THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA
“No Greater Love”: Friendship as a Soteriological Theme in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan.
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Faculty of the
School of Theology and Religious Studies
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
By
Mary Grace DeBroeck
Washington, D.C.
2019
“No Greater Love”: Friendship as a Soteriological Theme in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan.
Mary G. DeBroeck, Ph.D.
Director: William Loewe, Ph.D.
Friendship has been a recurrent theme in the history of Christian thought, used most readily to characterize the individual’s, as well as the Church’s, relationship with Christ. In the
13th century, St. Thomas’s contribution is notable for incorporating into his work on the life of grace Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship. More recently, Bernard Lonergan, S.J., 1904-1984, a student of the thought of St. Thomas, has brought Thomas’s understanding of friendship into his own work on the life of grace. In addition to the context of grace, the notion of friendship has also functioned in a soteriological context for both Lonergan and Thomas. This dissertation offers an in-depth study of the notion of friendship within the soteriology of both Thomas and
Lonergan; and, through their comparison, it demonstrates how Lonergan develops Thomas’s thought on the soteriological significance of friendship in his formulation of the Law of the
Cross.
The first two chapters focus on the theological understanding of friendship found in the work of Thomas, first by presenting Thomas’s understanding of friendship, his use of Aristotle, and how he identifies charity as “a certain kind of friendship” in the life of grace. The second chapter explores Thomas’s early soteriological writings that incorporate the concept of friendship and his brief appeal to friendship in the Summa Theologiae in the context of satisfaction in which he states that if two are “one in charity” then one can atone for the other. The third chapter examines Lonergan’s assimilation of Thomas’s notion of friendship in the context of grace in which Lonergan builds on and transposes this concept for his own theological project. The fourth chapter explicates Lonergan’s expansion of Thomas’s theme of friendship in a soteriological context to better understand how and why satisfaction occurs through the union of wills that Thomas indicated. Lonergan draws out the implications of
Thomas’ construal of charity as friendship by identifying Christ’s saving work as God’s offer of friendship to the unfriendly. This offer becomes an integral and central part of God’s redemptive transformation of evil into good through Christ’s self-sacrificing love for his friends enacted on the cross. This dissertation by Mary G. DeBroeck fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Systematic Theology approved by William P. Loewe, Ph.D., as Director, and by Rev. John P. Galvin, Dr. Theol., and Rev. Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., Ph.D. as Readers.
______William P. Loewe, Ph.D., Director
______Rev. John P. Galvin, Dr. Theol., Reader
______Rev. Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., Ph.D., Reader
ii
For my parents, Jay and Lyn, who together strive to be closer friends of Christ.
iii
Christ is our wisest and greatest friend.
Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae I-II Q. 108
Although she is but one, [Wisdom] can do all things, and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God.
Wisdom 7:27
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER 1: CHARITY AS FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD IN THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE ...... 15
FRIENDSHIP ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE ...... 18 FRIENDSHIP AND ITS ACTS IN THOMAS’S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE ...... 23 Communicatio as the Cause of Friendship...... 27 The Acts of Friendship ...... 29 Benevolent “Amor Concupiscentiae” ...... 30 Benevolent “Amor Amicitiae” ...... 33 Beneficence ...... 35 Concord...... 36 Delight ...... 39 CHARITY AS FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD IN THE SUMMA IIA-IIAE, Q.23 ...... 41 Communicatio of Charity ...... 43 Communicatio and God’s Invitation to Friendship ...... 46 Charity as Habit and Virtue ...... 51 The Object of Charity ...... 54 The Acts of Friendship Transformed by Charity ...... 58 “Amor Concupiscentiae” and “Amor Amicitiae” ...... 59 Beneficence ...... 60 Peace: Concord in Charity ...... 63 Spiritual Joy: Delight in Charity ...... 65 CONCLUSION ...... 66
CHAPTER 2: THE CONCEPT OF FRIENDSHIP IN THE SOTERIOLOGICAL THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS...... 68 EARLY WORKS WITH FRIENDSHIP AS A SOTERIOLOGICAL THEME ...... 71 Friendship in the Summa contra Gentiles ...... 71 The work of the Spirit ...... 73 The work of Christ ...... 79 Christ as Friend in the Lectura super Ioannem ...... 86 Concluding Observations on Friendship in a Soteriological Context ...... 95 SOTERIOLOGY OF THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE ...... 99 Thomas’s Tertia Pars: Christ as the way back to God ...... 103
v Thomas’s Tertia Pars: Humanity’s Return to God through the Sacraments ...... 111 The Eucharist as the sacrament of friendship ...... 113 Penance as a sacrament of reconciliation between friends ...... 115 CONCLUSION: AN INTENTIONAL OMISSION OR ACCIDENTAL OVERSIGHT? ...... 118
CHAPTER 3: FRIENDSHIP AND THE ORDER OF GRACE IN EARLY LONERGAN ...... 125 DE ENTE SUPERNATURALI ...... 127 Thesis 1: The Proportion of Nature ...... 128 Thesis 2: Theorem of the Supernatural ...... 135 Concluding Observations ...... 138 LONERGAN’S “SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES ON SANCTIFYING GRACE” ...... 141 The Scriptural Roots of Sanctifying Grace ...... 142 Friendship in the Systematic Presentation of Sanctifying Grace ...... 145 Friendship with God as an imitation of divine love ...... 146 Friendship with God as an effect of sanctifying grace ...... 151 Concluding Observations ...... 153 LONERGAN’S “FINALITY, LOVE, MARRIAGE” ...... 155 Vertical Finality ...... 157 Vertical Finality in the Context of Human Loving and Friendship ...... 162 Vertical Finality in Action: The Ascent of Love toward Charity ...... 166 Ascent in the passive aspect of love ...... 168 Ascent in the immanent aspect of love ...... 169 Ascent in the active aspect of love ...... 170 Concluding Observations ...... 172 CONCLUSION ...... 175
CHAPTER 4: FRIENDSHIP AS AN INTEGRAL ASPECT OF REDEMPTION IN LONERGAN’S SOTERIOLOGY ...... 182 DE DEO TRINO ...... 185 Intelligibility of the Missions: The Nature of God and the Persons who are Sent ...... 187 Intelligibility of the Missions: The Effects of the Missions and the Good of Order ...... 192 The good of order ...... 193 The good of order established by the divine missions ...... 196 Concluding Observations ...... 199 DE VERBO INCARNATO ...... 202 Thesis 16: Vicarious Satisfaction ...... 204 Function of friendship in the nature of satisfaction...... 206 The nature of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction ...... 210
vi Thesis 17: The Law of the Cross ...... 214 Concluding Observations ...... 219 THE REDEMPTION: A SUPPLEMENT ...... 222 Why the God-Man: A Communication of Divine Friendship ...... 225 Implications of Divine Friendship: Historical Causality and the Human Good ...... 232 Concluding Observations ...... 236 CONCLUSION ...... 238
GENERAL CONCLUSION: TRACING THE THEME OF FRIENDSHIP IN THOMAS AND LONERGAN ...... 248
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 267
vii
Acknowledgements
I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with the writings of two such monumental figures as Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan. I am confident that it is only through the intercession of St. Thomas, the great Angelic Doctor of the Church, that this project has been guided from the beginning, directed in its progress, and brought to its completion. There are, of course, many others who have also been a great and indispensable help. I am especially grateful to my director, Dr. William Loewe, for his very patient guidance and insightful review of my work. My readers, Fr. John Galvin and Fr. Nicholas Lombardo, have both been generous with their time and have offered helpful feedback. To Dr. Jeremy Wilkins as well, who has been a great help and a kind mentor, particularly at the beginning stages of this project, I am very appreciative. I am grateful for the support of my loving parents (Jay and Lyn), siblings (Elise, Matt, John, Shailey, Ryan, and Erin), extended family, and friends. I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my most dear friend, husband, fellow scholar, and careful copy editor, Adam, without whom this project would not have been completed, thank you. Finally, in a moment of absolutely no irony, I would like to apologize to all the friends and family who I have inadvertently ignored while undertaking this project on friendship. I will text you back soon.
viii Introduction
In the fourth gospel, Jesus states, “there is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing, I have called you friends” (John
15:13-15). With these words, Christ makes possible for his disciples what was rarely found before, a friendship with God. An exclusive few in the Old Testament were said to have such a relationship, those such as Abraham or Moses, of whom it was said that God “spoke face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend.”1 With friendships with God reserved for so few, Christ’s words of friendship become more remarkable and Christ appears to initiate a new kind of relationship with his apostles. In the more recent past, Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum, echoed this theme of friendship to characterize the work of Son made flesh. It states,
In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature. Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.2
1. Exodus 33:11. Abraham’s relationship was identified as a ‘friend’ of God, particularly in his role as the father of Israel in Isaiah 41:8. Another example is Solomon, and those who seek after Wisdom; see Wisdom 7:14. For more on Old Testament references to friendship, see Jan Dietrich, “Friendship with God: Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Perspectives,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 28 (2014): 157-171; Jacqueline C. Lapsley, “Friends with God?: Moses and the Possibility of Covenantal Friendship,” Interpretation 58 (2004): 117-129; Saul M. Olyan, Friendship in the Hebrew Bible, Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). 2. Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum, in Vatican II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Northport: Costello, 1987), 2.
1 2
According to Dei Verbum, God’s plan of salvation occurs through the missions of the Son and
Spirit so that humanity may have access to the Father. In a particular way, the Son’s part in this plan is to make visible God’s love and to make an overture of friendship with humanity.
Following a theme of friendship through the near two thousand years of Christian history between the time these words of Christ were written and the promulgation of Dei Verbum cannot be traced simply by a straight line. Varied issues arise in this history. One difficulty regards what relationship is being characterized; most commonly, as seen above, friendship has been used to illustrate the relationship between God and humanity initiated by Christ. Friendship, however, has also been used as a way to characterize the bond among Christians, the unity among the divine persons, one’s spiritual relationship with Christ and even to characterize Christianity’s relationship with the rest of the world.3 Further terminological distinctions have also been drawn in the kinds of friendship, such as ‘natural,’ ‘worldly,’ or ‘particular’ friendships, and often compared to ‘spiritual friendships,’ of those within the Church, most notably distinguished by
Aelred of Rievaulx in the twelfth century.
Another difficulty arises, particularly in the early history of the Church, with the influence of non-Christian ideas of friendship into Christian theology. The early Apostolic
Church, through the Patristic period and into the Monastic periods, reflects an over-arching influence from the classical friendship-traditions of Greece and Rome, especially with Cicero’s
3. Liz Carmichael, Friendship: Interpreting Christian Love (New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 3-4. For example, the seventeenth-century Anglican Divine, Jeremy Taylor, famously stated that “Christian love is friendship to all the World.” In contrast, the Eastern traditions more readily use the concept of friendship to speak of the inter-relatedness of divine and human love, as with Maximus the Confessor (580-662); friendship has been a theme in this social understanding of the Trinity in varying degrees. See Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 68-69; F. Gerald Downing, “Friends in God: A Foundational Motif in Classical Reflections on the Divine Economy,” Anglican Theological Review 97, 3 (Summer 2015): 483-494. Downing argues that the theme of friendship in terms of a ‘social’ model of Trinity can be seen in the Eastern figures such as John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa. 3
De Amicitia in the Latin West.4 The influence of non-Christian thought was not always seen as a positive influence and many Christian writers were resistant to the use of non-Christian sources to characterize Christian relationships or realities. As a result, many sought to distance the
Christian community and Christian theology from these foreign visions of friendship and the
Classical conceptions of friendship were assimilated into early Christian thinking in varying degrees.
Theological problems arise along with the incorporation of non-Christian sources.
According to David Konstan, Christian ideals put “an enormous pressure on classical views of friendship.”5 For one, a fundamental theological concern was the presumption of equality between friends, which made any characterization of the human-divine relationship in terms of friendship a less than ideal depiction. Other theological issues arise with the nature of friendship as exclusive, particular and self-selecting, all of which were understood in the Classical context to be inherently necessary in forming friendship. Cicero, for instance, reserved true friendship for the educated elite, Roman men, and of them, only those who were of good character.6 Liz
Carmichael observes that “such friendship elects with great care whom it will love and is partial, exclusive and contingent on worthiness, unlike the universal love command by Christ.”7 Christ’s
4. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 3. See also, David Konstan, “Problems in the History of Christian Friendship,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4, 1 (1996): 87-113; Erik Peterson, “Der Gottesfreund: Beiträge zur Geschichte eines religiösen Terminus,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 42 (1923): 161–202. The Greek Classics were not yet translated and were therefore mostly absent in the West, although their influence was present in the Latin Classical traditions. For information on the Greco-Roman tradition of friendship, see David Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World, Key Themes in Ancient History (Cambridge University Press, 1997); Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 7-35. 5. Konstan, “Problems in the History,” 88. 6. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 3. For a summary and analysis of Cicero’s work, see Carmichael, 25-32. 7. Ibid. This tension between particular friendships and Christ’s universal call is likewise described and summarized by Paul Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 70-74; Gilbert Meilaender, Friendship: A Study in Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 1-5. 4
call to love one’s neighbor out of love for Christ was perceived, according to David Konstan, to
“militate against friendship as it is ordinarily understood” and therefore Christian love was often set up antagonistically in contrast to friendship.8 For this reason, Christian love [Gk. ἀγάπη, Ln. caritas] was often spoken of in terms of kinship, or brotherhood, rather than friendship.9
Despite these issues, friendship as a theme has been recurrent in the history of Christian thought, utilized to understand and articulate the relationship that Christ initiates with the individual, as well as the Church as a whole. In the New Testament, the idea of friendship is present although the specific Greek words for friendship [Gk. φιλία, ‘friendship’ or φίλος,
‘friend’] are rarely used.10 Although these exact words for friendship are infrequent, the general category, theme, and motif of friendship is used to characterize both the Christian community of believers and the work of Christ.11 In Acts 4:32, for instance, friendship is identified as a defining characteristic of the Christian community, in which “the community of believers was of one heart and mind” and in this community, no one claimed any possessions to be his or her own, but they held “everything in common.”12 The theme of the “one heart and mind” among friends is echoed by Paul, who often appeals to the “one soul” and the “thinking the same thing” of the
8. Konstan, “Problems in the History,” 88. 9. Ibid. See also Adolf Harnack, ‘“Friends” (hoi philoi)’, in The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. I, J. Moffatt trans. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1908) 421. Harnack suggests that early Christians preferred the language of brotherhood to friendship because it was “still more inward and warm.” 10. Sean Winter, “Friendship Traditions in the New Testament: An Overview,” Pacifica 29, 2 (2016), 193. 11. Winter in particular argues for the presence of the topoi of friendship in the New Testament; he states that “we must look for broader patterns of language and argumentation, within which we may be able to identify specific terms, motifs or topoi that indicate the adoption or adaptation of historically and culturally available patters of contrasting human relations.” Winter, “Friendship Traditions in the New Testament,” 193. A similar project is found in Alan C. Mitchell, “‘Greet the Friends by Name’: New Testament Evidence for the Greco-Roman Topos on Friendship,” in Greco-Roman Perspectives on Friendship, ed. John T. Fitzgerald, SBL Resources for Biblical Study 34 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1997): 225-262. 12. A great deal of scholarship has focused on the notion of friendship in Luke-Acts, see Mitchell, “Greet the Friends,” 236-257; Rollin Ramsaran, “Who is the True Friend? Lukan Friendship as Paradigm for the Church,” Leaven 5, 2 (1997): 25-28; Kari-Shane Davis Zimmerman, “Neither Social Revolution Nor Utopian Ideal: A Fresh Look at Luke's Community of Goods Practice for Christian Economic Reflection in Acts 4:32–35,” Heythrop Journal 53, 5 (September 2012): 777-786. 5
members of Christ’s Church.13 Notably as well, in Romans 5:6-11, Paul speaks of God’s overture of friendship through the death of Christ, in that the enemies of God were reconciled through the love displayed by Christ in his death.
The concept of friendship was in scattered but consistent use by the Apostolic Fathers as well as the Church Fathers from both the East and West. In common use was the term ‘friend of
God’ which was used most often as a description of a fully committed believer.14 For the most part, friendship in these contexts echoed the themes of Christ’s words of friendship in John and the characterization of the Christian community as a brotherhood of those with one heart and mind found in Acts and Paul’s letters.15 During this time, the central source of concern for
Christian thinking was in understanding how Christian caritas differed from Classical friendship, while at the same time, “the best in Classical friendship was transformed and found a secure purpose in Christianity.”16 Particularly in the fourth and fifth centuries, the theme of friendship can be traced through the work of many notable figures, such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of
13. Philippians 1:27, 2:2. See also Winter, “Friendship Traditions in the New Testament,” 198-201. For a more comprehensive list of possible friendship texts in Paul, see John T. Fitzgerald, “Paul and Friendship,” in Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook, ed J. Paul Sampley (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003): 319-343. Recent scholarship questions whether Paul’s use of the concept of friendship is simply rhetorical; cf. Paul A. Holloway, Consolation in Philippians: Philosophical Resources and Rhetorical Strategy, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 112 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) which rejects friendship as a theme for reading Paul’s letters, as compared to L. Michael White, “Morality Between Two Worlds: A Paradigm of Friendship in Philippians,” in Greeks, Romans, and Christians: Essays in honor of Abraham J. Malherbe, David L. Balch, Everett Ferguson, and Wayne A. Meeks eds. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990): 201-215; for a summary of the debate, see Winter, “Friendship Traditions in the New Testament,“ 198-200. 14. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 62. Carmichael demonstrates that the language of “friend of God” was already present in the second century, with figures such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. 15. Konstan, “Problems in the History,” 96. Konstan observes that although Christian writers themselves place “small emphasis on friendship among the faithful,” still Christian interest in friendship with God “derives wholly” from the Bible and “owes little or nothing to classical views concerning friendship.” Konstan insists that it is the Scriptural background, and not the Greco-Roman classical culture, that is the driving force for the inclusion of this theme in Christian thought. 16. Carolinne White, Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 58. 6
Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine and John Cassian.17 With the rise of the monastic traditions, the concept of friendship, especially ‘particular friendship’ between monks, was often met with suspicion, seen as a possible distraction from loving others and as creating divisions in the communal life of the religious orders.18 In the twelfth century, St. Aelred of Rievaulx endorsed friendships as a positive aspect of Christian living and developed the idea of ‘spiritual friendship’ as a way to characterize monastic life as contrasted to worldly friendship.19
In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas contributed notably to the friendship traditions of the earlier centuries in part through his thorough incorporation Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship into his work on the life of grace. Friendship for Aristotle was essential for human thriving and the attainment of human happiness. In his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle identifies a taxonomy of friendship, identifying the three categories of friendship: pleasure, utility, and virtue. Within this framework, friendships are categorized according to the object of the love and the most perfect form of friendship, virtue friendship, is based on a shared pursuit of the good.
17. For a brief overview, see Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, ch. 2. A more comprehensive view of these figures can be found in White’s Christian Friendship in the Fourth Century. These figures encouraged friendship to varying degrees; Basil of Caesarea, for example, was hesitant to prescribe friendship in monasteries, while John Cassian sought to demonstrate how friendship could exist among people of prayer. David Konstan remarks on the difficulty of tracing the theme of friendship in this period in modern scholarship; he suggests that “both the abundance of primary materials and the preponderance of theological considerations in the Christian interpretation of human ties have had consequences for modern discussions of late antique friendship. On the one hand, treatments are often abstractly doctrinal. On the other hand, they frequently focus on individual personalities and cases such as the conflict between Gregory of Nazianzus’ preference for monastic withdrawal and Basil’s sense of ecclesiastical calling, or Paulinus of Nola’s anguish over Sulpicius Severus’ failure ever to visit him, or again Saint Augustine’s intense feelings at the death of his unnamed friend from Tagaste.” Konstan, “Problems in the History,” 88-89. 18. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 70-73; see also, Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, Cistercian Studies 95 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988). 19. Although Paulinus of Nola (c. 353-431) is credited with the first literary appearance of the idea of “spiritual friendship,” St. Aelred of Rievaulx became the most closely associated with this idea, due to his widely read treatise Spiritual Friendship written for his monastic community in 1147. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 70-71. For a brief survey of his writing and his development of the theme of friendship, see Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, ch. 3; Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life, 104-110; Brian Noell,”Aelred of Rievaulx’s Appropriation of Augustine: A Window on Two Views of Friendship and the Monastic Life,” Cistercian Studies Quarterly 37, 2 (2002): 123-144. 7
Friendships built on virtue and pursuit of the good contribute greatly to the moral life of the individual and the larger moral life of the community. Following Aristotle, Thomas structures his understanding of the moral life around happiness as the goal of human living; and, like Aristotle, he argues that the happy man is one who desires and cultivates the fellowship of friends. For both Aristotle and Thomas, the good life is not achieved through the possession of any one particular good, but a life ordered by good moral acts and is maintained by associating with similarly virtuous people and always seeking greater perfection of the moral virtues.
Thomas Aquinas’s primary contribution on the subject of friendship is found in the second part of his Summa Theologiae, where he defines the supernatural gift of charity as a
“certain kind of friendship” with God.20 Relying on Aristotle’s analysis of friendship, Thomas uses friendship as a category to present the life of grace as a relationship. God offers the gift of charity, and if one co-operates with it, one enters into friendship with God. All friendships, for both Thomas and Aristotle, are founded on a similitude, a “communicatio,” a common ground from which a friendship can grow. While ordinary human friendships might be grounded in blood relation, a common interest, or a love of virtue, the human-divine friendship that is charity is, for Thomas, grounded entirely by a communicatio given by God. A relationship of this kind, with such a disparity between friends, requires that God initiate and sustain this relationship through the infusion of grace and the supernatural virtues.
For Aquinas, friendship with God became the paradigm of all friendships and the image through which the virtue of charity could be best conceptualized. In the Summa, Thomas follows
Aristotle and develops an understanding of friendship as having particular acts: (1) a friend
20. ST II-II q. 23 a.1. 8
wishes his friend to be and to live; (2) a friend desires good things for his friend; (3) a friend does good things for his friend, which constitutes beneficence; (4) friends are of like mind, and are thus in concord, and (5) friends share in mutual delight.21 These acts of true friendship are present in, and yet transformed by, a friendship with God in which this friendship creates an order of love that includes those whom one already loves as well as those with whom one does not already share a natural relationship. Thomas’s vision more clearly unites the inner friendship with God to the order of friendships that can occur in one’s life. Indeed, loving others in these contexts is colored by, and is an extension of, the friendship one establishes with God. In this way, Thomas is able to surmount the struggle of the Early Church by bringing together Christian love and friendship into a more unified vision of the Christian life.
Through his identification of charity as a kind of friendship, Thomas makes a unique contribution to theology, a contribution which became a fixture in the Christian tradition. In the centuries that followed Thomas, the concept of friendship and its use in the Christian tradition reached its greatest divergence, especially with the fragmentation of the Christian communities after the Reformation. The spiritual writers of the twelfth to fifteenth centuries used the concept of friendship to emphasize growth in the spiritual life as a deepening and developing friendship.22 In the Protestant churches, the focus on New Testament brotherhood and a renewed concern with friendship as preferential, brought with it suspicion and, in some cases, a general resistance to the concept of friendship.23 As perhaps a response to the Reformation, the theme of
21. ST II-II q. 25 a.7. 22. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 129-136. The theme of friendship was most common in figures such as Thomas à Kempis (1379-1471), Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), John of the Cross (1542-1591), Francis de Sales (1567-1622). 23. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, ch. 5; Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life, ch. 4. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Anders Nygren (1890-1978) are two notable examples of Protestant thinkers who claim agape leaves preferential love behind. 9
friendship became rather stagnant in Catholic thinking, and the majority of the theologians in the
Catholic tradition would rehearse their understanding of the virtue of charity as a kind of friendship to such an extent that “friendship with God became little more than a stock synonym for being in a ‘state of grace.’”24
Within the Catholic history following Thomas, Bernard Lonergan, S.J., 1904-1984, would bring a unique retrieval of and a contribution to the Thomistic tradition of charity as friendship with God. A Canadian Jesuit, Bernard Lonergan was sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to complete a doctorate in theology in 1933; during this time, and for more than a decade after, Lonergan would devote himself to the study of Thomas. His work reflects a clear indebtedness to Thomas, but his work is not simply a restating of Thomas’s theology. Instead,
Lonergan followed a motto: vetera novis augere et perficere, to enlarge and complete the old with the new.25 Lonergan remained attentive to the tradition he inherited but he was interested nevertheless in how it could be brought into a modern conversation. Regarding Lonergan’s reception of the Christian tradition, Jeremy Wilkins observes that
Lonergan received and transformed this tradition, partly by recovering achievements of Thomas Aquinas that had been obscured in the commentary tradition, and partly by re-grounding it within the horizon of his own deep philosophical and methodological reflections. He connected Thomas Aquinas’s theoretical interests to Augustine’s preoccupation with the historically concrete and put the tradition in conversation with contemporary questions arising from existentialism and personalism, emphasizing in particular the psychological and
24. Carmichael, Interpreting Christian Love, 3, see also 126-128. Carmichael notes that ‘friendship with God’ was incorporated into moral theology as a technical term for the state of grace. The Council of Trent, for instance, characterized justification as turning an enemy of God to “a friend of God.” Council of Trent, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, trans. H. J. Schroeder (Charlotte: Tan Books, 1978), 6th Session, ch. VII. 25. Lonergan adopts this motto from the encyclical Aeterni patris by Pope Leo XIII. See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 3, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 769; Pope Leo XIII “Aeterni patris, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII: On the Restoration of Christian Philosophy,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 12, no. 1 (2009): 169-192. 10
intersubjective implications of the Augustinian and Thomist tradition of speculation on the Trinity and the economy of grace.”26
Lonergan sought to enhance the theological tradition in which he was formed in part by retrieving the achievements of figures such as Thomas Aquinas and also by putting these traditions into contact with modern concerns. Lonergan’s retrieval and development of Thomas’s concept of friendship is a clear example of Lonergan’s efforts to enlarge and complete the old with the new.
Lonergan takes up the notion of friendship during his time of close study of the works of
Thomas. Like Thomas, Lonergan uses the concept of friendship to structure his understanding of the life of grace in which charity, as a friendship with God, shapes and transforms one’s knowing and loving. In this way, the concept of friendship plays a significant role in his work on grace, as it did for Thomas. While Lonergan relies heavily on both Thomas and Aristotle to approach friendship, he ultimately uses Thomas’s development of the concept of friendship to transpose this theme for his own theological project. This transposition occurs not only in the field of the state of grace, but also, Lonergan most uniquely develops Thomas’s work on friendship by incorporating his concept of friendship into his soteriological work. Utilizing Thomas’s concept of friendship in this way, Lonergan brings greater attention to the work of Christ as the mediator of a new friendship with God.
Lonergan’s main soteriological development of the theme of friendship occurs in his work on the Trinitarian missions in De Deo Trino: Pars Systematica (1964) and in his works on soteriology, particularly De verbo incarnato (1960) and his Supplement to this work.27 In these
26. Jeremy Wilkins, “Why Two Divine Missions? Development in Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77, 1 (February 2012),19-20. 27. Bernard Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12, ed. H. Daniel Monsour and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); Bernard Lonergan, “De Verbo 11
works, Lonergan begins with a Thomistic understanding of how Christ achieves salvation through vicarious satisfaction. Significantly, however, he expands on Thomas, explicating friendship as a theme to better understand how and why satisfaction occurs through the “union of wills” that Thomas indicated. Furthermore, Lonergan draws out the implications of Thomas’ construal of charity as friendship by identifying Christ’s saving work as God’s offer of friendship to the unfriendly. This offer becomes an integral and central part of Christ’s redemptive transformation of evil into good by his self-sacrificing love for his friends enacted on the cross.
This conversion of the world’s evils into a supreme good—a principle of transformation that
Lonergan calls the Law of the Cross—is at the heart of our redemption. And, through our acceptance of Christ’s offer of friendship, we ourselves are empowered to collaborate in God’s redemption of all creation.
Both Thomas and Lonergan make significant and unique contributions to theology in their use of the concept of friendship. Thomas legitimizes the use of the Aristotelian concept of friendship through his description of charity as a friendship and through his use of this concept as a framework for constructing an understanding of the life of grace. With friendship squarely at the center of his understanding of the moral life and the order of grace, Thomas brings an important synthesis to the theological question of how Christian love and a concept of friendship can be understood together. Lonergan demonstrates the extent to which Thomas’s concept of friendship can bring even greater unity to Christian truths, particularly, how God’s plan of salvation involves the offer and extension of divine love in friendship mediated by Christ.
Incarnato: Theses 15-17,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 9, The Redemption, ed. Robert Doran, H. Daniel Monsour and Jeremy Wilkins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018); Bernard Lonergan, The Redemption, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 9, The Redemption, ed. Robert Doran, H. Daniel Monsour and Jeremy Wilkins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018). 12
Lonergan inherits Thomas’s characterization of charity and develops it by bringing the concept of friendship into a clearly soteriological context. Through his use of the concept of friendship,
Lonergan is able to bring together a Trinitarian theology, Christology, a doctrine of grace,
Pneumatology, Ecclesiology, the moral life and a soteriology into a greater synthesis than
Thomas had before him. The goal of this present work is to explore the ways in which both
Thomas and Lonergan develop the concept of friendship in their work and to highlight in a particular way the impact of this concept of friendship in regard to the work of Christ.
Chapter one presents Thomas’s understanding of friendship, his use of Aristotle, and how he incorporates the notion of friendship into his vision of the Christian life. The chapter begins with a brief presentation of Aristotle’s philosophy of friendship from the Nichomachean Ethics which provides a helpful foundation to appreciate Thomas’s efforts to assimilate Aristotle’s ideas. Building on this initial look at Aristotle, the focus of the chapter is Thomas’s work in the
Summa Theologiae (1265-1274), with occasional reference to his Commentary on Aristotle’s
Ethics (1271-1272), which reveals Thomas’s reliance on Aristotle’s notion of friendship in order to provide a framework to conceptualize the Christian relationship with God. First, a general, synthetic account of friendship according to Thomas is constructed in which friendship is seen as a kind of love, grounded in some kind of similitude or likeness, and is marked by a particular set of characteristics. Then, attention is turned to Thomas’s use of the concept of friendship within the unique context of the life of grace and his understanding of the theological virtue of charity found in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa.
The second chapter moves into a study of Thomas’s Christology and soteriology in order to explore the extent to which Thomas incorporates the concept of friendship in these contexts. 13
In the Summa contra Gentiles (1259-1264) and in his commentary on the Gospel of John
(1270-1272), Thomas makes use of the theme of friendship to understand the mission of the
Spirit and as a reason for the fittingness of the Incarnation. Additionally, in the commentary,
Thomas develops a picture of Christ as “friend” and draws significantly on Jesus’s understanding of his death in John 15:13 which he sees as the perfect expression of friendship. Significant passages from these two texts are highlighted to draw a contrast with Thomas’s mature work of the Tertia pars of the Summa Theologiae in which Thomas does not integrate the theme of friendship in a significant way into his Christological and soteriological writings, but briefly ties it to his sacramental theology in the Tertia pars. This chapter concludes with attention to modern scholarship which accounts for Thomas’s omission of the theme of friendship from his
Christological and soteriological writings in the Summa in various, and sometimes contradictory, ways.
Chapters three and four examine Lonergan’s assimilation of Thomas’s concept of charity as friendship and Lonergan’s own unique development of it. Chapter three focuses on Lonergan’s understanding of the order of grace and how, in this order, charity as described by Thomas is at its center. In this chapter, three texts in particular are explored: “Finality, Love and
Marriage” (1943), De ente supernaturali (1946), and “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying
Grace” (1951).28 Close examination of these texts reveals the significant role of the concept of friendship in Lonergan’s vision of the supernatural order. Sanctifying grace makes friendship
28. Bernard Lonergan, “Finality, Love, Marriage,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 4, Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988); Bernard Lonergan, “De Ente Supernaturali: Supplementum Schematicum,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); Bernard Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 14
possible and this friendship for Lonergan occurs through God’s saving plan, which he describes as the “diffusion of love.” Lonergan develops a vision of the supernatural order that is entirely interpersonal in nature in which grace is an interpersonal reality which implies a union of love.
The chapter closes with a study of Lonergan’s most sustained and foundational work on friendship called “Finality, Love, Marriage” in which he carefully meditates on a concrete example—marriage as a friendship—which demonstrates the order of grace in action.
Chapter four treats Lonergan’s explicitly soteriological development of the concept of friendship and, in particular, the way in which Christ mediates divine friendship. First,
Lonergan’s De Deo Trino offers an enhanced understanding of the Trinitarian missions as initiating new interpersonal relationships which have a profound impact on all aspects of human living. Second, Lonergan’s soteriology in the final three theses of De Verbo Incarnato and in his
Supplement to that work expands Thomas’s soteriology by positing friendship to be a central factor in salvation. In these works, Lonergan argues for the fittingness of Christ to communicate divine friendship as part of God’s plan to work in history to restore the broken relationship between God and man as well as to restore human living through the establishment of the
Church.
The final chapter is a comparative one which seeks to bring together and analyze the theme of friendship in both Thomas and Lonergan. The concept of friendship will be central to the redemptive acts of Christ for both Thomas and Lonergan. For Thomas, this is seen primarily in the order of grace in which charity, as a friendship, is established and nurtured. For Lonergan, friendship will play a more integral role in his understanding of the divine missions and in the role Christ plays as the mediator of a divine-human friendship. Chapter 1: Charity as Friendship with God in the Summa Theologiae
Although never writing an explicit treatise on the topic, Thomas Aquinas incorporates a carefully nuanced notion of friendship into his theological writing. Relying on Aristotle’s conception of friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics, Thomas formulates what he considers to be the paradigmatic friendship a person can cultivate: a friendship with God. Beyond simply reiterating Aristotle, Thomas turns Aristotle’s understanding of friendship on its head by arguing that the supernatural virtue of charity is itself a kind of friendship with God. While Aristotle insists that humans cannot be friends with the divine due to the disparity between men and god1,
Thomas will insist that the state of grace enables this seemingly impossible relationship to become a commonplace Christian reality. Human persons, as rational creatures capable of love, can enter into friendship with one another; being the recipients of God’s grace and salvific action on our behalf makes friendship with God possible. Aristotle’s understanding of friendship in the
Nichomachean Ethics becomes the thematic scaffolding on which Thomas will develop a distinctively Christian notion of charity as a friendship.
Thomas’s use of Aristotle’s work in this context reflects the broader aims of the
Scholasticism of his time. A key feature distinguishing this period from the monastic traditions that preceded it was the incorporation of a wide range of Christian, and even non-Christian, texts into the task of theology.2 While still relying heavily on Scripture as his central text, Thomas
1. Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 1158b29-1159a13. 2. Thomas was also acquainted with the thought of many of his near contemporaries, such as St. Anselm, Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, Alexander of Hales, St. Albert, and St. Bonaventure. Interestingly, there is no evidence to suggest that Thomas was familiar with the famous medieval work on friendship by St. Aelred of Rievaulx although Thomas and Aelred were near contemporaries. This happenstance is explored by Nathan Lefler, Saint Aelred of Rievaulx and Saint Thomas on Friendship: A Comparison of Monastic and Scholastic Theology (Ph.D. Diss.,The Catholic University of America, 2008), 133-4.
15 16
pulled from both Western and Eastern Church Fathers; outside of the Christian tradition, Thomas was also deeply conversant in the great medieval Islamic scholars and the Greek and Latin classical authors, most notably in his familiarity and use of the works of Aristotle.3 Aristotle was an enormous influence on Thomas’s view of the moral life; indeed, it has been observed that
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is by far the single most frequently cited work in Thomas’s major systematic writing in the Summa.4 With a good deal of the current chapter’s focus on this incorporation of Aristotle’s ideas into Thomas’s theology, it is worth noting, as Gilles Emery has insisted, that Thomas never uses Aristotle “as a mere expedient” but rather “adopts Aristotelian notions because of their truth value, and he assimilates them (with some adjustments or complements) into a Christian discourse.”5
Regarding the topics of friendship, charity and the moral life, Thomas will make use of a variety of sources to understand charity as a theological virtue and the moral life more broadly, with friendship as an important part of this life. Using friendship to describe and encapsulate the varying and disparate elements of charity found in the tradition does not originate with Thomas.6
Daniel Schwartz observes that, while Aquinas “is not the first theologian to treat charity as a form of friendship,” his original contribution is bringing the Aristotelian understanding of friendship firmly into the discussion of Christian charity.7 What becomes Thomas’s unique
3. Nathan Lefler observes: “in general, though Thomas often surpassed his peers in the breadth and depth of his patristic reading, his approach was fundamentally that of the great schools of Paris and Oxford: read everything and everyone, distilling from this vast wealth of sources what is most true and good.” Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 132. 4. Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams, “Introduction” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 2. 5. Gilles Emery, “Central Aristotelian Themes in Thomas Aquinas’s Trinitarian Theology” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed. Gilles Emery, O.P. and Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 27. 6. For a brief account of the history of charity, see Daniel Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 5. See also, D. Konstan, “Problems in the History of Christian Friendship,” Journal of Early Christianity 4 (1996): 87-113. In the Eastern Churches, friendship was associated with agape by Greek Fathers such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom. 7. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 5. 17
contribution is his use of Aristotle as a source to understand friendship generally, with all its implications for how friends live and act, and how this can be used to capture even more profoundly the nature of charity.
In the course of his career, Thomas treats friendship in a substantial way in five places:
(1) in his commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, Sententia Libri Ethicorum (1271-1272), books 8 and
9; (2) in his commentary on Dionysius, In Librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus (1266);
(3) in his commentary on the Gospel of John, Super evangelium S. Iohannis lectura (1270-1272), most particularly in connection to Jesus’s words in John 15; (4) in his Summa contra gentiles
(1258-1265) and (5) in the Summa theologiae (1267-1274).8 Thomas’s position develops in the course of his career and many valuable studies have been dedicated to tracing that development, studying his sources, and analyzing his every reference to friendship.9 Relying on these achievements, the present chapter will not redo the work of its predecessors; rather, the focus of this chapter will be Thomas’s mature articulation of friendship and charity as a kind of friendship found in the Summa theologiae. A close focus on Thomas’s mature treatment of friendship will establish Thomas’s indebtedness to Aristotle and, further, will reveal Thomas’s unique contribution to theology in his transposition of Aristotelian friendship in the context of charity as friendship with God.
8. The dates of these works are taken from Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work, translated by Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 327-329. 9. Nathan Lefler, to whom I am indebted for the aforementioned list, is one example. See Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, Ch. 3. See also Matthew Kauth, Charity as Divine and Human Friendship: A Metaphysical and Scriptural Explanation According to the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2013); Fergus Kerr, O.P., “Charity as Friendship,” in Language, Meaning, and God (London: Chapman, 1987): 1-23. 18
To reach our goal, the chapter will unfold in three major sections. First, a brief, general presentation of Aristotle’s notion of friendship will provide the foundation on which to identify
Thomas’s developments. The second section will synthetically piece together a general account of friendship according to Thomas, relying on his observations on Aristotle’s work in his
Commentary and in his work on friendship and its characteristics in the Summa, most particularly with identification of friendship as a kind of love in the Prima Secundae.10 The third section will focus on Thomas’s use of friendship within the context of the life of grace and the theological virtue of charity in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa.
I. Friendship According to Aristotle
Friendship for Aristotle is one of life’s necessities and plays an essential role in the establishment and maintenance of the happy life. In Aristotle’s vision of happiness in the
Nicomachean Ethics, the sum total of the moral life is oriented toward the final good, eudaimonia, which for Aristotle is the activity of the soul in accordance with virtue and reason.
True happiness can be described essentially as the result of good living and good doing.11 The insertion of friendship into a discussion of the moral life is not incidental but points to Aristotle’s overall understanding of eudaimonia: happiness is not found or achieved in isolation, but necessarily includes interaction with, and the happiness of, others. On a larger scale, friendship
10. The use of these sources is an intentional narrowing of the scope which corresponds to the goal of this current chapter. Thomas’s work on the Divine Names, offering some of his most unique insights on love, is a valuable study in its own right; however, Thomas imports the most crucial insights in this work, especially on friendship, into his later work in the Summa. Exploration of Thomas’s Commentary on John and the Summa contra gentiles will be relegated to the next chapter’s treatment of Thomas’s use of friendship in soteriological contexts. 11. NE 1098a7-15. Here, Aristotle compares the moral life to a good lyre player, “for a lyre player plays the lyre, but a good lyre player does so well.” Aristotle concludes that “the function of a man is a certain life, that this life is the same as an activity or action of soul with a principle, that the function of a good man is to fulfill this function well and nobly, and that each function is fulfilled well when fulfilled in accordance with its own virtue.” 19
also functions significantly in the moral shape, development and maintenance of the political life according to Aristotle.12 Friendship creates the space or context in which virtue can be displayed and happiness can be jointly pursued.13 The supremely happy person is the good person, and, in order to be good and also happy, one needs and desires the presence of friends.14 Aristotle’s account of the moral life focuses around the interrelationship of these central themes of happiness, the life of virtue, and friendship, where friendship plays a central role in the moral life of the individual, but also more broadly in society itself.
Aristotle famously distinguishes the three kinds, or species, of friendship identified according to the three different objects of their love: the good, the pleasant, and the useful.15
Friendship of pleasure and friendship of utility are friendships which focus on the good that the other can provide for oneself, whether pleasure or some kind of usefulness. Friendships of these sorts, while not necessarily bad, are egoistical in nature, in that these people “feel affection for another not as someone loved but as someone useful or pleasant.”16 The love expressed in these kinds of friendship is a love for oneself, in the desire to see oneself pleased and provided for. The
12. Robert Sokolowski has observed that the Nichomachean Ethics comes to three peaks in its treatment of moral virtue: first, in the treatment of “megalopsychia,” a greatness of the soul, in Book IV, which according to Aristotle, perfects the individual; second, the treatment of justice in Book V which governs one’s relationship to others; and third, in the treatment of friendship in Books VIII and IX, where friendship “completes justice and the other moral virtues” and is “the finest way in which we exercise practical reason.” Robert Sokolowski, “Phenomenology of Friendship,” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2002), 452. See also, Paul J. Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989) ch. 3. Wadell affirms that for Aristotle, “the goal of the moral life is not just the virtuous person, but the virtuous community” (p. 46). 13. NE 1169b10. See also Nancy Sherman, “Aristotle on Friendship and the Shared Life,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47, no. 4 (1987), 595. 14. NE 1169b18-22. See also L. Gregory Jones, “The Theological Transformation of Aristotelian Friendship in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas,” New Scholasticism 61 (1987), 374-376. 15. NE 1155b17-20. 16. NE 1156a15-16. Much debate has occurred over the question of whether friendships of pleasure and utility are friendships at all, given the qualities of friendship that Aristotle has outlined at the beginning of NE. See Bradley Bryan, “Approaching Others: Aristotle on Friendship’s Possibility,” Political Theory 37, 6 (2009): 754-779, who argues that for Aristotle friendships of pleasure and utility are “unfinished” and are thus not rightly identified as friendship. Cf. John M. Cooper, “Aristotle on Friendship,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 20
friendship does not necessitate a love for these friends essentially, for who they are as persons, but primarily for the good that they provide.
While Aristotle admits that friendships of pleasure and utility each have a legitimate place in life, the third species of friendship, friendship whose object is the good, is morally crucial and friendship properly so-called.17 This kind of friendship, variously translated as
“character friendship,” “perfect” or “virtue” friendship, is the friendship that exists “between good men who are alike in excellence or virtue.”18 In contrast to the other types of friendships, these friends “wish alike for one another’s good because they are good men, and they are good per se. Those who wish for their friends’ good for their friends’ sake are friends in the truest sense, since their attitude is determined by what their friends are and not by incidental considerations.”19 True friendship for Aristotle reflects genuine love for the other as a person.
Genuine love for the other in an essential way requires a concern for the happiness of one’s friend. A true friendship is one that not only enables one to live, but to flourish.20 Therefore, true friendship, for Aristotle, is connected to virtue, where both friends share in the same object of the good. There is an inextricable interrelationship between friendship and happiness, in which the supremely happy person is the good person who shares this goodness with friends.21
Aristotle dedicates the last three books of the Nichomachean Ethics to developing the nature of friendship and how it contributes to happiness. At the opening of his treatment of friendship in Book VIII, Aristotle establishes the foundational structure of his understanding of
17. Aristotle states: “those who wish the good to their friends for the sake of them are the most friends, for they do this for their sake and not accidentally.” NE 1156b9-11. See Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 375. 18. NE 1156b6. 19. NE 1156b6-11. 20. Sherman, “Shared Life,” 596. 21. L. Gregory Jones observes, “the supremely happy person is the good person, and in order to be both good and happy one needs and desires the presence of friends.” Jones, “Theological Transformations,” 374. 21
friendship in which friendship is a mutual love of wishing good to the other that can only occur between rational creatures.22 This foundational understanding of friendship is developed throughout Aristotle’s work.23 In Book IX, Aristotle specifies his most comprehensive list of traits that describe a virtue friendship:
(1) A friend wishes and does what is good for the sake of his friend, and,
(2) wishes his friend to exist and to live for his own sake.
(3) A friend is one who lives with his friend, and
(4) Chooses the same things as his friend, and
(5) Grieves and rejoices with his friend.24
A good friend possesses these qualities in regard to his friend, but they are first grounded in relation to himself. Friendship based in virtue first requires friendliness to oneself, for a good man “wishes what is good for himself and what appears to be good, and he does these things, for being good he works out the good, and he also does these things for his own sake.”25 The qualities that Aristotle finds to be in a true friend are first found in oneself, which, for Aristotle becomes a key factor in the overall moral life of persons and communities. In this way, one’s mode of self-relation determines the mode of one’s relation to another.26 Aristotle claims: “all
22. NE 1155b27-1156a5. 23. Kauth observes that NE is “written in a sort of peripatetic prose rather than in a syllogistic style. As a result, when attempting to construct a clear understanding of friendship, the reader is left with the task of gathering and assembling the various parts to gain a picture of the whole.” Kauth, Divine and Human, 133. 24. NE 1166a2-9. The earlier characteristics are developed and subsumed into this current list, which presumes mutuality and reciprocity. See Paul Schollmeier, Other Selves: Aristotle on Personal and Political Friendship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), ch. 4; Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 375-6. 25. NE 1166a14-17. For a detailed look at Aristotle’s argument here, see Schollmeier, Other Selves, ch. 4. He analyzes each of the five characteristics and presents Aristotle’s argument for self-love for each. 26. Marko Fuchs explains: “Aristotle does not mean that our goodwill, that is, the fact that we wish the friend well for his own sake, is derived in a strict sense from our self-love. His idea is that we cannot be someone’s friend if we are torn apart by our emotions and inclinations, for these would not only prevent us from loving the other in an orderly way but also would mean that we ourselves were not lovable persons and, one might add, could 22
friendly feelings toward others are an extension of the friendly feelings a person has for himself.”27 The virtuous man possesses the qualities numerated above, both toward himself first,
“his own best friend,” and then also toward his friend.28 A virtuous man attracts virtuous people and requires virtue of his friends.
Ultimately Aristotle will argue that, considering all the qualities of a friend listed above, a friend becomes “another self.”29 The virtuous person recognizing the virtue in another is not only a catalyst for friendship but also enables the best kind of friendship to occur because of the mutually recognized virtue in the other. This notion of the friend as another self is, in part, why inequality in friendship can make friendships impossible. Free men and slaves, citizens and rulers, human and divine persons, have too great a disparity between them for friendship to occur; such distance and disparity can occur on the level of virtue as well.30 L. Gregory Jones summarizes: “friendship is the locus of the kinds of virtuous activities whereby one who delights in the good actually becomes good” and so Aristotle can claim that “the perfection of friendship is possible only when the friends have both absorbed and are characterized by the good both love.”31 True friendship can create an equality of virtue, in that through friendship with “another self” alike in virtue, a person can grow and strengthen their own virtue.
not be relied upon.” Marko Fuchs, “Philia and Caritas: Some Aspects of Aquinas’s Reception of Aristotle’s Theory of Friendship,” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 207. 27. NE 1168b6. 28. NE 1168b9. 29. NE 1166a30. 30. NE 1158b33-35. Aristotle states: “whenever a great difference arises between friends in respect of virtue, vice, resources, or some other thing; […] not only are the parties involved no longer friends, but they do not even deem themselves worthy to be.” 31. Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 378. Also summarized well by Schollmeier: “A man becoming a good for a friend loves what is good for himself; a good man loving a friend becomes a good for his friend; therefore, a good man loving a friend loves what is good for himself.” Schollmeier, Other Selves, 45. 23
For Aristotle, the love of friendship is a habit and not any one singular act. Friendship is a
“state of character” because the mutual love of friendship “involves choice and choice springs from a state of character.”32 Based on the above characteristics of friendship, a true friend is one who exhibits virtue and who is consistently willing and doing the good for her friend. Friends,
Aristotle continues, “love each other reciprocally by choice and their choice springs from habit.”33 Friends choose the good for the ones they love, not from passion or whim or on occasion, but in accordance with habit and steadiness of affection. A friend always wishes her friend well for her own sake, for her own virtuous activity and character.34 This kind of love involves consistency and a stability that can only occur through virtue friendship. Aristotle states:
A good friendship is well said to be permanent. For in it come together all the qualities that must belong to friends. All friendship is either for the sake of the good or the pleasant, either absolutely or for him who loves, and all friendship is in accordance with some similarity. All these qualities mentioned belong to good friendship in accordance with the friends themselves.35
The truest friendship arises from a stable disposition and an equality in which virtue recognizes virtue. It is through this kind of friendship, rare as it is, that the virtues continue to develop virtue and true happiness can be found.
II. Friendship and its Acts in Thomas’s Summa Theologiae
Thomas treats the notion of friendship in the Summa within the context of the moral life.
Following Aristotle, Thomas structures his understanding of the moral life around happiness as the goal of human living; and, like Aristotle, he argues that the happy man is one who desires and
32. NE 1157b28-34. 33. NE 1157b30-31. 34. Schollmeier, Other Selves, 45. 35. NE 1156b17-21. 24
cultivates the fellowship of friends.36 For both Aristotle and Thomas, the good life is not achieved through the possession of any one particular good, but a life ordered by good moral acts and is maintained by associating with similarly virtuous people and always seeking greater perfection of the moral virtues. Eberhard Shockenhoff observes that for both Aristotle and
Thomas, “happiness enlarges people not by adding up various experiences of prosperity and emotional satisfaction but by the orientation to the good that transforms their acts.”37 While
Aristotle would recognize this good of eudaimonia as man’s true end, Thomas will nuance and deepen this understanding of man’s true happiness as being two-fold: there is a natural happiness proportioned to human nature and a supernatural happiness to which all are called by God.
Schokenhoff explains this distinction between Aristotle and Thomas on this point:
Whereas in Aristotelian ethics the idea of happiness or eudaimonia is understood in a formal sense, meaning simply the final encompassing end within which one’s single acts can be interpreted as more or less fortunate moments of a whole life- plan, for Thomas . . . . Man’s practice does not find its point of unity in itself, but is completed in communion with God as the unique fulfilling good. Man’s path to God is thus thought of not simply as a preparation for the reception of future happiness after death but rather as a growth process of a happiness already realized initially in moral acts, which will lead from its now imperfect shape to eschatological perfection.38
According to Schokenhoff, Thomas’s concept of happiness is strictly theological in that God has ordained human living to be a growth process of happiness already realized in moral acts whereby God draws all people back to Himself to ultimate perfect happiness. The moral life
36. ST I-II q. 4 a. 8c. “If we speak of the happiness of this life, the happy man needs friends, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 9), not, indeed, to make use of them, since he suffices himself; nor to delight in them, since he possesses perfect delight in the operation of virtue; but for the purpose of a good operation, viz. that he may do good to them; that he may delight in seeing them do good; and again that he may be helped by them in his good work. For in order that man may do well, whether in the works of the active life, or in those of the contemplative life, he needs the fellowship of friends.” 37. Eberhard Schockenhoff, “The Theological Virtue of Charity (IIa IIae, qq. 23-46),” in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Stephen Pope (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 245. 38. Ibid. 25
necessarily involves a consideration of both the natural virtues and the supernatural, both of which enable the human person to reach happiness. The supernatural virtues are particularly crucial in that the supernatural end of life with God is not a naturally proportioned end for the human person; proportionate operations then are necessary in order for this supernatural end to be possible.
In his work in the Summa, Thomas’s treatment of friendship is primarily in the context of charity as friendship with God, rather than an excursus on ‘ordinary’ human friendship. The result is that Thomas brings in at different intervals Aristotle’s work on friendship for the purpose of contrasting ordinary human friendship with the divine-human friendship of charity. To appreciate the distinctiveness of divine-human friendship, it will be best to create a synthetic picture of Thomas’s understanding of human friendship before delving into how charity transforms any ordinary understanding of friendship. This section will present Thomas’s general account of friendship, pulling most readily from his references to human friendship in the
Summa, as well as his Commentary on the Ethics.39 Against this background the uniqueness of charity as divine-human friendship will be examined in the last part of this chapter.
To approach Thomas’s understanding of human friendship and his reliance on Aristotle’s work, it is necessary to once again turn to the essential characteristics of friendship. Following
39. There is much debate on the nature of Thomas’s Commentary, whether it is more theological than philosophical. The challenge has been presented as a hermeneutical question: is Thomas intending to offer his own views of Aristotle’s Ethics in a Christian context or is he merely providing an explanation of Aristotle’s Ethics? The debate’s most recent and vocal interlocutors have been Christopher Kaczor, who argues that Thomas offers his own views of the Commentary, and Mark Jordan, who argues that Thomas seeks an interpretation of the text. Cf. Christopher Kaczor, “Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Ethics,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 78, 3 (2004): 353-378 as compared to Mark D. Jordan, “Aquinas Reading Aristotle’s Ethics,” in Ad Litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval Readers, eds. Mark D. Jordan and Kent Emery, Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. For a summary of the argument, see Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller, and Matthias Perkams, “Introduction” in Aquinas and the Nicomachean Ethics, 3-9. Thomas’s main, explicit aim, it seems, is a philosophical exposition of Aristotle’s work rather than theology regardless of whether Thomas is successful in this endeavor. 26
Aristotle’s lead, Thomas defines friendship according to the deeds, acts or effects of friendship40 which Aristotle had identified in Book IX of his Ethics. While Thomas appeals to different characteristics of friendship for varying purposes in the Summa, Thomas presents the most comprehensive list of the characteristics, or “acts,” of friendship in question 25 article 7 of the
Secunda Secundae, on whether a sinner loves himself. Here, Thomas identifies the five acts of friendship41 which loosely parallel Aristotle’s count.
For Thomas, friendship is built on some kind of communicatio which has the following acts: (1) a friend wishes his friend to be and to live; (2) a friend desires good things for his friend; (3) a friend does good things for his friend, which constitutes beneficence; (4) friends are of like mind, and are thus in concord, and (5) friends share in mutual delight.42 The first two characteristics emerge as considerations of what kind of love is involved in friendship, that ultimately, friendship involves making a choice with one’s will regarding primarily another person rather than a good for oneself. The third is the external manifestation of this love among friends. The fourth characteristic, concord, is the union that emerges from the habitual action of
40. Schwartz elaborates on the different terms used by Thomas: occasionally he will use ‘effects’ (SE lib. 9 lect. 1), sometimes ‘deeds’ (SE lib. 8 lect. 3, 5, 6), but most often ‘acts’ (ST II-II q. 31 a. 1). Schwartz seems to suggest Thomas uses these different terms interchangeably with no substantial difference in meaning. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 7. 41. The exact characteristics of friendship for Thomas are debated by many theologians and there seems little agreement on their number and definitions. Many count three, as Aristotle did, and as Thomas himself has done elsewhere. For example, Daniel Schwartz identifies three: benevolence, beneficence and concord. See Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 6-7; Louis Hughes argues that Thomas follows Aristotle’s characteristics of benevolence, reciprocation and awareness, but replaces awareness with communicatio. See Louis M. Hughes, “Charity as Friendship in the Theology of Saint Thomas,” Angelicum 52 (1975): 164-178; Guy Mansini emphasizes the similitudo, communicatio, and choice. See Guy Mansini, “Similitudo, Communicatio, and the Friendship of Charity in Aquinas” in Thomistica (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), 1-26. For the current project, I follow Matthew Kauth’s presentation, whose own argument for the five characteristics I found the most persuasive. Kauth states that “Thomas himself is not always concerned with offering a complete list, but rather mentions those notes which most pertain to the topic in question.” To defend the use of the five characteristics that Thomas identifies in Q.25, Kauth exhaustively combs the works of Thomas and shows this set of five characteristics to be a full articulation of the qualities of friendship. Kauth, Divine and Human, ch. 3. 42. ST II-II q. 25 a.7. See also Kauth, Divine and Human, 129. 27
friendship; the final characteristic is the delight that arises from the shared life of friends. The following pages will explore the nature of friendship for Thomas by studying the communicatio, what brings friends together, and each characteristic that Thomas identifies as features of true friendship.
A. Communicatio as the Cause of Friendship
All friendships and their corresponding acts are built first on a foundation, or a reason, for that friendship. Not every kind of love is friendly, Thomas states, but only a love of friendship and well-wishing for the other that “is founded on some kind of communicatio.”43
There must be a common ground, shared action, environment or purpose for friendship to occur; if two persons have nothing in common, there is no way that they can be friends. Precisely because of this communicatio, friendship is possible. Joseph Bobik argues the communicatio of friendship functions as a material cause for friendship according to Thomas. The communicatio is a foundation and as such, functions as a material cause “in the sense of something which is there beforehand, which has united persons or brought them together, and which, having brought them together, thereby disposes, or prepares, or puts them into a position in which convivere amico and the accompanying conversatio can take place.”44 As material cause, the communicatio functions as a foundation disposing the friends for an amicable relationship.
Many different things can constitute the material cause or communicatio and any human activity in theory can give rise to a communicatio. For instance, the most common
43. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1c. The term communicatio has no directly corresponding English word and no translation has been universally accepted among scholars; this being the case, I will forgo any attempt at translation and leave it in the Latin. For an in-depth look at the various ways in which Thomas will use the word communicatio, see Kauth, Divine and Human, 55-60. 44. Joseph Bobik, “Aquinas on Friendship with God,” The New Scholasticism 60 (1986), 263-4 (emphasis his). 28
communicatio, Thomas argues, is blood relation (cognati), in which what is in common is the friends’ shared origin, a life together and the implicit rules that govern the shared house. Further, having the status of fellow citizens, sailors, soldiers, students, spouses, church members are all possible communicationes.45 A pattern emerges in these different kinds of communicatio in which what is in common can be considered either an active sharing of goods in common, or, a more basic foundation in a social-relational context of the same qualities, circumstances or origin.46 In the first sense of communicatio, what is shared are the activities of friendship, such as enjoyment of wine or playing sports. The second sense of communicatio is a more passive sense of belonging to the same family, neighborhood or class. This more passive social context can provide the foundation for friendship as what brings the persons together disposing them to become friends. The communicatio joins two separate entities and a relationship is established on something held in common by both parties.
The communicatio also functions to make the two friends similar to one another. There is a likeness (similitudo) insofar as the friends are concerned for the same goods. For Aristotle, this similitude signified “a unity, or agreement, in quality, of many things” and for a friendship to occur, there needs to be some sort of communicatio of likeness.47 Thomas contends that likeness, in fact, “is the cause of friendship.”48 As constituting the communicatio, likeness can be
45. SE lib. 8 lec. 9 1657-1671. See also Bobik, “Aquinas on Friendship,” 266-267. 46. Joseph Bobik, “Aquinas on Communicatio, The Foundation of Friendship and Caritas,” The Modern Schoolman 64 (1986), 13-14. There is no consensus among scholars on exactly how communicatio functions for Thomas. Bobik brings this to light in his article, summarizing and comparing six different interpretations of Thomas’s use of communicatio. Ultimately, Bobik will argue for three uses of communicatio. The most common two kinds he identifies will be discussed presently, the final kind of communicatio will be discussed in the context of charity. See also Guy Mansini, “Similitudo,” 2-14. 47. Leo Bond, “A Comparison between Human and Divine Friendship,” The Thomist 3 (1941), 57. 48. SE lib. 8 lect. 4, n. 1588. In the Summa, Thomas grants that by reason of form, two people have a basic similitude in species; this forms the basic requirement for friendship. See ST I-II q. 27 a. 3c. Leo Bond observes that this similitude offers a “remote” basis of friendship, but a further similitude is needed as a “proximate” basis of friendship, see Bond, “Comparison,” 58. 29
understood to be the cause of friendship, while at the same time, likeness can increase and become a result of friendship.49 While shared good or similitude may ground a friendship, this of itself is not yet friendship; two people may be from the same family, or enjoy drinking wine, or playing the same sport, but that does not necessarily mean they are friends. Friendship, as will be shown, will still necessarily involve a choice to build a friendship on this foundation by a concern for the same good.50 The similitude however provides the necessary beginnings and, granted communicatio of some kind as a material cause, a friendship is possible on this foundation.
II. B. The Acts of Friendship
With a foundation in place through some kind of communicatio, friendships can occur and, for Thomas, true friendships will exhibit the same essential qualities regardless of the communicatio on which the friendship is built. Not all relationships, however, even ones that perhaps share one of the aforementioned communicationes, can be called friendship, nor indeed, can any kind of love be a friendship. Thomas states that friendship is only “that love which is together with benevolence, when, to wit, we love someone so as to wish good to him.”51 Thomas emphasizes that one may love a horse or wine, but that does not imply friendship. In the first place then, what characterizes the love, and what distinguishes it from love of wine or horses, is benevolence, or wishing the other well.
49. Mansini, “Similitudo,” 9. 50. L.-B. Gillon, “‘A propos de la théorie thomiste de l’amitié: ''Fundatur super aliqua communicatione’’ (II-II, q. 23, a. 1),” Angelicum 25 (1948), 16-17. 51. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1c. 30
For Thomas, his well-wishing for another is necessary but not sufficient, “since friendship is between friend and friend.”52 For Thomas, what is needed further is the qualification of “a certain mutual love.”53 Leo Bond has observed that simple benevolence is not itself enough for love, nor does it presuppose a union of love; indeed, benevolence can occur even with strangers. Instead, as it pertains to friendship, benevolence, he states, “is rather a mode of love” in that it distinguishes the love of friends from other kinds of love.54 Friendly love, as a mode of loving, exhibits mutual benevolence in such a way that it is distinguished as its own kind of love. Friendship, Thomas notes, is unique among the kinds of love in that this mutual benevolence is a love “like a habit.”55 As a kind of habitus, friendship has a stability to it. In this way, no one singular action is friendship, but the latter is characterized instead by a propensity to act in a particular way in accordance with reason.56 As indicated, Thomas identifies five characteristics of friendship that capture the particularities of the unique love of friendship as a habitus grounded in mutual well-wishing, distinct from other ways of loving. Each will be treated in turn.
II. B. 1. Benevolent “Amor Concupiscentiae”57
This first characteristic regards the nature of friendship as a type of love rooted in the appetite. While all created things have an appetite of some kind, be it natural, sensitive, or
52. Ibid. 53. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1c. 54. Bond, “Comparison,” 78. 55. ST I-II q. 26 a.3c. 56. Kauth, Divine and Human, 158; Bobik, “Aquinas on Friendship,” 262. 57. It should be noted that “concupiscentia” in its broadest sense refers to the yearning of the soul for any kind of good. In this sense which refers to the “concupiscible faculty,” it is a neutral term and the intended meaning in the present passage. See ST I-II q. 26, a. 1c and q. 30, a. 1. In the history of Christian theology, this term has a more commonly used narrower understanding as the desire of the lower appetite as contrary to reason which can lead to sin. In this more familiar context, concupiscence has a negative connotation. 31
rational, Thomas focuses on the distinctiveness of rational beings who, beyond the sense appetite, have a will, the intellectual appetite.58 In article three of question 26 of the Prima
Secundae, Thomas identifies dilectio as a type of love, specifically referring to rational love of the will.59 In distinguishing the sense appetite from the rational appetite, Thomas is further able to distinguish a different and higher form of love in the latter. While amor refers to all inclination, dilectio, the love of the rational appetite, implies “in addition to love, a choice
[electionem] made beforehand, as the very word denotes.”60 Since the will is capable of free acts, this dilectio is set apart from the sensible appetite which is governed by instinct. For Thomas, the goods which attract the sensible appetite are ones which produce a good at the level of sense; the rational appetite, on the other hand, is attracted to a good that the intellect identifies, an object simply as good or pleasurable.61 Dilectio therefore involves choice moved by reason and it is at the level of dilectio that a love can arise which is not directed to the good of the individual, but to the other as a recognized and chosen good.62
58. Inanimate beings, while inclined by natural appetite, are not the agents of their own movement, but are moved extrinsically. This being the case, the term appetite is said of them imperfectly and is more properly said of beings with cognition, sensitive or intellectual. See Mark P. Drost, “In the Realm of the Senses: Saint Thomas Aquinas on Sensory Love, Desire and Delight,” Thomist 59 (1995), 54. 59. ST I-II q. 26 a.3c. Thomas states that there are four terms referring in a way to the same thing: amor, dilectio, caritas, amicitia. Thomas argues that these four terms all refer to love, but in different senses. Love (amor) has a wider signification than these other types because it applies to a broader range of created beings and the sensitive appetite. Caritas and amicitia will be addressed in the course of the present chapter. 60. ST I-II q. 26 a.3c. See David M. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude and Love of Friendship in Thomas Aquinas,” Medieval Studies 58 (1996), 11-13. 61. D. M. Gallagher emphasizes this distinction between the rational appetite and the sensible appetite: “since sensible pleasure (taken at the sensible level) can be the good only of the one experiencing it, and objects here are loved precisely as productive of pleasure, such objects are always loved for the sake of the individual good of the lover… in order to love objects as goods in themselves, i.e., to have complaisance in another being for the good that it is in itself, an appetite is required to the good as such.” Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 13. 62. L.B. Geiger argues that the rationality of the will allows for a certain “objectivity” in love based on an intellectual grasp of the good. L.B. Geiger, “Le problème de l'amour chez S. Thomas d'Aquin” (Conférences Albert- Le-Grand, 1952) 75-80. See also Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 13; Frederick E. Crowe, S.J., “Complacency and Concern in the Thought of St. Thomas,” Theological Studies 20 (1959), 19-20. 32
Crucial to understanding the nature of friendship, for Thomas, is the nature of dilectio as a movement of the will. In the following article, Thomas begins by citing Aristotle that to love a friend is to wish the good to another.63 With this basic definition as a foundation, Thomas observes that the movement of this love has a tendency “towards the good which a man wishes to someone,” be it to oneself or to another, and also “towards that to which he wishes some good.”64 Thomas distinguishes in dilectio a two-fold tendency of wishing a good and of wishing that good for someone.65 The tendency in friendship to will a particular good for someone
Thomas calls amor concupiscentiae and the love for the person to whom the good is willed is amor amicitiae.66 Thus, Amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae together constitute the twofold tendency of dilectio and as such will both be requisite for friendship.
Amor concupiscentiae, as one movement in dilectio, tends toward a good which is for the other person and is thus a necessary piece to friendship love. One cannot, Thomas insists, speak of loving someone without implying the presence of a love for what is good for that person.67 Put simply, a person who loves another in friendship will inevitably also wish that person to have good things. For Thomas, what is loved as good for someone can be any accidents, both sensible and spiritual, that can be applied to a subject.68 An essential characteristic of friendship is to will
63. ST I-II q. 26 a. 4c. Here Thomas refers to Aristotle’s Rhetoric ii.4. 64. Ibid. 65. For Thomas, every rational love has this dual aspect. This is a development in Thomas’s thought from an earlier position which considered these as separate ways of loving. Mansini traces this development, see Guy Mansini, “Duplex amor and the Structure of Love in Aquinas,” in Thomistica, ed. by E. Manning. Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale; Supplementa, Vol. 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), 137-196. 66. Thomas inherits these two terms from the tradition. Matthew Kauth draws attention to St. Augustine as establishing this kind of distinction as part of his famous distinction of uti and frui. See Kauth, Divine and Human Friendship, n. 129. See also Thomas Osborne, Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth Century Ethics (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2005), 32-68. 67. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 14. Gallagher clarifies Thomas on this point of amor amicitiae, “This is clear if we try to articulate the opposite: “I love you, but I am completely indifferent as to whether or not you possess what is good for you.” 68. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 16-17. Gallagher specifies health, knowledge, and virtues as examples of goods that can be loved as a good for a friend. 33
what is good for the other. This amor concupiscentiae is therefore, for Thomas, derivative; it is derivative because this good is loved as good for the one to whom the good is referred. What is loved here is loved relatively rather than absolutely in that it is wished as good for another, loved only in relation to the person for whom these goods are wished.
II. B. 2. Benevolent “Amor Amicitiae”
The second movement of dilectio, and so also the second characteristic of friendship, is amor amicitiae. While amor concupiscentiae involves wishing for some relative goods for one’s friend, amor amicitiae involves the love of the friend in themselves. Matthew Kauth notes for
Thomas that “the good that one wills, whatever it may be, must have a terminus, a subject” and thus amor concupiscentiae stands to amor amicitiae as “accident to subject.”69 Amor amicitiae is predicated of the one who is loved “simply and for himself.”70 To clarify the distinction between amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae, Thomas draws an analogy to being (esse) and goodness. He states,
For just as that which has existence, is a being simply, while that which exists in another is a relative being; so, because good is convertible with being, the good, which itself has goodness, is good simply; but that which is another's good, is a relative good. Consequently the love with which a thing is loved, that it may have some good, is love simply; while the love, with which a thing is loved, that it may be another's good, is relative love.71
For Thomas, all beings participate to some degree in goodness by virtue of their esse. Matthew
Kauth again explains, “that which is loved simpliciter is ultimately a being who belongs to himself while secundum quid is that which is desired for a being who belongs to himself.”72
69. Kauth, Divine and Human, 111. 70. ST I-II q. 26 a. 4c. 71. ST I-II q. 26 a. 4c. 72. Kauth, Divine and Human, 112. 34
Love simpliciter is the love by which something is loved so that by it, the one loved might be good; love secundum quid is the love by which something is loved so that it might be the good of another.73
The unity of affection that occurs with amor amicitiae makes this love function such that the good of the other pertains to one’s own good in that the good willed for the other becomes an extension of one’s own good. Thomas states: “in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself; and his friend's will as his own, so that it seems as though he felt the good or suffered the evil in the person of his friend.”74 There is a unity between these two parts to dilectio in that when we speak of loving a person, we “imply a connected love of concupiscence for that which is good for the person.”75 For dilectio, both movements are essential to the one act of love in which the friend loves what is good for that person to the point that it is connected with one’s own good.
At this point in his discussion of love in question 28 of the Prima Secundae, and despite the use of the word “amicitiae,” Thomas has not reached friendship itself, but is rather using amor amicitiae to nuance dilectio as one of its tendencies. Rational love, for Thomas, tends to will the good to a person. True friendship, as Thomas has already indicated, is a habitus, and involves more than simply any one act of amor amicitiae or amor concupiscentiae. Gallagher observes that “while all true friendships require love of friendship, the love here described by
Thomas is not limited to friendships.”76 Rather, the term denotes “simply the love of a person, by which one has complaisance in the other person as good in himself and consequently wills goods
73. ST I-II q. 27 a. 4c. See Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 16-17; Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 144-146. 74. ST I-II q. 28 a. 2c. 75. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 15. 76. Ibid. 35
for that person for that person’s sake.”77 Dilectio is for Thomas a higher form of love because it is proper to rational beings and rooted in the rational will; a person will choose whether or not to love a good, or another person. Amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae are necessary aspects of friendship as the tendency of rational love to will the good of a person and willing goods for that person but is not sufficient however to constitute friendship. Both amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae become the first two acts of friendship in Thomas’ analysis when they are mutually and habitually present between two parties.
II. B. 3. Beneficence
The third act of friendship according to Thomas is beneficence, doing good things for one’s friend. This characteristic follows directly from recognizing that friendship is a kind of love, and more particularly the amor concupiscentiae that constitutes a part of this love. For
Thomas, beneficence is the “exterior proof” of friendship.78 The desire for the good for one’s friend leads to good action on behalf of one’s friend to make this desire a reality. Thomas argues that one’s goodwill should in fact lead to good works: “Now the will carries into effect if possible, the things it wills, so that, consequently, the result of an act of love is that a man is beneficent to his friend.”79 Beneficence, for both Thomas and Aristotle, is the practical expression of the affection in friendship. For Thomas, beneficence is the external act of goodwill and so is the “execution of goodwill.”80 With the interior act connected to the corresponding external act, willing the good for one’s friend should lead to doing the good for that friend.
77. Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 15. Thomas will refer to this love more generally as “benevolent love”. 78. SE lib. 9 lec.5 n. 1. 79. ST II-II q. 31 a. 1c. 80. ST II-II q. 31 a. 4sc. 36
II. B. 4. Concord
The distinction that Thomas drew between amor concupiscentiae and amor amicitiae reveals that in dilectio, the will seeks the other, not merely as some good apprehended (as the sensitive appetite does), but seeks the good as the intellect grasps it, the good in itself. For
Thomas, in the act of love, the will apprehends that something is good and seeks to unite itself to what is loved. Love will involve different kinds of union between the lover and the object desired, both prior to and posterior to the activity of the will. Concord, the fourth characteristic of friendship, refers to a posterior effect of love and the union of the will that occurs in true friendship; to understand concord in friendship, however, it will need to be contextualized within
Thomas’s broader understanding of love and its unitive effect.
In question 28 following the discussion of dilectio in the Prima Secundae of the Summa,
Thomas describes the union of lovers as being of two kinds: real and affective. Real union consists in the “conjunction of one with the other” which is obtained in the presence of the beloved.81 Love is a uniting and binding force which draws lovers together so that the lover thinks of the beloved as one with the self. Thomas states: “this union is according to a bond of affection, and is likened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover stands to the object of his love, as to himself, if it be love of friendship.”82 Real union is particularly sought by the lover for the joy or pleasure that real union brings of the two friends together.
81. ST I-II q. 25 a. 2 ad ob 2. 82. ST I-II q. 28 a. ad ob 2. Gallagher expertly sheds light on this process: “the object ‘enters into’ the affection or appetition and ‘informs’ it, in a way that calls to mind Thomas’s theory of how a species informs a knowing power and makes it to be in a state of actually knowing. The appetite’s adaptation to the object is a kind of union between the two, insofar as the loved object exists in the appetite.” Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 21. 37
Affective union is essentially the love itself, in that it corresponds with the preceding apprehension which puts in motion the process toward a real union.83 As mentioned, prior to love, a likeness (similitudo) is a cause of love, regardless of whether it is an actual or potential likeness.84 Being alike, for Thomas, makes two in some way one based on what they have in common. With the love of friendship, when a friend loves another “he wills good to him, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self, in so far, to wit, as he wills good to him as to himself … hence a friend is called a man’s ‘other self.’”85 The union present in friendship is one in which there is a likeness or uniformity in the friends’ willing of the good for the other; Thomas describes this as a mutual inherence (mutua inhaesio) of the lover and the beloved in one another. A friend is “another self” in such a way that it is only through regarding the other as another self that one can genuinely love another and will them the good in this union.86
The fourth characteristic of friendship, the union of wills, emerges within the context of this prior union of love in friendship. Concord itself regards choices and it follows that one’s choices within a friendship should be in harmony with one’s friend who is ‘another self.’
Concord then is a union of wills which allows and preserves the communicatio of the shared life in friendship in which one chooses and acts with friends.87 Daniel Schwartz argues that the
83. Ibid. See Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 26. 84. ST I-II q. 27 a. 3c. 85. ST I-II q. 28 a. 1c. In contrast, Thomas states that in erotic love this affective union manifests itself as the lover apprehending the beloved “as belonging to his well-being.” 86. To say this is not to say that the other is collapsed into one’s own self love, but as David Gallagher observes, friendship is an “extension of self love.” Gallagher argues that this is “the paradox of amor amicitiae” in that “the motion to overcome otherness, the affective union, does not merely leave the ontological otherness intact but actually depends upon it. I can love the other as myself only if the other is not myself.” See Gallagher, “Desire for Beatitude,” 26ff. 87. Schwartz argues that this does not mean that concord is passivity or indecision but rather “the love of friendship involves practical deliberations about the best way to realize the friendship.” Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 10. 38
notion of concord is rooted in Aristotle’s concept of homonoia, which was for Aristotle a kind of concord of central political importance.88 In this context, Aristotle understood concord to be not merely agreeing on something, but what occurs when a group agrees about what is advantageous and makes the same decision and acts on their common resolution.89 In this sense, true concord sustains common projects and life. This kind of agreement requires a longevity of vision and stability in one’s choices. Aristotle believed that anyone who lacks virtue is unequipped for friendship, since their character lacks the stability and firmness necessary to achieve this kind of concord.90
Thomas adopts this notion of homonoia but will situate concord more specifically within the love that forms the friendship. For Thomas, concord occurs in friendship in the union of wills regarding the thing willed.91 Concord, Thomas states, “is between one man and another, in so far as the wills of various hearts agree together in consenting to the same thing.”92 Friendship as a habitus involves a disposition to make a certain type of choice; between two persons who are grounded in virtue, there will be a unity in choice for the good. The affective union that binds friends to each other is one that involves grieving and rejoicing over the same things. One’s love of the good is the cornerstone of human behavior and the motivating factor that lies at the root of
88. Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 24. 89. NE 1167a 22-9. See also Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 24. 90. Even vice, which would be a habitual inclination to some evil, would not equip one to the habitual nature of true virtuous friendship. While two people may incidentally share in the same vice, their friendship will always only be one of utility or pleasure. The vicious, for Aristotle, will always adopt what presently seems good depending on what is found pleasant; Aristotle argues that these people do not hold mistaken conceptions of the good, but have never considered the good in the first place. Friends established in virtue, on the other hand, are consciously oriented toward the good and wish goods in the same way to each other for each other’s own sake. NE 1178b8-18. 91. Daniel Schwartz argues that Thomas will approach the notion of concord differently than Aristotle by introducing “a parallel, but different distinction: a distinction between ‘union of wills’ and ‘union of opinions.’” Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 24. 92. ST II-II q 29 a. 1c. 39
one’s actions; thus, the good that one chooses to frame one’s life has a significant impact on the type of union that can occur in friendships. Thomas states, a friend “wills and acts for his friend’s sake as for his own sake, looking on his friend as identified with himself.”93 When love unites friends who pursue the same good there will be concord. While friends may disagree in terms of superficial tastes, preferences or enjoyments, true friends exhibit no conflict of wills on the most essential, primary, goods.94 True friendship founded in virtue is a love that unites people in their shared love of the pursued good.
II. B. 5. Delight
For Thomas, friends desire to live together and find this life with each other delightful.
Delight, the final characteristic of friendship, arises for Thomas from the mutually-willed shared life, grounded in the virtues.95 The love of friends brings about an affective union in which the lover desires to be united with what is loved and when united, rejoices in this love. The result of this union is delight. Thomas states,
The object loved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as it is in his affections, by a kind of complacency: causing him either to take pleasure in it, or in its good, when present; or, in the absence of the object loved, by his longing, to tend towards it with the love of concupiscence, or towards the good that he wills to the beloved, with the love of friendship: not indeed from any extrinsic cause (as when we desire one thing on account of another, or with good to another on account of something else), but because the complacency in the beloved is rooted in the lover’s heart.96
93. ST II-II q. 28 a. 2c. Schwartz, Friendship in Aquinas, 41. 94. Kauth observes: “two persons who experience friendship with themselves in virtue, insofar as they desire for themselves that which is truly good for the ‘interior man’ cannot differ with respect to what is truly good.” Kauth, Divine and Human, 159. 95. Kauth, Divine and Human, 159. 96. ST I-II q. 28 a. 2c. 40
In amor amicitiae there is a desire for the presence of the person loved if not present and joy felt when the friend is near. This love, for Thomas, will always seek a suitable union, “to live together, speak together, and be united together in other like things.”97 This is the convivere amico which occurs only because the friends engage, enjoy, and delight in each other’s company and in the same activity. The notion of delight was foundational for Aristotle as well who suggests that “for friends what is most desirable is sharing lives” because “friendship is community, and as a person is disposed towards himself, so he is towards his friends too.”98 In his Commentary, Thomas elaborates that “just as his own existence is desirable and delightful to every virtuous man, so is his friend’s existence desirable and delightful to him—if not equally, at least very nearly so.”99 Just as one delights in his own existence and the goods of life, this is extended to the friend who is ‘another self.’
As it was for Aristotle, true friendship which exhibits these five characteristics is an important part of the moral life and the attainment of happiness for Thomas. In order that these friendships succeed, a friend must first be a friend to oneself. Thomas argues that the virtuous man recognizes that the rational nature of the self, the “inner man,” is the chief thing in oneself and the virtuous man is thus attentive to its development. Just as the virtuous and true friend exhibits the five characteristics of friendship, so also does the virtuous man exhibit these characteristics to himself. Thomas argues:
The good love themselves, as to the inward man, because they wish the preservation thereof in its integrity, they desire good things for him, namely spiritual goods, indeed they do their best to obtain them, and they take pleasure in entering into their own hearts, because they find there good thoughts in the present, the memory of past good, and the hope of future good, all of which are
97. ST I-II q. 28 a. 1 ad 2. 98. NE 1171b29-1172a2. 99. SE lib. 9 sec. 4 n. 9. 41
sources of pleasure. Likewise they experience no clashing of wills, since their whole soul tends toward one thing.100
True friendship begins with becoming a friend to oneself, attending to the needs of the “inner man” and orienting the self toward the good in the virtuous life. Once this is achieved, true virtuous friendship is not only sought but can also be attained. With a general understanding of
Thomas’s view of friendship and his reliance on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, we can now turn to his understanding of charity as friendship with God.
III. Charity as Friendship with God
Thomas’s treatment of charity in the Summa occurs within the context of the virtues, in particular in the transition from the three supernatural virtues to the four cardinal virtues.
Nicholas Lombardo emphasizes the significance of the location of these questions, suggesting that Thomas’ questions on charity as friendship are “the pivot on which the Secunda secundae turns,” completing the section on the theological virtues and providing a transition to “the execution of charity’s commands through the cardinal virtues.”101 For Thomas, the happiness that the cardinal virtues afford in Aristotle’s vision of the moral life are reoriented toward the supernatural, which is achieved only by the infusion of the supernatural virtues in the life of grace. Thomas uses the notion of friendship not only to conceptualize this singular supernatural gift of charity, but additionally to unify the moral life and all virtues into a coherent vision of what it means to be friends with God and ultimately to achieve perfect happiness. In this way,
100. ST II-II q. 25 a. 7c. 101. Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 158. 42
charity will be the guiding reality for the Christian life in which this friendship with God is made manifest in the life of virtue.102
Thomas’s ability to incorporate friendship into his treatment of charity relies heavily on nuancing a very particular kind of communicatio that will ground this friendship and will uniquely impact the corresponding acts of friendship. This friendship of charity will be distinct from all other friendships because of the uniqueness of the divine friend. It will become clear through his presentation of charity that, while Aristotle’s theory of human friendship offers the structural framework around which Thomas builds his theory, it is ultimately divine-human friendship that becomes the primary standard by which all friendship is measured and understood.103 With charity, the concept of friendship is elevated and its characteristics transformed on account of the communicatio which grounds this friendship with God. A close reading of Question 23 of the Secunda Secundae will reveal Thomas’s reliance on the
Aristotelian notion of friendship to explain charity in itself, particularly in regard to the unique nature of the communicatio of this friendship as the basis of charity. Relevant sections of the following questions on charity in the Summa will be incorporated to fill out the picture of
Thomas’s understanding of charity according to the five characteristics of friendship already articulated.
102. L. Gregory Jones states, “charity is the form of the virtues not because of any idealization of love, but because a life of friendship with God calls forth a correspondingly specific set of virtues.” See, “Transformation,” 391. 103. See Guy Mansini, “Charity and the Form of Friendship,” in Ethical and Theological Disclosures: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski, ed. by Guy Mansini and James G. Hart (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 34-35. A similar point is made by Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 246. 43
III. A. The Communicatio of Charity
In the first article of Question 23, Thomas begins his treatment of charity by asking directly whether charity is friendship. Here at the commencement of his work on charity lies the heart of Thomas’s employment of the concept of friendship and how friendship with God is possible at all: charity can be understood as friendship on account of the communicatio that exists between God and man. Thomas argues that what is necessary for friendship to exist, beyond a requisite benevolent love where a friend wishes her friend well, is a communicatio, that this well-wishing be founded on some ground of similitude, a sharing of some good in common.
With these parameters set, Thomas concludes that friendship with God is not only possible, but charity can be identified as friendship. He states:
Accordingly, since there is a communication between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates [communicat] His happiness to us, some kind of friendship must needs [oportet] be based on this same communication . . . The love which is based on this communication, is charity: wherefore it is evident that charity is the friendship of man for God.104
The necessary foundation of the friendship between God and man is God’s sharing of his own beatitude with us. Therefore, the love which is based on this sharing, which is charity, can be properly conceived as a kind of friendship.
Thomas’s statement above on the nature of the communicatio in divine-human friendship reveals that this communicatio is unlike the standard kinds of communicationes explored in the previous section. The foundation of the friendship of charity is, after all, God Himself. This is not immediately a commonality of classmates, family, or work; nor is it based on a common love of virtue, of happiness or even the good—the human being lacks similitude of any kind. Instead,
104. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1c. 44
in this communicatio God alone gives (“communicat”) a share in the divine life; this is not something originally shared between the two friends. The prior distance between the two parties in the relationship is further emphasized, Joseph Bobik argues, in Thomas’s insistence that this communicatio “ought to be” (“oportet”) the foundation for friendship.105 God’s offer of friendship must be accepted and it ought to be the case that the inferior party would respond to the initiative of the superior party in this offer. Joseph Bobik further explains the significance of the type of communicatio here:
It is fitting that “some sort of friendship be founded on, arise out of, this offer of eternal beatitude, simply because it has been offered as a gift. Whenever two persons, a superior and an inferior, have nothing in common, but the superior offers a sharable gift to the inferior, not only do the two begin thereby to have something in common, but it becomes fitting that the inferior respond to the initiative of the superior by taking steps to contribute whatever he can to actualizing the friendship to which he has been invited.”106
This friendship can arise only by through a human response to this communicatio offered as gift by God. Friendship with God is only possible in this instance through an entirely unique foundation created by God Himself.
Thomas reaffirms the viability of this communicatio as the basis of an Aristotelian friendship with God in his responses to the objections in the article. Indeed, the three objections
Thomas raises to this first article revolve around the nature of this communicatio. In the first, the objection is raised that a communicatio involves a dwelling with (convivere amico) one’s friend which is absent in charity. In the second, it is argued that charity, as encouraging love of one’s
105. Bobik, “Communicatio,” 15. 106. Bobik, “Aquinas on Friendship,” 259. Bobik argues that this singular use of communicatio, seen here as an offering or gift, is different from all other contexts of human friendship. Thomas’s unique use of communicatio in this context is seen, Bobik argues, through Thomas’s use of the verb form of “communicat” (vs. the use of the noun “communicatio” as he does in every other context). See Bobik, “Communicatio,” 15. 45
enemies with whom one is not friends, seemingly has no communicatio insofar as it relates to one’s enemies. The third objection appeals to Aristotle’s three kinds of friendship: utility, pleasure and virtue; the objection argues that friendship with God is none of these three, since
“by charity we love even sinners, whereas friendship based on the virtuous is only for virtuous men.”107 Based on these three initial observations from Aristotle, it seems prima facie that we do not have a communicatio with God, nor with sinners with whom we are supposed to become friends according to Scripture, and thus charity cannot be considered friendship.
In the sed contra, Thomas wields his most sure argument for charity as friendship:
Christ’s words to his disciples in John’s Gospel: “I will not now call you servants … but my friends.”108 These words, according to Thomas, were said to them by reason of “nothing else than charity.”109 Thomas begins his presentation of charity as a friendship with the acknowledgement that this love is in fact a friendship because Christ identified it as such. Kauth observes that “Christ, Thomas asserts, had the fullness of charity and loved perfectly with his human will according to this virtue … thus, when the Lord describes love he does so by that by which he loves which is nothing less than the love of friendship.”110 Further, Thomas insists, quoting Paul, that Christ’s love unites and creates a fellowship (koinonia) of the faithful, a vital union that becomes the foundation of friendship.111
107. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1 ob.3. 108. ST II-II q. 23 a.1 sed contra. See also ST I q. 1 a. 8c. and Anthony Keaty’s article in which he argues that John, and not Aristotle, was Thomas’s true authority on the question of charity as friendship. Anthony Keaty, “Thomas’s Authority for Identifying Charity as Friendship: Aristotle or John 15?” Thomist 62 (1998), 581-601. 109. Ibid. 110. Kauth, Divine and Human, 163. 111. ST II-II q. 23 a. 1c. Thomas quotes I Cor. 1:9: “God is faithful: by Whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son.” See also Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 247. 46
Turning to Thomas’s response to the proposed objections, Thomas was not unaware of the complications in the use of Aristotle’s categories when he chose to incorporate Aristotle’s notion of friendship. Aristotle was insistent that friendship with God is not possible because some kind of similitude is required and the distance between men and god is insurmountable.
Aristotle’s true friendship exists only among friends who are equals—in terms of Aristotle’s ideal of friendship, no overcoming of disproportionate rank or distance between two people is possible. Nevertheless, Thomas ultimately overcomes the objections to the communicatio of the divine human friendship in the first article by appealing to the “twofold” life of man, the interior and exterior reality. With regard to the exterior life, the life regarding man’s sensitive and corporeal nature, there is indeed no communicatio between the human person and God. To the interior, spiritual life of man however, is given a special communicatio with God, perfected ultimately in heaven. Schockenhoff observes on this point that Thomas “interprets the concept of communicatio in light of his Christian understanding of God, which makes possible the equality required.”112 God’s grace now offered through the missions of the Son and Spirit not only creates a new equality, a character capable of friendship with God, but will also have ramifications for how one acts in the world and whom one loves, even as far as love of one’s enemy. Thomas explores the implications of this unique communicatio and what it means for how one loves in the rest of the section on charity in the Secunda Secundae.
III. B. The Communicatio and God’s Invitation to Friendship
The communicatio of friendship is for Aristotle a necessary precondition for any friendship at all; for Thomas, the communicatio in charity is unique in that it is a one-sided gift
112. Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 248. 47
of divine life to the human person so that friendship is possible. Charity, Thomas states, cannot be in us “naturally, nor through acquisition by the natural powers,” but only by “the infusion of the Holy Spirit, Who is the love of the Father and the Son, and the participation of Whom in us is created charity.”113 The communication of divine life is the foundation on which human love is elevated as friendship. Charity in the soul, for Thomas, is the participation of the soul in God’s perfect charity, but is not God’s Love itself. Through the communicatio of this friendship, the soul is given a created habitual form whereby a similitude to God is established. The charity by which we love our neighbor is a created participation in the uncreated divine love of the Holy
Spirit.114 Although the communicatio of divine-human friendship is passively received by infusion of charity in the soul, this friendship is still not entirely one-sided; the love of friendship requires a free mutual act of the will on both sides and necessitates a response. Denys Turner emphasizes this distinction:
It is here that we can see just why for Thomas friendship is so important a model for his doctrine of grace. Our human wills, as Thomas says, are not the instruments of the divine agency, as the wills of servants are the instruments of their masters’ will, their agency entirely at the disposal of their master’s. Our free actions are the direct creation of the divine will so that grace and our free consent to it are but one action that proceeds from the shared life, knowledge and consent of friends who, loving one another, know one another’s business.115
Grace establishes and enables friendship with God to occur in God’s offer of friendship which calls for a response on the human part to God’s overture of friendship. Charity is not this
113. ST II-II q. 24 a. 2c. 114. Thomas is carefully distinguishing charity and grace; charity for Thomas comes from a communicatio of divine life which is grace. Wadell succinctly summarizes the relationship: “what grace enables, charity completes.” See Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life, 126. See also, Mansini, “Similitudo,” 12; Jerome Wilms, Divine Friendship According to Saint Thomas (Dubuque: The Priory Press, 1958), 34; Kauth, Divine and Human, 170-173. 115. Denys Turner, Saint Thomas: A Portrait (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 160. 48
communicatio but is made possible and grows from the free gift of God’s communicatio of
Himself which is infused in the soul.
The uniqueness of the communicatio of divine-human friendship, namely, a communicatio that is passively received, ought to be the grounds of friendship. What is essential for friendship, and also for charity, is the free response or choice of love on the part of the human friend. In article two of question 23, Thomas asks whether charity is something created in the soul. This article, seemingly unrelated to the question of friendship and the nature of the communicatio, is a vitally significant piece in how Thomas employs the concept of friendship to understand the nature of charity.
The question of charity as something created was a pressing issue of theological concern and debate for Thomas. By asking this question, Thomas seeks to engage and respond to the position of Peter Lombard who, in his work Four Books of Sentences, argues that charity is not a created reality in the soul, but is in fact the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the mind.116 The movement of charity for Lombard is not the Holy Spirit (who is immutable); rather, Thomas assesses Lombard’s view that, in the movement of the soul to love God and one’s neighbor, the
Holy Spirit moves the soul without “any intermediary habit.”117 Charity in this context is the immediate result of the Holy Spirit’s action, rather than, as Thomas will subsequently argue, a created habit in the soul.
116. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. For a more detailed exploration of Thomas’s interpretation of Lombard on this point, see Shockenhoff, “Theological Virtue,” 248-250. 117. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. Thomas elaborates and explains Lombard’s position in his Commentary, I Sent. d. 17. 49
Thomas not only disagrees with Lombard but states that it would be “detrimental to charity” if this view of charity were the case.118 When the Holy Spirit moves the mind in charity, the mind is not moved by an extrinsic power without the voluntary action on the part of the human person; this would be for Thomas contrary to the nature of a voluntary act, making charity no longer an habitual action of love.119 Further, Thomas argues, the Spirit cannot be said to move the will in such a way that the human will is a mere passive instrument. Even if one conceives the will as a passive instrumental cause, this attempted explanation of charity remains insufficient, because the will still does not have the power to act freely. Thomas insists that
“given that the will is moved by the Holy Spirit to the act of love, it is necessary that the will also should be the efficient cause of the act.”120 Love requires a free movement of the will to be love at all; to move the will, even instrumentally, still does not allow charity to be an act of love.
Thomas argues that for the will to be the efficient cause of acts of charity, it must be connatural to the power of the will to perform these acts, otherwise any act of charity would be less than the naturally performed acts of the will.121 Therefore, Thomas concludes, “it is most necessary that, for us to perform the act of charity, there should be in us some habitual form superadded to the natural power, inclining that power to the act of charity and causing it to act with ease and
118. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. For Lombard, charity is how the soul loves God. Denys Turner observes that Thomas “will not accept that the Holy Spirit’s presence in the soul as charity achieves any such ‘oneness of spirit’ as would displace the free agency of the human will itself.” Turner, “Grace and Friendship,” 162. 119. For voluntary acts, the principle of the act must be intrinsic to the agent who acts. This can be done perfectly or imperfectly; to be moved perfectly by an intrinsic principle requires that the agent possess some knowledge of the end for which the agents acts. See ST I-II q. 6 a. 1c.; Keaty, “Thomas’s Authority,” 598. 120. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. Anthony Keaty states: “I call you not servants but friends: “the friend of the master, unlike the servant, grasps the end and appreciate the value of the end for which the master acts. … it is precisely in the voluntary character of the disciple’s discipleship that the disciples are now friends rather than simply servants, and it is from the elevated status of being friends with Christ rather than servants that charity derives its excellence.” Keaty, “Thomas’s Authority,” 600. 121. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. It must be connatural to that power by reason of some form which is the principle of that action that an act be perfectly produced by that power. 50
pleasure.”122 Charity then is the created habitual form in the soul added to the natural power of the will that enables one to choose freely to love God and to complete the acts of charity that surpass the power of the will.
Thomas establishes significant points regarding the nature of charity and the uniqueness of charity’s communicatio in this article. First, he is clarifying the role of the human will in charity as having a real and not merely instrumental role in friendship with God. J.P. Torrell succinctly draws out the implications of this, stating:
If it is the Holy Spirit who acts in our place (as uncreated grace), it is no longer we who act; the human subject is telescoped. We would not have mastery over our acts of charity, nor their liberty, nor their merit. In fact we would be excluded from the act of love of God and neighbor; we would only be the theater in which they occurred.123
Secondly, Thomas distinguishes the communicatio of divine human friendship from the friendship itself. By building on Aristotle’s framework, Thomas is able to bring clarity to the relationship of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the subsequent created reality of charity which is entirely dependent on the prior communicatio of the Spirit as making the friendship possible. And thirdly, by this distinction Thomas is reaffirming the nature of friendship as a habitus, an affective response of the will. Charity is a habitual form in the soul that unites one to
God and is thereby not only a virtue, but the form of all other virtues. Finally, the ability to love
God in friendship is entirely based on the communicatio by which God has established the relationship. While the nature of friendship is such that it is a voluntary act, charity as a friendship with God remains dissimilar to ordinary human friendships because of the
122. ST II-II q. 23 a. 2c. 123. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., St Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2: Spiritual Master (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 183. 51
disproportionate natures of its friends. The disparity of friends and the requirement of human will to be efficient cause of its own acts of love are resolved by the communicatio of the divine- human friendship.
III. C. Charity as Habit and Virtue
Like friendship generally, charity is not identical with any one single human act but is more properly understood as a habitus. Charity differs in that it is a created habitus infused in the soul by God and ordered to the love of God. As such, Charity must be supperadded to the natural powers since this end exceeds the proportion of human nature.124 Guy Mansini observes that charity “is a form superadded to our natural powers, since its exercise merits for us the very beatitude of God, the promise of which founds our friendship.”125 The unique nature of the friendship with God impacts the quality of the habitus of charity, which is more than a mere habitual disposition to mutually wish well and do good for God as other friendships might. By its exercise, charity is a virtue, and more, charity is the form of all other virtue.
In the third article of Question 23, Thomas asks whether charity is a virtue. To answer this question, Thomas relies on Augustine, who argues that charity is “a virtue which, when our affections are perfectly ordered, unites us to God, for by it we love Him.”126 Relying on Aristotle as well, Thomas identifies virtue as that which makes its subject, and the subject’s work, good.127
Further, for Thomas, good acts are those which attain reason or God Himself. Therefore, charity is a virtue because “charity attains God, [in that] it unites us to God.”128 Charity as a virtue is an
124. ST I-II q. 51 a. 4c. 125. “Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology of Charity in the Summa Theologiae,” in Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, ed. Gilles Emery, O.P. and Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 125. 126. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3sc. 127. ST II-II q. 17 a. 1c. Thomas quotes Aristotle here. 128. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3c. 52
operative habit, inclining the will toward its end of loving God. The unique reality of charity as a virtue differs dramatically from general human friendship; Aquinas argues that, for Aristotle, friendship can be virtuous in that friendship is “either a virtue or with a virtue.”129 Friendship can be a virtue because it can involve good moral acts in respect to another person, but in this sense this virtue is “not a virtue distinct of itself from other virtues.”130 Even regarding virtuous friendship, the relationship is consequent to virtue rather than itself a virtue. Here, Thomas distinguishes charity entirely from all other kinds of friendship, even the highest virtuous friendships, appealing to the communicatio on which the friendship rests. There is no comparison, he states, since charity “is not founded principally on the virtue of man, but on the goodness of God.”131 Charity, resting on a communicatio given by God, is its own virtue rather than a possible consequent to virtue as the habit of friendship is typically found.
With the nature and end of charity in place, Thomas completes his initial study of charity in question 23 by identifying charity as the most excellent among, and the form of, all other virtues. The natural, moral virtues are those which are directed to do the good “in accord with right reason.”132 The infused, theological virtues direct one to God in a way that exceeds human capacity.133 Based on this distinction, Thomas argues that the theological virtues are higher than the moral virtues since “God is the first rule” in that “even human reason must be regulated.”134
In seeking to attain God, the theological virtues remain higher than the other virtues. Charity has
129. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3 ad ob1. Thomas quotes NE VIII. 130. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3 ad ob1. 131. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3 ad ob 1. In tracing Thomas’s use of Aristotle, Mansini notes that on this point there “is a sort of coalescence of the friendship and the virtue the friendship is ordered to, a coming into one of two things that stay distinct in Aristotle.” Mansini, “Form of Friendship,” 35. 132. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3c. 133. ST I-II q. 62 a. 1c. 134. ST II-II q. 23 a. 3c. 53
a particular pride of place because “charity attains God Himself that it may rest in Him, but not that something may accrue to us from Him.”135 Following Scripture, Thomas states that charity is even more excellent than the other theological virtues of faith and hope.136 In regard to the supernatural virtue of faith, Thomas argues that charity, the love of things which are above, is greater than the knowledge of such things held in faith.137 Similarly, hope implies a future, not a present, union with God as its object and so too, is less perfect than charity.138 Charity is the greatest of the virtues because it immediately directs the person to union with God in love, rather than, as other virtues do, by way of some kind of human perfection.
Charity is not only the greatest of all virtues, both natural and supernatural, but it is also the form of all virtues. In the final article of question 26, Thomas clarifies that to say charity is the “form” of all virtues is not to say it is the exemplar or essential form of all other virtues; to say this, Thomas argues, would imply that all other virtues are the “same species” as charity and so thus, indistinct from it.139 Thomas suggests instead that charity is the “efficient cause” because it “sets the form” for all other virtues.140 Charity sets the form of all virtues in the sense that it
“directs the acts of all other virtues to the last end” and so “directs all other virtues to its own end.”141 Charity shapes the way in which the moral virtues are performed, gathering the good already present in these moral virtues and directing them to God, so that ultimately all the virtues
135. ST II-II q. 23 a. 6c. See also Turner, “Grace and Friendship,” 161. 136. ST II-II q. 26 a. 6sc. Thomas refers to I Corinthians 13. For an in depth look at charity as related to the other theological virtues, see Michael Sherwin, By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), ch. 5. 137. ST II-II q. 23 a. 6 ad 1. 138. ST II-II q. 23 a. 6 ad 3. 139. ST II-II q. 23 a. 8 ob. 1 and c. 140. ST II-II q. 23 a. 8 ad 1. 141. ST II-II q. 23 a. 8c and ad 3. 54
will serve the friendship with God as their ultimate end.142 Charity becomes the root, the source of nourishment, for all other virtues because it reorients all other virtues to charity’s end. Further, even the supernatural virtues of faith and hope are “quickened by charity” and receive from it
“their full complement as virtues.”143 Ending question 26, Thomas clarifies the role of charity as the “form” of the virtues with a metaphor to motherhood; he states that “since a mother is one who conceives within herself and by another, charity is called the mother of the other virtues, because, by commanding them, it conceived the acts of the other virtues, by the desire of the last end.” 144
III. D. The Object and Order of Charity
With charity as the most excellent and the form of all virtues, friendship with God should direct and guide all of one’s actions. God, toward whom this friendship is directed, is the formal object of charity. Thomas states, “God will be to each one the entire reason for his love, for God is man’s entire good.”145 God is loved first and above all else because God is the greatest good and the source of charity. For Thomas, charity as a love of friendship has particular implications when addressing the object of charity in that the love for God is not an abstract concept, but a love between friends. Leo Bond notes:
The good of virtue by which we love in a human friend, we do not love as an abstract good having no reference to ourselves, for that would be contrary to the very nature of love, which of itself implies a reference, a convenience, an accommodation to the appetite of the one loving. Likewise, by charity we do not
142. ST II-II q. 23 a. 8 ad ob 1. Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 251. Schockenhoff argues that Thomas separates himself here from the view of Augustine who argued that the lack of charity in any human action makes an act one of sinful self-love. Schockenhoff contends that for Thomas, “the success of human practice does not depend only on its orientation to the final end, but also on what love does in the sphere of proximate ends of action.” 143. ST I-II q. 62 a. 4c. 144. ST II-II q. 23 a. 8 ad 3. 145. ST II-II q. 26 a. 13 ad 3. 55
love the goodness of God as something completely abstract and disjoined from ourselves; we love the goodness of God precisely as He communicates that goodness to us inasmuch as He is our ultimate end, capable of perfectly satisfying every tendency and desire of our appetites.146
The good in charity however is not a participated good, as with all other virtues, but the very essence of goodness itself, which renders God infinitely lovable for His own sake.147 Charity directs one to union with God as He is in Himself, not simply as the source of all good or as the author of revelation and blessedness.
Thomas further specifies a certain order [ordo caritatis] that should be observed in charity. First and foremost, God is loved above all else. The love of charity however does not stop with God, but rather extends to one’s neighbor, sinners and even those who hate us.148 The friendly love one has with God is extended to all that God loves, just as “when a man has friendship for a certain person, [and] for his sake he loves all belonging to him, be they children, servants, or connected with him in any way.”149 For Thomas, the scope of charity is humanity in its entirety. Schockenhoff observes that Thomas emphasizes above all “the inner unity of charity” which “only afterward and secondarily is differentiated into different acts of love of God, of one’s self, of fellows near and far, or of personal enemies.”150 Since friendship with God occurs only through the unmerited gift of grace, whereby a communicatio is supplied, so should the new friend of God be emboldened not only to respond to God in friendship but to love God’s other friends. Thomas states, “the aspect under which our neighbor is to be loved is God, since what we ought to love in our neighbor is that he may be in God.”151 Hence, he concludes, “it is
146. Bond, “Comparison,” 84. 147. ST I-II q. 62, a. 3c, II-II q. 28 a. 6. See also, Jean Porter, “De Ordine Caritatis: Charity, Friendship, and Justice in Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae,” The Thomist 57, 2 (1989), 199; Bond, “Comparison,” 83. 148. ST II-II q. 25 aa. 6 and 8. 149. ST II-II q. 23 a. ob 2. 150. Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 252. 151. ST II-II q. 25 a. 1c. 56
specifically the same act whereby we love God, and whereby we love our neighbor.”152 All persons are to be loved for the sake of God because all persons in respect of their nature, have the capacity for happiness, on which the fellowship of friendship with God is based.153
Among one’s neighbors, Thomas specifies further the order in which one’s neighbors ought to be loved which he spells out in Question 26. Radiating outward from the principal point of love of God, a certain ordo proceeds in which all objects of charity are ordered according to their relation to God.154 The schema for Thomas is that there be “some order in things loved out of charity, which order is in reference to the first principle of that love, which is God.”155
Following love of God, one should love oneself in charity, even before one’s neighbor. Because the friend of God enjoys the fellowship, the communicatio, of God, there is a certain union in relation to God. By virtue of this union, by virtue of “the fact that man himself has a share of the
Divine good, this is a “more potent reason for loving” one’s own self than another person who is also friends with God.156 A person is more one with him/herself before any kind of union with others, so in charity one loves oneself before others.157 He argues that one “out of charity, loves himself by reason of his being a partaker of the aforesaid good, and loves his neighbor by reason of his fellowship in that good.”158 The union with oneself and with God in friendship is for
Thomas the standard by which one is called to become one with others in charity.
152. Ibid. 153. ST II-II q. 26 a. 6c. 154. ST II-II q. 26 a. 1c. See also Mansini, “Similitudo,” 16. 155. Ibid. 156. ibid. Thomas is careful to specify in the same question that this priority of self-love is in reference to the spiritual self, not just for any good that one desires. In article 5, Thomas argues that the good of one’s own physical body, physical health, etc., is subordinate to the love of neighbor. 157. ST II-II q. 26 a. 4c. Schockenhoff argues that the primacy of self-love over love of neighbor on this level “is not a statement of normative ethics” but rather Thomas here describes “the natural weight of the human will, which is inscribed in it as an ontologically fundamental direction” and so there is a “natural assertion of one’s own good [that] precedes the free love that is supposed to reach the neighbor.” Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 253. 158. Ibid. 57
The inner unity of the ordo caritatis for Thomas moves from love of God, and then love of self to love of neighbor. Thomas states, “one loves the neighbor, neither for one’s own profit, nor for one’s own pleasure, but wishes the neighbor good for the same reason for which one wills the good for oneself.”159 Charity transforms the friend of God in such a way that one’s own personal good is extended into Christian fellowship and the good of the other is seen as an extension of one’s own good. For Thomas, when a neighbor is loved in charity, the reason for this love is God and that person is loved so that he may be in God. Guy Mansini explains,
I cannot love the neighbor “for himself” unless I want him to possess that ultimate and supernatural perfection of his person, the vision of God, which entails that I, too, love God in the same sense, as the subsistent good and to possess which in vision would be my own best good.160
Although universal in scope, the love of charity one is to extend to one’s neighbor is not indiscriminate.161 Thomas specifies that some neighbors ought to be loved more than others based on the person’s virtue and nearness to God: “our neighbors are not all equally related to
God. Some are nearer to Him by reason of their greater goodness, and those we ought, out of charity, to love more than those who are not so near to Him.”162 After those who are better in terms of the love of charity, Thomas further identifies those whom one should love, arguing that those neighbors who are closest to oneself are loved more due to the natural bond present there before those further removed from oneself.163
159. ST II-II q. 44 a. 7c. 160. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 132. 161. ST II-II q. 25 a. 1 ad 2. Thomas states, “we love all our neighbors with the same love of charity, in so far as they are referred to one good common to them all, which is God; but we give various honors to various people according to each one’s virtue.” See also Jones, “Transformation,” 395. 162. ST II-II q.26 a. 6 ad 2. 163. ST II-II q. 26 aa. 8, 9-11. Schockenhoff observes that “Thomas reckons realistically with the fact that the order of charity must remain capable of being fulfilled, and so each can be assigned only a limited number of neighbors to be loved immediately…Only insofar as one wishes for every human being the same highest good without curtailment can one’s love be considered valid for all without distinction. The intensity and the form of 58
Charity binds one to love others for God’s sake primarily and so this extends to all, even those considered to be one’s enemy. For, as with other friends, “if we loved a certain man very much, we should love his children though they were unfriendly toward us,” so too the more one loves God, “the more does he put enmities aside and show love toward his neighbor.”164 A friend of God ought to love one’s enemy; however, this for Thomas does not require “signs and effects of love to our enemies” but rather that the friend of God inwardly love those “whom we love out of charity in relation to God,” since it is God “to Whom the friendship of charity is chiefly directed.”165 Along with one’s enemies, a friend of God loves the sinner as well, as one being capable of beatitude, loving them “out of charity, in respect to their nature.”166 The communicatio given by God necessitates that the friendship with God involve love of all those whom God loves; the dictates of charity are grounded in God’s love as the communicatio, and not on the ability of human love, and so require the help of grace to manifest this love. Charity compels all friends of God to love all others as God loves, wishing the good of God’s love to every person.
III. E. The Acts of Friendship Transformed by Charity
With charity firmly established as a kind of friendship based on the communicatio from
God, Thomas is able to develop a picture of charity keeping in balance its diverse elements by use of the central theme of friendship. Charity signifies, for Thomas, “not only the love of God, but also a certain friendship for Him, which indeed over and above love, adds a mutual return of affection with some mutual communication.”167 Thomas will rely on Aristotle’s understanding of expression of our orientation to others must on the other hand be directed to accord with the relationships in which beings stand in relation to one another.” Schockenhoff, “Virtue of Charity,” 255. 164. ST II-II. q. 25 a. 8c. 165. Ibid. 166. ST II-II q. 25 a. 6c. 167. ST I-II q. 65 a. 5c. 59
friendship to demonstrate the singular distinctiveness of friendship with God. Guy Mansini notes that for Thomas, “charity is not beyond friendship but true friendship: founded on the surest communicatio of the best foundation of what potentially unites God and men, the divine beatitude.”168 Using the characteristics of friendship already established, Thomas can demonstrate how these defining characteristics are transformed by the life of grace in friendship with God.
III. E. 1. Amor Amicitiae and Concupiscentiae
The first two acts of friendship identified by Thomas, benevolent amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae, are perhaps the most crucial acts of friendship in the context of charity for
Thomas. In Question 27, Thomas states that love is the “principal act” of charity because friendships consist of loving.169 More specifically, he argues that to love belongs to charity as charity more properly than to be loved. The love enacted in charity is not simply goodwill, or benevolence, for another person, no more than in any other instance of human friendship.
Thomas insists that the love of charity, as a friendship, expresses a mutually benevolent amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae. While simple benevolence is the beginning of friendship, it does not imply a union of affection; in this case however, to love, “considered as an act of charity, includes goodwill, but as such dilection or love adds union of affections.”170 Thomas relies on the nature of dilectio as having this two-fold tendency of amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae to understand love in the context of charity.
168. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 130. 169. ST II-II q. 27 a. 1c. 170. ST II-II q. 27 a. 2c. 60
In charity, both amor amicitiae and amor concupiscentiae play a part. Thomas states:
“moreover it is for this that the gift of charity is bestowed by God on each one, namely, that he may first of all direct his mind to God, and this pertains to a man’s love for himself, and that, in the second place, he may wish other things to be directed to God, and even work for that end according to his capacity.”171 Here, Thomas identifies the role of amor amicitiae when one loves
God for God himself “not for anything else, but for Himself.”172 Beyond this love, however,
Thomas insists that charity “tends to God first, and flows on from Him to other things.”173 The gift of charity directs one’s mind and will to God first and secondarily to other things directed to
God, displaying amor concupiscentiae in wishing for the things which God wills. That one love what God loves for the sake of God is most revealed through loving one’s enemy, in that love of
God is “the only reason for loving” that person (in contrast to one’s friend, for instance) and so the “love for God is proved to be all the stronger through carrying a man’s affections for things which are furthest from him.”174 In charity, friends of God are called to a similar, but elevated dilectio, loving God, and whom God loves, and desiring the good which God wills.
III. E. 2. Beneficence and the Increase of Charity
In this third characteristic of friendship, and so also of charity, a friend of God ought to work for the good of God. Here again, Thomas faces the issue of vast inequality of the friends in charity, since in no way could a friend do for God what God does for His friends. Thomas
171. ST II-II q. 26 a. 13c. 172. ST II-II q. 27 a. 3c. 173. ST II-II q. 27 a. 4c. See Kauth, Divine and Human, 188-189. 174. ST II-II q. 27 a. 7c. 61
addresses this issue with the characteristic of beneficence in Question 31 of the Secunda
Secundae, the first of three questions regarding the outward acts or effects of charity.175
In the first article of Question 31, Thomas asks whether beneficence is an act of charity at all. In ordinary relationships, beneficence among friends is done in order to benefit the other through gifts. In friendship with God, the giving of gifts is noticeably one-sided: the human friend receives plentiful gifts for his or her benefit, but nothing can be done or given to increase or sustain God’s goodness. Thomas addresses this concern by relating beneficence back to the love of friendship: “the will carries into effect if possible, the things it wills, so that consequently, the result of an act of love is that a man is beneficent to his friend.”176 Just as beneficence among friends emerges necessarily from the love among friends, as the external effect arising from the internal movement of love, the same occurs in charity. Thomas states: “it is not for us to benefit
God, but to honor Him by obeying Him, while it is for Him, out of His love, to bestow good things on us.”177 Thomas acknowledges the disparity in the divine-human friendship but argues that the love of friendship unites the friends in such a way that the inferior is perfected by the superior; that the inferior human friend in charity is perfected by the superior divine friend is the true act of beneficence in charity.
175. The other two questions treat two additional outward effects of charity: almsgiving and fraternal correction. Building on the connection he will make between the love of friendship and beneficence, Thomas will argue that both of these effects are expressions and executions of the goodwill of charity. In Question 32, almsgiving, Thomas notes, is properly speaking an act of mercy but is also an effect of charity “through the medium of mercy,” because mercy itself is an effect of charity. In Question 33, fraternal correction functions as an effect of charity in that we wish and do the good for our friends; this includes doing away with anyone’s evil which “is the same as to procure his good.” See ST II-II q. 32-33. 176. ST II-II q. 31 a. 1c. 177. ST II-II q. 31 a. 1 ad 1. Fuchs argues on this point that Thomas fails to incorporate Aristotle successfully in his transition from true friendship to charity. The kind of obedience and honor Thomas suggests here is not that of equals, Fuchs argues, but of imperfect, unequal friends. Fuchs, “Philia and Caritas,” 213. Cf. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 113. Mansini responds, suggesting servitude of this kind should be seen best in charity with Christ, with whom the disciples were friends in service. 62
While God bestows goods on his friends, the friend of God can only offer God obedience since nothing can be given to benefit a perfect God. Still, the love that binds the believer to God in friendship binds the friend of God to extend love to all. Since, Thomas argues, the love of charity extends to all, so too should beneficence. As the outward expression of friendship, beneficence is “the execution of goodwill.”178 External acts of goodwill toward one’s neighbor are acts of love for God. The beneficence therefore expressed to all people out of charity is not distinct from the friendship with God in charity. The ways in which the beneficence in charity can be expressed to one’s neighbor are plentiful; Thomas identifies in particular almsgiving, works of mercy, and fraternal correction which are aimed at mutual growth in love of God and neighbor.
Just as human friendships can deepen as both friends habitually orient their actions in reference to the good, charity too can increase. Thomas states that charity can increase only by
“its subject partaking of charity more and more, i.e., by being more reduced to its act and more subject thereto.”179 This increase does not occur simply by ticking off charitable deeds, but rather each act of charity disposes one to act more readily from charity, similar to any other habitus.
These acts of goodwill and deed make one “more ready to act again according to charity, and this readiness increasing, man breaks out into an act of more fervent love, and strives to advance in charity, and then his charity increases actually.”180
178. ST II-II q. 32 a. 4sc. 179. ST II-II q. 24 a. 5c. 180. ST II-II q. 24 a. 6c. On the other hand, charity cannot decrease because it is not the result of human acts but caused by God alone. It can be lost by mortal sin because mortal sin is contrary to charity. Venial sins, Thomas argues, do not diminish charity because these sins “do not touch charity.” Charity regards the last end and venial sin is a “disorder about things directed to the end” and “a man’s love for the end is none the less through his committing an inordinate act as regards the things directed toward the end.” ST II-II q. 24 a. 10, 11. 63
III. E. 3. Peace: Concord in Charity
As an interior effect of the love of friendship, concord is built on the union of affection in the love of friendship. This union of affection in love brings about a similitude between the friends in which the two become in a sense ‘one mind.’ The communicatio on which charity rests is the mutual foundation on which rests concord, a union of appetite, of willing and choosing the same thing. Thomas elaborates on the interior quality of concord in the context of charity in
Question 29. Here, Thomas argues that friendship with God brings more than mere concord as found in an ordinary friendship. Charity’s union in love brings about a deeper concord: peace.
Peace for Thomas necessarily implies concord but adds something to it. Concord, Thomas reiterates, “is between one man and another, insofar as the wills of various hearts agree together in consenting to the same thing.”181 Having a like mind in terms of the most substantial things is necessary for a friendship, but, Thomas cautions, even evil men can share concord.182 Peace runs deeper.
For Thomas, the peace that comes with charity implies another kind of union. While there is a unification of one’s appetite with another’s that occurs in concord, a further union occurs here: the unification of appetites in a single person. This further union of appetites in the person is essential to peace, because “man’s heart is not at peace, so long as he has not what he wants, or if, having what he wants, there still remains something for him to want, and which he cannot have at the same time.”183 Peace does what concord is not equipped to do, it gives calm and unity to the appetite in that with peace the appetite is directed to what is truly good. In the Christian
181. ST II-II q. 29 a. 1c. 182. ST II-II q. 29 a. 1sc. 183. ST II-II q. 29 a. 1c. 64
life, true peace, and friendship with God, require that there be a conformity of the will to God, as friends will and seek the same good. Therefore, true peace for Thomas is only in good people and about good things; and perfect peace is only found in God.184
Concord and peace are both found in charity as interior characteristics of friendship with
God. Peace is brought about by this friendship “insofar as a man loves God with his whole heart, by referring all things to Him, so that all his desires tend to one object.”185 Concord is brought about by this friendship in that, “in so far as we love our neighbor as ourselves” the result is that
“we wish to fulfill our neighbor’s will as though it were ours: hence it is reckoned a sign of friendship.”186 Charity brings about true concord and peace in that friendship with God brings about both a union of one’s will with God and with others who are also in union with God and also an interior unity of all of one’s willing. Since all are loved by God and since one is called to love all people for love of God, the aim of charity is also peace with all people, beginning with ourselves.187 Peace in this life is possible for that friend of God who “gives his whole heart to
God habitually, viz., by neither thinking nor desiring anything contrary to the love of God.”188
Perfect peace, God Himself, is not attained fully in this life but only in the next, but nevertheless it is possible to increase in charity and enter more fully into God’s peace to the degree that one’s will is oriented to God’s will.
184. ST II-II q. 29 a. 2 ob. 3, 4. 185. ST II-II q. 29 a. 3c. 186. ST II-II q. 29 a. 3c. 187. Jerome Wilms, Divine Friendship According to St. Thomas, trans. Sister M. Fulgence (Oxford: Blackfriars, 1958), 105-111. 188. ST II-II q. 24 a. 8c. 65
III. E. 4. Spiritual Joy and Delight in Charity
The final characteristic of friendship is delight with one’s friend. Delight (delectatio) is caused by and follows from love, for by the same habit one is inclined to love and desire the beloved good, and to rejoice in it.189 The love of friends always seeks the delight in being with one’s friend but is not limited to physical togetherness. Friends can still bring friends joy and delight, despite not being present to delight in the other’s company. The love of benevolence allows a distant friend to nevertheless rejoice in the well-being of one’s absent friend.
Just as delight occurs in human friendships as an effect of love, joy occurs in the divine human friendship as an interior effect of the principal act of charity. For Thomas, a twofold spiritual joy in God arises from charity; in the first and more excellent way, the spiritual joy of charity occurs primarily when one rejoices in divine goodness Itself. Built on the fellowship of everlasting happiness, charity transforms the nature of this joy:
Charity is love of God, Whose good is unchangeable, since He is His goodness, and from the very fact that He is loved, He is in those who love Him by His most excellent effect, according to 1 Jo. IV. 16: He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him. Therefore spiritual joy, which is about God, is caused by charity.190
The joy connected with charity is the greatest joy of which one is capable because this joy is derived from union with one’s ultimate end, goodness itself.191
In the second sense, spiritual joy about God can also be experienced insofar as one participates in the divine good through charity. Thomas states that in this second way joy proceeds in part from charity, but also in part by hope “whereby we look forward to enjoy the
189. ST II-II q. 28 a. 4c. See Wilms, Divine Friendship, 100-101. 190. ST II-II q. 28 a. 1c. 191. Bond, “Comparison,” 87. 66
Divine good,” although this enjoyment itself “whether perfect or imperfect, is obtained according to the measure of one’s charity.”192 The greater the measure of charity, or the closer friend one is with God, the more this friend can participate in divine goodness and so increase in spiritual joy.
This participation in the divine good can vary in different people and so too can be hindered by sin, disordered inclinations, or anything contrary to it.193 Joy remains incomplete in this world, and it “still remains possible for us to approach nearer to God by grace” until one reaches the perfect and complete fullness of joy in beatitude.194 All longing comes to a fulfillment in God, in whom universal peace and joy become realities.
IV. Conclusion
Thomas uses Aristotle’s notion of friendship to understand charity and to provide a framework to conceptualize the Christian relationship with God. In the hands of Thomas,
Aristotle’s understanding of friendship is utilized but is not left unchanged—it is transformed by the concept of charity. Guy Mansini summarizes this transformation well, stating that:
Aristotle has been interpreted as much as he has interpreted, that he has been framed and repositioned for all that he has helped us position St. Paul, and that the notion of friendship has been transformed in such a way that we realize its primary analogue is not the friendship between virtuous Athenian gentlemen or even that between philosophers, but that between Christians and their God. Like a satellite captured by a heavier body, friendship has been stolen from its wonted orbit and made to circle a more heavenly star; or, in the usual image, like many a
192. ST II-II q. 28 a. 1 ad 3. 193. ST II-II q. 28 a. 2c. Laura Lysen explains that there is a “marked inequality” between these two forms of joy. For Thomas, “it lies in the precariousness of human participation: divine joy entering human life becomes also human joy, subject to all the frailties and imperfections of the life that receives it. Human-divine joy (as it were) depends not only on charity, the present enjoyment of God, but on hope, the expectation of future divine fellowship.” Laura Lysen, “Vicious Sorrow: the Roots of ‘Spiritual’ Sin in the Summa Theologiae,” Studies in Christian Ethics 30, 3 (2017): 332-333. 194. ST II-II q. 28 a. 3c. 67
piece of pagan gold before it, it has been stolen into the service of another people with another God.195
The ideal, paradigmatic friend for Aristotle is the virtuous man, who enters into equal friendship with another who is alike in virtue, and friendship is then the perfection of all these other excellences in virtue. For Thomas however, an unequal relationship between God and man in charity is the ideal, most perfect friendship in which anyone can engage.196 Unlike virtuous friendships for Aristotle in which the virtue is prerequisite, friendship with God is itself a virtue for Thomas. The foundation on which this friendship is based is not virtue, not even any kind of natural similitude whatsoever, but God’s divine life offered as a free gift. This communicatio, unlike all other kinds, is the basis, but also the goal of this friendship which is attained when friends of God grow in similitude with God by cooperating with God’s grace and increasing in charity. Further, with charity as the ideal friendship for Thomas, and the Christian understanding that God is love, God Himself becomes the exemplar of charity. God, as perfect friend, both in the inter-Trinitarian life and in charity, elevates and transforms the five characteristic acts of friendship into meritorious acts which reflect divine love. There is for Thomas then no greater love than charity according to which perfect benevolence is expressed: where God desires for us the perfect goodness of Himself and we love God in this goodness for His own sake.
195. Mansini, “Form of Friendship,” 31. 196. Mansini notes further that charity is the “architectonic friendship” since “it most surely brings us to our supernatural end God.” However, we should not say that charity is friendship “only analogically” but rather it is “supereminently analogically friendship.” Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 130. Chapter 2: The Concept of Friendship in the Soteriology of Thomas Aquinas
Thomas’s employment of an Aristotelian view of friendship as a way to conceptualize his construal of charity is indisputable, yet what remains uncertain is the extent to which this notion of friendship functions outside the context of charity and within a soteriological one. As the last chapter brought to light, Thomas adopts Aristotle’s understanding of friendship to serve as a kind of scaffold from which he develops an understanding of charity as a friendship with God. This new relationship of charity, Thomas tells us, is made possible through the work of the Son and the Spirit in their redemptive missions. Thomas states in the Prima Pars of the Summa theologiae that “it belongs to the Holy Ghost, Who proceeds as Love, to be the gift of sanctification; to the Son as the principle of the Holy Ghost, it belongs to be the author of this sanctification. Thus the Son has been sent visibly as the author of sanctification; the Holy Ghost as the sign of sanctification.”1 The missions of the Son and Spirit, while different, are deeply interrelated, and both together bring about a new relationship between humanity and God, with the Son as the author of sanctification in the Incarnation and the Spirit sent invisibly as the sign of this sanctification through the Son. This sanctification brought about by the missions occurs with the infusion of charity into the soul of the believer and establishes a new relationship of friendship.
What would seem to follow as a natural development from an understanding of charity as friendship is an integration of this theme of friendship into soteriological contexts, particularly the missions of the Son and Spirit. If one were to look to the Summa theologiae alone, little
1. ST I q. 43 a. 7c.
68 69
would be found to develop the theme of friendship within a soteriological context apart from
Thomas’s extensive use of friendship to understand the virtue of charity. Given the importance of the missions of the Son and Spirit for the establishment of this new friendship, it is surprising when reading the Summa theologiae on these topics to find few references to friendship. In the
Secunda Pars, the Spirit’s mission of indwelling in the soul is not primarily elaborated in terms of friendship, although implicitly it can be drawn from the text insofar as friendship occurs through an infusion of charity by the Holy Spirit. The Tertia Pars of the Summa, which included
Thomas’s Christological text, however, does not incorporate friendship as a theme in the life of
Christ, beyond a brief passing reference to a friend’s ability to suffer for one’s friend and a more extended appeal to the concept of friendship in regard to the sacraments. Even when considering
Christ’s lifestyle, and whether it was fitting that Christ should have associated with men, Thomas still does not incorporate friendship nor mention the friendships Christ formed with his disciples.2 In the context of understanding Christ’s death, Christ’s words of sacrificing the self for the sake of one’s friends in John 15 are not integrated into his study of the passion. Such notable absence of references to friendship has prompted one scholar to observe that Thomas
“conspicuously does not choose the christological” exposition of friendship.3
This omission stands in contrast with the explicit incorporation of this concept in a few of
Thomas’s earlier works. In the Summa contra Gentiles written between 1259 and 1264, Thomas plainly makes use of the theme of friendship in the context of the missions of the Son and Spirit.
In this work, Thomas presents an understanding of charity as friendship and draws heavily on the
2. ST III q. 40 a. 1c. 3. Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 160. Lefler argues that this is most clearly seen in Thomas’s use of John 15, which, as will be shown, is not incorporated into the Summa’s Tertia Pars. 70
notion of friendship to unpack the mission of the Spirit, and also as a reason for the fittingness of the Incarnation. The second important text is Thomas’s Lectura super Ioannem, his commentary on the Gospel of John, written between 1270 and 1272, and a close contemporary to the Tertia
Pars of the Summa.4 In his Johannine commentary, Thomas develops a picture of Christ as
“friend” and additionally draws significantly on Jesus’s understanding of his death in John 15:13 in which he sees Jesus’s saving death as the perfect expression of friendship.
The goal of this chapter is not to judge definitively as to the reasons for Thomas’s omission of friendship in the treatment of the divine missions and soteriology in the Summa theologiae nor is it to draw artificially a connection for Thomas between friendship and Christ’s saving work. Rather, the intended aim is an exploratory one, to highlight Thomas’s use of friendship to explain Jesus’s salvific work in contexts beyond the Summa and the ways Thomas appears to shift from drawing on the concept of friendship in regard to Christ toward a more pointed use of friendship to describe the aspects of sacramental life of the Church in the Tertia
Pars of the Summa. The first part of the chapter will be devoted to a study of the pertinent sections of the Contra Gentiles and the Commentary on John, ending with some remarks on friendship as a soteriological theme in these texts. The second part of the chapter will turn to
Thomas’s mature soteriology found in the Tertia Pars of the Summa theologiae, presenting first, the major features of his soteriology in his Christological treatise and second, Thomas’s return to the use of friendship as a concept in regard to the sacraments of the Eucharist and penance.
Finally, a presentation of various ways in which modern authors have come to understand Christ as friend in Thomas’s theology is offered to suggest possible reasons for this shift.
4. Torrell, The Person and His Work, 198. According to Torrell, Thomas began writing the Prima Pars of the Summa in 1265 and the Tertia Pars in 1272-1273. 71
I. Early Works with Friendship as a Soteriological Theme
Both the Contra Gentiles and the Commentary on John provide a situation in which one can see Thomas bringing the concept of friendship into a soteriological context. Friendship is employed by Thomas in order to better conceptualize the new reality brought about by the work of the economic Trinity. The goal of this section is to identify and draw out how Thomas uses friendship in these texts to explain the work of salvation.
I. A. Friendship in the Summa contra Gentiles
While traditionally the Summa contra Gentiles was thought to be a missionary manual, modern scholarship has suggested that there is no clear occasion for the book to have been written but that it is more likely the result of personal reflection on the part of Thomas.5 No longer thought to be intended for those converting the Muslims of Spain, the text is considered to have a more general purpose, namely, to display the relationship between philosophical knowledge and Christian wisdom, examining varying sets of issues that were of a particular concern to Thomas.6 Thomas states that his purpose is the “work of a wise person” which is “the task of making known, as far as [his] limited powers will allow, the truth that the Catholic faith professes, and of setting aside errors that are opposed to it.”7 This pursuit of wisdom, for
5. Nicholas Healy, Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 4-5. For additional information regarding Thomas’s purpose for writing the Contra Gentiles, see Torrell, Person and His Work, 107-111; Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Contra Gentiles: A Guide and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 9; Anton Pegis, introduction to Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God, trans. Anton Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 15-44. 6. Torrell, Person and His Work, 107. See also Healy, Theologian of Christian Life, 5. Healy argues that although Thomas’s aim was to display this relationship between philosophical knowledge and theology, Thomas does not view his aim as strictly philosophical and never abandons theology. The discussion of the first three books of the ScG, although focused on philosophical concerns, is clearly dependent on and oriented toward the revealed knowledge that shapes Book IV of the ScG. 7. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God, trans. Anton Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975) I ch. 2, 2. 72
Thomas, is of no small import; indeed, he argues that the wise man approaches a likeness to God and “since likeness is the cause of love, the pursuit of wisdom especially joins man to God in friendship.”8 Thomas resolutely seeks to explore theological and philosophical notions through reason, not for the purpose of proving doctrine, but ultimately to show the reasonableness of what is held by faith and in fact, to move closer to God in friendship.
Written between 1259 and 1264, the Contra Gentiles is comprised of four books, beginning with a study of God apart from Christian revelation and proceeding through a discussion of creation and providence, according to what is known by reason.9 In these first three books, Thomas seeks to demonstrate a reasonability, rather than proof, for Christian revelation by appealing to philosophical reasoning, as a kind of ascent or building up to Thomas’s treatment of revelation in Book IV. Thomas adjusts his focus in Book IV to focus on the reasonability of the truths of God revealed through God’s salvific work in history. He states that,
since natural reason ascends to a knowledge of God through creatures and, conversely, the knowledge of faith descends from God to us by a divine revelation —since the way of ascent and descent is still the same—we must proceed in the same way in the things above reason which are believed as we proceeded in the foregoing investigation of God by reason.10
In this fourth book of the Contra Gentiles, Thomas argues that although treating the faith from the perspective of ‘above,’ namely, from revealed truths, nevertheless the order should be the same as the order of the first three books: beginning first with the things of God that surpass reason, followed by the things “which surpass reason that have been done by God, such as the work of the Incarnation,” and finally the “things surpassing reason which are looked for in the
8. SCG I ch. 2, 1. 9. Davies, Summa Contra Gentiles, 10-13. 10. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles O’Neil (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), IV ch. 1, 11. 73
ultimate end of man.”11 Thomas will explore what is known exclusively through revelation: the
Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments and the eschaton.12
The beginning of Book IV treats the unity of the divine Persons in the inner-Trinitarian life and progresses to treat the work of the Son and Spirit in their missions to bring salvation.
Book IV of the Contra Gentiles moves from the Trinity in itself to the Trinitarian persons in their mission to redeem humankind—and it is within the soteriology of Book IV that Thomas makes use of the concept of friendship. The Son’s mission centers on the Incarnation as establishing a friendship whereby the visibility of Christ as man leads humanity back to God while the Spirit’s mission enables the human response to this friendship established by Christ. In this text, Thomas primarily incorporates the concept of friendship in two significant ways. The first point of interest is in the context of the Spirit’s mission in which Thomas characterizes the mission of the
Spirit in terms of how the Spirit makes the believer a friend of God. The second important use of friendship is in the context of the Son’s mission in which Thomas uses the theme of Christ as friend to explain why it was fitting for the second person of the Trinity to become incarnate for our salvation.
I. A. 1. The Work of the Spirit
On reading Thomas’s writing on the Spirit in chapters 21 and 22 of Book IV of the
Contra Gentiles, J. P. Torrell observes that it is “quite striking to see the constancy with which
[Thomas] returns to the theme of friendship to explain the action of the Spirit in the believer.”13
In these chapters, Thomas draws out the effects of the Spirit’s mission by speaking of the new
11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 170. 74
friendship that this mission creates between the believer and God. The consistent use of this concept of friendship allows Thomas to organize and frame the new mode of living that occurs with the indwelling of the Spirit and the consequent effects it has on the soul of the friend of
God. a. Contra Gentiles Book IV, Chapter 21
In chapter 21, Thomas explains the effects of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in terms of the gifts that God gives through this mission. Sent by the Father and Son, the Spirit is sent in his mission to the soul of the believer, infusing the soul with charity. Thomas states that “the charity which is in us, although it is an effect of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is nonetheless for a special sort of reason said to be in us through the Holy Spirit.”14 The mission of the Spirit brings an effect, a new mode of being in the believer in which God is present as the efficient cause of this new state. Thomas concludes from this that, “since the charity by which we love
God is in us by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit Himself must also be in us, so long as charity is in us.”15 This new mode of being brings a new mode of relating to God since “by the Holy Spirit not only is God in us, but we also are in God.”16 This new reality is a friendship and this friendship, for Thomas, is seen in its effects.
The first effect attributed to the mission of the Spirit is the intimacy of affection that occurs between God and the friend of God. Thomas states:
Of course, this is the proper mark of friendship: that one reveal his secrets to his friend. For, since charity unites affections and makes, as it were, one heart of two, one seems not to have dismissed from his heart that which he reveals to a friend; and so our Lord says to His disciples: “I will not now call you servants but
14. SCG IV ch. 21, 3. See Torrell, Spiritual Master, 164. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 75
friends: because all things whatsoever I have heard of My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).17
Through the indwelling of the Spirit realized by grace, the heart of the believer is united by love to God as friend. In this unity of affection, in which Thomas states two hearts are made one, a new intimacy is created. This intimacy allows for the revelation of secrets. Thomas states,
“therefore, since by the Holy Spirit we are established as friends of God, fittingly enough it is by the Holy Spirit that men are said to receive the revelation of the divine mysteries.”18 The disclosure of one’s secrets creates a new intimacy which becomes an essential effect of friendship; part of the Spirit’s mission, therefore, is to reveal the mysteries of God to God’s friend to deepen the intimacy of the friendship that has been established.
For Thomas, this same unity of affection which brings the intimacy of secret sharing also brings a second effect: a sharing of what the friends have in common. Appealing to Aristotle,
Thomas argues that a friend helps his friend by sharing his own possessions, as part of willing and doing the good for his friend.19 Once again, the mission of the Spirit makes the friendship between man and God possible, in this case by sharing his own possessions in order to do the good for the believer. Relying on a quote from Scripture, Thomas contends that the Spirit gives gifts which facilitate one’s friendship with God so that more is held in common. He comments:
This agrees with 1 John (3:17): “He who has the substance of this world, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his bowels from him: how does the charity of God abide in him?” But such is especially the case with God whose will is efficacious on its effect. Therefore, it is fitting that all the gifts of God are said to be gifts from the Holy Spirit.20
17. SCG IV ch. 21, 6. 18. Ibid. 19. SCG IV ch. 21, 7. 20. SCG IV ch. 21, 7. On this effect, Torrell states succinctly that “every gift comes to us from the Spirit. We can generalize this quite honestly, for nothing is left outside his influence: through him we are configured, through him we are also made able, through him the way is always open to us.” Torrell, Spiritual Master, 168. 76
Every gift from God comes from the Spirit and enables friendship with God so that by spiritual perfections and sharing more in common, the friend of God might be likened to God.
The final effect of the Spirit as friend enumerated in this chapter is the forgiveness of sins. Thomas argues that “by the fact that one is established as the friend of another, every offense is removed” because “friendship and offense are contraries.”21 Through friendship with
God sins can be forgiven by virtue of the love that binds the friend of God with God, and it is the mission of the Spirit in the soul that makes this forgiveness possible. “Since we are established as friends of God by the Holy Spirit,” Thomas argues, then “it is by Him that God remits our sins.”22 In his work on the Contra Gentiles, J. P. Torrell remarks on Thomas’s placement of this last but crucial gift of the Spirit, stating:
Among the gifts we receive from the Spirit, Thomas mentions in the last place the remission of sins—rather curiously, for that seems to us as preliminary. But the reason for this is the same as for everything that went before: by the very fact that there is friendship between two beings, every offense that might bring him harm is discarded: “Love conquers all faults” (Prov. 10:12).23
The friendship between God and the believer by the mission of the Spirit brings about the remission of sin because of the very nature of the love of friendship. For Thomas, understanding the Spirit’s mission to the soul through the concept of sustaining and developing friendship, it is fitting that the Spirit makes his recipient of charity holy and a pleasing friend. b. Contra Gentiles Book IV, Chapter 22
In chapter 22, Thomas moves from a consideration of the effects of Holy Spirit which make the believer friends with God to develop how, through this mission of the Spirit, the
21. SCG IV ch. 21, 10. 22. Ibid. 23. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 168. 77
believer is moved toward God. Thomas Hibbs argues that this chapter is part of Thomas’s larger aim to demonstrate that “the moving of the whole of creation to God is the work proper to the
Holy Spirit.”24 In contrast to the rest of creation, the human person is moved back toward God in an unique way, a way that is characterized by the intimacy of friendship. By the mission of the
Spirit in the soul, the friendship with God that is offered becomes a true friendship because the
Spirit enables the believer to respond to God’s overtures of friendship and thereby move back to
God.
The first property of friendship that the Spirit enables is “to converse with [one’s] friend,” which Thomas sees as “especially proper” to friendship.25 Thomas immediately follows this point with the acknowledgment that the conversation which marks an ordinary human friendship differs from the conversation that marks friendship with God; in the context of the latter, the conversation between these friends is accomplished through contemplation. Therefore, Thomas concludes, since “the Holy Spirit makes us lovers of God, we are in consequence established by the Holy Spirit as contemplators of God.”26 The Spirit creates and enables the intimacy with which one can become a friend with God and in doing so, allows the friend of God to converse with God.
A second property of friendship that the Spirit arouses is delight in the presence of one’s friends. Thomas describes this essential quality of friendship, stating that “it is also a property of friendship that one take delight in a friend’s presence, rejoice in his words and deeds, and find in
24. Thomas Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas: An Interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 146. Hibbs immediately qualifies this statement by emphasizing that this requires both restoration and elevation of human nature, in short, the work of the Son as well as the Spirit. 25. SCG IV ch. 22, 2. 26. Ibid. 78
him security against all anxieties; and so it is especially in our sorrows that we hasten to our friends for consolation.”27 Friends, in the presence of one another, can bring both delight and consolation. It is no different for the friend of God, who through the mission of the Spirit, can find consolation and peace. Thomas concludes that, “since, then, the Holy Spirit constitutes us
God’s friends, and makes Him dwell in us, and us dwell in Him (as was shown), it follows that through the Holy Spirit we have joy in God and security against all the world’s adversities and assaults.”28 The indwelling of the Spirit brings an intimacy such that it allows the friend of God to move toward and seek God in times of joy and for consolation in distress.
The last property that Thomas identifies in chapter 22 is the concord that occurs between friends. It is proper to friendship, he states, “to consent to a friend in what he wills.”29 For
Thomas, the will is ordered to the good, and friendship occurs when two people are oriented toward the same good. It follows then that the friend of God should be aligned to the perfect
Good. The Spirit thus enables friendship with God by inclining the will of the believer toward the good, namely to what God wills. Thomas states that “the Holy Spirit so inclines us to act that
He makes us act voluntarily, in that He makes us lovers of God. Therefore, the sons of God are impelled by the Holy Spirit freely out of love, not slavishly out of fear.”30 The Spirit moves the will by love, not by force, aligning the human will with the will of God. More specifically,
Thomas stipulates that the will of God is “set forth for us by His precepts,” and since “we are established as God’s lovers by the Holy Spirit,” it therefore “belongs to the love by which we love God that we fulfill His precepts.”31 The friend of God aligns herself to the perfect good by
27. SCG IV ch. 22, 3. 28. Ibid. 29. SCG IV ch. 22, 4. 30. SCG IV ch. 22, 5. 31. Ibid. 79
following the precepts of God—that is, what God wills—and the friend of God does this not out of fear or force, but from the very love of friendship itself.
I. A. 2. The Work of Christ
After addressing a variety of Christological heresies regarding the Incarnation, Thomas completes his Christological section of the Contra Gentiles by arguing for the suitability of the
Incarnation in chapters 53-55 of Book IV. His extensive treatment of the suitability of the
Incarnation begins with the underlying presupposition that “the Incarnation of God was the most efficacious assistance to man in his striving for beatitude.”32 In the search for beatitude before
Christ, humanity “would grow cold, held back by very desperation,” unable to achieve this state, due to the “unmeasured distance between the natures” of God and the human person.33 In this context of mankind’s ever striving for beatitude, the Incarnation will provide a hope for beatitude in that it reveals that “God was willing to unite human nature to Himself personally” which points out “with greatest clarity that man can be united to God by intellect, and see Him immediately.”34 In this way, for Thomas, the desire for beatitude grounds the suitability of the
Incarnation; Torrell argues that for Thomas, “the love God bears toward man is not limited to reestablishing in strict justice the equilibrium destroyed by sin,” but God “wishes in addition to complete his plan of salvation.”35 The suitability of the Incarnation will rest on this fundamental
32. SCG IV ch. 54, 2. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid; Davies, Summa contra Gentiles, 359. 35. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 110. Torrell continues: “Compared to an overly anthropocentric view that the Incarnation occurred because of man’s sin, Thomas’s view differs greatly in the emphasis on a desire to see God, which is the emptiness left in man by his Creator.” In Torrell’s view, Thomas understands the Incarnation in terms of God’s overall plan of salvation, rather than as a response to humanity’s sin. See also, Sharon Putt, “The Foundational Efficiency of Love: Reconciling with Aquinas,” Scottish Journal of Theology 68, n. 2 (2015), 145. 80
orientation of God seeking to complete his plan for salvation, with an emphasis on a deep human desire to see God.
Among his reasons for the suitability of the Incarnation, Thomas says that the Incarnation effects friendship between man and God in a new and unique way. To give shape to this new friendship, Thomas identifies an initial hurdle to a friendship between God and man by referencing Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, relying on Aristotle’s notion of friendship as requiring equality between friends. This obstacle to friendship will provide a sense in which one can see a fittingness to the Incarnation. Thomas states:
Furthermore, since friendship consists in a certain equality, things greatly unequal seem unable to be coupled in friendship. Therefore, to get greater familiarity in friendship between man and God it was helpful for man that God became man, since even by nature man is man’s friend; and so in this way, ‘while we know God visibly, we may [through Him] be home to love of things invisible.’36
Within this statement, Thomas makes several significant remarks regarding the Incarnation itself and the friendship it creates as part of the larger soteriological effort in the missions.
First, in a general sense, the Incarnation was a fitting way to reveal the invisible God through the visible life of Christ. Thomas presumes the efficiency of grace, and the work of the
Son and Spirit, to overcome any obstacle to bringing humankind to a genuine friendship with
God, addressing the Aristotelian concern of equality among friends.37 Secondly, the visible life of
36. SCG IV ch. 54, 6. Thomas references Preface, Mass of the Nativity of our Lord and of Corpus Christi. Torrell argues that Thomas, quoting this preface for the Christmas Mass alongside a reference to Aristotle on friendship, most likely drew his initial inspiration from the Mass; he states that “the Christmas liturgical celebration, under the aegis of the divine love for man and its manifestation in the coming of the Word in the flesh, was well suited to helping Thomas deepen his meditations on the appropriateness of the Incarnation.” Torrell, Spiritual Master, 109. 37. Regarding this passage from the Contra Gentiles, Guy Mansini observes that “it is noteworthy . . . that St. Thomas never raises an objection to considering charity as friendship from the disproportion of the excellence or the inequality of the friends, neither in the Summa nor in the commentary on the Sentences, in the articles where charity is defined. it is not that the difference between God and man is obliterated. but grace really does make natural for us what is proper to God.” Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 129. 81
Christ in particular not only reveals the invisible realities of God but enables us to love the invisible God more effectively. In mind here for Thomas is his immediately prior argument for the fittingness of the Incarnation as a means to dispose man to love God. Thomas argues that
Nothing, of course, so induces us to love one as the experience of his love for us. But God’s love for men could be demonstrated to man in no way more effective than this: he willed to be united to man in person, for it is proper to love to unite the lover with the beloved so far as possible. Therefore it was necessary for man tending to perfect beatitude that God become man.38
This argument is nuanced by the qualification of this love as a love of friendship, which occurs in the following paragraph. The Incarnation allowed for a greater intimacy of love between God and man in that the lovers could be united as friends through the human nature of Christ.
Finally, the third notable point to draw from Thomas’s incorporation of friendship into his discussion of the fittingness of the incarnation is that by God becoming man, a friendship could occur between man and God through a similitude of natures.39 God becoming man makes friendship possible with God because a likeness is established through Christ’s human nature.
Matthew Kauth observes that “the likeness Christ thus shares with us in our human nature is both a cause of love based upon similitude and, at the same time, something which does not make love compulsory since the fullness of the Godhead is not revealed in his universal goodness.”40
Kauth again argues that the Incarnation allows for friendship in that by proffering friendship through the similitude of Christ’s human nature, rather than the fullness of divine nature, the response of the friend to Christ is preserved and not forced. He contends that “his true humanity is that which permits the Son to be seen and revealed properly because the Divine light is
38. SCG IV ch. 54, 5. Here Thomas speaks of the Incarnation in terms of necessity (necessarium); later, in the Summa, he elects to speak in terms of fittingness (conveniens). Cf. ST III q.1. 39. SCG IV ch. 54, 6. 40. Kauth, Divine and Human, 223. 82
shrouded, and also that which allows the Son to be chosen in the realm of human volition. This respects the nature of human love and friendship.”41 For Thomas, friendship with God is facilitated by the Incarnation of Christ in that through the human nature of Christ, one can move from the visible to the invisible.
While the very Incarnation itself is important in establishing a friendship between mankind and God, the death of Christ as friend has a particular significance in redemption for
Thomas. In the Contra Gentiles, Thomas connects the friendship of Christ with the obedience of
Christ’s suffering on the cross. After arguing for the suitability of the Incarnation in the prior chapter, Thomas addresses an array of arguments against the suitability of the Incarnation in chapter 55 of Book IV. One of these objections will be significant for the present soteriological concerns in that Thomas examines Jesus’s death in the context of charity and sacrificing oneself for one’s friend. The objection posed is that it seems unreasonable that the will of God the Father would require the death of the Son of God for obedience’s sake.42 To suffer death would appear to be contrary to divinity.
To answer this objection, Thomas appeals to the perfection of human virtue. The more perfectly one carries out an act of virtue, he argues, “the more he is obedient to God.”43 With charity as the greatest of the virtues, then, Christ, “when He fulfilled the act of charity most perfectly was most obedient to God.”44 Relying on Jesus’s own words in John 15, Thomas concludes that “Christ bearing death for the salvation of men and for the glory of God the Father was extremely obedient to God and carried out a perfect act of charity.”45 Christ’s human life is
41. Kauth, Divine and Human, 223-4. 42. SCG IV ch. 53, 15. 43. SCG IV ch. 55, 17. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 83
the exemplar of human virtue and friendship seen most profoundly in his death on the cross. The
Father was “pleased with that will in whose charity Christ undertook his death.”46 Christ was the most obedient and perfect of humans and Christ’s truest modeling of friendship was in his sacrificial act on the cross.
The true dynamism of Christ’s saving work in his suffering, for Thomas, arises from his love of friendship. Thomas argues that “the death of Christ had its satisfying power from His charity in which he bore death voluntarily.”47 The power of Christ’s death was not in the act of suffering or dying in itself, nor was it from the iniquity of his killers. Rather, Thomas insists that at the heart of Christ’s satisfaction for sin is the perfect charity, the love of friendship, with which
Christ went to his death. He states that “the death of Christ was sufficient for the expiation of all sins; and this by reason of the extraordinary charity in which He bore death, as well as by reason of the dignity of the satisfying person who was God and man.”48 It is precisely Christ’s perfect love of his friends that brings salvation.
Thomas’s argument here relies on an earlier section of the Contra Gentiles in Book III in which Thomas connects friendship and the act of satisfying for wrongdoing. Christ’s own satisfaction for his friends sets a precedent within charity whereby one can make satisfaction to
God on behalf of another. Friendship, Thomas states, “makes two persons one in love, and especially in the love of charity.”49 And so, “just as a person can make satisfaction to God by himself, so also can he do it through another person, especially in case of necessity. Indeed, the
46. Ibid. 47. SCG IV ch. 55, 25. 48. SCG IV ch. 55, 26. 49. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book Three: Providence Part II, trans. Vernon Bourke (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), III ch. 158, 7. 84
punishment that a friend suffers for oneself one regards as if it were suffered by oneself.”50 The love of charity that impels one to suffer for a friend to make satisfaction is more acceptable to
God than if that person suffered for his or her own self. Thomas argues that “it may be taken from this that one person can make satisfaction for another provided both abide in charity.
Hence, the Apostle says in Galatians (6:2): ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ.’”51 The “law of Christ” that Thomas quotes from Paul is the precedent established by Christ’s sacrificial act on the cross in which the greatest act of friendship is suffering death for the sake of the other.
Christ’s voluntary acceptance of his death in charity is for Thomas established as the perfect example of humility and love. Thomas explains that “men were by reason of pride lovers of worldly glory” and thus Christ came “to change the spirits of men over from love of worldly glory to love of divine glory.”52 To demonstrate divine love, Christ “willed to bear death—not just any sort of death, but a death abject in the extreme.”53 Christians are called to imitate
Christ’s contempt of death and willingness to suffer for one’s friends. Thomas Hibbs argues that
Thomas is recasting the traditional virtue systems of the ancient philosophers on this score; he states that, “the chief virtue is no longer magnanimity, at least not as Aristotle depicts it. . . .
Friendship, now understood as charity, has been transposed from an auxiliary to a constitutive role in the good life.”54 That Christ bore abject pain and death out of love for his friends establishes Christ as the perfect model of humility and exemplar of charity.
50. Ibid. 51. ibid. 52. SCG IV ch. 55, 20. 53. Ibid. 54. Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative, 160. 85
Ultimately, Thomas concludes that it is only in the unique person of Christ, one who is perfectly God and man and who models perfect charity, that satisfaction for sin can be made. He argues that “even in human affairs it is clear that by as much as the person is higher, by so much is the penalty he bears reckoned for more” and thus by the “humility and charity of the one suffering,” Christ’s death was sufficient for the satisfaction of the entire human race.55 The immense “dignity of the person suffering—and this is the person of the Son of God—renders His death precious.”56 Thomas’s emphasis in these passages is focused primarily on the dignity of the person of Christ and on the magnitude of his love for his friends, both of which function to render Christ’s actions satisfactory for human sin.57 Christ’s voluntary sacrifice of his life, as valuable and precious as it was, functions to satisfy for sin. Thomas argues that Christ, “who was without sin willed to suffer the penalty due to sin” and to “take on Himself the penalty due to others,” was able to do so because in satisfaction “when to placate the one offended, some other voluntarily assumes the penalty, we consider the charity and benevolence of him who makes satisfaction.”58 Christ is the universal cause of salvation on account of his unique position as God and man as well as his perfect love for his friends on behalf of whom he willingly faced his death.
55. SCG IV ch. 55, 26-27. 56. SCG IV ch. 55, 27. 57. Romanus Cessario, O.P., Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas: Towards a Personalist Understanding (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982), 124. He argues that this emphasis is a marked development in Thomas thinking from his earlier work in his commentary on the Sentences. Cessario contends that Thomas moves from a strictly “juridical frame of reference” for the sufficiency of Christ’s satisfaction to “a more personal perspective,” namely, that Jesus Christ is “moved by an intense love” and “willingly gives himself over for our sins.” Unlike in his earlier work, Thomas’s emphasis here “is focused upon the dignity of [Christ’s] love that renders the satisfaction he performed perfectly adequate and acceptable to God.” Cessario suggests possible explanations for this shift to be greater exposure to Greek theology and closer work with the Gospels in his commentaries. 58. SCG IV ch. 55, 23. 86
I. B. Christ as Friend in the Lectura super Ioannem
Of the four Gospels, Thomas ascribes a particular importance to the Gospel of John’s unique presentation of Christ. At the beginning of his commentary, Thomas notes that while “the other evangelists deal principally with the mysteries of Christ’s humanity,” John “puts first and in a special way Christ’s divinity.”59 John holds a particular place of distinction for Thomas as being the most contemplative and concerned more with the divinity of Christ than his humanity.60 John’s unique contribution in his Gospel is attributable, according to Thomas, to the privilege the disciple John himself held of being “more loved by Christ.”61 Jesus “confided his secrets in a special way to that disciple who was specially loved.”62 Given John’s role as the beloved disciple, John’s understanding of charity as a friendship will be of no small importance to Thomas. James Weisheipl observes that, “among all of Thomas’ writings on Scripture none surpass the lectura on John’s Gospel . . . . It is sublime in its theological profundity, particularly in its discussion of the last discourse of Jesus (Jn. 14-17).”63 It is within his commentary on the last discourse of Jesus that Thomas significantly develops a soteriological understanding of the mission of Christ in his characterization of the unique role of Christ as friend and in his presentation of Jesus’s understanding of his death as an act of friendship.
59. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Vol. 3, trans. Fabian Larcher, O.P and James Weisheipl, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), Prologue, n. 10. 60. This is clear for Thomas in the classic images used to designate the different Gospel writers: “He is described as to his symbol, for John is symbolized by an eagle. The other three Evangelists, concerned with those things which Christ did in his flesh, are symbolized by animals which walk on the earth, namely, by a man, a bull calf, and a lion. But John flies like an eagle above the cloud of human weakness and looks upon the light of unchanging truth with the most lofty and firm eyes of the heart.” Ioan. Prologue, n. 11. 61. Ioan., Prologue, n. 11. 62. Ibid. Serge-Thomas Bonino has observed that revelation and friendship are closely linked and this is “eminently verified” in the case of the apostle John. Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., “The Role of the Apostles in the Communication of Revelation according to the Lectura super Ioannem of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, eds. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 328. 63. James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 246. 87
Thomas’s commentary on John reveals Thomas’s understanding of friendship in a
Christological context in that it is through the human life of Jesus that friendship with God becomes possible and a perfect example of charity is given. In his analysis of John’s Gospel,
Thomas presents Jesus as a friend who exhibits most perfectly the love of charity. Two places are most significant to draw out Thomas’s understanding of Jesus as friend: Thomas’s observations on John 13 where Jesus identifies his “new commandment” of love and on John 15 where Jesus identifies laying down one’s life for one’s friends as the greatest love. A close study of these two texts in Thomas’s commentary on John will provide a picture of Christ as friend and a context of friendship within which one can understand Christ’s death. i. John 13:34-35 “I give to you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This new commandment of Christ immediately follows the washing of feet and the announcement of Judas’s betrayal in John 13, and all together culminate directly in the last discourse of Christ. Before Christ comforts his apostles with his words and strengthens them with his prayers in chapters 14 through 17, Christ first prepares them for his passion by giving himself as an example to imitate with the washing of the disciples’ feet at the beginning of chapter 13.64 This order of events is not coincidental in Thomas’s eyes: “the sequence found in this exhortation is that Christ later taught in words what he had first done by his actions.”65 After modeling a life of humility and service, Jesus gives the new commandment to his disciples so
64. Ioan. 13, lect. 1, n. 1727. 65. Ioan. 13, lect. 3, n. 1796. 88
that they may be fit to follow Christ’s example. Michael Sherwin observes that “Aquinas discerns an order of presentation in Christ’s pedagogy” in that “Christ first acts and then explains his actions” and so here “Aquinas reminds us that the purpose of Christ’s teaching is to lead us to the Father.”66 Christ’s actions at the last supper model for the disciples the kind of love through service that will lead to God. Thomas states, “since Christ is going to God, it is special to him to lead others to God. This is done especially by humility and love; and so he offers them an example of washing their feet.”67 With this model of humility and service, Christ sets a foundation for deeper understanding of his new commandment.
For Thomas, this command to love one another, what he calls the exemplum, is distinctly
“of the very nature of friendship.”68 The mutuality of love in the command is paramount—for without the mutual love of one another, the disciples’ relationship is merely one of good-will.
The significance of the new commandment of love for Thomas is that it is a reciprocal command in which the disciples are told to love one another mutually as friends. Matthew Kauth observes that “Christ, Thomas contends, wanted perfect friendship among his disciples” and “as the
‘instructions’ of the exemplum [say], this commandment is not abstract well wishing” but exists and “can only exist in the loving of concrete persons to the end of loving God for his sake.”69
The commandment Jesus gives in John 13 is not simply well-wishing, but a love for God that is expressed in love of others, and Jesus himself provides the standard for the friendly love of charity. Thomas Keaty notes that for Thomas, “the friendship that is charity is a friendship
66. Michael Sherwin, O.P., “Christ the Teacher in the Commentary on the Gospel of John,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, eds. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 186. 67. Ioan. 13, lect. 1, n. 1743. 68. Ioan. 13, lect. 7, n. 1837. 69. Kauth, Divine and Human, 245. 89
specified by the good willed and communicated by Christ to his disciples” and thus “the paradigmatic case and indeed the source for the friendship of love that he is calling charity is the friendship love exhibited by Christ.”70 Christ is not simply a good friend to his disciples, but the paradigm of the most perfect love that one can have for another.
In the context of this commandment in Chapter 13, Thomas identifies three ways in which Jesus in the Gospel of John modeled this friendship love: gratuitously, effectively and rightly. The first way in which Christ set the standard for love is in the gratuitous nature of his love. Christ did not “wait for us to begin to love him” but he loved first; in the same way, all should “love our neighbors and not wait to be loved by them or for them to do us a favor.”71 The second way that Christ modeled perfect love is in the effectiveness in his love. Thomas appeals to the beneficence of Christ’s love, as a characteristic of friendship, in that “love is proven to exist from what one does.”72 Under this consideration, Christ’s entire life reflects his love for his friends, and the greatest act in which Jesus effectively demonstrates his love is his death.
The third way in which Christ modeled perfect love is that he loved rightly. To explain this third way, Thomas appeals to the foundation of Christ’s friendship with his disciples, “since all friendship is based on some kind of sharing (for similarity is the cause of love).”73 The best kind of friendship is one in which this foundation is based on a similarity or share in the good— this is a friendship rightly formed. Christ, then, loved most rightly in that he “loved us as similar to himself by the grace of adoption, loving us in the light of this similarity in order to draw us to
God.”74 Thomas insists that in charity, one should love rightly by loving what pertains to God,
70. Keaty, “Thomas’s Authority,” 593. 71. Ioan. 13, lect. 7, n. 1838. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. Thomas recognizes this as the communicatio of friendship in the Summa, see ST II-II q. 22, a. 1. 74. Ibid. 90
rather than what pleasure or benefits the other might give. To quote Mathew Kauth again, “Christ loved in us a similitude, which he himself created, the grace of adoption given to us, for the purpose of drawing us closer to God.”75 Rather than loving the other for the pleasure or benefit that the other might bring, Christ calls his disciples to love one another rightly in charity, by loving what God has created in the other through a similitude of grace. The humanity of Christ allowed for a similitude by which a new friendship was established between Christ and man and additionally provided a model by which a friend of Christ is shown how to act. ii. John 15:13-16 “There is no greater love than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is about. I have called you friends, because I have disclosed to you everything that I heard from the Father. You did not choose me: I chose you.”
In his commentary on chapter 15, Thomas builds on the nature of Christ’s friendship with his disciples already established in chapter 13. Thomas argues that in chapter 13, Christ “urged us to love our neighbor, based on his example,” but in this passage, Christ shows his disciples
“the benefit conferred upon them which obliges them to imitate him, which is, that he has embraced them in his love.”76 For Thomas, Jesus’s words in chapter 15 further reveal the nature of charity by indicating the signs of this friendship and its cause.
Thomas identifies in John’s gospel two signs of this friendship in charity. The first sign is on the part of the disciples: they are friends of Christ if they keep his commandments. Thomas
75. Kauth, Divine and Human, 247. 76. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2010. 91
explains that those who are friends with God keep God’s commands because “by conferring his grace on them he helps them to keep them: for by loving us, God makes us love him.”77 While
Christ calls his friends to the difficult task of loving as Christ loved, this call to friendship is facilitated by God’s gift of grace to aid Christ’s friends in loving. The disciples are called, not solely to love Christ back, but are Christ’s friends only if they in turn are ready to make a gift of themselves in friendship to others.78
The second sign is on Christ’s part and is revealed in the first place when Christ states: “I no longer call you servants.” Thomas argues that servitude is opposed to friendship because a servant is a stranger to his master in that a servant, as Christ observes, does not know what his master is doing. What differentiates servitude and friendship is that the friend is a free person, acting “for the sake of himself, as for an end, and he acts by himself, because he is moved to the work by his own will.”79 The servant, however, does not act for the sake of self, but for the sake of the master. Anthony Keaty explains that “the friend of the master, unlike the servant, grasps the end and appreciates the value of the end for which the master acts;” and, therefore, “the friend of the master acts toward the master’s ends in a more fully voluntary manner than does the servant.”80 The friend of Christ does what Christ bids out of love, based in a free movement of the will in which the friend acts for herself. Further, the friend of Christ “does not act for the sake of himself, because charity does not seek its own,” but instead seeks “the interests of Jesus and the salvation of one’s neighbor.”81 The disciples of Christ obey Christ’s new commands, but not as unfree servants, but in an obedience that springs from love.
77. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2011. 78. Hughes, “Charity as Friendship,” 173. 79. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2015. 80. Keaty, “Thomas’s Authority,” 600. 81. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2015. 92
This sign of friendship on Christ’s side extends further in that Christ reveals what he has heard from the Father to the disciples. Thomas argues that “the true sign of friendship is that a friend reveals the secrets of his heart to his friend.”82 And thus, “since friends have one mind and heart, it does not seem that what one friend reveals to another is placed outside his own heart.”83
The intimacy of friendship creates confidence, so that friends reveal secrets to each other. Jesus’s disciples are now friends because Jesus has shared with his disciples what he has heard from the
Father.84 For Thomas, this secret knowledge that Jesus reveals to his friends is not an incidental bit of information, but rather is knowledge of the Son in his own essence.85 Matthew Levering explains that “since Christ is the Wisdom of God, his wisdom is the Trinity, and learning his wisdom, as his friend, means to share in the Trinitarian life” and thus Christ “reveals the Trinity to his friends. As incarnate Wisdom, he does so by teaching through his words and actions.”86
Through his word and deed, Christ reveals knowledge of his relationship to the Father to his disciples thereby establishing an intimacy and friendship.
For Thomas, God’s revelation of Himself through the Incarnation itself is linked to the friendship that Christ establishes. Thomas explains that “the reason is obvious why God will manifest himself to his own, and not to the world. It is because his own really have love, and it is love which distinguishes the saints from the world: ‘He hides the light from the proud. He shows
82. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2016. 83. Ibid. 84. Here Thomas is as close to St. Aelred on friendship as he will get. St. Aelred’s understanding of friendship emphasized the sharing of secrets. Nathan Lefler observes on this point that “while he clearly sees its importance for John’s theological vision, [Thomas] does not develop the idea elsewhere, either in connection to his definition of charity in terms of friendship or otherwise.” See Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 136. 85. Ioan. 15, lect. 3, n. 2017. Thomas has already established that Christ knows the Father perfectly: “He has received the entire nature of the Father perfectly, through an eternal generation, sees and comprehends totally.” See Ioan 6, lect. 5, n. 947. 86. Matthew Levering, “Does the Paschal Mystery Reveal the Trinity?,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, 89. 93
his friend that he owns it’ (Job 36:32).”87 The secrets of divine wisdom, for Thomas, are principally revealed to those who are united to God by love.88 What is known by the Son of the
Father is not accessible unless shared; once shared, this knowledge of the Father enables friendship by enkindling love and intimacy. William Young observes that “God’s revelation makes possible our reciprocation, as God wills that we should be saved in a manner that makes us worthy and capable of friendship with God” and the shift from servitude to friendship thus “is a change in the love between us.”89 Jesus’s revelation of the Father is the key component of the
Incarnation and further demonstrates the central importance of Christ’s friendship with his disciples.
For Thomas, John 15 also reveals the cause of this friendship to be entirely Christ. He reemphasizes the gratuitous quality of this friendship in that God loved us first. “In this friendship, it is Christ who reveals the secrets both of the Godhead and those secrets hidden in the hearts of men to themselves. This is characteristic of God alone.”90 The love Christ shares with the Father is one of equality. A human person sharing in this love in friendship is only possible because Christ offers it. William Young argues that in this passage “Thomas makes it clear that the love of Father and Son involves an equality of nature, whereas the love for the disciples is an adoptive love that proceeds by likeness . . . human participation is only possible on the basis of this communication of the triune love to us by the Son.”91 Christ’s choosing of the
87. Ioan. 14, lect. 6, n. 1949. 88. Ioan. 13, lect. 4, n. 1807. 89. William Young, The Politics of Praise: Naming God and Friendship in Aquinas and Derrida (New York: Rutledge, 2016), 111. 90. Kauth, Divine and Human, 233. 91. Young, Politics of Praise, 109. 94
disciples is the beginning of charity, the beginning of a possible friendship with God. Unlike all other kinds of friendship, it is God’s love alone that causes this friendship.
As with his lecture on chapter 13, Thomas once again in chapter 15 emphasizes Christ’s sacrifice of himself for his friends as demonstrating the efficacy of Christ’s love. To defend this teaching of Christ, Thomas appeals to an order of things to be loved, which begins with God, followed by one’s own soul, one’s neighbor and finally one’s own body.92 In this order, since one’s physical life is the best thing one possesses after the soul, “it is the greatest thing to expose it for the sake of your neighbor, and a sign of greater love.”93 Out of love for God, one should be willing to give one’s body for the sake of saving a neighbor. Viewing Christ’s death in terms of friendship, his death was significant as the greatest act of charity which turned sinners, the enemies of Christ, into friends. Thomas states that “Christ did not lay down his life for his enemies so that they would remain enemies, but to make them his friends.”94 In this way, it is possible to say that Christ laid down his life for his friends “not in the sense that they were friends who loved him, but rather were those whom he loved.”95 Jesus’s act demonstrated the greatest love in that he died so that others may be friends although currently enemies; Jesus, as
Thomas highlights from John’s gospel, had the greatest charity in part because he loved first.
Torrell observes that “since charity is friendship, if charity does not find friendship, it creates it.”96 God’s love is such that, in the face of hostility it can overcome evil with good. The death of
92. Ioan. 15, lect. 2, n. 2009. See also ST II-II q. 26. 93. Ibid. Of course, Thomas clarifies, one would never sacrifice the state of one’s soul for another person. 94. Ibid. Thomas refers to Romans 5:8, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” 95. Ibid. 96. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Christ and Spirituality in Thomas Aquinas, trans. Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 55. See also, Young, Politics of Praise, 125-6. 95
Christ is the perfect expression of charity, the giving of his body for the sake of another and in this case, for the sake of all sinners.
I. C. Concluding Observations on Friendship in a Soteriological Context.
With these seminal references to Christ as friend in John’s Gospel as well as Thomas’s explicit incorporation of friendship into his work on the missions in the Contra Gentiles, a few observations can be made regarding Thomas’s use of friendship within a soteriological context.
In both texts, Thomas employs the notion of friendship to understand the missions of the Son and the Spirit. More specifically, through the use of this concept of friendship, Thomas is able to develop the interrelatedness of the missions of Son and the Spirit as establishing a visibility to and intimacy with God and then enabling a human response to this offer of friendship by offering an example and a help. These texts reveal the importance that both Christ and the Spirit have in establishing friendship with God and the means by which this friendship is oriented toward bringing all of humanity back to God.
First, in both the Commentary and Contra Gentiles, the humanity of Christ is emphasized as a key element in God’s plan of redemption which leads people through the visibility of the incarnate Son made flesh back to the invisible Trinity. In the Commentary on John, Thomas states that it is by his human nature that “he is the mediator between God and us” and it is by his divine nature that “he is one God with the Father.”97 He continues: “Christ, considered as having a human nature, was not a mediator who never united us to God, like some mediators who never unite extremes. So, Christ joins us to the Father.”98 What is clear for Thomas in this passage on
97. Ioan. 16, lect. 6, n. 2138. 98. Ibid. 96
St. John is that Jesus saves humankind by establishing a new relationship between God and man by virtue of his human nature; likewise in the Contra Gentiles, the Incarnation was essential to provide a visibility of the divine and to establish a similitude. This new relationship, as Thomas identifies in both the Commentary and in the Contra Gentiles, is a friendship. His human nature, as Matthew Kauth observes, “is a bridge, not the destination, the mediator, not the mediated.”99
The very act of the Incarnation begins the salvific role of Christ whose human nature becomes the similitude by which a new relationship is established and Jesus can become friend.
The similitude of human nature shared by the incarnate Word and the rest of humanity allows for the unique role of Christ as friend, model, and teacher. Michael Sherwin observes that especially in the Commentary, “divine friendship is the context within which (1) God teaches the disciples, and (2) the disciples put this teaching into practice by teaching others.”100 Through the relationship of friendship, especially as seen in the Commentary, Christ is able to act as teacher and model for what friendship with God entails. The idea of Christ as model is confirmed in the
Contra Gentiles with direct reference to Jesus’s commandment to his friends; Thomas states that:
For man to be confirmed in virtue, it was thus necessary to receive from a God become man instruction and examples of virtue. Behold why the Lord Himself affirms in John’s Gospel (13:15): I have given you the example so that you may do as I have done for you.101
The friendship established by Christ is therefore unique to Christ and humanity. Guy Mansini argues that “insofar as he shares the revelation of the Father through his humanity with [the disciples] . . . there is therefore something distinctive about this friendship, which our friendship
99. Kauth, Divine and Human, 236. 100. Sherwin, “Christ the Teacher,” 191. 101. SCG IV 54, 2928. See also Torrell, Spiritual Master, 113. 97
with Father and Spirit does not share.”102 When Christ calls his disciples his friends, he does this as man. It it through this unique friendship that Jesus shares the revelation of the Father; this friendship with God allows the disciples to benefit from divine revelation.103 Once hearers of divine revelation, the apostles are given a model of perfect charity in Christ whose sacrificial action on the cross sets the precedent for offering oneself as a sacrifice in charity, as seen in the
Contra Gentiles.
Secondly, in both the Contra Gentiles and in the Commentary, Thomas connects the mission of the Spirit to what Christ has established with the Incarnation through the concept of friendship. In the Contra Gentiles, as mentioned, Thomas consistently uses friendship to characterize the action of the Spirit in the believer: the gifts and effects of the Spirit in the soul enable and enliven a response to God in friendship. This indwelling of the Spirit is a product of both the work of the Spirit and the Word in their redemptive missions. In the Commentary on
John, Thomas succinctly draws the connection between the two, stating:
The Holy Spirit was not given before the passion because, since it is a gift, it should not be given to enemies, but to friends. But we were enemies. Thus it was necessary that first the victim be offered on the altar of the cross, and enmity be destroyed in his flesh, so that by this we might be reconciled to God by the death of his Son; and then, having been made friends, we could receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.104
Christ’s great act of charity on the cross, which was done for his enemies that they might be friends, is necessarily followed by the gift of the Spirit so that the believer can respond to
Christ’s gesture of friendship.
102. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 137. 103. Bonino, “Role of the Apostles,” 328. He states that, “it is the friendship that they have with God that explains why Christ specially manifests himself to the apostles. In fact, charity alone renders man apt to benefit from divine revelation.” 104. Ioan. 7, lect. 5, n. 1096. 98
The Spirit’s work enables the believer to be transformed interiorly to live out the life of friendship as Christ modeled and commanded. Serge-Thomas Bonino argues that for Thomas, the Spirit enlightens and purifies the heart, readying the soul for friendship with God, not “by bringing to them new objective knowledge,” but “by assuring their personal subjective assimilation to the teachings of Christ.”105 As Thomas states in the passage quoted above, the gift of the Spirit is oriented to and develops the mission that Christ had established in friendship.
Matthew Kauth observes that “what the Son has, he gives to us as friend to be held in common by the gift of the Spirit.”106 In chapters 21 and 22 of the Contra Gentiles, Thomas reveals exactly how the gift of friendship is held in common by the believer through the indwelling of the Spirit.
Thirdly, the mission of the Spirit not only transforms the soul of the individual believer but unites all of Christ’s friends into the one community of charity. In his Commentary, Thomas emphasizes the command of mutual friendship that Christ gives to all his disciples, that beyond mere well-wishing, all the disciples were called to be unified with each other in their friendship with God. All of Christ’s friends are enabled by the Spirit to live like Christ and are bound by a common friendship into a true community. Louis Hughes observes that “what is striking about divine friendship as found in Jn. 15 is that it can only be received by men as a group, as a community whose members are willing to love one another.”107 The Spirit enlivens the entire
Church to be united in charity. The mutual love of friendship that is charity binds the community of disciples as friends of Christ. Frederick Bauerschmidt observes that in Thomas’s Commentary on John, “the unity in love of the community of disciples is itself a preaching of God’s nature as
105. Bonino, “Role of the Apostles,” 331. 106. Kauth, Divine and Human, 278. 107. Hughes, “Charity as Friendship,” 173. 99
a community of love. If the communal life of disciples as unity in charity is to be a preaching of
God’s nature as love, then it must be an empirical reality, discernible through and fostered by concrete practices.”108 The visible markers of charity are for Thomas found in the sacramental life of the Church and in the works of charity by the friends of Christ.
Both of these texts bring to the fore the nature of the new relationship of friendship established by the missions, showing the importance of each mission for this friendship and how they interrelate. This friendship is something new, formed from the missions themselves. Guy
Mansini makes a valuable contribution on this point, stating that “charity is friendship with God.
And God is love. But God is not friendship.”109 Instead, friendship for Thomas is what God institutes as the means for salvation. Mansini continues: “for there to be friendship with God there must be created persons, and, in the actual order of redemption, a created humanity assumed by a divine Person. Charity names the abundance of divine love for what is beyond
God.”110 Charity as friendship with God is enacted through the economic missions of the Trinity, first by the Incarnation of the Word, who by a similitude of human nature initiates friendship, and the Spirit, who by his indwelling in the soul, enables a human response to this offer of friendship.
II. Soteriology of the Summa Theologiae
As has been demonstrated, Thomas incorporates the concept of friendship in select writings to characterize the new relationship with God established by the redemptive work of the
Son and Spirit. Thomas’s theological corpus culminates with the writing of the Summa
108. Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, “That the Faithful Become the Temple of God” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, 302. 109. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 138. 110. Ibid. 100
theologiae, whose hundreds of questions were written over the course of the last several years of
Thomas’s life, from 1265-1273.111 While the plan and overall purpose of the Summa are both the subject of debate, he intimates his general objective from the outset, stating that he seeks to
“pursue the things held by sacra doctrina” in order to instruct others.112 The transmission of knowledge of God that occurs in sacra doctrina leads Thomas to structure his Summa according to speculative knowledge rather than according to how it is discovered: beginning first with the nature and existence of God and subsequently the procession of creatures from God (Prima
Pars), followed by the movement of the rational creature toward God (Secunda Pars), and finally treating Christ, “who, according to his humanity, is for us the way that leads toward God
(Tertia Pars).”113 Although writing on the heels of the Summa contra Gentiles and partly contemporary with the writing of his Commentary on John, Thomas makes a noticeable shift in the Summa in terms of how and when he incorporates the notion of friendship into his theology.
His primary and most exhaustive use of friendship in the Summa remains in the context of the supernatural virtue of charity, as established in the previous chapter.
In the soteriological contexts in the Summa, however, friendship is not directly incorporated as a theme, either to qualify the nature of the missions of the Son and Spirit or to characterize Christ as friend, but only briefly to discuss the sacraments of the Eucharist and
111. Torrell, Person and His Work, 333. 112. ST I Prologue. At its outset, Thomas states it is written for “the training of beginners,” although the exact level of these “beginners” is certainly unclear. For a brief summary, see Davies, Summa Theologiae, 8-13; Torrell, Person and His Work, 145-148; Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, 216-219. 113. Torrell, Person and His Work, 148. Torrell is paraphrasing Thomas himself in ST I q. 2, a. 1 preface. This is standardly presented in terms of the exitus and reditus scheme proposed by M.-D. Chenu, in which the Prima Pars is concerned with the emanation of things from God and rest of the Summa with their return to God. See M.-D. Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1964), chapter 11. While pervasive, this theme is not considered to be the sole means by which one can, or should, view the Summa. See Torrell, Person and His Work, 152-153; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure and Reception (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005); Davies, Summa Theologiae, 14-16. 101
penance at the end of the Summa. At least on the part of the mission of the Spirit, as will be argued, the mission of the Spirit can be seen at work in the Secunda Pars of the Summa, where
Thomas elaborates on the life of grace in which charity is characterized as a friendship. For the mission of the Son, Thomas does not address Christ as a friend as he does in the Commentary, nor does he use friendship explicitly as a way to understand the fittingness of the Incarnation as he does in the Contra Gentiles. This absence of “Christ as friend” is all the more surprising when considering that the Tertia Pars and the Commentary are contemporaries.114 Presuming no major oversight, it would seem that Thomas did not intend to continue his use of friendship as a soteriological theme in his work on Christ in the Summa. The question guiding this current section is simply that if Jesus is not to be understood in a central way as “friend” in his saving mission, then how does Thomas understand this saving mission instead? The goal of the present section is to offer a brief survey of Thomas’s mature soteriology as presented in the Summa’s
Tertia Pars, highlighting the sporadic instances of Thomas’s uses of friendship as they occur.115
The question of Thomas’s incorporation of friendship into his understanding of the
Spirit’s mission can be situated within a larger criticism of Thomas for what has been considered a lack of explicit development of the Spirit’s mission in his Summa.116 While three important questions in the Prima Pars are assigned to the role of the Spirit in His relation in the Trinity, there seems to be an absence of questions directly treating the Spirit’s mission itself. Many
114. Torrell estimates the dates for the John commentary, as previously stated, to be between 1270 and 1272, and the Tertia Pars beginning in 1271-1272. See Torrell, Person and His Work, 333 and 339. 115. Many scholars have written at length on Thomas’s soteriology, see Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “‘Bearing the Marks of Christ’s Passion’: Aquinas’s Soteriology,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, eds. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 277-302; Aidan Nichols, “St Thomas Aquinas on the Passion of Christ: A Reading of the Summa Theologiae IIIa, Q. 46,” Scottish Journal of Theology 43 (1990), 447-459; Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 7. 116. A presentation of this issue can be found in Torrell, Spiritual Master, ch. 7. 102
modern authors, in defense of Thomas, argue for a pervasive, albeit underplayed, role of the
Spirit in the entirety of the Summa. Gilles Emery for instance, argues that in the Summa “perhaps more than elsewhere, theology is closely linked to the economy, because the Spirit is at the source of Christian life and of ecclesial unity” in that “the ground of Christian existence, and the bond of believers, lives in the Charity who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”117 The
Secunda Pars, which treats the moral life, grace, and the various aspects of the human person, is in a sense entirely reliant on the transforming power of the mission of the Spirit, sent in an invisible mission in the soul.118
While not explicitly drawn, the effects of the Spirit are found throughout the Secunda
Pars of the Summa and are seen in a particular way with Thomas’s treatment of the supernatural virtues. These infused virtues reach their culmination with charity which, as Brian Davies recognizes, “represents what Aquinas has been working toward all along” in the second part.119
Charity, as developed in the previous chapter, arises in the soul by the grace of the Holy Spirit and is itself a share in “that infinite charity which is the Holy Spirit.”120 Although not addressed and incorporated as explicitly in the Summa as it could be, Thomas does nevertheless develop the mission of the Spirit and its effects throughout the Summa and in a particular way in the Secunda
Secundae, which culminates in the discussion of the Spirit’s indwelling in the soul of those who are friends with God.
117. Gilles Emery, O.P., The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 219. 118. Emery, Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 363. Emery states that “the theory of the economy of grace, to be elaborated later in the Prima, in the Second, and in the Tertia Pars, is given its groundwork when Thomas expounds what he technically calls the ‘invisible mission’ [of the Spirit] and the ‘visible mission’ [of the Son].” 119. Brian Davies, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 239. 120. ST II-II q. 24 a. 8c. 103
II. A. Thomas’s Tertia Pars: Christ as the way back to God.
The mission of the Son is studied in the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae and contains a wealth of Thomas’s mature soteriology. At the outset of the Summa, Thomas views this last part as an essential piece of redemption in that it examines “Christ, who as man, is our way back to God.”121 The mission of the Son begins the return to God and this return is continued by the Spirit through the Church and her sacraments. In this way, Christ’s mission is relegated to the focus of the final part of the Summa, not for lack of importance, but to highlight
Christ’s remedy for sin after considering the nature of the human person.122 Sin destroys charity and on account of this, the soul has “suffered the loss of its brightness;” mankind needs both to address the punishment of sin and also to seek restoration of what has been lost.123 Thomas therefore begins his final part of the Summa stating that Christ “showed Himself to us as the way of truth through which it is possible for us now to come to resurrection and to beatitude in eternal life,” and so Thomas’s investigation must continue “by way of the Savior of all things, considered in Himself, then by way of the benefits with which he has graced the human race.”124
In this third part, Thomas first treats the speculative part of the mission of the Son, first studying
“the mystery of the Incarnation itself,” before turning to “those things which were done and suffered by the Savior, God incarnate.”125 The Tertia Pars ends with the ‘benefits’ of Christ’s saving mission in his treatment of the sacraments. As stated, Thomas will not make explicit use
121. ST I, q. 2 preface. 122. Davies, Summa Theologiae, 291. 123. ST I-II q. 87, a. 6c. 124. ST III Prologue. 125. Ibid. For a brief but helpful overview of the Tertia Pars, as well as a comparison to the Christological portions of the Contra Gentiles, see Joseph Wawrykow, “Hypostatic Union” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, eds. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 232-233. Wawrykow also observes here that in the second main part of the treatise on Christ, Thomas relies on the Synoptics to retell the story of Jesus, and that the Gospel of Matthew is “especially favored.” 104
of a notion of friendship either to understand the fittingness of the Incarnation or to characterize
Christ’s relationships as man, but will once again appeal to a notion of friendship in the subsequent section on the sacraments. A brief survey of the Christological section will outline
Thomas’s mature soteriology before turning to Thomas’s use of friendship in regard to the sacraments.
Thomas opens his study of the Incarnation in the Tertia Pars with a question on whether it was fitting that the Incarnation occur. Similar to the corresponding section of the Contra
Gentiles, Thomas appeals to the nature of the human person to learn through sense experience, that, “by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known.”126 While in the
Contra Gentiles, the fittingness of the Incarnation in part relied on this visibility of the Son for the purpose of establishing a foundation for friendship, Thomas here argues that the visibility is fitting for the purpose of God revealing his goodness. He states that, “it belongs to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others.”127 Goodness seeks union with others and the highest
Good will communicate itself “in the highest manner to the creature” which is brought about by
God becoming man.128 For Thomas, the visibility of the Son’s Incarnation is fitting as a way to show God’s goodness to mankind in a tangible way.
In the second article of this first question, Thomas argues further that the Incarnation was most fitting for its purpose of restoring humanity from sin on account of ten reasons, five of these reasons relating to movement in the good, while the second five relate to movement away from evil.129 Although Thomas listed friendship as a reason for the Incarnation in the Contra
126. ST III q. 1 a. 1c. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid. See also Davies, Summa Theologiae, 296-297. 129. ST III q. 1 a. 2c. It should be observed here that Thomas is asking a slightly different question than in the Contra Gentiles. Thomas is specifically asking about the restoration from sin. The question of fittingness 105
Gentiles, here Thomas does not mention friendship, but does number “charity,” along with the other supernatural virtues, as enkindled by the Incarnation in its furtherance in the good.130 For
Thomas in the Summa, the heart of the fittingness of the Incarnation is that the work of the
Incarnation was specifically ordained as a remedy for the unique issue of sin just as it was fitting that the second person of the Trinity be the one to assume this human nature.131 This fittingness derives from the unique role of the Word, who stands to all of creation as “exemplar likeness,” but in a particular agreement with human nature “since the Word is a concept of the eternal
Wisdom from Whom all man’s wisdom is derived.”132 Thus on account of this likeness and on account of the ultimate goal of beatitude that God has ordained for humankind, it is fitting that the Word, “Who is the natural Son,” should share “this likeness of sonship by adoption” with humankind.133
Thomas’s first major grouping of Christological questions addresses the ontological makeup of the hypostatic union which has significant soteriological implications. The hypostatic union brings such unification between the Word and humanity that Thomas states that the eternal person of the Word is understood “not only as the subject of the divine but also as the subject of the human nature.”134 This intimacy brings a grace on account of the union with the Word such that his humanity can be referred to as the “conjoined instrument” of his divinity.135 Joseph discussed in the Contra Gentiles, on the other hand, seems to be a more positive one about the intended destiny of mankind, rather than about freeing us from sin. 130. Ibid. 131. ST III q. 1 a. 3c and q. 3 a. 8c. 132. ST III q. 3 a. 8c. 133. Ibid. 134. ST III q. 2a. 2c. 135. ST III q. 18 a. 1c. Also, ST III q. 62 a. 5c. The Contra Gentiles also has an early notion of instrumentality, not as fully developed as it is in the Summa. Thomas’s development of “instrumentality” is traced in William D. Lynn, S.J., Christ’s Redemptive Merit: The Nature of Its Causality According to Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1962); see also, Paul Crowley, S.J., “Instrumentum Divinitatis in Thomas Aquinas: Recovering the Divinity of Christ,” Theological Studies 52 (1991). 106
Wawrykow argues that this identification is significant for Thomas for two principal reasons, namely, that he can “reinforce the insight that the human nature is not the divine nature” and likewise make the point that “Jesus’s human nature is in the service of the divine: it is the medium through which the divine Word works out the salvation of other humans.”136 The divine
Person of the Son can use the human nature that he has assumed to carry out the divine mission, not as one might make use of an axe as an instrument, but according to the grace of union which binds these two natures in the one person of Christ. Thomas states that “the humanity of Christ is an instrument of the Godhead—not indeed, an inanimate instrument, which nowise acts, but is merely acted upon; but an instrument animated by a rational soul, which is so acted upon as to act.”137 Christ’s human nature has its own proper activity and works freely in accord with, and as an instrument of, the divine will.
Further, the hypostatic union requires that, in addition to the grace of union that enables the Divine Person of Christ to make use of his human nature for salvation, Christ have additional graces as human. For, Thomas argues, Christ as man “is the Mediator of God and men,” and thus
“it behooved Him to have grace which would overflow upon others.”138 In the distinction of the two natures, both the divine and human retain their proper form and powers by which they operate. Further, if Christ’s humanity is not his divinity, his human nature requires grace so that the soul may be raised and so Christ must be a recipient of habitual grace. Never sinning, Christ received an “influx of Divine grace” and the perfection of all knowledge and virtues.139 And yet,
136. Joseph Wawrykow, “Grace,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, eds. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 213. 137. ST III q. 7, a. 1 ad 3. See Crowley, “Instrumentum Divinitatis,” 465. 138. ST III q. 7 a. 2c. Christ conveys this grace to others as “Head of the Church.” See ST III q. 8, a. 5c. 139. ST III q. 7, a. 1c. See all of Question 7 for the specific graces and virtues which Thomas ascribes to the person of Christ. 107
on account of the union with the Word, Jesus as man was unlike other human persons in that he possessed all the virtues in perfect form as well as a fullness of grace. Thomas argues that Christ as true exemplar for all humans has a unique grace in order that he can merit salvation for all of mankind.140 With this grace, all that Christ did and underwent during his life was for our salvation.
Thomas’s Tertia Pars reaches a soteriological peak with questions 46-49 which treat the
Passion and death of Christ. In question 48, Thomas addresses the efficacy of the passion under several different considerations: merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption, and causality. Under these various aspects, Thomas explains how Christ makes the process of his death a meritorious, voluntary and charitable act bringing reconciliation between God and humankind. In doing so,
Thomas presents his most broad account of the efficiency of Christ’s death, incorporating and holding together various soteriological themes from the tradition.141 Rather than giving a comprehensive account of Thomas’s understanding of the redemptive work of Christ, a look at the most pertinent major themes can reveal Thomas’s major soteriological aim in the Summa.
In the first place, Thomas treats the merit of Christ’s passion. Grace was bestowed on
Christ by virtue of the hypostatic union. Further, grace was bestowed on him “not only as an
140. Torrell argues that the moral exemplarity of the person of Christ is less emphasized in Thomas’s systematic works but is a central homiletic theme for Thomas and is present throughout his scriptural commentaries. Torrell makes reference to Thomas’s commentary on John’s account of the foot washing in Chapter 13 where Thomas states that “the example of a mere human being would not be an adequate model for the entire human race to imitate, both because the human race cannot take everything into account [whether about life or about everything good], and because human reason errs in what it does not take into account. And so there was given to us the example of the Son of God, which cannot err and is adequate for all situations.” In contrast, Thomas only briefly mentions Christ’s moral example in the Summa in ST III q. 1 a. 2c. See Torell, Spiritual Master, 87-88. 141. These many different soteriological themes that Thomas obtains from Scripture and the Church Fathers should not be reduced to any single paradigm. Although the present task requires a focus on Christ’s death as satisfaction, Thomas presents this as one of multiple soteriological images. See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo- Drama Volume IV: The Action (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 262-266; Jeremy Wilkins, “Why Two Divine Missions? Development in Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012), 19; Adam Johnson, “A Fuller Account: The Role of Fittingness in the Development of Thomas Aquinas’ Doctrine of the Atonement,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12 (2010), 307; Peterson, “Penalty and Atonement,” 271. 108
individual but inasmuch as He is the Head of the Church, so that it might overflow into His members.”142 Christ has received grace through the hypostatic union not only for himself but for all people as head of the Church, which for Thomas means that Christ’s redemptive works can merit for others. Echoing what he has elsewhere stated in regard to friendship, Thomas states,
“Christ’s works are referred to Himself and to His members in the same way as the works of any other man in a state of grace are referred to himself.”143 Although he possessed this grace from conception, this grace was not conferrable to others on account of human sin and so Christ’s passion has a “special effect” in freeing humankind from sin and enabled the reception of this grace. 144 Brandon Peterson observes that for Thomas, “although Jesus Christ was meriting grace for us from the very beginning of his Incarnation, the flow of grace was ‘blocked’ by an
‘obstruction’, namely sin, which the passion served to remove.”145 Christ’s death plays a crucial role in the reception of grace in that Christ freely makes a choice of obedience to the Father out of charity, thereby making reception of grace possible through the meritorious actions of
Christ.146
In the second article of question 48, Thomas treats the notion of satisfaction as an effect of Christ’s passion. Appropriating Anselm’s theory of atonement, Thomas considers the death of
142. ST III q. 48 a. 1c. 143. Ibid. 144. ST III q. 48 a. 1 ad 1, 2. This forms the foundation for understanding how the believer is said to be able to merit. For a detailed presentation that traces Thomas’s development of merit, see Joseph Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); for a brief summary of Wawrykow’s understanding of merit, see Young, Politics of Praise, 102-107. 145. Peterson, “Penalty and Atonement,” 273. See also ST III q. 48 a. 1 ad 2; W. Jerome Bracken, “Of What Benefit to Himself Was Christ’s Suffering? Merit in Aquinas’s Theology of the Passion,” The Thomist 65 (2001), 390. 146. The general point made by Rik Van Nieuwenhove in his assessment of Thomas’s question 48. See Van Nieuwenhove, “‘Marks of Christ’s Passion,” 277-302. 109
Christ a means for making satisfaction for humanity’s incurred debt of sin.147 This notion of satisfaction is earlier framed in the Secunda Pars where Thomas treats the notion of sin. Sin, as a violation of God’s order, must be righted by the sinner by some kind of penal compensation, either willingly (as a satisfactory punishment) or unwillingly (as a punishment simply), to restore the equality of justice. The willing punishment is objectively better in that one “takes upon himself the punishment” and “bears patiently the punishment which God inflicts on him” which brings union with God and eradicates the stain of sin.148 In this case of satisfaction, although sinless, Christ willingly takes on satisfactory punishment for all of mankind through his passion.
Thomas explains that this is possible because the unique quality of satisfactory punishment is that it can be borne by another, if the two are united “as one person by the bond of love.”149 As voluntary in a certain sense, satisfactory punishment can be transferable between those who are united as one in love, which can motivate a person to make satisfaction out of identification with one’s friend, the offender. And, because of the friend’s closeness, the satisfaction of the friend of the offender can become valid and acceptable in the eyes of the victim. Christ’s act of
147. Thomas appropriates Anselm’s understanding of redemption but not without making his own modifications. Many scholars have written on this issue, who judge him more or less successful in adapting what some consider to be a juridical approach by Anselm. See Balthasar, Theo-Drama Volume IV, 262-266; J. Patout Burns, “The Concept of Satisfaction in Medieval Redemption Theory,” Theological Studies 36, no. 2 (1975), 285-304; Rachel Erdman, “Sacrifice as Satisfaction, Not Substitution: Atonement in the Summa Theologiae,” Anglican Theological Review 96, no. 3 (2014), 461-480; W. Jerome Bracken, "Thomas Aquinas and Anselm's Satisfaction Theory,” Angelicum 62 (1985), 503-530; Putt, “Foundational Efficiency of Love,” 145-155; Johnson, “Role of Fittingness,” 310-316. 148. ST I-II q. 86, a. 6c. 149. ST III q. 48 a. 2 ad 1. Gerald O’Collins argues that this satisfactory punishment still has penal elements within it that mark Thomas’s approach with retributive and vindictive elements. O’Collins argues that Thomas’s construal of satisfaction along these lines opens the door to later problematic atonement theories, such as penal and substitutionary theories. See Gerald O’Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 136. A critical response to O’Collins was made by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, see “Marks of Christ’s Passion,” passim; Rik Van Nieuwenhove, “St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas on ‘Satisfaction’: Or how Catholic and Protestant Understandings of the Cross Differ,” Angelicum 80 (2003): 159-76. 110
satisfaction can be seen in this context because it was a free act of love in the will—in this it has its power and efficacy.
For Thomas, the voluntary nature of the satisfaction made by Christ becomes essential to the act of satisfaction. In this act, when what is required is that one “offers something which the offended one loves equally or even more than he detested the offense,” Christ will offer his suffering and death, done out of love and obedience.150 For Thomas, what satisfies for human sin in the passion and death of Christ is not the suffering in itself, but the magnitude of the love with which Christ went to his death. Thomas states that “Christ gave more to God than was required to compensate for the offense of the whole human race” because “of the exceeding charity from which He suffered.”151 Christ’s suffering and death pay the penalty for original and personal sins, but it is his personal act of love and obedience that satisfy for the original disobedience. Because
Christ could offer his life of perfect obedience to the offended, Christ’s passion was a
“superabundant atonement” for the human race.152 It is the voluntary action and the love present in this action, not simply suffering, that brings reconciliation of humans and God, because Jesus, in the bond of love, atones for others. Christ’s satisfaction thereby restores humankind to a lost state of dignity, a friendship with God.
The final article of Question 48, on the instrumental causality of Christ’s humanity, connects the saving death of Christ to its effects in Question 49. Thomas states that “all Christ’s actions and sufferings operate instrumentally in virtue of his Godhead for the salvation of men,”
150. ST III q. 48 a. 3c. For Thomas, suffering is the matter of the act of satisfaction. Thomas argues that, “the penalties one suffers for another’s sin are the matter, as it were, of the satisfaction for that sin; but the principle is the habit of soul, whereby one is inclined to wish to satisfy for another, and from which the satisfaction has its efficacy, for satisfaction would not be efficacious unless it proceeded from charity.” ST III q. 14 a. 1 ad1. 151. ST III q. 48 a. 2. Thomas additionally argues here that the dignity of his life and the extent of the passion contribute to his satisfaction for sin. 152. ST III q. 48 a. 2c. Also in SCG IV ch 54, 9. 111
and so, “we are cleansed of sin by Christ’s charity, his obedience and by the efficient cause of his flesh as the instrument of salvation.”153 The enormous value of Christ’s sacrifice is such that by his passion all can participate in its saving effects. Thomas states that Christ’s voluntary suffering
“was such a good act that, because of its being found in human nature, God was appeased for every offense of the human race with regard to those who are made one with the crucified
Christ” and this good act can be “applied to us even through faith, that we may share in its fruits.”154 Christ’s sacrifice was found acceptable on account of Christ’s charity and so it is by charity that believers are joined to Christ and receive the effects of his work done on our behalf.
Rik Van Nieuwenhove argues that for Thomas, “the merit of Christ’s satisfaction is derived from his love and obedience: through identification with Christ’s redemptive work and by sharing in his charity, we become utterly transformed and become part of him.”155 Thomas describes the sharing in Christ’s charity as conforming believers to the one Body of Christ: “Christ’s satisfaction works its effect in us inasmuch as we are incorporated with Him, as the members with their head.”156 The efficacy of Christ’s redemptive work in the Passion continues through the gift of the Spirit which is mediated through the Church and in a particular way through the sacraments.
II. B. Thomas’s Tertia Pars: Humanity’s Return to God through the Sacraments.
The final sections of the Tertia Pars treat the sacramental life of the Church. With the placement of these questions on the sacraments, Thomas intends to connect life in the Church to the saving action of Christ. The location of the sacraments at the end of the Summa, as Liam
153. ST III q. 49 a. 1c. 154. ST III q. 49 a. 4c., a. 1 ad 5. 155. Van Nieuwenhove, “Marks of Christ’s Passion,” 290. 156. ST III q. 49 a. 3 ad 3. 112
Walsh observes, is for Thomas the “ultimate concretizing of God’s action, in Christ and the
Spirit, on the universe God has created,” in that “they bring to fulfillment at the end of human history the human moral striving for blessedness, in which all that God has made is brought back to God.”157 Thomas’s sacramental theology here is not simply an elongation of his Christological treatise, but speaks to the role of the Spirit in the life of the Church and of the individual believer.158 The sacraments “derive their efficacy from” Christ and are the “sign of a sacred reality that is acting to sanctify man.”159 The Word, Thomas states, is “the author of sanctification” because he gives the Spirit.160 Christ possessed the Spirit and in baptism “the fulness of grace and virtues flows from Christ the Head to all His members.”161 The grace of the
Holy Spirit, which enables one to respond to God in friendship, communicates the merits of
Christ’s passion to members of the Church.162 Beginning with baptism, the sacraments become the way in which one is united to Christ through the community of the Church and begins a return to God. The sacraments function as instrumental causes of salvation through which what
157. Liam Walsh, “Sacraments,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, eds. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 328. 158. Many modern scholars stress the personalist, existential emphasis of Thomas in his work on the sacraments. See Liam Walsh, “The Divine and the Human in St. Thomas’s Theology of Sacraments,” in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris: image et message de saint Thomas d’Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneutiques et doctrinales: hommage au professeur Jean-Pierre Torrell OP à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire, ed. Carlos-Josaphat Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg, Suisse: Editions universitaires, 1993), 321-354; Colman O’Neill, Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the Sacraments (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983). 159. ST III q. 60 prologue, q. 60 a. 2c. See also ST III q. 8, a. 1 ad 1. Jeremy Wilkins argues that for Thomas, it is from the hypostatic union itself that the sacraments arise; he states: Christ “is the principal cause of the interior operation of grace in virtue of his divinity” and “by his humanity, which is a conjoined instrument, he is also the principal minister of the sacraments.” Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 18. 160. ST I q. 43 a. 7c. 161. ST III q. 69 a. 4c. Jesus gives the Spirit because he is the only one who can, having possessed the plenitude of the Spirit. Baptism for Thomas becomes the essential start in that by baptism, “man is made conformable to Christ’s passion and resurrection, in so far as he dies to sin and begins to live anew unto righteousness.” ST III q. 66 a. 2c. See also Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 18. 162. Thomas Harmon, “The Sacramental Consummation of the Moral Life According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” New Blackfriars 91, n. 1094 (2010), 479. 113
Christ has merited is applied to believers.163 All the sacraments, and particularly the Eucharist and Penance, are an integral piece of the soteriological picture that Thomas constructs in his
Summa, and Thomas will draw out the soteriological implications of the Eucharist and penance through the use of the concept of friendship.
II. B. 1. The Eucharist as the Sacrament of Friendship
Thomas relies on the notion of friendship to understand the unique nature of the sacrament of the Eucharist among the other sacraments and additionally to understand how
Christ is present in the Eucharist. To do this, Thomas emphasizes union as a key characteristic of friendship; union of love between friends extends to a desire to dwell, to be physically present, with one another. In question 75, in which he presents his understanding of the real presence,
Thomas appeals to Aristotle’s characteristic of living with one’s friends in order to emphasize that Christ lived with his friends. And yet, Thomas argues, Christ continues to live with his friends in that even now, “in our pilgrimage He does not deprive us of His bodily presence” but
“unites us with Himself in this sacrament through the truth of His body and blood.”164 With the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Christ’s presence is not denied to his friends, even after his death. For Thomas, part of the suitability of the real presence in the Eucharist is that Christ can continue to be present to his friends, to all those who have been established as friends in baptism.
The Eucharist and baptism are the “principal sacraments” in their unique unitive functions.165 Through baptism, one becomes a member of the Church and is “incorporated with
163. ST III q. 49 a. 1 ad 4; Harmon, “Sacramental Consummation,” 477. Of course, sacraments are the ordinary means by which grace is conferred on believers, but not the only way. 164. ST III q. 75 a. 1. 165. ST III q. 62 a. 5c. 114
Christ.”166 According to Thomas the unity of those incorporated into the Body of Christ in the sacrament of baptism is ordained to the Eucharist as its end.167 The Eucharist not only causes grace, but additionally contains “Christ himself substantively.”168 Because Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, Thomas argues that the Eucharist becomes “the sign of supreme charity, and the uplifter of our hope, from such familiar union of Christ with us.”169 The true union with Christ occurs in the sacrament of the Eucharist in a particular way through his death. Christ’s greatest saving act for his friends occurs through his sacrifice on the cross and therefore, in a truly unique way, the Eucharist is a sacrament of friendship between Christ and his Church.
In its relationship to the saving work of Christ on the cross, the Eucharist can be distinguished from the rest of the sacraments, even baptism. Thomas draws the distinction that
“baptism is the sacrament of Christ's death and Passion, according as a man is born anew in
Christ in virtue of His Passion,” but the Eucharist is “the sacrament of Christ's Passion according as a man is made perfect in union with Christ Who suffered.”170 Thomas can conclude that in a particular way the bond of friendship is perfected in the Eucharist because it unites the friend of
Christ specifically to Christ as friend in his saving act on the cross. Hence, Thomas states, “as
Baptism is called the sacrament of Faith, which is the foundation of the spiritual life, so the
Eucharist is termed the sacrament of Charity, which is the bond of perfection.”171 The unity that occurs in the sacrament for Thomas is explained well by Matthew Kauth; he states that the
Eucharist is the “sacrament par excellence of Divine friendship” because:
166. ST III q. 62 a. 2c. 167. ST III q. 65 a. 3c. 168. ST III q. 65 a. 3c. For Thomas, all of the sacraments create a visible community whose purpose is to mediate participation in Christ’s passion. All the sacraments therefore contain a certain instrumental power which is a share of Christ’s power, but only the Eucharist contains Christ Himself substantially. 169. Ibid. 170. ST III q. 73 a. 3 ad 3. 171. ibid. 115
Nothing so displays God’s love for us as the Son’s Incarnation and Passion, which are brought to us in the holy Eucharist; no act is more beneficent than to give one’s life for one’s friends, and such an act is brought to us in the Holy Eucharist; no communicatio is more intimate and radical than the grace of the Spirit and communion with the Body and Blood of the Lord, which effect in the recipient an increase of charity.172
Baptism allows for the friendship with God to be possible, but through the Eucharist a deeper union in charity becomes possible.
II. B. 2. Penance as a Sacrament of Reconciliation between Friends
The other important incorporation of the notion of friendship that has a soteriological significance within the context of the sacraments occurs with penance. Both the saving work of
Christ and the sacrament of penance rely on notions of satisfaction.173 In a general sense, justice demands a satisfaction for offenses, as mentioned in the previous section. Christ’s satisfaction in the passion is achieved on account of the work of God as incarnate who, through his human nature as an instrument, offers satisfaction for sin. Thomas argues that as a result of this action,
“faith requires that [the penitent] should seek to be justified from his sins through the power of
Christ's Passion which operates in the sacraments of the Church.”174 In the case of sacramental satisfaction, satisfaction will occur through the friendship with God that Christ’s saving action brings in order to amend for one’s personal offenses against God.
Christ’s salvific work creates a foundation of friendship and for this reason a certain type of justice after wrongdoing is required. Charity requires justice because as a friendship it requires equality. One cannot in charity commit a sin against God and not need to make the friendship right again; without making the wrong right, an obstacle impedes the friendship. Thomas states
172. Kauth, Divine and Human, 289. 173. This sacrament also relies on the contrition and the confession of the penitent. See ST III q. 90 a. 1c. 174. ST III q. 84 a. 5 ad 2. 116
that “wherefore as the injury inflicted entailed of itself an inequality of justice, and consequently an inequality opposed to friendship, so satisfaction brings back directly equality of justice, and consequently equality of friendship.”175 In friendship, strict justice is not required. Thomas states that “in giving honor to one's parents or to the gods, as indeed the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii,
14), it is impossible to repay them measure for measure, but it suffices that man repay as much as he can,” and just so friendship “does not demand measure for measure, but what is possible.”176
Strict justice is not sought among friends because of the union of love that binds the friends together; nevertheless, justice is needed to repair the relationship.
The atonement that occurs in penance is based on charity, on the love of friendship, out of which the reparation is sought. Thomas states, in satisfaction made to God, “the equality is based, not on equivalence but rather on God's acceptation,” so that “although the offense be already removed by previous contrition, the works of satisfaction must be acceptable to God, and for this they are dependent on charity.”177 Because Christians are bonded to Christ in charity, satisfaction for sin is an act of reconciliation between friends who are released from the need to make payment in full for the wrongdoing of sin.178 The efficacy of the sacrament lies in the foundation of friendship which was established through the missions of the Son and Spirit; and
175. ST Supplement q. 12 a. 2 ad 1. It should be noted that these questions are found in the Supplement to the Summa. Since Thomas died before the completion of the text, the text was completed on his behalf, following his intended trajectory of the work, by using his earlier writings from his Commentary on the Sentences. Torrell notes that this Supplement was “written with good intentions and with reasonable success, and it does provide a quantity of important information. But it is preferable to read these passages in the work from which they were borrowed or, at least, to remember that they were written twenty years earlier. In what we have, we find no trace of the progress that we see in the first pages of this Third Part.” Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa, 62. It should not be assumed, therefore, that Thomas still held everything written in the Supplement to be true at the time of his death. See Torrell, Person and His Work, 333; Davies, Summa Theologiae, 7. 176. ST Suppl. q. 13 a. 1c. 177. ST Suppl. q. 14 a. 2c. 178. See Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 145. He argues that this is seen in Thomas’s assertion that satisfaction has no value unless performed for all offenses, that it must come freely, and that its focus is in the restoration of honor not of goods. 117
sins are forgiven, not through an exact repayment of the wrongdoing, but through the contrition and the acts of penance on the part of the penitent, a friend of Christ who has transgressed.
Daniel Schwartz argues that for Thomas “once we consider a relationship to be one of friendship, quantitative satisfaction is no longer required.”179 Penance does not occur according to strict justice but according to charity, a kind of justice among friends, in making satisfaction for wrongdoing.
Ultimately for Thomas, the sacraments are an extension of Christ’s saving mission, made possible in a particular way by his obedient and loving suffering in the passion. Through his saving work, the superabundant grace of Christ redounds on all who believe in him and is accessed primarily through the sacraments of the Church. Becoming part of the body of Christ through baptism and being bound ever more intimately through the Eucharist, one can additionally be freed from sin by satisfying for sin in penance by virtue of Christ having restored mankind to a friendship with God. Romanus Cessario observes that for Aquinas, “the acts of satisfaction which a man makes to God are not isolated, mercantile exchanges that have an intrinsic value all their own,” but rather “these acts of satisfaction find their worth within a broader context; they are part of the relationship that exists between God and man which is the love of friendship or charity.”180 For Thomas, the friendship which Christ’s passion makes possible allows for the efficacy of the sacraments through which believers develop a friendship with God.
179. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 152. 180. Cessario, Christian Satisfaction, 64. 118
III. Conclusion: An Intentional Omission or Accidental Oversight?
Apart from his treatment of charity in the Secunda Pars, Thomas does not employ the notion of friendship in a sustained way in the Summa. As the chapter has demonstrated, earlier works of Thomas show a greater, although by no means comprehensive, use of friendship in soteriological contexts. His work on the Spirit, although less explicit, seems to function tacitly in the second part of the Summa, and Thomas even seems to be expounding at greater length in this second part what he identifies regarding the Spirit’s mission in the Contra Gentiles. The most surprising lack of data regards friendship in the Tertia Pars in the life of Christ and Christ’s own understanding of himself as ‘friend,’ despite reference to Christ’s friendship explicitly in the sections on charity in the Secunda Secundae.181 Despite the reality of the Incarnation, in which
God assumes a human nature and everything corresponding to human living apart from sin,
Thomas will not characterize Christ’s relationship with his apostles or anyone else beyond a general relation to all of mankind as ‘mediator.’182 In terms of Jesus’s death, Thomas does not incorporate any reference to Jesus’s words from John 15:13 of sacrificing himself for his friends in the questions regarding Jesus’s death nor in the entirety of the Tertia Pars, except once in the context of baptism.183 All the more fascinating is it to consider that Thomas was writing the
Commentary on John simultaneously with a good portion of the Tertia Pars of the Summa.
Contemporary work on the theme of friendship in the thought of Thomas Aquinas accounts for the seemingly absent Christological piece in different ways. Most modern authors see the interconnectedness of the theme of friendship in the entirety of Thomas’s corpus and seek
181. Recall ST II-II q. 23, a. 1 sc. Also referenced at length in the previous chapter. 182. One question of the Tertia Pars is dedicated entirely to Christ as mediator. See ST III q. 26. 183. Specifically, in regard to the efficacy of baptism by blood. See ST III q. 66 a. 12c. 119
to draw connections that Thomas himself does not explicitly make. William Young, for instance, observes that for Thomas, “friendship with God serves as a node in which central theological principles harmonize and merge, as Thomas draws upon God’s election and providence, grace, free will, and merit, and Christology to unpack this relationship.”184 Many extrapolate a vision of
Jesus as friend, using the sections on charity from the Summa and Thomas’s Commentary on
John to construct this picture.185 Using these sections on friendship as a touch point, different scholars pursue the theme of friendship via moral theology, the sacraments, scripture, merit, or atonement, although Thomas does not draw out the implications of friendship in all of these areas in the Summa.186 While most do not draw attention to, or have not observed, the lack of explicit use of friendship in a Christological context in the Summa, others have more pointedly addressed the issue.
Nathan Lefler, for example, argues that this “conspicuously” absent theme of friendship in the Summa of Christ as friend is an intentional movement by Thomas.187 Thomas, Lefler argues, clearly “does not think of friendship in predominantly christological terms, any more than he tends to focus on Christ’s character as friend of the soul.”188 Lefler maintains that
184. Young, The Politics of Praise, 102. 185. Matthew Kauth, for example, argues that the Summa and Commentary on John are “coterminous” works and that they “have a mutual influence is without question.” His construction of Jesus as friend, in chapters five and six of his book, is based predominantly on Thomas’s Commentary on John. See Kauth, Divine and Human, 203. 186. A common example would be various scholars in moral theology who seek to assess and incorporate more deeply the role of Christ in the moral theology of Thomas. Many extract from the Tertia Pars an understanding of Jesus under themes such as savior, moral exemplar, teacher or friend. See Joseph Wawrykow, ‘Jesus in the Moral Theology of Thomas Aquinas’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42:1 (2012): 13-33; Patricia Clark, ‘The Case for an Exemplarist Approach to Virtue in Catholic Moral Theology,’ Journal of Moral Theology 3:1 (2014): 54-82. Others will more explicitly draw out the theme of Christ as friend, usually with an appeal to Thomas’s commentary on John and the sacraments in the Tertia Pars. See Livio Melina, The Epiphany of Love: Towards a Theological Understanding of Christian Action (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), chapter 1; Thomas Ryan, “Jesus — ‘Our Wisest and Dearest Friend’: Aquinas and Moral Transformation,” New Blackfriars 97 (2016): 575-590. 187. Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 160. 188. Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 162. His emphasis. 120
Thomas “instead opts decisively in favor of a perspective on friendship that is theological in a strict sense.”189 The picture of ‘Christ as friend’ constructed in Thomas’s Commentary on John is not reflective of Thomas’s theology proper, but any insight there is “ad hoc” and “to be expected of a biblical commentary” and only “broadly congruent with his theology of friendship as a whole.”190 Thomas makes use of friendship with God in the context of charity alone, envisioning this friendship as a strictly ‘theological’ one in that it is a friendship with God in God’s unity, rather than with any one particular Person of the Trinity. While for Thomas, the work of the
Spirit in a particular way “constitutes” one as friends with God, Lefler contends that Thomas is nevertheless reticent to suggest that the divine attribute of charity be appropriated to any one
Person of the Trinity and is thus carefully employing the use of friendship only in certain contexts.191
Lefler’s approach to Thomas on friendship can be contrasted with others, such as L.
Gregory Jones, who argues that Thomas’s reliance on Aristotle for his understanding of friendship restricts Thomas from grasping the full implications that ‘charity as friendship with
God’ can signify in the Christian tradition. Thomas, he asserts, is “limited by his failure to attend to the doctrine of the Trinity as a way of fully explicating the relationship between friendship and contemplation.”192 The second part of the Summa, he argues, is grounded in an implicit
Christological referent of Christ as friend that Thomas never explicitly connects but is crucial to understanding charity as friendship.193 Jones’s own project involves expanding the context for
189. Ibid. 190. Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 136-137. 191. Lefler, Saint Aelred and Thomas, 163. Lefler argues that this reticence is, in part, due to Thomas’s concerns with the position of Lombard, as has been shown in the previous chapter of this work. 192. Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 398. 193. Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 382-383. 121
friendship in reading the Summa, in part by supplying ‘friendship’ for locations which speak of
‘charity,’ by reason of the definition established in question 23 of the Secunda Secundae of the
Summa.194 Ultimately, Jones concludes that the limitedness of Thomas on charity even as adapted in current scholarship “lies in Thomas’s own obscurity; his discussion of charity as friendship with God is seemingly dependent upon a Christological and sacramental referent which he does not provide in that context.”195
What Jones considered to be a shortcoming is judged to be an achievement of Thomas’s treatment of friendship in the Summa by others, such as Guy Mansini. Mansini argues that the contexts in which Thomas uses friendship are carefully selected by Thomas and, especially in terms of the Trinity, intentionally nuanced.196 He explains that with Thomas’s use of Aristotle’s understanding of friendship, “for which an independent exercise of individually and really distinct agencies is required,” Thomas recognizes that friendship “depends on the exercise of two individually distinct wills,” which means that “friendship can only be verified in God only if
Father and Son have distinct wills.”197 As he sees it, to speak of friendship among the divine persons would be to border on tritheism. Further, Mansini argues that friendship with Christ depends on “his own personally distinct exercise of freedom” and so depends on “his assumption of a human nature, another way of exercising rational agency, and a way distinct from that of the divine nature itself.”198 Although he does not explicitly address the lack of friendship as a theme
194. See Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 388 footnote 46. 195. Jones, “Theological Transformation,” 392. 196. See Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 135-138. In these pages, Mansini’s first observation is in regard to the Holy Spirit and the inter-relations of the Trinitarian persons. He argues the Spirit should not be regarded as “the friendship” between Father and Son; the issues he identifies can likewise be applied to similar dangers in regard to the Incarnation. In this way, Mansini is not directly addressing the issues regarding Christ but his fundamental point can be applied to this case. 197. Mansini, “Aquinas’s Theology of Charity,” 137. 198. Ibid. 122
in the Tertia Pars of the Summa, Mansini insists that Christ’s friendship with his disciples is one that he necessarily establishes particularly through his human nature.
Thomas scholars such as Fergus Kerr and J. P. Torrell attribute the lack of friendship in the Tertia Pars to Thomas’s overall intent in the Summa. Thomas’s growing use of Aristotle to provide a framework for his anthropology required a restructuring of the theological elements at play. Kerr states that with the writing of the Summa, “the consideration of Christian love is no longer embedded in questions about the human nature of Christ” and rather, “the placing of charity becomes a decisive move in a radically theocentric description of human beings as moral agents” using Aristotle’s eudaimonia and arete instead of the christocentric conceptualization in his earlier works.199 Torrell argues similarly that Thomas sought to center his theological work around a complete vision of “absolute theocentrism,” in which God is the “keystone of all theological knowledge.”200 Thus, Torrell concludes, “it is quite true then that the person of Christ does not by itself play the central role either in the construction of the Summa or in the organization of Thomas’s moral teaching” and “this is meant in no way to diminish Christ’s status, but is the natural consequence of an earlier decision to invoke the whole Trinity.”201 For
Kerr, and for Torrell as well, Thomas’s re-reading of Aristotle played a significant part in the restructuring of Thomas’s thought and accounts in part for the topic of charity as being isolated from Thomas’s Christology and, as perhaps a byproduct of this restructuring, the removal of the theme of Christ as friend.202
199. Kerr, “Charity as Friendship,” 4. See also, Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, 220. 200. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 103. 201. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 104. Torrell frames this change in part as a conscious movement away from Lombard’s treatment of charity within a Christological context, which Thomas followed in his Commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. 202. Torrell, Spiritual Master, 103. 123
Still others suggest that Thomas’s omission of friendship from the Tertia Pars reflects a development in Thomas’s soteriological thinking regarding the nature of Christ’s saving work.
With the aim of the project of the Summa being systematic and speculative, rather than commentorial, Thomas was more free to construct a vision of the Incarnation according to the themes he chose as most illustrative and helpful, such as Christ as head of the Church, the image of the Body of Christ, and Christ as mediator.203 Daniel Schwartz, for instance, argues that for
Thomas in the Summa, “while friendship allows sacramental satisfaction to effect reconciliation,
God’s friendship with humankind cannot be said to play a significant role in Aquinas’s account of Christ’s satisfaction on behalf of humanity.”204 In studying the nature of friendship in Thomas from the perspective of justice, Schwartz reasons that Thomas did not make use of the theme of friendship in the Summa for Christ’s satisfaction on the cross in order to draw a clearer distinction between this unique satisfaction by Christ and sacramental satisfaction in penance. He contends that for Thomas, “friendship exonerates individuals from the need to make full quantitative satisfaction, but friendship is never said to exonerate humanity from having to make full quantitative satisfaction.”205 The de-emphasis of Christ’s words in John 15:13 for Schwartz was thus intentional and for the sake of greater theological clarity and pedagogical concerns.
With these diverse explanations and accounts in mind, it is sufficient to observe that the nature of, and reason for, the lacunae of the concept of friendship—as a specifically soteriological theme—in the Summa is still an open question. However, in the end, the very words of Jesus describing himself, and his death, in terms of friendship, make the use of this
203. For example, Brian Davies emphasizes Christ as “Head of Church,” see Davies, Summa Theologiae, 301; Rik Van Nieuwenhove and William Lynn emphasize the “Mystical Body of Christ,” see Van Nieuwenhove, “Marks of Christ’s Passion,” 295 and Lynn, Christ’s Redemptive Merit, 147-157. 204. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 151. 205. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship, 155. 124
concept of friendship within a soteriological context a necessity, to some extent, for Thomas. In his early work in the Contra Gentiles, Thomas stays closer to the scriptural account and makes more explicit use of friendship, particularly through frequent direct references to John 15:13 in his treatment of the Incarnation and understanding of Christ’s death. By the time of his most systematic writing in the Summa, however, Thomas only treats this theme in relation to charity and the work of the Spirit, and to a few aspects of the sacraments, the latter of which is not an emphasis in the Contra Gentiles. In his most mature work in the Summa, then, Thomas presents friendship as the channel that enables the grace that Christ merits to be communicated to members of the Church by way of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and through the sacraments.
That said, this summary of the theme of friendship in the Summa does not definitively explain the lacuna of that theme in the majority of the text, but it does suggest how the theme of friendship fits into Thomas’s soteriology by the time of his most mature work. Chapter 3: Friendship and the Order of Grace in Early Lonergan
Bernard Lonergan’s sustained interest in the thought of Thomas began during the final years of his doctoral studies at the Gregorian University in Rome when he was assigned by his director Charles Boyer to write his dissertation on issues of grace in Thomas’s theology. Starting from this point in 1938, over a decade of Lonergan’s life was dedicated to an apprenticeship to
Thomas, what Lonergan himself characterized as “years reaching up to the mind of Aquinas.”1
This period of intense study produced two major works on the theology of Thomas: Gratia
Operans, his dissertation on Thomas’s work on actual grace and freedom, and Verbum, on
Thomas’s Trinitarian theology and the analogy for the intelligible emanations.2 For Lonergan, the time dedicated to Thomas was formative and instrumental in the development of his later more independent theological corpus, which is signaled with the publication of Insight in 1957.3
During the early period of Lonergan’s career, from roughly 1943-1951, Lonergan was devoted most explicitly to the study of Thomas and spent a great deal of time exploring and developing his own theology, particularly on topics on which he taught: Christology, sacraments,
1. Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 3, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 769. See also Frederick Crowe, preface to Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 2, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), ix. 2. Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 1, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000) and Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 2, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); see also David Tracy, The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), ch. 2 and 3. For a helpful survey of Lonergan’s work on Thomas in Gratia Operans and Verbum, see chapters 2 and 3, respectively. These significant early works of Lonergan focus specifically on attending to the historical and theological development of Thomas’s positions; as such, they are outside the focus of the current project. 3. Frederick Crowe loosely divides Lonergan’s career into three periods: the “early period” from 1940-1953 during which time he taught in Montreal and Toronto; second, “the middle years” from 1953-1965 during which he taught at the Gregorian University in Rome and published Insight; and the “period of integration” that is marked by his publication of Method in 1972. See Frederick E. Crowe, Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Washington, D.C., The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 132-137.
125 126
Trinitarian theology, and grace.4 Michael Stebbins emphasizes the important development that occurred during this period, especially in terms of Lonergan’s theology of grace, of which he argues that “the pre-Insight writings indicate a rounded but initial phase in Lonergan’s developing thought on the meaning of the doctrine of grace.”5 Clearly indebted to Thomas’s work on grace, these years of study and teaching do not result in mere recitation or recapitulation of Thomas’s thought; rather, Thomas’s theology provides the initial groundwork of Lonergan’s deepening and broadening of what is found in Thomas with his own contributions.
In the development of his doctrine of the order of grace, Lonergan adopts Thomas’s construal of charity as friendship as a central organizing theme for understanding that order. It is so central in fact, that, according to Jeremy Wilkins, “friendship is the centre of Lonergan’s theological understanding of the order of grace.”6 This chapter explores how the centrality of friendship comes to expression in the early period of Lonergan’s career through a close study of three texts:
“Finality, Love and Marriage” (1943), De ente supernaturali (1946), and “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace” (1951). To more clearly see the function of the concept of friendship in
Lonergan’s development of the order of grace, the current chapter will approach these texts thematically rather than chronologically. First, De ente supernaturali characterizes the nature of the supernatural order as established by grace and as that through which friendship with God is
4. Frederick Crowe, Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), 38-41. See also, Frederick E. Crowe, introduction to De Ente Supernaturali, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 53-61. 5. J. Michael Stebbins, The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), xix. 6. Jeremy Wilkins, “Why Two Divine Missions? Development in Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,” Irish Theological Quarterly 77 (2012): 23. A similar statement is made by Frederick G. Lawrence, see “The Problematic of Christian Self-Understanding and Theology: Today’s Challenge to the Theological Community,” in Meaning and History in Systematic Theology: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Doran, S.J., ed. John D. Dadosky (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009), 308. 127
made possible. Secondly, Lonergan’s “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace” describes the
Trinitarian missions as God’s plan for the “diffusion of love” in which charity is an interpersonal relationship. Third and finally, in “Finality, Love and Marriage,” Lonergan carefully meditates on a concrete example—marriage as a friendship—which demonstrates the order of grace in action.
I. De ente supernaturali
Written in 1946, De ente supernaturali functioned as a supplement to Lonergan’s course on grace at the College of the Immaculate Conception in Montreal where he taught from
1940-1947.7 The core content of the course consisted in instruction from Scholastic manuals on grace, but Lonergan would develop his own theoretical work on grace to teach alongside the manuals through the creation of his own supplements.8 Robert Doran argues that this supplement in particular is in fact “Lonergan’s most thorough treatment of the systematics of grace and, it seems, his first major effort at writing a systematic treatise.”9 In this supplement, Lonergan is chiefly concerned with explaining, in his own words, “the gratuitousness of grace.”10 Ultimately, grace is gratuitous because it is a gift; it is necessarily a gift because it exceeds “the proportion of our nature, because it is supernatural.”11 Lonergan seeks to explore the supernatural order as the ground of this truth of the gratuitousness of grace in five theses. The answer to his initial query regarding the gratuitousness of grace involves understanding the structure of the supernatural
7. Frederick E. Crowe, introduction to De Ente Supernaturali, 53. 8. Ibid, 55. For the basic elements in the doctrine of grace, Lonergan would use the manuals of his predecessors, Paulin Bleau and Charles Boyer, before incorporating his own text for a deeper exploration in the doctrine of grace in the second part of the course. See Stebbins, Divine Initiative, preface note 1. 9. Robert Doran, “Consciousness and Grace,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 11 (1993): 51-52. 10. Bernard Lonergan, “De Ente Supernaturali: Supplementum Schematicum,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 63. Henceforth, DES. 11. DES 63. 128
order, the difference between the natural and the supernatural, and how the natural and supernatural relate.
Lonergan relies on Thomas’s theological achievement to orient his own theological focus throughout this text. Further, Thomas’s construal of charity as a kind of friendship aids
Lonergan’s theological objective in DES by situating charity, and its associated actions, squarely, and prominently, within the supernatural order. To illustrate this, a presentation of Lonergan’s first two theses of DES is necessary to understand the nature of the supernatural order and more specifically, how charity fits into the larger framework of this order. These two theses, Michael
Stebbins observes, “are the foundation of Lonergan’s speculative treatment of the doctrine of grace.”12 A close examination of these two theses therefore provides an explanation of the gratuitousness of grace and establishes the principal elements of the supernatural order: sanctifying grace, the hypostatic union, the habit of charity, and the light of glory. For Lonergan,
God’s gift of divine love for humankind effects a new ground from which humans can participate in supernatural acts of knowing and loving. Within this supernatural order, Lonergan will construe charity as a friendship whose foundation is exactly this gift of God’s grace.
I. A. Thesis 1: The Proportion of Nature
Lonergan begins his study with a thesis advancing the existence of a supernatural order.
This first thesis posits the basic reality of the supernatural order, namely, that:
There exists a created communication of the divine nature, which is a created, proportionate, and remote principle whereby there are operations in creatures through which they attain God as he is in himself.13
12. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 55. This work by Stebbins offers an in-depth study of DES and its role in Lonergan’s overall development. 13. DES 65. 129
For Lonergan, this first statement is not a new assertion of any kind but is taken from “the truths from treatises on the incarnate Word, on habitual grace, on infused virtues, and on God as ultimate end.”14 Taking these truths of the faith as foundational, Lonergan’s aim is to arrange them under the formality of the communication of divine nature in order to establish the existence of the supernatural order.
Lonergan’s thesis rests on an understanding of a ‘proportion of nature’ which he derives from Thomas.15 Proportion of nature, as Lonergan defines it, is a “parity of relations between substance and existence, and between accidental potencies and operations.”16 Using the proportion of nature, Lonergan observes the relationship between what a substance is and what a substance can do. The nature of a substance functions as a remote principle of operations and is determinative of the potencies of the substance, or what kind of actions this substance can perform. An act on the part of substance is the realization of a potency and therefore, any action of a substance is limited by its potencies.17 Lonergan argues that this principle of the proportion of nature is commonly expressed through the following statements:
(1) Accidental potencies arise from substance. (2) Operation follows existence. (3) Existence is received in substance and is limited by it. (4) An operation is received in an accidental potency and is limited by it.18
The starting point for the proportion of nature regarding the principle of operations is that a substance does what it does and has the properties it does because of what it is.19
14. DES 65. 15. Lonergan refers specifically to ST I, q. 54, aa. 1-3, which is Thomas’s treatment of angelic cognition. See also, Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 36. 16. DES 67. 17. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 37. 18. DES 67. 19. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 47. 130
For Lonergan, the proportion of nature allows one to move from the operations of a being to a knowledge of the existence of potencies from which these operations occur. Further, it reveals the differences between potencies which leads one to an awareness of the difference between natures; for instance, the natures of dogs and humans can be differentiated by a comparison of what these natures can and cannot do. Lonergan argues this analysis occurs frequently and often unintentionally; providing a common-sense example, he states that “if an ox were to understand and will, you would say that not only does it perform the operations of understanding and willing, but also that it possesses a possible intellect and will, and you would draw the further conclusion that that bovine body was informed with an intellective soul.”20
Drawing from what is implicitly understood in everyday living, Lonergan makes theoretically explicit the connection between a being’s substance and the operations that this substance can do.
Lonergan’s first thesis pivots on the proportion of nature as applied to the human person’s reception of grace. As stated in the thesis above, Lonergan argues for a “created communication of divine nature” which is a created, proportionate and remote principle of operations. Through this communication one can attain God as he is in himself. Lonergan observes that there are two operations through which God is attained in such a way: the beatific vision in the intellect and the act of charity in the will.21 In the case of the first, those in heaven “have a direct intuitive vision of God,” seeing God “as perfectly as God sees himself.”22 Stebbins recognizes this act of understanding the divine essence as representing “the fulfillment of our desire to know.”23 The
20. DES 71. Stebbins has observed on this point that “Lonergan’s rather homely example suggests that the proportion of nature is simply the theoretical counterpart of the common-sense insight that a thing does what it does, and has the properties it has, because of what it is.” Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 47. 21. DES 69. As habitual states, the beatific vision in the intellect is called the “light of glory” and the act of charity in the will as “the habit of charity.” 22. Ibid. 23. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 48. 131
other operation through which God is attained in himself is the act of charity in the will.
Lonergan states that the blessed not only know God as he is in himself but also love God as he is in himself. Appealing to charity as friendship as Thomas articulated it, he explains that the blessed “love him not for their own benefit or pleasure but because of the objective goodness of
God himself, for they love him as a friend loves a friend.”24 This operation of the will is understood for Lonergan on the analogy of friendship wherein true friends are loved according to their intrinsic goodness rather than on the utility or pleasure they may provide.
The operations of the intellect and will that attain God as he is in himself are not operations proportionate to human nature as such. Neither natural knowledge of God nor human loving alone can ground these acts because rational creatures cannot know or love God as he is in himself, but only insofar as God is the principle and end of all being.25 Stebbins clarifies for
Lonergan that “because the operations of vision and charity attain pure and infinite act as such, no created potency or nature is proportionate to them.”26 Lonergan states that “because no one possesses ‘being God,’ no rational creature can rightfully claim a knowledge and a love of God as he is in himself.”27 The one exception is Christ. As God and man, Christ has these operations
“by right.”28 Lonergan argues that without the beatific vision, “Christ as man would not know himself as God” and without charity, “Christ as man would be volitionally divided from Christ as
God.”29 The operations of vision and charity are present in Christ, and with them their remote principle of sanctifying grace; additionally, Christ has a further principle, the grace of union,
24. DES 69. 25. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 47. 26. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 49. 27. DES 71. 28. DES 69. 29. DES 69. 132
through which Christ actually is God.30 Appealing to graces Christ receives as redeemer,
Lonergan asserts that because Christ as man is also God, from his being God there follows knowing and loving God as he is in himself.
While these two operations are found rightfully in Christ alone, they are nevertheless found in the blessed (both angels and humans), in those detained in purgatory, in humanity’s first parents before the fall, and in the justified. Lonergan further clarifies that all of these groups possess these operations, not by right, but by free gift from God and differently according to the subject receiving the gift.31 Recognizing this, Lonergan appeals to the proportion of nature to conclude that therefore there must be a created communication of divine nature to make this possible. If these people truly know and love God in himself, then it must also be the case that these operations are somehow intrinsic to them. Stebbins explains that because these are not extrinsic operations, they must have “their source in principles immanent in the creature” and so
“the proximate source of each operation is a proportionate operative potency.”32 Moreover, these potencies for Lonergan are habitual, in that both the beatific vision and charity are settled orientations of the intellect and will, not intermittent or an isolated single act but occur in the justified with frequency and pleasure.33 Lonergan asserts that those who perform these operations which attain God in himself possess “not only the proximate principles of these operations, namely the light of glory and the habit of charity,” but also must possess “the remote proportionate principle of these same operations.”34 What grounds and unifies these operations in
30. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 50. Stebbins clarifies further for Lonergan, stating that “while sanctifying grace relates us intimately but accidentally to the infinite God, in Christ’s case the divine nature is communicated in such a way that he actually is God.” 31. DES 71. Lonergan states further that the difference in how these groups possess this gift is an “extrinsic division” based on “the subjects receiving grace, not in the gift of grace itself.” 32. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 49. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. Emphasis added. 133
these persons cannot be the creature’s own finite nature, as clarified above. Rather, Lonergan argues, there must be an immanent principle, a communication of divine nature, that is the remote source of these operations in the human person.
This communication by which God in himself becomes shared is a contingent gift, freely given to those who receive it. Because it is contingently said of God, this communication is
‘created’ and necessarily finite as well.35 Lonergan identifies this communication additionally as
‘remote’ because it “gives rise to the proximate principles in which the operations themselves are received.”36 Stebbins clarifies that for Lonergan to call it remote is simply “to say only that it is the proximate principle of potencies rather than of acts.”37 With this gift, the supernatural operations of the intellect and will are now proportionate, that is, there is now a parity between the capability of the being and the object which these actions attain.
With the nature of this created communication in place, Lonergan identifies the two ways in which this principle of the created communication operates.38 First, the primary principle of the created communication is operative in the hypostatic union. Lonergan insists that the God-
Man is no mere title, but “an objective reality is required in order that this man be truly said to be
God, and this reality, being contingent, is something created and finite as well.”39 The grace of union by which Christ is truly God and truly man requires this principle of a created communication of divine life. Stebbins clarifies for Lonergan that “the hypostatic union involves the conferral of a ‘secondary act of existing’ such that Christ’s human nature is united to the
35. DES 71. 36. DES 67. 37. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 49. 38. Lonergan also identifies that besides these two created communications, there are two uncreated communications: “the Father communicates divine nature to the Son, and the Father and Son together communicate it to the Holy Spirit.” DES 73. 39. DES 71. 134
person of the Word” and “this act of existing is the immanent, remote principle of the operations of charity and vision in Christ as human.”40 In Christ as human, a created communication of divine nature is necessary but occurs uniquely in the grace of union which unites his human and divine natures.
The secondary principle which provides for all other human persons is sanctifying grace.
It is, according to Lonergan, “sanctifying or habitual grace by virtue of which we are children of
God, sharers in the divine nature, justified, friends of God.”41 With this communication of divine nature, those who receive this gift possess the potency to perform the acts of intellect and will that attain God in himself. Stebbins explains that through the analogy of the proportion of nature,
Lonergan can show that sanctifying grace “can be thought of as a habit modifying the creature’s substantial form,” making one “the kind of person in whom the occurrence of such acts is fitting, proper, and even, as it were, second nature.”42 The created communication of divine nature, sanctifying grace, grounds the principles of operations, namely the light of glory and the habit of charity, which attain God in himself.43 For Lonergan, the goal of this proportion of nature in which sanctifying grace is seen as a created communication allows one to see more readily sanctifying grace as a principle of operations which allows friendship with God to be possible.
40. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 50. See also, ST III q. 2, a. 10c. 41. DES 71, 73. 42. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 50. For this reason, sanctifying grace is often called an “entitative habit” because it modifies the creature’s substantial form rather than an operation. 43. More precisely, Lonergan carefully nuances that this communication is sanctifying grace “materially but not formally.” He states, “there is a material identity but formal diversity between sanctifying grace and the created communication of divine nature in us,” insofar as this created communication is sanctifying grace “not simply as such but inasmuch as it is the remote proportionate principle of the operations by which we attain God as he is in himself.” DES 73. 135
I. B. Thesis 2: Theorem of the Supernatural
Lonergan’s second thesis clarifies the nature of this created communication of divine nature as being entirely supernatural. In this thesis, Lonergan identifies the “fundamental property” found in this communication which in turn guides all further understanding of the supernatural order.44 The second thesis is as follows:
This created communication of the divine nature exceeds the proportion not only of human nature but also of any finite substance, and thus is absolutely supernatural.45
This second thesis provides the essential property of the created communication of divine nature, namely, that it is absolutely supernatural. If something is natural, then it falls within the proportion of the being’s nature. In this context, Lonergan understands the supernatural to be
“that which exceeds the proportion of another nature and is superior to it in being and perfection.”46 The term ‘supernatural’ is not used in such a way as to be opposed to nature, but as compared with it, referring either to an order higher (‘relatively supernatural’) or highest
(‘supernatural without qualification’).47 Lonergan argues that this thesis is essential because it
“specifies the ontological excellence of the created communication of divine nature” by affirming that this communication exceeds “the ontological perfection that is proper (1) to human nature and (2) to any finite substance whatsoever.”48 God in himself is infinite and exceeds the proportion of any created finite substance. As wholly supernatural without qualification, God’s infinite substance is not in any hierarchy of being, as a level higher than angels, but is absolutely supernatural.
44. DES 79. 45. Ibid. 46. DES 81. 47. Ibid. 48. DES 83. Angels, for instance, are relatively supernatural to humans. 136
Because God is absolutely supernatural, to know or love God in himself exceeds the powers of any created, finite nature. Nevertheless, the created communication of divine nature belongs to this absolutely supernatural level of being because it proportions beings to the attainment of God in himself. In this second thesis, Lonergan appeals to the Scholastic development of “the theorem of the supernatural,” first expounded by Philip the Chancellor in the early thirteenth century, which was the focus of a significant portion of his dissertation work in Gratia Operans.49 This theorem distinguishes between nature and grace, a theory “of two orders, entitatively disproportionate” to which belong “grace, faith, charity and merit, but also nature, reason, and the natural love of God.”50 This theorem was systematized by Thomas and led to the formulation of the idea of the supernatural habit; this habit “resolved justification into a twofold operation: as supernatural, grace effected the meritoriousness of human acts, elevating them above the merely human level” and as “a habit or virtue, grace operated psychologically, effecting the moral goodness of the will.”51 God is absolutely beyond the attainment of anything created. The supernatural and natural orders are disproportionate and distinct. God’s created free gift aids the attainment of God in himself and remains something that is absolutely supernatural.
The supernatural order established by God allows the participation of creatures in the divine life not by making the divine less divine but by elevating operations, raising natural operations to participate in the absolutely supernatural. For Lonergan, the created communication
49. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan vol. 1, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). In this work, Lonergan traces the history and development of this theorem; for a brief survey of this development, see Lonergan’s first chapter, 1-20. A summary of Lonergan’s achievement here can be found in Stebbins, Divine Initiative, ch. 3; also, Randall S. Rosenberg, The Givenness of Desire: Concrete Subjectivity and the Natural Desire to See God (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), ch. 2. 50. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 17. 51. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 20-21. Stebbins observes that Thomas “realized in a sweeping and systematic fashion the speculative potential of Philip’s discovery.” Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 80. 137
of divine nature that raises the human person to participate on the supernatural level mirrors the natural capacities of the intellect and will. Stebbins clarifies that for Lonergan the principal elements of this created communication give “rise to proportionate habits of intellect and will, and these in turn are passive potencies for the occurrence of the strictly supernatural acts of vision and charity.”52 Human beings are called to respond to God’s grace, to know and love God, in the supernatural order despite the fact that these actions are absolutely supernatural and not proportionate to human nature. Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeer similarly argues that for Lonergan
“the faculties emanating from the soul express the potency for natural knowledge and love; and the theological virtues of faith and charity emanate from sanctifying grace and express the potential for supernatural acts worthy of eternal merit.”53 The theorem of the supernatural indicates what operations occur in the supernatural order by which God can be attained in himself.
In his third thesis, Lonergan builds on the second by extending the field of the supernatural order to include other virtues as well. Charity, as has been said, is strictly a supernatural reality, established in the supernatural order; Quentin Quesnell observes that for
Lonergan, “charity reveals God’s grace possessed as a habit; the resulting individual actions are grace-in-act.”54 If charity is indeed grace in action, then the effect of charity is felt across the entire person. Lonergan argues that in establishing the habit of charity, the created
52. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 55. Stebbins will note that Lonergan “does not take the time to explain the supernaturality of these habits and acts…[it is] because of these acts, and on the basis of the analogy of proportion, that Lonergan can affirm the existence of the corresponding proximate and remote principles.” See Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 315 note 64. 53. Christian Jacobs-Vandegeer, “Sanctifying Grace in a ‘Methodical Theology,’” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 59. 54. Quentin Quesnell, “Grace,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 178. 138
communication of the divine nature renews the whole person; for, Lonergan states, “the old self must be completely laid aside, and the new self is to put on Christ. This patterning of our life to the life of Christ shines forth most clearly in the acts of the virtues.”55 For in reception of sanctifying grace, these other virtues are specified by a supernatural formal object, namely God as he is in himself, by virtue of the supernatural order and so are supernatural. Quesnell summarizes that “this thesis explains that if a conscious, deliberate, morally good action is done for the end of possessing God as he is in himself, then that action is absolutely supernatural, just as truly as charity is.”56 The created communication of grace transforms one’s loving, and with it, other virtues as well, embracing the good where it is seen and orienting it toward God as its end.
I. C. Concluding Observations
Lonergan’s aim in this text to explain the gratuitousness of grace is achieved by first drawing out the intelligibility of the supernatural order through the analogy of the proportion of nature and the application of the theorem of the supernatural. Through this meticulous sorting of the natural and the absolutely supernatural operations, Lonergan reveals the distinctiveness of the supernatural from the natural order but nevertheless emphasizes the harmony that exists between the two. As he sees it,
The supernatural is not in opposition but in comparison to nature: it supposes a world-order in which some beings surpass others in perfection; it designates a certain order or grade as higher or highest; it does not in the least deny that this higher or highest grade possesses the objective intelligibility, coherence, proportion, and harmony which we customarily indicate by the terms ‘nature’ or ‘natural’; but it does deny that a lower order or grade possesses the perfection
55. DES 99. 56. Quesnell, “Grace,” 176. See also Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 94. 139
which is proper to a higher order or grade — the very perfection which, in point of fact, makes the higher truly be higher.57
The natural and the supernatural orders are distinct such that even a created communication of divine nature remains absolutely supernatural and ontologically superior to human nature.
The supernatural order which God establishes involves a created communication which makes divine life proportionate. The intelligibility of the supernatural order is found in the analogous operations of the intellect and will present there. Stebbins remarks on this point that for Lonergan “the supernatural realities of grace are not to be found in some realm that is wholly separate from the natural order, nor does their realization involve the suppression of that order”; instead, they reveal for Lonergan the possibility of human capacities of knowing and loving to be used by God “for the emergence of the mystical body of Christ.”58 The created communication of divine nature which establishes the supernatural order builds on the natural operation of the intellect and will so integral to natural human functioning and proportions these operations to function on a supernatural level. Jeremy Wilkins observes that for Lonergan, “the natural openness of the human spirit that reaches out to know and love the whole universe of being is itself the radical capacity of human beings to receive, by unmerited grace, the divine self-gift and so enjoy a fulfillment surpassing the possibilities of every created creature.”59
In his development of the structure of the supernatural order, Lonergan also identifies the principal elements of the order to be sanctifying grace, the hypostatic union, the habit of charity, and the light of glory. In particular, the habit of charity is what is established by sanctifying grace
57. DES 81. 58. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 292. 59. Jeremy Wilkins, “Finality, History, and Grace: General and Special Categories in Lonergan’s Theory of History,” in Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship: Essays in Honor of Fr. Matthew L. Lamb, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples, FL: Sapientia, 2007), 393. 140
and characterizes the new life built on the communication of grace. Within his elaboration of the supernatural order, Lonergan is aided in part by Thomas’s understanding of charity as a kind of friendship. The reality of friendship as a habitual movement of the will and the necessity of it being grounded on some kind of communicatio, as identified by Thomas, bolster Lonergan’s understanding of sanctifying grace as a created communication of divine nature. Lonergan states that “charity is received only in one who has been justified” in that “charity is the love that is friendship, which can only exist between friends; but it is through the reception of sanctifying grace, from which flow the other infused virtues, that we become friends with God.”60 For
Lonergan, charity is at the center of the supernatural order in that friendship with God is the goal and reason for which the communication of divine nature is given.
Further, the language of communicatio links Lonergan’s work on grace to Thomas’s, expanding on Thomas’s work by using the proportion of nature to explain what kinds of loving and knowing occur in the supernatural order. It is the gratuitous gift of sanctifying grace which is the principle which allows one to become friends, to know and to love, God. For Lonergan then,
“one is free to do not only what lies within one’s own personal power, but also all that one can accomplish through the kindness of friends. Now God makes himself our friend, and makes available to us the gift of his love. Therefore we are free—with his help—to love him as we ought.”61 The supernatural order does not work in opposition or in isolation from the natural order, but through nature by elevating the natural operations of knowing and loving. In DES,
Lonergan establishes friendship as the central relationship in the order of grace by qualifying the
60. DES 163. 61. Lonergan quote found in Quesnell, “Grace,” 175. 141
love that sanctifying grace establishes and the proportionate response of love by the person that sanctifying grace requires.
II. Lonergan’s “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace”
The second text, “the Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” emerged in the context of Lonergan’s early teaching career for a course at the Jesuit seminary in Toronto in
1951-1952.62 Lonergan’s additional notes are divided into three broad categories: historical, biblical, and systematic. With this organization, Lonergan desires to connect “the steps that led to the Lutheran and Reformed positions on justification” which he argues are both rooted in nominalism and in the thought of Scotus.63 His analysis of these historical developments brings him to a study of the scriptural notion of grace ultimately to show the source of the later systematic development of the concept of sanctifying grace.
Written after DES, this text reveals Lonergan’s development and deepening of his theology of grace and, in terms of the current investigation, it demonstrates further integration of
Thomas’s understanding of charity as a kind of friendship into the center of this development.
Building on the labors of the section which developed grace as a divine self-communication, this text reveals further information regarding the order of grace, the important role of charity, and how God communicates grace. For Lonergan, the divine self-communication in sanctifying grace
62. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, introduction to “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 563. For additional information on Lonergan’s development which led to the creation of these notes, see Robert Doran, “Sanctifying Grace, Charity, and Divine Indwelling: A Key to the Nexus Mysteriorum Fidei,” Lonergan Workshop 23 (2009): 169-170. 63. Ibid. The editors state that “his concern in this section seems to be almost exclusively to set up a context that calls for a review of what scripture says about justification and salvation, which, he claims, cannot support the Lutheran and Reformed positions.” With this being the main focus of the historical section, and far from the topic at hand, a study of this section is omitted in the current project. 142
is an orderly one which corresponds to God’s own perfect love among the divine Persons.
Lonergan’s scriptural study highlights friendship as a scriptural theme and an important effect of
God’s saving work in the “diffusion of love.” Secondly, the systematic section of this work reveals how this diffusion of love occurs by studying the formal cause and effects of grace.
II. A. The Scriptural Roots of Sanctifying Grace
After addressing the major historical issues, Lonergan turns to the biblical study of sanctifying grace and addressing the most immediate issue in this study, namely that sanctifying grace is not a biblical term at all. Nevertheless, Lonergan demonstrates the basic reality of sanctifying grace as present in scripture by synthetically collating the scriptural data which reflect the need for, and the results of, sanctifying grace. To do this, Lonergan presents a positive doctrine of grace found in scripture in a thesis that he will subsequently defend. His thesis is:
To those whom God the Father loves (1) as he loves Jesus, his only begotten Son, (2) he gives the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit, so that (3) into a new life they may be (4) born again and (5) become living members of Christ; therefore as (6) just, (7) friends of God, (8) adopted children of God, and (9) heirs in hope of eternal life, (10) they enter into a sharing in the divine nature.64
With this thesis, Lonergan brings together many different terms and expressions in Scripture to form a scriptural basis for sanctifying grace. Robert Doran observes that Lonergan’s principal concern here is to establish through this thesis that sanctifying grace is “a synthetic category that unites these ten features of biblical doctrine.”65 While scripture gives an account of sanctifying grace without the precision of later theological language, the reality conveyed nevertheless
64. Bernard Lonergan, “Supplementary Notes on Sanctifying Grace,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 19, Early Latin Theology, ed. Robert Doran and H. Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 581. Henceforth SNSG. 65. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 173. 143
speaks to the role of sanctifying grace as creating a new relationship in which believers are
“raised up to a new supernatural life.”66 In this context, Lonergan will rely on friendship, interpreted through the lens of Thomas, in two important places in his analysis of scripture’s accounts of the effects of sanctifying grace.
In unpacking the aforementioned thesis from scripture, Lonergan’s first use of friendship to clarify the effect of sanctifying grace is in regard to believers “becoming living members of
Christ.” Here Lonergan appeals to the “principle of the economy of salvation,” which he sees more precisely to be “the principle of the diffusion of love and friendship.”67 This diffusion of love however only occurs because of the nature of friendship. Referencing Thomas’s Summa
Theologiae II-II q. 23, Lonergan argues that “a friend loves the friends of one’s friend.”68 The friendship struck between the Son incarnate and humanity is the effect of a new diffusion of love which begins with God. Lonergan explains that,
God the Father loves Christ as God with that special love that is the Holy Spirit. God the Father loves Christ as human with the same love; Luke 4.18-19, 21. Christ as human loves humans and humans love the human Christ. God the Father and God the Son love humans with a special love and send the Holy Spirit crying out, ‘Abba, Father.’69
In God’s economy of salvation, it is through the incarnation that a new relationship between humankind and God is achieved by a diffusion of love. The order of this loving is significant and, for Lonergan, is essential for salvation. He asserts that “this is the order intended and willed by God the Father, namely, that the Father makes Christ to be human and makes him love humans and makes humans love the human Christ so that he loves humans with a special love.”70
66. SNSG 583. 67. SNSG 601. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 144
The “principle of the economy of salvation” is such that through the incarnation humankind is able to become friends with God on account of God’s offer of friendship through the human
Christ.
In the second important moment in his scriptural study, Lonergan identifies becoming
“friends of God” in the above thesis as a significant scriptural understanding of the new relationship with God that sanctifying grace effects. Appealing to several passages from the New
Testament, especially in St. Paul, Lonergan emphasizes the death of Christ as transforming enemies into friends, as a crucial step in the principle of the diffusion of love in that it creates the foundation of friendship.71 By Christ’s self-sacrificing love, the believer is enabled to make a response to this love in a mirroring act of dying to self so to live in Christ.72 Lonergan argues that the believer loves God in response only because God has poured his love into the heart of the believer by the Holy Spirit.73 The infusion of God’s love into the soul makes a human response possible; this response to God’s outpouring of love is made in friendship. Appealing to the
Secunda Secundae, Lonergan restates Thomas’s definition of friendship as “the mutual love of benevolence founded upon sharing in something that is good.”74 To be friends is to will mutually the good for the other friend; friendship with God then “consists in this, that we will to him his infinite good and he wills to communicate to us his own happiness.”75 Christ establishes a new
71. Lonergan refers to Romans 5:6-11: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.” 72. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15: “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” 73. SNSG 607. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 145
relationship of friendship between God and humanity; if this is to be a true friendship of mutual love and benevolence, as both Thomas and Aristotle identify as essential in true friendship, then elevation by grace is required to make this friendly love mutual. Lonergan pulls from scripture the evidence of the offer of friendship, made through Christ’s life and death, and the evidence of
God’s aid of the Spirit to the heart of the believer so this friendly love can be mutual.
For Lonergan, scripture demonstrates the reality of sanctifying grace by articulating a new relationship between God and humankind patterned on God’s diffusion of love. This diffusion of love is the foundation for a friendship with God.
II. B. Friendship in the Systematic Presentation of Sanctifying Grace
Lonergan’s final section of his “Supplemental Notes on Sanctifying Grace” is a systematic presentation of sanctifying grace built on the scriptural foundation of the previous section. He begins with a Thomistic definition of sanctifying grace as “an accident in the genus of quality reducible to the species of habit.”76 Although in the species of a habit, it is not a virtue itself “but is in the essence of the soul as in its subject.”77 Building on Thomas and the distinctions he has previously established in DES of the absolutely supernatural reality of the order of grace, Lonergan drills deeper into his study of this order, specifically drawing out the relationships among sanctifying grace, divine indwelling, charity, and the divine love which affects this new order. Lonergan frames this section with an appeal to friendship:
by supposing God as one and as Trinity, by the very fact of having grace one also has adoptive sonship, brotherhood with the Son, the gift of the Spirit, the indwelling of the Three, and mutual friendship with God.78
76. SNSG 615. 77. Ibid. 78. SNSG 663. 146
For Lonergan, divine self-communication has a clear cause in God’s love as well as effects in the soul which allow each person of the Trinity to be present in the believer and establishes a new relationship of friendship. An examination of a few key moments of this systematic section will reveal Lonergan’s continued use of Thomas’s concept of charity as friendship to bring further clarity to the order of grace, specially through his treatment of the formal cause and effects of sanctifying grace.
II. B. 1. Friendship with God as an imitation of divine love
To achieve a deeper understanding of the reality of grace, Lonergan begins his systematic section with an exploration of God as the ontological foundation of all graces. Lonergan begins with an initial contradiction: if grace is a participation in divine nature, then “this participation is either finite or it is infinite. If infinite, it is not a participation but God himself. If it is finite, it is not divine, for God by his nature is infinite.”79 To address this seeming dilemma, Lonergan parses out the two senses in which divine love can be understood and what this means for God’s causality in the created order. Like Thomas before him, Lonergan affirms God to be the first exemplary cause of all things.80 Stebbins explains that “God is the principal cause not only of our participation in the divine nature but of each and every instance of created being and activity.”81 In terms of the order of grace, divine love brings about a participation in divine nature in the soul; and this causality, for Lonergan, brings about formal effects in the created order.
For Lonergan, understanding God’s causality in the order of grace requires an understanding of divine love, which can be approached from two ways. First, essential divine
79. SNSG 617. 80. ST I q. 6, a. 4. 81. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 293. He explains further that God’s efficacy is transcendent and “the only necessity that can be deduced from it is hypothetical necessity, which is compatible with contingence.” 147
love refers to the love equally affirmed of all three persons; this love is “pure act itself, the divine essence” in that “by this love Father, Son, and Spirit love equally.”82 Lonergan differentiates essential divine love from “notional divine love” which is the Holy Spirit. He explains, “this
[notional] love means not so much that the Holy Spirit loves as that he is, for the Holy Spirit is proceeding Love. And it is by this love that the Father and the Son love, in the sense that they are the principle and source of this proceeding Love.”83 While all three Persons of the Trinity love perfectly, the Holy Spirit properly, according to the distinction of his Person, can be said to be true Gift and the love that proceeds from the Father and the Son.84 This distinction of the Persons is brought into further relief in the divine missions in that what occurs in the missions of the Son and Spirit can be spoken of properly of these persons. Lonergan argues that “not everything that is stated about the divine persons in the matter of grace is stated by appropriation.”85 Just as the
Incarnation is properly said of the Son, so the created communication of the divine nature in the order of grace will be attributed in a particular way to the mission of the Spirit.
The distinction between essential and notional divine love is significant for Lonergan’s development of the causality of grace. Robert Doran clarifies Lonergan on this point, stating that
“grace, as caused by God, is the result or effect of the love common to the three divine persons, but at the same time, it establishes in us distinct relations to each of the divine persons and a distinct participation in the divine life of each of them, in keeping with the distinct fashion in
82. SNSG 627. 83. SNSG 627. Lonergan’s emphasis. 84. Lonergan pulls directly from Thomas’s Trinitarian theology, see ST I q. 38, aa. 1-2. Thomas argues that “gift, taken personally in God, is the proper name of the Holy Ghost,” in that “love has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts are given,” so the Spirit who proceeds as love, “proceeds as the first gift.” ST I q. 38, a. 2c. The Holy Spirit can be said to be Gift, not only in the missions, but as an eternal property as well. 85. SNSG 631. Attributes spoken of God can be stated either properly or by appropriation. Appropriation allows an attribute to be stated of one divine person although it is in reality belonging to God essentially. 148
which each of them exercises the divine creative love.”86 Sanctifying grace makes its recipient pleasing to God; this is effected by essential divine love.87 The Spirit, who is the gift of love immanently, is given gratuitously to dwell in the soul of the recipient of sanctifying grace. Doran explains that for Lonergan, “the Holy Spirit is given to us precisely as the uncreated term of a created relation grounded in a created gift, a gift that elevates the central form of the person to participation in divine life through this created relation to an uncreated divine Person.”88 It is the giftedness of the Spirit which allows the Spirit to be gifted to the soul in the created communication of sanctifying grace. Lonergan states therefore, “essentially, the Father and the
Son and the Spirit give the uncreated gift by efficient causality and formally. Notionally, the
Father and the Son give the Holy Spirit.”89 While essentially divine love is the efficient cause of grace, Lonergan attempts to speak more precisely in terms of the notional acts of the divine
Persons which distinguish the three Persons from each other.
Divine love offers a share in the divine life as a free gift and this gift brings about new created realities. Drawing from his earlier work in De ente supernaturali, Lonergan recalls the central realities of the order of grace and argues that all other graces are either dispositions toward or consequent on four graces: grace of union, the light of glory, sanctifying grace, and the virtue of charity.90 The grace of union refers to the “finite entity received in the humanity of
Christ so that it exists through the personal act of existence of the divine Word.”91 This is the
86. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 174-175. 87. SNSG 585. He references ST I-II q. 110, a. 1c. 88. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 181. 89. SNSG 589. 90. SNSG 631. All other gifts and virtues that operate in the order of grace follow upon these four graces. For example, he states that “the gifts of the Holy Spirit pertain not to the supernatural life itself but to operations that are consonant with it.” 91. SNSG 631. 149
grace by which the incarnation occurs. Secondly, the light of glory is “that finite entity by which a created intellect is disposed to receiving the divine essence as an intelligible species and thus see God as he is in himself.”92 The third is sanctifying grace which Lonergan states is the “finite entity by which a finite substance is reborn and regenerated for participating in the very life of
God.”93 And finally, the last grace is charity whereby “a regenerated finite substance habitually possesses genuine friendship with God.”94 Here, Lonergan identifies charity, specifically characterized as a friendship, as one of the four main realities of the order of grace.
The significance of charity as friendship becomes a crucial characterization in Lonergan’s development of the order of grace because, for Lonergan, the four graces are rooted in the very relations of the divine Persons. Lonergan emphasizes an intelligibility between the inner life of the Trinity and the order of grace that the Trinity establishes through the missions of the Son and
Spirit. This intelligibility reveals the “nexus” between “these graces and God’s own life.”95
Lonergan states that “since these four eminent graces are intimately connected with the divine life, it seems appropriate to say that they imitate the divine essence considered as really identical with one or other real trinitarian relation.”96 While in a certain sense all of creation reflects the
92. SNSG 633. 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid. 95. SNSG 635. 96. SNSG 633. This the first instance of what is called Lonergan’s “Four Point Hypothesis.” Lonergan will more formally present this thesis later in his career in De Deo Trino, but it is seen for the first time in these notes. For his later formulation of this thesis, see Bernard Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, trans. Michael G. Shields, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Mansour, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 471-73, 490-99. Many theologians have written on of this hypothesis, see Robert M. Doran, “Addressing the Four-point Hypothesis,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 674-82; Charles C. Hefling, “On the (economic) Trinity: An Argument in Conversation with Robert Doran,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 642-60; Neil Ormerod, “Two Points or Four?—Rahner and Lonergan on Trinity, Incarnation, Grace, and Beatific Vision,” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 661-673; Neil Ormerod, "The Four-Point Hypothesis: Transpositions and Complications," Irish Theological Quarterly 77, 2 (2012): 127-140; Michael Kujan, “Participation in the Triune God: Engaging Karl Rahner’s Trinitarian Theology with Bernard Lonergan’s Four-Point Hypothesis, as Developed by Robert Doran,” PhD diss., The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C., 2018, ProQuest (2054006557). 150
divine essence in its absoluteness, the uniqueness of these graces, which exceed any proportion of finite substances, reveals a deeper intimacy with the divine essence than the rest of creation.
He concludes that “the grace of union imitates and participates in a finite way the divine paternity, the light of glory divine filiation, sanctifying grace active spiration, and the virtue of charity passive spiration.”97 This participation in the divine nature is brought about in a particular way by the mission of the Spirit, who is sent by the Father and Son to dwell in the soul.
Pairing the four graces with the four relations in the Trinity brings charity as a friendship to the center of the order of grace. For Lonergan, it is the habit of charity characterized as a friendship which imitates the passive spiration of the Spirit. This passive movement is consequent to the active love already actively given. With the correlation of these graces to the relations in the Trinity, Thomas’s distinction of sanctifying grace and charity is brought into further clarity by Lonergan. “It is precisely that distinction,” Robert Doran argues, that “enables
[Lonergan] to speak of distinct relations to each other of the divine persons.”98 The Trinitarian relations of the active spiration and passive spiration of the Spirit are the associated terms to sanctifying grace and the virtue of charity, respectively. In this pairing, one can better see that sanctifying grace anticipates the virtue of charity insofar as it reflects the active spiration of the
Spirit by the Father and the Son. The relation of the Spirit as the one who is spirated by the
Father and the Son allows Lonergan to characterize the relationship of sanctifying grace and the virtue of charity as “(1) distinct, (2) commensurate, and (3) such that when grace is infused, charity flourishes, and when charity ceases, grace ceases.”99 Sanctifying grace is the divine
97. SNSG 633. 98. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 171. 99. SNSG 635. 151
communication of divine love which makes possible the habitual and mutual, friendly love of charity. While truly distinct one from the other, it is still the case that sanctifying grace and charity are correlative, equal and inseparable.
II. B. 2. Friendship with God as an effect of sanctifying grace
After exploring the causality of divine love in the order of grace, Lonergan turns to consider the formal effects of grace. The primary effect, as stated in the definition given above, is that it makes whoever receives it a participant of the divine nature. Sanctifying grace, Lonergan argues, “imitates the divine essence considered according to its being identical with active spiration.”100 With this, it makes its recipient pleasing to God, as lovable according to a special divine love.101 Again, corresponding to the active spiration of love from the Father and the Son, sanctifying grace is imitating this active procession of love in God.
Along with this primary effect of making its recipient lovable, a secondary effect of sanctifying grace is the infused virtue of charity. Lonergan argues for a necessary connection of the primary effect of being made pleasing to the secondary effect of the infused virtue of charity through an appeal to the nature of friendship in which sanctifying grace stands to charity “as the principle to its resultant.”102 While charity is the effect of sanctifying grace, and so really distinct, the two are nevertheless inseparable and mutually reliant. Lonergan states that “with the infusion of grace, charity is also infused” and thus “when charity is lost, so is grace” so that “the measure of grace in the same person is the same as the measure of charity.”103 That sanctifying
100. SNSG 637. 101. Ibid. 102. SNSG 639. Faith and hope are likewise secondary formal effects. 103. SNSG 639. 152
grace and charity reflect the active and passive spiration of the Spirit requires that the two go hand-in-hand. Robert Doran explains that for Lonergan,
Our created share in active spiration does not spirate the Holy Spirit, but if it is a share in active spiration, it must spirate something. It spirates charity. The further created change is charity. Charity is our created participation in the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son and that proceeds from sanctifying grace in a manner that is analogous to the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son and that grounds a created relation to the uncreated Father and Son.104
Charity and the other secondary immanent effects, such as the recipients’ rebirth into a new life and justification, are “the proximate principles of a supernatural life” which are the result of sanctifying grace.105 These effects of sanctifying grace are not separable from it but rather are had because sanctifying grace is had and lost when it is lost. This for Lonergan is most clearly seen in viewing the new life established by sanctifying grace as a friendship; he states that, “just as it is impossible for the same person to be a friend and an enemy at the same time, so it is impossible for the same person to have grace and be in the state of mortal sin.”106 Sanctifying grace brings love concomitantly into the soul in such a way that the recipient of this grace is made friends with God.
In identifying the effects of sanctifying grace within the human person, Lonergan concludes that “there is genuine friendship between God and the just.”107 Lonergan argues that in addition to the immanent effects of sanctifying grace, there are also transcendent formal effects of sanctifying grace. The transcendent effects refer to those effects that are said of God contingently “in connection with sanctifying grace, such as that God makes a person pleasing to
104. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 180. 105. SNSG 639. 106. SNSG 663. 107. SNSG 659. 153
him, that he loves the person with a special love.”108 Sanctifying grace brings a true change in its recipient most fundamentally in terms of the Holy Spirit being given; Doran clarifies that “the
Holy Spirit is given to us insofar as the Spirit is had by us, and this posits a change, not in the
Holy Spirit or in God but in us.”109 Sanctifying grace makes its recipient lovable; and, on account of this new lovability, God loves the person in a new way, in a similar way to which God the
Father loves the Son, as Lonergan’s study of scripture reveals. A further transcendent formal effect of sanctifying grace is that those who have received it live as members of Christ.110 Again,
Lonergan returns to a consideration of an “economy of love” in that “we are Christ’s, dead to ourselves, living for Christ through grace and charity.”111 Christ saves by love and so one participates by love.
II. C. Concluding Observations
Lonergan’s “Supplemental Notes” reveals Lonergan’s deeper exploration of the order of grace first by tracing the scriptural roots of sanctifying grace that speak to its reality and by nuancing the cause and effects of the grace which establishes this order. In this task, sanctifying grace and charity emerge in a particular way at the forefront of this order. Culling scripture,
Lonergan identifies the major themes that inchoately point toward later systematic development of the notion of sanctifying grace. Lonergan’s scriptural study emphasizes all three divine
Persons as operative in the diffusion of love: the Father lovingly sends the Son, the Son turns enemies into friends, and the Spirit is given so this love can be reciprocated by us. The
108. SNSG 641 109. Doran, “Sanctifying Grace,” 178. 110. SNSG 647. 111. SNSG 655. 154
systematic section reveals an intelligibility to what scripture reveals as a God’s diffusion of love wherein what is perfectly loved is given for the purpose of creating friends of God.
The intelligibility of the diffusion of love is further aided by Lonergan’s distinctions regarding essential and notional divine love. For Lonergan, there is a symmetry in divine love and the order of grace that divine love establishes, as evidenced by the connection of the real divine relations to the four supernatural realities of the order of grace. It is the unique mission of the Spirit to be sent as Gift to the soul of the justified; this uncreated gift is mirrored in the created gift of sanctifying grace which is given to the soul. Further, charity mirrors the Spirit as the love which follows from this giftedness. Neil Ormerod observes that
While Lonergan identifies sanctifying grace as involving a special relationship to the Holy Spirit, as a created participation of active spiration, he also speaks of the habit of charity as involving a special relation to the Father and Son, as a created participation of passive spiration. The life of grace thus involves the whole Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, in a proper trinitarian mode of active and passive spiration.112
Lonergan’s careful distinction of essential and notional divine love allows a more nuanced understanding of the cause of the order of grace and prioritizes the role of charity within this order.
With such a prominent role of charity, it is significant that Lonergan uses Thomas’s theme of friendship in reference to charity. He, like Thomas, distinguishes sanctifying grace which grounds a new relationship with God from the love that sanctifying grace engenders. Lonergan’s systematic work relies heavily on Thomas’s treatment of sanctifying grace and charity as friendship; yet Lonergan pursues this connection more deeply suggesting a further step by drawing a parallel of divine love and the friendship of charity along with the other three main
112. Ormerod, “Two Points or Four,” 668. 155
graces. Jeremy Wilkins argues that for Lonergan “this order of friendship brought about through the divine missions not only imitates but shares the relational order of the Trinity.”113 This parallel brings into closer intimacy the missions and the graces that God gives which both center on the desire for and offer of friendship. Lonergan explains that,
this friendship is founded upon the communication of the divine nature and of God himself. It is benevolent love on the part of God, for grace is the term of both essential and notional divine love. It is also benevolent love on our part, for the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.114
Sanctifying grace is a free gift of divine love whose central effect is to aid a response of friendship to divine love; charity proceeds from the transformed disposition established by this grace. Ultimately, Lonergan’s “Supplemental Notes” maps the diffusion of love that occurs with the economic work of the Trinity, in the interpersonal gifts of sanctifying grace and charity, by pairing it with the active and passive spiration of the Spirit to reveal these as interpersonal gifts intended for God’s friends.
III. Lonergan’s “Finality, Love, Marriage”
Like De ente supernaturali, this third text was written in the early period during which
Lonergan taught in Montreal from 1940-1947. While this text emerged from a course he taught on marriage, “Finality, Love, and Marriage” was not written as a supplement to the course.
Rather, Lonergan sought to contribute to an ongoing theological debate surrounding Pope Pius
XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii promulgated in 1930, in which the pope argued marriage could
113. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 24. 114. SNSG 659. 156
have a redemptive role in human society.115 With this article, Lonergan is concerned with
“thinking out afresh the theory of marriage” and seeks to identify the primary and secondary ends of the sacrament.116 Lonergan’s focal question, as he articulates it, is to consider “how can a natural institution have a supernatural end?”117 His answer to this question involves a notion called “vertical finality,” which, Michael Stebbins argues, is “crucial to Lonergan’s explanation of the relation between the natural and the supernatural orders.”118 While Lonergan was specifically entering a debate regarding marriage, the reach of this article far surpasses the scope of the sacrament in question. Indeed, according to its editors,
the article is, in fact, a mini-Summa of theology: a theology of creation in its outline of nature, civilization, and grace; a theology of history in its analysis of human process; a theology of culture and religion in its study of life, the good life and eternal life; and, finally, in the context of all this, a theology of marriage.119
Looking at marriage and its ends afresh, Lonergan will unpack a theology of grace which demonstrates how God’s plan of salvation involves supernatural ends to natural institutions.
While not as explicitly on the topic of grace as the two previously examined texts, this article is nevertheless significant in determining the central role of friendship in Lonergan’s understanding of grace. The prior texts revealed Lonergan’s development of the order of grace and the significant role charity and sanctifying grace have within this order; in this text,
115. Christopher Friel, “The Evolution of Lonergan’s Structure of the Human Good,” Heythrop Journal 54 (2013): 759. Lonergan was in conversation with many different thinkers on the issue of marriage and its ends, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Rev. John C. Ford, S.J., and Herbert Doms to name a few. For more on his correspondence and the context of this article, see Frederick E. Crowe, introduction to “Finality, Love, Marriage,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 4, Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 258; William Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest: A Study of Desire in the Authoring of Insight (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 123-124. 116. Bernard Lonergan, “Finality, Love, Marriage,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 4, Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 18. Henceforth, FLM. 117. FLM 29. 118. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 56. 119. Frederick E. Crowe, introduction to “Finality, Love, Marriage,” 259. 157
Lonergan will employ the concept of vertical finality to demonstrate how God can work within the natural order to lead to beatitude. Lonergan analyzes the natural process of human loving, found particularly in friendship, to articulate how God makes use of this natural process for a supernatural end. Lonergan states that “here the argument draws upon Aristotle’s classic
[argument] on friendship and Aquinas’ transposition of Aristotelian analysis, and it endeavors to formulate an ascent of love from the level of two-in-one-flesh to the level of the beatific vision.”120 In “Finality, Love, Marriage,” friendship functions as a key term for Lonergan and is an integral part of the human process through which God will draw human beings to himself.121
After first presenting the concept of vertical finality, Lonergan turns to evaluate the natural process of human loving, epitomized in friendship, to demonstrate the concept of vertical finality at work in the order of grace.
III. A. Vertical Finality
As with the elaboration of the proportion of nature in DES, Lonergan sets the stage for vertical finality by appealing to common-sense and empirically observed realities. In this case, he observes instances of finality which, he states, refers to the relationship of a thing to its end where the end motivates an appetite or orients a process.122 Finality is not just any response of the will or any orientation, but rather it is the final cause to which the appetite responds because
“the motive is good.”123 Lonergan argues for three kinds of finality. The first is absolute finality,
120. FLM 18. 121. Kathleen Williams, “Graced Friendship and Being Oneself: Releasing Excellence,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from his grateful students, ed. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy D. Wilkins (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016), 355. 122. FLM 19; Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 56. 123. FLM 19. 158
which is God, who in his intrinsic goodness is the “absolute motive and absolute term.”124 While this absolute finality is shared in a limited way by all finite beings, the way in which different beings respond to God as motive differs, particularly among irrational beings as compared to rational beings. The second kind of finality is a horizontal one in which the motive or end is one that is proportionate to the particular nature of the being. This horizontal finality functions as a limiting one, as “limiting essence to [a] limited mode of appetition and of process.”125 On the one hand, absolute finality is universal and unique and necessary as it directs all things to the absolute; horizontal finality, on the other hand, is the result of the abstract essence of a particular thing and holds true even in isolation from other created beings or things. This twofold finality is found in every essence based on the understanding that all beings who gain their existence from
God tend toward God as their absolute end, but also have as part of their nature a natural end to which God has proportioned them.126
Lonergan identifies a third kind of finality, a vertical finality, which emerges on account of the varying and hierarchic nature of the universe which God has created. Vertical finality is a finality toward an end higher than the proportionate end; it is the notion that any lower level appetition or processes can participate in higher levels.127 While absolute and horizontal finality have historically been more recognized and studied, Lonergan argues that the existence of vertical finality has been recognized although obfuscated in the “mists of Aristotelian
124. FLM 19. Jeremy Wilkins elaborates on this point that, “materially, the good is a motive for the response of an appetite, or a term for the orientation of a process. But the formal constituent of any end is the good, not as motive or term, but as final cause. Absolutely, the motive and term of all appetition and process is God’s intrinsic goodness.” See Jeremy Wilkins, “Finality, History, and Grace,” 376. 125. FLM 20. 126. FLM 21. Lonergan argues further that these two finalities are seen through “straightforward metaphysics”: the knowledge of the absolute finality results from the idea of an absolute good and the knowledge of horizontal finality results from the theorem of essence as a “principle of limitation”. 127. FLM 20. 159
science.”128 Modern sciences however continually point to its existence; for, Lonergan states, “it is most conspicuous to one who looks at the universe with the eyes of science, who sees the subatomic uniting into atoms, atoms into compounds, compounds into organisms.”129 In the many levels of the universe, Lonergan sees this third finality operating, as he says, “through the fertility of concrete plurality.”130 Within this plurality, there is a “vertical dynamism and tendency, an upthrust” of the lower to the higher levels of appetition and process.131 As atoms may contribute to the composition of an organism, these occurrences of vertical dynamism reveal how the lower can take part not only in what is a horizontal, or proportionate, end, but also a higher end above its nature.
For Lonergan, vertical finality itself can be manifested in different modalities. He identifies four such ways it can occur: instrumental, dispositive, material, and obediential. First, an instrumental vertical finality occurs when “a concrete plurality of lower activities may be instrumental to a higher end in another subject.”132 Lonergan suggests that the movement of a chisel to create the beauty of a statue is an example of instrumental vertical finality, since the many movements of the chisel contribute to the higher end of the artist’s work. Secondly, vertical finality can occur within the subject in a dispositive vertical finality, as with the case of the lower
128. FLM 22. 129. FLM 22. Brian Himes argues that for Lonergan, only the advent of modern science could validate the truth of vertical finality against Aristotelian science. Offering his own example from modern science, Himes states, “for example, amino acids are in potency to contribute to the maintenance of animal life while still remaining distinct and intact as amino acids. This is a potency to an end beyond the proportion of a thing’s nature. The fact that certain species are extinct further proves our point that finite natures are not prior to the world order: for the extinct natures not to have been ‘in vain,’ their extinction must somehow be for the good of the prior world order.” See Brian Himes, “Lonergan’s Position on the Natural Desire to See God and Aquinas’ Metaphysical Theology of Creation and Participation,” Heythrop Journal 54 (2013): 772-3. 130. FLM 21. 131. FLM 21. 132. FLM 20. An instrumental finality as such would contribute to the higher perfection but would not participate in this perfection, since it is extrinsic to this perfection; this would be in contrast to the other modalities which can occur within the subject. See Wilkins, “Finality, History, and Grace,” 379. 160
activities of sense experience in research leading to the higher end of a breakthrough scientific discovery.133 A third manifestation of vertical finality is the material one, in which “a concrete plurality of lower entities may be the material cause from which a higher form is deducted or into which a subsistent form is infused,” such as biological evolution.134 The fourth manifestation, and the focus of Lonergan’s project, is an obediential vertical finality. Lonergan explains that “a concrete plurality of rational beings have the obediential potency to receive the communication of God himself.”135 This kind of vertical finality is specific to a theological understanding regarding rational beings in that persons together “in a plurality” can participate in the very life of God. Lonergan’s paradigmatic example in this case is the Mystical Body of
Christ, “with its head in the hypostatic union, its principal unfolding in the inhabitation of the
Holy Spirit by sanctifying grace, and its ultimate consummation in the beatific vision.”136 With the obediential manifestation of vertical finality, a collective group of persons have the potency to receive the communication of God himself and thereby participate in a higher level than what is proportionate to them.
The nature of vertical finality stands uniquely apart from the absolute and horizontal modes of finality. While the absolute is universal and the horizontal is isolated and abstract based on the essence of the thing, vertical finality is concrete and not from an isolated instance but a collaborative “conjoined plurality.”137 Lonergan insists that vertical finality emerges from understanding the plurality and hierarchy present in the world. He states that,
133. FLM 20. 134. FLM 20. Example taken from Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 57. 135. FLM 20-21. 136. FLM 21. 137. Ibid. 161
Vertical finality is of the very idea of our hierarchic universe, of the ordination of things devised and exploited by the divine Artisan. For the cosmos is not an aggregate of isolated objects hierarchically arranged on isolated levels, but a dynamic whole in which instrumentally, dispositively, materially, obedientially, one level of being or activity subserves another. The interconnections are endless and manifest.138
The diversity of creation creates a dynamic whole that enables a vertical finality in which lower levels can contribute to, and even participate in, higher levels and processes.
Vertical finality for Lonergan pertains less to natural law and more to probabilities, meaning what can occur, what Lonergan calls “statistical law.”139 The upthrust of the lower to the higher levels does not regard what happens strictly by nature in the abstract, which is governed by its horizontal finality, but regards what can and does occur in a concrete plurality. This in mind, Lonergan argues that the horizontal end therefore is “more essential” than the vertical in that the horizontal finality is determined by the essence of the thing, “while the vertical end is had only by escaping the limitation of isolated essence through the fertility of concrete plurality.”140 The vertical end, although not essential, is considered nevertheless to be “more excellent” than the horizontal end since it participates on a higher level.141 Recognizing the vertical end as such does not make the horizontal end less essential or unimportant but identifies a plurality of ends that can be present simultaneously. Lonergan offers an illuminating example of oxygen:
The essential end of oxygen is to perform the offices of oxygen as oxygen; but its more excellent end is its contribution to the maintenance of human life, and this
138. Ibid. 139. FLM 22. In his later work, Lonergan will refer to this as “emergent probability”. See Jim Kanaris, Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of Religion: From Philosophy of God to Philosophy of Religious Studies (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2012), 68. 140. FLM 21. 141. FLM 22-23. 162
end oxygen attains not in isolation nor per se but in combination with other elements and within the human biological process.142
In an instrumental vertical finality, oxygen can contribute to a higher level in its support of human life. For Lonergan, vertical finality is a means by which God has ordered the universe into many levels of participation in which all creatures and beings are able to be utilized by God in ways beyond their natural ends. Through obediential finality in particular, Lonergan intends to draw his most poignant conclusions regarding the ends of marriage and how the natural human movement of human loving can be moved toward the supernatural level.
III. B. Vertical Finality in the context of Human Loving and Friendship
Before Lonergan can apply the notion of vertical finality to marriage, he first looks briefly at the nature of human loving. The natural process of loving in which a good is desired, sought, and attained becomes the ground for vertical finality. As stated above, Lonergan seeks to uncover the vertical, obediential finality in which “a concrete plurality of rational beings have the obediential potency to receive the communication of God himself.”143 Lonergan narrows in on the “personalist development” of friendship that can be perfected on the supernatural level.144
Kathleen Williams explains that, “in his analysis of vertical finality [Lonergan] makes it clear that in human history it is friendship, of and with God initially and also with one another on the way, that makes the concrete plurality fertile.”145 Focusing on friendship, Lonergan develops the notion of human loving as the fertile ground from which properly-ordered love tends upward toward its true good. Borrowing from Thomas, Lonergan begins by identifying the nature of the
142. FLM 23. 143. FLM 20-21. 144. FLM 19. 145. Williams, “Graced Friendship,” 356. 163
natural act of human willing and loving, in which he draws out four simultaneous aspects. In the first and most fundamental sense, love is the basic form of the faculty of appetition in which there is a “pure response of appetite to the good.”146 Second, as an act of the faculty of appetition, love is also “the first principle of process to the end loved,” meaning that the whole process of loving is an expression of love.147 The third and fourth aspects of love can be conceived as the acts of a subject, insofar as love is the principle of union between two subjects.
This union of love in the subjects can, in the third aspect, be considered as the union of people in solidarity in the process to an end, as with “the love of friends pursuing in common a common goal.”148 In the fourth aspect, the union of love in subjects can be considered in terms of the union in the consummation of the end attained, illustrated in the ultimate end of the beatific vision.149 Love can be understood then as the union between subjects both in the process to a common end but also in the attainment of that end. The multiplicity of the aspects to love is further complicated by the many different loves which occur in any subject.
For Lonergan, love is a pure response to a good, but many desires and loves can produce tension and contradictions, even within a single subject, which can hinder the possible ascent of love. In the process of desiring and attaining the good, the multiplicity of appetites gives rise to an inner tension: “in this tension, the rational part of man is at a disadvantage, for natural spontaneity takes care of itself while knowledge and virtue have to be acquired.”150 Desires are constant, but self-awareness and knowledge are needed to determine if these acts of the appetite are in accord with what is right since the appetite itself is indifferent to whether its love is
146. FLM 23. 147. FLM 24. 148. FLM 24. 149. FLM 24. 150. FLM 26. 164
egoistic or altruistic.151 For Lonergan, these issues are further compounded when viewed from the societal vantage point. Drawing attention to the dialectical and social obstacles associated with this tension in loving, he states, “people continue to affirm publicly a dialectical series of rationalizations gradually to undermine and eventually to destroy the spiritual capital of the community.”152 Disordered pursuits of the will lead to a societal decay. Lonergan ultimately argues that there is a “human solidarity in sin with a dialectical descent deforming knowledge and perverting will” so that “evil performance confirms us in evil.”153 The internal tensions in misdirected loving not only hinder any ascent in loving upward toward the good but become manifest on a social level and bring the community further from the good.
The dangers of mistaken self-love threaten all human relationships and here, Lonergan brings a particular focus to friendship. He extols Aristotle’s classical articulation of friendship, which, he argues, recognized the pernicious issue of self-love as one that shifts between virtue and vice. Seeing the dangers of an ill-formed will, Aristotle’s notion of perfect friendship required virtue; Lonergan confirms that for Aristotle “only by being a true friend to oneself can one be a decent friend to others.”154 The transcendence of both egoism and altruism “is implicit in the Aristotelian notion of true friendship with its basis not in pleasure nor in advantage but in the objective lovableness of the virtuous man.”155 In asking what precisely is true friendship to oneself and others, Lonergan argues however that Aristotle’s vision of friendship bears a
151. Ibid. Lonergan explains that “while it may happen that after each failure to carry out ideal aspiration man repents and reasserts the primacy of the ideal over the real…it may also happen that after repeated failure man begins to rationalize, to deform knowledge into harmony with disorderly loves.” As Mathews observes, “the unreasonable is what suits mistaken self-love.” Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest, 126. 152. FLM 27. 153. Ibid. 154. FLM 25. Lonergan references Ethics VIII, 4, 1157a. 155. FLM 25. 165
“methodological defect” in that “intent on a practical goal, [Aristotle] defined virtue empirically and ruled out discussion of an absolute good.”156 In Lonergan’s estimation, Aristotle’s vision of true friendship is hindered by a lack of consideration for the absolute good to which the will should be oriented; only with an understanding of the absolute good can one speak of an objective lovableness of another in friendship and only in tending toward the absolute can friends truly escape the tug and pull of egoism and altruism. This was the achievement of Thomas’s later development of Aristotle. Lonergan argues that what is implicit with Aristotle “is made explicit with Thomas” when he argues that all creatures by nature love God above all things.157 The notion of true friendship is perfected with Thomas’s vision of God as the ultimate good seen in his work on charity. Mathews explains that for Lonergan, only “by being attuned correctly to the absolute good that is God will egoism and altruism be transcended and virtue loved. Selfishness stands in a dialectical relationship with love.”158
While Lonergan warns of a solidarity that occurs in the descent of sin, he likewise recognizes a solidarity in the upward ascent with grace. This upward ascent is achieved through
God’s response in the divine missions to the personal and social obstacles of sin and selfishness.
He states that “to pierce the darkness of such ideology the divine Logos came into the world” and “to sap its root in weak human will he sent his Spirit of Love into our hearts; and in this redemption we are justified, rectified, renewed.”159 Halting the descent in sin and selfishness occurs through God’s gift of grace through the missions of the Son and Spirit which heal the disordered will. A divine solidarity is present in the Mystical Body of Christ by the workings of
156. FLM 25. 157. FLM 25; See also ST I-II q. 109, a. 3c. 158. Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest, 126. 159. FLM 27. 166
grace to transform selfishness into self-giving love. Lonergan states that “the ascent of the soul towards God is not a merely private affair but rather a personal function of an objective common movement in that body of Christ which takes over, transforms, and elevates every aspect of human life.”160 The order of grace works to transform the will and opens a pathway upward to participation in divine life.
III. C. Vertical Finality in Action: The Ascent of Love toward Charity
For Lonergan, the divine missions function to heal human loving of its selfish descent into sin and to elevate this natural action of loving to a supernatural level. Vertical finality reveals the unfolding of God’s plan to unite all people through this elevation of human loving. Lonergan uses the common friendship of the spouses to show how the natural can reach the level of grace and ultimately beatitude. To do this, Lonergan states that “one has to set the complex nature of love in the empty category of vertical finality” to see the ascent of love.161 Using vertical finality,
Lonergan intends to demonstrate that “there is a dispositive upward tendency giving a new modality to that high pursuit, for husband and wife are called not only to advance but to advance together.”162 Through the process and development of love, grace can be at work in the love found among people; some friendships can function as a key part of God’s saving plan and in the order of grace.
The ascent of love in a human person involves a movement through three levels of appetite, reason, and grace. These levels are interwoven with the first three aspects of love,
160. Ibid. 161. FLM 29. 162. FLM 29. 167
identified above.163 Grounding the ascent of love through these levels is an understanding that on all three of these levels, God is, and remains, the source and end of loving. On the lowest level, that of basic appetite, the desire for the good is natural and instinctual in its pursuit of what is desired; this basic appetite is, what Lonergan identifies as, “very obviously the word of God, who implants in nature its proper mode of response and orientation.”164 On this fundamental level of bodily desire, one sees a good and one seeks to attain it. The level of reason operates on a higher level than the appetite in that one is moved by a good affirmed by the intellect, which
Lonergan attributes to God’s design for the human person’s “antecedent spontaneity” to goodness and truth.165 God implants in the rational being a desire for goodness and for truth more sophisticated than mere bodily appetite. Lonergan states that “rational love examines and selects its motives, deliberately wills its own immanent perfection, and freely proceeds to effect further instances of the good.”166 The level of reason operates on a higher level than the appetite in that it involves a deliberate and conscious response to the truly good.
The highest level is the level of grace which does not work in isolation from the other two levels but raises and transforms what is present there. Lonergan explains that,
On the highest level of grace, there is a heightening or elevating transformation of the rational level’s antecedent spontaneity, so that the truth through which God rules man’s autonomy is the truth God reveals beyond reason’s reach, and the good which is motive is the divine goodness that is motive of infused charity.167
163. As stated, love has (1) a passive aspect in the response to the good; (2) an immanent aspect in the perfection of the lover; (3) an active aspect in that love is productive of further instances of the good; and (4) the union of love in the subjects. Since the fourth is the final consummation, the end fully attained, it is not incorporated into the movement through the levels. 164. FLM 30. 165. Ibid. 166. Ibid. Lonergan argues therefore that on the level of reason there is “superimposed” a fourth aspect of love, of “reflection and freedom” in that this level adds the deliberation and decision-making of the rational process and is “embedded in a field of natural spontaneity and infused virtue.” 167. Ibid. 168
The good sought on the level of grace is beyond reason’s ability to know or to seek unaided. In
Lonergan’s vision, God can make use of the free exercise of the intellect and will to spark an upward shift onto the level of grace.
Lonergan’s account of the vertical upthrust of love requires that the natural process of love move through the levels of appetite, reason and upward to grace. It is a complex movement as the lower levels dispose the higher levels and the higher level works to perfect the lower.
Realized in a single subject, these levels dispose themselves to the higher in such a way that all these levels come from “and return to God.”168 Lonergan’s goal is to witness “the vertical upthrust, the ascent, that crosses from lower to higher levels of appetition and process.”169
Lonergan attempts to reach this goal by analyzing each aspect of love to show how each aspect can be disposed to an upthrust toward a higher, more profound level of loving. This ascent begins first with the passive encounter of the will with the good.
III. C. 1. Ascent in the passive aspect of love
Under the first aspect of love, love is a passive response to a good. For Lonergan, this good can, and ultimately should be, God or “some manifestation of divine perfection,” since God is to be loved perfectly in himself as the cause of all good.170 Although a desire for God is built into the human person, this desire does not begin in an unmediated way. Instead, there is a process by which other proximate loves are inserted into the order of divine charity. Lonergan argues that “towards this high goal of charity it is no small beginning in the weak and imperfect heart of fallen man to be startled by a beauty that shifts the center of appetition out of self.”171
168. Ibid. 169. FLM 31. 170. FLM 30, 31. 171. FLM 31. 169
This shift occurs on the level of appetite, on this level of “sensitive spontaneity by eros leaping through delighted eyes and establishing itself as unrest in absence and an imperious demand for company.”172 The desire for another begins on a level of appetite which responds to another as a good, through the desire for company, and seeks to attain it.
Once the desire is activated on the level of appetite, “company may reveal deeper qualities of mind and character to shift again the center from the merely organistic tendencies of nature to the rational level of friendship with its enduring basis in the excellence of a good person.”173 On the next level, that of reason, the appetite is drawn toward the good in a deeper way, from mere company now as friend, in which the love is based on a level of mutual common interest in the good. Finally, if this is truly a virtuous good, love is drawn outside itself once again when “grace inserts into charity the love that nature gives and reason approves.”174 The passive aspect of love is a response to the good by shifting one out of oneself by delight in another, moving one from eros to friendship and from friendship to love of God.
III. C. 2. Ascent in the immanent aspect of love
In the process of loving, the second aspect refers to the internal process in the lover toward what is loved. For Lonergan, the whole process is “the self-expression of the love that is its first principle.”175 Lonergan argues that the immanent aspect of love has three formal effects: a moral, relative and a unitive effect. The moral aspect refers to making ourselves virtuous or vicious, depending on whether our loving is ordered or disordered. Seeking to attain what is desired starts a process of change within the lover; a true good requires development in the good;
172. FLM 31-32. 173. FLM 32. 174. Ibid. 175. FLM 24. 170
evil will confirm vice. Consequent to the moral effect is a relative one, namely, that a good person is the one truly lovable and so true love of friendship moves forward only to the degree that both are oriented toward being good people.176 The virtuous person is the truly lovable person. With these two in place, the third effect is union. Lonergan explains that “when love is habitual and reciprocated, there emerges a third formal effect: then love unites; it makes lovers parts of a larger unit with each to the other as another self, a dimidium animae suae.”177 For
Lonergan, the lovers become for the other the very half of one’s soul and a second self.
For Lonergan, ascent in the immanent aspect of love requires the perfecting of the lover with virtue. Without this development, ascent is not possible beyond the level of appetite. Vice and disordered love hinder the development of this immanent aspect toward its effect of union since the selfish lover only truly loves herself. To reach the level of reason involves a friendship which recognizes the “full realization of the existence of another self.”178 This immanent aspect can move onto the higher level of grace through “the very fact of incorporation in the body of
Christ.”179 In an unique way, marriage can operate on this level as a sacrament, but for Lonergan all members of the Mystical Body of Christ “are known and loved as other selves.”180 An invitation into the body of Christ is an invitation to enter a union of love of Christ for his Church.
III. C. 3. Ascent in the active aspect of love
The third aspect of love is its active aspect in which love is productive. Lonergan enumerates four ways in which it is productive: in seeking its own self-perpetuation, in seeking
176. FLM 32. 177. Ibid. 178. FLM 33. 179. Ibid. 180. FLM 33-34. 171
its own self-expression, in seeking possession of the good, and, if that good is a project, in seeking to produce it.181 The principle reflected here, for Lonergan, is “bonum est sui diffusivum,” the good is creative of further good.182 Love in its active aspect seeks to influence, to commonly motivate, and to become more perfect. Lonergan roots this active aspect in the friendship as the result of what is formed in the immanent aspect of love. He states that “just as habitual and reciprocated love has the formal effect of constituting a union, of setting up mutual other selves, so a common end, defined by a common motive and sought in the common effort of friends sharing a common life, actuates the common consciousness of mutual other selves.”183
This third aspect involves the common life shared by the friends. Lonergan explains further:
Now a man is to himself in consciousness of his being, and he is conscious of his being through activity; hence, to be to his friend as he is to himself, the common consciousness of mutual other selves has to find a common activity; and since activity results from response to motive, this common activity presupposes a coincidence of views, profound or superficial, on the meaning of life, on what makes life worth while and sets a goal to human striving.184
True friends are bound by common pursuit of virtue and of the truly good. This perfection in the immanent aspect of the lovers produces this active aspect in which friends live out their pursuit of the truly good in a life in common. While the relationships of bad people produce evil things, the friendships of good people foster good things and the mutual sustained improvement of one another.
Lonergan argues that the ascent of love that occurs through these levels is a dynamic and dispositive one. Lonergan speaks to the nature of this ascent in which “the lower is not the mere
181. FLM 34. 182. Ibid. 183. FLM 35. 184. FLM 35. 172
instrument of the higher, nor material from which it is educed, nor obediential potency for it.”185
Rather, with these levels of activity and love, “there is an intensification of the higher by the lower, a stability resulting not from mere absence of tension but from positive harmony between different levels, and, most dynamic, the integration by which the lower in its expansion involves a development in the higher.”186 The love that begins as a passive response and then as immanent only truly ascends if the love is properly ordered to the good. When this is the case, then the active aspect of love sets to work, in which the two spouses, the two friends, work together toward their common goal as two people oriented toward the good. Then, for Lonergan, “their goal will be not just fun but, here below, the humanistic goal of the Aristotelian good life, and supernaturally the beatific vision.”187 Ultimately the ascent of love is brought to love of God in that “it is in charity to one another that, in truth and reality, people come to the love of God.”188
The friends are motivated by their common good and seek to more and more fully actualize this good in the productive aspect of love; for Lonergan, God can make use of this relationship, raising this pursuit of the good from natural to supernatural aims.
III. D. Concluding Observations
“Finality, Love, Marriage” reveals Lonergan’s vision of grace as operative in a world designed by God as an integrative system rather than a world of discreet isolated sets of created things. Vertical finality reflects this governing principle in the world order, namely, that God has orchestrated the cosmos in such a way that beings can contribute to ends higher than their proportionate ones. Jim Kanaris observes that for Lonergan, “horizontal and vertical ends are
185. FLM 36. 186. Ibid. 187. FLM 37. 188. FLM 36 173
viewed as complementary and part of the same system, with the intensification of the levels being a bottom-up process.”189 While horizontal ends remain most essential, Lonergan observes the ways in which lower levels can contribute to, and even participate in, higher levels of activity through a process of ascent; and the higher, conversely, work to extend and perfect the lower ends.190 This fundamental reality in the order of the universe can apply to the human person in terms of the supernatural order as well. Lonergan envisions that, “in the cosmic breadth of a simultaneous context of nature, history and grace,” God can lead one toward beatitude through a sublational process of vertical finality in which love moves from nature to reason and reason to grace.191
While human loving has the capacity for a vertical upthrust, this does not necessarily occur in every instance of loving. Indeed, Lonergan emphatically articulates the problematic reality of sin and disordered love that hinder love’s ascent before discussing how love can possibly ascend. It is on this point that Lonergan’s incorporation of Aristotle becomes essential; only the best friendships, those founded in virtue and oriented toward the absolute Good, can avoid mistaking self-love for true friendship. Kanaris observes that for Lonergan friendships that are not oriented by the absolute good may contribute to a horizontal end, still “by itself it is a truncation of vertical finality.”192 Instead, he argues that “the true end of friendship—a good,
Aristotle estimates, that surpasses all other goods, making life desirable—must have its basis in more than what is pleasurable or acceptable, that is, if it is not to be merely subjective.”193 Only natural loves that are authentic and grounded in the truly good, that seek to actualize their own
189. Kanaris, Lonergan’s Philosophy, 74. 190. Wilkins, “Finality, History, and Grace,” 381. 191. FLM 19. 192. Kanaris, Lonergan’s Philosophy, 73. 193. Ibid. 174
immanent perfection, have the possibility of the vertical upthrust toward beatitude. Fred
Lawrence observes that “Lonergan speaks repeatedly of excellence…the excellence of a person, of a state of affairs” and ultimately of God as “the ground of all excellence, of the ascent through participated excellence to the absolute excellence of God, of the enduring bliss of friendship in the excellence of the good person.”194 The excellence established immanently in the lover contributes to an excellent friendship; and as established in vertical finality, an excellent friendship can participate in charity as friendship par excellence.
In this article, Lonergan’s vision of the vertical finality of human loving is applied to the natural institution of marriage, but Lonergan’s work is not focused on marital love exclusively, but on the friendship that marital love can foster. For Lonergan, true friendship seems to become the model for marriage and the key for the vertical upthrust of human loving.195 He states that
“any insertion of spontaneous union or human friendship into charity, which is friendship in
Christ, has not the ground of supernatural excellence achieved but the end of such excellence to be achieved.”196 Friends bound together in their pursuit of Christian perfection can more firmly root their progress in the Christian life. Lonergan argues, “a human friendship cannot but intensify the mutual charity of members of the mystical body.”197 Any friendship which is rooted in the common pursuit of the good can provide the dispositive upward tendency toward beatitude in which the two friends can advance together.
194. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 813. 195. Williams, “Graced Friendship,” 359. Williams argues: “Lonergan conceives of true friendship as a model for marriage, rather than vice-versa, primarily because friendship rather than marriage would appear to be at the heart of his analysis of Aquinas’ explanation of the gift of charity as amicitia Dei.” On the other hand, Fred Lawrence leaves it an open question whether marriage or friendship to be the true model; he states, “it is a question whether Lonergan conceives of married love as the model for true friendship, or vice-versa. Whatever the case, the steps in this ascent clearly hold true for friendships generally.” Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 813. 196. FLM 37. 197. FLM 36. 175
For Lonergan, friendships touched by the ascent of vertical finality combat the descent of selfishness and sin. He argues that with Christian friendship, “their mutual actuation of a common consciousness and conscience will be a rejection of the world’s dialectical rationalizations, a focal point in the stream of history for the fostering of growth in the mind and heart of Christ, a pursuit of the highest human and eternal ends.”198 In the system Lonergan develops, vertical finality only occurs through communion with others, specifically a communion that is punctuated by common pursuit of the good. Lonergan asserts that ultimately,
“it is in charity to one another that, in truth and reality, as St. John so clearly taught, people come to the love of God.”199
IV. Conclusion
Lonergan’s devotion to the study of Thomas permeates his understanding of the tradition and his own theological development during the early stages of his career. His appropriation of
Thomas becomes the foundation for his refinement of the Thomistic tradition he inherits and grounds his own subsequent theological and philosophical projects. The focus of this chapter was to examine three texts from his early career: De ente supernaturali, his “Supplemental Notes on
Sanctifying Grace,” and “Finality, Love, Marriage.” While each of these texts has its own unique and disparate aim, they all nevertheless can be brought together through the theme of friendship.
Each in turn sketches the outlines of Lonergan’s vision of the supernatural order of grace, of
God’s plan for salvation, and of the invitation for human participation in it. Lonergan’s incorporation of the notion of friendship within this framework colors the order of grace as an
198. FLM 37. In the sacrament of marriage specifically, Lonergan states “the compenetrating consciousness of lives shared by marriage is dynamic and reaches forth to will and to realize in common the advance in Christian perfection that leads from the consummation of two-in-one-flesh to the consummation of the beatific vision.” 199. Williams, “Graced Friendship,” 367-68. 176
interpersonal reality, ordered toward the good, which calls for collaborative human participation; all of this is oriented toward the ultimate perfection of this friendship in beatitude. Further important implications can be synthesized on the basis of these three texts.
First, Lonergan’s use of the notion of charity as friendship reinforces his conception of the order of grace as an interpersonal reality. Jeremy Wilkins argues that “for Lonergan, the ‘state of grace’ is not only an immanent perfection and order in the soul, but a divine-human interpersonal situation.”200 All three texts reflect Lonergan’s understanding of grace as a free gift given precisely out of divine love for the purpose of establishing a new relationship. In DES,
Lonergan emphatically distinguishes between sanctifying grace, which is the created communication of the gift of grace, and charity as a friendship, which is the result of that love.
This gift of grace is not simply about healing a nature distorted by sin but elevating the human person to participate in a supernatural relationship that is beyond what is naturally attainable.
Lonergan’s “Supplementary Notes” provides the clear purpose of this gift of grace on God’s part to be “a diffusion of love.” Even more profoundly, Lonergan argues that God diffuses this love in an orderly way, according to the manner in which love is interpersonally present within the
Trinity. The active love of the Father and Son makes the human person a temple of the Holy
Spirit through the indwelling and the created communication of divine nature. This love is given to establish a friendship with God which requires a mutual response made possible by sanctifying grace and enkindled through the infused habit of charity.
Secondly, Lonergan’s identification of charity as a friendship contributes to Lonergan’s organization of the harmonious complementarity between the natural and the supernatural orders.
200. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 27. 177
In DES, Lonergan emphasizes the absolutely supernatural reality of the supernatural order; this however does not necessitate a strict isolation of the supernatural from the natural. Instead, both
DES and “Finality, Love, Marriage” affirm that God has designed the universe in such a way that lower things can participate in what is higher. Michael Stebbins observes that for Lonergan,
The radical discontinuity that sets off the absolutely supernatural order from all other created orders of being does not preclude participation. Far from it — as constituted by or oriented to the attainment by creatures of God uti in se est, the absolutely supernatural order has to do precisely, and in an eminent way, with the participation of lower grades of being in higher.201
For Lonergan, the reality of the supernatural order so deeply penetrates the natural world and the processes of the human person that the supernatural can almost be considered natural by grace.
As Lonergan develops in DES, the created communication of sanctifying grace is sent to the soul in such a way that it even becomes the origin of authentic operations of knowing and loving.
Additionally, Lonergan’s supernatural order not only uses the natural operations of the intellect and will, but also can make use of natural institutions, like marriage and friendship, to bring them to a higher perfection than their natural, horizontal, ends. Lonergan’s development of vertical finality in “Finality, Love, Marriage” shows development on natural levels which “are stabilized and integrated on the higher level of supernatural life.”202 The supernatural order does not interrupt, monopolize or eradicate natural operation, but brings it to a higher perfection; for, as Lonergan states, “grace inserts into charity the love that nature gives and reason approves.”203
Using the natural love like what is found in Aristotelian friendships, Lonergan maps the progress of friendship through the natural order and the vertical ascent it makes when perfected by grace.
201. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 57. 202. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 815. 203. FLM 32. 178
Thirdly, Lonergan’s conceptualization of charity as a friendship allows further characterization of the communion of those bound together by grace. Lonergan states that the ascent of the soul “is not a merely private affair but rather a personal function of an objective common movement in the Body of Christ.”204 As Lonergan establishes, central to the order of grace is human loving which has been elevated and perfected by grace. Obediential vertical finality, according to which God draws the natural toward the supernatural, only occurs through
“a concrete plurality.” In other words, God’s perfection of human loving cannot occur through isolation or in a vacuum; rather, perfection of human loving occurs through loving others.
Jeremy Wilkins clarifies that for Lonergan, “fully human living requires community not only for collaborative action but above all for the very possibility of self-donation, which in human beings constitutes the highest possibility of their nature”; ultimately, “it is this intersubjective character of human self-transcendence that participation in the trinitarian life of God perfects and sublates.”205 The new order of loving marks the community of the Church who are all enabled by sanctifying grace to become friends with God. Robert Doran similarly emphasizes the significance of the communal reality of the order of grace in Lonergan’s theology; he states that:
This habit of grace in individuals sets up a state of grace in the community, even as it is conditioned by the state of grace. In what is truly a groundbreaking transformation of traditional language, Lonergan says that the state of grace is a social situation, a set of intersubjective relationships, where the founding subjects are the three divine subjects, and where grace prevails because they have come to dwell in us and with us.”206
204. FLM 27. 205. Wilkins, “Finality, History, Grace,” 396. 206. Robert Doran, “Being in Love with God: A Source of Analogies for Theological Understanding,” Irish Theological Quarterly 73 (2008): 237. 179
All three texts characterize the relationship that the order of grace establishes as a friendship with
God. The order of grace is an interpersonal reality which implies a union of love, similar to what is found in friendship fashioned by the diffusion of love first initiated by God.
Finally, the use of friendship to clarify the order of grace reflects Lonergan’s understanding of the interconnectedness of the order of grace with the natural good of order, that order according to which all things are oriented toward their own individual and mutual flourishing. The “Supplemental Notes” and DES both point to the complementarity of the supernatural order of grace with the natural order as revealing God’s intentional structuring of redemption to involve the transformation of one’s knowing and loving. This transformation involves the whole person and begins in the present life. Kathleen Williams argues that “for us, being motivated by and drawn to God means being caught up with a host of strangers on the way to becoming intimates, as we cooperate in producing the human good, each becoming what each can be, all possibly becoming part of becoming and achieving what none can do or become alone.”207 Further, Lonergan argues in “Finality, Love, Marriage” that orientation toward the truly good and the development of virtue are both necessary in the supernatural order. According to Robert Doran, Lonergan conceives “the state of grace as an interpersonal situation,” whose
“formal effects extend to the establishment of a genuine community of meaning and value among human beings.”208 The diffusion of love which establishes the supernatural order is intended to transform human living and so also creates a community of those who are bound to
God in friendship.
207. Williams, “Graced Friendship,” 356. 208. Robert Doran, “Social Grace and the Mission of the Church,” in A Realist’s Church: Essays in Honor of Joseph A. Komonchak, ed. Patrick Hayes and Nicholas Rademacher (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 173. 180
The community of those united as friends of God in the Body of Christ is likewise united in the common pursuit of greater and greater charity. Ultimately, for Lonergan, solidarity in virtue and in the Body of Christ is the antidote to the disharmony of sin and selfishness of disordered love. Lonergan argues that with true friends, “their mutual actuation of a common consciousness and conscience will be a rejection of the world’s dialectical rationalizations, a focal point in the stream of history for the fostering of growth in the mind and heart of Christ, a pursuit of the highest human and eternal ends.”209 Through the realization of the community’s vertical finality, love can become perfected, but only if it is truly authentic loving oriented toward the good; otherwise, instead of an ascent toward perfection, disordered love leads to rationalizations, sin, and social disorder. Wilkins observes that for Lonergan, “redemption can be brought about only through a divinely instituted collaboration with human beings that transcends the cumulative effects of sin through self-giving love.”210 Thus, for Lonergan, the order of grace involves the transformation of the knowing and loving of the entire human person and ultimately of the entire human community. This transformation is the remedy for sin in the social order.
These three texts of Lonergan reveal the central role of friendship in characterizing the order of grace. For Lonergan, sanctifying grace establishes a friendship which is modeled on, and offered by, divine love, and requires a collaborative response by the newly-made friends of God.
In these texts, Lonergan masterfully develops a vision of the order of grace that unites Trinitarian love to the missions, and further to the life of grace as part of the diffusion of love in God’s plan of salvation. In a 1951 domestic exhortation to his religious community in Toronto on the
Mystical Body of Christ, Lonergan brings unity to these themes again, stating:
209. FLM 37. 210. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 26. 181
By the uncreated gift of the Holy Spirit, by the infusion of sanctifying grace into our souls, we are born again. Our sins are forgiven, we are made just in the sight of God, we become his friends, his children, and heirs to the kingdom of heaven. There is implanted within us a new principle of higher life, and from it there flow the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost. That new and higher life is not lived in isolation. For it is the life of the member of Christ, and it flourishes in us in the measure that we are united with Christ.211
Ultimately, the members of the Mystical Body of Christ are those who are joined to God, and to one another, in friendship. The new principle of sanctifying grace modifies the entirety of one’s life and compels the friend of God toward excellence and working together toward the good.
This new life of friendship was the intended goal of the diffusion of love first begun by the work of Christ.
211. Bernard Lonergan, “The Mystical Body of Christ,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 20, Shorter Papers, ed. Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 109. Chapter 4: Friendship as an Integral Aspect of Redemption in Lonergan’s Soteriology
The previous chapter explored the theme of friendship in Lonergan’s early works on grace until the year 1951. The end of what is considered the early stage of Lonergan’s career is generally identified two years later with Lonergan’s relocation to Rome to teach at the Gregorian
University in 1953.1 As a pivot to move into Lonergan’s theological writing during this next period of his career, it is worth returning to the text last referenced in the previous chapter, “The
Mystical Body of Christ,” a domestic exhortation written for his Jesuit community in Toronto in
1951. In this text, Lonergan defines the Mystical Body of Christ as “a concrete union of the divine Persons with one another and with man, and, again, of men’s union with one another and with the divine Persons.”2 Given the “comprehensive network of relations” within this one
Mystical Body, Lonergan follows the theme of love extracting five instances of love which come together in the one Body: the love of the eternal Father for his Son as God, a love which is the
1. Crowe, Lonergan Idea, 132-137. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this next stage of Lonergan’s career is signaled by the publication of Insight in 1957, considered by most to be one of his greatest achievements. In this text, Lonergan presents a theory of human knowledge and provides a general analysis of the dynamic structure of human history. His presentation entails a study of the human good and human development as well as the dangers of decline and social breakdown. Lonergan’s work in Insight provides the philosophical background from which Lonergan would write his most important soteriological texts which are the focus of the current chapter. Themes of human knowing and willing, sin and the social cycles of decline, the need for a transformation of evil into good, and the connection of redemption and the social order which are developed in a philosophical context in Insight will recur throughout these theological writings as well. The focus of the present project continues to be Lonergan’s explicitly theological works and therefore treatment of Insight is outside the purview of this work; nevertheless, given the significant role Insight has on Lonergan’s overall development, and in particular the soteriological themes just identified, it is an important moment to mention, and references to Insight will be made throughout the chapter when relevant. For a detailed analysis of Lonergan’s Insight, see Tracy, Achievement of Bernard Lonergan, chapters 4 and 5; Mathews, Lonergan’s Quest, passim; Donald Gelpi, “Learning to Live with Lonergan,” in Finding God in All Things: Celebrating Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner, ed. Mark Bosco and David Stagaman (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 15-34; Terry Tekippe, Bernard Lonergan: An Introductory Guide to Insight (New York: Paulist Press, 2003); Richard Liddy, Startling Strangeness: Reading Lonergan’s Insight (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007). 2. Lonergan, “Mystical Body of Christ,” 106.
182 183
Holy Spirit; the love of the Eternal Father for his Son as man, since the Son is “the same Person in his divine and human natures”; the love of Christ “as man for men,” those whom Christ loved with a human will and for whom he willingly died as a friend; the love of the Father for us communicated through the merit of Christ which makes us lovable as adopted sons and daughters; and the love of God in the heart of the justified made possible by the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit.3 With these five instances, Lonergan elaborates on his early understanding of the principle of the economy of salvation as a “diffusion of love” which brings God and humanity into a new union of love.4
At the center of these different loves which constitute the Mystical Body is Christ, in whom divine love and human love meet. The mediation of divine and human love by Christ, characterized as a friendship, becomes the focal point of redemption for Lonergan. According to
Frederick Lawrence, the role of friendship in Lonergan’s exposition of the Mystical Body is
“underlined in the central role he assigns to Jesus’s human love for us” and this becomes “crucial for the Christian understanding of the economy of salvation.”5 For Lonergan, the Son as mediator, specifically as a human mediator, is at the heart of the God’s plan of redemption and the means by which the diffusion of God’s love to humanity occurs. Moreover, this divine love is a love of friendship; for, as Lonergan argues in 1958, “the Son of God became a human so that divine friendship might be communicated in orderly fashion to the unfriendly.”6 In this way, the
3. Lonergan, “Mystical Body of Christ,” 107-109. 4. SNSG 601. 5. Frederick Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship: Postmodern Political Theology and God as Conversational,” Gregorianum 85, 4 (2004): 810. 6. Bernard Lonergan, The Redemption, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 9, The Redemption, ed. Robert Doran, H. Daniel Monsour and Jeremy Wilkins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 235. 184
purpose of the incarnation is to mediate divine friendship in a human manner and through a human life. Kevin Vander Schel argues that for Lonergan,
While the incarnation certainly does bring a reconciliation with God, its purpose is not first and foremost to redress the effects of sin. It finds its supreme good, instead, in the communication of divine goodness and love — that is, the communication of the divine friendship of the Trinity. And in this communication, it inaugurates a restoration and fulfillment of the total human good of order, the gathering up or recapitulation of all things in Christ through the ‘body of Christ.’7
God’s plan of redemption in the diffusion of divine love occurs through the mediation of the human life of Christ which radically transforms all of human living by presenting divine friendship as the highest good. The human love of Christ “as man for men” communicates divine friendship in such a way that reconciliation occurs, beatitude becomes attainable by grace, sin and evil are defeated, and the good order of the universe is restored.
The goal of this chapter is to explore the role of friendship and, in a particular way,
Christ’s role as mediator of this divine friendship. Three major works in particular are to be examined: De Deo Trino from 1961, De Verbo Incarnato from 1960, and a lesser-known supplement to De Verbo Incarnato called The Redemption first started in 1958.8 In the first,
Lonergan’s systematic work on the Trinity concludes with a chapter on the divine missions in which Lonergan carefully grounds the missions of the Son and Spirit in the order of divine life.
Further, Lonergan argues that the primary aim of the missions is to establish new interpersonal
7. Kevin Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word: Reflections on Schleiermacher and Lonergan,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from his grateful students, ed. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy D. Wilkins (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016), 314. 8. While not in chronological order, the presentation of these three texts in this way enables Lonergan’s thought to build conceptually to reveal the main lines of his soteriology. Since De Deo Trino treats the divine Persons and the constitution of their divine missions, it is fitting to discuss this prior to the work the Son did as man in the other two texts. Although these three texts are not exhaustive of Lonergan’s soteriological texts they contain the majority of his original thought. Other minor soteriological writings will be incorporated as they relate to these three chief texts. 185
relationships; and, these new relationships, in turn, have a profound impact on the “human good of order.” The second text, Lonergan’s manual for Christology, De Verbo Incarnato, reveals
Lonergan’s understanding of how God deals with evil and sin through its transformation into good—the paradigmatic example of this transformation is Christ’s death on the cross. This transformation on the cross occurs because of Christ’s love of friendship as a man and his suffering and death can only be understood in this context of friendship. Finally, The Redemption brings together the themes from the first two texts and posits friendship as a central factor in salvation and in the human good both historically and eschatologically. Lonergan argues for the fittingness of Christ to communicate divine friendship as part of God’s plan to work in history to restore the possibility of beatitude and to bring restoration to the human good of order through the Church.
I. De Deo Trino
Lonergan regularly taught courses on the Trinity throughout his career, beginning in
1945-1946 in Montreal, again in 1949-1950 in Toronto, and during his tenure in Rome from
1953-1960.9 What began as course notes, supplemental materials, and articles ultimately developed into two full volumes, De Deo Trino: Pars Dogmatica and De Deo Trino: Pars
Systematica, both published in 1964.10 The first of these texts presents the history of the
Church’s teaching and the doctrinal development of the theology of the Trinity. Presupposing this doctrine as true, the second text explores the Trinity from a more speculative and systematic approach to studying the divine mystery, specifically treating the processions in God, the real
9. Robert Doran, preface to Triune God: Systematics, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12, ed. H. Daniel Monsour and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), xvii. 10. For extended treatment of the development and compilation of these texts, see Doran, preface to Triune God: Systematics, xvii-xviii. 186
relations and consubstantiality of the divine persons.11 Following in the path of Augustine and
Thomas Aquinas, Lonergan notably endorses and updates the psychological analogy for the
Trinity which compares the eternal processions of the Son and the Spirit to the workings of the human mind in the processes of knowing and loving.12
Building on what he establishes regarding the processions in God in the preceding chapters, Lonergan lays out his vision for the true fittingness, the intelligibility, of the missions of the Son and the Spirit in the final chapter of DDT. Here, Lonergan posits a clear foundation for the missions in the inner-Trinitarian life of God which in turn reveals the unique role that each divine Person has in the divine plan of redemption. What comes into focus in this chapter, as Kevin Vander Schel has observed, is that for Lonergan “the mystery of redemption is inherently Trinitarian.”13 Lonergan himself states:
It was appropriate that the economy of salvation, which is ordered to participation in divine beatitude itself, should not only imitate the order of the Holy Trinity but also in some manner participate in that order. For this reason the very divine persons who from eternity proceed from the Father are also in time sent by the Father to initiate and strengthen new personal relations of reconciliation and love with human persons.14
11. Bernard Lonergan, Triune God: Systematics, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12, ed. H. Daniel Monsour and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 3. Henceforth DDT. Describing his method, Lonergan states his goal to be “that imperfect, analogical, obscure, gradually developing, synthetic, and fruitful theological understanding.” DDT 117. 12. See DDT 134-181. Lonergan takes this inherited analogy and transposes it into his own intentionality analysis, focusing on consciousness and the psychological subject. Jeremy Wilkins explains that, in the Trinity, “the Father speaks the Word and both spirate Love. Thus, Lonergan conceived the speaking of the Word by analogy with the true judgment of value that consciously and autonomously proceeds from a grasp of the sufficiency of the evidence. He conceived the spiration of the Spirit by analogy with the act of love that consciously and autonomously issues from the grasp of sufficiency and assent to value.” Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 21. A great deal of scholarship focuses on Lonergan’s retrieval of this analogy. See Peter Drilling, “The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,” Irish Theological Quarterly 71, 3 (2006): 320-337; John Dadosky, “God’s Eternal Yes!: An Exposition and Development of Lonergan’s Psychological Analogy of the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 81, 4 (2016): 397-419; Anne Hunt, “Psychological Analogy and Paschal Mystery in Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 59, 2 (1998): 197-218; Robert Doran, “The Starting Point of Systematic Theology,” Theological Studies 67, 4 (2006): 750-776. 13. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 314. 14. DDT 497. 187
The sequential arrangement and goal of each of the missions both reflect the ordered divine life of the Trinity and also reveal the order and purpose within God’s plan of salvation through what
Lonergan sees as ‘new personal relations of reconciliation and love.’
A close study of Lonergan’s final chapter demonstrates the firm Trinitarian foundation of the missions and the central role of interpersonal relationships in Lonergan’s soteriology. Toward this purpose, Lonergan’s characterization of the intelligibility of the missions is analyzed in the following section from two perspectives. The first perspective turns on the divine constitution of the missions, namely, unpacking the intelligibility of and the order to the divine Persons as those who are ‘sending’ and ‘being sent’. The second perspective on the missions brings into focus the intelligibility of the missions as discerned from their effects and ultimate goal in the created world as being strictly interpersonal in nature.
I. A. Intelligibility of the Missions: The Nature of God and the Persons who are sent
The first perspective regarding the intelligibility of the missions refers to the immanent divine order which structures the missions. For Lonergan, this divine order can be identified insofar as it “regards both constitution and consequent terms.”15 The correspondence of the missions to the inner divine life of the Trinity is seen first in the ontological constitution of the missions and secondly in the consequent terms associated with each of the missions. The parallel of the missions to the inner life of the Trinity gives the missions an intentional sequence and order which ultimately shapes the effects of the missions.16
15. DDT 479. 16. Within this chapter, Lonergan observes that this discussion of God’s work ad extra is to speak in terms of “contingent predication.” God’s work in the missions is strictly contingent and not necessary. Contingent predication, for Lonergan, refers to those contingent truths which “whether predicated of the divine persons commonly or properly, have their constitution in God but their term in creatures.” This work of God ad extra brings no conditions to God himself but entails consequences in the created order. DDT 439; See also John Carmody, 188
In terms of the ontological constitution of the missions, the heart of Lonergan’s work on the missions is rooted in Thomas’s central principle that the internal processions of the Son and
Spirit provide the ground for their external missions in redemption.17 As Christian doctrine asserts, the one God in three Persons is related through two processions: the generation of the
Son and the procession of the Spirit. Both the Son and Spirit can be understood as truly sent in the missions because these missions are based on their internal processions—in Lonergan’s terms, “by reason of a relation of origin.”18 The sendings of both the Son and Spirit are rooted in real relations found in God, and so a divine person is only sent by one from whom that person proceeds. Lonergan states that “just as a divine person is and knows and wills and operates by the divine essence, and is distinguished as generating or generated, or as spirating or spirated, by a divine relation of origin, so also a divine person is constituted as sending or as sent by a divine relation of origin.”19 The manner of relation within the Godhead corresponds to the Son and
Spirit being sent; thus, the mission of a divine person is constituted by a divine relation of origin.
The relations of origin constitute the personal distinctions of the Father, Son and Spirit and likewise reflect the order of the relations of origin. So too, the work of the Trinity in the missions occurs personally, through the unique relations of the persons, and reflects this order of origin.20 The mission of the Son is from the Father and the mission of the Spirit is from the
“Lonergan on the Divine Missions,” Laval théologique et philosophique 30, 3 (1974): 319; Robert Doran, Trinity in History, Vol. I: Missions and Processions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013), 42; Neil Ormerod, “A Trajectory from Augustine and Thomas to Lonergan: Contingent Predication and the Trinity,” Irish Theological Quarterly 82, 3 (2017): 208-221. 17. Cf. ST I, q. 43, a. 1. Thomas was not the first to make this connection, but Thomas, significantly, imposed a more theoretical framework in his presentation. See Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 12. 18. DDT 439. 19. DDT 465. 20. Within this context, Lonergan formalizes his “4 Point Hypothesis” mentioned in the previous chapter in the section on “Supplemental Notes on Sanctifying Grace.” The four real relations which ground the inner- Trinitarian life (i.e. The Father generating the Son [paternity], the Son who is generated by the Father [filiation], the Spirit who is spirated by the Father and Son [passive spiration], and the Father and Son who spirate the Spirit [active 189
Father and the Son, just as the Son is generated from the Father and the Spirit processes from both the Father and the Son. In terms of the missions, Lonergan states that “the first mission is that of the Son for the reconciliation of all human persons to God the Father, and the consequent mission of the Spirit is to each one of the just, who have been reconciled.”21 The temporal sequence of the missions reflects the personal order of origin in the divine life. Lonergan argues that, “since in God there is an order of nature or origin, there is no procession of love except in an order to the procession of the Word” and hence, “the Son is not any kind of Word, but the
Word breathing forth or spiraling Love.”22 The internal processions of the Son and Spirit are not in temporal sequence but convey only an order of origin that grounds the relations; the missions in history, however, reflect this order by establishing one mission as prior, and the other consequent.
The missions which are based in the real relations of divine Persons are further constituted by unique created external terms. The creation of the appropriate external term allows the persons to be truly sent and the missions to occur as contingent and temporal.23 Lonergan argues that through their infinite and unlimited divine perfection, “the Three really and truly constitute, are really and truly constituted as sending and sent, respectively, and the three persons spiration]) become the foundation for the “four very special modes that ground the external imitation of the divine substance.” In this way, there are four “absolutely supernatural realities, which are never found uninformed, namely, the secondary act of existence of the incarnation, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity, and the light of glory.” DDT 471, 473. Although essential to Lonergan’s understanding of the missions, and in particular in understanding sanctifying grace, these four realities will not be redeveloped here apart from noting that these supernatural realities convey for Lonergan that God operates externally not according to the common nature of God but according to the divine relations. 21. DDT 491. The Holy Spirit’s mission which is ordered to the mission of the Son does not preclude the Spirit’s work in speaking through the prophets. Rather, Lonergan, following Thomas, understands the missions as the divine Persons being sent in a new way; in his mission, the Spirit is sent in a new way to confirm the new relations by Christ through his indwelling. See DDT 475, 477. 22. DDT 479. 23. DDT 441, 457. With this external term, nothing real or intrinsic is added to the persons. This term is not a “constitutive cause,” but only a consequent condition of the Persons being sent. It is necessary so that there is a “correspondence of truth” to the idea that the Persons are truly sent. 190
really and truly equally create the appropriate terms.”24 Each mission has an external term which is similar “as to the manner of their constitution and creation” but differs “as to what is constituted and created.”25 With the Son’s mission, the material external term is the generation of the “nonsubsistent human nature” of Christ.26 In contrast, the Spirit’s mission is to a subsistent human nature when the Spirit is sent to dwell in the soul of the justified and involves the created external term of sanctifying grace.27 For Lonergan, these external terms are the consequent conditions which characterize the missions as temporal and as true sendings which work to distinguish the two missions from each other.
The external terms that characterize the missions of the Son and Spirit also characterize the related operations of the persons in these missions. Lonergan argues that the missions refer not only to an external term but to “a whole new series of operations.”28 With these new operations, the tasks of both the Son and the Spirit are identified; Lonergan states that:
For the Son has been sent to gather up and reconcile all things, that God may be all in all. And the Holy Spirit is sent, not for this or that particular operation, but to preside over the whole of Christian living in every one of the just.29
The manner of the missions is not identical and so likewise the operations differ. Lonergan concludes that the Father, Son and Spirit “understand, will, constitute, and accomplish different things in the incarnation and in the giving of the Spirit.”30 The Son performs works proper to himself through the Incarnation, in order that he may reconcile all things.31 The Spirit, as
24. DDT 469. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. DDT 457, 469. 28. DDT 485. 29. Ibid. 30. DDT 471. 31. DDT 485. As the Son alone assumes a human nature, he is able to perform works through this nature that are proper to himself. 191
residing in the soul of the justified, does not do works strictly alone.32 The divine order, external terms, and the corresponding operations reflect the unique role of each Person in the plan of redemption.
The sending of the Son mirrors the Father’s eternal generation of the Son. In this eternal and perfect generation, the Father and the Son together spirate their love in the procession of the
Spirit. In his mission, this origin of the Son as generated as well as his part in the spiration of the
Spirit are mirrored in his unique role as mediator. The Son is able to communicate visibly the divine life by which he was sent through the assumption of a human nature. Further, the Son’s visible mission occurs in order to inaugurate human persons into divine love. Lonergan argues that the Son “was sent so that the Father might be able to love us as he loves his own Son, and the Spirit is sent because the Father does love us as he loves his own Son.”33 For Lonergan, the
Son was sent not to assume a human nature, but that through this assumption he would be constituted as mediator of divine love. The mission of the Son, Lonergan argues, “was carried on throughout his mortal life, during which time the Son of Man entered into personal relationships with the children of men” and the principal objective of the mission was accomplished “when in dying on the cross he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.”34 The human life of Christ was the mediating principle by which a new interpersonal relationship with humanity could be struck through which human persons could be brought into the very relational order of the Trinity.
32. As explored in the previous chapter, the Holy Spirit is sent by “notional divine love” which is distinguished only conceptually from “essential divine love.” The mission of the Spirit as being given to the just involves all three divine Persons. Lonergan states that, “although the Spirit alone according to his proper perfection is gift, still, since to give one’s entire love is the same as to give oneself, and since the Father and the Son give their entire proceeding Love, they also give themselves and therefore are said to come and dwell in the just.” DDT 471. 33. DDT 483. 34. DDT 489. 192
The Son’s visible mission extends to the sending of the Spirit, just as within the immanent Trinity in which the Spirit is the love that eternally issues forth from the Father and
Son. In both the eternal procession and the mission, the issuing of the Spirit involves all three divine persons; Lonergan explains that “the Father and the Son are loving and sending and giving, while the Holy Spirit is proceeding Love and the person sent and the gift given.”35 In his mission, the gift of the Spirit to the justified is divine love, a love “altogether special, by it the
Father and the Son love the just and give to them by the Holy Spirit.”36 For Lonergan, the mission of the Spirit is necessarily ordered to and builds on the mission of the Son; this is reflected both in the ontological constitution of the mission, in this case of the Spirit who eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son, as well as the consequent term and manner in which the Spirit is sent. The reconciliation that the Son achieves is followed by the mission of the Spirit; the operation of the Spirit in this mission is to confirm and strengthen “by uncreated gift the new relations by the Son.”37
II. B. Intelligibility of the Missions: The Effects of the Missions and the Good of Order
As the last section revealed, Lonergan’s understanding of the Trinitarian missions is rooted squarely in the distinction of the divine Persons. Only with this firm foundation secured is it possible to grasp the intelligibility of the missions in terms of their goal and effects. For
Lonergan, a mission, even generally understood, is carried out “not so much that works be done as that new personal relations be initiated and strengthened.38 The missions of the Son and Spirit in God’s plan of redemption are no different and, in this case, the purpose of these missions is a
35. DDT 475. 36. Ibid. 37. DDT 497. 38. DDT 485. 193
share in the communion of the divine Persons. Lonergan argues further that it was appropriate that “the economy of salvation, which is ordered to participation in divine beatitude itself, should not only imitate the order of the Holy Trinity but also in some manner participate in that order.”39
For Lonergan, the new personal relations established by the missions enable participation in the order of the divine life; however, although this new interpersonal situation is perfected in beatitude, it begins in history with the incarnation of the Son. Jeremy Wilkins observes that for
Lonergan, through the divine missions “human persons enter historically and eschatologically into the relational order of the Trinity.”40 In presenting the intelligibility of the missions in terms of their effects, Lonergan articulates a vision of the missions as constituting a new divine-human interpersonal situation which is perfected in heaven but initiated and developed on earth through a ‘good of order’ which makes possible human participation in history with these new interpersonal relations.41
I. B.1. The Good of Order
Lonergan’s understanding of the good of order rests in his understanding of God as perfect goodness itself. As such, God ordains all of creation to participate in varying degrees in this goodness under two formalities: one which concerns act and the other that concerns order.
The ‘good of act’ involves a particular good, while the ‘good of order’ concerns the order by which many goods stand in relation to each other.42 Lonergan makes this distinction clear: “we
39. DDT 497. 40. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 25. My emphasis. 41. DDT 497. 42. DDT 493. Mark Miller explains: “the good of order is not one more good among other particular goods, but the proper organization of a set of particular goods. The economy is an example. All the pieces required for a robust economy may be in place, such as raw materials, factories, labor, and consumers, but if these parts are not related harmoniously, there is no good of order.” Mark Miller, The Quest for God and the Good Life: Lonergan’s Theological Anthropology (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 86. 194
distinguish particular goods, by which particular beings are perfected in themselves, and goods of order, which are certain concrete, dynamic, and ordered totalities of desirable objects, of desiring subjects, of operations, and of results.”43 The good of order concerns not just one good, or a single individual’s good, but the good more broadly and systematically. A consideration of the good of order can apply to even inanimate things, like plants and animals in an ecosystem for instance, and also in human life in the “human good of order.” The human order is produced by people, specifically, people identifying and choosing goods for themselves and for others.44
Lonergan identifies five elements as ultimately constituting the human good of order:
(1) a certain number of persons, (2) cognitive and appetitive habits, (3) many coordinated operations among many persons, (4) a succession and series of particular goods, and (5) interpersonal relationships.45
The good of order necessarily involves the use of intellect and will, the cultivation of habits, as well as the coordination of many individuals in choosing and distributing goods among themselves. When these elements are functioning in harmony, human society flourishes; otherwise, social decline occurs.46 As Lonergan sees it, human development does not occur through isolated achievements by different individuals, but through communal bonds formed by
43. DDT 493. 44. DDT 493. Lonergan speaks similarly in Insight; he states the good of order consists in “an intelligible pattern of relationships that condition the fulfillment of the desires of others, and similarly protect each from the object of his fears in the measure he contributes to warding off the objects feared by others.” Lonergan, Insight, 237. 45. DDT 493. 46. Joseph Ogbonnaya explains that “the relationship of these constituents of community (the social order and a network of relationships under which people live and relate in community—locally and collectively), could be harmonious or it could be distorted. The tension between them—practical common sense and the network of relationships as spontaneous intersubjectivity constitute the ‘dialectic of community.’” (p. 69). For Lonergan, this “dialectic of community” can be aggravated by individual, group and general bias. Long cycles of decline, rather than progress, can be the result of such biases. See Joseph Ogbonnaya, Lonergan, Social Transformation, and Sustainable Human Development, African Christian Studies Series 4 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013), 67-81. Lonergan develops this at length in Insight, ch. 7. 195
persons in history and with the proper skills and conditions in place for this flourishing to occur.47
Within the human good of order, interpersonal relationships play a central and necessary role. In this network of individuals which constitutes the human good of order, the good is willed for oneself and for others; such willing of the good to someone is the effect of love, as Lonergan recalls from St. Thomas.48 With this consideration, Lonergan claims that the relationships formed in the human good of order have a “certain priority,” because people desire to communicate what is good to those whom they love.49 Lonergan argues that “persons, pursuing a common good of order, are mutually in one another as the known in the knower and the beloved in the lover.”50
Supposing a union of love, the other aspects come more readily, in that “to make our cooperation more effective, we acquire the necessary habits and detest the contrary defects.”51 Individuals motivated by love desire to develop in ways to deepen this love and are more bound to the good of order. Lonergan concludes therefore that the human good of order is exemplified in friendship; he states that:
By the very fact that a friend is loved there results a quasi-identification of the friend with the lover. Thus, a friend is said to be a second self, or as the poet says, ‘half of my soul.’ For friends who pursue a common good of order, work together in an orderly way, and enjoy a succession of particular goods, are so far from
47. The notion of the human good is a recurrent theme in Lonergan’s later philosophical and theological works, see Insight, chapter 18; Method in Theology, chapter 2. Extensive secondary literature is available on Lonergan’s understanding of the human good as well; see Miller, God and the Good Life, 84-93; Ogbonnaya, Social Transformation, chapters 2 and 3; Friel, “Structure of the Human Good,” 756-766; M. Shawn Copeland, “A Genetic Study of the Idea of the Human Good in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan,” Ph.D. dissertation (Boston: Boston College, 1991). 48. Ibid. 49. DDT 495. 50. DDT 507. The personal presence that exists in this way corresponds to the idea of order, so that, “the degree of perfection by which the good of order is achieved is the same as that by which personal presence is achieved, and similarly, that the degree of perfection by which personal presence is achieved is the same as that by which the good of order is achieved.” DDT 505. 51. DDT 495. 196
living each one for himself or herself that they may rather be said to have one life in common.52
For Lonergan then, the good of order is most readily fostered in personal relationships of friendship because true friendships involve a union of wills which are already oriented toward a common good.
I. B. 2. The Good of Order established by the Divine Missions
With an understanding of the notion of the good of order in place, Lonergan contextualizes his understanding of the purpose of the divine missions. He states that,
The ultimate end is of course the divine good itself communicated immediately in the beatific vision, while the proximate end is that good of order which, according to various analogies with human good of order, is called either the kingdom of God, or the body of Christ, or the church, or the mystical marriage of Christ with the church, or the economy of salvation, or the city of God.53
For Lonergan, the goal of the missions is not only the beatification of the faithful in the next life but a proximate end within history that corresponds to the human good of order.54 The missions instituted a new personal relationship with God in which a new good is sought — divine beatitude. Orientation toward this new good is established in history and in communion with others who likewise are oriented to this good. The good of order that the missions establish on earth reflects and becomes an extension of the good of order found in the divine life.
That the missions occur both for the ultimate end of beatitude and the proximate end of the good of order is discernible in the missions’ effects. To demonstrate this, Lonergan indicates
52. DDT 507. Lonergan refers to Cicero’s famous notion that friendship makes one soul out of two, echoed in the work of Augustine as well. 53. DDT 495. 54. DDT 495. This is reflected in the images used to describe the human good of order as listed in the above quote. Lonergan explains that “the proximate end is called a kingdom because of its similarity to a good political order, a body because of its similarity to the good of order that obtains among the organs of a single body, a church and a city because of its similarity to a social good of order, a marriage because of its similarity to a domestic good of order, and an economy because of its similarity to the good of order in acquiring, producing, and managing material things.” 197
that the missions contain all five elements that constitute a ‘human good of order.’ First, that a certain number of persons is clear since Christ died for all. Second, the missions involve the intellect and will, and corresponding habits, especially present through the indwelling of the
Spirit, “since from sanctifying grace flow the infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit.”55 The third element, which requires a coordination of operations, can be seen in the prescriptions for
Christian living that Christ gave his disciples, “since Christians put off the old man, live a new life, and love one another.”56 Fourthly, Lonergan identifies numerous successions and series of particular goods brought about by the missions, goods which flow “from the benefits that the new life in Christ constantly produces.”57 And finally, personal relationships are instituted,
“formed when Christians love one another as Christ loved them, when in loving one another they love Christ, when in loving Christ they are loved by the Father, and when the Holy Spirit is sent to them by the Father through Christ.”58 With this final element of interpersonal relationships, all other aspects are brought into a unity in that all other elements are grounded first in the diffusion of divine love through Christ. The five elements in place confirm for Lonergan that the missions of the Son and Spirit are ordered not only to beatitude but to a more immediate human good of order.
The human good of order is confirmed and sustained by the Spirit but is instituted through the mediation of Christ. The visible mission of the Son established the new interpersonal relationship with God by providing a way by which God can be known and loved.59 Lonergan argues that we are in the Word “as known and loved through both his divine and human nature”
55. DDT 497. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 198
and the Word “is in us in order that in knowing and loving a visible human being we may arrive at knowing and loving God, who dwells in unapproachable light.”60 Robert Doran argues that the visible mission of the Word is integral to the communication of friendship, stating that, “the mission of the Son is constitutive of the friendship with God that is inaugurated on God’s part by the invisible missions but that requires the outer word of revelation if it is to come to completion.”61 Drawn through the visible offer of friendship by the Son, the believer is brought to a new personal relationship with God. Consequently, the invisible mission of the Spirit functions to “confirm by uncreated gift the new relations initiated by the Son and to be a pledge of eternal life” by dwelling invisibly in the heart of the believer and transforming the cognitive and appetitive habits by grace.62 Lonergan emphasizes this new friendship as that which the Son establishes as mediator and what the Spirit strengthens.
The grace which shapes the individual’s knowing and loving binds the believer in friendship not only to the divine Persons but to those similarly bound in love for God. Lonergan concludes that,
The divine persons themselves and the blessed in heaven and the just on this earth are in one another as those who are known are in those who know them and those who are loved are in those who love them. This knowing and loving is directed both to the ultimate end, which is the good itself by essence, and to the proximate end, which is the general good of order, the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, the church.63
For Lonergan, those who know and love Christ live no longer for themselves, but by grace and in keeping Christ’s commands, they live in the communion of the Church that is marked by this
60. DDT 513. 61. Doran, “Social Grace,” 172. 62. DDT 497. 63. DDT 511. 199
love. The proximate goal of the missions is this good of order found in the Church; and, within this good of order that the missions established, the interpersonal relationships in the Church take a particular priority. The missions of the Son and Spirit established the good around which the human good of order in the Church is centered and those persons in the Church must cooperate in accordance with this good. Jeremy Wilkins summarizes Lonergan’s account of the human good of order within the Church, stating:
This order incorporates many persons, with many different skills and habits, performing many different operations, bringing about a succession and series of particular goods, including the sacraments by which Christ is made personally present. The source and summit of this order, however, is friendship: the friendship initiated by Christ and extended by his members.64
The missions therefore enable the proximate end of the good of order through those brought into a union of friendship with Christ in the church.
II. C. Concluding Observations
Lonergan’s approach to understanding the intelligibility of the missions in DDT has been traced from these two major perspectives: from the relations of origins which ground the missions and from the effects that the missions bring. In doing this, it is possible to draw attention to the central importance of interpersonal relationships that ground the missions and are created by them. Lonergan argues that,
In order to understand a divine mission, one must consider not only the works proper to the person sent but also the personal relations that that person initiates or strengthens in order that the end of the mission may be attained through the cooperation of others.65
64. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 26. 65. DDT 485. 200
Understanding the fullness of God’s plan in the divine missions first requires knowledge of the inner divine life of Trinity and the uniqueness of each of the divine persons. Further, if, as
Lonergan attests, missions are primarily about establishing a new interpersonal situation, the intelligibility of the missions must also be observed from the intended end and the effects of each mission on those to whom the Persons are sent. Ultimately for Lonergan, to understand the missions is to recognize, as John Carmody observes, that the missions “include and distinguish various stages of a complex economy.”66
This complex economy begins with the perfect interpersonal relations of the divine
Persons. The divine Persons in their relations of origin shape the manner and order of the missions. For Lonergan, the divine missions occur in order to bring about new interpersonal relationships that imitate and ultimately share in the relational order of the Trinity. The uniqueness of the divine Persons shapes both how the missions occur and their sequence in history. In the immanent Trinity, God the Father loves the Son and gives to him by the Holy
Spirit; fittingly, the Father loves the Son as man in the incarnation and gives to him by the Holy
Spirit.67 The missions of the Son and Spirit are, as Vander Schel has observed, “not only parallel but are co-ordered to one another.”68 For, Lonergan states, “the mission of the Son is to make us children of God by adoption; and that the mission of the Holy Spirit is in accord with this adoption.”69 The missions therefore reflect a divine order in which the divine relations of the persons are mirrored in the sequence and the work of the missions.
66. John Carmody, “Divine Missions,” 321-322. 67. DDT 485. 68. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 313. 69. DDT 481. 201
Lonergan’s vision of the complex economy of redemption continues with establishment of the primary goal of the missions—that a new interpersonal situation be instituted and strengthened. Lonergan argues that the Son’s mission pertains to “that friendship which he commends: ‘As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” and the mission of the Spirit to
“those intimate relations whereby we are not our own.”70 The Son works through the assumed human nature to establish a new interpersonal situation of friendship. Carmody clarifies for
Lonergan that the Spirit, then, “lays the foundation for cooperation, since he confirms the new personal relations through the very gift of himself.”71 Confirmed through the mission of the
Spirit, an interpersonal divine-human situation is constituted and strengthened in the life of grace. With this, Carmody observes that “the divine persons and the just are mutually in one another like the known in the knowers and beloved in lovers.”72 The missions are co-ordered to the institution and development of new interpersonal relations between God and humankind.
That the missions occur for a new interpersonal situation is crucial within Lonergan’s vision of the complex economy of redemption. A new interpersonal situation is required not only for a mission in a general sense but is also necessary in establishing the human good of order.
For Lonergan, it is appropriate that the Son and Spirit are sent to constitute and develop the new good of order since the goal of this economy of salvation is participation in divine goodness itself. And while other goods of order may “externally imitate that supreme good of order that we observe in the Holy Trinity,” it was appropriate that the economy of salvation “should not only imitate the order of the Holy Trinity but also in some manner participate in that order.”73 In the
70. DDT 487. 71. Carmody, “Divine Missions,” 322. 72. Carmody, “Divine Missions,” 323. 73. DDT 497. 202
economy of salvation, those bound to Christ are brought together in union toward the ultimate end of God as the supreme good and the proximate end in the Church. Motivated by this union and enabled by grace, members of the Church work toward this good. For Lonergan, the new interpersonal situation creates a divine human collaboration, one which, according to Jeremy
Wilkins, “brings about a new good of order in history, a divine-human interpersonal order, inaugurated by the Incarnate Word.”74 Christ’s mediation of the God’s love creates a new order within human history that continues to be strengthened by the Spirit and mediated through
Christ’s friends in the Church.
II. De Verbo Incarnato
A year before his texts on the Trinity, Lonergan’s manual for his Christology courses, De
Verbo Incarnato, was published in 1960.75 Lonergan modeled the text on the Neo-Scholastic manuals of the time and treated the traditional Christological topics manuals were expected to cover during this time.76 Presented in a series of theses, DVI also shares the basic common structure of the manuals which loosely follow Thomas’s treatment in the Tertia Pars of the
Summa Theologiae: the first ten theses on the dogma of the hypostatic union and the development of this doctrine and four theses on the implications of the hypostatic union, such as
74. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 26. 75. Lonergan’s manual in 1960 was followed by a second edition in 1961 and a third edition in 1964. These editions involve a great deal of editing, cleaning up the order and fixing transitions. The 1964 is an especially significant version in that it contains a revised thesis on the knowledge of Christ. See Crowe, Christ and History, 74-75; Robert Doran, general editors’ preface to De Verbo Incarnato, vol. 8, xxvi. 76. Crowe, Christ and History, 74. Lonergan’s text is based on the manual from which he taught, written by Charles Boyer. For more information on his use of Boyer, see Crowe, Christ and History, 64-66. 203
Christ’s graces, knowledge, and freedom.77 The last three theses cover the redemptive work of
Christ and are the focus of the current section.
In a lecture given while preparing this text, Lonergan argues that redemption fundamentally is “an act of communication,” a communication from God to humanity of the fact that God loves us.78 In thesis 15 in DVI, Lonergan specifies the communication further as a result of his survey of the main scriptural material on redemption, arguing that in the person of Christ is revealed God the Father’s detestation of sin. Redemption is mediated through Christ’s life who communicates both God’s love for humanity and detestation of sin by his vicarious suffering and death.79 As seen with Lonergan’s understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ in the beginning of the chapter, Christ is the mediator precisely because the Father’s divine love for the Son extends to him as man.80 This love, Lonergan argues,
belongs to Christ the man, to a divine person subsisting in a created nature, for grace confers on that nature what befits a divine person subsisting in such a nature, so that he may be united to God on the basis of full friendship. And it is
77. William Loewe, “Jesus, Son of God,” in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 185. On Lonergan’s composition of his own manual, Loewe observes, “Lonergan’s textbook conforms to the requirements of the dogmatic manual of its day. The reader quickly discovers, however, that the content of Lonergan’s course strains that format to the limit.” For more on the structure of DVI, see Crowe, Christ and History, 74-75. 78. Bernard Lonergan, “The Redemption,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 6, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert Croken, Frederick Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 6. This text is from a lecture given by Lonergan at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal in September of 1958. According to the editors of the text (see footnote 1), Lonergan had at the time just completed teaching a course on redemption for the third time. Already in 1958, Lonergan had already begun work on DVI and its supplement. Frederick Crowe has described “The Redemption” lecture as reflective of Lonergan’s more “forward looking” position on redemption, seen at various points in DVI as well. See Crowe, Christ and History, 126. For the most part, this lecture presents in summary form what is found in DVI and therefore is not presented at length in the current project; relevant and illuminating elements will be incorporated throughout this section. 79. Bernard Lonergan, “De Verbo Incarnato: Theses 15-17,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 9, The Redemption, ed. Robert Doran, H. Daniel Monsour and Jeremy Wilkins (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018), 3. Henceforth DVI. De Verbo Incarnato has been separated into two different volumes in the publication of the Collected Works: Volume 8 with the strictly Christological theses (Theses 1-14) and Volume 9 with the soteriological theses (Theses 15-17). Unless otherwise noted, all DVI references will be found in Volume 9. 80. DVI 4. 204
possible to understand on that basis the Fathers’ saying: ‘Christ assumed what is ours that he might give us what is his.’81
For Lonergan, this friendship that Christ enjoys with the Father is shared with us through Christ’s mediation in his redemptive acts in order to make each person a friend of God.
DVI reveals Lonergan’s emphasis on redemption as a communication which is centered on an interpersonal element. The communication of redemption is not an abstract communication, but one made between persons, motivated by love and the desire to establish a new relationship. Lonergan argues that God’s plan of redemption “shows clearly the interpersonal relations between Christ and God the Father, between Christ and sinners, and between Christ and those who are justified.”82 This section focuses first on Lonergan’s treatment of satisfaction in Thesis 16 in which Lonergan presents and evaluates the soteriological tradition he inherits before presenting his own understanding of vicarious satisfaction developed from
Thomas. For Lonergan, the notion of vicarious satisfaction is necessarily grounded in, and can only be understood within, the concept of friendship. The second part of this section explores
Lonergan’s final thesis of DVI in which he presents his “Law of the Cross,” what he considers to be the essence of God’s communication in redemption. In both of these theses, interpersonal relations, and at points specifically friendship itself, remain an essential element in Lonergan’s vision of redemption.
II. A. Thesis 16: Vicarious Satisfaction
Lonergan’s survey of the various scriptural expressions of Christ’s redemptive work in
Thesis 15 leads to an extended treatment of the theme of Christ dying because of human sins.83
81. DVI 561. (Volume 8) 82. DVI 4. 83. Raymond Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 78, 1 (2003): 26. 205
This theme has been developed in the Church, particularly by St. Anselm, in terms of the concept of satisfaction. As Thomas did in the Summa Theologiae, Lonergan identifies satisfaction as one of the many aspects of the redemption that Christ achieves.84 Lonergan observes additionally that the concept of satisfaction has often been misappropriated to conceptualize satisfaction in terms of a strict retributive justice, in which Christ suffers a penalty, or that Christ’s actions become an impersonal transaction in the payment for sins.85 To correct this over-emphasis of payment and suffering for the sake of suffering, Lonergan restores Thomas’s connection of satisfaction to the sacrament of penance and locates satisfaction within interpersonal relationships, and ultimately, within the context of friendship.86 Lonergan proposes his thesis on the meaning of satisfaction as follows:
Christ has made satisfaction for our sins, not only adequately but superabundantly as well. This satisfaction, understood on a sacramental analogy, adds to his vicarious suffering and death an expression of utmost hatred of all sins and utmost sorrow over all offenses against God.87
Through an emphasis on the motive of Christ’s death as an expression of sorrow, Lonergan presents satisfaction as a process of interpersonal reconciliation. Raymond Moloney argues that,
84. See Lonergan’s “Preliminary Note 1” to Thesis 15, DVI 10-14. 85. DVI 54-56. Lonergan identifies four different kinds of “divergences” from the proper conception of satisfaction. The first is with Anselm’s first articulation of satisfaction which Lonergan argues is undeveloped and establishes a problematic choice between “either satisfaction or punishment.” The second divergence is exemplified for Lonergan in Duns Scotus in that he integrates satisfaction into a more legalistic contractual sense. The third divergence involves distorting “the very notion of satisfaction.” Lonergan argues that substitution and “satispassion” theories are representative of this, which emphasize the punishment Christ suffers as the principal element in satisfying for sins. The fourth divergence is the modern incorporation of substitution and satispassion theories by Catholic theologians. Many scholars, like Lonergan, have indicated the many issues that can arise with “satispassion” and substitution theories; see Jean Higgins, ‘Redemption,’ in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist, 1988), 207; Charles Hefling, “Perhaps a Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ’s Satisfaction,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 10 (1992): 60-64; William Loewe, “Toward a Responsible Contemporary Soteriology,” in Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. Matthew Lamb (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981): 214-215. 86. Like Thomas, Lonergan argues that the concept of “satisfaction” itself comes from the world of personal relationships. See DVI 53; See also Higgins, “Redemption,” 208. 87. DVI 47. 206
for Lonergan, “love, not retributive justice, is the basic principle of Lonergan’s notion of satisfaction, God’s love, on the one hand, and Christ’s love for the Father and the human race, on the other. Personal relationships, not some abstract law of retribution, set the framework within which the whole matter is to be approached.”88 Like Thomas before him, Lonergan emphasizes the sacramental analogy of penance as the locus of the analogy for satisfaction; and, at the center of penance, and so also Christ’s satisfaction for sin, is an interpersonal relationship of friendship that needs reconciliation.
II. A. 1. The function of friendship in the nature of satisfaction
Lonergan identifies the origin of the notion of satisfaction in a liturgical and interpersonal context.89 It is only in this context, and not a juridical one, that satisfaction can be rightly understood — a tenet he argues is present in Thomas Aquinas and in St. Anselm, if read correctly. Satisfaction, Lonergan attests, is “the furthest conceivable opposite of offenses against
God. It is compensation for these offenses, as it were, where compensation is thought of in terms of interpersonal relationship rather than commercial transaction.”90 Following Thomas, Lonergan understands satisfaction to be making amends for an offense not by suffering due punishment but by offering the one who is offended something that pleases more than the offended hated the offense.91 Satisfaction is about reconciliation, not primarily a debt paid or a punishment endured, but a true expression of sorrow and the desire to offer something in order to make amends.
88. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 27. Lonergan states that Christ took on but did not incur the punishment owed for sins since he had neither original nor actual sin. Because of this, “he cannot be said to have suffered punishment out of God’s retributive justice.” DVI 95. 89. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 20. 90. DVI 53. 91. DVI 47. Cf. ST III q. 48, a. 2. Lonergan argues that “Thomas has moved far beyond Anselm, inasmuch as he explains vicarious satisfaction through the union of love that exists between Christ, as Head, and his members.” DVI 95. 207
For Lonergan, satisfaction as an interpersonal reality distinct from retributive justice is characterized by elements not necessarily present in the context of retributive justice. In the first place, satisfaction involves the offender recognizing and voluntarily accepting her own wrongdoing. The process of satisfaction for wrongdoing does not begin through coercion or against the will of the one who has committed the offense; rather, the impetus for reconciliation begins with the offender herself who detests her wrongdoings and freely seeks to make amends.
Secondly, the offender offers some penitential gesture as an external expression of the internal sorrow for her misdeeds. In this way, the offender seeks pardon, not through the removal of any punishment, but by offering something which the offended person values more than the offense.
This gift symbolizes the disposition of the penitent but is not the satisfaction itself—true sorrow and a motive of love become the source of the satisfaction for the offense. Satisfaction as such is in stark contrast with retributive justice which seeks to impose a punishment, regardless of contrition, and intends restitution not reconciliation.92 For Lonergan, satisfaction is something that is offered, not suffered, and willingly done in recognition of the offender’s wrongdoing.
With these elements of contrition, detestation for one’s wrongdoing, and some offering to reflect this contrition, a gesture can be made toward reconciliation with the offended party. The offended party does not seek punishment in itself but an acknowledgement of the interpersonal
92. DVI 73-75. Lonergan offers a helpful scripture passage which reflects the difference between retributive justice (and punishment) and satisfaction: “Mt 5:23-26. ‘So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and first go to be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while on the road with him; lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will not come out of there, until you have paid the last penny.’ Here it is a matter of asking and granting pardon (“something against you,” “be reconciled,” “make friends”), which is different from inflicting punishment (“the judge,” “the officer,” “prison,” “the last penny”).” DVI 73-74. 208
wound that has been created.93 Jean Higgins explains that for Lonergan, satisfaction is not undergoing some kind of punishment but “simply a matter of doing something which expresses one’s sorrow and regret—sorrow for having offended the other and which shows one still loves and esteems that person as before, in spite of the impression one’s ‘offense’ may have made.”94
In acceptance of this offering, the offended party is granting pardon and thereby restoring the relationship. Lonergan argues that “if one truly in one’s heart forgives the offense and is reconciled with the offender, there is no further thought of exacting punishment.”95 Unlike retributive justice where the debt paid or the time served fulfills the penalty for the wrongdoing, the offended party needs to accept this offering for satisfaction to take place. Granting pardon is still a gift, offered in response to the expression of one’s sorrow and regret and the corresponding actions performed out of love.
Vicarious satisfaction is a unique form of reconciliation that can occur among friends.
Following Thomas’s definition, Lonergan understands vicarious satisfaction to result when there is a “voluntary acceptance of punishment so that pardon for another’s offenses, not one’s own, may appropriately be asked and granted.”96 Lonergan immediately raises foreseeable issues with vicarious satisfaction: for who, he asks, would voluntarily take on the just punishment of another person, and how does this demonstrate the good will of the one who committed the offense?
93. Charles Hefling explains that “it involves the seeking and granting of pardon, where pardon is understood as remission of offense, as reconciliation, which is not to be confused with remission of punishment.” Hefling, “Valid Achievement,” 63. His emphasis. 94. Higgins, “Redemption,” 208. 95. DVI 75. Lonergan argues that offering something to the offended party is considered a punishment, but only in a general way, in the sense of a ‘deprivation of some good’. In a narrower sense of ‘punishment’, this deprivation is done contrary to the will of the one being punished and is imposed from without. In the case of satisfaction, however, the deprivation is a gesture to express one’s contrition and is freely taken on the part of the offender. Lonergan makes careful distinctions of the various senses of “punishment”, see DVI 71-73; see also Hefling, “Permanently Valid,” 63. 96. DVI 75. The term “vicarious satisfaction” was first used, however, in the 19th century; see Hefling, “Permanently Valid,” 67. 209
Lonergan answers these objections simultaneously by referring to Thomas on the nature of friendship:
The objector is evidently overlooking the foundation of vicarious satisfaction, which, as we have said, is a willing union of love. Listen to Thomas Aquinas: ‘“What we can accomplish through the efforts of our friends we seem to do ourselves.”(Aristotle, ethics, III, iii, 13; 112b). For a friendship makes two persons into one through sympathy, and chiefly by the love that is charity.’97
For Lonergan, key to vicarious satisfaction is the union of love in friendship. Mark Miller explains further that what is needed is a two-fold friendship on the part of the person offering vicarious satisfaction: “there needs to be friendship between not only the one making satisfaction and the party offended, but also a friendship between the one making satisfaction and the party at fault.”98 In offering satisfaction vicariously, the reconciliation occurs through the mediation of a mutual friend to both parties.
Lonergan argues that vicarious satisfaction can only function in a context of friendship and mutual love to avoid a sense of injustice that would be raised in a framework of retributive justice. Those bound in true friendship are bound in a union of wills and so can be regarded as one. In such a union, the suffering of a friend becomes one’s own suffering; additionally, the suffering is all the more painfully experienced if one’s friend is suffering on your behalf and you are the cause of the suffering.99 Vicarious satisfaction is thus only effective when the friends are bound in this union of love so that the suffering of one is keenly felt by both. This, according to
Mark Miller, is the most important aspect of Lonergan’s understanding of vicarious satisfaction
97. DVI 76. 98. Mark Miller, Why the Passion?: Bernard Lonergan on the Cross as Communication, Dissertation for the degree of the Doctor of Philosophy, Boston College (Boston College, 2008), 224. 99. DVI 76-77. Lonergan relies heavily on Thomas’s work in the Summa contra gentiles; there Thomas states that “Indeed, one will regard punishment for his sake by a friend as if he himself suffered: and thus he is not without punishment, provided he suffers along with his suffering friend, all the more so, the more he is himself the cause of the suffering.” SCG III ch. 158, 7. 210
in that it does not focus on “physical pain or financial payment but on interior movements: knowledge, love, detestation, and sorrow.”100 He explains further:
If my friend was moved by (1) love for me, (2) love for the one I have offended, (3) the knowledge that my fault was offensive, (4) detestation of my fault, and (5) sorrow for my offense, then I would be moved out of loving unity with my friend to the same inner movements, to the same judgments, feelings, and decisions. I would—to the degree that I was truly loving—take a stand not with me and my fault, but with the offended party against my fault. I would repent and reconcile.101
For Lonergan, the union of love even in natural friendships is such that one can suffer on behalf of one’s friend; suffering out of love on behalf of one’s enemy is, for Lonergan, uniquely possible only through an act of divine friendship.
II. A. 2. The nature of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction.
With friendship at the heart of the notion of vicarious satisfaction, Lonergan develops the nature of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction in personalist terms. Sin, as Lonergan defines it, is an evil human act and an interpersonal offense against God that involves conflicting wills.102 In response to the problem of sin, reconciliation for this offense requires a supreme act of love and obedience along with an expression of total detestation of sin—all of which must occur through a union of wills. Jean Higgins observes that “a human act of infinite love and sorrow over sin and submission to God was appropriate in a world full of sin, hatred and rebellion, and [Christ] provided that act.”103 To make amends for human wrongdoing requires a human act of infinite love to express true contrition for human sinfulness. Through the use of the concept of vicarious
100. Miller, Cross as Communication, 225. 101. Ibid. 102. For Lonergan, a will that contradicts God’s will is contrary to divine justice. DVI 71; see also Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 28. 103. Higgins, “Redemption,” 211. 211
satisfaction, Lonergan emphasizes the motive of Christ’s actions as central to what makes
Christ’s actions redemptive.104 Christ was able to offer a human act of love and express true sorrow for human sinfulness, himself being sinless, and so vicariously make satisfaction for human sinfulness to bring about reconciliation with God.
For Lonergan, thus, the vicarious satisfaction for sin by Christ is efficacious because of his unique role in the incarnation as mediator. Lonergan argues that as both divine and human,
Christ was placed “in a divided position.”105 As the Word made flesh, Christ detested sin and loved the Father perfectly; he however also “loved us to whom he came,” but we “were not friends but enemies of God.”106 His love for humanity did not lessen his detestation of sin. On the contrary, Lonergan states, “his detestation of sin, combined with his love for us, caused in him the greatest sorrow” due to his knowledge and love of God.107 As both God and man, Christ was able to be the mutual friend necessary for vicarious satisfaction, expressing true human sorrow for sin and motivated by divine love for sinners in his human and historical life.108
Therefore, Christ accepted his sufferings “because they provided an opportunity for him to communicate to us at once his love for us and his detestation for sin and his sorrow for our
104. DVI 113. Moloney argues that Lonergan’s emphasis on the conscious motive of Christ’s suffering “is a significant step for the theology of satisfaction in particular.” Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 27. 105. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 22. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Lonergan speaks often of the nature of Christ’s mediation. This mediation occurred through the very reality of the hypostatic union as well as through Christ’s conscious acts and knowledge while living. Wilkins, “Why Two Missions,” 24; Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 159; see DVI thesis 12 in which Lonergan discusses the knowledge of Christ and Lonergan’s The Ontological and Psychological Constitution of Christ, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 7, ed. Robert Doran Frederick Crowe and Michael Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), passim. Many scholars have written on Lonergan’s position on Christ’s beatific knowledge, see Frederick Crowe, “Eschaton and Worldly Mission in the Mind and Heart of Christ,” in Appropriating the Lonergan Idea, ed. Michael Vertin (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1989), 193-234; Charles Hefling, “Revelation and/as Insight,” in The Importance of Insight: Essays in Honor of Michael Vertin, ed. John Liptay Jr. and David Liptay (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 97-115; Jeremy Wilkins, “Love and Knowledge of God in the Human Life of Christ: The Silence of Eternity, Interpreted by Love,” Pro Ecclesia 21 (2012): 77-99. 212
sins.109 On the cross, Christ made satisfaction by willingly taking on himself the negative consequences of sin, with his suffering and death becoming the material element by which Christ brings reconciliation and redemption.110 Christ’s gesture was accepted by the Father as satisfaction for humanity’s wrongdoing. It is Christ’s motive of love as the mediator of friendship between God and humanity that truly, and formally, brings about satisfaction.
While the category of vicarious satisfaction brings greater understanding to Christ’s death, Lonergan cautions against collapsing God’s work in redemption into a strictly human category. Instead, Lonergan appeals to an “analogical relationship” between the vicarious satisfaction of Christ and a vicarious satisfaction that occurs in natural friendships.111 While in natural friendships, friendship precedes any satisfaction, in this unique case, the love of charity in the one who satisfies brings forth “a similar love of friendship in the offender.”112 Christ’s saving action becomes the foundation for reconciliation and a new relationship is established on an offer of friendship to the enemies of God. Lonergan insists that “Christ has the love of charity because he is a divine person subsisting in a human nature, and it is through his own satisfaction and merit that his entreaty gains for others a similar love.”113 Christ’s superabundant satisfaction for sin occurred in his human expression of divine love, turning unrepentant enemies of God into friends.
109. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 23. 110. DVI 113-114. Following Thomas, Lonergan identifies the suffering of Christ to be the material element of redemption, but not its principal factor nor is it alone sufficient for redemption. Lonergan argues that the material satisfaction “becomes formal satisfaction by the fact that hatred of sins and sorrow over them are expressed.” God is not directly willing or finding pleasure in the suffering of Christ. 111. DVI 77. Cf. Hefling, “Permanently Valid,” 67. 112. DVI 78. 113. Ibid. 213
Christ’s unique satisfaction merited for human persons the ability to enter into a divine friendship. Jean Higgins observes that, for Lonergan, Christ performed an act of perfect love
“appropriate to his divine nature” that we could never have done for ourselves, but we love like that “only insofar as God gives us a share in his own way of loving.”114 Therefore, she concludes, this “act of Christ, the God-man, can be the ground of all human-divine friendship.”115 In this truly unique relationship Christ establishes us as friends of God through his friendly act. While redemption is exclusively an act of God for our sake the intention is one in which the human person mirrors Christ’s action in friendly return.116 The friends of Christ are enabled, specifically by the satisfaction by Christ, to participate in this love, enabling them to love in a similar way. Moloney argues that, “while the causal influence of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ enters human affairs both unconsciously and consciously, for Lonergan, satisfaction belongs to the arena of interpersonal relations and so is located within the field of consciousness, albeit at the same time under the influence of the causality of grace.”117 Christ’s actions merited salvation and occurred without the consent of those for whom he died. The reconciliation he achieved is seen in the principles he left us to follow — love one another as I have loved you — which allows those for whom he died to respond to and participate in this friendship through grace.
114. Higgins, “Redemption, 211. 115. Higgins, “Redemption” 211. 116. Lonergan is specifically concerned with avoiding any “Pelagian sense” in the use of this analogy of friendship. Divine friendship, as communicating divine life, is absolutely supernatural. By virtue of the hypostatic union, Christ has the love of charity by right; any other human person possesses charity only through Christ’s merit and satisfaction. Lonergan insists that vicarious satisfaction is founded on a loving union of wills but still requires that the work of satisfaction is achieved exclusively by Christ. See DVI 77-78. 117. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 26. 214
Christian satisfaction occurs therefore through a union of love which begins with Christ.
Through his satisfaction for sin, this love can be shared by the friends of Christ. Lonergan argues that this union of love involves love which “belongs to Christ on account of the fullness of grace that is his alone” and to no one else, “except through the satisfaction and merit of Christ.”118
Christ’s satisfaction establishes a communion in grace, a communion, Moloney argues, which is
“essentially a communion of suffering within the loving relationships of the body of Christ.”119
Ultimately, vicarious satisfaction enables a response to the union of love that occurs between
Christ and the faithful as well as allowing for a transformation of evil into good. Lonergan argues that “in Christ, through his satisfaction and merit, the order of divine justice is so well reintegrated that from the very greatest evil God draws that greatest good of all, which is the body of Christ and the church militant, suffering, and triumphant.”120 For Lonergan, the motive of Christ’s death was both an expression of God’s love for sinners as well as an expression of detestation for sin which in the end, provides a superabundant satisfaction for sin.
II. B. Thesis 17: The Law of Cross.
Lonergan recognizes the importance of the concept of satisfaction in the tradition of the
Church to provide explanation to Christ’s death on account of sin. While the satisfaction for sin that occurs through the death of Christ is, for Lonergan, an important aspect of redemption, he does not see satisfaction as its essence. In his final thesis, Lonergan presents his Law of the
Cross in which he offers a unique elaboration on Thomas’s work in the Summa and seeks to bring greater emphasis to the fittingness of the Christ’s suffering and death as a reflection of
118. DVI 78. 119. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 32. 120. DVI 84. 215
God’s wisdom and goodness.121 For Lonergan, satisfaction is a way in which one can characterize how the death of Christ addressed the problem of human sin; the Law of the Cross, however, is Lonergan’s answer to the question why, why God saw it best to have the Son become human, suffer and die.122 Lonergan’s thesis states:
This is why the Son of God became man, suffered, died, and was raised again: because divine wisdom has ordained and divine goodness has willed, not to do away with the evils of the human race through power, but to convert those evils into a supreme good according to the just and mysterious Law of the Cross.
This principle of the Law of the Cross provides for Lonergan the essence of redemption and, as
Raymond Moloney observes, “represents the heart of the redemptive process.”123 This law provides the intelligibility of the divine plan, namely that God wills through the life and death of
Christ to transform evils into a supreme good.
Lonergan’s Law of the Cross is a transformation which unfolds in three steps. With the first there is a recognition of sin and death as its consequence, a move Lonergan sees as progressing from the evil of fault to the evil of penalty.124 For Lonergan, sin produces evil effects in human life.125 The second step involves a “voluntary transformation of punishment into good”; in this step, Lonergan suggests that the penalty of dying, if accepted out of love can be
121. DVI 117. Like Thomas, Lonergan seeks the “positive fittingness,” or what Thomas calls the “convenientia” of the Incarnation. For more on Lonergan and convenientia, see Lawrence, “Christian Self- Understanding,” 286-294, and in this text Lawrence relies considerably on Massimiliano Marianelli, Ontologia della Relazione: la convenientia in figure e momenti del pensiero filosofico (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, IDEE/ Filosofia, 2008). 122. DVI 117. See also Charles Hefling, “Lonergan’s Cur Deus Homo: Revisiting the ‘Law of the Cross,’” in Meaning and History in Systematic Theology: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Doran, S.J., ed. John D. Dadosky (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Marquette University Press, 2009), 153. 123. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 32. Lonergan’s emphasis on the transformation of evils into good is found in Insight as well in which he argues that the only solution for evil in the world is a theological one. The unintelligibility of sin can be met with the supernatural intelligibility of divine love. See Lonergan, Insight, ch. 20. 124. DVI 120. 125. Higgins, “Redemption,” 215. 216
transformed.126 The final step is the blessing of this transformation with new life. Lonergan argues that this three step law is “intrinsically intelligible” in that “punishment follows from sin; punishment freely borne is converted into a means of salvation; through the means of salvation, salvation is attained.”127 Lonergan characterizes this process as a ‘law’ not in the sense of necessity, since sin itself is not necessary, nor in the sense of a universality of empirical laws, such as physical and scientific laws. Rather this law is not acknowledged “except through the
Holy Spirit” and is understood to be the way God has structured the world and the most fitting and effective means of redemption.128 Lonergan argues that the fittingness of redemption through the Law of the Cross reveals both how God transforms evil into good through the cooperation of humanity.129
The sequence of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ is for Lonergan the principal instance of the Law of the Cross and that by which Christ makes this law his own.
Although sinless, Christ suffered and died on account of human sin and through his vicarious satisfaction, he transformed the evil of suffering and death, by accepting it in love and obedience, into a moral good. Jeremy Wilkins explains that “by converting his unjust suffering at the hands of sinners into an expression of great love for God, sorrow and detestation for sin, and mercy toward sinners, Christ brought good from evil.”130 Christ’s dying was an act of love that was blessed by the Father in Christ’s resurrection and in the freedom from the eternal consequences of sin that all humans can now enjoy. For Lonergan, Christ’s conversion of evil into good is the
126. Ibid. 127. DVI 140. 128. This is not to say that God created sin, but that the Law of the Cross was part of God’s plan for sin’s defeat. See Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 153. 129. DVI 147-148. Higgins, “Redemption,” 216-217. 130. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 27. 217
“most outstanding example” of the Law of the Cross.131 It was freely chosen by Christ exactly so that Christ’s followers might choose this principle as well. For Lonergan, Christ’s transformation of death becomes a precept for Christ’s followers: a precept of “loving one’s enemies,” of “daily accepting of one’s cross,” and of “the wisdom of laying down one’s life for Christ and the gospel so that one truly saves one’s life.”132 Jesus’s command to love as he loved extends to his greatest action of love in his willingness to accept death and suffer for others.
Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross is significant for Lonergan in that it was accomplished not just as an individual man but also “as Head of his Body the church.”133 As an individual, Christ’s actions were in response to the evil of his persecutors to whom Christ responded by being faithful and obedient to the Father who had sent him, transforming their evil action into a supremely good one, and finally this action being blessed by the Father with his resurrection. In his role as mediator and through the grace as head of the Church, Christ was obedient to the Father and transformed the evil of death into a good through his willing acceptance of his death. Christ’s actions both as an individual and as head of the Church brought the blessing and approval of the Father. Lonergan states that there are “universal effects flowing from God the Father through his Son as mediator” which constitute redemption “as end both in this life and in the life to come.”134 In the final step of Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross come the effects of forgiveness of sin, justification and reconciliation.135 As the head of the
Church, Christ resolves the problem of sin and death, makes justification possible, and
131. DVI 120. 132. DVI 135. 133. DVI 120. 134. DVI 134. 135. Ibid. 218
establishes a supreme good in the Body of Christ in which “human evils are transformed.”136 By the cross of Christ, evil and death are not replaced but transformed as part of this reconciliation that Christ achieves.
An aspect of the intelligibility of the redemption in the Law of the Cross is that it reveals
God’s love for humanity and the desire for reconciliation and friendship. In his thesis on the Law of the Cross, Lonergan argues that in Christ’s making the cross his own, the “fittingness of charity is made most clear.”137 Lonergan elaborates through an appeal to the nature of friendship; he states that,
Friends apprehend each other as ‘another self’ and wish good things for their friends as they do for themselves (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 9; 1166a 31, 1169b 6). Likewise, according to Augustine, “It was well said by someone of a friend, ‘You are half of my soul!’”(Confessions, IV, 6; ML, 32: 698). And Thomas Aquinas’s teaching is the same; he writes that the effect of love is union and coinherence (ST, I-II, q. 28, aa. 1-2).138
Lonergan sees the Law of the Cross as revealing a true act of friendship on the part of the Son as man. Through the Son’s principal instance of the Law of the Cross, it is possible to grasp “the quality and the greatness of the Son’s love toward us (1) in his becoming like us and our situation, (2) in the love with which he labored on our behalf, and (3) in the fact that our cross became his in such a way that in bearing our own evils we are counted co-associated, conformed, and conjoined with him.”139 As confirmed by Aristotle, Augustine and Thomas, love tends toward union. In his likeness to humanity, Christ united himself to humanity in a union of love
136. DVI 118. Lonergan states that, “the supreme good into which human evils are transformed is the whole Christ, head and members, in this life as well as in the life to come, in all their concrete determinations and relations. This supreme good includes (1) communicated goods, (2) a good of order in that quasi-organic unity which is Christ and the church, and (3) particular goods both of Christ the Head and of the members.” 137. DVI 143. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 219
and willingly chose to lay down his life for the sake of his friends. Therefore, Christ’s life, lived according to the Law of the Cross, presents, as Vander Schel has observed, “both an offer of solidarity with us and an invitation to us to join in his redemptive and constructive activity in the world— to take up this self-sacrificial love.”140 In making the Law of the Cross his own and as head of the Church, Christ enables the faithful to join similarly in the efforts of transforming evil into good.
II. C. Concluding Observations
In his redemption article, Lonergan argues that the incarnation and redemption are the
“supreme instance of God communicating to us in this life,” which is “above all, a personal communication.”141 This personal communication is mediated in particular through the person of
Christ. For Lonergan, the very life of Christ brings an “incarnate intelligibility” to redemption;
Christ is no mere symbol, but in a particular way Christ embodies God’s word of redemption.142
Lonergan argues that it is “in the concrete, in the flesh of Christ, in his blood, and in his death that punishment is transfigured into satisfaction.”143 For Lonergan, the communication of redemption is not expressed through abstract concepts but in the person of Christ and through his life. Only in this personal communication does Christ’s satisfaction have its intelligibility;
Lonergan states that, “one’s suffering because of the sufferings of one’s own friend is something that is intelligible, and yet it is something that can be seen by us to occur only when flesh and
140. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 315. 141. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 6-7. 142. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 10. The notion of “incarnate intelligibility” becomes an important theme throughout Lonergan’s career. In The Redemption supplement, he refers to the outer word of Christ as an “expressive sign”; later referred to as “incarnate meaning” in Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 55. See also Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 315; Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 165. 143. Ibid. 220
spirit are united in a single being.”144 Christ’s redemptive satisfaction occurs because God became man and acted on behalf of his friends.
Lonergan’s understanding of incarnate intelligibility is expounded at greater length in thesis 16 of DVI in which Lonergan connects Christ’s suffering and death to an interpersonal act of reconciliation where a friend can vicariously satisfy for a friend’s transgressions. Far from situations of strict justice and suffering punishments, friendly reconciliation always involves a motive of love, true sorrow for one’s sins and the intention to make amends as its main catalysts.
In this way, Lonergan’s understanding of satisfaction is beyond any categorization of a sterile payment of debt, but is found in a richer interpersonal context. Redemption on the cross is a moment of communication mediated by Christ in his suffering: Christ’s suffering is both an expression of God the Father’s detestation for sin as well as a perfect expression of human sorrow for sin by the incarnate Son.145 Charles Hefling suggests this communication means at least two things: “(1) it is saying: this is how infinitely Intelligent love deals with evil. (2) it is saying: this is what forgiveness consists in. They both come down to the same thing—the law of the cross.”146 The perfect expression of love on the cross reflects the union of wills Christ has with the Father as well as the solidarity of friendship he holds with humanity. For Lonergan, the essence of God’s communication in redemption is the reconciliation expressed in the Law of the
Cross, which satisfies for sin but also reveals God’s plan to transform evil into good. Through
144. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 11. 145. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 22. 146. Charles Hefling, “Grace, Christ, Redemption, Lonergan (In That Order),” Lonergan Workshop 14 (1998): 107. See also, Miller, Cross as Communication, 193-194. Hefling explains further about the acceptance of Christ’s death: “Accepting death is saying something — saying what was on Jesus' mind and heart. The crucifixion, considered from the side of the Crucified, is an act of meaning. To repeat: not death (as such) but the will of the willing die-er; not death (as such) but Jesus' will; not death (as such) but Jesus' acceptance of death as manifesting his will. In some sense, then, the crucifixion was Jesus' 'last word,' his last communication. The cross was (part of) his 'incarnate meaning.’” 221
Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross, God not only communicates the greatness of his love for humanity but reveals the plan of divine Wisdom that evils in the world are overcome not by brute power but by self-sacrificing love.
In DVI, Lonergan’s emphasis on the interpersonal communication inherent to redemption establishes an important role of the human response to God’s redemptive action. While redemption is entirely achieved by God alone, as an interpersonal reality it requires human participation. The communication in redemption is above all a personal communication directed,
Lonergan states, “to the individual soul.”147 Moloney argues that for Lonergan, “the transformation to which the law of the cross refers begins with human interiority. It is a matter of the insights which move people’s minds and the choices that govern their actions.”148 Christ as man expressed true sorrow and detestation of sin. In this way, Christ’s vicarious satisfaction is done so that enemies might become friends, that the enemies of God recognize Christ’s act of friendship and share in Christ’s sorrow and detestation of sin.149 Moloney explains that for
Lonergan “redemption entails a transformation within human beings themselves, which is to lead in turn to the transformation of the world. It is a passage from death to life in that people die to the untruths and disvalues of the reign of sin and are reborn to the light of truth and authentic living, both individually and communally.”150 For Lonergan, the transformation of evil into good is the highest principle in the economy of salvation and is given as a precept so that all may cooperate with God’s plan of redemption to transform evil into good. Lonergan argues that the
Law of the Cross is in fact a law in that “what happened to Christ becomes a general law for the
147. Lonergan, “The Redemption,” 7. 148. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 34. 149. Lonergan enumerates four ways that one can join in Christ in his suffering, death and resurrection: sacramentally, morally, ascetically, and physically. See DVI 135. 150. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 34. 222
members of Christ’s mystical body.”151 The friend of Christ shares in his detestation of sin and seeks to take up her own cross as an act of friendship with God and by doing so, she takes an active part in the transformation of the world.
III. The Redemption: A Supplement
The final text to be examined in this chapter is considered to be an oddity against the backdrop of Lonergan’s corpus. By Lonergan’s own account, he considered it to be a supplemental addition to his soteriology in De Verbo Incarnato. Despite this referral, this unnamed text, often previously referred to as “The Supplement” or by its first chapter’s title “De bono et malo” before being recently published as The Redemption, has proved to be a challenge to categorize for many scholars.152 Frederick Crowe has admitted that “how it fits into the full picture is not at all clear,” first and foremost because it seems to be an attempt to break away from the scholasticism which characterized Lonergan’s work in DVI.153 Additionally, issues arise in identifying the date of its composition.154 Nevertheless, Crowe argues that it is possible to locate the text in terms of Lonergan’s development. He suggests that, “whatever the precise date,
I think we may locate it in Lonergan’s thought as intermediate between the high Scholasticism on
151. DVI 121. 152. Lonergan himself did not explicitly name the text. As stated, it has traditionally been titled according to the first chapter (de bono et malo) or “The Supplement.” The publication of the English translation has opted for The Redemption: A Supplement [De Redemptione]. The new preferred title will be adopted here. Henceforth DR. 153. Crowe, Christ and History, 99. Crowe indicates a few markers of this attempted break from Scholasticism to be: “the thesis form is almost abandoned, new categories featuring the work of Christ are introduced, and history is a theme.” 154. Crowe argues for 1958 as the date of its composition. Some private letters of Lonergan from 1956-58 suggest its composition during this time. Interestingly, however, Lonergan himself dated the manuscript between 1963-1964 when he handed the manuscript over to Crowe in 1972. Crowe believes that it was first written in 1958, but perhaps picked up again in 1963, or possibly misremembered by Lonergan himself. See Crowe, Christ and History, 124. 223
the one side of De Verbo incarnato and De Deo trino in 1964, and on the other side the open shift to modernity in, say, the papers of A Second Collection, 1966 to 1973.”155
Because Lonergan himself considered this work supplemental, it is necessary to first contextualize it with regard to DVI. While there is some overlap in topics, the intention appears to be a re-presentation of the soteriology of DVI in light of different themes—what Frederick
Crowe observes to be as Lonergan “tak[ing] a new look at redemption.”156 Affirming Crowe’s estimation, Charles Hefling insists that the supplement “by no means abandons satisfaction any more than it abandons the Law of the Cross. Both, however, are put in a different and wider context.”157 As part of this new context, Lonergan begins his work by developing an anthropology in chapter one, through an investigation of the human condition, treating issues regarding the good of order and the destructiveness of sin. In chapter two, he provides a theological framework to treat these anthropological issues with a consideration of the order of divine justice and divine wisdom. With this foundation in place, the following three chapters present the major ideas of the theses 15-17 of DVI, specifically the soteriological elements of
Scripture, the nature of satisfaction, and the Law of the Cross, but reordered with some sections expanded.158
155. Crowe, Christ and History, 99. This shift to modernity will be briefly noted in the conclusion of this chapter. 156. Crowe, Christ and History, 103. 157. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 154. 158. Chapter 3 of The Redemption, like Thesis 15 of DVI, studies the relevant passages of Scripture that refer to redemption. The Law of the Cross from DVI (Thesis 17) gets more extensive treatment in DR’s chapter four (“On the Cross of Christ”). Chapter 5 of the DR is “On the Satisfaction of Christ” provides greater exploration on the sacramental analogy for satisfaction found in St. Thomas and Thesis 16 in DVI. While these chapters are not strictly identical to his work in DVI, Lonergan’s use of the concept of friendship in these chapters does not radically diverge from his use in DVI. This being the case, these three chapters will not be the main concern presently; rather, the focus is on chapter 6 which is the unique contribution of DR. For more information on these chapters and their relationship to DVI, see Crowe, Christ and History, 102-109. 224
These different soteriological elements come together in the final chapter on the effects of redemption where Lonergan steps most clearly beyond his work in DVI by investigating the
“historical causality of Christ”.159 Chapter six culminates in a final article in which Lonergan asks Anselm’s famous question ‘Why the God-Man?’ and provides his own unique answer.160
For the current project, his answer is crucial: “The Son of God became man to communicate
God’s friendship to the unfriendly.”161 The fittingness of the Son becoming man finds its intelligibility in this communication of God’s own friendship. Frederick Lawrence argues that with this communication “we see friendship as the central factor in both the human good and in salvation.”162 The goal of this section is therefore to explore the role of friendship as a central factor in salvation and the human good in chapter 6 of The Redemption, first by examining
Lonergan’s answer to why it is fitting that the God-man is the agent of redemption and second by unpacking the secondary implications of the redemptive work of the God-man in the human good through understanding the ‘historical causality of Christ’.163
159. Crowe identifies Lonergan’s study of the historical causality of Christ “as an especially important new step for Lonergan.” See Crowe, Christ and History, 103. Christ’s historical causality was an interest of Lonergan’s from the beginning of his career, seen as early as 1935 in a student essay on history: Panton Anakephalaiosis [The Restoration of All Things},” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 9, No. 2 (October 1991), 139-172. In his own words, Lonergan suggests that this text was an attempt at a “metaphysics of human solidarity” which emphasizes the role of the human person in history as connected to the larger whole of humanity. For more on this interest of Lonergan’s and its development, see, Michael Shute, The Origins of Lonergan’s Notion of the Dialectic of History: A Study of Lonergan’s Early Writings on History (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993); R. Michael Clark, “Byway of the Cross: The Early Lonergan and Political Order,” Lonergan Workshop Journal 12 (1996): 27-44; Joseph A. Komonchak, “Lonergan’s Early Essays on the Redemption of History,” in Lonergan Workshop 10: The Legacy of Lonergan, ed. Frederick Lawrence (Chestnut Hill: Boston College Press, 1994): 159-177. 160. For a close comparison of this question in both Anselm and Lonergan, see Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” passim. 161. DR 631. 162. Lawrence, “Christian Self-Understanding,” 306. 163. This project only focuses on chapter 6 of this text. For more general study of The Redemption, see John Volk, “Lonergan on the Historical Causality of Christ: An Interpretation of the Redemption: A Supplement to the De Verbo Incarnato,” (Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 2011). 225
III. A. Why the God-Man: A Communication of Friendship
Identifying the purpose of redemption is, for Lonergan, a relatively straightforward task: numerous scriptural passages reveal that Christ came to reconcile humanity with God by redeeming humanity from sin and death.164 Understanding more deeply the purpose of the incarnation is possible by appealing to the broader category of cause; in this exploration of the aspects of causality, many different questions can arise that shed light on the various ways redemption can be understood. Lonergan explains:
The intrinsic causes of Christ are dealt with in the treatise on his ontological constitution. His extrinsic cause, the agent, is the triune God in his external operation. A final cause or end. . . is divided into primary and secondary, so that the primary end is the divine goodness itself, and the secondary end is the glory of God, the order of the universe, and the body of Christ wherein all things are brought together and reconciled in him.
With these points being presupposed, we may ask this further question about the end or purpose, why a divine person was required to accomplish this end, why a finite person would not have sufficed.165
With understanding that the final cause, the goal, of redemption is beatitude and the secondary final cause to be in the order of the universe, a further question can emerge, namely, why it was necessary within this plan of salvation that one who is both God and man be used for this purpose. Lonergan’s answer to this question is rooted in friendship: “The Son of God became man to communicate God’s friendship to the unfriendly.”166 Lonergan’s answer is carefully worded.
In the first place, Lonergan distinguishes what is being communicated as specifically
‘God’s friendship.’ Natural friendship, he notes, is a “mutual benevolent love in the sharing of
164. DR 625. Lonergan specifically refers to Mark 10:45, Gal. 4:4, and their summary in the Nicene Creed. 165. DR 631. 166. Ibid. 226
some good” among friends.167 Divine friendship, what the Son of God is communicating, is
“mutual benevolent love with respect to that which is good by its very essence.”168 This kind of friendship is entirely foreign to human loving and is proper to the divine persons alone.169 The divine love of friendship known perfectly only to the Father, Son and Spirit is absolutely supernatural and only shared contingently as pure gift. Charles Hefling explains that “the right to be God’s friend belongs to no created being, no finite person, because commitment to infinite good is by definition supernatural. Humans have no claim to it, no exigence for it. It is natural only to divine persons.”170 Nevertheless, for Lonergan, God seeks to share this friendship and so communicates it “to intellectual creatures contingently and in time,” first in hope to those
“possessing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit” and secondly to those in heaven “when being confirmed in grace, they rejoice in the immediate vision of God.”171 This divine friendship is absolutely supernatural, belonging to God alone by right, and is shared with others only by free gift.
Secondly, Lonergan’s answer importantly identifies the Son’s communication of divine friendship as destined for God’s enemies. Humans are made enemies by sin. This Lonergan has already established in chapter 2 of The Redemption, where sin is defined as an estrangement.172
This interpersonal estrangement between God and humanity brings temporal and eternal punishment. Further, this sin has led not only to social evils but to larger cycles of decline.
167. Ibid 168. Ibid. 169. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 157. Hefling observes: “from that definition it follows that there are, properly speaking, just three friends of God, three who enjoy divine friendship, three who are unrestrictedly in love with unrestricted loving. God are those friends: the Father, the Son and the Spirit.” 170. Ibid. 171. DR 633. 172. DR 186. 227
Lonergan explains that personal sins lead to a moral impotence among people in that
“individually they fail to do the good” and as a consequence of this, humans “socially and historically set up a regime of sin and live their lives subject to the power of darkness, of death, and of the devil.”173 With evils moving from the personal to the social level, human powerlessness increases and any sustained good of order to combat the decline of sin is impossible.174
The third significant nuance to Lonergan’s answer is that this communication occurs ‘in due order.’ Far from suggesting the necessity of God’s redemptive acts, Lonergan invokes an idea of “due order,” suggesting the fittingness of God’s plan of redemption as “following the free plan conceived by his wisdom and chosen by his goodness.”175 In chapter two of his supplement,
Lonergan explains this revelation of wisdom and goodness, stating that,
God is good because he freely and out of nothing creates and pours forth being and good; God is just because he chooses the order of reality determined by infinite wisdom; God is generous because divine wisdom does not order things for self-interest but to manifest divine goodness; and God is merciful because the ordering to divine goodness is far better than an ordering to any created goodness.176
While God was free to bring about redemption in any possible way, the plan God set in place occurs in such a way as to communicate God’s friendship in accord with and to manifest God’s wisdom, justice and generosity.
173. DR 633; Crowe, Christ and History, 121. In chapter two of DR which treats divine justice, Lonergan explains that “man’s greatest evil is that which corrupts this interior order and manifests itself in the decline of culture; for it is rooted in that alienation from God that causes moral impotence, namely, the darkness of intellect, weakness of will, and a strong objective difficulty in choosing the good. These in turn corrupt the external good of order, and as a result particular goods diminish and particular evils grow greater day by day.” DR 216. 174. On human impotence in the face of sin, see DR 193-203; John Volk, “Lonergan on the Historical Causality of Christ,” Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 3, 1 (2012): 84-85. Lonergan also argues for a similar impotence in the face of the problem of evil in Insight, ch. 7 and ch. 18. 175. DR 633. 176. DR 240. 228
i. Principles at play
God’s divine plan of communicating divine friendship to humanity involves for Lonergan the application of three principles.177 The first is the “Principle of Cause” which states that God normally works through secondary causes.178 The second is the “Principle of Continuity” which recognizes that God customarily acts in a way appropriate to a created nature, in keeping “with normal course of events and, for the most part, without violating any laws, whether physical, human, psychological, social or historical.”179 Finally, the third principle is “of the extension of friendship” according to which a friend loves his friend’s friends. Quoting Thomas on this point,
Lonergan identifies that by this principle a loving friendship can even extend to one’s enemies, whom one might love because of a mutual friend.180
The application of these principles brings certain implications for God’s plan of redemption. In the first place, “a man is required who is a friendly go-between or intermediary” who stands both as friend of God (according to divine friendship) and as friend to mankind. This intermediary is a secondary cause through whom God can work to communicate his friendship.
Secondly, according to the principle of continuity, God customarily acts according to a created nature, so it is fitting that the communication of friendship occur, not through an apocalyptic disruption of some kind, but in keeping with the normal historical order.181 Thirdly, the one who communicates this friendship must be one who is “in his own right” a friend of God and already
“ordered towards the possession of God as infinite good.”182 A friend simply by merit rather than
177. DR 633. The first two of these are also found in Insight chapter 19. For a comparison of both instances of use, see Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 156. 178. Ibid. 179. DR 635. 180. Ibid. Lonergan quotes ST II-II q. 23, a. 1. 181. DR 637. 182. Ibid. 229
by right merely initiates an infinite regression of mediators; therefore, for Lonergan, to safeguard the principle of cause and the extension of friendship the secondary cause cannot be a human but must be a divine person subsisting in a human nature.
ii. Reasons for the God-man
Through the conclusions drawn from these three principles, Lonergan identifies several reasons for the fittingness of the God-man. In the first place, the God-man as divine is by right a friend of God according to divine friendship.183 Secondly, Lonergan argues that if a human being in his own right enjoys God’s friendship then he “also enjoys by his own right all the supernatural gifts, and therefore is a proportionate exemplar cause according to which these gifts can be communicated to other men.”184 Finally, in terms of the diffusion of friendship, “if a divine person is man, this man’s love is that of a divine person.”185 If the God-man is truly an intermediary friend, then he must be not only a friend of God but also a friend of mankind; thus, as Lonergan sees it, “he must love men and men must love him.”186 Quite easily does the true friend of God love others for the sake of his love for God; much less easily does the sinner, the enemy of God, love God’s friend. Therefore, Lonergan argues that “in order that the friend of
God be an intermediary friend, he must turn men from hostility to friendship, so that loving the man who is God, they may come to have love for God.”187 The God-Man must make these enemies into true friends; this is done not by force, but naturally and in accord with human living
183. Ibid. 184. Ibid. 185. DR 639. 186. Ibid. 187. Ibid. My emphasis. 230
with the principle of continuity in mind. Through these principles, it becomes clear that a God- man is the only means by which the communication of God’s friendship can occur.188
iii. Christ as intermediary friend.
For Lonergan, Christ the God-man works as intermediary to transform enemies into friends throughout his human life but finds his greatest expression of friendship on the cross. In
The Redemption, Lonergan speaks of the “two-fold assimilation” Christ bore as mediator. He states that “it is fitting that the Father love us with the same love with which he loves his Son, to the extent that we and the Son are made one. But we and the Son are made one inasmuch as the
Son is assimilated and joined to us and we in turn are assimilated and joined to the Son.”189 The first assimilation and union occurs with the Incarnation itself whereby Christ becomes a sharer in our humanity. A further assimilation occurs with the union, the “quasi-identification that love brings about.”190 The greatness of Christ’s love for humanity is seen throughout his life in word and deed. While the entire life of Christ is a communication of divine friendship, Lonergan argues that “it is by way of the cross that sinners are to come into friendship with God.”191 Christ took on the cross of death that humans bore and made it his own. By his death on the cross,
Lonergan argues that Christ “not only assimilated and united himself to us, but in a most compelling manner invited us into assimilation and union with himself.”192 As in DVI, the Law
188. Hefling argues that through the application of these principles Lonergan can deduce the constitution of the incarnate Word, as Anselm did. The significant difference is the manner by which this deduction occurs. Hefling states that, “the difference, which is important, is that the three premises from which Lonergan argues are not themselves necessary. As to the first, God is not bound to work through secondary causes; as to the second, God is quite capable of suspending scientific or psychological or historical laws. He could, therefore, have achieved his eschatological purpose in an apocalyptic manner. As it happens, he did not. As it happens, he chose the Incarnation.” See Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 158. 189. DR 284. 190. DR 285. 191. DR 286. 192. Ibid. 231
of the Cross for Lonergan remains the essence of redemption and the means by which the God-
Man mediates divine friendship.
As the intermediary friend seeking a diffusion of friendship, Christ not only taught and prescribed the Law of the Cross but performed his work according to it. There is, Lonergan insists, no more effective way than “to show love first” and to “show the greatest love” in the most effective way, namely that Christ himself “be struck down by the hatred of his enemies, overcome these evil deeds by bringing good out of them, and by his great victory demonstrate how true it is that for those who love God all things work together unto good.”193 As an intermediary friend, Christ wills for his friends, who are God’s enemies, the good that he enjoys as God’s friend; it is fitting, therefore, that Christ show them how to be converted and bring them to friendship with God.
Finally, as mediator, Christ makes possible the loving return of friendship with God by being himself the cause of grace as head of the Church. For Lonergan, Christ’s display of love and inducement to love in return is “sufficient only to make men initially disposed to love.”194
There is an additional need of sanctifying grace to make this return of friendship possible. Christ accomplishes this through his “superabundant” satisfaction for sin in his work as mediator.195 His grace is therefore likewise superabundant. This grace is such, Lonergan argues, because “a divine person brings it about that men work for themselves but also himself works for them, as the head working for the members, a priest working for his people, a shepherd for his sheep, a king for his
193. DR 639. Lonergan recalls John 15:13. 194. DR 641. Charles Hefling explains that “it is one thing to love a divine person who has become human. To love him as a divine person is something else. The first is natural, the second supernatural…. To love the person of Christ requires the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and requires the love for God which is participation in the Spirit, and which is poured by the Spirit into human hearts.” Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 162. 195. In DR, Lonergan reaffirms his statements in DVI about satisfaction and likewise makes reference to Thomas’s appeal to the union of love in friendship. See DR 607. 232
subjects, a deputy for those whom he represents, a friend for his friends.”196 Christ as human is a true friend of the Father and communicates this friendship to the unfriendly through his human life and, most particularly, through the cross.
III. B. Implications of the Communication of Divine Friendship: Historical Causality of
Christ and the Human Good
One of the most unique contributions to Lonergan’s The Redemption is his treatment of the “historical causality” of Christ within his work on the effects of Christ’s mission.197 John
Volk insists that Lonergan’s understanding here is not a new truth but “simply an extension of trying to understand imperfectly and analogically the mystery of redemption by asking new questions raised by historical mindedness.”198 Using different theological categories, Lonergan explores the historical implications of the incarnation and the divine friendship that Christ communicates. As Frederick Lawrence summarizes, for Lonergan “in the Supplementum, the
Incarnation’s assumption of human nature is a sublation of the human good by reason of the absolutely supernatural component into the good of order.”199 Christ’s communication of divine friendship brings into human living a new good, a supreme and absolutely supernatural one, around which the good of order can be situated. Lonergan’s understanding of the historical causality of Christ is an important consideration in the current project for two reasons.200 In the first place, Lonergan’s work on this topic allows him to speak of the Body of Christ as the
196. DR 641. 197. Chapter 6 explores many different forms of agency: individual, social, and historical. For more on agency, see Volk, “Historical Causality,” 68-71. 198. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 78. 199. Lawrence, “Christian Self-Understanding,” 306. 200. Historical causality of Christ is a unique and important contribution by Lonergan but cannot be the focus here; see John Volk’s dissertation, Volk, Historical Causality of Christ: An Interpretation of the Redemption, passim. 233
ultimate historical effect intended by Christ, aimed in part at improving the human good on the cultural level. Secondly, Lonergan’s very understanding of the Body of Christ, and its agency in the common good, is rooted in an understanding of friendship.
For Lonergan, the work of Christ greatly and irrevocably impacts human history. If an historical agent most broadly is one that “causally influences either the external or the cultural good of order,” then Lonergan argues that Christ is the “greatest of all historical agents,” acting both as God and as man in his redemptive work.201 While the primary purpose of the incarnation is ultimately union with God in heaven, Christ’s agency in history in the communication of divine friendship brings other more immediate effects as well.202 The communication of divine friendship orients the soul toward God as the infinite good; in this way, Lonergan argues that
“Christ’s action is directly aimed at ordering human life on earth to the future life in heaven.”203
This ordering of human life toward heaven occurs first through Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross which brings about the transformation of evil into good in the present world order.
Lonergan observes that since “this ordering liberates man from evils and turns him towards true good with the result that the human good of order in itself is greatly improved, this improvement itself is necessarily intended indirectly by Christ as an historical agent.”204 For Lonergan,
Christ’s historical causality is aimed at improving the human good particularly on the cultural level and has a significant impact on the totality of history.205
201. DR 581, 587. The historical causality of Christ is an aspect of his efficient causality whereby people become members of his Body. See DR 609. 202. Christ’s historical agency is unique and more complicated than others in that, for Lonergan, it has a “twofold” action. First, as a mediator, Christ interceded in history on behalf of others; now, in heaven with the Father, Christ is still interceding on behalf of others, especially in the Eucharist. DR 609. 203. DR 613. 204. Ibid. 205. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 85. Volk explains that the locus of this liberation occurs on the cultural level which has to do with “the interior ordering of our habits and desires.” Cultural evils are grounded in moral impotence and therefore can only be combatted by first addressing interior habits and desires. The aberrations of 234
As an historical agent, Christ continues to act socially and historically through the members of the Body of Christ in their union of love in the Church and in each member’s own implementation of the Law of the Cross. Lonergan states that “Christ acts socially and historically through his members, not as isolated individuals but as one body socially, historically, and spiritually.”206 Those who are in a state of grace, whose knowing and loving are oriented toward God as the ultimate good, carry on the work of Christ in history thereby extending his historical causality. Volk argues that for Lonergan the Body of Christ is “a social and historical agent for mediating Christ’s agency in history, not only to build up and perfect this same body, but through the actions of its members to improve the human situation.”207 The human situation is improved because Christ’s members enact the Law of the Cross and combat the cycles of decline. Volk explains that the Law of the Cross replaces the incapacity brought about by sin for a sustained development in the good because “through this law God introduces into history a higher integration of human activity that transforms the irrational, nonsystematic element of evil without abrogating the underlying manifold of psychological and sociological laws.”208 The Law of the Cross allows the members of Christ’s body to cooperate with the good, not through suspension of the natural order but through a reordering to the supreme Good. The
Body of Christ is intended to improve the human situation in history and does so to the degree that its members imitate Christ and remain a part of his body.
cultural evils result in historical decline and it is at this level therefore “that humanity most needs divine intervention.” 206. DR 617. 207. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 84. Volk argues that the Body of Christ is a mediated efficient cause of Christ’s historical agency. The Body of Christ is the historical effect intended by Christ, therefore for Volk, “in terms of causality it’s a means to its own end.” 208. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 84. 235
The formation of the Mystical Body is an intentional aspect of God’s redemption of humanity. In terms of Christ’s work in history, the effect of this total historical action is “is the whole human good of order, both external good and cultural good, past, present, and future.”209
For Lonergan, the Body of Christ is the ultimate historical end that Christ intends in that all who are brought together in this historical reality are reconciled in Christ. While the Body is a supernatural reality, it nevertheless improves the human situation in history. Volk explains that
“the human good is meant to become a supernatural good, and therefore it is the historical element of the supreme good. For members of the church then, the new community is the supreme good in its historical dimension.210 The supreme good is found in heaven, but in its historical dimension, on the way toward perfection in beatitude, it is found in the historical Body of Christ, the pilgrim Church. In this way, Lonergan states that Christ “as both God and man, with his divine will and his human will, loves God above all things as primary end, and out of his superabundant love for the divine goodness also loves the secondary end, which is God’s external glory and his body, head and members.”211 Christ’s historical action is directed toward ordering human life on earth to life in heaven, but in the process of this ordering is the historical reality of those bound in friendship to Christ in the pilgrim Church.
Understanding Lonergan’s notion of the ‘historical causality of Christ’ reveals the importance of friendship in what Christ establishes. John Volk argues that for Lonergan in his supplement, “friendship is the glue that holds the human good together, including the Body of
Christ.”212 The members of the Church are significant to this picture in that, as Volk states, they
209. DR 611; See also Crowe, Christ and History, 115. 210. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 75. 211. DR 629. 212. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 87. 236
“are the ground of social and historical agency on the human side of divine-human cooperation in the historical drama of redemption.”213 At the heart of the unity of the Body of Christ is the reconciliation that Christ achieves through his mediation of divine friendship which requires the friend of God to cooperate and respond to God’s friendship. Lonergan states that,
The entire work of Christ is summed up in this reconciliation. Just as the human good of order refers to the steady stream of particular goods, coordinated operations, and interior habits and external institutions as all being closely knit together and vivified in a concrete synthesis through interpersonal relationships, so also is the kingdom of God, the Church, Christ’s body and pleroma.214
Interpersonal relationships are essential in the natural human good and in the supernatural human good as well. The linchpin in these interpersonal relationships is that those who are unified in the
Church are unified in their understanding and their willing, ordered to the possession of God as the infinite good. In this way, the members of the Body of Christ are bound in friendship to
Christ and to each other and in this union of wills they share in an historical agency to combat the cycles of sin and evil through their participation in the Law of the Cross.
III. C. Concluding Observations
The Redemption is an important piece of Lonergan’s soteriology in that Lonergan attempts, as Hefling has argued, to provide a wider context to his soteriological themes in DVI.
The heart of Lonergan’s soteriological vision remains the Law of the Cross, what he sees as the essence of redemption, and it is the means by which God achieves his purpose of communicating divine life to humanity through the transformation of evil into good. One way that The
Redemption book expands on this central point is through a greater emphasis on friendship as a
213. Ibid. 214. DR 623. 237
central factor. Fred Lawrence observes that in this work “the incarnate Word is the created principle of the transformation of the universal good of order by God’s self-communication. This means the at least implicit acknowledgement of friendship as the central factor in both the human good and in salvation.”215 Similarly, John Volk remarks on the interconnectedness of the soteriological themes of interpersonal relationships, the human good, and Christ’s communication of divine friendship as reaching a particular synthesis in this text; he contends that, “when one understands the importance of interpersonal relationships in Lonergan’s understanding of the human good then his answer to the question Cur Deus Homo is easily integrated into an understanding of the historical causality of Christ.”216 Lonergan’s answer to the question of the God-Man as offering friendship to the unfriendly functions to bring greater unity to the Law of the Cross, vicarious satisfaction, the historical reality of the Church, and the human good of order.
The human good of order is found in interpersonal relationships, when people are brought together, ideally in friendships, in their identification of a good. In addressing the need for redemption and the fittingness of the God-man to be its agent, Lonergan is clear that this work is for the purpose of communicating divine friendship. The only way one is a friend of God is if he or she is bound in union with the infinite good that is God. This friendship is absolutely supernatural but is offered to human persons through the mediation of Christ as the God-man, particularly through his reconciliation of God and humanity on the cross by which he transforms humanity’s greatest evil into a supreme good. Lonergan’s unique elaboration of the historical causality of Christ broadens his work on the Law of the Cross by seeing those bound by a union
215. Lawrence, “Christian Self-Understanding,” 306. 216. Volk, “Historical Causality,” 38. 238
of wills in the Body of Christ as the mediating efficient cause of Christ’s continuing historical agency. This is most particularly realized in the Church through which the friendship established in Christ’s redemptive acts is concretized in history. These friends of God gathered in the one
Body of Christ through the help of grace work with God to transform evils in the world into the good.
IV. Conclusion
The three texts examined in this chapter make it possible to piece together a picture of
Lonergan’s understanding of redemption. This image can be regarded from several vantage points: the Trinitarian missions of the Son and Spirit and the Father who sends them, the Son who is sent as mediator, the purpose and manner of redemption, the relationship of the Son’s work to the Spirit’s, and effects of the missions in the created order with both an eschatological and historical dimension. Working within these different points, the goal of the present chapter was to identify and elaborate how the theme of friendship functions consistently to reinforce and strengthen Lonergan’s soteriological vision. Regarding Lonergan’s overall aim in his soteriological writings, Charles Hefling suggests that “it was Lonergan’s aspiration, as Frederick
Crowe has observed, to find and articulate. . . an intelligible unity — a single explanation capable of grounding all the traditional images and theories.”217 Although in agreement on
Lonergan’s desire for an intelligible unity, Hefling interestingly parts ways with Crowe. He states that:
Crowe, however, seems inclined to judge that the Law of the Cross in The Incarnate Word represents Lonergan’s solution to the problem of integrating in a total view the various components of Christ’s work. I would say that he found a
217. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 163. 239
comprehensive viewpoint, not in the Law of the Cross per se, but in the answer his Redemption book gives to the question ‘Why a God-man.’218
Lonergan’s answer to this question is, of course, the communication of divine friendship. Hefling argues that the wider, more systematic context which is offered in the Redemption book can offer a total view of redemption that Lonergan sought. By way of conclusion, it will be worth following Hefling’s argument and contributing to it further ways that Christ’s mission as communicating divine friendship can bring together various elements present in Lonergan’s soteriology into a total view.
One of the major points Hefling offers to defend his assertion is the greater integration of
Lonergan’s soteriology to his other theological texts and, in particular, to De Deo Trino.219 As seen in the first section of the present chapter, Lonergan argues in DDT that the unique ontological constitutions of the Son and Spirit bring particular implications for their missions and their effects. In this way, redemption for Lonergan is inherently trinitarian and involves both the unique invisible mission of the Spirit and the unique visible mission of the Son in his historical living.220 Lonergan develops the external terms, operations, and effects of the two missions in terms of their total goal and common purpose “to establish and confirm new interpersonal relations.”221 Lonergan’s Redemption book takes these interpersonal relations and more clearly identifies them as friendship in a union of love of God. For this purpose of creating a friendship, the two missions are more clearly ordered to each other: friendship with God is initiated by
218. Ibid. Hefling refers to an editorial note in Lonergan’s work that he attributes to Crowe’s authorship; see Bernard Lonergan, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert Croken, Frederick Crowe, and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1996), 14, n. 26. 219. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 164. Along with DDT, he also points to its assimilation of Lonergan’s work The Psychological and Ontological Constitution of Christ. Since, however, this book was not addressed in this chapter, it’s integration in the Redemption book will not be addressed here. 220. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 314. 221. DDT 497. 240
Christ, extended to his friends in the Mystical Body, where it is confirmed and maintained by the
Spirit. Further, the connection of these interpersonal relations and the good of order is also brought into greater unity since the interpersonal friendship with Christ unifies Christ’s friends in common pursuit of a new supernatural good. Lonergan argues that to communicate divine friendship is to communicate “mutual benevolent love with respect to that which is good by its very essence,” which is an offer of participation in the divine life itself.222 In Lonergan’s vision, the persons of the Trinity each take a unique part in the establishment of the new interpersonal relationship of friendship that is established in God’s plan of redemption.
Hefling’s other point to defend this proposition involves the importance of Christ as mediator in the diffusion of God’s love.223 For Lonergan, the human life of Christ brings people to a love of Christ as human and ultimately to a love of Christ as divine.224 This mediation made friendship with God possible but not as a natural friendship occurs where both parties are drawn together by a common good since, as Hefling argues, there is nothing “in the universe of proportionate being that can evoke this love, not even a divine person made man.”225 The unique case of establishing a human-divine friendship requires the gift of sanctifying grace by the Spirit to make one a friend of God. Hefling argues that for Lonergan, “the Word was made flesh so that grace, the immediate love of God, might have something to cooperate with, an ‘outer word’ adequate to express what is congruent with the gift of love that God works within us.”226 The missions involve a diffusion of divine love that is radically and absolutely supernatural, entirely established by God. However, as Lonergan states, “the call of God’s grace is not an ordination to
222. DR 631; Volk, “Historical Causality,” 89. 223. Hefling discusses Christ’s mediation more in the context of worship. 224. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 164. 225. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,”165. 226. Ibid. 241
a nameless divine mystery but always remains a call in Christ.”227 Christ’s mediation of redemption in history shapes this reception in terms of friendship to make it in a sense easier to cooperate with divine grace and the absolutely supernatural reality of divine friendship.
Further, Hefling’s suggestion for the total view as found in the God-man communicating divine friendship can bring greater unity to the soteriological elements of DVI, specifically vicarious satisfaction and the Law of the Cross. To begin, Lonergan’s use of the communication of divine friendship adds a foundation for the fittingness of the incarnate Son to make satisfaction for sin and to enact the Law of the Cross. If God is going to make friends of enemies, he has to transform evil hearts. In the Redemption book, Lonergan observes that in their disordered pursuit of goods, these sinful hearts create cycles of sin and foster societal decay.228
With these anthropological assertions, Lonergan’s answer to the ‘Why the God-man?” relies on the nature of friendship to address these concerns. If God is going to reorder the human heart toward the good, and this is done without force, it is fitting to occur through an offer of friendship in which a union of love is established through the presentation of a new good, in this case an infinite one. Frederick Lawrence argues that the incarnation in this sense is “a sublation of the human good by reason of the absolutely supernatural component into the good of order.”229 God communicates divine friendship, a friendship that is mutual, benevolent, and committed to divine goodness as the supreme good in order, in order to solve the problem of sin and open up a share in divine life but also to pattern a new way of living in the world according to a higher good.
227. DDT 479. 228. DVI 118. 229. Lawrence, “Christian Self-Understanding,” 306. 242
In terms of the satisfaction made by Christ, Lonergan’s work in the Redemption book which puts friendship as the center of its soteriological vision allows his understanding of vicarious satisfaction to be properly contextualized within it. In the first place, the emphasis on
Christ’s communicating friendship allows Lonergan to shift emphasis away from satisfaction for sin as the primary purpose of the incarnation, a problematic tendency Lonergan observes in popular soteriological views. Rather, as the quote in the introduction from Vander Schel indicated, the primary purpose of redemption for Lonergan is the mediation of friendship that occurs through Christ’s reconciliatory actions.230 This mediation of friendship, however, is offered to those who have been made enemies by sin; therefore, addressing the problem of sin is found within the larger aim of reconciliation of friends. Within this framework, Lonergan contextualizes Christ’s vicarious satisfaction as a reality only properly understood within the context of friendship in which it cannot be forced or imposed as punishment; satisfaction regards interpersonal reconciliation and only works when the offender willingly recognizes and feels sorrow for her offense. Moreover, Christ’s vicarious satisfaction is entirely dependent on a notion of friendship, for only a true union of wills can make possible a vicarious offering; in his case, it was Christ’s superabundant sorrow for sins that allows him to bring reconciliation between God and humanity. Lonergan’s total view of redemption as Christ communicating divine friendship to the unfriendly contextualizes the role of satisfaction within a larger framework and requires that satisfaction be understood in its proper context of friendship.
Lonergan’s Law of the Cross can be similarly brought into a wider systematic framework through understanding Christ’s communication as one of divine friendship. For Lonergan, this
230. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 314. Hefling makes a similar point, see Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 160. 243
law remains the essence of redemption and the reason why Christ suffers and dies; through
Christ’s death and his making the Law of the Cross his own, he brings about a supreme good. If the cross is the ultimate self-communication of God in redemption, and the Redemption book reveals that this communication is of divine friendship, then Christ’s making the law of the cross his own by his death on the cross is the greatest act of friendship. Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross is an act of friendship, since “one who really loves, not only is willing to give of what he has but also looks upon the evils his friend has to endure not as someone else’s but as in some way his own” and thus, “when his friend suffers some evil, he suffers with him.”231 In befriending humans, Christ expressed his sorrow for sin and took on the cross that was not his and made it his own.232 Friendships unite people together in a shared love of a good—in the case of divine friendship, God communicates the good and by grace allows this supernatural good to be loved by the human friends of God. Mark Miller observes that with this Law, “God works with us in Jesus Christ by transforming the evil effects of sin into a good that shifts the probabilities in human history toward the emergence of further goods.”233 The method of the cross, Christ making the Law of the Cross his own, was the means by which Christ makes enemies friends.
Christ’s communication of divine friendship additionally brings into greater relief the necessity of human response and cooperation in friendship in their own enactment of the Law of the Cross. Given the pervasiveness of sin, infecting both the individual and the social order, God found it best not simply to suspend human psychological and social laws or use sheer power to
231. DR 641. 232. DR 286. 233. Miller, God and the Good Life, 193. 244
combat sin, but to bring about the good by a transformation of evil. Suspension of such laws can not make enemies into friends. Human persons, Lonergan argues, “cannot be turned from evil to good except according to the method of the cross: that men acknowledge the evils that beset them and endure them, overcome them by patient and persevering good will, and implore the blessing of divine providence.”234 For Lonergan, Christ takes on the Law of the Cross to make it his own in a perfect act of friendship and, in doing so, he makes it a precept for his followers to choose as well. Within the context of friendship, this Law of the Cross can be seen less as an exteriorly decreed precept and more as an interiorly driven expression of the union of love in friendship. Mark Miller observes that for Lonergan, “the divine solution to the problem of evil is a supernatural friendship with God that lifts our lives into the trinitarian life, reinforces the trickle of our love into the unrestricted river of divine love, and divinizes our very being so that all our operations may be a cooperation in God’s work of redemption.”235 If the friend of God is truly a friend then she is brought into union with God and seeks what God seeks, namely the transformation of evil. Further, this friend is motivated by the desire to love God as the ultimate good and to build up the body of Christ as the ultimate historical end that Christ intended.
Finally, Christ’s redemptive work as a communication of friendship brings greater intelligibility to the historical reality of Mystical Body of Christ as the proximate goal of the redemption as reorienting humanity toward the good. As Lonergan argued, interpersonal relationships are foundational for any kind of human good of order; in this way, society improves as it works together for the good or is in decline to the degree that it fails to do so. With
Lonergan’s understanding of the Incarnation as communicating divine friendship, this
234. DR 639. 235. Miller, God and the Good Life, 199. 245
communication brings with it a new supreme good around which interpersonal relationships collaborate in the good of order. The Church Christ founded is therefore an integral piece of
Christ’s redemptive work in that the love of Christ necessarily binds the body together in charity.
Vander Schel observes that for Lonergan, “the Church is the body that has taken up the meaningful manifestation of divine love in Christ” and is called “to expand Christ’s redemptive work through choosing the Law of the Cross as the rule of its own collective life,” manifesting this work “in interpersonal living, in relationships of forgiveness and reconciliation, and as a change in attitudes, motivations, and selves.”236 The members of the Mystical Body of Christ as
“friends” are joined in union to Christ and each other and thereby perpetuate the historical causality of Christ and work to live according to the supreme, absolutely supernatural good that has been communicated in redemption. Robert Doran states that, “the supreme good, then, into which the evils of the human race are transformed by the Law of the Cross is a new community, a set of transformed relations grounded in the communication of trinitarian divine life itself.”237
Established by the divine missions, the Body of Christ is the secondary historical effect that
Christ intended so that human persons can collaborate in God’s solution to the problem of sin as an expression of their friendship with God.
The burden of this chapter has been to argue for the central place of the notion of friendship in Lonergan’s main soteriological writings during what is considered the middle stage of his career, from roughly 1953-1965. This period reflects the beginning of Lonergan’s transition from strictly theological writings into a focus on methodological concerns which
236. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 316, 317. 237. Robert Doran, “The Nonviolent Cross: Lonergan and Girard on Redemption,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 56-57. 246
govern the most mature stage of Lonergan’s career.238 Frederick Crowe observes that Lonergan’s work during this middle stage reflects the beginnings of his prolonged effort to “move out of the
Thomist context, replace Thomist language, refine the Thomist solution, and to move fully into the twentieth century.”239 With an aim as such, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that
Thomas’s concept of friendship to characterize charity and the state of grace is neither a recurring theme, nor explicitly present, in Lonergan’s later writings. Nevertheless, an understanding of redemption, of “the relationship of God’s gift of grace to human historical living” was, according to Vander Schel, “a central and lifelong concern” for Lonergan.240 While not categorized as friendship per se, the central truth of redemption as God’s self-communication aimed at the transformation of human living both historically and eschatologically is not lost in this development. In fact, Charles Hefling suggests that the central reality of redemption first characterized as a divine friendship is, in later Lonergan, conveyed in his emphasis on “falling in love with God.”241 Such love, Lonergan would argue in his Method in Theology in 1972, is
“being grasped by ultimate concern.”242 He explains that,
238. Frederick Crowe describes Lonergan’s most mature intellectual period one in which he was caught up in experiments in theological method, “where he came to grips with the new human sciences and their concern for meaning and value, as well as with the questions the new historical consciousness was raising for Catholic truth.” Frederick Crowe, Bernard Lonergan, Outstanding Christian Thinkers Series, ed. Brian Davies (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), 59. 239. Quote by Crowe found in Stebbins, Divine Initiative, xix. 240. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 310-311. Vander Schel identifies some texts from Lonergan’s mature period that treat matters relating to redemption; see Method in Theology, 364-368; “Transition from a Classicist World-View to Historical-Mindedness,” in A Second Collection, ed. William Ryan and Bernard Tyrrell (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1974), 1-10; “Mission and the Spirit,” in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan (Mahwah, NJ: Pualist, 1985), 23-33; ‘Moral Theology and the Human Sciences”, in Collected Works, Vol. 17, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1965-1980 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2004). 241. Hefling, “Cur Deus Homo,” 156-7. He states that, “the divine friendship that God became human to communicate is mutual, benevolent love, committed to divine goodness, or to what might be thought of in ‘later Lonergan’ terms as analogous to the higher integration of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness that is the state of being-in-love.” 242. Lonergan, Method, 240. 247
It is other-worldly falling in love. It is total and permanent self-surrender without conditions, qualifications, reservations. But it is such a surrender, not as an act, but as a dynamic state that is prior to and principle of subsequent acts. It is revealed in retrospect as an under-tow of existential consciousness, as a fated acceptance of a vocation to holiness, as perhaps an increasing simplicity and passivity in prayer.243
This falling in love, like friendship, is understood as a gift, a gift whereby one’s knowing and loving are transformed, and the ground from which one acts and is motivated to seek the good.
Further, as with friendship, this love brings true fulfillment which “bears fruit in a love of one’s neighbor that strives mightily to bring about the kingdom of God on this earth.”244
243. Ibid. 244. Lonergan, Method, 105. Conclusion: Tracing the Theme of Friendship in Thomas and Lonergan
In a footnote to “Finality, Love, Marriage,” Lonergan quipped that “so manifold is the dependence of Aquinas [on Aristotle] that an understanding of the Summa theologiae on charity is attained most easily by reading first the eighth and ninth books of the Ethics.”1 As the first chapter demonstrated, Thomas’s reliance on Aristotle’s work on friendship is clear; yet Thomas, of course, did more than merely repeat Aristotle, and rather transposed Aristotle’s philosophy into a Christian context and developed it. A similar statement to Lonergan’s quote above could be easily made regarding Lonergan’s own dependence on Thomas; and Lonergan, too, performs an analogous developmental transposition of Thomas. Recalling Lonergan’s motto of vetera novis augere et perficere, to enlarge and complete the old with the new, such a transposition of Thomas was part of Lonergan’s commitment as a theologian, to enlarge and complete what was found in the tradition. Although connections and developments to Thomas’s thought are evident throughout the entirety of Lonergan’s career, it is especially evident early in his career, from the late 1930’s into the early 1960’s, the years on which the present work has focused.
The soteriology of Lonergan is a clear instance of his reliance on, and development of,
Thomas’s theology. The points of comparison and development are manifold. To follow more specifically the theme of friendship within the soteriologies of Thomas and Lonergan is a useful way to narrow this field of comparison. As the first two chapters revealed, friendship is not a pervasive theme in Thomas apart from his work on charity and is only briefly incorporated into his soteriological writings. This lacuna, or perhaps lack of thorough incorporation, in Thomas’s
1. FLM 18, footnote 6.
248 249
work is for the present purposes fortuitous. Lonergan’s implementation of Thomas’s concept of friendship, applied both to the topic of charity and in his soteriology, offers a clear example of
Lonergan’s aim to enlarge and complete the old with the new by more deeply integrating
Thomas’s concept of friendship within his own soteriological vision.
This concluding chapter will unfold through an extended comparison, bringing together and analyzing the theme of friendship in the theology, and more specifically the soteriology, of
Thomas and Lonergan. The theme of friendship is at the center of Thomas’s understanding of charity and the state of grace; Lonergan employs Thomas’s concept of friendship in his understanding of grace and by importing this theme into his soteriology, he is able to draw out this theme to further implications. Under the auspices of the concept of friendship, Lonergan brings greater synthesis and unity in his soteriology than Thomas had before him.
A. Friendship as a concept applied to charity
Thomas’s work on charity begins with Aristotle’s definition of friendship as a mutual benevolent love between rational creatures based on some kind of communicatio, a similitude or something held in common. The importance of a communicatio as the foundation of friendship is the very point at which Aristotle sees it necessary to conclude that humans cannot be friends with
God. In the Summa, Thomas assimilates Aristotle’s idea of friendship into a Christian context and is able to turn this key impediment for Aristotle into an indication of the uniqueness of the
Christian message: that God offers a communicatio as part of his saving plan for humanity. This communicatio is pure gift and provides the foundation for a new relationship between God and humanity; the state of grace is the ground of an interpersonal situation. In this context, Thomas can characterize charity as a friendship, as a personal reality. Employing Aristotle’s philosophy 250
of friendship gave Thomas a structure around which to build an understanding of charity and how it is situated within the state of grace.
Throughout his work on charity in the Summa, Thomas works to show the correspondence of divine friendship to the virtue friendships that Aristotle argues to be the truest form of friendship. Thomas maps the “acts” of human friendship onto divine friendship, acts such as amor concupiscentia and amor amicitiae, beneficence, concord, and delight. While
Thomas’s vision of charity may align with Aristotle’s characteristics of a virtue-based friendship,
Thomas at the same time is quick to highlight its uniqueness and this friendship as the true model of all other friendships. Frederick Lawrence notes that Thomas’s teaching on charity presents charity as “friendship of God where the genitive is both subjective and objective.”2 It is a friendship in a sense entirely one-sided: it is a friendship ‘of God’ in that the communicatio is provided entirely by God. Further, this communicatio is offered for the purpose of a relationship with God in which God’s friend shares in a love which is proper to the divine alone. With sanctifying grace as a communicatio of the divine friendship and the other graces instituted as a help in this friendship, the state of grace for Thomas is structured on an ongoing relationship in which, as Jeremy Wilkins observes, “the perfection of the creature is not simply a matter of metaphysical elevation but of interpersonal presence.”3 The state of grace enables the human person to persevere in the good; this help of grace is necessary, he explains, “for the emergence and survival of so fragile a project as divine-human friendship and collaboration.”4 Additional gifts by the Spirit are given to allow this friendship to be sustained and to encourage a more and
2. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 804. 3. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 17. 4. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 26. 251
more perfect union of God and his friends. It is only with this divine help that a human person could possibly attain a friendship with God. For Thomas, grace continually acts to heal and to elevate the soul to prepare for and retain the friendship with God.
Thomas’s emphasis on the unique communicatio of divine-human friendship is, for
Lonergan, an instance of Thomas’s implementation and application of the theorem of the supernatural. As Frederick Lawrence observes, this theorem for Thomas “not only allows the natural to reach its full and proper stature, but it also invites the use of nature for the imperfect, analogical understanding of the revealed mysteries.”5 Thomas’s use of the concept of friendship enables him to speak both of an absolutely supernatural reality as well as a complex relationship between God and man through an accessible analogy. Charity for Thomas cannot be acquired naturally but only through its infusion in the soul. The absolutely supernatural gift of sanctifying grace becomes the communicatio of this friendship, where the soul is given a created habitual form, a created participation in the uncreated divine love of the Spirit. Grace becomes a remote principle of operation which works within the soul and modifies one’s knowing and loving.
Charity then directs the person to God in the love of friendship, in a union of wills with God, and so that the friend of God wills the good that God wills. Just so, charity becomes the form of all other virtues because of its radical re-ordering of the soul toward God through this union of love.
Lonergan takes the interpersonal quality of charity as a friendship and brings greater emphasis to the entirety of the life of grace as an interpersonal situation. The communicatio remains as central in Lonergan’s account of grace as it is for Thomas. For Lonergan, the supernatural order is itself ‘a created communication of divine nature’. The supernatural order is
5. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 812. 252
established to make proportionate those acts which attain God as He is in Himself. Lonergan more firmly extends Thomas’s language of communicatio to characterize the supernatural order and identify within it four main realities: the hypostatic union, sanctifying grace, the habit of charity and the light of glory. Like Thomas before him, Lonergan recognizes sanctifying grace as enabling one to be friends with God, in that those who receive it possess the potency to perform the acts of the intellect and will that attain God in Himself. Lonergan also explicitly connects the supernatural order to Christ, whose grace of union allowed the person of Christ in his humanity to be friends with God by right. Further, Lonergan connects these four created realities to the four relations of the Trinity to more clearly tie these realities to divine life. Michael Stebbins emphasizes the way in which Lonergan’s definition of the supernatural order as “a created communication of divine nature” brings synthesis to his work; he states that
This notion expresses a remarkably comprehensive synthesis: it suggests a link between the grace of union in Christ and sanctifying grace in us; it provides a way of relating the latter to the theological and moral virtues and to all salutary acts, whether these occur before or after justification; it accounts for the supernaturality, and hence the gratuity, of grace; and it suggests that through grace we share in the life of God precisely as triune, since the interrelations of the divine Persons are grounded in the uncreated communication of the divine nature from Father to Word, and from Father and Word to Spirit.6
Lonergan adapts Thomas’s notion of the communicatio that grounds charity as a friendship and develops an understanding of the supernatural order as the ‘created communication of divine nature.’ This allows Lonergan to develop, organize, and deepen Thomas’s work on grace as well as connecting it other areas of theology.
Lonergan also builds on the implicit world-view that grounds Thomas’s theology of grace. He takes from Thomas a vision of the world order that is diverse, dynamic and as tending
6. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 292. 253
toward God as its ultimate good; a world in which grace perfects and builds on nature. Frederick
Lawrence observes that Lonergan, “like his master Aquinas, always makes the best of the natural in light of the supernatural” and that “throughout his career, Lonergan always considered the low in light of the high.”7 For both Thomas and Lonergan, the supernatural order makes use of what is natural by allowing the natural to be perfected by grace. The supernatural realities of grace, as
Stebbins observes, “are not to be found in some realm that is wholly separate from the natural order, nor does their realization involve the suppression of that order.”8 Instead, the supernatural realities of grace reveal for Lonergan the possibility of human knowing and loving as abilities that can be used by God for human divinization. Specifically with his concept of “vertical finality,” Lonergan takes Thomas’s worldview and develops it by identifying how God has orchestrated the cosmos in such a way that beings can contribute to higher ends than their naturally proportionate ones. For Lonergan, God can make use of this vertical finality “in the cosmic breadth of a simultaneous context of nature, history and grace” so as to lead human persons toward beatitude through a process in which love can move from nature to reason and reason to grace.9 Friendships, both human and especially divine, become one of the occurrences of human loving that God can use to lead human persons back to Himself.
B. Christ as friend in redemption
As an extension of Thomas’s identification of charity as a kind of friendship, Lonergan maintains friendship with God to be at the center of the supernatural order. Lonergan does this
7. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 812. Considering the low in light of the high, Lawrence argues, “contrasts with modern approaches that, considering the high from the viewpoint of the low, tend toward reductionism—not only of the supernatural to the natural, but also of the natural to sin.” 8. Stebbins, Divine Initiative, 292. 9. FLM 19. 254
first by incorporating this concept of friendship into his treatment of the missions of the Son and
Spirit, whose missions involve the establishment of the supernatural order. Jeremy Wilkins describes the concept of friendship and personal relations to be “the center of gravity” in
Lonergan’s understanding of the divine missions.10 Lonergan first grounds his soteriology in an understanding of the missions as establishing a new friendship with God. The weight of friendship as a center of gravity emerges from Lonergan’s elaboration and deeper incorporation of Thomas’s concept of charity of friendship into his theological writings.
According to Thomas, the missions of the Son and Spirit take place for the twofold end of redemption and divinization.11 For this twofold end to occur, Thomas argues that it was fitting that specifically the Son and Spirit are sent. In doing so, Thomas develops at length the nature of the eternal processions of the Son and Spirit and the contingent external terms of the missions that enable both Persons to be truly sent. The Son has a visible mission as “the author of sanctification” and, with the Father, gives the Spirit; the invisible mission of the Spirit enables all to be assimilated to Christ in the Church. For Thomas, the incarnation is complemented by the interior gift of the Spirit and together the missions bring about a new interior reality where by grace “the soul is made like to God.”12 Thomas states that,
if we speak of mission according to origin, in this sense the Son's mission is distinguished from the mission of the Holy Ghost, as generation is distinguished from procession. If we consider mission as regards the effect of grace, in this sense the two missions are united in the root which is grace, but are distinguished in the effects of grace, which consist in the illumination of the intellect and the kindling of the affection. Thus it is manifest that one mission cannot be without
10. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 28. 11. ST III q. 1, a. 2c. 12. ST I q. 43 a. 5 ad ob. 2. 255
the other, because neither takes place without sanctifying grace, nor is one person separated from the other.13
Unity in the missions for Thomas is found in the unity of the persons of the Son and Spirit, whose missions most fittingly coordinated so as to overcome the effects of evil and to bring the created trinitarian image in human knowing and loving to perfection in beatitude.14 Thomas brings a deeper understanding to the missions by connecting the internal processions of the Son and Spirit with the external contingent terms of their missions. In doing this, Jeremy Wilkins argues that Thomas “leaves implicit the further intelligibility of the missions as a means to an end” and it is Lonergan who “spelled out expressly these connections.”15 Lonergan does so, according to Wilkins, by situating the missions “within his rich account of the human good of order constituted in meaning and value.”16 In this understanding of the good of order, friendship is a key concept that provides this intelligibility to the missions.
Lonergan brings greater unity and complementarity to the missions by extending the concept of friendship and interpersonal relations to the context of the missions as their “the center of gravity.” He states explicitly that the missions together occur for the diffusion of divine love.17 In Lonergan’s vision, the Son and the Spirit in their missions constitute a “new interpersonal situation” with humanity which begins first with Christ’s communication of divine friendship and then this communication is subsequently sustained by the Spirit. It is appropriate,
Lonergan argues, that the economy of salvation, “which is ordered to participation in divine beatitude itself, should not only imitate the order of the Holy Trinity but also in some manner
13. ST I q. 43 a. 5 ad ob. 3. 14. Wilkins, “Trinitarian Missions,” 692. 15. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 28. 16. Ibid. 17. SNSG 601. 256
participate in that order.”18 This statement by Lonergan echoes Thomas’s vision of symmetry between the divine Persons themselves and their missions; Lonergan brings a greater unity and complementarity to the missions by centering them on God’s plan for the diffusion of divine love. The diffusion of love established by a new interpersonal situation is brought about most fittingly through the divine Persons themselves, since they alone share in this divine love by right.
Lonergan’s use of friendship as a key to the intelligibility of the missions offers a unified vision of the missions in which the Son and the Spirit both contribute uniquely to the establishment and maintenance of this new friendship. The visible mission of the Son makes known the offer of friendship and by his death the obstacle of human sinfulness is overcome by making his enemies his friends. The incarnation is complemented by the interior gift of the Spirit without which this initiated friendship could not be received or reciprocated. Lonergan argues that without “the visible mission of the Word, the gift of the Spirit is a being-in-love without a proper object,” and, without “the invisible mission of the Spirit, the Word enters into his own, but his own receive him not.”19 For this friendship to occur, Christ’s visible mission alone is insufficient; the minds and hearts of humans must be changed. The Spirit’s mission to the soul and the created communication of divine nature allows for the reception of this friendship as well as its preservation. Contextualized within the framework of communicating divine friendship, the missions are given a greater unity in that both the Son and the Spirit uniquely participate in the establishment of this divine-human friendship.
18. DDT 497. 19. Bernard Lonergan, “Mission and Spirit,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 16, A Third Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 32. 257
Narrowing in on Christ’s redemptive acts, Thomas presents the efficacy of Christ’s passion from different perspectives of which satisfaction for sin is one. Christ’s actions bring satisfaction through the great love that Christ expressed on the cross for his friends, the perfect act of charity. Particularly in the contra Gentiles and briefly in the Summa, Thomas connects the nature of Christ’s satisfaction to interpersonal relationships. Thomas implicitly references friendship in this context one time in the Summa, arguing that Christ can make satisfaction as head of the Church because “in so far as any two men are one in charity, the one can atone for the other.”20 Thomas takes this key principle from Aristotle’s account of friendship: that the love of friendship makes two people so unified in affectivity that what one does through her friend she is seen to do herself. Frederick Lawrence explains that for Thomas, “the man Jesus so loved us in the charity of the Holy Spirit that he has become dimidium animae meae for us. Because of our love of friendship for him, our reaction to the sufferings of Jesus causes us to repent and reject sin.”21 Christ’s act of superabundant love became a remedy to human sin and brought reconciliation between God and humanity; in this way, Thomas argues, while Christ’s passion was not strictly necessary, it was fitting that Christ should die in such a way so that persons are
“stirred to love him in return”, can follow his example of obedience and love, can partake of the graces he merited, and are “all the more bound to refrain from sin.”22 Thomas’s concept of friendship is an implicit undercurrent in his most mature work of the Tertia Pars through an understanding of the union of love that friendship establishes.
20. ST III q. 48 a. 2 ad 1. 21. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 811. 22. ST III q. 46, a. 3c. 258
Thomas’s implicit appeal to Aristotle’s concept of friendship is made explicit in and central to Lonergan’s soteriology. As a central reality to understanding redemption, Lonergan uses this concept of friendship to bring the life of Christ and his death into a more unified context. Christ’s role as mediator, as both human and divine, is such so that Christ may mediate and communicate divine friendship. The Son uniquely can offer friendship as an intermediary friend, one who is friend of God by right and through his human life reveals the extent of both human and divine love. For Lonergan, Christ’s human life is the ‘incarnate intelligibility’ of
God’s offer of friendship. Frederick Lawrence suggests that Lonergan’s Christology “focuses on the communicative dimensions of Jesus’ knowing and doing in a systematic understanding of the redemption in which friendship is the pivotal idea and reality.”23 Through his life, his word and deed, Christ is communicating this friendship, modeling what it is to be a friend of God and what divine love looks like. Christ’s perfect communication of love culminates in his passion, where out of friendly love he offers himself for his enemies.
Like Thomas, Lonergan presents a theological understanding of Christ’s death in which satisfaction is one of the many perspectives to making sense of his death. When Christ accepted his cross out of love for his friends, Christ did all he could “to unite and assimilate himself to us” by way of “merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption, and drawing all people to himself.”24 For
Lonergan, Christ’s love of friendship as head of the Church can unite the soteriological themes found in Thomas’ treatment of the efficacy of Christ’s passion. Taking the brief lines in Thomas about satisfying for one’s friend, Lonergan elaborates and explains the connection Thomas drew but did not develop in his soteriology of the Summa. Like Thomas, Lonergan incorporates a
23. Lawrence, “Christian Self-understanding,” 309. 24. DR 287. 259
consideration of satisfaction as it occurs in sacramental and interpersonal contexts. He concludes that Christ’s satisfaction can absolutely only occur in the context of friendship; as belonging to the area of interpersonal relations, satisfaction has nothing to do with punishment, only reconciliation between friends.
Lonergan develops Thomas’s understanding of satisfaction by emphasizing the interior and psychological elements of Christ’s passion, rather than the physical ones.25 Lonergan takes up Thomas’s identification of Christ’s ‘superabundant’ love and adds greater attention to Christ’s consciousness: his love of his friends and his detestation of and sorrow for sin that underpin his acceptance of his passion. Christ is the true friend of humanity, who sees the suffering and despair caused by human sin, and seeks to mediate reconciliation with God through his own self- sacrifice on behalf of others. Lonergan’s emphasis on Christ as friend and the interior movements of Christ associated with this friendship enables Lonergan to distinguish more starkly a correct understanding of satisfaction from any kind of penal substitution, strict justice, or any sense of
God as a divine abuser.26 By doing so, Lonergan in a sense rescues Thomas’s soteriology in the modern context by situating satisfaction within an explicit context of friendship in which reconciliation, not punishment, is prioritized.
Lonergan brings greater development to Thomas’s soteriology through his development of the Law of the Cross as the essence of redemption. Here again, the centrality of friendship is significant. Lonergan argues that the Christian life involves the fundamental principle found in
25. Mark Miller, “Perseverance in the Good: The Inner Dimensions of Anselmian Satisfaction,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from his grateful students, ed. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy Wilkins (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016), 154. 26. Miller, “Perseverance in the Good,” 165. He states that “it is helpful to focus on what was going on in Christ’s consciousness, in his thoughts and feelings, his judgements and intentions. We need, in other words, to shift to a soteriology informed by intellectual conversion and interiority as a realm of meaning.” 260
the Law of the Cross, which requires “transforming evil into good, absorbing the evil of the world by putting up with it, not perpetuating it as rigid justice would demand,” so “that putting up with it acts as a blotter, transforms the situation, and creates the situation in which good flourishes.”27 Jeremy Wilkins argues that Lonergan’s Law of the Cross “integrates Augustine’s focus on the cross—as the revelation of how divine wisdom subverts evil to bring about a greater good through justice rather than power—with Thomas Aquinas’s account of Christ’s satisfaction on our behalf through the solidarity of friendship.”28 For Lonergan, Christ’s satisfaction remedies the problem of sin and death, which is the obstacle to friendship, but the true essence of redemption is in Christ’s revelation of divine love in the face of evil. Redemption occurs not through rigid justice, but through reconciliation. The solidarity that can occur through friendship involves not simply the removal of an impediment but the union of wills in mutual love. Thomas suggests this union of love occurs through the cross; Lonergan explicitly brings to light the intelligibility of the cross as the true means by which friendship with God is established.
Christ’s communication of divine friendship is an essential element to the Law of the
Cross in that this law requires the union of wills that occurs between friends. Christ mediates divine love through his human life, becoming a friend to both and by his death, he offers his life for the sake of his friends. His voluntary sacrifice of his life was a response to a world alienated from God as the result of sin; it was a response motivated by love and a detestation of sin. In this way, Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross is, according to Jeremy Wilkins, the “central
27. Bernard Lonergan, “The Mediation of Christ in Prayer,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964, ed. Robert Croken, Frederick Crowe, and Robert Doran, vol. 6, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 179. 28. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 28. In his article, Wilkins traces extensively the development in Augustine, Thomas, and Lonergan. 261
gesture of friendship in human history.”29 It reveals divine love through a perfect act of friendship. Wilkins explains further that “when by the charity of that same Spirit we come to reciprocate Christ’s friendship, our contemplation of his sufferings moves us to more efficacious repentance and rejection of sin.”30 Similarly, Moloney argues that for Lonergan, “the transformation to which the law of the cross refers begins with human interiority;” the Law of the Cross is a precept through which, Moloney explains, people are converted “by the power of
God’s operative grace but also the grace of conversion cooperating with their minds and hearts to turn their struggle with the results of sin into occasions for loving God all the more.”31 For
Lonergan, Christ’s enactment of the Law of the Cross is a great act of friendship and should foster a response of love and a desire to emulate his example by those who are united to Christ in love.
The Law of the Cross as the intelligibility and essence of redemption reveals that redemption involves a transformation of evil into good that occurs throughout human history.
Lonergan’s modern concern with history and with Christ as an ‘historical agent’ enable further elaboration and extension of the theme of friendship in his soteriology. With the focus on the
Law of the Cross and its transformation of evil, Moloney argues that Lonergan “lifts his soteriology above the tangled web surrounding the discussion of atonement and expands it to embrace the whole of human history.”32 For Lonergan, redemption occurs within and through the historical order in that God’s plan for salvation makes use of secondary and historical causes to transform history and elevate it from within.33 Lonergan draws this point explicitly in De Deo
29. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 28. 30. Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 27-28. 31. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 34. 32. Moloney, “Lonergan’s Soteriology,” 33. 33. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 315. 262
Trino with his understanding of the divine missions as establishing and transforming the ‘human good of order’ that occurs in history. The human good of order requires healthy interpersonal relations in which a community works together, with all the associated habits and skills, in a common vision and in the pursuit of the good. The Trinitarian missions are ordered toward a transformation of history through the insertion of a new, supernatural, good into this order.
Lonergan’s De redemptione argues that “the Incarnation’s assumption of human nature is a sublation of the human good by reason of the absolutely supernatural component into the good of order.”34 Part of the fittingness of the redemptive plan is its work in the good of order which involves the transformation of the human good of order on both the historical and eschatological levels.35
For Thomas, Christ’s satisfaction works its effects in history through life in the Church.
In the Contra Gentiles, Thomas specifies how the Spirit confirms the friendship of charity, primarily through the Indwelling, but also through the many gifts of the Spirit which enable a human response to this friendship. In the Summa, the life of grace and friendship with God unfold most centrally through the sacraments of the Church. He states that those “who are incorporated with [Christ], as members with their head,” are those who belong to the Church and it is through the sacraments that one is likened and conformed to Christ.36 The sacraments
“derive their efficacy from” Christ and through the grace they give one is “made a member of
Christ.”37 It is through the life of the Church that Christ’s offer of friendship is extended to all
34. DR 306. 35. Lawrence, “Christian Self-understanding,” 304-5. 36. ST III q. 49 a. 3 ad 3. 37. ST III q. 60 a. 1c, q. 62 a. 1c. See also ST III q. 8, a. 1 ad 1. Jeremy Wilkins argues that for Thomas, it is from the hypostatic union itself that the sacraments arise; he states that Christ “is the principal cause of the interior operation of grace in virtue of his divinity” and “by his humanity, which is a conjoined instrument, he is also the principal minister of the sacraments.” Wilkins, “Two Divine Missions,” 18. 263
persons. In a particular way the Eucharist is the great sacrament of friendship in that it offers a real presence of Christ in friendship.
Just as the concept of friendship united the missions of the Son and Spirit, Lonergan’s use of friendship at the center of his soteriology can also work to connect more organically the life of the Church to the redemptive work of Christ. Lonergan identifies the Church as the intended historical effect of Christ’s saving work and his mission to communicate divine friendship.
Frederick Lawrence describes the Church Lonergan envisions as a reality in which its “self- meaning becomes constitutive of our own personal and communal self-meaning . . . our self- meaning becomes a function not just of the objective communal movement of the mystical body of Christ, but of the Self-meanings of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”38 Because Christ’s redemptive mission entails an intended ecclesial reality, the Mystical Body is shaped by the perfect divine love that is diffused through the missions of the Son and Spirit. The Spirit’s mission in the soul brings a unity of affection that binds Christ’s followers to Christ and to one another. Further, with the Law of the Cross, the Church is “called to expand Christ’s redemptive work through choosing the Law of the Cross as the rule of its own collective life.”39 The Church is a part of God’s plan of the diffusion of love and to be a member of the Church is to respond to and continue this diffusion. Christ mediated divine love through his life and his establishment of the Church so that members of the Church are also called to mediate this divine love in the world. Lonergan argues that “Christ acts socially and historically through his members, not as isolated individuals, but as one body socially, historically, and spiritually.”40 Life in Christ’s
38. Lawrence, “Grace and Friendship,” 819. 39. Vander Schel, “Redemption and the Outer Word,” 317. 40. DR 225. 264
Church requires radical change of interpersonal living as each person is called individually, and communally, to be conformed to Christ in friendship by the Law of the Cross.
In Thomas’s vision of charity as a friendship, friends of God are bound in a union of affectivity with God and from this love are moved to love God’s friends as well. For this reason, charity is the root of all of Christian living and all the virtues. Charity, as a friendship, shapes the entirety of one’s life; and this friendship becomes for Thomas the overarching foundation of the order of grace. For Thomas, the life of grace is built on charity, where “God will be to each one the entire reason for his love, for God is man’s entire good.”41 Thomas builds a vision of the moral life which radiates outward from this core union of love with God. The ordo caritatis that
Thomas develops reflects this vision in which Thomas concludes, “it is specifically the same act whereby we love God, and whereby we love our neighbor.”42 All persons are to be loved for the sake of God because all persons in respect of their nature, have the capacity for happiness, on which the fellowship of friendship with God is based.43
Lonergan’s incorporation of Thomas’s concept of friendship as a center of gravity in his soteriology brings a greater synthesis to the moral life and Christ’s saving action. Collaboration with God’s redemption of history is integral to Lonergan’s soteriological vision. Like Thomas before him, Lonergan similarly asserts that “it is in charity to one another that, in truth and reality, as St. John so clearly taught, people come to the love of God.”44 Lonergan’s deeper inclusion of the concept of friendship in his soteriology tightens the connection of Christ’s friends emulating and perpetuating Christ’s transformation of evil into good. William Loewe
41. ST II-II q. 26 a. 13 ad 3. 42. ST II-II q. 25 a. 1c. 43. ST II-II q. 26 a. 6c. 44. Williams, “Graced Friendship,” 367-68. 265
observes that Lonergan’s soteriology as centered on the Law of the Cross “acquires a practical intention which finds fulfillment not in understanding but in action.”45 He explains further that,
“by the fact that it culminates in a precept, Lonergan’s theory points toward action not as an afterthought, not as an inference to be drawn, but directly and intrinsically.”46 Enacting the Law of the Cross in one’s life is exactly how the friend of Christ exhibits the union of love in friendship. Shawn Copeland observes that a return to God, repentance for sin, and reconciliation depend “upon the cooperation of human persons with grace to change their actual behavior for the construction and maintenance of good in the social order.”47 Taking the Law of the Cross as precept and making it one’s own becomes the true mark of a friend of Christ and the exact means by which God has ordained to break the cycles of sin and violence in history.
Lonergan’s use of friendship as the center of gravity of his soteriology can be seen as an attempt to draw out Thomas’s understanding of charity into its fullest implications. For both
Thomas and Lonergan, Aristotle’s concept of friendship became an accessible and useful notion to emphasize that the Christian life is first and foremost an interpersonal relationship. Grace is not simply a thing or gift, but the dynamic ground on which a new relationship with God is established and maintained. Lonergan incorporates the concept of friendship more deeply into a larger soteriological vision in which the Son and Spirit work in coordinated missions in the diffusion of divine love. This relationship begins through the mediation of the Son in his human
45. Loewe, “Responsible Contemporary Soteriology,” 218. 46. Ibid. 47. M. Shawn Copeland, “‘All Flesh Shall See It Together’: Grace, Friendship, and Hope,” in Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence, from his grateful students, ed. M. Shawn Copeland and Jeremy Wilkins (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016), 65. She also ties Lonergan’s understanding of the transformation of society to Martin Luther King Jr., who states similarly, “to meet hate with retaliatory hate would do nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Hate begets hate; violence begets violence …. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love …. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding.” life, whose self-sacrifice Jesus himself regarded as an act of friendship. The characterization of
Christ as friend is not for Lonergan a mere platitude, nor should this relationship be oversimplified or degraded such that Christ becomes a mere friend of utility or pleasure.
Friendship with Christ involves participation in the truest and most perfect friendship, a friendship which requires self-sacrifice and mandates cooperation in the transformation of the world’s evil. Further, friendship with God is not something private, but rather is “a personal function of an objective common movement in that body of Christ which takes over, transforms, and elevates every aspect of human life.”48 Those bound to Christ in the affective union of friendship are called to a transformation by divine love, experiencing both a shared delight in friendship and a share in the suffering of Christ, and, a similar sharing for all those whom Christ loves. Ultimately, for both Thomas and Lonergan, friendship with God involves a radical reorientation of one’s life through an affective union with God even to the point of self-surrender in an act of perfect love, a love than which no greater is found.
48. FLM 27.
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