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Transcript of Dissertation August 2005
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CTC Dissertation: Candidate number: V42326
From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
Heythrop College, University of London
MA in Contemporary Theology in the Catholic Tradition
DISSERTATION (Submitted August 2005)
From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the
universal in Catholic theology.
The mind of one who knows has been freed of concepts and is open to what is. Tao Te Ching: 27.
Abstract
Platonism (and Neo-Platonism) provided a working conceptual framework for thetheologians of the Patristic period (including the Cappadocian Fathers and StAugustine) who contributed in a decisive way to the shaping and development of keyChristian doctrines. Central to this Platonism was the eternal and immutable Form,the supra-sensible archetype of the real, represented by the idea or the universal inthe human intellect. The universal was regarded as a conceptual window onto theReal, including the transcendent reality of God, and this perspective came to governthe expression of Christian doctrine in many theological areas. Mainly as a result ofthe rediscovery of the metaphysical writings of Aristotle, this realist position wasrevised by theologians like Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham. While the denial of realismhad a formative influence on the theology of the Reformation (and, ultimately, thepostmodernism of our own era), the Catholic Church embraced a moderate realismin which the universal, abstracted from sense perception, continued to provide
access to definitive truth. In the course of the revival of Thomism in the nineteenthcentury, traditional Thomism continued to emphasise the centrality of the concept,whereas Transcendental Thomism, in relativising the concept in relation to thejudgement, became the catalyst for the theological pluralism that characterised theperiod after Vatican II. In recent times, Catholic theologians, including Lonergan,Schillebeeckx, Panikkar and Pieris, have sought to retrieve and redefine theuniversal as a dynamic symbol that can mediate theological meaning.
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
and a particular table shares to some extent in tableness as such. Spatial
metaphors are brought into play to describe the relationship between the world of
sense and the world of ideas: the real world lies beyond appearances that present
themselves to the senses; phenomenal truths participate in ultimate truth. This
approach, developed by Plato with great ingenuity and imagination, resulted in a total
worldview that ascribed permanence, perfection and ultimacy to one realm of reality
and the opposite characteristics to another.
By the second century these Platonic assumptions, combined with ideas derived
from Stoicism (emphasising detachment, virtue and Logos as the transcendent
principle of rationality animating and sustaining the world) were inextricably woven
into the intellectual outlook of many Europeans. The early Christian Fathers who
reflected on faith and who attempted to present a coherent and compelling account
of it to their contemporaries were, in the main, Gentile Greeks and Romans. Their
thought patterns were Hellenistic, though these patterns were not so embedded in
their awareness as to preclude criticism of certain Greek ideas that were considered
to be inconsistent with Christian revelation. For example one problem with Platos
philosophical monotheism was that God, of necessity, belonged to the realm of
being and was thus completely immutable and impassible, characteristics that cannot
be easily squared with the doctrine of the Incarnation. However many of the early
Christian thinkers and theologians maintained a high opinion of Greek philosophy
and sought, not just to reconcile the revelations of Christianity with many of the core
assumptions of Greek thought, but to suggest that Plato and others had been given
an historic mission to prepare the theoretical foundations for important aspects of
Christianity.
In the course of the early centuries it became necessary for the Church to define as
accurately as possible its christological and Trinitarian beliefs. At the confessional
and liturgical level, the Church, of course, already knew what it believed about
Jesus. Had not Peter in his Pentecostal sermon proclaimed that God has made
[Jesus] both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified? (Acts 2:36); in the
early hymn in Philippians we read that God highly exalted Jesus and gave him thename that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:9-11).
However, while the lex orandihad consolidated itself in successive generations of
Christian life after the Apostolic period, consensus regarding the lex credendi, in the
absence of theological language making it possible to think of Jesus Christ as
God, 2 was not to be achieved without serious controversy. Ultimately, however, it
was by means of the Platonic universal that the Church was able to set down some
markers for a minimal orthodoxy, though the solutions proposed at the Councils of
Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) generated as many questions as answers.
The route to the eventual deployment of the Platonic universal by the Cappadocian
Fathers in connection with the definition of belief relating to the nature of Christ and
the Trinity is mapped out in some detail by Jaroslav Pelikan. 3 While the Church
employed a variety of metaphors to express and summarize the meaning of
salvation, Christians were generally united in the belief that salvation was the work of
no being less than the Lord of heaven and earth. 4 As we have already seen,
prevalent (Hellenistic) concepts of the Godhead as impassible rendered beliefs in a
God who suffers problematic; docetizing tendencies, even among orthodox believers,
were not uncommon. Efforts to provide a more biblical grounding for the divinity of
Christ resulted in adoptionist Christology, reliant upon key Old and New Testament
texts that lacked the theological and philosophical resources to affirm a more precise
ontological relationship between Jesus and the divine Logos. This conceptually fuzzy
adoptionism seems to have generated a monarchianism that stressed the identity of
Son with the Father without specifying the distinction between them with
precision. 5 Tertullian (160-c.220) himself admitted that the simple people who
are always the majority of the faithful ... shy at the economy, 6 the economyreferring to the distinction between Father and Son. Another pre- (Hellenistic)
philosophical attempt to express the sonship of Christ that finally slipped into
desuetude was the designation of the divine in Christ as an angel. The existence of a
primitive Jewish-Christian angel Christology with its implications for the role of the
Christ (that would include the inauguration of the new aeon of the kingdom) has been
cited by some scholars as a reason for an absence of christological controversy in
the Apostolic age.7
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
However it was the Arian controversy of the fourth century, possibly the greatest
theological crisis of the Churchs (early) history, that became the trigger for the
adoption of overtly Platonic language for the defining of a new Trinitarianism that was
and has remained a primary standard of orthodoxy for the whole Church. According
to Pelikan 8 it was the exegesis of Proverbs 8:22-31 (The Lord created me first of all,
the first of his works, long ago. I was made in the very beginning ) in the light of a
particular set of theological a prioris that resulted in the Arian doctrine of Christ as
creature. One of the Arian a prioribeliefs to which Pelikan is referring was the
absolute oneness, the one-and-onlyness, () of God. In fact, Arius preferred the
stronger superlative , without beginning and utterly one, when
referring to the Godhead. No identification of Christ with the (semi)-divine Logos
should be allowed to compromise this arithmetical oneness of God 9 who, as
monad () was absolutely alone. An early attempt to settle the matter at the
Council of Nicea, done in peremptory style by the Emperor Constantine himself who
(probably at the instigation of his western advisor, the Spaniard Hosius) declared in
frustration that the term homoousios (same ousios/being) should be used to
capture the nature of the relationship between Christ and the Father, resulted only in
deeper schism and controversy. The Church had to wait for a later Council, that at
Constantinople (from May to July 381), before a relatively coherent formula, couched
in the language of the more advanced philosophers, 10 could be presented.
What the Church needed was a formula that would allow the believer to affirm both
identity and difference in the Godhead in a coherent way. The Cappadocian Fathers
(including Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus and his younger brother Gregory of
Nyssa) deftly steered a course between the Scyllas of either Sabellianism or tritheism
and the Charybdis of Arianism by placing Trinitarian theology within a Platonic
framework and by unpacking the Godhead in terms of the most general of the
Platonic universals, namely ousia. Gregory of Nyssa needed a distinction similar to
that between Platos Form of the Good a kind of master universal - and the (more
ordinary) Form in order to avoid the confusions attendant upon predicating an
undifferentiated ousia of the persons of the Trinity. Arguing from analogy he
maintained that, just as it was inaccurate to speak of three individual people as three
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
humans since human was a term for a nature they had in common, so, in the case
of the Trinity, it was both inaccurate and dangerous to speak of three ousiaisince
believers had clearly (mistakenly) concluded from this that there were three distinct
divinities within the Godhead. In his words the divine, simple, and unchangeable
nature transcends any sort of diversity in order to be truly one. 11 The
hierarchically (and, according to Basil, ontologically12) inferior general universal, the
hypostasis, provides the conceptual means by which to differentiate the Persons.
Both universals were required: ousia to safeguard the unity of God and the
hypostasis to ground the necessary diversity within unity. Basil vehemently resisted
any false exaltation of divine ousia over the hypostases, rejecting any such inference
as irreligion. 13 While the Cappadocians general position shows great conceptual
refinement and intellectual rigour, it is not surprising, given the nature of the subject
matter, that subsequent attempts to popularise doctrine sometimes introduced
inconsistencies and apparent contradictions that undermine their own Platonic
consistency. Having differentiated ousia and hypostatsis,Basil draws an analogy
between these and the relationship between universal and particular which is less
than helpful:
Substance relates to hypostasis as universal relates to particular. Each of us shares in existence
through the common ousia and yet is a specific individual because of his own characteristics. So also
with God, ousia refers to that which is common, like goodness, deity or other attributes, while
hypostasis is seen in the special characteristics of fatherhood, sonship or sanctifying power.14
Even Gregory of Nazianzus occasionally abandons his characteristic precision and
uses figurative language and rhetorical appeals:
When I speak of God, you must be enlightened at the same time by one flash of light and by three.
There are three individualities orhypostases or, if your prefer,persons. (Why argue about names
when words amount to the same meaning?) There is one ousia ie. deity. For God is divided without
division, if I may put it like that, and united in division. The Godhead is one in three and the three are
one. The Godhead has its ousia in the three or, to be more precise, the Godhead is the three We
must neither heretically fuse God together into one nor chop God up into inequality 15
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
Occasional lapses aside, the intellectual and conceptual rigour of the Cappadocians
should not be seen as an accidental feature of their thought. Rather their concern to
delineate ideas carefully and unpack them with the utmost precision is a direct
corollary of the Platonic epistemological and ontological underpinnings of their
theological position. Mental ideas were images of supra-sensible and eternal
universals or Forms. 16 The idea ousia is the of a (perfectly remembered)
eternal and ultimate reality (in this case the being of God). According to the Platonic
view there is a real (that is, not conventional or arbitrary) connectedness between the
content of the mind encapsulated in the universal and the eternal Form. Orthodoxy,
ex hypothesi, required the right mental contents/ideas, meticulously delineated and
scrupulously unfolded. From this perspective heterodoxy is essentially a (sinfully
incompetent) travesty of the real. Sabellianism is wrong in the same way that an
imperfect image fashioned by flawed artist is wrong: there is a mismatch between the
image-idea and the reality to which it is supposedly intrinsically related.
The central doctrines of Plato that helped to resource the early Christian intellectual
tradition were themselves developed by several thinkers associated with Platonism,
the most important of whom being Plotinus (204-270) whose form of Platonism
(subsequently known as Neoplatonism 17) was adopted by both the Cappadocians
and St Augustine (354-430). In the Enneads (an edited version of Plotinus work by
his pupil and successor, Porphyry (232-304)), Plotinus affirms many of the themes
common to the Platonic tradition including the belief in a higher level of reality than
visible and sensible things and the non-materiality of the highest form of reality.
According to Plotinus monistic version of Platonism, the being of all things emanated
from a single unitary source, the One, through the Intelligence that contains the
universals on which the physical world in modelled, and the Soul, that includes the
individual souls of creatures including humankind. This new Platonism was the route
to Christianity for one of the faiths most influential spokesmen, Augustine of Hippo, a
major figure in intellectual history whose influence on Christianity Eastern or
Western, ancient or mediaeval or modern, heretical or orthodox 18 is unmatched by
any other thinker.
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
Augustines debt to Plato through the thought of Plotinus is a common theme in many
of Augustines commentators. The great Augustine scholar, Otto Scheel, maintained
that many of Augustines key doctrines were merely the consequence of his
Neoplatonism. 19 In his own early writings Augustine seems to identify the biblical
doctrine of God with what Plato and Plotinus have said about God. 20 Referring to a
work of Augustines concerning Christ the teacher, Pelikan remarks on the similarities
between Augustines epistemological ideas and Platos theory of knowledge:
It is appropriate to observe how consistently Platonic was Augustines early doctrine of knowledge
in the soul, which identified the work of Christ as the divine teacher with the idea of recollection (
), so that, we do not consult a speaker who utters sounds to the outside, but a truth that presides
within Christ, who is said to dwell in the inner man he it is who teaches. It would require only the
change of a few words and sentiments from Plato and his followers to become Christians.21
In Augustines theory of knowledge we encounter an original synthesis of Platos
doctrine of the Form of the Good and later Neoplatonist notions of God as the source
of intellectual illumination. In his analogy of the cave in the Republic VII, Plato makes
use of the sun to represent that by which the things of the world (that represent theForms or universals) are made intelligible. In his reworking of these ideas, Augustine
portrays God as the sun that illuminates the truths of the world. Moreover the
environment for these truths is no longer the supra-sensible world of the Forms but
the mind of God. Human knowing then becomes a sharing in (the contents of) the
mind of God. Understanding (which is the actualisation of knowledge) is the
successful seeing by the intellect of the eternal truths that are made visible to man by
the light of Gods presence. The universality and necessity of ideas or concepts
(including those central to the faith including human nature and the nature of the
Trinity) are grounded in divine ideas that are seen or intuited by the enlightened
human intellect. Perhaps by way of mitigating the intellectualism of this intuitionism,
Copleston suggests that Augustinian knowledge could be thought of as being derived
from experience and that the regulative influence of the divine ideas (which means
the influence of God) enables man to see the relation of created things to eternal
super-sensible realities and that Gods light enables the mind to discern the
elements of necessity 22 He does concede, however, that Augustines
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
epistemology is anything but systematic and that a definitive interpretation is not
possible.
Mediaeval and later perspectives on the universal
In his discussion of Augustines metaphysics of being and theory of knowledge,
Gerald McCool remarks that Augustine never ceased to be a Platonist. 23 Certainly
in the socially and politically unstable period following the so-called Carolingian
renaissance of the ninth century, the problem of universals continued to be a major
preoccupation for Christian thinkers, as did the Neoplatonic solution proposed by
Augustine who remained a massive presence and influence well into the mediaeval
period. Interestingly a clear bifurcation in thinking about universals seems to have
developed in the period up to Aquinas (1224-74). On the one hand, according to the
position that became known as (Exaggerated) Realism, the Platonic doctrine of the
real existence of universals in a world outside the human mind is maintained. Well-
formed concepts provide windows onto these eternal verities and, as such, have a
decisive and definitive status for thought (and theology). This position reduced sense
knowledge to mere illusion. Representatives of this view included John Scotus
Eriugena (c. 815- c. 877), Remigius of Auxerre (841-908), William of Champeaux
(1070-1120) and to some extent Gilbert de la Porre (1076-1154). The contrary
position, known as nominalism, and represented by Roscelin (c. 1050-1120), John of
Salisbury (c. 1115-1180) and arguably Peter Abelard (1079-1142), held that the
universal is a mere name (nomen orflatus vocis) that is used to label groups of
things that share something in common. As such, universals are provisional and
expendable. Contemporary critics maintained that nominalism was destructive of allknowledge and reasoning and that it rendered philosophy and theology impossible.
In the thought of Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) we find a compelling synthesis
of elements drawn from Augustine, from realist and nominalist positions and, of
course, from the metaphysical and epistemological writings of Aristotle. Thomas
concurred fully with Augustines belief that the human mind was an expressed image
of the Trinity. McCool writes that in Thomass philosophical theology the mind andwill of mans autonomous human nature were ordered to the Triune God of Christian
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
revelation as their unique, albeit supernatural, end. 24 However while Thomas
believed, with Augustine, that human beings were orientated to God by means of an
innate intellectual appetite for Being in its fullness (the Beatific Vision), he did not
share Augustines belief in a directintuitive grasp of truth. Following Aristotle, Thomas
developed a theory of knowledge that incorporated an indirectintellectual intuition of
an intelligible form in the sensible content of the image. The content of this intuition is
held in the mind as a universal concept and expressed outwardly as a term. Finally,
in the unity of the judgement, the mind is able to synthesise the subject of predication
with the universal concept. This moderate solution to the problem of universals
retains its links with realism by positing the real existence (intentionally in the mind
and physically in the thing) of the same entity in both the mind and in the object. Thus
Thomas succeeded in creating a new philosophy of knowledge in which the
synthesis of particular and universal is achieved by means of the judgement, no
longer following upon divine illumination as Augustine maintained, but resulting from
the ordinary operation of the human mind.
While Thomas was happy to embrace much of Aristotles epistemology, it would be
incorrect to suggest that the principal difference between Thomass Christian
philosophy and that of Augustine was Thomass obvious preference for Aristotle (in
his entirety) over Plato. Thomism should not be considered, according to McCool, a
Christianised version of Aristotles philosophy of being. 25McCool draws upon the
research of tienne Gilson 26 to suggest there is an unbridgeable diversity in the
definitions given to being in the philosophies of Aristotle and Thomas. For Aristotle
being meant subsisting essence, a generic notion that included both the pure
substantial form associated with the concept and the composite reality of the thingconsisting of substantial form and primary matter. For Thomas, however, being meant
existence which was conferred on substantial form. Unlike Aristotelian form, being
could not be grasped intellectually and known like a universal that is produced by
means of abstraction. Rather, being is known through thejudgement, that synthesis
of particular and universal that is ordered directly to Infinite Existence as its end. 27
This emphasis on the (active) judgement, away from the (static) concept, was to
have huge implications for Catholic theology in the period between the two VaticanCouncils and beyond (see below). However the more radical implications of
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
Thomass metaphysics were mitigated to some extent by later readings that, with
hindsight, seem closer to Aristotle than to the insights and more original
developments offered by Aquinas.
The reasons that explain the overly Aristotelian reading of Thomas in the three or four
centuries after his death are diverse and, of necessity, conjectural. One of the
problems with Augustines theory of divine illumination was its inability to grant
proper autonomy to the contingent beings and agents of our finite world. 28 Through
Aristotle, Thomas was able to address the question of autonomy by developing an
epistemology (and a modified metaphysics) that acknowledged the human
contribution to the cognitional process and to the metaphysical affirmation of being.
As we shall see, there were both individual intellectual pressures and, in the course
of time, highly developed theological standpoints feeding into significant social-
political changes, that would question the kind of human autonomy that Thomas
sought to uphold. The human beings humanity, for example, was, for Thomas,
neither a super-sensible, quasi-Platonic, divinely constituted entity in the mind of God
nor a purely human, convenient name for an arbitrary set of characteristics. Rather it
was an empirically grounded reality, appropriated through normal human cognition,
but at the same time constitutionally directed towards (an affirmation of) God. Indeed
it may be the case that an exaggerated defence of human nature by some followers
of Thomas resulted, ironically, in a fragmenting of the concept of human nature that
actually facilitated a contrary apologetic that emphasised the infinite distance
between God and man. By the end of the middle ages nominalism, and not Thomass
moderate realism, had become the mainstream movement in scholastic theology.
Thomism had to await the spiritual and intellectual revival of the Order of Preachersin the middle to late fifteenth century before Thomass ideas were reintroduced into
Catholic theological circles. Following Ignatius lead, the Jesuits put Thomas at the
centre of theological education and new and scholarly editions of Thomas works
together with detailed commentaries were produced throughout the sixteenth century.
Recognising that Aristotle alone could not provide a suitable foundation for Catholic
philosophy, the greatest of Jesuit theologians, Francisco Surez (1548-1617),
developed a course in philosophy for use by the Jesuits based on what wasperceived to be Thomass adaptations of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics.
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
In his interpretation of Thomas, Surez allowed himself to be guided by majority
Jesuit opinions. This seems to have prevented Surez from following a number of
Thomass original positions, including his views on being an existence, referred to
above (page 10). In particular Surez seems to have relegated Thomass distinction
between essence and existence from real to conceptual. Contrary to the view of
some Dominican commentators, there was no act of existence that was really distinct
from the essence that limited it. This meant that Thomass dynamic metaphysics of
existence was, in McCools words, totally excised from Surezian philosophy. 29
Thomism, effectively, became the Christianised version of Aristotles philosophy of
being that Gilson responded to three centuries later in the Neo-Thomist revival of the
inter-Conciliar period.
Thomism and its principal variations from the thought of Thomas himself, through
his Dominican and Jesuit interpreters and up to the more recent (19th/20th century)
Neo-Thomist revival has been decisive for the shaping and development of
Catholic theology for over seven hundred years. Indeed Leo XIIIs ardent wish,
expressed in his EncyclicalAetrni Patris (1879), was that the philosophy of St
Thomas should always have a place of honour in the education of the Catholic clergy.
However another strain of thought, representing an alternative approach to the
question of the universal, has had equally important implications for Catholic
theology, both during the centuries of reform and counter-reformation and in our own
theologically pluralist period. In an article on the Death of Universals 30 Neal Magee
suggests that there are fruitful connections to be made between the thought of
William of Ockham, the rejection of the rule of reason and tradition associated with
the Reformation, the empiricism of the Enlightenment and the apparent rejection ofthe universal characteristic of contemporary postmodernism.
William of Ockham (c.1280-1349), a brilliant Franciscan theologian known among his
contemporaries as Doctor invincibilis et venerabilis inceptor, studied under John
Duns Scotus (an advocate of realism) at Merton College, Oxford. Ockham derived
his understanding of the omnipotence of God from Scotus. Scotus emphasised the
total transcendence of God and the utter contingency of creation, including humannature. In no sense, certainly not in the Augustinian outlined above, could human
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beings claim to have a stake in the mind of God or even in the real by means of
their involvement with universals. What human beings encounter are individual
substances and qualities and these are the fundamental realities of human
experience. The realist and the Thomist positions on the universal were supportive of
a doctrine of the analogy of being which, in turn, could be used to underpin a belief in
the human beings constitutional orientation towards God as their final end. Ockhams
commitment to thepotentia absoluta of God combined with his absolute incredulity
towards universals resulted in a theology that helped to shape both the reforming
perspective of Martin Luther and subsequent philosophies that have rejected the
possibility of absolute norms of truth and morality. The possibility of theologys
qualified self-authentication, so to speak, by means of reference to a rationality
founded upon universals that could connect human thinking to the real and,
ultimately, to the divine, is now denied. All theological speculation must be tested
against the only objective authority that God, in Gods providence, has provided,
namely the authority of the scriptures. Also consistent with Ockhams position is the
apparently extraordinary view that, from a human perspective, there can be no
absolute ethical norms. Magee observes that murder, adultery and theft couldhave
been arranged by God to be acceptable acts. 31 In complete freedom, however, God
chose not to make these acts acceptable, as is clear from scripture. This appears to
amount to a version of the divine command theory according to which ethical laws
are deemed to be good because God has chosen them and not because of any
inherent goodness they may have, even if this goodness is grounded on a rationality
that is rooted in divine reality. This systematic rejection of universals by Ockham is
one of the earlier philosophical sources of a more developed contemporary
postmodern rejection of absolutes. The nature of this denial will be relevant to thediscussion (below) of the retrieval of the universal for (Catholic) theology in the
postmodern era.
Ockham was an important link in a chain of philosophical and theological thought that
extended into empiricism, the Enlightenment and finally the post-industrial,
postmodern era. The implications of Ockhams anti-metaphysical nominalism and his
views of Gods absolute power would help to stimulate opposition to a number ofCatholic doctrines, opposition that (in the minds of the dominant Dominican and
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Jesuit theologians) only a rejuvenated, Aristotelian-Thomist, second scholasticism of
moderate realism had the resources to resist. Some examples of theological
positions that seemed vulnerable once the reality of the universal was questioned
were the nature of the Church, human nature, including the character of the humans
capacity to respond to Gods grace, and the sacraments. Against the perpetual visible
identification of the Church with one particular form, Ockham implied that the Church
was a contingent historical reality rather than one that was necessary and universal.
Central to Ockhams teaching on grace is the belief that the goodness of an act is not
inherent in the act but is ascribed to it by God. The definition of what is good lies in
the will of God; merit is based on acceptation, not acceptation on merit. There is no
created human nature (with its own, autonomous capacity for (the reception of)
grace) that can take the initiative in this respect. This (anti-universal) thinking was
applied by Ockham (and his mentor Scotus) to the sacraments. The sacraments
operate, not by any inherent reality or virtue but by an ascribed virtue or power. There
is no inherent power in water or words that has sacramental effect; instead efficacy
depends entirely on God. Inconsistently Ockham maintained that there is an inherent
value in the Eucharist after consecration.
Neo-Thomism and the relativisation of the concept
After the Council of Trent (1545-63), a revived (second) scholasticism was used to
underpin Catholic theological responses to a reform movement that was broadly anti-
Aristotelian, opposed to natural theology and its reference to an analogia entis, and
empiricist in the sense that direct, unmediated religious experience (authenticated by
reference to revelation) was decisive for faith. By the second half of the eighteenthcentury, however, this scholastic revival seems to have run its course. When the
Catholic Church began its slow recovery after the damaging anti-religious secularism
that swept through Europe at the end of the century, it turned, not to Aristotelian-
Thomism to meet the challenge of secular philosophy, but to contemporary forms of
post-Cartesianism and post-Kantianism. Later in the nineteenth century, however,
Pope Leo XIII, hailed by The Times as the greatest Pope to have governed the
Catholic Church since the French Revolution,32
was convinced that only a return toThomism would enable Catholics to engage philosophically and theologically with
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contemporary thought and allow them to make significant and lasting contributions to
European culture. The story of the rehabilitation of Thomism as a serious option for
modern theology, however, was to result in a theological pluralism that Leo, at the
time of his EncyclicalAeterni Patris (1879) could hardly have foreseen.
Pope Leo was convinced that a scholasticphilosophia perennis was the antidote to
the malaise that had afflicted both the Catholic and the secular thought of the
nineteenth century. As historians of thought, including Gilson, have pointed out,
however, the existence of a common scholastic/Thomistic synthesis is at best
chimerical and the unity of mediaeval philosophy was not so much a unity of
systematic content as a unity of spirit.33 In other words, if Leo wanted Thomism to
play a pivotal role in the integration of contemporary thought, it was germane to ask,
Which form of Thomism, in his estimation, was equipped to carry out this task? I have
already referred to the bifurcation of Thomism into a (more original) metaphysics of
existence and a later, Surezian, Aristotelian-Thomism that became normative for
Catholic education for several generations but which, in Gilsons opinion, was
compromised and inauthentic (see page 11). In the course of the Thomistic revival of
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two (incompatible) forms of Thomism
presented themselves as coherent systems of thought both for theology and for
Catholic philosophers who wished to engage with contemporary thought. In his study
of an exchange of correspondence between the two figureheads representing these
options (namely Jacques Maritain (1884-1978) and Joseph Marchal (1878-1944)),
Ronald McCamy refers to two writers, Georges Van Riet and Robert Havanek SJ,
who, he feels, have set reliable guidelines 34 for distinguishing these two Thomistic
positions. At the heart of this distinction between Maritain and Marchal is a differentunderstanding and appreciation of the stages of cognition. In Van Riets words:
Certain authors direct their interest to the concept, others to the judgment; sometimes it is the one,
sometimes the other, of these elements which is considered as revealing the real.35
Fr Havanek subsequently 36 developed a nomenclature to make this distinction
explicit: he wrote of a philosophy of the concept that was opposed to a philosophyof the judgment. The philosophy of the concept, with its Aristotelian-Thomist
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
pedigree up to the second scholasticism of Surez, is associated with the
conservative view; the philosophy of judgment, traceable in embryonic form to
Thomass metaphysics of existence and hinted at in the nineteenth century writings
of the ostensibly Surezian advocate Joseph Kleutgen, 37is the epistemological
mainstay of the more progressive pluralists. A brief delineation of these two
philosophies will enable us to see how different understandings of the role of the
universal gave rise to alternative theological positions that had very different
implications for the future of Catholic theology.
Two routes to the real broadly relatable to either some form of Platonic mysticism
whereby supra-sensible forms are recalled by the intellect, or to any form of direct
intuition or seeing of ideas or truths in the mind of God - are ruled out by the
concept-oriented approach. In the philosophy of the concept, reality in contacted
through the concept. All human minds, regardless of race, culture, historical or
intellectual conditioning, are constituted in exactly the same way. In the human
cognitional process the mind liberates the essential features of the object from the
limitations imposed on it by the conditions of matter. The universal idea embodied in
the concept succeeds in capturing, and stands in a relation ofunivocaladequation
with, the unchanging essential nature of the substance that is located in extramental
reality. One adequate conceptual representation of the substances essence is
sufficient. There is no requirement for, or possibility of, a plurality of conceptual
frameworks.
If the promotion of dialogue between Catholic thinkers and representatives of the
European philosophical traditions was consistent with the spirit ofAeterni Patris,then the Catholic theologians who developed what Harvanek referred to as a
philosophy of judgment could be said to be furthering the general aims of Pope
Leos Encyclical. Their detractors (including Maritain), however, believed that their
attempts to reach a rapprochementwith secular thought were being achieved at too
high a cost. Maritain regarded the Transcendental Thomism of Pirre Rousseleot
(1878-1915) and Joseph Marchal as a monstrous hybrid that would, if it were
allowed to inform Catholic theology, open the gates of pluralism and run counter tocenturies of Catholic thought. Certainly, the project that Marchal brought to fruition in
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
his monumental Le point de dpart de la mtaphysique, essentially a synthesis of his
reading of Thomass metaphysics of existence and Kants (1724-1804)
transcendental reflection on human knowledge, was highly ambitious and strikingly at
odds with conventional Aristotelian Thomism. Kants Copernican Revolution
constituted a direct challenge to the notion that the necessity and universality of
knowledge was a function of its conformity with extramental reality. 38 Contrary to the
view of Aristotelian-Thomist moderate realism, the universality and necessity of
objects is, for Kant, guaranteed through the conformity of objects to the mind.
Objective reality is that which has been processed a prioriin conformity with the
categories of the understanding. Marchal was sympathetic to this Kantian turn to
the subject but believed that the Kantian position, once its implications had been
worked through, was fully compatible with a realism that affirmed that there was
something independent of the subject to which the subject could conform itself.
Indeed, Kant had himself unwittingly unpacked these implications in his laterCritique
of Practical Reason (1788) by suggesting that what is beyond reason, namely
noumenal reality and the postulates of morality (God, freedom, the after-life), is
reachable, not by means of speculative reason, but by the dynamism of practical
reason. As McCamy writes, Rather than ground objectivity in the conditioned
conceptuality of discursive reason, why not understand human intellect as an
appetitive drive to the absolute [my emphasis]. 39 The problem with Kant, from
Marchals point of view, was that the object was constituted by means of a static
union of empirical data. By including a dynamism of the mindas one of the a priori
conditions of the possibility for the speculative intellects knowledge of the object,
Kants unbridgeable gulf between the subject and the world and between the human
knower and God could be crossed. Once noumenalised by this intellectual eros forthe Absolute, the concepts of a conceptual scheme can be understood as relativised
cognitive constructs. Harvanek summarised the position in the following way:
[While] the concept is an important and valid form of knowledge in its own right, it nevertheless has
only an intermediate position in the scale of human cognition. The perfection of human cognition is
considered to be the knowledge of the existent It is the judgment that makes contact with reality, by
virtue of its dynamic character as a n assertion: a dicere. Reality is not contacted in the fullest sense
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by being received into a knowing subject, as in the process of abstraction, but by being encountered
in the dicere of the judgment.40
Maritains fear that Marchals Thomism - a marriage of Thomass affirmation of
being through the judgement and a modified Kantian turn to the subject dynamically
oriented to the Absolute - would, if it were embraced by Catholic theology, completely
undermine conventional Aristotelian-Thomism with its one-to-one correspondence
between concept and reality, was clearly well founded. Of course pluralism (in the
sense of the existence of more than one theological system), as Maritain would have
conceded, has existed within and without Catholic orthodoxy for many centuries. The
question for Maritain, however, was, Could different frameworks of systematic
theological thought exist at the same time without contradiction? Given the one-to-
one correspondence already mentioned, Maritain did not believe that they could.
However with Marchals shift in epistemological emphasis from concept to
judgement, co-existence becomes a real possibility. McCool has observed that only
the fittest Thomistic tradition [could have survived] to inherit a relevant role in the
evolutionary movement of contemporary Catholic thought. 41 Given that, outside
conventional Catholic Aristotelian-Thomism, conceptual frameworks were routinelyconsidered mutable and revisable, any real hope that conceptually orientated
scholasticism would provide the Church with the essential tool for dialogue seemed
unrealistically optimistic.
While the Marchalian project (explicitly identified by Harvanek as an instance of the
philosophy of judgment) was to have a powerful catalytic effect upon the direction of
Catholic thought up to and beyond the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), it isimportant to be mindful of two features that are integral to Marchals position. The
first is that, in spite of his shift of emphasis from concept to judgement, Marchal, like
Maritain and in line with the scholastic tradition generally, subscribed fully to
philosophical realism. Marchals sympathy for the Kantian transcendental turn did
not commit him to any form of critical idealism. Indeed, once Marchals Thomistic
correction of Kant was in place, Marchal was equipped to demonstrate that the
ultimate object of the human intellectual appetite to know (in his expanded, dynamicsense) was the absolute being of God. The second point is that the relativisation of
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
the concept implied by Marchals Thomism is not the same as the ultimate
epistemological relativism that was associated with such anticonceptual views as
those of Henri Bergson (1859-1941). As McCamy points out, there is a difference
between the claim that there is no absolute relativism and absolutely no relativism.42 What is relative is the status of the concept, not so much in relation to the
judgement in the cognitive process, but in terms of its nature as a product of
particular historical and cultural circumstances.
An interesting illustration of the application of the Marchalian (philosophy of
judgment) approach to an item of fundamental Christian belief, namely the doctrine
concerning the divinity and humanity of Christ, can be found in the writings of Karl
Rahner (1904-1984). Using the available philosophical categories of the fifth century,
the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon (451), in their attempts to define the nature
of Christ, proposed that Christ shared in the being of God andin the being of
humankind:
Following the holy fathers, we confess with one voice that the one and only Son is perfect in
Godhead and perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, that he has a rational soul and a body. Heis of one being () with the Father as God, he is also of one being () with us as
human. He is like us in all things except sin 43
The paradoxical nature of the Chalcedonian definition is, to some extent, a function
of the language and the philosophy through which it is expressed. Rahner has
maintained that, in the absence of an adequate hermeneutical key, many ordinary
Christians have allowed themselves to become closet docetists on this doctrine.
44
Rahners solution involves the relativisation of the concept and reference to the
judgement that is characteristic of Marchals Transcendental Thomism. The concept
of human nature as something fixed and limited must be rightly understood. 45 Human
beings are essentially a dynamic and infinite openness, oriented and directed to the
fullness that is God. In this new framework, Christ can be understood as the
radicalisation of what is true about all humans. Human being is characterised by
transcendence and Christs humanity amounts to the total realisation of this
transcendence in the being of God. Another example of how Transcendental
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
Thomism impacted on belief that had been shaped by philosophy of the concept
was Rahners contribution to the theological discussion about the nature of grace that
preoccupied Catholic theologians in the mid-twentieth century, up to the Second
Vatican Council. With its understanding of human nature as a fixed reality, the
Aristotelian-Surezian-Thomist tradition ruled out the possibility ofexperiencing
Gods grace since, according to this tradition, grace was something wholly extrinsic to
human nature. Following the transcendental method, Rahner characterised grace as
an a prioriformal object or horizon that conditions all human knowledge and freedom.
As such, grace is experienced unthematicallybut can be rendered thematicby an act
of reflexive appropriation. Grace becomes thematic for the Christian through faith but
every human being is constitutionally equipped to enjoy profoundly worthwhile
experiences that can shape ultimate life choices.
Postmodern retrieval and redefinition of the universal
If the Marchalian wave did sweep aside the advocates and popularisers of
Aristotelian-Thomism, 46 two of the most influential Catholic theologians of the
twentieth century, Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, emerged from the tradition of
Marchal, not to jettison realism or to advocate a theological pluralism that would
suffocate realism with a thousand qualifications, but to develop Marchals thought to
show that a philosophical and theological method, based on the finality of the human
mind, can continue to present a concept of invariant truth in a theology marked by
history and pluralism. In spite of this, a direct corollary of the Marchalian approach
(which, according to John Knasas, was the only current of Thomism that streamed
into Vatican II and emerged with any vibrancy 47) for Catholic theology was thelegitimisation of different conceptual frameworks associated with a range of
theologies that have enlarged and enriched themselves with concepts drawn from
existentialism, personalism, Marxism and other political ideologies, praxiology and
ecology. 48 The parallel between the evolution in the post-conciliar period of a variety
of theologies based on different conceptual frameworks and the gradual emergence
since World War II of that diverse social and cultural phenomenon, itself
characterised by a relativisation of concepts and a pluralism of perspectives, knownas postmodernism, may suggest that the symbiotic relationship between theology
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
and dominant or prevailing intellectual perspectives (referred to at the beginning of
this essay) continues apace into the modern era. Of course, postmodernism is an
amorphous concept that cannot be pinned down in a precise way. To the extent that
parallels between theology and postmodernism can be drawn, however, while
theological pluralism has generally followed where postmodern trends have led,
when it comes to the universal, the creative initiative the attempt to provide a
significant universal for the postmodern period lies with theology. For example, a
massively influential Enlightenment epistemology and its assumption that the
criterion for certainty rests exclusively within human rational capabilities; the view that
one kind of language, namely that which refers to and makes assertions about
objects in the world, has to be normative for all other kinds of language; the centrality
and emphasis of the self and the individual found in modernity, often at the expense
of the other and the collectivity; postmodernisms critique of these and other features
of modernity have been embraced in different ways by theologians who have
concerned themselves with the dialogue with culture. However, the outright rejection
of abstract universals as the linchpins of totalising and repressive metanarratives,
has not been shared by all influential contemporary Catholic theologians. Indeed, as
the following brief references indicate, a careful reappraisal of the universal (freed
from unhelpful metaphysical pretensions) as a call to transcendence in which the
nature of the universal is one of open-ended mediation, has provided theology with a
useful tool for dialogue with a postmodernity that is no longer at ease with
essentialism, whatever form this may take.
The shift from the metaphysical universal (representing final truth) to the symbolic
universal 49 (designating a process in which the universal both participates and helpsto bring into being) is alluded to in the work of Bernard Lonergan, who regards the
human world as, essentially, a world mediated by meaning.50 In Method in Theology,51 Lonergan develops a distinction between transcendental notions and
transcendental concepts. He believes that transcendental notions are prior to
concepts and constitute the dynamism of our conscious intending:
[Transcendentals are] the radical intending that moves us from ignorance to knowledge. They are aprioribecause they go beyond what we know, to seek what we do not know yet. They are unrestricted
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From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.
because answers are never complete and so only give rise to further questions. They are
comprehensive because they intend the unknown whole or totality in which our answers reveal only
part.52
Transcendentals should not be equated with their objectifications. The function of the
transcendental (concept) is to mediate the transcendental notion and to orient us to
the horizon of our intending. Damien Casey explicitly associates Lonergans
transcendental concepts with universals in that they mediate and orient us towards
transcendence and transcendent value. 53 Casey describes this universal in dynamic
terms, as a projection from human intentionality towards the fullness of human
becoming. Our essence as human beings is mediated to us by means of theuniversal humanity which is the horizon of possibility of what it is possible for
women and men to become. It is the symbol through which the particular enters a
world of possibility 54
The philosopher Richard Kearney 55 has contributed to the contemporary theological
debate about the postmodern universal through his discussion of what he refers to as
thepersona considered as an icon of transcendence.56
In the course of anexploration of the theme of transfiguration in terms of a phenomenology of the
persona, Kearney presents thepersona as that which (in Lonerganian terms) has the
capacity to mediate the totality of the person, including the otherness of the other.
Kearney echoes Caseys belief that a defining characteristic of the postmodern
universal is that it is understood as an eschatologicalrather than a metaphysical
reality:57 thepersona vouchsafes the irreducible finality of [the human person] as
eschaton,
58
where eschaton signifies an end without end, an end that escapes andsurprises us, like a thief in the night. By introducing this new, dynamic category of
persona, Kearney is seeking to associate the unfathomable otherness and infinite
capacities of being human (mediated by the universal - or transcendental concept -
humanity) with the transfigurative possibilities of the fullness of life attested by
Christian revelation, in particular its canonical expression in the testimony of Mount
Tabor (Lk 9: 28-36). In this passage, Peters desire to set up tents is symptomatic of
the human desire to reduce radical alterity to a fetish of presence. For Kearney the
eschatologicalpersona is always transfiguring but always remains to be ultimately
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transfigured, at the end of time [that is] its temporality exceeds the limits of
ordinary time. 59
After many years of close association with Aristotelian-Thomist perspectives on the
nature of knowledge and being, Edward Schillebeeckx has concluded that it
necessary to move beyond positivistic outlines and pre-existing definitions in
philosophical terms (eg., in Aristotleian and Thomistic or Spinozan and Wolffian
terms). 60 With reference to the concept of human nature, Schillebeeckx proposes a
dynamic theology of anthropological constants 61 that point towards human
impulses and orientations. Again, reiterating the conviction of other postmodern
theologians, Schillebeeckx insists that we do not have a pre-existing definition of
humanity indeed for Christians it is not only a future, but an eschatological reality.62 In his sacramental theology, too, Schillebeeckxs language is reminiscent of
Lonergans when he reminds us that sacraments are anticipatory, mediating signs 63 that orient us towards the ultimate horizon in which the reign of God will be fully
realised. 64
Schillebeeckx, alongside other contemporary Catholic theologians who have
endorsed the postmodern critique of the totalising abstract universal, has argued for
a form of partisanship to counteract the usual tendency of universals to express the
interests of the powerful (including those of white, male, Western, Eurocentric, liberal
theologians). In other words, the unavoidable bias enshrined in the universal must be
directed towards the well being of the ones who have been, and who continue to be,
marginalized by the powerful. For this reason, Schillebeeckx believes that the
Christian universal needs to be non-discriminatory, transformative, inclusive andpolitically partisan. An authentic Catholic bias, driven by a preferential option for the
poor, is directed to the kind of non-persons that Jesus sought out in his own ministry;
an essential aspect of this bias is that it should aim for the transformation of the
world to a higher community; 65 the Catholic Christian universal must be incarnated
into practical, even partisan, political action detractors who deny the radical,
practical implications of the gospel are indulging a form of docetism that should be as
objectionable to the contemporary Church as its earlier expression was in the earlycenturies. Two other theologians, Raimon Panikkar (b. 1918) and Aloysius Pieris,
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have highlighted the provisional nature of the postmodern Christian universal by
questioning the quasi-absoluteness of the universality of human rights. While neither
theologian is suggesting that the issue of human rights should be regarded as
peripheral by the Church, 66 Pieris has observed that the Asian Churchs agenda is
more concerned with the recognition and empowerment of non-persons than with the
promulgation of human rightsper se. As Pieris writes, certain First World theologians
tend to universalise and absolutize their paradigm, unmindful of its contextual
particularity and ideological limitation. 67 Panikkar is not convinced that a particular,
Western, Enlightenment-style expression of such an important aspect of the
humanum should be so readily embraced, in its western (Christian) form, by the
Universal (ie Catholic) Church. As an alternative, he has proposed (at least for the
Church in Asia), that dharma68 the homeomorphic equivalent of Western human
rights should provide the (local, Asian) model for expressing an understanding of
human rights that is relevant for Asian Catholics and Asian society as a whole.
Concluding remarks
Despite the changing perspectives within Catholic theology, two theological constants
are discernible in the work of the majority of theologians. The first is (theological)
realism: this is construed in different ways in accordance with the available
conceptual framework(s), but a minimal characterisation would be that there is a
mind-independent, transcendent reality to which human beings are oriented but
which they cannot adequately conceptualise. The affirmation of the transcendent is
not the same as an affirmation of transcendence. Transcendence, as Heidegger has
pointed out, is an intrinsic feature of a being that, in the course of expressing itself,ex-ists or stands out dynamically against the facticity of its circumstances. There is
an aseity about transcendent reality: it maywhen conceptualised represent the
consummation of the boundless human appetite for meaning but it also stands over
and against humankind as the absolutely other, real beyond the shifting realities of
human experience and sufficient unto itself. The second truth is that human beings
have the capacity to affirm this absolutely other by means of concepts and that this
affirmation is the highest expression of authentic and autonomous humanity. Wehave seen that theologies that deny any intrinsic human capacity to affirm God have
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been associated with philosophy that has been opposed to conceptual realism
(nominalism, the work of William Ockham) and that has denied the possibility of an
analogia entis. The denial of the possibility of a transcendent reality, as a kind of
news from nowhere has, of course, been a feature of the secular postmodernism
that has jettisoned the universal as an otiose and repressive abstract entity. The
rehabilitation of a form of conceptual realism in post-conciliar theology has thrown up
a postmodern universal that has been shaped by a wide variety of philosophical
influences. This could prove to be a vital aid for contemporary theologians in their
ongoing dialogue with culture. It remains to be seen, however, whether the tensions
that are inherent in this universal (Does it promote discovery or invention? Is it
statically or dynamically constituted? and so on) can be resolved in a satisfactory
way.
9997 words
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1ENDNOTES
The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series offootnotes to Plato A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929.
2 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A history of the development of doctrine 1: The emergence of theCatholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago, 1971), p176.
3 Pelikan, Chapter 4, The Mystery of the Trinity, pp. 172 225.
4 p. 173
5 p. 177
6 Tertullian,Against Praxeas, 3.1. Corpus christianorum. Series Latina. Turnhout, Belgium, 1953, 2:1161
7 See Martin Werner, Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas problemgeschichtlich dargestellt, Bern 1941, p.311
8 p. 194
9
p. 19410 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 31.15
11 Gregory of Nyssa, Quod non sint tres dii, dii.
12 It is in this sense that the Cappadocian solution may be termed Semi-Aryan. The hypostasis of the SecondPerson is distinct from/not identical with that of the Father.
13 Basil of Caesarea, Homilies, 24.4
14Letters: 214:4 Source: The Concise Book of Christian Thought, Tony Lane, Lion 1984.
15
Oration 39:1116 In this connection see Jacques Maritain,An Introduction to Philosophy, Sheed and Ward 1979, Ch. IV, Platoand Aristotle, p. 59ff; also The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ed. Ted Honderich, OUP 1995, article on Ideasby Harold I. Brown: [An Ideas is] the image of a Platonic Form that occurs in a persons mind
17 This term was first used as recently as the mid 19th century when German scholars used it to distinguish theviews of later Platonists from those of Plato.
18 Pelikan, Op. cit, p. 292.
19 Scheel. Otto, Die Anschauung Augustins ber Christi Person und Werk, Tbingen, 1901
20 Augustine, Soliloquies 1.4.9 (Patrologia Latina, Paris, 1878-90)
21 Pelikan, p. 295 referring to Augustine, On the Teacher (De magistro), 38 (Corpus scriptorium ecclesiasticorumlatinorum. Vienna, 1866)
22 F. Copleston SJ,A Hisory of Philosophy Volume II: Augustine to Scotus, Burns and Oates 1964, pp. 66-67.
23 Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists, Marquette 2003, p. 141
24 Op. cit. p. 21
25 Op. cit. p. 142
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26 Two sources of information about the relevant research by Gilson are the biography by Laurence K. Shook,CSB., Etienne Gilson (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of mediaeval Studies, 1984) and Maurer, The legacy ofEtienne Gilson, in Victor B. Brezik [ed], One hundred years of Thomism (Houston: University of St Thomas,1981)
27 McCool, p. 22
28 see Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, pp. 144-47
29 Op. cit. p. 26
30 See Neal Magee, William of Ockham and the death of universals onwww.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01
31 Op. cit.
32 Quoted in the entry on Leo XIIIin the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
33 McCool, p. 140.
34
See Ronald McCamy, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis? A Maritainian Critique of Fr. Marchal, Peter Lang 1998, p.12.
35 Quoted by McCamy, p. 12 op. cit.
36 Robert Harvanek, Philosophical Pluralism in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol 11, New York: McGraw-Hill1967, pp 448-451.
37Catholic Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 3, referred to by McCamy, p. 17.
38 McCamy writes: Such necessary [transhistorical and transcultural] and immutable concelts, the cognitionalendowment of a common human nature, had een a unifying undergirding for Chrsitain doctrine: quod ubique,quod simper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. This was grounded in a realism in which the objectivity of the
knowing mind was defined as its conformity with a mind-independent reality. op. cit. p. 739 p. 8
40 Robert Harvanek, The Unity ofMetaphyscs, Thought28: 110 (September 1953), 402.
41Catholic theology in the nineteenth century, p. 3
42 Op. cit. p. 15
43 Quoted in Tony Lane, Op. cit. p. 50.
44 See the discussion in Karen Kilby, Karl Rahner, Fount 1997, Chapter 2, Christ and grace, pp15-29.
45 one can only say what man is by expressing what he is concerned with and what is concerned with him.But that is the boundless, the nameless. See Theological Investigations (Darton, Longman & Todd), IV, 108.
46 McCamy writes that the de facto ascendancy of the transcendental approaches of Karl Rahner and BernardLonergan become apparent vis--vis any Maritainian counterposition. Op. cit. p.31. One can, however, stillencounter appreciative references to Maritains Thomism and critique on contemporary thought. See, forexample, Rowan Williams recent Grace and necessity: Reflections on art and love, Continuum 2005.
47 John Knasas, The twentieth centuryThomistic revival, www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm 2.9
http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm%202.9http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm%202.9 -
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48 See Battista Mondins Legitimacy and limits of theological pluralism onwww.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMfor a fuller discussion.
49 See the paper by Damien Casey, Luce Irigaray and the advent of the divine from The metaphysical to thesymbolic to the eschatological, Pacifica, 12.1 (Feb. 1999) 27-54.
50 See Bernard Lonergan,A third collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan SJ, Frederick E. Crowe (ed.), NewYork: Paulist Press, 1985, 179.
51 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.
52 Ibid. 11
53 See Damien Casey, The postmodern universal: An incarnational viewonwww.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm p. 8/17
54 Ibid, p. 9/17
55 Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Boston College.
56 See Transfiguring Godby Richard Kearney in The Blackwell companion to postmodern theology, ed. Graham
Ward, Blackwell 2001, Chapter 21.57 See Casey, The postmodern universal, p. 4-5/17.
58 Ibid. p. 372.
59 Ibid. p. 383.
60 See The Schillebeeckx Reader, ed. Robert J. Schreiter, T & T Clark 1986, Chapter 1, The Structures ofHuman Experience, p. 29.
61 These include: relationship to human corporeality, nature and the ecological environment; being with others;the connection with social and institutional structures; the conditioning of people and culture by time and space;
mutual relationship of theory and practice; the religious consciousness of man; the irreducible synthesis of thesesix dimensions. See Ch. 1. op. cit.
62 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The experience of Jesus as Lord, (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 284.
63 Ibid. 836.
64 Casey, Op. cit. 11/17.
65 Ibid. p, 170 (quoted by Casey, p. 14/17)
66 On the contrary, the conciliar document, Dignitatis Humanae (1965), indicated that the Church should endorsesecular insights into human rights suchy as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. A useful referenceis John H. Miller, Vatican II: An interfaith appraisal(1966), The Declaration on human freedom by Rev. JohnCourtney Murray SJ, p. 566.
67 Aloysius Pieris, Human rights language and Liberation Theologyfrom Fire and Water: Basic issues in AsianBuddhism and Christianity(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 113. Quoted by Casey, op. cit. 13/17.
68 with its emphasis, not on the individual, but the whole concatenation of the Real. See Raimon Panikkar, Isthenotion of human rights a Western concept?from Invisible harmony: Essays on contemplation andresponsibility, Jarry James Cargas (ed.), Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995), p. 113. Quoted by Casey, Op. cit.p.13/17
http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htmhttp://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm -
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SHORTER PAPERS AND ARTICLES
Review of Ronald McCamys Out of a Kantian Chysalis? by Winfried Corduan forPhilosophiaChristion www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htm
Peter Hoenen, Thomistic influences onwww.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htm
The perfecting of philosophy in mediaeval times, (Author ?) onwww.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htm
Damien Casey, The postmodern universal: An incarnational view, onwww.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm
http://www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htmhttp://www.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htmhttp://www.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htmhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htmhttp://www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htmhttp://www.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htmhttp://www.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htmhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm -
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Msgr Jeremiah J. McCarthy, Theological education in the postmodern era, onwww.wocati.org/mccarthy.html
Scott David Foutz, Deconstruction and physical philosophy, Quodlibet Journal: Volume 1Number 1, March April 1999, on www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.html
Neal Magee, William of Ockham and the death of universals, on www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htm
Stan Wallace, Discerning and defining the essentials of postmodernism onwww.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htm
Danile J. Adams, Toward a theological understanding of postmodernism, onwww.crosscurrents.org/adams.htm
http://www.wocati.org/mccarthy.htmlhttp://www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.htmlhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htmhttp://www.crosscurrents.org/adams.htmhttp://www.wocati.org/mccarthy.htmlhttp://www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.htmlhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htmhttp://www.crosscurrents.org/adams.htm