GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST

VOLUME 81 (2017)

ARTICLES

Brotherton, Joshua R., Hope and Hell: The Balthasarian Suspension of

Judgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Casanova, Carlos A., A Restatement of the Fourth Thomistic-Aristotelian Way
to Prove the Existence of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Di Noia, J. A., O.P., Not “Born Bad”: The Catholic Truth about Original Sin
in a Thomistic Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
Eitel, Adam, The Protreptic of Summa theologiae I-II, qq. 1-5 . . . . . . . . . 183
Hughes, Margaret I., Does Taste Matter for Thomists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Hunter, Justus H., Rereading Robert Grossteste on the ratio incarnationis:
Deductive Strategies in De cessatione legalium III . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Jensen, Steven J., Libertarian Free Decision: A Thomistic Account . . . . . 315
LaNave, Gregory F., How Theology Judges the Principles of Other Sciences
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567
Lusvardi, Anthony R., S.J., A Presumptuous Age? The Sin of Presumption in
the Summa theologiae as a Key to Understanding the “Age of
Entitlement” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Marshall, Bruce D., “Tolle me et redime te”: Anselm on the Justice and Mercy
of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
McCormick, William, S.J.“The Two Heads of the Eagle”: Aquinas and
Rousseau on Civil Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Napier, Stephen, The Neuroscience of Moral Judgment and Aquinas on
Moral Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Osborne, Thomas M., Jr., Which Essence Is Brought into Being by the
Existential Act? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Rubin, Michael J., The Places of “Thing” and “Something” in Aquinas’s
Order of the Transcendentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Scherz, Paul, Prudence, Precaution, and Uncertainty: Assessing the Health
Benefits and Ecological Risks of Gene Drive Technology Using the
Quasi-Integral Parts of Prudence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Van Nieuwenhove, Rik, “Recipientes per contemplationem, tradentes per
actionem”: The Relation between the Contemplative and Active
Lives according to Thomas Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
 REVIEWS

Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and

Following Christ (Olivier-Thomas Venard, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Benedict XVI, Anthropology and Culture: Joseph Ratzinger in “Communio,”
vol. 2 (Jeffrey L. Morrow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Berwick, Robert C., and Noam Chomsky, Why Only Us: Language and
Evolution (Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Blankenhorn, Bernhard, O.P., The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian
Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Henk J. M.
Schoot) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Brower, Jeffrey E., Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World: Change,
Hylomorphism, and Material Objects (Andrew Jaeger) . . . . . . . 277
Bushlack, Thomas J., Politics for a Pilgrim Church: A Thomistic Theory of
Civic Virtue (Thomas W. Smith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
Chaberek, Michael, O.P., Catholicism and Evolution: A History from Darwin
to Pope Francis (John Baptist Ku, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Chomsky, Noam, and Robert C. Berwick, Why Only Us: Language and
Evolution (Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Deák, Viktória Hedvig, Consilia sapientis amici: Saint Thomas Aquinas on the
Foundation of the Evangelical Counsels in Theological Anthropology
(Basil Cole, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Flood, Anthony T., The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in
Aquinas (Colleen McCluskey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
Führer, Markus, Echoes of Aquinas in Cusanus’s Vision of Man (Donald F.
Duclow) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Gaine, Simon Francis, O.P., Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation,
and the Vision of God (Rik Van Nieuwenhove) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Griffiths, Paul J., The Practice of Catholic Theology (James J. Buckley) . . 600
Hoffmann, Tobias, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Jensen, Steven J., Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations
to Deriving Oughts (Stephen L. Brock) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Kupczak, Jaros»aw, O.P., Gift & Communion: John Paul II’s Theology of the
Body (Perry J. Cahall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620
Labourdette, Michel, O.P., La foi (Romanus Cessario, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . 449
Levering, Matthew, Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation: The Mediation of the
Gospel through Church and Scripture (Roger W. Nutt) . . . . . . . 138
Lisska, Anthony J., Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic
Reconstruction (David L. Whidden III) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
 REVIEWS (con.)

Loyer, Kenneth M., God’s Love through the Spirit: The Holy Spirit in Thomas
Aquinas and John Wesley (Daria Spezzano) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Matz, Brian, Patristics and Catholic Social Thought: Hermeneutical Models for
a Dialogue (Kenneth R. Himes, O.F.M.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446
Midgeley, Mary, Are You an Illusion? (Christopher A. Decaen) . . . . . . . . 302
Müller, Jörn, Tobias Hoffmann, and Matthias Perkams, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Oakes, Edward T., S.J., A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies (Christopher
J. Malloy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609
Perkams, Matthias, Jörn Müller, and Tobias Hoffmann, eds., Aquinas and the
Nicomachaean Ethics (Christopher Kaczor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306
Pfau, Thomas, Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions,
and Responsible Knowledge (Kevin Hart) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Porro, Pasquale, Thomas Aquinas: A Historical and Philosophical Profile
(Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459
Ramage, Matthew J., Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with
Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas (Anthony Giambrone, O.P.) . 273
Rogers, Katherin A., Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism
(Eileen Sweeney) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
Sanford, Jonathan J., Before Virtue: Assessing Contemporary Virtue Ethics
(William C. Mattison III) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Schumacher, Michele M., A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and
Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas (Roch
Kereszty, O.Cist.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Selin, Gary, Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations (Sara Butler, M.S.B.T.)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
Sirilla, Michael G., The Ideal Bishop: Aquinas’s Commentaries on the Pastoral
Epistles (Basil Cole, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Spezzano, Daria, The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification according to St.
Thomas Aquinas (Daniel Keating) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Swafford, Andrew Dean, Nature and Grace: A New Approach to Thomistic
Ressourcement (Bernard Mulcahy, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Torre, Michael D., ed., Do Not Resist the Spirit’s Call: Francisco Marín-Sola
on Sufficient Grace (Bernard Mulcahy, O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 437
Whidden, David L., III, Christ the Light: The Theology of Light and
Illumination in Thomas Aquinas (Aaron Canty) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
White, Thomas Joseph, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Study in Christology
(Corey L. Barnes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
The Thomist 81 (2017): 471-505

WHICH ESSENCE IS BROUGHT INTO BEING BY THE

EXISTENTIAL ACT?

THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

Center for Thomistic Studies

Houston, Texas

A
LTHOUGH SCHOLARS agree that according to
Thomas Aquinas there is a distinction between essence
and existence (esse) in created things, they are often
unclear about the nature and even the terms of this distinction.
In this article, for the sake of clarity, I follow Joseph Owens in
translating “esse” as “existence” when it means the existential
act of a being. One should perhaps first ask what Thomas means
by “essence” in this context. I argue that the essence that is
actualized by existence is the essence that is a determinate
nature in an individual and not the essence absolutely
considered. This essence in individuals has a potential being that
is actualized by existence.
Owens and some other Thomists argue that the essence at
stake in this distinction is the essence absolutely considered.
Owens writes:

[An] essence is individual when existent in the human intellect, but common
and not existent when considered absolutely. Essence as common nature,
essence in its absolute consideration, and essence contrasted with existence
coincide. All three denote the essence that may be brought into being by
existential act, either in reality or in cognition.1

1
Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston: Center for
Thomistic Studies, 1985), 139-40. See also idem, “Common Nature: A Point of
Comparison between Thomistic and Scotistic Metaphysics,” Mediaeval Studies 19
(1957): 1-14, at 5-7. For a related account, see John Knasas, “The Intellectual

471
472 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

Owens emphasizes that this essence has no being of its own. I

will argue that the essence absolutely considered is an essence to
which it makes no sense to attribute existence. The essence that
is really distinct from existence is distinct from existence in the
way that being in potency is distinct from being in act.
First, I will show that Owens neglects an important dis-
tinction between two kinds of potency, namely, that which
results from God’s power to create and that which belongs to an
existing essence that receives an existential act. Second, I will
consider the text of Thomas’s early De ente et essentia, in which
Thomas makes the distinction between the kinds of essence or
nature, of which one is the essence absolutely considered. I will
show that when Thomas establishes the distinction between
essence and existence as one of potency and act, he has in mind
not essence absolutely considered but the essence that is in
individuals. Third, I will show that this interpretation of De
ente is the only one that is compatible with Thomas’s statements
about the distinction between nature and existence in his
Christological treatments. Although there are many relevant
texts, the Christological discussions perhaps most clearly bring
out the relationship between essence or nature, the individual
substance (suppositum or hypostasis), and existence.

I. TWO KINDS OF POTENCY

A distinction between two kinds of potency is important for

understanding how essence is really distinguished from
existence. First, an essence can be considered as merely possibly
existing. In this sense an essence depends only on the being of
the divine essence. Essence itself has no being before it is
created except insofar as it is in God’s essence.2 It is in potency
with respect to the ability to come into existence at all by an

Phenomenology of De ente et essentia, Chapter Four,” Review of Metaphysics 68

(2014): 107-53.
2
Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 6 (Quaestiones disputatae, ed. P. Bazzi et al.,
2 vols. [Turin: Marietti, 1953], 2:48).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 473

agent.3 Second, an essence can be considered insofar as it is

actualized by existence. In this second sense essence receives
being. It is in potency to the existence that it receives in a way
similar to that in which matter is in potency to the form that it
receives. This second kind of potency is the kind that is at stake
both in the distinction between essence and existence and in the
distinction between matter and form.
Thomas thinks that the distinction between essence and
existence is needed to provide a real composition in created
creatures that lack matter, namely, the angels or spiritual
creatures. All created being is divided between potency and act.
Material creatures are in potency because of their matter. Since
angels lack matter, there must be another explanation for their
potency. Thomas writes:

There is to consider in created things a twofold act and a twofold potency.

For first a certain matter is as potency in respect to form, and form is its act;
and again a nature constituted from matter and form is as potency in respect
to its existence, in so far as it is receptive to it. Therefore, with this foundation
of matter being removed, if there remains some form of a determinate nature
per se subsisting and not in matter, it will be still compared to its existence as
potency to act: I do not say as a potency separable from act, but that which its
act always accompanies.4

3
For different interpretations of such possibility, see Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas
and the Possibles,” The New Scholasticism 53 (1979): 76-85; Beatrice Zedler, “Why are
the Possibles Possible?,” The New Scholasticism 55 (1981): 113-30; John F. Wippel,
“The Reality of Nonexisting Possibles according to Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent,
and Godfrey of Fontaines,” Review of Metaphysics 34 (1981): 729-58, at 730-40, 758;
repr. in Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 163-89, at 164-73, 189.
4
De spir. creat., a. 1: “in rebus compositis est considerare duplicem actum, et
duplicem potentiam. Nam primo quidem materia est ut potentia respectu formae, et
forma est actus eius; et iterum natura constituta ex materia et forma, est ut potentia
respectu ipsius esse, in quantum est susceptiva eius. Remoto igitur fundamento materiae,
si remaneat aliqua forma determinatae naturae per se subsistens, non in materia, adhuc
comparabitur ad suum esse ut potentia ad actum: non dico autem ut potentiam
separabilem ab actu, sed quam semper suus actus comitetur” (Quaestiones disputatae,
2:371).
474 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

In this text, the potency of a nature to existence is compared

with the potency of matter to form. Although similar, the two
potencies are not entirely the same.5 For instance, the matter of
a natural being is in potency to become something else, and it is
limited by its form. In contrast, a nature or essence is not in
potency to become something else, and it limits its act to a
determinate kind of being. Despite such differences, essence and
existence divide being according to potency and act in a real
way, just as matter and form do. Thomas clearly has in mind the
potency of an essence that is actualized by existence and not the
mere possibility that an essence has for existence. He notes that
the determinate nature’s potency is inseparable from its
existence. Consequently, an essence that is not actualized by
existence lacks potency in this sense, even if it is possible for
such an essence to exist.
This distinction between these two kinds of potency is
sometimes called a distinction between objective potency and
subjective potency. In such later Scholastic terminology, ob-
jective potency is “the capacity of a mere possible to be
created,” and subjective potency is “the passive capacity in a
subject that is already existing.”6 Objective potency is a non-
repugnance that can be brought into being. In contrast,
subjective potency indicates a member of a division of real being
into potency and act. For instance, the matter of Socrates is in
subjective potency to his form. According to this terminology,
on the traditional Thomistic account, Thomas would think that

5
For a discussion of matter and form in light of this difference, see John F. Wippel,
The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 103-5, 296-312.
Cajetan, In “De ente,” c. 5, q. 12, n. 101, lists two similarities and ten differences
between the two compositions (In “De ente et essentia” Thomae Aquinatis, ed. M-H.
Laurent [Turin: Marietti, 1934], 141-44). For Dominic Banez’s partial criticism of
Cajetan on this point, see my “Continuity and Innovation in Dominic Banez’s
Understanding of Esse: Banez’s relationship to John Capreolus, Paul Soncinas, and
Thomas de Vio Cajetan,” The Thomist 77 (2013): 367-94.
6
Bernard Wuellner, Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1956;
repr. Fitzwilliam, N.H.: Loreto, 2012), 94. For other Scholastic uses of “objective
potency,” see Alexander a Jesu, Metaphysica iuxta mentem D. Thomae et doctrinam
nostrorum Complutensium, tract. 1, disp. 3, q. 2, n. 2 ([Naples, 1688], 1:163).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 475

an essence has subjective potency that is actualized by existence.

The real distinction between essence and existence is a dis-
tinction between principles of being, namely, potency and act.
Owens’s account of the role of the essence absolutely
considered may in part be rooted in his alternative
understanding of subjective and objective potency. Owens
rejects earlier Thomistic accounts of Thomas’s distinction
between essence and existence in part because he seems to agree
with Suarez’s criticism that such Thomists make essence into
something that has its own actuality apart from existence.7
Unlike his Thomist contemporaries, Suarez thinks that
something can have subjective potency only if it has real
actuality. Suarez holds that matter has subjective potency to
form because it has its own actuality apart from form and can at
least by God’s power exist without form. In contrast, it would
be contradictory for essence to exist without existence, and
therefore essence cannot have its own actuality or be in
subjective potency. It follows that essence can have only
objective and not subjective potency. In accepting Suarez’s
criticism of his contemporary Thomists, Owens adopts an
understanding of subjective potency that earlier Thomists
rejected. Suarez’s criticism that contemporary Thomists
attributed actuality to essence has plausibility only if it is
assumed that subjective potency has some level of actuality. But
Thomists explicitly deny this assumption. In summary, Suarez
has a non-Thomistic account of what it means to be a potential
being, and Owens apparently either accepts this non-Thomistic

7
Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 135 n. 8; idem, “The Number of Terms
in the Suarezian Discussion on Essence and Being,” The Modern Schoolman 34 (1957):
147-91. For the argument, see Francisco Suarez, Disputationes metaphysicales, disp. 31,
sect. 3 (Opera omnia, vol. 26 [Paris: Vives, 1861], 233-35). For the wider differences
between Suarez and Thomists on this issue, see Norbert Del Prado, De veritate
fundamentali philosophiae christianae (Fribourg: St. Paul, 1911), 188-91; Réginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, La synthèse thomiste, ed. nouvelle (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,
1950), 78-93. Owens mentions Del Prado’s criticism of Suarez but I cannot find that he
addresses Del Prado’s arguments. See Owens, “Suarezian Discussion,” 189-90.
476 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

account or does not recognize the nature and importance of

Suarez’s divergence from Thomas on this point.
Suarez rejects the doctrine of the real distinction because
objective potency is a mere logical possibility that cannot be
part of a real composition with existence. If Suarez is correct
that essence only has objective potency, then essence cannot be
distinct from existence in the way that potency is really distinct
from its act. On such an account, this objective potency or
logical possibility could perhaps belong to the essence absolutely
considered. For instance, rationality can be predicated of
humanity precisely because of this essence absolutely con-
sidered, which depends only on the nature of humanity as in
God’s essence, and not on any actually existing man. This
possibility does not depend on any existence apart from that of
God.
Owens seems to share Suarez’s non-Thomistic understanding
of potency when he writes that “essence as ‘objective potency’
and as ‘receptive potency’ or ‘subjective potency’ coincide. The
essence that receives being has no actuality whatsoever prior to
the reception of being.”8 Like Suarez, Owens seems to identify
the nonrepugnance of essence to existence, or the possibility of
an essence to be created by God, with the essence that is
distinguished from existence. Owens accepts Suarez’s criticism
of the standard Thomistic position because, like Suarez, he
assumes that if essence has subjective potency it would have
some degree of actuality. On the other hand, Thomas under-
stands the act/potency distinction in such a way that a potential
principle such as matter or essence has, on its own, no actuality.
Potency is a different sort of being. Nevertheless, it is a division
of being, and not mere possibility.
Although it seems to me that Owens’s interpretation might
lead to serious errors concerning Thomas’s use of the intellectus
essentiae argument and his wider understanding of act and
potency, my focus here is his narrower account of how essence
is in potency to existence. His approach seems to blur the
distinction between the two kinds of potency, namely, potency

8
Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 139 n. 20.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 477

as a possibility of existing and potency as a recipient of act.

Consequently, he obscures the fundamental issue at stake in
debates over the real distinction between essence and existence,
namely, that it is a real distinction between potency and act.
Moreover, as Deborah Black and Paul Vincent Spade have
pointed out, if Owen’s account of Thomas is true, then it is
difficult to see what explanatory role essence plays in Thomas’s
metaphysics. Black notes that on Owens’s account Thomas
focuses on the individually existing thing in such a way that the
metaphysical role of essence disappears.9 She thinks that in
contrast with Avicenna’s view of the common nature as having
relatively equal being in the intellect and in things, Thomas’s
account undermines the distinction between essence and
existence. According to Spade, Thomas’s account both denies
existence to the common nature and yet demands some
diminished existence for it.10 If the common nature has no
existence, it cannot play the metaphysical role that Thomas
assigns to it. While I do not agree with Black and Spade in their
description of the problem or its alternatives, they are right to
be puzzled over the role of essence in Owens’s interpretation. I
will argue that for Thomas, an individual essence plays a
metaphysical role in the composition of an individual that
receives an act of existence. It is the determinate nature or
essence in individuals that plays this role, not the essence merely
insofar as it is considered absolutely apart from its existence in
individuals.

II. DE ENTE ET ESSENTIA

In De ente et essentia, Thomas considers the meaning of the

two most basic terms in metaphysics, namely, “being” (ens), and

9
Deborah Black, “Mental Existence in Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna,” Mediaeval
Studies 61 (1999): 45-79, at 77-79.
10
Paul Vincent Spade, “Degrees of Being, Degrees of Goodness: Aquinas on Levels
of Reality,” in Scott MacDonald and Eleanore Stump, eds., Aquinas’s Moral Theory,
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 255-75, at 270-74.
478 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

“essence” (essentia). At the beginning of the work, after

distinguishing between real being and being as the truth of a
proposition, he discusses different senses of essence or nature. I
am concerned here with the way in which the essence/existence
distinction is relevant to two distinctions that Thomas makes
concerning essence. First, he distinguishes between essence
taken with and without precision, such as the difference
between “humanity” and “man,” or between “equinity” and
“horse.” Essence taken with precision signifies a part and
essence without precision signifies a whole. Second, he
distinguishes between three different kinds of essence. The
second distinction, which is between three meanings of essence
or nature, comes from Avicenna. This distinction is between
essence absolutely considered, essence as existing in singulars,
and essence as existing in the mind.11 In his description of
Avicenna’s threefold distinction, Thomas discusses only essence
considered without precision, although there is no reason to
think that it does not also apply in a way to essence taken with
precision. For instance, he should be able to distinguish between
humanity considered apart from any existence, and humanity as
existing in either an individual man or in the intellect of a
knower.
In chapter 1, Thomas explains the close relationship between
terms such as essence, quiddity, form, and nature.12 Essence is
what places beings in diverse genera and species. For instance,
humanity places Socrates in the species “human” and in the

11
Avicenna, Metaphysica 1.5 (S. van Riet and G. Verbecke, eds., Avicenna Latinus,
Liber de philosophia prima sive scientia divina I-IV [Louvain: Peeters; Leiden: Brill,
1977], 35). For Thomas’s usage of this distinction in light of the problem of universals
and the influence of Boethius, see Jorge J. E. Gracia, “Cutting the Gordian Knot of
Ontology: Thomas’s Solution to the Problem of Universals,” in David M. Gallagher, ed.,
Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1994), 16-36. For the influence of Avicenna on Thomas on this point,
see Black, “Mental Existence,” 45-79; Giorgio Pini, “ʽAbsoluta consideratio naturae’:
Tommaso d’Aquino e la dottrina avicenniana dell’essenza,” Documenti e studi sulla
tradizione filosofica medievale 15 (2004): 387-438.
12
De ente et essentia 1 (Leonine ed., vol. 43, pp. 369-70). Unless otherwise
indicated, all texts from Thomas Aquinas come from his Opera omnia (Rome:
Commissio Leonina, 1884-).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 479

genus “animal.” Essence is related to nature in two ways. First,

nature signifies the essence insofar as it signifies what makes the
being grasped by the intellect, namely, the definition or essence.
Second, nature signifies the essence insofar as it is a principle of
a being’s proper operation. This close relationship between
essence and nature explains why Thomas sometimes shifts from
one to the other in the same discussion.
The different senses of essence are explained in chapters 2
and 3. In chapter 2, Thomas treats the essence or nature of
substances that are composed of form and matter.13 Here he
distinguishes between essence or nature taken with precision,
which cannot be predicated of the subject, and essence taken
without precision, which can be so predicated. For example,
“humanity” is the human essence taken with precision, and
“man” is the same essence taken without precision. We cannot
say “Socrates is humanity” but we can say “Socrates is a man.”
Essence taken with precision is not a whole in the way that man
is, but instead a formal part of this whole.14 It excludes all that
is nonessential. Socrates is not humanity because he includes
much more than is present in humanity, such as his individual
matter. But we can say that he has humanity.
The essence of substances that are composed of form and
matter includes a matter that is undesignated, meaning that it is
not individual. Humanity includes everything that makes some-
one human, including both his form and undesignated matter.
For instance, humanity includes undesignated matter such as
bone, but it does not include the individual bone of Plato or
Socrates. In this way humanity is a formal part of the whole
man. This formal part that is signified by the abstract nature, or
essence taken with precision, is sometimes called the “form of

13
De ente 2-3 (Leonine ed., 43:373-74).
14
For many other texts and a discussion of how essence is a formal part of a
substance, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 198-208. For this distinction in the
context of universals, see Gabriele Galluzzo, “Aquinas on Common Nature and
Universals,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 71 (2004): 131-71, at
146-54.
480 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

the whole” (forma totius) in contrast with the form narrowly

considered apart from any matter, which is the form of the part
(forma partis).15 The “form of the whole” is not the substantial
form alone but the essence taken with precision, which includes
both the substantial form and the undesignated matter.
In what way might this essence taken with precision exist?
Owens argues that precisive essence exists only in the mind and
that consequently it cannot be contrasted with existence. He
writes:

[T]he essence that is really distinct from the existence is taken non-precisively.
Taken precisively, the essence can have existence only in the mind—you
cannot say that Socrates or any other individual is humanity.16

Spade makes a similar argument for understanding Thomas as

holding that humanity cannot exist.17 Spade recognizes that
Thomas never explicitly draws this conclusion, but holds that it
is entailed by his thesis that humanity prescinds from existence.
Although it is clear to any reader of De ente that precisive
essence cannot be predicated of an individual man such as
Socrates, both Owens and Spade seem to misunderstand why it
cannot be so predicated. In this context Thomas merely states
that the precisive and nonprecisive essences are distinct as
whole and part. Although we cannot say that Socrates is
humanity, we can say that Socrates has humanity. Similarly, we
cannot say that Socrates is his matter alone, or that he is a hand
or eye. As we have seen, “humanity” signifies a part of the
whole, whereas “man” signifies the whole. If the whole exists as
an individual thing, why should we not also say that the formal
part in some way exists in this whole? Owens and Spade think

15
For this terminology and the background in Averroes and Avicenna, see Armand
Maurer, “Form and Essence in the Philosophy of St. Thomas,” Mediaeval Studies 13
(1951): 165-76; repr. in idem, Being and Knowing: Studies in Thomas Aquinas and
Later Medieval Philosophers (Toronto: PIMS, 1990), 3-18; Fabrizio Amerini, “Aristotle,
Averroes, and Thomas Aquinas on the Nature of Essence,” Documenti e studi sulla
tradizione filosofica medievale 14 (2003): 79-122, at 100-119.
16
Joseph Owens, “Aquinas’s Distinction at De ente et essentia 4.119-123,”
Mediaeval Studies 48 (1986): 264-87, at 277 n. 28.
17
Spade, “Degrees of Being, Degrees of Goodness,” 266-67.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 481

that humanity cannot be predicated of Socrates because

humanity cannot exist in individuals. It seems to me that
humanity cannot be predicated of Socrates because it is a formal
part of man, and Socrates is a man and not a formal part.
The difference between terms such as “man” and “humanity”
can perhaps more easily be understood in the context of the
distinction between signification and (personal) supposition,
which was more clearly developed by terminist logicians than by
Thomas himself. Although Thomas’s own accounts of these
terms are perhaps inconsistent, and he considers supposition to
be a mode of signification, the terms do play an important role
in his thought.18 The signification of a term is more or less what
that term makes known or means, whereas the logical supposit
is more or less the reference of a term.19 Both “man” and
“humanity” signify the same thing, but in different ways.20 For

18
Gyula Klima, “The Semantic Principles underlying Saint Thomas Aquinas’s
Metaphysics of Being,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 5 (1996): 87-141, at 110-13.
For Thomas’s general understanding of supposition as a mode of signification, see Henk
J. M. Schoot, “Aquinas on Supposition: The Possibilities and Limitations of Logic ‘in
divinis,’” Vivarium 31 (1993): 193-225; idem, Christ the “Name” of God: Thomas
Aquinas on Naming Christ (Leuvern: Peeters, 1993), 41-73; Fabrizio Amerini, “Thomas
Aquinas and Some Italian Dominicans (Francis of Prato, Georgius Rovegnatinus and
Girolamo Savanorola) on Signification and Supposition,” in Medieval Supposition
Theory Revisited, ed. E. P. Bos (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 327-51, at 329-36. A slightly
different account is given by Eileen Sweeney, “Supposition, Signification, and
Universals: Metaphysical and Linguistic Complexity in Aquinas,” Freiburger Zeitschrift
für Philosophie und Theologie 42 (1995): 267-90. For Thomas’s peculiar reluctance to
discuss supposition in the context of statements such as “man is a most worthy animal,”
see René-Antonin Gauthier, introduction to Thomas, Expositio libri Peryermenias
(Leonine ed., 1.1*:54*-56*).
19
For the differences with contemporary accounts of meaning and reference, see
especially E. J. Ashworth, “Do Words Signify Ideas or Things? The Scholastic Sources of
Locke’s Theory of Language,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (1981): 299-326;
eadem, “Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface
to Aquinas on Analogy,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 39-67.
20
Fabrizio Amerini, “Pragmatics and Semantics in Thomas Aquinas,” Vivarium 49
(2011): 95-126, at 101-3. Allan Bäck suggests that the different uses of “man” show that
a universal concrete term can be taken concretely or abstractly, but it seems to me best
to apply the distinction between concrete and abstract to different words such as
482 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

instance, in the Summa theologiae Thomas writes “this name

‘man’ signifies humanity in the supposit.”21 The difference is
that the concrete term “man” can have personal supposition,
meaning that it can take the place of an individual, whereas the
abstract term “humanity” always indicates an essence or formal
part that inheres in such a supposit. For instance, we can say
that “Every man is an animal.” In this usage “man” and perhaps
“animal” supposit for individual human beings. Nevertheless,
the human beings are signified in different ways by the two
terms.22 “Man” signifies the human nature, and “animal”
signifies the genus. The concrete terms “man” and perhaps
“animal” supposit for individuals. In contrast, the abstract terms
do not function in this way. The terms “humanity” and
“animality” signify the same essences that the terms “man” and
“animal” signify. Nevertheless, they lack personal supposition,
since there is no separately existing “humanity” or “animality.”
We could say “Every man has animality,” but in this case the
term “animality” does not supposit for all individual men.
One complication with describing the difference in terms of
supposition and signification is that some scholars argue that for
Thomas the nature as a subject always has supposition but the
predicate either lacks supposition or has a different kind of
supposition which is really a kind of signification that is distinct
from denotation.23 Words such as “man” would have different

“horse” and “equinity,” or “humanity” and “man.” See Allan Bäck, On Reduplication:
Logical Theories of Qualification (Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill, 1996), 315, 339.
21
“hoc nomen ‘homo’ humanitatem significat in supposito” (STh I, q. 39, a. 4; see
also ibid., ad 3). For some similar uses, see I Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2 (Thomas Aquinas,
Scriptum super Libros sententiarum, ed. Pierre Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 4 vols.
[Paris: Lethielleux, 1927-47], 1:770); STh III, q. 17, a. 1; De Unione, a. 3, ad 5 and 14
(Thomas Aquinas, De unione verbi incarnati, ed. Walter Senner, Barbara Bartocci, and
Klaus Obenauer, trans. Roger Nutt [Leuven, Paris, Bristol, Conn.: Peeters, 2015], 128,
130). For variations in Thomas’s accounts, see Amerini, “Thomas Aquinas and Some
Italian Dominicans,” 335 n. 16; “Pragmatics and Semantics,” 191 n. 9.
22
STh I-II, q. 67, a. 5; II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 5 (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 2:100). See J.
L. A. West, “Nature, Specific Difference, and Degrees of Being: Background to
Aquinas’s Anti-Monophysite Arguments,” Nova et Vetera (Eng. ed.) 3 (2005): 39-80, at
53-54.
23
Sweeney, “Supposition, Signification, and Universals,” 284; and Schoot, Christ the
Name of God, 64-65.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 483

semantic properties when serving as subjects and predicates. As

Peter of Spain writes, “common terms are predicated in virtue
of the essence and are made subject in virtue of the substance.”24
This interpretation is connected to the wider dispute over the
“inherence” theory of predication that some attribute to
Thomas, according to which predicates perhaps only signify a
form that inheres in a supposit.25 For instance, both in his
commentary on the Sentences and in his Summa theologiae,
Thomas notes that “terms placed in the predicate are held for-
mally, but in the subject materially.”26 In this context a subject
term might indicate the subject itself, whereas the predicate
term would indicate a form or nature in the subject. The
statement “The Second Person of the Trinity is a man” would
attribute a human nature to the supposit that is the second
person, but it would not indicate that the supposit is a man.
However, Thomas himself seems to state that predicates can
both signify a form that belongs to the supposit and themselves
possess supposition. For instance, in the Summa theologiae, he
explicitly states that the terms are true because they name the
same supposit, although in a different way. The statement “Man
is an animal” is true, “for in the same supposit is both the
sensible nature, by which it is called ‘animal’, and the rational,

24
“termini communes predicantur ratione essentie et subiciuntur ratione substantie”
(Peter of Span, Sycategoreumata 8.8.76-77 [ed. L. M. de Rijhk, trans. Joke Spruyt
(Leiden, New York, Cologne: Brill, 1992), 376]). For this text in the context of Peter of
Spain’s account of reduplication, see Bäck, On Reduplication, 216-21.
25
For the sources of this interpretation, see Peter Thomas Geach, “Subject and
Predicate,” Mind 59 (1950): 461-82; Idem, “Form and Existence,” Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society 55 (1954-55): 251-72; repr. in idem, God and the Soul (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), 42-64; idem, “Nominalism,” Sophia 3 (1964): 3-14;
repr. in idem, Logic Matters (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1980),
289-301. For criticisms, see John Malcolm, “A Reconsideration of the Identity and
Inherence Theories of the Copula,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (1979):
383-400; Gyula Klima, “Geach’s Three Most Inspiring Errors concerning Medieval
Logic,” Philosophical Investigations 38 (2015): 34-51, at 36-46.
26
“termini in praedicato positi tenentur formaliter, in subjecto vero materialiter”
(III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 1 [Mandonnet-Moos ed., 3:233]). See also STh I, q. 13, a. 12.
484 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

by which it is called ‘man.’”27 This same text also considers the

statement “A man is pale” to be similar. It is true if they both
refer to the same supposit, which would have both human
nature and paleness. Whatever Thomas’s wider theory of
predication, the difference between such concrete subject and
predicate terms to some extent is concerned with supposition.
The predicates that signify the whole, such as “man” and
“animal,” can also have the same supposit as the subject, even
though they signify it differently. But predicates that signify the
part, such as “humanity” or “animality,” cannot supposit for the
whole.
The question of whether essence taken without precision can
exist is relevant to Thomas’s threefold division of essence in
chapter 3. In his examples of this threefold division, Thomas
mostly uses the essence without precision. For example, in his
examples he more often uses the term “man” than “humanity.”
Nevertheless, the threefold division itself seems to follow
criteria that are independent of the distinction between whole
and formal part. This threefold division is in part based on
Avicenna and repeated by Thomas in several contexts, especially
in his earlier writings.28 It is the division between the essence
absolutely considered, the essence as existing in the soul, and
the essence as existing in singulars. First the essence can be
considered entirely in abstraction from existence and whether it
is one or many.29 This essence absolutely considered can be
predicated equally of different individual men. This essence is
what Owens thinks is at stake in the distinction between essence
and existence.
Essence exists only in the soul and in singular beings.30
Insofar as the essence “man” exists in the mind, it is a single
being in the soul or mind that represents different men. This

27
“in eodem supposito est et natura sensibilis, a qua dicitur animal, et rationalis, a
qua dicitur homo” (STh I, q. 13, a. 12).
28
Quodlibet 8, q. 1, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 25.1:51-52). See also II Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 2,
ad 2-3; d. 3, q. 3, a. 2, ad 1 (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 2:91, 117); De Pot., q. 5, a. 9, ad 6
(Marietti ed., 2:155).
29
De ente 3 (Leonine ed., 43:374).
30
De ente 3 (Leonine ed., 43:374-75).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 485

essence has real being insofar as it is an accident of the knower’s

soul that is distinct from that of the substantial being of a man
such as Socrates and Plato. We can say that “Man is a species.”
We cannot say that “Socrates is a species.” The third kind of
essence taken without precision is the essence that exists in the
individual. In this way we can say that “[A] man is pale” because
we can say that “Socrates is pale.”
One problem in translating Thomas’s text is that there are no
articles in Latin. Consequently, the word “homo” might be
translated as “the man,” “a man,” or simply as “man.”31 It seems
to me that it might better to translate “homo” in this context
with an indefinite article, since we are referring to someone
through the essence.32 The translation is not as important as the
recognition of the distinction between an essential term such as
“man” and a term such as “Socrates.” There is in Latin no
verbal difference between “[A] man is pale” and “Man is pale.”
The essence absolutely considered and the third kind of
essence are used differently in statements such as “[A] man is
pale” and “Socrates is a man.” When we predicate “man” of
Socrates, we are predicating a common nature that excludes all
nonessential elements. Consequently, if “man” is taken as the
essence absolutely considered, it is false that “Man is pale.” On
the other hand, if “man” is taken as existing in a pale Socrates,
then it is true that “[A] man is pale.” It is important that when
the essence is predicated of an individual it is predicated in
abstraction from every existence and therefore as considered
absolutely, but the absolutely considered essence itself is not
predicated of the individual as so abstraced.33 For example, the
statement “Socrates is man” predicates the essence considered

31
For example, “we say that man is white because Socrates is white” (Thomas
Aquinas, On Being and Essence, 2d ed., trans. Armand Maurer [Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968], 46).
32
Peter of Spain, Syncategoreumata 8.8.76 (Spruyt, trans., 376-77), notes that such a
term names an “indeterminate individual which is some man” (“individuum vagum
quod est aliquis homo”). See also I Peryerm., lect. 10 (Leonine ed., 1.1*:53).
33
Cajetan, In “De ente,” c. 4, q. 8, n. 63 (Laurent, ed., 100-101).
486 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

apart from its universality in the intellect or its presence in

singulars. Nevertheless, it is predicated of an existing substance
that possesses a human nature. Insofar as it is absolutely con-
sidered, an essence cannot be said to exist or not to exist.
In De ente, Thomas uses a qualification (“qua” or “secundum
quod”) to indicate the difference between the use of a term to
indicate the essence absolutely considered and the essence as
existing in the individual.34 For instance, “Man insofar as he is
man is pale” is always false. Nevertheless, the bare statement
“Man is pale” is ambiguous in that it is false if “man” signifies
the essence absolutely considered but true if “man” signifies
Socrates. Thomas’s use of statements with qualifications has a
wider theological context in his Christological writings, when
he wishes to indicate whether something is predicated of the
second person of the Trinity according to his divine or human
nature.35 Without such a qualification, context is needed to
determine whether a term signifies an essence as absolutely
considered, as existing in individuals, or as existing in the soul.
In his late Expositio libri Peryermenias, Thomas provides a
slightly different account of these statements that nevertheless
seems compatible with his earlier account in De ente.36 In this
late text, he states that something can be said of universals in
four different ways. The first two are about the universal
considered in the mind, and there is no descent to particulars.
For instance, statements such as “man is a species” or “man is
the most worthy creature” do not justify the statements
“Socrates is a species” or “Socrates is a most worthy creature.”
Both sentences are about the universal considered apart from
individuals. In contrast, statements such as “Man is an animal”
and “[A] Man walks” both can apply to individuals. We can
conclude that “Socrates is an animal” or “Plato is an animal”

34
De ente 3 (Leonine ed., 43:374-75).
35
See Michael Gorman, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 126-57; Schoot, Christ the “Name” of
God, 67-70, 164-68; Bäck, On Reduplication, 312-15, 336-40; Gyula Klima, “Libellus
pro Sapiente: A Criticism of Allan Bäck’s Argument against St. Thomas Aquinas’ Theory
of the Incarnation,” The New Scholasticism 58 (1984): 207-19.
36
I Peryerm., lect. 10 (Leonine ed., 1.1*:51-53).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 487

from “Man is an animal.” Nevertheless, even though there is a

descent to the particular in the case of such essential predicates
or proper accidents, the predication is made on account of the
essence. Socrates is an animal and is rational precisely because
he is a man. These predicates belong to the nature considered
apart from singular beings even though, unlike predicates such
as “species,” they belong to the singular beings who possess the
nature. When predicated of singulars, such universals are
predicated by the aspect of their common nature (ratione nature
communis). In contrast, paleness or walking are attributed to
the singulars only by reason of their singularity.
The context of De ente shows that the essence at stake in the
essence/existence distinction is the essence as existing in
individuals. It is the human essence existing in Socrates or Plato,
even though it lacks the properties that can be attributed to
Socrates or Plato as individuals. Although it makes sense to
predicate in some way existence of essence considered with
precision as a determinate nature in Socrates, it does not make
sense to predicate it of the essence absolutely considered. We
can say “[A] man exists” because we can say that “Socrates
exists” or that “Plato exists.” We are not stating that existence
belongs to their common nature. The death of only one would
not affect the other’s existence. The statement “[A] man exists”
is in some respects similar to “[A] man is pale.” But since the
essence absolutely considered is abstracted from existence, it is
at least as strange to say “Man exists” in this sense as to say that
“Man is pale.” The fact that essence can be absolutely
considered tells us something about created essences, namely,
that they do not have existence as a formal part or as a property
that flows from the formal part. However, the created essences
that actually exist are not the essences that belong to more than
one individual.
As we have seen, Owens identifies this essence absolutely
considered as the common nature. On this reading, insofar as
the essence “man” is common to both Plato and Socrates, we
can say both that “Socrates is a man” and “Plato is a man.” This
488 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

account of the common nature should be clarified. In some

texts the nature seems to be common in the way that it is
universal. For instance, in chapter 3 of De ente, Thomas writes:

But it cannot be said that the character [ratio] of a universal belongs to nature
thus taken, since unity and community belong to the character [ratio] of the
universal; for neither of these belong to human nature according to its
absolute consideration. For if community belonged to the understanding of
“man,” then community would be found in whatever humanity is found, and
this is false, because in Socrates is not found any community, but whatever is
in him is individuated.37

As such, the essence absolutely considered seems to prescind

from either universality or individuality. This text and similar
ones support Gabriele Galluzzo’s claim that “The only place, so
to speak, where an essence actually exists as common is in the
intellect.”38
However, as Owens emphasizes, Thomas distinguishes
between different kinds of universality and of commonality.39 In
De potentia, Thomas more or less distinguishes between three
meanings of universal, namely, as considered absolutely, in
individuals, and present in the mind.40 In this case the division
between the universals is the same as the threefold division of
essences in De ente. In the Sententia libri De anima and In libros
Metaphysicorum, Thomas distinguishes between the universal
considered as a universal and apart from any being, and the

37
De ente 3: “Non tamen potest dici quod ratio uniuersalis conueniat nature sic
accepte, quia de ratione uniuersalis est unitas et communitas; nature autem humane
neutrum horum conuenit secundum absolutam suam considerationem. Si enim
communitas esset de intellectu hominis, tunc in quocumque inueniretur humanitas
inueniretur communitas ; et hoc falsum est, quia in Sorte non inuenitur communitas
aliqua, sed quicquid est in eo est indiuiduatum” (Leonine ed., 43:374). See also I Sent.,
d. 19, q. 5, a. 1, sol. (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 1:486); ScG I, c. 26 (in Editio Leonina
manualis [Rome: Commisio Leonina, 1934], 27).
38
Galluzzo, “Aquinas on Common Nature and Universals,” 161.
39
Owens, “Common Nature,” 6-7. See esp. 7 n. 23.
40
De Pot., q. 4, a. 9, ad 16 (Marietti ed., 2:155).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 489

universal precisely as a universal.41 The first item of the division

seems to be the essence absolutely considered. Nevertheless,
despite such descriptions of the essence absolutely considered as
in a way common or universal, Thomas emphasizes that a
nature exists as a universal only in the mind and has extra-
mental existence only in an individual. In the Sententia libri De
anima, he writes:

Thus it is clear that the intention of universality cannot be attributed to a

common nature except according to the being that it has in the intellect: for
thus alone is one [said] of many, insofar as it is understood apart from the
principles by which the one is divided into many. Whence it follows that the
universals insofar as they are universal do not exist except insofar as they are
in the soul. But these natures to which the intention of universality accrues are
in things. And on account of this, the common names signifying these natures
are predicated of individuals, but not the names signifying the intentions. For
Socrates is a man, but not a species, although man is a species.42

In this text Thomas speaks of a common name such as “man,”

which can signify either the nature in the soul or the nature of
an individual. He does not say that the common nature exists or
receives existence insofar as it is distinct from that of an
individual.
In the Summa theologiae, Thomas compares the distinction
between “humanity” and “nature” to the distinction between
the color of an apple apart from its smell and the apple itself.43

41
II De Anima, c. 12 (Leonine ed., 45.1:115-16); VII Metaphys., lect. 13 (nn. 1570-
71) (In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, ed. M-R. Cathala and R.
Spiazzi [Turin: Marietti, 1964], 378.
42
II De Anima, c. 12: “Sic igitur patet quod nature communi non potest attribui
intentio uniuersalitatis nisi secundum esse quod habet in intellectu: sic enim solum est
unum de multis, prout intelligitur preter principia quibus unum in multa diuiditur. Vnde
relinquitur quod uniuersalia secundum quod sunt uniuersalia non sunt nisi in anima,
ipse autem nature quibus accidit intentio uniuersalitatis sunt in rebus. Et propter hoc
nomina communia significancia naturas ipsas predicantur de indiuiduis, non autem
nomina significancia intentiones: Sortes enim est homo, set non est species, quamuis
homo sit species” (Leonine ed., 45.1:116).
43
STh I, q. 82, a. 2, ad 2. See also q. 82, a. 3, ad 4. For this intention of universality,
see John Frederick Peifer, The Concept in Thomism (New York: Bookman, 1952), 196-
490 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

The color that we see exists only in the apple alongside its
smell, although the similitude of the color and not the smell
exists in our vision. Similarly, humanity exists only in the man
himself alongside a man’s individuating conditions. Never-
theless, when we through abstraction think of humanity apart
from the individual conditions, there is an intention of
universality. This universality belongs only to the similitude in
the mind and not to the man in whom the humanity exists.
Moreover, Owens notes that in other texts Thomas speaks of
the way in which the common nature is contracted to or
received by the material substance.44 This common nature seems
not to be the universal in the mind, but it is not clear how it is
common except insofar as distinct individuals such as Plato and
Socrates share the same properties. Jeffrey Brower has recently
argued that for Thomas the common nature has a kind of being
and unity of its own insofar as the natures of materially distinct
individuals are distinct only derivatively.45 For instance, Plato
and Socrates have humanities that are numerically distinct only
because they are individuated by matter. The distinction in
nature must be explained by another nature. On Brower’s read-
ing, Thomas has common natures that are not universals in the
mind. In his claim that the common nature has a unity or being
of its own, Brower certainly departs from Thomas’s own words.
Nevertheless, he is right that Thomas sometimes uses the word
“common” in a way that is distinct from “universal,” and more
especially “universal” in the narrow sense of existing only in the
mind. Although there is no agreement among contemporary
scholars over the connection between the essence absolutely
considered and the common nature, it seems clear in light of De
ente and other texts that essence has being only in the mind and

99; Robert W. Schmidt, The Domain of Logic according to St. Thomas Aquinas (Hague:
Nijhoff, 1966), 177-201; Klima, “Semantic Principles of Aquinas,” 102-5.
44
Owens, “Common Nature,” 7 n. 24. See especially I Sent., d. 8, q. 4, a. 1, ad 2
(Mandonnet-Moos ed., 1:219); ScG IV, c. 40 (Editio manualis, 495).
45
Jeffrey E. Brower, “Aquinas on the Problem of Universals,” Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 92 (2016): 715-35, at 722-32. Spade, “Degrees of Being,
Degrees of Goodness,” 273, argues that on Owens’s interpretation the common nature
should have a diminished being even though Owens states that it lacks any being.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 491

in things, and not insofar as it prescinds from these two

meanings. As I will show, this minimal claim is sufficient for my
argument that the essence in things is what receives existence in
the way that a potency receives act.
Of the kinds of essence mentioned in De ente, neither the
essence existing in the soul nor the essence absolutely
considered exist in the categories in which the essences place
them. With respect to the first point, the known object does not
exist in the soul in the same way that it exists in the material
word.46 For instance, we can know a substance such as a man or
a horse. But in knowing the man or horse we do not have a new
substantial existence in the soul. The same form that exists
physically in an object exists intentionally in the knower. It
seems to me that in this passage on the existence of the nature
in the soul, Thomas has in mind not only the intelligible species,
but also and perhaps primarily the mental word or concept in
which the object is known.47 Nevertheless, on either inter-
pretation the species or concept is an accident (quality) of the
soul and not a substance. The intelligible species or concept as a

46
For a discussion of some literature, see Jeffrey Brower and Susan Brower Toland,
“Aquinas on Mental Representation: Concepts and Intentionality,” Philosophical Review
117 (2004): 193-243. The best account remains Peifer, The Concept in Thomism.
47
For the nature and importance of the distinction, see my “The Concept as a
Formal Sign,” Semiotica 179 (2010): 1-21. For the accidental character of the
intelligible species, see Brower and Brower-Toland, “Aquinas on Mental Repre-
sentation,” 197. Cajetan may be correct in stating that there are several ways of
attributing esse to the nature in the intellect, whether considering it objectively or
subjectively, or as an intelligible species or as a concept: “Primo sic: natura secundum
esse obiectivum in intellectu agente est universalis in praedicando. Secundo sic: natura
secundum esse subiectivum in intellectu possibili est universalis in repraesentando.
Tertio sic: natura secundum esse subiectivum in intellectu possibili est universalis in
praedicando” (“First thus: nature is universal in predicating according to [its] objective
being in the agent intellect. Second thus: nature is universal in representing according to
[its] subjective being in the possible intellect. Third thus: nature is universal in
predicating according to [its] objective being in the possible intellect” [Cajetan, In De
ente, c. 4, n. 66 (Laurent, ed., 104-5)]). In this division, the subjective being is an
accidental being.
492 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

singular in the soul represents an essence or nature that exists

differently in individuals outside the soul.48
The second point, that an essence as absolutely considered
can neither be existent nor nonexistent, is made true simply by
the fact that the absolute consideration prescinds from any
existence. The statement “[A] man exists” uses “man” either as
indicating an essence that exists as a species in the soul or a man
that exists as a singular subject. “Exists” cannot be predicated of
the absolute essence any more than paleness can. We can
attribute “substance” to the essence “man” in the same way that
we can attribute “rational” to it. But this attribution does not
entail that an individual man exists.
On Owens’s reading, it is unclear how such an absolutely
considered essence could play the role that he attributes to that
essence which is distinct from existence, namely, to explain how
angelic forms are not pure act even though they lack matter.
The conclusion of Thomas’s argument for the distinction is
stated right before the argument begins, “Therefore even
though they are forms without matter, substances of this sort
are not pure act nor are they yet entirely simple, but they are
mixed through with potency.”49 Thomas clearly has in mind not
an essence that might possibly exist, but an actually existing
thing that retains potency. It is important that the essence
absolutely considered prescinds from existence. Thomas’s argu-
ment presupposes or entails that existence does not belong to
essence absolutely considered and cannot be a proper accident
of it. Nevertheless, the argument is about essences that exist in
individuals. The act/potency division is here not merely within
that which can exist, but instead a division within being in the
way that the division between matter and form is.50 The essence

48
STh I, q. 76, a. 2, ad 3; q. 85, a. 2; De spir. creat., a. 9, ad 6 (Marietti ed., 2:403-
4). For the argument that Thomas rejects Avicenna’s thesis that mental and individual
existence have a kind of parity, see Black, “Mental Existence,”74.
49
De ente 4: “Huiusmodi ergo substantie, quamuis sint forme tantum sine materia,
non tamen in eis est omnimoda simplicitas nec sunt actus purus, sed habent
permixtionem potentie” (Leonine ed., 43:376).
50
For a parallel and clear statement of the similarity, see esp. De spir. creat., a. 1
(Marietti ed., 2:370-71).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 493

of an immaterial being is in act insofar as it is form, and yet it is

in potency to the existence that it receives from God.51 This
division between potency and act in the spiritual creature is
based on the fact that the possibly existing quiddity has its
existence from another. Thomas does not indicate that this
potency exists prior to or apart from its existence. The essence
receives existence for as long as it exists. Consequently, Thomas
must be considering the distinction between an existing
individual essence and its act of existence, and not that between
an essence absolutely considered and some possible existence.
In chapter 5 Thomas explains that material essences are
similarly in potency to existence. He states that in material
substances, “being is received and finite on account of the fact
that they have being from another, and again their nature or
quiddity is received in signate matter.”52 Although matter does
not exist apart from form, it is in potency to form. Matter that
is being actualized by form is at the same time in potency to the
form. Similarly, although a determinate nature or essence does
not exist apart from its existence, it is in potency to existence.
God produces the essence when he gives it existence. As
Thomas writes in his later Quaestiones disputatae De potentia,
“God, at the same time giving existence, produces that which
receives existence.”53
One difficulty for interpreting De ente is that there is no
exact parallel to this division of essence in other texts. In fact,
Thomas discusses Avicenna’s threefold distinction primarily in
two early texts, namely, De ente et essentia (1252-56) and
Quodlibet 8 (q. 1, a. 1), which is from roughly the same period
(Easter 1257). In the quodlibetal question, Thomas is concerned

51
De ente 4 (Leonine ed., 43:377). See also I Sent., d. 8, q. 5, a. 2, sol. (Mandonnet-
Moos ed., 1:229-30).
52
De ente 5: “esse est receptum et finitum propter hoc quod ab alio esse habent, et
iterum natura uel quidditas earum est recepta in materia signata” (Leonine ed., 43:379).
53
De Pot., q. 3, a. 1, ad 17: “Deus, simul dans esse, producit id quod esse recipit”
(Marietti ed., 2:41). For additional texts and a discussion, see Del Prado, De veritate
fundamentali, 170-72.
494 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

with the ordering between the different senses of the word

‘nature’.54 He adopts Avicenna’s threefold distinction as one
between three ways of considering nature, and himself adds a
consideration of nature as existing in the divine intellect and in
the angelic mind. In this question he wishes to show that the
essence in the human mind is posterior to the essence in
singulars, which itself is posterior to the essence considered
absolutely and in the angelic mind.
If essence is taken without precision, then only the essence
that is in individual things is the essence that receives existence,
and is consequently relevant to Thomas’s distinction between
essence and existence. It seems to me that the essence taken
with precision is also relevant, when it indicates an essence such
as humanity as existing in this or that individual. Numerically
distinct individuals have numerically distinct essences. For
instance, in the Summa theologiae, Thomas writes that there are
three numerically distinct humanities in Socrates, Plato, and
Cicero.55 In this way the difference between essence and
existence can also be applied to essence considered as a formal
part.
Owens oddly uses the early quodlibetal text to argue that it
is the essence absolutely considered that “can exist by the divine
being, by real created being, and by cognitional being.”56
Although Thomas states here that the essence absolutely
considered is posterior only to the essence as existing in the
divine mind and is prior to essence in the mind or in singulars,
this priority does not imply that this essence absolutely
considered is the essence that receives existence. The essence
considered absolutely is what makes possible the attribution of
the predicate “rational” to humanity apart from the existence of

54
Quodl. 8, q. 1, a. 1 (Leonine ed., 25.1:51-53).
55
STh I, q. 39, a. 2. See also q. 50, a. 4; De rationibus fidei, c. 4 (Leonine ed.,
40B:60)
56
Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 136. For this quodlibetal text, see John
Lawrence Dewan, “The Doctrine of Being of John Capreolus: A Contribution to the
History of the Notion of Esse,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1967),
1:406-9, 421.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 495

individual humans.57 Although this text does not discuss the

distinction between essence and existence, its account of essence
absolutely considered clearly indicates that such an essence
could not receive existence in the way that potency receives act.
It is prior to an existing essence, and consequently not
something that itself either exists or not. An essence exists only
in the singular, in created minds, or in God. The essence
absolutely considered cannot exist or not exist because it is
considered as not existing. It is prior to the essence that is in our
understanding, but is posterior to the essence as existing in and
in some way identical to the divine mind. The divine essence
grounds the essence absolutely considered, which in turn
justifies essential predications such as “Man is rational.”
My interpretation of De ente will be supported by the many
texts in which Thomas states that existence is an actuality of
that essence, such as humanity, which is part of an individual
subject. In these texts he attributes to the essence or nature con-
sidered with precision much of what in De ente he attributed to
the essence considered without precision. For instance, he
attributes to an essence considered with precision, namely,
“humanity,” the distinction between the nature’s existing either
as in the soul or in the mind, and its existing in individuals.
Thomas’s other texts make unlikely a reading of De ente
according to which Thomas means to say that an essence such
as humanity cannot exist insofar as it is a formal part of an
existing man.

57
Quodl. 8, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1 and 3 (Leonine ed., 25.1:53). It seems to me for this
reason that the essence absolutely considered must be considered as distinct from and
prior to the universal in the mind. For a somewhat different position, see Fabrizio
Amerini, “Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Alexandria, and Paul of Venice on the Nature
of Essence,” Documenti et studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 15 (2004): 541-89,
at 550-59.
496 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

III. CHRISTOLOGICAL DISCUSSIONS OF NATURE AND PERSON

In Christological contexts,Thomas explicitly addresses how

existence as an act of the supposit (suppositum) actualizes that
essence which is a formal part of the supposit considered, not
merely as a logical reference, but as an individual substance.58
When it is rational, the supposit is called a “person.” In a
Christological context, it is also called a “hypostasis.” Catholics
and other Chalcedonian Christians believe that Christ is a divine
person who assumed a human nature. Thomas states that
Christ’s divine existence is identical with his divine essence and
actualizes his human nature. The philosophically relevant points
are brought out when he contrasts Christ’s existence, which is
divine, with the ordinary way in which a man’s created
existence actualizes his own human nature.
Although the context is theological, Thomas uses philo-
sophical notions that he discusses and develops elsewhere. For

58
Sweeney, “Supposition, Signification, and Universals,” 272 n. 14, distinguishes
between a logical and an ontological supposit. For Thomas’s understanding of nature
and supposit, see Galluzzo, “Aquinas on Common Nature and Universals,” 137-46; J. L.
A. West, “The Real Distinction between Supposit and Nature,” in Peter Kwasniewski,
ed., Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P.
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 85-106. For texts
and discussion of the esse of the suppositum, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 238-
53. For the Christological context, see especially Thomas U. Mullaney, “Created
Personality: The Unity of Thomistic Tradition,” The New Scholasticism 29 (1955): 369-
402; Othmar Schweizer, Person und hypostatische Union bei Thomas von Aquin
(Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1957); Corey Barnes, “Albert the Great and Thomas
Aquinas, on Person, Hypostasis, and Hypostatic Union,” The Thomist 72 (2008): 107-
46. For the background in twelfth-century disputes over person and nature, see
especially Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study
of Gilbert Porreta’s Thinking on the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the
Incarnation during the Period 1130-1180 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 47-64, 106-65, 296-312;
Marcia L. Colish, “Gilbert, the Early Porretans, and Peter Lombard: Semantics and
Theology,” in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains: Aux origines de la logica
modernorum, ed. Jean Jolivet and Alain de Libera (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1987), 29-50;
repr. in eadem, Studies in Scholasticism (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorium, 2006). For a
more recent discussion of relevant twelfth-century texts on “homo” and “humanitas,”
see Christopher P. Evans, “Introduction,” to Simon of Tournai, On the Incarnation of
Christ: Institutiones in sacram paginam 7.1-67, ed. and trans. Christopher Evans
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2017), 34-54.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 497

instance, in his In libros Metaphysicorum, Thomas writes that

insofar as “nature” means “form”:

[N]ot only is the form of the part called a nature, but the species itself is the
form of the whole. For instance, we might say that the nature of man is not
only the soul, but humanity and the substance which the definition signifies.
According to this even Boethius says, that the nature is the specific difference
informing each thing. For the specific difference is that which completes the
substance of the thing and gives the species to it.59

In this text, Thomas directly connects a way in which Aristotle

understands “nature” with Boethius’s use of “nature” in
Christology. Moreover, both Aristotle and Boethius are
connected to the philosophical tradition that distinguishes
between the form of the part, which excludes matter, and the
form of the whole, which includes undesignated matter.
The way in which Christ is a supposit with two natures
brings out difficulties in understanding the way that existence
actualizes an essence. If I am correct to argue that essence can
be considered as existing either insofar as it is a whole such as a
“man,” or insofar as it is a part such as “humanity,” then in
what sense can it be said to be actuated by existence? Thomas
often discusses the distinction between essence and existence as
between “that which is” (quod est) and existence (esse).60 Is the
essence a quod est? The problem is less acute in spiritual

59
V Metaphys., lect. 5 (n. 822): “non solum forma partis dicitur natura, sed species
ipsa est forma totius. Ut si dicamus quod hominis natura non solum est anima, sed
humanitas et substantia quam significat definitio. Secundum hoc enim Boetius dicit,
quod natura est unumquodque informans specifica differentia. Nam specifica differentia
est, quae complet substantiam rei et dat ei speciem” (Marietti ed., 223). Boethius,
Contra Eutychum, 1.1, in The Theological Tractates, trans. H. F. Steward, E. K. Rand,
and S. J. Tester (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 80. See also
Quodl. 2, q. 2, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 25.2:216). For the importance of such texts for
Thomas’s Christology, see West, “Nature, Specific Difference, and Degrees of Being,”
44-51.
60
De ente 4 (Leonine ed., 43:376). For other texts, see Wippel, Metaphysical
Thought, 249-51. An excellent early discussion of the issue and further texts can be
found in Del Prado, De veritate fundamentali, 11-22.
498 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

substances in which a nature is instantiated only in one

individual. Human beings can be said to have an essence that is
distinct from the quod est. Socrates has a human nature that is
distinct from himself as an individual substance, and he also has
a human nature that is numerically distinct from that of Plato.61
In the Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas writes that in creatures,
“essence is other than existence, and even in some creatures that
which subsists [quod subsistit] in its essence is other than its
essence and nature, for this man is neither his humanity nor his
existence.”62 In material substances the id quod est is distinct
both from the existence and from the essence. In this context
“essence” seems to be an essence taken with precision that is
numerically distinct from other such essences. As Thomas states
in his commentary on the Sentences, “humanity” is the “by
which” (quo est) a man is, whereas “man” is that which is (quod
est).63 The essence or nature is a formal part of an individual
subject, which is sometimes described as the supposit. This
supposit itself is the subject of the act of existence.64 The
act/potency composition of form and matter is between parts of
the supposit. The act/potency composition between the supposit
and existence is a composition of the individual with existence.
Although some Thomists have thought that the supposit itself is
constituted by existence, Thomas himself never suggests such a
thesis, and it would seem contradictory for a part of an indi-
vidual to have existence prior to the existence of the individual

61
See also ScG 4, c. 11 (Editio manualis, 446).
62
Ibid.: “ea quae in creaturis divisa sunt, in Deo simpliciter unum esse: sicut in
creatura aliud est essentia et esse; et in quibusdam est etiam aliud quod subsistit in sua
essentia, et eius essentia sive natura, nam hic homo non est sua humanitas nec suum
esse.”
63
I Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 1, sol. (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 1:556).
64
Quodl. 2, q. a. 2, ad 2 (Leonine ed., 25.2:218). For difficulties connected with
Thomas’s distinction between nature and supposit in this text, see Wippel, Metaphysical
Thought, 243-53; Schweizer, Person und hypostatische Union, 18-53. For the danger of
thinking of the supposit as having existence somehow independently of or prior to
existence, see Benjamin Llamzon, “Supposital and Accidental Esse: A Study in Báñez,”
The New Scholasticism 39 (1965): 170-88, at 171-79.
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 499

that exists.65 How would something incapable of existing and

part of a whole combine with existence in order to produce the
supposit, which is itself the proper subject of existence?
Although Avicenna’s explicit threefold division of essence
does not appear in Thomas’s later texts, we find the distinction
between the individual nature or essence and the absolutely
considered nature or essence separated from this division both
in his early commentary on the Sentences and in his later
writings.66 For instance, not only in the early Sentences com-
mentary but also in the later De malo, Thomas distinguishes
between human nature absolutely considered, which is
unchanging, and the nature which is corrupted by original sin,
which is transmitted through generation.67 In De malo Thomas
states that the human nature which comes from Adam is, in this
respect, like water coming from a tainted fountain. The water
coming from the fountain is corrupted even though the water
absolutely considered remains the same. Similarly, it is not
human nature absolutely considered that is corrupted by

65
For a recent defense of this thesis that admittedly does not find it explicitly in
Thomas’s texts, see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought, 243-52. This idiosyncratic view was
upheld by the Carmelite Blasius a Conceptione, and was consequently attacked
vehemently and with prolixity by his fellow Carmelite Alexander a Jesu, Metaphysica
tract. 2, disp. 5, qq. 5-6 ([Naples, 1688], 2:508-35).
66
For the essence absolutely considered, in addition texts discussed below, see De
Verit., q. 21 a. 1 ad 1 (Leonine ed., 22.3:594); De Pot., q. 9, a. 6 (Marietti ed., 2:239);
STh I, q. 75, a. 5. For some logical issues connected to the distinction between the
common nature and numerically distinct individual natures, see Gyula Klima, “ʽSocrates
est Species:’ Logic, Metaphysics, and Psychology in St. Thomas’ Aquinas’s Treatment of
a Paralogism,” in Argumentationstheorie: Scholastische Forschungen zu den logischen
und semantischen Regeln korrekten Folgerns, ed. K. Jacobi (Brill: Leiden, 1993), 489-
504, at 498-504. For the possibility that Thomas shifts positions and a response, see
Pini, “Absoluta consideratio naturae,” 407-38; Pasquale Porro, Thomas Aquinas: A
Historical and Philosophical Profile, trans. Roger W. Nutt and Joseph Trabbic
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 88-92. For the
consistency of De ente’s account of essence with later texts, see West, “Nature, Specific
Difference, and Degrees of Being,” 57-62.
67
De Malo, q. 4, a. 6, ad 9 (Leonine ed., 23:121-22); II Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1
(Mandonnet-Moos ed., 2:805).
500 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

original sin, but human nature insofar as it exists within

persons.
In the Sentences commentary, Thomas notes that the
“human nature in Christ is individual, singular, and
particular.”68 Thomas’s distinction between the nature
absolutely considered and the determinate nature is particularly
important for understanding his Christology. For instance, in
the third part of the Summa, in his discussion of Christ’s human
willing, he writes:

Through this that “to will in some way” is said, a determinate mode of willing
is designated. But the determinate mode is held concerning that same thing of
which it is a mode. Therefore, since the will pertains to the nature, even this
“to will in some way” pertains to the nature not as it is absolutely considered,
but as it is in such a hypostasis.69

The objection had been that since in Christ there is only one
person, and it is the person who wills, in Christ there is only
one will. Thomas responds that determinately willing belongs
primarily to the determinate nature and not to the nature in its
absolute consideration. This text consequently appeals explicitly
to the distinction between the essence in individuals and the
essence absolutely considered.
Thomas also continues to distinguish between essence as a
formal part and as a whole in many later texts, although usually
in the context of the distinction between nature and supposit.70
Although he discusses such issues in many Christological texts, I
will focus on the relatively late Summa theologiae and De
unione verbi incarnati.71 In these texts the nature is a formal

68
III Sent., d. 6, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 1: “humana natura in Christo est individuum,
singulare, et particulare” (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 3:226).
69
STh III, q. 18, a. 1, ad 4: “per hoc quod dicitur aliqualiter velle, designatur
determinatus modus volendi. Determinatus autem modus ponitur circa ipsam rem cuius
est modus. Unde, cum voluntas pertineat ad naturam, ipsum etiam quod est aliqualiter
velle, pertinet ad naturam, non secundum quod est absolute considerata, sed secundum
quod est in tali hypostasi.”
70
West, “Supposit and Nature,” 96-97.
71
For the many relevant texts and scholarly controversy over Christ’s supposital esse,
see Roger Nutt, “Introduction,” in Thomas Aquinas, De unione verbi incarnati, ed.
Walter Senner, Barbara Bartocci, and Klaus Obenauer, trans. Roger Nutt, Dallas
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 501

part of a supposit. The supposit is a whole that can be signified

by an essential term such as “man” or a proper name such as
“Socrates.” The nature seems, to some extent, the same as
essence taken with precision as it is discussed in De ente.
However, here the focus is on the way in which such a nature is
part of such an individual subject such as Peter or Jesus Christ.
Thomas writes that “the supposit is signified through the way of
a whole, but the nature through the way of a formal part.”72
Christ is a divine supposit who assumes a determinate human
nature and not a common one.73
The supposit is signified differently by a word such as “man”
or by a proper name, even though both can signify the
supposit.74 When the word “man” signifies a supposit, it
signifies it in the way that was described in De ente as signifying
an essence without precision and existing in singulars. It
signifies a supposit that has humanity. But proper names such as
“Jesus” and “Peter” also signify such a supposit. Thomas
explains the difference between the two kinds of terms:

“[Someone] having humanity” is signified in one way though this name

“man,” and in another way through this name “Jesus,” or “Peter.” For this
name “man” means someone having humanity indistinctly. . . . But this name
“Peter,” or “Jesus,” means distinctly someone having humanity, namely under
determinate individual properties.75

“Humanity” is an abstract term for a formal part of a supposit

such as “Peter” or “Jesus.” “Man” is a concrete term that itself

Medieval Texts and Translations 21 (Leuven, Paris, and Bristol, Conn.: Peeters, 2015),
57-78.
72
De Unione, a. 3: “suppositum significatur per modum totius, natura autem per
modum partis formalis” (Peeters, ed., 126).
73
STh III, q. 4, a. 4.
74
STh III, q. 17, a. 1; De Unione, a. 3 (Peeters, ed., 118-32).
75
STh III, q. 17, a. 1: “habens humanitatem significatur per hoc nomen ‘homo’: et
aliter per hoc nomen ‘Iesus’ vel ‘Petrus.’ Nam per hoc nomen ‘homo’ importat
habentem humanitatem indistincte. . . . Hoc tamen nomen ‘Petrus,’ vel ‘Iesus,’ importat
distincte habentem humanitatem, scilicet sub determinatis individualibus
proprietatibus.”
502 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

can be used for either Peter or Jesus, even though it does not
signify their particular properties.
“[A] man” and “humanity” differ as essence taken without
precision and existing in singulars, and essence as taken with
precision. Thomas writes, “for humanity is called that by which
someone is a man, and thus it includes in its signification only
those things which pertain to the essence of a species; but [a]
man is called that which has humanity, in which are even many
things apart from the essence of the species.”76 For instance, we
can say that “[A] man is pale” because Socrates is pale, or that
“[A] man is not pale” because Peter is not pale. But paleness or
a lack of paleness do not belong to humanity.
In most of his texts Thomas explicitly asserts that Christ has
only one and not two existences, since Christ is only one sup-
posit, and existence directly belongs to the supposit and not to
the nature.77 In the commentary on the Sentences, Thomas
explicitly states that the word “esse” in this context means the
act of being, and not essence or the truth of the proposition.78
In De unione and only in this text, Thomas ascribes an esse
secundarium to Christ’s humanity.79 Scholars are divided over
whether this esse secundarium is some sort of subordinate
existence or a term for Christ’s human nature, and they even
disagree over whether it is consistent with Thomas’s other

76
De Unione, a. 3, ad 14: “nam humanitas dicitur qua aliquis est homo, et sic in sua
significatione includit sola ea quae pertinent ad essentiam speciei. Homo autem dicitur
qui habet humanitatem, in quo etiam multa sunt alia praeter speciem” (Peeters ed.,
130).
77
III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2 (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 3:237-40); Comp. Theol. I, c. 212
(Leonine ed., 42:165); Quodl. 9, q. 2, a. 2 (Leonine ed., 25.3:93-95); STh III, q. 17,
a. 2.
78
III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2 (Mandonnet-Moos ed., 3:237-40). Medieval and early
modern Thomists often use the term “esse existentiae” to distinguish this meaning of
“esse” from the other two. Gorman (Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union, 108-12),
thinks that in some of these texts Thomas is discussing esse as a fact and not as an act.
This seems to me inconsistent with Thomas, and esse as fact has no foundation in
Thomas’s texts except insofar as it refers to one of the other two meanings of esse. For
the twentieth-century genesis of this meaning, see Kevin White, “Act and Fact: On a
Disputed Question in Recent Thomistic Metaphysics,” The Review of Metaphysics 68
(2014): 287-312.
79
De Unione, a. 4 (Peeters ed., 132-34).
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 503

texts.80 Nevertheless, even in De unione, Thomas writes, “For

existence [esse] is properly and truly said of the supposit.”81
This point is essential to his Christology, because Christ as one
supposit has only one supposital existence even though he has
two natures, namely, the divine and the human. This point also
sheds light on Thomas’s philosophical understanding of the way
in which essence is actualized by existence. In the Summa
theologiae, Thomas states:

For existence pertains to the hypostasis and to the nature: to the hypostasis
just as to that which has existence; to the nature as that by which it has
existence; for the nature is imposed through the mode of a form, which is
called being by the fact that by it something is, just as something is white by
whiteness, and someone is human by humanity.82

According to this text, the essence is actualized by existence, but

only through the actualization of the supposit. It plays a formal
role in determining the supposit to the kind of thing that it is,
although it does not itself impart existence to the supposit but
receives the supposit’s own act of existence. It is a formal part
of an actually existing individual subject. Consequently, as an
essence that is distinct from and in potency to existence, it is
either a determinate nature, and consequently a formal part of
the supposit, or the essence considered as existing in a supposit.
As a whole, these Christological texts contradict the thesis
that essence receives existence insofar as it is absolutely con-
sidered. They clearly show that an essence such as humanity

80
In addition to the texts mentioned in Nutt, “Introduction,” 57-78, see more
recently John Froula, “Esse secundarium: An Analogical Term Meaning That by Which
Christ Is Human,” The Thomist 78 (2014): 557-80; Gorman, Metaphysics of the
Hypostatic Union, 101-25.
81
De Unione, a. 3: “Esse enim proprie et vere dicitur de supposito subsistente”
(Peeters ed., 56).
82
STh III, q. 17, a. 2: “Esse autem pertinet ad hypostasim et ad naturam: ad
hypostasim quidem sicut ad id quod habet esse; ad naturam autem sicut ad id quo
aliquid habet esse; natura enim significatur per modum formae, quae dicitur ens ex eo
quod ea aliquid est, sicut albedine est aliquid album, et humanitate est aliquis homo.”
504 THOMAS M. OSBORNE, JR.

receives existence as a formal part of an existing supposit such

as Peter or Socrates. Similarly, we can say “[A] man exists”
when we mean that an individual subject such as Socrates or
Peter exists. In this context the name “man” signifies a supposit
that has a human nature even though it does not signify the
supposit’s individual properties. On the other hand, insofar as
“man” signifies the essence absolutely considered, it is not
something to which it would make sense to predicate existence
or even the loss of existence. It is not the kind of essence that
exists. Considered as an absolute essence, we can no more say
that “Man exists” than we can say that “Man is pale.”

CONCLUSION

The distinction between the mere possible existence of an

essence and a determinate essence’s reception of existence
explains what is at stake in the question of whether essence
absolutely considered is the essence that belongs to Thomas’s
famous distinction between essence and existence. According to
Thomas, the essence that receives existence is in potency to the
existence that is possessed by the supposit. It is actualized by
this existence in a way that is similar to the actualization of
matter by form. An essence absolutely considered might be said
to have potency insofar as it is nonrepugnant and capable of
being predicated of an existing individual, but only the essence
of an existing individual enters into composition with existence.
The real distinction between essence and existence is precisely
about an act/potency composition, and consequently must
involve a really existing essence, whether such an essence be
considered with precision as a formal part of a supposit, or as
without precision signifying such a supposit. It is a distinction
between the supposit’s act of existence and the essence insofar
as it exists in singular things. The essence absolutely considered
is in some way prior to this essence, and its priority explains
why essential properties can be predicated of an essence even
apart from the existence of individuals. It is posterior only to
 ESSENCE AND THE EXISTENTIAL ACT 505

the essence as present in God, but it is not as absolutely

considered that it can enter into composition with existence.83

83
I would like to thank the attendees of a colloquium of the Center for Thomistic
Studies and a sponsored session of the American Catholic Philosophical Association for
their comments on previous versions of this article. Special thanks to Domenic D’Ettore,
Rose Grimes, Turner Nevitt, and an anonymous reader for The Thomist.
The Thomist 81 (2017): 507-37

PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY:

ASSESSING THE HEALTH BENEFITS AND ECOLOGICAL
RISKS OF GENE DRIVE TECHNOLOGY USING THE
QUASI-INTEGRAL PARTS OF PRUDENCE

PAUL SCHERZ

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.

U
NCERTAINTY HAS become a central problem for con-
temporary decision-making. It is difficult to predict the
outcomes of actions and even more difficult to foresee
the possibility and effects of rare events. Though considerations
of uncertainty and contingency have always had an important
place in human action, two aspects of modernity have
accentuated their importance.
First, society depends upon complex, interconnected systems
in areas such as communications, transport, finance, and
medicine, systems that have vastly increased the efficiency of
contemporary society but at the cost of increasing fragility
through amplification of the effects of small events.1 A glitch in
the trading algorithm of a single firm can send markets
plunging, floods in Thailand can bring the global computing
industry to a halt, and a disease outbreak in West Africa swiftly
threatens New York. Moreover, increasingly complex causal
chains make the future effects of actions more opaque to the
decision-maker, since it is difficult to predict what will result
from any intervention. For example, it is unlikely that U.S.

1
See Ian Goldin and Mike Mariathasan, The Butterfly Defect (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2015); Nassim Taleb, Antifragile (New York: Random
House, 2014).

507
508 PAUL SCHERZ

regulators would have let Lehmann Brothers fail in 2008 if they

knew that this policy would precipitate a global financial crisis.
A second, related problem rests on the novelty of techno-
logical developments, which bring many advantages in their
train, but also greater and, to some extent, unknown risks, since
no one has ever had experience with these novelties. These new
technologies increase dangers of random shocks to the system as
they magnify the power of individual actors—a malign hacker, a
DIY bioweapons designer, or even a foolish trader can have
outsize effects. The unknown, the unpredictable, and the
contingent play an ever-larger role due to otherwise beneficial
developments in technology and social organization.
Because of these changes, society increasingly focuses on
governing risks to health, security, the economy, and the
environment.2 Regulators, banks, public health officials, and
intelligence agencies dig through massive amounts of data
collected in the past to generate algorithms to predict future
risks. In many cases, these developments are to be commended,
since good risk assessment is essential for any action. For
example, society needs to know how energy policy might
endanger the environment. Yet these efforts can also lead to
injustice and their own systemic dangers if policy makers
become too confident in their ability to control and predict the
future. Because such algorithms are based on past data, they
cannot reliably predict the effects of new technologies, nor can
they deal with rare, unlikely events that have never occurred
before but can have great significance. These “Black Swan”

2
See Gerd Gigerenzer et al., The Empire of Chance (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1990); Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1991); Ulrich Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage Publications,
1992); Niklas Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory, trans. Rhodes Barrett (New
Brunswick, N.J: Aldine Transaction, 2005); Michel Foucault, Security, Territory,
Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78, ed. Michel Senellart, trans.
Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Robert Aronowitz, Risky
Medicine (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2015).
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 509

events pose the greatest threat to contemporary complex

systems.3
Alasdair MacIntyre used exactly this point to attack the
utilitarian managerial ideology that claimed to offer a science of
society that could give predictive control to the leaders of
industry and government.4 MacIntyre argues that such pre-
dictive control is impossible because of uncertainties arising
from radical innovation, free will, game theoretic considera-
tions, and pure contingency.5 He follows Machiavelli in arguing
that even with “the best possible stock of generalizations, we
may on the day be defeated by an unpredicted and
unpredictable counter-example.”6 Instead of such a calculative
rationality, MacIntyre argues, we should turn to the virtues,
especially the virtue of prudence, which offers a more flexible
decision-making apparatus grounded in experience, rightly
formed desire, and tacit knowledge.
I will argue that current models of the virtue of prudence, at
least as developed in the Thomistic tradition preferred by
MacIntyre, are vulnerable to the same two problems as
algorithmic risk analysis in regard to uncertain, rare events.7
First, prudence is also formed in the light of past experiences, so
it is vulnerable to the problems of novelty. Second, Thomas
Aquinas explicitly says that prudential caution cannot consider
rare events, but in complex systems, rare events can be the

3
Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York:
Random House, 2007).
4
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2d ed. (Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 88-108.
5
Ibid., 93-100.
6
Ibid., 93.
7
John Bowlin provides an argument for the importance of contingency to Aquinas’s
ethical thought, but his discussion largely refers to issues of moral luck or the passions
rather than prudential decision-making under uncertainty. See John Bowlin,
Contingency and Fortune in Aquinas’s Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 76-82.
510 PAUL SCHERZ

whole game.8 Yet, as MacIntyre argues, the Thomistic system is

open to development and modification in the face of new
arguments and situations.9 In this essay, therefore, I will suggest
how Thomistic prudence can be modified in response to the
problems of uncertainty in complex systems. I will proceed by
drawing on the widely discussed precautionary principle, as it
was developed by Hans Jonas, as well as on Nassim Taleb’s
analyses of how to protect oneself from unknown negative risks.
My aim is to modify and develop the classical account of
prudence by adding imagination and precaution to what are
called prudence’s “quasi-integral parts” (this latter concept will
be engaged in greater detail below).
To demonstrate how these modifications to prudence would
function, I will apply them to a case study of recently proposed
gene drives in mosquitoes.10 These are technologies that hope to
reduce the burden of diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and
Zika by eliminating the disease vector, the mosquito. They use
advanced gene editing technology, CRISPR/Cas9, to spread a
genetic modification rapidly through a mosquito population,
causing either the elimination of that population or its
resistance to the disease. Gene drives are an excellent test-case
for three reasons. First, even their proponents admit that they
are radically new and that their effects are uncertain. Second,
they would affect two complex systems, human health and the
environment. Finally, unlike many biotechnologies, their
benefits are not aimed at wealthy consumers or corporations

8
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 8, ad 3. In MacIntyre’s defense, he is doubtful that large-scale
complex societies like our own can support the virtues, and thus argues for different
social institutions. While agreeing with many of his criticisms of contemporary society, I
think it is necessary to learn to live well within it. From a purely practical point of view,
even a renewed community of Benedict would be endangered by the ecological or
biological devastation that could result from disasters of poor risk management.
9
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
10
For an overview, see National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine,
Gene Drives on the Horizon (Washington: National Academies Press, 2016).
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 511

with risks left to the poor, but they largely seek to address
diseases of the poor that are difficult to address in other ways.
Thus, benefits accrue to the poor while risks are generated to
the environment and perhaps also to the poor.
The argument will proceed in four stages. First, I will outline
the projected benefits and risks of gene drives. Then I will
suggest the difficulties of addressing these issues through either
current risk analysis or prudence as theorized by Aquinas,
before turning to modifications that would address these
deficiencies. Finally, I will apply the resulting model of
prudence to the case of gene drives, while addressing problems
that may arise with such an application.
Before beginning, it is important to note three caveats so that
the aims and scope of the argument are not misunderstood.
First, the example assumes, for the sake of argument, that these
genetic modifications of organisms to advance human health are
in principle licit. There are many counterarguments to this
premise, most importantly concerning animal rights, but these
are based largely on considerations different from those
concerning risk and uncertainty for which gene drives serve as
an example here. Second, the arguments of this essay
specifically apply to regnative prudence—policy decisions on
new technologies and social changes that might affect the
common good. Uncertainty raises different issues when
considered in an individual life.11 Finally, this essay only
considers prudence as a natural virtue that provides a rational
process for decision-making, without, however, denying the
importance or impact of spiritual aspects of decision-making.
While prudence provides suggestions for how to make
decisions, it is not a deterministic model, so the process of
counsel may provide more than one reasonable alternative
choice. Thus, judgment about which course of action to take is

11
For example, it seems impossible to live a good life without some kinds of
irreversible, risky decisions, whether it be a vocation, marriage, parenthood, or
martyrdom for a cause.
512 PAUL SCHERZ

required. Prayer, Ignatian spiritual discernment, and other ways

of seeking divine guidance can play an essential role in a
Christian’s decision-making, and Aquinas suggests that the
guidance of the Holy Spirit through the gift of counsel is
essential for unerring wise decisions.12 Yet, one can develop
rational norms to narrow options, which is all this essay seeks to
do. With these caveats in mind, let us first turn to the details of
the case at hand.

I. GENE DRIVES

Mosquito-borne illnesses kill millions of people every year,

with malaria alone accounting for 438,000 deaths in 2015.13
Many of these diseases, such as malaria and dengue, lack
effective vaccines. Some can be treated after symptoms begin to
show, although resistance to drugs that treat malaria continues
to develop. For some emerging diseases, such as the Zika virus,
there is no treatment at all. The most effective prevention
strategies have long targeted the mosquito vector, either pre-
venting individual exposure, through bednets, or eliminating
the mosquito population. These latter strategies tend either to
be time- and labor-intensive, such as removing the stagnant
water in which mosquitoes breed, or to pose other risks to
health and the environment, as in the case of spraying
insecticides.
These difficulties have led some researchers to seek more
complicated solutions to the problem through genetic
technologies, especially one called a gene drive.14 A gene drive is
a tool that ensures a specific version of a gene is inherited in

12
STh II-II, q. 52, a. 1.
13
“WHO | World Health Organization,” WHO, accessed January 27, 2017;
http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/vector_ecology/mosquito-borne-diseases/en/.
14
Austin Burt, “Site-Specific Selfish Genes as Tools for the Control and Genetic
Engineering of Natural Populations.,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences 270, no. 1518 (7 May 2003): 921-28.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 513

greater than Mendelian ratios. To review some basic genetics,

there are two copies of most genes in the cell, since there are
two of each chromosome, one from the father and one from the
mother. If an individual receives one variant of a gene, called an
allele, from the father and a different allele from the mother,
then there is a 50% chance that the individual will pass on the
paternal allele to his children and a 50% chance of passing on
the maternal allele. A gene drive is a tool that changes this
pattern of inheritance, meaning that the individual’s children
preferentially inherit one allele at a rate greater than 50%,
sometimes approaching 100%.
There are many different techniques that researchers can use
for a gene drive, but the one that has made them a broadly
feasible strategy is the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system (which
I will henceforth shorten to CRISPR).15 CRISPR originally
evolved as a bacterial immune system against viral infections. It
involves two elements, a short guide RNA sequence (sgRNA)
that can bind to matching viral DNA and a protein, Cas9, that
cuts the DNA sequence recognized by the sgRNA. In the last
five years, geneticists have discovered how to modify the system
to target any DNA sequence they wish by using an artificial
sgRNA. CRISPR is currently used as a cheap and easy gene
editing tool in many organisms and cell types.
What makes it so useful for a gene drive is that it can help to
insert new stretches of DNA into a chromosome. Whenever
DNA is cut, the cell tries to repair it, since having a broken
chromosome is extremely dangerous. Cells use one or the other

15
For a more detailed discussion of CRISPR’s mechanism of action and its
implications for Catholic bioethics, see Paul Scherz, “The Mechanisms and Applications
of CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Editing Technology,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 17
(2017): 29-36. For overviews in the scientific literature, see Patrick D. Hsu, Eric S.
Lander, and Feng Zhang, “Development and Applications of CRISPR-Cas9 for Genome
Engineering,” Cell 157, no. 6 (5 June 2014): 1262-78; Addison V. Wright, James K.
Nuñez, and Jennifer A. Doudna, “Biology and Applications of CRISPR Systems:
Harnessing Nature’s Toolbox for Genome Engineering,” Cell 164, no. 1 (14 Jan. 2016):
29-44.
514 PAUL SCHERZ

of two mechanisms to effect this repair. The first mechanism

consists simply in attempting to stick the two cut ends together,
which tends to cause errors, such as an added or lost DNA base,
and to leave a nonfunctional gene in its wake. The second
mechanism, homology-directed repair (HDR), is the one
necessary for a gene drive, even though it occurs much more
rarely than the first mechanism. In HDR, the cell uses the
sequence on the matching chromosome as a template to repair
the broken strand of DNA. This is the key to the gene drive.
Researchers can insert Cas9 and an sgRNA targeting a certain
DNA site into that site on one chromosome in a cell. In every
cell in an individual inheriting the modified chromosome,
CRISPR will then target and cut the other (normal)
chromosome.16 When the cell tries to repair the damaged DNA,
it will copy the section of DNA containing Cas9 and the
sgRNA, resulting in both chromosomes having the modification.
In theory, 100% of the offspring will then carry CRISPR, and
those offspring will in turn pass on CRISPR to 100% of their
offspring through the same mechanism. This self-amplifying
process should result in the modified gene spreading rapidly
through the population.
There are two basic strategies for using gene drives to
control disease vectors. First, one could try to eliminate the
population, for example by inserting the CRISPR system into a
gene in such a way as to make males sterile or to cause lethality
in females. As it spreads, the gene drive would kill or sterilize

16
Two studies showing that this can be done in principle in insects are Valentino M.
Gantz et al., “Highly Efficient Cas9-Mediated Gene Drive for Population Modification
of the Malaria Vector Mosquito Anopheles Stephensi,” Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 112, no. 49 (8 Dec. 2015): E6736-43; Andrew Hammond et al.,
“A CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Drive System Targeting Female Reproduction in the Malaria
Mosquito Vector Anopheles Gambiae,” Nature Biotechnology 34, no. 1 (2016): 78-83.
There are complications, in that it will not be 100% efficient and researchers may
design CRISPR only to turn on in cells that will give rise to sperm and eggs.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 515

large parts of the population.17 Second, one could make the

mosquitoes resistant to carrying the disease. In one proof of
concept experiment, researchers inserted antibodies that killed
Plasmodium falciparum, which causes malaria, alongside the
CRISPR and the sgRNA in the mosquito Anopheles stephensi.18
This strategy would make an increasing portion of the popu-
lation resistant to spreading the disease. In these ways, gene
drives could be a great help in controlling disease-carrying
mosquitoes.
Yet, as with all new technologies, gene drives will have their
limitations. First, since the strategy that seeks to eliminate the
population will not lead to very many offspring, there is a
strong likelihood that these mosquitoes will not saturate the
population before being wiped out themselves by natural
selection. Even with the disease resistance strategy, the resulting
disease-resistant mosquitoes could be less fit than the normal
wild ones, so they might not take over the population. Finally,
because the HDR repair mechanism does not occur every time,
in many cases the broken DNA will be sutured together in a way
that causes another type of mutation. In some cases, these
mutations will make it impossible for CRISPR to recognize its
target site, making these chromosomes resistant to the gene
drives, with the result that resistance would rapidly arise in
response to gene drives, as it has with other disease control
strategies.19 For these reasons, gene drives will not be a cure-all

17
This strategy is similar to traditional methods of vector control that try to destroy
a population by taking away its breeding sites, killing it with insecticides, or releasing
sterile males.
18
Gantz et al., “Highly Efficient Cas9-Mediated Gene Drive for Population
Modification of the Malaria Vector Mosquito Anopheles Stephensi.”
19
Robert L. Unckless, Andrew G. Clark, and Philipp W. Messer, “Evolution of
Resistance Against CRISPR/Cas9 Gene Drive,” Genetics 205, no. 2 (1 Feb. 2017): 827-
41.
516 PAUL SCHERZ

for vector control, but would merely be another tool to be used

in conjunction with other strategies.20
The biggest concerns facing policy makers are the possible
risks associated with this new technology. As the researchers
involved in one of the first proof-of-principle experiments em-
phasize, this is “a fundamentally new form of active genetics.”21
It is unlike previous forms of genetic modification of organisms
in research and agriculture, in which transgenic elements are
passed on in Mendelian frequencies and which are, for the most
part, designed for use in spatially confined areas. In contrast,
gene drives are designed to spread rapidly through dispersed
populations, making them much harder to control once
released. These characteristics make it imperative for policy
makers to study risks before deploying gene drives. As the
researchers note, “it is important to keep the unprecedented
power of such systems on a tight leash.”22
Since gene drives aim to fight diseases that preferentially
target the poor, they avoid the ethical problems surrounding the
justice of many genetic technologies that primarily benefit well-
off consumers and the corporations that develop them.
Nevertheless, they generate many risks for the environment and
for human health.23 Given both the scale of the interventions
into the environment and their potential for generating un-
predictable consequences, these techniques raise numerous
questions. What are the effects of eliminating only certain
species of mosquitoes? Will this hurt other organisms or disrupt
food chains? Will it merely open a niche for an alternative

20
Andrew Roberts et al., “Results from the Workshop ‘Problem Formulation for the
Use of Gene Drive in Mosquitoes,’” The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene 96, no. 3 (March 2017): 530-33.
21
Valentino M. Gantz and Ethan Bier, “The Dawn of Active Genetics,” BioEssays
38, no. 1 (January 2016): 50.
22
Ibid., 61.
23
These risks are reviewed in National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine, Gene Drives on the Horizon, 112-30; Roberts et al., “Results from the
Workshop ‘Problem Formulation for the Use of Gene Drive in Mosquitoes.’”
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 517

disease vector? Will mosquitoes immune to one disease just start

preferentially carrying other diseases? What happens when
mosquitoes become resistant to a gene drive, or could a gene
drive be mutated in such a way as to introduce other kinds of
alterations into the mosquito? And the greatest fear, one that
experience with other GMOs appears to suggest can be
discounted but that should still be considered: what happens if
the gene drive is transferred to another species? There are a
great number of dangerous scenarios.
As most of the proponents and analysts of gene drives readily
admit, we are operating under a great deal of uncertainty
coupled with significant risk. Gene drives are completely new,
which makes it difficult to infer effects from prior
biotechnologies. Scientists and ethicists can dream up some
possible dangers, but there is no ready mechanism for predicting
all of the effects, good or bad, of a novel technology. It is
exactly in these unknown effects that the greatest dangers may
lie. This is why gene drives offer an opportunity for thinking
more broadly about decision-making under uncertainty.

II. MODELS OF DECISION-MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY

Performing a risk assessment is central to contemporary

policy decision-making. Risk assessments take a particular prob-
lem or decision, look at past data and current conditions, and
decide on certain parameters to analyze. They use information
about the past and present to determine harms and benefits that
may arise from possible future scenarios.24 Most risk assessment
methodologies then perform a cost-benefit analysis, attempting
to provide monetary values for the harms and benefits that may

24
There are many methods of performing a risk analysis. See Kristin Shrader-
Frechette, Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology: Some Problems of
Technology Assessment and Environmental-Impact Analysis (Boston: Springer, 2013);
HM Treasury, “The Orange Book: Management of Risk – Principles and Concepts”
(Treasury, 2004); Ernest Braun, Technology in Context: Technology Assessment for
Managers (New York: Routledge, 1998).
518 PAUL SCHERZ

arise from the decision or technology. They also try to

determine mitigation strategies and compare their cost to
possible benefits. These cost comparisons and mitigation
strategies are then used by decision-makers.
It is not my purpose in this essay to denounce risk assessment
techniques. There are a number of valid criticisms of these
methods, of course, based on everything from their bureaucratic
nature, to their claim to be able to provide monetary values for
some harms, to the way that they discount future harms. Yet,
some such methodology is necessary if society is to take into
account the repercussions of policies, especially in a democratic
society that values transparent decision-making.25 Risk assess-
ment can be an extremely valuable tool when it is understood as
an aid for counsel rather than as a calculation that dictates
decisions:

To say that forecasting is prone to error is not only a commonplace, but also
an understatement. Nonetheless, it is an essential aspect of the human
condition that we attempt to foresee the future in an effort to shape it. . . .
The assessor suggests a range of possible policy options; the decision maker
decides which of these . . . to implement.26

However, problems can arise when these calculations are taken

as conclusive in situations of uncertainty.
To see these problems, it is helpful to consider the economist
Frank Knight’s distinction between risk and uncertainty.27 A
decision under risk concerns decisions in which one knows the
probabilities of different negative outcomes with an approxi-
mate certainty. If one knows the probability of a danger, then
one can protect oneself against it through insurance, hedges, or

25
For the history and problems of this mode of transparent cost-benefit analysis-
based decision-making, see Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996).
26
Braun, Technology in Context, 32-33.
27
Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (repr.; Cornell University Library,
2009), 20.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 519

mitigation strategies. In contrast, uncertain dangers are those of

which one does not know the probability, or of which one may
not even be aware, and which therefore rule out the possibility
of insurance or direct mitigation. Uncertainty presents situations
of great profitability or disaster. It is especially dangerous to
mistake a situation of uncertainty for one of mere risk.
Taleb has criticized risk assessment methodologies in many
areas, especially in finance, because of their dependence on past
and present data, which blinds them to novel events.28 In
complex systems, like markets or nature, rare events can have
an outsized effect, leading to bankruptcies and extinctions. Such
events will not be captured by risk assessments, so these will be
blind to absolutely crucial considerations. Too much confidence
in extrapolative calculations from past data can lead to future
disaster.
Since it is not based on calculations, prudence might seem to
escape these problems. Indeed, much of the classical virtue
tradition attempts to teach one how to live wisely in the face of
the vagaries of human existence. Yet even the best-developed
description of prudence, that of Thomas Aquinas, still reveals
significant lacunae when it is applied to situations of novelty
and uncertainty. According to Aquinas, in line with much of the
virtue tradition, prudence is “right reason about things to be
done” and regulates the means to attain an end.29 It governs the
whole process of decision-making. First, through rightly formed
prudence, a person recognizes the salient practical aspects of a
situation, the goods to be pursued and evils avoided, and de-
velops an intention to attain an end.30 If a proper course of
action is not immediately apparent, which it frequently is not

28
This criticism turns up nearly every few pages in his writings, but for a good
summary, see Taleb, Antifragile, 8-9.
29
STh I-II, q. 57, a. 4: “recta ratio agibilium.” Latin text of Aquinas from
http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html. This discussion largely follows Daniel
Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (New York:
Clarendon Press, 1994).
30
STh I-II, q. 12.
520 PAUL SCHERZ

because of the uncertainty of contingent singulars, the prudent

person initiates an inquiry into the possible means available to
attain the end in the situation and the benefits and harms of
each before choosing a course of action. This inquiry is called
counsel.31 Then the person judges between these options and
chooses one, before finally executing the action plan.32 It is this
last act of execution that is the proper act of prudence,33 while
the other actions are governed by the three potential parts of
prudence: counsel, synesis (judgment of the ordinary), and
gnome (judgment of exceptions).34
To function properly, prudence needs other ancillary virtues,
“things which need to concur for the perfect act of prudence,”
called the quasi-integral parts of prudence.35 There are eight of
these: memory, understanding, docility, shrewdness, reason,
foresight, circumspection, and caution. Five of them—memory,
docility, foresight, circumspection, and caution—seem espe-
cially important to the problems of novelty and uncertain rare
events.36 To grasp the importance of these parts of prudence,

31
STh I-II, q. 14, a. 1: “In rebus autem agendis multa incertitudo invenitur, quia
actiones sunt circa singularia contingentia, quae propter sui variabilitatem incerta sunt.
In rebus autem dubiis et incertis ratio non profert iudicium absque inquisitione
praecedente. Et ideo necessaria est inquisitio rationis ante iudicium de eligendis, et haec
inquisitio consilium vocatur.” See also STh I-II, q. 14, a. 2.
32
STh I-II, q. 13, a. 3; q. 15, a. 3; q. 16, a. 4.
33
STh II-II, q. 47, a. 8.
34
For a description of these virtues see STh II-II, q. 51.
35
STh II-II, q. 48, a. 1: “alicuius quae necesse est concurrere ad perfectum actum
virtutis illius.”
36
One could also see gnome as pertaining to uncertain or novel events, since it helps
to judge exceptional situations, ones that do not accord to the standard law (ibid.:
“gnome, quae est circa iudicium eorum in quibus oportet quandoque a communi lege
recedere”). Yet this virtue is more about exceptions to rules in which one appeals to
higher principles—it is about selecting the proper law to follow (STh II-II, q. 51, a. 4).
Thus, the example that Aquinas gives is not to give an enemy back a sword, because the
higher principle of defending one’s country supersedes the lower principle in terms of
true justice. For truly uncommon matters that approach chance, the only rule for
judging is Divine Providence, to which we have access only through the prompting of
the Spirit, not the regular virtue of prudence, although some may be better at judging
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 521

one must understand the temporality of prudence as it is

described in the section of Cicero’s De inventione that served as
a source of the parts of prudence for the medieval tradition.37
“Memory is the faculty by which the mind recalls what has
happened. Intelligence is the faculty by which it ascertains what
is. Foresight is the faculty by which it is seen that something is
going to occur before it occurs.”38 This shows how practical
wisdom involves an intelligent relation to all three dimensions
of time: past, present, and future. One recognizes the important
lessons from the past in memory, which allows one to
understand and interpret the present, which in turn allows one
to foresee the future.
Aquinas uses this same temporally inflected model. One
needs experience to acquire prudence, because experience
teaches “what is true in the majority of cases,” which is the kind
of norm that should direct us in practical matters.39 “It
behooves us to argue . . . about the future from the past.”40 This
experience can be gained on one’s own, for which one needs a
good memory, or through others, which is why a prudent

these situations than others (STh II-II, q. 51, a. 4, ad 3: “omnia illa quae praeter
communem cursum contingere possunt considerare pertinet ad solam providentiam
divinam, sed inter homines ille qui est magis perspicax potest plura horum sua ratione
diiudicare”). Thus, gnome does not seem to apply to the consideration of rare future
consequences. A similar argument can be made about the virtue of shrewdness (solertia),
which grasps quickly what should be done in a changing situation by discovering the
middle term of a practical syllogism (STh II-II, q. 49, a. 4, ad 1: “solertia non solum se
habet circa inventionem medii in demonstrativis, sed etiam in operativis”).
37
The others come from Ambrosius Aurelius Theodosius Macrobius, Commentary
on the Dream of Scipio (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 1.8.7.
38
“Memoria est, per quam animus repetit illa, quae fuerunt; intellegentia, per quam
ea perspicit, quae sunt; providentia, per quam futurum aliquid videtur ante quam
factum est” (Cicero, Cicero: On Invention; The Best Kind of Orator; Topics. A.
Rhetorical Treatises, trans. H. M. Hubbell [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1949], 2.53.160).
39
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 1: “Quid autem in pluribus sit verum oportet per experimentum
considerare.”
40
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 1, ad 3: “ex praeteritis oportet nos quasi argumentum sumere
de futuris.”
522 PAUL SCHERZ

person needs docility, the willingness to learn from others.41

These virtues allow one to understand how the world works,
and thus predict outcomes. These insights from the past are
then applied to the future. One uses the general understanding
of what happens in the majority of cases to foresee the future
and properly order future contingents to the appropriate end.42
Circumspection (literally, the act of looking around oneself)
helps one to see particular aspects of the circumstances that may
make the means unconducive to the end.43 Similarly, caution
helps one identify possible obstacles to success or evils that may
come from good actions.44 Thus, one foresees the future and
takes steps to prevent dangers arising from action.
From this overview of prudence, it becomes clear where the
current Thomistic model might be weak in dealing with novelty
and uncertainty. If one discovers the norms guiding action from
past experience, then these norms start to fail once the situation
changes. With a dramatically new technology, like gene drives,
little in past experience can guide one properly to foresee the
future outcomes of these technologies. More generally, society
is changing incredibly quickly, so that the norms of experience
are increasingly unstable guides to the future. Hartmut Rosa
calls this “the contraction of the present,” meaning by the
present “the time span for which the horizons of experience and
expectation coincide. Only within these time-spans of relative
stability can we draw on past experiences to orient our actions
and infer conclusions from the past with regard to the future.”45
Innovations and social changes make older knowledge obsolete,

41
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 3.
42
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 6: “Unde consequens est quod contingentia futura, secundum
quod sunt per hominem in finem humanae vitae ordinabilia, pertineant ad prudentiam.
Utrumque autem horum importatur in nomine providentiae.”
43
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 7.
44
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 8.
45
Hartmut Rosa, “Full Speed Burnout? From the Pleasures of the Motorcycle to the
Bleakness of the Treadmill: The Dual Face of Social Acceleration,” International Journal
of Motorcycle Studies 6, no. 1 (2010).
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 523

contracting this present at an ever-increasing speed. Moreover,

as Taleb argues, it is exactly our arrogance in thinking that the
future will be like the past that leaves us vulnerable to rare
important events.
Yet, there is an opening in Aquinas’s discussion of prudence
that would allow one to address extremely uncertain events.
Aquinas himself is very concerned about the unknowability of
contingent events, which is why he emphasizes considering
what happens in the majority of cases. Thus, caution is directed
only against common dangers:

Of the evils which man has to avoid, some are of frequent occurrence; the like
can be grasped by reason, and against them caution is directed. . . . Others
there are that occur rarely and by chance, and these, since they are infinite in
number, cannot be grasped by reason, nor is man able to take precautions
against them.46

Yet, one could also read from the past a need to concern oneself
with the unforeseen, which is what Aquinas’s prudence would
require. Thus, after saying that caution will address only com-
mon contingencies, he says that “by exercising prudence [one] is
able to prepare against all the surprises of chance, so as to suffer
less harm thereby.”47 Though he does not address this aspect of
prudence in depth, Aquinas leaves room for injecting concern
for uncertainty into prudence. Precaution offers one way to
“limit the sovereignty of Fortuna” even if it cannot dethrone
her.48

46
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 8, ad 3: “malorum quae homini vitanda occurrunt quaedam
sunt quae ut in pluribus accidere solent. Et talia comprehendi ratione possunt. Et contra
haec ordinatur cautio. . . . Quaedam vero sunt quae ut in paucioribus et casualiter
accidunt. Et haec, cum sint infinita, ratione comprehendi non possunt, nec sufficienter
homo potest ea praecavere.”
47
Ibid.: “quamvis per officium prudentiae homo contra omnes fortunae insultus
disponere possit ut minus laedatur.”
48
MacIntyre, After Virtue, 93.
524 PAUL SCHERZ

III. PRECAUTION AND PRUDENCE

In the face of the growing power of technology and the

ecological damage that humans can cause, ethicists have
increasingly emphasized the importance of precaution. While
many people have used this concept, it is perhaps most strongly
associated with Hans Jonas, who argued that, given the un-
precedented powers of contemporary technology to impact the
future through nuclear war, genetic modification gone awry,
and man-made ecological damage, people must focus on their
responsibilities to ensure the continuation of humankind. His
imperative of responsibility is to “act so that the effects of your
action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human
life.”49 This principle, which attempts to address the imbalance
between our increased power to cause harm and our decreased
predictive knowledge of the future, also clearly corresponds to
the precautionary principle embraced by governments,
international agencies, environmental ethicists, and religious
leaders, most recently Pope Francis in the encyclical Laudato
Si’. “If objective information suggests that serious and
irreversible damage may result, a project should be halted or
modified, even in the absence of indisputable proof.”50
Understood in this way, the principle of precaution has a
clear relationship to the quasi-integral parts of prudence of
Aquinas. As expressed throughout Laudato Si’, the principle
encourages decision-makers to be docile to a greater range of
experiences and expertise than were used in the past—engage in
interdisciplinary explorations,51 solicit the opinions of affected
segments of society, and pay close attention to the experiences

49
Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the
Technological Age (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1985), 11.
50
Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, 186; http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/
en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. See also
Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, at
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.htm.
51
Laudato Si’, 110.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 525

of the marginalized whenever a project is planned.52 Based on

this broad set of experiences, policy makers can circumspectly
identify a range of possible risks. Out of caution, projects
should be delayed until there is more knowledge of the dangers
they entail or until they are altered so as to mitigate possible
dangers. In this way, the prudent person can respond to dangers
that she suspects but does not know will happen.
Yet framed in this way, the precautionary principle does not
quite meet the problem of uncertainty. First, it assumes that
people already have some knowledge, even if not certain or
reliable knowledge, of possible dangers. Thus, it does not
address the unknowns with which novelty and uncertainty
confront us. Second, it is framed as a principle rather than as a
virtue. This framing as a Kantian imperative is tied to Jonas’s
other achievement, which was to development a secular
theoretical justification for an ethics of responsibility that
encourages precaution based on the importance of purpose and
the ability to value things evident in human life and the natural
world more broadly. He sought an imperative of responsibility
that could be based in metaphysics.53 While I am sympathetic to
his attempt to ground ethics in ontology, his justification of
precaution as part of an ethics of responsibility has many
weaknesses, from the basic deontological problem of motivation
to broader issues in how he develops his specific arguments.54
Fortunately, a Christian embrace of precaution need not rely on
Jonas’s specific justification for the protection of the existence
of humanity and life in general because a Christian attitude of
precaution can draw on many other sources. Even if one wanted
to retain a deontological perspective, one can follow Pope
Francis in interpreting the commandment in Genesis 2:15 to

52
Ibid., 183.
53
Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 43-44.
54
For a detailed critique of his position, see Gerald McKenny, To Relieve the Human
Condition (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1997), 39-75.
526 PAUL SCHERZ

“till and keep” the land as a command to protect the

environment.55
In a more Thomistic vein, one could view the precaution in
policy-making that Jonas discusses as an aspect of regnative
prudence, the prudence tied to the government and command
of a city or kingdom, directed toward the common good.56 “[A]
government is the more perfect as it is more universal, extends
to more matters, and attains a higher end. Hence prudence in its
special and most perfect sense, belongs to a king who is charged
with the government of a city or kingdom.”57 It is this kind of
prudence that protects nations and the entire human com-
munity from undergoing disasters caused by unpredicted effects
of actions. It is especially important as it pertains to broad
environmental effects, which affect the common good of the
whole human community and the natural order.58
Though Jonas formulated the imperative to precaution in
Kantian language, his argument as a whole suggests a concern
for the development of a certain habit of thinking and feeling
about the dangers of action. He speaks, for instance, of cul-
tivating the emotion of fear, or of developing heuristics.59 It
therefore makes sense to think of precaution less as a principle
than as a virtue. I propose that we retrieve Jonas’s intuitions in
this area by introducing two new quasi-integral parts of pru-
dence, imagination and precaution. These are quasi-integral
because, while they are ancillary to prudence as not tied

55
Laudato Si’, 66-67.
56
STh II-II, q. 50, a. 1.
57
Ibid.: “tanto enim regimen perfectius est quanto est universalius, ad plura se
extendens et ulteriorem finem attingens. Et ideo regi, ad quem pertinet regere civitatem
vel regnum, prudentia competit secundum specialem et perfectissimam sui rationem.”
58
As Jean Porter notes, “Although Aquinas does not explicitly say so, it seems
plausible that the orientation of the will toward a universal good can also be expressed
through a love of other kinds of comprehensive good, including the political
community” (Jean Porter, Nature as Reason [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 2004], 208).
59
Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 25-31.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 527

immediately to the action of command, they are virtues that are

necessary for the continued proper action of prudence.
Jonas argues that precaution presupposes the act of
imagining possible dangers. Initially, there will be little knowl-
edge, or even inkling, of possible dangers of a new technology;
there will be situations “where that which is to be feared has not
yet happened and has perhaps no analogies in past or present
experiences.”60 It is thus incumbent on decision-makers to
employ the faculty of imagination to come up with possible
scenarios. “The anticipatory conjuring up of this imagination
becomes itself the first, as it were introductory, duty of the
ethics we are speaking about.”61 Jonas calls for a casuistry based
in such imagination. The role of fiction, especially science
fiction, in arguments about new technologies suggests the
importance of imagination. While such imaginative works
should not be determinative of ethical arguments, they broaden
the possible ethical considerations, and thus have a valid role to
play. Moreover, artistic works possess the second relevant
aspect of imagination: imagination can evoke a proper
emotional response to possible dangers; “it can instill in us the
fear whose guidance we need,” impelling policy makers to
investigate or mitigate potential dangers.62 Of course, after
further investigation and reflection, one may decide that an
imagined scenario is actually not possible or can be prevented
easily. Still, the imagination is an essential aid in areas in which
one lacks the knowledge otherwise needed to generate possible
scenarios.
Yet there would still remain unimagined possibilities, dangers
of the unthought. It is to address these situations that one needs
a habit of perceiving and responding to situations that grasps
their shape in a way that allows one to mitigate possible
disaster; a precaution, then, that acts in the spirit of Jonas while

60
Ibid., 27.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid.
528 PAUL SCHERZ

going beyond his account as an exercise of the virtue of

prudence “able to prepare against all the surprise of chance, so
as to suffer less harm thereby.”63 The difficulty is that one has to
be able to perceive vulnerabilities to disaster and loss in a
situation or course of action even while not necessarily being
able to predict how those losses might come about. Taleb is
especially helpful for understanding how to see courses of
action in these ways that help one limit the possible harms from
unforeseen events by looking at the properties of systems. He
describes three possible properties of systems, states, or plans of
action in relation to volatile, unforeseen events: fragility,
robustness, and antifragility.64 Some systems or courses of
action are fragile, meaning that usually they function well, but a
shock event can lead to rapid collapse and loss. A famous
example is the collapse of the power grid of the Eastern United
States in 2003 as a result of a tree falling on a powerline,
leading to a blackout affecting fifty million people.65 Or one
could consider the example of investing in the stock market,
which generally gives a good return on investment, but
occasionally loses much of its value, as in 2008. Most modern
systems are fragile because they have been designed primarily
with efficiency in mind. A robust system or course of action, by
contrast, is one that is resistant to shocks because it has
multiple, redundant safeguards. Thus, the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA) designed the Internet to use
multiple nodes so that it would still function after a nuclear
attack. The analogue for investing would be a diversified
portfolio of extremely safe investments. In contrast to fragile
courses of action, and going beyond robust systems, Taleb
encourages what he calls antifragile courses of action—those
that flourish in volatility and uncertainty, taking advantage of
them. Taleb argues that entrepreneurial markets as a whole are

63
STh II-II, q. 49, a. 8, ad 3.
64
Taleb, Antifragile, 20-27.
65
Goldin and Mariathasan, Butterfly Defect, 106-7.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 529

antifragile (although not for the individual entrepreneurs that

go bankrupt);66 the same holds for an investment portfolio com-
posed mostly of extremely safe investments but with some long-
shot bets like venture capital or an option to short a market.
Prudent actions and prudently designed systems should aim at
robustness or antifragility in the face of uncertainty. While a
prudent person will frequently be able to take advantage of
uncertainty, she should at least aim for robustness, which is all
that can be achieved in some circumstances.
The way to ensure a system’s robustness is to pay attention
to its maximal exposure to harm rather than to the expected
average benefit and risks. The folly of the utilitarian weighing of
the probability-adjusted benefits versus the probability-adjusted
harms is that it cannot take into account the unknown and thus
always tends toward fragility. One cannot know for certain the
probability of future events, so such calculations are mere
guesses. Instead, one must look at how much harm could occur
if everything went even worse than could possibly be expected
from past experience. With Jonas, the person concerned with
systemic robustness knows how to view the future with a proper
heuristics influenced by fear as well as hope.
There are many ways to get a sense of maximal exposure to
harm. First, one could look to see if the action is nonlinear, so
that bad effects would accelerate in relation to possible bad
events, rather than merely increasing at a linear rate.67 If one
sees that bad effects accelerate, then it suggests that the results
of the unforeseen could be catastrophic. Second, one could look
for safeguards capable of containing the increase of harms. In
finance, one can have a stop-loss order, whereby an investment
is sold once it decreases to a certain price in order to limit loss.
In other areas, processes should be reversible once bad effects
appear. If harms can be limited, this suggests that an action
meets the test of precaution. It makes little sense to act in such a

66
Taleb, Antifragile, 74-80.
67
Taleb calls this convexity versus concavity (ibid., 267-89).
530 PAUL SCHERZ

way that one exposes oneself or others to great harms in the

event of an unforeseen disaster in exchange for limited or even
great gains. Such benefits can be erased very swiftly.
At first glance, it may seem that what Taleb gives us is merely
a way of calculating effects of actions, one that may be more
akin to utilitarian cost-benefit analysis than prudential judg-
ment, even if it is a significant advance over most versions of the
former. Yet, what Taleb is really trying to suggest is a different
way of perceiving courses of action and ways of organizing
society. As Josef Pieper describes it, such proper perception is at
the heart of prudence:

The pre-eminence of prudence means that realization of the good presupposes

knowledge of reality. He alone can do good who knows what things are like
and what their situation is. . . . Realization of the good presupposes that our
actions are appropriate to the real situation, that is to the concrete realities
which form the “environment” of a concrete human action; and that we
therefore take this concrete reality seriously, with clear-eyed objectivity.68

Taleb is attempting to change how people see situations in

order to help them avoid exposure to catastrophes. In this way,
he is encouraging a habit of thinking and perceiving, a certain
form of intellectual excellence akin to virtue, even if he does
not use the term. This habit of precaution would help the
individual prevent laws, policies, and actions that may harm the
common good of nations, humanity, and the world as a whole
by exposing it to disaster. In this sense, it is a habit of thought
that helps one attain a flourishing existence as a social creature
by protecting the common good.

IV. ANALYZING GENE DRIVES THROUGH PRECAUTIONARY

PRUDENCE

Through a greater emphasis on imagination and a tendency

toward precaution thought of in terms of robustness, prudence

68
Josef Pieper, Prudence (New York: Pantheon Books, 1959), 25.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 531

becomes precautionary. Precaution ceases to be a restricted

principle but instead becomes a way of approaching problems
so that the harms arising from the unknown will be limited.
This account of precaution helps in the analysis of gene drives.
This discussion will focus on the release of gene drives into the
environment, since researchers have developed many safeguards
to contain gene drives in lab research.
First, it must be noted that discussions of gene drives are
laudable for their forthright recognition of the novelty and
uncertainty of this technology, and for their calls for docility.
Discussions have been interdisciplinary and have contained calls
to consult local communities before the technology is used.
There is even a system for testing the safety and efficiency of
modified mosquitoes before they are released.69
Unfortunately, none of these proposed discussions or re-
search plans can really give a good sense of the possible
problems that may arise because the research plans are not
designed to answer the question of how modified mosquitoes
will act in complex environments. The stages before widespread
release occur in highly controlled lab environments and
confined field tests. They will primarily provide information
about the efficacy of the gene drive rather than possible risks to
the environment or human health. Once the technology is
released into a complex system, it will be impossible to recall.
Thus, the research will not give a thorough sense of possible
bad effects that may arise.
It is also not clear that the work of imagination is sufficiently
thorough. Scenarios are largely extrapolated from other
technologies, which makes gene drives seem more controllable,
although policy makers know this is not the case. Moreover,
there has not been the time or attention for imaginative writers
to become involved. It may be necessary for more time to
develop a casuistry of imagination. Because of these issues, it

69
TDR, Guidance Framework for Testing Genetically Modified Mosquitoes (Geneva:
TDR/World Health Organization, 2014).
532 PAUL SCHERZ

seems that we have little circumspection about this technology

and not enough time to address it with caution.
There are further problems associated with a stance of
precaution. In this technology, harms will accelerate in the case
of an unexpected problem, because it is designed to amplify
itself through the population. In the highly unlikely event of a
gene transfer to another species, it will spread rapidly in that
population as well. It is thus a fragile system, depending on
everything going well.
It also seems unlikely that the effects of a gene drive will be
reversible. In some cases, harms might appear only after the
technology has run its course. If the loss of a mosquito
population harms an ecosystem or allows another species of
mosquito to expand and spread other diseases, there will be no
way to bring it back. It may be that negative effects at one field
site could lead to changes in implementation at others, but
analysts warn that a gene drive may spread internationally once
released. Researchers have designed safeguards for lab use, like
making the modified organism dependent on an artificial
nutrient, separating the Cas9 and the sgRNA, or inserting kill
switches, but these most likely will not work in a real-world
scenario.70 Geneticists have also developed a reverse gene drive,
which would introduce a second gene drive with Cas9 and an
sgRNA that targets the first gene drive.71 If something goes
wrong with the first gene drive, policy makers could release this
second one to spread through the population and destroy the
first. Unfortunately, this approach introduces another set of
uncertainties and risks with a perhaps limited chance of success.
In effect, it doubles the possible problems with gene drives by
introducing a second one. Gene drives thus seem to run counter
to a stance of precaution.

70
Gantz and Bier, “Dawn of Active Genetics.”
71
James E. DiCarlo et al., “Safeguarding CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Drives in Yeast,”
Nature Biotechnology 33, no. 12 (December 2015): 1250-55.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 533

Given this analysis, it would seem that CRISPR-driven gene

drives present too many uncertain dangers to use. While it is
true that they have the potential to lower the burden of
mosquito-borne illness among the world’s most disadvantaged,
they are no “magic bullet.” Many commentators see their
chance of great success as limited, since mosquitoes will develop
resistance to CRISPR modification, and modified mosquitoes
may be outcompeted by wild ones. Even if no unforeseen harms
come to pass, gene drives would probably still need to be
repeatedly released and complemented by other control
methodologies. There is little chance of expanding our
knowledge of possible harms before their release into the
environment, and once released, unforeseen harms would
accelerate and would be irreversible. Given the existence of
other more proven and reversible techniques, such as removing
breeding areas and repeatedly releasing sterile males, it is more
prudent to invest in these techniques and vaccine research than
to develop a new technology with large and uncontrollable
potential downsides.

V. CONCERNS ABOUT PRECAUTION

There are still at least three criticisms of precaution that must

be addressed. First, many have criticized the precautionary
principle for ignoring the harms of the status quo, in this case
mosquito-borne illness and the costs of other control strate-
gies.72 These costs are real, which is why it is essential to invest
more money into research into treatment and vaccines for these
diseases and into the actual healthcare systems of places where
these diseases are endemic. The costs of other strategies are real,
but they are known, in contrast to the unknown costs of gene
drives. Too often, policy makers seek magic bullets that will

72
The literature on the precautionary principle is vast, but for a thorough and
thoughtful criticism, see Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
534 PAUL SCHERZ

avoid the costs of current responses to a problem, not realizing

that each new technology or policy will also have its own very
real costs. While many times these costs will be well worth
accepting, it is important to be clear-sighted about what those
costs are. In the case of gene drives, the costs of the new
intervention may vastly exceed the known costs of current
interventions.
Second, some argue that, taken to extremes, precaution
could stymie all technological developments, because there are
always unknown or imagined dangers. These concerns are
unfounded for this analysis, because there are steps to take to
mitigate concerns, which is exactly the purpose of precaution.
Imagined dangers can be investigated and mitigated. One can
discern whether the effects of a new technology would be linear
or nonlinear, leading to a diagnosis of a course of action as
fragile or robust. Designers can implement safeguards in the
very biology of the organism to limit damage and ensure
reversibility, as synthetic biologists have already done in many
cases.73 As part of the quasi-integral parts of prudence,
imagination and precaution take place within a whole structure
of prudential judgment, bringing new considerations and ways
of seeing, but not overpowering other aspects. Precaution
modifies the analysis of new technologies rather than stopping
them.
Finally, the needs of precaution could seemingly be used to
justify many immoral actions out of the necessity of defending
the common good. Even the originator of the principle of
precaution, Hans Jonas, suggested that preserving the
environment might require an authoritarian government
founded on a “noble lie.”74 Any policy founded on a Weber-
inspired ethic of responsibility is in danger of licensing proble-

73
One can see steps in this direction in DiCarlo et al., “Safeguarding CRISPR-Cas9
Gene Drives in Yeast.”
74
Jonas, Imperative of Responsibility, 149.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 535

matic actions.75 However, Christians should not allow their

stewardship of the environment or society to lead them to act
against the human dignity arising from the same image that calls
us to stewardship. The way that precaution can be used
prudentially to protect the common good will be limited by at
least two considerations. First, it will be limited by other
elements of the common good such as human rights, the good
of truth, and so on. Second, it will be limited in the way that all
powers of the community are limited in Thomistic thought, by
the fact that the ultimate human good lies in communion with
God. While supporting the terrestrial common good is an
important element of human flourishing, human persons are
ultimately ordered to a greater end in God, which limits the
demands that the community can make on the individual.76 For
example, to further the common good, one cannot use policies
such as a noble lie that would make it impossible for citizens to
access truth.
In an earlier debate about the use of genetic technologies,
specifically about using eugenics to counter a feared growing
load of mutations in the human genome, both Karl Rahner and
Paul Ramsey, who otherwise thought very differently about
these issues, argued that Christians need to recognize that their
ability to prevent bad consequences in the future are limited.
Scripture assures us that eventually the world will end. As
Rahner says, “This death is not only the zero hour through
which the individual must pass on his way to the absolute
future, but also the zero hour for mankind as a whole.”77 Or as

75
Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber, ed. H. H. Gerth and C.
Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 77-128.
76
Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973).
77
Karl Rahner, “Experiment with Man,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 9,
Writings of 1965-67 I, trans. G. Harrison (New York: Herder and Herder Inc., 1972),
223. While generally optimistic about the limited nature of the harms of human
technology because of his trust that the world contains self-regulating systems that will
536 PAUL SCHERZ

Ramsey more bluntly puts it, Christians affirm that “God means
to kill us all in the end, and in the end He is going to
succeed.”78 Ultimately, Christian prudence aims at God rather
than the world, and all stewardship must take place within that
horizon. Yet part of what God calls us to is stewardship of the
environment, health, and society.79 Through prudence, one can
maintain a balance between these demands.

CONCLUSION

While there are weaknesses in contemporary models of

decision-making in the face of uncertainty, Thomism can meet
these problems by integrating the virtues of precaution and
imagination into the virtue of prudence. These ancillary virtues
allow one either better to predict negative outcomes or at least
better to perceive possible vulnerabilities in courses of action.
Through this habit of perceiving action and policy, decision-
makers can take steps to shape their actions in ways that
minimize the possibilities of unforeseen catastrophic harms.
Under this model of looking at technological developments,
gene drives appear to leave communities and the environment
open to too many unforeseen, irreversible, possible harms to be
used prudently. If something were to go wrong, the negative
effects would accelerate, making it worthwhile to bear the costs
of current methods rather than deploy an extremely fragile
technological system. This example also shows that while this
model of prudential decision-making will always require
judgment of an experienced decision-maker, as does all pru-

return to an equilibrium, Rahner did warn that some actions are irreversible, like
Original Sin (ibid., 217-19).
78
Paul Ramsey, Fabricated Man: The Ethics of Genetic Control (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1970), 27.
79
Laudato Si’, 67-70.
 PRUDENCE, PRECAUTION, AND UNCERTAINTY 537

dential judgment, it can lead to publicly defensible reasons for

action.80

80
My thanks go to Adrian Walker and China Scherz for their comments on this
essay, Beth Lofgren for research assistance, and to the Bioethics Group at the Catholic
Theological Society of America for their comments on an earlier version of this essay. I
would also like to thank the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University
of Virginia and the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America
for their support of my research.
The Thomist 81 (2017): 539-65

“THE TWO HEADS OF THE EAGLE”:

AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION

WILLIAM MCCORMICK, S.J.

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis, Missouri

W
HEN PRESIDENT Barack Obama spoke in Cairo in
October 2009, he uttered a surprising statement:
“faith should bring us together.” The statement was
surprising first because he was speaking in a region plagued by
interreligious conflict: faith would seem to be pulling the
Middle East apart. But the statement was also surprising because
the president was speaking on behalf of the secular and liberal
West. Why would he champion the role of faith in the effort
toward peace?
President Obama’s words underscore the complexities of our
age.1 The ambiguities of secularism have often led to more
rather than to less religious conflict in politics, and in many
parts of the world secularism simply never arrived. Indeed,
Jürgen Habermas has suggested that liberalism cannot articulate
sufficient moral foundations for itself in the face of such threats,
warning that liberalism needs to cooperate with at least some
forms of religion.2 Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that
scholars have lately reconsidered a strand of modern thought
that does not share liberalism’s commitment to separating

1
The speech is available at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-
office/remarks-president-cairo-university-6-04-09.
2
Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger, Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason
and Religion, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 24-52.

539
540 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

religion from politics.3 It has in fact turned to religion as a

source of public values and legitimacy. This is civil religion. As
the “political use of religion,” civil religion is as ancient as
politics itself.4 Yet civil religion has developed a new task in
modernity: to domesticate religion. Moreover, in its attempts to
reckon with religious pluralism in early modern Europe, civil
religion has at times served as a dialogue partner and com-
petitor with liberalism.
Yet their differences are considerable. Whereas classical
liberalism seeks to ground political obligation in non-
controversial conceptions of the good, civil religion embraces
religious norms and practices as politically binding. Civil
religion grounds the particular of a political community in
another particular, namely, religion.5 Civil religion thereby runs
counter, both to liberalism’s commitments to rationalism and
universalism, and to its distinction between religion and
politics.6
The connection between civil religion and liberalism comes
to the fore in the work of Ronald Beiner, whose recent studies
of civil religion have clarified the origins and goals of
liberalism.7 In illuminating the central place of Rousseau in
framing the role of civil religion in modernity, Beiner has shown
how much civil religion and liberalism share against theocratic

3
Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions
in a Post-Secular World (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006); Aaron Herold,
“Spinoza’s Liberal Republicanism and the Challenge of Revealed Religion,” Political
Research Quarterly 67 (2014): 239-52; Victoria Kahn, “Political Theology and Fiction
in The King’s Two Bodies,” Representations 106 (2012): 77-101; and Ronald Weed and
John von Heyking, eds., Civil Religion in Political Thought (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2010).
4
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, La cité antique (Paris: L. Hachette et Cie, 1866).
5
Rhys H. Williams and Todd Nicholas Fuist, “Civil Religion and National Politics in
a Neoliberal Age.” Sociology Compass 8 (2014): 929-38.
6
Liberalism can also be particularistic, of course; cf. Anna Stilz, Liberal Loyalty:
Freedom, Obligation, and the State (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011).
7
Ronald H. Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau on Civil Religion.” Review
of Politics 55 (1993): 617-38; and Ronald Beiner, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the
History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 541

visions of politics. Yet he also equates religion with theocracy,

accepting the illiberal premise of civil religion that religion is
necessarily a problem that must be neutralized—what Charles
Taylor calls a “subtraction story.”8
Subverting Rousseau and Beiner, I argue that at least one
religion, Christianity, can intervene in politics and thereby
critically support it without becoming theocratic. Like liberal-
ism, Christianity recognizes a distinction between the earthly
and the spiritual. That distinction is not without its tensions,
however, and such tensions are at the heart of navigating
politics. But Christianity can direct the liberal polity away from
facile resolutions of those tensions, and so fulfil Habermas’s
hopes for a religious dialogue partner for liberalism.
In this article, I turn to Thomas Aquinas to illuminate such
possibilities. In a little-studied work, De regno, he treats civil
religion thematically, a treatment that is in many ways the high
point of the text. He details both why Christianity cannot be a
civil religion and yet why it must remain politically active. In his
work we will see both a challenge for liberalism to take its own
principles seriously, and a recognition that religion and liberal
politics can be aligned in their goal against civil religion and
theocracy. Yet Aquinas also cautions that religion and politics
can come to no easy settlement, a lesson which should dissolve
any complacency on liberal or civil-religious terms about the
possibility of achieving a lasting institutional resolution to their
relationship.
In what follows, I juxtapose the arguments of Rousseau and
Aquinas to bring them into conversation. After detailing
Rousseau’s account of civil religion, I describe De regno in two
movements: the starkly political treatment of book I, and the
more theological account of book II. I then bring Aquinas into
dialogue with Rousseau, concluding with the benefits of
allowing religion to speak with its own voice in this dialogue.

8
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2008), 26-28.
542 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

I. ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION

While civil religion has become a trendy topic, Beiner has

aimed in his work on Rousseau to uncover civil religion’s
enduring significance. By drawing out the inner connections
between civil religion and liberalism in their shared opposition
to theocracy, Rousseau illuminates the aims and limits of
liberalism, and thereby the terms of modern politics.
Rousseau famously vacillates between civil religion and
liberalism, a hesitation from which Beiner takes his central
claim. This wavering, Beiner argues, reveals a critical truth,
namely, that civil religion challenges the liberal belief that
politics can be grounded in a legitimacy apart from religion.9
While both proponents of civil religion and proponents of
liberalism fear that religion would subvert politics for its own
ends, they diverge in their response to that threat: liberals seek
to separate religious and political authority, and civil religion
advocates the domestication of religious power for the benefit
of political authority. The challenge of civil religion to
liberalism, then, is to deny that liberalism’s separation of re-
ligion and politics is possible.
Beiner’s work requires clarity on the meaning of three
slippery terms: civil religion, liberalism, and theocracy. Civil
religion is the use of religion for political purposes. While
religion and politics were often ambiguously differentiated in
ancient cultures, modern notions of civil religion assume that
religion and politics are conceptually and institutionally distinct,
such that political authority can manipulate religious institutions
as discretely separate entities. One thinks, for instance, of King
Henry VIII’s establishment of the Church of England to further
his dynastic aims.10

9
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 637-38.
10
Political theory’s understanding of civil religion as an elite-driven, top-down
process contrasts with sociologists’ tendency to study it as the bottom-up emergence of
“nonsectarian faith” in a culture’s history; see, e.g., Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in
America,” Daedalus 96 (1967): 1-21.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 543

As civil religion involves the cooperation of politics and

religion, so liberalism calls for their separation. Quoting Haber-
mas, Beiner notes that classical liberalism depends upon “the
unifying, consensus-creating power of reason” supplanting “the
social integrative powers of the religion tradition shaken by
enlightenment.”11 Indeed, liberalism arose to secure toleration
and peace in the midst of the confessional strife of early modern
Europe.12 Liberalism characteristically stipulates which matters
require consent by the majority of a population for political
governance, and which matters are immaterial to governance.
Theocracy is the most nebulous of the three terms, in part
because its etymology is misleading and its use typically
pejorative. Literally denoting “rule by God,” in effect it
connotes government by “those who claim to rule in the name
of God.”13 Pharaonic Egypt and early Israel in the times of the
“judges” are ancient examples, but one also thinks of claims in
medieval Europe that the Church should exercise direct
authority over the temporal power.14 In Beiner’s schema,
theocracy can be taken at times as a kind of civil religion.15 But
in contexts in which religion and politics are conceptually and
institutionally distinct, we can distinguish between those
situations in which religious authority deploys politics for the
benefit of religion, and those in which political authority
deploys religion for the benefit of politics.
In short, civil religion is the political use of religion,
theocracy is the religious use of politics, and liberalism is the
attempt to limit the role of religion in politics. Both civil
religion and liberalism espouse the priority of politics over
religion, although that priority takes the form of the mastery of

11
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 638.
12
David Hollenbach, The Common Good and Christian Ethics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 14-15.
13
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 627.
14
Leonard E. Boyle, “The De regno and the Two Powers,” in Leonard E. Boyle,
Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas (Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium: Collège
Cardinal Mercier, 2000).
15
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 637.
544 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

politics over religion for civil religion, and the autonomy of

politics from religion for liberalism. This shared goal is why
Beiner wants to direct the attention of the liberal West to the
civil religion tradition.
Indeed, as striking as Beiner’s observations are, he means to
do no more than reclaim this earlier tradition. Rousseau’s
treatment of civil religion in the Social Contract shapes the
terms of the debate between civil religion and liberalism.
According to Rousseau, in modernity civil religion is both
necessary and unavailable.16 No State has been founded without
civil religion, and so there is simply no proof of liberalism’s
success.17 And yet the possibilities for civil religion in the
modern era are unacceptable, such that Rousseau cannot
actually endorse any of them. He thus argues for civil religion
throughout the Social Contract, only to adopt an anemic
“religion of tolerance” in his conclusion.18 In other words,
Rousseau believes that liberalism does not answer our needs,
but it is the best option that we have. He is caught between the
traditions of liberalism and civil religion: he lacks the
confidence of Hobbes and Machiavelli in founding a civil
religion, but he also challenges the liberal conviction that
human communities can flourish without it. It is precisely
Rousseau’s reservations about liberalism and civil religion that
make him fascinating and timely.19
Yet if Rousseau wavers between liberalism and civil religion,
he is resolute in his rejection of theocracy. He agrees with
Machiavelli’s and Hobbes’ claims that Christian theocracy tends
to subvert political authority.20 This subversion divides the
citizen’s loyalties, such that he is torn between his identity as a
citizen and as a man: as a public patriot of his country and as a

16
I take the word “unavailable” from Robert Pippin’s excellent “The Unavailability
of the Ordinary: Strauss on the Philosophical Fate of Modernity,” Political Theory 31
(2003): 335-58.
17
Ibid., 618.
18
Ibid., 617-38; Beiner, Civil Religion, 11-17 and 78-83.
19
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 637-38.
20
Ibid., 634-35.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 545

private adherent to his religious sect. For Rousseau, the

responsibility of the citizen summons the best of the human
person. Yet the Christian citizen gives his best to the Church.
But trying to get behind Christianity will not do, either:
Rousseau rejects as impossible and undesirable the efforts of
Machiavelli and Hobbes to resurrect pagan or ancient Jewish
theocracies. Rousseau has no choice but to promote the weak
tea of a religion of tolerance, the best defense he can muster
against theocracy.
Why does all of this matter today? Beiner, mindful of the
complexities of twenty-first-century secularism, worries that
advocates of liberalism will not see the power that religion
exerts even today, and will be unequipped to meet politically
resurgent religious forces. For this reason, he argues that the
history of Western modern political thought should not be
reduced to the ascent of liberalism, but that we should summon
the resources of a long tradition developed in parallel with
liberalism that does not share liberalism’s optimism in the
power of reason to ground human community: civil religion.
The history of the dialogue between liberalism and civil religion
will show why for some thinkers civil religion has at times
seemed preferable to liberalism, and what resources liberalism
has to respond to and surpass civil religion’s claims. In this way,
liberalism can avoid becoming a victim of its own success.
Beiner’s treatment of Rousseau extends far beyond what I
have detailed, and I intend to examine it further after my
discussion of Aquinas. Yet it should be clear from this summary
that, in his attempt to re-vivify the dialogue between civil
religion and liberalism, Beiner leaves one voice silent: religion.
His explicit interest is politics, not religion, as he himself
admits.21 For this reason, he does not study religion on its own
terms, preferring to yield to liberalism’s and civil religion’s
characterization of religion: as a threat to political order and as
a problem to be solved. His failure to permit religion to speak
with its own voice, however, is a curious move in a project for

21
Beiner, Civil Religion, 2-3.
546 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

which religion is so critical. Indeed, Beiner’s conflation of

religion with theocracy means that he never asks fundamental
questions about the relationship between politics and religion,
questions that are logically prior to the question of the
superiority of liberalism or civil religion. Rousseau, after all,
wants to reunite the human person, to reclaim the “citizen” and
“man” as one. But what is the nature of the person? What is the
person that he is so easily torn between citizen and man? What
are “politics” and “religion”? Must they be opposed? Could a
politically active religion in fact be nontheocratic, and offer re-
sources to liberalism in its commitment against illiberalism?
These are questions that liberalism ought to confront. For in
failing to ask them, one fails to “get behind” liberalism and civil
religion to the questions for which they are answers. When
Beiner frames the problem of politics on civil religion’s terms,
he accepts religion as the theocratic other, and does not con-
sider the anterior and more fundamental question of the nature
of human beings and their community. Religion, however,
claims to speak to the human person’s nature and communal
life. To assume that politics must instrumentalize religion, then,
is to assume that politics must instrumentalize whatever truth
religion offers about human beings. Yet for liberals to respond
to new challenges by religion, it must precisely not do that.
In what follows, I give voice to the religion that Beiner leaves
silent. By broadening the horizons of this debate beyond the
“illiberal,” as Beiner broadens it beyond the liberal, I show that
“religion” does not equal theocracy, as Beiner assumes. I further
aim to show how we might avoid instrumentalizing both reli-
gion and politics. At the very least, I will illustrate that the two
have a coordinating term that is obfuscated, that is, the human
person. Finally, in the spirit of Rousseau himself, I indicate
through the terms of this fuller debate how we might have to
live with certain tensions. Ultimately, I expand this debate on
terms that I hope Beiner himself would find acceptable, even if
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 547

the conclusions surprise him. For religion need not be

liberalism’s theocratic other.22

II. DE REGNO

Before we study De regno, a word of introduction is in order.

As the title indicates, De regno is a tract on kingship. Aquinas
wrote it in the early 1260s, after reading Aristotle’s Politics, but
before writing his more famous practical works, including the
“Treatise on Law” in the Summa theologiae. The composition
of De regno was itself something of a political act: Aquinas
penned it at the behest of his superiors for the Norman king of
Cyprus as encouragement to support the Dominicans in the
Levant.23
The text comprises an introduction and twenty chapters. For
most of its history, however, De regno has been concealed
within a text of Ptolemy of Lucca. It is now generally accepted
that all but the final four chapters of the first two books are the
work of Aquinas.24 As a “new” text, De regno has received little
treatment, and primarily to confirm what scholars have already
argued from other works of Aquinas.25 John Finnis, for
example, warns against taking De regno as Aquinas’s final word

22
Hollenbach, Common Good and Christian Ethics, 33-34, 114.
23
I. Th. Eschmann, “Introduction,” in Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, trans. I. Th.
Eschmann (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949), xxx-xxxi.
24
See H.-F. Dondaine’s critical introduction to De regno ad Regem Cypri, ed. H.-F.
Dondaine, in Opuscula III, Volume 42 (Roma: Editori di San Tommaso, 1979), 417-71.
Other attestations to Aquinas’s authorship include Francis Oakley The Mortgage of the
Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 105; 249-50 n. 27; Jean-Pierre Torell,
Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Work, vol. I, trans. Robert Royal (rev. ed.;
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 14; and Alfred
O’Rahilly, “Notes on St. Thomas,” Irish Ecclesiastical Record 31 (1929): 396-410.
25
Partial exceptions to this neglect include I. Th. Eschmann, “St. Thomas Aquinas
on the Two Powers,” Mediaeval Studies 20 (1958): 177-205; James M. Blythe, “The
Mixed Constitution and the Distinction Between Regal and Political Power in the Work
of Thomas Aquinas,” Journal of The History of Ideas 47 (1986): 547-65; John Finnis,
Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); and Mary
M. Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
548 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

on tyranny, yet abandons this caution when he claims to find a

doctrine in De regno that comports with his own controversial
understanding of the common good.26 We have thus far gained
little from the recovery of De regno.
So why De regno? It is Aquinas’s longest sustained discussion
of politics, and his only free-standing political text.27 Aquinas
did not write extensively on politics, and what he wrote tends
to be interspersed with other topics; for example, the “Treatise
on Law” in the Summa theologiae is a mere 19 questions within
over 500. More to our purposes, Aquinas addresses the
“Church-State” question, at the heart of the civil religion
debate, in only two works: De regno and his commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard, and even in the commentary the
question arises elliptically. It is of central concern only in De
regno. Moreover, De regno is addressed to a practitioner of
politics: it is of the “mirror of princes” genre, intended to
educate its royal reader.28 Aquinas might not have known much
about this king, but he knew that he was writing a letter meant
to be of value for a Norman war baron, and not an abstract
delineation of theoretical principles for theology students. De
regno is thus a valuable example of how Aquinas’s theological
teachings are relevant to practical affairs.
For these reasons, in this article I will focus on De regno to
the exclusion of other works by Aquinas. By orienting ourselves
toward this little-studied treatise, we will gain a fascinating
insight into the relationship between Christianity and politics,
one that puts Aquinas in a new perspective. In this way we will
allow an underappreciated work by Aquinas to speak in its own
voice.

26
Cary Nederman, review of Finnis, Aquinas, in The American Political Science
Review 93 (1999): 700-701.
27
Mark Jordan offers a stimulating treatment of the place of De regno in Aquinas’s
political thought, although he is perhaps too quick to assume that Aquinas takes no
interest in politics as such. See Mark Jordan, “De regno and the Place of Political
Thinking in Aquinas,” Medioevo 18 (1992).
28
Allen Gilbert, Machiavelli's Prince and Its Forerunners: “The Prince” as a Typical
Book De regimine principum (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1938).
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 549

In the first book of De regno, Aquinas comes close to

describing a “state of nature,” emphasizing the role of necessity
and the limits of reason in politics. He argues that human beings
must cooperate via politics to remedy their lacks, including their
lack of natural defense and of instincts (I.1.5.).29 Yet, what they
lack in the physical realm they compensate for in their rational
attributes, qualities they complete with and through other
human beings.
Aquinas then points to the limits of reason in politics. All
things ordered to an end, he argues, require some directive
principle to guide them there (I.1.3). For man, this directive
principle is reason. But reason is not enough, Aquinas argues,
for man naturally lives in groups. Thus, human community
must itself have a directive principle. What governs human
beings must reconcile their diverse interests: a ruler has “care
for what pertains to the good of the multitude” (I.1.10). Man is
naturally social and political, then, but his communal ordering
is not spontaneous; it must adjudicate between the common and
the particular. Such relations are an achievement: they must be
developed and attained.
Aquinas maintains herein that politics arises out of necessity.
In this account he seems as close to the early modern depiction
of the “state of nature” as he does to Aristotle’s city and its
origins in necessity. And whereas Aristotle would go on to
emphasize that the city continues to grow from this necessity
into excellence, Aquinas, like the early moderns, retains his
focus on necessity. For, having justified the importance of
politics, he outlines a typology of regime forms—with mon-
archy (I.2) as the best and tyranny (I.3) the worst—that is not
quite that of Aristotle. Aquinas does not argue that monarchy is
the best regime because it is rule by the best person, but rather
because it is rule by one person. And while he does say that the

29
Future in-text citations will refer to De regno by book, chapter and paragraph
number. All translations are mine, in consultation with Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship,
trans. I. Th. Eschmann (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949), and
the Latin of Dondaine’s Leonine text (see footnote 23 supra).
550 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

good king is God’s gift to the people, he goes on to argue that

most rulers are not particularly virtuous, and so citizens must
constantly be on guard against tyranny. After his brief
discussion of monarchy, Aquinas devotes the next chapters (I.3-
6) to a denunciation of tyranny. While he ostensibly justifies
monarchy against detractors, the net effect of these chapters is
to grant that monarchy frequently flirts with tyranny.30 As if to
signal this, Aquinas closes chapter 6 with an account of citizen
resistance.
The citizen has a difficult task, Aquinas thinks, for the rule of
one can issue in opposite ends: justice and injustice. This leads
many citizens, Aquinas notes (I.4), to conflate monarchy and
tyranny, tolerating tyranny under the guise of kingship and
rejecting kingship as tyranny. Yet the examples Aquinas gives
suggest that this problem is more than just a misunderstanding:
history points to few kings worthy of the confidence placed in
them. Indeed, when Aquinas argues (I.5) that monarchy is less
likely than “the rule of many” to lapse into tyranny, he
concedes that “either form of government might become
dangerous.”31
When Aquinas returns to monarchy in chapter 6, his avowed
goal is the devising of a kingship that can withstand the threat
of tyranny. He distinguishes between mild and excessive
tyranny. Mild tyranny is to be tolerated, and Aquinas implies
that it is common: cities would be in endless tumult were
citizens to revolt against every injustice. This reinforces his quiet
emphasis on the limitations of justice throughout these first six
chapters: this is no “political perfectionism.”
Chapter 6 ends with an appeal to a conversion of the people:
“Sin must therefore be done away with in order that the scourge
of tyrants may cease.” This is not a call to quietism; citizens
ought to pray that they be delivered from tyranny, but they also
must cultivate a political community that educates decent
citizens and princes. In addition, our royal reader must also

30
Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good, 64.
31
Blythe, “The Mixed Constitution,” 561 n. 48.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 551

undergo conversion. Chapter 2 is a defense of monarchy as the

best regime. Yet throughout chapters 3-6 we are reminded of
the pervasive influence of vice in politics, problems from which
kingship is by no means inoculated. While monarchy is a
superficially common form of government, it rarely lives up to
its end as the rule of the truly virtuous person.
To close book I, Aquinas in chapters 7 to 11 discusses the
proper reward of a prince. Examining the competing claims of
honor, glory, material goods, and happiness, Aquinas
unsurprisingly opts for the last, which turns out to be the
beatific vision of God.32 Yet he then makes a curious move. The
reward of the king, he argues, is also the “reward” of every
flourishing human, not simply the king, and so Aquinas is able
to ask what the political community should achieve for all of its
citizens. Given that this section directly follows the exhortation
for the conversion of citizens (I.6), we might think that the sort
of regime that is supposed to cultivate the virtue of every citizen
would be one in which citizens are somehow incorporated into
rule in a mixed regime, not simply ruled as subjects.33 Further,
this discussion of the reward of the king follows the treatment
of tyranny (I.3-6). The king who fears that he might become a
tyrant could then easily fear that he would lose this reward. Yet
this reward might be the best enticement for a ruler to
persevere. Note, too, that Aquinas is offering the king a spiritual
reward for a temporal activity; the most theological aspect of
book I does not undermine politics, but rather affirms it.
Reviewing book I, we can concur with Keys that Aquinas
goes to considerably more trouble to show that tyranny is the
worst regime than to show that monarchy is the best regime.34
This is an odd teaching to present in a gift to a king, and we
may wonder what Aquinas has achieved through this
presentation. Let us consider two themes.

32
Cf. STh I-II, qq. 1-5.
33
Cf. STh I-II, q. 105.
34
Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good, 164.
552 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

First, he has underlined the difficulty of quotidian politics,

rooted in necessity and reason. He has achieved this by drawing
out the distinction between the form and end of a regime: while
monarchy’s form is the best, the end it seeks can easily lapse
into tyranny. Thus if monarchy is the best form of government
in theory, in practice our king must struggle to achieve that
justice.
Second, Aquinas grants a wide role for citizens: through their
“conversion” that leads to regime change; at times in rein-
forcing justice through the mixed regime; and as the possessors
of ends that the king must serve. For what most incorporates
the people into their government are their own ends. If the
“reward” of the people is the good king (I.2), this reward is that
of the government that seeks their end as its own (I.7-12).
In sum, book I concerns the limitations of politics that
emphasize the importance of political life. Rather than seeing
such difficulties as a license to turn away from politics, or to see
politics as nothing more than a means for mutual protection,
Aquinas asserts strongly that the good of the people must be the
ruler’s chief concern. This concern for their virtue does not lead
the ruler to zeal and enthusiasm after the fashion of the
Taliban’s Ministry for Vice, but more humbly in recognition of
his own limited abilities to effect good in his regime.35 Aquinas
seems to have situated his ruler in a profoundly moral yet also
realistic space, one between caricatures of Augustinian quietism
and Aristotelian perfectionism.
As we approach book II, we note that a critical institution
has not been discussed: the Church. A modern reader might
wonder at this absence, and indeed fear that Aquinas’s stress on
the difficulty of politics is meant to point toward the necessity
of a politically active Church. Yet in considering how the
Church arises in De regno, we will note that Aquinas does not
assert the authority of the Church, but its responsibility and
necessity as the keeper of something that he has articulated in
book I (7-11): revelation and the promise of God to man. This

35
Keys, Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good, 8-12.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 553

corresponds with his emphasis in book I on the nobility and

difficulty of politics, and his focus therein not on the role of the
Church in directing politics to spiritual ends, but rather in
directing politics toward its own ends.
Aquinas states, in chapter 1 of book II, that the duty of the
king must be discerned from “the pattern of the regime of
nature.” How, he asks, is the king’s “particular” government
aligned with that of God’s “universal” government? In chapter
2, he begins to answer this question by distinguishing two
aspects of God’s works in the universe: creation and gover-
nance. The latter “more properly pertains to the office of a
king,” for even founding kings only order what God has
created. Kingly rule in the world is thus only analogous to
divine rule of the cosmos in a limited sense. There is no hint of
the “divine right of kings” theory here.
Having distinguished between creation and governance,
Aquinas turns in chapter 3 to governance: “It must first be
considered, however, that to govern is to lead that which is
governed fittingly to its proper end.” Aquinas explains that
there are two kinds of ends: extrinsic and intrinsic. Human
beings have each of these, and a governor for each. The king is
the governor of man’s intrinsic end, to be a flourishing human
being. Aquinas then explains that the king cannot govern man
toward his extrinsic end, heavenly beatitude with God, because
that end cannot “be attained by virtue of human nature,”
(II.3.108). The government that tends to man’s final end is the
Church, which has access to something beyond human nature.
Just as in chapters 1 and 2 Aquinas argues for limited
government on the basis of the doctrine of creation, so here he
argues for it on the basis of salvation: the king cannot save the
world. The sum effect of chapters 1-3 is to limit political
authority, as did book I.
To illustrate these teachings, Aquinas closes chapter 3 with a
discussion of civil religion. What concerns him is that “spiritual
things” and “earthly things” be distinguished, and so he explains
how they came to be seen as distinct.
554 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

Aquinas speaks first of the “priesthood of the gentiles,” the

pagan peoples who preceded Christianity, including the Romans
and Greeks (II.3.111). This priesthood had a directly earthly
and temporal function, for it served the acquisition of temporal
goods. An essentially political organ, it was governed by kings.
Aquinas here emphasizes that such cults were instituted by
human beings for natural needs, yet he admits that they
promoted the earthly aims of political societies. This charitable
interpretation contrasts with Augustine, who sees only idolatry
in such orders.36
Aquinas then turns to priests under the “Old Law” that God
gave to the ancient Hebrews. While the Old Law was divinely
instituted to secure the peace and prosperity of the Hebrews,
Aquinas argues that with this law the community was also
directed to goods they could attain by their own reason. In this
respect the priesthood of Moses was indeed earthly, and so its
priests were also subject to the Hebrew rulers.37
As went the Old Law, though, so went its modes of gover-
nance. For “in the New Law there is a higher priesthood by
which men are carried to celestial goods” (II.3.111). The New
Law is the gospel given through Jesus Christ, and heralds a new
end beyond man’s natural end: beatitude. Instead of the Chris-
tian priests serving the earthly needs of the city, they grant men
access to an end beyond the earthly one. The king and priests
consequently no longer directly serve the same ends, but
temporal and spiritual ones, respectively. Religion cannot be
used merely to serve political ends. Christianity cannot be a civil
religion.
In a letter from a Christian theologian instructing a Christian
king, we might be surprised to see such a sympathetic treatment
of pagan civil religion. Aquinas acknowledges persuasive
arguments to justify what we now call civil religion or civil

36
Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, vol. 5, The Collected Works of Eric
Voegelin, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia, Mo.: University of Columbia Press,
1999), 47-50.
37
Cf. STh I-II, q. 114, a. 10, obj. 1; and Douglas Kries, “Thomas Aquinas and the
Politics of Moses,” Review of Politics 52 (1990): 84-104.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 555

theology. But Christianity cannot be a civil religion, he argues,

and politics must change to reflect this. Simply put, Christianity
proposes a distinction in the person’s ends. Man’s natural and
supernatural ends are not the same, and while there are many
cities of man, there is only one city of God. Human beings
belong not only to a political community, but to an ecclesial
community as well.38 We see this in book I, chapters 7-12: the
person’s final desire to attain to the good is realized in celestial
beatitude, beyond immanent existence.39 The State and the
Church are not directed toward the same goals: their work can
be complementary, but it cannot be the same, as is the case with
civil religion. And yet this distinction is the basis for civil
religion and liberalism: civil religion treats political and
religious authority as distinct so that politics can dominate
religion; and liberalism takes their distinction to be grounds for
their separation.
We see why Christianity establishes a new priesthood
separate from the political order: the political power will have a
vested interest in maintaining older forms of religion, by
denying either the distinction between the temporal and the
spiritual, or the superiority of the spiritual end to the temporal.
Thus for Aquinas the supra-political basis of Christianity must
be emphasized. But if Christianity cannot be a civil religion,
then can it be a theocracy? One might think so from the end of
Aquinas’ history of civil religion: “But in the new law there is a
higher priesthood by which men are guided to heavenly goods.
Consequently, in the law of Christ, kings ought to be subject to
priests” (II.3.111.). Leonard Boyle argues, however, that this
passage is no paean to theocracy. He notes that Aquinas has
already established the legitimacy of kings in the political
sphere, and further that the office of the spiritual authority is
distinct: it is an external end added (or rather distinguished)

38
Robert Sokolowski, God of Faith and Reason (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1982), 31.
39
Mary Nichols, “Aristotle’s Science of the Best Regime [Response to Robert
Bartlett],” American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 152-55.
556 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

later. For Boyle, Aquinas’s purpose is not to argue for the

primacy of the spiritual over the political, but to circumscribe
the temporal in such a way that the spiritual can indeed have its
own autonomy. The authority that this gives the religious over
the political authority, Boyle further argues, is limited. For it
does not extend to direct power over all political authority, but
only indirect power, insofar as political governance touches
upon religious authority. Boyle argues that this claim
corresponds to what Aquinas argues in his commentary on the
Sentences.40
Boyle’s interpretation complements what we have seen in the
text. In book I, Aquinas takes politics to be noble, with a value
of its own, and in book II he argues that the king must govern
his subjects to their intrinsic ends. Aquinas further cautions in
his treatment of civil religion against blurring the distinction
between religion and politics, which has Christianity as its
source.
This interpretation would not make Aquinas an advocate for
theocracy. Indeed, he seems more concerned to distinguish the
spiritual from the temporal than to assert spiritual power over
the temporal realm. And even if he does seem to endorse an
indirect check of the spiritual over the temporal, this is not a
move to instrumentalize politics for the benefit of religion, any
more than he would allow an instrumentalization of religion for
the benefit of politics. As we noted earlier, the most theological
aspect of De regno, the promise of eternal reward, does not
undermine but affirms politics.
Aquinas rules out civil religion on Christian terms, and seems
no less opposed to theocracy. Yet precisely because of the
difficulties of employing Christianity as a civil religion, ersatz
alternatives will remain attractive, as Aquinas himself notes.
Indeed, a long tradition beginning with Machiavelli and
Hobbes, and ambivalently regarded by Rousseau, seeks to turn
the clock back to a pre-Christian civil religion.

40
Boyle, “De Regno and the Two Powers,” 3-5.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 557

III. AQUINAS IN DIALOGUE

With Aquinas’s thoughts on civil religion in mind, we may

attempt to give voice to religion in Beiner’s dialogue between
civil religion, liberalism, and theocracy. It should be noted that
Rousseau and Aquinas agree on a great deal. The relationship
between religion and politics is a central question for both.
Quotidian politics is noble, as we saw for Aquinas in De regno,
and as hardly need be said for Rousseau. Moreover, their
typologies of civil religion are remarkably similar. For both,
history places a decisive role in shaping the availability of civil
religions. But where for Rousseau history offers the alluring
possibility of reuniting religion and politics, for Aquinas history
discloses their distinction.
Rousseau sees two fundamental forms of civil religion: the
this-worldly “Religion of Citizen” and the other-worldly
“Religion of Man” (IV.8.15).41 Rousseau includes Roman
paganism and Judaism in the former category. The “Religion of
Man” includes the “pure and simple Religion of the Gospel.”
Rousseau objects to resurrections of “this-worldly” civil
religion, including the proposals of Machiavelli and Hobbes.
Both thinkers seek to get behind Christianity, and thus deny the
distinction between politics and religion.
Yet Rousseau’s objections to Hobbes and Machiavelli are
deeply indebted to Christianity: Rousseau finds unsatisfying the
moral particularism of pre-Christian civil religions advocated by
Machiavelli and Hobbes, and seems drawn to Christianity’s
universalism.42 While he opposes “phony cosmopolitanism,” he
also regards pagan civil religions as too particularistic. Nation-
alist pagan religion is tribal and intolerant, “warmongering and
bloodthirsty,” which for Rousseau rules out Machiavelli’s hopes
for a pagan renaissance. Such paganism easily becomes
“exclusive and tyrannical,” and “breathes only murder and

41
References to Rousseau refer to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract,
trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978).
42
Beiner, “Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau,” 635.
558 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

massacre” in “killing whoever does not accept its Gods.”

Rousseau further denies that we can “get behind” Christianity
in reclaiming a Jewish or pagan civil religion, as “the spirit of
Christianity has come to pervade everything,” (IV.8.11). Pace
Hobbes, Rousseau argues that trying to “tame” Christianity
cannot re-unite the “two heads of the eagle.”43
Rousseau displays his sympathy for moral universalism in his
discussion of “the Religion of man or Christianity . . . of the
Gospel,” which he distinguishes from Christianity of the
European churches (IV.8.20). Calling it “saintly, sublime,
genuine Religion,” Rousseau laments that this creed could not
be “more contrary to the social spirit,” as it “preaches nothing
but servitude and dependence.” He concludes that “a society of
true christians would no longer be a society of men,” (IV.8.21-
2).
Aquinas agrees with Rousseau both that pre-Christian
political religions served a purpose and that with Christianity
they have become impossible. While he does not offer a
sustained analysis of these ancient political religions, Aquinas
concurs that they served but temporal ends, and were not aware
of the temporal/spiritual distinction. Thus he groups the Jewish
and pagan civil religions together, as does Rousseau. Aquinas’s
distinction between creation and governance, further, would
rule out the “creation” of civil religions for the purposes of
political control.
Finally, Aquinas and Rousseau agree that Christianity bears a
distinctive relationship toward politics. However, considerably
different accounts of Christianity lead them to this conclusion.
While Rousseau maintains that there are two main forms of civil
religion, he also notes a hybrid of the two:

There is a third, more bizarre sort of Religion which, by giving men two
legislations, two chiefs, two fatherlands, subjects them to contradictory duties
and prevents their being at once devout and Citizens. Such is the Religion of
the Lamas, such is that of the Japanese, such is Roman Christianity. One may

43
Ibid., 635.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 559

call it the religion of the Priest. It results in a sort of mixed and unsociable
right which has no name. (IV.8.16)

This “religion of the priest” is the worst of both worlds for

Rousseau: an amalgam of other- and this-worldliness that
corrupts the morality of pure Christianity and subverts the
power of the state. Whereas the Christianity of the Gospel is
decidedly other-worldly, “limited to the purely internal cult of
the Supreme God and the eternal duties of morality,” this
“Roman Christianity” meddles in this-worldly affairs in the
name of its other-worldliness. But unlike a pagan civil religion,
it does not support the state, but divides and undermines it. A
civil religion that divides loyalties between “two fatherlands” is
worse than useless. Rousseau is therefore quick to dismiss it.
Priestly Christianity “is so manifestly bad that it is a waste of
time to amuse oneself demonstrating that it is” (IV.8.17).
Aquinas, not surprisingly, sees Christianity differently. He
rejects these critiques of Christianity, and would find question-
begging Rousseau’s attempt to distinguish Christianity “of the
Gospel” from Christianity “of the Priest.” It is important to see
that Rousseau’s distinction only makes sense under the
assumption that the gospel leads to escapism and quietism.
Rousseau also assumes a radical dualism between Jesus’ King-
dom and the Church, such that he denies any kind of earthly
religious authority. Again, this interpretation is tendentious at
best.
As we noted, Aquinas agrees with Rousseau that Christianity
cannot serve as a civil religion. Moreover, he emphasizes the
importance of quotidian politics. For these reasons, Aquinas
introduces Christianity into politics tentatively and dialectically.
If we rehearse the unfolding of Aquinas’s regime in De regno,
we note that he presents it in such a way as to preserve its
integrity: as a worthy activity through which human beings
attain vital goods, pace hyper-Augustinians like de Maistre who
see politics as the domain of sin, and pace Rousseau, who claims
that the Christian meekly accepts whatever politics is forced
upon him. It is only after Aquinas’s discussion of politics that
560 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

Christian revelation arises in De regno. When Aquinas does

invoke revelation, moreover, he does not propose a concrete
relationship between the Church and State. He distinguishes the
ends of these authorities rather than orders them. We may
recall, after all, that his purpose in treating on civil religion was
“that spiritual things might be distinguished from earthly
things” (II.3.109).
We might find this surprising. In fact, Aquinas’s refusal to
make Christianity a civil religion is of a piece with his defense of
politics as noble. Aquinas does not weaken man’s political
nature to increase his devotion to the Church, but strengthens it
to ensure that man flourishes politically. His theology of politics
calls attention to this natural end first to distinguish it from the
grace-given end to which man must attend, and so ensure that
the state attends to man’s natural end. The polis that fosters the
natural desire for the good in men is the polis that cultivates a
predisposition in them toward the source of good, God.44
Many modern conversations about politics and religion
begin with the question of “Church and State,” or the in-
stitutional problem of the State having a rival for power. This
problem takes the form of contest over the proper relation
between those powers, which powers are essentially abstractions
from human activity as reified in institutions. The intractability
of this conflict, moreover, is what leads both modern civil
religion and theocracy to the conclusion that politics or religion
must instrumentalize the other. This intractability is also what
leads liberalism to “bracket” nonpolitical ends of persons.
Liberalism, civil religion, and theocracy all seek a permanent
and lasting resolution to this contest. On the model of Hobbes’s
geometric aspirations for politics, modern thinkers from Locke
to Rawls have sought an eternal settlement to this dispute, one
that will secure politics from religion indefinitely.45

44
Robert Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 88-96.
45
Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Marc A. LePain
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 113-23.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 561

Aquinas, however, refuses to choose between religion and

politics. He does not see them as locked in a tragic struggle out
of which only one can emerge in its full integrity. Rather, he
views the human person as the coordinating third term of
politics and religion.46 In De regno, the problem of “Church and
State” arises, not as the proper coordination of or contest
between two institutions, but as the question of the integrity of
human activity, which Aquinas sees as possible only in view of
knowledge of all human ends. Thus stated, the problem turns
out to be distinctly practical and dynamic. In urging us to
distinguish the political from the spiritual, and to be cautious
about their practical relation, Aquinas has provided principles
for making determinations in particular situations. In giving us
principles rather than programs, he has acknowledged that
politics is not applied metaphysics. Rather, it must be learned
and negotiated practically. Since the point of politics is happi-
ness, communities must discover what that happiness is, and
then what sort of regime fits its pursuit. As they grow in
knowledge of that happiness, or as they regress, for that matter,
so must their communal structures, including in their relation to
the Church. Aquinas therefore envisions the coordination of
politics and religion to be effected through prudence, not the
divine law of theocrats or the philosophical necessity of
moderns.
Rousseau cares deeply about the human person, as evidenced
by his desire to see “man” and “citizen” reunited. Yet he does
not see a way beyond the conditions of his time. Perhaps this is
because he seeks to elaborate a neat institutional solution, one
that is necessarily chimerical. He seems poised to leave us in the
tragic situation of the necessity and unavailability of civil reli-
gion. Aquinas, however, finds a way around this. He is no
liberal, to be sure. Yet he would prefer liberalism to civil

46
By “person” I intend “the end of the person,” which is to say Aquinas’s theological
anthropology, not the twentieth-century “personalism” that invoked Kant in the
interpretation of Aquinas. See Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good,
trans. John J. Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1947).
562 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

religion, for at least liberalism does not instrumentalize religion,

or at least it does not necessarily do so. Indeed, we see here that
Christianity and liberalism espouse a commitment to distin-
guishing political from religious ends. While liberalism aims to
protect political life from confessional controversy, and
Christianity to protect religion from political entanglements, at
their best liberalism and Christianity can acknowledge that such
differentiation is good for both politics and religion. To be sure,
not all theories and practices of liberalism are equal in this
regard: much depends upon how liberal theorists and polities
conceive of and protect transpolitical ends.47
Yet this, I believe, is where we find room in Aquinas’s De
regno for pluralism. Religious pluralism and its political ramifi-
cations occasioned in part the rise of classical liberalism. Can
Aquinas speak to that problem? I think so. To be clear, we are
not speaking of “principled toleration,” that is, the claim of a
State to be neutral on controversial matters.48 Instead, a State
might abstain from suppressing or rejecting an activity because
to do so would be imprudent, which we might call “prudential
tolerance.” Let me lay out three considerations.
First, we should recall that in De regno Aquinas guards
carefully the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual.
Yet close fusions between “Church” and “State” could blur
distinctions of the greatest necessity, as when a State does not
understand its proper role or a Church arrogates direct political
authority. Thus Aquinas might prefer liberal tolerance to
government support of religion when the latter might indeed
blur the temporal/spiritual distinction. To be sure, as we noted

47
The possibility of rapprochement between Christianity and liberal democracy is a
vast and fraught subject, with attitudes ranging from Maritain’s hopes for a democratic
character in Man and the State (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1998) to D.C. Schindler’s description of modern freedom as having a “diabolical
character” in his Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty
(South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017).
48
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971),
215-16.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 563

above, liberal theory and practice vary widely in terms of what

is understood by the end of politics and what surpasses it.
Second, we might consider the historical character of
Aquinas’s argument in De regno. In his view, for much of
human history the Christian regime was impossible to
instantiate, because Christian truths were not known. Thus
Aquinas thinks of human history as the story of human com-
munities coming to know and conforming to those truths. This
history, then, is a kind of education. At each stage, the city
achieves a certain level of perfection because the rulers and
citizens orient their activity toward a certain truth. To the
extent that they share that truth, they can assume it in their
political activity, and clarify its basis and explore its
implications. Toleration would then be necessary to the extent
that pushing the boundaries of this truth would be in part
constitutive of political discourse. Yet it is also true that to the
extent that citizens share this truth and actively seek to embody
it, they would expand truth’s practical ambit in their com-
munity. On this reading, toleration would be a “moving target,”
as it were, a kind of exploration to move the truths of political
discourse further. If this seems far-fetched, we might consider
what Aquinas says in the Summa:

The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but
gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the
burdens of those who are already virtuous, viz. that they should abstain from
all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts,
would break out into yet greater evils.49

In an era like our own, in which religious truths are questioned,

Aquinas might think that we have returned to an earlier state of
community, one in which we cannot agree on the final ends of
society. In such a case, we can only reassert the nobility of
politics and the distinction between religion and politics.
Finally, and most speculatively, Aquinas nowhere discusses
the use of coercion for the purposes of faith in De regno. The

49
STh I-II, q. 96, a. 2, ad 3.
564 WILLIAM MCCORMICK,S.J.

lack of any overt reference cannot demonstrate that Aquinas

foreswears coercive measures in De regno. After all, in other
works he does advocate for coercion in religious matters.50 We
thus cannot exclude that Aquinas had such coercion in mind, or
that he might have meant to add it later. That said, the ab-
juration of force would be complementary with the explicit
arguments of De regno. For we have seen Aquinas claim that the
tasks of the Church and regime must be clearly distinguished.
We have also seen him elaborate an education of our king and
his citizens characterized by reason and persuasion rather than
by force. The need for the Church to present itself as a
disinterested teacher and prophet, and to prove its temporal
power to be truly indirect, may rule out appeals to force.
Moreover, Aquinas seems to be ambivalent (at least in I.1-6)
about the ability of the regime to cultivate basic moral virtues in
its citizens, let along enforce the higher dictates of the Church.
Thus, if Aquinas in the Summa theologiae indeed justifies such
coercion in the name of religion, we find in De regno the
possibility of a Thomistic politics without such coercion.
Aquinas’s account in De regno is admittedly not the neat
picture of civil religion, liberalism, or theocracy. Rather than
stipulating institutional arrangements for all time, he seeks to
set up a dialogue between religion and politics that will have to
be worked out in history. He wants a dynamic relationship that
will respond to the needs and self-understanding of the people
in a community. This is a messy arrangement, but Aquinas is
comfortable with that. As Beiner argues, such tensions are
generally the most fruitful points in a thinker’s thought.51

CONCLUSION

Many of liberalism’s most sympathetic critics have urged

liberal thinkers, and particularly Enlightenment liberals, to take
stock of the human person’s “taste for the infinite,” as

50
STh II-II, q. 10, a. 8.
51
Beiner, Civil Religion, 410-11.
 AQUINAS AND ROUSSEAU ON CIVIL RELIGION 565

Tocqueville called it, or the desire to cultivate that in us which

transcends politics.52 Similarly, while Aquinas could not have
known modern liberalism, he urges us to see the human person
beyond politics and religion, the whole that both ought to serve.
He encourages us to abandon pretensions to eternal insti-
tutional arrangements. The human person develops over time
and in practice. So must human institutions.
So what would Aquinas have said to President Obama in
2016? Liberalism in our era must contend with religious
challenges to its authority, resurrecting the specter of theocracy.
Aquinas would encourage a leader like President Obama to call
forth religious voices that can be liberalism’s dialogue partners.
Liberalism can remind Christianity of the dignity and difficulty
of quotidian politics. Christianity in turn can remind liberalism
of the need to avoid instrumentalizing religion for the sake of
politics, lest it become civil religion. And they remind each
other of the need to differentiate politics and religion clearly.
No less importantly, Aquinas’s vision of the regime opens up
the possibility that a community grow in truth together. While
the liberal vision encourages us to devise political authority on
noncontroversial grounds, Aquinas would ask: can we continue
to grow in that common ground? If so, Western leaders might
have to reconsider the relationship between religious faith and
political liberalism. For where liberalism places a “ne plus
ultra,” Christianity might invite a dialogue to deepen commonly
held beliefs.
Can modern political communities grow as Aquinas
envisions? Perhaps we cannot answer that question now. But it
is worth asking.53

52
Aaron Herold, “Tocqueville on Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Democratic
Soul,” American Political Science Review 109 (2015): 523-34, at 523.
53
The author thanks for their kind help J. Budziszewski; Thomas D’Andrea; Andrea
Bianchini, S.J.; Michael Breidenbach; Russell Hittinger; Joseph Koterski, S.J.; Michael
Mohr, S.J.; Paul Rogers; and Kevin Stuart.
The Thomist 81 (2017): 567-93

HOW THEOLOGY JUDGES THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER

SCIENCES

GREGORY F. LANAVE

Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception

Washington, D.C.

I
N HIS TREATMENT of the nature of sacra doctrina in the
first question of the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas
makes a claim regarding the relationship of sacra doctrina to
other, lesser forms of knowledge that is familiar to every
Thomist: that sacra doctrina does not prove, but judges, the
principles of other sciences. The text, which is a response to an
objection, runs in full as follows:

The principles of other sciences either are evident and cannot be proved, or
are proved by natural reason through some other science. But the knowledge
proper to this science comes through revelation and not through natural
reason. Therefore it has no concern to prove the principles of other sciences,
but only to judge of them. Whatsoever is found in other sciences contrary to
any truth of this science must be condemned as false: ‘Destroying counsels and
every height that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God’ (2 Cor. 10:4,
5).”1

What generally draws the attention of commentators here is the

harmony between all forms of knowledge, and the superior
place of sacra doctrina.2 Very little attention is given to the

1
STh I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2. Translations from the Summa are taken from the translation
by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).
2
Most of the attention that is given to the article focuses on the conclusio, which is a
justification of identifying sacra doctrina as wisdom, and the response to the third
objection, which distinguishes theological wisdom from the wisdom that is the gift of
the Holy Spirit. Some of the commentaries that do address the response to the second
objection will be cited below. Examples of well-known commentaries that do not

567
568 GREGORY F. LANAVE

specific claim that sacra doctrina judges the principles of other

sciences. Yet on its face this is a critically important claim. Any
Thomist will be, as was Aquinas himself, committed to the
appropriate autonomy of any science. It is profoundly un-
Thomistic to think that a theologian, just as a theologian, is an
expert in philosophy, physics, psychology, or politics, for
example. But if the sciences are indeed in important ways
autonomous, claims regarding their relationship to a superior
science must invite attention. Moreover, the expression “to
judge the principles of another science” is an unusual one in
Aquinas,3 which means that its meaning here may not be
immediately evident from other passages.
In what follows I will first give some basic exegesis of this
passage, then examine various proposed interpretations of it. I
will then present my own proposal for understanding this
passage, making use of a comparison Aquinas draws between
sacra doctrina and metaphysics, and then giving some tentative
examples of how the relationship plays itself out.

I. EXEGESIS OF STH I, Q. 1, A. 6, AD 2

To determine the meaning of the expression “to judge the

principles of another science” we need to look more carefully at
the text, and its context. These provide us with five points that
need to be incorporated into any explanation.

address this point at all include those of Cajetan, the Salmanticenses, Louis Billot,
Gerald Van Ackeren, the Blackfriars edition of the Summa, and Jean-Pierre Torrell. One
modern commentator whose reading of this text has some similarity with mine is Michel
Corbin, Le chemin de la théologie chez Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974); see
esp. 761-69.
3
So far as I have found, it occurs only here. STh I-II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1, on the virtue
of wisdom, speaks of judging another science in light of its first principles. STh II-II,
q. 45, a. 1, on the gift of wisdom, speaks of wisdom judging everything in its genus. The
word iudicare is absent from the treatment of the division of the sciences in Aquinas’s
commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate, as it is from the discussion of wisdom in the
Summa contra Gentiles. Both of those texts speak of wisdom as ruling and ordering, but
not as judging, other sciences.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 569

A) “Sacra doctrina”

First, that which judges is sacra doctrina, the nature of which

is the subject of the whole of question 1 of the Prima pars. It is
both a science and a wisdom, and includes everything from the
acceptance of the articles of faith, which are its principles, to
their uttermost ramifications in theological conclusions.
It follows that the judgments made by sacra doctrina need
not be made solely in terms of the infallibly known principles of
faith. They can also be made on the basis of theological claims
which are not dogmatically defined. For example, it is perfectly
legitimate to appeal to a common theological opinion on origi-
nal sin to make a judgment about the science of evolutionary
biology.4 The decisiveness of the judgment will depend in part
on the degree of surety with which the theological opinion is
held. Such theological truths may not be known infallibly, but
insofar as they are known at all they have a proper role in
judging the claims of other sciences.

B) Intellectual Work

Second, the judgment we are talking about here requires real

intellectual work on the part of the Christian. Sacra doctrina is a
science, and science, being a movement from principles to con-
clusions, requires the effort of the knower to make that move-
ment.5 This point is verified in what Aquinas says immediately
following the text we are considering: in the response to
objection 3 he distinguishes judgment by inclination from

4
The science of evolutionary biology typically regards death as an inevitable part of
the nature of corporeal beings; the Christian knows through dogma that death came
into the world because of sin. Whether death can still in some sense be called “natural”
(e.g., it could be proper to human nature as created, if the original freedom from death
is regarded as a “preternatural” gift) and the nature of the transmission of the effects of
sin are matters of theological discussion, and those theological conclusions invariably
touch on the subject that evolutionary biology treats (see below).
5
Thus we distinguish understanding (intellectus), which apprehends what it knows
all at once (statim) from science (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia), which know through
the movement of the reason’s inquiry (per inquisitionem rationis); see STh I-II, q. 57,
a. 2; STh I, q. 79, a. 8.
570 GREGORY F. LANAVE

judgment by knowledge acquired through study, and says that it

is the latter that is in question here. The person of simple faith,
who accepts the articles of faith and can even be said to have a
kind of connatural knowledge of divine things, can certainly
make judgments on the basis of what he knows in this way, but
what Aquinas has in view here is the judgment made by the
Christian who has reasoned through the ramifications of his
faith—who has the scientia of sacra doctrina.

C) The Principles of Other Sciences

Third, it is not just any claims of another science that are

judged, but its principles. Aquinas certainly does think that sacra
doctrina is able to judge the conclusions of other sciences,6 but
here he is drawing attention to a judgment concerning
principles. For example, the science of psychology may come to
the conclusion that a certain amount of rebellion on the part of
a teenager is appropriate, on the basis of the principle that if the
teenager is to become an adult, he must differentiate from his
parents. Strictly following what Aquinas says here, it is not only
the conclusion (appropriateness of rebellion) that stands under
the judgment of sacra doctrina, but the principle (maturation
through differentiation).
The extraordinary character of this claim is evident when
one considers that the principles of a science make it to be what
it is. Aquinas is saying that sacra doctrina can judge the very
nature of another science.

D) Judging, not Proving

Fourth, sacra doctrina does not prove the principles of

another science, but judges them. Both verbs deserve some
attention. By saying that sacra doctrina does not prove the
principles of another science, Aquinas is excluding the idea that
the relationship of sacra doctrina and another science is one of
subalternation, wherein the principles of another science would

6
See below, section II.A.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 571

be known—or proved—as the conclusions of sacra doctrina.

Sacra doctrina stands above all other sciences, but that does not
mean that their principles are, in the strict demonstrative sense,
derived from it.7 Sacra doctrina does not prove the principles of
political science, or metaphysics, or psychology, or biology, or
anything else. To put it another way, no Christian can claim,
just on the basis of his faith, to know another science.
The mention of “judging” evokes Aquinas’s doctrine of “the
way of judgment.” Later in the Prima pars Aquinas distinguishes
the “way of inquiry or discovery” from the “way of judgment.”8
The former discovers new knowledge by deduction from first
principles, while the latter analyzes this knowledge in light of
those principles. If that is what Aquinas would have us under-
stand here, it would mean that sacra doctrina would be able to
consider the conclusions of different sciences in light of the
highest principles that lie behind those conclusions. For
example, the biologist makes various claims about living beings,
and the practitioner of sacra doctrina is able to consider these in
light of its higher knowledge of the origin of life. As we will see,
this relationship among sciences is pertinent to Aquinas’s
meaning here, but it cannot be the full explanation, for, as
already noted, he does not say that sacra doctrina judges the
conclusions of other sciences, but their principles. What exactly
judgment consists of therefore remains to be seen.9

7
The same can be said about metaphysics, which stands above all other
philosophical sciences but does not subalternate any of them. A subalternating science is
always higher than a subalternated science, but a science can be higher without being
subalternating. For a list of sciences Aquinas does explicitly regard as subalternated and
subalternating, see Denis J. M. Bradley, “Ephemerides thomisticae analyticae:
Metaphysics and Ethics in Stump’s Aquinas,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 616. On whether
sacra doctrina itself can rightly be called subalternated to the scientia Dei et beatorum,
see M. V. Dougherty, “On the Alleged Subalternate Character of sacra doctrina in
Aquinas,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 77 (2003):
101-10.
8
STh I, q. 79, a. 8.
9
In any science one may consider three things: the conclusions, the first principles it
has in common with other sciences (common principles), and the first principles that are
peculiar to it (proper principles). In STh I-II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1, Aquinas says that wisdom
(here, philosophical wisdom) judges all other sciences “not only as to conclusions, but
572 GREGORY F. LANAVE

E) A Relation among Speculative Sciences

Fifth, Aquinas is talking here specifically about the

relationship between sacra doctrina and other speculative
sciences. This is harder to see, and requires a consideration of
the context. Articles 5 and 6 of question 1 of the Prima pars
form a pair, in that they both deal with the relationship between
sacra doctrina and other sciences. Article 5 asks whether sacra
doctrina is nobler than other sciences, article 6 asks whether it is
properly called wisdom. Article 5 distinguishes three ways in
which one science can be said to be nobler than another.10 The
first two pertain to speculative sciences: greater nobility means
greater certitude and a more worthy subject. That sacra doctrina
is the highest of all sciences because it treats of the highest
possible subject (most worthy) in the highest possible way (with
the greatest certitude) is hardly surprising; for the Christian,
such a claim is really self-evident. On the other hand, one
practical science is said to be nobler than another on the
grounds of its greater finality. This indicates a proper order
among sciences. The architect’s science is nobler than the
stonecutter’s not because a well-designed building is worthier
than a well-cut stone, but because the stonecutter’s work is
undertaken for the sake of the architect’s work: the former is
ordered to the latter.

also as to first principles,” by which he means common principles (cf. I Sent., pro., q. 1,
a. 2). Later in the same question, Aquinas says that “Judgment of anything should be
based on that thing’s proper principles,” and goes on to explain: “difference is based not
on common but on proper principles. Consequently, even in speculative matters, there
is one science of dialectics, which inquires about all matters; whereas demonstrative
sciences, which pronounce judgment, differ according to their different objects.” The
idea that sacra doctrina judges the common principles of all other sciences emerges from
its comparison to metaphysics, as we will see later; but there is no reason to restrict the
“principia” of our principal text to common principles. My argument is that Aquinas
envisions sacra doctrina making a determination about a science’s proper principles,
without proving those principles as the conclusion of what it properly knows.
10
STh I, q. 1, a. 5: “One speculative science is said to be nobler than another, either
by reason of its greater certitude, or by reason of the higher worth of its subject-matter.
. . . Of the practical sciences, that one is nobler which is ordained to a further purpose.”
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 573

Turning to article 6, Aquinas asks whether sacra doctrina is

wisdom. There are two key features of wisdom that he evokes
here: one is that the wise man arranges and judges, the other is
that he does so in light of a higher principle.11 The body of the
article deals with the second aspect of wisdom, and verifies that
sacra doctrina is rightly called wisdom because it is the
knowledge of the highest of all principles.12 The replies to the
second and third objections deal rather with the “arranging and
judging” aspect of wisdom. The reply to the second objection
says, again, that sacra doctrina judges the principles of other
sciences, and the reply to the third objection says that this
judgment occurs by way of knowledge, not inclination.
In short, article 5 specifies a way in which sacra doctrina
orders the practical sciences, namely, in terms of its greater
finality. Article 6 does not speak of the distinction between
speculative and practical sciences,13 and there is no reason to
suppose that what Aquinas says here is limited to the practical
sciences. Rather, it is reasonable to suppose that article 6 has in
view the relationship between two speculative sciences, or at
least that it does not exclude them.
In sum, we learn from this context not only that sacra
doctrina is higher than other sciences, but also that its rela-
tionship to them is one of ordering and judging. For practical
11
STh I, q. 1, a. 6: “It is the part of a wise man to arrange and to judge, and since
lesser matters should be judged in the light of some higher principle, he is said to be
wise in any one order who considers the highest principle in that order.”
12
Ibid.: “In the order of building, he who plans the form of the house is called wise
and architect, in opposition to the inferior laborers who trim the wood and make ready
the stones: ‘As a wise architect, I have laid the foundation’ (1 Corinthians 3:10). Again,
in the order of all human life, the prudent man is called wise, inasmuch as he directs his
acts to a fitting end: ‘Wisdom is prudence to a man’ (Proverbs 10:23). Therefore he
who considers absolutely the highest cause of the whole universe, namely God, is most
of all called wise. Hence wisdom is said to be the knowledge of divine things, as
Augustine says (De Trin. xii, 14). But sacred doctrine essentially treats of God viewed as
the highest cause—not only so far as He can be known through creatures just as
philosophers knew Him—‘That which is known of God is manifest in them’ (Romans
1:19)—but also as far as He is known to Himself alone and revealed to others. Hence
sacred doctrine is especially called wisdom.”
13
We recall that in article 4 Aquinas describes sacra doctrina as both speculative and
practical.
574 GREGORY F. LANAVE

sciences this will happen by way of ordering to the proper

ultimate end; for speculative sciences this will happen by way of
a judgment concerning their principles, made possible by the
acquired habit that is the science of sacra doctrina.

II. PROPOSED READINGS OF AQUINAS: EXAMPLES

In light of this analysis, we may evaluate a variety of

interpretations of Aquinas on this point. All of them are faithful
to genuine Thomistic thought; but each in some way falls short
of a full interpretation of the passage in question.

A) Trumping Other Truth-Claims

A common interpretation of this passage focuses on the last

sentence, “Whatsoever is found in other sciences contrary to
any truth of this science must be condemned as false,” and goes
something like this. There are things that the Christian can
judge as false simply because they contradict things that are
known to be true in the faith.14 The Christian can judge abor-
tion to be wrong just because it is a violation of the
commandment “Thou shalt not murder.” If philosophical
ethics, or political science, or some other science claims that
abortion is morally acceptable, the Christian can legitimately
declare that that science, as so construed, is wrong. Again, if
someone were to claim, on the basis of political science, that the
sovereignty of nations means that no one has the right to
emigrate from one country to another, the Christian can
respond that this must be false, because it runs counter to the

14
See Domingo Báñez, Scolastica commentaria in I Partem Summae, q. 1, ed. Luis
Urbano, Biblioteca de tomistas españoles, vol. 8 (Madrid, 1934), 46: “it pertains to
[theology] to judge of the principles of other sciences, whether they are repugnant to
what has been revealed by God, or not” (“sed pertinent ad eam judicare de principiis
aliarum scientiarum, an repugnant revelatis a Deo, vel non”). See also Stephen L. Brock,
The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 2015), chap. 1, text at notes 46 and 47; cf. Andreas Speer, “The Division of
Metaphysical Discourses: Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister Eckhart,” in Kent
Emery, Jr., Russell Friedman, and Andreas Speer, eds., Philosophy and Theology in the
Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown (Leiden: Brill , 2011), 105-6.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 575

scriptural revelation of universal brotherhood and the care for

refugees, and the Church’s proclamation of a right of people to
migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families.15 A
famous example of this in Aquinas’s day would have been the
claim of Aristotelian science that the world is eternal. Aquinas
says that the philosopher cannot disprove this. The man of
faith, however, knows it to be false, because he knows that the
world was created by God in time.16 In sum, the knowledge the
Christian has in faith allows him to judge the claims of even the
most sophisticated practitioners of another science, if those
claims run counter to the faith.
So far as it goes, this interpretation is true—but insufficient.
The kind of quick judgment involved in such examples requires
hardly any work on the Christian’s part. All one has to do is
recognize the opposition between two truth-claims and
acknowledge that one of them is part of the faith. Such a
judgment is legitimate—and Aquinas makes precisely this point
in other passages17—but it does not seem to require anything
like the rational activity that he has in view here. Moreover,
these are examples of conclusions, not principles.18 It is

15
Pope John XXIII, encyclical Pacem in Terris 106: “among man's personal rights we
must include his right to enter a country in which he hopes to be able to provide more
fittingly for himself and his dependents.” See also Pontifical Council for the Pastoral
Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, “Migration and the Social Doctrine of the
Church.”
16
See, e.g., STh I, q. 46, a. 2.
17
ScG I, c. 7; Expositio in symbolorum apostolorum, prol.; De rationibus fidei, c. 2
18
“In response 2 of the same article, Aquinas insists that the highest wisdom may
‘judge’ the adequacy of the conclusions of inferior disciplines for their truthfulness or
falsity” (Thomas Joseph White, O.P., “The Precarity of Wisdom: Modern Dominican
Theology, Perspectivalism, and the Tasks of Reconstruction,” in Ressourcement
Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments, and the Moral Life, ed. Reinhard Hütter and
Matthew Levering [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010],
103); “The judgment exercised by theology simply approves the conformity of another
science’s conclusions with revealed truth” (Kieran Conley, O.S.B., A Theology of
Wisdom: A Study in St. Thomas [Dubuque, Iowa.: The Priory Press, 1963], 102. It
should be said that although I think the position of these authors, as an exegesis of the
passage in question, is too limited, their evident concern—that sacra doctrina cannot
substitute for the genuine hard work of knowing the truth available in another
discipline—is very much on target. Cf. Bernard McGinn, Thomas Aquinas’s “Summa
576 GREGORY F. LANAVE

perfectly fair to say that the Christian can judge that abortion
and euthanasia are intrinsically evil acts and that any political
theory that supports them must be opposed. But the claim that
there is a right to abortion or to euthanasia is not a principle
(typically), but a conclusion, one derived from, for example, a
certain conception of individual rights. As truth-claims they are
false, and the Christian knows them to be false, and knows this
precisely on the basis of his faith19—but if Aquinas is really
talking about principles, this is not the sort of thing that he
seems to have in mind.
This interpretation also suffers from being confined to
instances of conflict with those claims of sacra doctrina that can
be regarded as clear and certain dogmas. It is easy to see how
judgment, understood in this way, would apply to the issue of
abortion; but what about an issue such as immigration?20
Christians know the command to “Love thy neighbor,” but this
by itself does not lead to a decisive judgment about most
political claims concerning the right to emigrate. Such claims

Theologiae”: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 59: “sacred

teaching . . . judges the first principles and conclusions of the other sciences.” McGinn
refers to a judgment concerning “first principles,” as opposed to the simple “principles”
presented in the text; he may have in mind a comparison between this function of sacra
doctrina and the function of metaphysics as wisdom to establish the first principles
common to all philosophical sciences. As we will see below, such a comparison to
metaphysics, while helpful, does not get at the extraordinary claim being made here
about sacra doctrina.
19
They may also be known to be false on the basis of reason; the two are not
mutually exclusive.
20
One has to be careful to distinguish between political claims that are the
conclusions of political science and those that are really statements of public policy, and
therefore are exercises of political prudence. The claim that abortion is intrinsically evil,
or that there is a right to emigrate, is a claim of political science; but what public policy
ought to be pursued as a result is typically a matter of political prudence. The former
fall under the judgment of sacra doctrina; the latter do not. Venturing into this area can
be confusing, but I have chosen to do so because it presents striking examples of
Christian expectations regarding the relationship of sciences. On the one hand, we often
see Christians asserting that they know some specific, properly political truth just on the
basis of their faith; on the other hand, we often see Christians insisting with some
vehemence that there is no clear ramification of the faith with respect to a particular
political question, and therefore that the faith cannot provide a judgment. Neither
position reflects the subtlety of Aquinas’s teaching here.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 577

are commonly regarded as debatable, matters on which

reasonable people may differ.21 It seems to follow that sacra
doctrina has no judgment to give in such cases. But that is un-
duly to restrict the scope of its operation. In some instances, all
that is required is more effort: a proposed truth may not
conflict with the obvious dogmas of the faith, but someone who
seriously thinks through the ramifications of sacra doctrina may
be able to see that the proposal is untenable. In other instances,
a genuine plurality of positions is permissible: the pursuit of
sacra doctrina may indeed lead to a variety of legitimate
theological opinions. Nevertheless, the question addressed by
the lower science is still able to be judged in light of the
theological opinions—and if one or more of the opinions is in
fact more probable than the others, then that difference also
provides a ground for judgment. A judgment based on an article
of faith is more certain and known more generally than one
based on a theological opinion, but even a theological opinion
can be relatively certain, and the ground for some kind of
judgment about other sciences.

B) The Negative Imperium of “sacra doctrina”

The most obvious examples of the kind of interpretation just

mentioned are snap judgments that something cannot be true
because it conflicts with revelation. Bruce Marshall offers a
particularly refined version of the same.22
Sacra doctrina is, as Aquinas says in article 5, more certain
than other sciences. 23 The theologian’s right to make judgments

21
See, e.g., E. Christian Brugger, “Render unto Caesar: A Catholic Ethic on
Conscientious Voting,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 12 (2005): 154-77.
22
Bruce D. Marshall, “Quid scit una uetula: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology,” in
Rik van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow, eds., The Theology of Thomas Aquinas
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 1-35, esp. 20-25.
23
The judgment made by sacra doctrina about other sciences is justified because it is
higher than them in terms of its certitude. This is, as we have seen, one of the grounds
that Aquinas mentions in article 5 for identifying one science as higher than another.
Comparisons are difficult because the situation of sacra doctrina is unique. Perhaps
there is a way that metaphysics can be called more certain than physics, but
fundamentally they both appeal to human knowledge in the natural light of reason.
578 GREGORY F. LANAVE

about other sciences is therefore indispensable, but it is also

significantly limited. Theology is higher than philosophy, but
this does not mean that the theologian can ordinarily settle
disputed questions in philosophy. As Marshall puts it:

[Sacred doctrine] rightly rejects as false any belief, in any area, which is
contrary to Christian teaching. But save in matters which have a logically close
tie to the articles of Christian faith, it cannot provide reasons for beliefs or
enable us to decide between competing alternatives. Sacra doctrina thus has
only a limited stake in the arguments of the philosophers. Where philosophers
(or scientists) hold competing positions among which, as is very often the case,
theology has no way to decide, it is best for theologians imply not to become
entangled with such disputes.24

Clearly, this view urges a kind of humility upon the

theologian. Faced with a challenging claim of another science,
his instinct might be to make a snap judgment about it from the
superior standpoint of sacra doctrina, but in fact his first re-
sponsibility is to discern whether that claim really does conflict
with the truth of the faith. Frequently, he will have to admit
that he cannot be sure about the conflict, and therefore will
have to refrain from making a judgment. But it also follows in
this view—and this is the point that Marshall emphasizes—that
no science that is lower than sacra doctrina can properly be said
to be autonomous:

Aquinas’s basic teaching on the universal epistemic primacy of sacred doctrine

seems clear enough. Theology does not attempt to settle the competing claims
of worldly wisdom, so long as they are compatible with Christian teaching.

Sacra doctrina is God’s own knowledge of himself, communicated to us through the

light of faith, and therefore is fundamentally more certain than any other human
science.
24
Marshall, “Quid scit una uetula,” 21. For textual verification, Marshall quotes the
prooemium of Aquinas’s response to the Dominican master John of Vercelli, who asked
Aquinas to weigh in on a variety of disputed philosophical questions. “Aquinas felt
bound in obedience to reply right away, but he protests at the outset that ‘many of these
questions belong not to the doctrine of the faith, but to the dogmas of the philosophers.
It does a great deal of harm, however, either to assert or deny claims which make no
contribution to the teaching of piety, as though they pertained to sacred doctrine’”
(ibid., quoting Aquinas, Responsio de 43 articulis ad magistrum Ioannem de Vercellis,
prooemium)
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 579

But the wisdom we have from God judges all our claims to be wise, rejecting
whatever contradicts the wisdom from above. Yet this teaching has been
widely ignored, and often implicitly repudiated, in modern Thomism. . . .
[Some] Thomists assume that philosophy’s autonomously established results
have to be capable of inclusion in a harmonious Christian view of the world.
According to Aquinas, though, we can only be sure that philosophy’s results
will fit into a Christian view of the world if Christian teaching has the
epistemic right to judge, and if need be to reject, even the most thoroughly
certified philosophical claim. For Aquinas philosophy is evidently not
autonomous, but is always subject to correction from another quarter.25

If the theologian is called to be humble, so too is the

philosopher or other scientist. The integrity of his science
means that it knows what it knows on the basis of its own
principles, which are not derived from revelation, but it always
must be ready to receive the thunderbolt of a judgment from
revelation. My own interpretation, as will be seen below, does
not so much attenuate the autonomy of the lower sciences as
require that the one making the judgment needs to possess both
sciences.
The objections raised against the previous interpretation
apply here as well, but with somewhat less force. Marshall
acknowledges that the judgment in view does not strictly
depend on any labor of sacra doctrina, but neither is it reduced
to what any believer (or nonbeliever, for that matter) can see as
the plain sense of Christianity’s truth-claims. Most properly, the
judgment belongs to the Christian who, by faith and sacra-
mental grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, has a connaturality
with divine things, and thus can make judgments about what is
in harmony with them and what is not.26 Again, Marshall does
not highlight the fact that Aquinas refers here to the principles
of other sciences, but neither does he restrict the judgment of
sacra doctrina to conclusions; he refers more generically to the
“beliefs” one finds in other sciences, which include both

25
Marshall, “Quid scit una uetula,” 23.
26
“The holy teaching of the Parisian master is a partial and incomplete attempt to
catch up, by the laborious path of learning and argument acquired by study, to the
wisdom the unlettered charwoman already possesses as a free gift from God” (Marshall,
“Quid scit una uetula,” 25).
580 GREGORY F. LANAVE

principles and conclusions. Finally, whether Marshall sets an

undue restriction upon the scope of the judgments of sacra
doctrina is ambiguous. On the one hand, he has no use for a
constant intervention of the theologian into disputes proper to
the philosopher; on the other hand, to privilege the insights of
the simple old woman (the uetula) suggests that her judgment,
which she possesses by the gift of God, that something is
incompatible with the truth of God is a signal to the theologian
that perhaps he will be able to make a similar judgment through
his study.

C) Choosing among Independently Established Principles

A different construal of Aquinas’s meaning is that the knowl-

edge of sacra doctrina can incline one to a judgment about
claims regarding what the principles of another scientia are.
Although the Christian just as a Christian can make no claims to
expertise in any particular science, his knowledge of truth in
faith can, in some instances, allow him to judge between
competing claims regarding the principles of a science.27 For

27
Cf. Pope John Paul II, Fides et ratio 76: “Revelation clearly proposes certain truths
which might never have been discovered by reason unaided, although they are not of
themselves inaccessible to reason. Among these truths is the notion of a free and
personal God who is the Creator of the world, a truth which has been so crucial for the
development of philosophical thinking, especially the philosophy of being. There is also
the reality of sin, as it appears in the light of faith, which helps to shape an adequate
philosophical formulation of the problem of evil. The notion of the person as a spiritual
being is another of faith's specific contributions: the Christian proclamation of human
dignity, equality and freedom has undoubtedly influenced modern philosophical
thought. In more recent times, there has been the discovery that history as event—so
central to Christian Revelation—is important for philosophy as well. It is no accident
that this has become pivotal for a philosophy of history which stakes its claim as a new
chapter in the human search for truth. . . . In speculating on these questions,
philosophers have not become theologians, since they have not sought to understand
and expound the truths of faith on the basis of Revelation. They have continued
working on their own terrain and with their own purely rational method, yet extending
their research to new aspects of truth. It could be said that a good part of modern and
contemporary philosophy would not exist without this stimulus of the word of God.”
The pope does not identify the various theses enumerated here as principles, but that is
in fact how they function. His point is not that faith knows that, for example, there is a
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 581

example, the Christian just as a Christian cannot claim to be a

psychologist. But when confronted with competing claims about
psychology, he will occasionally find that he can make judg-
ments about what must not be true. Behaviorism may have
useful things to teach about human action and how to condition
the person to act in good ways, but insofar as it is based on the
principle that the spiritual soul is not relevant to human well-
being, that human beings are sufficiently understood in terms of
body-based responses to stimuli, the Christian has every right to
judge that it is faulty, and that it does not express the whole
truth of the person.
There could even be a more positive judgment on the part of
sacra doctrina: when there are different proposals concerning
the proper principles of a lower science, and one of the
proposals coheres well with what is known in the faith, the
practitioner of sacra doctrina may in fact make a tentative
judgment approving that particular proposal.28 Thus we find
that Christians can be favorably inclined to theories of
“intelligent design” because they have an obvious coherence
with what the faith knows of the creative and providential God.
We can see the same thing throughout the Christian tradition:
for example, the patristic approbation of Plato because there
seemed to be such harmony between his doctrine and
revelation.29 Such a judgment is tentative, not certain, for there
may be multiple construals of the principles of the lower science

free and personal God, and therefore philosophy must acknowledge that fact as well; it
is rather that faith’s knowledge of this free and personal God influences the properly
philosophical discipline of ontology.
28
See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God: “Sacred theology judges,
however, of the other sciences, and this in two ways. It judges negatively because
"whatever is found in other sciences contrary to any truth of this science must be
condemned as false." Thus many hypotheses that have not been scientifically proved,
from the very fact that they are contrary to divine revelation are repudiated by theology.
But it positively approves of a certain proposition of metaphysics or of natural
philosophy or of ethics, according as it is otherwise revealed, or at least is in conformity
with revelation. Thus it approves of propositions about the immortality of the soul or
the foundation of moral obligation or the distinction between virtuous, pleasant, and
useful good.”
29
See, e.g., Justin Martyr, First Apology 59; Augustine, City of God 8.5-9.
582 GREGORY F. LANAVE

that could harmonize well with what is known in sacra doctrina.

The expertise that allows one to make a certain judgment on the
science as a whole is that of the practitioner of that science—in
the example above, the biologist—not that of the Christian as
such.
This interpretation of Aquinas’s text is more plausible than
the first because it does center on judgment concerning
principles, not just any truth-claims. Where it falters, and
perhaps falls short of the name of wisdom, is that its judgments
are, as in the former case, too much of a simple transposition of
something known in faith to the field of a lower science. In
other words, the judgment is made without a thorough
thinking-through of sacra doctrina. According to Aquinas’s text,
it is sacra doctrina, not the articles of faith simply, that is able to
judge the principles of other sciences. Of course, the articles of
faith are the principles of sacra doctrina, and so one could say
that any judgment is ultimately traceable to them. But sacra
doctrina is a science, and therefore cannot simply be equated
with the content of the faith, which is more akin to intellectus
than to scientia. It is the person who thinks through the faith,
not the person who simply accepts the faith, who is in view
here. And it is not clear that this interpretation really takes
account of that fact. The example of “intelligent design” is
telling: such theories can appeal to the person of faith
(especially one who is aware of the history of Darwinian-
inspired attacks on Christianity), but, as more than a few
Thomistic scholars have noted, the doctrines of creation and
providence do not entail a reliance on the “god of the gaps.”30

30
“It would seem that Intelligent Design Theory is grounded on the Cosmogonical
Fallacy. Many who oppose the standard Darwinian account of biological evolution
identify creation with divine intervention into nature. . . . This insistence that creation
must mean that God has periodically produced new and distinct forms of life is to
confuse the fact of creation with the manner or mode of the development of natural
beings in the universe. This is the Cosmogonical Fallacy. . . . A Thomist might agree
with [Michael] Behe’s epistemological claim that no current or foreseeable future
attempt at explanation for certain biological complexities is satisfactory. Yet, a Thomist
will reject Behe’s ontological claim that no such explanation can ever be given in terms
of the operation of nature. This ontological claim depends on a ‘god of the gaps’
understanding of divine agency and such an understanding of God’s action is
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 583

D) “Sacra doctrina” as an Architectonic Science

A different sort of interpretation is that sacra doctrina is an

architectonic science with respect to its subordinates.31 Marshall
gives a helpful explanation of this in terms of stonecutting and
architecture:

Stonecutting has its own goals and methods, which the architect is normally
willing to leave to the mason. But if the architect’s well-designed edifice
crumbles because the stones would not bear the load, he rightly judges that the
mason, whatever his protests that the stones were flawless, needs to produce a
different result. The architect may, indeed, help him figure out how.32

The wise man, the architect, is willing to recognize the proper

autonomy of the stonecutter; he acknowledges that being an
architect does not give him the knowledge proper to the
stonecutter. However, his knowledge of the whole allows him
to make the judgment that when there is a conflict between him

cosmogonically fallacious” (Michael W. Tkacz, “Thomas Aquinas vs. the Intelligent

Designers,” paper prepared for the Gonzaga Socratic Club, Gonzaga University). The
divergence between Intelligent Design theorists and Thomists has been frequently noted
in popular publications (see, e.g., Michael W. Tkacz, “Aquinas vs. Intelligent Design,
Catholic Answers, Sept. 30, 2011; Mark Shea, “Intelligent Design vs. the Argument
from Design,” National Catholic Register blog post, Nov. 15, 2013; Francis Beckwith,
“St. Thomas Aquinas and the Inadequacy of Intelligent Design,” Patheos blog post, April
5, 2011). For more scholarly treatments, see William E. Carroll, “At the Mercy of
Chance? Evolution and the Catholic Tradition,” Revue des questions scientifiques 177
(2006): 179-204; and Marie I. George, “What Would Thomas Aquinas Say about
Intelligent Design?” New Blackfriars 94 (2013): 676-700.
31
See III Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 4 s.c. 2: “The knowledge of Christ was
regulative, and as it were architectonic, with respect to all human sciences.”
32
Marshall, “Quid scit una uetula,” 23. See In Boet. De Trin., q. 2, a. 2, ad 1: “the
function of wisdom is to order, and therefore this highest science [N.B. in this case not
sacra doctrina, but natural theology], which orders and rules all others, is called
wisdom; just as in mechanical arts we call those men wise who direct others, as the
architects.” Although the architect’s right of judgment is, as I say below, proper within
an order of practical sciences, Marshall does not intend the comparison to imply that
sacra doctrina governs in the way of a practical rather than a speculative science. What
he seems to mean is that architecture and sacra doctrina are both higher sciences (with
respect to stonecutting and philosophy, respectively), but on different bases;
architecture has a greater finality, while sacra doctrina has a greater certitude. But no
matter the basis, the right of judgment is the same.
584 GREGORY F. LANAVE

and the stonecutter—when his design should work, and yet

when produced by the mason it doesn’t—his higher knowledge
is right, and there must be something wrong with the
stonecutter’s craft. So too the practitioner of sacra doctrina
acknowledges that he does not, as theologian, know any par-
ticular lower science. But when the two touch on each other,
any conflict signals to the practitioner of sacra doctrina that
something must be amiss in the structure of the lower science.
It is not difficult to see how judgment takes place along these
lines when the two sciences in question are practical. In such a
case, the architectonic science has a greater finality, and
therefore the judgment about the appropriate activity of a lower
science follows not only from what is proper to its principles
but also from the needs of a science that is more final. A
stonecutter has many options for cutting stones well; the
selection of the appropriate option is determined by the needs
of the building being designed by the architect. For another
example, we may consider the relationship between civil science
and military science.33 A general knows various ways in which
he may conduct a war; the selection of the appropriate way is
determined not by (or, not solely by) the military science itself
but by the civil science toward which it is ordered. So too, sacra
doctrina will not tell political science what its principles are, but
because it knows the greater good, the greater end of the human
person in beatitude, it can order political science—for example,
helping it to determine how to pursue the good of the human
community in light of the ultimate end of the person. Such
examples are clearly what Aquinas evokes when he describes the
way in which one practical science is higher than another in
article 5.
The applicability of this solution to the relationship between
two sciences on grounds other than finality is less evident. In
the situation of an architect and a stonecutter both practicing
their craft in a common project, and the failure of a stone to
function as it should in the architect’s design, it seems just as
likely that the architect (though his science is higher than the

33
STh I, q. 1, a. 5.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 585

other, in the sense of having a nobler subject) is at fault, that

although the stone is perfectly well cut it fails because there is a
flaw in the architect’s design. Such would be the case between
any two related sciences that have their own proper principles
and that are not subalternated to each other. Therefore we do
not yet have an explanation for how the speculative science of
sacra doctrina judges the principles of any other science.

III. COMPARISON WITH METAPHYSICS

Having thus seen the limitations of these interpretations of

Aquinas, it makes sense to look to metaphysics for a possible
enlightening comparison to this function of sacra doctrina: after
all, metaphysics is a speculative science;34 it does not sub-
alternate any other sciences, but it is higher than any other
philosophical science; and it rightly goes by the name of
“wisdom.” There is one way in which sacra doctrina is like
metaphysics, 35 and another in which it is unlike, and both are
helpful for understanding what I think Aquinas is proposing.

34
It must be noted that Aquinas describes metaphysics (In Metaphys., proem.) as
architectonic with respect to other sciences, for it has to do with the final cause of the
universe, toward which all other philosophical sciences are ultimately ordered.
35
I Metaphys., lect. 2, lays out six ways in which someone is said to be wise, and
how each of these can be said of the metaphysician. (1) That man is wise who has
knowledge of all things in the highest degree. The metaphysician has this because he has
the most universal knowledge. (2) The wise man knows difficult things beyond the reach
of ordinary men. Universals are most removed from sensibles, and in this sense are the
hardest things to know; and the metaphysician considers universals. (3) The wise man is
more certain. The most certain science is that to which the fewest things have been
added. Thus metaphysics, the science of being, is more certain than physics, the science
of mobile being—and all other sciences as well. (4) The wise man is better able to teach.
He teaches best who knows the causes; and this is what metaphysics considers. (5) That
science is closest to wisdom that is known for its own sake. This certainly applies to the
science of first causes. (6) That science is closest to wisdom that is more basic, or nobler,
than other sciences. “That science which considers the final cause, or that for the sake of
which particular things are done, is related to the other sciences as a chief or master
science is to a subordinate or ancillary one.” And metaphysics considers the final cause
(and the first cause, for the first cause is the final cause). Only the last quality pertains to
the ordering of the sciences, and it really has to do with practical sciences.
586 GREGORY F. LANAVE

A) Similarity: Proving Common Principles and Manifesting Their

Truth

There are a variety of texts that talk about the relationship of

metaphysics and other sciences. Metaphysics is said to “explain”
(notificare) the principles of natural science,36 or the common
notions used by all sciences.37 It “declares” the truth of first
principles.38 It “bestows” principles on other sciences,39 and
judges those sciences in light of their ultimate first principles.40
Since it considers the final cause of the universe, its end has
greater finality than that of the other sciences, and thus governs
them.41 I would venture to summarize Aquinas’s teaching on
this point as follows. Demonstration takes place by way of both
proper principles and common notions, and since metaphysics is
the most universal of the sciences, it can certainly be regarded as
the source of the common notions the sciences use, though not
of their proper principles. Since metaphysics considers these
things most directly, and manifests them most clearly, one could
say that metaphysics exercises a regulative role over the other
sciences—but again, with respect to their common notions, not
their proper principles.
This is helpful for understanding how sacra doctrina might
function. Metaphysics is in its own right a science, which is to
say that it gives a reasoned explanation for the truths that it
holds, such as the principles of identity and noncontradiction,
the notion of causality, and so on. Sacra doctrina is also a
science. It includes both the things revealed by God and the
reasoned examination of the intelligibility of those things, and
all of this is available to other sciences. Sacra doctrina will not
prove the principles of, say, biology. But because it considers
things that are pertinent to biology in a higher light and in a
higher way—for example, the reality and harmony of creation,

36
In Boet. De Trin., q. 5, a. 1, ad 9.
37
VI Nic. Ethic., lect. 5.
38
Ibid.
39
In Boet de Trin., q. 6, a. 1.
40
STh I-II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1.
41
ScG I, c. 1; I Metaphys., lect. 2
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 587

as well as its teleology—it manifests truths that, while they are

not sufficient for biology, are part of what biology uses as its
principles.42

B) Contrast: Penetrating to Particulars

Turning to the point of contrast, Aquinas gives us reason to

say that sacra doctrina is more specific than metaphysics in what
it can contribute. In the prologue to book 1 of his commentary
on the Sentences, in a question on the unity of sacra doctrina, he
says,

this science is highest and derives its efficacy from the light of divine
inspiration itself and, while remaining one and undivided, considers diverse
things, and not just universally, like metaphysics, which considers all things
insofar as they are beings, without descending to proper knowledge of moral
matters or of natural things. Since the notion of being is diversified in diverse
things metaphysics is insufficient for specific knowledge of them. But the
divine light, remaining one in itself, is efficacious to make them manifest.43

He goes on, in a response to an objection, to say, "The divine

light, from the certitude of which this science proceeds, is effi-
cacious in making manifest the many things which are treated in
the different sciences of philosophy which proceed from
conceptions of these things to knowledge.”44 The truth mani-
fested by sacra doctrina is not limited to common principles, but
extends to particulars. Aquinas does not give an example of
what he means here, but he does refer to the beginning of
Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy, which speaks of everything
illuminated by the divine light leading back to divine unity.
One might think that Aquinas is adverting to the fact that
revelation includes particulars as well as general principles, and

42
Note that this is certainly an advance upon the view I objected to at the beginning,
that the judgment that sacra doctrina provides is the simple comparison of the things
known in faith to the things claimed in other sciences. Here we see that the judgment is
dependent precisely on the science of sacra doctrina, the reasoned account it gives of
things in the light of faith.
43
I Sent., pro., q. 1, a. 2.
44
Ibid., ad 1.
588 GREGORY F. LANAVE

that these particulars can be known with certitude just because

they are revealed. But his language here suggests that he is
emphasizing not the fact that certain particulars are revealed,
but that the divine light illuminates them. In the Summa he
incorporates particular revealed facts into the science of sacra
doctrina as examples to be followed (e.g., what the Old
Testament patriarchs did can provide a moral exemplar, which
is a proper subject for sacra doctrina) and as attestations of the
authority of the one through whom the revelation comes.45
Combining this with the teaching of the Sentences commentary,
we might say that the particular things known in sacra doctrina
are seen as suffused with a divine light, which creates an
intrinsic connection with everything else known in sacra
doctrina. For example, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is one of the
preeminent particulars of the Old Testament. On the basis of
question 1 of the Summa alone, we might think that its
significance is that it exemplifies the moral truth that one must
have faith in God’s promise. No doubt it does mean this. But
the teaching of the Sentences commentary suggests that it is not
simply a moral object lesson, but a revelation, a manifestation of
the divine light in a particular event—which is therefore not
simply a particular instance of a general rule, but a para-
digmatic, exemplary manifestation of a truth.

IV. HOW SACRA DOCTRINA JUDGES THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER

SCIENCES: A PROPOSAL

Several points are obvious from the foregoing. If the

theologian is to judge the principles of another science, he must
be able to think through both sacra doctrina and the other
science. The process of judgment requires both elements. If the
theologian judges another science solely on the basis of knowing
sacra doctrina, then either he is judging only the conclusions of
that other science, or the other science derives its principles
from sacra doctrina. If his judgment is made on the basis solely
of his knowledge of the other science, then sacra doctrina has

45
STh I, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 589

no role to play.46 All of these situations are possible, but none of

them give an adequate interpretation of our text.
The situation we are trying to envisage here is one in which
both sacra doctrina and another science are given their due, and
in which sacra doctrina has a decisive influence on the very
structure of the other science without that science deriving its
principles from sacra doctrina. We are to imagine this judgment
regarding, say, philosophy as the work of one single person who
is both a theologian and a philosopher—or, perhaps, as the joint
effort of a group of people, some of whom are theologians and
others of whom are philosophers.47 The theologians cannot just
preach to the philosophers; they must be receptive to the truly
philosophical work of the philosophers, but also raise questions
and offer insights that come from their theology, the
consideration of which may allow the philosophers to
reformulate and refine their philosophy. Snap judgments—the
immediate and decisive judgment about a truth-claim made by
the philosophers on the basis of some clear and obvious
principle of faith—are not what are called for here. Instead, we
may expect a lengthy deliberative process, driven by an ever-
deepening understanding of revelation.
In the remainder of this article I will give three examples of
what it might mean to think through both what is proper to a
science in its own right and the ramifications of the faith. I must
begin, however, with a caveat. If I am correct in my inter-
pretation of Aquinas on this point, what is required for judging
the principles of another science is twofold: knowledge of sacra
doctrina and knowledge of that other science. As a theologian, I
have some expertise in the former. But unless I have a
thoroughgoing knowledge of another science, unless I have
mastery and wisdom in that science, I am hampered in my

46
Some construals of “Christian philosophy” seem to adopt this view. Philosophy is
judged solely on the basis of philosophical principles, though the individual philosopher
may in fact have a stronger grasp of these principles by virtue of his faith.
47
A glance at the difference between the medieval and the modern university makes
it clear why I highlight the possibility of a communal project. In Aquinas’s day, it was
possible for one person to have mastery of sacra doctrina and a variety of other
disciplines. It is not so possible today.
590 GREGORY F. LANAVE

ability to come to meaningful judgments about its principles.

Aquinas wants judgment to be made about the principles of, for
example, psychology by someone who is both a theologian and
a psychologist. The three examples I give below pertain to
psychology, political science, and evolutionary biology. I am
neither a psychologist, nor a political scientist, nor an evolu-
tionary biologist—and therefore my conclusions about the
principles of those sciences are only tentative. But they may be
suggestive.
We know in sacra doctrina the perfection of the humanity of
Jesus Christ. That that humanity is suffused with the grace of
union is a dogmatic fact—but what that implies about the
knowledge, the virtues, and the passions of Christ is the work of
sacra doctrina in the form of theological reasoning. Now, if we
turn to the lower science of human psychology, we can see that
there is an overlap with Christology: psychology is, for
example, keenly interested in the passions of the soul, and sacra
doctrina has things to say about the passions of the perfect
humanity of Christ, including those of his soul. This does not
mean that one becomes a psychologist by thinking about the
humanity of Christ; the principles of psychology are surely
learned by observation and induction, by a broader knowledge
of the human constitution, and such-like. What I am suggesting
is that in considering the humanity of Christ, the theologian has
a guide to help him consider not only the truth about particular
claims regarding human psychology but also the very
parameters of that science—its basic principles. We can expect
an interplay between the claims of these two sciences, leading to
the most adequate formulation of psychology (and, it follows,
improving the perspicacity of the knowledge of human
psychology that the theologian imports to help him understand
his own science).
For another example, one might look at the relationship
between political science and what sacra doctrina says about the
kingdom of God. It is certainly not the case that the Christian,
simply as Christian, knows and understands the principles of
the science of politics: there is no relationship of subalternation
here. But the Christian does have a knowledge of the human
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 591

good that comes to him from revelation, and if he reflects on it

in the way of sacra doctrina he will come to have a sense of its
ramifications for the political good. This goes to the level of the
fundamental principles of politics. Take for example the
controverted question of whether the State ought to be
confessionally Christian or whether instead it ought to have as
its ideal modern pluralism. This is not an easy matter to
discern—and again, it is not obvious that the Christian must
hold for the former option, as one might expect from a simple
transposition (e.g., concluding from the fact that God is the
source of authority for the State that the State ought to adhere
explicitly to divine, natural, and ecclesiastical law). Certainly
the Christian will hold that the political good is less final than
the transcendental good of man, but he will have to think
deeply about what God wants for the political order—as well as
what the natural laws of human community allow to be possible
or impossible, desirable or undesirable.
For a final example, consider the relationship between sacra
doctrina and evolutionary biology as they pertain to human
origins and original sin. There are, no doubt, Christians who
will argue that any biological theory that asserts that there are
multiple origins to the human race must be false because it
conflicts with the biblical story of Adam and Eve. This would be
the simple transposition of something known through
revelation into another science—which is, again, the most
common reading of Aquinas in our text. It is noteworthy that
Pope Pius XII, dealing with this very question in the encyclical
Humani generis, did not take this approach. To be sure, he
attacked the biological theory of polygenism, but his chief
argument was “it is in no way apparent how such an opinion
can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth
and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church
propose with regard to original sin.”48 The pope implicitly
acknowledged that biology has no concern with the literal
historical veracity of the biblical account of creation. Instead, he
said that there is something that we know as part of sacra

48
Pius XII, Humani generis 37 (emphasis added).
592 GREGORY F. LANAVE

doctrina, namely, the truth of original sin, that does govern

what we can say in biology, and will properly affect our
approbation or disapprobation of proposed biological theories.
He even leaves open the possibility that if a theory of
polygenism could be constructed that would not run afoul of
what we know of original sin, that theory would not necessarily
be judged false. What do we know of original sin?
Dogmatically, we can say that it is that by which sin entered the
world, and with sin death; that its effect was not only on Adam,
but on all his posterity; and that this effect is not simply a
matter of imitation—in the words of the Council of Trent, it
has been “transfused into all.”49 Theologically, one might go
further. The Thomist will, for example, insist theologically that
we are not talking here about actual sin—the phenomenological
fact that all of us commit personal sins, and that these have a
profound deleterious effect on our world—but about the sin of
Adam that establishes for us the condition into which we come
into the world. Original sin exists today because, whatever
exactly the sin of Adam was, and however exactly its effects are
passed on to us, we come into the world with a wounded
nature. Furthermore, the Thomist will say that the wound of
that nature, as it pertains to death, is not the loss of a natural
created condition of immortality, but rather the loss of the
preternatural gift of freedom from death. These are things
pertinent to evolutionary biology. For example, the biologist
considers death and decay as natural qualities of composite
beings, and the Thomist does not disagree; perhaps Adam and
Eve and their descendants would never have died if they had
not sinned, but this could only have been a supernatural gift
(which is of course beyond the reckoning of the biologist). But
the Thomist and the biologist can have a mutually informative
conversation about how the propagation of a nature is
connected to the biological processes of generation and the
development of a species.
These examples seem to me to illuminate some ways in
which the theologian can judge the principles of other sciences.

49
Council of Trent, “Decree concerning Original Sin,” canon 3.
 JUDGING THE PRINCIPLES OF OTHER SCIENCES 593

This is not an easy task, for it involves a serious thinking-

through of both sacra doctrina and the other sciences. There are
only very limited ways in which the person of simple faith can
engage in such a judgment. But the result is a true harmony of
the sciences, ordered by sacra doctrina without any violation of
the autonomy of each.
 BOOK REVIEWS
The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology. By THOMAS JOSEPH
WHITE, O.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2015. Pp. xiv + 534. $65.00 (cloth), $34.95 (paper). ISBN:
978-0-8132-2745-0 (cloth), 978-0-8132-3009-2 (paper).

Thomas Joseph White’s substantial volume sets forth ambitious goals in ten
chapters framed with substantial introductory and concluding discussions. The
introduction clarifies that “this is a Thomistic study in Christology that seeks
to understand in a speculative fashion what it means to say that God became a
man and that this man who is God died by crucifixion and rose from the dead
for the salvation of the human race” (4). The study is framed in response to
concerns and challenges posed by historical-critical biblical scholarship,
Kantian philosophy, and the influence of these two on modern Catholic and
Protestant theology, particularly through the influence of Karl Barth. In the
face of these concerns and challenges, White affirms that “Christology has an
irreducible ontological dimension that is essential to its integrity as a science”
(5). This fundamental thesis courses through the veins of each chapter, with
the particular juxtapositions and arguments of these chapters constituting the
work’s aim just as much as the overall thesis.
The book begins with an introduction (“The Biblical Ontology of Christ”)
calibrated to frame the enterprise of scientific Christology in biblically rooted
ontological or metaphysical claims. This framing reveals much about White’s
argument and interpretation of Thomistic Christology. Stated otherwise, this
work details a Chalcedonian grammar of the Incarnation as expounded by
Thomas Aquinas and in response to modern Christological and theological
concerns in order to defend Scholastic Christology’s “perennial importance
for a right understanding of central mysteries of the New Testament” (22). By
emphasizing on “perennial importance” White shows his understanding of the
nature of theological truths against some modern interpretations, and
therefore he offers further impetus for addressing questions raised by modern
Christologies through the resources of Scholastic Christology.
The real question of the prolegomenon, “Is a Modern Thomistic Christ-
ology Possible?” is not whether but how it is possible. Here, White considers
the defining features of modern Christologies, the defining features of
Thomistic Christology, and how the latter can speak with and to the former.

595
596 BOOK REVIEWS

White identifies two foundations for modern Christologies: historical-critical

biblical scholarship and Immanuel Kant’s critique of classical metaphysics.
With respect to the first, the central question posed concerns the relationship
between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of theological reflection.”
Friedrich Schleiermacher and Barth offer two differing responses to this
modern question. “Schleiermacher correlates post-Enlightenment studies of
the history of Jesus with a decidedly post-Chalcedonian stance of interpre-
tation regarding classical (pre-modern) Christological ontology” (35), all of
which leads him to focus entirely on “the original religious consciousness and
sentiments of the founder of Christianity in their unalloyed beauty” (36). In so
doing, Schleiermacher prioritizes retrieval of the historical Jesus over the
subsequent adulterations of this religious consciousness by ecclesiastical
pronouncements and theological reflection. Barth, in contrast, minimizes or
undermines historical reconstructions of Jesus as inherently problematic and
as unreliable, purely human speculation distracting from the proper object of
faith. In White’s presentation, Schleiermacher and Barth thus represent
divergent and even opposite responses to the promise and challenge of
historical-critical biblical scholarship. Both fundamentally fail insofar as they
cannot methodologically integrate analysis of the historical Jesus and the
Christ of theological reflection.
With respect to the Kantian critiques of classical metaphysics, White
summarizes the problems of Schleiermacher and Barth as follows:

Schleiermacher rejects metaphysics and resorts to consciousness,

while Barth rejects human metaphysics and resorts to a sort of
revealed Christological metaphysics. But Barth’s strategy, seemingly
designed to avoid falling into Schleiermachian reductionism, ends
up (ironically) being an application of human categories after all,
and (even more ironically) these turn out to be categories of
consciousness. One can avoid these problems by accepting the
possibility of a natural capacity in human beings for metaphysical
reflection, so long as this metaphysics is endowed with a sense of
analogy, so that divine things are not reduced to human ones. (50)

At the heart of White’s project lies this reinvigoration of “a natural capacity in

human beings for metaphysical reflection” rooted in an analogy of being. This
approach intends to balance “an ontology of the hypostatic union and an
anthropological theology that focuses upon the human actions of Christ” (67).
The bulk of the study falls within two parts: first, “The Mystery of the
Incarnation,” and second, “The Mystery of the Redemption.” The former
opens with a chapter on “the ontology of the hypostatic union,” establishing
the ontological foundations for a classical single-subject Christology in order
to counter a Nestorian character prevalent in modern Christologies and
derived largely from Karl Rahner. This is not to claim that Rahner violates
Chalcedonian affirmations of a single subject in Christ, but rather to argue
 BOOK REVIEWS 597

“that Rahner locates the ontological union of God and man in Christ in the
same place where Nestorianism typically locates it: uniquely in the spiritual
operations of the man Jesus, particularly as they are conformed by divine in-
dwelling to the mystery of God in himself” (76). After tracing central aspects
of Thomas Aquinas’s articulations of the hypostatic union against thirteenth-
century traces of Nestorianism, White turns to Rahner as well as to
Schleiermacher, John Hick, Jacques Dupuis, and Jon Sobrino. As a means of
acknowledging legitimate concerns proposed by these thinkers within the
larger framework of a Chalcedonian Christology, White stresses “that the
human conscious activity of Jesus (while not constitutive) is in fact indicative
or expressive of his hypostatic identity as the Son” (122).
Chapter 2, “The Human Nature and Grace of Christ,” elaborates upon the
ontology of the hypostatic union by engaging Rahner and Marie-Dominique
Chenu. This chapter develops the interplay of Christology and theological
anthropology. “If nature is not historically and existentially separable from the
mystery of God’s gracious action in history,” White argues, “it is nevertheless
distinguishable and can even be appealed to precisely as a way toward
understanding the goodness of the mystery of life in Christ” (130). In this way,
White resists conflating Christology and theological anthropology, while
arguing for the utility or even necessity of recognizing, at least in the abstract,
a notion of pure nature. This grounds a discourse of hierarchically ordered
natural ends according to which humanity remains open to what transcends it.
White resumes consideration of analogy in chapter 3, “The Likeness of the
Human and Divine Natures,” engaging Barth and Eberhard Jüngel as chal-
lengers to a Thomistic analogia entis. Jüngel assists in “[framing] the debate
between Thomists and Barthians” (173). White argues that Barth misconstrues
Aquinas on analogy in significant and unfortunate ways, largely because
Thomas’s presentation of analogy and analogical causality answers the
theological questions posed by Barth better than does Barth’s own analogia
fidei. Thomistic analogical causality provides “crucial resources by which to
respond to Kantian criticisms of Christianity in ways that Barthian thought
does not” (180) in part because “Barth and Barthians tend to import wholesale
Kantian philosophical presuppositions into their theology without sufficient
justification” (194).
Chapter 4, “Why Christology Presupposes Natural Theology,” weaves
together affirmations of analogical causality and “of a natural capacity in
human beings for metaphysical reflection” (50). White rightly specifies
Thomistic analogy as both ontological and propositional, with the propo-
sitional depending upon the ontological. Building upon analogical causality in
response to Barthian uses of the analogy of faith, White argues “that the
natural human capacity to think analogically about God in his unity and
existence as the cause of the world—with the help of concepts drawn from
creation—is a necessary epistemological presupposition for any scriptural or
dogmatic account of the incarnate Word” (224). Without this natural human
598 BOOK REVIEWS

capacity, White argues that the proper reception of revelation would be

impossible.
The final chapter of part 1 (“The Necessity of the Beatific Vision in the
Earthly Christ”) highlights crucial distinctions from the long tradition of
Chalcedonian Christological reflection to counter Jean Galot and Thomas
Weinandy on Christ’s knowledge. Against such contemporary criticisms or
denials of Christ’s beatific knowledge, White first develops a Thomistic
response focused on Christ’s two wills and instrumental causality, together
with a distinction between mode and nature. These points require, as a
necessary condition, the perfection of Christ’s human knowledge so that his
human will could remain “subordinated to” and “expressive of” the divine
will (256). Recognizing the force of modern Christological emphases, White
extends what Thomas explicitly argues and writes: “The will of God is present
in the person of the Son in a unique way. The Son subsists eternally, having in
himself the unique divine will. However, he also has this divine will in a filial
mode, since all that he has (even as God) is received eternally through the
begetting of the Father and stands in relation to the Father as its principle and
source” (264-65). White elaborates Thomas in order to ground aspects of
Barth’s Christological insight in a classical Trinitarian metaphysics.
Part 2 turns to redemption in conversation with modern “kenotic”
Christologies and crafts “a plausible Thomistic alternative” (277). Chapter 6,
“The Obedience of the Son,” counters Barth with elements of classical
(Athanasian) Trinitarianism. White reads Barth as reducing the Son’s per-
sonhood to a constitutive obedience, a reduction entailing logical problems for
Trinitarianism and compromising the Son’s freedom to choose to become
incarnate for human redemption (300). The Thomistic alternative holds that
the Son’s “passive historical submission and his self-determined human actions
find their perfect, transcendent exemplar in his filial manner of being as the
Son, at once eternally receptive of the divine life he receives from the Father,
and active (in this same divine life) in all things” (304).
The following chapter (“Did God Abandon Jesus? The Dereliction on the
Cross”) rules out several kenotic approaches by taking despair and separation
from God to entail sin, thus allowing for these to be eliminated on biblical
grounds. Integrating modern and patristic biblical interpretation, White argues
for Christ’s cry as a prayer of desire conveying desire in agony and (merely)
metaphorical despair. “In this way, the happiness of being united in will with
the Father could coexist with extreme agony in Christ, such that the two
experiences were objectively distinct but subjectively (and therefore experi-
entially) inseparable” (330). For White, affirmation of Christ’s perfect
“knowledge present throughout his passion necessarily augmented his desire
for our salvation even as it simultaneously augmented his agony” (337). In
other words, what modern kenotic Christologies hope to achieve through
denial of Christ’s beatific knowledge and emphasis on dereliction can be more
richly achieved through a Thomistic framework.
 BOOK REVIEWS 599

Chapter 8, “The Death of Christ and the Mystery of the Cross,” recalls the
challenges of historical-critical biblical scholarship and Kantian metaphysics as
underlying modern kenotic Christologies. “The modern kenotic tradition,”
White notes, “has sought to solve modern Christological conundrums, but it
has thereby also introduced soteriological problems into modern Christology
that would seem to require correction” (376). White’s irenic corrective
reaffirms “an ontology of the divine names (of classical attributes of the
divinity)” (347) applied to Christ’s divine nature. Kenotic Christologies tend
to focus myopically on “the human character of the event of Christ’s suffering
and death” (368), and this diminishes the soteriological depth of the event.
Expanding the focus to include ontological considerations of Christ’s divine
nature reinforces the Passion’s depth insofar as “Christ can choose to redeem
the world freely in love only because he knows of the value of his sacrifice,
and its meaning. His act of free self-offering requires that he know that he has
been sent by the Father for our salvation, but it also requires that he know
who he himself is who is making the offering” (356).
White addresses a central theme of kenotic Christologies in chapter 9, “Did
Christ Descend into Hell? The Mystery of Holy Saturday.” White delves into
this mystery in conversation with Hans Urs von Balthasar and the variety of
concerns animating Balthasar’s thought, including universal salvation, ecu-
menism, and Trinitarian theology. White approves Balthasar’s approach
insofar as it acknowledges the historical reality of Holy Saturday but fears that
Balthasar strays problematically far from presentations in the Catechism of the
Catholic Church. Throughout this chapter, White recognizes a host of
difficulties—for example, questions regarding limbo—and ends with a clear
encapsulation of his larger point: “God can reveal to us in particularly
intensive ways his own goodness and intrinsically immutable love through the
drama of his own human suffering, death, and descent into hell” (420).
The final chapter (“The Ontology of the Resurrection”) first reminds
readers of a bifurcation in modern Christologies in that they “[tend] to reduce
Christology to a form of idealized anthropology” or to reflect a “theological
assimilation of all natural forms of knowledge into Christology” (438). White
proposes to balance “philosophical anthropology and theological realism re-
garding the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (439), in the process combatting
denials of any intermediate state between one’s natural death and resurrection
as well as highlighting the central Thomistic categories of exemplary and
instrumental efficient causality. These Thomistic causal categories provide a
robust vocabulary and ontological basis for maintaining that “the story of the
resurrection is a story of the redemption of our physical world and not the
story of the creation of a wholly other, alternative world” (454).
A lengthy conclusion (“The Promise of Thomism”) offers a fitting cul-
mination to this study by resuming central themes developed throughout the
chapters while also stressing the nature and importance of Christology as a
science (in conversation with and in response to Edward Schillebeeckx). White
600 BOOK REVIEWS

offers a concise summary: “the study of Christology is not first and foremost
historical (even if it habitually makes use of detailed historical knowledge and
argumentation). Rather, the study of theology in general and Christology in
particular, is structural or essential. Christology studies the structure of a
mystery: the mystery of the incarnation, the birth, life, death and resurrection
of Christ, his grace and its effects, and the eschatological hope arising from his
person and activity” (468-69).
These brief remarks do no justice to White’s arguments with respect to
their complexity or to the thinkers and sources they engage. Nor do they
constitute even an adequate summary. But they hopefully do convey the
general contours of an ambitious project. Offering substantive yet concise
evaluation of such an ambitious project also proves difficult. What should be
said, at minimum, is that White largely achieves the aims he sets for the
project. This is not to suggest that the individual analyses are beyond criticism.
Exception could be taken to the interpretation of key figures and even to the
foundational framing in terms of Kantian metaphysics and engagements with
Barth and those influenced one way or another by him. Focusing more than in
passing on such issues risks missing the point of the study in that White’s true
aim rests little, if at all, with the exposition itself of early modern or
contemporary figures and more with reiterating, articulating, and developing
the vital core of a Thomistic Christology in an idiom conversant with and
hopefully persuasive to modern Christologies otherwise suspicious of classical
metaphysics, natural theology, and the standard affirmations of Scholastic
Christology. All the more impressive is that White accomplishes this while
making serious and occasionally sustained use of modern biblical scholarship
as a vehicle facilitating the translation of Thomistic Christological commit-
ments rather than as their opponent. Students and scholars of Thomas
Aquinas, Scholastic Christology, modern theology, kenotic Christologies, and
many others will find much of enduring value in this impressive monograph.

COREY L. BARNES

Oberlin College
Oberlin, Ohio

The Practice of Catholic Theology: A Modest Proposal. By PAUL J. GRIFFITHS.

Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016.
Pp. xiii + 142. $29.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2890-7.

Paul Griffiths’s The Practice of Catholic Theology steps into the battlefields
over Catholic theology with “a modest proposal” that will be of interest both
 BOOK REVIEWS 601

to those just learning to be and to those already practiced in Catholic

theology. With characteristic clarity, originality, and compactness, he gives
dozens of very helpful “how-to” (xi) tips on practicing Catholic theology. He
also develops a concept of Catholic theology that is, in at least one crucial
way, explicitly a “minority” proposal. I highly recommend the many helpful
tips to all, those learning to practice as well as those practiced in Catholic
theology. But I will also offer a reading of his minority proposal that registers
some minor dissents on the way—all presuming, of course, that I have read
him correctly.
Griffiths’s book began as an invited lecture on “theological disagreement”
at the 2014 annual convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America
(published in the CTSA Proceedings). There Griffiths identified three tasks
that belong to the work of Catholic theology: discovery (under the authority
of Catholic bishops, obviously including the bishop of Rome), interpretation,
and perhaps most importantly, speculation. He then argued that, by not
making such episcopal discovery an explicit part of its mission, the CTSA (in
contrast to the Academy of Catholic Theology) was promoting a kind of
disagreement that undercut the disagreements over interpretation and specu-
lation essential to Catholic theology. Needless to say, the talk was intended to
be and is controversial.
That 2014 talk is now located “in a broader consideration of what theology
is and how it should be learned and performed” (xi). The earlier claim about
the episcopal establishment of church doctrine is legible in the book (132-34),
but not the particular polemical edge of the published talk—although Griffiths
persuasively insists that the practice of Catholic theology always involves agon
(struggle) and periodically antagonism (argumentative polemic) (125-29). To
use an analogy that Griffiths does not, his earlier polemic is a kind of
rhetorical “just war” and therefore presumes a range of conditions and ends,
lest it be confused nowadays with a kind of “total war.” Griffiths’s range of
conditions and ends is here organized as a series of forty-one brief, readable
sections, averaging about three and one-half pages, each a nugget of insight
and information. Here I merely take the reader through what I read as the
book’s three main movements, raising some questions on the way.
Griffiths’s first movement unpacks a “stipulative definition . . . of theology”
as a species of “reasoned discourse” (2). It is generically “reasoned discourse
about god (or the gods)” and specifically Christian “reasoned discourse about
the god who is the triune LORD, the god of Israel who became incarnate as
Jesus the Christ” (ibid.). Theology, both generically and specifically, aims at
“cognitive intimacy” with what or whom (in the case of Catholic theology) it
is about (ibid.). This might sound to incipient practitioners like a relatively
traditional Catholic distinction between natural and revealed theology. But it
is not identical to Vatican I’s distinction between a twofold object of
knowledge distinct in principle and object. Griffiths does not, of course, deny
such a distinction in its appropriate context, although this is not the only time
602 BOOK REVIEWS

some will wish for more comparison of his positions with precursor
traditions—in Griffiths’s terms, more “interpretation.”
In any case, getting a grip on this opening distinction requires keeping in
mind the book’s dedication and summary conclusion. Griffiths’s dedication
offers the book not only “to the church of Jesus Christ, which subsists in the
Catholic church” and “to the LORD” but also “to those who think and write
about the LORD in the church’s service” and “to those who think and write
about the LORD outside the church” (v). And his summary coda emphasizes
that theology has “a doubly open field”—“open . . . to anyone who wishes to
perform it by gaining the necessary knowledge and skill . . . [and] open . . . to
learning whatever can be learned from those who perform theology extra-
ecclesially” (134). Griffiths is helpful shifting a more typical question “What
can Catholic theology learn from others?” to “What can Catholics and non-
Catholics contribute to Catholic theology?” How can this be done?
The generic and specific forms of theology share “reasoned discourse,”
along with its aim at “cognitive intimacy.” Griffiths unpacks each element of
his stipulation, including “discourse” (3-6), “theology as discourse” (7-14),
and the LORD (15-18), which as “a name . . . does the same work as the
Hebrew tetragrammaton” (2). But Griffiths also sharply distinguishes
cognitive intimacy about the gods, god, or the LORD from “fleshly or
affective intimacy” (20)—like the difference between theology and confession,
or between “the offering of a description” and “the offering of a caress” (22).
This “deflates theology” (23)—and, it seems to me, “reasoned discourse”
more generically. But it also means that “Catholic theology, in the full and
proper sense, may, therefore, be done by those who are themselves not
Catholic—so Catholics ought to think, even though many of them do not”
(25). In still other words, “the LORD may have revealed things about the
LORD’s self to non-Catholic (and non-Christian) communities which remain
hidden from Catholics (it’s Catholic doctrine to affirm this of Jews)” (27).
Furthermore, the theology of the people of Israel “is the interlocutor of most
importance for Catholics, more even, than the theology done by non-Catholic
Christians” (29). Catholic theology can be practiced by those who love the
LORD. But it can also be practiced by demons and the otherwise indifferent
(42-43), and the morally depraved in small or large ways (44-48). Griffiths
knows that “so understanding the word ‘theology’ is a minority view within
the Catholic tradition” (42). Other “stipulative [definitions],” Griffiths admits,
are possible, and they “lead elsewhere” (3).
Does this mean Griffiths’s argument is based on mere “stipulation”? I do
not think so. His stipulation forces us to ask for the role of “definitions” in the
practice of Catholic theology. As he puts it, “If metaphor is language’s
dreamwork, stipulative definition is language’s (and therefore thought’s)
engine and pilot” (ibid.). So where does Griffiths’s stipulation lead? Here I
skip a number of helpful tips this stipulative definition enables Griffiths to
make (about various kinds of theology and Catholic theology) in order to
 BOOK REVIEWS 603

move to what I would call his second and third movements, after the
unpacking of his stipulative definition of “theology”: a discussion of
“theologians,” defined simply as those with “the necessary know-how (a
matter of intellectual skill) coupled with sufficient knowledge-that (a matter of
fluency produced by wide and deep reading in the tradition’s archive)” (41).
“Knowledge-that” is embodied in “the Catholic archive.” Some sections of the
archive are nontextual, but the archive is primarily, Griffiths argues, textual
(i.e., Scriptural, conciliar, magisterial, canonical, liturgical, and other
resources). Griffiths devotes about a quarter of the book (54-91) to taking the
reader through this archive. Yet it admittedly “is impossible for any
individual” to “be conversant with and responsive to the preserved archive in
its entirety” (55). The texts of theologians are included at the end, as befits the
deflation of theology: doctores ecclesiae and more contemporary readings
“mostly . . . from a perspective at odds with the one adopted here” (135-42).
For example, canonical Scripture is central and fundamental to the Catholic
archive, although Griffiths is careful to note that Scripture “has no place in
paradise and will have none in heaven” (57) and that even now in our fallen
world, “no natural language” (including Hebrew, Greek, or Latin) is “more
intimate with what the LORD has said than any other” (59). This is an explicit
critique of much Jewish and Protestant theology, as well as an implicit critique
of Catholic theology’s (and the magisterium’s) long promotion of the
Vulgate—unless we “interpret” that promotion as bound to passing pastoral
circumstances. But, again, more “interpretation” would help learners, but the
learned as well. Griffiths’s brief section on “magisterial texts” (71-73) notes
ways they are essential, even though they are not always easy to identify and
“aren’t beyond error, sometimes widespread and deep-going” (71). But I find
the recommendation or requirement that theologians “should kiss the textual
body of local episcopal teaching” an unnecessary step beyond cognitive
intimacy (72). Griffths’s remarks on canon law (78-81) and liturgy (81-87) are
splendid case studies of how “faith-filled and baptized Catholic [theologians]”
and “those doing Catholic theology from outside the church” will approach
the same archive differently but in mutually illuminating ways (80).
Addressing such issues requires not only “knowledge-that” of the archive
but also (in what I would describe as a third movement of his argument)
knowledge-how. Theologians’ know-how in using the archive is generic and
specific. The generic skills are those like fluency in Christian theological dis-
course, the ability to recognize and generate theological questions, to make
distinctions, and to argue one’s case. The theologically more specific skills are
(as Griffiths’s argued in his CTSA talk) the discovery of settled matters,
interpretive questioning of such matters, and speculation about unsettled
issues using theology’s generic skills (91-94). These skills are mutually re-
quired not like a ladder but more like a “feedback loop” or a “multi-linked
helix” (93), including “intellectual imagination” (95-96).
604 BOOK REVIEWS

It seems to me that Griffiths’s case for Catholic theology as a doubly open

intellectual enterprise climaxes when he turns to unpacking “fluency in the
grammar of Christian theology . . . [, which is] the first and essential tool of
[the] trade” (97). Section 27 on ”fluency” is the longest of the book, but the
discussion of fluency includes several other sections. I here abstract and
contrast two elements of this fluency. One of the key grammatical rules for
fluency (or what Griffiths also calls a “mnemonic” for such a rule) is, quoting
a maxim from Bonaventure, “every kind of cognition is theology’s slave”
(101)—a maxim important enough for Griffiths to also include it in the book’s
dedication (v). This maxim “at least” means “theology provides an interpretive
frame for [other reasoned discourses] which they cannot provide for
[theology] or for themselves”—“an unframeable frame” (100, 101). This
strikes me (as I think it would also strike Thomas Aquinas) as a good
“grammatical” rule, a good case of reasoned discourse about reasoned
discourse. It also makes clear one sense in which non-Catholics can do
Catholic theology: by learning such grammatical rules and how they apply to
specific cases, even cases when Catholic theology claims to provide an
unframeable frame for what the non-Catholic student of Catholic theology
takes as “frameable.”
Fluency (Griffiths says) also includes learning “to enter and occupy the
phenomenological attitude toward what they [those, whether Catholic or not,
doing Catholic theology] read”—that is, they “learn . . . to look closely at
what’s ordinarily transparent and unremarked” in the archive (106). Here
fluency includes more than knowing the grammar of reasoned discourse. It
includes probing the archive, seeking out the “unremarked.” A key example of
the execution of the phenomenological attitude is Aquinas’s discussion of fear
in STh II-II, q. 19, a. 11 (109-16). Although Griffiths does not make this
point, it seems to me that the phenomenological attitude, practiced by
Catholics or non-Catholics within the grammar of Catholic faith, could lead to
novel insights and even reforms of Catholic reasoned discourse—opening the
possibility of non-Catholics’ as well as Catholics’ proposing such reforms.
If I am right to read Griffiths’s proposal in three movements, I think this
book is an unrivaled contribution to arguments in and over Catholic theology.
Such arguments can now be taken as arguments over “the practice of Catholic
theology”—over one or more of his threefold movement—as a whole or in its
many details. In view of the many sorts of pietism in pulpit and pew, I am
generally sympathetic to Griffiths’s unrelenting focus on “reasoned discourse”
about the LORD, allowing all God’s creatures (Catholics and not) to
contribute to the practice, even as Griffiths “deflates” theology, and, more
generally, reasoned discourse. I doubt this will persuade most of those in
“Catholic Studies” to call what they are doing “Catholic theology,” but what
is primarily at stake in this book is how Catholic theology should take them,
not how they take themselves. And I would relish Griffiths’s further theology
of the Trinitarian Word as a context for our reasoned discourse in general and
 BOOK REVIEWS 605

in Catholic theology in particular. But that must surely be for another time
and place. It is more than enough to have given some new footing to our
arguments over Catholic theology.

JAMES J. BUCKLEY

Loyola University Maryland

Baltimore, Maryland

Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations. By GARY SELIN. Washington, D.C.:

The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Pp. xxi + 210.
$29.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-2841-9.

Is the “law of celibacy” only an ecclesiastical tradition, or might it also be

an apostolic tradition? Does this long-standing discipline chiefly serve a
practical purpose, or does it have theological roots attached to the nature of
the priesthood? Do the theological arguments advanced to support it depend
on flawed and obsolete theories, or has there been a doctrinal development
that supplies a positive and convincing rationale? Is the celibate vocation of
secular priests the same as or different from the vocation to chastity in the
consecrated life?
In Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations, Fr. Gary Selin addresses
these questions and opts for the second alternative in each instance. He
presents the case for “continence-celibacy” as an apostolic tradition whose
theological roots reveal it to be profoundly suitable to the nature of the
priesthood, above all to the episcopate. He shows how the Second Vatican
Council’s theological arguments concerning the Christological, ecclesiological,
and eschatological dimensions of priestly celibacy have been developed into a
solid, positive rationale. Given this new context, he is able to discover how
celibacy, as a charism, is integral, though not essential, to the priesthood, and
how it is ordered, not only to personal asceticism, but also to priestly ministry
and in particular to the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Selin successfully establishes his thesis that the reasons for observing
priestly celibacy are doctrinal and not merely pragmatic or disciplinary. He
documents a development that shifts attention from the doctrinal reasons
given in the past—ritual purity and the superiority of consecrated celibacy to
the married state—to those that highlight the imitation of Christ’s own
celibate condition, the newness of his priesthood, and his role as the
Bridegroom who sacrifices his life for the Church. This project is in some ways
related to the task of defending the Church’s practice of reserving priestly
ordination to men. It requires retracing the history of the tradition with the
606 BOOK REVIEWS

help of contemporary scholarship, evaluating inadequate and incomplete

explanations, and formulating theological arguments of fittingness that are
fully evangelical and supported by the analogy of faith.
In treating the biblical foundations of priestly celibacy, Selin distinguishes
texts that portray virginity or celibacy as a Christian ideal for everyone (Matt
19:11-12; 1 Cor 7:25-40; and Matt 22:30-32) from those that seem to re-
quire continence of the Church’s ministers—bishops (1 Tim 3:2), presbyters
(Titus 1:6), and deacons (1 Tim 3:12). He draws on Ignace de la Potterie’s
theory that “man (or husband) of one wife” in the Pastoral Letters is a
technical expression referring to the early Church’s practice of ordaining
mature married men with the expectation that they would thereafter be bound
by perfect and perpetual continence. The scholarly study of “continence-
celibacy” in the patristic era (e.g., the work of Christian Cochini, Alfons
Stickler, Stefan Heid, and Roman Cholij—building on the earlier thesis of
Gustav Bickell) favors this interpretation and offers new grounds for dis-
covering the antiquity, and possible apostolic authority, of clerical celibacy. A
growing consensus has gradually replaced the view that the Church imposed
the discipline of celibacy on the clergy at a much later date. Selin’s summary
of the historical evidence will help make the origins of the practice better
known, and it corrects the impression that the argument from ritual purity is
indebted to non-Christian influence. Selin gives a brief account of the
subsequent history and theology of celibacy in the Latin Church, leading up to
the Funk-Bickell debate and the seminal work of other nineteenth-century
scholars such as Johann Adam Möhler, Blessed John Henry Newman, and
Matthias Scheeben. He points out, however, that the reasons given to justify
clerical celibacy in the early twentieth century were often merely pragmatic
(e.g., freedom from distractions and worldly concerns), or defensive and
apparently negative (ritual purity, superiority to marriage).
The teaching of the Second Vatican Council on priestly celibacy (especially
Optatam Totius 10 and Presbyterorum Ordinis 16) draws more fully on the
New Testament and introduces the three positive dimensions—Christological,
ecclesiological, and eschatological—that have been developed by the post-
conciliar magisterium. Instead of featuring the appeal to ritual purity and the
superiority of the celibate life to marriage, the magisterium directs attention to
the person and example of Jesus, the “newness” of Christian virginity and
celibacy, and their potential for dynamic association with Christ’s own priestly
ministry and for spiritual “fruitfulness” or paternity. Selin takes the reader
through this development, document by document, with special attention to
Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, Pope John Paul II’s apostolic
exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis, and the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
Selin then recapitulates the arguments for the suitability of priestly celibacy
in a systematic treatment (necessarily quite repetitious) of the threefold
scheme. The Christological dimension focuses on a configuration to and
following of Christ—in his consecration, or manner of life, as well as in his
 BOOK REVIEWS 607

mission and priestly ministry. Celibacy is identified as a divine gift or charism

that accompanies and supports the priest’s call to radical discipleship and his
mission to act in persona Christi capitis Ecclesiae. According to Selin,
episcopal celibacy (which remains an obligation in the Eastern Churches) is
the preeminent manifestation of this charism. The ecclesiological dimension
follows from the priest’s configuration to Christ in his relationship to the
Church. A nuptial-ecclesiological understanding of his priestly service to the
Church finds expression in his offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The
rehabilitated ritual-purity argument is now situated in the context of the New
Covenant and Christ’s loving self-gift to the Church as her Bridegroom (Eph
5:25) and the spiritual Father of her offspring. It is recast as the “purity of
nuptial love for the Church” rather than “purity from personal sexual defile-
ment” (150). In his lengthy section on the ecclesiological dimension, Selin
makes good use of the Christological motifs (especially Christ the Bridegroom
and the sacrifice of the New Covenant) that the magisterium has used for the
defense of a male-only priesthood. He extends this speculative section still
further by examining the motif of spiritual paternity as a manly expression of
pastoral charity. The eschatological dimension of ministerial celibacy is
elaborated in light of New Testament sources (Matt 22:30; 1 Cor 7:31; Luke
18:28-30) and in terms of “the priest’s union with Christ through liturgical
and intercessory prayer” (154). Priestly celibacy is a vivid sign of faith in the
resurrection of the dead. In this third chapter, on the three dimensions of
priestly celibacy, Selin draws together a number of important themes and
suggests several fruitful avenues for further investigation.
The fourth chapter presents constructive proposals for a “Eucharistic-
Eschatological” theology of priestly celibacy focused on mediation and for a
theology, inspired by Pope Benedict XVI’s formulation in Sacramentum
Caritatis 24, that links the Eucharist and pastoral charity. Overall, Selin makes
the case that there is much to be gained from a deeper exploration of the
doctrine that accompanies the discipline of priestly continence and celibacy,
and he marks out many paths that such an exploration might pursue. Probably
because the book began as a doctoral dissertation on the tradition and
theology of priestly celibacy in the Latin Church, the author deliberately
leaves to one side such related questions as the practice of the Christian East,
the admission of married clergy from other ecclesial communions to holy
orders in the Catholic Church, and the present discussion of whether con-
tinence is required of married men ordained to the diaconate.
Selin treats only briefly the significance of the fact that both East and West
require celibacy of bishops. This is surely related, however, to the ascetical
dimension of clerical celibacy, something common to priestly celibacy and the
vocation to consecrated life. The practice of drawing bishops from religious
institutes (in the West) or monasteries (in the East) highlights the importance
of fostering and maintaining institutes of consecrated life wherever married
men are ordained as priests of the second order. It is worth noting that the
608 BOOK REVIEWS

council also treated virginity and celibacy in the consecrated life as a charism.
Moreover, it also chose to replace the traditional rationale for the vowed
life—the progressive renunciation of goods, as worked out by St. Thomas
Aquinas (STh II-II, q. 186), which is mentioned only in passing—with a
Christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological elaboration of its value
(Lumen Gentium 43-44; Perfectae Caritatis 12-14). Because the council
fathers were concerned with both women and men religious, including those
in holy orders, they did not attempt to specify differences between virginity
and celibacy in the consecrated life and in the priesthood.
As Selin points out, the new approach does not so much abandon the
argument from ritual purity as resituate it in a new and more comprehensive
context. Perhaps the same can be said of the argument from the objective
superiority of consecrated virginity or celibacy to marriage. While many
suppose that this cannot and should not be sustained, given the council’s
robust teaching on the universal call to holiness and the goodness of sacra-
mental marriage (Lumen Gentium 39-40; Gaudium et Spes 37-52), the
argument is, in fact, mentioned in Optatam Totius 10, and footnote 23 of that
paragraph cites the section of Sacra Virginitas (1954) in which Pius XII says
that this has been dogmatically defined. Pope Saint John Paul II, on several
occasions (Familiaris Consortio 6; Mulieris Dignitatem 22; Vita Consecrata 18,
32 and 105), continued to appeal to this argument as it pertains to the
consecrated life.
It is interesting to learn from Selin’s book that theologians in the decades
prior to the council (Joseph Lecuyer, Wilhelm Bertrams, Odo Casel) had
associated the celibate bishop or priest with the figure of Christ as Bridegroom
of the Church (as had Bonaventure). The nuptial-ecclesiological argument in
Inter Insigniores (1976), then, is not a novelty, hastily constructed to bar
women from priestly ordination, but was already in place. A related question,
the tradition of regarding the bishop as “bridegroom” of his diocese (or the
“friend of the bridegroom,” the “friend” leading the Church to Christ), needs
to be explored further. Archbishop Charles J. Brown has begun this project in
his thesis on The Development of the Concept of the Spousal Relationship
between Bishop and Local Church in the West to the Ninth Century
(Sant’Anselmo, 2008).
The Charism of Priestly Celibacy: Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral
Reflections, edited by John C. Cavadini (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 2012)
would be a good companion for Selin’s book. In particular, the chapters on
biblical foundations (Mary Healy), the origin and practice of priestly celibacy
in the early Church (Joseph Lienhard, S.J., who has reservations about
Cochini’s and Heid’s claims), and the virginity of Jesus the priest (Archbishop
Allen Vigneron) provide a valuable and vigorous complement to his study.
Aidan Nichols, in an appendix to his text Holy Order (Dublin: Veritas, 1990),
offers important insights into some consequences Eastern practice has for the
concept of the priesthood.
 BOOK REVIEWS 609

Priestly Celibacy makes a significant contribution to the theology of priestly

celibacy in the Latin Church. It demonstrates that celibacy can no longer be
regarded simply as a matter of discipline, enforced by law, that the Church has
the power to change. It is necessary, rather, to appreciate its character as a
charism, a gift of the Holy Spirit, intrinsically related to the ministerial
priesthood and to the Eucharist.

SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T.

University of Saint Mary of the Lake

Mundelein, Illinois

A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies. By EDWARD T. OAKES, S.J. Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2016. Pp. xxii + 248. $28.00 (paper).
ISBN: 978-0-8028-7320-0.

In each of these six essays, Edward Oakes nobly endeavors to resolve a

seemingly intractable dispute. He contends that “antinomies” beset each side
of each dispute and then strives towards a higher viewpoint that integrates the
truths of competing theses without correlative drawbacks. Methodologically,
Oakes offers a well-rounded approach, employing a wide variety of resources.
He grounds his claims in Scripture in light of recent scholarly advances and
canvasses various theological and secular usages of salient words (“grace,”
“sin,” “justification,” “righteousness,” etc.). He traces key, sometimes rival,
theological traditions. He employs literature, history, widely acknowledged
scientific findings, and words of saints. In each essay, he develops his thesis
systematically upon these foundations, following such luminaries as John
Henry Newman, Matthias Scheeben, Karl Barth, and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Of course, it is common to seek the middle between extremes. Success
requires accurate identification of “thesis” and “antithesis.” Precision and
wisdom must work hand in hand for this task and for the construction of
viable alternative syntheses. To evaluate Oakes’s achievement, I highlight two
chapters and touch on others, noting features running through the essays.
Chapter 1, “Nature and Grace,” constitutes a remarkable effort to achieve
balance between the concerns in a significant dispute. Henri de Lubac claimed
that there is an innate desire for the beatific vision, while certain twentieth-
century Thomists claimed that the innate desire is for a naturally attainable
happiness. Lawrence Feingold’s noteworthy dissertation/book (The Natural
Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters [2001,
2010]) rekindled this discussion. Oakes recognizes that the slogans
“extrinsicist” and “intrinsicist” are clumsy: no extrinsicist severs creation from
610 BOOK REVIEWS

Christ, and no intrinsicist makes eternal life something God “owes” (7). Still,
Oakes indicates, one can “veer” toward views that the slogans indicate, some
stressing the continuity of nature and grace in the one will of God to deify and
others stressing the discontinuity between man’s sinful state and God’s saving
initiative (12). Oakes appreciates the extrinsicist desire to preserve the gratuity
of grace and the loftiness of our calling. Still, he submits, the denial of a
natural desire for grace, if it “becomes too one-sided,” cannot cope with Paul’s
teaching that creation “does indeed ‘groan’” (23). Oakes briefly conducts the
reader through “two sets” of texts in Aquinas’s corpus, each supportive of
either extreme. As Oakes makes clear, at stake is not simply Aquinas’s text but
the truth of things.
Following Andrew Swafford’s lead, Oakes alights on Scheeben as providing
principles for a resolution. The move is surprising: of all people, Scheeben
starkly distinguished nature and grace. Notwithstanding, Scheeben agreed
with de Lubac that people are moved not by arguments from natural reason
but by the manifestation of faith’s supernatural beauty. More, Scheeben
proposed that grace and nature enjoy a “nuptial union,” an image more
intimate than that of a second story topping off a perfectly good first story.
Scheeben grounded this marital imagery in the effect of the Incarnation,
whereby the human race is caught up in the hypostatic prerogatives of Christ.
Accordingly, just as it is right that “this man, who is the Son,” receives an
abundance of grace, so it is right that those who through baptism are stamped
with Christ’s character and brought into his sonship receive sanctifying graces.
Distinction is in service of union.
This sketch should indicate the valiant nature of Oakes’s undertaking.
Perhaps the project succeeds; it does have weaknesses. First, Oakes presents
the “extrinsicist” tradition as regarding the relationship between sinful man
and grace. This description fails to identify the issue; primordially at stake is
the relationship of man qua man, considered as such and apart from sin, to
grace. This slip and others signal imprecision in Oakes’s account. There is a
delightful character to his broad brushstrokes, but this breadth is coupled with
the risk of eclectic incompletion. Second, Oakes reads innate desire as
synonymous with natural and as opposed to elicited (27); by contrast,
Feingold demonstrates that some natural desires are elicited. What Feingold
means by “innate desire” is a desire or inclination ever present and also
unconditional; elicited desires, even if natural, are not necessarily always
present and are not necessarily unconditional. Third, Oakes denies (30) that
Aquinas entertained the notion of debitum naturae, although recent
scholarship has demonstrated the opposite.
Of course, more important is whether Oakes’s employment of Scheeben
(Swafford’s work cannot be addressed here) succeeds in moving toward the
reconciliation of positions dubbed extreme. First, it remains a question
whether all positions dubbed “extrinsicist” constitute an errant extreme.
Oakes does not demonstrate this but takes it as a starting point. Not all theses,
 BOOK REVIEWS 611

however, are susceptible of dialectical treatment: “God is a Trinity” is not a

one-sided, half-true and half-misleading statement. Second, it remains unclear
exactly how Scheeben’s account alters any fundamental claims of the best
accounts of the thesis that an innate desire must be for an end naturally
attainable. I suggest that Scheeben proposes a deeper foundation for this very
thesis with his analogy: As the humanity of Christ subsists as the Son’s
humanity and thus deserves a plenitude of sanctifying graces, so the human
race, as incorporated into Christ, is entitled to a share in sanctifying graces.
Crucially, the first part of this analogy regards two graces, that of union and
the habit of grace. As Scheeben would acknowledge, human nature is in
obediential potency to both graces. Presupposing the grace of union as actual,
one can conclude that the assumed humanity must have an abundance of the
habit of grace. Similarly, the incorporation of this or that person into Christ is
a grace upon which other graces follow: baptism mediates this incorporation
(on this, Oakes is taciturn), conferring a character that links the baptized with
Christ and thus entitles him to a share in the habit of grace. Even granting
Scheeben’s analogy, an outstanding issue remains, namely, the obediential
potency of human nature for grace. Third, concerning this, Scheeben’s project
shows that one can articulate the relevance of grace on the premise that nature
as such has a connatural end and thus would not be necessarily tragic were
grace not offered. God touches the depths of the real man through graces:
there is no juxtaposition of two realms, but the human substance, capable of
grace, is really actualized by grace. Contradictorily, de Lubac argues that
unless nature is necessarily tragic without grace, it has no true aptitude for
grace. De Lubac excludes limbo, against Scheeben’s principles but to Oakes’s
approval. Fourth, deftly navigating between Michel Baius and Pelagius, Oakes
concludes that the nature with which we are conceived is that which God
could have created without grace. This eye-catching conclusion follows from
Scheeben’s principles (see Scheeben, Natur und Gnade [Mainz, 1861], 251).
But the foregoing considerations suggest that Oakes’s synthesis may not have
hit the mark. Fifth, woven into Scheeben’s proposal is the affirmation of
nonappropriated Trinitarian relations ad extra. Regarding this affirmation,
some juries are still out.
Chapter 2, “Sin and Justification,” contains Oakes’s most involved use of
Scripture scholarship. He follows the New Perspective on Paul, which replaces
psychological interpretations (Augustine, Luther) with a functional one.
According to the latter, the aim of the doctrine of justification by faith is “to
ensure Gentile inclusion in the people of God” (64). Oakes later returns to
this corporate theme via Balthasar and Pope Benedict XVI. Oakes also
countenances dogmatic tensions, especially that between forensic and
imparted notions of justification. Claiming antinomic features of both sides,
he views dogmatic stances as entailing church-dividing hardenings. Leaning on
Newman’s masterful Lectures on Justification, he claims that forensic readings
imply an unacceptable view of God as either unable or unwilling to render
612 BOOK REVIEWS

sinners holy. This critique, Newman’s most incisive, is irrefutable. Positively,

Oakes claims that the forensic side rightly seeks to avoid pride and foster
humility. Unmentioned are other crucial concerns: consolation from terror,
assurance of salvation, a way to “disinterested love,” and so on. Astutely,
Oakes calls proponents of imparted justification to address the issue of
humility versus pride. Here, however, his strategy runs aground: “Only the
infusion of justifying grace tells us how much we continue to depend on God’s
forensic decree that we are innocent even though we know we are guilty”
(74). This statement, having a family resemblance with Girolamo Seripando’s
rejected theory of duplex iustitia, is problematic. Trent dogmatically declared
that the newly baptized are innocent and immaculate (Denzinger-
Schönmetzer, Enchiridion [DS], 1515); that all justified persons are “truly
called just and . . . are just” (DS 1529); that observance of God’s command-
ments, which is necessary for salvation (DS 1570), is for them possible (DS
1536); and that they can avoid all mortal sins (DS 1537). Of course, the
justified are often guilty of venial sins, which in essence are distinct from
mortal sins (DS 1920), and they suffer from concupiscence, which however is
not sin (DS 1515). In contradiction, Lutherans generally teach that every
man—justified or unjustified—sins in every work, that all sins are damnable,
that obedience to the commandments is not necessary for salvation, and that
of all sins concupiscence ranks the worst. On these points, Oakes is silent.
Oakes also submits that the one problem Lutherans had with a central
decree of Trent (DS 1529) was the connection of justifying grace with
cooperation. He rightly points out that one must not forget Trent’s exclusion
of our merit from justification: God is the efficient cause and Christ the
meritorious cause. Unfortunately, Oakes gives no explicit attention to another
critical issue, the identity of the formal cause of justification. Trent taught the
formal cause to be the very justice that is from God and infused into the
human person, rendering him truly holy. The formal cause was the very point
upon which Seripando’s suggestion faltered and with which Newman never
fully grappled. Further, in the discussion of merit, Oakes omits to cite Trent’s
dispositive canon 32 and chapter 16 (DS 1582, 1545-50). Before concluding,
the chapter appeals against individualism to the notions of communal
participation in sin and Christ’s assumption of guilt. These appeals (woven
throughout the essays) call for but do not receive distinctions. First, Christ did
not assume guilt (DS 261, 294, 496, 543) but its consequence. What would it
say about God had he transferred guilt to the innocent? Second, while
influenced by the community, sin has its fundamental root in individual free
choice (John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 16, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis
77 [1985]: 217).
Space precludes detailed treatment of other chapters, although each shares
the strengths and weaknesses of the first two. Chapter 3 works to reconcile
evolution with original sin. Oakes presents a rich protology (another theme
woven throughout) and nobly strives to defend a carefully defined mono-
 BOOK REVIEWS 613

genism. As with recent accounts of protology, further distinctions are needed.

Is the world created “in the humanity” of Christ? Does a protological account
deny Adam’s commission of a primal sin? Does protology recognize nature (in
us) as prior to grace in the order of substance (grace being the further
actualization of nature)? Further, I do not find that Oakes affirms the
following teachings: original sin involves true although not personal guilt (DS
1515), is transmitted by propagation (1513), renders one worthy of
damnation (DS 858), and is a sine qua non reason that real human beings
suffer death (DS 1511f). Whereas one may legitimately argue for the salvation
of nonbaptized deceased infants, Oakes’s sustained mockery of Augustine and
of the notion of baptism as “celestial insurance” inhibits his adequate
appropriation of doctrines authoritatively independent of Augustine.
Chapter 4 defends the simultaneous truths of divine omnipotence and
human freedom against the pessimism of Augustine (and Calvin). With Barth,
Oakes holds omnipotence to work for universal salvation, although he follows
Balthasar in denying any systematic certainty of result. Oakes’s reading of
predestination as “a retrospective doctrine” (146) seems to dodge the issue.
One wishes that merit were addressed here.
Chapter 5, “Experience and Divinization,” may be the strongest. Oakes
highlights a crucial question: If something, X, is never experienced, of what
relevance is it? So, if grace is not experienced, of what relevance is it? Of
course, Oakes knows full well that the experience of grace is not to be taken
in a crude way. Moreover, he wisely critiques Cartesian solipsism and the
sentimental displacement of the act of “converting” with the amorphous
“conversion experience” (197). Oakes’s Ignatian spirit comes to the fore here,
with sound direction concerning discernment of spirits (consolations and
desolations, each judged according to the state of the soul) nicely correlated
with postmodern philosophy (presences and absences). Above all, Christian
experience must be based on self-denial. The section on divinization is not as
well developed, although Oakes offers an edifying vindication of Cyril of
Alexandria: the Son divinizes man by undergoing all human experiences.
Chapter 6 seeks common ground with Protestantism on the doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception of Mary. This doctrine regards an unmerited blessing
and thus highlights the character of grace as pure gift. Oakes creatively draws
on Scotus’s notion of predestination and suggests its convergence with Barth’s
notion of the same. The strategy of highlighting divine causality is effective,
albeit limited, for it does not address the product of that causality. The
product is, first, a plenitude of sanctifying grace—the formal cause of
justification. The secondary product is meritorious activity, which involves the
cooperation (which Oakes, as a Jesuit, rightly wants to uphold) and also the
coredeeming activity of Mary. This twofold product is the heart of the
Catholic-Protestant dispute.
In short, these essays exemplify a fruitful way of doing theology. They
attempt to identify weaknesses of extreme positions and pursue resolutions to
614 BOOK REVIEWS

disputes. Still, precision and adequate dogmatic foundations are required for
this task and for viable alternative proposals. On these two points, the actual
achievements of these essays fall short. The collection can be helpful in gradu-
ate courses on anthropology, provided that the inadequacies are addressed.

CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY

University of Dallas
Irving, Texas

Freedom and Self-Creation: Anselmian Libertarianism. By KATHERIN A.

ROGERS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 248. $74.00
(cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-874397-2.

Katherin Rogers is no stranger to the topic of Anselm and his account of

free choice. Her previous book Anselm on Freedom (Oxford University Press,
2008) was dedicated to an exposition of Anselm’s account of the will. While
the earlier book did bring Anselm’s view into dialogue with some
contemporary arguments and positions, its main focus was Anselm as an
historical figure and understanding his views. The present book takes an
“Anselmian” position, one grounded in Anselm’s original arguments but that
is Rogers’s own, stated in contemporary terms and in response to
contemporary debates. She calls it “Anselmian” so as to make explicit its
historical roots, its presuppositions, and its entailments. Importantly, Rogers
wants to recognize and use, rather than sweep under the rug, “Anselm’s own
theist perspective” (3). This is important because it makes explicit the way
Anselm’s views are connected to his theism. Rogers points out that all the
positions on free will—libertarian, compatibilist, and determinist—have their
own grounding intuitions and presuppositions, analogous to Anselm’s theism,
and that those need to be outed so that the discussion is as complete as
possible. “Intuitions” grounding those views “may be,” as she puts it,
“significantly colored by their background worldview” (6). This is true not just
for Anselm and other theists but also for thinkers like Daniel Dennett, who
frames the questions of whether and what sort of free will we have around the
question, “Why do we want free will?” A theist and an Epicurean will answer
that question differently. The point is that as philosophers puzzle over
narrowly drawn questions, they are motivated by but not transparent about
the intuitions that drive them toward defending or critiquing a position on a
more minor issue. Further, Rogers argues that since so many arguments about
free choice use the conceit of a “controller,” it is simply clearer and easier to
use the notion of an omnipotent, omniscient God performing this function
 BOOK REVIEWS 615

rather than an imagined figure, and thus to make the point incompatibilists
like to make more effectively. (Rogers does not argue that elaborate sci-fi
creations about mad-scientist controllers are distractions from the issue we
actually care about, but she might have.) Rogers also makes the important
point that contemporary discussions tend to blur the distinction between
“Should we hold you responsible?” and “Are you responsible?” If there is no
way your responsibility can be truly assessed, then the questions become
elided. Bringing in God as “an ideal observer” can help distinguish these
questions: while we may not be able to know, God could. It is important as a
way of pointing out (though Rogers does not quite put it this way) that what
we really want to know is, are we responsible? And I take it she wants to try to
answer that question instead of just moving to the pragmatic question.
The book is divided into two basic parts: chapters 1 through 4 explain the
basic elements of the Anselmian view, and chapters 5 through 8 defend the
Anselmian view from contemporary objections to libertarianism. Rogers
defends the Anselmian view against the objections Alfred Mele makes against
“internalism,” views that “[focus] on the structure of the immediate choice”
(33). She argues that the Anselmian view succeeds against this kind of criticism
better than Robert Kane’s version of libertarianism. She takes on Harry
Frankfurt’s compatibilism, which attempts to show that we can be responsible
even without being able (ultimately) to choose otherwise. She devotes two
chapters to what she calls the “luck” problem of libertarianism. If the agent’s
choice is undetermined when he might have chosen otherwise and nothing in
his past or character dictates that choice, then it seems the choice is a matter
of luck. David Hume makes this sort of argument, though Rogers responds to
Mele, Peter van Inwagen, and those who have made and criticized libertarian
attempts to ground free choice in probability or possible world theories. The
last chapter takes up what Rogers calls “the tracing problem.” The tracing
problem emerges out of the tracing thesis, that is, that we are responsible for
choices that emerge out of our settled character where we could not really
have chosen otherwise. We are responsible because those choices can be
traced back to a choice at which there was a real option to do otherwise in the
past. The objection is that I cannot be responsible for my settled character
unless that choice (or choices) in the past that formed it was made with the
knowledge that this would be a character-forming choice.
Throughout, Rogers defends a truly libertarian account of freedom in
which we as agents are able to “participate in our own creation by making
ourselves better on our own” (24). Anselm argues that if everything, including
our basic desires and inclinations, is given to us by God, and if we must, as
Aristotle argued, desire our own happiness as our end, then the choices we
make are as a matter of morality and merit attributable to the creator, not the
individual creature, who merely enacts his or her natural inclination. In
response, Anselm argues that we have to be responsible and that we can only
be held responsible if choices are really from us, that is, if we contribute
616 BOOK REVIEWS

something new. Critics of libertarianism have argued that the notion of self-
creation in libertarianism is incoherent. What is unique about Anselm’s
position is that he can avoid this criticism, because he does not hold that we
create ourselves out of whole cloth; rather, everything about us is given (not
self-created). Free choice emerges because God gives the creature two wills, or
affectiones, one for justice and one for benefit (commodum), which can
conflict. The choice between those two wills is, then, really a se, from us, even
though what we choose with and what we choose between have been given.
With this, Anselm achieves strong libertarian freedom without having to posit
any “sui generis powers.” Rogers calls this kind of libertarianism “parsi-
monious agent-causation.” Aseity is for Anselm real but limited in two senses.
First, we choose out of the inclinations we do not create but find ourselves
with; second, our free choice is negative, i.e., not to abandon one of those
wills or inclinations.
This is the kind of libertarianism Rogers defends as “Anselmian.” She does
not commit to the particular two affectiones—for justice and benefit—given in
Anselm, arguing only that the options must be “morally significant” and that
“the mechanics of a free choice could be the same on other views of what
constitutes morally better and worse choices” (87). Nonetheless, it is
something like Anselm’s “will for justice” that Rogers explains as making
choices morally salient. Her explanation of the desire for justice uses
Frankfurt’s notion of “a second-order desire,” “a desire about what basic
desires for benefit should be embraced . . . and restrained” (89). Thus per
Rogers, “the desire for justice is a second-order desire about how to regulate
our first-order desires” (118). Rogers, of course, does not follow Frankfurt
into compatibilism. While Frankfurt makes freedom and responsibility hang
on whether one has second-order desires even if those second-order desires
have been causally determined, Rogers insists that the choice between justice
and benefit as neither internally nor externally constrained is the necessary
condition for true freedom. Nonetheless, Rogers reads Anselm as a
eudaimonist, arguing that the “over-arching life goal . . . is to flourish as a
human agent” (73). This seems to me to read too much Aristotle (whom
Anselm never read) into Anselm. Anselm, while admitting that the desire for
benefit is omnipresent, also says that our purpose is to love the supreme
Good, and not as or for our benefit. But this is a debate about how to
interpret Anselm; Rogers’s Anselmian position is libertarian and eudaimonist.
Though I am not sure she can pull this off, Rogers’s way of explicating free
choice as operating at the meta-level is appealing: choosing to keep righteous-
ness (or not) means asking ourselves, given who we are, do we choose to
continue or to veer in a different direction? That other direction has to be part
of us as original equipment as well, but the crossroads moment occurs when
those two inclinations conflict, and we must choose between them.
The virtues of the Anselmian position Rogers elucidates are many. First, it
both allows for self-creation, giving true freedom and, thus, dignity to the
 BOOK REVIEWS 617

human condition, while also making freedom limited to the choice of whether
or not to continue to will. Moreover, this account of free will allows for
responsibility even in imperfect human agents (contra Mele, whose standards
for autonomy take a great deal of the choices we make out of the realm of that
for which we can be held responsible). Rogers gives a convincing response to
Frankfurt’s counterexamples, which attempt to show that we can be
responsible without having libertarian freedom. The counterexamples focus
on scenarios in which the person chooses to do what they would be coerced or
manipulated into doing if they did not (thus they were not able to “do
otherwise,” yet we still count them as responsible for their choice). Rogers
argues that the issue is not external deeds but internal acts of will; thus my
choice to stay in the room I do not know is locked is unproblematically free.
Rogers also manages to marry an account of libertarian freedom to a theory of
virtue ethics. The fairly rare but pivotal a se choices become the foundations
for virtues (or vices). When acting out of a formed virtue or vice, I do not
experience a true conflict or open options about whether to continue in this
vein. Thus in some sense, it is not possible that I will act differently. But I can
be held morally responsible for those acts because those virtuous or vicious
acts depend on previous a se choices (she calls this “the tracing thesis”). Her
account, in addition, allows for degrees of responsibility and responds to the
criticism of libertarianism that it makes those free choices unintelligible or
random since they by definition do not spring from preexisting character;
responsibility for a libertarian is “not . . . the character that led to the choice,
but the character produced by the choice” (175). Moreover, Rogers makes a
convincing case that locating the freedom in the moment of choice rather than
preceding it (over against Kane) better preserves its moral character. Insofar as
Kane and others attempt to build libertarian free choices on probability, they
“[play] into the critic’s claim that libertarian choice involves responsibility-
denying luck” (193). Thus, “probability talk . . . is better abandoned” (ibid.).
All of this is packaged in the kind of argument, examples, jargon, and
abbreviations that are the norm among analytic philosophers. Some readers
(this one included) may find this distracting and even at times a trivializing of
the importance and depth of the points being made. And there are times
where it seems like a waste to give a good argument against a position or
example that is a mere puzzle rather than a meaningful contribution to the
discussion. But Rogers makes a strong case for the “Anselmian” view of
freedom, and one can only hope that philosophers working on the issue of
free choice consult it and take the “Anselmian” position seriously.

EILEEN SWEENEY

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
618 BOOK REVIEWS

Why Only Us: Language and Evolution. By ROBERT C. BERWICK and NOAM
CHOMSKY. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 215.
$22.95 (cloth), $15.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-262-03424-1 (cloth),
978-0-262-53349-2 (paper).

What, if anything, distinguishes Homo sapiens, made in the image and

likeness of God, from all the other animal species in creation? Today, this is a
highly disputed question that comes with a plethora of often contradictory
answers from biologists, philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and many
others. However, for Robert C. Berwick, a professor of computational lin-
guistics, and Noam Chomsky, an institute professor and internationally
renowned linguist, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the
specific difference that defines our species is clear: human language, properly
understood, is what uniquely separates us from the other animals.
In this relatively short but fascinating book, Berwick and Chomsky provide
philosophers and theologians—indeed, basically any nonspecialist who is not
familiar with evolutionary theory or linguistics—with an overview of
contemporary biolinguistics, which is the study of language as an object in the
biological world. It is a summary of what we know about the nature and the
evolutionary history of human language, written by two of the world’s
foremost practitioners in the field.
First, for Berwick and Chomsky, human language, rightly understood, is
the product of an evolved biological capacity that gives human beings “the
ability to construct a digitally infinite array of hierarchically structured ex-
pressions with determinate interpretations” (110). This ability can be reduced
to a basic compositional operation that they call “Merge.” It is an operation
that takes two linguistic objects as arguments—say, the words “read” and
“books”—and returns a combination of the two as a new linguistic object, for
example, the phrase “read books.” Merge can then recursively build on this
new object, yielding more and more complex hierarchical representations,
such as the sentence “he read books.”
To illustrate the hierarchical structure of language made possible by Merge,
consider the sentence “Peter is too angry to eat.” It has two possible meanings.
First, most obviously, it could mean that Peter is too angry to eat anything.
However, it could also mean that Peter is too angry for me to eat him! The
same linear sequence of words has two meanings depending on how it is
hierarchically understood.
According to Berwick and Chomsky, Merge is the specific difference that
distinguishes human language from the other vocal communication systems
found in the animal kingdom. Animals may be able to produce linear left-to-
right vocal representations, but none are able to generate a hierarchically
structured communication system akin to human language. Even the celebrity
chimpanzee named Nim “never progressed to the point of producing
embedded, clearly hierarchically structured sentences, which every normal
 BOOK REVIEWS 619

child by age three or four can do” (145). (Incidentally, in my own view—and I
cannot defend this claim here—this ability to understand and to generate
hierarchical language is a sign of the immateriality of our intellects.)
The authors also make the striking claim that the architecture of human
language reveals that it evolved, not as an external tool for communication
between individuals but as an internal mental tool that allows an individual to
conceptualize and to imagine his world. Speaking a language came only after
thinking in a language. As evidence for this, they point to studies that showed
that the internal hierarchical structure of language carries no information
about the left-to-right order of phrases, words, or other linguistic elements. A
language is spoken vocally or signed manually in an order that is imposed, not
by its inherent structure but by the demands of the specific mode of ex-
ternalization, whether by the production of sound or the movement of hands.
This would not have been the case if language had evolved first and primarily
as an external tool for human communication.
Finally, Berwick and Chomsky propose a narrative for the evolution of
human language. Based on numerous paleontological and genomic studies,
they think that the capacity for Merge appeared more than 60,000 years ago
in Africa, in a single hominid—a historical Adam or Eve?—who acquired a
genetic mutation that altered his or her brain structure in such a way that it
was then capable of Merge. Hypothetically, they propose that the formation
of a nerve bundle ring linking important regions in the human brain associated
with language could have been this change. Individuals who acquired this
novel genetic and anatomical trait would have had a selective fitness advantage
over their nonmutant peers because they would now have been able to plan,
to infer, and to reason, actions they were not able to do before. In support of
this claim, the authors describe several empirical studies, including one that
reveals that children who have not yet acquired language cannot integrate and
use the information that a particular wall is blue. Evolutionarily, the
acquisition of language would have then triggered the great leap forward that
gave rise to other historical signs of human symbolic behavior, including
jewelry and art.
Going beyond the subject matter of this book, we know that God created
Homo sapiens through an evolutionary process. Therefore, a major challenge
in contemporary Catholic philosophy and theology involves reimagining an
authentic anthropology that takes our evolved history into account. This will
only be accomplished, in my view, when we are able to properly conceive of
the imago Dei not only as a rational animal but also as a speaking biped. This
book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to undertake this task.
A word about the text itself: This book is better understood as a collection
of four somewhat independently written essays rather than a monograph of
four coherent chapters. There is much repetition in the narrative, and the flow
of the presentation leaves much to be desired. I should also acknowledge that
the claims presented in this text are not uncontroversial. There are linguists
620 BOOK REVIEWS

and evolutionary biologists who would challenge even the basic premises of
the book. Nonetheless, it remains a seminal contribution that is accessible to
the nonspecialist who wants to understand how God, the Creator, gave his
image the capacity to name “all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all
the wild animals of the field” (Gen 2:20).

NICANOR PIER GIORGIO AUSTRIACO, O.P.

Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

Gift & Communion: John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. By JAROSŁAW
KUPCZAK, O.P. Translated by AGATA ROTTKAMP, JUSTYNA PAWLAK, and
OREST PAWLAK. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2014. Pp. xxiv + 230. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-8132-
2595-1.

Kupczak is the director of the Center of Research on the Thought of John

Paul II at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow. Gift &
Communion was originally published in 2006 in Polish, the native language of
the author and the language in which John Paul II’s theology of the body was
originally penned.
The author’s purpose is to provide an assessment of John Paul II’s theology
of the body in light of the larger Catholic theological tradition. Kupczak
succeeds in his goal of showing that the theology of the body makes significant
contributions to Christian ethics, the theology of marriage and family, and
theological anthropology. He situates John Paul II’s theology of the body in
the context of the pope’s other philosophical and theological writings and
thought, and he explores the breadth and depth of the theology of the body to
provide evidence for the significance of this work as an important stage in the
development of Catholic theology.
The book is divided into five chapters with an introduction and some final
remarks, and includes a foreword by Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the
Knights of Columbus. The introduction provides a brief overview of the
structure of the book as well as the structure of the theology of the body.
Kupczak overviews some of the praise that the theology of the body has
received, and asks why this theology has not been more widely treated in
scholarship or made more widely available on a popular level in homilies,
sermons, and retreats. Answering this question, he notes the need for an
instruction manual to help navigate the difficult texts of the theology of the
body. The complexity of the theology of the body stems from the language in
 BOOK REVIEWS 621

which John Paul II’s reflections were written and the method he employed in
his reflections, a method that includes “a phenomenological description of
human experience and subjectivity,” a “constant dialogue with Western
philosophical and theological traditions, as well as with contemporary
achievements in biblical exegesis, philosophy, and theology,” a “‘philosophical
exegesis’” of Scripture, and a lack of “sufficient scientific” apparatus like
“footnotes, explanations, [and] references” (xx-xxi, partly quoting Marian
Grabowski). Gift & Communion is offered as a guide to deal with these
complexities and to make the theology of the body more accessible.
The first chapter presents the theological method of the theology of the
body, focusing on two terms that John Paul II used to describe this method:
“adequate anthropology” and “hermeneutics.” Kupczak shows that the
method of John Paul II’s theological anthropology is opposed to René
Descartes’s method of understanding man. After briefly explaining Cartesian
dualism, he describes how John Paul II sought to overcome this reductionistic
vision of the human person by crafting an adequate anthropology. Key to this
adequate anthropology is biblical revelation. John Paul II interpreted biblical
texts with the assistance of insights from modern philosophy in order to
search for elements of essentially human experiences that differentiate man
from the rest of the natural world. This philosophical exegesis weds accurate
observations from phenomenology and metaphysics. Opposing Descartes,
John Paul II explained that man’s corporeality is important for his growth in
self-consciousness, yet the pope also rejected biological reductionism in his
theology of the body. Kupczak relates the adequate anthropology of the
theology of the body to the insights in John Paul II’s (Karol Wojtyła’s) work
Love and Responsibility, and he situates the pope’s philosophical and
theological anthropology in relation to the writings of other Polish
philosophers and theologians. The second part of the first chapter focuses on
the hermeneutical dimension of the theology of the body, with attention to
what John Paul II called the “hermeneutics of the gift,” which is a manner of
reading the biblical text attentive to the way the text reveals man’s subjectivity
and his capacity to be gift. Kupczak reflects on modern hermeneutics, notes
the importance that John Paul II placed on human experience in interpreting
the biblical text, and ends the first chapter by highlighting the similarities
between John Paul II’s hermeneutics and Paul Ricoeur’s theory of symbols.
This opening chapter serves as a helpful introduction to the method employed
by John Paul II in his theology of the body.
Drawing on the principles discussed in the first chapter, the second chapter
treats the theology of the body according to three stages in human history that
the pontiff delineated: the time of original innocence, the historical existence
of humanity after original sin, and humanity’s eschatological existence in the
resurrection. These three stages of human existence are the basis of John Paul
II’s theology of the body and of what Kupczak calls the pope’s “three-
dimensional vision of man” (75-76). He focuses on how John Paul II
622 BOOK REVIEWS

“considers the human body both in the structure of the personal subject and
within the web of interpersonal relations” (41), emphasizing again John Paul’s
decisively anti-Cartesian approach to the body. Kupczak explains the spousal
and parental meanings of the body and covers key concepts from the first part
of the theology of the body, such as original nakedness, original union, the
communion of persons, the experience of shame, the ethos of the redemption
of the body, and eschatological virginity. Although the analysis in this chapter
is good, the author could have organized his own text according to the
structural headings that John Paul II himself used to organize this foundational
part of the theology of the body. The last section of chapter 2 examines a
topic from the second major part of the theology of the body, the
sacramentality of the body in the context of the sacramentality of marriage. In
a brief few pages, Kupczak explains how John Paul II presented the union in
one flesh of husband and wife as both the primordial sacrament of God’s love
for man and the sacrament of redemption of Christ’s union with the Church.
These important concepts from the latter part of the theology of the body
might have been treated more adequately in an expanded separate chapter.
Chapter 3 focuses precisely on the terms “gift” and “communion” in the
philosophical and theological thought of John Paul II, covering the develop-
ment of John Paul II’s (Karol Wojtyła’s) philosophical anthropology and
ethics, and influences on his thought. In this central chapter, Kupczak
effectively argues that “the two terms ‘gift’ and ‘communion’ are the main
pillars of the papal theology of the body” (xxii). He provides a brief
introduction to the philosophical and theological history of these words. He
then covers the development of the philosophical concept of “gift” in
Wojtyła’s thought, and notes the importance of the Second Vatican Council in
John Paul II’s development of the concept of the “communion of persons.”
He then shows how, subsequent to Vatican II, Wojtyła applied these concepts
to his theology of marriage and family, the Trinity, creation, and the body. He
also illustrates how John Paul II applied the terms “gift” and “communion” to
the three stages in human history that were discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 3
ends with a section that could easily have been left out, in which the author
points out some perspectives for future research that would apply “gift” and
“communion” in the areas of anthropology, ecclesiology, and ecumenism.
The fourth chapter delves into John Paul II’s treatment of the theological
truth that man is created in the image of God (imago Dei). Although this
chapter contains some repetition and could have been organized more
effectively, it highlights some of John Paul II’s key insights into the imago Dei,
central to which are the concepts of gift and communion. Kupczak first notes
that the Second Vatican Council renewed the concept of imago Dei in
Catholic theology, and then he shows how John Paul II committed himself to
furthering this renewal. He gives an overview of John Paul II’s philosophical
exegesis of the Genesis creation narratives that is present in the first part of
the theology of the body, highlighting the pope’s emphasis on the communal
 BOOK REVIEWS 623

dimension of imago Dei and the person as gift, a theme emphasized by Vatican
II. Kupczak then explains how John Paul II presented the human body as
participating in the communion of persons by which humanity images the
communion of the Trinity. He notes how a spiritual view of imago Dei as
residing in man’s soul has dominated Christian theology throughout history,
and that John Paul II was trying to emphasize that the body has a place in our
understanding of the image of God. The pope maintained that the image of
God in both its individual and communal dimensions remains in man after
original sin, and that “the marital communio personarum remains a sign of the
mystery of the Trinity” (157). Kupczak explains how the entire first part of
the theology of the body is Christocentric, structured around three statements
that Jesus makes regarding the three stages of human existence: prelapsarian
(Matt 19:3-8; Mark 10:2-9), postlapsarian (Matt 5:27-29), and eschatological
(Matt 22:24-30; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40). As this point is key to
understanding the theology of the body, the author should have discussed it
earlier in the book. Kupczak provides a helpful discussion of John Paul II’s
vision of the eschatological fulfillment of humanity, and he closes the chapter
with a discussion of the synthetic character of the pontiff’s theology of imago
Dei, which he says contains both structural and relational elements. Kupczak
reiterates how important are the reflections of John Paul II on the communal
dimension of imago Dei, as this theme has received little attention throughout
Christian history. He closes by pointing out the important task of deepening
and developing an understanding of the communal dimension of the image of
God.
The final chapter explores the psychological, philosophical, and theological
sources of John Paul II’s understanding of “the language of the body,” a key
aspect of the sexual ethic presented in the theology of the body. Kupczak
begins by overviewing the understanding of nonverbal communication or
body language in philosophy and psychology. He then covers the sources of
the concept of “the language of the body” in the philosophical writings of
Karol Wojtyła that preceded the theology of the body. Kupczak explains “the
language in the body” as it appeared in the Wednesday audiences on the
theology of the body when John Paul II undertook his philosophical exegesis
of the Song of Songs and the Book of Tobit. Among other points, the author
notes John Paul II’s emphasis on the objective language of true love that
should be communicated through the body by husband and wife in the marital
embrace, and the fact that the words of the wedding vows “are rooted in the
truth of the language of the body of man and woman who have been united
by love” (197-98). Kupczak ends chapter 5 by explaining how John Paul II
used “the language of the body” in his treatment of Paul VI’s encyclical
Humanae Vitae. The author summarizes the main points of the ethical
argument found in Humanae Vitae and then shows how John Paul II
interpreted these points in the final part of the theology of the body to explain
that the moral norm for the conjugal act is speaking “the language of the
624 BOOK REVIEWS

body” in truth. Kupczak succeeds in illustrating the theological depth and

richness of John Paul II’s concept of “the language of the body.”
In his final remarks, Kupczak notes that John Paul II roots his theology of
the body in Scripture and that, in his “postliberal” philosophical exegesis, the
pope relates biblical texts and symbols to modern man’s experience without
reducing the meaning of the text to contemporary expectations and culture.
Kupczak sees the theological hermeneutics of John Paul II as a compromise
between Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologization of the Bible and Karl Barth’s
prioritization of the theological meaning of the biblical text. In the process of
briefly reviewing what he sought to accomplish in each chapter of Gift &
Communion, Kupczak highlights John Paul II’s indebtedness to the Second
Vatican Council’s emphasis on the centrality of Scripture in theology. The
author could also have mentioned the connection between John Paul II’s
theology of the body and the council’s goal of proclaiming the faith to modern
man in a manner in which he can more readily understand it. Kupczak notes
the ongoing debates over the relationship of John Paul II and Vatican II, but
points out that the theology of the body represents a clear connection between
the council and John Paul II’s pontificate. He concludes by noting the
potential of the theology of the body to address issues of marital and sexual
ethics, the role of women and the challenges of feminism, and the theology of
marriage and family. He expresses the hope that Gift & Communion will be
helpful in promoting such discussions.
Kupczak has succeeded in providing a scholarly guide to understanding
more fully the insights contained in John Paul II’s theology of the body.
However, this is not an introductory text. The length of the chapters and the
depth of his treatment make this book of interest mainly to scholars who
already have some familiarity with the theology of the body. Certain chapters
could have been organized better, and the book would serve more effectively
as an instruction manual if the author had followed at least some of the
structure and headings that John Paul II himself used to organize the theology
of the body; this is especially true for chapter 2. These organizational issues
notwithstanding, Gift & Communion should serve to promote renewed
scholarly interest in the profound insights contained in the theology of the
body.

PERRY J. CAHALL

Pontifical College Josephinum

Columbus, Ohio
 BOOK REVIEWS 625

Aquinas’s Theory of Perception: An Analytic Reconstruction. By ANTHONY J.

LISSKA. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xviii + 353.
$99.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-19-877790-8.

At the beginning of this monograph, Anthony Lisska quotes Dorothea

Frede’s observation that “the vis cogitativa is, for Aquinas, ‘an embarrass-
ment’” (4). In the remainder of this very helpful book, Lisska provides a
sustained rebuttal to Frede’s statement by arguing that the vis cogitativa is
crucial to Aquinas’s overall theory of perception because it “is the faculty by
which human perceivers are aware of individuals as individuals of a natural
kind” (4). In the course of this argument, Lisska makes an important contri-
bution to our understanding of Aquinas’s philosophy of mind, beginning with
a detailed analysis of his understanding of sensation and ending with a
description of how phantasms work with the agent and possible intellects.
Because the vis cogitativa plays an important role in how we come to perceive
objects as individual objects, which can later be abstracted, Lisska carefully
walks the reader through each step of the process of sensation, perception,
and abstraction, with a special emphasis on Aquinas’s understanding of the
inner senses.
In pursuing his analysis, Lisska engages with two sets of conversation
partners. First, among contemporary philosophers, he is primarily engaged
with other analytical Thomists and at times affirms and at times corrects the
work of Robert Pasnau, John Haldane, Eleonore Stump, and Anthony Kenny,
among others. Part of his disagreement with some of these contemporary
Thomists is methodological, as he argues that Aquinas offers a more robust
account of sensation and the inner senses in his commentary on De anima
than the more commonly preferred Summa theologiae, which offers an
abbreviated account of his philosophy of mind since it is focused on theo-
logical issues. In engaging his second set of interlocutors, Lisska demon-strates
his concern with the negative impact the British Empiricists (Hume, Locke,
Berkeley, et al.) have had upon contemporary philosophies of mind and sees
Aquinas’s theories of sensation and cognition as a helpful antidote to the
philosophical cul-de-sacs into which their approaches to sensation have led us.
In his first chapter, Lisska raises the fundamental question of the book,
which is how Aquinas understands our ability to be aware of individuals as
individuals rather than as a bundle of sensations. As Lisska is describing this
problem, he also argues for the importance of Aquinas’s metaphysics for
understanding his overall philosophy of mind, especially perception, adopting
Haldane’s maxim “that there is ‘no epistemology without ontology’” (11).
Additionally, Lisska provides his methodological case for the superiority of the
commentary on De anima over the Summa theologiae with regard to
understanding Aquinas’s theory of perception, arguing that the Summa
theologiae focuses on the intellect and will and so does not contain a full
account of perception, because the theological commitments of the Summa
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limit Aquinas’s need to treat perception (23-27). This is not to say that Lisska
ignores the Summa, but rather that he finds the commentary on De anima to
provide a fuller account of perception, one that can help us better to interpret
the Summa on perception or to fill in blanks that the Summa leaves in
Aquinas’s overall theory of perception.
In his next two chapters, Lisska provides his understanding of the
metaphysical framework in which Aquinas’s theory of perception operates. In
the second chapter, he gives an account of Aquinas’s theory of intentionality,
arguing in six propositions that Aquinas is both an ontological and
epistemological realist, that “esse intentionale is the cognitive content of an act
of awareness” and is dependent upon the ontological status of the knower,
and that Aquinas is an externalist in his philosophy of mind (37). Lisska points
out that the foundation of Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is his distinction
between act and potency, so that our senses and intellects must be properly
disposed to receive forms. In the third chapter, Lisska puts Aquinas’s
philosophy of mind in conversation with “both traditional and contemporary”
philosophers (64), arguing that Aquinas is a (qualified) empiricist, not because
his theory is “in any sense structurally identical to or coextensive with much
British or American empiricism” (65), but rather because he adopts a
structured mental act that always begins with sense experience. In fact, Lisska
claims that Aquinas “transcends the limits of classical empiricism yet avoids
the pitfalls of Cartesian innate ideas” (ibid.), a claim that, in many ways,
Lisska spends the rest of the book defending. He also argues that not only is
Aquinas a direct realist in matters of perception, but that he considered
representationalist understandings of perception to be nonviable, so any
reading of Aquinas’s texts that appears to lean in representationalist directions
needs to be reread in light of his direct realism.
Having described Aquinas’s metaphysical and epistemological framework,
Lisska turns in the fourth chapter to the epistemological dispositions that are
required for perception. Again, here the act/potency distinction plays an
important role as Lisska describes how sense faculties must be properly dis-
posed to receive sensation. In analyzing these dispositions, he breaks them into
what he calls “Disposition-1,” which “is the state in which any given potential
knower finds herself when she has the ability or capacity to know” (98), and
“Disposition-2/Actuality-1,” which is when one has acquired a piece of
knowledge, ability, or skill but may or may not be using it at the moment.
Human senses, according to Lisska, are under normal circumstances in the
state of “Disposition-2/Actuality-1,” as they “are structurally innate to the
human perceiver” (113). That is, humans are naturally disposed to see colors,
hear sounds, smell scents, and so on. We do not need to acquire these disposi-
tions in the same way that we acquire a language; we are just born with them.
Lisska also affirms a distinction between sensation and perception, where
sensation is our awareness of proper and common sensibles and where percep-
tion is “awareness on the sense level of an individual as an individual” (117).
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In the next three chapters, Lisska discusses the objects and faculties of our
sensory powers and other preconditions necessary for sensation. He pays
special attention to the need for all sensation to take place through a medium
and provides a helpful discussion of the role of the diaphanous medium and
its actualization by light in vision. There is no unmediated sensation for
Aquinas, as objects need a medium by which their forms move from the object
to actualize the sense faculty. Lisska argues, then, that there are three
necessary preconditions for sensation to take place: (1) an “object” to sense,
(2) a “medium,” and (3) a “properly disposed sense faculty” (167).
Those preconditions are necessary but not sufficient for sensation, as Lisska
argues in his eighth chapter, which focuses on the sensus communis as the first
of the internal senses. “The sensus communis,” Lisska claims, “is the structural
root or source for the workings of the external sensorium” (205). It is at this
level that humans move from sensing individual colors and sounds to a unified
awareness of an object. The sensus communis discriminates among different
sense data and creates relations between proper sensibles. The sensus
communis does not, however, use phantasms, which are used by the other
three internal senses (imagination, memory, and the vis cogitativa), a topic
that Lisska takes up in his ninth chapter.
The first nine chapters provide a theoretical background for the main point
of Lisska’s work, the role in Aquinas’s philosophy of mind of the vis cogi-
tativa, which Lisska argues allows us to perceive individuals as individuals of a
natural kind rather than as just a collection of unrelated sensations. Humans
have a need to be able to perceive objects as individuals of a natural kind—a
red apple from a red tomato instead of just a round red object—and this is the
task of the vis cogitativa. We know things as concrete wholes, and so our
consciousness of an object is of an entire thing rather than just a collection of
sensations. The vis cogitativa, in this understanding, gives us some “thing” to
think about (262).
Lisska concludes his book with two extended chapters on the role of
phantasms in the inner senses. He argues that because of many faulty
translations, scholars have often conflated phantasms with images, whereas
Aquinas never equates the two. This is especially problematic because equating
the two would make him a representationalist (289). Rather, “phantasms
dwell within . . . as traces of actual sensation” (III De Anima, lect. 6 [669], as
quoted on 299) and are connected to the vis imaginativa, vis cogitativa, and
vis memorativa. Lisska carefully analyzes the different ways that phantasms
operate in these three powers, especially their role in both the vis cogitativa
and the agent and possible intellects.
Overall, the book is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion of
Aquinas’s philosophy of mind. Lisska’s argument for the role of the vis
cogitativa in allowing us to perceive individuals as individuals is compelling.
Two methodological concerns, however, may trouble the reader. First, for a
book that attempts to offer such a comprehensive view of Aquinas on
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sensation and the inner senses, and to make the case primarily based upon
Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, it is curious how infrequently
Lisska engages with Aquinas’s other Aristotelian commentaries on the topic,
namely, those on De sensu and De memoria. While ignoring these texts does
not necessarily weaken Lisska’s argument, one wonders if engaging with them
would have strengthened it. Aquinas, after all, took the time to write those
two commentaries because he realized, as he explains in his prologue to his
commentary on De sensu, that De anima deals with the soul as an immaterial
reality while De sensu deals with the soul as it works in a body, which is
certainly the case for human cognition. A second concern derives from a
rather inexplicable use by Lisska of the Supplementum to the Summa
theologiae to make his case. I counted at least eight instances where he
references the Supplementum to bolster his argument. I am perplexed as to
why he would use the Supplementum instead of cross-referencing the Supple-
mentum to parallel passages in the Sentences commentary or other works.
This does not necessarily vitiate the overall claims of the book, but others may
want to investigate those parallel passages to determine their overall impact on
Lisska’s argument.
While philosophers may have their own concerns with Lisska’s argument,
there are also theological issues. Early in his argument, Lisska mentions that
when it comes to Aquinas’s cognitive theory, “Aquinas had God hovering in
the background” (10). There is a sense in which God is hovering in the
background throughout the whole work, bracketed from the argument. Lisska
argues that because faculties are oriented toward their objects, Aquinas’s
theory of sensation has affinities with modern evolutionary theories of human
sensation, as theorized by James Gibson. At one level, this seems like good
philosophical practice, as Lisska has written a book that explores Aquinas’s
contribution to our understanding of the philosophy of mind. But one
wonders if Lisska’s attempt to limit Aquinas’s teleology is sufficiently able to
account for his overall philosophy of mind. Can we truly understand why
humans have the ability to have both sense knowledge and abstraction outside
of the ultimate telos of the human mind, God? Lisska, to his credit, briefly
points to Stump’s suggestion that the purpose of our senses is better to
understand creation as it is ordered to God (190), but otherwise ignores the
question of the ultimate purpose of human cognition, including sensation.
Lisska’s work can stand on its own philosophically, but it can also serve as
an important handmaid to the work of theologians, who should continue his
work by moving God to the foreground, as Aquinas would, and further
develop Lisska’s insights in a theological direction.

DAVID L. WHIDDEN III

Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University

Baton Rouge, Louisiana