Thomism and Predestination Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Thomism and Predestination Principles and Disputations Edited by Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and homas Joseph White, OP Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Copyright © 2016 by Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, Ave Maria, Florida All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any other information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be directed to: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 5050 Ave Maria Blvd. Ave Maria, FL 34142 800-537-5487 Distributed by: he Catholic University of America Press c/o HFS P.O. Box 50370 Baltimore, MD 21211 800-537-5487 Cover Design: Kachergis Book Design Cover Image: Titian, Christ and the Good hief Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936550 ISBN: 978-1-932589-79-5 Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Contents Introduction 1 Steven A. Long 1. Contemporary homism through the Prism of the heology of Predestination 29 Serge-homas Bonino, OP; translated by Stefan Jetchick; translated and edited by Barry David and Steven A. Long 2. St. homas Aquinas, Divine Causality, and the Mystery of Predestination 51 Steven A. Long 3. From Eternal Sonship to Adoptive Filiation: St. homas on the Predestination of Christ 77 Roger W. Nutt 4. Catholic Predestination: he Omnipotence and Innocence of Divine Love 94 homas Joseph White, OP 5. Predestination as the Communication of Divine Goodness in Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians 127 Michael Dauphinais 6. Praemotio Physica and Divine Transcendence Joseph G. Trabbic Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 152 vi Contents 7. God’s Movement of the Soul through Operative and Cooperative Grace 166 Lawrence Feingold 8. How Sin Escapes Premotion: he Development of homas Aquinas’s hought by Spanish homists 192 homas M. Osborne Jr. 9. he Mystery of Divine Predestination: Its Intelligibility According to Lonergan 214 Matthew Lamb 10. Ave Maria! he Grace of Predestination 226 Romanus Cessario, OP 11. Balthasar and Other homists on Barth’s Understanding of Predestination 239 Michael Maria Waldstein 12. he homism of St. Ignatius and the Spiritual Exercises: Predestination, Physical Premotion, and the Sovereignty of Grace 260 Christopher M. Cullen, SJ 13. homas Aquinas’s De Praedestinatione as Confessio 281 Barry David List of Contributors 327 Index 331 Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Thomism and Predestination Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University homism and Predestination Introduction I ntroduct ion Steven A. Long he ensuing volume engages a profound and diicult subject that is central to the Catholic theological tradition. Below I introduce the volume’s contributions in a substantive essay rather than in a conventional summative description. his leads to unevenness, because in addition to the normal minima natura of reference to the works in question, I engage some essays to a greater degree than others. Beyond question, this unevenness is a function of the limitations of the author (and also of the limitations of space, since engaging all pieces at the same length would have yielded a much longer introduction). Essays reveal the predilections and contingent limitations of the essayist, and as the remarks below attempt more than the conventional introduction, these limitations are on full display. In particular, there are places where intonations of long-standing conversations with the authors in question assert themselves—perhaps nowhere more evidently than in the introduction of the essay by my friend (and astute critic) Michael Waldstein (chap. 11, this volume). hat introduction (and indeed his essay) continues a longstanding conversation that is and has been fruitful for us both. If it carries the ring of a late-night discussion between the two of us on the lanai, one hopes that may be further inducement to appreciate the book. In any event, one hopes that the words below may be of some service and interest. Whether aided or distracted by this introduction, the reader should 1 Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 2 homism and Predestination turn to the essays themselves, serene in the knowledge that these are of far greater intelligible density than either a conventional introduction, or a full-bodied introductory essay, is able to compass. hese essays merit serious attention, and their richness exceeds the capacity of the most robust introduction suiciently to delve. • hree striking facts encouraged us to orchestrate a conference addressing the homistic understanding of predestination and the disputations—ad intra and ad extra—to which it has given rise. First, the extent and nature of this central doctrinal conversation are to a great degree terra incognita among many theologians and philosophers today. here are many reasons for this. Doubtless the work of authors happily defending the normative primacy of an ignorance of seven hundred years of doctrinal development is part of this equation.1 hat such a position is convenient for the slothful, pleasant to the historicist, and obliging toward modernity has not hurt such views.2 But there is also the pronounced doctrinal and historical complexity of the subject, combined with its central importance in Catholic thought, rendering the subject forbidding even for those who have not ruled out the consideration of the tradition. Distinctively complicating the matter further, for a brief while the subject was thought to have been shown somehow to be one no longer requiring essential and distinct consideration in theological formation. Following upon the distinct claims of Rahner and of de Lubac to have superseded the contexts for consideration of nature and grace derivative of the preceding seven hundred years, it was widely thought that the questions and problems addressed in those years could simply be swept aside as disutile. In addition, speculative works in the homistic tradition somehow came to be popularly but misleadingly referred to as “manualism” —as though, for example, the several writings of Garrigou-Lagrange on the mystical life, dogmatic theology, and philosophy; or the moral 1. hese remarks target no “school” but rather the simple fact that the whole commentatorial period in its contributions to the Church’s doctrine and life is something that has for many theologians become either a “known unknown” or even, in some cases an “unknown unknown.” 2. hese remarks, too, target no properly theological school as such, but rather sloth, historicism, and the tendency toward servile subordination of truth to contingent and controvertible apologetic judgments. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 3 theology of Pinckaers; or the books of Maritain; or the texts of the Salmanticences, John of St. homas, Cajetan, and Báñez were not profound and challenging theological and philosophic works. One thinks also of accomplishments such as that of Del Prado (De gratia et libero arbitrio), the requisites for the understanding of which—quite apart from concurrence or dissent—are simply not enjoyed by those who, beret either of the speculative penetration of the thought of the Doctor Communis, or the historical depth and profundity of de Lubac’s contemplation of the Fathers, are armed only with genealogical glosses, aesthetic preferences, and philosophic eclecticism. hese convergent inluences—occurring in roughly the same time frame as the analytic and linguistic movements of philosophy in Anglophone thought, and the inluence of phenomenological and broadly existential considerations in Europe—for a time efected a virtual amnesia regarding the actual teaching of Aquinas. For St. homas’s theology is scientia and not a mere resource for ad hoc historical appropriation as syncretic and apologetic impulses (whether dubious or sound) may command. he second striking fact is the slowly dawning recognition by theologians that the new theological regimen has not in fact brought forth the expected fruits. Explanations for this are various. But theological antinomianism regarding the tradition, and particularly regarding the moral life, have undeniably become signiicant problems in the post–Vatican II era. hese efects were most certainly not the objectives sought by all critics of commentatorial homism—quite the opposite. It might be thought that while one might bring these efects to the doorstep of Rahner (who ater the council denied that the Church could deine particular moral norms), it would nonetheless be diicult to ascribe these to the intention of de Lubac, who always fought against them. Yet these efects have ensued, and the displacement and derogation of commentatorial homism—whether in behalf of the supernatural existential or the negation of a proportionate natural end, or of continental or analytic modalities of thought—seems arguably to have powerfully contributed to them. Because of the strategic importance of the teaching of St. homas Aquinas to the magisterium of the Church, which both in the preconciliar and postconciliar epoch has taught that his authority is not simply that of being one among many of the Fathers but rather that of an “au- Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 4 homism and Predestination thentic teacher,” 3 it is impossible permanently to relativize or derogate his contributions. Yet on many matters, those contributions have, as a matter fact (and one that would be an interesting object of study for the sociology of knowledge), sufered the distortion of a relativization effected by an aversion to the speculative project manifest throughout his work. De Lubac famously lamented the commentatorial homists’ “disregard for history and their slender critical sense,” quoting M.-B. Lavaud that “Exegesis and history concerned them far less than the fundamental nature of things.” 4 But it is equally manifest that this observation clearly pertains to Aquinas himself, who was not principally a historical scholar and certainly not what today we would call a “medievalist.” Aquinas was a brilliant theologian and philosopher whose insights can withstand the maximal speculative stress placed upon them, and whose teaching is susceptible of indeinite development and application. It was thus natural that minds sensitive to the need to read texts as the sort of texts they are would emphasize the speculative teleology of homas’s teaching and seek to extend and apply it. here is a principle here cognate with that of the methodology of the study of sacred Scripture in that a text must be read as the sort of text it is. Neither homas nor the commentators who sought to further develop and apply his teaching were principally undertaking a project in historical study, but sought to be, as Ramirez famously expressed the matter, a “disciple of faith and a master of natural reason.” 5 he structure of the question in the Summa heologiae (ST) and the nature of the disputed question indicate an intensive and extensive focus upon truth. It is thus necessary for appreciation of homas’s teaching to engage it precisely on the speculative level. Today many theologians and philosophers discern the need to 3. Cf. Santiago Ramirez, OP, “he Authority of St. homas Aquinas,” he homist 15 (1952): 1–109, and Jorgen Vijgen, “he Contemporary Authority of St. homas Aquinas: A Reply to Otto-Herman Pesch,” Divinitas 49 (2006): 3–26. 4. Cf. Henri de Lubac, Augustinianism and Modern heology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Herder, 1968). De Lubac criticizes sixteenth-century homists who speak of obediential potency for “their disregard for history and their slender critical sense” and in a note quotes the words of M.-B. Lavaud, OP: “Exegesis and history concerned them far less than the fundamental nature of things” (233). 5. Cf. Jacobus M. Ramirez, “De Hominis Beatitudine Tractatus heologicus,” in Edicion de las Obras Completas, vol. 3, ed. Victorino Rodriguez, OP (Madrid: Instituto de Filosoia, 1972), 103. “heologus tamen in hoc medio inveniendo se habere debet ut discipulus idei et ut magister rationis naturalis.” Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 5 renew speculative contact with the teaching of Aquinas as a condition for a fruitful understanding of the situation of theology in the twenty-irst century. his leads to the third fact. Predestination, both by reason of its intrinsic importance and because of its centrality for the fortunes of the homistic synthesis, is a subject of essential moment both for Catholic theology as such and for homistic thought. Given the distinctive work and achievement of the graduate theology program at Ave Maria University, this suggested our unique ability to host a conference uniquely addressing this subject in my adult lifetime. It soon became clear that some of the most prominent minds engaged on this subject would be able to participate. And so we come to the contributions to the present volume. Foremost among these is chapter 1, by Serge-Tomas Bonino, OP. Father Bonino is the president of the Pontiical Academy of St. homas Aquinas, general secretary of the International heological Commission, former editor of the Revue homiste, and—like his confrere in this volume, Romanus Cessario, OP—is recipient of the highest theological honor bestowed by the Order of Preachers, that of Master of heology in the Dominican Order. Aware at once of the importance of historical context and the priority of the speculative teleology of the text of St. homas, he enjoys distinctive awareness of the history, doctrinal complexity, and status quaestionae of the questions regarding grace, freedom, predestination, reprobation, and sin. As an author aware of the profound continuity of the Dominican teaching from St. homas Aquinas onward, he was from the very irst to our minds the optimal keynote speaker. His essay, “Contemporary homism through the Prism of the heology of Predestination,” thus merits prime mention and is situated at the start of the volume, as in a sense all the considerations taken up are situated in relation to it. It is a masterful articulation both of the situation of the homistic tradition as such in relation to this question, and a vindication of the synthesis which has animated the teaching of careful students of St. homas Aquinas’s work for generations. He defends the need for an account that vindicates the universal determining divine causality, the innocence of God, and the primacy of grace, and rejects accounts that deny the need for a prior permissive divine decree as a condition for evil. His rejection of “the absurdity” of “freedom conceived as Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 6 homism and Predestination irst cause” is masterful. As Bonino argues, “he reason for the permission of sin (and thus reprobation) is the wisdom of a divine government that conforms to the nature of things as it is thought by divine wisdom. Human nature being fallible in its freedom, God allows it to sometimes fail.” Aquinas airms the divine innocence, the primacy of grace, and the divine universal causality. hat God permits defectible free causes freely to defect does not militate against the divine goodness. In chapter 2, the present author (Steven Long) attempts to address the profound anxiety regarding reprobation that afects the reception and understanding of homas’s teaching, but turns to this subject only after showing the presence in St. homas’s texts of what later came to be called the doctrine of physical premotion. he view that because homas did not use these precise words he did not hold this teaching exhibits, he says, an “extreme ipssisima verba-ism,” as homas clearly holds that there is a divinely bestowed motion, prior by nature but not by time, which causes the free act of the will in choice, and moves the will to move itself (according to its contingent/free mode) to the perfection of a particular determination. he essay also undertakes critical corrective analysis responding to three major igures—Maritain, Marín-Sola, and Lonergan—whose accounts it designates as unsustainably “revisionist” with respect to the teaching of St. homas Aquinas on the subjects of premotion, grace, and predestination. Finally, Long argues that negative reprobation, and the divine permission of evil, must be viewed in light both of God governing things according to their natures—and thus permitting the defectible creature at times to sufer defect—but even more in relation to the rootedness of providence and predestination in the transcendent divine good, mercy, and love. he deontological element, though important, is subordinate, and can never of itself assuage or heal anxieties that only give way in abandonment to the light of divine providence and the omnipotent mercy of God. In chapter 3, “St. homas on the Predestination of Christ,” Roger Nutt argues persuasively that “homas Aquinas’s theology of the predestination of Christ is the locus where he most fully works out and integrates his theology of predestination—theology proper as discourse about God—with the realization of the eternal plan of predestination in the temporal order.” As he puts it, “Because Christ’s predestination is not ordered (irst) to ilial adoption by grace, but rather to the difusion of Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 7 the divine goodness through the personal union of the two natures in the Word (from which the redemptive efects of eternal predestination are realized in time), Aquinas’s complete doctrine of predestination cannot be fully comprehended without reference to the Incarnation and the economy of salvation.” Treating the unfolding of the plan of predestination in time, through the sacraments and human free acts—proceeding always from St. homas’s analysis and engaging Journet, Cessario, Huetter, Paluch and others—Nutt exhibits the masterful synthesis of homas’s doctrine as fully articulated in the account of the predestination of Christ. homas Joseph White, OP, in chapter 4 exposits the doctrine of predestination according to the teaching of St. homas Aquinas. Emphasizing the transcendence of God in relation to free human acts, he locates the source of sin in the defectibility of the human will and the divine permission of the same as congruent with the divine government of all things respecting their natures. He argues that the classical Catholic doctrine of predestination has become obscured in modern theology owing to a polemical opposition between those who appeal to some version of Calvin’s theology and the universalist vision of predestination to which it gives rise as a counterproposal. His argument is that the retrieval of a nuanced understanding of the traditional homist position serves to extricate Catholic theology from a set of false alternatives, and allows the right balance of an airmation of diverse theological principles: the primacy of divine grace in the order of salvation, the transcendent omnipotence of God, the universal ofer of salvation, the noncausal permission of evil, and the innocence of God in the face of moral evil.” He explains six theses essential to homas’s teaching: 1. All that is morally good in the human person comes from the creative activity and providential assistance of God. 2. All that the human person does that is morally evil stems from a truly free, morally culpable, and naturally defective initiative of the creature. 3. he mystery of salvation by grace stems primarily from the initiative of God, whose gits of grace precede all works of cooperation on the part of the free human creature. 4. God ofers the possibility of salvation to all human persons. he Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 8 homism and Predestination mystery of perdition originates from the free defective resistance to or refusal of the mystery of grace. 5. God foreknows all who will be saved from all eternity, and his divine will for their salvation is the efective cause of their predestination to divine glory. 6. God is eternally innocent of moral evil. Reprobation occurs in light of the antecedent permissive decree of God, which is in no way causal of sin. hese propositions are salient, and their intensive contemplation and explication form the heart of the homistic tradition regarding predestination. Michael Dauphinais in chapter 5 explores the ramiications of treating the divine initiative in the theology of Ephesians as an “occasion of joy and thanksgiving rather than of fear and dread, as it has been received at times from the period of the Reformation until the present day.” He seeks to understand the Pauline epistle more adequately in order to enter into the Pauline praise of God expressed in the hymn of praise and blessing to God in Ephesians 1:3–6. Appreciating the account of Markus Barth in its rejection of determinism, Dauphinais nonetheless criticizes it for placing the divine and created causality in a competitive relationship which insuiciently regards the transcendence of God. Adverting intensively to Aquinas’s commentary on Ephesians, he shows the importance of homas’s metaphysics of creation for fully appreciating the richness of the teaching of Ephesians 1:3–6. In chapter 6, Joseph Trabbic undertakes response to the criticism of Father Brian Shanley on the subject of the praemotio physica, and particularly to the claim that physical premotion compromises the divine transcendence. In the course of doing so, he explains physical premotion in general, and shows how it is that denial of this doctrine would imply either occasionalism or the rejection of Aquinas’s teaching of subordinated secondary causality, neither of which seems to provide a reasonable reading of Aquinas. He engages Shanley’s concern over turning into “something created, the very motion by which God moves created agents.” his, he notes, “would not be a real objection but only a misunderstanding of the doctrine.” He goes on to argue that “Premotionists distinguish between God’s action, the motion it produces (i.e., the Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 9 referent of the term ‘physical premotion’), and the action of the created agent. No premotionist says that God’s own action, which is identical with God himself, is created. But it is true that the motion produced by God and passively received by the created agent is something created.” Further, “premotionists, Shanley believes, tie God to a notion of moving that is essentially mundane, and fail to appreciate how our concepts break down in our attempt to understand creatio.” But “If he doesn’t suppose that he is simply relaying nonsense, then he must believe that he has some understanding of what he’s talking about. So, he must also believe that our concepts can apply at least analogically to God’s creative action. But if that is how he sees things, then he has not shown us any essential diference between his understanding of how our concepts could apply to the divine motio and how premotionists like Garrigou-Lagrange understand them to apply.” Along a path he notes to be similar to those of “Bernard Lonergan, John Farrelly, Francisco Marín-Sola, Jacques Maritain, and William Most,” Lawrence Feingold argues in chapter 7 that homas’s division of grace into operative and cooperative grace is a more fundamental division than that between what came to be called eicacious and suicient grace. he latter division (eicacious/suicient) ought, he argues, to be viewed as subordinate to the former (operative/cooperative). “It seems to me that a false dilemma is created when actual grace is divided irst into the categories of suicient and eicacious grace. his is a division with regard to consequence. I see it as introducing a kind of consequentialism into the debate about the nature of actual grace.” Arguing that operative grace “incites a desire for salvation,” but that cooperative grace continues this motion in us “resistably,” he argues that the diference is that of “the initial attraction to salvation” as distinct from “the actual choice of salviic means,” and concurs with Marín-Sola and Maritain with respect to the nature and role of the faulty deliberation of the will in cases of resistance to grace. Feingold argues for an account of contingency and freedom that requires that free acts be unknowable to God by way of divine causality, and knowable to God only through the divine eternal presence, because “the actual movement of free will (with the aid of cooperative grace) cannot be known with certainty in its causes alone, because the will is a subordinate and contingent cause of its own free act.” As the author puts it, Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 10 homism and Predestination “Cooperative grace can be frustrated in the course of deliberation by a inal practical judgment contrary to grace’s attraction. Nevertheless, it was suicient to have made possible the completion of the good act.” Feingold thus provides a nuanced argument along lines similar to the analyses of Maritain and Marín-Sola. homas Osborne in chapter 8 takes up the profound and delicate issue—which has divided homist commentators—over the question of whether, and in what respect, God premotively determines the matter of the sinful act without predetermining to the sin itself. Cajetan—whose position is further articulated by Alvarez and Lemos—held that God does predetermine to the matter of the sinful act without predetermining to the sin itself. Osborne considers the analysis of Cajetan—and the reasoning of Medina, Zumel, and Báñez—before turning to Alvarez and Lemos (great Dominican igures from the Congregatio de Auxiliis) as developing and defending the teaching of Cajetan. he diiculty concerns a threefold distinction articulated by Cajetan distinguishing “the act absolutely speaking, the positive entity that places the act in a species, and the privation of rectitude.” God causes the act absolutely speaking and does not cause the privation, but what of the positive entity that speciies the sin? Cajetan insists that “sin has a positive malice from its object but a privative malice in its lack of conformity to the law,” and the latter privation “is the sin’s deformity.” Alvarez, concurring with Báñez but construing the argument as interpreting rather than correcting Cajetan, argues that “relation to a deicient cause is not a positive entity and therefore not caused by God.” Osborne notes of Alvarez: His central point seems to be that the formality of sin is not formally a being, although materially it is one. In other words, the thing that is a sin is a natural being, but it is not a sin insofar as it is a natural being. God causes the sin only insofar as it is a natural being. Although God causes the being that is a sin, he does not cause it as a sin. But the deicient human will causes the sin insofar as it is formally sinful, namely, as related to a deicient cause. he conclusion that God causes sin is invalid because it draws on premises with diferent appellations of “sin.” It is the same logical error as concluding that the sculptor made wood from the premise that the sculptor made a statue, and that the statue is wood. Alvarez identiies the same fallacy and uses almost the same example that Báñez used in his discussion of Biel and Ockham. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 11 Osborne explores the further reasonings of Lemos on the subject and concludes, “he later homists were arguably successful in responding to contemporary challenges because they relied not only on homas Aquinas’s own texts, but also on the conceptual progress made by previous homists.” he essay is a pellucid explanation of the authentic further speculative development and clariication of the teaching of homas by commentatorial minds of great profundity and acuity. Father Matthew Lamb explains Bernard Lonergan’s theoretical exposition of Aquinas’s teaching in chapter 9. Identifying the proposition of Lonergan, that, absolutely speaking, causality in itself involves no change in the agent but only in the efect, he concurs with Lonergan that “If then, a gratia operans were to produce a contingent efect with irresistible eicacy, it could not be a creature; it would have to be God . . . Similarly, when God irresistibly produces a contingent efect, he does so, not through a necessitated, but through a contingent cause.” Lamb criticizes the recent work by Robert Matava6 in holding that Lonergan does not “seem to understand application—God’s operation in the operations of created agents—in terms of creation,” arguing that “Lonergan most certainly does see application as a further diferentiation within the context of creation and conservation.” He claims that the distinctiveness of Lonergan’s position enables him to hold that “Grace as a creature cannot produce any contingent efect with the irresistible eicacy proper only to God,” a teaching he considers to have been implicitly rejected by both Báñez and Molina. But grace and physical premotion are created. hus he holds that even as subordinated causes, they cannot bring about contingent efects eicaciously, which are brought about “through the immediacy of divine causality.” One’s own action is thus brought about not by one being moved by God to move oneself, but solely by having God create one’s actions directly, an account that as Matava notes (for he has sympathy with this position about divine creation)7 has not infrequently been criticized as entailing occasionalism.8 6. Robert J. Matava, Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Bañez, Physical Premotion, and the Controversy De Auxiliis Revisited, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 252 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 242–321. 7. Cf. Robert J. Matava, “Divine Causality and Human Free Choice: Domingo Báñez and the Controversy de Auxiliis” (PhD Diss., University of St. Andrews, 2010), 256–57. 8. Ibid., 248–51. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 12 homism and Predestination With Lonergan, Lamb rejects the insistence of Báñez that the divine motion of which Aquinas speaks—which is not God himself, nor is it the creature’s action (which derives from the divinely caused prior motion actuating its potential for agency)—is a created efect. Lonergan’s famous comment that “Peter acting” and “Peter not acting” are not really diferent is said to be simply the assertion that Peter is free to act or not to act (cf. Lamb’s footnote 3). As Lamb argues: Causation is the actuation of the active potency of the cause and the passive potency of the efect. One and the same act actuates both potencies, and this act is the motion produced in the object moved. Causation is therefore inherent not in the cause but in the efect; action and passion are really identical with the motion of the recipient. here is no change in the cause, only in the efect. Where Báñez raises the issue of how the inite thing that is not in itself a pure agent or cause but in potency to agency achieves the dignity of agency, Lamb with Lonergan focuses upon the intrinsic character of agency as in and of itself not requiring potency. “hus God creating and redeeming the world involves no change in God, but in the created and redeemed world. And it is also the case with human causation.” 9 9. Agency qua agency involves only agency, and so it is wholly accidental to agency that there be motion from potency to act. But the question may remain: does not the creature that is an agent need to be moved from potency to act in order to attain to the dignity of agency? God does not need to be moved from potency to act to be an agent, but is it not essential to the creature that it can only be an agent insofar as moved to agency by a principle that is in act? Lonergan does not seem directly to address the matter in these terms. But if the motion of which St. homas speaks in De malo, q. 3, art. 2, ad 4 (“Similiter cum aliquid movet se ipsum, non excluditur quin ab alio moveatur a quo habet hoc ipsum quo se ipsum movet.” “Likewise when something moves itself this does not exclude that it is moved by another, from which it has even this very thing that it moves itself” ), is a motio realis of the creature from potency to act, is this not God imparting a real motion to the creature whereby it is moved actually and freely to determine itself? Granted that some “efects” are only said to be so relationally, if we speak of activation of a real power, we speak of a motio realis (it being understood that motion is an analogical term referring to the reduction from potency to act). Matava on this point wishes to argue for direct creation and even criticize Lonergan for not doing so (cf. “Divine Causality and Human Free Choice,” 261), seemingly contrary to Lamb’s reading of Lonergan but placing Matava’s substantive position closer to that of Lamb and his reading of Lonergan. With regard to both, those with sympathy for the homism of the Dominicans at the Congregatio will wonder: does recourse to direct creation avoid occasionalism, follow St. homas’s mode of analysis, and conform to the metaphysical principle that anything that is moved from potency to act must be moved by something in act, quod movetur ab alio movetur (such that the motion is inite, granted that the mover is God)? his is a discussion that calls to mind the disputations regarding created grace. In any Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 13 He argues vigorously alongside Lonergan for a strong theonomic account. For Lonergan, Lamb explains, all that is is intelligible, and all that is good is from God, and evil is a surd that “cannot have an antecedent cause or noncause,” while evil presupposes the divine permission. his is a remarkable examination and exposition of Lonergan’s sui generis analysis and theoretical account of homas’s thought, and it is destined to be read and engaged for many years to come. In chapter 10, Romanus Cessario, OP, addresses the way in which the Dominican third-order priest Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673– 1716) discussed predestination and the predestined, and his teaching about “how to live the grace of predestination in a way that coheres with the truth about the outpouring of the divine goodness that appears on earth within the ‘logic of the Incarnation.’ ” Focusing upon the eicacy of divine grace, Cessario quotes de Montfort to the efect that “the Saints tell us that when we have once found Mary, and through Mary, Jesus, and through Jesus, God the Father, we have found all good.” 10 As Cessario puts it, “De Montfort knew that only the good draws.” He observes: “One leitmotif of de Montfort’s instruction appears in the association that he makes between devotion to Mary and predestination, a claim that the Church has acknowledged as worthy of credence.” Of Alan de la Roche, Cessario comments, “Blessed Alan, whom de Montfort venerated, assures his readers that those who cherish a devotion to the ‘Hail Mary’ display a mark of predestination, whereas those who lack reverence for the Ave Maria exhibit a sign of reprobation.” He suggests that de Montfort likely discovered the promise of predestination attached to the rosary’s “Aves” from Juan de Cartagena, OFM, a former Jesuit who “embodied a fervent opposition to Molinism, as one may surmise when it is discovered that he let the Jesuits ater the Society of Jesus had adopted Molinism as their school opinion.” Cessario does not hesitate to identify de Montfort as a “popular, anti-Molinist preacher of what I call the grace of predestination.” case, the Lonerganian position and Lamb’s reading of it (and even Matava’s general recourse to creation as the mode of divine causality of free acts) contribute to a mode of analyzing the question that is somewhat diferent both from Molinism and Congruism on the one hand, and from the homism of the Dominicans in the De auxiliis controversy on the other. 10. Le Secret de Marie, 451, no. 21. A. Somers, trans., he Secret of Mary (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1926). Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 14 homism and Predestination De Montfort’s stress on predestination has none of the sad severity of Pascal and the Jansenists, but rather a “conident rejoicing” in the supernatural gits that God has provided in Jesus and Mary “to an admittedly fallen race.” Cessario argues that while de Montfort’s teaching is itted better to the ordinary experience of life than to the salons or classrooms, it never opposes piety to learning but forwards the primacy of living by faith so as to grasp properly the truth of the complicated question of predestination. De Montfort’s adroit and profound consideration of Scripture is mentioned here. De Montfort uses the words of Sirach 24:13 (translated by Ronald Knox)—“Et dixit mihi: In Jacob inhabita, et in Israël hæreditare, et in electis meis mitte radices” “And his command to me was that I should ind my home in Jacob, throw in my lot with Israel, take root among his chosen race” —in an allegorical interpretation of Mary as Wisdom, developed around the theme of predestination. Cessario cites de Montfort’s use of Psalms 87:5 (NAB), “But of Zion it must be said: ‘hey all were born here.’ he Most High conirms this.” He points out the importance of de Montfort’s teaching that “each of the elect (homo et homo) comes to birth in the Blessed Virgin Mary” inasmuch as “She gives birth both to the Head and the members of Christ’s Body.” To be born of another mother than the one who gives birth to the Head would render the progeny to be monsters. And Mary protects her spiritual children from the malice of sin and the devil. Most importantly, Cessario points out that for de Montfort, proper knowledge about predestination arises only among the predestined, who accept sufering gladly as a way to participate in Christ. In Mary the Holy Spirit—from whom no divine person proceeds in the Trinity— brings forth predestined ofspring, such that Mary may be revered as the spouse of the Holy Spirit. In her assent to the Incarnate Word, the whole grace of the redemption enters the world, and de Montfort teaches the practice of ilial tenderness toward Mary and the greatest conidence in her goodness and power to ensure safe arrival in heaven. Michael Waldstein presents a profound and inherently homistic reading of Balthasars’s teaching regarding predestination (chap. 11). Beginning with an extended meditation of Johanine texts, he comments: Many who hear the word “predestination” in a culture deeply formed by Calvin hear primarily the note of limitation. From the mass of those predestined to damnation, some are snatched out to be predestined to live. “I will (θέλω) Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 15 that where I am those too may be with me.” Yet the primary thrust of the prayer is not to highlight the limits of predestination. Granted, Jesus does not state the universality of predestination as a fact. What stands in the center of attention is the expansive movement of the prayer as a whole. He continues, observing, “In this light one can see why predestination is the very paradise of teleology. It is the one and only way of reaching the end of all human longing, the end that ininitely exceeds all possible human longing: ‘What eye has not seen nor ear heard, what has not risen up into the human heart, God has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor 2:9).’ ” Moving from considerations of Plato and Plotinus, Waldstein then enters into an explanation of St. homas’s teaching regarding predestination by contrast with that of Karl Barth. He begins by referring to the limited end of created human nature according to St. homas, a nature that is nonetheless “theonomic” and an expression of God’s wisdom and goodness. “he ininite distance between the natural and the supernatural is the reason why predestination is needed in the irst place.” As he puts it, “What St. homas hears in the word ‘predestination’ is above all that God sends or shoots us over and across a great distance, oportet quod ab alio transmittatur, as an archer shoots an arrow at a target far away.” But for Barth, “no such act” is necessary, because he holds that double predestination is God’s irst act from which everything else derives. “Nature, if it comes into view at all, does so only as an implication of grace.” Balthasar, he argues, seeks to airm precisely what Barth denies: the consistency of the natural order and of philosophy. Without these, Balthasar insists, the git of grace is impossible. Balthasar, Waldstein explains, seeks to defend the abstract knowledge of created essences by showing that they are not incompatible with acts and events but rather based upon them: “by adding in concentric circles around this nature the sorts of things in which Barth is particularly interested,” Balthasar seeks to arrest his attention with the Catholic tradition. hese concentric circles include, Waldstein says, what the word “nature” is irst applied to, nature as the essence of a being in the abstract, essence as a principle of movement and activity, defense of this understanding of nature against what he calls Barth’s “actualism,” and explicit inclusion of the things in which Barth is particularly interested. He continues to note the concreteness, according to Balthasar, of the concentric circles around the essence, Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 16 homism and Predestination so as to conclude that Barth’s anxieties regarding a “merely” abstract nature is unfounded. Waldstein, turning to a contemporary author, difers strongly with my (the present author’s) work Natura Pura, which argues that Balthasar’s intentions with respect to vindication of nature are hollowed out by his approach, leaving nature as a mere “vacuole” for grace. he “Balthasar criticized by Long is more Barthian than Barth criticized by Balthasar.” Focusing upon one quotation from Natura Pura, Waldstein argues that the grammar of the English translation led to an incorrect interpretation, but that the German “settles the question deinitively.” 11 Further, “Long’s oten repeated objection that Balthasar is opposed to abstraction, that he has a wrongly concrete understanding of nature and so on, seems to arise from the tendency to read Balthasar mainly as speaking about nature in the sense of essence.” Waldstein’s most central criticism of Natura Pura refers to its reply to Balthasar’s claim that “homas never entertains, even hypothetically, a inal goal that could be unmoored from the supernatural vision of God.” Natura Pura argues that homas did expressly entertain a hypothetical natural end unmoored from the supernatural vision of God— the hypothesis of creation in puris naturalibus12—and that accordingly Balthasar is incorrect. Waldstein argues that a inality is “not truly inal” 11. On this point regarding the translation of the particular lines, I concur. 12. Steven A. Long, Natura Pura (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2010), 243. “De malo q. 5, art. 1, ad 15 teaches that, had man been created in puris naturalibus and then died beret of the beatiic vision, this lack of the vision would not be a punishment. For homas, a punishment, when it is just, proceeds from fault and is constituted by a deprivation of the natural good of the one punished, contrary to that person’s will, and engendering sufering. Clearly, if there were a strong and unconditional natural desire for supernatural beatitude as opposed to a conditional desire to know God under the disproportionate ratio of ‘Cause of created efects,’ then its deprivation would be a punishment, and its deprivation prior to fault would be an unjust punishment. Yet homas says it would not constitute a punishment. his is not merely because it would not proceed from fault, but because man apart from grace has no unconditional natural desire for supernatural beatitude which is not man’s natural end, a point made all the stronger in homas’s words in De malo q. 5, art. 3, resp. regarding the limbo puerorum: ‘Now it pertains to natural knowledge that the soul knows it was created for happiness and that happiness consists in the attainment of the perfect good. But that that perfect good for which man was made is that glory which the saints possess is beyond natural knowledge.’ (Pertinet autem ad naturalem cognitionem quod anima sciat se propter beatitudinem creatam, et quod beatitudo consistit in adeptione perfecti boni; sed quod illud bonum perfectum, ad quod homo factus est, sit illa gloria quam sancti possident, est supra cognitionem naturalem.)” Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 17 unless it is all-suicient and ultimate, and so that even hypothetically the phrase “a inal goal” can have been meant by Aquinas only to refer to the actual ultimate end in the present nonhypothetical order (i.e., supernatural beatitude). Ergo, he concludes, Balthasar is correct. In Natura Pura, I (the present author) take the phrase “natural end” to designate “natural inality” —a inality, in puris naturalibus “unmoored from the supernatural vision of God” in the sense of not requiring or constituting in itself an exigency for it, and of limited perfection while participating the eternal law.13 By contrast, in the proposition in question, by a “hypothetical inality,” Waldstein takes Balthasar to refer exclusively to absolutely perfect inality which accordingly refers not to the hypothetical but to the nonhypothetical order (i.e., the concrete providential order in which the supernatural good, owing to revelation, is our ultimate end). If the proposition of Balthasar’s in question is read as reducing the hypothesis to the thesis of the concrete order, then Balthasar cannot have intended to deny the hypothesis of creation in puris naturalibus. On the other hand, if the hypothesis is truly reducible to the thesis, how is it even conceivable? Such a reading seems to avoid acknowledging a contingent negation of the hypothesis of pure nature by Balthasar only at the cost of making that negation something absolutely necessary and ineluctable. As Waldstein puts it, “Even if God had not decided to order us to the supernatural end of his own happiness, our natural end could not be inal in the unqualiied and absolute sense.” his reading seems to construe “inal goal” to mean “unqualiied” and “absolute” rather than simply “inal” or “good” or “end” or “that for the sake of which.” Balthasar’s express rejection even of a subordinate inality of pure nature—“Finally there is the other extreme—and extreme it is, as it has hardly any adherents, or even could for that matter—which leaves room for a full-blown (if subordinate) inality of pure nature in the de facto world order (as in 13. Because of revelation, the limits of the natural good are better understood. To posit a limit is to have gone beyond the limit. Because the hypothesis of pure nature is the hypothesis on which God could have created us with only natural aids, but without elevating us in grace and for the sake of the supernatural beatiic vision, on that hypothesis we would not have the same understanding of the “limit” of natural good. he paradox of our recognizing a good being both the natural end, while needing to be further ordered vis-à-vis the inis ultimus, arguably comes about by virtue of God having created man as susceptible of elevation to the order of grace, and having from the beginning elevated man in grace. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 18 homism and Predestination Billot)” 14—raises complications even for this reading (for it makes clear that whether subordinate to supernatural good or not, it is the idea of any normative or fully natural inality that is being rejected). Might one not think that, had man not been raised to the order of grace, the natural end would unqualiiedly have been man’s only end without that end thereby being “unqualiiedly absolute?” 15 Nonetheless, it is manifest that Balthasar’s original intentions, stressed by Waldstein, are better served by Waldstein’s judgment to the efect both that there is a subordinated natural inality and that Balthasar wholly and fully airms it. here is a strong case to be made that Waldstein demonstrates that reading Balthasar in this way is the most speculatively penetrating and fruitful way in which to interpret Balthasar: because it aligns more perfectly with the teleological dynamism of Balthasar’s initial and express intention in the work. Discerning this teleology enables one to complete the work of the master along lines that preserve the good of the whole, whereas, proceeding diferently—even if it were to be exegetically warranted (a judgment from which Waldstein dissents)—cannot fulill the aboriginal intentions of the author. Waldstein clearly and strongly argues the homistic provenance necessary to interpret Balthasar’s account as corrective of Barth. “he end we can reach by our own power remains the deining end from which our speciic nature derives: we are rational animals, not angels. Knowledge comes to us through the senses. And yet that deining end cannot be our ultimate end, because we know it is inite and therefore not truly inal.” Criticizing Gormaz for his insistence that nature cannot “need” supernatural beatitude absolutely, as though it were due, Waldstein discerns 14. Balthasar’s rejection targets even natural good/end/inality, which is understood as subordinate to the supernatural good and so clearly understood not to be absolutely perfect. he heology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, SJ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 289: “Finally there is the other extreme—and extreme it is, as it has hardly any adherents, or even could for that matter—which leaves room for a full-blown (if subordinate) inality of pure nature in the de facto world order (as in Billot).” So, it is not merely the issue of subordination to the supernatural good, but the very airmation of natural inality tout court that Balthasar’s text negates. It is astonishing to read Balthasar’s words that Billot’s position could have no adherents, as Billot himself was one of no mean capacity. 15. St. homas Aquinas, Quod. I, q. 4, a. 3, resp. “But because it was possible for God to have made man in a state of pure nature, it is useful to consider how far natural love could be extended.” “Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus, utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere posit.” Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 19 “the poisonous stench of Baius’s legalism.” To this he opposes the Aristotelian sense of the transcendence of happiness and argues that “Aristotle is dimly aware” of the need to be “shot across” or “sent across” a great distance that “we cannot overcome by our natural power.” Here again we face the diiculty of whether the sense of nature can be exclusively that of the concrete order. If not, how may one be justiied in saying not merely that nature qua nature is susceptible of elevation and superior perfection through divine grace, but rather also saying that nature qua nature and of itself implicates and needs the supernatural order? In any case, Waldstein airms of nature and grace the profound truth that “Both are deeply theonomic.” hus—and Waldstein’s words recall to mind Kevin Flannery’s masterful essay “Can an Aristotelian Be a Friend of God?” 16—he comments of Aristotle that “Had he been told of predestination, it would have been good news for him, as it was to the criminal on the Cross.” Howsoever the argument is assessed that apart from beatiic vision all inality is only equivocally designated as end,17 the strong efort to interpret the argument of Balthasar in an axially homistic way is clearly a strong and speculatively penetrating mode of assimilating the intention with which Balthasar undertook his work in he heology of Karl Barth. he remarkable emphasis upon a subordinated and theonomic natural principle airmed by Waldstein provides a rich middle term that both those who follow de Lubac’s reading of nature and grace and those who do not will ind instructive and challenging. And it ofers a fruitful path for the achievement of the initial intentions articulated by Balthasar in he heology of Karl Barth. Christopher Cullen, SJ, observes in chapter 12 that while St. Ignatius 16. Father Kevin Flannery, “Can an Aristotelian Consider Himself a Friend of God?,” in Virtue’s End, ed. Joshua Hochschild, Fulvio De Blasi, and Jefrey Langan (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), 1–13. 17. One might think that a inite end is unequivocally and really an end, but an imperfect end, and that we might not, in a diferent order of providence, have been as able as we are now to understand either this imperfection of the natural good or to airm properly the perfection of the divine life—even while the natural good would remain limited and incapable of bringing perfect rest, and even though the inner life of God would remain ininite Trinitarian fecundity. One might also wonder whether the diferent semantics of Aquinas and Balthasar do not complicate the analysis. If Balthasar by “inal” means only ultimate inality, is this how homas uses the term when he speaks of the end of man had he been created in puris naturalibus? Surmounting all this is Waldstein’s unequivocal and profound airmation that both nature and grace are theonomic principles. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 20 homism and Predestination of Loyola (1491–1556) lived in the context of the Renaissance and Reformation, and frequently is understood purely in the light of humanism and Protestantism, “Ignatius also lived in the midst of the second major revival of homism.” He attempts to show the important ways in which Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises can be understood to be in harmony with classical homism. As he puts it, “By examining the congruence between classical homism and the Spiritual Exercises, ‘Ignatius the homist’ can come into focus.” hus, he suggests, the educational program of Ignatius and the early Jesuits will be seen as proceeding from a transcendent humanism signiicantly indebted to Aquinas. Because Ignatius was not a professional theologian, his theological beliefs are to be gleaned from his writings and particularly his spiritual writings. Both Hugo Rahner and Avery Dulles, SJ, Cullen notes, pursued such project. Cullen insists that the condition of accurately understanding Ignatius’s theology is, irst, that one “take care not to associate Ignatius with later theories that became closely identiied with Jesuits, such as that of Molinism, which only developed in the generation ater Ignatius . . . or that of probabilism.” He notes the evidence presented by Robert Maryks that Ignatius and the early Jesuits were not probabilists but tutiorists closer in moral doctrine to Bonaventure and Aquinas. Second, one needs “to see the unity of humanism itself as a tradition.” hat is, humanism is not something wholly new that arises with the Renaissance, but rather there is “a humanism not only of the Renaissance but also of the Scholastics.” He quotes R. W. Southern’s work Scholastic Humanism and the Uniication of Europe on this point to some advantage, especially regarding the essentially humanistic character of the seven liberal arts in “every cathedral school of the period from the tenth to the twelth centuries.” Cullen asserts that “the question is not whether Ignatius was a humanist or a Scholastic; in being the latter, he is necessarily also the former.” he diference between Scholastic and Renaissance humanism “is to no small extent an argument over which subjects ought to enjoy primacy within the education of the complete human being.” Cullen argues that Ignatius’s path is diferent from that of “Renaissance humanists, such as Erasmus, who reject Scholasticism.” To the contrary, “Ignatius sought to hold together both the humanism of the Renaissance, which culminates in the art of eloquence, and the humanism of the Scholastics, Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 21 which culminates in the wisdom of revelation.” Ignatius, Cullen believes, “overcomes this dispute by synthesizing the favored subjects of both the medieval and Renaissance humanists in a carefully ordered plan of studies that culminates in the study of divine wisdom.” his is made possible by the spirituality of the Spiritual Exercises. Following the life, intellectual formation, and writings of St. Ignatius with care, Cullen brings his examination to the point of addressing the topic “Ignatian homism: Reasons for Choosing Aquinas.” He observes the judgments of John O’Malley, SJ, from his book he Early Jesuits, noting a variety of reasons for the election of homas as the theologian of the society. In addition to a variety of less central reasons, however, O’Malley goes further, Cullen notes, and proposes the importance of two doctrinal reasons: (1) the basic compatibility between reason and revelation and (2) the compatibility between nature and grace. According to O’Malley, these tenets comport better with the Spiritual Exercises and Constitutions than would a more Augustinian perspective. Aquinas’s teaching on human nature makes clear the omnipresence and operation of God in all things. Yet “O’Malley thinks that the early Jesuits departed from Aquinas on certain other points. For example, he thinks they reject Aquinas’s view that theology is principally a speculative doctrine.” Further, Erasmus grappled with roughly this same problem, and his solution was “to jettison Scholasticism and replace it with the more rhetorical theology of the Fathers.” Ignatius, by contrast, acted diferently: “Rather than jettison the Scholastic tradition, he placed it at the center of Jesuit education, as evident in his choice of Aquinas as the theologian of the Society.” here ensues Father Cullen’s treatment of the many elements of the Spiritual Exercises that relect a homistic view, notably the superiority of the contemplative life to the active, which is manifest in the nature of the Exercises as “carefully structured meditations meant to encourage a habit of contemplation.” he contemplation of the Incarnation whose motive is clearly articulated to be human salvation is a further homistic element. Speciically, the homistic account of predestination may be found in the Exercises, in particular in Rules 14 and 15 for “hinking with the Church.” Rule 14 states: “It is granted that there is much truth in the statement that no one can be saved without being predestined and without Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 22 homism and Predestination having faith and grace. Nevertheless great caution is necessary in our manner of speaking and teaching about all these matters.” Rule 15 famously discourages speaking much about the subject, and when speaking about it encourages that one do so in a manner that will not cause ordinary people to fall into error by abandoning good purposes and actions and growing “listless” so as to “neglect the works which lead to good and to the spiritual advancement of their souls.” But Cullen notes that these are simply concerns with the efects of any misappropriation of the doctrine, not regarding its nature, and spring from the fear of quietism. Cullen explains that the Exercises clearly intend the retreatant to meditate predestination, and hold it to be real, but something of which there is an ignorance on the side of the retreatant. Regarding the second week of the Exercises, he writes: In the points for this meditation, Ignatius leads the retreatant to consider the great ordering and drama in which they ind themselves. Ignatius also places the emphasis on what God is doing. It is God who has ordered the plan. It is not as if there is no predestination to glory for the elect and nonelection for the reprobate, and God is waiting for the results. It is rather that we, in our limited consciousness, do not know the ending. But the author of this drama has written an ending, for the whole and for each. And the task of the retreatant is to do a series of spiritual exercises—meditations and contemplations, examens of conscience—in order to be found on the side of justice in the end. here then ensues the heart of Cullen’s treatment, wherein he explains St. homas’s teaching regarding physical premotion, indicating how understanding this teaching is of invaluable aid for the contemplation of the Spiritual Exercises: “An understanding of God’s help as a physical premotion within human nature is especially valuable when it comes to Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, because the soul can then be seen as a mirror in which God’s movements can be discerned.” he exercises “require as a precondition that God is moving us from within. Of course, this is true in the order of grace.” But, Cullen reasons, “this also seems true in the order of nature, at least with regard to the movements of the soul as operations of natural powers moving from potency to act.” Further, “God is at work in the intimacy of the human soul, in the most profound sort of way, insofar as the powers of the soul move from potency to act in their operations.” Cullen’s acute perception of the reason for the import of the discernment of spirits in the exercises is profound: Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 23 If we understand our souls to be autonomous domains, then it seems that the foundation of the Exercises is lost. But if our souls are moved from potency to act by God as Pure Act, the spiritual life is a realm of transcendence. Addressing nature and grace, merit, and choice, Cullen shows the deep ainity of the Exercises with the teaching of St. homas Aquinas. Of Jesuit education, he rightly states that “Ignatius worked to create a system of schools; these schools became one of the largest purveyors of Aristotelianism and homism in the history of Western education.” he historical depth and nuance given to his exploration of “Jesuit Aristotelianism” is remarkable and fascinating. Cullen quotes his late Eminence Avery Cardinal Dulles that: In the sixteenth century theology was in disarray because medieval scholasticism had been devastated by the mockery of humanists and the hostility of Protestant reformers. he Jesuits together with the Dominicans, were the primary architects of a new, updated scholasticism in which discipline and order were restored. Reading Cullen’s essay, one is inspired to consider that this teleological dynamism is still to be found in a world that very much needs it. Ignatius the homist is perhaps more needed today than ever before. In chapter 13, Barry David relates St. homas’s teaching on predestination in the Summa heologiae to rival accounts, viewing these accounts according to diverse interpretations of the nature and implications of the gratitude that follows upon divine faith. He distinguishes three claims: that the whole human race attains eternal bliss; that a majority of the race, “and possibly the entirety,” attains bliss; and that, “as Aquinas insists, only a minority of the race attains bliss.” He notes the distinction according to which predestination to bliss is universal but predestination to temporal election is not. his is a merely relative distinction, however, because in the irst treatment all are viewed as ordained to beatitude. David seems to think that universal salvation is the only fully theocentric account: By contrast, those opposing a teaching of universal bliss interpret the God– man relationship either by a nontheocentric paradigm combining theocentrism and nontheocentrism or by a strictly nontheocentric paradigm. hese paradigms maintain either that man cannot attain eternal bliss or that one portion of humanity attains bliss on account of God’s primary causality while the other portion does not because it, rather than God, exercises primary cau- Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 24 homism and Predestination sality. Each view contradicts a consistently theocentric account of the nature of and relationship between God and humanity. But why, if God governs things according to their natures—and if these natures are defectible—would it be “nontheocentric” for God to permit such defectible natures to fall into defect? And the possibility of such defect is only wholly, immutably, and inally overcome ater death. God could have created man in the beatiic vision, wholly immobilized in perfect good, but this, though possible to the divine power, is unitting. Why, then, is the permission of defectible creatures to defect—even though it be with regard to their ultimate supernatural good—absolutely contrary to the theocentric providence that governs all things in accord with their natures, even when moving them beyond their natures? David argues that homas’s account of reprobation places sin prior to reprobation; that is, “Because sinning causes the sinner to be abandoned by God and ‘deserted by grace’ a gratia deseritur, reprobation does not incite sinning but ordains the sinner to have an ‘eternal punishment’ poenae aeternae, ultimately due to sinning.” True enough that reprobation does not incite or cause sinning, as it does not deprive the creature of its powers. But the permission to fall away is a nonupholding in grace, an upholding not absolutely due. As homas puts it, “it likewise is part of that providence to permit some to fall away from that end; this is called reprobation.” 18 What is this “permission” ? Further, as homas puts it, “so also reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.” 19 But what does “permit” mean here? Because, by virtue of the universal causality of God, anything ontologically positive falls within the sphere of the divine efect, for a defectible thing to defect, God must allow it, and such allowance is not like that of one creature to another. Sin is the reason of damnation, but the permission of sin is required, which—with respect to inal sin—implies reprobation. As homas says in ST I, ad 2, q. 23, “guilt proceeds from the free-will of the person who is reprobated and deserted by grace.” hat is, reproba18. ST I, q. 23, a. 3, resp.: “ut permittat aliquos ab isto ine deicere. Et hoc dicitur reprobare.” 19. ST I., q. 23, art. 3, resp. “Sicut enim praedestinatio includit voluntatem conferendi gratiam et gloriam, ita reprobatio includit voluntatem permittendi aliquem cadere in culpam, et inferendi damnationis poenam pro culpa.” Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 25 tion is prior to inal defect, and not its efect: “Sed culpa provenit ex libero arbitrio eius qui reprobatur et a gratia deseritur.” As homas argues in the ad 3 of the same question, while reprobation does not take away from the power of the person, it does imply conditional impossibility: “this must not be understood as implying absolute impossibility: but only conditional impossibility . . . that the predestined must necessarily be saved; yet a conditional necessity, which does not do away with the liberty of choice.” 20 his requires a profound engagement with homas’s account of the composite and divided senses of “power” and “possibility.” However, it manifests that God alone upholds from defect. David argues that reprobation is “nontheocentric,” whereas predestination is “theocentric.” In some critical sense this must be true, as the evil of sin is not caused by God, nor is it necessary for God. But for anything to afect a creature, either positive or negative, it must be subject to divine providence, and predestination—as that part of providence that concerns the order to eternal life—is part of providence. In this sense, it would seem to be theocentric, although this is a sense of which man can have no proper knowledge in this life. hus the line of Augustine quoted by Garrigou-Lagrange in Predestination: “Why God draws this one and not that other, seek not to judge, if thou wilt not err.”21 Viewing reprobation as nontheocentric, David argues that “homas’s subordination of a theocentric to a nontheocentric paradigm has some merit” —owing to the antagonism of sin vis-à-vis virtue. Yet “his teaching on eternal reprobation contradicts the natures of divine goodness and human responsibility.” David sees the profundity of homas’s doctrine of predestination as “theological before it is anthropological; it concerns the self-suicient God who, as ST I, q. 19, aa. 2–3, shows, creates by suppositional rather than by absolute necessity.” hus, he argues, reprobation is in a sense an antithesis of predestination, serving to distinguish the privileged status of God’s elect. But as evil accents the good of which it is the contrary deprivation, so the darkness of evil serves to underscore the centrality and irradiance of the divine light. Because everything—including sin— 20. ST I, q. 23, art. 3, ad 3: “non est hoc intelligendum secundum impossibilitatem absolutam, sed secundum impossibilitatem conditionatam, sicut supra dictum est quod praedestinatum necesse est salvari, necessitate conditionata, quae non tollit libertatem arbitrii.” 21. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Predestination, trans. Dom Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder: 1939), 44, taken from In Joan., tr. 26. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 26 homism and Predestination inally gloriies God and serves God’s elect (just as the cruelty of the tormentors serves the patience of the saints), it is diicult to understand why reprobation is not also theocentric inasmuch as it is ordained as part of the universal divine providence (in which evil is permitted only because God can bring from it a greater good). David seeks to articulate the nature of what he refers to as confessio or the explicitly Trinitarian relationship of a mortal person with God. He writes that “while the ontology between divine goodness and human responsibility—and, consequently, between goodness and the predestined—is eternal, the ontology between divine goodness and the reprobated and the elect and the reprobated is contingent.” Further, he goes on to argue that, because the doctrine of majority salvation “is more capable of inspiring divine gratitude” than the doctrine of universal salvation, it is objectively preferable. Likewise, David argues that homas’s doctrine of predestination, while it “upholds the importance of practicing gratitude,” nonetheless “militates against recognizing the primacy of the divine goodness.” For this reason, Barry holds that “group B’s teaching” —that of majority salvation—is superior both to group A (universal salvation) and group C (minority salvation). It is, he claims: better able to subordinate (1) the contingent to the absolute word, (2) temporal to eternal being, and (3) inite responsibility to ininite divine goodness. It might be wondered whether there is not an anthropomorphism here, in that as ininitely good in himself, and the source of every Good, God is owed complete gratitude by every sentient being. Sin, and its punishment, convict the one whose moral defect God has permitted, and not God for permitting a defectible agent at times to defect. Yet, on the other side, inasmuch as David’s analysis proceeds ex convenientia, from ittingness, it presents a sui generis analysis whose considerations invite meditation and careful assessment. David’s claim is not that the extent of predestination must be as described, but—if this reader fathoms the argument—that considerations of the ittingness of the divine pedagogy suggest that it be as described. Barry’s systematic comparison of difering views of predestination and reprobation cannot help but move the mind back to irst principles both in natural knowledge—especially metaphysics—and in regard to revelation and the Church’s de ide teaching. One might, however, won- Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University Introduction 27 der: is it not better and more generous to hope that one may wholly conform to the divine goodness than to hope that a certain number may prove to be that of the elect? Without, of course, in any way denying that there is such a number known to God alone? If so, is it not the case that the generosity that alone matters is one to which the extent of salvation is wholly accidental? For though the beatiic good can only be received as a common good participable by many, it is also the same good irrespective of whether it is participated by many, and is ininitely transcendent of the universe. Of course, it is congruous with charity to wish for the salvation of all whom we do not know certainly to be damned, but as this is not a revealed object, this would be not theological hope but human hope. Yet if David’s argument is correctly viewed as an argument from ittingness, just so far it would seem not to contradict such relections, although the content of revelation on these points is a further consideration. In any event, however, these are questions and alternatives that have preoccupied this question for several centuries now. David ofers a remarkably forthright and clear argument for a particular view of the extension of salvation. • his lengthy introduction would be insuicient did it not express the gratitude of all those who participated in the conference to those who conspicuously contributed to its existence. First, we are grateful for all that Father homas Joseph White and the homistic Institute of the Dominican House of Studies did to contribute to the success of the conference, from arcane matters to artwork. We are grateful for the generous support of Ambassador Michael Novak, without whose help this conference well might not have occurred. And, in particular, we are thankful to the Honorable Francis Rooney, former US ambassador to the Holy See, for his willingness to introduce Father Bonino, and to meet with and encourage our graduate students, sharing with us his experience and wisdom. Michael Dauphinais, the chair of the theology department at Ave Maria University, was of constant support and brought a reined prudence, fruit of many years serving the university, to the good of this conference, and we are grateful. Michael Sherwin, OP, not only graciously ofered a brilliant paper at the conference, but also volunteered to translate the viva voce French remarks of Father Bonino into English. While circumstances did not permit him to contribute to this volume, we are Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University 28 homism and Predestination grateful to him for all he gave to the conference. Likewise, Barry David, who spoke at the conference and has contributed to this volume and aided in its translation, generously read the English transcript of Father Bonino’s remarks, transmitted to all who chose to use the earphones, during his French lecture. Like Father Sherwin, he of course did double duty! he stalwart eforts of Martin Doman, director of operations at Ave Maria University, in providing, testing, and making the wireless headsets workable enabled simultaneous translation to be possible at a moment when for many reasons this had begun to appear doubtful. Our theology department secretary, Susan Nutt, helped orchestrate innumerable details that were necessary to the good of the conference, and without her constant diligence, prudence, and cheerful generosity, it would have been a lesser event. Our master of arts student Melissa Eitenmiller placed the French and matching English of Father Bonino’s lecture into pamphlet form for the conference, while our PhD student Jeremy Johnston has provided helpful inal editing corrections of the notes for Father Bonino’s essay. Finally, we are grateful—with a sui generis gratitude—to President James Towey and to the chairman of the Ave Maria University board Michael Timmis, for their constant stalwart encouragement and support. heir eforts sustain a graduate theology program and theology conferences that seek to enkindle an acquired contemplation of God, of revelation, and of all things in nature and grace as proceeding from and ordained to God. hank you, one and all. Copyright © 2016 Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University