Soundings in the History of a Hope The Soteriology of Thomas Aquinas Notes on the Tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae Richard Schenk OP Lecture:
I. Please recall the context of the theodicy question, the question of justifying both the goodness of God and the dignity of his creation in the face of suffering. Recall that we argued, with and against both Leibniz and Kant, that without faith the theodicy question would tend towards the so-called "solution" of resignation, masked as (stoic) optimism or the "best-possible-world" thesis. This thesis makes humans just a minor part of the cosmos: "humans deserve no more than what they experience; that is their place in the good and varied cosmos"; so the thesis, minimizing the negativity of experience and so "solving" the theodicy question. Recall that we argued that such resignation is a premature "solution" and a loss of the niveau of problem based on mere prima facie plausibilties drawn from painful experience. However, there is something true and of lasting validity about this cosmological solution, something which Thomas will keep despite his rejection of Stoicism: namely the refusal to accept the functionalization of evil and its suggestion that suffering is allowed in order to cause new goods of mercy or justice for individual. Suffering is more the result of the condition of the possibility of the limited goods of a varied cosmos than the agent of their production. With regards to the individual, suffering is rarely more than the occasio of new goods, not even always that, most rarely its purposeful cause. Recall that Thomas holds that, while God would be free to make other ever better worlds (but no best world), this world of ours could not be freed from all suffering without becoming a different world. This world cannot be essentially different. But because of God’s freedom to make better ordered worlds; and because this or that suffering could be prevented without destroying this world as such; further, because suffering reflects non-instrumental negativity; and finally because Thomas believes by faith that each person is called by grace to beatitude, whereby each person is an end and an ultima ratio unto itself, the question of theodicy remains open. But it remains open only for faith, not for the general tendency of philosophy, which will follow the prima facie plausibilties (Leibniz over Kant). Jewish-Christian belief preserves hope in a special destiny of humans, which means it also preserves the theodicy question from premature solutions (pace Kant). Faith is more than evidence; faith begins, where evidence ends. Please recall finally that this basic thesis, "faith begins, where evidence ends", was also seen to be Thomas’ point about the axiom, omnis Christi actio nostra est instructio. What the historical Jesus said and did, gives our faith content and encouragement, but is not sufficient for full understanding or for the act of faith confirming what is understood. For that, the Spirit is necessary. We experience our experience as insufficient for a decision about theological hope, as caught in the antinomy and the insolubility of the theodicy question. Precisely this awareness of self-deficiency is therefore the legitimate starting point for faith. Transcendental soteriology has the task of reflecting on this starting point. This will be shown today with reference to the treatment of the resurrection and the cross in the Tertia pars. II. The first parts of the tract on Jesus' deeds and sufferings follow that threefold division of Christ's earthly life into ingressus - progressus - egressus, which Thomas first presented in his commentary on Matthew, possibly completed around 1263(1), developing thoughts suggested by the patristic studies he pursued at the papal court in Orvieto2. As the resurrection belongs to the fourth section on the exaltation of Christ "post hanc vitam"3, it would seem from the start that no immediate consequences could be inferred for the meaning of his earthly life. This impression seems at first glance to be confirmed by the content of Question 55: De manifestatione resurrectionis. Asking why the resurrection should not be manifest in a way evident to all humankind, Thomas replies that our future glory along with Christ's risen glory exceeds the power of common human knowledge4. It does not result from any natural power of human nature, as did Christ's mortality, which thus was and remains accessible to common historical reason; by contrast, the resurrection comes "from the glory of the Father" (Rom 6, 4)5. The quotes Thomas brings from Is 64, 4 and I Cor 2, 10 are especially significant: "No eye has seen what you have prepared for those who love you"; and: "God has revealed it to us through his Spirit"6. As to why not even the disciples were present to witness the event of the resurrection, Thomas points to the fact that the new life into which Christ rose was not the life commonly known to all, but a life conformed to God7. As such it transcends what general knowledge and experience could grasp not only as calling life from death (quantum ad terminum a quo), but as leading to a life of glory (quantum ad terminum ad quem)8. This distinguishes Christ's resurrection from Lazarus' revival9. Thus it was at least fitting that a proclamation by word should precede any apparitions, which could only be less adequate in grasping the mystery10. The disciples would become eye-witnesses11 of the apparitions only after they had come to believe the verbal proclamation they had at first only heard12. The risen Christ's remaining estranged from his disciples and the probably small number of apparitions were themselves meant as an instruction as to how very different the life of glory was from the earthly life familiar to common experience13. The disciples are called to faith, not to experience. The kind of experience or proof they had in regard to the apparitions was not of the sort which could eliminate their need for faith; the apparitions were only signs (signa) of the resurrection, not proof or evidence in the strong sense of the word as contrasting to faith, which remained even for them an "argumentum non apparentium" (Hebr 11,1)14; thus the merit of their faith remained, for they believed what they did not see, even if aided by visible signs15. No one apparition, no one sign, would have sufficed to engender faith, much less to replace it16. Even the culminative effect of all such signs taken together remained subordinated to the evocative power of the verbal proclamation; for they made manifest the resurrection "maxime propter Scripturae testimonium, et angelorum dicta, et ipsius Christi assertionem miraculis confirmatam"17. The Lord did not prove his resurrection to the disciples from naturally known principles of experience: "...si autem essent eis nota, non transcenderent rationem humanam, et ideo non essent efficacia ad fidem resurrectionis adstruendam, quae rationem humanam excedit; oportet enim principia ex eodem genere assumi"18. The new faith sought rather to build on the old: "Probavit autem eis resurrectionem suam per auctoritatem sacrae Scripturae, quae est fidei fundamentum"19. The Lord did not manifest his true glorified body in the apparitions, since he wished to convince the disciples that he was the same one who had lived with them and been crucified20. Whether they were quick or slow to recognize him in the apparitions depended on their faith; those with a less developed faith had apparitions which were less obviously of Jesus21. The radical otherness of this resurrected life determines much of what Thomas says here about the primacy of the proclaimed message over visible manifestations and about the insufficiency of what is seen or heard to demonstrate that of which it is but a "sign"22. And yet these themes on the resurrected Christ do relate back to the earthly life of Jesus and forward to the proclamation of Christ to those who did not experience the apparitions. For Thomas faith is directed toward the promise of a fulfillment, which by nature is somehow desired but uncertain, and which thus cannot be deduced from self-knowledge or self-reflection. By faith we are directed toward a goal we know to be "supernatural" in its attainment, though at least partially natural in our desire23. The human has by nature reason to hope and to doubt; the decision about which of these two movements finally should carry the day is not a consequence of that nature itself. The proclamation of the gospel comes to a humanity unable to solve of itself the antinomy of hope and despair. Desired and doubted at once, this fulfillment of human life would be precisely our share in the life of glory of the risen Lord, which is, however, less evident now than even in the qualified apparitions reported by the disciples. The "signs" of the beginnings of this glory, whether in the experience of grace or of charity, one's own or that of other Christians, remain too vague, too ambiguous, too similar to the conceivable history of a freedom not destined for glory to provide a sufficient basis for belief without the inner help of the Holy Spirit24. All grace, especially as given in this life, presupposes nature and does not destroy it or the limitations proper to it25. These include the unavoidable antinomy of desire and doubt, moving us at once toward hope and despair. Theological faith and hope transcend this basic antinomy of experience without destroying it, without replacing this common human uncertainty based on the experience of nature and history with new evidence of their own26. It is understandable why Thomas thought so highly of the description of faith in Hebr 11, 1 ("completissima fidei definitio"), the verse, which according to Thomas opened the second half of the Letter to the Hebrews27: "Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium"28. Thomas' treatise on the risen Lord casts new light on the general relation of faith and insufficient evidence, articulated beforehand in the context of the theological virtues. This is all the more significant, as recently there has been a tendency for prominent representatives of Protestant and Catholic soteriologies to drift ever farther apart, where they might have provided a corrective for each other in the three interrelated questions of theological method, the centrality of either Christ's death or his resurrection, and the theology of death in general, articulated respectively as primarily loss or gain29. Following Luther's demand for a theologia crucis30, leading Protestant thinkers have tended to put their emphasis on the conflict between faith and reason (or evidence), on the meaning of the cross viewed in its negativity, and in an understanding of death as judgement and negation. Rudolf Bultmann is representative of this, seeing historical science as dialectically opposed to faith31, while at the same time reducing the resurrection in its unfathomability to a call to embrace the cross in all its negativity, criticizing (with his so-called "Sachkritik") even St. Paul for attempting to conceive of resurrection as a fact and a conceivable, future possibility of his Christian listeners32; rather, the proclamation of the resurrection precisely as inconceivable is meant to lead us back to the experience of the cross, in which alone faith is possible33. These three interrelated emphases, a methodology cautious of too ambitious a theology, an orientation on the cross rather than on the resurrection, and a negative view of Christian death, are evident in varied ways in such different theologians as K. Barth34, E. Juengel35, J. Moltmann36 and D. Soelle37. Many prominent Catholic theologians have tended to the opposite extreme. Rightly enough, they have seen the resurrection as the true center of faith and soteriology, insofar as this stress on the resurrection has not been anticipated by an incarnational approach of human quasi-divinization. At the same time, they have tended to over-emphasize the contribution of experience to faith (a kind of theologia gloriae) and to minimize the negativity of factical death. As we have seen, Karl Rahner is a paradigm of these tendencies, viewing soteriology on the model of a kind of initial glorification and cosmic incarnation, the apriori elevation of humanity by God's coming to be himself in others. The negativity of human death is minimalized, understood at first as the gain of an all-cosmic relationship or later as a resurrection-in-death, a "liberation from the prison of time", the maturation and fulfillment of life, the act of freedom. Just as knowledge generally is rooted in that self-transcendence which ultimately is a share in glory close to the hypostastic union itself (literally a "Self-communication of God"), so, too, are faith and theology explications of general experience and philosophy38. In different ways, this threefold emphasis on the experiential evidence of faith, the elevating glory of Christ's resurrection or incarnation, and the factical advantages of death recurs in the theologies of L. Boff39 and G. Greshake40. The study of Thomas could help to recall an older tradition of new, ecumenical importance, recognizing the resurrection as the center of our faith41, a desire known to us and central to us, but without minimalizing the negativity of death or falling into the extremes of relating faith and experience by contradiction or identity. That becomes clearer with Thomas' understanding of the cross. III. In the context of the present problematic, the question must be: Is the cross according to Thomas a revelation, perhaps the effective revelation of God's/Christ's redemptive love, or is the cross only a signum sub contrario, the ultimate "dark night of the soul", where God's redemptive purpose is least manifest? Can it be both? An answer is made all the more difficult by two factors: first of all, the Christological section dealing with the passion and cross42 presupposes a number of insights, some articulated in previous or following sections, some never articulated; the principal presupposition is (and was already in sacred Scripture) the redemptive character of the cross, as viewed in light of belief in Christ's resurrection. Secondly, Thomas tends to discuss the passion and death of Jesus within categories related closely to the concept of redemption, not revelation, just as Pelagius conversely had minimized the discussion of redemption in order to highlight Christ's revelation43. Some of Thomas' positions on the revelatory value of the cross are explicit; others can only be assumed by an analogy to his statements on effective redemption. In recent times, an attempt has been made by E. Schillebeeckx to discern three phases in New Testament reflection on the death of Jesus44: at first, a stark contrast between the cross and resurrection, the work of sinners and of the Father respectively, such as at I Cor 15, 3s. and Acts 2, 23s.; then, the cross as foreseen and permitted or tolerated as part of God's salvific plan, but not yet as a direct cause of the fulfillment of this plan, nor as directly desired by God, such as occasionally in Luke's concept of Jesus' "way" (Lc 22, 22 with regard to his betrayal) or in Matthew's interpretation of the rejection of the Gospel by the Jews as a prerequisite for its proclamation to the Gentiles (culminating at Mt 28, 19); finally, the cross as somehow contributing to the attainment of salvation and as such somehow desired by Jesus and/or the Father, such as in concrete interpretations of the Cross as service, obedience, propitiatory sacrifice, or reconciliation, but also in the more general and widely attested expression of his death as "for us" (the so-called hyper-formulae), where the transition from the second to the third phase occurs, probably with the earthly Jesus himself. The distinction of these three phases within the New Testament has a certain plausibility of itself, but it should be articulated by considerations, which here can only be hinted at in five theses:
After recounting the leading New Testament models for expressing the salvific dimension of the cross (merit by representation, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption), Thomas mentions a further category, which is more formal in character than the others and implicit in all of them: efficientia50. Here Thomas presents the doctrine of the humanity of Christ as the instrumentally perfective (no longer simply the instrumentally dispositive) effective cause of salvation51. On the one hand, this doctrine claims for Christ's humanity aggreater share in the full causality of salvation than was clear in Thomas' early works: Omnes actiones et passiones Christi instrumentaliter operantur in virtute divinitatis ad salutem humanam. Et secundum hoc passio Christi efficienter causat salutem humanam52. On the other hand, the important role of the principal, divine causality (only "in virtute divinitatis") must not be forgotten, especially when extending by analogy the explicit doctrine on the effective cause of salvation to a thesis about the effective cause of revelation: Passio Christi, relata ad Christi carnem, congruit infirmitati assumptae; relata vero ad divinitatem, consequitur ex ea infinitam virtutem..., quia scilicet ipsa infirmitas Christi inquantum est Dei habet virtutem excedentem omnem virtutem humanam53. Thomas indicates here that this doctrine will be central to the tract on the causality of the sacraments, but he mentions too that it is significant for faith itself: "Passio Christi, licet sit corporalis, habet tamen spiritualem virtutem ex divinitate unita. Et ideo per spiritualem contactum efficaciam sortitur:sscilicet per fidem et fidei sacramenta, secundum illud Apostoli: Quem proposuit propitiatorem per fidem in sanguine eius"54. If it is possible to consider the actions and sufferings of Jesus, especially his death on the cross, as instrumentally perfective, efficient causes of revelation, it would seem likely that the necessity of the principal, divine cause, whose effectiveness is not experienced, would correspond to the necessity of a distinct inner grace in order to believe the spiritual meaning intended by what is seen. As instrumentally perfective, the sayings and words of Jesus have more than an accidental contribution; they are more than chance occasions of revelation. Not principally perfective, they do, however, demand a belief in the non-evident presence of God working salvifically in the human life and fate of Jesus. The passages where Thomas explicitly mentions the instruction intended by the passion confirm the plausibility of such an analogy. In STh III 46, 3 Thomas says that, apart from the main aim of the cross, our liberation from sin, a number of further goods pertaining to human salvation was gained. Most of these have to do with our instruction: in seeing how much he loves us, we are moved to love him in turn; we are taught by the cross an example of the virtues, especially those for right conduct under duress55; we see in humankind a new and greater dignity and a corresponding motive to avoid or overcome sin. Many of these themes were already touched upon in the first Question of the Tertia pars. It is clear, however, that this instruction depends on understanding the cross in light of the belief in the divinity of the one who accepted this death and in the resurrection to which it leads. Without the belief in what cannot be seen, this understanding of the passion narrative would be impossible. Such belief affects even what is "seen": That Christ suffered with a pain more intense than other conceivable pains is deduced from belief in his perfect humanity and thus his perfect body with its perfect tactile perception; the ideal of human perfection is notable56. That he did not suffer every kind of pain is deduced from the belief that he suffered with perfect charity, which is decisive for the satisfaction, which we believe came with this death: non satisfactio efficax...nisi ex caritate57; but for Thomas neither charity nor satisfaction nor that this death was truly "for us" is accessible to our certain experience. The imperfections of body and of soul which Christ assumed in principle at birth and perfected actually on the cross help us to "see" his true humanity, but we would never even have looked for it, did we not believe in his true divinity58. The negativity of Jesus' death, which we visualize mostly on the basis of the passion narratives, underscores for Thomas the remaining negativity of death even for Christians; this instruction, aimed at correcting the Stoic ideal of acceptance and impassibility, is meant to be communicated by reports of Jesus' laudable sorrow, fear, puzzlement and anger in the face of death59; and yet such reports take on their full significance only as a corrective to dubious conclusions about the alleged harmlessness of Christian death deduced from a valid belief in the resurrection. This, too, is the context of Thomas' greater stress on the insightful "natural" will of Christ to avoid death, which helps Thomas to "hear" better the Gospel narrative of Gethsemani60. Thomas "sees" the importance of this dimension of the humanity of Christ in light of his unusually detailed knowledge of the patristic and conciliar controversies on the humanity of Christ, which had become virulent only after the divinity of Christ was believed clearly. Thomas acknowledges the true and visible negativity of the cross, even (or rather especially) for believers; but their belief that this cross was carried by a divine person and with divine purpose means that it can be understood in faith as a revelation of love, solidarity, and promise. With his typically theocentric view of the cause of Christ's resurrection, Thomas underscores the fact that Christ's humanity could not of its own power have restored itself to life: "Si autem consideremus corpus et animam Christi mortui secundum virtutem naturae creatae, sic non potuerunt sibi invicem reuniri, sed oportuit Christum resuscitari a Deo"; only secundum unitae divinitatis virtutem was the humanity instrumentally causative in overcoming death61. Indeed, even to continue to talk of his humanity or his body after death depends on the believed relation of these to his divinity; for were the divinity not united to the body of Christ in the tomb, it would not have been the true body of Christ at all, but only his corpse62. This dimension in the doctrine of instrumental causality means that only the unseen divinity of the Crucified justifies the belief in the salvific effect of the cross: Mors Christi est operata salutem nostram ex virtute divinitatis unitae et non ex sola ratione mortis63. This is true not only of the dead Jesus, whose being dead, as a sharing in human fate, was salvifically effective but not meritorious, but even of the dying Jesus, where the merit by love and freedom can be supposed: even here the salvation comes from the humanity only as joined to the divinity64. On the other hand, to have saved humanity in another way than by this sharing of humanity and mortality, would have been an all too exclusive theocentricity. Thomas agrees with Augustine that God did not wish to redeem humankind without human cooperation. This dimension to the cross, salvific by means of the humanity but non nisi ex virtute divinitatis, reflects a dimension of the whole earthly ministry. The theocentricity corresponds on the epistemological level to the non-manifest character of the claim posed by Jesus' deeds and doctrine. The realization of what Jesus' claim meant, not apriori accessible to humankind, was only possible by power of these words and deeds, thus corresponding on the level of revelation to perfective instrumental causality: Christus per humanitatem suam voluit manifestare divinitatem. Et ideo, conversando cum oominibus, quod est proprium hominis, manifestavit omnibus suam divinitatem, praedicando et miracula faciendo et innocenter et iuste inter homines conversando65. But in order to cause an acceptance of the non-evident truth of this claim, the deeds and doctrine of Jesus had to be accompanied by divine power, that illumination by the Holy Spirit, of which Thomas spoke in the Commentary on John: "non nisi ex divina virtute." Greshake praises Pelagius for stressing the continuity of the new and old law, both carried by the self-experience of the power and positive possibilities of human freedom. Thomas does indeed reject from the time of his inception onwards the opposite hope of the Joachimites, that a time of the Spirit would come in this life, which would dispense us from the imperfections of the law of Christ, including the mediation of his doctrine and sacraments by the church and by a non-evident faith66. Thomas admits these imperfections of the new law and sees in them a parallel or continuity with the imperfections of the old law: Hic status (legis novae) est figuralis et imperfectus respectu status patriae, quo veniente iste status evacuatur67. If there is a continuity of experience between the old and new law, it is that under both an experience of sin and powerlessness deepens insight into the need for redemption: Unde eo modo erat homo liberandus, ut humiliatus recognosceret se liberatore indigere68. If no new share in the Spirit were given by Christ, the continuity of old and new law would have been as absolute as Pelagius maintained; and, Thomas adds, as much an experience of our mere mortality and powerlessness: Ad legem Evangelii duo pertinent. Unum quidem principaliter: scilicet ipsa gratia Spiritus sancti interius data. Et quantum ad hoc nova lex iustificat... Aliud pertinet ad legem Evangelii secundario: scilicet documenta fidei et praecepta ordinantia affectum humanum et humanos actus. Et quantum ad hoc lex nova non iustificat... Unde etiam littera Evangelii occideret, nisi adesset interius gratia fidei sanans69. Endnotes 1 Cf. Michael Arges: "New Evidence concerning the date of Thomas Aquinas' Lectura on Matthew", in: MedSt 49 (1987) 517-523. 2 Cf. Scheffczyk, "Mysteria vitae Christi", op. cit. 54-58. 3 STh III, 27, in principio. 4 STh III 55, 1, co. 5 Ibid. ad 1. 6 Ibid. co. 7 STh III 55, 2 co. 8 Ibid. ad 2. 9 Ibid. ad 3. 10 Ibid. co. 11 Thomas uses the term fide oculata here for eye-witness. The expression is found only three times in Thomas' writings, all from around the end of his life, and has led to some uncertainty on the part of his translators. In the Gilby-edition of 1971, Samuel Parsons and Albert Pinheiro translated fide oculata inspexit as Dionysius' "having witnessed with eyes of faith" a solar eclipse (STh III 44, 2 ad 2 in Vol. 53, 130s.), while Heinrich M. Christmann (Deutsche Thomas-Ausgabe, Bd. 28, 233) interpreted in 1956 the above passage on the disciples' eye-witness of the apparitions to mean: "Denn mit einem Glauben, der Augen hat, sahen sie...", which seemed to fit well enough to Thomas' insistence on the primacy of faith before apparitions (mit einem Glauben, der Augen gewonnen hat). In fact, however, a careful consideration of the context makes clear that at both passages from the Summa no play on words is intended; rather, Thomas follows the general meaning of the term as it had developed in the middle ages, above all in visitation regulations and reports, confirming rumors by "eye-witness". Once, however, Thomas does play on the words of the expression, namely in his very last writing, the only one we know to exist from after the experience of St. Nicolaus' Day 1273: his letter to Bernard, abbot of Monte Cassino. Here he tells the monks that rational reflection on the nature of God's immutability would help them to a more enlightened belief in the certain foreknowledge of his providence: "quasi fide oculata", i.e. with a faith which has come to see (by reason): Ed. Leonina, T. XLII (1979) 414, l. 85. 12 Ibid. Ad 1. 13 STh III 55, 3. 14 STh III, 55, 5. 15 Ibid. ad 2 et 3. 16 STh III 55, 6 ad 1: Singula argumentorum non sufficerent ad manifestandam Christi resurrectionem. 17 Ibid. 18 STh III 55, 5 co. 19 Ibid. 20 STh III 55, 6 ad 4. 21 STh III 55, 4. 22 Thomas often contrasts signs and proofs. The human desire for eternal life and beatitude is for Thomas a "sign" of immortality, without which this desire would seem to be vain; and yet such a sign falls short of being a conclusive proof; cf. L.A. Kennedy: "A New Disputed Question of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Immortality of the Soul", in: AHDL 45 (1978) 205-223, co. et ad 4. 23 Apart from the familiar texts on the reasonableness of believing more than reason alone (e.g. SCG I 5-8; IV 1) cf. the texts on the naturalness and unnaturalness of death and the natural and supernatural quality of the resurrection (e.g. SCG IV 52; 79; 81). 24 Cf. STh I-II 112, 5 et par.; and: Leo Scheffczyk: "Die Frage nach der 'Erfahrung' als theologischem Verifikationsprinzip", in: W. Ernst et al. (Ed.): Dienst der Vermittlung (EThSt 37) Leipzig 1977, 353-373; id. "Struktur und Ereignis als theologische Kategorien", in: N.A. Luyten (Ed.): Wege zum Wirklichkeitsverstaendnis (Grenzfragen 11) Freiburg 1981, 187-220; id. "Glaube und Glaubenserfahrung. Zur kategorialen Unterscheidung", in: MThZ 34 (1983) 129-145. 25 On Thomas' unique reception of the axiom, grace presupposes nature, cf. Schenk: Die Gnade vollendeter Endlichkeit, 288-442. 26 For Thomas doctrine that faith achieves less rest in an act of intellectus than even investigative science cf. QD de Ver 14, 1 et 2; et In Hebr 11, 1. 27 It is likely that Thomas commented on these two halves of Hebr at different times, leading occasionally to a separate textual tradition of the longer part; cf. James A. Weisheipl: Friar Thomas D'Aquino. His Life, thought, and work (Garden City, N.Y. 1974) 373. 28 Cf. also QD de Ver 14, 2 and STh II-II 4, 1. 29 A similar correspondence between the formal light of a science (its formale quo) and its formal object (formale quod) is evident in other sciences as well. In soteriology, it is the light of a theologia crucis or theologia gloriae which corresponds to the consideration of Jesus' death and resurrection in their relations to our suffering and salvation. 30 Luther's general methodological principle, "Crux sola est nostra theologia" (WA 5, 176), which he articulated from 1518 onwards, implies the direction of his soteriology as well. He goes beyond Anselm in seeing Christ's death not only as representative but also as penal. With reference to Gal 3, 13, Luther maintains that Christ became in death our curse and even our sin (WA 40/1, 433). Only in this, not in his merit, is his death transparent to ours. This confirms in turn both the meaning of our death and the method of the theologia crucis meant here. 31 Bultmann sees the "verbum crucis" of I Cor 1, 18 as a confirmation, "...that all human willing and striving, all human standards and values mean nothing before God, that they have been handed over into nothing, into death" (Exegetica, ed. by E. Dinkler, Tuebingen 1967, 225). This corresponds in turn to Bultmann's understanding of theological methodology and of our own death. 32 R. Bultmann: "Karl Barth, 'Die Auferstehung der Toten'", first in: Theologische Blaetter 5 (1926) 1-14, now in: Glauben und Verstehen I 38-64. 33 Ibid. 42, 53, 56, 58ss. 34 Ibid. 35 Gott als Geheimnis der Welt. Zur Begruendung der Theologie des Gekreuzigten im Streit zwischen Theismus und Atheismus (Tuebingen 21977), where the Crucified appears as the only legitimate analogy for God. The consequences for an understanding of our own death ("Angst" in the face of death and hatred of death, seen as the loss of relatedness, as obligations of the faith) are drawn out more expressly in: Tod (Themen der Theologie 8) Stuttgart/Berlin 1971; id. "Der Tod als Geheimnis des Lebens", in: Entsprechungen (Muenchen 1980). 36 Der gekreuzigte Gott. Das Kreuz Christi als Grund und Kritik christlicher Theologie (Muenchen 41981). Moltmann maintains that the cross ended the validity of general theology (e.g. the impassivity of God) and began properly Christian theology, which remains a response to the death cry of Christ. This cry, greater than the greatest theological response, is both origin and critique of theology, including the theology of the Trinity, to which Moltmann gave such anthropomorphic dimensions, as to have drawn the critique of Soelle and others. 37 Soelle aims at what might be termed (with some reservation) a "practical theology", seeking primarily to incite her readers to a solidarity with the sufferings of others, with the ongoing cross of Christ. While her appropriation of Th. Muentzer's critique of Luther occasionally leads her toward a mystical, almost positive understanding of suffering, her basic tendency remains the identification with the fight against death and suffering in general and against injustice in particular. It is in this context that the sentence must be understood: " 'Resurrection' - that only happens on the cross": Atheistisch an Gott glauben, Muenchen 21986, 99; cf.id. Leiden (Stuttgart 1973); id. Stellvertretung. Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem "Tode Gottes" (Stuttgart 1965). W. Pannenberg's work, Grundzuege der Christologie (Guetersloh 51976), must be viewed as the exception which confirms the rule: its stress on the resurrection of Jesus as the basis for his unity with God (47-112) and as accessible to historical reason was guided by Pannenberg's primary theological aim of overcoming the pietistic tradition in Protestantism by accentuating the rationality of Christian faith. The Protestant heritage is more evident in Pannenberg's caution against viewing the death of Jesus (ibid. 251-290) or our death too positively: "Tod und Auferstehung in der Sicht christlicher Dogmatik", in: KuD 20 (1974) 167-180 (cf. the criticism of Rahner's theology of death, 175ss.). 38 Cf. Karl Rahner: Grundkurs des Glaubens (Freiburg 1976), esp. 35-96, 122-312, 414-429. For the development of Rahner's theology of death cf. the third lecture and Schenk, Die Gnade vollendeter Endlichkeit, 458-477. 39 In his work on Jesus Christ, the Liberator (German translation Freiburg 21987), Boff abandons his initial caution against a too positive interpretation of the cross (225s.) and begins to seek positive meaning in death. Jesus' anxiety in the face of death was only in regard to possible doubt among his followers (276, 281), since he knew that the resurrection was the true sense of this death (293), in which God and the meaning of human life were fully present (340ss.). The third part of the book, on the "Resurrection of Christ - Our Resurrection in Death", begins by appropriating a hymn to death as a motto for his own thoughts, where the speaker waits "for death as for her lover" (the refrain). Boff accepts both of those two positive theories of death, which Rahner still saw as alternative to each other: first, death as the gain of an all-cosmic relationship ("death perfects the human"; it is "the genesis of genuine and perfect willing" and of "unlimited freedom"; it is "the moment of a deep intuitive insight into the center of the universe and the total presence of the world", the "completion of human birth": 421-424); but also secondly, the theory of resurrection in death (426ss.). In his work on the Experience of Grace (German version: Duesseldorf 1978), Boff sees death as "the truly universal sacrament of grace par excellence", "total liberation from all ties to what is earthly", "the chance, that Spirit can come to Light", "the realization of freedom and the human project" (179s.), while repeatedly criticizing Platonism as too dualistic for Christian tastes. Given the difficulty of justifying the fight against injustice and death from this vantage point, it would be hard to object to Karl Lehmann's judgement of Boff's work: "Because the systematic dimension of the work is so very incomplete and betrays a certain haste, the separate parts of the work are all too obviously just pieced together. Alongside severe social accusations, one finds thoroughly old-fashioned schoolbook theology in very non-political language" (in: Gegenwart des Geistes. Aspekte der Pneumatologie, QD 85, ed. Walter Kasper, 192). 40 Cf. the previous lecture. 41 E.g. STh III 53, 1 ad 3: Passio Christi operata est nostram salutem, proprie loquendo, quantum ad remotionem malorum; resurrectio autem quantum ad inchoationem et exemplar bonorum. 42 STh III 46-52. 43 Greshake unterscheidet between redemptive grace ("Erloesungsgnade") and salvific grace ("Heilsgnade"): Gnade als konkrete Freiheit, 101-115. 44 E. Schillebeeckx: Jesus. Die Geschichte von einem Lebenden (Freiburg 1975) II 2, 1 (242ss.). 45 Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche, biblische Christus (Muenchen 21956) 60. 46 STh III 48, 1. 47 Ibid. Art. 2. 48 Ibid. Art. 3. 49 Ibid. Art. 4 et 5. 50 STh III 48, 6. This "presence" of efficacy in the other categories is clear from the context, even though Thomas (ibid. ad 3) attempts a one-dimensional division of the categories for convenience sake. 51 For the development in Thomas' thinking, the influence of Greek patristic (esp. Cyril of Alexandria) and conciliar documents (notably the sixth ecumenical council of Constantinople in 680/1), and for the doctrine of (perfective) instrumental causality from the mid-1260's on, cf. Theophil Tschipke: Die Menschheit Christi als Heilsorgan der Gottheit unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Lehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg 1940). 52 Ibid. co. 53 Ibid. ad 1. 54 Ibid. ad 2, citing Rom 3, 25. 55 Cf. also STh III 46, 4. 56 STh III 46, 6. 57 STh III 14, 1 ad 1; cf. Art. 4. 58 STh III 14 et 15. 59 STh III 15, 6-9; 46, 6. 60 STh III 18, 3 et 5. 61 STh III 53, 4 co. 62 STh III 52, 3. 63 STh III 50, 6 ad 1. 64 Ibid. co. et ad 2. 65 STh III 40, 1 ad 1. 66 Cf. Weisheipl: vriar Thomas, 84-110. Both Contra impugnantes, with its derivation of a preaching order from the ancient structure of the church and not from any new age of the Spirit or unique charism, and the possible "resumptio" of his inception, based on the words of Baruch 4, 1 ("Hic est liber mandatorum Dei et lex quae est in aeternum") can be seen as counter-arguments to the kind of thinking exemplified in the Introductorius in Evangelium aeternum by Gerard de Borgo San Donnino. In any event, the case against Joachimism is one which Thomas will continue to argue throughout his life; cf. the literature (less so the explanations) in: Winfried H. J. Schachten: Ordo salutis. Das Gesetz als Weise der Heilsvermittlung. Zur Kritik des hl. Thomas von Aquin an Joachimvvon Fiore (BGPhThMA, NF 20) Muenster 1980. 67 STh III 106, 4. 68 STh III 1, 5 co. 69 STh I-II 106, 2 co.; cf. ad 1 et 3.
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