On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christology: Sacra Doctrina, Analogia Entis, and Kenosis Thomas Joseph White O.P. I would like to thank Angela Franks, Ian McFarland, Joshua Ralston, and Chris Tilling for their generous comments on my book The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology. The wonderful professionalism of engagement and theological verve that each of their essays demonstrates are impressive and stand somewhat in disproportion to my theological merits. The topics we are engaging with are important ones for the understanding of the mystery of Jesus Christ and the Church’s common confession of faith, as well as ways that academic theology seeks humbly to understand that mystery. There is, perhaps happily, too rich a content in the essays for me to respond to comprehensively. Given the ecumenical context of our discussion in this format, I would like to address three topics briefly: sacra doctrina in the Thomistic tradition, analogia entis as it relates to ecumenism, and topics in kenosis, particularly with regard to the renewal of dyotheletism and what I take to be the helpful traditional use of the communication of idioms when speaking of God’s human suffering and kenotic love. Sacra Doctrina Catholics in the Thomistic tradition and Protestants influenced in noteworthy ways by Barth do often have clear substantive disagreements theologically, to be sure. However, they do not always understand one another in the terms each other would easily recognize. I think it is important to make a few comments about Thomistic self-understanding regarding [End Page 649] the practice of theology as a normative discipline and how it relates to Scripture, Tradition, dogma, and philosophy, as well as normative claims about orthodoxy and heresy. As anyone recognizes, Aquinas is only one theologian among many in the Catholic tradition. Evidently, no one who is a member of the Catholic Church is required intellectually to be committed to Thomistic interpretations of commonly held doctrine, let alone to Aquinas’s own distinctive philosophy. What then do Catholic Thomists make, methodologically, of the inherent theological pluralism within their own Church, and how does it relate to argumentative claims Thomists sometimes propose regarding the supposed insufficiencies of alternative theological viewpoints, or the conceptual advantages of Thomistic positions in Christology? First let us simply note some levels of authority that Aquinas himself recognizes in question 1 of Summa theologiae [ST] I, and questions 1–2 of ST I-II. My list below is affected by an interpretation of Aquinas made in light of the Second Vatican Council Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, but it is not for that reason, I think, artificial or extrinsically imposed. 1. God reveals himself in free self-disclosure and self-communication by way of grace, teaching us through the medium of the prophets and apostles, and this teaching is found in Scripture and early apostolic Tradition. It is received, transmitted, and understood within the living tradition of the Church. The whole Church is assisted by the Holy Spirit in this process to understand and receive the teaching of God revealed in Christ faithfully down through the ages, not without the assistance of the apostolic college, the episcopal authorities of the Church acting in communion with the see of Rome. 2. This teaching is itself codified at times in dogmatic universal pronouncements, which are not identical with primal revelation as such but which seek to promote and protect right understandings of integral elements of it. The dogmatic teaching of Chalcedon, for example, is not identical with scriptural revelation but is taken to indicate something perennially true about the ontology of Christ which is revealed implicitly in the New Testament. Most Catholic theologians agree that the Church understands this kind of dogmatic teaching as infallibly expressive of divine revelation, and irreformable. This does not mean that the teachings given in these locales are comprehensive or fully adequate, but they do indicate core confessional truths, manifest implicitly or explicitly in Scripture, that must be preserved [End Page 650] through the ages, even if such conciliar teachings also can be reinterpreted in various ways in subsequent ages, in new theological and philosophical formats. The latter formats, novel though they may be in each age, need...
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Dec 20, 2023
Nathanael Neacșu 
Open Access
