Norman Kretzmann Research Articles

Ibn ‘Arabī on Divine Atemporality and Temporal Presentism

Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is arguably the most influential philosophical mystic in Islam. He is also a presentist. This paper responds to the arguments of contemporary philosophers, Norman Kretzmann, William Lane Craig, Garrett DeWeese, and Alan Padgett, who argue that divine atemporality and temporal presentism are incompatible, through the temporal ontology of Ibn ‘Arabī. Ibn ‘Arabī asserts that all entities in the universe are loci of manifestation of God’s most beautiful Names. These divine Names constitute sensible reality. The principal response of Ibn ‘Arabī to the arguments of contemporary scholars is that the divine Names as they are manifested in the cosmos cannot be conflated with the divine Names as they are in themselves, which, in turn, cannot be conflated with God in His numinous essence. This allows him to simultaneously maintain the atemporality of God and temporal presentism.

Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas's Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul

Operation and Actuality in St. Thomas Aquinas's Argument for the Subsistence of the Rational Soul1 Kendall A. Fisher THE HUMAN SOUL is something of an ontological anomaly for St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the substantial form of the human being and so serves as her principle of existence and organization.2 But it is also a subsistent part of the human being—specifically, the part with which she understands. As subsistent, it is not merely the formal principle by which she exists; it exists in its own right, per se, akin, in this respect, to body parts like the hand or eye.3 Yet unlike these body parts, it is a subsistent substantial form, and Aquinas argues that this [End Page 185] ontological status renders it incorruptible. Consequently, it survives death to exist in a disembodied state. Such implications render Aquinas's commitment to the soul's subsistence—and his argument to that end—central to his philosophy of the human person.4 For Aquinas, the soul owes its subsistence to its rational nature. He argues that our intellective acts, unlike sensitive or nutritive ones, cannot be performed by something corporeal, like a bodily organ. Instead, they must be performed by something incorporeal. Aquinas locates these operations in the soul, apart from the body.5 In his view, this renders the soul a per se operator, which in turn entails its subsistence, that is, its existence per se. He holds that "[i] "nothing operates per se unless it exists per se, [ii] for, indeed, nothing operates except a [End Page 186] being in act, [iii] whence a thing operates in the way it exists."6 Since the soul operates per se, it must exist per se. Aquinas's argument rests on the correspondence between a thing's mode of operation and its mode of existence. This is explicit in [i] and [iii]. Yet he does not take this correspondence as primitive. Instead, he justifies it with [ii], nothing operates except a being in act. This requirement that agents be "in act" in order to operate underlies the correspondence between operating and existing per se. Aquinas makes similar moves in other contexts, appealing to variations of [ii] to support correspondence claims regarding operation and existence.7 In fact, [ii] is an instance of a pervasive principle in Aquinas's thought, which frequently appears as "nothing acts except insofar as it is in act" or, "each thing acts insofar as it is in act."8 He employs this principle, which I will call the in-act principle, in myriad contexts. It features in his arguments that God alone creates,9 that all creatures produce their like,10 that incorporeal creatures are incorruptible,11 that the intellective powers are formally in us,12 and others.13 Yet what the principle means and how it serves its justificatory role in the subsistence argument are not immediately clear. Indeed, despite the in-act principle's prominence in Aquinas's thought, it has received relatively little attention in the literature. Perhaps this is because it has sometimes been taken as the truism that agents must exist simpliciter. John [End Page 187] Wippel, for instance, explains the principle by noting that "nonexisting agents do not actually produce effects."14 And, while discussing its role in the subsistence argument, Robert Pasnau explains that what does not exist independently cannot operate independently because "existence is a pre-requisite for operation."15 While true, this reading of the principle is unhelpful for understanding it within the context of Aquinas's subsistence argument. His aim is not simply to establish that the soul exists simpliciter, but to establish that it exists per se and not as a mere formal principle. Other interpreters have taken the principle to be little more than a restatement of one of the correspondence claims regarding mode of operation and mode of existence.16 Norman Kretzmann notes that things that depend on matter (i.e., nonsubsistent forms) cannot act on their own.17 But again, this does little to explain why something nonsubsistent cannot operate per se, and leaves the in-act principle's role in the argument largely obscure. If we can illuminate the...

Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship to God by Paul A. Macdonald, Jr.

494 BOOK REVIEWS Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind's Relationship to God. By PAUL A. MACDONALD, JR. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Pp. 306. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-08132 -1577-8. Macdonald's book demands the attention of philosophers and theologians alike. Philosophically, Macdonald engages skepticism, subjectivism, philosophy of the mind, analytical philosophy, epistemology, realism, and Thomism. Theologically, Macdonald discusses the relation of faith and reason, the role of the intellect and the will in faith, apophatic theology, eschatology, and the significance of theological realism. These twin trajectories inform his answer to the question: "How can God transcend the mind but still remain known to the mind?" Critical of the overwhelmingly negative responses to this question since Kant, Macdonald affirmatively proposes, "Having knowledge of God thus seems to require that our conceptions of God bear on or are directed on God's transcendent reality" (xiii). The aim of the book, therefore, is to offer an epistemology that permits objective knowledge of God that does not diminish God's transcendence. Macdonald accomplishes this by arguing for an epistemology of direct realism and then shows how direct realism is compatible with natural knowledge of God, knowledge gained by faith, and even knowledge in the beatific vision. This last aspect is particularly intriguing since the beatific vision functions as the primary or quintessential instance of direct realism. Knowledge and the Transcendent is divided into three parts. The first part outlines howsubjectivism and skepticism proffer a problematic conception ofthe mind's relation to God, and traces the influence of this problematic through various philosophical and theological thinkers since Descartes and especially Kant. The second part addresses this problematic by offering an alternative, direct realism, argued for on the basis of a close reading of Aquinas's epistemology (STh I, qq. 78-85) and supported by its consistency with the knowledge of God by reason, faith, and beatitude. Macdonald argues that direct realism ensures objective knowledge of things and correspondingly of God-even if, in the case of the latter, this knowledge is partial, noncomprehensive, and nonabsolute. The third part applies direct realism to contemporary discourses on faith and reason on one hand and theological realism on the other. In this manner, Macdonald orients direct realism and its implications by critically engaging the works of John McDowell, Victor Preller, Norman Kretzmann, Denys Turner, and Peter Byrne. Modern discussions about knowing the transcendent God have often been falsely construed on the basis of a misconception of the relation between the mind and the world and, derivatively, the mind and God. Modern epistemologies conceive a disjunctive dualism between subject and object, the BOOK REVIEWS 495 mind and the world, which limits reason to dealing with mere appearances and not things-in-themselves. This restrictive narrowing of reason and objective knowledge by skepticism and subjectivism consequently creates a divide or boundary between the mind and God so that one must either overcome the divide by reducing God to the subject (anthropomorphism) or accentuate it so that God ultimately remains entirely unknown (agnosticism). Macdonald explains the consequences of many modern epistemologies, worth quoting at length, In short, the problem can be specified as follows: once God is placed outside or beyond a cognitive boundary (given that God is pictured as transcending a cognitive boundary), then there can be no objectivity in what human persons believe and say about God. The beliefs and assertions we hold and make about God ... can have no bearing on who God objectively is. This leads to skepticism regarding our knowledge of God. The alternative to the skeptical position, which in fact turns out to be an extension of skepticism, is subjectivism. According to this position, we can think and talk about God in terms of our religious symbols and experience; or we can think and talk about God in terms of our individual or collective religious responses and practices; but again, we cannot think and talk about God "in God's self." (3) As one may expect, Macdonald outlines the genesis of this problematic in Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Their epistemologies result in "theological antirealism ," whether in its anthropomorphic or agnostic forms, indicative of...

Locke on Language

AbstractJohn Locke is the first modern philosopher to offer a comprehensive philosophy of language. After discussing Locke's aims and scope, I explore Locke's main linguistic category, signification, and the most prominent interpretations of it, including those of Norman Kretzmann and E. J. Ashworth. I then turn to the nature of the proposition and the question whether Locke can distinguish between the act of forming a proposition and the attitude one adopts toward it.

A History of Scottish Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: History of Jewish Philosophy by Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman John Inglis Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman, editors. History of Jewish Philosophy. Routledge History of World Philosophies, Vol. 2. London: Routledge, 1997. Pp. xii + 934. Cloth, $150.00. Martin Bernal’s thesis in Black Athena (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1987) applies as well to the history of Jewish philosophy, which has been [End Page 316] neglected in the standard general histories of philosophy published since the nineteenth century. Yet, as interest grew in Latin medieval thought, attention was given to Jewish philosophy in order to sketch the Christian intellectual context. That is why the presentation of Jewish philosophy for its own sake as an important continuation and adaptation of the Classical philosophical tradition in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), edited by A. H. Armstrong, marked such a precedent, and its omission in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, such a lacuna. Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman help to supply much of this missing history in the volume under review. The collection of thirty-nine articles written by thirty-five for the most part prominent younger scholars, offers a fresh detailed account of the arguments of significant philosophers who were Jewish and of the critical roles they played in the history of “Western” philosophy. For this reason the book is especially useful for the study of Jewish philosophy as well as for arriving at a fuller picture of the history of philosophy. For example, David Winston’s discussion of Philo and Alexander Broadie’s article on Maimonides and Aquinas present Jewish philosophical discussions that had widespread implications for both the Jewish and Latin traditions in the medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. Furthermore, the philosophical activity of many of these philosophers in North Africa and the Near East broadens the standard Eurocentric historiography of philosophy. One reason why philosophers who were Jewish could have such influence outside of Jewish circles is their adoption of universal conceptual schemes, the topic of much of this volume and one which Winston calls the universalization of the Torah (41). T. M. Rudaysky develops this point in reference to medieval Jewish Neoplatonism, Lenn E. Goodman in reference to Judah Halevi, Howard Kreisel to Maimonides, and Seymour Feldman to Gersonides. These uses of the Classical philosophical tradition lead Frank to question whether it makes sense to continue to speak of Jewish philosophy (3–4). His point is that philosophers who were Jewish often treated issues common to the classical tradition and not issues only for Jews. He argues that since it became common to speak of Jewish philosophy only when faced with the problem of assimilation in the nineteenth century, we should not apply this term to all philosophy practiced by Jews, as if there was a single Jewish essence of philosophy. Respect for historical context is perhaps the single most important contribution made by the editors to the historiography of philosophy. Single chapters are devoted to the historical context of specific centuries and carry philosophical import. For example, within a treatment of the economic basis of philosophy in the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries, Marc Saperstein draws a contrast between celibate Christian Friars, whose intellectual and material needs were taken care of within religious communities, and Jewish philosophers, who had to work in order to provide for their own development (296–300). This helps to appreciate the specific issues raised and the difficulties involved in the study of philosophy. Elisheva Carlebach offers another example in a study of the social and cultural context of the seventeenth century, arguing that undue [End Page 317] stress should not be placed on Spinoza’s excommunication (602–605). One among many who held radical views and during a period of unrest brought on by an influx of emigration, Spinoza was dealt the same punishment as those who failed to pay their communal dues. The apt conclusion drawn is that from the perspective of the community, this excommunication was of no great significance. Such history corrects earlier interpretations and helps readers...

Norman Kretzmann on Aquinas's attribution of will and of freedom to create to God

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Norman Kretzmann's account of Aquinas's discussion of will in God. According to Kretzmann, Aquinas's reasoning seems to leave no place for choice on God's part, since, on Aquinas's account, God is not free not to will Himself. And so this leads to the problem about God's willing things other than Himself. On this, Kretzmann finds serious problems with Thomas's position. Kretzmann argues that Aquinas should have drawn necessitarian conclusions from his account of divine will. Moreover, in light of one reading of De veritate, q. 24, a. 3, but one not accepted by the Leonine edition, Kretzmann also maintains that Aquinas practically conceded this necessitarian view of God's creative activity in that text. My purpose will be, after presenting Kretzmann's presentation and defence of Aquinas's attribution of will to God, to examine critically his claim that Thomas should have concluded that God is not free not to create, and to determine whether a stronger argument can be made in support of Aquinas's position in light of his texts.

On a principle of sufficient reason

In The Metaphysics of Creation and The Metaphysics of Theism, Norman Kretzmann defends an argument for God's existence which he claims to find in Aquinas. I assess this argument's key premise, a principle of sufficient reason, that: ‘PSR2: Every existing thing has a reason for its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in the causal efficacy of some other beings’. PSR2 requires God's nature to explain His existence. Kretzmann does not tell us how this explanation is supposed to go. I examine such ways as I can envision that God's own nature might explain His existence. None pan out. I argue contra Kretzmann that if God is simple, as Aquinas understood this, His nature does not explain His existence, and while His existence is in itself per se notum (‘self-evident’) this does not entail that it has an explanation. If this is correct, we ought not to read Aquinas as committed to PSR2. Further, if I'm right that it's impossible for ‘the necessity of a thing's nature’ to explain its existence, PSR2 is true only if every existing thing has a reason for its existence in the causal efficacy of some other beings. So, if I'm right, theists ought to steer clear of PSR2, at least read in terms of genuine explanation. I finally offer a weaker reading of ‘a reason for its existence’ which does not generate the problems of the stronger reading Kretzmann seems to have in mind. This too, though, turns out to have its problems.

The So-Called Res Theory of Walter Chatton

37 Franciscan Studies 61 (2003) The So-Called Res Theory of Walter Chatton I We should start by distinguishing and explaining four important questions in fourteenth-century philosophy of language. (1) What are the truth-bearers for subject-predicate sentences? (2) What are the truth-makers for subject-predicate sentences? (3) What are the significates of subject-predicate sentences? (4) What are the objects of assent? (Acts of assent include knowing, believing, opining, doubting, etc.) (1) The question of truth-bearers asks: What features of reality ultimately bear the properties true and false and so thereby play a role in explaining why certain sentences are true or false? Some possible candidates for the job of truth-bearer are: (a) sentence-tokens themselves, i.e., actual instances of sentences, whether written, spoken, or mental; (b) propositions, which, let us say, are non-physical entities associated with the meanings of declarative sentences; or perhaps (c) complexe significabilia, extra-mental objects which are given by the dicta of declarative sentences. For example, the complexe significabilia associated with “God is three and one” is that God is three and one (in Latin Deum esse trinum et unum or quod Deus est trinus et unus).1 (2) The question of truth-makers asks: What elements of reality are responsible for making true sentences true (and, typically, false sentences false)? Some possible candidates here are: (a) a combination of (i) the passage of time, (ii) change of location, or (iii) the generation 1 The literature on complexe significabilia is fairly large and cannot be usefully summarized in a footnote. A few of the discussions on the topic that I have read and found useful are as follows: Elizabeth Karger, "William of Ockham, Walter Chatton and Adam Wodeham on the Objects of Knowledge and Belief," Vivarium 33, no. 2 (1995): 171-196; Gabriel Nuchelmans, "Adam Wodeham on the Meaning of Declarative Sentences," Historiographia Linguistica 8 no. 1 and 2 (1980): 177-187 and "The Semantics of Propositions," The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Richard Gaskin, "Complexe significabilia and Aristotle's Categories," in J. Baird and I Rossier, eds., Actes du XIIIe Symposium européen de logique et de sémantique médiévales (Avignon, 2000). RONDO KEELE 38 or corruption of some res;2 (b) exclusively res themselves, i.e., things in the ten Aristotelian categories; (c) complexe significabilia; or in a modern vein, (d) states of affairs. (3) The question of the significates of sentences asks: Which elements of reality does a sentence call to mind? Generally speaking, signification is just that power of language whereby we are caused to think of certain things, viz., the things that the language in question is about. Usually we talk about the signification of simple terms of a language, rather than the signification of whole sentences, but there is no reason why the question of sentential signification cannot be at least raised. Signification of spoken or written signs is conventional, of course, but the signification of mental language has a non-conventional connection to the things it signifies. Moreover, spoken and written signs are subordinate to mental signs in some fashion. Hence we can say that question (3) is best understood as follows: A mental sentence signifies whatever entity or entities it naturally causes me to think about; what are those entities? Some possible candidates are: (a) strictly speaking, nothing, but if we consider loosely the question of the reference of sentences, then loosely they could refer to a restricted class of res, for example, only individual substances and their individual qualities (b) a broader class of res, in particular, the res that the subject term in the mental sentence is about (and possibly the predicate terms in a polyadic predication); or again (c) complexe significabilia. (4) Finally, the question of objects of assent asks: What pieces of reality serve as the termini of our "assertive" mental acts, i.e., those mental acts that relate to claims that can be true or false. Some possible candidates include: (a) mental sentences themselves; (b) res, in particular, the res that the subject term in the mental sentence...

Aquinas’s Abstractionism

Aquinas’s Abstractionism

The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles II by Norman Kretzmann

The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles II by Norman Kretzmann

10.1023/A:1026443618400

Norman Kretzmann's recent analysis of the natural lawslogan ``lex iniusta non est lex'' (an unjust law is nota law) demonstrates the coherence of the slogan andmakes a case for its practical value, but I shallargue that it also ends up showing that the sloganfails to mark any interesting conceptual or practicaldivision between natural law and legal positivistviews about the nature of law. I argue that this is ahappy result. The non-est-lex slogan has been used toexaggerate the extent of disagreement about the natureof law and has diverted critics of natural law theoryfrom recognizing that the main disagreement betweennatural lawyers and legal positivists centres ontheories of practical reason and how they affect ourunderstanding of the relationship between law andmorality. This extends the debate about the nature oflaw somewhat beyond the traditional boundaries ofphilosophy of law, but these boundaries are due inpart to the diversion created by debate over thenon-est-lex slogan. Recognizing that the non-est-lexslogan fails on its own to mark any interestingpractical or conceptual division between natural lawtheories and legal positivism should therefore focusand encourage debate on matters of genuine substancebetween these outlooks. The disagreement, however, mayturn out to be primarily metaphysical and explanatoryand not normative in nature.

Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy by John Inglis Mark D. Jordan John Inglis. Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, volume 81. Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill, 1998. Pp. x + 324. Cloth, $99.50. Modern philosophers have shown themselves quite unphilosophical about the academic history of their own discipline. Content with grand stories that move from Plato to themselves, they have treated institutional histories, recent histories, and bibliographical histories as unworthy of attention. John Inglis sets out to change all that for the study of medieval philosophy. He demonstrates by the book’s end that we have failed to recognize our historiographical procedures as conventions—with very particular histories of their own. The first part of the book traces the genealogy of the dominant (one might say, hegemonic) model in recent studies of medieval philosophy. The genealogy is prefaced with two chapters that show how various were the motives for reconstructions of medieval thought before 1850 in authors such as Billuart, Goudin, and Brucker or Hegel, Ritter, and Hauréau. These chapters might be dismissed by contemporary scholars as so much antiquarianism. There can be no dismissing the relevance to contemporary work of Inglis’s main genealogy, which runs with surprising directness from Joseph Kleutgen (1811–1883) and Albert Stöckl (1823–1895) to Norman Kretzmann and Anthony Kenny. It adds to the piquancy of Inglis’s argument that most specialists in medieval philosophy will not even recognize the names of Kleutgen and Stöckl, much less feel kinship with them. But Inglis shows convincingly what Kleutgen and Stöckl did to make the study of medieval philosophy possible in modern universities. Kleutgen mapped the medieval texts onto a system of “spheres,” of fields or topics, recognizable to professors of philosophy. This means that he necessarily privileged epistemology, as he necessarily connected a medieval thinker’s views across the “spheres” into a system—or a failed attempt at one. Kleutgen then emphasized the reason/revelation dichotomy and an allegiance to what he understood as the system of Thomas Aquinas. Put these elements together and you have a surprisingly familiar story. It remained for Stöckl to write it up as an erudite and monumental narration. Inglis follows this „Kleutgen-Stöckl model” through a number of more familiar authors, including De Wulf, Gilson, Boehner, Weinberg, and the editors of the Cambridge [End Page 530] History of Later Medieval Philosophy. Of course, in reducing the genealogy to a list of famous names I ignore two of its great virtues. The first is the detail with which it retells the institutional circumstances and the forgotten intermediaries of the scholarly tradition. Behind the genealogy, around its borders, there stands Inglis’s enormous effort of original research, much of it archival. The genealogy’s second virtue is the dialectical subtlety with which it locates continuities under contradictions. Gilson is usually touted as the antithesis of De Wulf, and Kretzmann of Gilson. Inglis makes such antitheses seem superficial by comparing them with an abiding if tacit agreement about how medieval texts can be appropriated within modern philosophy. To seal the comparison, Inglis suggests in the book’s second part what a real antithesis to the Kleutgen-Stöckl model might be. He reconstructs, in his last two chapters, Thomas’s accounts of human knowledge and of theology’s relations to philosophy in opposition to that model’s prescriptions. No review can represent—or even adequately praise—the enormous learnedness of this book. Moreover, since the book already discusses so much, it must seem ungrateful to suggest that it ought to discuss anything else. Let me end then rather by posing two questions beyond the book’s end. First, does Inglis’s genealogy mean to suggest that the Kleutgen-Stöckl model is now chiefly received in English-speaking philosophy departments? I wonder, for example, how far Inglis might judge Alain de Libera’s Penser au Moyen Age (Paris: Éds. de Seuil, 1991) an alternative to that model. Certainly de Libera shows more self-consciousness about the culturally determined history behind our historiography. His emphasis on the thirteenth-century recovery...

In Memoriam: Norman Kretzmann, 1928-1998

Mos enim amicorum est ut cum amicus ad suam exaltationem vadit, de eius recessu minus desolentur.Thomas AquinasThis quotation from Aquinas’s Lectura super evangelium Johannis c. 14, l. 8 appeared as the dedication in Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, edited by Scott MacDonald and Eleonore Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999).Norman Kretzmann, one of the founders of Medieval Philosophy and Theology and chair of the journal's editorial board since its inception, died on August 1, 1998 in Ithaca, New York. Although he had been under treatment since 1991 for an incurable cancer, he remained actively engaged in his own research and directly involved in the work of the journal until a few weeks before his death.

Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter

Of Angels and Pinheads: The Contributions of the Early Oxford Masters to the Doctrine of Spiritual Matter Surely one of the strangest doctrines to emerge from the intense theological debates of the thirteenth century was the concept of spiritual matter} Traceable to the Fons vitae of Ibn Gabirol, spriritual matter (or "universal hylomorphism") in tandem with the doctrine of the plurality of forms became one of the pillars of what used to be called with such confidence the "Franciscan School."2 In fact, as I shall argue, this terminologically gauche teaching exemplifies the occasional ill fit between the newly discovered natural philosophy of Aristotle and traditional Christian teaching. The metaphysical testing ground par excellence for the compatibility of these two world views was the doctrine of the angels, spiritual substances that were at the same time limited and mutable. How, in philosophically coherent language, was one to account for their composition (or lack thereof) and their distinctiveness both from the incarnate spirits below them in the chain of being and the infinite Spirit above them? Indeed, how account for their distinction from one another? In the three or four decades before positions hardened into the Wegenstreit between the Dominicans [read "Thomists"] and the Franciscans, masters belonging to both orders, as well as secular masters, debated the issue without the constraints of following a party line. I intend in this paper to focus on the contributions to 1On the face of it an oxymoron, spiritual matter is more generally referred to by historians of philosophy by the less obtrusive label, "universal hylomorphism." The most complete treatment of the issue is still the dissertation of Erich Kleineidam, Das Problem der hylomorphen Zusammensetzung der geistigen Substanzen im 13. Jahrhundert, behandelt bis Thomas von Aqmn (Breslau, 1930). For corrections and additions to the latter see O. Lottin, "La composition hylémorphique des substances spirituelles; les débuts de la controverse," RNSP 34 (1932) 21-41. 2See e.g. Etienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy m the Middle Ages (New York, 1954), pp. 327-53, and David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962), pp. 235-48. The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (ed. Norman Kretzmann et al. [Cambridge, 1982]) talks of "Franciscan thinkers" and even "Franciscan thought" but avoids mention of a "Franciscan School." 239 Franciscan Studies, Vol. 56 (1998) 240R.James Long this debate of the earliest Oxford theologians who wrote on the subject, Grosseteste, Fishacre, and Rufus—a secular, a Dominican, and a Franciscan respectively.3 The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 had set the parameters for Christian belief concerning the angelic nature, that it was, namely, spiritual: . . . creator omnium visibilium et invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium: qui sua omnipotenti virtute simul ab initio temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam videlicet et mundanam.4 But "spiritual" was philosophically imprecise (as imprecise as mundanam "earthly" in the same formula) and needed to be translated into Aristotelian terms. And herein lay the difficulty. Did "spiritual" mean pure form, as were the separate substances in Aristotle's cosmos? If so, how account for their finitude on the one hand and for their individuation on the other hand? It was to respond to these metaphysical exigencies that the notion of "spiritual matter" was born. Although Grosseteste's influence on speculative theology at the Oxford Studium, especially on the Franciscans, is difficult to exaggerate, it seems that he was not responsible for the doctrine of spiritual matter. On a number of occasions, in fact, Grosseteste insists that the angels are immaterial both in their nature and their activity.5 The sole statement of his to the contrary—namely, that in comparison with the absolute simplicity of God all creatures are material—can be explained away by the context.6 'Although one cannot ignore the influence of Parisian theologians (among them William of Auvergne, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, and Philip the Chancellor) on their English counterparts, what one finds on investigation is that the distinctively empirical orientation of Oxford infuses even their angelology. 4Conc. Lateranense G?" (1215); Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum no. 428. 5E.g. De cessatione legahum: "Igitur simpliciter universitatem reducere ad completam unitatem non est, ut videtur, alio modo possibile...

Moments of the Ars Obligatoria According to John Duns

MOMENTS OF THE ARS OBLIGATORIA ACCORDING TO JOHN DUNS i. Introduction We feel very grateful to Jerry Etzkorn for many important contributions to Franciscan thought in particular and philosophia christiana in general. We might even suggest that he is there in the best possible philosophical and theological company, because we might also suggest that the theology and philosophy of Duns Scotus constituted the summit of both movements. At any rate, Duns' theoretical work elicited a paradigmatic breakthrough in philosophy and theology and the center of this scientific revolution was his ramified logic and ontology of synchronic possibility and synchronic contingency. However, how could he have done so and how could the Oxonian universe of thought have been so fruitful at the turn of those centuries, seven hundred years ago? To my mind, from the formal point of view logic and semantics in general, the ars obligatoria in particular have contributed very much. Understanding Duns means also digging into the development of the ars obligatoria. About halfway through the fourteenth century, Robert Fland distinguishes two traditions in the theory of dialogue and disputation (obligationes):1 1) the old and new way of ideas; the old and the new logic of obligations — by Fland characterized as the antiqua responsio and the nova responsio.2 The new line of the theory of disputation 'Robert Fland wrote between 1335 and 1370 and was probably associated with the University of Oxford. See Paul Vincent Spade (ed.), "Robert Fland's Insolubilia (RFI). An edition, with comments on die dating of Fland's works," Mediaeval Studies 40 (1978): 56-80. 2See paragraphs 14 and 20 of Paul Vincent Spade (ed.), "Robert Fland's Obligationes. An edition," Mediaeval Studies 42 (1980): 41-60, and Paul Vincent Spade, "Obligations: B. Developments in the fourteenth century," in The Cambridge history of hter medieval philosophy (CHLMP), eds. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge, 1982) 335-336,335-341. 383 Franciscan Studies, Vol. 56 (1998) 384ANTONIE VOS and argumentation appears to have originated with Roger Swineshead,3 who certainly appears to have been part of the intellectual circle with which Kilvington and Bradwardine are associated, and he may well have studied with them. Probably sometime after 1330 and before 1335, Swineshead wrote his pair of treatises on obligations and insolubles.4 If this new line of the theory of obligations has entered a new phase in the 30s of the fourteenth century and has to be associated with the innovative scholars of Merton College, the so-called Calculatores, in what way has the old tradition to be identified? According to Spade this tradition "conforms to the views of Burley, to those of the treatise attributed to William of Sherwood, and to those found in most if not all the other early treatises."5 This seemingly clear answer refers to rather different periods and places. On the one hand, we have four short treatises from the thirteenth century edited by De Rijk; on the other hand, we have a Tractatus de Obligationibus, attributed to William of Sherwood (Oxford, ca. 1200/1210 - ca. 1270) and Walter Burley's Tractatus de Obligationibus from 1302 (Oxford). Because of the intimate theoretical relationship between the treatise attributed to William Sherwood and Burley's tract we have to discern two kinds of puzzles; the systematics of both groups of treatises and the problem of the historical phases of the different contributions to the theory of obligationes. The contents of the treatises edited by De Rijk are much less advanced than that of the putative Tractatus de Obligationibus of William of Sherwood. Moreover, there is the historical connection between the two traditions of the responsio antiqua and the responsio nova specifically linked with Oxford. How then is the old way of ideas in the theory of disputational dialogue (obligationes) to be identified? Is there a 3Swineshead died about 1365, a Benedictine monk of Glastonbury and master of theology. See James Weisheipl, "Roger Swyneshed O.S.B. Logician, natural philosopher, and theologian," in Oxford Studies presented to Daniel Callus, (Oxford, 1964). 4Paul Vincent Spade, "Obligations: B. Developments in the fourteenth century," CHLMP, 335. ''Ibidem . THE ARS OBLIGATORIA3 8 5 continuous tradition during the second half of the thirteenth...

Kretzmann’s Theism vs. Aquinas’s Theism: Interpreting the Summa Contra Gentiles

The Thomist 62 (1998): 603-22 KRETZMANN'S THEISM VS. AQUINAS'S THEISM: INTERPRETING THE SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES THOMAS S. HIBBS Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts ~ CENT WORK on Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles1 ends simultaneously to put into question the traditional ssessment of it as a missionary work and to elevate its philosophical and theological significance in Aquinas's corpus.2 In his recent book, Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa contra Gentiles I,3 Norman Kretzmann rejects not only the missionary thesis but a broadly apologetic one as well. The problem with the latter is that Aquinas is "not answering objections to the faith"; his approach is not "reactive" (46-47). In this first volume of a projected three-volume study of Summa contra Gentiles I-III, Kretzmann sets out to confront the first book on its own terms and in detail. His project is philosophically ambitious, an attempt to reconstruct and clarify 1 Work on this essay was supported by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation through the Institute of Medieval Philosophy and Theology at Boston College, directed by Stephen Brown. I am grateful to John O'Callaghan and the anonymous reviewers of this essay for The Thomist for their criticisms of a previous draft of this essay. 2 See R.A. Gauthier, Introduction historique au tome I de /'edition bilingue de la Summa contra Gentiles (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1961), 7-123; idem, "Introduction" to Somme Cantre les Gentiles (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1993); Mark Jordan, "The Protreptic Structure of the Summa Contra Gentiles," The Thomist 50 (1986): 173-209; Thomas Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation ofthe Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). For a summary of the interpretations of the Summa Contra Gentiles, see L'Initiation a Saint Thomas dAquin: Sa personne et son oeuvre, by Jean-Pierre Torrell (Paris: Editions Cerf, 1993). 3 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Unless otherwise noted, page references in the text are to this book. 603 604 THOMAS S. HIBBS some of the key arguments in the first book. Indeed, his approach has the advantage of treating the Summa contra Gentiles as having a distinctive aim, not one that is merely a stage in the development of Thomas's theological writings. It thus circumvents one of the chief obstacles to uncovering the intention of the Summa contra Gentiles: the tendency to read it as an imperfect realization of what is later achieved in the Summa Theologiae, as perhaps the penultimate stage in what Michelle Corbin calls the chemin of Thomas's thought.4 The Metaphysics ofTheism offers more than a commentary on ScG I; it also provides an intriguing, if finally unpersuasive, claim about Aquinas's intention and strategy in composing the entire Summa contra Gentiles. To state Kretzmann's thesis with introductory brevity, he holds that the work was intended for atheists, to instruct them in generic "perfect-being theism." As we shall see, the problem with this approach is not just the anachronistic supposition about the audience, which Kretzmann readily concedes did not exist in Thomas's own time. The deeper problem has to do with the imposition of a contemporary conception of perfect-being theism upon Thomas's own distinctive theism in ScG I. Coming to terms with these difficulties will aid us in sharpening our reading of Thomas's work. In order to bring out the strengths and weaknesses of this interpretation, we will take up four issues. First, we will consider Kretzmann's thesis concerning the intention of the work, whose ideal audience, educated atheists, did not exist in Thomas's own time. Second, we will suggest that Kretzmann would have been on surer ground had he followed through on his own comments about the primacy of wisdom in the prologue to the Summa contra Gentiles. Third, we will analyze his conception of the meaning of natural theology in the Summa contra Gentiles and its relationship to revealed theology. Finally, we will examine Kretzmann 's interpretation of the doctrine of the names of God and the significance of his neglect of Aquinas's most important application of that doctrine: God's knowledge of...

Rezeption und Interpretation der aristotelischen Politica im späten Mittelalter (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 5t7 Averroists have misinterpreted Aristotle. In order to clarify this argument, Mclnerny offers in his essays a careful explanation of Aquinas's interpretation of Aristotle's philosophical accounts of the soul, the senses, the intellect, and the relations between the human body and soul. Reminiscent of Mandonnet's division of Aquinas's shorter works into theology or phiiosophy,~ Mclnerny argues that there is a great divide between the theological and philosophical writings of Aquinas (155). Theology has to do with revelation and philosophy with reasoning in the public domain (158). His point is that since Aquinas attempts to offer a correct account of Aristotle in his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, this text is one of philosophy and not theology 056 and 162). But what about recent claims that such a dichotomy is unfaithful to Aquinas? For example, Mark Jordan argues that if we look at the use to which Aquinas puts philosophy , he appears to have transformed philosophy into theology.3 In fact, Aquinas makes a claim in his Summa theologiae (ST) that implies he studied Aristotle for a theological purpose. When considering whether religious orders should be established for the study of science, he notes the use to which their members should put philosophy . He argues that since their entire lives are devoted to the service of God, they should only direct themselves to philosophical texts to such a degree that they can apply what they find to sacred teaching (ST, 2-2. 188.5.ad 3). Since Aquinas was a member of such a religious order, McInerny ought to consider whether Aquinas is writing theology and not philosophy. If Aquinas wrote his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas in order to demonstrate that Aristotle is not opposed to Christian faith, he is defending the use of Aristotle in sacred teaching and thus has transformed philosophy into theology. Aquinas against the Averroists is a welcome addition to that small but growing body of medieval texts in translation. McInerny and the editors of the Purdue University Series in the History of Philosophy are to be commended for providing a bilingual edition of Aquinas's De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas. The commentary provided and the summary of recent research into the historical context should be useful both for students and scholars. JOHN INGLIS University of Dayton Christoph Fliieler. Rezeption und Interpretation der Aristotelischen Politica im spiiten Mittelalter . Volumes i and 2. Bochumer Studien zur Phiiosophie, Band 19. Amsterdam: B. R. Griiner, 1992. Pp. xv + 335 (Volume l); vi + 2o9 (Volume 2). Cloth, $148.oo. These scholarly and intelligent volumes make several valuable contributions to research in an important field. (For recent evidence of the variety and originality of 9Thomas Aquinas, Opuscu/aOmnia, 5 vols, ed. P. Mandonnet (Paris: Lethielleux, 1927). aMark Jordan, "Theology and Philosophy," in The CambridgeCompaniontoAquinas, eds. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 235- 518 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 33:3 JULY 1995 medieval political Aristotelianism, see James Blythe's Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages.) Most broadly useful will be the detailed census of medieval commentaries on the Politics and the Pseudo-Aristotelian Economica occupying the second volume. Manuscripts and editions are identified and described in helpful detail for 14o commentaries, and references are given to another 62. In addition-or subtraction--several manuscripts previously thought to be commentaries on the Politics or Economica are revealed not to be such, or not to be by the authors to whom they have previously been attributed. Besides significantly augmenting the coverage of these works in the pioneering catalogue of Charles Lohr, Christoph Fliieler provides lists of questions for twenty-four "commentaries in question form," that is, works in which the Aristotelian text serves as point of departure for the author's own engagement with substantive issues. The questions, often fascinating, are few in some cases, well over a hundred in others. Of the two dozen commentaries of this type, only four have been printed. In his first volume FlOeler focuses on the influence of the Politics on medieval discussions of servitude (servitus). After a concise "before and after" analysis, suggesting that Aristotle's defense of the naturalness of...

Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann.

Overview: Dedicated to Norman Kretzmann - a major figure within medieval philosophy and a leader in the redifinition of philosophy of religion - this book presents important new essays by fourteen eminent philosophers. Examining aspects of the rationality of faith or bringing philosophical techniques to bear on particular religious texts or doctrines, each chapter deepens our understanding of the connections between faith and reason. In the first part of the collection, the contributors examine the assumption that faith can be epistemologically valid only if it is based on sufficient evidence. The following chapters explore the relationship between reason and revelation with reference to the book of Genesis. Additional essays provide analytic approaches to such traditional divine attributes as transcendence, eternality, perfect goodness, and freedom. Focusing on problems of redemption and evil, the concluding chapters apply categories of Anglo-American philosophy to central doctrines of the Christian faith. This book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the expanded range of topics now addressed by Anglo-American philosophers of religion. It will be valuable reading for scholars and students in the fields of philosophy of religion, medieval studies, biblical studies, theology, and metaphysics.

Reasoned Faith. Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann

Reasoned Faith. Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann

The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump, Cambridge University Press 1993, paperback £12.95

Book Review in this Articles:THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO AQUINAS, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore StumpLIVING A CHRISTIAN LIFE by Germain GrisezFROM EXISTENCE TO GOD, by Barry MillerTHE COLLEGEVILLE BIBLE COMMENTARY NEW TESTAMENT, based on the New American Bible. General Editor R.J. Karris, O.F.M.SIX NEW GOSPELS, by Margaret Hebblethwaite