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BODILY IDENTITY in SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY Antonia Fitzpatrick

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BODILY IDENTITY IN SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY Antonia Fitzpatrick UCL Submitted for the degree of PhD in History 2013 1 I, Antonia Fitzpatrick, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 BODILY IDENTITY IN SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY ABSTRACT At the core of this thesis is an examination of how Aquinas's materialistic understanding of resurrection shaped his thinking on human nature, individuality and bodily identity. Resurrection implied two things with respect to the individual body. First: the union between soul and matter was intimate and essential. Aquinas held that the soul is the only substantial, or nature-determining, form in a human being. Second: the material part in a human was relatively independent from the soul. Aquinas grounded the relative independence of body from soul on the accidental form 'dimensive quantity', which gave to the body its organic structure, individualised its matter, and supported its material continuity. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss Aquinas's Aristotelian and Averroan sources. For Aristotle, although individuality had its basis in matter, all matter was exchangeable without prejudice to identity. Problematically for the theologian working on resurrection, Aristotle offered no account of postmortem bodily continuity. Averroes, crucially, imported Aristotle's geometrical notion of 'body' as a three-dimensional kind of quantity into his discussions of bodily identity. Averroes thought that matter had a bodily structure of its own, supporting its continuing identity across radical change. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss Aquinas's thinking on the individual body and bodily identity. Reflection on resurrection, it seems, pushed Aquinas towards adopting a position on the nature of matter similar to Averroes'. In the 1270s, critics (mostly Franciscan) of Aquinas's theory of human nature turned it on its head, argued that it threatened the body (with heretical consequences for the identity of Christ's corpse), and set off the late-thirteenth century's defining debate on human nature. Chapter 5 discusses the divergent ways in which the Dominicans Thomas of Sutton, Robert of Orford, and Richard Knapwell defended Aquinas's theory of human nature and its consequences for postmortem bodily continuity at Oxford during 1277-86. It culminates in an examination of Knapwell's advanced work on the nature of matter, which built upon Averroes' and Aquinas's. The thesis contends, furthermore, that these three Dominicans can still be grouped under the banner of the 'early Thomistic school' if the ground they share is understood to be primarily political, rather than primarily doctrinal. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to gratefully acknowledge the support of the following institutions: The Arts and Humanities Research Council University College London St. John's College, Oxford. I am particularly grateful for the support, encouragment and advice of my supervisor David d’Avray. I am also grateful to others who have read parts of this thesis or have discussed its arguments with me, and have offered helpful criticism: Sophie Page, Alain Boureau, Sylvain Piron, and John Sabapathy. 4 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 8 CHAPTER 1. ARISTOTELIAN BACKGROUND (I): INDIVIDUALITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL BODY Introduction 40 1. The Basics (I): Body and Soul as 'Proper Matter' and 'Proper Form' 42 1.1. Substance and Accident 44 2. The Basics (II): Human Generation, the Material Principle, and Necessity in Causation 45 2.1. The Generation of the Individual Body 55 3. The Individual Body and its Intellect in De anima 59 4. Essence and Individuality in the Metaphysica 60 Conclusions 66 CHAPTER 2. ARISTOTELIAN BACKGROUND (II): BODILY IDENTITY Introduction 68 1. Body as a Kind of Quantity 71 2. The Identity of the Mortal Body: Growth and Material Exchange 74 3. The Identity of the Corpse 79 4. Substantial Change and Material Continuity 81 4.1. Aristotle on Substantial Change 85 4.2. Averroes on Substantial Change and Corporeal Structure 88 4.2.1. Corporeal Structure as Incorruptible 89 4.2.2. Corporeal Structure as Divisible 93 4.2.3. Corporeal Structure and Material Identity 96 4.2.4. 'Indeterminate Dimensions': an Accidental Form sui generis 99 Conclusions 100 CHAPTER 3. THOMAS AQUINAS (I): INDIVIDUALITY AND THE INDIVIDUAL BODY Introduction 102 1. The Basics (I): Substantial Form and Matter in Human Nature 105 1.1. Essence and Esse 105 5 1.2. The Composite Human Essence 108 1.3. Commensuratio between Individual Soul and Individual Body 116 2. The Basics (II): Dimensive Quantity as the Body's Accidental Corporeal Form 118 2.1. Dimensive Quantity and Organic Structure 119 2.2. The Human Body as 'optime dispositus' 123 3. Human Generation and the Shaping of Individuals 127 3.1. Material Developments in Human Generation 128 3.2. The Individual Body 135 4. Individual Matter 140 Conclusions 150 CHAPTER 4. THOMAS AQUINAS (II): BODILY IDENTITY Introduction 152 1. Material Continuity and the Identity of the Mortal Body 156 1.1. The Identity of Dimensive Quantity across Growth 164 2. Formal Continuity and Bodily Identity at the Resurrection 167 2.1. The Body's Uninterrupted Esse 169 2.2. The Soul and the Body's Formal Identity 169 2.3. The Soul as the Body's Efficient Cause 172 2.4. The Soul as One of Two Essential Principles 174 3. Postmortem Bodily and Material Continuity 176 3.1. The Continuity of the Matter Particular to Individual Bodies 179 3.2. Christ's Dead Body and Saints' Relics 187 Conclusions 193 CHAPTER 5. POSTMORTEM BODILY CONTINUITY IN DOMINICAN THOUGHT (1277-1286): THOMAS OF SUTTON, ROBERT OF ORFORD, AND RICHARD KNAPWELL Introduction 195 1. Thomas of Sutton: De pluralitate formarum (1278) 219 2. Robert of Orford's Sciendum (1282-3) and the anonymous De natura materiae 232 3. Richard Knapwell: Quare (1278) and the Quaestio disputata de unitate formae (1285) 242 Conclusions 263 6 EPILOGUE 270 APPENDIX I: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE 280 BODY'S ACCIDENTAL FORMS APPENDIX II: ON HUMAN NATURE AFTER DEATH 282 APPENDIX III: ON CORPOREITY AS THE 'FIRST FORM IN MATTER' 284 BIBLIOGRAPHY 286 7 INTRODUCTION In the thirteenth century, scholastic theologians' interpretation of the doctrine of the general resurrection was literal and materialistic. It did not make sense to use the word resurrectio, Thomas Aquinas pointed out, unless the very same body that died would be that which rose again.1 Longstanding theological reasoning supported this interpretation of the general resurrection, as did the decrees of the great reforming Church councils of the thirteenth century: each individual would be justly judged or rewarded only in their sinning flesh; the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the Second Council of Lyons (1274), in the face of the threat of dualist heretics who taught that matter was evil, reaffirmed that every woman and man would rise again with their own body, a body that was identical to their mortal body.2 But in virtue of what would any person's risen body be the same as their mortal body? Which flesh formerly belonging to them would need to rise, and how much of it? And how, in any case, did an individual body's remains persist and remain the same after its death and decomposition? Answering questions like these led theologians to develop complex analyses of bodily identity. They discussed the development of the individual body in utero, the material transmission of characteristics across generations, and the physiology of growth and nutrition. Questioning how the material particular to an individual body might survive across the body's decay, 1 'Non enim resurrectio dici potest, nisi anima ad idem corpus redeat: quia resurrectio est iterata surrectio; ejusdem autem est surgere et cadere'. Thomas Aquinas, In quattuor libros sententiarum (hereafter In Sent.) IV, d. 44, q. 1, a. 1, qc.1, response, Opera omnia (ed.) R. Busa, 7 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980), vol. 1, p. 635. 2 Lateran IV: 'omnes cum suis propriis resurgent corporibus, quae nunc gestant, ut recipiant secundum opera sua, sive bona fuerint sive mala, illi cum diabolo poenam perpetuam, et isti cum Christo gloriam sempiternam'; Lyons II: 'in die iudicii omnes homines ante tribunal Christi cum suis corporibus comparebunt, reddituri de propriis factis rationem'. H. Denzinger (ed.), Enchiridion Symbolorum. Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 429, 464 pp. 200, 216. On the early development of the doctrine see C. Setzer, Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Christianity. Doctrine, Community and Self-Definition (Boston: Brill, 2004) and H. Chadwick, 'Origen, Celsus and the Resurrection of the Body', Harvard Theological Review, 41 (1948), pp. 83-102. On the equivocal evidence in scripture for the materialistic interpretation of resurrection see R. M. Grant, 'The Resurrection of the Body', Journal of Religion, 28 (1948), pp. 120-30. For a survey of the varying Christian interpretations of the resurrection from the Fathers through to the fourteenth century see C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 8 decomposition, and even being eaten by other humans, they analysed the nature of matter itself. The question of personal identity remains provocative and fertile in modern philosophical debate, of course. In order to try to isolate the criteria for personal survival, modern analytical philosophers have devised thought experiments
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