P. THOMAS AQUINAS’S understanding of papal power has been the subject of close theological scrutiny. It has often been compared to the thought of other Scholastics of the thirteenth century and to medieval canonists. It has been studied in the contexts of the mendicant controversies and efforts at reunion with the East, and evoked in questions about the papacy’s role in the faith, sacraments, and the unity of the Church. In studies of developments in ecclesiology, Thomas often draws attention for his articulations of the papal preservation from error when canonizing saints and the pope’s plenitudo potestatis. Special attention has been given to Thomas’s influence on subsequent theological and doctrinal formulations regarding the papacy’s jurisdiction vis-à-vis local bishops and state governments, as well as on papal teaching authority over the universal Church.1 [End Page 51] By contrast, there has been little study in ecclesiology of Humbert of Romans, the fifth Master (1254–63) of the Order of Preachers to which Thomas belonged. Humbert’s views on the papacy are known better by historians specializing in the thirteenth century than by theologians today.2 Humbert wrote a consilium in preparation for the Second Council of Lyons [End Page 52] (1274),3 which he offered probably at the personal request of Pope Gregory X, as Simon Tugwell argues, rather than as a response to one of two general letters preparing for the council.4 Of all extant reports that prepare for the council, Humbert’s Opus (or Opusculum) tripartitum is by far the most thorough.5 As its name suggests, it is divided into three parts to meet the three needs of the Church that would be discussed at [End Page 53] Lyons: crusade, union with Greeks, and reform in the Church.6 Especially remarkable is the Secunda pars, the most comprehensive extant medieval analysis of the schism written by either a Latin or a Greek. Composed in a clear Scholastic style, the consilium addresses political, theological, social, psychological, linguistic, and philosophical matters that are required in order for reunion to become a reality. Humbert is, as Burkhard Roberg says, an independent thinker.7 Humbert writes this plan under the aspect of advising the pope on what he should do and why he should do it in light of the ad hoc needs of the Church. While scholarship has given attention to Humbert’s proposal (although its effort for Christian unity is still not as well known as it deserves), no study has been devoted per se to his understanding of the pope as laid out in this treatise.8 The following study compares Humbert’s view of the pope with that of Thomas. While there is no evidence that Humbert borrowed from Thomas’s teaching on the papacy, studies of the two together can be mutually illuminative—especially for an audience much more familiar with Thomas’s teachings on the Church.9 While Humbert does not rival Thomas in genius, he [End Page 54] offers additional practical insight and frank criticism for understanding the papacy, not found in Thomas.10 The two friars wrote in different genres and contexts, with different literary emphases and perspectives: Humbert, as a highly respected retired head of the Dominicans and prolific writer for his Order; and Thomas, as a renowned master of the sacred page with several scattered treatments of the papacy in academic disputes. Some scholars, such as Leonard Boyle and Paul Murray, have shown how Thomas was likely influenced by Humbert in his own writing.11 While Humbert’s proposal for [End Page 55] Pope Gregory X seems to have been composed too late (March/April–December 1272) to have influenced Thomas’s writing on the papacy,12 it can illuminate what Thomas wrote, and did not write, on the papacy. Examining Humbert’s text against the backdrop of Thomas’s theology can also shed some light on Humbert’s own distinctiveness. Certainly, neither is sufficient to explain the other. Yet, putting Humbert alongside Thomas—two of the most...

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas Melissa Eitenmiller Introduction There is an ongoing debate between two predominantly analytic1 groups of Thomists, those holding the "survivalist"2 view of the human person after death and those maintaining the "corruptionist"3 view. Those who defend [End Page 57] the survivalist view wish to claim that the human person does not cease to exist at death, and although, according to Mark Spencer, the survivalist camp does not identify the human person with the separated soul, it nevertheless "contends that, in the separated state, a person is constituted by a soul, while remaining an individual rational animal and individual substance of a rational nature."4 The corruptionist view, on the other hand, will be represented in the present article by Patrick Toner5 in his "St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul," in which he argues that St. Thomas held that "human beings cease to exist at their deaths,"6 at least until the resurrection of the body. Toner presents this in the following manner: (1) "human beings" are composites of body and soul (therefore, as he quotes Aquinas, "my soul is not me"7); (2) death is a substantial corruption of the composite; and (3) [End Page 58] "hence, humans stop existing at their deaths."8 In this article, I would like to propose that Aquinas's view is more nuanced than either side appears ready to acknowledge.9 It seems to me important to emphasize that, although death truly involves a separation of body and soul (thus constituting a corruption of the human person as such), nevertheless, the soul remains the "essential part" of the person and maintains a certain identity with that person as a subject of attribution10 [End Page 59] already capable of enjoying the absolute bliss of the Beatific Vision (or the suffering of temporal or eternal punishment in purgatory or hell, respectively), even before the general resurrection.11 Consequently, it would be wrong, and even spiritually dangerous, to ignore the importance of the intermediate state. It is not at all clear to me that Toner means to do this, but in emphasizing the destruction of the human person at death, he and other corruptionists do appear to leave themselves open to that sort of interpretation. In fact, Serge-Thomas Bonino, who calls these two camps12 the "minimalists" (i.e., corruptionists) and the "maximalists" (i.e., survivalists), points out that: According to the minimalists, the refusal to attribute personhood to the separated soul not only means that St. Thomas calls into question the identity between the current "me" and the separated soul, but also implies a minimal conception of the activity of the [End Page 60] separated soul, reduced to a comatose state of prolonged vigil. The separated soul would have … an existence similar to that … which the Ancients would concede to the shadows which haunt Sheol.13 As an example of this, Bonino cites B. Carlos Bazán, who declares, "a soul without its ontological correlate [i.e., matter] cannot operate, and consequently does not live."14 This statement will be shown to be false when we speak of the operations of the separated soul. First, however, I would like to review each of Toner's three points mentioned above. The Composite Human Person With regard to Toner's first point, it is certainly true that, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the human person, "an individual substance of a rational nature,"15 is a composite of both body and soul, together with a human esse. Gilles Emery explains that "since the person is an individual substance, it is a reality that possesses its proper being in a complete manner, in itself and through itself, and which exercises on its own the act of existing. … [Therefore,] what accounts for my uniqueness is not only my concrete individual essence (my own humanity), but my proper act of existing in the human nature common to all human beings."16 In other words, other than in the case of Christ, the union of body and a rational soul necessarily implies the act of existence proper to a human person (since the act of being...

Between Wisdom and Sluggishness:Thomas Aquinas on the Elderly Piotr Roszak THOMAS AQUINAS DID NOT live long enough to experience old age himself. He died when he was approximately forty-nine years old, "on his way," literally, as he was traveling to Lyon to participate in a council, busily penning his works (he averaged twelve standard A4 pages at the last stage of his life, according to the calculations of Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P.),1 his Summa theologiae still incomplete. Whenever he speaks of old age he reads it, as if by default, through the works of St. Paul, who approached the Old and New Covenant dialectically and reminded that a Christian puts on a new man even if his or her calendar age is advanced. This reference to the spiritual aspect of old age defines Thomas's thought, with particular emphasis on the concept of new creation. At the same time, he asks himself the serious question of whether church offices should be held by elders or juniors.2 Thomas's theological method with respect to this point is characteristic of him: he does not speculate in a vacuum but instead engages in a dialogue with the broad intellectual tradition—and not only the Christian tradition. He was [End Page 91] familiar with the classic treatises on old age, including those of Cicero, whom Thomas frequently cites in his reflections on morality. He was also greatly influenced by Aristotle and his fundamentally naturalistic description of old age. Thomas associated the term senex with the notion of maiores, a legacy still present in many modern languages. For instance, Spanish refers to an elderly person as mayor de edad, even though mayor is ambiguous, as it describes someone who is either "older" or "greater." In what sense, therefore, is an elderly person maior? The respect due to old age, regarded as the fruitio of life experience, opens up a theological reflection on the meaning of the passage of time in our life. What is the meaning of each passing moment? Did not the Creator determine everything? Are we not determined by our genes to become whatever they make us to be? For what purpose did God need this delay in creation? He could have created the world and saved it immediately afterwards. He chose not to. Following the creation of the world, a whole history opened up and became deeply meaningful to all Christians. Therefore, it would seem reasonable to place old age on the axis of the passing time and emphasize the importance of experience, decisive in attaining the heights of moral life. A theologian identifies this dynamic as a "grace of time" given to each human being so that he or she can experience becoming a cause of good in the world. For Thomas, "being good" is but one form of perfection, while a far greater form of perfection is "being a cause," even if instrumental, of good in another person.3 This article will present the spiritual ethos of the elderly person in the light of Thomas's thought. I will explore, in addition to Thomas's more familiar works such as the Summa theologiae, a few lesser-known works, such as his biblical commentaries, in which Thomas, the medieval professor, expresses himself most eloquently. The Bible speaks [End Page 92] at length about old age and its significance; Thomas's biblical commentaries provide direct access to his understanding of these passages. Furthermore, the Summa theologiae was intended to develop a better understanding of the Bible, as we read in the Summa's prologue.4 We will see that Thomas praises the doctrine of the elders while warning against certain tendencies of old age that could lead elderly persons astray and cripple them spiritually. Of course this does not mean that God's idea of old age is a failure, that the elderly are not to cooperate as higher causes in God's plan for creation. Thomas simply recognizes that there are dangers that accompany the potentialities. In my analysis, I shall focus on questions of wisdom, prudence, and hope. I. The Parable of the Vineyard Workers: "Old Age Is...

Can Dead Faith Assent to God?A Brief Reflection on St. Thomas's Account of the Relationship between Living and Lifeless Faith Jeffrey M. Walkey St. Thomas Aquinas, like many within the Christian tradition, makes a distinction between living and lifeless faith. Living faith is faith that is accompanied by charity, or what St. Paul calls "faith working through love."1 Love, or charity, is the form of living faith. This is the faith that enables the believer to be ordered toward and attain their beatifying end, namely, union with the triune Lord. Lifeless faith, on the other hand, is faith that lacks charity. It is what we call, following St. James, "dead" faith.2 It is to no avail. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, however, as we shall see below, even lifeless faith enables one to assent to the truths of the faith on the basis of the authoritative testimony of the revealing God. That is to say, in lifeless faith the intellect of the believer conforms to the mind of God, at least with respect to the intellect and its object, namely, the true. More specifically, in lifeless faith the intellect is able to assent to the articles of faith as revealed by God and mediated by the Church. In short, lifeless faith, which flows from [End Page 1181] the same habit or disposition as living faith, is perfect with respect to the intellect, though imperfect with respect to the will. It assents to God and the articles of faith, though, without charity, which is to say that it assents without loving and living in accordance with that to which assent is given in faith. Some interpreters have challenged this claim. The late Princeton philosopher Victor Preller maintained that lifeless faith is incapable of conforming the intellect of the believer to the mind of God. Without living faith, one does not and cannot do so.3 We see this in his rigorous "reformulation" of St. Thomas in Divine Science and the Science of God. He notes, "Unless God 'takes the opportunity' of infusing the intentional forms of live faith, the mind of the 'believer' will not be conformed to the being of God."4 He suggests that those without living faith "do not refer to God or conform the mind to God. … This [conformity] is not done by the communication of intelligible forms, but the ordination of the whole soul, intellect and will, to the Word or Image of God."5 Such conformity, insofar as it requires the ordination of both the intellect and the will, obtains only in living faith. A further consequence of Preller's interpretation is that, without living faith, or what he calls here "live faith," one cannot even in principle assent to the truth "God exists."6 [End Page 1182] Only believers, which are, for him, only those with living faith, can assent to the truth "God exists."7 There are good reasons, both exegetical and systematic, for thinking that the interpretation of Preller is incorrect on this point. In order to make this clear, the following discussion will be threefold. First, I shall consider St. Thomas's distinction between Christian credere, on the one hand, and other kinds of cognition, namely, scire and opinari, on the other. This discussion sets forth the principles of faith, the relationship between those principles, and the objects or ends of its act. Second, I shall discuss what, for St. Thomas, is the essential notion of faith, the roles of the intellect and will, and the relationship between the theological virtue of charity and this essential notion. This discussion maintains, following St. Thomas, that the essential notion of faith resides primarily in the intellect, being perfective of it, whether or not it is accompanied by charity. Moreover, the will-act that is a part of faith is not charity, but a prior or preexistent (and graced) will-act that is further elevated and perfected by charity. So, while charity perfects faith (and its prior will-act), it does not constitute faith. With or without charity, faith heals the believer from unbelief vis-à-vis God and the truths of faith. Lastly, third, I shall consider...

Christ Our Ritual Sage?A Chinese Articulation of Christ's Priesthood Joshua Brown This article concerns developing an account of Christ's priesthood utilizing concepts and terms from Chinese philosophy. The primary problem I address is methodological: how can an intercultural reading of Christological doctrine be simultaneously culturally relevant and orthodox? In answer to this question, I seek to negotiate intellectual complications that arise in attempting to articulate a doctrine concerning Christ's historical and cultural embodied person while drawing on a cultural and ritual milieu vastly different from those of the Christian Scriptures or doctrinal tradition. Focusing on the question of Christ's priesthood, I demonstrate here that a reading that is at once both culturally relevant and orthodox is possible through cultivating a reading of two concrete programs and then using these perspectives to analyze and resolve issues in articulating Christ's priesthood in a Chinese key. Thus, I base this work here on an analysis of ritual and ritual agency in the philosophical writings of the early Confucian Xúnzǐ (310–210 BC) and St. Thomas Aquinas's account of Christ's priesthood in question 22 of Summa theologiae [ST] III.1 The framework in which I pose this reading of Christ's priesthood is, [End Page 15] then, the relationship between human culture and Christian doctrine. In the modern West, the difficulties of articulating Christian teaching in a Western idiom have been by and large negotiated for a long time, and thus many Western Christians do not have any trouble understanding Christian doctrine in their native intellectual categories. However, especially in the wake of postmodernism and postcolonialism, this is not true in many parts of the world. In recent decades, a number of Asian and Asian American theologians have articulated some variety of the claim that traditional Christian doctrinal categories, especially Christological doctrines, are products of and are only relevant to the dominant intellectual culture of the West and that, hence, a culturally relevant and responsive theology for Asian peoples must find a different foundation to be really "Asian."2 Modern theology therefore faces a considerable dilemma. On the one hand, many Asian theologians are suspicious of the possibility of a truly Asian theology being founded on traditional Christian categories and discourse. On the other hand, sociologically speaking, it seems that Christianity itself is fading in the West and that the dominant Christian culture will be Chinese within a matter of decades.3 We face, then, a very imaginable situation in which the majority of Christians might be led to believe that the doctrinal content of traditional Christology is not culturally relevant to them, and thus can be replaced. What is to become of these categories, then, and the doctrines they communicate? What is to become of the theological sciences that today seek to better understand and articulate these doctrines and their categories? Will they fall away and, indeed, [End Page 16] become irrelevant, or will they find ways to speak to a changing context? In this article, I seek to show that being responsive to the changing global context enables Christianity to accommodate the concerns for both cultural relevance and traditional Christian doctrinal categories. Yet doing so requires a difficult process of understanding how traditional Christian proclamation can inform and be relevant to the intellectual devices of historically non-Christian cultures, such as that of China. And so, instead of making an argument for method, I demonstrate what this work could look like. In this demonstration, I focus on the challenge of articulating Christ's priesthood in a Chinese idiom, mediated by Xúnzǐ. Ultimately, the prospects for this articulation will rest heavily on the ability to consider Christ's priesthood within the category of the ritual sage, the shèngrén , as it functions in Xúnzǐ's philosophy. But, in order to appreciate why this move is necessary, we first require a presentation of Xúnzǐ's broader understanding of rituals and their role in moral cultivation. Then, we must understand Christ's priesthood in traditional doctrinal categories so that we may explore the relationship between this doctrine and Xúnzǐ's thought. Hence, in the second section of the present article, I...

The Thomist 74 (2010): 189-235 THOMAS'S CATEGORIZATIONS OF VIRTUE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEMPORARY SIGNIFICANCE WILLIAM C. MATIISON III The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. THOMAS AQUINAS IDENTIFIES groups of virtues according to a variety of distinctions.1 Three are examined here, namely, those concerning efficient cause, ultimate end, and object of virtue. Thomas distinguishes acquired virtues from infused virtues based upon how they are obtained (efficient cause). He distinguishes natural from supernatural virtues based upon the type of happiness toward which they direct a person (ultimate end). And he distinguishes theological from cardinal virtues based upon a difference between what he calls the "objects" of these different groups of virtues.2 Each of these distinctions engenders two different categories of virtue, or what is called here a single categorization of virtue. Each categorization of virtue (e.g., acquired vs. infused virtue), therefore, includes a pair of categories of virtues (e.g., acquired virtues and infused virtues), which are distinguished on some basis or rationale (e.g., efficient cause) that Thomas explicitly supplies. Though each of these distinctions and categories is well known, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how different 1 The author would like to express his gratitude to several people who read and offered comments on earlier drafts of this essay: Angela McKay, Joseph Capizzi, Michael Gorman, David Cloutier, and R.E. Houser. Thanks also to Benjamin Safranski, who provided valuable research and editing assistance. 2 At times Thomas distinguishes theological virtue from "moral and intellectual virtue," and the relation of this latter to "cardinal virtue" is explained below. 189 190 WILLIAM C. MATTISON III categorizations relate to one another. For instance, in a recent publication, a renowned Thomist remarks, in passing, while discussing synderesis, that "discerning and judging action in light of the natural law need to be perfected and stabilized by the cardinal virtues (acquired habits) and infused virtues (faith, hope and charity)."3 This remark implies that all cardinal virtues are acquired virtues and suggests that the bases for the categorizations "acquired vs. infused" and "cardinal vs. theological" are one and the same. Neither of these is the case. As will be seen below, certain categorizations, though made on different bases, do indeed graft onto each other. However others (including those in this quotation) do not. Examples of such confusion are not infrequent, as will be seen more fully in the final section of this essay.4 The confusion is particularly evident in historical and contemporary discussions of the relationship between grace and virtue (and the related classic question of pagan virtue), since scholars have commonly approached these questions by offering different categorizations of virtue. In such discussions, precision is especially important, given the nuance required in describing the relationship between nature and grace. The purpose of this essay is to help dispel such common confusion by explaining how Thomas's different categorizations 3 See Russsell Hittinger's review (of Douglas Kries' The Problem ofNatural Law) entitled "Examination of Conscience" in First Things 189 Oanuary 2009): 59-61 (at 60). So careful a reader of Thomas as Hittinger knows of course that not all cardinal virtues are not acquired, and that the terms "cardinal" and "infused" refer to different bases of categorization. Yet the quotation, in itself, obscures these facts. 4 For another example by a renowned Thomist, see Herbert McCabe, O.P., The Good Life (London: Continuum, 2005), where he says "Aquinas sets this within the context of what he calls the end of man, blessedness (beatitudo), and he seeks to show that the political virtues, the cardinal virtues, take their place in the deepest meaning of human life, which is our vocation to the heavenly polis, the divine life" (52; emphasis in original). While actually trying to make a point consonant with a main concern of this essay, namely, that cardinal virtues can be directed to one's supernatural happiness, McCabe along the way equates the categories "political" and "cardinal." While cardinal virtues may often be political virtues in Thomas' categorizations of virtue, these two terms do not rely on the same basis of categorization and thus should not be identified with one another. THOMAS'S CATEGORIZATIONS...

Seraphicus Supra Angelicum:Universal Hylomorphism and Angelic Mutability* Brendan Case (bio) One of the great philosophical and theological debates in the second half of the thirteenth century concerned the metaphysical constitution of angels, namely whether they are, like trees and cats and humans, composed of "form" and "matter," in the sense given those terms by the then newly ascendant Aristotle.1 In this period, the field was roughly divided between universal hylomorphism, maintaining that angels are form/matter composites, and (let's call it) spiritual immaterialism, maintaining that spiritual beings such as angels are pure, self-subsistent forms. The former position was championed especially though not exclusively by Franciscan theologians (notably the "Seraphic Doctor," St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio), and the latter by Dominicans (notably the "Angelic Doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas).2 In time, support for universal hylomorphism collapsed even within the Franciscan Order,3 with the result that spiritual immaterialism has [End Page 19] become the default position about the angels for Christian thinkers drawing on the broad Platonist-Aristotelian metaphysical tradition.4 In my view, this is an unfortunate circumstance, since spiritual immaterialism fails on its own terms, offering vague suggestions at best of how angels could be capable of intellectual and volitional change.5 As such, universal hylomorphism ought to be the angelology of choice for anyone thinking about the angels in the terms set by classical metaphysics – assuming, of course, that it can withstand the objections traditionally leveled against its own coherence.6 [End Page 20] This essay attempts to make good that peremptory judgment, in five parts. After a brief introduction to Aristotelian hylomorphism and its relevance for thought about the angels, I consider Thomas Aquinas's bid to explain the angels' mutability in terms of their composition out of essence (essentia) and being (esse), or (in the more widely accepted distinction framed by Boethius) out of "what it is" (quod est) and "by which it is" (quo est).7 (I will refer to this as the "Boethian distinction," and to the composition it picks out as "Boethian composition.") I then set out and concur with Bonaventure's doubts about whether the Boethian distinction provides a sufficient basis for explaining angelic mutability, before turning to the rival accounts of the angels offered by Aquinas's Franciscan contemporaries, especially the authors of the Summa Halensis8 and Bonaventure, both of whom grant that angels include Boethian composition, but deny that it suffices to explain how they can be the subject of accidental change, such as the fall from beatitude to wretchedness. For this, they insist, hylomorphic composition is necessary as well.9 [End Page 21] I conclude my defense of universal hylomorphism by considering (and again concurring with) Bonaventure's and William de la Mare's responses to Aquinas's key objection to universal hylomorphism, that intellection would be impossible for an angel so constituted. Aristotelian Hylomorphism: Corruptible Bodies, Intelligences, and Angels10 All parties to our debate agreed that the central case of a hylomorphic unity is a physical (sc. locally moveable) substance (an atom of gold, a tree, a cat), which is generated from the corruption of other substances.11 As Aquinas reads Aristotle's own account of it,12 the story of hylomorphism begins with those pre-Socratic thinkers, such as Thales and Empedocles, who denied that the medium-sized dry goods of ordinary experience were genuine individuals, identifying them instead as mere momentary congeries of some more basic, elemental substance.13 The [End Page 22] appeal to the complementary union of form and matter, by contrast, is an attempt to account for the existence of genuine individuals under conditions of change, to show how, for instance, a tree might be thought of as an individual substance over and above the sum of its changing physical parts. As the scholastics interpreted them, Platonist and Aristotelian theories of matter aimed to distinguish accidental change within a particular substance from the generation and corruption of substances as such: "They distinguished intellectually," Aquinas noted, "between the substantial form and matter, which they posited as uncreated; and they perceived that transmutation came about in bodies according to their essential forms."14 The key innovation in these theories, of...