REDEEMED CONVERSATION: SELECTED MEDIEVAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO A THEOLOGY OF DISCOURSE by Jennifer Anne Constantine-Jackson A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Theology of Regis College and the Department of the Toronto School of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology awarded by Regis College and the University of Toronto © Copyright by Jennifer Anne Constantine-Jackson 2012 Redeemed Conversation: Selected Medieval Contributions to a Theology of Discourse Jennifer Anne Constantine-Jackson Doctor of Theology Faculty of Theology, Regis College and the Department of Theology, Toronto School of Theology Abstract Contemporary approaches to systematic theology as a theology of discourse constitute a re-visioning of the theological task through critical reflection of ways in which language and relationality both inform and are formed by the Christian faith. This re-visioning requires an engagement with texts from the tradition. St. Augustine’s De doctrina christiana and Confessions manifest a foundational example of the Christian tradition’s expression of the vertical and horizontal spiritual exercises that David Burrell has identified in Johannine reflections on friendship and its expression in the world. Two texts from the medieval tradition will be offered as both confirming and developing Augustine’s contributions. The Letters of Heloise and Abelard constitute a twelfth-century correspondence that has received substantial scholarly attention from the work of medievalists, historians and literary critics, but now requires more intentional reflection from the work of systematic theologians inquiring about the relation between the truths of the Christian faith and the collaborative participation of men and women in God’s work of the conversion of God’s people. The Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas is a thirteenth-century scholastic text that has not yet been fully mined for its contribution to a theology of discourse, a contribution marked ii especially by his discussion of oratio as the transformative discourse that arises from the authentic practice of loving shared among a people created for friendship with God. iii Acknowledgments To the profoundly generous community of faculty, staff and students at and around Regis College, Toronto, for their support of my doctoral education on so many levels, I dedicate Chapter One of this dissertation on the foundations of discourse. In terms of foundations, it is Gilles Mongeau, S.J., to whom I am most indebted, for he recognized in me my reading of St. Thomas’s Summa before I had truly begun to appropriate it for myself. His dedication to the vocation of teaching, which includes his commitment to sharing the life and work of St. Thomas, constantly inspires and challenges me to seek the magis in the service of cura personalis. I am deeply grateful to Gordon Rixon, S.J., Joseph Schner, S.J., and Gill Goulding, C.J., for their support of my work, especially in its early stages. Mechtilde O’Mara, C.S.J., Michael Vertin, Adrienne Pereira, Sean Mulrooney, Michael Stoeber, Jaroslav Skira, Michael Kolarcik, S.J., Wilma Scherloski, Bob Croken, S.J., Danny Monsour, Georgina Rooney, Claude Meurehg, Andy Martin, Elaine Chu, Kelly Bourke, Heejung Cho and Margaret Ou have each shared invaluable gifts of friendship with me at critical turning points along the doctoral path. The dynamic invitations for moving forward in this project offered by David Burrell, C.S.C. and Jill Ross at the doctoral defense constituted scholarly models of friendship to which I can only hope to worthily respond. The generous conversations shared with me in the last two years by Joseph Goering and Jim Olthuis in Toronto, and Kevin White in Kalamazoo, Michigan will never be forgotten for their profound depth of consolation and inspiration; they were invitations to me for deeper conversion. In gratitude for the formative influence of earlier teachers at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Boston College, I dedicate the second chapter attending to contemporary iv exercises in discourse. Through the gift of teaching offered by my first formal Aquinas teacher, Dominic Doyle, and by Daniel Harrington, S.J., Frederick Lawrence, Janice Farnham, R.J.M., Stephen Brown, Patrick Byrne, James Keenan, S.J., and Rev. John Connelly, my attentiveness to Thomas’s life of prayer and friendship began to take root. The account of St. Augustine’s deep regard for the prayerful support of family and friends in Chapter Three is dedicated first of all to the ever-mystifying, self-giving love of my parents, Claire and David Constantine, and secondly to the unwavering and good- humored support of each my siblings: Joseph, Rachel, Theresa, Karen, Angela, Mary, Erica, Susan, David and Paul, their spouses and their joy-bearing children (with special thanks to Rachel for the extravagant encouragement shared at long distances in the midst of her own sufferings, and to Theresa for her profound and steady gift of listening during the last months of writing). There have been friends from Toronto and beyond whose conversation and hospitality will not be forgotten: Barbara Geiger, Sami Helewa, S.J., Kathryn Jacinto, Eileen Kearney, Steven Emde, Elizabeth Lambert, Wayne Lott, Brett Salkeld, Peter Nguyen, S.J., Mark Fusco, S.J., Joy Carroll, and Rev. Philip Hamel. Without Mary Jo McDonald’s spiritual and scholarly companionship throughout the entire journey of the dissertation, I would have been at a great loss indeed. Finally, for my husband, Timothy; through his faithful devotion, healing spirit, editorial prowess and love of libraries in all of their dimensions, he bore with me the burdens that could only be borne by the two of us together. Chapter Four’s call to the mutual conversion of men and women in community is dedicated to the director of this project, Robert Sweetman. If not for his gift of conversation in friendship, including the life of faithful discipleship informing his scholarship, this dissertation would not have arisen as it did. His own life’s work, which truly reflects a v trajectory marked by the foundations of the life of faith, its fruitfulness in the tradition of the cura mulierum, and its discerning reflections in contemporary philosophical and theological thought, has profoundly informed my own commitment to systematic theology. I will be forever in gratitude for Bob’s witness of faithful perseverance in his vocation. The summit chapter of this dissertation, through its attempt at a faithful accounting of the spiritual exercises of the Summa Theologiae, is offered up in thanksgiving to the Lord, through the humble intercession of George D. Constantine and St. Thomas Aquinas. May it truly be, as should all of our efforts in this world, for the glory of God. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................iv Chapter One: Theology of Discourse: Revisioning and Retrieval................................1-20 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Defining the revisioning project: status quaestionis 1.1.2 Selected efforts at moving forward 1.1.3 Attending to the complex task of retrieval 1.2 Discourse and method 1.2.1 Methodology: Lonergan’s functional specialty, “foundations” 1.2.2 Etymological illumination: medieval conversatio 1.3 Conclusion Chapter Two: Contemporary Articulations of a Theology of Discourse....................21-54 2.1 Introduction 2.1.1 A hermeneutical circle of discourse: Tracy, Burrell, Coakley 2.1.2 Transposing Aristotelian modes of persuasion for a theology of discourse 2.2 David Tracy: Semiotic mediations as transformative practice 2.2.1 The nature and role of theological discourse 2.2.2 A “New Hermeneutics” for theological reflection 2.3 David Burrell: conversion in community 2.3.1 Spiritual exercises: gifts of friends for mutual formation 2.3.2 Created relationality 2.4 Sarah Coakley: Making way for the language and relationality of gender 2.4.1 The principal nature of gender discourse 2.4.2 The way of “purgative contemplative practice” 2.5 Conclusion Chapter Three: Augustine’s Semiotics of Creation and Revelation as Primary Spiritual Exercises................................................................................................55-95 3.1 Retrieving Augustine for a theology of discourse vii 3.2 De doctrina christiana and Confessions: complementary readings in the rhetoric of conversion 3.2.1 Spiritual exercises in the De doctrina christiana 3.2.2 Spiritual exercises in the Confessions 3.3 A complexification of exercises in the narrative of the Confessions 3.4 A Pseudo-Dionysian interlude: mining the language of prayer 3.5 Invitations for further retrieval Chapter Four: Exercises in Memory and Conversion in the Epistolary Discourse of Heloise and Abelard ............................................................................96-156 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Gender and conversion in theological reflection 4.3 Ecclesial contexts for gender complementarity: cura mulierum 4.3.1 The care of souls as the “art of arts” 4.3.2 Vita apostolica 4.3.3 Imitatio Christi 4.3.4 Ars dictaminis 4.4 The twelfth-century Letters of Heloise and Abelard 4.4.1 Background to the correspondence of the Letters 4.4.2 Memory of transgression in Letter 1 (Historia calamitatum) 4.4.3 Memory of friendship in Letters 2-4 4.4.4 Meditation and discernment for the care of souls in Letters 5-8 4.4.5 A ‘new lectio’ for contemplation in the Problemata Heloisae 4.5 Thirteenth-century Dominican contributions