“Lucid, compelling, and conversational, David Farina Turnbloom’s Speaking with Aquinas connects the sacramental theology of the Summa Theologica with Thomas Aquinas’s soteriology and ethics. By examining the relationship between grace and the virtues, Turnbloom uncovers the presuppositions of Thomas Aquinas’s treatises on the sacraments and on the Eucharist. Aquinas’s ‘multiple grammars’ allow him to treat the paradoxical agency of both Christ and the Christian in the sacraments. As a result, in this nuanced but accessible treatment, the Holy Spirit and the Christian life of faith emerge as the center of Aquinas’s sacramental theology. Speaking with Aquinas reveals the links between Christology, sacrament, the Eucharist, and ethics, showing how Aquinas’s sacramental soteriology can still speak to readers today.” — Kimberly Belcher, PhD University of Notre Dame “David Turnbloom invites us into an entirely new conversation about how the Eucharist nourishes our moral lives. Into the circle of contemporary theologians like Chauvet, Morrill, and Baldovin, Turnbloom invites Thomas Aquinas and gives him room to speak about his grammar of grace and virtue. As Turnbloom channels Thomas, we hear the thirteenth-century theologian with a whole new voice speaking to us about the spiritual life of friendship with God as a pilgrim community. Refreshingly satisfying discourse for hungry Christians on the move!” — James F. Keenan, SJ Boston College Speaking with Aquinas A Conversation about Grace, Virtue, and the Eucharist David Farina Turnbloom Foreword by Bruce T. Morrill, SJ A Michael Glazier Book LITURGICAL PRESS Collegeville, Minnesota www.litpress.org A Michael Glazier Book published by Liturgical Press Cover design by Monica Bokinskie. Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. © 2017 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, micro- fiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint John’s Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America. 123456789 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Turnbloom, David Farina, author. Title: Speaking with Aquinas : a conversation about grace, virtue, and the Eucharist / David Farina Turnbloom. Description: Collegeville, Minnesota : Liturgical Press, 2017. | “A Michael Glazier book.” | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016045750 (print) | LCCN 2017003422 (ebook) | ISBN 9780814687802 | ISBN 9780814687819 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint, 1225?–1274. | Grace (Theology) | Virtues. | Lord’s Supper. Classification: LCC B765.T54 T865 2017 (print) | LCC B765.T54 (ebook) | DDC 230/.2092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045750 This book is dedicated to all my teachers at: St. John’s Elementary School, Woodland Middle School, Hibbing High School, The University of St. Thomas, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, and Boston College. I am still learning to recognize how much you gave me. Contents FOREWORD Bruce T. Morrill, SJ xi PREFACE Conversion through Conversation xv INTRODUCTION Finding a Lost Voice xvii I. Grammars xvii II. Scholastic Grammars xx III. Modern Grammars xxiv IV. The Problem: Lacking Context xxvii V. The Solution: Finding a Lost Voice xxx CHAPTER ONE Why the Secunda Pars? 1 I. Lamenting the Loss of a Loss 2 1. The Deadly Dichotomy 2 2. Consequences of the Deadly Dichotomy 5 II. The Purpose of the Summa Theologiae 9 viii Speaking with Aquinas III. Signification and Causality 11 IV. Baptism and Penance: Infusing Charity 16 V. The Eucharist: Increasing Charity 20 VI. Unanswered Questions 25 CHAPTER TWO Grace as the Embodied Spiritual Life 27 I. The Teleological Nature of the Spiritual Life 28 1. The Structure of the Summa Theologiae 29 2. The Place of the Prima Secundae in the Summa 32 II. Grace and the Spiritual Life 33 1. Grace Actualizing the Image of God 35 2. The Spiritual Life Conforming to Grace 39 III. Belief and Signs 40 IV. Conclusion: Cooperative Participation 47 CHAPTER THREE The Theological Virtues Founding the Embodied Spiritual Life 49 I. The Theological Virtues: Orders and Degrees 50 1. Faith, Hope, and Charity 51 2. Orders of Generation and Perfection 52 3. Three Degrees of Charity 56 II. Falling in Love with God 57 1. Justification 58 2. Infusion 61 III. Growing in Love for God 64 1. Sanctification 64 2. Increase 66 IV. Being Saved by Love 70 Contents ix CHAPTER FOUR The Moral Virtues Manifesting the Embodied Spiritual Life 73 I. Moral Virtues 74 1. The Codependence of Moral Virtues 75 2. Acquiring and Increasing Moral Virtue 84 II. Embodying Friendship with God 87 1. Operating Ex Caritate 87 2. Dispositive Acts of Charity 92 3. Communal Embodiment of Friendship with God 97 III. Grammars of Grace and Virtue 100 CHAPTER FIVE The Eucharist Nourishing the Embodied Spiritual Life 103 I. Jesus Establishes the Way 104 1. Paschal Mystery as Sacrificial Sign of God’s Love 104 2. Provocation as Possibility of Theosis 108 II. Sacraments Show the Way 111 1. Writing the Signs through Religion 112 2. Reading the Signs through Faith 115 3. Graced Cooperation 118 III. Eucharist as Nourishment for the Way 120 1. Writing Christ through the Eucharist 121 2. Spiritually Eating through Faith 123 3. The Unity of the Church: The Fellowship of Sinful Saints 129 CHAPTER SIX A Liturgical Theology of Right Religion 133 I. A Self-Defeating Tendency 133 II. Goodness and Rightness 138 x Speaking with Aquinas III. Religious Signification 140 IV. Right Religion 142 1. Religious Prudence 143 2. Striving for Right Religion 144 V. Writing a Diverse Christ for a Plural World 148 1. Prudently Writing Christ 148 2. How Do We Write Christ? 150 CONCLUSION Speaking with a Lost Voice 155 Bibliography 157 Index 163 FOREWORD Good, powerful academic theology always draws from significant pastoral experience, from some well-founded practical motivation. This is no less true for sacramental-liturgical theology than for any other theological subdiscipline. Indeed, all too often the challenges posed to the sacramental-liturgical scholar from both without and within this particular field of theology arise from modern propensities for excessively dividing theory from practice. In the post-Enlightened modern academy, Catholic and Protestant, theological faculties tended for a combination of reasons to relegate the study of sacra- ments and liturgy, whether on the grounds of method or content or both, either to historical-material treatment or to the pastoral realm. In the latter case, there could arise the implication of a certain intel- lectual inferiority inherent to the subject matter. An air of defensive- ness on both “sides,” i.e., systematic versus liturgical theologians, could prove palpable in such situations, which, thankfully, now seem to be on the wane. The disciplinary quest and sporadic polemics over the nature and mission of practical theology have, for all their diffi- culties, at least helped systematic theologians explicitly acknowledge that practical concern (practice of the faith), however implicit, under- lies their scholarship. Now, with vigor and enthusiasm, young theo- logians are following the example of their deceased predecessors in the ressourcement begun more than a half century ago, reaching back beyond rationalism and idealism for critical engagement in the litur- gical practice–based thought of Christian theologians of the ancient through medieval eras. xi xii Speaking with Aquinas Meanwhile liturgical theology has had its own internal problems, among which a significant one has comprised often misguided, prag- matic pursuits of palpable, practical results in the pastoral field. The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’s mandate that “full and active participation in liturgical celebrations by all the people [be] the aim to be considered before all else” has, to follow the formulations of my doctoral mentor Don Saliers, suffered distortion by liturgists playing to surface-level feelings rather than to depth of emotion. Isolating parts or even the entirety of liturgy, not a few liturgical theologians (across denominations and continents) have worked at creating diagnostics for determining whether full, conscious, and active participation is actually taking place. This can amount to ask- ing of the liturgy, and thereby of the people engaged in it, what it in itself, in its ritual components—and, thus, they in their ritual perfor- mances alone—cannot yield. The liturgy in itself is not the value. The liturgy (to invoke the other celebrated line in Sacrosanctum Concilium) as the source and summit of the life of the faithful is. Surely, the content and form of the liturgy—reformed and renewed—matter. But this type of “liturgiology” alone is incapable of informing the deeper connection between liturgy and life essential to gospel faith. Scholarly service to the character of lives the church hopes to foster through sacramental rites requires capacious reflection on the dy- namics of grace as conveyed through scripture and tradition. Study of the monumental achievement of Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae is invaluable