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. Of the three groups of issues which we have identified as the "material objects" of soteriology, Christology, sacramentality, and eschatology, the area of sacramentality has up until now received little direct attention. Readers of the Tertia pars often overlook that the discussion from Question 60 onwards is not just of individual Christian sacraments, but also of the cultic practices of non-Christian religions as well. This discussion was well established before Thomas began writing. Peter Lombard began the fourth book of Sentences, dealing with sacraments and "last things", with a tract on "sacraments in general", trying to differentiate Christian sacraments from the rites of other religions. Some commentators on the Sentences, such as Thomas' later Dominican critic, Robert Kilwardby, made their questions on the fourth book into works devoted exclusively to the theology of religions. The relation of Christianity to what until the Council of Trent were generally called the "sacraments" of the First Covenant (de lege scripta) and of natural religions (de lege naturali) was discussed in detail. Although it is not as obvious as in the titles of his questions in the I-IIae on the cult of the older covenant (the longest articles in the Summa) or in the II-IIae on the virtue of religion (focusing there, however, on its realization in different "religions" or Christian orders of "religious"), Thomas deals with interreligious issues in our sense of the term not only in the tract on sacraments in general (Questions 60-65), but also in the context of the individual sacraments, for example in regards to the relation of the Eucharist to pre-biblical (as Melchisedech is pictured) and First Testament (paschal lamb, scape-goat) sacrifices of plants and animals. These interreligious issues have become a central topic in our day in three, ever-widening circles of dialogue, whose interconnections are not always obvious: inner-Catholic, inner-Christian, and interreligious. 1. The Inner-Catholic Discussion of Religious Tolerance and Religious Liberty. The Second Vatican Council extended its initial plan of a decree on Judaism to include in Nostra aetate positive comments on other religions as well, and it added the decree on the necessity of religious liberty, Dignitatis humanae. As with all conciliar documents of every age, the decrees do not reflect a perfect unanimity among the council fathers, but rather show where the outer boundaries of consensus are to be found. Precisely the decree on religious liberty reiterated the term "unica vera Religio", while insisting that coercion of any kind was unsuited to this religion. Beyond agreement on this negative limit, rejecting coercion for tolerance, it remained unclear what the good of religious freedom implied about the legitimacy of other religions. Were they merely to be tolerated so as not to force persons to sin against their consciences, as proponents of the exclusive claims of Christianity to truth (now called "exclusivists") argued, or were they in themselves valuable ways to truth in their own right, as others maintained? Consensus on the description "unica vera Religio" was made possible by the fact that most non-exclusivists were convinced that Christianity implicitly included, rather than excluded, most of the truth claims of other religions (a position now called "inclusivism"). The most convincing advocate of this position was arguably Karl Rahner. His theory of "anonymous Christianity" was not meant to apply only and not primarily to religiosity or religions, but to every human activity of thinking, willing, and hoping; but it meant, too, that it was now easier to imagine that the truth explicitly claimed by non-Christian religions was an implicit and less adequate affirmation of what was more clearly confessed by Christian belief. Christianity could thus be the "unica vera Religio" without denying other religions a participation in this truth. Inclusivism, even in variations other than Rahner’s, seems to have become the predominant view of Catholic theologians in the 20 years following the council. Today, in spite of new doubts and challenges which we shall discuss below, inclusivism still has a wide following, even in the magisterium. At the time of his invitation to religions to come to an assembly of prayer in Assisi, Pope John Paul II did not yet articulate the theology of religions behind his action; the event was officially described and carried out as parallel but distinct prayer groups next to one another, not as common prayer. But in the encyclical Redemptoris missio, nr. 29, the pope stated: "The meeting between religions at Assisi was meant to reaffirm unmistakably my conviction that every authentic prayer is awakened by the Holy Spirit, who is present in mysterious ways in the heart of every human." This conviction seems to correspond most easily to the inclusivist view (the authenticity of the prayer of non-Christian religions as coming from the Spirit of Jesus Christ), but it does not rule out a moderate exclusivist view, arguing that the Spirit is in those praying not by mediation of their religions as such; although, on the other hand, it should then be asked why the Spirit is suspected precisely in the prayer forms defined by these religions, and not elsewhere. The ambiguity is clearly present in the new Roman catechism as well, where with reference to the Council the now less common phrase unica vera religio is repeated alongside the affirmation of the value of other religions and the undisputed necessity of tolerance. For reasons to be discussed below, it should not be ruled out apriori that this ambiguity, far from indicating mere confusion or division of opinion, is the most appropriate attitude possible, and one which has a longer tradition than is commonly recognized. One such ambiguous position was the paradigm of pre-Christian religions’ being related to Christianity as foreshadowing to truth, sicut figura ad veritatem, which was initiated by the New Testament, expanded by Augustine, and accepted (along with other models) by Thomas Aquinas and most other medieval thinkers. The figura-veritas-model can stress either the (inclusivistic) continuity, that there was indeed always the same faith (eadem fides) common to both the figurae and the open veritas, or it can stress the (exclusivistic) discontinuity, that only with Christ is the open and effective truth of sacraments given, especially once Christ has appeared (raising the problem of the cessatio rituum legis naturalis vel scriptae). It is the very identity of faith in pre-Christian and Christian religion which is the source of the critique of non-Christian sacraments: in contrast to Christian sacraments, not the rites themselves, but that faith in Christ which was implicit or explicit in them justified; and thus the value of the figurative rites was abolished, as soon as the truth they were pointing to appeared. Their merit was in their imperfect identity with Christian faith, but only there; their otherness had no merit in its own right. Thomas radicalized his defence of this view in the Tertia pars, noting twice (!) that he had changed his mind on an important point regarding the sacraments of the older covenant (Sth III 62, 6 ad 3; 70, 1). He now denied that circumcision as the sacrament of initiation into the first covenant was effective of itself; only by its implicit or explicit Christological faith did circumcision remove original sin and bestow the fullness of grace. Thomas still admits, with most of his contemporaries, that the same graces were given in circumcision as in baptism; yet not by circumcision itself, as by baptism, ex opere operato. The ambiguity is evident. The figura-veritas-model behind Thomas’ view was not the only medieval theology of religions, nor can it be viewed as adequately grasping the whole problem (in Thomas’ version, it does not distinguish the religion of the first covenant sufficiently from natural religions); but its structural ambivalence on non-Christian religions should not be overlooked by historical research and need not be totally rejected in new systematic alternatives. 2. The Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue on Justification and Sacraments and the Question of the Analogous Meaning of Sacrament. An important new phase of discussion between the two confessions began after a Lutheran initiative on the occasion of the pastoral visit of Pope John Paul II to Germany in 1980 (Albertus Magnus anniversary, Ü 1280). The commission formed has since then presented a document which several Catholic and especially Lutheran theologians (including the faculty at Gˆttingen) has criticized as too dominated by an ecumenism of convergence or consensus. Taking the canons and chapters of Trent and the 16th century Confessional Documents of Lutheranism as a point of departure, the commission came to the judgement (and in some cases began from the judgement) that no serious difference had ever existed, but rather misunderstanding; and that where differences had existed, they had been fully or largely overcome in the time between the 16th century and now. The commission recommended that the two churches rescind their condemnations of the other's positions and declare that no doctrinal obstacles to the reunion of the churches remain. It is impossible in the time and space allowed here to go into argued detail about this discussion. Suffice it to say that the discussions have shown that the method of convergent ecumenism, applied here almost exclusively, is one essential method, but only one, which for reasons both of historical accuracy and systematic imagination needs to be complemented by other partial methods. One such complementary method, which we might call "an ecumenism of warning", would involve self-examination on the basis of the abiding accusations made by the other confession, with a view towards each side's asking if they have not become even more "guilty" of what they were accused of in the 16th century; say, subjectivism on the one hand or neo-Pelagianism on the other. The irony of the discussion is that the two confessions are never so near to each other and to the classical form of Christian faith as when they are embarrassed by their disagreements: the majority of Catholic theologians is willing then and only then in cases of doubt to stay closer to Augustine, to accept the foundation by Christ of all Christian sacraments, to stress the need for special grace over and against factical human nature, etc.; while the Lutheran theologians stress here more than elsewhere that they, too, believe in Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, that Christianity consists not in social action but in justification by exclusive faith in Christ etc. The controversies with Roman-Catholics strengthens the hand of doctrinally interested Protestants, such as those in the Faith and Order commission of the World Council of Churches, against other Protestants, including the leadership of that same Council, who would stress the given communio of world-wide social, political, and environmental concern among all peoples and religions over any doctrinal divisions within Christianity. At this present moment of history, it seems that theologians on both sides are never so close to each other and to classical positions as when confronted with the accusations of the other. Should the declaration of non-contradiction between the confessions and the introduction of intercommunion and interchangeable ministers reduce the pressure of meeting such accusations, there is the danger that the groups will again drift further apart from each other and certainly away from this classically formulated heart of Christian faith. Given the stress placed by the commission on convergence, it is notable that in one point an abiding difference is admitted: the Catholic insistence on an analogous sense of sacrament preceding and accompanying the sacraments instituted by Christ. As with the inclusivism mentioned above, the most influential proponent of this position was Karl Rahner. In 1955 and 1960 Rahner presented the argument that the church is the basic sacrament instituted immediately by Christ, and the individual sacraments flow from Christ (himself the originary sacrament) by mediation of this basic foundational sacrament, the Church. The idea had the advantage of not needing to read into Scripture an institution of all seven sacraments (or even the primary two) by Jesus of Nazareth; the post-resurrectional context for instituting the new Trinitarian baptism takes on new ecclesiastical meaning. Just as with the now widespread view that Scripture came out of individual ecclesial communities and needed the united ecclesial community to bring it to unity, so, too, the origin of sacraments in the church seemed to confirm Catholic rather than Protestant ecclesiology; thus, the abiding divergence. The question of the precise number of sacraments was no longer seen by Catholics as a crucial issue, since they felt that analogy allowed a hierarchy of more and less important sacraments. The idea of analogous sacrament also opens up the continuity of sacraments with more general symbols of hope in human life in general. All this has with good reason (though sometimes also for less adequate reasons) found widespread acceptance in the Catholic community, but only there. Less accepted even in Catholic circles was the unique colouring given to the idea by Rahner’s particular system of the supernatural existential and anonymous Christianity, where a transcendental Christology and ecclesiology would imply that the root sacrament is not just the historical Church but factical human existence as such, of which the individual sacraments are (mere) thematizations. Such a view could not avoid stressing the continuity between the cultic practices of non-Christian religions and Christian sacraments. Drawing on their own traditional contrast between Christian faith and all religions ("non-religious faith"), many Protestants see their suspicions confirmed that Catholicism is more an expression of general, i.e. heathen and sinful religiosity than it is genuinely Christian, i. e. oriented to solus Christus und sola Scriptura. It shows as a practical problem of Catholic dialogue the danger that, the more consensus which is found by Catholic theologians between themselves and other religions, the more they risk losing the consensus gained in inner-Christian ecumenism. If we apply the method of ecumenical "warning", we might ask whether the analogous meaning of sacrament could be radicalized in such a way as to be more open for the uniqueness of the small number of sacraments instituted by Christ in a special sense of that term. Those students of Catholic theology who would not ready to accept a finite number of sacraments instituted by Christ on the basis of the authority of Trent are often willing to entertain the idea, once they realize that their denial threatens approaching unity with the Lutheran community. One of the misapplications of the idea of analogous sacramentality has been to make the empirical Church community the true subject of sacramental action, rather than Christ in his divinity or the Father. Newer Catholic theories of the sacraments as the communicative action of the community have interpreted the liturgy e. g. as the performative speech-act of the church itself constituting itself as a united community. Such views seem to push Catholicism nearer to Zwinglianism than to Christocentric Lutheranism (sacraments as Christ’s own word of promise) or even to pneumatic Calvinism (sacraments effective when the Spirit touches the recipient): a point, by the way, which also shows the necessity of complementing bilateral methods of ecumenism with multilateral ones. The systematic question here for Catholic theology is: Can the analogous meaning of sacrament make room for Christ’s institution of special sacraments in his Church which are effective only as including the primacy of his activity and the activity of the triune God? It is here that a close re-examination of Thomas Aquinas could be of significance. Since the time and space allowed here permit only a few indications of Thomas’ theology of religions, only one key thought will be noted as regards this circle of discussion and each of the two to follow. Along with most other medieval theologians, Thomas was convinced that God’s grace was saving humans in every age before Christ. Thomas, stressing more forcefully than most other theologians the strict identity of justifying faith in each age as being faith in Christ crucified, develops an idea of analogous sacraments of the cross: "...sine fide passionis Christi nunquam potuit esse salus secundum illud, Rom 3<, 25>: Quem proposuit Deus propitiatorem per fidem in sanguine eius; et ideo oportuit omni tempore apud homines esse aliquod repraesentativum Dominicae passionis" (Sth III 73, 5 co). "Aliquod repraesentativum Dominicae passionis" need not be cultic. It could be found in matters more personal or familial, such as sickness or death; but it is certainly imaginable in religious worship as well, which always involved these areas of concern. What Thomas has to say about salvation and Christ’s own crucifixion, including its salvific efficacy only by divine power, was discussed in the previous lecture. The main points are repeated in the tract on the sacraments with reference to the meaning of the cross for the sacraments. The merit and efficacy of Christ’s humanity in the sacraments is again merely instrumental: an instrument joined to the divinity in the humanity of Christ itself; an instrumentality separate from this divinity in the case of the sacraments. In both cases, however, as regards the humanity of Christ crucified and risen and the mediation of the Church’s liturgy, the efficacy of grace is imaginable only by virtue of the divinity as principle, non-instrumental cause. This decisive, divine efficacy is the ontological side of what corresponds in transcendental reflection to the abiding horizon of the antinomy regarding the gift of grace, its non-evidence. The cross in this sense is not only the efficient cause but also the formal cause of the sacraments, a Realsymbol not only of the presence of grace (as is usually implied in current Catholic theories) but also of the uncertainty and distance of grace, where self-experience reveals the need for but not the assured facticity of a grace, which must come from an Other, if at all. The cross is present as a formal cause in each of the Christian sacraments: in baptism, as being emerged into Christ’s death for a new life more resistant to death than natural powers could be; in the Eucharist, which provides access to the present risen and living Lord only by recalling and representing his crucifixion; in confirmation, reconciliation, and the anointing of the sick by recalling the situations of weakness in the life of Christians; in matrimony, by blessing a human love which knows it cannot fulfil and protect those loved as it would want to; and in orders, by sending humans to preach something which they cannot prove or make evident, to anoint the dying and to bury the dead whom they would rather give back in health to their families, and to lead toward unity and perfection a church which will always remain in the discord and sin which the anointed ministers find in themselves as well (the status perfectionis of religious being an obligation to, but not a realization of perfection). It is the cross in this sense that is present in every religious cult which shares in the unica vera Religio and confesses that faith in the Crucified which justifies. Analogous and Christocentric views of the sacraments need not contradict one another. The differences between participations are in a central way the differences by which the sacraments of different religions are capable of believing in and hoping for this non-evident gift of salvation from an Other. That will become more understandable in the third circle of discussion. 3. The Interreligious Problematic in (Christian) Theologies of Religion The last ten years have seen the appearance of a school of thought on the theology of religions hardly known at the time of the Council. In calling itself pluralistic, it wants to distinguish itself not only from exclusivism (which it considers the traditional position of the churches), but also from inclusivism, which it claims, not without good reason, to be simply a modified form of exclusivism: Salvation in both older schools is in Christ alone. Most popular in England and North America, the movement has been treated until now with reserve by Continental theologians. Pluralists such as John Hick claim, however, to be simply drawing the consequence implied not only by Continental hermeneutics or even postmodernism, but to be following the logic of Continental Christologies, which avoid the Chalcedonic formulation of faith. The pluralists argue that, without this formulation, the person of Jesus Christ is too relativized to be the sole mediator of salvation; thus Christianity cannot be the unica vera Religio, even in its inclusivistic sense. No one religion is definitive over and against, or anonymously "behind", the others. The significance of works like the new Christology of Peter H¸nermann, cited in the first lecture, rests in the attempt by European theologians to revise Continental Christology to a point, where the acceptance of a pluralism of soteriological and religious ideas can be avoided. It would take more a whole lecture to do justice just to this discussion alone. Let it be said that each of the terms mentioned, exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism refer to groups of theories, often contradicting other theories in their own group. A first task would be to distinguish among the species of each genus and identify some of the dynamics at play. It would soon become evident that many arguments, such as the figura-veritas-model mentioned above, are ambivalent, combining in themselves a potential for exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, depending on the context and accentuation. Furthermore, it would become clear that no one type of argumentation is without deficiencies, and no one type without some merit, at least in its critique of the alternatives. John Hick’s pluralism e. g. affirms two senses of the unica vera Religio phrase: as the non-empirical, non-historical truth hinted at by all concrete religions (similar to Lessing’s theory of religions), and as the more genuine (as opposed to the conventional, say fundamentalist) realizations of concrete religions, of which his own religious theory is meant to be an example. The theological task is to confront all these theories with their own inner ambivalences and variations, in order to say what is true or false about each. What is least known in the discussion is the pre-modern phase of the theology of religion, which is generally thought to be simply exclusivistic; it is also thought that exclusivism itself is easily grasped and described; finally, it is thought that exclusivism has nothing to offer but a continuation of that kind of religious intolerance and persecution it was often involved in. All three of these assumptions are false. Another task of theology is therefore to examine pre-modern Christian theologies of religion in order not only to reveal the variety of arguments and the conflicts between groups of theologians (say, the followers of Peter Lombard, critical of religions, and the more sympathetic followers of Hugo of St. Victor), but also to see where and why each individual theologian came into an internal conflict with his own presuppositions and goals (as Thomas regarding circumcision). One such conflict is hinted at by Thomas, but dealt with more fully by other of his contemporaries. It is the widespread view that, as good as pre-biblical religions were, they needed to be superseded by biblical religion due to the growing danger of idolatry. It is left unclear how and why idolatry should have grown up, if the religious faith in the saviour, inspired by God himself, was at work in these religions, as is maintained. It is the widespread view that, as good as the cult of the first covenant was, it needed to be superseded by Christian religion due to the growing danger of venality and exclusiveness(!). It is left unclear how and why venality or pride or exclusiveness should have grown up, if the religious faith in the saviour, inspired and even expressly revealed by God himself, was at work in the older covenant. An examination of these themes, or of the Old Testament category of idolatry, suggests that it was not the so much the growing need which brought forth a new phase of religion, but the new hope given was a source of dissatisfaction with the previous attitude. The paschal feast of Israel was less self-understood than the nomadic paschal feast from which it sprang, celebrated with immediate reference to the care for the flocks involved: as a recollection of the believed exodus and above all as the expectation of future liberation into a Messianic era it involved a greater risk, a lesser evidence, a goal which made the goal of the old feast seem trite, even idolatrous. The Christian celebration of Easter or the Eucharist is based on a new hope, which makes the earlier concern for future generations seem more trite than it was. From "before and below", each hope can be inclusive, a symbol for all; from "after and above", this is no longer possible. The worship of local gods for primarily local reasons is idolatrous only when monotheism and Messianic hope have been believed; but the belief is directed to what is less evident, to what is all the more "aliquid repraesentativum Dominicae passionis". Exclusivism becomes necessary, only for those who are faced with an alternative, not for those who still exist with an undifferentiated, holistic hope. In Prophecy and Inspiration, Pierre Benoit used the Tertia pars and its arguments on instrumental causality to show the mediating role played by the self-understood historical context of each prophet. This model could be extended to show that religions vary not just according to their atemporal claims, but by the historical presuppositions of their adherents. Certain asymmetrical relations are to be expected, including why Christianity's self-understanding needs to grasp Judaism more than conversely, or why Judaism must see itself in the context of a struggle against idolatry. It becomes clear, too, that if a religion cannot even conceivably be wrong, or its hopes false, it cannot be especially right. Pluralism, but also an analogous understanding of sacrament which would make all religiosity self-confirming, is a denigration of religions, not their acknowledgement.
Publications Critical Edition: Robert Kilwardby, Quaestiones in librum quartum Sententiarum (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Veroeffentlichungen der Kommission fuer die Herausgabe ungedruckter Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt 17) Muenchen (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften) 1993.
On today’s problematic in the theology of religions: Die Suche nach einer widerspruchsfaehigen Ambivalenz. Wahrheitsparadigmen als ein Unterscheidungsmerkmal von Religionstheologien christlicher Provenienz, in: P. Koslowski (Ed.), Die spekulative Philosophie der Weltreligionen. Ein Beitrag zum Gespraech der Weltreligionen, Vienna (Passagen) 1997, pg. 59 - 90. Keine Ñunica vera religioì? Die Wahrheitsproblematik pluralistischer Religionstheologien, in: Th. Eggensperger u. a. (Ed.), Veritas. Festschrift der Dominikanerprovinz Teutonia, Mainz (Gruenewald) 1995, pg. 167 - 185. Goetzendienst oder Gottesdienst? Gegenwart und Abwesenheit Gottes in den Religionen im Lichte des Ersten Gebots, in: R. Schenk u.a. (Ed.), Jahrbuch fuer Philosophie des Forschungsinstituts fuer Philosophie Hannover, Band 6, 1995, Wien (Passagen) 1994, pg. 169 - 181. Heilige Sehnsucht. Das geweihte Leben in der Oekumene, KNA Oekumenische Information, Nr. 38 (15. September 1993) pg. 22 - 24, und Nr. 39 (22. September 1993) pg. 20 - 22. Die Suche nach dem Bruder Abel. Zum Streit um das analoge Sakramentsverstaendnis, in: R. Schenk u.a. (Ed.), Jahrbuch fuer Philosophie des Forschungsinstituts fuer Philosophie Hannover, Band 5, 1994, Wien (Passagen) 1993, pg. 69 - 87. Evangelisierung und Religionstoleranz: Thomas von Aquin und die Gewissenslehre des II. Vatikanums, in: Forum Katholische Theologie 8 (1992) pg. 1 - 17. Auferstehung oder Reinkarnation? Zum Wesen der christlichen Hoffnung, in: F. Breid (Ed.), Die letzten Dinge (Steyr 1992) pg. 189 - 220. ÑCarl Gustav Jungì (zusammen mit A. Moreno-Elosqui), in: R. Baeumer und L. Scheffczyk (Ed.), Marienlexikon III (St. Ottilien 1991) pg. 461 - 465. In universum mundum. Das Zeugnis des Evangeliums im Zeitalter pluralistischer Religionstheorien, in: W. Schreer und G. Steins (Ed.), Auf neue Art Kirche sein. Wirklichkeiten ñ Herausforderungen ñ Wandlungen (Festschrift Josef Homeyer), Muenchen (Don Bosco) 1999, pg. 507 - 523.
Towards a history of the Christian theology of non-Christian religions "Divina simulatio irae et dissimulatio pietatis". Divine Providence and Natural Religion in Robert Kilwardby's Quaestiones in librum IV Sententiarum, in: A. Zimmermann (Ed.), Mensch und Natur im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Mediaevalia 21,1) Berlin/New York 1991, pg. 431 - 455. Covenant Initiation. Thomas Aquinas and Robert Kilwardby on the Sacrament of Circumcision, in: Carlos-Josaphat Pinto de Oliveira (Ed.), Ordo sapientiae et amoris. Hommage au Professeur J.-P. Torrell, Fribourg (…ditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse) 1993, pg. 555 - 593. Christ, Christianity, and Non-Christian Religions. Their Relationship in the Thought of Robert Kilwardby, in: K. Emery, Jr. und J. Wawrykow (Ed.), Christ among the Medieval Dominicans: Representations of Christ in the Texts and Images of the Order of Preachers, Notre Dame, Indiana (University of Notre Dame) 1988, pg. 344 ñ 363. Opfer und Opferkritik aus der Sicht roemisch-katholischer Theologie, in: R. Schenk (Ed.), Zur Theorie des Opfers (Collegium Philosophicum 1) Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Frommann-Holzboog) 1995, pg. 193 - 250. Robert Grosseteste und die Hypothese einer koeniglichen Konversionspolitik. Ueberlegungen zur Frage nach dem praktischen Kontext mittelalterlicher Religionstheorien, in: F. Niewoehner und F. Raedle (Ed.), Konversion im Mittelalter und in der Fruehneuzeit, Hildesheim (Olms) 1999, pg. 25 ñ 42. |