A Thomistic Response to N.T. Wright on Metaphysics, Trinitarian Formulas, and the Historical Jesus

In Chapter 4 of Scripture and Metaphysics, Matthew Levering takes on N.T. Wright who argues that traditional Western Trinitarian theology bypasses the narrative account of Scripture especially regarding the historical Jesus, and instead presents a fundamental non-narrative Trinitarian theology which “approache[es] the Christological question by assuming this [ontological] view of god and then fitting Jesus into it” (Wright, “Jesus and the Identity of God,” 54).

Wright begins his essay with a personal anecdote of talking to students who claim to not believe in god. Wright probes them to explain “which god they don’t believe in” and determines that when students say this, what they mean is that they do not believe in a god who sits on high, looking down and casting out judgment, what Wright calls the “spy-in-the-sky.” To these students, Wright responds that he does not believe in such a god either, but rather, believes in the God that is revealed in the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

Wright’s point is that we need historical studies of Jesus because it is all too easy to create an idol of Jesus, a heavenly, perfect, sinless, and non-Jewish Jesus “who wanders round with a faraway look, listening to the music of the angels, remembering the time when he was sitting up in heaven with the other members of Trinity, having angels bring him bananas on golden dishes.” Rather than starting off with the Orthodox, post-Nicaean and post-Chalcedonian Jesus as the second person of the Trinity (what Wright calls the kyriarchal portrait of God), Wright argues that we need to start with the historical Jesus who reveals to us not a creedal formula, but rather, the Old Testament God of Israel:

In Jesus himself, I suggest we see the biblical portrait of YHWH come to life: the loving God, rolling up his sleeves (Isa 52:10) to do in person the job that no one else could do, the creator God giving new life the God who works through his created world and supremely through his human creatures, the faithful God dwelling in the midst of his people, the stern and tender God relentlessly opposed to all that destroys or distorts the good creation, and especially human beings, but recklessly loving all those in need and distress. “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd; he shall carry the lambs in his arms; and gently lead those that are with young” (Isa 40:11). It is the OT portrait of YHWH, but it fits Jesus like a glove.

In this chapter, Levering wants to save Aquinas from the implicit criticism of people like Wright, namely, that his conception of Jesus is sterile and formulaic, and completely detached from the Jesus as revealed in Scripture. Instead, Levering claims that Aquinas rejects the kyriarchal portrait of God just as strongly as Wright does. He cites the Tertia Pars, QQ. 46, art. 3. where Aquinas asks whether there was a more suitable way of delivering the human race than by Christ’s passion. In the first objection, alluding to St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, Aquinas states that God could have liberated humankind solely by His Divine Will! This could have not only spared the life of the incarnate son of God but would have more suitably revealed God’s superior power.

But Aquinas rejects the mighty display of God’s power as more suitable than the Passion (as does Wright) on the grounds that Christ’s passion teaches us about the God who saves us: “In the first place, man knows thereby how much god loves him, and is thereby stirred to love him in return, and therein lies the perfection of human salvation” (IIIa, Q. 46, art. 3). As Levering writes:

Christ’s Paschal mystery reveals to human kind the extraordinary depth of God’s love. Without Christ’s passion, humankind would not have known the superabundance of God’s love. The Paschal mystery reveals the Trinity (God-in-himself) in terms of a wisdom of wondrous love,, to the point of the Son of God giving his own life for the salvation of sinners, that is, for the salvation of those who by pride had cut themselves off from God” (Levering 134).

Aquinas does not give us the “disembodied theological cipher” which Wright wants to counter with the historical Jesus, but rather, to use Wright’s own words, “the Jesus whose body was killed as the revelation of the love of God and raised to new life.”

Aquinas gives another reason that Christ’s bloody passion was more fitting than a mighty display of God’s power neatly accomplishing the same task. That is, by his passion, Christ “set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion which are requisite for man’s salvation. Hence it is written (I Peter 2:21): ‘Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps” (IIIa, Q. 46, art. 3). Levering’s point is this, that like Wright, Aquinas appeals to the cross and the scriptural account of Jesus to dispel what Wright calls the “kyriarchal” or aloof, uncaring and philosophically formulaic God. But unlike Wright wants to argue that his scriptural and historical account of Jesus reveals a God of superabundant love, of humility, and of personified wisdom, as opposed to the philosophical accounts of God that his students reject, Aquinas uses philosophy to probe the depths of this mystery further. Namely, Aquinas draws a Trinitarian conclusion.

Jesus, Aquinas argues, was able to endure such suffering (which we have already established is intended to suitably reveal the intimate love of God that God is willing to suffer with and for God’s people) because of intimate knowledge of the Father. In suffering, and suffering without sin, for the sins of others, Jesus had full knowledge of Father, which gave Jesus the ability to suffer the most profound sorrow for sin out of the love which is manifest in the Father. As Levering writes, “the Father inspired Christ’s human will with this perfect charity by infusing Christ’s humanity with the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit. In Christ’s passion, one thus sees manifested the incarnate Son’s obedience to the Father through the Holy Spirit. The Paschal mystery of Jesus Christ reveals God’s wisdom and love in Trinitrarian form” (136).

For Aquinas, the scriptural Jesus, and especially the scriptural account of Jesus’ death reveals the Father as the one who sends the Son as the Father’s Word of love for the world, reveals the incarnate Son who is God’s perfect Word in the world, and reveals the Holy Spirit who enables the incarnate Son to suffer with supernaturally-inspired love. That is, for Aquinas, it is not the study of metaphysics, though metaphysics certainly helps, and not the study of creeds, though creeds are important, but precisely the study of Scripture and especially the Passion which reveals the Trinity.

We see the central and foundational importance of scripture in Aquinas’ Trinitarian formulas elsewhere, specifically in his commentary on John. Commenting on John 5:20, Aquinas writes that “because the Father perfectly loves the Son, this is a sign that the Father has shown him everything and has communicated to him his very own power and nature” (Super Ioan. 5, lect. 3, no. 753). Because the Father gives the Son everything he has, the Son is the perfect image of the Father (Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:15) or as Aquinas reflects using metaphysical language “since likeness is a cause of love (for every animal loves its like), wherever a perfect likeness of God is found, there also is found a perfect love of God” (Super Ioan 5, lect. 3, no. 753). Just as the Father bets the Son by absolute self-gift, so too the Son, in order to reveal the Father, must give himself completely.” Hence, we get the Passion.

This is not a way of ignoring the God of Israel which Jesus reveals perfectly through his earthly life (as Wright wants to argue); it is, however, a fuller revelation of the God of Israel. Levering writes, “Before Christ’s coming, the people of Israel knew God the father, but they only knew him as father in the sense of Creator, and as the one and only God. Christ’s disciples, on the other hand, are able to know Father by faith (by the grace of the Holy Spirit) as the Father of the only-begotten son” (139). Aquinas cites John 5:36 on this point: “The very works which m Father has given me to perform—those works that I myself perform—they bear witness to me that the Father sent me.” According to Aquinas, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus, by revealing himself through his works, also reveals the Father. This is the basis of Trinitarian formulas—the works of Jesus as related by Scripture.

Wright wants to say that if we really study the Jesus as revealed in Scripture, we will not get at a creedal Trinitarian formula. The real Jesus and the Second Person of the Trinity have nothing to do with each other. He writes,

After fifteen years of serious historical Jesus study, I still say the creed ex animo; but I now mean something very different by it, not least by the word “god” itself. The portrait has been redrawn. At its heart we discover a human face, surrounded by a crown of thorns. God’s purpose for Israel has been completed. Salvation is of the Jews, and from the King of the Jews it has come. God’s covenant faithfulness has been revealed in the good news of Jesus, bringing salvation for the whole cosmos.

But for Aquinas, as Levering points out, it is precisely by studying this historical, earthly Jesus that we are taught, as Jesus taught his friends, about the Trinity. Jesus teaches us through his words and actions. On this, Aquinas would agree with Wright. But whereas Wright uses only historical and literary methods to understand this Jesus, Aquinas also integrates metaphysical methods to not only exegete the historical Jesus, but also to be conformed to true knowledge of the living God revealed in scripture. Metaphysical speculation does not, as Wright criticizes, lead to the construction of an aloof kyriarchal idol, but rather, seeks to illuminate the true meaning of scriptural narrative of the transcendent and immanent God revealed to Israel as YHWH. In short, metaphysical speculation, in addition to historical and literary methods of understanding, complement one another by instilling within the believer greater contemplative understanding of the mystery of the Trinity. Or as A.F. Gunten, O.P. remarks,

“The texts of Scripture invited [Aquinas] to undertake a philosophical study that bears its fruits. It then permits him to give a more precise interpretation of Scripture.”

Aquinas on God’s Knowledge

Jon Levenson writes in Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence that three Christian theological errors have distorted the scriptural understanding of Israel’s God:

1. “the residue of the static Aristotelian conception of deity as perfect, unchanging being”
2. “the uncritical tendency to affirm the constancy of divine action;”
3. “the conversion of biblical creation theology into an affirmation of the goodness of whatever is.” (Levenson xxv).

This is the argument that Matthew Levering takes on in Chapter 3 of Scripture and Metaphysics, namely, that in light of Scripture’s numerous accounts of God’s capricious will e.g. Exodus 32, Jeremiah 18), incomplete knowledge (Genesis 18:21), and impotence to stop certain atrocious acts, how can Christian theology still hold that God is unchanging, omniscient, and omnipotent. Levering illustrates how Aquinas solves this problem through a creative interplay of Scriptural exegesis and metaphysical reflection. In this post, we will discuss Levenson’s argument that God is not omniscient as the metaphysicians claim that God is.

Levering first identifies three important aspects of Aquinas’ scriptural exegesis. The first is that Aquinas has a “whole-canon hermeneutic;” that is, he accepts on faith that the whole Bible contains God’s self-revelation. This means that Aquinas thinks that each passage which reveals something about God’s identity must be weighed against other relevant passages in order to understand the full meaning of these passages.

Second, Aquinas thinks that the images of God found in the biblical texts must be analyzed metaphysically in order to fully understand what the text is saying, and in order to avoid anthropomorphizing God. The third point is related to the second. That is, Aquinas believes that human language used to refer to God is analogical, meaning that words used to describe finite creatures like “good” or “wise” or “angry” cannot be fully and properly ascribed to God who is beyond human comprehension and human language. To see more on Aquinas’ use of analogical language to talk about God, check out this earlier post.

In seeking to understand God’s knowledge, Aquinas turns first to the relevant passages of Scripture, and then uses metaphysical speculation to investigate these revealed mysteries by establishing “their ontological, causal, and communicative structures, [thus enabling him as a theologian] to express judgments about the meaning of Scripture’s claims about God and human beings” (Levering 21; see Fides et Ratio no. 66).

Jon Levenson, influenced by process theology, doubts that God fully knows other creatures, arguing that this seems to contradict the image of God in scripture of God coming to know his creatures, whose free actions seem to frequently allude the knowledge of God. In investigating God’s knowledge, Aquinas begins with God’s perfection, citing Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is also perfect.” Aquinas notes that “a thing is perfect in proportion to its state of actuality, because we call that perfect which lacks nothing of the mode of its perfection” (Ia, Q. 4, art. 1). What he means is that we use the word “perfect” analogically to describe the being of something.

A thing is perfect in so far as it exists the way that it is supposed to. A pen, for example, is perfect in so far as it fully exists as a pen is supposed to exist, writing smoothly, etc. Human beings, however, are more complicated than pens. There are lots of different ways that humans can be. Humans can be wise or unwise, they can be good or not good, they can be knowledgeable or lacking knowledge. Human beings are good or perfect (that is, achieve the fullness of their being) to the extent that they do the various things that human beings are supposed to do. One of the things that humans are supposed to do is “know things.” Thus, knowledge is one of the various perfections that we can ascribe to humans.

But humans exist or “have being” in a different way that God does since they are (1) created and (2) embodied. Humans can have more or less existence. For example, somebody who has lived a long time and has done good and virtuous things and has gained a lot of knowledge we might describe as having “a full life.” Such a person has reached a greater state of perfection. I do not a moral state of perfection but an ontological state of perfection. They have reached a greater or fuller state of being. They have lived the way humans are supposed to live.

God, we have already established, is pure Being, because God is pure form. Since God is pure and simple Being, there is only one way for God to exist. In other words, God does not have more or less existence like human beings do. So all the “perfections” that we ascribe to humans to indicate the extent to which they are fulfilling how they are supposed “to be,” perfections like goodness and knowledge, are already in God because God is simple Being. God is not better or worse, or does not exist in a fuller or lesser way. God simply IS. And this means that any perfection that we would derive from existence is simply in God.

Aquinas uses this idea of God’s perfection to shed light on the scriptural passages that refer to different “perfections” of God like God’s knowledge. He looks at Romans 11:33, for example, “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” and Job 12:13 “With God is wisdom and strength, counsel and understanding” and Hebrews 4:13 “All things are naked and open to his eyes.” Aquinas’ explanation is metaphysical. Since God is simple being, God’s knowledge is not a perfection that exists apart from God’s being. As Levering writes, “God is his knowledge, and his knowing is infinite. Knowing is a perfection of His infinite Act” (86). Simple existence that God reveals of his identity in Scripture, from which all created things take their existence demands that God is also perfect and knowing.

But surely Levenson would argue that this is exactly the God that is not revealed in Scripture, but rather the philosophers’ god superimposed on the scriptural account. Levering would point to Scripture accounts of God not knowing, such as in Genesis 3 when he questions the woman. If God knew everything, why the questions?

Aquinas’ response to Levering is that Scripture clearly indicates that God is all-knowing. However, in describing the ways that human beings can relate to God, the authors of scripture sometimes portray God’s knowledge as incomplete, not because God’s knowledge is incomplete, but because human language is insufficient to describe the complex ways that human beings relate to God. Human beings know, to return to our last post, in an analogous fashion to the way God knows.

Human knowledge in Aquinas’ theory is obtained in two operations. The first operation, the sensitive operation, is when the sense perceptions like vision and hearing and touching perceive a particular object. Sense knowledge then is knowledge of particular things like a particular dog. The second operation is the intellective operation. Intellective knowledge is knowledge of universal things, that is, what makes this particular furry and barking thing in front of me a “dog.” So human knowledge proceeds from particular things to the ideas behind those things; that is, human knowledge processes from sensory knowledge to intellective knowledge of the ideas behind the sensory objects.

Another way of explaining this is with the distinction between form and matter (see this and this earlier post for more explanation). In Aquinas’ view, all things are composed of form, or the essence of what they are (the dogginess in the dog) and matter, the particular individuating “stuff” which makes one dog a particular dog and distinguishes it from other dogs. The sensory operation of knowledge perceives the various aspects of the dog like fur, four legs, paws, canine teeth. The intellective knowledge abstracts from the particular matter and judges the “thing” to be a dog. It is the intellect that allows a person to say that both a Chihuahua and a Doberman, despite their differences. That is, it is the intellective operation that allows a human to abstract the form “dog” from the particular substance.

Truth consists in the equality of the intellect with its object. True knowledge of a dog is when the intellect rightly abstracts the form “dog” from the particular substance, rather than abstracting the form “cat” or “bear” despite certain similarities in the particular matter.

God’s knowledge is different. God does not have a body, so obviously, God does not know things through a sensitive power. Nor is God’s knowledge a distinct power in God. As we established above, as simple Being, God is God’s own knowledge. So how does God know? God knows, according to Aquinas, because God is the cause of all things. God knows things because God makes them. God’s knowledge, therefore, (and this is the important part) is not affected by and dependent on what is known, but God’s knowledge is what causes anything to be known.

For humans, something must exist (even as an abstraction like a dinosaur) for it to be known. For God, it is the opposite. God must know anything for it to exist. God’s knowledge is logically and metaphysically prior to existence. God’s causative knowledge raises a huge theological problem, namely the problem of evil, because if God’s knowledge causes all things, then how can we say that God does not thereby cause evil. We will address this problem in another blog post. But for now, it is sufficient to address Jon Levenson’s claim that God has incomplete knowledge with the metaphysical claim that our knowledge is analogical to God’s. So we have to use analogical language to talk about God’s knowledge. God does not know through sensory perception like we do, nor does God know in stages of perceiving, abstracting, and judging like we do. God’s knowledge of a dog, in its essence, is metaphysically necessary (though not sufficient) for the dog to even exist, much less be known according to human knowledge.

What Language Can We Use to Talk About God?

According to Aquinas, there are two incorrect ways to understand language about God, which Aquinas summarizes in Summa Theologiae Ia, Q. 13. Univocal statements about God are statements that mean the same exact thing as the same statement said when referring to human creatures. If we say “God is wise” univocally, we mean that “wise” means the same thing as when we say “Beth is wise.” Aquinas says that we cannot use language to say anything univocally about God. We obviously mean something different when we say that God is wise than when we say that Beth is wise. Human wisdom is different, more limited, more restrictive, than divine wisdom.

The other erroneous way to speak about God that Aquinas identifies is equivocally. Equivocal statements about God mean something completely different than the same statement made in reference to human creatures. So if we use “God is wise” equivocally, what we mean is something completely unrelated to what we mean when we say “Beth is wise.” But Aquinas says that language about God cannot be totally equivocal. That is, there is some similarity, some connection in meaning between the statement “God is wise” and the statement “Beth is wise.” Human wisdom is not completely different than divine wisdom, or else we wouldn’t use the same word for it.

This is where scripture and metaphysics merge for Aquinas. Philosophically (metaphysically) and scripturally, Aquinas believes that we can say something about God. That is, we do not have to assume that our language is completely equivocal. He cites Romans 1:20 that something about God can be known through creation, thus, philosophically we can say something about God. And he believes as a Christian that what the Bible says about God is true, so we can in addition to natural knowledge of God (indicated in Romans 1:20), we can also have revealed knowledge of God.

So if language about God is not univocal or equivocal, what is it? Aquinas says that language about God is analogical. The example he uses is health. Health is a characteristic of a human body. If I say “I have a healthy heart,” what I mean is that my heart pumps blood well. When I say “I have a healthy body,” I do not mean only that my body pumps blood well, although this is certainly part of having a healthy body, but I mean something more expansive. I mean that all the parts of my body are functioning well, I have no illness, etc. So the two statements are not equivocal (meaning exactly the same thing) nor are the equivocal (meaning exactly different things). Rather, I use the phrase “healthy heart” analogically to “healthy body.”

So this is how we speak of God. When we say “Beth is wise,” we mean something analogical to what we mean when we say “God is wise.” Just like my heart has certain characteristics of health that my body does, so too, if I am wise, I have certain characteristics of God who is wise. But when we say “God is wise,” we mean something larger, something more expansive than what we mean when we say “Beth is wise.” According to Aquinas, just as a healthy heart partakes in the fullness of health of a healthy body, so too do creatures, who are created by God, partake in the attributes of God like goodness, justice, and wisdom.

But we should not stop here. In article 6 of question 13, Aquinas asks whether analogical language refers primarily to God or to creatures. He is asking a philosophical question here. Philosophically, if we say that analogical language refers primarily to creatures, what we are saying is that we have words (like “wise” and “good”) to refer to creatures, and we extrapolate from there and say that the fullness of the meaning of these words must belong to God. That is, we start with what we know about creatures and then raise all of that to the nth degree and say the same thing about God. So if “Beth is wise,” God must be the fullness of wisdom, since if God wasn’t, God would not be God. This is the philosophical (and specifically metaphysical way) of knowing something about God.

The philosophical way of knowing God starts with creatures and the words that we use to describe those creatures, and then posits a god that is based on what we already know, and usually like, about creatures. That is why people complain that the philosophers’ god is different from the Christian God as revealed in Scripture. People complain that people want to think that God is all-good and all-powerful, and so they logically construct a good who is such. This is what theists do. They say, “I believe in this type of god which is a god I can rationally conceive.” If God appears to get angry or vengeful or capricious in Scripture, a theist could say, “that is not the god that I believe in. My god is all-good, etc. We will see how Levering treats this in the next post, when he argues against Jon Levenson who claims that the philosophical god of people like Aquinas (all-good, all-knowing) is not the same as the God revealed in Scripture.

What is important to establish first in this post is that Aquinas does not take the philosophical way to knowing something about God. That is, he thinks that analogical language refers actually primarily to God, and secondarily of creatures. This means that if we say “Beth is wise,” what we first mean is that we know what wisdom is because God is the fullness of it. Beth shows certain similarities to that which we see first in God. So Beth is wise in a similar way—in an analogical way—that God is wise.

Aquinas argues this point from Scripture. He cites Ephesians 3:14-15 “I bow my knees to the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.” His argument is a scriptural one that we only know what fatherhood is because we first know it in God. So when I say “John is a father,” what I mean is that I see something similar in John that I see fully expressed in God. I can name something in John that I only know because it is in God. Same thing about wisdom. I can only say “Beth is wise” because I first see it revealed in God. Where? In Scripture. For Aquinas, the starting point of everything we know is not human reason which we explore philosophically; the starting point of everything we know is Scripture which reveals to us the living God.

And when we say that God is a living God, we are saying something analogical, not univocal or equivocal. What we mean when we say that “God is a living God” is that we only know what “living” means, and can apply it to creatures (Beth is a living blogger) because we first saw it revealed in God.

This will be important for subsequent discussions about God. For Aquinas, we only know that God is good because Scripture reveals that God is good (Exodus 33:19, 1 Chronicles 16:34), and so we can use the language of goodness to apply to creatures. We can say that God is wise only because Scripture reveals that God is wise (Job 12:16, Psalm 104:24), and what we know about human wisdom comes from this revelation.

Aquinas does not take the philosopher’s path to talking about, and knowing about God. That is, he does not assume that we start with human knowledge and extrapolate to God. We start off with knowledge of God revealed in Scripture and apply it to humans. Philosophy serves to illuminate what Scripture reveals. But philosophy is the handmaid, not the equivalent of scripture. When I say that Aquinas uses Scripture and metaphysics together to talk about God, I mean that Aquinas first uses scripture to know something about God, and uses philosophy to expand, in human language, that knowledge about God. And he does so by speaking about creatures and creaturely know in an analogous way to God.

YHWH: God’s Being as Simple Being

Continuing on with our examination of Matthew Levering’s Scripture and Metaphysics, in this post I will give a concrete, hopefully simple, example of how metaphysical speculation can enhance our understanding of Scripture.

In examining Scripture, there are numerous passages that refer to God’s body. In Exodus 33, God speaks to Moses face to face, and allows Moses to gaze upon his back. Psalm 33 anthropomorphically depicts God sitting on his throne in heaven and looking down on the earth to judge the righteous and the wicked. Scripture frequently refers to God’s “right hand” (Psalm 48:10, Acts 7:56). However, Christianity holds that God is not a body, but that God is a spirit. In light of the scriptural passages that say otherwise, how can Christianity hold such a belief?

Aquinas, as Matthew Levering points out, provides one such way of interpreting these seeming conflicting passages, by using metaphysical reflection to illumine the relevant passages of Scripture. He begins with John 4:24: “God is a spirit” as providing the basis of his metaphysical reflection (Ia, Q. 3, art. 1). He then goes on to say, in light of the biblical quotations which describe God in bodily terms, that the Bible “puts before us spiritual and divine things under the comparison of corporeal things” (Ia, Q. 3, art. 1, ad. 1). Aquinas’ point is that human language must rely on sensible images to describe God, though God is immaterial.

But how do we know this is the case? In light of the numerous Scripture passages that say otherwise, would it not make more sense to conclude that God has a body (and a spirit, to take into proper account John 4:24)? Aquinas uses metaphysical arguments to the contrary. First, a body is composed of matter, and it would be impossible for matter to be attributed to God. This is because matter exists in a state of potentiality.

Aquinas takes his understanding of potentiality from Aristotle. Aristotle’s definition of potentiality in the Metaphysics, is the “power that a thing has to produce change” or “the source of change in something else or in itself qua other.” (1046a12). The exercise of potentiality is movement or process (kinesis) or actuality (energeia). So a thing has potentiality in so far as it is capable of changing, and especially in so far as it is capable of taking on a better or more complete state of being.

We can think of potentiality as “potential energy” in physics. A stone sitting at the top of the hill has potential energy, which will be translated to movement (kinesis or kinetic energy) as the stone rolls down the hill and comes to a rest. But metaphysically, potentiality has a wider meaning that refers to states of being. An infant, for example, has potentiality to grow into an adult, thus taking on a more perfect or more complete state of being, because as an adult, the infant will be able to do more things properly ascribed to humans (walking, talking, reasoning, making art) that an infant cannot do.

According to Aristotle, everything in the universe can be described as a combination of form and matter. Matter is the raw material of things, whereas form is the structure of a thing or the “essence of what a thing is.” A woman and a gazelle are both composed of matter, and some of the same types of matter (like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen) but the two substances are distinguished by their form—the woman has the form of a human and the gazelle the form of the gazelle. All matter is in a state of potentiality because it could take on any number of forms. So matter is the “waiting to happen” part of existence; form is the “happening” part of existence. An infant’s matter will change over time, but the form, the essence of what that infant is, will remain constant, which is why the three year-old, 20 year-old, and 90 year-old “former infant” can still be said to be the same person.

Things that have bodies, therefore, are in a state of potentiality. They are changing, they are always in the process of becoming. So if God had a body, God would be in a state of change. But Aquinas, based on both Scripture and metaphysics, does not accept that God changes. He cites James 1:17 that in God “there is no change nor shadow of alteration” and Malachi 3:6 “For I the Lord do not change” and Numbers 23:19: “God is not as a man, that He should lie, nor as the son of man that He should be changed” (see Ia, Q. 14, art. 10 and Q. 19, art. 7) Using these passages of Scripture, Aquinas can then return to his metaphysical speculation—things that have bodies composed of matter are in a state of potentiality, and therefore they change. But God does not change. Thus, God must not have a body composed of matter.

Metaphysically, this informs Aquinas of something important. He accepts the Aristotelian dictum that all things are composed of matter and form or potentiality and actuality. But if God does not have matter, then God must be only form, and if God is only form, then God must be only actuality without any potentiality. Another way of saying this is that God is “pure Act” or the perfect fullness of “to be.” Moreover, things that are composed of matter and form are composites, but God is not composed of matter and form and therefore cannot be a composite. Thus, Aquinas concludes, that God is simple.

These are the two metaphysical assumptions which Aquinas bases all subsequent metaphysical reflection when discussing God’s existence: (1) God is pure Being or pure Act and (2) God is simple. Although he uses metaphysical language to make these claims, Aquinas is not doing pure metaphysical speculation. In other words, he is not just recapitulating the “static Aristotelian conception of the deity” as a “mere philosophical problem” (Levering 86) but is rather using Aristotelian metaphysics to illuminate an understanding of the God of Israel and this God’s relation to human history.

For Aquinas, the language of God as “pure Being” is not separable theologically from the revelation of “YHWH”: “The two names complement each other, revealing God’s historical presence as infinite, sheer, eternal Presence. They express the same God, understood metaphysically and historically” (Levering 61).

So why use the metaphysical language at all? Because, as we saw at the beginning of this post, Scripture uses language to refer to God that describes God in human terms, and as such, the language of Scripture can possibly dispose readers to idolatry, to create God according to a human image. According to Aquinas, as Levering points out in his book, the metaphysical language God ascribes to Godself in Exodus 3:14 is intended to wean God’s people from idolatry by revealing God as pure being and nothing more, without any particular mode of being (i.e. as simple) and consequently, and here is the important part, as sheer presence.

Because God does not have any particular mode of being, God is eternally present. As YHWH, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God is intimately active without being limited by temporality. There should be no doubt that Aquinas is not trying to create a philosopher’s God who is detached from creation, but is rather trying to use metaphysical language to illuminate the God who is intimately close to creation, who is personal, and eternally present. God as Aquinas describes him in the language of Greek metaphysics as Pure, Simple Being is also the living and creating God of Israel. On this point, Thomas Weinandy finds a unity of metaphysical and historical naming of God in Christian thought:

Within Greek though these attributes [e.g. imperishability, perfection, goodness, power] constitute God as one who is removed from, even if related to, all else that is. They constitute him as transcendent in the sense of not only making him other than the cosmic order, but also as often being incapable of actively relating to the cosmic order. Within the Judeo/Christian tradition these attributes do constitute God as wholly other than all else, but they equally constitute him as Creator and so immediately related to all else that is” (Weinandy, Does God Suffer?, 72)

So here we have one example of how Aquinas uses both Scripture and metaphysical reasoning to illuminate God as revealed in Scripture, namely, as a God who is simple (not composite form and matter but rather pure form without a body) and a God who is Pure Being.

Questions:
1. Aquinas uses metaphysics to make sense of all those scriptural passages saying that God has a body. How do you make sense of those passages?
2. It is very important for Aquinas’ understanding of God that God does not have a body. In your mind, what difference does it make if God does or does not have a body?
3. Does describing God as “Pure Being” obscure or illuminate God as God is revealed in Scripture, especially in light of the fact that God gives the name YHWH “I am who I am” to Moses as the name by which God should be called.

Is Anger an Appropriate Response to Suffering?

In the last post, I said that I was going to do a series of posts on some of the thoughts I have been having related to the “theodicy” issue, or the problem of evil and suffering in light of the belief that God is all-good and all-powerful. In this post, I am going to use as my starting point a quote from Harold Kushner, who I mentioned in the last post wrote a very famous book on theodicy called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. In his effort to explain God’s involvement in the suffering humans experience on this earth, Kushner writes,

We can recognize our anger at life’s unfairness, our instinctive compassion at seeing people suffer, as coming from God who teaches us to be angry at injustice and to feel compassion for the afflicted. Instead of feeling that we are opposed to God, we can feel that our indignation is God’s anger at unfairness working through us, that when we cry out, we are still on God’s side and God is still on ours (45).

In this post, I am going to expound on Kushner’s provocative idea about anger from a Thomistic framework in order to determine the moral and theological significance of anger, and whether Kushner is right is saying that suffering should prompt anger.

We tend to think of anger as vicious or harmful. Somebody may say, “I didn’t mean to do X, but I was blinded by anger,” or “anger is wrong; I want to be a more peaceful person.” Aquinas is aware that anger connotes sinfulness. There is good reason for this. In Matthew 5:22, for example, Jesus claims that one who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment. In his discussion of anger, Aquinas asks whether all anger is contrary to virtue, to which he answers a resounding no. Anger, which is a passion, can be aroused according to reason, which makes anger in some situations virtuous.

So how do we determine if anger is virtuous (according to the standards of reason) or not? Aquinas looks at the object of anger, or that to which the anger is directed. He identifies two objects to anger: one is the injury that the person suffers, and the other is vindication (vindicatio) that the person seeks. The vindicatio is the justice that one seeks to exact against an perceived injustice. It is the way of making an injustice right. The vindicatio is an evil under the aspect of good. Denying a person his freedom for a number of years in punishment for theft, for example, could be a vindicatio because it is an evil (imprisonment) that seeks to rectify an injustice (the theft), thus rendering the vindicatio itself a good.

If a person seeks a vindicatio against a person who does not deserve it, for example, the anger would be sinful. If a person seeks too great a vindicatio, such as when a person repays an injustice with a much greater injustice (beating a child for spilling milk), such anger would be sinful. So anger is virtuous if a truly unjust offense occurs and the response is proportionate to the injustice.

What about Matthew 5:22 that says that anyone who is angry against their brother is liable to judgment? In light of scripture, how can Aquinas still say that anger can be virtuous? One way which Matthew 5:22 has been explained is using the person/sin distinction. That is, it is wrong to be angry against a person, but okay to be angry against a sin. Because Jesus is referring to the former in his condemnation of anger, it does not contradict the thesis that anger can be virtuous. This is the explanation Augustine used, claiming that one is properly angered at the sin of one’s brother, not one’s brother himself. Thomas disagrees with this, claiming that if a person is unjust, it is fitting and proper to be angry towards that person, granted that one’s anger is proportionate and the vindicatio sought is just.

The reason is that anger is that, according to Aquinas, has a two-fold object—the injustice, and the rectification of that injustice. An injustice is when a person is not given their due. The order of the universe which is in natural things and in the human will reveals that there is justice in God. God orders things and orders that they be in right relationship, and this is what is meant by God’s justice. Kushner is right in identifying that when we recognize that things or people are not in right relationship, we are participating in God’s justice.

Anger, then, because it is concerned with justice, is properly determined by relationships. In order to determine if anger is appropriate, one must be in some relationship of justice, that is, a relationship that is ordered according to God’s standards. This requires a little explanation. I cannot be angry against an inanimate object, for example, because the inanimate object cannot do me an injustice. I may stub my toe on my desk, but my anger cannot rightfully be oriented towards the desk. Nor can I be angry at a hurricane or a virus for the same reason. I may be hurt by these things, but they cannot be the object of my anger because they did not commit an injustice against me. Anger, for Aquinas, is really properly directed at people.

Additionally, if anger is to be justified, the right rectification must be sought. A child who commits a grievous fault–perhaps he hits one of his siblings–has committed an injustice which the parents, due to their relationship of justice with the child, have a responsibility to rectify. Perhaps they will ground the child, or require some sort of positive compensation to the assaulted sibling. However, the sibling who has been harmed is not in a relationship that allows him to seek the necessary vindicatio. It would be inappropriate for the sibling to ground his own sibling or to hit his sibling back. It would also not be appropriate for a stranger to punish the pugilistic sibling. Nor would it be appropriate if a child was the victim of an injustice committed by a parent to seek vindicatio. If a child is hit by a parent, the appropriate response is to appeal to a higher authority, like the police. In short, in order to seek a vindicatio, one has to be in the right position of seeking justice.

This is why we frown on vigilantes, or civilians who go out to seek vindicatios against injustices that are going unpunished. Because such civilians are not in the proper relationship of justice to the people whom they are punishing, they are actually committing an injustice in their actions in seeking a vindicatio that is not theirs to seek. Their anger is not virtuous, because the vindicatio sought is not virtuous.

Reasonable anger (and hence, virtuous anger) according to Aquinas is (1) prompted by an occasion of injustice, (2) directed at the perpetrator of injustice, and (3) seeks a just vindicatio to restore the injustice. If anger meets these three requirements, Aquinas would say it is virtuous.

So how does this play out regarding the theodicy question as Kushner sees it? First of all, the object of anger must be an actual injustice, not just something that makes us unhappy. Aquinas would not say it is virtuous to be angry if you, for example, get diagnosed with a terminal illness. This is not an injustice that should rightfully prompt anger. Moreover, there is no committer of an injustice towards which one can direct their anger. A more proper response would be sorrow at the fact that one is experiencing an evil, but not an injustice. But it would be proper to experience anger at a news story relating how somebody has been raped or murdered, or to be angered when you hear about the violence in the Middle East or Zimbabwe. Here, we do have an injustice, and perpetrator, which can be the object of our anger.

Second, the anger must be directed at the right person. If I read about what is going on in Zimbabwe and get angry at Robert Mugabe, my anger may be justified. If I read about Zimbabwe and get angry at black people, my anger is definitely not. Similarly, if I get angry at God when I hear about Mugabe’s egregious offenses against his people, my anger is not targeted at the right person. Such anger, according to Aquinas would not be justified.

Lastly, the vindicatio sought must in itself be just. If I decide that I am going to go assassinate Mugabe to stop his injustices, the unjust vindicatio thus renders my anger unjust. A more just vindicatio might be writing to the UN or raising awareness in this country by writing letters to the newspaper or marching in DC, or praying to God for the Zimbabweans who are suffering.

Kushner is right that we should feel compassion and sorrow for those who suffer. But I am not quite sure that an appropriate response to suffering is anger. Anger connotes that an injustice is being done that one can do something about. Sickness, death, and natural disasters are indeed evils, but they are not injustices. Such tragedies may be handled in an unjust way. Hurricane Katrina, for example, was not itself an injustice, but the subsequent way it was dealt with in many ways was.

This is not to say that Aquinas thinks we should remain Stoic in the face of suffering. He acknowledges that the passion of sorrow, which is the apprehension of some pain or evil, is a appropriate. When one is faced with a pain or evil, it may be appropriate to weep, to seek to remove or alleviate the harm, or even, as is the case with Job, demand answers from God. But for Aquinas, and I think he is right, it is not an injustice to experience pain, nor does God owe us any answers. The proper response to suffering, I would argue against Kushner, is not anger, but rather sorrow. The situations that concern Kushner, the death of a child for example, do not arouse God’s anger because no injustice is being done. God’s universe is still in order, even if we suffer.

But this is not the final word for Aquinas against Kushner, which will be the subject of another post on the issue. Aquinas, as a Christian, has not only a God that gets angry at injustice, as Kushner does, but also, a God who through the incarnation, is capable of suffering with, or feeling compassion and sorrow with his creation. And through the resurrection, Aquinas has a God who not only suffers with his creation, but has also ultimately defeated suffering in the grand eschatological scheme. Thus, for Aquinas, suffering should prompt not only anger if an injustice is done, or sorrow if no injustice is done, but should also prompt us to reflect on the God who loved us so much, that he suffers with us, and is himself ultimately the remedy to our sorrow.

Aquinas on Job and Divine Providence

A couple of weeks ago, my husband gave a sermon on the end of the Book of Job. Briefly, Job is a righteous man who is rewarded in life with a big family, a fine home, lots of property and animals, and excellent health. When God brags about his servant Job’s righteousness to Satan, Satan challenges God saying that if Job did not have so many blessings, he would surely not be so righteous. Take away his blessings, challenges Satan, and God will discover that Job will curse his name.

So God accepts the challenge. Job eventually loses his wealth and possessions, his children, and even his health. Destitute and covered with boils, Job still does not curse God. He does, however, demand an explanation of God. Confident in his innocence, Job wants to know what reason God could have for sending such misfortune on him.

So God answers Job:

Then the LORD addressed Job out of the storm and said:
Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?
Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers! Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it?
Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone,
While the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
And who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb;
When I made the clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling bands?
When I set limits for it and fastened the bar of its door,
And said: Thus far shall you come but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stilled!
Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place For taking hold of the ends of the earth, till the wicked are shaken from its surface?

God basically answers that He is sovereign, that He created the world, and that Job, as a mutable creature, has no right to question the wisdom of God. So Job repents in dust and ashes.

The book of Job is often used to talk about one of the major problems in modern theology which is the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in a world in light of the belief that God is both all-good and all-powerful. This is sometimes known as “theodicy” or as Harold Kushner posed the question in his very famous book on the subject, “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?” In light of the conversations that my husband and I have been having since his sermon, I am going to do a series of blog posts on some of the issues raised by the modern theodicy question.

The reason I say that the theodicy question is a major problem for modern theology is that historically in Christian theology, the problem of evil does not really bring into question the goodness or omnipotence of God. Thomas Aquinas is actually not all that concerned with this question. In fact, he wrote an entire commentary on the Book of Job, which would seem like the perfect place to talk about theodicy. But even in discussing Job, the theodicy problem is not a central concern.

What is a central concern for Aquinas in his commentary on Job is the question of providence, which will be the subject of this post. By providence, I mean that God is in control of things, directing worldly events to their rightful conclusion.

The primary view that Aquinas wants to reject in his commentary on Job is that of fatalism or determinism. By fatalism, I mean the idea that God is somehow not personally involved in the lives of people, that people are subject to the vicissitudes of nature in a way that God is somehow indifferent to. This is the deist argument that God has taken a “hands-off” stance after the creation of the world.

In opposition to a fatalistic viewpoint, Aquinas explains that the way God’s providence works is through a hierarchy of causes. God who is the universal cause of all creation, ordained that the universe would be governed by a series of inferior or secondary causes. One simple example of this is that God made a universe in which small objects would be attracted to larger ones, which we call the force of gravity. By allowing such inferior causes to operate, God made a universe in which He does not have to be the direct cause of every stone falling to the ground.

In this way, Aquinas explains how God created a world which is infused with dignity because God has imparted causality, which God is ultimately responsible for, on creation. Thus, even though it is not necessary (that is, God could have ordained a universe in which gravity did not exist), we can know the outcome of certain contingent events like stones falling. We do not have to wonder about God’s will every time a stone falls to the ground, even if it strikes us on the head when it does. God has given us a secondary cause—the force of gravity—that is directly responsible for each stone’s earthly plummet.

So Aquinas strikes a balance between fatalism (or determinism) that says that God is in control of everything, and Divine indifference that says that God is hands off in dealing with the world. More importantly for the question of evil, Aquinas finds a way of maintaining God’s omnipotence (the idea that he is all powerful) without it therefore inevitable that God is responsible for evil.

Harold Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People comes up with a similar conclusion to Aquinas that differs in one major way. Kushner claims that God cannot stop contingent events from happening. He has created a universe in which he is powerless to stop things like hurricanes or natural illnesses, and that this is actually a good thing. If God let himself control every little thing that happened on earth, then He would have an obligation to reach out and save good people from horrible deaths, and innocent people from suffering. Kushner writes:

Would this be a better world if certain people were immune to laws of nature because God favored them while the rest of us had to fend for ourselves? A world in which good people suffer from the same natural dangers that others do causes problems. But a world in which good people were immune to those laws would cause even more problems. (59)

Kushner’s interpretation of God’s hands-off attitude saving seemingly righteous people like Job has its appeal, but I think it is wrong to conclude that God must be powerless to stop contingent events. According to Aquinas, God’s universe in which God ordained not to be the direct cause of contingent events is indeed better, but this in no way detracts from his omnipotence. God could indeed have created a perfect world in which he was in control of everything and there was no secondary causation, no contingency, and hence, no suffering. Aquinas says that it was in God’s wisdom to ordain not to be responsible for all contingent events, and even in God’s wisdom to allow that there be defects in certain secondary causes (e.g. that the movement of the earth’s plates might result in a city being destroyed). God allows defects in secondary causes to exist because this contributes to the greater good of the whole:

Hence, corruption and defects in natural things are said to be contrary to some particular nature; yet they are in keeping with the plan of universal nature; inasmuch as the defect in one thing yields to the good of another, or even to the universal good: for the corruption of one is the generation of another, and through this it is that a species is kept in existence. Since God, then, provides universally for all being, it belongs to His providence to permit certain defects in particular effects, that the perfect good of the universe may not be hindered, for if all evil were prevented, much good would be absent from the universe. A lion would cease to live, if there were no slaying of animals (I, Q. 22, art. 2).

Human beings, as part of nature, are subject to these contingent events. Human beings get sick, they fall victim to disasters, they get rich and they get poor. Human beings get in the way of all these secondary causes that God has established like the movements of the stars, the change of the tides, and the replication of viruses.

But for Aquinas, this is not the end of the lesson on providence that the book of Job offers. Remember, Job questions God, and what does God do? He answers Job. From this, Aquinas draws two important conclusions about Divine Providence:

(1) God is a personal God
(2) God’s grace is utterly gratuitous

God does not leave Job alone in his time of need. He answers Job’s questions in his time of need. He provides him with grace to endure his trial. He does not make Job immune to the contingent events of nature, but he does help him deal with these contingencies. In the Christian tradition, this Divine Assistance is known as grace.

Furthermore, God’s answer to Job indicates that Job does not deserve this help. Job is in no position to demand anything from God. The chasm between him as a creature and the creator who created him out of nothing is too great. God’s answer to Job is a gift, just as Job’s life and every other good thing that he has is a gift. Job is in no position to demand from God anything; he is only in a position to ask and to accept.

This aligns well with what Kushner concludes regarding God’s involvement in the effect of evil on human beings. We writes, “God stands for justice, for fairness, for compassion. For me, the earthquake is not an “act of God.” The act of God is the courage of people to rebuild their lives after the earthquake, and the rush of others to help them in whatever way they can” (60).

Aquinas would quibble with Kushner slightly. The earthquake is indeed an “act of God,” but it is a contingent act of God, caused not directly by God but by God’s ordained secondary causes that move the earth’s plates. God is not the direct cause of the earthquake; he ordained the universe so that inferior causes (some of which we are aware of, others that we are not) would cause earthquakes. Ultimately, God made a universe in which earthquakes exist, but God did not cause an earthquake at a specific time and a specific place to punish or to reward the human beings that might fall victim to it. The earthquake, in other words, is not necessary.

But Kushner is right that the courage and strength that comes from the response to the earthquake is an act of God, that this is God gratuitously and personally involving His very self in the lives of His creatures. And this, says Aquinas, is the lesson of Job.

An Ethical Response to the Fragility of Human Life

Human life is a fragile thing. The goodness of human life is dependent on (or threatened by) external circumstances such as wealth, health, beauty, talent, and simple luck. Since antiquity, people have pondered how to factor in the seeming necessity of external contingents into an ethical account of the “good life.” The Stoics were notorious for their conclusion that external contingents like health, wealth, friends, and family were not relevant factors in the formula for a good life. For the Stoics, all that mattered was virtue. If you were a virtuous person–that is, a courageous, temperate, just, and prudent person–you could lose your home, your friends and family, all your possessions, and even your health and still, if you kept your virtue, you would still be happy.

Although most of us probably feel that the Stoic response is somehow not really human, we can be sympathetic to what this school of philosophy was trying to achieve. Bad things happen to good people. Even in antiquity, this was a truism. In light of this, the task of ethics is to keep good people from turning into bad ones when disaster hits. The Stoics concluded that detachment from the need for external goods was the only way to stay good in a world full of badness. “Love only virtue,” was the Stoics’ rallying cry. If you loved only virtue, you could lose a child and remain unfazed. If you loved only virtue, you could get a cancer diagnosis and not be troubled. In the face of any adversity, you stayed stoic, and most importantly, virtuous.

The alternative to the Stoic conception of happiness and morality in light of the fragility of external goods is Aristotle’s way. Aristotle said that we need more than just a virtuous character to be happy. As humans, we need food and shelter, we need a certain degree of wealth and life success, we need good health, and we need relationships. No amount of virtue will create a happy life if we are missing any of these things.

The Stoic tendency shows up a lot in history, Christianity included. Christian morality is often caricatured as teaching the saints live an austere life, indifference to grief, joy, pleasure, or pain. I want to argue, however, that the Christian conception of happiness is much closer to the Aristotelian notion than the Stoic, namely, that we need certain external goods to be happy.

Enter Job. Job is a righteous man, and blessed by God. He has a big family, robust health, a huge estate with lots of animals, and quite a bit of wealth. Not only is he a happy guy, he’s virtuous as well.

But then he gets tested. He loses his animals, his children die, his home is destroyed, and eventually, even his health goes. Poor Job is sitting on the ash heap covered with boils and sores, and he is miserable. Not only is he miserable, but he wants answers from this alleged “good” God that has allowed him to suffer so.

And God gives an answer:

Then the LORD addressed Job out of the storm and said: Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance? Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers! Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its size; do you know? Who stretched out the measuring line for it? Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone, while the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:1-7)

I heard my husband preach on this text this weekend, and he brought Job into dialogue with Paul in 2 Corinthians 6 who is not, unlike Job, complaining about his suffering, but actually boasting and rejoicing in it. My husband pointed out that there is a major difference between Job and Paul when they confront the contingency of external goods, and the terror that comes with losing them. The difference is that Job has something to lose, but Paul, as well as the other apostles, have already given everything up. They have left their homes and their families, and given up any hope of being rich. With nothing to lose, suffering does not present the same sort of problem for the disciples of Christ as it does for Job.

The moral lesson of the story, according to this sermon, was to be preemptive when it comes to losing the external goods that cause so much suffering by giving up these goods voluntarily. If you don’t want to be afraid of losing your money, give most of it away. If you don’t want to suffer badly when you lose your job, don’t get to attached to it.

That sounds nice in theory, but Paul’s boasting in his suffering and the disciples’ total renunciation of worldly goods is not the way most Christians live. And it sounds a little too Stoic for my taste. Plus, it is fine to talk about the renunciation of external goods like property and wealth, but what about external goods like relationships and health? Surely Christians are meant to have at least some attachment to these external goods. So how are Christians to make sense of external goods that the world offers, and which sometimes are cruelly taken away?

Thomas Aquinas is Aristotelian in his approach to the question of external goods. This means that he is not going to recommend detachment from externals, like the Stoics or some Christian interpretations of the command to “hate the world.” Instead of detachment, Aquinas recommends “ordered love.” External goods can be loved, but they have to be loved in the right way. This means that goods like a nice home, a reliable car, a big family, and a sound bill of health are all goods that we can and even should desire. We just may not desire these goods as ends in themselves. Ordered love prefers always the greatest good, which is God, to all other lesser goods.

We pervert the proper order of love when we either love lesser things inordinately, like loving someone loving their car so much that they go bankrupt in taking care of it, or we pervert the proper order of love when we don’t love greater goods enough. The greatest good being God, all other goods should be subordinated to Him. This means that it is disordered to love your friends so much that you skip worship to spend time with them. It is disordered to love our health so much you spend all of your money on gym memberships and supplements and health food, to the neglect of other financial pursuits like charity and tithing.

But what is important to note about this idea of ordered love is that according to Aquinas, Christians can still love the goods of this world, and be attached to them, and mourn them when they are lost. It is good and proper to mourn for a lost loved one, and it is appropriate to worry about losing your home and possessions during tight economic times. Aquinas recognizes that we need these things to be happy, that is, to lead full and flourishing human lives. Aquinas’ way is not a way of detachment, but rather of proper attachment. Aquinas recognizes that becoming a Christian disciple does not necessarily prevent you from becoming Job yourself, sitting on top of an ash heap and mourning the fact that you’ve lost everything against your will.

Life on this earth is full of contingents. Sometimes things work well for us. Sometimes, we get to marry the person of our dreams, land a dream apartment in a cool city, get a job that is not only a career but a vocation, and surround ourselves with friends and family that love and care for us. At other times, we may have to deal with the mess of losing our job, or having a spouse lose their job. We may have to face a debilitating illness or watch a loved one succumb to a terminal disease. We may lose our home to the force of nature, become victims of violence, or find that the love we once thought was strong has grown dim or even disappeared. A good ethical response to the fragility of life on this earth is not detachment from external goods, but rather, fostering the sort of attachment that allows you to desire and love and mourn properly, without losing your desire and love for the greatest good—the God who is the source of all good things.

How Should Christians Make Sense of the Theory of Evolution?

In John Paul II’s message to the Pontifical Academy of Science on Evolution in 1996, he finely summed up the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on evolution, reaffirming the statement made by his predecessor Pius XII in 1950 that “there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation.” The conflict among theologians over evolution according to the pope was not whether Darwinian theories were compatible with Christianity, but rather “the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.” Some, like Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn in this NYTimes Op-ed, claim that John Paul II’s support for evolutionary theories are overblown. Pope Benedict XVI said in his 2005 inaugural mass that “We are not some causal and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” But this should not be taken as a Catholic hostility to the theory of evolution, per se. For both John Paul II and Benedict XVI, science and religion are ultimately compatible, each with different questions, tools, and spheres of influence, but at certain points, mutually enlightening.

Evolution is a materialist theory, meaning that it is a theory concerned with matter. It explains the reorganization of matter over time. As an empirical theory, it is based on observations and measurements. The job of the natural sciences is to explain such natural phenomenon like the differences between the species or the biological development of organisms over time.

But there are other disciplines that study phenomena that are not natural, not concerned with matter, and not empirically observable. For example, the soul, according to Christian theology is immaterial. Thus, it cannot be explained by a materialistic theory like evolution. Rather, the question of the soul is a metaphysical question. Metaphysics simply means “beyond or above physics.” Whereas physics and the other natural sciences are concerned with nature, that is, observable and measurable phenomena, metaphysics is concerned with that which cannot be observed, with those deep and abiding questions of why. Why are we here? What is our purpose? What is the soul?

It is concerning the question of human evolution, particularly when it comes to humans having an immortal soul, where evolutionary theories and theology really seem to conflict. It seems directly contrary to the Biblical account of creation to say that human are the process of natural selection. Moreover, it seems repulsive to the idea of human dignity rooted in the belief that human beings are created in the image of God to say that human beings and monkeys descended from a common ape-like ancestor. How can human beings bear the divine image if one accepts that they are descended from an animal?

Thomas Aquinas offers us one such solution. Thomas Aquinas adopted Aristotelian biology to explain the biology of the human being. Aristotle thought that human beings were animals, and Aquinas affirmed him on that. According to both, the organizing structure (or form) of the human being was the soul, which was both immaterial and inseparable from the body (unlike Plato who thought the soul was imprisoned in the body). In the Aristotelian view, the human soul had three levels. The most primitive level was the vegetative level that allowed the human being to do plant-like things like grow through cellular division or use energy. The next level of the soul was the animalic level, which allowed the human being to do animal-like things like hunt down food, attack in self-defense, and mate with other human animals. But where humans were distinct from their fellow animal kingdom members was that they had a third level of their soul—the rational part–which allowed them to do things like think, ponder, form communities, create moral codes, resist animal instincts, and wonder about God. Most importantly, it is the rational part of the soul that allows the person to have free will, that is, the ability to act voluntarily and intentionally. The idea of the soul as having multiple levels allowed Aristotle and Aquinas to conceive of the human person as both an animal and more than an animal.

According to Aquinas, it is in the rational part of the soul that we find the image of God. This is an important point to emphasize: for Aquinas, being in the image of God means being able to act (1) voluntarily and (2) with intention or purpose.

So this gets to why the Roman Catholic Church, which is heavily influenced by the theology and philosophy of Aquinas, can accept evolution. It is because the church sees the realm of philosophy and theology to be concerned primarily with the rational dimension of the soul and with the human being as a free and intentional creature, capable of conceiving a realm of reality that is not material, a realm of reality that is concerned with immaterial, or metaphysical phenomena like the true, the good, and the beautiful.

It is not the job of philosophy and theology to explain functioning of the other parts of the soul that control things like cell division and appetite. This is the job of the natural sciences like biology. Theology, since it is based on revelation, cannot explain the exact observable mechanisms of the way the world works or the way God creates. Saying that God created the earth is one thing; explaining how is quite another. Science, on the other hand, cannot explain the deep and inescapable existential questions that arise in human existence. Why are we here? Where are we heading? How do we lead a good life?

There are reductionist tendencies on both sides of the debate. There are some religious folk who say that everything we need to know is in the Bible. This sort of Biblicism (sometimes called fundamentalism) is ultimately self-defeating. The majority of even the most stringent Biblicists or fundamentalists will go to a doctor when they are sick. The Bible talks about healing, so why not turn to the Bible for answers to an illness? Because the Bible does not give us those answers. The Bible does not tell us how to set a broken bone or how to cure strep throat. To think that the Bible provides all the answers is an example of reductionism.

The reductionist tendencies on the scientific side of the debate try and use science to provide all the answers. We said before that religion can provide answers to the deep-seated metaphysical questions that emerge in each of our lives, but scientific reductionists will say that science provides answers to these questions. To the question, “why are we here?” scientific reductionists will say that we are not here for any reason, but are rather the products of chance. To the question, “what happens when we die?” scientific reductionists will say that nothing happens when we die besides the fact that our biological mechanisms cease to function. To the question, “how do we live a good life,” scientific reductionists will say something like “there is no such thing as a good life, only as much subjective pleasure as possible.” But like the religious reductionist position, this scientific reductionism is also ultimately self-defeating. There is no scientific (i.e. empirical) evidence to prove that there is no God or that chance, not God, is the force behind the evolutionary processes. You cannot use the tools of science to examine metaphysical questions like the meaning of life, the nature of God, or the question of final causality.

This is why Darwin’s theories have never been officially condemned by Vatican. Darwin sought to explain a physical question, whereas the church seeks to explain metaphysical questions. Now, metaphysical explanations are partially dependent on physical phenomena, but metaphysics goes beyond what physical theories like evolution can tell us. Theologically, it would be devastating for the acceptance of evolutionary theories if they embraced a view of human beings as wholly material, and indeed, some evolutionists believe this. But Darwin did not, and strictly speaking, evolutionary theories do not contribute to such a view of mankind.

Revealed Knowledge of God

Today’s first reading for Mass from 1 Samuel presents the perfect opportunity to talk a little about natural knowledge of God and revelation, a topic which I have also written about here.

Samuel is sleeping in the temple of the Lord where the ark is when he hears a voice calling him. Thinking the voice is coming from Eli, the only human voice around, he runs to him saying “Here I am. You called me.” When this has happened twice to Samuel, the author tells us, “Samuel was not familiar with Yahweh because the lord had not revealed anything to him as yet.” The NRSV makes it clearer “Samuel did not yet know Yahweh” (1 Samuel 3:7). Because God had not yet revealed himself, Samuel attributes his experience–hearing this voice–to a natural cause. Only when it happens a third time does Eli realize that no natural cause could explain Samuel’s experience. “Eli understood that Yahweh was calling the youth. So he said to Samuel, ‘Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply, ‘Speak, Yahweh, for your servant is listening.’” The next time that Yahweh calls out, Samuel is able to respond correctly. He knows who is calling.

If you went to Mass this morning, you probably heard a slightly different reading of the story. Instead of “Yahweh,” you probably heard “the LORD.” When you see in your Bibles the word “LORD” in small capital letters, what you are seeing is the translation of the transliteration of the Hebrew word for “Yahweh.” I used Yahweh in my own version of 1 Samuel to emphasize that the young Samuel is not receiving just any revelation, but is learning the proper name of the God of Israel.

Thomas Aquinas’ second question of the Summa Theologica is on the existence of God, a part of the Summa often quoted and studied in intro. Philosophy classes and often misunderstood. First, Thomas asks whether the existence of God is self-evident. He answers, “No one can mentally admit the opposite of what is self-evident; as the Philosopher [Aristotle] states concerning the first principles of demonstration. But the opposite of the proposition “God is” can be mentally admitted: ‘The fool said in his heart, There is no God.’ Therefore, the existence of God is not self-evident.”

Something is only self-evident, according to Aquinas, if the essence of the subject includes the predicate like “a zebra is an animal” because the essence of zebra, what makes a zebra what it is, includes animal in it. Regarding God, Aquinas says that if we say “God is,” the statement in itself would be self-evident because God includes his own essence. There is no predication in God. But here’s the rub: “Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us, but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature, namely, by effects.”

Thomas’ main interlocutor here is John Damascus who says that “the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all.” Aquinas agrees that the knowledge of God is in us naturally–sort of. Here, the passage in 1 Samuel is helpful. Samuel hears Yahweh calling him, so in this way, he has knowledge of God because he hears the voice of God. But until it is revealed to him that this voice comes from Yahweh, he attributes the voice to other things, namely, Eli. Aquinas writes,

“To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This however is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as knowing that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for there are many who imagine that man’s perfect good which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.”

The knowledge human beings have of God naturally is analogous to Samuel hearing a voice, and not knowing who it comes from, or seeing a person approaching and not knowing who it is. Not very useful knowledge.

But Aquinas still wants to insist that we can know that God exists naturally. Our knowledge of his existence comes from his effects. For Aquinas, the universe is constantly in motion, and it is this motion which is mysterious and needs to be investigated. Motion means that the universe is always in a state of flux, because when one thing moves, it impacts another. And because the universe’s change is attributable to motion, the universe can be investigated according to principles of causation.

Aquinas, when he looks around the universe, tries to explain things in terms of Aristotelian causation, as he claims all humans do. But this chain of causation cannot be endless. There must be some first cause. There must be some first efficient cause, some unmoved mover or necessary “causer” on which all other contingent causes derive their existence. This, Aquinas says, is God, which he explains in the second question of the Prima Pars. This first cause is what is naturally sought out by the intellect. In other words, the intellect was made to seek out knowledge of God in this way. Aquinas writes,

The existence of God, like other truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection presupposes that something can be perfected (I, Q. 2, art. 2, ad. 2).

What Aquinas is trying to do is show that the intellect can come to some natural knowledge of what God does through his effects. But this tells us nothing about the essence of God. What or Who or the Essence of God remains beyond us. The human intellect, says Aquinas is not made to know anything naturally about God.

For knowledge of God, the human depends on grace. In the first question of the Prima Pars, Aquinas says that sacred science (I.e. theology) is necessary because the human being does not naturally know God, and so a further principle, revelation, is necessary. This first question regarding the importance of revelation guides the rest of the Summa. When Aquinas says that the effects of God in the universe lead the intellect to posit God as their cause, he emphasizes that revelation is still necessary in order to know anything about this first cause. The intellect depends on God’s grace to elevate it and allow it to grasp knowledge of God. Thus, faith, the theological virtue located in the intellect, is necessary to grasp knowledge of God.

In the story in 1 Samuel, Yahweh has to be revealed to Samuel. He can’t just hear the voice and know God. He must be helped, both directly by God’s self-revelation, and indirectly by the assistance provided by those who know Yahweh, in this case, Eli (this “assistance” other people provide in disclosing knowledge of God is what Aquinas calls “justifying grace”).

Fergus Kerr says that Aquinas’ five proofs are about showing how God has already been known naturally by the philosophers. He is not re-proving God, but simply rearticulating. His basis for doing so is Scriptural, and he cites Romans 1 “for what can be known of God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divinity has been understood by the things he has made.” In the Old Testament, we see a fuller understanding of God, revealed in God’s election and sustaining of Israel. But the Jews also have an imperfect knowledge of God. The fulfillment of knowledge about God is found in the person of Jesus Christ, in his birth, life, death, and resurrection. It is in Jesus that God makes himself fully known.

Barth and Aquinas on Theology and Public Life

As part of my studies for comprehensive exams, I was reading an article by Ronald Thiemann from The Thomist (1986) on “The Significance of [Karl] Barth for Contemporary Theology.”  Thiemann is a Lutheran minister and professor at Harvard Divinity School who works specifically on theology and public life.

Karl Barth (1886-1968 ) was a Swiss Reformed theologian, and some describe him as the father of Neo-Orthodoxy.  Barth based theology on God’s revelation alone, not on history, or religious feelings, or most importantly, philosophy.  He is famous for his rejection of natural theology, which attempts to speak about God based on how God has revealed himself in nature or history.  For Barth, the only true knowledge of God is God’s own self-definition in Jesus Christ, as attested to by the Scriptural witness.  The only task of theology, therefore, is testing the church’s proclamation of God against God’s own self-revelation.  Natural theology differs from something like Barth’s revealed theology because it attempts to talk about using reason, rather than revelation, as God is found in the natural world, not Scripture or salvation history.

Thiemann claims that modern culture is characterized by the collapse of Christendom, and by a theological and moral pluralism in which belief in God can no longer be presumed.  Moreover, the antithesis of belief in God–atheism–has become a logical possibility for increasingly more people.  The challenge to atheism is met by many with arguments based on natural theology, rational arguments for the existence of God, or other arguments that try and argue for the inherent religiousness of every human being (Thiemann cites specifically David Tracy‘s transcendental argument and Schubert Ogden‘s argument on experience and language).  Because Barth rejects such arguments, he seems passé to those who want to find a positive role for theological discourse within modern pluralism.

As we have already said, Barth does not think that human reason can prove God’s existence or anything about God.  Because of the primacy Barth attributes to revelation, he claims that the necessary condition for our knowledge of God is God’s movement toward us, God’s revelation of God’s self.  Barth is not a fundamentalist, meaning he does not think that the revelation of God is contained exclusively within Scripture, which would no longer make him a hidden God.  Rather, we come to know God through another external reality, which is the exclusive vehicle for revelation, namely the person of Jesus Christ, to whom Scripture bears witness.

Barth insisted that correlation between Christian theology and the language of culture threatened the integrity of the Christian faith.  In Thiemann’s words: “Christian language does, in its own halting and piecemeal fashion, describe the reality of the world in which we all live, a world whose origin and destiny are determined by the reconciliation accomplished in Jesus Christ.  Insofar as the language does truly describe, its irreducible integrity and distinctive logic must be preserved.  Because that language describes our common world of experience, it must be related to other forms of human discourse, but the terms of that relation must always be ruled by the logic of the Christian gospel.”

Thiemann thinks that the situation of modern pluralism calls into question any attempt to ground the meaning and truth of Christian beliefs in any system outside the Christian faith.  He points to Barth, however, as an example of Christian theology may participate in the public square, “engaging the world of culture from within an integral vision of reality as formed by the Christian gospel.”  This does not mean rejecting science or philosophy or any other non-theological discourse, but it does mean placing  them at the service of Christian theology.

As a Thomist, I am sympathetic to much of what Barth is trying to do.  Part of his project, which I think the Barmen declaration reflects, is rejecting the idea that there are two spheres of existence for the Christian–a public and a private, a worldly and a religious, a faithful and a rational.  For Barth, the church does not serve the state, or science, or philosophy, nor does it change or water down its message in light of cultural pressure to do so.  The job of the church and the task of theology is to proclaim God as revealed in Jesus Christ.  To the extent that science and philosophy and other disciplines facilitate that goal, they may be used, but always as a means to theology’s end.

Thomas would agree with much of what Barth sees as the task of theology and its role in public life.  For Aquinas, theology is a sacred science which depends exclusively on knowledge revealed by God which “surpasses human reason.”  The knowledge that sacred science contains is essential to man’s salvation and must be accepted on faith.  Sacred science uses philosophy and the other sciences, “not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer.  For it accepts its principles, not from other sciences, but from God, by revelation” (I, Q. 1, art. 5).  Aquinas’ theology, like Barth’s, is a revealed theology.

Aquinas, like Barth, also does not think that there is a realm of rational human existence, and a realm of faithful human existence.  Just as theology is the queen of the sciences, revealed knowledge is the height of all knowledge, and is the standard for judging all other knowledge: “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 Corinthians 10:4-5).”

Theology for both Barth and Aquinas is the highest of the sciences, and the standard for judging all other human experience.  In the context of modern pluralism, especially in light of the rise of atheism, theology has a place only insofar as it does not compromise its integrity.  Both Aquinas and Barth think that the ability to participate in pluralistic discourse, therefore, is limited by the absolute and particular nature of the foundation of Christian life, which is God’s revelation.  No arguments for the revealed God of Christianity suffice.  No  philosophy can contain this God who has communicated himself in Jesus Christ.  Aquinas says on this note:

Sacred Scripture, since it has no science above itself, can dispute with one who denies its principles only if the opponent admits some at least of the truths obtained through divine revelation; thus we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Writ, and against those who deny one article of faith, we can argue from another. If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections — if he has any — against faith. Since faith rests upon infallible truth, and since the contrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear that the arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations” (I, Q. 1, art. 8).

Christians are not called to withdraw from public life.  Neither Barth nor Aquinas would support the idea that Christians could not be judges or politicians or biologists or even soldiers.  Both Barth and Aquinas would agree, however, that this participation must always be Christian participation, and unapologetically so.  It means that Christ must be the standard of judgment for all things, even worldly things.  Both Barth and Aquinas would say, for example, that an allegedly Christian politician could claim that he agrees with his church’s teaching on the dignity of all human life, including the pre-born, but could still support pro-abortion as a public figure.  For both Barth and Aquinas, Christian existence has an integrity and continuity.  There is no public realm over which Christ does not have authority.

What Barth pushes stronger than Aquinas, however, due to his historical circumstances which are especially relevant today is that not only does the church not subordinate itself to or separate itself from culture, it also cannot assimilate itself into culture.  For Barth, the identity of the church could not have its locus in a particular Volk or political movement, like the rise of National Socialism in the 1930’s.  Barth vehemently opposed the German Christians who exalted Hitler as bringing salvation to Germany, and demanded that Protestant churches  should cooperate in national renewal under his leadership, not letting theological scruples prevent them from wholeheartedly supporting the project of National Socialism.  That people saw God speaking through Hitler must be categorically false, according to Barth.  God cannot be humanized in some department of history, nor does he speak in anything other than the one Word, Jesus Christ.

To bring this discussion to the practical realm, I cannot help mentioning my discomfort with the way Christian theology has been co-opted in support for Barack Obama.  Check out this blog as an example of what I am convinced is a widespread belief about Obama–he is the change we want to see.  MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews’s comment on Obama’s messianship have become almost legendary but they bear repeating: “I’ve been following politics since I was about 5. I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”  Barth would undoubtedly see too many parallels between the Christian response to Obama in 2008 and the Christian response to Hitler in 1933.  He would probably call for another Barmen declaration in response.  Not because Obama and Hitler are remotely comparable as politicians (I don’t think they are), but because the Christian response to them is so similar.

There is only one revelation, and this is the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.  Any person, or philosophy, or thing that replaces Jesus as the fulfillment of truth, as the object of hope, as the standard of judgment is simply inconsistent with Christianity, at least as Barth and Aquinas understand it.

The church must bring its theological scruples to the public square and not allow itself to be co-opted for any other purposes not the purposes of God.  Nor should it water down its proclamation to serve worldly powers.  Theology is the rule and measure of worldly powers.  Theology  is the criterion of experience, not vice versa.  The public square, therefore, is not a non-theological square, nor is it immune to distinctively Christian critiques.  On this point, Barth and Aquinas would wholeheartedly agree.