In the 1940s, Henri de Lubac was unusual, at least as far as Roman Catholic theologians go. He was a Thomist, but not by the criteria that the majority of Thomists would have judged other Thomists: he wasn’t educated in Rome under Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, the leading Thomas scholar of the first half of that century; like M.-D. Chenu and Yves Congar, he wrote a lot about the church before Thomas, which led Garigou-Lagrange to write an article called “The New Theology: Where Is It Headed”; he disagreed with the primary commentators on Thomas, such as Cajetan and Suarez; he accused the Thomists of adhering to a Wolffian rationalism and a model of pure nature (thanks to Cajetan and Suarez) that rather than preserving the integrity of human nature and the gratuity of grace resulted in an incoherent idea of human nature which either demanded grace from God out of a plea for justice, or made the natural and supernatural merely two species of the same genus – the supernatural and natural are different, but only on account of the supernatural being a “super” natural.
Needless to say, this led to all sorts of controversy for him, but not before WWII broke out. Aside from the dubious ties between certain members of the Vatican elite (Garigou Lagrange, etc) and the Vichy regime1 , de Lubac faced other hardships. As a loosely connected member of the Resistance, de Lubac went into hiding, adopted a pseudonym, and gave talks about spiritual resistance, and wrote tirelessly to the Vatican pleading for intervention in the crisis. In 1946, at the end of the war, de Lubac came out of hiding and published Surnaturel, his second book and considered by some to be the most debated theological text of the 20th c.2 Still untranslated into English, it was largely an historical study of the relationship between nature – humanity’s natural end – and the Supernatural – grace. In 1949, he published the article “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” both a clarification and an intensification of the theological theme of Surnaturel, namely that the model of pure nature and its two tendencies (to 1, conflate the natural and supernatural orders to the effect that the supernatural becomes simply a “super” or better nature, and 2, create a demand in the natural order for the supernatural order so that God’s justice is at stake) had been a misstep in the Tradition and still infiltrated the academy.
In 1950, Pius XII published the encyclical Humani Generis, declaring “Others destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”3 Many, especially de Lubac’s Thomist detractors read this as an explicit condemnation of de Lubac, although de Lubac never even approximates saying that God could not create humanity as such. He simply insists that God did not create this way and that theology would be better off addressing the situation in reality not in hypothetical. Nevertheless, de Lubac’s Jesuit superiors pull his books from the shelves and forbid him from writing or teaching in theology, despite a letter from Pius XII the next year thanking de Lubac for his scholarly and orthodox contributions. His superiors were shocked to learn that he already had not been teaching for about 10 years.
In 1965, after returning from a kind of exile in which he published several excellent studies in Buddhism, religious studies, and the Church, de Lubac publishes The Mystery of the Supernatural and its companion volume, Augustinianism and Modern Theology. The latter is an extension of the historical line he tracked in Surnaturel, and the former continues the theological argument he had renewed in the article by the same name.
- For more information, see Action Française, Action Francaise: an unltramontanist, monarchist restoration movement founded and led by Charles Maurras in the closing years of the 19th C. during the Dreyfus affair. Although an atheist, Maurras restoration of the RCC. In the wake of the Dreyfus affair, the French government had become rather anti-clerical. A good deal of clergy and orders had gone into exile in Switzerland and Belgium. Maurras’ polemics against modernism won him favor with the Vatican, and together had founded an institute with a chair against modernism. Maurras essentially wanted to create a hybrid of royalist politics and positivist social theory. The opponents of the modernists and Bondel supported Action Française. It was condemned in 1926 by Pius XI, although the reasons for condemnation weren’t given, but an “unhealthy atmosphere” was pointed out. Many of the same figure who had started and supported Action Française tried to resurrect it under Vichy regime.↩
- Catholicisme, his first, was published in 1938, and contains elements that would later be directly imported into the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes↩
- Humani Generis, 26↩
In 1949, he published the article “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” both a clarification and an intensification of the theological theme of Surnaturel, namely that the model of pure nature and its two tendencies (to 1, conflate the natural and supernatural orders to the effect that the supernatural becomes simply a “super” or better nature, and 2, create a demand in the natural order for the supernatural order so that God’s justice is at stake) had been a misstep in the Tradition and still infiltrated the academy.
Don’t know why it’s left out my comment about the part I quoted.
The criticisms de Lubac directs at the pure nature model are the same as those which were directed at him. I thought the problems with the pure nature model were that it essentially rendered the supernatural superfluous due to separating them too much (as opposed to conflating them).
David, you’re right to point out the tendency of the pure nature model to “render the supernatural superfluous”. But this is only one of the two sides of it as de Lubac understands it. See pg. 40-48 of The Mystery of the Supernatural for a better explanation than I could give. The problem, if I may, is not so much that it opposed the Supernatural and the natural, although it did do that, but even prior to opposing or separating them, it understood them univocally rather than analogously, or as I said above, it made them two species of the same genus. So, you have a sort of hypothetical nature and then a “super” version of that hypothetical nature. in some ways, this is similar to Balthasar’s critique of the loss of being in Theology, where God’s being and human being come to be known apart from the analogia entis as two of the same. philosophy (now secularized) becomes the discipline of choice re: ontology once God’s being gets subsumed into the study of Being proper.
Hope that helps rather than muddles, although I can vouch that de Lubac does a marvelous job breaking this down in the article “The Mystery of the Supernatural” in Theology and History (Ignatius, 1996).
Hi Dan,
Is there discussion among G.L. and de Lubac about the content of the BV? Is it (1) the Trinity, (2) the Incarnation and (3) divine attributes, or does it also include (4) all divine ideas of possible (and actually created) creatures? I somewhat think that (4) is the link btwn. saying the BV is a necessary end for human creatures. If you think, as Aquinas does, that the proper object of human cognition is the quiddity of material substances, and that ‘no special divine illumination/infusion of divine ideas’ is necessary, then I’d think that (4) is not the basis on which to say, for Aquinas, that the BV is the ultimate end of human creatures. It would have to be on some other ground, namely, for knowledge of (1)-(3). I suppose from Romans 1:19 (?) you could argue that (3) may be the bridge for saying the BV is the ultimate end of human creatures, and then introduce (1)-(2) as ‘what else do you learn’ in learning about (3) in the BV. But even then, why posit the BV for such knowledge if Aquinas thinks we can have naturally acquired knowledge of divine attributes in this life and w/o grace? How would knowledge of (3) be inclusive of knowledge of (1)-(2)?
Or, another route, a Bonaventurian one, would be to say that (4) is not complete unless we receive some special infusion from God in order to know the quiddity of material substances. So, in this way, as it were, by definition humans find their intellectual satisfaction from God in this life. But then, how to get from the end of knowing material quiddities, to the end of knowing their source? I suppose, it is just a further step to know ‘more’ about these quiddities divine exemplar (divine idea) and how these imitate the divine essence, which is their ultimate ‘ground’. And so, we may find our intellectual end in knowing the divine essence as it is the source for all divine ideas. But still, would it not be incidental that we’d learn (1)-(3) when we know (4b) the source of divine exemplars?
It seems to me, another option would be to introduce the necessity of knowing the Trinity for knowing (4)–and so, you’d have to give a lot of explanatory weight to a psychological acct. of the Trinity, rather than Aquinas’s opposed relations acct. alone. And, it would seem, Henry tries to expland on what Aquinas and Bonaventure saw, but turned away from given the various hazards the saw in making the psychological model do the fundamental explanatory work. And so, Henry regresses, in a way, to Origen, though perhaps a bit more carefully (I don’t know) given the lessons he learns from Aquinas and Bonaventure about such hazards in the psychological model for an orthodox (creedal, council based/coherent) account of the Trinity.
Scott, please show me where Aquinas says that Beatific vision is only knowledge of the quiddity and not also the “thisness” of God. Further, please share where Aquinas posits that the BV is only knowledge, and not also seeing.
Thanks
Huh? Did I say the that BV is only quidditative knowledge? I was saying that Thomas thinks human cognition’s proper object is the quiddity of material substancss. That it is natural for human cognition to perform this sort of intellectual operation aimed at knowing the essence of material things, and as you know, he thinks that it is by a reflexive act on the phantasm that such quidditative knowledge can be applied/known about an individual material creature.
I think Aquinas does say the BV is of God’s quiddity, and that this quiddity is ‘this quiddity’. God’s essence is not a universal, but a ‘this’. By ‘seeing’ I take you to mean, some sense species is generated from some object, passes through a medium, imposes a species on a sense organ, sensation occurs, then another species generated on the sense memory, and then a sense species is generated on the imagination, and from the imagination the agent intellect abstracts an intelligible species, and the possible intellect then performs intellectual acts with this intelligible species? If by this you mean ‘the beatific vision’, then I think you’d be hard pressed to find Aquinas saying the BV consists in this sort of intellectual cognition. And the reason is simple, the BV is direct cognition of God, by means of the divine essence itself, and not by means of some sensible species or some intelligible species. And the classic reason for this denial is that not finite species can be a similitude of an infinite being, who is God.
I imagine you think Aquinas posits such intermediary species in the BV b/c he uses the word ‘seeing’ (videre) rather than ‘knowing (cognoscere, intelligere), but this is just another way of saying ‘knowing’ (cognizing). Of course, there is more to be said about our knowledge of God via Jesus in the BV, and it is there that we’d find him arguing for the places of in/direct cognition of God by the Word. In ST 1.12 I recall no mentioning of positing an intermediary species as you seem to be suggesting here.
I’ll check my sources when I get back home in a day or two, and then point out the passages to you re: human cognition. Off hand though, ST 1.75-89 is his treatise on human nature, which is where he discusses his acct. of human cognition. Robert Pasnau has a whole book on this: Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologiae, 1a 75-89.
Also, so far we’ve talked about the beatific _vision_ which is synonymous with beatific (intellectual) cognition; another discussion would be beatific enjoyment. It just so happens that I’ve got a copy of a diss. on this topic, a survey from 1250-1325. So maybe I’ll have something else to report in due course.
Scott, with much love and respect, I am not sure I see how you’ve arrived at this equivocation (beatific = intellectual cognition) other than through a very choice reading of Thomas and the tradition (It looks a lot like Steven Long’s reading). From the perspective of many 1st and 2nd Testament texts on “beatitude” (fear of God; blessedness), we can arrive at no other conclusion than does Thomas that beatitude is Happiness. Certainly Thomas demonstrates this by discussing the end of the human intellect, but (ST I-II.3.8) he’s adamant that the beatific vision is not possible by any other means that the union with God by God’s grace by which the human is granted all of God’s essence in the way God knows, sees, hears, touches, tastes His own essence. Augustine is helpful here in exploding our points of reference by shifting the conversation away from knowledge: Lord you have made us for yourselves and our hearts our restless until they rest in you. Thomas joins with Augustine when he says that the end of human nature is in rest and happiness, which includes knowledge, but also includes fulfillment, delight, in the words of de Lubac, “an intimate participation in the vision the Son has of the Father in the bosom of the Trinity” (The Mystery of the Supernatural, 228).
Dan,
Hmm, I somewhat think we are talking past each other here. Is it possible for a human creature to be happy without cognition, and especially without intellectual cognition? I’d think Thomas would say no, precisely b/c, with Augustine, he doesn’t think you can love anything whatsoever unless you have at least some bit of cognition and knowledge. Knowledge is a necessary condition for the act of love to happen (this argument is even used in support of the filioque by Aquinas, Henry, and others).
So, if we are using the phrase ‘beatific vision’ this has to do with intellectual activity, and if we are using the phrase ‘beatific enjoyment’ this has to do with appetitive activity (love –>happiness). But if we just say ‘beatific’ that doesn’t identity the sort of activity, but just the highest (yet to be determined) activity for some power. So no, I don’t equate ‘beatific’ with intellectual action, but I do equate ‘beatific vision’ with intellectual action, and ‘beatific enjoyment’ with volitional action.
I don’t think anything I’ve said so far contradicts the quotation from Augustine (which he borrowed from Plotinus and appropriated for Christian theological use). There is just a very particular technical vocabulary that scholastics use, such as sensibile species, intelligible species, etc. I am somewhat baffled as to why you leave this stuff aside as though Thomas didn’t trade in its coinage or use it to say things about the beatific vision. ST 1a.12 is full of this technical vocabulary. It would be rather misleading to ignore these features. I’ve never read S. Long re: Thomas, and haven’t really read anything he’s written. My ‘conclusions’ come simply from reading the latin primary texts (ST 1a.12, 1 Sent. 35-37, De Ver. 2-3), which were sources for a paper I wrote and is now published in PSMLM 6 (2006).
I just read through ST 1-2.3.8; there he discusses the perfection of the human intellect by knowing not only some effect (creature), but also its cause (God)–and so long as we only know the quiddity (quod quid est) of causes, we don’t know their cause and so desire and ask about their cause. I didn’t see him mention grace in this passage, though he does mention the union of God to the human intellect: ‘Ad perfectam igitur beatitudinem requiritur quod intellectus pertingat ad ipsam essentiam primae causae. Et sic perfectionem suam habebit per unionem ad Deum sicut ad obiectum, in quo solo beatitudo hominis consistit’.
I didn’t find anything about sensations of the five senses here; coul d you direct me to passages where he says e.g. tasting is necessary for the beatific vision?
In ST 1-2.4.8.co Aquinas, interestingly says that loved ones are not necessary for the blessed’s beatific vision, still it is good for the blessed to have his/her society of friends. (Sed si loquamur de perfecta beatitudine quae erit in patria, non requiritur societas amicorum de necessitate ad beatitudinem, quia homo habet totam plenitudinem suae perfectionis in Deo. Sed ad bene esse beatitudinis facit societas amicorum.) This would seem to minimize the necessity of sense-images for the beatific vision–these rather are extras added on, rather than being necessary and essential for the beatific vision?
correction:
“so long as we only know the quiddity (quod quid est) of causes,”
should read:
“so long as we only know the quiddity (quod quid est) of effects,”
This whole conversation reminds me of the HUGE change in the meanings of the word “knowledge” after Descartes and elaborated by Kant. “Cognition” and whether or not what we cognize can be “known” to “exist” becomes the focus of Western thought after the 17th century.
It’s really easy to read these modern notions of “knowledge” as cognition back into the Greco-European tradition prior to the rise of science, but it always distorts our readings, I think.
When anyone from Plato through Milton is thinking about “knowlege,” (they are thinking of “coming to know” something, and they are not primarily making a distinction between the intellectual and the sensuous. The Bible’s the same way. Adam “knew” Eve doesn’t mean the knowing was just sexual. It means that “coming to know” between husband and wife has so much to do with bodily (and other) intimacy, with the bodily as the distinguishing mark of this relationship, that it can be used as the sign of this kind of coming to know, and therefore it truly IS knowledge.
Furthermore, for the Greco-European tradition, including Augustine and Aquinas (and Dante), coming to know is always DESIRE-driven. The “appetitive” part of the soul is lesser not because it desires, but because what it desires is a lower good. We are human adorans, or worshipping and desiring beings, and the whole mind/person desires the deepest and most intimate knowing of the deepest realities, that it is capable of. That is ultimate happiness, and it is full coming to know engaged in by the whole person to the fullest extent. (“Mind has not known, nor ear heard, what God has in wait for those who love Him.”)
Before we get into technical discussions of the Beatific Vision, let’s keep it simple.
“If I am a creature, who and where is my Creator?
“If I am a child, who and where is my father and mother?
“If I am a finite and mortal being, who and what is my cause and my end?”
“If I am, from what “I am” have I emerged into being?”
“If I am beloved, who, where is my Lover?”
“If I love, who, where is my Beloved?”
This is a re-union! We have come from God, been sustained by God, and are desirous of God as the end of our being. The Beatific Vision is altogether experiential and existential, the coming together in the most intimate and joyous knowledge possible, between a human person and God. “Knowing” and “enjoying” are not two separate things until after the 17th century!!
All the rest is technicalities. And I imagine Aquinas drew back at this point and hazarded only the most respectful of guesses. Everything he wrote was hazarded, by the way, not dogmatically “certain,” and was devoted to our growing knowing of the good. The good when it is known will create and sustain a deepening love, and a deepening love desires its fulfilment in oneness. (This is why Augustine assumed that the body’s ecstacy is part of the Heavenly Banquet, to go back to A.D.’s ponderings on Dumbledore and the thread about sexuality in heaven).
Hmm, well, I don’t disagree with what you say about the beatific vision!
I must humbly depart however, when it is said that e.g. Aquinas does not distinguish btwn. sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge. There are certain common features btwn. these to be sure (e.g. sensation and an occurrent intellectual thought are both operations, and both are in some way passions-in the Aristotelian sense). But Aquinas does explicitly and repeatedly distinguish btwn. sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The obvious quite reference for this is his following Aristotle that sense cognition is of individuals and intellectual cognition is of universals. Not to mention Thomas’s defense of intelligible species (generated by the agent intellect from the phantasm) as the intellectual means by which we intellectually cognize extra-mental objects.
Stepping back a bit, I think it is important to realize that the previous paragraph consists of reporting Thomas’s philosophical arguments and views. And that this occurs with a certain form of discourse, and this form of discourse is rather specific and isolates very specific things. For example, to report that “Adam knew Eve” is to report a rather complex ontological reality (acc. to scholastics). There is a lot that can be discussed, a lot that can be pointed out in order to explain what is it for ‘Adam to know Eve’. And certain discussions aim to point out very specific features of this reality. It doesn’t pretend to say all there is to say about it, rather it aims to say only very few things about it, but a few things that are thought to be rather important. Aristotle’s technical vocabulary which Aquinas makes arguments with and draws conclusions from, is all to try to explain such seemingly simple and very rich phenomena such as when ‘Adam knew Eve’.
If you forgive the meta-phrase, poets try to show you what it is like for ‘Adam to know Eve’, as if you could be Adam, they simulate it, they ‘perform it’ if you will; but Aquinas’s technical rigor will teach you about the building blocks for this phenomenon, and these building blocks are not ‘experiential’ but play an explanatory role for the thing to be explained. Yet, if you really get into the argumentation and see why and how it works, it is perhaps yet one way into simulating the experience though in an abstract way.
By ‘cognition’ above, I simply meant, ‘an act of sensation’ and ‘an act of understanding’. It’s a fairly dry and basic meaning, yet a very important one, one on which whole cathedrals of explanation can be built, whether Thomas’s, Giles’, Henry’s, Scotus’s, Aureoli’s, or Olivi’s–and through whose stained glass windows we have a way to see something quite beautiful if we were only willing to do the hard work.
Listen, I agree with you about the beauties of Aquinas’s system. I love it too. But it emerged within a larger and more existential context that we can’t let drop out of sight without damage. All that intellection was in prase of God, as one way to “know” God better and to prepare for intimacy with God. When Thomas had his vision, he said all of that was “as straw.” He didn’t mean it wasn’t valid and worthwhile. He just meant that it was a means to an end and when you got to the end, you threw away the ladder.
I also love Aristotle, and everything you say about him is true and yet is also turned on its head when you realize that he thought that real being was always and ultimately an individual, and not the formal category. (He is such a dialectical thinker.) Everything for Aristotle begins with and in the experiential — and the Form-al is always “in” the particular and fully realized only in the particular. Nothing in either thinker is dry or basic. I think it is all an incandescent ladder from the wonder-ful to the even more wonder-ful.
We are trained as moderns to think the details and pin down the specifics. But they thought like poets and visionaries. They thought passionately. I humbly believe that we have to work as dialectically as they did, and be as visionary as they were, and keep the whole in mind even as we look at the part — and the end or telos is what matters most at all times. And I really do appreciate and respect your hard work, Scott. Maybe I’m wrong, and in some respects I’m bound to be wrong, aren’t I? But I have to keep faith with these writers and thinkers as best I can and be honest about it, right? That’s certainly how they felt about it, trying to keep faith with and do some justice to the vision of God they found in their faith, using the mind as a desiring search engine into what they loved.
How exciting it is to see Thomas being given such priveleged attention, and with such creativity. I have dropped in on this conversation for a few weeks now, and have found it to be inspiring.
If I may offer some thoughts:
First, and foremost, I would recommend Thomas Gilby O.P. Poetic Experience, An Introduction to Thomist Aesthetics. New York: Sheed and Ward Inc., 1934. This work offers a profound vision of the mode of knowing in Thomas Aquinas. It speaks to the issue of the distinctions that Aquinas, like all good scholastics, made in order to unite. Aquinas made distinctions but he did not maintain discontinuities, but to further illuminate the unity that can never be assumed as an apriori given. It’s not until modernity, really, that unity, much like being, becomes ‘objectified’ so to speak, as if it were a category to be wrenched out of reality. As I’m sure you – Janet and Scott (and I know Dan) – knows, the fundamental doctrine for Aquinas was analogia, right alongside participation (something that Cornelio Fabro brought to light in the last century). Anyway, the point is that for Aquinas the distinction between sensual and intellectual cognition must be udnerstood in the context of his metaphysics, which is thoroughly analogical. (I should note that I side with Bernard Montaigne against, e.g., Ralph McInerney in holding that analogia is real and not simply notional for Aquinas). This means that all distinctions serve a greater unity, but neither of the two has priority as such. Thomas was not an equivocal thinker, nor was he dialectical in the Platonic or even the Hegelian sense. He is, instead, a metaxological thinker (see the work of William Desmond for a fuller understanding of this mode of metaphysics, or just keep reading Aquinas).
So, in short, I have a tremendous amount of affinity for Janet’s position: Aquinas was an artist in the truest (i.e., classical, and medieval) sense of the term. There has been a reduction of his thought to a kind of rigid scietistic (in the modern sense of the term) by many of his admirers.
But, I also have tremendous respect for Scott’s position, insofar as Thomas’s though, like all scholastic thought, was riddled with technicalities that require a great deal of historical work to fully grasp. (Though I don’t imply that Janet doesn’t also hold this).
Sorry, I hit ‘submit’ prematurely.
I would also recommend A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). Although I woundn’t be surprised if Janet has already known of this work. It investigates the idea, echoed by Janet, that Aquinas is best understood as a mystical theologian whose work is concerned first and foremost with the possibility and conditions of union with God. I’m not saying that it’s a work not without shortcomings, but it certainly uncovers a very relevant and often missed element in Aquinas’s thought – probably his most relevant. Thomas was in love with God, I think it is safe to say. And while he was an intellectual giant, and a brilliant scholastic technician, we shouldn’t allow the former to eclipse the latter based upon the agenda largely set by modernity.
Thanks so much!
Brendan,
Thanks for your comments; I’ve not read most of the books you mentioned–though I have looked through A.N. Williams’s for a paper I wrote on the nature of grace acc. to Aquinas a long while back.
Is the debate then over methodology about how to read Aquinas, or other scholastics? There are various ways to approach of course: (1) we could be interested in the arguments as such, and so try to understand and report about them, (2) we could be interested in the historical influences certain author’s had in Aquinas’s work (i.e. how Aquinas understands and in turn appropriates a given thinker), (3) we could be interested in how his work (1)-(2) manifests his love for God and the communion of saints, … and on, I am sure.
Generally, as a student I start with (1) and work toward (2), and if I’m lucky, get to (3) after (1) and (2). Why do I proceed in this way? Generally, I think that Aquinas himself is interested in making arguments and teaching me about something. So, I choose (1) as a first step b/c that is how I think Aquinas would like me to understand him. This is a matter of doing justice to Aquinas’s texts and to him. As Kevin Vanhoozer argues in _Is There a Meaning in This Text?_, we are obliged to understand some author’s text, before we ‘overstand’ it. Overstanding a text is when I bring my own sorts of questions to the text and ask the text to answer my own questions, rather than its own questions. Understanding should come before overstanding. So, b/c I believe that Aquinas generally is interested in making arguments, I try to understand these first. Once I understand these, or at least as best as I can, then I can go on to see how Aquinas appropriates his sources (2) b/c then I can compare what his argument is and what the sources’s arguments or views are. And once I’ve done (1)-(2) I will entertain questions about why Aquinas might make theological arguments in the first place–which is to ask about Aquinas’s own motivations. I can generally say, he wrote X b/c he loves God; but I could say more, he wrote X b/c he wished to correct some other person so that they might know God a little more clearly and in turn love God a bit more intensely. I could go on and ask why Aquinas cares about what other people believe or what positions they hold, and I could say, ‘well, he loved God and loved his neighbor–and was interested/desired to know the truth and make it known for its own sake’. I could go on and ask, but why did he desire such things? Or why did he give into this desire? And at this point, I am asking a metaphysical sort of question–’why does the will will?’ At this point, I have to return to the arguments- but even then, even if I understand Aquinas’s argument about the will’s freedom, I could still be wrong to attribute this metaphysical view to explain Aquinas’s own motivations–what if Aquinas was a hypocrite from time to time? What if he willed some x and not some y, but only willed x b/c he willed x rather than y. What if at another time he willed some x and not some y b/c he thought x was more compelling a good to pursue.
In other words, this historical work of uncovering Aquinas’s very own motivations is tough going-at least if I want a scientific explanation. I can fall back on his own theory, but people can contradict there own theories from time to time, no?
Scott,
Thanks for your response, which was much more elaborate than my own comments merited.
It seems that my comments either inspired in you, or perhaps prompted unwittingly, the need to explain your hermeneutical method with respect to reading Thomas. Please understand I had no intention of giving the impression that I was questioning your approach to Aquinas. As I mentioned, I have tremendous respect and admiration for the approach you take. Having studied Aquinas with John Wipple, who I would consider the “Father” of my thinking on Thomas in many regards, I have a great affinity for the approach you outline. So please understand there is no need to submit it as a rejoinder (forgive me if I speak too hastily in seeing it as a rejoinder).
To answer your question (is the debate over methodology?) more directly, though, I would have to insist that every debate concerns methodology, though it may not always be the initial nor explicit element in a debate. But it did seem as though that was where the discussion was going between you and Dan, and then you and Janet.
But this in my view is a necessary concommitant within any philosophical discussion. Questions of modes of mindfulness – or methodologies – will eventually be brought to light since what is really at stake in most philosophical investigations is really the intelligibility of being, as well as its source. Investigation into being’s intelligibility requires examination of one’s ontological presuppositions, which for the most part involve hermeneutics and questions of determinacy.
Sure, debates can involve various arguments of a particular thinker or thinkers [your "(1)"], or they can involve their historical influences [your "(2)"]. But the human spirit more often than not uses these to excavate its way into the truth, goodness and beauty of being in its own personal quest for union. When we love a thinker it is, as I see it, for the same reasons we love a poet: because they convey the truth, goodness and beauty of being in a way that reaches into the very depths of our souls, inspiring us to do the same for others.
As to your methodological triad, I think it rather goes without saying. I think any historical figure, or any person for that matter, would like us to understand him or her to the fullest of our capacities. Then, we may investigate their influences in an effort to ‘know’ them better. So please understand that I agree with you on these two points. My own dissertation moves in the same way: with confidence as to (1) I am writing about (2).
But it’s (3) that I’m not sure I would posit as a viable approach to a given thinker, at least not in the way it was worded in your fine reply. Rather, and maybe this is what you meant, I would suggest that what is at stake is the way a given thinker – any thinker – teaches the unknown reader about the highest reality, and in doing so invites the reader to participate in this in some capacity. The better thinkers are those that inspire the reader not only to desire that thinker’s thought more, but to begin to see the reader’s own original contribution to the communal act of bringing being to greater intelligibility. Great thinkers launch our ships triumphantly out of the harbor and into the sea of mystery, inviting us to explore and perhaps giving them a position on our crew.
Of course for Aquinas, his mode of inspiration involves a pedagogy that is everywhere interested in promoting the truth of the Catholic Faith. But he does this by promoting not only the truth of the faith, but also the beauty of the faith, which is why I credit him with being the artist par excellence.
This conclusion comes from no eisegetical reading of Thomas, but rather my own development with respect to his work. When I began to read his thought, it was well beyond me, but I was attracted to it. I couldn’t at the time explain why I spent hours sometimes reading one question over and over, wrestling with his logic, his principles, trying to figure out his presuppositions. There was something in his words, in his thought, his vision, his portrait of the Godhead that attracted me beyond reason and beyond explanation. This was not the cold dead objectivism of which so many of his critics accuse him. That kind of thinking can’t attract much of anything. My own work on Aquinas has only confirmed the substance of this attraction. This is the foundation of my claim to the beauty of his thought (which, as you wrote, you also recognize). And as I tried to explain, this beauty should at some point elicit the desire to carefully read his work, ideally in its original form, to guarantee that it is understood. I think to begin with the desire for a “scientific explanation” is to risk missing a great deal of this beauty. Reception of this beauty requires a different mode of mindfulness.
So I would also be reluctant to hold too firmly to the division between understanding and ‘overstanding’ based upon your account. I think all hermeneutics is marked by a complex hybrid of both of these operating simultaneously. To suggest, as you (or perhaps Vanhoozer) seem to do, that it is possible for a person to approach a text free from any a priori questions is to subscribe to an anthropology that abstracts the human person from his or her historial context. It is simply impossible to approach any text as if one were in a vacuum – in fact, even that aspiration itself would already fulfill the requirements of a presupposition out of which questions naturally arise. At the very least, one would approach a text with the question, “can I approach this text without my own questions?” If it is possible for me to recognize the questions being asked by the text, it requires that I recognize them at some point as questions worth asking and so as my questions. The image that arises in your account is one of a computer being inputted with data; as if I approach a text from a position of utter neutrality in hopes that the text will give my questions (and again, forgive me if I speak hastily to this). To put it more pointedly: the recognition of a question as a valuable question presupposes that I already affirm its content in my mind in some capacity. Any given text asks a multitude of questions. The one’s which I will recognize as more valuable (understanding) depend upon the questions I also bring to it (overstanding). Maybe I’ve overanalyzed the point, but I think the subtleties are significant.
I do agree with you if you are saying that good ‘overstanding’ comes from solid understanding – I can only begin to ask good questions of a text if I hear the questions that the text is addressing. But it is simply false to think the two aren’t always working side by side.
Ultimately, I agree with your point that doing justice to Aquinas is the key. But even this is not a self-evident matter. There are many who believe that doing justice to the treasures Aquinas bequeathes to us means to remain in the treasurehouse, compulsively shining each gem with a dust rag, only to put it back on the shelf. “Don’t touch,” they command, “just look… Those are Thomas’s jewels… They aren’t meant to be removed from the museum of his memory.” And when an overly zealous young mind (or in the case of Milbank, e.g., an overly zealous older mind) comes along to try and cash in on those treasures, they are quickly accused of theft by these Thomist hoarders.
Case in point: not too long after Milbank had written Truth in Aquinas, he came to CUA to discuss it. During the Q&A, Wipple stood up and modestly proclaimed something like: “before one writes on Aquinas, one should make sure one understands Aquinas.” Was Wippel wrong to do this? Not likely. As I’m sure you know, Wippel is one of the foremost, if not the foremost, authority on what Aquinas has written. But he is really a historian of philosophy. I don’t think it would be an insult to him if one were to say he isn’t a proper philosopher. It just isn’t what he is about. Granted, he knows the nature of philosophy better than most postmodern philosophers, and his knowledge of Thomas is practically flawless. But this is because he chose to focus on that element of Thomas’s thought, and of thought in general. Does that make him the spokesman for authentic Thomism (as if there could be such a claim…)? Sure Milbank’s work was etymologically insufficient, his conclusions rather hastily drawn and entirely bereft of an awareness of the numerous debates surrounding the issues. But that doesn’t mean Milbank’s work didn’t offer some contribution to Thomist scholarship in particular and theological/philosophical thought in general. What, then, is the point to polemics in such a case? Why haord Thomas’s treasures?
So, yes, in the end, it is about methodology – but it’s also about the overall goal of discourse. I respect and assume that you have read Aquinas and understood him to the best of your capacity. At the level where we are in our studies, that assumption is, in my view, well founded. It would be odd if one were to go around blog commenting on Aquinas without at least some knowledge of his thought, and some desire to know it better. Of course, there is the occasional “Thomistic drill sergeant” who feels it necessary to transform every discussion on Aquinas into his own personal “Thomas boot camp.” But those discussion tend to fizzle out rather quickly. Yours hasn’t done that. What this means is that methodology is foundational to every discussion, though other issues may lead into that one, and continue to remain germane throughout the discussion.
Finally – and if you’ve bore with me this long, you have my admiration and respect – I don’t think it is tough to get at a historical figure’s particular motivation. Most of one’s work is a direct expression of intention and motivation. I don’t accept the view that there is a motivation hidden behind the work that is unspoken, available to only the select few. I DO think it is difficult to advance propositions claiming to know those hidden motivations that are beyond verifiability. As long as one can support one’s interpretation of a given thinker, then the reading is worthy of discussion in my view. It’s really a symptom of youth and eagerness to see things that aren’t even implicitly there. But this error is usually due to one’s inability to express oneself, not a malicious intent to distort a thinker’s thought. All good debates that surround Thomas can be attributed to the fact that his work merits it. As de Lubac insightfully explains in his Surnaturel, “the ambivalence of Thomas’s thought in unstable equilibrium, ransom of its very richness, explains how it could be interpreted in such opposed senses.”
Anyway, my sincerest apologies for the long windedness.
Much gratitude to you for your engagement in all this.
Sounds good; I basically agree with what you say. Neither me nor Vanhoozer thinks readers operate in a vacuum, of course we have our own experiences and desires and the like when we have a book to read. I think the methodological point is that we should try to be upfront to ourselves and when we write or talk about the book to others that ‘such and such a question’ is something that I bring to the text. Ultimately, I think it is a matter of attributing to the right people their claims and desires and questions. Of course, temporally speaking my own questions enter into my reading of Thomas, but when I think or write about him, I should try to identify and distinguish my own questions from Thomas’s. It is the least I could do to do justice to Thomas and to myself. ‘Overstanding’ and ‘understanding’ are methodological points, not a description of the temporal sequences of the questions and answers of each. So yeah, I have a great sympathy to those like Gadamer, but perhaps a little more hopeful that I could be right or wrong about some interpretation of e.g. Thomas.
I should also say, that I too don’t like the approach of shining Tom’s jewels and not critical engaging with them, either just critically, but better, constructively also. I have respected Wippel’s work (his was the first big book on Aquinas I bought _Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas_); though, I have enjoyed the work of those like R. Pasnau and those with a similar approach (though not necessarily in agreement with Pasnau’s conclusions, etc.) b/c it asks how successfully Aquinas’s arguments seem to work on not. There are of course other sorts of critical engagments–a Continental approach, or another is the RO path, or Rahner, etc. I just happen think the more analytic sorts of engagement get closer to the arguments of the text. E.g. Gilles Emery has criticized George Lindbeck’s reading of Thomas b/c Lindbeck e.g. doesn’t acknowledge that Aquinas’s 5 ways, although abbreviated, were meant to be outlines for actual demonstrative arguments for proving God’s existence. Lindbeck blatantly overlooked (acc. to Emery) what Aquinas explicitly said about these arguments (they are necessary arguments, demonstrative proofs, and other such names). I’d value Lindbeck’s approach more if he just say, ‘yeah, Thomas is wrong at this point, but on other points what he says is quite good’. Basically, such an acknowledgment would from Lindbeck’s point of view indicate that Aquinas is actually wrong about some claim, but might be right about others. To my mind, this more honest, perhaps confessional sort of approach allows us to say that such and such a saint can be wrong on this or that point. This ‘more honest’ approach seems to go against the desire to have your favorite spiritual or theological authority to be fallible in your own eyes and assessment. for example, I once asked a certain PhD. student of a certain RO lecturer whether she thought Aquinas was wrong about anything, and this PhD. student couldn’t think of anything she thought Aquinas was wrong about, or that she disagreed with. I just look at this person aghast. I mean, I have a ton of respect for Aquinas and would read him to my children for their catachism from various texts, etc., but I wouldn’t wish to instill in them an attitude that Aquinas is infallible, or that we are unable to identify errors. It is one thing to say Aquinas may be wrong about such and such a claim, it is another to actually identify a certain claim and say it is false or misguided or wrong. To my mind, Aquinas doesn’t deserve this sort of honor, only the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. But perhaps this is my protestant sort of impulse. Though maybe not, even Giles of Rome, one of the biggest admirers of Aquinas in the late 13th c. made ‘corrections’ or ‘adjustments’ to Aquinas (e.g. in his theory of cognition; or the real distinction btwn. being and essence). I just wish people would stop being so deferential, and learn to love their favorite theological authorities by knowing their arguments and texts quite well so as to be able to see the goods and the missteps. This sort of spirit, I suggest, is quite at home with Christian spirituality if not identical with it.
apologies for the typos.
your favorite spiritual or theological authority to be INfallible in >your own eyes
Scott,
Well said. At least for Catholics, one thing Thomas was without doubt wrong about is the Immaculate Conception. Not to mention, like most medievals, any teaching of his that concerns sexuality….
He was a man of his time, and for this reason was limited as all men and women are. I too cringe when anyone has a hard time admitting Thomas, or any thinker for that matter, might be wrong on something. Flaws are necessary to every thinker (except William Desmond of course…….joking).
I suppose what my basic concern is that the analytic approach, or what you referred to as the ‘scientific’ approach (I think your exact words were, “if we want to remain scientific”), to Aquinas tends to eclipse all others. Of course this could be simply a difference in views as to what philosophy is and/or should be. I take a very Desmondian approach to philosophy (which is in part similar to Vico), and quite naturally apply this to Aquinas, in the same way that one might take a very analytic, or scientific approach to philosophy and thus apply this to Aquinas. I suppose that’s the beauty of his thought, and evidence that he couldn’t always be right (then how could there be varying views, many of which are at odds, right?): his thought gives itself to so many interpretations.
But as I said in my last note, I agree with you that solid understanding is always fundamental. My own studies of medieval aesthetics has illuminated many aspects of Thomas’s metaphysics that I think get subsumed by assumptions which miss the mark. So I think there is still much work to be done on all medieval thought, especially Aquinas.
Anyway, I’ll be interested to read more of your input in this matter in the future.
To my mind, there is a problem, or a set of issues that is crucial but is frustrating, boring and exciting–that is to say, one’s own experience of scholastic theology, whether it is Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Peter John Olivi, Duns Scotus, etc. What if I read Scotus for a decade and was generally edified by it: my love for God and neighbor increased, etc. Is this an indictment against Henry of Ghent, with whom Scotus disagreed? Does this mean if history followed Henry that the world would’ve gone to hell in a hand-basket?
Or rather, is the set of question I am really asking is this: what should by church leaders say about such matters? JP2 has a watchful sort of agnosticism about these issues in Fides et Ratio. On the one hand he wants to allow philosophy to work itself out without over-weaning border guards of theology; on the other hand he wants to say that certain philosophies generally don’t cohere with the Christian gospel and so are generally ‘wrong’ and misguided. I am more or less in agreement with JP2 on this. I’d want to point my finger at clear or evident enough incoherences btwn. philosophy x and the Christian gospel, on the other hand, I think the Pope (or some Protestant equivalent) should keep their hands out of policing the details of a philosophy. On this view, Christians can learn, appreciate and employ various philosophies without strictly identify philosophy x with the gospel, however much philosophy x might cohere with the faith. For me, this is a methodological point, not an ontological one. I do think philosophy x can actually be right or wrong about something, and so as a person and as a Christian I should acknowledge x’s claim–it is just that I’d keep in mind that the historical context of x’s claim (whether made in the technical univ. of Paris in 1275, or in Oxford in 2007) may influence or motivate us to accept x’s claim for some other contextual reason y (e.g. some ad hominiem judgment about the person’s or societies enabling such claims).
How’s that?