The time has come for another compte rendu of articles from recent issues of The Thomist. I will first discuss the articles in these issues generally, and then focus on two of particular note, at least in the eyes of this reviewer. The first is an article by Dr. Glen Coughlin on the old Thomistic debate regarding the relationship between natural philosophy and metaphysics. The second is Dr. Barrett Turner’s excellent contribution to the proper understanding of the ius gentium in Thomistic natural law theory. Both concern issues of importance regarding perennial principles dear to disciples of the Angelic Doctor, and they deserve to be well-known and carefully studied.

– Thomist 84.2 and Thomist 84.3: Articles generally noted

In brief, about certain articles in the second issue: Fr. Dominic Legge’s “Incarnate De Spiritu Sancto: Aquinas on the Holy Spirit and Christ’s Conception” aims to show how the Holy Spirit’s absolutely indispensable role in the conception of Christ is accounted for by Aquinas “without compromising the central place of Christ’s identity as the Word, or endangering the consubstantial unity of the triune God.” Legge concludes that “Aquinas deserves to be numbered among the theologians in the history of Western theology with a great sensitivity to this pneumatological dimension of the mystery of the incarnation.” The essay “Interpersonal Commands and the Imperium-Praeceptum Debate,” by Teresa Enríquez and Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo, seeks to add to the literature on the subject of imperium and its unclarified relation to praeceptum in Aquinas’s corpus by focusing on texts concerning interpersonal commands. They defend a modified version of Gauthier’s view that praeceptum is a type of imperium. Lastly, Fr. Heribertus Dwi Kristanto’s “Aquinas on Shame, Virtue, and the Virtuous Person” discusses the constitutive role of the passion of shame in the moral life, explicates the nuance of Aquinas’s use of Aristotle, and builds on “Aquinas’s argument by suggesting that, for shame not only to be praiseworthy but also to produce a beneficial outcome in the person, it must be accompanied by the paired virtues of humility and magnanimity.”

In the third issue, Fr. Romanus Cessario’s “Sanctified Thought and Affection in Aquinas's Teaching on Nature and Grace” derives from his keynote address at a conference in honor of Servais Pinckaers in 2018. Cessario explores the proper understanding of the role of emotions in the moral life and the avoidance of a casuistic moralism. Properly “humanized” passions lead to a more capacious Thomistic anthropology. Also on the subject of Pinckaers’s theology is Michele M. Schumacher’s “The Reunification of Naturalism and Personalism in the Conjugal Act: A Contribution of Servais Pinckaers.” This essay closely examines the twofold end of marriage. In particular, argues Schumacher, it is by combating nominalism that Pinckaers is able to defend “an integral anthropology that implies the perfect harmony of naturalism and personalism.” 

Of more particular note are articles in the second issue: Juan Eduardo Carreño’s ““My Name is Legion”: The Biblical Episode of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Angelic Location,” and Paul O’Callaghan’s essay review “That All May Be Saved.” O'Callaghan’s essay provides a brief overview of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved as well as a diplomatic, thoughtful critique. He offers various points that counter Hart’s arguments involving the metaphysical relationship of God to the world, the meaning of apokatastasis in Gregory of Nyssa, the interpretation of New Testament texts, the translation of aiōnios, as well as the individuality of each human being, properly understood, vis-a-vis personal salvation and freedom. Throughout, he offers various insightful points that return readers to the broader tradition’s theological resources which should be considered when evaluating Hart’s universalism.

Carreño examines St. Thomas’s angelology with particular regard to the demoniac of Mark 5:9 and how angels are said to be in place. In response to the apparent problem of multilocation, Carreño proposes three hypotheses in resolution: that many (fallen) angels cooperated to achieve that possession, that each angel possessed only a part of the demoniac’s body, and that a single angel was the complete and immediate cause of possession, while others were mediate ones. He favors the third, which—although unmentioned by Carreño, who instead finds it in Aquinas’s Catena citing Gregory of Nyssa— leads to a certain “lowerarchy” of the demons as in C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Carreño writes: “Certainly, through the despotic control that some demons exert over others, the Prince of this world displays a disfigured and sarcastic representation of the way the true God governs the universe and respects the secondary causality inherent in all his creatures, including, of course, the angelic ones.” Although Aquinas himself does not propose this response in so many words, Carreño’s resolution is indeed “faithful to the spirit of the work of the Angelic Doctor.”

Let us now turn to the aforementioned articles of special note.

– Arguing one’s way out of the physical world

Glen Coughlin’s “The Role of Natural Philosophy in the Beginning of Metaphysics” is a clear and cogent presentation of what is sometimes referred to as the Laval School interpretation of the relationship between natural philosophy and metaphysics. The issue is an old debate among modern disciples of St. Thomas concerning the beginning of or the discovery of metaphysics as a speculative science (in the Aristotelian sense) distinct from the philosophy of nature. Coughlin marshalls enough philosophical reasoning to warrant his claim that “one must prove the existence of immaterial beings in natural philosophy before one can begin the scientific study of metaphysics” (395), and, even further, that this is the “traditional [claim]” (396) that Thomists ought to defend.

Coughlin begins by showing why mere generalization, setting up a new study based upon the more generic name “being,” for instance, does not suffice to establish metaphysics, because the speculative sciences are not diversified by mere generality or specificity. Rather, one must establish a new science and its subject-matter to be investigated via a new mode of definition—in this case, “with definitions that separate from all matter” (399). This is, as many readers of this site will know, the mode of definition established by an act of separatio. Noting that Aquinas in no specific, clear text, in his own voice, say “how the separation characteristic of metaphysics is possible” (405, fn. 29), Coughlin proceeds to argue that we have available to us only four routes that could lead to the discovery of the possibility of this new mode of definition. These are experience or one of the three acts of the mind, namely understanding, judgment, or reasoning. Coughlin examines each of these in turn and concludes that only through the third act of the mind, through an argument, is it possible to establish the distinctiveness of metaphysics, and that such an argument must be found in natural philosophy.

Coughlin addresses all the principal views in this debate, both past and present, including Avempace, Gilson, Maritain, Owens, Wippel, and Knasas. He does significantly limit the scope of his presentation, when discussing the view of those who defend the judgment-based account of separatio, by noting that “whether the claims that the text [of Super Boetium de Trinitate, q. 5, a. 3] indicates the path to knowing real existence, that this is the ground for Thomistic metaphysics, and that it indicates, in addition, a glaring difference between Aristotelian and Thomistic metaphysics, are issues beyond this article. I limit myself to asking whether knowledge of the subject-genus of metaphysics demands knowledge of the existence of immaterial beings, and whether such knowledge is gained in natural philosophy” (404, fn. 27). However, the slice of the debate that he does consider is thoroughly and well argued.

He also answers various objections. For instance, there is a typical objection that the natural philosophy route into metaphysics makes the goal of metaphysics otiose—namely, to resolve all being as such to its first principle, God. In reply, Coughlin suggests “that the objection fails due to the fallacy of the accident. To discover that there is an immaterial first mover is to discover God or some inferior immaterial substance as the principle of motion, not as the principle of being” (431). One answer is bound to be dissatisfactory to some parties of this debate, namely, Coughlin’s admission that it is beyond his article’s scope to attempt to definitively rebut via extensive textual interpretation the objection that “if St. Thomas really agreed with the thesis of this essay, he ought to have said so somewhere.” One senses, however, that any merely textual issues are of secondary concern here.

Indeed, the philosophical importance of Coughlin’s thesis is evident, and he states it in no uncertain terms: “In fact, not only can natural philosophy prove the existence of immaterial beings, but only natural philosophy can do so” (432). In this, he builds his conclusion upon Aquinas’s doctrine that “‘our intellect is not proportioned to knowing something by natural knowledge except through sensibles; and therefore it is not able to arrive at pure intelligibles except by arguing,’ [I Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2] and, I add, by arguing within natural philosophy” (434, fin).

– A law that can and cannot change

In a previous issue of The Thomist (reviewed on Thomistica here), Gregory M. Reichberg examined various scholastics articulations and defenses of religious freedom. He concludes, for instance, that St. Thomas “were he writing today ... would surely amend the social and political aspects of his theology to fit the new expectations of our age and the underlying legal codes, civil and ecclesial, that have accordingly emerged” (84.1: 50). Avery Cardinal Dulles’s words are added in support, that “doctrine of a social or political character does not follow exactly the same course of development as pure dogma. It is not simply spun out of the original deposit of faith, but emerges with a certain irregularity according to the vicissitudes of history. ... [T]he social teaching of the magisterium is under continual revision insofar as the unchanging principles of the gospel need to be upheld in varying social situations. The fundamental principles are constant, but the judgments and adaptations are new” (ibid., fn. 165).

Barrett H. Turner’s “The Law of Nations as Developing Moral Law: Two Interpretations of ius gentium in the Thomistic Tradition” is, in my judgment, a contribution of first-rate importance to contemporary natural law scholarship and to our day’s continued ressourcement of the Thomistic philosophical and theological tradition. For his part, Turner also cites Cardinal Dulles arguing against John T. Noonan’s view that Dignitatis Humanae was a “flat rejection of propositions once taught.” Turner adds, however, that while “Dulles offered an important response to Noonan in noting how new conditions could change what the moral law demands, he did not offer a theory of the development of moral doctrine” (84.3: 340). Turner’s essay is a crucial element for such a theory, showing that “the Thomistic concept of the law of nations can ground an account of how the Church’s interpretation of the natural law and its application can likewise develop in response to changes in social conditions” (391). Turner has previous employed the implications of the ius gentium in his doctoral work and a Nova et Vetera article, but here considers that subject directly.

Turner’s article takes as its particular subject matter the debate within the Thomistic tradition concerning the precise character of the ius gentium. This category of law gets short treatment by Aquinas, and typically it is presented in summary fashion as a sort of proto-natural, supra-civic law, sitting in a nebulous space between the natural law and human law, but for all that distinct in various ways from international law. One way to briefly encapsulate and motivate one to read carefully Turner’s nearly sixty-page tour de force is to ask whether “the law of nations [is] a changing natural law” or “merely a change in human knowledge of the natural law” (see 379)?

Two schools of thought emerged that “sought to clarify precisely in what sense the law of nations is distinct from the natural law and in what ways it can change, building upon St. Thomas Aquinas’s fundamentally ambiguous account of the law of nations” (342). The first school of thought, the Salamancan line, includes various Dominican theologians; it begins with Vitoria and includes de Soto, Cano, Bañez, Suárez, and Billuart. The second view is the “Neo-Thomist line” of thought, beginning with Maritain and including Simon, Labourdette, La Soujeole, and John Finnis. The Salamancans maintain that ius gentium is “essentially universally binding custom added to the natural law, and hence positive in content. The law of nations is only morally necessary for keeping the natural law and is therefore mutable depending on conditions” (343). By contrast, the Neo-Thomist view “holds that the law of nations is a set of strict conclusions from natural-law principles and thus belongs essentially to the natural law. These conclusions are known more perfectly under or extended more concretely within progressive civilizational conditions” (ibid.).

Turner argues, at least vis-à-vis his further target of laying the ground for a theory of the development of moral doctrine, that “the Salamancan [line] is better able to account for change in the law of nations without falling into historicist or relativist interpretations of the natural law or the ordinary exercise of the Magisterium in moral doctrine” (342). For all that, important lessons can be had by turning to the Neo-Thomists. Thus, he concludes that:

either one must add to the Salamancan line a Maritain-like account of conditions changing our knowledge of what is possible in the natural law, resulting in new possibilities in the law of nations; or one must modify Maritain—as Labourdette and La Soujoule do—by adding the power of new conditions to activate what was potential in the natural law itself (and not merely in our gnoseological awareness). These two lines so modified practically converge in being capable of presenting an interplay between new conditions and new extensions of the natural law that elicit developments in social doctrine, without prejudice to the human institutions and magisterial teaching that were necessary for past configurations of human society. (391)

The intricacies of the tradition examined by Turner defy brief summary. However, it is my view that future discussions of the natural law, ius gentium, and their sapiential application in moral theology when understanding the long history of the Church’s moral teaching should take not a few pointers from this essay. In particular, philosophical and theological debates over understanding Dignitatis Humanae—among other teachings—should take note of Turner’s review of the history of this debate.

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In closing, we should reflect on the importance of a principle that lies at the heart of both Coughlin’s articulation of the proper way in which to relate natural philosophy and metaphysics and Turner’s suggestion concerning the availability of ius gentium to indicate limits to and avenues for doctrinal development. That principle is the basic epistemological poverty of the human mind and its natural aptitude to discover the truth in a truly animal way, namely, through sensate, bodily experience. Only the angels’s minds are incipiently sicut tabula picta (De Ver., q. 8, a. 5, s.c. 3)—our minds are at first sicut tabula rasa. As one descends the angelic hierarchy, one approaches the human intellect, that prime matter of a mind, which in its native intellectual impoverishment is “brought so close to material things that a material thing is drawn to participate its own existence” (De Ente, ch. 4; my translation). These ontological initial conditions of our forays into the discovery of the truth call for a history of our understanding of the truth across generations and their intellectual traditions, including its development and our failures to achieve the truth or to preserve it once attained and handed on.