De Veritate Research Articles

Herbert of Cherbury before Deism: The Early Reception of the De veritate

Perhaps more than any other seventeenth-century philosopher, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1582-1648) has become the creature of his posthumous reputation. Since the middle years of the eighteenth century he has been widely known as 'the father of English Deism'. Despite a recent scholarly effort to question the inevitable association between Herbert and the English deists - an association forged by Charles Blount's pillaging of his manuscripts thirty years after his death - it has proved a remarkably persistent view, and one that continues to inflect modern perceptions of Herbert's writings.1 In particular, the widespread assumption survives that Herbert's purposes were overwhelmingly theological rather than philosophical, and that Herbert intended his major work, the De veritate (On Truth) exclusively as a deliberate charter for deism and natural religion.2 Modern scholarship, in short, remains very largely in thrall to the eighteenth-century characterisation of Herbert as the fountainhead of the deistic movement in England. This paper, in contrast, develops recent reassessments of Herbert's relation to 'deism' by examining how early readers of the De veritate read and responded to it. It aims to get behind the posthumous reputation Herbert acquired after the emergence of the tendency known as 'deism', and to explain the range of responses that his work provoked.The deist characterisation of Herbert does not adequately represent the perceptions his contemporaries and immediate successors had of him. The suggestion one finds made that Herbert's early readers 'had no doubt' that his purposes were essentially religious rather than 'epistemological' by no means tells the full story.3 The eighteenth-century historians of deism who placed Herbert at the front of their books were developing an account of his writings that only arose from the 1670s onwards. Before then, Herbert's readers were excited, influenced, and often confused by his writings and their purposes. For in his lifetime, Herbert was not universally taken as an unequivocal enemy of Christianity - indeed, his most perceptive modern scholar, D. P. Walker, has already suggested that 'Herbert's reputation as an anti-Christian deist began only twenty years after his death'.4 Until 1645, the only published work Herbert's readers had to gauge his purposes was the De veritate, which was first printed in Paris in 1624. And even when early readers of this were suspicious of his intentions, as several were, they did not level at him the accusations of 'deism' and 'natural religion' that now sit so heavily upon him. Herbert's reluctance to mention Christ and his ingrained anti-clericalism were indeed suspected by some of those who knew him personally. But they only became widely known after accounts of his behaviour on his deathbed in 1648 began to circulate, and after the publication of his later writings: the De religione laici with its Appendix ad sacerdotes (1645) and the posthumous De religione gentilium (1663). Before then, Herbert's early readers principally understood his De veritate in terms of two principal contemporary intellectual preoccupations. The first of these was the search for philosophical concepts of 'method' and of an axiomatic foundation for logic. The second was the elaboration of metaphysical (that is to say, 'natural' or non-revealed) proofs of the existence of God. The responses of early readers of the De veritate, in short, were not as unequivocal as those of later readers and modern scholars have tended to be.IIt has been assumed that Herbert's writings were little read in England in the twenty-five years following his death - although that there was significant continental interest is well enough known.5 In fact, however, a good number of early readers of the De veritate can be found, in England as well as across Europe. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that the book had a wide circulation, for both bibliographic and external evidence suggests that Herbert himself carefully controlled the distribution of the early manuscripts and printed copies of the book. …

"L'Eglise Invisible" and "La Maison du Messie Charnel": The Saintly and Prophetic Voices of Les Grands cimetieres sous la lune

Drumont and Peguy In a characteristically audacious moment in Les Grands cimetieres sous lune (1938), Georges Bernanos imagines the funeral of his former political ally and maitre, (2) Charles Maurras, as grande manifestation d'union national--only to declare that n'y verra pas Drumont, ni Peguy, ni moi. (3) Writing in 1937, six years after his stormy break with Maurras, Bernanos makes his present allegiances clear. That he buries a living maitre while resuscitating two others, long dead, is not in itself surprising. Nor is it difficult to conceive either Edouard Drumont or Charles Peguy, as Bemanos imagines now one, now the other, snubbing Maurras along with him. It is their proximity that gives us pause. Only in Bernanos, and especially beginning with Les Grands cimetieres, do we find Drumont and Peguy hailed as partners in influence. (4) Bernanos, of course, looked well beyond their vehement opposition from either side of the Dreyfusard divide. He saw each as the author of an impassioned denunciation of mo dem politics and society: Peguy, disabused Socialist turned monarchist, lone defender of mystique over politique; (5) vieux Drumont--after the Affair, after the decline of La Libre parole--obscure prophet of La Fin d'un monde (1889). Even if we concentrate on whatever their destinies may have had in common, suspending other associations--Drumont's frenzied vilification of Jews in La France juive (1886), Peguy's near-sanctification of Bernard Lazare in Notre jeunesse (1910)--these two remain an odd pair of masters. We might ask how the grouping of Drumont and Peguy relates to the question of whether Les Grands cimetieres marks a change in Bernanos's thinking. For his part, he denies that he has changed (386). The pamphlet contains several indicators of change or evolution, the most obvious being political. Although Bernanos had already broken with Maurras and L'Action francaise when he and his family set out for Majorca in October 1934, it was very much expected that he would back the Christian side in the Spanish War. He did, in fact, support the Rebel cause during the early stages of the conflict. This early partisanship, however, was overshadowed by a subsequent condemnation of Franco and his fascist allies and of the role of the Catholic Church of Spain in the war. In contrast to the split from Maurras in 1932, which, though never to be reversed, had nonetheless been over a relatively trivial political issue, his position on the Spanish War signaled a major turning point. The former member of Les Camelots du roi a nd L'Action francaise would go on to oppose the Maurrasians over the signing of the Munich Pact (Scandale de verite, 1939) and throughout the war he would write on the side of the Resistance (Nous autres Francais 1939; Lettre aux Anglais, 1942). (6) Bernanos's acknowledgment of Drumont and Peguy together as maitres underscores what perhaps ought to be obvious--that his vision was only in the final instance political. Although he was constantly taking political stands and was long an active participant in political debates, he saw the world primarily through a metaphysical lens. At the same time, he never shied from confrontation with what Maurice de Gandillac, speaking about the evolution of thinking on the French Right, has called la realite politique: ... pour taus ceux qui ant pu subir 1'influence de Drumant, de Maurras et d'autres, ligne de clivage essentielle se situe au moment ou ces idees qui etaient, sinan de purs concepts, tout au mains des idees assez abstraites, sont passees dans in realite palitique. Mussolini avait ete relativement modere d' abord. Mais, avec guerre d'Espagne et guerre d'Abyssinie, le fascisme prenait un autre aspect. Et surtout avec Hitler. A ce moment-la il y a eu vraiment une coupure dans droite natianaliste francaise: certains ant subi fascination de Nuremberg, d'autres ont reagi a fois par patriotisme et par une certaine fidelite a des valeurs humanistes ou chretiennes. …

The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1: Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas ed. by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran

500 BOOK REVIEWS exaggerated emphasis on subjectivelyexperienced needs, and reduced emphasis on the identity of the sacrament of the altar with the mystery of the Cross). These criticisms certainly apply de facto to much contemporary celebration; whether they can be laid at the door of the Pauline Missal simply as such is another question. It would, however, be a pity if the deficient sympathy of many readers for the author's liturgical preferences stopped them reading on and reaching his valuable statement of Thomas's "liturgics." Here he brings together a number of principles, discussed at some length by Thomas in the two Summas, and capable of acting as building blocks for the theology of the liturgy Thomas never got around to constructing. Within an "analectic" reading of Thomas's intellectual vision as characterized by deliberate balance, comprehensiveness, and interconnection, Berger sets out in brief compass such themes as: theocentricity; man's physical-spiritual nature as a worshiping being; the return of man to God through the instrumentality of the humanity ofJesus Christ, the High Priest whose continuing action the liturgy is; the sacraments as efficacious signs of his saving work; the Eucharist as the center of the "liturgical cosmos"; and the sacramental character as the share of Christians in the high priesthood of Christ. What is needed and, for reasons of the book's brevity, cannot be furnished, is the integration of these, more fully reflected on, into a satisfying whole. The footnotes provide useful bibliography for those interested in the conservative wing of theology and liturgical commentary in present-day German Catholicism. AIDAN NICHOLS, 0.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1: Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Edited by FREDERICK E. CROWE and ROBERT M. DORAN. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Pp. xxiii + 513. $24.95 (paper), $80.00 (cloth). ISBN 0802083374 (paper) 0802047998 (cloth). Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought ofThomas Aquinas is the latest volume ofthe CollectedWorks ofBernard Lonergan, a series arranged and edited by the Lonergan Research Institute. This new volume contains two important works of Lonergan: a critical edition of his 1971 book Grace and Freedom and his doctoral dissertation, entitled Gratia Operans. The editors BOOK REVIEWS 501 made the decision to publish these two texts together because the 1971 book is a reorganized and reedited form of the dissertation. The central thesis governing both of these works is that St. Thomas continually refined his conception of the human condition, causing developments in his understanding of operative, cooperative, habitual, and actual grace. Lonergan contends that these refinements can best be understood by tracing the historical development of St. Thomas's thought through three major periods. Lonergan presents St. Thomas's first period as roughly coinciding with the completion of his Commentary on the Sentences. There, St. Thomas maintains that perfection is measured by the proportion between potency and act. God is all act and is therefore perfect. Humans are mostly potency and, while open to perfection, are not perfect. They must develop in space and time, and this process of growing creates the possibility offlawed development. SaintThomas believes, Lonergan argues, that perfection becomes possible for humanity only through the infusion and action of new habits-what he terms operative and cooperative habitual grace. Operative habitual grace establishes new habits and desires; cooperative habitual grace works in conjunction with the human will to bring these new habits and desires into fruition through external action. Together, these graces enable human persons to actualize their potency effectively and become more perfect, more Godlike. Lonergan contends that while St. Thomas has a clear understanding of habitual grace during this time, he barely develops the category of actual grace. Actual grace encompasses an enormous variety of events and gifts that may lead to one's repentance and conversion (e.g., a preacher's sermon, loss of health, speaking in tongues), but the category lacks any definitive meaning. On Lonergan's account, St. Thomas's second period is roughly equivalent to the completion of De Veritate. In this text, St. Thomas slightly alters his understanding of the human situation and, consequently, his solution to it...

Cross-Referencing in Wyclif’s Latin Works

One of the most immediately striking features of all of Wyclif’s major writings, whether philosophical, theological, or polemical, is the frequency with which cross-references are found both between different chapters or parts of the same work and between works other than the current one. The frequency of cross-referencing is variable. In the philosophical works and the intermediate tracts traditionally placed before the twelve-part Summa theologie, links are not enormously numerous. The first text to show a plethora of them is De civili dominio: here on average one instance occurs roughly every other page, more frequently in parts I and III, in other words some 600 in all. This habit continues with slight abatement in De veritate sacre scripture, and into De ecclesia. Thereafter the remaining parts of the Summa show a diminishing number, still further reduced in the De eucharistia. Cross-referencing is relatively common in the three long sets of sermons composed after Wyclif’s retirement to Lutterworth, and in the Sermones quadraginta written dum stetit in scholis. The device is obviously in origin an academic one, and it is worth observing that some of the major works which were written after Wyclif left Oxford have few if any: in the Trialogus the virtually complete absence of internal Unkings could be explained as the result of a perception that the orderly organization of the whole obviated the necessity for such an aid, but this explanation does not seem relevant to the final Opus evangelkum. Cross-referencing has previously been observed by students of Wyclif, and has traditionally been used in the attempt to order his vast output chronologically, and to put dates to individual works. But this is to jump to conclusions – to assume that the references are authorial and that the works in which they occur were composed as a whole at one time. The discussion here will suggest that there are questions to be answered in regard to the former assumption, and substantial objections to the latter. More modestly, I hope here to use the cross-references to throw light on the ways in which Wyclif’s works were written, put together, and ‘published’.

Ciencia y docencia en Agustín y Tomás de Aquino (del maestro agustiniano al maestro tomista)

Science and teaching in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. The author tries to make a comparative analisis of the notions science, teacher and disciple such as they appear in St. Augustine's De Magistro and in question 11th, «De Magistro», of the Disputatio De Veritate of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Augustinian science of intelligible and eternal truths is adquired by a mental view of intellect and reason; it supposes the good will of knowing subject. Thomist science consists of a number of intelligent forms adquired from a deductive logic-necessary process that begins with the first obvious principles and axioms. For Augustin, there is only one teacher of intelligible truths that hides himself in the deepest of every rational soul and shows the Truth only to the interior man, that is, the one dominated by the good will. For Thomas Aquinas, there exist two different teachers: the main and interior one that is God, and another external and human, with perfect and actual knowledge, who helps the disciple to get the ability and the habit of deducing notions and truths from the first obvious principles and axioms. For Augustin, we all are disciples of the unique teacher of Truth, Christ, and we will be good or bad disciples according to our good or evil will. For Thomas Aquinas, every disciple has from the very beginning all the notions and truths that he is going to learn, but in potency or in their seminal reasons -the first obvious principles and axioms-; but he will. try, with the important help of the teacher, to get the ability and the habit of deducing and developing all notions and truths enclosed within the first evident principles and axioms.

A Contradiction in Saint Thomas’s Teaching on Creation

A CONTRADICTION IN SAINT THOMAS'S TEACHING ON CREATION THEODORE J. KONDOLEON Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania 0 THOSE FAMILIAR with Saint Thomas's writings is generally known that the Angelic Doctor changed his position on a number of philosophical issues during the course of his relatively short professional career. For instance, there is his opinion concerning the instrumental role of higher creatures in the creation of the universe-something he allowed as possible in his Commentary on the Sentences but later rejected in his Disputed Question On the Power of God and in the Summa Theologiae. Another example is Thomas's view on the possibility of an actual infinite multitude, an opinion he accepted in the early Disputed Question On Truth but argued against in the Summa Theologiae.1 However, to change one's mind on a particular issue is not to contradict oneself, since to do that is to say or hold, in the same time frame, pwhile also saying or holding not p. However, in his Treatise on Creation in the Summa Theologiae, Saint Thomas does, at least once, contradict himself in what he has to say on the question of the demonstrability of the world's temporal beginning , a contradiction which, to my knowledge, has never previous1 On the question whether higher creatures can be instrumental causes in the creation of lower creatures see In Sent. IV, d. 5, q. 5, a. 3; De potentia Dei, q. 3, a. le and Summa Theologiae, I, q, 45, a. Sc. On the issue of an actual infinite multitude see D. Q. De veritate, q. 2, a. 9 and Summa Theologiae , 1, q. 7, a. 5. However, in the De aeternitate mundi-a work possibly written after Saint Thomas completed the first part of his Summa-Aquinas asserts, towards the end of this work, that no demonstration has as yet been forthcoming that God cannot produce a multitude that is actually infinite. 51 52 THEODORE J. KONDOLEON ly been noted. In what follows I intend to expose this contradiction and to see whether there is any possible way for him to escape it. I In article 1 of Question 46 of the Prima pars, Aquinas argues that it cannot be demonstrated that the world of creatures always existed, given that the actual existence of creatures depends upon the causal will of God and the only thing which God wills necessarily is Himself.2 Consequently, whether or not the world exists, or is created eternally or with a temporal beginning, are matters entirely up to God's free will.3 In the following article he argues that neither can the world's temporal beginning be demonstrated but that this is something known only by faith.4 It cannot be demonstrated from the world itself since demonstration proceeds by way of knowledge of the universal essences of things and universals abstract from the hie et nunc, or from the question of temporal origin.5 Nor can it be proved from the world's efficient cause-the divine will-seeing that God's will cannot be investigated by reason except as regards those things which God wills necessarily (and what He wills about creatures is not among 2 " Dicendum nihil praeter Deum ab aeterno fuisse. Et hoc ponere non est impossibile. Ostensum est enim supra quad voluntas Dei est causa rerum. Sic ergo necesse est esse sicut necesse est Deum velle ilia, cum necessitatis effectus ex necessitate causae dependeat, ut dicitur in Meta. Ostensum est autem supra quod, absolute loquendo, non est necesse Deum velle aliquid nisi seipsum." ST I, q. 46, a. le. Latin quotations from Saint Thomas appearing in the footnotes are from the Leonine edition. 3 " Non est ergo necessarium Deum velle quod mundus fuerit semper. Sed eatenus mundus est quatenus Deus vult illum esse, cum esse mundi ex voluntate dependeat, sicut ex sua causa. Non est igitur necessarium mundum semper esse: Unde nee demonstrative probari potest." Ibid. 4 " Dicendum quod mundum non semper fuisse sola fidei tenetur, et demonsrtative probari non potest; sicut et supra de mysterio Trinitatis dictum est." Ibid., a. 2c. 5 "Et hujus ratio est, quia novitas mundi non potest demonstrationem recipere ex parte ipsius mundi...

Maire's editions of Grotius's De veritate religionis christianae from 1627 to 1640

Maire's editions of Grotius's De veritate religionis christianae from 1627 to 1640

Naming, Truth, and Creation in the Poetics of Pindar

The numerous and important studies in early Greece by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel Detienne have taught us to recognize the mental and cultural operations beneath the surface of explicit statement in archaic poetry. Their work also casts light on what we may call the mythical poetics of archaic Greece. Their books and essays on memory, on the poet as a master of truth, on the shifting roles of guile [metis] in relation to cosmogony, poetry, technology, power, and intelligence have brilliantly illuminated the underlying assumptions and practices of Homer, Hesiod, Alcman, Simonides, and many others. As Vernant has shown in Aspects mythiques de la memoire et du temps, the poet's power of commemoration enables him to cross the boundaries between the living and the dead, between the past and the present [Mythe et pensee chez les Grecs 87]. In a much cited section of Les maitres de verite dans la Grace archarque [22ff.], Detienne demonstrates that truth [aletheia] of archaic Greek poetry does not correspond to veracity in the modern sense of truthfulness, but rather forms part of a system of oppositions important to the values of an oral culture: preservation versus oblivion, light versus darkness, praise versus blame. What is truthful for the archaic poet is not so much what is factually exact as what successfully resists the corrosive darkness of forgetting. Pindar's poetry stands at a point of transition between an oral and a written culture. This is also the transition between the traditional, past-oriented archaic society, much of whose intellectual energy is expended in maintaining through memory the communal records and the accumulated lore of the past, and the growing critical spirit of the Sophistic movement, whose major efforts are directed toward challenging the past and rethinking traditional wisdom. At such a crisis a traditional poet like Pindar is particularly concerned to probe the meaning of Truth and to deepen its archaic significance as A letheia, the force of the poetic voice that vanquishes the forgetting of heroic deeds.'

The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch by Wayne Hudson

660 BOOK REVIEWS times recalls that of De veritate. (As Marrone points out, this work is representative of Grosseteste's earlier and more 'Augustinian' period.) These passages have suggested to most scholars that even in his efforts to come to grips with Aristotle, Grosseteste continued to hold to his early views on the place of divine illumination in man's knowledge of simple truth" (p. 195). He then goes on to explain why it is we ought not to take Grosseteste to mean what he appears to mean, even if, as he admits : "Every historian who has written about Grosseteste's thought" has tended to do so. His recommendation is that we consider such passages in the text as attempts at imagery or metaphor, to be read in the corrective light of what Robert says elsewhere-or rather, fails to say elsewhere about divine illumination in explaining how man knows truth. Here again, the simpler lesson would seem to be that Grosseteste, like William of Auvergne, remained committed to St. Augustine's illumination theory, despite the newly discovered insights from Aristotle. The foregoing critical remarks, it must be emphasized, reflect this reviewer 's opinion only as to Marrone's general thesis, i.e., his contention that William of Auvergne and Robert Grosseteste are in the business of replacement rather than synthesis. The running comment he provides on how the two men handled the exposition of truth is very well done, and will be of help to anyone who seeks to learn what they thought about the subject. As a final note, I might refer the reader to another recent study, viz., The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste by James McEvoy (Oxford, 1982), who, it seems to me, strikes a better balance in the way he presents one of Marrone's two scholars in this complex period of transition. FRANCIS E. KELLEY St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure, New York The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. By WAYNE HUDSON. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982. $27.50. This is an impressive book whatever one thinks of Bloch's philosophy. Ernst Bloch was one of the most elusive thinkers in twentieth century Marxism; at times he seemed studiously vague not only in his prose but in thought as well. All the more reason then to be grateful to Hudson for his systematic, clear presentation and analysis of Bloch's philosophy. The origin of this work was Hudson's doctoral dissertation on Bloch written under Leszek Kolakowski at Oxford in 1975. Thus, one needs to BOOK REVIEWS 661 qualify the author's claim that this book is an introduction of Bloch to the English-speaking world since it is anything but an introduction for the general reader. Rather, the detail of argument and the frequent allusions to and comparisons with other philosophers and philosophical schools make the book most attractive to teachers and serious graduate students in philosophy. Hudson displays a scholar's attention to fine points of nuance besides commendable mastery of material on classical German philosophy, Marxism, and Bloch himself. One senses Hudson has fairly and carefully set forth Bloch within a context of Marxist revisionism even when the author disagrees with his subject. The research is indeed thorough, perhaps even a bit excessive-941 footnotes for 218 pages of text! To use Isaiah Berlin's parable, Bloch is best understood as a hedgehog rather than a fox-a man with a single great insight which he uses to retrieve and re-cast other ideas that became conventional. That single insight was the importance of utopian thinking. In six chapters Hudson unfolds Bloch's approach, not so much chronologically as thematically, helping the reader to see the basic insight, explaining how Bloch developed this insight into a metaphysical system, and showing where Bloch has enriched, challenged, confused, and strayed from the Marxist tradition. The opening chapter is a brief outline of Bloch's biography and a short note on the ambiguity of his use of the term " not yet." Chapter two covers the major themes in Bloch's project for a utopian philosophy while the two middle chapters expand this effort to illustrate how Bloch conceived of a " Marxist metaphysic." The last...

A Philosophical Precursor to the Theory of Essence and Existence in St. Thomas Aquinas

A PHILOSOPHICAL PRECURSOR TO THE THEORY OF ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS IN THIS PAPER I wish to present an important precursor, hitherto unnoticed, to the theory of essence and existence in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It comes from an ancient pagan context and throws considerable light upon the whole problem of whether the distinction between essence and existence is real or not. I have in mind a series of passages from the Enneads of Plotinus; their principal motifs are significantly repeated in the anonymous commentary on the Parmenides attributed to Porphyry,1 and they are further systematized in the work of Proclus. Indeed too, I think, the whole context of Boethius's De Hebdomadibus in a more limited fashion owes much to Plotinus here.2 What I wish to show, however, is not simple textual correspondence, but a similar philosophical approach to a similar problem. Before coming to Plotinus, I sha11 first present the principal points of the Thomistic distinction and then attempt to relate this to the wider problems of nature and grace, natural capacity and the vision of God's essence. For the sake of simplicity and brevity I shall confine myself almost exclusively to the question of composition in either immaterial substances or created substances in general. Unlike the Spanish philosopher Avicebron and all the Neoplatonists , St. Thomas held that spiritual substances (human souls and angels) do not include matter. Instead, following 1 By P. Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, Volumes I and II, Etudes Augustiniennes , Paris, 1968. 2 On this see below. 219 KEVIN CORRlGAN Avicenna and St. Aihert, they are compounded. of essence, or form, and being (esse), and these elements are related to each other as potency to act. In an early work, De Ente et Essentia, Thomas argues for the distinction as follows: every essence can be understood without knowing anything about its existence. One can know, for example, what a man or a phoenix is without knowing whether or not it actually exists. Therefore existence is different from essence, unless there is something whose essence is existence, in which case this Being is one and primary. In all created things, however, existence is not contained in the notion of essence and must, therefore, come from outside the essence and enter into composition with it. Only in God are existence and essence identical (De Ente, C. VI, pp. 34, 6-35, 2; Roland-Gosselin). Is this distinction real or conceptual? In the De Veritate 3 and the Commentary on the Sentences 4 these two intrinsic principles of the creature are said to be really distinct. But in the De Ente this is not specified. What does the distinction mean? Essence refers to what is expressed by the definition of a thing; existence, or Being, indicates that the individual is and that it depends upon a prime cause. In every created spiritual substance we find a quality, the substance itself and its existence which is not the substance (quod non est substantia ejus; Contra Gent. II, 53) . Intelligence receives its existence from God, but its essence is identical with that which it is (De Ente, C. IV, p. 35, 4-6, R-G). Every creature possesses existence, therefore, by participation ; 5 and the substance that participates in existence is something other than the participated existence. Hence, the essence stands as potency to the act of existence which it receives from God. The existence is " that by which it is '', the essence " what sne Veritate 27, 1 ad 8; 1, 1 ad 3 (sed contra). ,. In I Sent.: d. 13, q. 1, a. 3. s ST, I, 61, 2, resp.: De Spir. Oreaturis, 1, 1, 14. ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS 221 it is". By essence Thomas means not the abstract universal essence, even though it can be grasped abstractly, but the actual essence as found in things. Created substances, then, are composed of " quod est " and something added to them, esse, or " quo est ". Boethius 6 had ·used these terms (quod est and esse) to distinguish the concrete subject and nature in finite things (cf. De Hebdomad., PL. 64, 1311C). For him all things are good in their...

Toward A Reformulation of Natural Law by Anthony Battaglia

BOOK REVIEWS 461 efforts at particularization must face public debate and probably subsequent revision; in the meantime he will have labored hard to translate into realistic civil law the moral principles which are more nearly unchanging. Those who read McCormick will wisely begin at the beginning, allowing him to spin out his general moral principles, and only subsequently move with him into the more conditioned considerations of what constitutes wise public policy and law in our day. Univers-ity of Dallas Irving, Texas WILLIAM J. FINAN, O.P. Toward A Reformulation of Natural Law. By ANTHONY BATTAGLIA. New York: The Seabury Press, 1981. Pp. ix + 150. $14.95. Anthony Battaglia has written an attractive, erudite essay which basically proposes the natural law doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas and finds it valid for guiding us in the field of morality today. He does have his reservations about an all-out endorsement of Aquinas, but in the end he comes rather close to one. In his introduction, the author sets forth his purpose " to rescue the chief insights of the natural law tradition from this limbo to which it has recently been relegated" (p. 1). After giving three reasons for the reexamination of the natural law theory, Battaglia describes himself as· presenting " a revisionist understanding of Thomas Aquinas" (p. 4). Four chapters constitute the bulk of the book with a brief concluding chapter. The first chapter is mainly concerned with defending the very treating of natural law in an age inclined to dismiss it, and probably morality itself, as old hat and not relevant to our times. The writer succeeds in capturing the good will of the reader by his engaging presentation and arouses one's interest by hinting at the exploration to come. The second chapter is explicitly on St. Thomas and his teaching on the natural law. Actually the whole book is on Aquinas, as anyone just glancing at the footnotes could discover. Of the 160 notes almost half refer to St. Thomas's writings. However, the second chapter is the ex professo treatment of natural law as found in Thomas's Commentary on the Sentences and the Summa. Also, since the author relates the analogy of law to that found in truth, he has occasion to draw from De Veritate. All of this is done clearly and with considerable creative and original insights. Chapters three and four develop an essential claim the author makes throughout the work for establishing the validity of natural law, namely, 462 BOOK REVIEWS that "moral reason is trustworthy because it is in touch with reality" (p. 5). In these chapters Battaglia brings in other authors than St. Thomas. He wants to gain support from some recent writers for his thesis that natural law still has a role to play for guiding us in moral decisions. He successfully integrates these modern comments into the ever-present doctrine of St. Thomas. As a result he is able to achieve what he set out to do. Early in the book he had written: "Reformulating means, in its commonsense usage, to say the same thing in a different way " (p. 29). Hence, we conclude with the natural law theory of St. Thomas Aquinas said in a different way, more congenial perhaps to our contemporaries, although a bit watered down by the author's concern for the role of historicity (cf. pp. 13 sq.) as a determining factor for change in morals, especially in the area of sexual morality. But then the human family is always looking for something like that. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. RAYMOND SMITH, O.P. The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth. By ROBERT ScHARLEMANN. New York: The Seabury Press, 1981. Robert Scharlemann has contributed a significant and provocative addition to the debate on the nature of truth and the way in which truth is experienced. His work will undoubtedly arouse discussion and interest among theologians for some time to come. The author's intention is not to engage in a debate about the theoretical nature of truth but rather to focus discussion on how truth is experienced. This distinction allows the author to contend that the theme will...

La teología del verbo en la `summa contra gentiles´

The present work is written against the background of S. Thomas's different answers to the question concerning the individual character an the personality of the Word of God. The differences appear above all in the major theological works of S. Thomas (the Commentary on the Sentences, the De Veritate, the Summa Contra Gentiles, the De Potentia, and the Summa Theologica). These writings mark various stages in the evolution of the Common Doctor in his Theology of the Word. The work studies one of these writings, the Summa Contra Gentiles, which presupposes a highly advanced investigation into the trinitarian theology of S. Thomas. It consists of two parts, in the first of which the argumentation of the Holy Doctor is followed step by step, while the bearing of his statements is explained by means of studies on the intellectual act and the nature of the mental word or intentio intellecta. It is here that S. Thomas arrives for the first time at the idea that the intellectual act, in which the mental word is produced, is a kind of generation. The generation in question is in man a mental generation, that of a mental word, and in God a real generation, in which the Word produced, —i.e. engendered,— is of the same nature as God himself, and therefore truly God. The boldness of S. Thomas has caused his integrated theology of the Word, especially in the relatively concise formulation of the Summa Contra Gentiles, IV, to be criticized as non-theological, i.e. as rationalist or lacking in theological authority. In the second part of the work these objections are answered on the basis of the words of S. Thomas himself. This enables the author, incidentally, to defend the role and value of a theological elaboration, constructed by the reason enlightened by faith, and having as its object the first of the Christian mysteries, namely the Most Holy Trinity. The analogy of the mental word as an aid to speaking of the personal Word of God appears, in particular, as an apt analogy which clarifies the revealed mystery and assists the reason in forming a judgment regarding its intrinsic credibility.

The Grammar of Esse: Re-Reading Thomas on the Transcendentals

THE GRAMMAR OF ESSE: RE-READING THOMAS ON THE TRANSCENDENTALS SIGLA. For ease in argument, Thomas's works will be cited according to the following sigla: DV, De Veritate; Sent, Smiptum on the Sentmices; SCG, Contra Gentiles; ST, Summa Theologiae; InMet, commentary on the 1Vfetaphysics; Quod, Quaestiones Quodlibetales; lnDivNom, commentary on the Divine Names. The number appearing before the siglum indicates a Book or Part number; thus, ' 1 Sent' means the commentary on the first book of the Sentences and '4 SCG' means the fourth Book of the Contra Gentiles. 0 NE OF THE ADVANTAGES of the desuetude into which Thomism has lately fallen is that interpreters of Thomas Aquinas must address fundamentals. The effect of the last decade's convulsions was to break up a discourse within which Thomism figured as something immediate . For such discourse, Thomas was a thinker rather than an artifact; he was an interlocutor, not an instance. But in the immediacy of discourse, peripheral issues often acquired disproportionate force. Familiarity with the basic formulae passed for intelligibility. Today, when scholasticism seems to have the bad odor of an ancien reginie, the interpreter of Thomas must work to secure the first things, the central insights, since it is these that are controverted and misunderstood.1 There is no time for the peripheral and no ground for assuming familiarity. If this is the only advantage of the change of fortune, it is still an important one. The first thing in Thomism is the doctrine of esse. It is first in two ways, as a distinguishing characteristic and as a structuring principle. Its being first as a characteristic needs little demonstration. Even if Giles of Rome is seen as a vulgarizer of 1 Michel Corbin has described the present state of Thomist exegesis with great acuity in Le chemin de la theologie chez Thomas d'Aquin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974), pp. 26-35. His own solution to the current dilemma-the project of the "lecture speculative "-resembles the present reading in result, but not in justification . 1 MARK D. JORDAN authentic Thomism, he is evidence that the doctrine of esse has characterized Thomism-even constituted it in its uniquenessfrom the earliest days.2 The doctrine of esse serves as centerpiece in the encyclopedic commentary of Capreolus, in the Thomistic fundamentalism of certain Renaissance masters/ and even in the unfortunate " Approved Theses of Thomistic Philosophy ." 4 But if the doctrine about esse has characterized historical Thomism, it is not the case that the doctrine has informed the reflection of Thomists. The twenty-four "Theses" illustrate the inverse relation between doctrinal peremptoriness and reflective appropriation. The more one insists on esse as the shibboleth of some ' true Thomism,' the less room there is for showing how full of questions are Thomas's texts about esse. The force of these questions became apparent in the half dozen works published in the years around 1940 by Fabro, Rahner, Gilson, de Finance and others.5 The questions remain. To insist that the doctrine of esse is characteristic of Thomas's thought can only underscore that its work as a principle has yet to be grasped. As a step towards clarifying this first thing in Thomism, I 2 See the introduction to the edition of his Theoremata de ente et essentia by Edgar Hocedez (Louvain: Museum Lessianum, 1930). The authenticity of Giles's reading of Thomas was challenged as early as Robert Orford's Reprobationes dictorum a Fratre Egidio in primum Senfontiarum (1288-1292). 3 See the essay on Dominic of Flanders by Armando F. Verde, "Domenico di Fiandra, intransigente tomista non gradito nello studio Fiorentino," in Tomismo e antitornismo, Memorie Domenicane, N.S. 7 (1976), 304-21, but particularly pp. 310-311. •The list was published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 6 (1914), 384 ff., and reprinted in the Enchiridion Symbolorum, 32nd ed., ##36fll-!i!4. Its native defects were exacerbated in the exposition of Guido Mattiussi, p;-':1led in the Osservatore and published as Le XXIV tesi della filosofia di S. Tornrnaso d'Aquino (R-0me: Gregorian Univ., 1925); esp. pp. 28-34 and 45-51, where the doctrine of esse becomes almost mechanical. 5 The concurrence of the following books marks something like...

Acerca de la verdad contenida en la Sagrada Escritura: una "quaestio" de Santo Tomás citada por la Constitución "Dei Verbum"

Towards the end of the past century, the divine gift of biblical inspiration begun to be considered as an aspect of the gift of prophecy, which St. Thomas explains in the questions 171-174 of the secunda secundae of the Summa Theologiae, as well as in other texts. Hence, the nature of the gift of biblical inspiration was understood as a case of prophecy in which God gives to the hagiographer the lumen divinum ad iudicandum, as speculative judgment; but at the same time that this lumen is not accompanied by the infusion of the species on the part of God. Biblical inspiration was then considered as revelatio late dicta. A few decades ago, serious objections came up opposing this form of explaining the divine gift of inspiration above all with arguments based on a clearer distinction between revelation and inspiration. The eminently practical character of biblical inspiration oriented towards writing is accentuated. This notion of inspiration is considered foreign to the formulation of the problem made by St. Thomas on the subject of prophetic gift. The essence of the gift of inspiration is placed not in the speculative judgment, which distinguishes the divine gift of revelation, but rather in the practical judgment which deliberates on the convenience of writing and the manner of doing it. In this context, it is highly significant that the Const. Dei Verbum of the II Vatican Council makes rejerence, in note 5 of paragraph 11, to a text of St. Thomas in which he studies the gift of prophecy: De Veritate q. 12, a. 2 c. In the last moments of the composition of Dei Verbum, this quotation of St. Thomas is inserted in order to clarify the correct meaning of biblical truth, one of the most discussecl topics of the mentioned conciliar Constitution. The truth, quam Deus nostrae salutis causa Litteris Sacris consignari voluit, understood (according to the orientation of note 5) under the light of Thomistic doctrine, supposes that the gift of inspiration involves on the part of the hagiographer an act of the speculative judgment. All the affirmations of the Sacred Scripture have been placed in script for our salvation. But at the same time, these are all true in themselves because they correspond to reality. They are salvific truths (salutares) that always maintain their true and salvific character. The very close relation between both concepts -truth and salvation- should not lead to a loss of the proper meaning of the former. This supposes that the gift of divine inspiration of the Holy Scripture includes an act of speculative judgment, in the manner of prophetic gift, as well as an act of practical judgment, which is also considered, in an analogous manner in the thomistic doctrine of the divine gift of prophecy.

El modo del conocimiento profético y escriturístico en Santo Tomás de Aquino

In the most recent studies on the treatise De Inspiratione there is a tendency to reject the use of the notion of prophetic gift and of what St. Thomas says about prophecy, in order to focus its treatment from the psychological point of view or the philosophy of language. The study presented here, without entering in polemics with the alluded currents of thought, pretends to point out that the elements contained in the works of the Angelic Doctor, and specially the short treatise De Prophetia of the Summa (II-II, qq. 171-174), as well as in parallel texts (for example, De Veritate q. 12), can serve to clarify the nature, finality and properties oj the hagiographic gift. The demonstration is carried out in two steps. In the first place, the parallelism between prophecy and inspiration is studied. The most important factor which is established is that the prophecy is a cognoscitive gift, which consists essentially in an illumination of the intellect (lumen propheticum), in order to judge of the truth of something apprehended naturally or supernaturally. In this sense, it is not essential that the species present in the mind of the hagiographer be infused: the most important element of knowledge is the judgment (judicium est perfectivum cognitionis), and for that matter, one could talk of a natural human knowledge (memory, fantasy, etc.). From this point of view, which corresponds to the notion of prophecy in the broad sense, the scriptural inspiration and prophecy can be considered identical. Moreover, the prophecy is a grace gratis data, which is given ad loquendum, that is to say a manifestative gift. But then, inspiration is also a manifestative gift, although ad scribendum. Between the denuntiatio prophetica and the composition of an inspired book, there is an evident analogy, even though there exists some difference. For that reason, the Angelic Doctor says in some texts that Solomon was a prophet simply for the composition of the books of wisdom even though he had never foreseen the contingent future things. The second part of the investigation tries to find out whether St. Thomas, in fact, utilized the notions of lumen propheticum, of gratia locutionis and of denuntiatio prophetica while speaking of inspiration. The examination of the texts related to inspiration does not resolve the problem. On the other hand, it is quite evident that the Common Doctor has the notion of inspiration present when he speaks of prophecy. As conclusion, according to the texts of St. Thomas inspiration pertains to prophecy as a species to its gender. What characterizes inspiration (its specific difference) is that the hagiographer does not necessarily receive the intellectual species by supernatural infusion. This could be given, but not necessarily. One characteristic of inspiration is that of being a gift destined to put in script and in a truthful manner (apte infallibili veritate) what the writer knows or receives from God.

Aquinas on the Self-Evidence of God's Existence

In the Summa Theologia I (STI), beginning at question 2, article 3, and in the Summa Contra Gentiles I (CGI), beginning at chapter 13, Aquinas provides five proofs for the existence of God. These proofs are intended to demonstrate that God exists and to provide the foundation for a larger program to demonstrate many other doctrines which are held by faith. However, the program which Aquinas sets up for himself in the two great Summae is trivial and unnecessary if the existence of God is self-evident in such a way that God's existence needs no demonstration. So, as a preamble to the five ways, Aquinas argues that the existence of God is not self-evident in any way that would hinder his program of rational theology.In STI the argument occurs in question 2, article 1, and in CGI it occurs in chapters 10 and 11. Aquinas also argues the same point in Commentum in Primum Librum Sententiarum (CS) distinction 3, question 1, article 2, and in Quaestiones Disputate De Veritate (DV) question 10, article 12.

An Essay on the Development of Dogma in a Heideggerian Context: A Non-Theological Explanation of Theological Heresy

AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA IN A HEIDEGGERIAN CONTEXT: A NON-THEOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THEOLOGICAL HERESY 0 NE ROLE that falls to systematic theology is that of re-conceptualizing traditional doctrines in terms of shifting cultural and theoretical frameworks. What this essay attempts within modest limits is to show what dogmatic development would look like if it were considered within a Heideggerian context. The theoretical framework in which doctrinal development is usually considered is, we believe, implicitly Aristotelian. Development itself is as much a feature of experience as permanence, and a discussion of the nature of development leads into ontology, into the question about being, about identity and permanence, change and becoming. Even so diverse thinkers as Rahner and Whitehead acknowledge this point: dogmatic development is one characteristic feature of the world that must be comprehended in a general metaphysics of being and becoming.1 But there is something about Aristotle's ontology which is uncomfortable with change, which favors the substantial and the permanent, and which supports an understanding of truth as the permanently valid and immutable . In dogmatic theology this approach to being translates into doctrines whose meanings can be fixed for all times and which thereafter determine the limits of orthodoxy. Now, we do not mean to deny any dogma, nor to shift the ontological weights from being to becoming, from permanence to process, although it does seem to us that a theory of dogmatic develop1 See Karl Rahner's essays, " The Development of Dogma" and " Considerations on the Development of Dogma" in Theological Investigations, Vols. I and IV (Baltimore, 1961 & 1966), and A. N. Whitehead's Process and Reality (New York, 19~9), Part V, Chapte;r ~471 472 WILLIAM E. REISER ment must take novelty seriously; the history of dogma is not the endless repetition or re-conceptualization of old truths. Nor do we advocate a dehellenizing of dogma. Heidegger himself moves behind the Greeks in his task of destroying the history of ontology in order to recapture the meaning of the original Greek inquiry about being. It is precisely because the question of being and becoming is so important to a given conceptual framework that we have tied our concern with dogmatic development to ontology. However, our concern will be to show that the axis of the discussion must be shifted somewhat, for the notion of being, at least on Heidegger's terms, not only cannot be conceptualized but conceptualization itself is inimical to a proper grasp of the question about being. For this reason he spoke of destroying the history of ontology. In his manner of distinguishing art and science Aristotle elevated theoretical knowing to a primacy among the ways we have of appropriating the real. Metaphysical knowledge in scholastic philosophy is dominated by the bias towards theory and science, yet it is out of such a context that theology emerges as the fuller viewpoint on man and his world, the divine science itsel£.2 In this essay we shall try to move behind this context in Heideggerian fashion. In De Veritate, q.l, a.l, St. Thomas asked about truth and in what sense the true is convertible with being. " True expresses the correspondence of being to the knowing power"; when the intellect conforms to things, to being, we can properly speak of the true: "the knowledge of a thing is a consequence of this conformity; therefore, it is an effect of truth." 3 Strictly speaking, therefore, the true is not that which is; that is the definition of being. But insofar as being, that which is, is grasped by intellect, we add to the notion of being the notion of truth. By their ontological conformity to the divine intellect things are true: " Even if there were no human intellects, • For a neo-Thomist exposition of this see Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York, 1957), Chapter 20. 3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, Trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S. J. (Chicago, 1952), Vol. I , p. 6. AN ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOGMA 478 things could be said to be true because of their relations to the divine intellect. But if, by an impossible supposition, intellect did not exist...

Aquinas’s Definition of Good

Aquinas's ethics, Q. 21 of the De Veritate which deals with Aqui nas's notion of Good, is almost entirely overlooked. For example D. J. O'Connor's book Aquinas and Natural Law1 refers only once to the De Veritate and that is not a reference to Q. 21. Even the massive work of Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas? in the entire third section which deals with Aquinas's moral theory has only six references to the De Veritate and again none are to Q. 21. H. J. McCloskey in Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics? provides what he considers two definitive repudiations of Aquinas's theory but there is no mention or reference to the De Veritate. There may be a reason for this. Thomists like Gilson may not be attuned to or interested in answering the specific problems which contemporary ethical theorists address themselves to,4 while ethical theorists like O'Connor seem to depend upon traditional Thomistic accounts to locate the pertinent passages in Aquinas's ethical writings, accounts which follow the order of one or other of the Summas. Be that as it may, some of the most illuminating sections of Aquinas dealing with ethical-theoretical issues are to be found in Question 21 of the De Veritate, for in this question is

"S. Tommaso la Verita (Quaestio I de Veritate)," translation and Commentary by Maurizio Mamiani

"S. Tommaso la Verita (Quaestio I de Veritate)," translation and Commentary by Maurizio Mamiani

The Process of Human Intellectual Love, Or Spirating A Pondus

THE PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE, OR SPIRATING A PONDUS IN IDS REFLECTIONS on the procession of love in God Cardinal Billot raises an interesting question about the process of creatures' intellectual love. That question might be stated in this manner: Does a distinct reality exist within the loving will which corresponds analogously to the mental word produced by the intellect in its act of knowing? 1 He is considering human love and knowledge insofar as they offer to us a foundation for our understanding something about the Divine Processions according to knowledge and love. Within human knowledge, of course, our normal mode of knowing consists in producing an immanent term which we call the mental word. This word is an apprehension of or judgment about something. Some reality which does or can have extramental existence is produced intentionally within the intellect as known. Through this mental word we look intellectually at the reality itself to enjoy a vision of it. Let us suppose on the other hand that in our will there is an operation of love? Or rather, on the contrary, must we confess within our will a similar intentional term of the beloved? Does that being which is loved really exist in some intentional way within our appetite? If so, is it really distinct from the operation of love? Or rather, on the conrtary, must we confess that no such term is produced within our act of loving? Cardinal Billot is prepared to concede that such a distinct volitional term does not exist within our love. Although I 1 De Deo Uno et Trino, Ludovico Billot, S. J. (Rome: Gregorian University, 1935), p. 365. Among other and more recent studies on love is The Experience of Love, by Jules Toner (Washington-Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1968). Although this is an interesting analysis of the total experience particularly of " radical love " and contains a remarkable criticism of other works on love, it does not explicitly dwell upon the exact question treated here. 39 40 WILLIAM ROSSNER respect Billot as a fellow Jesuit who loves St. Thomas Aquinas, I should like to disagree, amiably, however, as becomes brothers. Such a concession might seem to reduce our experience of an impulse toward what we love to some kind of myth. It might also appear to render less intelligible our process thought about Divine Love and the second procession according to which the Father and Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit. As favoring his position Billot cites a text of St. Thomas Aquinas: "The will does not have something proceeding from itself in the manner of something produced; but the intellect has in itself something proceeding from it, not only in the manner of operating but also in the manner of something produced." 2 I should prefer rather to say that in normal human speculative knowledge the intellect conceives a concept of something or speaks a mental word through which we know extra-mental reality. This grounds our human supernatural knowledge of the analogy in God where the Father speaks a word which is a generating of the Son who is the second Person of the Holy Trinity. And similarly in human intellectual love the will produces a distinct term which is intentionally the beloved; and this too grounds our knowledge of the procession according to love in God whereby the Father and Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit. I. THE QuESTION OF THE PROCEss OF LovE The problem raised here is interesting to anyone who finds attraction in the subject of love as it is found in creatures or in God. When raised to trinitarian heights it allures not only dogmatic theologians but also philosophers. In God each procession grounds a distinct person. The procession according to knowledge becomes generation of a Son from the Father. The procession according to love, although it grounds the distinct Holy Spirit as proceeding from Father and Son, nevertheless is not itself generation. In other words, within the • De Veritate, q. 4, a.~. ad 7. PROCESS OF HUMAN INTELLECTUAL LOVE 41 divinity, while the procession according to knowledge is itself a generation, the procession according to love is not itself a generation. The...