Soundings in the History of a Hope

The Soteriology of Thomas Aquinas
in Transcendental Theological Reflection:

Notes on the Tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae

Richard Schenk OP
Berkeley

Lecture:

I.
Salvation and the "Bright-Obscurity" of Faith in the Face of the Question of Theodicy

The past three lectures have all touched upon the correspondence between the "what" and the "how" of soteriology, its formal object and formal method: the need-and-possibility of salvation corresponds to the uncertain hope of faith, which R. Garrigou-Lagrange once described as the "bright-obscurity" of belief. The formal object, salvation, was seen in the dialectical character of death, which is both unnatural, somehow unfitting as the final verdict on humans, for whom we would hope for more; and yet also natural, in that human nature is impotent to avoid death. The object was also seen in the dialectical character of resurrection, as somehow natural, fulfilling the nature desire to save humans from death and restore them to full personhood; and yet also supernatural, not resulting from our own internal powers or from the dynamic of factical human existence, not resulting from the dynamic of our lives, much less from the dynamic of our deaths. What is described here ontically, corresponds in transcendental reflection and method to the antinomy, the inability to transcend the structure of finite transcendentality by introspection or self-evidence. This antinomy is not just Kant’s theoretical antinomy, but an antinomy of the heart. It is not less antinomian than Kant, but more. Kant thought the theoretical antinomies about God, the soul, and the world were unresolvable but unimportant; one could live well without knowing the answers to such questions. He thought that the practical antinomies were important, but practically resolvable; because, sensibly, they were ignored by self-confident moral practice anyway. Kant was confident that our own moral resolve and purpose would be enough to solve pragmatically the practical antinomies about God, freedom, beatitude, and the self-confidence in human dignity connected with them. After two centuries of repeated disappointments of this self-confidence, the antinomy of the heart knows more certainly than ever that everything will depend upon whether the message of our salvation by an Other is true or not. This is the dialectic which makes us look beyond our own identity to the possibility and urgency of salvation from an Other. Our own identity will tell us only of the indecisive oscillation between vague hope and self-doubts, which is the reasoned fruit of introspection. This dialectic is especially important at the end of the age of subjectivity, when the question of "alterity", of the "other" beyond the self has been posed anew; for example, by E. Levinas. This metaphysics of desire is somewhat more than the Scotistic metaphysics of simple possibility, metaphysics in the subjunctive mood, and something less than a Thomistic metaphysics of facticity, metaphysics in the indicative mood. It is a metaphysics of need, of desire, of hope, as unsure of fulfillment as neediness itself, but also as free of being merely arbitrary or speculative, defined by "the one thing necessary", a metaphysics in the "optative" mood. This is the transcendental basis of the kind of transcendental soteriology sought here. The reflected structures of uncertain self-experience provide the constant point of departure for every act of firm, decisive theological hope in salvation through an Other than ourselves. The method of the transcendental uncertainty of all self-evidence corresponds to the object of the salvation of human dignity and aspirations through an Other, if at all.

"Antinomy" came up in Kant in another context important for our own times: theodicy. Although the issue at stake is at least as old as Job, the word itself was coined by Kant’s opponent, Leibniz, just a century before him. "Theodicy" meant the attempted defense or justification of God in the face of his suffering creation. Although often overlooked, "theodicy" is also necessarily an attempt to justify the world or the human as worthy of this or that treatment; theodicy is always necessarily "anthropodicy" as well, although the word is less common. Why insects die is a question which less demands theodicy than the question of why human infants or young human parents die, not because the idea of God involved is different, but because the idea of the creation involved is different. If the world or the human were totally unimportant, the question of justifying God would not be posed. If God were thought to be an impersonal force or an abstract principle, the question would also not be posed. Only when two sets of presuppositions are taken together can the question of theodicy arise and be maintained: if God is thought of as personal, just, knowledgeable of and benevolent towards his creation; and if humans are thought of as worthy of special benevolence. So-called "solutions" of the theodicy question tend to simply give up one or both sides of these presuppositions, either by making God less personal and free or less benevolent, or by making humans less worthy or less needy of benevolence, or both. The question of theodicy after Auschwitz puts both God and human dignity in doubt with new urgency. Theodicy has become a question of the temptation to despair of the hope for human dignity.

Leibniz had argued a position which sounded implausible already to the opponents of his own day, such as the fideistic Pierre Bayle: Leibniz argued that philosophy can show that God had in fact created the best of all possible worlds. After the famous earthquake in Lisbon in the 18th century, where so many people died a common death despite their different merits, Leibniz’ claim sounded less plausible than every Writers like Voltaire heaped scorn upon Leibniz, and Kant took up many of Bayle’s counter-arguments to claim that no philosophical solution of the theodicy-question was possible; again, an antinomy, here between the various qualities attributed to God, say all-good and omnipotent. What Kant and the age of anthropocentric subjectivity took less notice of, was that Leibniz had absorbed much of an older philosophical tradition, which downgraded how worthy of benevolence humans were. If not the absolute best (as Leibniz thought), so at least the best kind of world had to include an order among different grades of beings, some perishable, others imperishable; some with no will or freedom at all, others with perfected wills, still others with defective freedom. A less varied world could be more predictable, but not better or more beautiful. Even the proper good of humans is possible only by allowing fallibility to run its course: the goods like freedom of choice, regret, forgiveness, or courage all demand that evil be allowed for the sake of the possibility of these goods, even when the evil thus incurred makes no positive contribution to the achievement of a new good for any personal individual.

Thomas Aquinas saw the merits of these arguments, but also their limits. Because of their merits, Thomas avoided the pious sounding (but profoundly impious) opinions of those who were saying that every evil is for some new individual good of mercy or of justice. For Thomas, the death of a young mother, say, need not be caused or allowed for the purpose of some hidden benefit to her soul or her family or as a punishment for original or actual sin; it can be the result of the condition of the possibility of the fragile good which mortal human beings are, without claiming that the loss of this fragile good is itself a contribution to a new good. Similarly, the evil of the fragility of crystal is a condition of its beauty, but its fracture need not be for any new good. But, unlike Leibniz, Thomas saw that no best world was possible; God could make better worlds of order and variety. Thus, the question of why he chose to make this world remained open. With Leibniz, Thomas also admits that the basic fallibility of goods in this world could not be done away with without doing away with what this world is all about. If there were no corruption and loss suffered in this world, it would no longer be the same world. But against Leibniz Thomas says that this or that detail could turn out better without changing the whole world; this particular young mother need not have died to preserve the fallible world order. Thus, the question of why this particular suffering also remains open for Thomas, but due to his faith, especially since he believes that each individual person has been called to beatitude. For Thomas (by the way, also for Leibniz, whose Christian faith kept him from following the consistency or, better, the one-sidedness of his own arguments), that meant that Kant’s position was wrong as well. Philosophy, left to itself, could not remain antinomian in this question for long, but would tend towards that form of resignation which Leibniz disguised as optimism: namely that humans are not so important after all, but just part of a varied cosmos. Faith in the basis of a personal hope keeps the question of why there is suffering open against premature philosophical "solutions", which would give up hope altogether. It is because faith affirms that our hope is well-founded, because Christ has lived this life with us, that the question remains open (and thus antinomian). Faith warns against misreading what looks like plausible evidence in the trial of God and human dignity. The question of theodicy leads us to the question of Christ.

II.
The Question of Christ’s deeds and sufferings

Thomas articulates his theodicy position in the first part of the Summa and maintains it in the second. In the completed sections of the Tertia pars it is reflected in the discussion of the efficacy of Christ’s death. It would have played a role in the uncompleted sections on eschatology. There, too, our general question of evidence and faith recurs, as in the two sections on either side of it, which we will deal with first: the treatise on Christ’s ministry, and the treatise on the resurrection. In both cases, the evidences offered to prepare our faith are an important but inconclusive point of departure, not an adequate basis for our hope.

A. The Ministry of Christ

The four-part tract on what Christ did and suffered (Questions 27-59), following the tract on the hypostatic union, was newly conceived and structured by Thomas. As less common than the first, it was of special importance to him. Thomas developed the four divisions while working on the Catena aurea and the commentary on Matthew: the entrance of Christ into the world (which we will deal with in the final lecture); his progress through it, or ministry; his exit from the world, or death; and his exaltation or resurrection. The treatise on his way of life and ministry was mostly ignored by neo-Scholasticism, such as represented in Garrigou-Lagrange’s commentary on the Tertia pars, which passes over the Questions 27-45 with the simple remark, that they should be read closely. Thomas associated more meaning with them, saying already in the prologue that Christ showed us by his own life the way of truth. What Thomas means by that can be seen in use of a common axiom of theology, going back to Augustine’s student, Cassiodorus: Omnis Christi actio, nostra est instructio: every deed of Christ is meant for our instruction, and has been re-told by the Evangelists for that very reason.

Before we consider Thomas’ use of the axiom, let us look at one contemporary context in the typical gravity of Roman-Catholic theology toward a revival of Pelagius, against whom Thomas wanted to argue his case.

II.
G. Greshake’s Proposal of a non-Pelagian Pelagius

Jesus Christ is seen by Thomas as the fullness of revelation surely not only in his humanity, more precisely stated: not only in the deeds and sayings of his earthly life or in his passion, death, and resurrection, but in his nature as the Divine Word and in his eschatological presence to the church and the blessed; and yet it is the first theme which is to be discussed here, how the Jesus who was seen and heard by his disciples "viam veritatis nobis in seipso demonstravit"1. This focus is justified partially by Thomas' own innovative division of the Christology2 into one tract centered on the concept of the hypostatic union3 and another on what Jesus did and suffered4. The systematic significance of the theme so selected is perhaps less obvious than that of the possible themes set aside. R. Garrigou-LaGrange's "running" commentary on the Tertia pars skips over the questions 27-45, noting only that they should be read attentively5: an omission typical of the neoscholastic difficulty in seeing dogmatic significance in the actions of Jesus' life and ministry. But the difficulty is in no way an exclusive problem of neoscholasticism. Gerd Lohaus, taking his systematic positions largely from Karl Rahner, proposes to treat the mysteries of the life of Jesus in the Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas6; and yet he devotes no thematic discussion to the events between the baptism and the passion of Jesus, with the exception of his miracles. If it seems that the theme selected here is in fact more of a spiritual than of a dogmatic nature, then at least this much should be conceded: Thomas' increased theological attention to the deeds of Jesus is to be viewed in the context of a renewed religious interest during the mid-thirteenth century: a fact, which theologians such as Leo Scheffczyk have seen as offering the possibility of spiritual renewal in our own times as well7. The question of the properly systematic-dogmatic dimension and problematic of our theme has been posed recently by the critique of a theologian, who surely cannot be accused of an attempt to dissociate theology and spirituality: Gisbert Greshake.

Greshake's theological themes, centering on the doctrine of grace8, found their decisive formulation in his Habilitationsschrift at Tuebingen: Grace as concrete freedom. An investigation of Pelagius' doctrine of grace9. While rejecting the description of his intention as an attempted "rehabilitation" of Pelagius10 (defined with somewhat arbitrary restrictiveness as mere "Repristinierung"11 without transposition into today's systematic context), Greshake sums up his intended result as follows: "In conjunction with the theology of Pelagius, we have developed at least in outline structures of a new doctrine of grace, which can come to terms with today's way of thinking better than the traditional doctrine of grace could have done so, and which especially can satisfy better the demand for concreteness (of grace)"12. Although occasionally conceding that Pelagius' optimism about the generally universal, positive response of human freedom to God's revelations presupposed a cosmocentric or theocentric world view which was antiquated already in his own day by comparison to the principles of Augustine's critique13, Greshake stresses that Pelagius was the legitimate heir both to the Jewish veneration of the law as being of itself a transforming revelation of God14 and to the Eastern Christian churches' doctrines of grace and Christology, to which Pelagius is said to owe his entire thought15 (excepting perhaps the pathos of freedom16 and accountability17); but Pelagius is said also to have a close relation and similarity to the thought of our day. Only by rejecting the alleged one-sidedness of Augustine's critique should we hope to recover those insights of Pelagius so unfortunately eliminated by Augustine but so congenial to today's way of thought: "The systematic task of this work is, in a strict sense, to think anew in light of the horizons of today's thought and problems those theological factors and dimensions which were eliminated or undervalued through Augustine's victory over Pelagius and, if possible, to absorb them into today's understanding of the faith"18. Sometimes Greshake describes these commonalities between Pelagius and our own day in terms of concrete doctrines (e.g. the stress on the laity19 and on social charity20 or a skepticism in regard to the baptism of children and to prayers of petition21). More commonly, and more importantly for the theme of this paper, Greshake sees the revival of Pelagian themes as a way to overcome Augustine's restrictions on the visibility, knowability, and universality of grace. Greshake propounds four qualities of grace: First, grace should be seen as integrated universally into human nature, just as the orders of creation and redemption, old and new covenant, or law and gospel are integrated into each other without any rift at all ("bruchlos")22; secondly, grace should thus be viewed as concrete, categorical freedom (and not just as transcendental freedom!23), i.e. grace is primarily the human freedom of concrete choice and particular decision ("For Pelagius, the fundamental form of grace is human freedom itself in its being actually carried and supported by God and in its being directed to him as to a final goal"24); thirdly, grace itself is thus concrete, i.e. experiential ("erfahrbar"), empirical ("empirisch"), provable ("ausweisbar") and verifiable ("verifizierbar")25; finally, grace is all of this not in some inner, invisible, spiritual realm, but as exterior, visible (and presumably audible) especially in the history and actions of others, preeminently in the deeds and doctrine of Jesus in himself and as carried on by the church26. The chief error of Augustine, misled by neo-Platonism27 and in turn misleading the traditional theology of grace ever since, was the denial of these four qualities of grace28.

Greshake tries to correct Augustine and the later Latin tradition by reviving the Pelagian reinterpretation of the Greek patristic theme of divine paideia29 with its more explicit stress on the possibilities of human freedom30. Given the positive view of human freedom as always already constituted and transformed by grace, God is ever revealing himself effectively to a fundamentally eager and willing humanity: in the whole of nature, but especially in the self-experience of human nature and human freedom, above all in the exterior realm of human history. With steady, unbroken continuity, this revelation of concrete, visible, experienced and verifiable grace is present in the Jewish law, in the deeds and doctrine of Jesus, and in their continuation by the church31. Greshake agrees with Pelagius that these visible graces are effective of themselves, without the "addition" of a distinct, inner grace, for instructing and perfecting an humanity always already ("immer schon") well-disposed32. He criticizes Augustine and the later Western tradition for demanding above and beyond these visible graces a distinct, inner grace in order to believe and be transformed by the visible forms of grace. Greshake sums up the alleged mistake of Augustine thus: "(For Augustine) it is not the very hearing of a doctrine which constitutes grace, not even if it be the doctrine of Christ, or his example, or his discipleship, but only that love which has been instilled into our hearts in a secret and hidden way"33. "The proper place of grace is the interior being of humans in their immediacy to God; in comparison to this, every extrinsic mediation of grace cannot be more than a merely instrumental sign of its invisible reality"34. Augustine's distinction of signum and significatio in regard to the need to come to understand whatever is said or seen is criticized here as a complete disjunction, at best an accidental association, of the perceived deed or word and its meaning35. This, in turn, is said to lead to the disjunction of the theology of grace (as given immediately by God to the human interior sphere) from its Christological basis (by mediation of the exteriorized humanity of Christ)36. The primacy of grace in exteriorized freedom is the only model developed by Greshake as a possible alternative to the sheer "dualism" of inner grace without any significant relation to the outer instance; there is no middle ground mentioned between these two extremes. No concept of a "shared" causality is discussed, which would seek to grasp the primacy of inner grace without dismissing the exterior instance as merely accidental37.

According to Greshake, the position of Pelagius is to be preferred, partly due to its more positive evaluation of the revelatory value of Christ's deeds and doctrine38: "(Interior) grace is always mediated by concrete, historical forms of mediation: nature, law, Christ's life, his, words and deeds, the witness of the community... Christ, he himself, the historical, concrete exterior of his life, word, and example, this is that graced power, which is capable of changing humans, liberating them to freedom, and leading them on their way toward becoming similar to God"39. "Here is the true effectiveness of Christ's instructions: His life's example of perfected justice speaks to us and recommends itself to us by its own power. Jesus' love and goodness shone brightly for us as a model, which incited us to imitate him. (As Pelagius says:) 'The greatness of his kind deeds awakes (excitat) in us the greatness of love returned'"40. We are moved to perfect justice not primarily by unseen, inner grace, but by the visible example of Christ as proclaimed and imitated in the church41. "Of course, salvific grace is not what it is for Augustine: an interior, imperceptible power, a kind of invisible medicine, which Christ, the mysteriously operative doctor, pours into us in a way unnoticed, unnoticeable in time and place. For Pelagius, grace is rather Christ himself, his word and deed, his radical being-just and his radical love, which he actualized in his life and death, which in turn are present to us in their proclamation"42.

What is true of Jesus is true of the Christian community as well: "Jesus Christus himself, who is freedom itself, is also the criterion of all freedom...That is the freedom which, taking from him its origin and power, is introduced by the community into history"43. In regard to this visible, effective grace of Christ in himself and in his members, Greshake praises Pelagius for his fidelity to a basic, Jewish principle of salvific history: "Interior history has no demonstrable advantage over exterior history; rather conversely: it is in history, before the eyes of all the world, that Yahweh proves himself to be Yahweh"44. Just as the example which Jesus lived took precedence over the message he proclaimed (allowing no part of his message to be without the example of his life), so, too, for the church: her proclamation will accompany her visible life, especially her social engagement, and not the other way around. For Christ and his church the sentences of Pelagius hold equally true: "First the deed, and then also the word"; "Never less by example than by word"; and "Ornamentum enim vitae doctrina - firmamentum vero verbi est opus"45. There seems to be no thought given here to a revelation which programmatically exceeds what could be verified or made evident by praxis.

Greshake's challenge to Augustine and the Western tradition, especially in regard to Christ's deeds and doctrine, his appeal to Pelagius' interpretation of the Greek patristic tradition, and his claim to present an especially modern theology of grace suggest the question to be pursued here: How does Thomas Aquinas view the Augustinian position on the insufficiency of Jesus Christ's visible deeds and sufferings, his verbal message, and their proclamation in the Church for faith and justification? Does he suggest a possibility of arguing the necessity of inner grace in order to believe and understand the revelation of visible deeds and audible message, without reducing those actions, sufferings, and sayings meant as revelation to the level of mere occasions46? Thomas anticipates the objection that, as faith comes from hearing (Rom 10, 17), so too the preaching and deeds (especially the miracles) of Christ or his church would be sufficient to engender the faith47. As will become clear, Thomas sees the origin and development of faith in a "duplex causa", with what is seen and above all what is heard as true (though secondary) causes helping to induce (persuade), define and confirm the faith; and yet, in contrast to the Pelagian tradition (and to certain recent forms of Catholic apologetics48), Thomas says of the causality of the preached word and visible deed or miracle: Quorum neutrum est sufficiens causa fidei. Sed principalis et propria causa fidei49 est id quod interius movet ad assentiendum50. The meaning of this position in regard to the biblical tradition of what Jesus said and did is evident in Thomas' reception of an axiom which sounds similar to Greshake's intention.  To Continue This Lecture Click Here. . .