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Justification in Aquinas: Pauline Foundations, Aristotelian JUSTIFICATION IN AQUINAS: PAULINE FOUNDATIONS, ARISTOTELIAN ANTHROPOLOGY AND ECUMENICAL PROMISE Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in Theological Studies By Bradley Ryan Cochran Dayton, Ohio May 2015 JUSTIFICATION IN AQUINAS: PAULINE FOUNDATIONS, ARISTOTELIAN ANTHROPOLOGY AND ECUMENICAL PROMISE Name: Cochran, Bradley R. APPROVED BY: _____________________________________ Matthew Levering Faculty Thesis Advisor James N. and Mary D. Perry, Jr. Chair of Theology University of Saint Mary of the Lake _____________________________________ William L. Portier Faculty Thesis Reader Mary Ann Spearin Chair of Catholic Theology University of Dayton _____________________________________ John Inglis Faculty Thesis Reader Chair of the Department of Philosophy University of Dayton ii © Copyright by Bradley R. Cochran All rights reserved 2015 iii ABSTRACT JUSTIFICATION IN AQUINAS: PAULINE FOUNDATIONS, ARISTOTELIAN ANTHROPOLOGY AND ECUMENICAL PROMISE Name: Cochran, Bradley Ryan University of Dayton Advisor: Dr. Matthew Levering My thesis will examine Aquinas’ doctrine of justification in three chapters corresponding to three lines of inquiry. First, I examine Aquinas’ biblical interpretation of the Pauline language of justification in the epistle of Romans where the most extended and important biblical text of the doctrine is found. Second, I survey his overall anthropological understanding as illuminated by his doctrine of charity. This affords the interpreter of Aquinas with an understanding of how he conceives the core of human nature in the interdependent dynamic found between the will/appetite on the one hand and the intellect/reason on the other. Given the comprehensive scope and role of love in human nature, understanding charity in Aquinas, which is natural love transformed by grace, will also help clarify in what sense Aquinas understands grace to perfect and fulfill human nature. Third, I provide a summary and interpretive expansion on his doctrine of justification as found in the Summa, starting with Aquinas’ explicit treatment of the iv doctrine but drawing from other articles to clarify terms and set the doctrine in a larger context with respect to his understanding of human and divine causality. This helps establish the systemic difference between Aquinas’ doctrine of justification and the variety of forensic definitions found in post-Reformation theologies, as well as a more ecumenically promising commonality in how the dynamic between grace and free will is understood in justification. The three chapters relate to each other as progressive waves of interpretive insight. The close examination of his Pauline interpretation sets the basic contours and boundaries within which he works out his theology of justification. Aristotelian foundations in the second chapter enable a more penetrating analysis of Aquinas’ teaching on the doctrine of justification found in the Summa. The third chapter takes all that we understand about Aquinas’ biblical interpretation and anthropology and brings it to bear in the interpretation of his most systematic teaching on justification. My conclusion reflects on the significance of Aquinas’ thought for ecumenical theology and dialogue between Protestants and Catholics. v Dedicated to my wife Emily Marie Cochran, my son Roman Xavier Cochran, and my friend and mentor in Thomistic studies, Matthew Levering. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My special thanks first and foremost to my wife Emily Marie Cochran for her bravery in giving an all natural child birth to our healthy baby boy, Roman Xavier Cochran, during the writing of this thesis, my parents without whom I would never have been able to afford the luxury of careful study in those crucial early years in my academic development, my friends who never tired of discussing theologically complex questions in search for answers or exploring and entertaining differences and reasons for them. I would also like to express deep gratitude for those special breed of friends known at one point in time or another as mentors who invested time with me during the crucial years of my personal development without whom my study of theology would not have been as intense or important to me, such as (but not limited to): Warren Whitaker, Randy Spencer, Eric Marsden, Will Honeycutt, Gaylen Leverett, Todd Robertson, Kevin and BJ Hendrix, Gregg and Nora Allison, John H. Armstrong, Samkon Gado, Eric L. Johnson, Ramon Luzarraga, William Portier and Matthew Levering. An especial thanks also to William Portier for believing “I have the disease” (which I still have and will never find a cure), Matthew Levering for his respectful engagement with Protestant evangelicals in the burgeoning of our new ecumenical era and his advise on my academic work and aspirations, Fr. Silviu Nicolae Bunta who also has become a personal friend and academic mentor for his great hospitality in inviting me to his home during my self-guided study to entertain all my questions about Eastern vii Orthodoxy on the most gracious of terms and allowing me to participate in his ordination into the priesthood. Finally, I would like to thank John Inglis for agreeing to participate on my thesis board at the last minute, Annette Mitchel and Amy Doorley for their outstanding student support in the Religious Studies Department that makes the lives of students easier so they can focus on their academic goals. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………..……………iv DEDICATION ………………………………………………………………..………….vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ……………………………………………………….…….vii INTRODUCTION ……………………………………………………………...…..…….1 CHAPTER 1: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION: PAULINE FOUNDATIONS …..…...…8 CHAPTER 2: LOVE AND CHARITY: THE PERFECTION OF INTELLIGENT WILL …………………………………………………………………………………...…...….37 CHAPTER 3: PROCESSUS IUSTIFICATIONIS IN AQUINAS: EXPLORING THE NEXUS OF REMISSION, FREE WILL, AND PREDESTINATION……………….....…85 CONCLUSION: EVER RECEDING DIFFERENCES………………………...……….124 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………138 ix INTRODUCTION For a long time it has been my conviction that Protestants in my own faith Tradition mostly understand Thomas Aquinas through a narrow lens of polemical historiography in which he is a go-to example of what went wrong with Medieval theology prior to the Reformation. In sum, this popular narrative runs roughly like this: Aquinas exploited the notion of justification as “make righteous” instead of “declare righteous” because he studied theology during a period when the true gospel recovered by the Reformers was mostly eclipsed, and this unfortunately ensured that semi- Pelagianism and human merit would forever be enshrined in the Catholic Tradition.1 Although some Protestants heavily influenced by this narrative have found ways of re- evaluating Aquinas in more positive terms, this is ordinarily circumscribed to either his ethical teaching or his apologetical arguments or “proofs” for the existence of God. Aquinas’ biblical commentaries or his teachings on justification and grace are simply too “Catholic” for many Protestants to stomach—especially those in the conservative evangelical tradition with a “literal” interpretation of the Bible or a Calvinistic view of grace. Aquinas can be appreciated to some degree, but this appreciation does not easily extend to his theology where it really counts. The simple fact that he had a theology of 1 The term “Semi-pelagian” is used loosely in Protestant theology to refer to any Roman Catholic teaching perceived to threaten a Protestant notion of grace. On the meanings and polemical origins of the term, see Irena Backus and Aza Goudriaan, “’Semipelagianism’: The Origins of the Term and its Passage into the History of Heresy,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 65, no. 1 (2014): 25-46. 1 human merit is enough for most Calvinistic Protestants to not take his grace theology seriously as a positive source for theological reflection. Actually adopting it would be almost unthinkable apart from a narrative of conversion to Roman Catholicism. This sentiment can be corroborated more by the lack of rigorous study of Aquinas on grace amongst Calvinistic Protestants than by what is explicitly said by way of polemical historiography. The great dearth of Thomistic studies on grace in evangelical Protestant seminaries speaks louder than anything in writing ever could. Mediated through selective secondary sources that tell their readers what to expect from Aquinas on grace, very little of the distinctions that are important in Aquinas’ grace theology are known, much less appreciated, in the evangelical academic environments that shaped the development of my own Protestant spirituality and intellectual life. In less than ten minutes I could eagerly find a quotation in the Summa that seemed to support or confirm the polemical suspicions handed down to me in this popular polemical narrative. Recent unprecedented ecumenical achievements between Protestants and Catholics have challenged the default polemical attitudes that have perpetuated polemical traditions in both Catholic and Protestant theology and largely taken hold by a critical reflection on these traditions. Those who might have initially dismissed these ecumenical endeavors as little more than a hopeless project to superficially fuse two theological traditions that are systemically at odds and irreconcilable, as it turns out, underestimated the degree to which this movement sought to ground itself in careful study of
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