Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition [1 ed.] 0198786514, 9780198786511

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Introduction

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Introduction Orientation William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This introduction forms the bridge between the first and second volumes. The author points us back to his argument in Volume One that a central mistake in debates about divine agency and divine action is that one must use a general concept of divine action to understand the particular network of divine actions in creation and redemption that are at the core of the Christian faith. Even if one finds necessary and sufficient conditions for a concept of divine action, that concept will not inform us in any meaningful way about what God has actually done on our behalf. The author proposes that a careful, critical investigation of the Christian tradition will best supplement the intellectual malaise among Anglophone analytic philosophy on divine action. By careful attention to specific divine actions in the Christian tradition, one will find fresh ways of thinking about divine action in the contemporary debate. Keywords:   divine action, analytic philosophy, history of doctrine, systematic theology, divine agency, philosophy and theology

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Introduction One central mistake that recurs in treatments of divine agency and divine action in Christian theology is this: we think that some general concept of divine action, or some general theory of divine action derived therefrom, will suffice in understanding the particular network of divine actions in creation and redemption that are at the core of the Christian faith. At the very least, it is thought, this exercise will solve “the problem of divine action” once and for all and allow us to get on with theology proper. If we could only get hold of a generic concept of action or a general theory of providence we could then, it is hoped, go on to apply one or both of these fruitfully to all those more “special” and particular divine actions that have been so central to the Christian faith. The major rival to this way of proceeding is represented by those who think that one specific divine action, say, creation or incarnation, can provide the pivotal clue to understanding divine agency and divine action more generally. Somehow the grammar of creation, for example, will solve the only significant issues that need to be tackled in Christian theology as it relates to divine action. In this instance there is a move from the particular to the general, a refocusing in the opposite direction from that of shifting from the general to the specific. As I have argued at length against the first of these proposals—by far the more popular proposal of the two on offer—in volume I,1 it will suffice here initially to state briefly why I think this first way of thinking is a dead-end for Christian theology. First, it is simply not the case that the concept of action as applied initially to human agents can be captured in a set of necessary and sufficient conditions. The concept of action is an open concept; there are various sufficient conditions but there are no non-trivial necessary conditions. Thus the whole idea of taking a concept of action—one necessarily derived from analysis of human action—and then applying it analogically to God collapses immediately.

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Introduction (p.2) Second, even if we did have a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the concept of action, this strategy would not help much in helping us understand the particularities of divine action. Consider a banal analogy. I am sitting in my favorite pub in Dublin and my neighbor Jimmy O’Reilly tells me that our mutual friend, Paddy Murphy, has performed a very important action on my behalf. I am agog with curiosity and excitement. What has he done for me? Then I am told that the essential thing to note is that he has performed an intentional action. This is the essence of an action, “intentionality,” so it is the essence of what he has done for me. I pause in exasperation, hoping to hear more. O’Reilly has nothing more to say to me. He has given me the necessary and sufficient feature of any human action and thus of Murphy’s action on my behalf. However, this tells me next to nothing about what Murphy has done. I know that he has done something; and I know that he has done it intentionally rather than inadvertently, or unconsciously, or under duress, or by chance. But I have no idea what he has really done for me. The only way forward is for O’Reilly to spell out in detail what in particular Murphy has done for me. With this in hand I can then go on to find out why Murphy has been so generous; and I can, if need be, begin to revise my account of the character of Murphy compared to what I have known about him before. This is precisely how the matter stands with respect to divine action. Any necessary and sufficient conditions we might lay down for understanding the concept of action as applied to God will not really tell us how to read claims about what God has actually done on our behalf. All that such a theory can tell us is something like this: if we analyze the concept of action as applied to God as requiring necessary conditions “n” and sufficient conditions “s,” then we can expect conditions “n” and “s” to be satisfied when we think of any specific action predicated of God. However, this will not help us make much progress on understanding, say, the difference between divine speaking and divine inspiration. This may seem a banal observation until we explore how failure to observe the difference has wreaked havoc on Christian doctrines of Scripture. We shall see the importance of this in Chapter 2.

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Introduction For understanding this we must descend to the specific actions predicated of God in the Christian tradition. We need to start at ground level, so to speak, and go to work. Even then we need to be careful about building taxonomies or “models” of divine action, in that these too quickly get us entangled in metaphysical and epistemological concepts and worries that can warp our thinking from the outset.2 We need to know a decent array of divine actions (p. 3) that Christians claim to have happened, say, that God has created us in his own image, that he has become incarnate in Christ, that he baptizes us with his Holy Spirit, that he forgives us our sins, that he promises eternal life in the world to come, and on and on. We do not need agreement on the catalogue we build but we need a generous survey of the domain. This is precisely why I shall start in with Paul and see where this strategy takes us. Then we can begin to look at the problems Paul’s claims about divine action evoked for him and how he went about solving them. Of course, once we make this move, we are up to our necks in theology. To repeat, we cannot begin to get hold of what God has done without careful attention to the actual actions predicated of God in the Christian tradition. These are inescapably theological claims that have led across the centuries—and continue to lead today—to reflection on their meaning, significance, and coherence with other claims we want to make. So we can then proceed to explore why God may have done what he has done; and we can press forward in developing, say, an account of the nature or character of God. We have to turn to theology proper in order to make substantial progress. It is not that we engage in conceptual analysis of action and then do theology; we have to do theology to make progress in conceptual analysis. Even then, such work may be ad hoc and very provisional. As we shall see, it readily spills over into fascinating metaphysical and epistemological moves that can be both daring and daunting in the extreme. There is a deeper reason for adopting this approach at this point in the history of theology. The first mistake I have mentioned has so gripped our semantics and intellectual sensibilities that we need drastic medicine to cure us of its consequences. We live in an intellectual bubble where we think that if only we could get one more general theory of human action then we would understand divine action. Somehow, this would help us overcome the conceptual and epistemological worries that bedevil the discussion. To change the metaphor, we have developed a form of mental cramp which forbids one to take seriously the rich array of divine actions that show up in the Christian tradition. To get out of the bubble, to get relief from the cramp, we need to enter anew into the rich resources of Christian theology and be mentored afresh. It is not enough to stare down the opposition and get on with our work; we need help in getting on with our work; and help comes when we immerse ourselves in the complex traditions of Christian theology.

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Introduction The medicine I offer is to be found in a careful review and evaluation of the particularities of divine action that show up in the tradition from Paul to Louis de Molina. I began with no grand scheme beyond my own best intuitions in making the choices I have made. Even so, a list made up of figures as influential as Paul, Irenaeus, Origen, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, Maximus, Symeon the New Theologian, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, John Calvin, and Louis de Molina constitute a formidable team of players. The actions explored (they (p.4) range from such actions as the divine inspiration of Scripture, through transubstantiation in the Eucharist, to predestination and divine concurrence) are enough to give us plenty to nourish our impoverished intellects and imagination. The theologians I bring to the table provide us with a rich array of first-order claims about specific divine action together with extensive second-order reflection. There is an additional payoff from paying careful attention to crucial instances of divine action. We can surely agree that the heart of Christian theology involved very substantial claims about divine action from creation to eschatology. Consequently there is a vast array of material available on various divine actions across the history of theology. What distinguished this treatment of divine action is the careful attention given to specific cases of divine action. The payoff is that this approach sheds new light on a host of theological proposals that have grown stale because of familiarity. Thus we can gain fresh insight into such well-worn themes as divine inspiration, transubstantiation, and predestination. Equally important, we encounter fresh ways of thinking about long-standing issues related to Christology, pneumatology, grace and freedom, and the like. Hence we can make available fresh ways of reading the history of theology that might otherwise go unnoticed. Hopefully, we can also open up new ways to tackle old problems. In order to forestall an obvious objection, note that this project is not some rearguard effort to develop a conservative theology that merely repeats what has been said in the past. If we agree with this or that account as we find it in the tradition, then it is not enough merely to appeal to the tradition. We need to be able to see why we in our situation are persuaded that the tradition was on the right track. Hence there is a deep critical element involved in our endeavors. This is not to say that tradition lacks epistemic weight; it simply limits the weight that can be given to it. Moreover, it will become perfectly clear that certain ways of resolving the problems that show up in the tradition fail because of incoherence, lack of relevant evidence, mistaken inferences, failures in judgment, and the like. We cannot simply microwave what we find and serve it up for our theological dinners. Just as historians are called to engage in historical criticism, the theologian working carefully within the history of theology is called to engage in doctrinal criticism. However, good critical work can yield deep agreement with the tradition as much as it can yield significant dissent.

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Introduction This takes me to a comment on the second problem that played a much less significant role in the first volume, namely, the move to hold that one particular divine action, say, creation ex nihilo, would either give us the clue to all other action predicates applied to God or provide the foundations for understanding divine agency and divine action more generally. The obvious semantic problem with this move is that we will surely need to distinguish divine creation from the host of other actions predicated of God. Hence it is (p.5) surely odd to think that this will allow us to figure out what to make of, say, divine forgiveness or divine incarnation in Jesus. There are irreducible differences that will block this kind of move relatively early in our deliberations. To use a different example, many have thought that the vision of the incarnation as involving the union of divine and human in Jesus is the way to work up an account of the ontology of Scripture and thus resolve problems in debates about the divine inspiration of Scripture. Just as we have the union of the human and the divine in the incarnation, we also have the union of the human and the divine in the divine production of Scripture. However, it is surely a massive stretch to think we can run this analogy without encountering obvious difficulties.3 I once had a student who insisted that the proper inference to be drawn from this analogy was that there was a fourth Person in the Trinity. He failed to note the obvious problems this would generate for the doctrine of the Trinity. The more obvious worry is that this analogy will continue to perpetuate a vision of the inerrancy of Scripture that simply does not work given what we know historically of the origins and content of Scripture. At this point I do not offer this as a knock-down argument but merely as an indication of the immediate difficulties this strategy must meet. If this fails, think of what light the action of divine incarnation might throw on any divine action predicate we choose; I suggest that we will quickly see what is wrong with the whole strategy.

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Introduction Even so, working on the strategy of moving from one divine action—creation ex nihilo—to understanding divine agency and divine action more generally led me to see that certain domains of divine action have had a role in evoking debate about divine action that I had long overlooked. I have in mind the crucial place of debates about grace and freedom in worries about divine action. The claim that God creates the free actions of human agents, that divine efficacious action goes all the way across the world in providence and all the way to the bottom in the free decision to receive salvation, brings this into the sharpest focus imaginable. If a theologian does not think that attributing the free actions of human agents to God is a problem then we need to have a recall and bring them back to school until they do so. The crucial place of doctrines of grace in salvation became clear to me in the work of grammatical Thomists like Herbert McCabe and Denys Turner and in the version of grammatical theology that shows up in the work of Kathryn Tanner.4 I remain unpersuaded by their proposals both methodologically and materially, but it was a revelation to see how far the problem of grace has been the lead dog when it comes to discussion of divine action. (p.6) Originally, I had planned to take the soundings all the way up to the present. This course of action would have enabled me to track some crucial figures in the transition that led to the cultivation of the cramp that I aim to eliminate. Thus it would have allowed me to include a chapter on Immanuel Kant, clearly a pivotal figure in the impoverishment that I lament and excoriate.5 It would also have allowed me to tackle the problems that show up in Frederick Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, liberation theologies, and Pentecostal theologies. However, I decided that just as I ended Volume One with material informed by the debate about freedom and grace, then it would be fitting to end this volume on the same topic by tackling the proposals of Louis de Molina. Perhaps until we crack this problem, crucial problems related to divine action will never be resolved. Obsession with issues related to grace and freedom are another source of mental cramp that we need to dissolve once and for all. For my part I am convinced the problem of grace and freedom can be resolved by proper attention to the language of causation as related to divine and human agency. In this volume I show that when we look carefully even at the debate between Augustine and Pelagius, the problem may not at all be as acute as the commentary tradition insists it is. Augustine gives us more room to breathe than either his own or later theories of predestination tend to allow. Whatever we think of what I say about the problem of grace and freedom both historically and conceptually, it is high time that we prevented it from dominating our thinking. We need to keep our eyes on the full range of divine action that show up in the Christian tradition. As I show in what follows, the insights of Athanasius on divine action in creation and in Christ deserve far more attention than does the attention we give to Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas on grace and freedom.

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Introduction There is another reason why we do not need to take the soundings all the way up to our own time. We do not need to go this far in order to get access to the medicine that we need. I think there is enough here to heal our souls and open up our minds to a better future in theology. Given that taking the medicine is much better than talking at length about the medicine, we can move immediately to the first dose. At the end we can come back around and make some general comments on what we have learned by stepping back and reviewing what we have learned from the raft of theologians who shall detain us in what follows. Notes:

(1) William J. Abraham, Divine Agency and Divine Action: Exploring and Evaluating the Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). (2) Eugene Teselle, “Divine Action: The Doctrinal Tradition,” in Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Edward Henderson (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 71–92. (3) For a recent treatment of the issue along these lines see Stephen Fowl, “Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 345– 61. (4) I discuss their respective contributions in Chapters 10 and 11 of volume I. (5) I have provided a lengthy review of divine agency and divine action on Kant in “Divine Agency and Divine in Kant,” forthcoming. The work of Benedict Spinoza also deserves attention at this point, not least because he saw so clearly the moral problems related to certain claims about divine action in Scripture and the historical problems thrown up by historical investigation.

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The Stamp of the Infinite

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

The Stamp of the Infinite Divine Agency and Divine Action in Paul William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter, the author engages what Paul of Tarsus says about divine agency and divine action in his letters and in the book of Acts. Attention is given to the types of divine actions Paul identifies, whether he identifies God as an agent of various actions, and his comments about whether we have access to divine agency and divine action. The author identifies particular divine actions seen in Paul’s writings, like the work of God in his own life and in his calling as an apostle, personal revelations from Christ, and divine action in the church that brings about unity. Keywords:   Paul of Tarsus, personal revelation, divine action, apostle, new creation, Holy Spirit, religious language, salvation

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The Stamp of the Infinite Paul of Tarsus provides the first written accounts of the central claims about divine agency and divine action in the Christian tradition. His place in the tradition is so secure that various scholars have posited that he is effectively the first Christian, radically departing from the much simpler message of Jesus and inventing the basic Christian narrative about Jesus.1 This is not how he is seen either canonically or historically by the church. Clearly we have radically different evaluations of the content and significance of Paul. This should not surprise us for Paul’s life and his vision of divine action involve a challenge to any secular or naturalistic reading of his letters. Half a century ago, Wayne Meeks readily captured the way in which Paul can undercut a common mode of intellectual self-confidence. Our vaunted objectivity, the universality of our reasoning, the efficacy of our methods, are all in question. The aim of the modernist project that, beginning in the eighteenth century, came to dominate the writing of history in the nineteenth and twentieth century, was to free ourselves, by the sheer power of our rationality and the austerity of our method, from traditions and dogmas and the institutions that sustained and lived by them. Thus, by seeing the past as it really was, we thought to find a secure starting place for knowing and valuing. We discovered meaning to be always dependent on context. We found identity to be a social process. And we learned that we could not avoid involving ourselves whenever we attempted to assess historical events and personages in a non-trivial way.2 Accepting most of the force of this observation but setting aside any final evaluation of its content, my aim in this chapter is to chart what Paul has to say about divine agency and divine action. What specific divine actions does (p.8) he identify? Do some specific actions get more attention than others? How does he identify God as the agent of various divine acts? What second-order comments does he make about divine agency and divine action and about our access to divine agency and divine action?3

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The Stamp of the Infinite We can begin with an account of Paul’s call to be an apostle to the Gentiles.4 According to his companion Luke, Paul, a Jew brought up and trained in a rigorous Pharisaic school of Judaism, set out on a journey from Jerusalem to Damascus in order to secure legal action against a network of Jews who had become followers of Jesus. Convinced that they had misread the role of divine action in Jesus and that they posed a serious threat to the faith of his ancestors, his aim was to bring them back to Jerusalem for appropriate reprimand. En route a light from heaven flashed around him, he fell to the ground, and heard a voice he named as “Lord,” which interrogated him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The source and agent of the voice identified itself in turn in a twofold manner, first, by way of the name of Jesus, and second, by way of a definite description, that is, the one “whom you are persecuting.” Both designations are puzzling in the extreme. For Jesus, whom Paul had assumed to be justly punished and executed and was therefore dead, was not only present directly in an utterly mysterious contemporary encounter with Paul but also present in the people whom Paul was persecuting. Immediately Paul was given orders by the same agent to get up and enter Damascus where he would be told what to do. Blinded by this stage even though his eyes were physically open, he was led by the hand to Damascus where he remained without sight and neither ate nor drank. Read straight up, this is an astonishing experience which should not be run through casually. The crucial divine action involved is that of divine speaking represented by interrogation and command. The agent is identified both as the Lord and as Jesus. The speech acts of the Lord were preceded by flashing lights; they were expressed in an audible voice heard only by Paul and not by his companions; and they were accompanied by the loss of physical sight. For his part Paul fell to the ground, remained remarkably docile, and has all the appearance of a passive human agent overwhelmed by a show of divine strength and person-relative revelation.

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The Stamp of the Infinite The promise of further instruction from the Lord was no less remarkable in its execution. A Christian disciple in Damascus, called Ananias, had a vision in which he was told to go to a specific street and house in Damascus where he (p. 9) should look for a man from Tarsus called Saul, which was Paul’s common name at the time. Simultaneously, Paul in prayer was experiencing a vision in which he saw a man named Ananias come, lay hands on him, and thereby regain his sight. Knowing Paul’s reputation Ananias was skeptical of such a prospect. The rejoinder from the Lord to Ananias was as simple as it was effective. Paul was an instrument chosen to bring the Lord’s name before the Gentiles, kings, and the people of Israel. In turn this would be a vocation that would involve much suffering. When Ananias eventually met Paul as anticipated, he made it clear that he had been sent by the Lord Jesus, the one who had appeared to Paul earlier. Ananias laid hands on Paul, acting as a human agent in the regaining of his sight and his being filled with the Holy Spirit. Something like scales fell from Paul’s eyes, he regained his sight, was baptized, ate some food, and regained his strength. We already have a network of dramatic phenomena related to divine action on our hands: a divine voice, a most unusual agent, unexpected physical phenomena, a vision, and a double miracle. These are precisely the kind of phenomena that set our teeth on edge in and around the topic of divine action. The shards of modernity still lingering within our breast tempt us to dismiss the whole story as infested with superstition and credulity; our postmodern impulses tempt us to look for the power play and the hidden drive to authority that must lie beneath the surface. Ananias’ skeptical worries arise for different reasons. What is reported in his vision about Paul does not fit with his background beliefs; what immediately comes to his mind is the evil Paul has done to the saints in Jerusalem. Even God is held to an informal standard of evidence in which the narrative of divine action cannot ignore the human-historical narrative that everybody knows to be the case. Ananias’ problem is one of coherence: what God is saying does not fit with what he already knows to be the case. The resolution of his skepticism does not involve debates about divine intervention and miracle; it rests on the reception and recognition of the intentions and purposes of God in the life of Paul as it relates to the spread of the Gospel. Even then, he will need more than a mere articulation of potential coherence within a narrative of divine action; what he is open to believing about divine action is confirmed in his subsequent encounter with Paul in Damascus.

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The Stamp of the Infinite As far as divine action is concerned, this account of Paul’s call is complemented by his own way of identifying the divine actions that fit with what happened to him. Thus he speaks of having been appointed to be an apostle5 and of being set apart and called.6 Correlative with this we are not surprised that Paul claims that he has been given authority by God to build up rather than tear down believers in Corinth,7 that he has been given a specific sphere of (p.10) influence,8 that he was an ambassador through whom God was making an appeal,9 and that he has been given a ministry of reconciliation.10 He also dared to say that he, together with Silvanus and Timothy, had “been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel.”11 This gave them a distance from the demands of human agents but only to bring into play an accountability before God “who tests our hearts.”12 Within this vocation Paul received specific person-relative special revelation to go to Jerusalem to meet with other Christian leaders in a private meeting. As he noted: “I went up in response to a revelation.”13 More generally, Paul was the subject of divine action described in terms of visions and revelation whose contents were not shared in any great detail.14 These were of such an exceptional character that they were laden with spiritual danger. Initially Paul reported the antidote to this acute danger in terms of the evasive passive, that is, “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to prevent me from being too elated.”15 The context makes clear, however, that God was intimately involved, for when Paul appealed for release from this constraint, the Lord responded: “My grace is sufficient for you for power is made perfect in weakness.”16 Beyond such personal revelation Paul also insisted that he had been given nonpersonal relative revelation, revelation that we might name as public or universal in that it was intended for everyone. The shocking and abrupt way in which Paul expressed this claim in his letter to the Galatians deserves to be quoted at length. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel—not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you another gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! Am I now seeking human approval or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.17 Page 5 of 24

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The Stamp of the Infinite One way to think of this claim is to see it as a claim on the part of Paul to be among the prophets, that is, one who has special access to the will of God because of his call and of his having received a word of revelation from God. Such a reading dovetails naturally with the suffering that Ananias prophesied (p.11) he would undergo, with the challenges to his status as an apostle, and with the acute spiritual temptations to which he was subject. Divine action in the life of Paul was not just confined to his dramatic call and his long-term vocation as an apostle; it also shines through in both his specific and in the more general accounts of his life and work. Thus he insists that his competence comes from God. “…our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, the Spirit gives life.”18 He looked to God to direct a way to visit the church in Thessalonica.19 When he arrived in Troas a door had been opened for him in the Lord;20 God rescued him and his associates from deadly peril.21 When his co-worker, Epaphroditus, became so ill that he nearly died, Paul described his recovery in terms of divine mercy in action: “…God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, so that I would not have one sorrow after another.”22 Anticipating a painful visit to Corinth, he was worried that when he arrived God would humble him before the church because of extensive moral failure of its members.23 Clearly divine actions such as these, while they are named quite specifically take place in, with, and through the course of his experience and encounters with others. Thus divine action naturally spreads into the course of life as a whole. No matter whether Paul faced scarcity or plenty, he could do all things through him who strengthened him.24 In a memorable passage he put the issue clearly as follows. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”25 Divine action in call and ministry in the church is not confined to Paul. Just as God had called and worked through Paul among the Gentiles, God had made Peter an apostle to the circumcised. These specific calls fitted into a wider divine strategy in the life of the church. Hence Apollos and Paul are both servants with work assigned to each by the Lord. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.26

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The Stamp of the Infinite God commanded that special agents like these who were set apart full-time for the proclamation of the Gospel should earn their living by the Gospel.27 However, it is not likely that all who were appointed to a special ministry in the church shared this privilege. This is manifest in the additional network of agents appointed by God in the church. “…God has appointed in the church (p.12) first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues.”28 As Paul and others preach the Gospel those who hear and receive their message are also subject to a diverse array of divine action. Thus believers in Thessalonica are described as chosen by God29 and called into the kingdom of God.30 The Corinthian believers have been called by God “into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord”;31 God has shone into their hearts “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”32 The Roman believers are “called to belong to Jesus Christ.”33 God demonstrated his love for them in that while they were sinners Christ died for them.34 They were justified by the grace of God as a gift, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood effective through faith.”35 They were the recipients of the love of God poured out into their hearts through the Holy Spirit that had been given to them. Similarly, the Galatian believers had received the Holy Spirit through believing what they heard rather than by doing the works of the law, so much so that God supplied the Holy Spirit and worked miracles among them.36 More generally God sent the Spirit of his Son into the hearts of believers whereby they cry “Abba! Father!” and receive a spirit of adoption in which the Spirit bears witness to their spirits that they are children of God.37 Elsewhere Paul speaks of God giving the Spirit as a guarantee of future blessing in the life to come.38 Moreover, his general aspiration for believers is that the God of peace sanctify them entirely.39 The final outcome of this range of divine action in the lives of believers is captured in his vision of those in Christ as a new creation: “So if anyone is in Christ; there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…”40 Living the life of the new creation does not mean that everything is plain sailing for those who have believed, repented, and been baptized. Intimate divine action comes into play as they suffer with and for Christ and as they struggle with the moral requirements of Christian discipleship. [T]he Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.41

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The Stamp of the Infinite (p.13) In times of emotional and relational stress, as happened in Paul’s worries about his relationship with the Corinthian congregation, God consoles through the agency of others. For even when we came into Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were afflicted in every way—disputes without and fears within. But God, who consoles the downcast, consoled us by the arrival of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was consoled about you, as he told us of your longing, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced still more.42 Paul clearly believes that divine assistance is given more generally in the church to bring about genuine harmony. Thus he prays: “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”43 More specifically, given the thorny problem of table-fellowship as it related to a pious commitment to vegetarianism on the part of some Christians, “Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them.”44 Even faith itself is dependent on divine action. “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”45 In this instance we observe a remarkable coordination between divine action and human action. Believers are expected to think with sober judgment about their place in the church, yet such thinking is exercised within the measure of faith assigned to them by God. The context of this reference to divine action suggests that Paul may be thinking of faith here as a divinely given awareness of the gifts distributed by the Holy Spirit within the body. Elsewhere he makes it clear that he sees divine action as essential to coming to faith itself, that is, in salvation. “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation in fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”46

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The Stamp of the Infinite Thus far we have looked at a range of specific divine actions that is naturally articulated in the call of Paul, in the ministries of his co-workers in the church, and in the lives of his converts scattered across the congregations to which he wrote. We have taken a set of soundings so that we can begin to get a sense of the wide range of actions predicated of God. We are working from below rather than from above; that is, we are interested in the very particular action predicates that show up. It would be tedious to rattle off a list of all the action (p.14) predicates deployed at this point: create, call, appoint, redeem, direct, humble, shine into human hearts, justify, sanctify, send the Spirit, raise Jesus from the dead, reconcile, and so on. However, it is crucial to grasp the significance of this exercise. In the twentieth century the drive to develop various general theories related to such discourse has been well-nigh irresistible. We can think of hermeneutical theories that depict talk of divine action as mythological. Or we can think of semantic theories that posit a generic account of religious language that treats such discourse as expressions of intention to lead an agapeistic way of life, or as expressions of emotion, or as sui generis and therefore not factual or explanatory, or as disguised expressions and bids for power. There is no simple, decisive way to rule out general semantic theories of the sort just identified; virtually any expression deployed by, say, Paul can be uprooted and made to do whatever work the theologian wants it to do. So one can take the sentence, “God raised Jesus from the dead,” and use it to express the sentence, “The early disciples of Jesus came to a new and life-changing perspective on the significance of Jesus.” Moreover, we can expect that general theories of religious discourse, like the poor, are always likely to be with us. What I want to do by highlighting the particularity of divine action predication as we find it in Paul is to bring all such exercises under strain. They fail to do justice to the radical specificity of what Paul actually says. They cannot capture the cognitive content and usage of the very particular claims about divine action that we encounter.47 The same applies in the drive to secure a general account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of action discourse and then use that to understand particular divine actions. So suppose we arrive at a strong consensus that all actions necessarily involve conscious intention on the part of the agent who performs them. This will not begin to do justice to the distinction, say, between create and redeem, or between test our hearts and raise Jesus from the dead as applied to God. It is specific actions like these that are the life blood of theology and that are vital for the life and action of the ordinary believer. Being informed that these actions are all carried out intentionally does next to nothing to help us with how to think through the full meaning and significance of the divine actions that are central to theology. Any general concept of divine action that we might abstract from a paradigm case of divine (p.15) action or from a sampling of divine action, even if this were semantically available to us, is next to useless in theology. Page 9 of 24

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The Stamp of the Infinite We can indeed move to a more general level in our thinking of divine action. At this point Paul’s worries were radically different from how worries about divine action are generally articulated. Paul’s challenge was to figure out how the divine actions already specified fit into a wider narrative of divine action that also has to be articulated in terms of very particular divine actions. The broad question is this: How does divine action in Paul, in his associates, in his converts, and in their churches fit into a more comprehensive narrative of creation and recreation? Moreover, within this agenda, Paul was especially challenged to figure out how the divine strategy to save the whole world, that is, the world of Gentiles as well as Jews, is to be accurately interpreted. At this level what is at stake is a thoroughly contested analysis of divine promise and fulfillment. Hence our next task is to come to terms with the wider narrative as we find it in Paul. Notice afresh that we are still in the realm of specific action predicates such as creation, recreation, promise, and fulfillment. Paul begins his wider narrative in midstream, as we find it laid out in Romans. After initial salutations he portrays the Gospel as first and foremost the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.48 The manifestation of this power is a salutary antidote to the wrath of God that is also manifest across the Greco-Roman world of ungodliness and wickedness.49 Divine judgment is entirely apt given the background divine action of creation and revelation. God in creating the world has made manifest his eternal power and divine nature. God has shown himself plainly in the created order; God’s power and nature have been understood by human agents through the things God has made. Human agents are therefore without excuse when they suppress the truth about God, failing to honor and give thanks to him. Consequently human agents “become futile in their thinking and their senseless minds become darkened.”50 They claim to be wise but are essentially fools, substituting the worship of images of humans and animals for the worship of God. As a result God reacts by handing human agents to their own lusts, passions, and debased minds. These inner dispositions are expressed in a host of ways ranging from idolatry, to sexual immorality, to a general catalogue of human vices. They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious towards parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They know God’s decree, that those who practice (p.16) such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but applaud others who practice them.51

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The Stamp of the Infinite The divine antidote to this downward spiral of disordered human minds, dispositions, and vicious habits and actions begins with God’s election of Abraham and his offspring to be the bearer of a divine promise of righteousness, that is, of victory over evil. Abraham and his children represent a reversal in which faith in God’s promise to bless (and the obedience it evokes) replaces the rejection of divine revelation and its consequences in human history. That promise announced before in the scriptures is now fulfilled in the coming of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.52 Gentiles who exercise faith in Jesus Christ have equal access to the fulfillment of that promise as much as Jews do. “…the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying: ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed by you.’”53 Where before God has handed all over to disobedience, “so that he might be merciful to all,”54 now mercy is available to all who return to God in repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. Two features related to divine action are pivotal to Paul’s account of the journey from creation to recreation. First, God’s promise of salvation is now fulfilled and focused on Jesus Christ; second, the fulfillment of the divine promise to Abraham applies to all who have faith in Jesus Christ, that is, to Gentiles as well as Jews. Focusing on Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the divine promise to Abraham does not eliminate the privileges of the Jewish people prior to the coming of Christ. “They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever.”55 These promises are now embodied and fulfilled in what God has done in Jesus Christ. God has sent his Son Jesus Christ to set us “free from the law of sin and death.”56 “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”57 This redemption was achieved through Jesus Christ, “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.”58 “For our sake he (God) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him (Christ) we might become the righteousness of God.”59 This Jesus was buried and then raised from the dead by God.60 “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.”61 And on the Day of Judgment, “God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.”62

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The Stamp of the Infinite (p.17) What this wider angle of vision on divine action makes clear is that for Paul what God has done in Jesus Christ lies at the very center of a narrative of creation, freedom, failure, judgment, promise, and redemption. This involved for him a revolutionary change of mind about the place of Jesus Christ in God’s action in history for the reorientation of the world. It did not involve, however, a repudiation of divine action in Israel; on the contrary it posited continuity between God’s action in Israel and in Jesus Christ. For this reason it has rightly become common to avoid talk of conversion when we think of Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus. Paul was already a faithful Jew.63 What happened to him was that he underwent a radical change of perspective on the meaning of his Jewish faith.64 Furthermore, Paul was insistent that the promise of God to Abraham as it applies to Gentiles does not require that they first become Jews. [L]et each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned you, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandment of God is everything. Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.65 We can frame the issue felicitously in terms of God’s intentions. All along the divine intention was to come in the person of his Son Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. “Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring; it does not say, ‘And to offsprings’, as of many; but it says, ‘And to your offspring’, that is, to one person, who is Christ.”66 Moreover, the blessing promised was not simply to Jews but also to Gentiles. “…the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying: ‘All the Gentiles shall be blessed by you.’ For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.”67 Finally, the blessing of Abraham came initially into effect not through his observance of circumcision or the law but through faith in the promise of God. If the inheritance came through the law, “it no (p.18) longer comes from the promise, but God granted it to Abraham through the promise.”68

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The Stamp of the Infinite Is this blessedness, then, promised only on the circumcised, or also on the uncircumcised? We say, ‘Faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness.’ How then was it reckoned to him? Was it reckoned to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after but before he was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the ancestor of all who believe without being circumcised and who thus have righteousness reckoned to them, and likewise the ancestor of the circumcised but who also follow the example of the faith that our ancestor Abraham had before he was circumcised.69 The focus on divine action in Jesus Christ within a wider narrative of creation, freedom, failure, judgment, promise, and redemption, and the inclusion of Gentiles into the family of Abraham, are pivotal in capturing the storyline of divine action for Paul. It is not difficult to see that his catalogue of specific actions is readily suggestive of fresh ways of naming the identity of the divine agent at work here. It would be false to say that Paul identifies God explicitly in terms of later Trinitarian theology but it would be equally false to say that the issue remains exactly where it was before Saul became Paul.

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The Stamp of the Infinite Paul identifies “the living and true God”70 in a variety of ways as God, our God and Father, the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord, and the Creator.71 However, there are fascinating instances where the action of God is associated with—if not identified with—the agency of Jesus Christ and the agency of the Spirit. Consider how the action of God is intimately related to the agency of Jesus Christ. “…for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”72 God sent his Son to redeem those under the law.73 “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our lord Jesus Christ.”74 Grace and peace are traced to “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”75 Paul is appointed as an apostle through Jesus Christ and God the Father.76 “…we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”77 In times of trouble God supplies the needs of the Philippians “according to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”78 In the Day of Judgment “God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.”79 (p.19) We find similar intimate relations between the action of God and the Spirit. The Lord is the Spirit.80 Human agents as God’s temple are identical to human agents as the Spirit’s temple.81 The power of the Spirit is identified with the power of God.82 The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead.83 The Holy Spirit imparts true understanding of God.84 “…God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”85 The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.86 We also find an intimate relation between the action of Jesus Christ and the action of the Spirit. “No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Spirit.”87 Speaking of his ministry Paul says this: “I will not venture to speak of anything except what God has accomplished through me to win obedience from the Gentiles, by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and as far as Ilyricum I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ.”88 Speaking of his converts at Corinth he writes: “…you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”89 Referring to the various gifts distributed in the local church of Corinth, he writes: “Now there are varieties of gift, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”90

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The Stamp of the Infinite It would be tempting to dismiss the preceding observations as a rearguard attempt to provide some sort of proof texts for, say, the doctrine of the Trinity and all that that implies for the naming of God. This is neither my intention nor my point. What is at issue is the conceptual pressure that these ways of predicating action of God are likely to bring to bear on how we name and understand God in the Christian tradition.91 To speak of God in the way that Paul does—and does in an entirely natural manner—is no casual affair. It is small wonder that those committed to the theological traditions of Judaism who rejected his claims and even fellow believers committed to following Jesus as the Jewish Messiah were deeply unsettled by this kind of discourse. At the very least the material claims advanced by Paul about divine action and about the way in which divine action is intimately related to the actions of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God are likely to evoke prolonged reflection once they are taken seriously. Given his vocation Paul had his own way of reflecting on divine agency and divine action. On the negative side Paul eventually died for his convictions at the hands of Roman officials. Paul was not a professor of theology, as envisaged, say by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas takes Paul to be a theologian of the doctrine of grace, first as it is in (p. 20) Christ the head himself, second, inasmuch as it is in the principal members of his mystical body, and third, inasmuch as it is in the mystical body itself, which is the church.92 There is indeed much about divine grace in Paul; we do well to ponder the very specific action predicates and their agents before we say too much about, say, grace and freedom. Nor was Paul an analytic theologian before his time, interested, say, in working out an account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of divine action; or, say, in providing a taxonomy of divine actions that would distinguish the natural from the supernatural; or, say, in sorting through the potential conflict between divine action and human freedom, or between divine foreknowledge, predestination, and human action. As he made clear, Paul’s own self-designation was that of apostle to the Gentiles. He was a preacher, an ambassador, and an agent of reconciliation between God and the Gentile world. Yet as the last network of themes indicates, Paul provided the platform and impetus for pursuing a host of questions about divine agency and divine action. Moreover, he himself began to make some interesting secondorder comments on divine action that are worth noting at this point. Let me briefly deal with three of these, the first of which was implicit and the other two more explicit.

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The Stamp of the Infinite First, it is clear that one of the crucial challenges for Paul when he ruminated on divine action focused on finding coherence between what he had inherited as a Pharisaic Jew with respect to divine action and what he had come to believe about divine action in Jesus Christ in and of itself and as that action related to the inclusion of Gentile Christian converts in the people of God. Paul was not interested in coherence as a philosophical or logical problem; he assumed that the idea of divine action is coherent and internally consistent in the sense that the concept is in good working order and does not involve some kind of hidden contradiction. He was, however, passionately interested in how to make coherent sense of what God is doing in Christ as a fulfillment of the promises to Abraham and his descendants. Put differently, he was looking for a narrative of God’s intentions and purposes that would embrace both what God did in Israel and what God did more recently in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the subsequent experience of those who came to believe in him as Messiah of Israel and Savior of the world. Moreover, narrative here is to be taken in a realistic sense. He spoke of what God really had done in Israel, in Christ, and among his converts. Paul was concerned to develop an account of the internal consistency of divine action as placed against the background (p.21) claims of divine action in Israel; this can only get off the ground on the assumption that God really did act as depicted in Christ. Second, prima facie the divine actions related to Jesus Christ are absurd. Given certain narratives about the divine they are likely to be dismissed as ridiculous. In particular, the story of Christ’s crucifixion was radically inconsistent both with certain Jewish and certain Greek concepts of how God is supposed to act.93 In the latter case the story did not exhibit appropriate wisdom; in the former it is insufficiently warranted by miraculous signs. Hence it was bound to evoke dissonance and ridicule by many of his interlocutors. Expressed in the later technical language of theology and philosophy there was acute tension between faith and reason. By faith I mean the specific claims advanced about divine action in Christ; by reason I mean the material metaphysical and ontological commitments about the relation between God, history, and the world. On the grounds of reason, it was said, it is not possible for God to have done what Paul claimed God has done in Christ. Paul’s initial response was quite simple: it has happened, therefore it is possible. The particular actions performed by God happened so the opposing account of how God works and how the world operates must be false.

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The Stamp of the Infinite Yet Paul did not leave it there. He also began reaching for epistemological resources that would underwrite his first-order claims. Thus in Romans he developed an account as to why human agents are likely to reject if not detest what God has done; they have suppressed divine revelation, become corrupt in their judgments, and generally no longer operate as properly functioning epistemic agents. In his first letter to the Corinthians he developed a more positive line by proposing that recognition and appreciation of what God has done in the death of Christ stems in part from the work of the Spirit in imparting a wisdom that renders intelligible what God has done. This did not preclude an appeal to signs and wonders, what he called a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.94 However, these are strictly limited in their capacity to persuade and establish the truth of his proposals. All of these themes will be taken up later in the history of theology and philosophy; they are a matter of intense debate in contemporary work in the epistemology of theology. However, in Paul they remained underdeveloped. Even so, they make clear that he was interested in providing a reasoned defense of his convictions. Third, the intensity of Paul’s intellectual self-confidence is utterly astonishing. It is no surprise that from the beginning he made enemies, even among those who shared much of what he believed about divine action in Jesus. In part this is simply a matter of his personality and character; he was no shrinking violet; most of the time there was not an irenic bone in his body. However, this is a superficial observation. The deeper point of contention is (p.22) his claim to possess privileged access to the truth about God and what God is doing in history for the reorientation of human existence. He really meant it when he said that he was not looking for human approval and when he refused to provide an external set of credentials for his epistemic and executive authority to his Christian opponents.95 Paul was a man on a mission from God made clear to him in a divine call confirmed but not initially secured in various ways by others. Paul was a recipient and mediator of divine revelation. Working inside his perspective we can readily make sense of his brutal ways of speaking, for example, to the Galatians, and of his tenacity to the point of death. Epistemologically we can also make sense of these features of his life if we recognize, as we should, that divine revelation furnishes the highest form of knowledge. Operating at these levels is an acquired intellectual taste and achievement; most ordinary mortals are exactly like those interlocutors of Paul who tested what he said against their material background beliefs and when they proved to be inconsistent with those beliefs rejected what was on offer. However, there have always been those who have stayed the course with Paul and been persuaded by his proposals. His letters are a landmark collection of materials that were ultimately canonized and became Christian Scripture. The exegetical, historical, theological, and philosophical inquiry they have provoked is astonishing and continues unabated in our own day.

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The Stamp of the Infinite Much has been written about whether Paul represents simply one voice in the early developments of the Christian tradition in the New Testament. Against a stream of scholarship that has championed a story of diversity over against that of unity, Eugene E. Lemcio has proposed that there is a unifying kerygma of the New Testament. He is convinced that there is a discrete kerygmatic core that integrates the diversity that may be found in the New Testament. The kerygmatic core here isolated contains six constant items, usually but not always, introduced by a statement that what follows is kerygma, gospel, or word about (1) God who (2) sent (Gospels) or raised (3) Jesus. (4) A response (receiving, repentance, faith) (5) towards God (6) brings benefits (variously described).96 Lemcio’s intent in part is to capture afresh the theological component of the kerygma here identified. God invariably appears as the originator of the saving event and the recipient of Christian response. Furthermore, the content amounts to a recital of divine activity (narrative in nuce) rather than the acclamation of Christological status. Much more of theocentricity occurs in the New Testament; but I have deliberately confined myself to its (p.23) presence in this kerygmatic form (and to the appearances of all six elements, even though more instances with fewer items could be adduced).97 Lemcio’s proposal is an arresting one despite its thin content. What we have found in Paul certainly fits with his observations about the theocentricity of the Gospel he proclaimed. At its heart was a ringing declaration of what God had done in Jesus Christ and the promise that a divinely assisted response brought amazing benefits. What I have been at pains to bring out is the richness, complexity, and implicit realism of the details about divine action that Paul supplies. It is also important to capture the existential fear and trembling that so often comes with the response. After forty years of biblical research the great pioneering Catholic scholar, Pere M. J. Lagrange, was close to the mark when he wrote as follows. We feel tempted to say that it is all too wonderful to be true. But what is there apart from this that is of any value to us, that bears the stamp of the infinite? If we turn away from this, we are confronted with nothingness. Whither should we go, O Lord? Shall we shut ourselves up in a state of supercilious or despairing doubt, or shall we rather gather around Peter, who says still: ‘Thou hast the words of eternal life’, and surrender ourselves to the embrace of God in Jesus Christ.98

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The Stamp of the Infinite It was Paul rather than Peter who provided an exceptionally rich written articulation of the claims about divine action that Lagrange felt tempted to read as all too wonderful to be true. In fact, Paul’s writings constitute the largest block of writings written by a single author that we have in the New Testament. In time, like the rest of Christian Scripture, they were treated as the product of divine action. So the divine actions depicted by Paul were preserved in written form that has been construed in terms of further divine action. More precisely, they are said to be inspired by God. Given the significance of what Paul wrote about divine action, it is surely not accidental that they became Scripture and that his writings were seen in terms of divine action. For God to do what Paul insists God did and then simply to leave the accounts of those actions to human happenstance does not fit with the wider divine-historical narrative to which Paul wants us to respond. So it is fitting to construe the accounts as originating from divine inspiration. This was no casual development, for the action of divine inspiration as applied to Scripture has its own twists and turns when theologians sought to unpack that action as predicated of God. To that topic we now turn. Notes:

(1) James D. Tabor, Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012). (2) Wayne A. Meeks and John T. Fitzgerald, eds., The Writings of St. Paul: Annotated Texts, Reception and Criticism (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 691– 2. (3) For purposes of economy I shall limit my account to what Paul covers in what is generally accepted as his authentic letters, that is, First Thessalonians, Galatians, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, and Philemon. While this is the standard consensus among contemporary biblical scholars, it is by no means a secure consensus. (4) Daniel J. Harrington SJ, Meeting St. Paul Today (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2008), 9–11. (5) Gal. 1:1; cf. 1 Cor. 1:1. (6) Gal. 1:5. (7) 2 Cor. 10:8; 13:10. Paul insists that this authority to speak on behalf of God is accompanied by “a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” See 1 Cor. 2:4. (8) 2 Cor. 10:13. (9) 2 Cor. 5:20. (10) 2 Cor. 5:18.

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The Stamp of the Infinite (11) 1 Thess. 2:4. (12) Ibid. (13) Gal. 2:2. (14) 2 Cor. 12:2. (15) 2 Cor. 12:7. (16) 2 Cor. 12:9. (17) Gal. 1:6–12. (18) 2 Cor. 3:6. (19) 1 Thess. 3:11. (20) 2 Cor. 2:12. (21) 2 Cor. 1:10. The details are not specified. (22) Phil. 2:27. (23) 2 Cor. 12:21. (24) Phil. 4:13. (25) Rom. 8:28. (26) 1 Cor. 3:5–9. (27) 2 Cor. 9:14. (28) 1 Cor. 12:28. (29) 1 Thess. 1:4. (30) 1 Thess. 2:12. (31) 1 Cor. 1:8. (32) 2 Cor. 4:6. (33) Rom. 1:8. (34) Rom. 5:8. (35) Rom. 3:23–25. (36) Gal. 5:3. Page 20 of 24

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The Stamp of the Infinite (37) Gal. 4:6 and Rom. 8:16. (38) 2 Cor. 5:5. (39) 1 Thess. 5:23. Cf. 1 Thess. 4:3. (40) 2 Cor. 5:17–18. (41) Rom. 8:26–27. (42) 2 Cor. 6: 5–7. (43) Rom. 15:5–6. (44) Rom. 14:3. (45) Rom. 12:3. (46) Phil. 2:12–13. (47) E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977), 523. (48) Rom. 1:16. (49) What follows is drawn from Paul’s seminal analysis of creation given in Romans 1:18–32. (50) Rom. 1:21. (51) Rom. 1:29–32. (52) Rom. 1:2. (53) Gal. 3:8. (54) Rom. 11:32. (55) Rom. 9:4–5. (56) Rom. 8:2. (57) Gal. 4:4. (58) Rom. 3:25. (59) 2 Cor. 5:21. (60) Rom. 1:4, 1 Cor. 15:15, 1 Thess. 1:10. (61) 1 Cor. 6:14. Page 21 of 24

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The Stamp of the Infinite (62) Rom. 2:16. (63) Nowhere is this more forcefully expressed than in Phil. 3:4–6. “If anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” (64) In the wake of the new perspectives on Paul initiated by E. P. Sanders one way to think of this debate is precisely as a debate about how the specific divine action of salvation is to be spelled out. Is God’s covenant with Israel such that we get in by grace but remain in by our actions and works? What precisely does divine covenant-making as articulated in Paul entail? (65) David J. Rudolph, A Jew to the Jews: Jewish Contours of Pauline Flexibility in 1 Corinthians 9:12–23 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). (66) Gal. 3:16. (67) Gal. 3:8. (68) Gal. 3:18. (69) Rom. 4:9–12. (70) 1 Thess. 1:2. (71) Rom. 2:16, 1 Thess. 1:2, 1 Thess. 1:3, 2 Cor. 11:31, 1 Cor. 11:32, and Rom. 1:35, respectively. (72) 1 Cor. 8:6. (73) Gal. 5:5. Compare Gal. 3:3 where Christ redeems from the curse of the law. See also Rom. 3:24 where redemption comes through Jesus Christ, and Rom. 7:25, where Paul describes himself as rescued from the body of death through our Lord Jesus Christ. (74) 1 Cor. 15:57. (75) 2 Cor. 1:2. See also Rom. 1:7 and Phil. 3. (76) Gal. 1:1. (77) 2 Cor. 5:20. (78) Phil. 4:19. (79) Rom. 2:16.

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The Stamp of the Infinite (80) 2 Cor. 3:15, 18. (81) 1 Cor. 3:16. (82) 1 Cor. 2:4. (83) Rom. 8:11. (84) 1 Cor.11:13. (85) Rom. 5:5. (86) Rom 8:27. (87) 1 Cor. 12:3. (88) Rom. 15:18–19. (89) 2 Cor. 3:3. (90) 1 Cor. 12:4–5. (91) R. Kendall Soulen, The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity: Distinguishing the Voices (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011). (92) I take this summary from Aquinas’ own words as found in Otto Hermann Pesch, “Paul as Professor of Theology: The Image of the Apostle in St. Thomas’s Theology,” The Thomist 38 (1974): 584–605. Pesch argues that Aquinas, even as he holds that Aquinas wrote his letters as a philosopher trained by the logic of Aristotle, provides a remarkably accurate account of justification in Paul. He also nicely undermines the common assumption that there is some kind of necessary incompatibility between scholasticism and an evangelical movement in the life of the church. (93) The issues are taken up in 1 Cor. 1–2. (94) 2 Cor. 1:4. (95) 2 Cor. 3:1–3. (96) Eugene E. Lemcio, “The Unifying Kerygma of the New Testament,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988): 6. (97) Ibid., 7. Emphasis as in the original. Lemcio has a follow-up article where he provides additional evidence for his claims. See Eugene E. Lemcio, “The Unifying Kerygma of the New Testament (II),” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1990): 3–11.

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The Stamp of the Infinite (98) Pere M. J. Lagrange OP, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, vol. 2 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1938), 340–1.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages The Divine Inspiration of Scripture William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords One significant divine action borne out in the pages of the New Testament is the divine inspiration of Scripture, attested most clearly in 2 Timothy 3:16. The author asks what set of divine actions best describe the production of Scripture, and investigates what the early Christians thought about the divine production of Scripture. The author then interrogates the work of Irenaeus of Lyons and Origen of Alexandria, and concludes that their concerns with Scripture were not with developing a theory of inspiration. Then the author argues that modern debates about the divine authorship of Scripture confuse the action of speaking and the action of inspiration, when the two realities are distinct. He thus concludes that the divine inspiration of Scripture should be distinguished from divine authorship. Keywords:   Scripture, divine inspiration, divine agency, human action, Origen, Irenaeus of Lyons, divine authorship

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages The Christian tradition is committed inexorably to a very substantial network of divine action in creation, in Israel, and in Jesus Christ. More significantly it is tied to spelling out a sequence of specific divine actions that articulate the core of the theological tradition as a whole. Thus Paul developed a narrative of creation, freedom, failure, promise, and fulfillment. Within this divine–human, cosmic–historical narrative Paul was profoundly challenged on how to speak of the place of Jesus Christ in God’s overall purposes of redemption and of how the coming of Gentiles to faith in God through Jesus Christ was to be rendered intelligible in the absence of their becoming canonically Jewish. He argued that both the coming of Jesus and the inclusion of the Gentiles in the people of God were in continuity rather than discontinuity with what God had done in creation and in Israel; both were coherent rather than incoherent with the divine strategy initiated in Israel; both were the divine fulfillment of prior divine promises. One simple way to advance both of these claims was to say that these divine acts were carried out according to the Scriptures.1 A deep motivation for the use of the phrase “according to the Scriptures” stemmed from the further claim that God was intimately involved in the production of Scripture. The immediate question that arises now is this: What specific divine actions best describe the production of Scripture? Did Paul and those who came after him specify the divine action that best captured the particular action predicated of God? This is not initially a question of the mode or how of God’s action. We are interested in the logically prior question of the designation or identity of the divine action envisaged. Put grandly, we are interested in the semantics of divine inspiration. Paul’s own writings are (p.25) conspicuously underdeveloped at this point. The most famous designation appears in 2 Tim. 3:16. “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” This text is late in the New Testament; it is grammatically complex; and it may be more Paulinist than Paul, depending on how we settle questions of authorship. This is not to belittle its content in other contexts; in fact it is a splendid text in its own right; rather, it is of limited value in resolving what he meant by divine inspiration. One obvious reason for the lack of attention to the divine action of inspiration on Paul’s part is that it was not a matter of contention in the debates which preoccupied him. Paul’s formation within the Jewish tradition provided him with a robust sense of what was involved in the divine inspiration of Scripture in that it was an element of a wider vision of Scripture and its production. So he could operate against this background music. However, this simply pushes the question further back: Was there a general sense of the inspiration of Scripture in Second Temple Judaism? And, if there was, what was it? Later I shall point out that a very plausible answer to these queries has not gotten the attention it deserves for understanding early Christian concepts of divine inspiration. Page 2 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages It is these early Christian concepts of divine inspiration that I want to explore in this chapter. The questions I plan to take up are these: In speaking of the production of Scripture what action predicates show up in representative figures? What human actions are involved? What divine actions are proposed? Do certain divine action predicates, or a family of action predicates, take center stage? If so, what work do they do? What role do they play in the interpretation of Scripture? What in broad strokes is their after-life, if any, in later Christian theology? In due course I shall focus on Irenaeus and more briefly on Origen. However, both Irenaeus and Origen stand in a more general tradition that deploys a very interesting web of attributes and action predicates that have long been known and catalogued. Before we explore what divine actions become standard in the production of Scripture, it is important to pause and note that a whole network of human actions is causally necessary if we are to do justice to what happened in the origination of Scripture. The line of human action moves from their initial writing, through their dissemination, through their collection into a single book, and on to their designation as Scripture. Paul’s writings, for example, are entirely human in the sense that they arise because he was faced with a host of issues that cried out for attention in early Christian congregations. He engaged in intelligent acts of reflection, vocal acts of speaking to an amanuensis or scribe, physical acts of writing, and social acts that ensured the safe delivery of his writings to their recipients. Luke makes it clear that his work went beyond those just enumerated to include research and (p.26) careful reflection so that he might achieve the goals he set himself as a writer.2 Papias, a second-century Christian writer, in a famous comment on Mark’s gospel, tells us that Mark put it together from notes of the occasional preaching of Peter and thus that it was incomplete though careful as far as it went.3 If we allow for this, Mark still had to make a host of decisions on what to include, how to organize the whole, how to have it produced for circulation, and the like. So the individual writers or schools of writers or editors all engaged in various human acts to ensure that the materials that became Scripture were produced in the first place.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages Once these materials were disseminated and read, there was then the complex human process in which they were selected and gathered together. Initially they were written and copied mostly as single documents on smaller rolls of papyrus; and then gathered in larger codices of vellum where they could be given a definite order. Before they could become candidates for selection as Scripture they had to be widely read or heard and then appreciated by their recipients. Initially the process of canonization was informal as different leaders and communities began to develop lists of writings that they began to consider as Scripture. Certain books, like the gospels and Pauline letters, were readily listed and gradually designated as Scripture. Others were deemed marginal. Some of these were accepted, like Hebrews, Revelation, the Pastoral Epistles, Jude, and James; others were dropped, like 1 and 2 Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. In time leaders gathered in local synods began to make official lists of writings,4 but there was no general or canonical action taken by the church until after the Reformation at the Council of Trent. Prior to that lists were drawn up by Athanasius, Epiphanius, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Gregory of Nazianzus. Jerome’s production of the Vulgate and its hearty reception in the West were decisive for the adoption of the Western canon of Scripture. A multiplicity of social human action and activity was therefore indispensable for the creation of Christian Scripture.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages We can also identify an array of fascinating human intellectual judgments in play in the handling of canonization. Many have posited an epistemic judgment as crucial to the process, namely, the judgment that the church needed a criterion of truth in order to adjudicate the disputes that naturally arose within the church as it faced external and internal threats to its identity and authenticity. I leave aside here whether this is an inflationary projection back into the life of the church of an obsession that was to grip theologians for centuries and is still alive and well today. What is undeniable is that human agents informally engaged in a host of intellectual acts that resulted in the privileging of certain texts as Scripture. Thus some judged that the favored texts were apostolic, either directly or indirectly; some queried whether letters (p.27) written to individuals should be included. Some insisted that historical books must be by eyewitnesses or careful historians; others were happy to follow the judgment of a distinguished church thinker or bishop. Augustine took his cue from the authority of as many as possible of the great Catholic churches.5 Some relied on fascinating numerological reasoning in order to decide the limits of the canon of Scripture.6 Many relied on a prior sense of canonical doctrine that ruled out any material incompatible with that doctrine. Thus the famous Muratorian Fragment, whose dating is much contested, will not have gall mixed with honey. The challenge this poses for strictly epistemic concepts of canon is not sufficiently recognized, much less resolved in a coherent manner.7 However, our concern at this point is not epistemological but ontological; the aim is to highlight the thoroughly human activity involved in the production of Scripture. This activity ran deep into the intellectual life of the individual and social agents involved. In time we shall return to the crucial significance of this catalogue of human action in the origination of Scripture. We will want to know how it fits with the descriptions of divine action that were initially common in the early centuries of the church. Hence we now turn to that topic.8 One of the most general properties ascribed to the Scriptures is that of their being in some sense “divine.” Thus we find the following designations: holy scriptures, sacred writings, sacred books, the divine Word, the divine scriptures, that through which God speaks, and the holy and adorable word of Scripture.9 Such language is very general; it suggests that somehow the writings that were included in the canon of the New Testament were related to God and to divine action.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages The critical divine action that naturally emerged was that of divine inspiration. Thus Theophilus of Antioch in 181 AD spoke of the New Testament writers as being pneumatophoroi (“bearing the spirit” or “inspired”)10 and proposed the writings of the prophets and evangelists agree because all the pneumatophoroi “have spoken by one Spirit of God.”11 Two features of this example are worth noting immediately. First, the activity of inspiration was connected to the activity of the Holy Spirit; and the language of inspiration (p.28) readily was transposed into the language of speaking. So Tertullian spoke of the minds of the sacred writers “being flooded with the Holy Spirit”;12 and Clement of Alexandria refers a saying of Paul in 1 Cor. 3:2 to the Holy Spirit in the apostle “using mystically the voice of the Lord.”13 Philo and Athenagoras in describing the inspiration of the prophets spoke of “their own reason falling into abeyance and the Spirit making use of them as a flutist might play on a flute,”14 while Clement of Alexandria called the prophets the “organs of the divine voice.”15 Over time, the term theopneustis, the term used in 2 Tim. 3:16 to describe the Septuagint, was applied “to the New Testament, first in Clement, then in Origen, and Eusebius, and even in the address of the Emperor Constantine to the assembled bishops at Nicaea.”16 By this point the New Testament was clearly seen as arising from the same divine action as the Old Testament. What is not so readily recognized is that later theologians describe the extrabiblical tradition of the church as theopneustis. [T]he attribute ‘inspired by God’ (theopneustis), which the New Testament used only once and applied to the Old Testament, could be applied also to church fathers. The attributes and epithets that came to be attached to the names of the individual church fathers are a significant index of their special grace and inspiration. Athanasius was the ‘God-bearing teacher’ and ‘the inerrant winner of contests’; Basil was ‘the great eye of the Church,’ meaning perhaps ‘the leading light’; Clement of Alexandria was ‘the philosopher of philosophers,’ whose adaptions of Platonic theories had special force in the church; Dionysius the Areopagite, whose authenticity and antiquity had to be defended against critics, was ‘the one who truly spoke of God, the great and holy Dionysius,’ ‘this blessed one who was worthy of divine inspiration,’ one who had in a marvelous way taught all the dogmas of the faith correctly, and even ‘the revealer of God (theophantor)’; Gregory of Nazianzus was not only a ‘God-bearing teacher,’ as was Athanasius, but his sayings were ‘most divine.’ Even some of the Latin fathers came in for recognition, especially Ambrose, and above all, Pope Leo I.17 Maximus follows out the logic of this to the point where inspiration is predicated of the first five ecumenical councils. Thus he pointed out to some of his opponents:

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages First let them prove this on the basis of the determinations of the fathers!…If this is impossible, then let them leave these opinions behind and join us in (p.29) conforming to what has been reverently determined by the divinely inspired fathers of the catholic church and the five ecumenical councils.18 Not surprisingly, if the fathers and councils are used as an epistemic criterion in theology, a problem of circularity crops up when the robber-baron council of Ephesus 429 was rejected because its doctrine was rejected. Those who argued that this or that theological doctrine was warranted by an ecumenical council suddenly found that an ecumenical council was in part identified because its doctrine was already determined to be true. There is another problem in the making: Does the move to predicate inspiration of fathers and councils undermine the privileged place of Scripture in the fathers? One simple way of resolving this was to posit different degrees of inspiration, a move already applied to Scripture itself when scriptural materials failed to come up to the standard of excellence expected of Scripture.19 However, the more interesting, if not more acute problem, stems from the fact that one can agree on both the reality and scope of inspiration, restricted, say, in the strongest sense or degree, to Scripture and still face the challenge of interpretation. Sorting through the responses to this problem as we find it in Irenaeus and Origen throws invaluable light on how inspiration was understood when predicated of Scripture. In fact there were two distinct issues that deserve attention. First, who are the reliable agents of the interpretation of inspired Scripture? Second, how does one deal with difficult texts that initially appear unworthy of God as the agent of inspiration? It was Irenaeus who supplied one of the most influential answers to the first problem. He dealt with the challenge in not just one but three distinct ways. First, he insisted that the problem could be resolved by using passages which were perfectly plain to interpret passages which were not so plain. Irenaeus presupposed here that God in providing Scripture had made available truth that was generally accessible. By daily study it is easy to know what God wants us to know. “These things are such as fall [plainly] under our observation, and are clearly and unambiguously in express terms set forth in the Sacred Scriptures.”20 (p.30)

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages Since, therefore the entire scriptures, the prophets, and the Gospels, can be clearly, unambiguously, and harmoniously understood by all, although all do not believe them; and since they proclaim that one only God, to the exclusion of all others, formed all things by His word, whether visible or invisible, heavenly, or earthly, in the water of under the earth, which I have shown from the very words of Scripture; and since the very system of creation to which we belong testifies, by what falls under our notice, that one Being made and governs it—these persons will seem truly foolish who blind their eyes to such a clear demonstration, and will not behold the light of the announcement made to them.21 For Irenaeus it was risky to work off parables for they admit of many interpretations; but the solution was not to “desert what is certain, indubitable and true…”22 Given the perfect consistency of Scripture as stemming from the hand of God, the parables shall harmonize with those passages which are perfectly plain; and those statements the meaning of which is clear, shall serve to explain the parables, and through the many diversified utterances [of Scripture] there shall be heard the one harmonious melody in us, praising in hymns that God who created all things.23 In the wake of this observation it is no surprise that Irenaeus insisted that, as John Behr aptly notes, Scripture should be understood on the basis of Scripture.24 Even more forcefully, Irenaeus insisted that “proofs [of the things] which are contained in the Scriptures cannot be shown except from the Scriptures themselves.”25 So the first response to the identity of reliable agents of interpretation is this: it is the reader of Scripture. This solution cut no ice with Irenaeus’ opponents, for the Gnostics not only rejected the authority of the Scriptures to which he appealed, they also insisted that they were so ambiguous that one needed the oral tradition to which they had privileged access if the truth about God was to be secured. Thus Irenaeus developed a second way to get access to the meaning of Scripture, that is, by consulting those who stood in the line of apostolic succession. The proper interpretation of inspired Scripture could be secured (p.31) by appeal to the church as represented by those churches that could trace their lineage back to the apostles appointed by Christ. The Christian doctrine, say, of creation, was to be established on the basis of the divine oracles and the divine oracles were to be interpreted by consulting “that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches…”26 Authentic apostolic tradition could in turn be secured by consulting the tradition of the apostles available in the church of Rome. Page 8 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the succession of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the succession of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.27 It is important not to read too much into this famous and contested passage. Irenaeus was engaged in a brilliant piece of apologetics against his Gnostic opponents who had claimed to have an inside track to the apostles like Paul by means of a secret oral transmission. He was undercutting the empirical claim to have access to a secret tradition by positing that the agents most likely to have access to that tradition were those of churches that could trace their lineage back to the apostles. He was not developing a full-scale epistemology of revelation in terms of precise criteria and norms. Nor beyond the reference to the missionary work of Peter and Paul does Irenaeus tell us exactly why Rome was so important for him. Rome could well have been privileged because she was representative of the range of Christians who were to be found there.28 Elsewhere Irenaeus was perfectly happy to speak of a succession of presbyters in various places, albeit presbyters who are coordinated with a succession of bishops.29 Moreover, Irenaeus was not some kind of positivistic thinker who (p. 32) believed that the content of Scripture, whether at Rome or elsewhere, could be received without the working of the Holy Spirit or without the virtue of love.30 In keeping with his emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit, Irenaeus spoke of a third way of securing access to the authentic tradition of the apostles, namely, through the action of the Holy Spirit in the human heart.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages To which course [of the tradition they (the apostles) handed down] many nations of those barbarians who believe in Christ do assent, having salvation written in their hearts by the Spirit, without pen or ink, and, carefully preserving the ancient tradition, believing in one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things therein, by means of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; who, because of his surpassing love towards His creation, condescended to be born of the virgin, He Himself uniting man through Himself to God, and having suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rising again, and having been received up in splendour, shall come in glory, the Saviour of those who are saved, and the Judge of those who are judged, and sending into eternal fire those who transform the truth, and despise his Father and His advent. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom. If anyone were to preach to these men the inventions of the heretics, speaking to them in their own language, they would at once stop their ears, and flee as far as possible, not enduring to listen to the blasphemous address. Thus, by means of that ancient tradition of the apostles, they do not suffer their mind to conceive of anything of the [doctrines suggested by the] portentous language of these teachers among whom neither Church nor doctrine has ever been established.31 To sum up, reliable interpretation of Scripture is available through the agency of the reader, through the agency of the church as represented in churches with proper presbyterial and episcopal succession, and through the work of the Holy Spirit in the human heart. While Irenaeus was not at all uninterested in the details of Scripture much of his attention is focused on the broad sweep of Christian doctrine from creation to eschatology. When we turn to Origen, we are dealing with a wayward genius who delighted in every jot and tittle of Scripture. Not surprisingly, he was acutely aware of the challenge of those difficult texts of Scripture which did not fit with his vision of divine inspiration. In this instance the problem is that of how to deal with texts that initially appear unworthy of God as the agent of inspiration.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages Origen assumed at the outset the belief that the Scriptures were written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In keeping with this he can speak of the (p.33) Scriptures being composed in a style that is divine32 and of the Holy Spirit supervising33 the production of Scripture. While there may be differences of degree in the inspiration, inspiration applies across the board to all of Scripture. As R. P. C. Hanson notes, “the scriptures were not only inspired but verbally inspired.”34 The natural corollaries to this vision of divine inspiration were that Scriptures are inerrant, that they are uniform in their teaching, and that they aim at edification of the faithful. Hence in his commentary on Matthew he writes: There is in the holy discourses nothing crooked or perverse, for all are clear to those who understand. And since there is nothing crooked or perverse to such a person, on this account he sees an abundance of peace in all the Scriptures, even those that seem to contain a contradiction and to be opposed to one another…For he knows that the whole Scripture is the one perfect and harmonious instrument of God.35 The great surprise in Origen’s interpretation of Scripture is that while Scripture is indeed inerrant and while everything written within it is worthy of God, the meaning of it is not at all confined to its surface meaning. In fact Origen pointed out that read in a straightforward sense Scripture turns out to contain falsehoods of both fact and doctrine. And we must also know this, that because the principal aim was to announce the connexion that exists among spiritual events, those that have already happened and those that are yet to come to pass, whenever the Word found that things which had happened in history could be harmonized with these mystical events he used them, concealing from the multitude their deeper meaning. But wherever in the narrative the accomplishment of some particular deeds, which had previously been recorded for the sake of more mystical meanings, did not correspond with the sequence of intellectual truths, the scripture wove into the story something which did not happen, occasionally something which could not happen, and occasionally something which might have happened but in fact did not. Sometimes a few words are inserted which in the bodily sense are not true, but at other times a greater number.36 (p.34) Origen’s resolution of the problem of material in Scripture that was unworthy of God was a simple one. One sought out a deeper meaning to the text by means of allegory. We need not here go into the details of this delicate operation, for the general strategy is clear.37 The goal is to find a meaning of the text that will both fit minimally with a proper account of the nature of God and be edifying to the reader.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages But if the usefulness of the law and the sequence and ease of the narrative were at first sight clearly discernible throughout, we should be unaware that there was anything beyond the obvious meaning for us to understand in the scriptures. Consequently the Word of God has arranged for certain stumbling blocks, as it were, and hindrances and impossibilities to be inserted in the midst of the law and the history, in order that we may be completely drawn away by the sheer attractiveness of the language, and so either reject the true doctrines absolutely, on the ground that we learn from the scriptures nothing worthy of God, or else by never moving away from the letter fail to learn anything of the more divine element.38 It has been tempting, following Hanson, to look upon Origen as an intense rationalist and to dismiss his complex system of allegorizing as a priori and arbitrary.39 This is a very misleading description of Origen for his actual interpretation of Scripture is constrained by what he takes to be a matter of truth on other grounds, say, of observation or warranted theory, by his wider and warranted theological commitments, and by the crucial goal of edification. Hanson is on much safer ground when he expounds Origen’s vision of inspiration and interpretation as a form of accommodation wherein God speaks to us in terms that fit both our spiritual and intellectual condition. God acts analogously to a father speaking to a child, a school teacher speaking to a student, or a doctor working with a sick person.40 My aim thus far has been to provide a meaty summary of some of the central ways of thinking of the divine inspiration of Scripture. At one level we can see that the theologians of the patristic era were not in the least interested in providing some kind of conceptual analysis of divine inspiration as (p.35) predicated of Scripture. Moreover, they had very limited interest in thinking through how they might bring their views on divine inspiration into line with the myriad human actions that show up in the composition, selection, and canonization of Scripture. What we have are really underdeveloped comments that assimilate inspiration to the relations between grace and freedom in redemption or between the incarnate Word in Christ and the words of Scripture.41 We might say that there is here the beginning of a theory of double agency; inspiration means that at one and the same time we have human acts which can also be characterized as divine acts. Whether we should go down this road is a matter of some urgency that I shall take up shortly.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages The salient action predicate that has grabbed almost universal attention in speaking of the divine origin of Scripture is that of divine inspiration. It is not exaggerated to say that in time focusing on inspiration became normative for interpreting the phenomena. This is a misleading way to proceed for several reasons. First, we find that the first theologians of the church were as much if not more concerned with the actual content of Scripture as they were with the modes of its production. Thus they were especially keen to provide a more general account of divine creation and redemption in Christ, that is, the kind of narrative that was eventually enshrined in the canonical creed of the church developed at the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the fourth century. Indeed, no agreed account of inspiration or of its relation to reason was ever canonized within the church of the patristic era; nor did a formal canonization first show up until after the Reformation. In this respect there is an interesting parallel in treatments of doctrines of atonement. Second, while it is true that the divine inspiration of Scripture was readily tied to various concepts of the authority of Scripture and thus readily led to doctrines of perfection and inerrancy, we find all sorts of other epistemic sources deployed such as logical coherence, empirical observation, appeal to the experience of the reading of Scripture, and plausible contemporary theories about the universe. Tellingly, decisions about what to count as inspired, whether applied to Scripture or authentic fathers or ecumenical councils, often presupposed various theological doctrines rather than being straightforwardly derived from them. Hence there was a remarkable tolerance of circularity. Most importantly, following the cue already given in the Pauline tradition, Scripture was read, pondered, and applied in a variety of interesting ways to foster development in spirituality and faith. This more than anything else is the deep motivation behind Origen’s astonishing remarks about divinely placed falsehoods, absurdities, and stumbling blocks. In technical theological jargon the goal of Scripture was essentially soteriological; its goals were to transmit and foster divine wisdom in the hearer or reader in the journey to (p.36) union with God within the life of the church. It was not enough just to look up the answer in a book; it is a matter of wrestling with the text and one’s own faith journey. Third, we find a variety of attributes and divine action predicates showing up in the causal language that governs the production of Scripture. Most certainly, we find a significant use of the language of inspiration of 2 Tim. 3:16, but even then we find that it was applied not just to Scripture but to the fathers and to the first five ecumenical councils. We also find the language of general divine assistance, divine composition, divine dictation, divine revelation, divine authorship, and above all divine speaking.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages This emphasis on divine speaking and on divine authorship deserves pondering. Consider why this way of thinking almost certainly emerged as the favored way of thinking of divine inspiration. One of the obsessions of early Christian thinkers was to argue that the Gospel was true because it was the fulfillment of divine prophecy. This was both integral to the proposals about the material divine action they announced and to the warrants they supplied for taking their announcement as true. Mark begins his gospel by drawing on a quotation from Isaiah and clearly indicates the activity of John the Baptist as the fulfillment of an earlier prophesy;42 Matthew takes every opportunity he can to convince us that what he says about Jesus is true because it is a fulfillment of an earlier word of promise from God. This practice continues in the post-apostolic period and is taken up with massive intensity in Irenaeus.43 My interest here is not in the logic of this latter move44 but in how this emphasis on divine prophesies spills over into concepts of divine inspiration. One way to think about this extension is to think of divine inspiration as modeled on that of God speaking to a prophet. Once this move was made then interesting questions arise about the relation between the work of God, often interpreted in terms of the Spirit, and the human agent who prophesies. This issue was not confined to Jewish and Christian circles; it crops up in both ancient Roman and ancient Greek circles. Various options were canvassed: augury, astrology, and the examination of entrails; mental excitement and dreams; and a spiritual agent of some sort imparting wisdom to the advanced soul.45 The latter option is well known to philosophers because it represents one way to handle the puzzling case of the daimonian that purportedly spoke to Socrates.46 These proposals migrated into concepts of divine inspiration (p.37) of prophets in the Jewish and Christian tradition. The linguistic landscape expanded in order to provide intelligible descriptions and explanations of what is happening in cases of divine inspiration. In turn this landscape became the vibrant world in which early Christianity was formed. Within this landscape it comes as no surprise to be told that through the Holy Spirit Paul used mystically the voice of the Lord, or that the Holy Spirit made use of the prophets as a flutist might play on a flute, or that the prophets were organs of the divine voice. Once this semantic transfer of divine speaking to divine inspiration has been completed, it is easy to see why doctrines of divine inspiration became of great epistemological import. In speaking God supplies crucial information pertaining to his actions in creation, in history, to his will for the world, to his hidden providence, and the like. We saw this when we looked at divine action in Paul in his letter to the Galatians when he summarily dismissed those who disagreed with him and refused to offer human credentials for his authority on the grounds that he had been the recipient of divine revelation from the risen Lord. At least one theologian in a later period applied exactly this language of Paul to describe the doctrines of the church and thus to provide a nuclear strike against those who disagreed.47 Page 14 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages What began as a regional account in which inspiration is understood in terms of God speaking was then extended to cover all of Scripture. If all of Scripture is divinely inspired, and divine inspiration is construed in terms of divine speaking, then the natural inference is that Scripture is divinely dictated. What Scripture says, God says; God is the author of Scripture. Once this becomes embedded in the life of the mind then we can make sense of the exegetical practices of figures like Irenaeus and Origen. Scripture will naturally but not inevitably be seen as having such properties as inerrancy, uniformity, perspicacity, semantic density, and the like. Yet even then, as we see especially in the case of Origen, there can be ingenious and surprising moves when it comes to the actual interpretation of Scripture. This follows from the fact that the divine author has freedom to speak or write in ways that fit the overall intentions of the divine project summed up in, say, creation and redemption. Moreover various conditions, like, appropriate humility before divine mystery, and the development of spiritual senses, can readily be attached to a fully rounded reading and appropriation of the content of Scripture.48 (p.38) Modern Christian theology has been haunted by the vision of Scripture as authored by God. The most pressing problem has generally been how to reconcile this vision of Scripture with the findings of historical investigation. The agenda spawned by this challenge has many sides to it that are well known. However, few have noticed the conceptual confusion that is at issue in this whole way of thinking. The point can be made with elegant simplicity. No one in their right senses would confuse the action of speaking with the action of inspiration when predicated of human agents. The action of authoring or speaking is clearly distinct from the action of inspiring. Children learn the distinction in the same way as they learn distinctions between hosts of action predicates. Yet when it comes to the identification of divine inspiration with divine speaking nobody blinks. Surely we should not just blink but stop and have a hard look at what has happened conceptually. Once we put the distinction between divine speaking and divine inspiration on the table, we are faced with a very interesting dilemma which can be addressed in at least one of two ways. The dilemma is this: How do we reconcile what we say about divine inspiration construed as divine speaking with the human actions that everyone admits played an indispensable role in the production of Scripture? The long list of human actions delineated earlier does not appear to give us instances of divine speaking or testimony to divine speaking. This, of course, is a dilemma that can be stated without saying much if anything about the results of historical investigation of Scripture; what the latter does is heighten the dilemma and make it inescapable.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages One way to proceed is to ignore the flexibility of the early tradition on exactly what divine action predicates to deploy and privilege the central idea that Scripture is authored by God. The next move is to develop a theory of double authorship so that Scripture is seen both entirely as words written by human agents and words written by God. Spelling this out in turn might then be done in a variety of ways. One obvious way would be to make use of a (p.39) doctrine of all-embracing particular providence: God minutely superintends the writing so that the process is governed by both divine and human agency. Another option would be to draw on a theory of primary and secondary causality in which God as primary agent works through the secondary instrumentalities of the human agents. In this instance one might work from a non-competitive general account of the relation between divine and human action in which there is supposedly no competitive relation between the divine and the human; a human action can be equally and fully a divine action and a divine action can be a human action. A similar kind of account might be developed by applying a suitable account of the relation between grace and freedom in salvation. In this instance one takes the action of salvation as a paradigm case and deploys the interaction of divine and human action derived from this to understand the divine and human authorship of Scripture. Alternatively, one might take another specific divine action predicate, say, the act of divine incarnation of God in Christ, and use this instance of divine action as a paradigm case of divine action. The crucial core idea in all these options is to develop a theory of double authorship and double intentionality. On the one hand, there is the intentionality of the divine and on the other the intentionality of the human agent. A comprehensive understanding of Scripture will then involve a rendering of both intentionalities. It would be accurate to say that this option has been the primary agenda for much of recent Catholic and Protestant theology that wants to provide an authentic and illuminating historical and theological reading of Scripture.49 Scripture should be read and pondered as fully the words of human agents and fully the word of God. Many analytic theologians and philosophers will be drawn to this way of thinking as it fits snugly with their traditionalist theological commitments.50

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages There is, however, another way to proceed. This would begin by exploiting the flexibility of the early tradition in its use of divine action as predicated of Scripture, note the misleading but understandable etiology of the double authorship theory, and above all insist that the distinctions between divine authorship, divine speaking, and divine inspiration be rigorously maintained. Divine inspiration would be seen as analogous to its meaning as applied to human agents; and its polymorphous nature would be preserved in both (p.40) cases.51 Equally, it would mean that the proper domain of divine speaking as it applies to ancient prophecy and to cases of contemporary divine speaking would be preserved. More generally the uniqueness of the divine incarnation in Jesus Christ as the final and ultimate locus of divine revelation would be emphasized. This in turn would create space for a more nuanced account of divine revelation and related topics; and it would require a better account of the canon of Scripture and its place in the life of the church. This agenda would work with a thoroughly soteriological concept of Scripture and eschew the kinds of circularity that crop up in epistemic concepts of inspiration that seek to protect interests in the epistemology of theology that are by no means mandatory. Such a soteriological vision of Scripture would not be afraid of warranted historical readings of the text, recognizing that internal tensions and contradictory materials should be seen as spiritually salutary. It would also read rabbinic and allegorical interpretations of Scripture with a view to mining their spiritual benefits for today, seeing in them creative ways of applying the complex content of Scripture in the life of faith.52 To some this way of carving up the alternatives may seem to be mere philosophical nit-picking. Both options can be housed within thoroughly robust narratives of divine action from creation to final resurrection; both can accommodate complex and sensitive hermeneutical strategies; and both may end up in the same neighborhood when it comes to the intellectual fruit they bring forth. I am reluctant to accept this irenic overture. Thinking carefully about divine action requires respecting such an obvious distinction as the one represented by the distinction between divine inspiration and divine authorship. The first option fails on this score; the second succeeds. Even so, this shift of perspective is likely to be resisted in part because of the provenance of the first across the centuries in the West and in part because the fears invoked by its popular adherents run very deep. The antidote to such fear is close to hand. One of the great benefits of the second option is that it allows for a much more natural reception of the results of the historical study of Scripture and of the historical study of doctrine that I have leaned on in this chapter. We should receive these not just as good gifts of scholarship but also as gifts of providence given by God in the long journey of faith in the church across the centuries. God promised of old to lead the church into the truth. It is (p.41) one of the challenges of our time to come to terms with the insights made available in the development of historical study of Scripture. Page 17 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages Doctrines of Scripture have all too often been cast in terms of an all or nothing mentality. Nervous souls have been subject to forms of intellectual bullying that have driven hosts of believers out of the faith into the arms of skepticism and unbelief. William Sanday has sage advice to offer the contemporary theologian. He noted that there was a time when it would have been most dangerous at that day to attempt to discriminate between Divine and Human. The Divine would have gone out with the Human; wheat and tares would have been rooted up together. If the authority of the Bible had been broken down upon any one point, it would soon have been broken down upon all. One age can bear what another age cannot; and Divine wisdom has never put upon any age a burden too great to bear.53 Some may want to insist on the absolutes of black and white, of light and darkness, when it comes to the inspiration of Scripture; nothing but a precise vision of divine perfection will do. However, there is a third class who have a rooted disbelief in the formula ‘All or Nothing’, who think that no such drastic theories can ever correspond to the complexity of the phenomena, who do not expect to be able to drive a straight furrow through the world of thought without losing what they gain. They who constitute this class are quite aware that they do not look down upon existence with a rigid theory in their hands which they are prepared to impose upon all that is presented to them. They look not down but up, their hearts filled with awe and wonder at the mystery—which is not wholly mystery—around them. They are conscious of ‘moving around in worlds not realized’—that is not fully realized, for some firm standing ground is theirs which is not bare or barren, but rich with flower and fruit and with gleams upon it from heaven. Such will cling to their Bible; they will clasp it all the more closely to their breasts, because there breathes beneath it a genuine human life, the life of men who though illuminated from on high, were yet of like passion with themselves. And if they note how He who is the centre of this illumination, the Light which lighteth every man, coming into the world, touched gently, or forbore to touch, some of the simpler features of the faith of His contemporaries, they will remember that it was written, ‘Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.’54 Notes:

(1) Both Paul in 1 Cor. 15:3 and the Apostles’ Creed use this important phrase in relation to the resurrection of Jesus. (2) Luke 1:1–4. Page 18 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages (3) Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III.39, 15. (4) Laodicea (363), Carthage (419), and the Trullan Council (692). (5) On Christian Doctrine, II.8, par. 12. (6) This is not as silly or farfetched as it sounds to contemporary ears given the ancient context and the revival of Pythagoreanism. (7) Thus Bishop Serapion of Antioch from about 190 to 209 after initially welcoming the Gospel of Peter rejected it on the grounds of its heretical content, perhaps seeing it as docetic in tendency. See William Sanday, Inspiration: Eight Lectures on the Early History and Origin of the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1901), 16. (8) Our topic was subject to intense inquiry in the late nineteenth century as the challenge of historical study of Scripture became more and more acute. I shall initially draw on one judicious summary of the terrain developed by William Sanday. See Sanday, Inspiration. (9) Sanday, Inspiration, 28–9. (10) Cf. Hosea 9:7, Zephaniah 3:4. (11) Sanday, Inspiration, 31. (12) Ibid., 32. (13) Ibid. (14) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 60. (15) Ibid. (16) Ibid., 33. John Behr notes that “Irenaeus is the first patristic writer to make full use of the apostolic writings as Scripture.” John Behr, “Introduction,” in St Irenaeus of Lyons, On the Apostolic Preaching (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 15. (17) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 19–20. (18) ibid.,

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages (19) Origen took this line in dealing with 1 Cor. 7:12 where Paul distinguishes his own opinion from that of a Word from the Lord. See the fine discussion in Maurice Wiles, “Origen as Biblical Scholar,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 459. Theodore of Mopsuestia distinguished between the gift of prophecy and the gift of prudence in order to handle his estimate of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. See Maurice Wiles, “Theodore of Mopsuestia as Representative of the Antiochene School,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1, ed. Ackroyd and Evans, 495. (20) Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1: The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 398. (21) Ibid., (22) Ibid., (23) Ibid., (24) John Behr, “Introduction,” 24. Interestingly, Irenaeus sought to demonstrate the truth of the apostolic preaching not by arguing for the inspiration of the Gospels and Paul, something Irenaeus fully endorsed, but from the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Thus the scriptural authority of the apostolic preaching, itself a unit deemed canonical by Irenaeus, is secured by means of appeal to Scripture. This is the logic which lies behind the structure of On the Apostolic Preaching. (25) Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 434. (26) Ibid., (27) Ibid., (28) A point not lost on the editors of his work in English. Rome, they say, “was a mirror of the Catholic World, owing her orthodoxy to them; not the Sun, dispensing her own light, to others, but the glass bringing their rays into a focus.” See ibid., 215 n.3. Moreover, Irenaeus readily referred to a succession of bishop and presbyters that spread throughout the whole world. See ibid., 417, 547–8. (29) Ibid., (30) Presbyters who fail to “display sound speech and blameless conduct” are to be shunned. See ibid., 497, 498. Irenaeus assimilates the gift transmitted in the successors of the apostles to that of the Pauline gifts of the Spirit, including “the pre-eminent gift of love.” See ibid., 508. Page 20 of 22

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages (31) Ibid., (32) Origen, On First Principles (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1973). (33) Ibid., (34) R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1959), 187.On First Principles (35) Quoted in Michael W. Holmes, “Origen and the Inerrancy of Scripture,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 24 (1981): 224–5 [Philocalia 6.1– 2]. (36) Origen, On First Principles, 286 [4.2.9]. Compare what he says later: “We have mentioned all these instances with the object of showing that the aim of the divine power which bestowed on us the holy scriptures is not that we should accept only what is found in the letter; for occasionally the records taken in a literal sense are not true, but actually absurd and impossible, and even with the history that actually happened and the legislation that is in its literal sense useful there are other matters interwoven.” See ibid., 293–4 [4.3.4]. Hanson quotes an amusing example drawn from the law that bothered Origen. “Are we to imagine the Almighty God who was giving answers to Moses from heaven made regulations about an oven, a frying-pan and a baking pan?” See Hanson, Allegory and Event, 219–20. (37) Morwena Ludlow, “Theology and Allegory: Origen and Gregory of Nyssa on the Unity and Diversity of Scripture,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 4 (2002): 45–66. (38) Origen, On First Principles, 285 [4.2.9]. (39) Allegory and Event, 196, 231. (40) Ibid., (41) For a fine summary of these moves in Origen, see Wiles, “Origen as Biblical Scholar,” 462–4. For the latter analogy in Origen see also Hanson, Allegory and Event, 193. (42) Mark 1:2. Mark in fact conflates material from Exod. 23:20 and Mal. 3:1. (43) Most intensely in The Apostolic Preaching. (44) The logic of arguments manifesting a promise-fulfillment structure has been well captured by William P. Alston in “The Fulfillment of Promises as Evidence for Religious Belief,” Logos 12 (1991): 1–26.

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Bearing with the Divine Wisdom of the Ages (45) John R. Levison, Of Two Minds: Ecstasy and Inspired Interpretation of the New Testament (North Richland Hills, TX: BIBAL Press, 1999), 7. (46) ibid., (47) Thus Pelikan notes that in disputes between East and West Theodore of Studios is representative when he says: “For the substantiation of what has been said it would be necessary to have the statement confirmed by patristic testimony…if anyone announces to you another gospel than that which the catholic church has received from the holy apostles, fathers, and councils, and has guarded until now, do not listen to him…If an angel or an emperor announces to you a gospel other than the one you have heard, close your ears.” See Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol. 2, 9. (48) relevantJames Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible as It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 15–18. (49) Karl Rahner, Inspiration in the Bible (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961).Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks (50) For an exceptionally incisive challenge to Alvin Plantinga and Eleonore Stump who want to champion a traditional vision of Scripture along these lines, see C. L. Brinks, “On Nail Scissors and Toothbrushes: Responding to the Philosophers’ Critiques of Historical Biblical Criticism,” Religious Studies 49 (2013): 357–76. (51) Compared to normal instances of speaking where one speaks as a basic act, inspiration is done in, with, and through other acts one performs. I stand by the case I made for this analysis of inspiration in The Divine Inspiration of Holy Scripture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). (52) David M. Williams. See his Receiving the Bible in Faith: Historical and Theological Exegesis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004),chap. 6 (53) Sanday, Inspiration, 425. (54) Ibid.,

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter, the author engages the theology of the fourth-century bishop Athanasius. For Athanasius, given the kind of agent that God is, God’s coming in Christ is a coherent and intelligible action, because God has the capacity and motivation to act in the way he did in Christ. Thus the author engages this primary claim in the chapter, exploring the various facets of Athanasius’ motif of agency and action. First, the author examines the treatise Contra Gentes and there engages Athanasius’ maxim that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the agent who performs them. Second, he explores how this maxim applies to discerning the identity of Jesus Christ, and third, he concludes by offering a brief commentary that highlights how Athanasius can contribute to contemporary thinking on divine agency and divine action. Keywords:   Athanasius, incarnation, Jesus Christ, divine action, identity, agency, discipleship

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius On Thursday night, February 8, 356, there was a noisy commotion in the church of Theonas in Alexandria. The Roman emperor Constantius had ordered the local dux Syrianus to seize the local bishop. With the church surrounded, things did not look good for Bishop Athanasius. Happily, a group of monks were on hand to hurry him away to safety and to six years of exile, most likely in the monastic settlements in the Nitrian desert. While there Athanasius wrote a remarkable book, the Vita Antonii. On one occasion, Athanasius tells us, Antony received a deputation of Greeks with a reputation for wisdom. They asked him for an explanation of our faith in Christ, but when they attempted to construct syllogisms concerning the preaching of the divine cross, and sought to ridicule this, Antony paused for a moment, at first pitying them in their ignorance, and said (through an interpreter who expertly translated his remarks): ‘Which is better—to confess a cross, or to attribute acts of adultery and pederasty to those whom you call gods? For that which is stated by us is a signal of courage, and evidence of disdain for death, while your doctrines have to do with incidents of lewdness. Again, which is preferable, to say that the Word of God was not changed, but remaining the same he assumed a human body for the salvation and benefit of mankind—so that sharing in the human birth he might enable mankind to share the spiritual and divine nature—or to make the divine very much like the irrational beings, and on these grounds worship fourfooted creatures and reptiles and images of men? For these are the objects of worship for you who are wise! How dare you ridicule us for saying that Christ appeared as a man, when you, separating the soul from heaven, say that it has wandered and fallen from the vault of heaven into a body…. Our faith declares the coming of Christ, which took place for the salvation of mankind, but you are deceived in your belief concerning an uncreated soul. For our part, we know the power and benevolence of providence—that this advent of Christ was not impossible for God…’1

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (p.43) ‘And concerning the cross, what would you say is preferable: when a plot is introduced by evil men, to endure the cross and not to cower in fear before any form of death, or to relate myths about the wanderings of Osiris and Isis, the plot of Typhon, and the flights of Kronos, and swallowing of children and murder of fathers? For these are the things you count as wise! And how is it that while you scoff at the cross, you do not marvel at the resurrection? For those who told the one also wrote the other. Or why, since you remember the cross, are you silent about the dead who are raised and the blind who recovered their sight, and the paralytics who were cured, and the lepers who were cleansed, and the walking on the sea, and the other signs and wonders that demonstrate that Christ is no longer a man, but God? Actually you seem to me to do yourself an injustice, and not to have read our Scriptures honestly. But do read them and see that the things Christ has done reveal him to be God, who appeared for the salvation of mankind.’2 How far the extracts from this conversation represent the ipsessima verba of Antony need not detain us. This is vintage Athanasius both in terms of its theological content and its rhetorical power. It is also vintage Athanasius in what it has to say about divine action. The Life of Antony is itself a remarkable testimony to an array of divine action manifest in Antony his hero. Moreover, in these opening quotations Athanasius tips his hand in a variety of ways. Conceptually, certain acts are inappropriately predicated of the divine; indicating in turn that other acts are appropriate to divine agency. Materially, he insists that the word of God has assumed a human body for the salvation of mankind; that the death of Christ is an act of great courage that undoes the work of evil men; and that Christ has been raised from the dead. In terms of justification for these claims we encounter the beginnings of an informal vision that he develops with gusto elsewhere in his writings. “…the things Christ has done reveal him to be God.” Christ’s actions indicate that he is to be identified as divine; and if he is divine he gives us knowledge of the Father. There is also an important modal claim: grant the power and providence of God and it is not appropriate to say that the advent of Christ was impossible for God. In other words, given the kind of agent that God is, God’s coming in Christ makes coherent and intelligible sense in that God has the capacity and the motivation to act as he did in Christ.3

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius It is this crucial motif of agency and action in the theology of Athanasius that I want to explore in this chapter.4 I shall operate initially with his (p.44) important, carefully integrated, single-volume work, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione.5 I shall first pinpoint a very general maxim developed informally by Athanasius in Contra Gentes, namely, the maxim that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the agent who performs them;6 and indicate how this plays out in Contra Gentes. Let’s call this maxim the action maxim. As we proceed I shall identify other maxims visible in the thinking of Athanasius, but this will suffice for the moment. Second, I shall explore how the action maxim features for him in securing his claims about the identity of Jesus in his rationale for being a disciple of Jesus Christ. Third, I shall conclude by offering a brief commentary that highlights certain features of Athanasius that deserve mention and that bring into focus the significance of Athanasius for our thinking about divine action and divine agency today. Athanasius wrote Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione in part as an exposition of Christian tradition but it was intended for an audience both inside and outside of the church. His goal was to expound the faith in such a way that he could rebut some popular objections that clearly posed a threat to the faith of new or young believers. However, one can also hear very clear echoes of a desire to win over sympathetic readers outside the faith.7 The immediate objection from the Gentile interlocutor is that the whole idea of the cross is something of a joke deserving of mockery and scorn. This objection, as Athanasius sees it, belies a lack of sensitivity, an inability to see the power and knowledge mediated by the cross. More specifically, it fails to recognize the action of God in the cross, an action that mirrors the action of God in the (p.45) sun in creation. So right at the start of Contra Gentes we have a bold first statement of the maxim that action indicates agency. It is worth quoting Athanasius at some length at this point.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius For if they had really applied their minds to his divinity they would not have mocked at so great a thing, but would rather have recognized that he was the Saviour of the universe and that the cross was not the ruin but the salvation of creation. For, if now the cross has been set up, all idolatry has been overthrown, and by this sign all demonic activity is put to flight, and only Christ is worshipped, and through him the Father is known, and opponents put to shame while he everyday invisibly converts their souls— how then, one might reasonably ask them, is this still to be considered in human terms, and should one not rather confess that he who ascended the cross is the Word of God and Saviour of the universe? These people seem to me to be suffering the same kind of delusion as if one were to depreciate the sun which is hidden by the clouds, but wonder at its light when he sees the whole world illumined by it. For as light is beautiful, yet the author of light, the sun, is more beautiful, likewise, as it is something divine that the whole world is filled with knowledge of him, the author and instigator of such an achievement must be God and the Word of God.8 The primary claim here as regards agency is that a catalogue of actions (the death of Christ on the cross, the overthrow of idolatry, exorcisms in the name of Christ, the worship of Christ, people coming to know God the Father, the shaming and conversion of opponents) are not accurately read as merely human actions but are to be seen as indicating something divine so that the author and instigator of such actions must be God and the word of God. The subsidiary claim is that the logic of this observation is analogous to reading the light that becomes visible during a cloudy period as stemming from the sun which illuminates the whole world. Put differently, there is a common pattern of thinking in play: certain actions indicate their origin in the divine just as streams of sunlight indicate their origin in the sun. When the latter analogy is extended to the claim that creation indicates its origin in God and His Word, we have effectively a crucial element in the core of the argument in Contra Gentes; when the preceding indicative phrase is spelled out in detail we have our hands on a crucial component of the argument of De Incarnatione. Yet argument is not quite the right word here, as we shall see; what is really at stake is the proper functioning of human perceptual capacities rather than a body of inferences or syllogisms.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius This latter epistemic move with its focus on the proper function of our cognitive capacities makes sense in turn within a drama of divine creation, human choice, divine judgments in which human actions have consequences, and divine recreation. Athanasius was keenly interested in what has happened (p.46) to human agents within this drama. Created in the image of God by God through his own Word our Savior Jesus Christ, the human race had initially the grace and power to know God, to rejoice and have fellowship with God, “living an idyllic and truly blessed and immortal life.”9 Unfortunately, human agents turned their minds away from the divine, began to concentrate on their bodies and its sensations, and gradually drifted into a life of fear, most especially the fear of death, that is, separation from the body. This led to misperceptions of what was truly good, to the altering of human abilities and their abuse, and eventually to a focus on their actions as ends in themselves disconnected from the right objective. Such a downward spiraling in human action and nature was not at all inevitable. There was genuine choice involved. Human agency “…had been created with free will. For it can just as well turn to the good as turn away from the good; but when it abandons the good it considers things which are completely the opposite.”10 Put differently, human agents are designed by God in such a way that if they chose aright they would fulfill God’s purposes for themselves, but in turning away from God they lost their grip on objective reality and on objective good, turning to unreality and evil. Within this process they lost the ability to perceive God in creation. For although the body has eyes in order to view creation and through its harmonious order to recognize the Creator, although it possesses hearing in order to listen to the divine sayings and the laws of God, and has hands too, in order to do necessary actions and to stretch them out to God in prayer, yet the soul abandoned the contemplation of the good and virtuous activity, and was from then on deceived and moved in the opposite direction.11 At this point the action maxim failed to register in the minds of human agents. God’s actions in creation are no longer recognized; creation is no longer perceived as originating in the divine Creator. Yet the action maxim does not cease to operate; it goes underground into the mental activity of the human agents and resurfaces in forms of false imagination and fantasy that deify creatures and their creations. It is as if human agents keep the maxim (actions indicate agency) but fail to properly identify the real agent performing them. Hence evil human actions were not attributed to human agents but to evil in and of itself, or to a demiurge of (p.47) creation distinct from a good god who was not involved in creation. Applying the action maxim, Athanasius tellingly argues that these moves raise fundamental questions about how to identify this logically distinct good god that have untoward consequences given the logic in play. Page 6 of 27

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius [I]f the visible world is the work of the evil god, what is the good one’s work? For nothing can be seen except the creation of the demiurge. And what indication is there that the good God exists, for there are no works of his by which he could be known? For the creator is known by his works. How could there be two sets of works opposed to each other, or what would separate them so that they exist apart from each other? For it is impossible that they should exist simultaneously, since they are mutually destructive. Nor could one exist in the other, because of their natural incompatibility and dissimilarity. The separating agent will then derive from a third source, and itself be god. But of what nature would the tertium quid be? It seems unclear whether it could be good or evil for it could not be both.12 One way to unpack Athanasius’ reasoning here might run like this. All we can see before us is the natural world; if the activities perceived in this world indicate an evil agent as its creator, then there are no further actions available to us to indicate that there is also a good god. To secure the existence of two deities we would need to be able to identify two distinct sets of divine actions. One way out of this would be to posit a third deity who would be the source of the second deity. However, to secure the identity of that deity and to know its nature as good or evil we would also need a network of actions; but these actions are also not available for all we have is the creation from which we started in the first place. In time psychological projections led folk to mismanage the action maxim and thus to apply “…the term ‘God’ to visible phenomena and heeding only those things which it wished and regarded as pleasurable.”13 To do so was akin to falling into deep water and then believing that there is nothing other than what they perceive there, taking these to be the most important things there are. This was what men of old did when through feeble reasoning they “…represented phenomena as gods and glorified creation instead of the creator, deifying its works rather than their cause and fashioner and lord, God.”14 The logic here is that human agents think of various phenomena as actions indicative of agency (and rightly so) but then go on to misidentify the originating agent. They deify the works of nature and of human agents; they see various creaturely phenomena, take them to be actions, and then posit a host of unreal deities as the originating causes. The catalogue invented through the misapplication of the action maxim is a long one. It extends from heavenly bodies, to the elements of nature, to natural objects, fabulous creatures, personified lusts, and to human agents, both living and dead.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (p.48) At this point Athanasius moves to another level of analysis and in the process deploys a second maxim worth naming. If the true God possess an identifiable nature or character, then failure in action to measure up to that nature will disqualify any putative god as truly divine. Let’s call this the agent maxim. The agent maxim states that knowledge of the divine nature and its correlative potential actions provides criteria for falsifying putative claims about the identity of this or that agent as divine. Thus Athanasius neatly says: “Now if one were to consider the actions of their so-called gods, to begin from there, he would find that they are not only not god but that they are the basest of men.”15 Zeus is a dramatic example. He is guilty of rape and secret adulteries; he is overcome by pleasures, so much so that he is the “slave of women and on their account venturing to appear in the form of irrational animals, beasts and birds…”16 Hence Athanasius asks: “So is it right to regard as a god one who has committed such great crimes and who is accused of things forbidden even to ordinary men by the common laws of Rome?”17 Any serious answer to this must be in the negative. It is likewise with a host of other gods; their actions indicate their real nature so that one should “…recognize that they are nothing other than men, and weaklings at that, and will admire those who wounded them rather than those who were wounded.”18 As far as deities of wood and stone are concerned, it gets even worse for these gods are completely immobile and lifeless; they have no agency compared to humans who are deified. These deities need daily care; and they can neither see nor hear. As for insensible human artifacts, “They give no indication of divinity, but are completely inanimate and appear as they are only by virtue of human skill.”19 Taken as a whole, it is the record of the deeds of the false gods “which prove their lack of divinity and shameful behavior.”20 It is no defense that the poets invented stories of such gods for human entertainment. The poets invent them as real beings in order to deceive their audiences. A crucial problem that lies at the heart of their claims is that they make elementary mistakes on the relation between agency and action as captured in the agent maxim. [T]hose who invented the tale that these are gods surely know what gods should do, and would not have attributed human conceptions to gods any more than one would attribute the action of fire to water. For the one burns, but the other’s nature is cold. So if the deeds are worthy of gods, then those who perform them would be gods; but if adultery and the abovementioned acts are acts of men, and of evil men at that, then those who did them would be men and not gods. For acts must correspond to natures, so that the actor is known from his effect, and the action can be known from its nature.21

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (p.49) It may be tempting for advocates of the gods to claim that the gods are useful because they have invented a host of useful practices, like the arts of sculpture, smithery, weaving, music, hunting, farming, and the like. Again the problem is that the actions, or, in this case, skills, are clearly attributable to human agency rather than divine agency. Moreover, if “…skills deify, and it is on their account that statues are carved of the gods, then those who invented other subsequent skills must, in their view, also be gods.”22 Turning his mind to various images and sculptures as potential ways of mediating knowledge of God, Athanasius then again insists these artifacts predicate inappropriate attributes of God. If they think of God as corporeal and depict God as having, say, breasts or reproductive organs, they are not just showing their impiety, they will have to say that it follows that he endures all other changes of the body, to being cut, dismembered, and even decaying entirely. But these and their like are not characteristics of God but rather of bodies from the earth. For God is incorporeal and incorruptible and immortal, lacking nothing whatsoever.23 The biggest challenge to this vision of the divine comes, of course, from those who identify the universe as divine. Here the corporeality of God is accompanied by a rejection of the dreadful actions and attributes predicated of the standard pagan deities. Athanasius initially deploys the action maxim and then shifts to the agency maxim. First, deploying the action maxim, the issue “…is practically settled by creation itself crying out against them and indicating its maker and creator, God, who rules over it and over all, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”24 For those with eyes to see, the need that each part has for other parts “indicate and attest their divine Lord and Maker, the Father of the Word, by their undeviating obedience to him…”25 Second, deploying the agent maxim, “If it is accepted that God is in need of no one but is self-sufficient and complete in himself, and that the universe subsists through him and that it is rather he who gives to all, how is it right to call the sun and moon and other parts of creation gods, when they are not like that at all but need each other’s help?”26 If one moves to call the whole divine, the whole is still constituted by its parts. “But this is far removed from our ideas of God. For God is a whole and not separate parts; he is not constituted of different (p.50) elements but is himself the creator of the composition of the universe.”27 Perhaps aware that this position cannot be practically settled as easily as he initially suggests, Athanasius hammers home his point afresh. If God is by nature incorporeal and invisible and untouchable, how can they suppose God to be a body, and worship the honor due to things we see with our eyes and touch with our hands? Or again, if we accept the view about God that he is all-powerful, that nothing dominates him but that he dominates and rules the universe, how can those who deify that creation not see that it does not fall within such a definition of God?28 Page 9 of 27

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius If one wants to find God in the created order, the place to start is with ourselves, that is, with each one’s soul and the mind within it. “Only through this can God be seen and apprehended…”29 Athanasius at this point is switching to another topic, that is, to the nature of the human agent who, when properly functioning, can recognize the agent active in creation. Let us call this the agency maxim. Given the way human agents are constituted by God as souls and minds they have the capacity to mirror in certain crucial respects divine agency and this allows them to discern God within. Because some deny the existence of the soul, the defense of this claim will, of course, require a detour in order to establish its existence, its invisibility, and its immortality. Happily I can set this aside here.30 The relevant consideration to register at this stage is this. Created in the image and likeness of God, human agents are minimally to be understood as entities constituted by immortal souls and mortal bodies that have various desires and impulses, by the capacity of self-movement, by the ability to engage first- and second-order reflection (including imagination and contemplation), by the capacity to act against their natural instincts and thus capable of being guided by reason, by the ability to discern the action of God the Word both within themselves and within creation, and by the capacity to rise towards God with the mind of their soul and turn back again towards God. With this background anthropology in place, Athanasius can say that when the soul has put off every stain of sin with which it is tinged, and keeps pure only what is in the image, then when that shines forth, it can truly contemplate in a mirror the Word, the image of the Father, and in him meditate on the Father, of whom the Saviour is the image.31 Given what Athanasius has already said about the bad choices at the beginning of human history and the effects of these on human capacity to discern God, it is no surprise that he quickly adds: (p.51) Or if this instruction on the part of the soul itself is not adequate because of external influences which disturb its mind and prevent it from seeing the better course, it is still possible to grasp knowledge about God from the visible phenomena, since creation through its order and harmony, as it were in writing, indicates and proclaims its master and maker.32

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius This latter option is an expression of the goodness and love of God. And the logic combines the logic of the action maxim and the logic of the agency maxim. Just as an artist is known through his works, so the word of God is known through his works in creation. We are rightly struck, he observes, by the balanced and uniform coordination of natural phenomena. We can see both that there is balance and order and that these are sustained across time.33 The phenomena we observe in nature are to be read as actions that indicate the presence and nature of the word of God. This word of God is “other than created things and all creation.”34 He is “the one, only-begotten, good God, proceeding from the Father as from a good source…”35 He is the omnipotent and perfectly holy Word of the Father himself who is present in all things and extends his power everywhere, illuminating all things visible and invisible, containing and enclosing them in himself; he leaves nothing deprived of his power, but gives life and protection to everything, everywhere to each individually and to all together.36 This word of God, as the one who proceeds from the Father, is also rightly called the interpreter and messenger of his Father. Just as through human (p.52) words we perceive the mind of the speaker, so “when we see the power of the Word we form an idea of his good Father as the Saviour himself attests this: ‘Who has seen me, has seen the Father’.”37 This word of God spoke in the past to the Jewish people through their divine Scriptures, giving additional knowledge beyond what was available through the works of creation, and thus providing fuller and even more reliable ground for what to believe. Such additional knowledge through prophesy, however, did not cancel the knowledge universally made available through creation and discerned by human agency. On the contrary, it reiterates this claim and gives further warrant for identifying the agent indicated by our encounter with creation as the word of God. Having such a good Son and creator as his offspring, the Father did not hide him from created beings, but reveals him to all every day through the subsistence and life of the universe which he brings about.38 We can recognize the world as created by the Word of the Father because the Father orders the universe and contains and provides for all things through “his Word, the Saviour of all, our Lord Jesus Christ.”39

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius By this stage we are clearly working within the manifold conceptual and doctrinal resources of the Christian tradition.40 It is not just that creation has been created and is sustained by the providence of God, generically conceived; it is the word of God, the second Person of the Trinity, who is identified as the divine agent active throughout the universe. We have a case of the Father working through the action of the Son in creation and providence; the human agent recognizing the agency of the Son; and the Son mediating knowledge of the Father to the human agent. In time this intra-divine action (the Father working through the Son) will pose its own ontological challenges for the Christian tradition. However, the more immediate problem for Athanasius is closer to hand. How can the Christian church teach so confidently that God the Word was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth and that in his death God was doing something critical for the healing of human agents? The answer Athanasius develops redeploys his action maxim afresh. Jesus of Nazareth is to be identified as the Word of the Father through whom he created and sustains the world precisely because the actions he performs both in the past and in the present indicate that he is the Word of the Father. Before I explain his position, however, I must add one more maxim related to action and agency, namely, that one explains the actions of an agent by displaying the reasons or rationale for the performance of the actions under review. Let’s call this the explanation maxim. (p.53) When confronted with claims about amazing human action, there are several ways in which one may challenge the testimony to that action. One can say that the action reported is not possible because the kind of action posited lies outside the causal powers of human agents. Or one can say that the action mentioned does not make sense when predicated of the agent because it is unintelligible in terms of the agent’s known intentions and purposes. Or one can say that the action cited did not happen because the agent who did it has not been correctly identified. Suppose Mulligan is reported as having landed on the moon. One can well imagine folk a century ago laughing and saying such an action was not possible given what we know about the causal powers of human agents. Or, if they think moon landings are possible, they might say that the claim cannot be right because they know Mulligan and there is no credible rationale for Mulligan landing on the moon. Or they might say that they agree that someone landed on the moon, but it was not Mulligan, it was in fact Murphy.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius In dealing with the church’s proclamation that the word of God who was the Father’s agent in creation had become incarnate in Jesus Christ and died to restore human agents to their proper destiny, Athanasius faced precisely objections of the sort I have just enumerated. In De Incarnatione he deals specifically with objections of the second and third type. No doubt objections of the first sort were also in the air, but happily we can set that aside here. Athanasius deftly integrates the way he responds to the second and third objections; and in the process he also deftly integrates the explanation maxim and the action maxim. He assumes at this point a certain concept of God. Thus he has already committed himself to a flexible Trinitarian theism in which God has a nature captured in an informal list of attributes, like being incorporeal, almighty, full of kindness, intelligent, morally upright, invisible, incorporeal, worthy of praise, incorruptible, immortal, and self-sufficient.41 He also assumes a vision of material divine action plotted on a narrative of creation, human choice, divine judgment, and divine recreation. The importance of the latter assumption is immediately apparent in the fact that he begins De Incarnatione by recapitulating and extending an earlier version of the same narrative given at the very beginning of Contra Gentes. This provides him with the resources to deal with the objection that the incarnation of the Word is unintelligible in the sense that there can be no serious rationale in terms of the intentions and purposes of the agent. Athanasius’ strategy is quite simple. He articulates a vision of what God was doing (p.54) in the incarnation of the Word in terms of saving that world from final corruption. Given the human situation and given the character of God as a kind and authentic agent who could be relied on, God had sent his Son, the Word, to stop the downward spiral into nothingness and ultimate disaster. For the explanation of these matters (the incarnation of the Word and his death on the cross) one must remember what we said earlier, that you may be able to know the reason for the manifestation of the body of the Word of such and so great a Father, and lest you think the Saviour put on a body as a consequence of his nature, but rather that although he is incorporeal by nature and Word, yet through the mercy and goodness of his Father he appeared to us in a human body for our salvation. But as we proceed in our exposition of this, we must first speak about the creation of the universe and its creator, God, so that in this way one may consider as fitting that its renewal was effected by the Word who created it in the beginning. For it will appear in no way contradictory if the Father worked its salvation through the same one by whom he created it.42

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius It is not easy to capture the richness of Athanasius’ portrayal of why God acted as he did in the incarnation. He hints that there are two crucial reasons for God acting as he did: first, to teach the world afresh the truth about God; and second, to bring the corruptible to incorruption. Within this the death of Christ is an entirely fitting way to pay the debt human agents owe to God for their sin. One way to capture the manifold reasons for God acting as he did is to note that God had in principle other options which might have been exercised.43 So maybe God could have let things take their course and let the full consequences of human wickedness play themselves out to the bitter end; or maybe he could have shown up in a theophany; or maybe he could have simply opted for a call to repentance, or maybe just acted by fiat. However, none of these options would have worked given God’s compassion, given his integrity in keeping his word in dealing with evil, given his design to deliver us from evil, given his desire to tackle our fear of death in the dissolution of the body, given the intention to undo the burden of debt that our sin had accrued, given the need to break our addiction to sinful actions, given God’s respect for our native intelligence, given his strategy of meeting us half-way so that we might better understand his will, and given the need for human agents to get a strong grip on divine providence. What Athanasius effectively does is spell out what God did in the incarnation and in the death of Christ so that the more specific actions performed are fitting to the depth and breadth of God’s intentions and purposes. By way of illustration, consider how he handles the possibility of Christ dying privately and quietly in his bed rather than on the cross. (p.55)

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius Consider whether such an objection be not human, whereas what was done by our Saviour is truly divine and worthy of his divinity for many reasons. In the first place because the death which is the fate of all men comes upon them through weakness of their nature, since they cannot last long, in time they are dissolved. And so many diseases come upon them, and becoming weakened, they die. But the Lord is not weak, but is the Power of God and the Word of God and Life itself. If therefore in some private place and in the fashion of men, he had laid aside his body on a bed, it would have been supposed that he also had suffered this through weakness of his nature and that he had no superiority over men. But because he was life and the Word of God, and because death had to take place on behalf of all, therefore, as he is life and power, he gave strength to the body; and as death had to occur, he took the occasion provided not by himself but by others, to complete the sacrifice. For it was neither right that the Lord should be ill, he who healed the illnesses of others, nor again was it right that his body should be weakened in which he strengthened the weaknesses of others. So why did he not restrain death as he did disease? Because that was why he had the body, and it would have been unfitting to avoid death lest the resurrection be prevented. Furthermore it was unfitting to let the disease precede death lest he who was in the body be thought to have some weakness.44 I have chosen a mundane example of Athanasius’ deployment of the explanation maxim rather than the more high-octane examples that usually show up in histories of atonement theory precisely because it captures so aptly what Athanasius is doing. De Incarnatione is laden with explanations which feed off each other in ways that are thoroughly intelligible to his readers. For my purposes here it is enough to catch the deep structure of his thinking and to note how it works off a very apt grammar of action, agents, agency, and explanation. I can also be brief in showing how in De Incarnatione Athanasius deploys the action maxim to telling effect to secure the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate word of God. The heart of the matter involves a felicitous cataloging of the various actions related to Jesus of Nazareth and the insistence that these actions indicate that the agent who performed these actions should be recognized not just as a human agent but also as a divine agent. The specific actions predicated of Jesus and attested by his followers before and after his resurrection indicate that he is divine, the Word and Son of the Father. One passage which blends very nicely the action maxim and the explanation maxim runs as follows.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius So just as if someone wishes to see God, who is invisible by nature and in no way visible, he understands and knows from his works, so he who does not see Christ with his mind, let him learn of him from the works of his body, and let him test whether they be human or divine. And if they be human, let him mock; but if they (p.56) are recognized to be not human but of God, let him not laugh at what are not to be mocked, but rather wonder that through such simple means these divine things have been revealed to us, and that through death immortality has come to all, and through the incarnation of the Word of God the universal providence and its leader and creator the Word of God himself has become known. For he became man that we might become divine.45 Athanasius identifies a wide range of actions attributed to Jesus that indicate his identity as the Son of God. For as he is invisible yet is known by the works of creation, so, becoming a man and not visible in a body, it would have been known from his works that it was not a man but the Power and Word of God who was performing them. For the fact that he commanded demons and cast them out was not a human deed, but a divine one. Or who, seeing him healing the diseases to which the race of men was subject, would still think that he was a man and not God? For he purified lepers, he made the lame to walk, he opened the hearing of the deaf, he made the blind to see, and indeed cast out every illness and disease from men; from which anyone can see his divinity. For who, having seen him giving what was lacking to those whose very being was deficient and opening the eyes of the blind from birth, would not think that the creating of men was in his power and that he was their Fashioner and Maker? For he who gave to a man what was missing from birth is most clearly the Lord of the creation of them. Therefore also in the beginning, when he came to down to us, he fashioned himself the body from the virgin alone without a man, in order to give all men no small indication of his divinity; for he who fashioned this is himself the Maker of these others. For who, seeing that the body came forth from a body alone without a man, would not think that he who was revealed in it was the Creator and Lord of other bodies? And who, seeing the substance of water being changed into wine, would not think that he who did this was the Lord and Creator of the substance of all water? So, for this reason, as Lord he walked on the sea and on the land, and gave to all who looked on a proof of his universal lordship. When with a little food he fed such a great multitude and brought back an abundance from a lack, so that five thousand were sated (p.57) from five loaves and left as much again, this was nothing else but proof that he is the Lord of the providence of the universe.46

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius Beyond the actions related to Jesus prior to his death Athanasius also appeals to his action as risen Lord in the life of the church of his day. Thus he draws attention to the following: deliverance from fear of death, the readiness of young boys and girls to face martyrdom, the numerous conversions across Greece and other foreign lands, the dissolution of magic, idolatry, and witchcraft, the deliverance from demonic powers, the coming of pagans to the God of the Jews, the sense of assurance believers have concerning immortality, the reconciliation of enemies, and above all the spread of conspicuous sanctity where before there was nothing but whoremongering, murder, and cowardice. Inviting his readers to see in these phenomena a network of actions performed by the risen Christ as the Gospel is preached and the church established, Athanasius insists that these too indicate that the one behind such phenomena is none other than the Word and Son of God who was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The reference to conspicuous sanctity brings us naturally to the Vita Antonii. To be sure, we are dealing here with a masterpiece in hagiography. However, even when allowances are made on this front, it is clear what Athanasius is doing: he is drawing attention to the continued actions of the word of God in the life of a saint.47 So we are regaled with a drama of struggle against evil, of (p.58) extended victories over the temptations and machinations of the demonic, of particular providences, of visions, of wisdom in the face of intellectual challenges, of proper fear and trust in God, of self-sacrificing ministry to the confessors in the mines and the prisons, of healing at a distance, of revelation about events taking place afar, of feats of prayer, and of prophecies of divine judgment on a nasty military commander. However, it is clear that what matters most to Athanasius is the life of conspicuous sanctity which indicates most clearly the action of God in Antony’s life. So he proposes that proof of Antony’s virtue and proof that his soul was loved by God were signified by the fact that he had become famous everywhere. Antony may have lived a life of isolation but like many others like him “…the Lord shows them like lamps to everyone, so that those who hear may know that the commandments have power for the amendment of life, and may gain zeal for the way of virtue.”48 He ends by deploying the action maxim. And if the need arises, read this to the pagans as well, so that they may understand by this means that our Lord Jesus Christ is God and Son of God —and additionally, that the Christians who are sincerely devoted to him and truly believe in him not only prove that the demons, whom the Greeks consider gods, are not gods, but also trample and chase them away as deceivers and corrupters of mankind, through Jesus Christ the Lord, to whom belongs glory forever and ever.49

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius By this stage some of my readers may have lost patience with Athanasius. The reference to the demonic and exorcisms as indications of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth simply does not compute. They are tempted to deploy a version of the one objection I mentioned earlier that Athanasius does not address, namely that in this case the causal powers purported to be visible (whether demonic, human, or even divine) do not exist. This is an important issue that will not be taken up here. My aim has been to display the remarkable insights about action, agents, and explanation that are on display in Athanasius. It is very tempting to add a lengthy commentary on what it is going on both theologically and philosophically, but this is likely to try the patience of my readers. So let me keep my commentary to a minimum. First, it is crucial to note the role of the maxims I have deployed in my exposition of Athanasius. Athanasius does not start out with maxims and then see how they will help him in his account of what God has done in creation and incarnation. He is articulating, expounding, and defending what God has done as he finds it in Scripture, in the teaching of the church, and in lives devoted to the Gospel. Yet in doing so he brings to light a pattern of thinking that is embedded in the content and life of faith. He is not working on the metaphysics of action and agency but it is clear that a metaphysics of action and agency is emerging and is unavoidable if we are to do justice to his (p.59) reflections. The language of action, agency, and action explanation come utterly natural to him; they are not something foreign or alien. Second, a similar observation applies to the epistemological proposals that emerge as Athanasius works through the issues. It is important to describe these accurately. There are indeed hints where he can appear to be deploying a version of the teleological argument. Given the phenomena we see in creation and in the life of Christ (he at times seems to be saying) we can and should explain these phenomena by positing a divine agent who makes certain decisions in the light of various intentions and purposes. And we should accept these explanations because they give us a better explanation than that supplied by others. However, this strand in this thinking is at best drastically underdeveloped. Over against this Athanasius is working with a vision where human agents, given the way they are created, are equipped with the appropriate cognitive mechanisms to recognize the action of God in the world. Regrettably, given their ancestral history of sin, these mechanisms of perception and recognition are somewhat wayward in their function. Hence God acts afresh in Israel and in Christ to reverse the downward spiraling into sin and to establish a proper understanding of God and to reverse the damage that sin and the ensuing ignorance have brought about. This is the underlying epistemological stance that is being developed.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius Third, Athanasius would likely baulk at this description of his work. For him it is not some grand epistemological story like this that governs his thinking; it is Scripture. On that front he is operating with the conventional concept of Scripture as authored or spoken by God and thus as the oracles of God. Hence to offer this description, even though it eschews any serious role for syllogisms, will still look far too philosophical and extra-biblical and therefore suspect. One way around this would be to do exactly what he does from time to time, namely, drop in a pertinent biblical text that instantiates the claims he is making. On the issue before us he can and does draw on Paul in Romans; and on the action maxim he can and does quote Jesus in John when he proposes that his critics should believe in him not because of what he says but because of the works or actions he is performing. My own judgment is that Athanasius is upgrading the exegetical texts he deploys as warrant for his epistemological insights and that we should provide a more deflationary vision of Scripture that puts primary emphasis on its soteriological purpose. Furthermore, Athanasius’ epistemological proposals can stand independently of their weak grounding in Scripture; they are as much brought to the text as found in the text. They deserve extended articulation and defense in their own right and should be placed where they belong, that is, in the epistemology of theology.50 (p.60) Fourth, it is clear that Athanasius brings to his initial interpretation of the world the developing concepts (Word and Son of God the Father) and the developing narrative (creation, freedom, fall, redemption) of the church in his reading of what is going on in the world. Again, he would almost certainly insist that these (the concepts and the narrative) are derived from Scripture; they are not in any deep sense extra-biblical. What I have just asserted with respect to his epistemological convictions applies afresh here. I would prefer to see these as emerging—not without regard to the church’s Scripture—but as a result of resources that reach above and beyond Scripture. Thus they can survive the particular vision and exegesis of Scripture that Athanasius deploys. Moreover, the church was right to press on and work through to a fuller vision of divine agency and divine action than that developed by Athanasius. This was unavoidable given the theological and ontological moves made by Athanasius. It is natural in the wake of Athanasius to reach for apt accounts of the person and work of Christ and more generally of God not just as binitarian but Trinitarian. This is not to fall from a functional into an ontological Christology and theology; it is to follow out ontologically the logic of the Gospel and the faith as a living reality in the life of the church.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius Nor is this to fall into some kind of disastrous Greek way of thinking that corrupts the purity of faith. To be sure there are Greek elements in Athanasius that deserve attention; but it is patently clear from his treatment of idolatry and polytheism that Greek theology was by no means confined to some sort of immutable transcendence that was unrelated to ethics and piety. Athanasius brilliantly exposes the weakness of Greek and Roman polytheism directly by giving a persuasive account of the malfunctioning cognitive mechanisms that underlie it and indirectly by providing a narrative of action and explanation for these mechanisms that has legs. Polytheists, if they offer anything, offer arbitrary mythology; they do not have any underlying epistemological resources. The church offers genuine, life-giving theology; and it is the task of her teachers to spell out the grounds for that theology. Finally, Athanasius’ deployment of the maxims of action, agent, agency, and explanation do not just permit him but require him to gather together the creed of the church, theological reflection, and spirituality in a tightly knit package. His theological work is not an ideological exercise designed to preserve some kind of dead orthodoxy or to secure his own place as a powerful bishop in the life of the fourth-century church. His life was a tumultuous one in which he was exiled from his beloved Alexandria five times, where he was hounded by the civil and clerical functionaries of emperors, where he landed in court on trumped-up charges of murder, and where he was accused of interfering with the corn deliveries in Egypt. He rightly saw that the institutional life of the (p.61) church needed persons and practices to preserve the faith of the church; he equally saw that offering a persuasive account of divine action in creation and redemption was not a luxury but an intellectual and spiritual necessity. The really deep reason for these endeavors comes to a fitting climax in the writing and dissemination of his Vita Antonii. As he put it so memorably: God became man so that we might become divine. In the end it was conspicuous sanctity that really mattered both to God and to the world he had created. Notes:

(1) Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter of Marcellinus (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), 84–5. (2) Ibid., (3) I am assuming that Athanasius is not worried here about impossibility in the logical sense that it involves a contradiction but in the very different sense that it makes no rational sense for a divine agent to do what he did in Christ.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (4) Where standard renderings of the work of Athanasius have focused on his disputes with Arianism, more recent work on Athanasius has been intent to capture neglected aspects of his ecclesial and intellectual career which have tended to downgrade his positive intellectual pedigree. There is certainly much to explore if one wants to highlight his work as an exceptionally powerful ecclesiastical figure who operated effectively if not ruthlessly. His Life of Antony, for example, can be read as an effort to contain the forces of monastic renewal within the church, thus preventing it syphoning off financial offerings which might readily be deployed in Meletian, Arian, or even wayward sectarian groups. It can equally be read as a move to routinize the charismatic aspects of divine action and tame them if not bury them within the more bureaucratic institutional life of the church. However, one reason for making him the focus of this chapter stems from his place within the developments of Nicene theology in the fourth century. What makes him especially interesting in this arena is precisely the multifaceted nature of his life as a polemicist, a disciplinarian, a church politician, a persecuted bishop, and a shepherd of his flock. Insofar as he has a theology of divine action it is worked out in the hard grind of ecclesiastical and political contestation. More importantly, what he has to say about divine agency and divine action deserves close attention. In our treatment of these topics the Life of Antony is by no means an incidental text that can be set aside as a piece of pious marginalia, as we shall see. (5) Athanasius makes very clear early on in De Incarnatione the prior significance of Contra Gentes for the central arguments he develops there. See Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 136. For a detailed commentary on Contra Gentes see E. P. Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes, Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1984). (6) There are times when Athanasius indicates that action might also give us access to the name of the agent but this is too underdeveloped to pursue here. (7) The exposition which follows does not hinge on whether this is correct or not; nor does the fact that I favor a late rather than early dating. (8) Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, 3, 5. (9) Ibid.,

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (10) Ibid., 11. Later Athanasius writes: “All these things (murder, adultery, evil speaking, gluttony, and the like) are evil and sins of the soul, but they have no other cause save the turning away from better things.” See ibid., 13. “…we must present clearly the truth of the church’s teaching, that evil neither came from God, nor did it exist in the beginning, nor has it any independent reality. But men, rejecting the notion of the good, began to think up for themselves and invent objects which do not exist as the fancy struck them.” See ibid., 19. Athanasius had a dynamic, mobile concept of human agents at the outset of the human race. They possessed initially certain natural capacities and powers and are “naturally mobile.” (11) Ibid., (12) Ibid., (13) Ibid., (14) Ibid., (15) Ibid., (16) Ibid. (17) Ibid. (18) Ibid., (19) Ibid., (20) Ibid. (21) Ibid., 45. After a further catalogue of actions which purport to be done by various gods, Athanasius drives home this point afresh: “…since the deeds of the gods prove them to be men, whereas the tributes paid to them surpass human nature. Now each of these is inconsistent, for it is not natural for heavenly beings to act thus, nor can one suppose these who do act in this way to be gods.” See ibid., 47. Again, speaking of the poets’ narratives of the gods, Athanasius writes: “I personally think that they spoke of their passions and actions against their will. For since they were eager to ascribe the incommunicable name, as Scripture says, of God and the honour due to him to beings who are not gods but mortal men—and this was great and impious daring on their part—for this reason they have been unwillingly forced by the truth to expound the passions, as set down in the books about them, are a proof of their not being gods.” See ibid., 49. (22) Ibid., (23) Ibid., Page 22 of 27

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (24) Ibid., (25) Ibid. (26) Ibid., (27) Ibid. (28) Ibid., (29) Ibid., (30) Essentially Athanasius develops a non-reductionist set of arguments at this point; however, the exact cogency of the arguments is not germane to my argument here. (31) Ibid., (32) Ibid. (33) Interestingly, where we would expect from his earlier epistemic remarks to be given merely an account of how we should perceive God immediately in these phenomena, we are told in addition to conclude by inference that these indicate —by analogy with other instances of balanced, uniform, and sustained order— the presence of a single divine agent. Thus Athanasius wobbles back and forth between a theory of general divine revelation hooked to a theory of proper function and a teleological argument for the existence of God. Essentially the argument takes the form of elimination. Given that he has already eliminated the existence of the gods of the poets, creation itself as a deity, and the existence of the idols of the Gentiles, the only real option left is the God whom Christians worship and preach. (34) Ibid., (35) Ibid.,

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (36) Ibid., 115. Note the very precise way in which God is identified here. Athanasius goes even further. “Who then is he, if not the all-holy Father of Christ, beyond all created being, who as supreme statesman, through his own wisdom and his own Word, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, guides and orders the universe for our salvation, and acts as seems him best?…if it (the universe) was created with reason, wisdom, and understanding and has been arranged with complete order, then he who governs and ordered it can be none other than the Word of God.” See ibid., 111. And again: “…being the good offspring of a good Father and true Son, he is the power of the Father and his wisdom and Word; not so by participation, nor do these properties accrue to him from outside in the way of those who participate in him and are given wisdom by him, having their power and reason in him; but he is absolute wisdom, very Word, and himself the Father’s own power, absolute light, absolute truth, absolute justice, absolute virtue, and indeed stamp, effulgence, and image. In short, he is the supremely perfect issue of the Father, and is alone Son, the express image of the Father.” See ibid., 131. (37) Ibid., (38) Ibid. (39) Ibid., (40) Athanasius is well aware of this as his very opening statements in Contra Gentes and his closing statement in De Incarnatione make clear. (41) In the volume under review Athanasius writes like a binitarian rather than a Trinitarian, but omitting references to the Holy Spirit is understandable given his overall aims. Moreover, the development of a Trinitarian vision of God follows out the logic of his Christological proposals by using the action maxim as ground for positing the Holy Spirit as divine. (42) Ibid., (43) ibid., (44) Ibid.,

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (45) Ibid., 269. Athanasius repeats the theme of the word of God being recognized through his works again and again. For example: “For as he is invisible yet is known by the works of creation, so, becoming a man and not visible in a body, it would have been known from his works that it was not a man but the Power of God and Word who was performing them.” See ibid., 179. In his Orations Against the Arians, book III, he makes the same point in the following passage. “We have necessarily begun by looking into these matters carefully, so that if we see Christ acting or speaking in divine fashion through the instrumentality of his own body, we will know that he does these works because he is God; and again, so that if we see him speaking or suffering in the manner of a human being, we may not fail to understand that he became a human being by bearing flesh, and that this is how he does and says these [human] things. If we recognize what is proper and peculiar to each, while at the same time perceiving and understanding that both sets of deeds come from one [agent] we believe rightly and shall never be led astray.” See Richard A. Norris Jr., ed., The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 94.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius (46) Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, 179, 181. Athanasius captures the ingenuity of God in meeting the intellectual needs of diverse groups in his time in a way which also deftly embodies the action maxim. “For because men had turned away from the contemplation of God, and were sunk as it were in the abyss with their eyes cast down, and they were seeking God in creation and sensible things, and had set up mortal men and demons as gods for themselves; for this reason the merciful and universal Saviour, the Word of God, took to himself a body and lived as a man among men, and took the senses of all men, in order that those who supposed God was in corporeal things might understand the truth from the works which the Lord did through the actions of his body, and through him might take cognizance of the Father. And because they were men and thought of everything in human terms, wherever they saw a comprehensible universe, and they learnt the truth from all sides. For if they were struck at creation, yet they saw it confessed Christ as Lord; and if their minds were preconceived towards men so that they supposed them gods, yet when they compared the works of the Saviour with theirs, it appeared the Saviour alone among men was the Son of God, since men had no such works as those done by God the Word. But if they were prejudiced by the demons, yet when they saw them being put to flight by the Lord, they recognized that only he was the Word of God and the demons were not gods. And if their minds were by them fixed on the dead, so that they worshipped the heroes and those said to be gods by the poets, yet when they saw the resurrection of the Saviour they confessed, that the former were false, and that only the Word of the Father was the true Lord, he who has power over death. For this reason he was born and appeared as a man and died and rose again, weakening and overshadowing by his own works those of all men who existed, in order that from wherever men were attracted he might lift them up and teach them his true Father, as he himself says, ‘I have come to save and find that which was lost’.” See ibid., 171, 173. (47) One of the goals of hagiography is precisely to highlight in a pleasing manner the reality of divine action by way of exaggeration and pious imagination. (48) Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter of Marcellinus, 99. (49) Ibid. (50) To fill out how a fuller epistemology that took Athanasius as a platform would involve working with a diachronic account of the attainment of justification and knowledge cannot be pursued here. One would within this have to deal with how best to integrate the deployment of the action, agent, agency, and explanation maxims.

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Actions, Agents, Agency, and Explanation in Athanasius

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Building on the work of the previous chapter, where it was shown that Athanasius held that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the agent who performs them, the author turns to the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers and their work on the identity of the Holy Spirit. Just as Athanasius’ maxim that action manifests identity and nature contributed to our understanding of Christ’s divine nature and identity, so also does the maxim play out in the Cappadocians with respect to the Holy Spirit, among whom the conclusion is that the Holy Spirit is divine and not a creature. The author then thinks through several implications of this position. Keywords:   Holy Spirit, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, divine agency, divine action, apophaticism, ontology

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Contemporary theologians can be naturally reticent and even nervous about engaging in ontological reflection on the person and action of the Holy Spirit. If they take the Holy Spirit seriously, they rightly want to ensure that the person of the Holy Spirit is never divorced from a robust doctrine of the Trinity and that the action of the Holy Spirit is normed by the action of Christ. In either case there can be serious intellectual and spiritual consequences if these concerns are not recognized. Intellectually, appeals to the Spirit can readily become a normative source that trumps what God has revealed in Christ. Spiritually, the action of the Spirit can be let loose to operate against the life of the church and to barrel its way into merely subjective expressions of emotion and irrationality. Such has been the reticence that ingenious rationales have developed to inhibit ontological reflection on the Spirit and to eliminate any distinct place for the Holy Spirit within the loci of systematic theology. In some systematic theologies where pneumatology is omitted it is tempting to think that the church has replaced the work of the Spirit; more charitably, we might say that the action of the Spirit has been virtually confined to the life of the church. It is obvious that ontological reflection on the action of the Spirit is both intrinsically interesting and spiritually inescapable. No serious analysis of the doctrine of God in the Christian tradition can sidestep giving attention to the action and status of the Holy Spirit. To be sure, the increasing interest in the observable action of the Spirit that has erupted and developed in the modern period and is now commonplace across the Christian universe makes such reflection and attention all the more urgent. However, this development may tell us more about the relative deficiency of modern forms of Christianity in the West than it does about the crucial place of reflection on the Holy Spirit in the development of canonical Christian doctrine. Of one thing we can be sure: while the most significant historical debate about the ontological status of the Holy Spirit was compressed into the short span of a generation, the intense reflection that took place in this brief period takes us once again into terrain (p.63) where divine agency and divine action played a pivotal role in the arguments deployed.1 In this chapter I shall delineate that role, explore some of the implications, and eliminate some dead-ends that have cropped up over the last century. Reflection on the status of the Holy Spirit became something of an informal theological research program that eventually centered in the works of Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus.2 In time here I shall focus on their deliberations on divine action and divine agency as it relates to the Holy Spirit. I shall begin, however, by taking a short step back to look afresh at Athanasius.3

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Athanasius is crucial for my purposes because he initially grasped the underlying logic of the move from action to agent. Indeed, once that logic was articulated in the case of Christology, the resources he made available were then applied to sorting through what to do with the action of the Holy Spirit. This is not to say that Athanasius and the Cappadocians rely merely on these specific resources; on the contrary, they deploy a great variety of argument; however, removing his appeal to the logic of action and agents would seriously weaken his case. The crucial insight that deserves attention here is the maxim that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the (p.64) agents that perform them.4 Applied to the action of the Holy Spirit, once one comes to terms with the actions predicated of the Holy Spirit, then the move to envisage the Holy Spirit as divine rather than a creature is as secure as the parallel argument from the actions predicated of the Son showing him as divine rather than a creature. Athanasius was fortunate in that his interlocutors shared the content of the Creed of Nicaea and thus held both to the divinity of the Son and to a doctrine of the Trinity in some form or other. They baulked at asserting the full divinity of the Spirit, preferring to look upon the Spirit as a creature produced by the Father and the Son. Another temptation was a simple one: look upon the Spirit as a Son and then reidentify the Son as Father and the Father as Grandfather.5 To use the language of Athanasius, in this instance one retains a Trinity in the doctrine of God but reworks the content to sustain the claim that the Holy Spirit should be understood as a creature derived from the joint action of the Father and the Son. Against this, Athanasius maintains that It is sufficient for you to believe that the Spirit is not a creature, but rather that the Spirit is of God and in him there is a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And there is no need to call the Son by the name of the Father, nor is it permitted to say that the Spirit is the Son, or that the Son is the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, they are precisely what they are said to be. And in the Trinity there is divinity, and there is one faith and one baptism, which is given in the Trinity, and one baptismal initiation into our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory and might to the Father along with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen [1 Pet. 4:11].6

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians As with all who write on the Holy Spirit, Athanasius couches his argument in terms of the exegesis of Scripture. As we shall see later, this can readily be construed as fatal to his whole position on the grounds that he is committed to a doctrine of propositional revelation that has been undermined by historical criticism.7 However, this is a superficial reading of his work. For one thing, Athanasius by no means confines his arguments to Scripture; he also appeals to the tradition of the church. More importantly both the texts selected by (p.65) Athanasius and the implicit assumptions he brings to the text about actions and agents are by no means secured by appeal to Scripture. One crucial element in the argument is that many texts of Scripture deal with the actions of the Holy Spirit, actions that cannot be ascribed to a creaturely agent; indeed the actions characteristically predicated of the Spirit are precisely actions which are exclusively predicated of the Father and the Son. Actions which indicate that the Holy Spirit should be seen as divine include the following: the bestowal of the new birth in baptism, the coming of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and others at Pentecost, the bestowal of grace, the leading of Christ into the wilderness, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in believers meaning they become temples of the Holy Spirit, the bestowal of various gifts in the life of the church, the renewing and perfecting of believers, the guiding of believers and the church, raising Jesus from the dead, anointing and sealing of believers, the joining of human agents to the Word, the Holy Spirit’s filling the whole world with its presence, providing inner revelation of Christ, acting as the agent of the Father in creation, and acting in the revelation given to prophets.8 Both the range of actions identified and their distribution across the letters to Serapion make it clear that Athanasius by no means confines his attention to the action of the Holy Spirit in sanctification. The argument throughout is that if we ascribe these actions to the Spirit, then we have to decide whether the agent involved falls on the side of creature or creator. Given that a creature, even an angel, could not perform these actions, then they must be predicated of the creator. Consequently the church is right to confess the Holy Spirit as divine. In turn this whole argument is embedded and thus supplemented by further arguments that increase the strength of the case he is making. Thus it is possible for human agents to perform actions in relation to the Holy Spirit that imply that the Holy Spirit is truly an agent. They can resist the Holy Spirit, commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, provoke the Holy Spirit, outrage the Holy Spirit, and sadden the Holy Spirit.9 Furthermore, to deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit is to speak evil of the Son, given the Son’s role in the giving of the Spirit.10 Equally, it is to commit blasphemy against the Image of the Father.11 To deny the Holy Spirit is to reduce the Trinity to a dyad and thus ignore the teaching already adopted at Nicaea and to set aside the name of God given by Christ in the great commission of Matthew 28.12

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians This basic move from actions to the identity of the Holy Spirit becomes in time a pivotal element in the deliberations of the Cappadocians.13 Basil’s On (p.66) the Holy Spirit, which is generally seen as the most important work on the Holy Spirit in the fourth century, readily bears this out.14 Prompted by his critics, Basil initially engages in a delicate discussion of the ontological implications raised by prepositions related to the Holy Spirit.15 In time he picks up the argument that the mighty works of Christ both indicate “his manifold energies, by which He satisfies the needs of each in his His tenderheartedness to His own creation,”16 and indicate “His divine majesty” through the wealth of titles deployed.17 Taking the titles of the Holy Spirit as a cue, he then systematically deploys an appeal to the actions of the Holy Spirit to secure the parallel conclusion that the Spirit is divine. Thus the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, right Spirit, willing Spirit. His first and proper title is the Holy Spirit, a name most appropriate to everything which is incorporeal, purely immaterial, and indivisible. That is why the Lord taught the Samaritan woman, who thought that God had to be worshipped in specific places, that ‘God is Spirit.’ He wanted to show that an incorporeal being cannot be circumscribed. When we hear the word ‘spirit’ it is impossible for us to conceive of something whose nature can be circumscribed or is subject to change or variation, or is like a creature in any way. Instead we are compelled to direct our thoughts on high, and to think of an intelligent being, boundless in power, of unlimited greatness, generous in goodness, whom time cannot measure.18 He begins immediately to indicate the kind of actions which underwrite or give expression to this vision of the Holy Spirit as divine. All things thirsting for holiness turn to Him; everything living in virtue never turns away from Him. He waters them with his life-giving breath and helps them reach their proper fulfillment. He perfects all other things, and Himself lacks nothing; He gives life to all things, and is never depleted. He does not increase by additions, but is always complete, self-established, and present everywhere. He is the source of sanctification, spiritual light, who gives illumination to everyone using His powers to search for the truth —and the illumination He gives is Himself. His nature is unapproachable; only through His goodness are we able to draw near it. He fills all things with His power, but only those who are worthy may share it. He distributes His energy in proportion to the faith of the recipient, (p.67) not confining it to a single share. He is simple in being; His powers are manifold: they are wholly present everywhere and in everything.19

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Basil’s catalogue of actions predicated of the Spirit is not difficult to delineate. They include the following: regeneration in baptism, making us children of God, enabling human agents to confess Jesus as Lord, baptizing believers into the body of Christ, granting salvation to the soul, making us to live and bear moral and spiritual fruit, pouring out life-giving power in the renewal of souls, dispensing gifts in the church, perfecting the work of creation, bestowing holiness, and making prophecy possible.20 Basil succinctly indicates the action of the Holy Spirit in the bestowal of salvation, the work of the Son, and in establishing the order of the church. But when we speak of the plan of salvation for men, accomplished by God’s goodness by our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who would deny that it was all made possible through the grace of the Holy Spirit? Whether you wish to examine the Old Testament—the blessings of the patriarchs, the help given through the law, the types, the prophecies, the victories in battle, the miracles performed through righteousness men—or everything that happened since the Lord’s coming in the flesh, it all comes to pass through the Spirit. In the first place, the Lord was anointed with the Holy Spirit, who would henceforth be inseparably united to His very flesh, as it is written, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is He who…is my beloved Son’, and ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit.’ After His baptism, the Holy Spirit was present in every action He performed. He was there when the Lord was tempted by the devil: ‘Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.’ The Spirit was united with Jesus when he performed miracles: ‘But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons…’ Nor did the Spirit leave Him after His resurrection from the dead. When the Lord renewed mankind by breathing into His Apostles’ faces, (thus restoring the grace which Adam had lost, which God breathed into him in the beginning) what did He say? ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ Is it not indisputably clear that the Church is set in order by the Holy Spirit? ‘God has appointed in the Church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues.’ The order is established according to the different gifts distributed by the Spirit.21 Like Athanasius, Basil ponders the names given to the Holy Spirit, names which indicate divinity. He couples this felicitously by appeal to the actions of the Holy Spirit, especially the action of sanctification. (p.68)

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians If we ponder the meaning of His name, and the greatness of His deeds, and the multitude of blessings He has showered upon us and on all creation, it is possible for us to understand at least partially the greatness of His nature and unapproachable power. He is named Spirit: ‘God is Spirit’, and ‘the Spirit of our nostrils, the Lord’s Anointed.’ He is called holy, as the Father is holy and the Son is holy. For creatures, holiness comes from without; for the Spirit, holiness fills His very nature. He is not sanctified, but sanctifies. He is called good, as the Father is good; the essence of the Spirit embraces the goodness of the Father. He is called upright—the Lord my God is upright—because He is truth and righteousness personified. He does not lean to the one side or the other since His nature is changeless. He shares the name Paraclete with the Only-begotten, who said. ‘I will ask the Father and He will give you another Paraclete.’ The Spirit shares titles in common by the Father and the Son; He receives these titles due to His natural and intimate relationship with them.22 Even more to the point, Basil explicitly connects the actions of the Spirit to his identity as divine. What does the Spirit do? His works are ineffable in majesty, and innumerable in quantity. How can we even ponder what extends beyond the ages? What did He do before creation began? How great are the graces He showered on creation? What power will He wield in the age to come? He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages. Even if you can imagine anything beyond the ages, you will discover that the Spirit is even further beyond.23 If wherever God is, the Spirit is present also, what nature shall we presume Him to have? An all-encompassing nature, or a nature confined to particular places, as we have described the nature of angels? No one would say the latter. He is divine in nature, infinite in greatness, mighty in his works, good in his blessings; shall we not exalt Him; shall we not glorify Him? I reckon this ‘glorifying’ is nothing else but the recounting of His own wonders. Our opponents’ argument would force us to never even mention the blessings which flow from Him to us. Obviously this is absurd, so the opposite is true: to describe His wonders gives Him the fullest glorification possible. The same is true for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Only-Begotten Son Himself; we are only able to glorify them by recounting their wonders to the best of our ability.24 Basil makes clear that this strand of argument from action to the nature of the agent is not the only strand in his argument. (p.69)

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians There are many other arguments why the Holy Spirit cannot be counted as a created nature, but for the moment I will not speak of them. If I were to use all the evidence already available to us in a manner suitable for the loftiness of this discussion, our opponents’ objections would be overthrown, but such an enormous treatise would result that my readers would be exhausted by its length.25 The work of this chapter would suffer the same fate if I were to show in detail how Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa articulate the same fundamental line of reasoning that I have identified in Athanasius and Basil. So I shall be brief. For Gregory of Nazianzus the argument crops up explicitly in the last of his Five Theological Orations, given in all probability in the summer or fall of 380. Again the argument is couched in terms of the testimonies of Scripture. But now the swarm of testimonies shall burst you from which the deity of the Holy Ghost shall be shown to all who are not excessively stupid, or else altogether enemies to the Spirit, to be most clearly recognized in Scripture. Look at these facts: Christ is born; the Spirit is his forerunner. He is baptized; the Spirit bears witness. He is tempted; the Spirit leads him up. He works miracles; the Spirit accompanies them. He ascends; the Spirit takes his place. What great things are there in the idea of God which are not in his power? What titles which belong to God are not applied to him, except only unbegotten and begotten? For it was needful that the distinctive properties of the Father and the Son should remain peculiar to them, lest there be confusion in the Godhead which brings all things, even disorder itself, into due arrangement and good order.26 Gregory of Nazianzus proceeds from here to enumerate the relevant titles applied to the Spirit that indicate his divinity. Equally important, he proceeds to enumerate the host of actions that underwrite these titles.27 We can see in (p. 70) this work the more explicit move to take up the status of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Trinity which fits neatly with the overall thrust of this set of theological orations. In the work of Gregory of Nyssa we find the same deep ontological interests. As with Athanasius, Didymus, and Basil, his ontological reflections are built upon the same fundamental logic of action and agency. The logic that in part generates his vision of the divinity of the Son is carried over into his vision of the Spirit. Speaking of the Son, he writes:

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians by manifesting in itself the attributes to be seen in God, it is identical in nature with him who is recognized by the same characteristics. In whatever way one indicates the conception of the Father, whether by goodness, or power, or wisdom, or eternal being, or freedom from evil, death, and corruption, or complete perfection, by the same attributes he will recognize the Word derived from him.28 After noting an analogy between word and breath in human agency and Word and Spirit in divine agency, he continues: When we heard of the Word of God, we did not suppose that the Word was something without subsistence, that it was dependent on acquired knowledge, or uttered by a voice, or cease to exist when once uttered. We did not think that it was subject to such conditions as we observe in the case of our own word; but [we contended] that it had its own real subsistence, and having the faculty of will, was active and all-powerful. In the same way, when we learn that God has a Spirit, which accompanies his Word and manifests his activity, we do not think it as an emission of breath. For we should degrade the majesty of God’s power were we to conceive of his Spirit in the same way as ours. On the contrary, we think of it as a power really existing by itself and in its own special subsistence. It is not able to be separated from God in whom it exists, or from God’s Word which it accompanies. It is not dissipated into non-existence; but like God’s Word it has its own subsistence, is capable of willing and is self-moved and active. It ever chooses the good; and to fulfill its every purpose it has the power that answers to its will.29

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians It is clear that Nyssa is less interested in cataloguing the actions of the Spirit compared to the actions of the Son.30 This perhaps fits better with the context of his “Address on Religious Instruction,” for this material is presented in the (p. 71) process of catechizing new converts. It also fits better with the common assumption that Nyssa is more philosophically oriented than his Cappadocian colleagues. His philosophical inclinations certainly come through in his earlier material, “On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians.” Thus in speaking of the Spirit, he drives home in detail the disjunction: “So they must accept one of two alternatives; either not to call him divine at all, or to refrain from subtracting from his Deity any one of those concepts which are attributable to Deity.”31 At the same time, Nyssa is so sure of his ground on the work of the Holy Spirit in creation that he can make fun of the Macedonians by asking if the Holy Spirit was a having break from work by reason of inclinations of ease and rest.32 Given that this is not plausible and that the Holy Spirit was active, he proposes another disjunction. “Was it owing to his being grudged a share in the glory of these operations, and in order to secure that the admiration at their success should not extend to a third person as its object; or to a distrust of His help, as if His cooperation would result in present mischief.”33 The central point of the argument thus far has been to show that Athanasius’ maxim that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the agents that perform them, runs as a thread through the architects of the doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit in the fourth century. My focus has been deliberately restricted to shining a sharp light on this particular element of the development of Trinitarian doctrine. The next step in the development is obvious. If we accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit, what does this entail for the relations within the Trinity represented by the agency of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit? This is not a matter I will take up in any extended detail here. It comes as no surprise though that the Cappadocians did not hesitate to pursue this line of inquiry; there was no shying away from further ontological reflection. Two distinct kinds of questions were readily registered. The first had to do with how to understand the internal relations within the divine actions within the life of the Trinity. Various formulae were supplied to describe, say, the gifts given by God. So Nyssa notes: “Rather is it the same life that is produced by the Father, prepared by the Son, and depends on the will of the Holy Spirit.”34 He continues:

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Thus the holy Trinity brings to effect every operation in a similar way. It is not by separate action according to the number of Persons; there is one motion and disposition of the good will which proceeds from the Father, through the Son, to the Spirit. For we do not call those who produce a single life the three life-givers; (p.72) nor do we say they are three good beings who are seen to share the same goodness; nor do we speak of them in the plural in reference to all their other attributes. In the same way we cannot enumerate as three gods who jointly, inseparably, and mutually exercise their divine power and activity of overseeing us and the whole creation.35 The second question has to do with how to think of the ontology of the Trinity in and of itself. Various categories were already available to them, such as ousia and hypostasis; and the scriptural causal language of begetting and proceeding were also at hand. Again Nyssa is especially perceptive. Should anyone cavil at our argument that, by refusing to acknowledge distinctions in the nature, it makes for an admixture and confusion of the Persons, we will give the following answer to such a charge. Although we acknowledge the nature is undifferentiated, we do not deny a distinction with respect to causality. That is the only way by which we distinguish one Person from the other, by believing, that is, that one is the cause and the other depends on the cause. Again, we recognize another distinction with regard to that which depends on the cause. There is that which depends on the first cause and that which is derived from what immediately depends on the first cause. Thus the attribute of being only begotten without doubt remains with the Son, and we do not question that the Spirit is derived from the Father. For the mediation of the Son, while it guards his prerogative of being only-begotten, does not exclude the relation which the Spirit has by nature to the Father.36 Clearly, there are extremely interesting questions in play here. How should we think of the Trinity within a monotheistic horizon? And, how can we secure best the unity of the wealth of actions ascribed to the Persons of the Trinity? My aim here is the modest one of insisting that such questions naturally crop up given the crucial place of reflection on actions and agents that drives this whole way of thinking in the first place. I do, however, want to highlight three other considerations that arise from the work of this chapter.

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians First, consider the inference that initially so naturally offended the theologians under review. They made fun of any move to think of the Trinity in terms of, say, Grandfather, Father, and Grandson. We can readily share their sense of derision; in doing so we overlook the underlying assumption held by all, namely, that we should think of God in terms of being an agent understood in some way as analogous to human agents. The very language of Father and Son belongs in this arena.37 Making this explicit is not a casual observation (p.73) about the metaphysics of the Trinity; it surely provides the governing category for the vision of God in play. To be sure, it was natural to think of God in terms of substance and accidents; thinking about God involves thinking of subsistent entities of whom a host of actions can be predicated.38 Consequently there is a perennial temptation to lodge the accusation that impersonal philosophical categories are now likely to wreck the Christian concept of God. We are headed down the road, it will be thought, of some static substance that is alien to the tradition. This is an unfortunate and misleading reading of what is going on conceptually and ontologically. On the contrary, the tradition is built upon and presupposes a thoroughly robust and thoroughly dynamic concept of God where agency and action are the very heart of its construction. Second, it is equally a mistake to inhibit ontological reflection for today on the nature of the Holy Spirit by thinking of the activity of the Holy Spirit in merely functional terms. Thus Kilian McDonnell, a theologian who is especially sensitive to the full workings of the Spirit in the contemporary church in the wake of the Charismatic Movement, makes the suggestion that we should think of the Holy Spirit as the “contact function,” that is, as “the universal point of contact between God and history.”39 While he wants to ensure that the Holy Spirit is not neglected in our understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and while he is aware of neglect of the Spirit in comparison with Christ, he is reluctant to engage in any kind of “pneumatological affirmative action.”40 He agrees with Richard McBrien’s decision not to have a separate tract on the Holy Spirit in his two-volume work on Catholicism. His initial reasoning for this policy stems from the claim that the doctrine of the Spirit “…is a methodological center not a material center”41 in theology as a whole. The deeper reason is furnished by the claim that “…the Spirit is the universal comprehensive horizon within which any and all theological reflection is possible.”42 Put in grander terms, “… pneumatology is to theology what epistemology is to philosophy. Pneumatology determines the ‘rules’ for speaking about God.”43

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Leaning on the authority of Karl Barth, McDonnell makes much the same point in terms of the hermeneutics of Scripture. He repeats the assertion that because the Spirit plays a mediating function in relating us to the Son, knowledge-wise, this should inhibit any treatment of the Holy Spirit in its own right. One interesting historical element in his claim involves his appeal to Basil. He rightly points out the place of the action of the Holy Spirit in our (p.74) coming to know the Son and the Father. As Basil puts it, “The way to the divine knowledge ascends from the one Spirit through the one Son to the one Father.”44 After a detour through John and Paul through Didymus the Blind and others to much the same conclusion, McDonnell summarizes his analysis as effectively showing that “The Spirit is known by what is effected; but if one argues back from effects, that does not leave a reasonably satisfying account of who the Spirit is.”45 This is surely a reversal of what we have seen in the evidence presented heretofore, including the evidence from Basil. It is precisely from the effects of the Holy Spirit in a host of actions that we in part know that the Holy Spirit is divine and must be regarded as a full Person in the Trinity.46 McDonnell’s fine review of the reticence about the Holy Spirit in the ancient sources and its trumpeting by an array of recent theological luminaries is a model of historical sensitivity. There are very serious problems, however, in his effort to eliminate any distinctive attention to the person and work of the Holy Spirit in theology proper. He is handicapped by his underdeveloped account of the work of the Holy Spirit as an element in a comprehensive epistemology for today. For example, he rightly notes that we need the ideas, say, of properly functioning faculties, but he has no framework of the kind supplied by virtue epistemology to make any real sense of this. In part this is because he is subject to the lingering but fatal afterglow of a positivist concept of the relevant evidence. In addition, if we were to follow McDonnell’s logic, then we would equally be compelled to abandon Christology as a distinct tract within theology proper. Christ clearly holds a central place in any developed account of our knowledge of God.47 Yet no one would propose that because of this we should abandon Christology as a tract in systematic theology. Moreover, it is a category mistake to draw an analogy between the place of pneumatology in theology and the place of epistemology in philosophy. If anything, the analogy would call for much more rather than less work in pneumatology; epistemology along with metaphysics has long been a booming industry in contemporary philosophy. However, at the bottom of McDonnell’s thesis on eschewing any separate treatment of the Holy Spirit in theology proper lies his initial mistake of thinking of the Holy Spirit in (p.75) functional terms. We need to look at the varied actions predicated of the Holy Spirit in their own right. Once we shift to the categories of action and agency, the field lies wide open before us.48

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Third, a much more radical effort to undercut the place of the Holy Spirit in theology arises from the place of Scripture in providing warrants for ontological reflection on the activity of the Holy Spirit. Maurice Wiles has argued in a penetrating and elegant paper that the whole effort to construct a Trinitarian theology on appeals to the acts of God fails either because it involves a commitment to a doctrine of Scripture construed as a form of propositional revelation or because it cannot find adequate grounding in the various activities predicated of the Persons of the Trinity.49 In formulating the debate in this manner, he accepts the framing of the issues as they had been inherited at Oxford in the aftermath of the “God who Acts” slogan that was so central to certain strains of biblical theology in the wake of Barth. It is not difficult for him to show the obvious failure of the effort to develop a doctrine of the Trinity in terms of merely reflecting on the various divine actions that are deployed in Scripture and tradition. He rightly points out that Gregory of Nyssa is keen to insist on the identity of operation in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in order to show “clearly the indistinguishable character of their nature.”50 For Wiles, “The Cappadocian construction was built upon and logically requires the foundation belief that the threefold form of the Godhead is a datum of revelation given in clear propositional form.”51 Wiles gives us three options to ponder: either (1) we do after all know about the Trinity through a revelation in the form of propositions concerning the inner mysteries of the Godhead; or (2) there is an inherent threefoldness about every act of God’s revelation, which requires us to think in Trinitarian terms of the nature of God, even though we cannot speak of the different persons of the Trinity being responsible for specific facets of God’s revelation; or (3) our Trinity of revelation is an arbitrary analysis of the activity of God, which though valuable in Christian thought and devotion is not of essential significance.52 Wiles rejects the first two and proposes that we adopt the third. He recognizes that this is a revolutionary development but cushions the impact by insisting (p. 76) that the shift would not be more radical than the “…break-away from the idea of propositional revelation of which it appears to be the logical conclusion.”53 Having concluded that the idea of propositional revelation is no longer tenable, the best way forward, Wiles suggests, is to abandon the doctrine of the Trinity and then find a better way to articulate the Christian experience of God in terms that are more intelligible given the intellectual resources available to us today.

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians It is tempting to respond to Wiles’ radical suggestion by arguing that his work is no longer a contribution to Christian theology; or by challenging the claim that his list of options is exhaustive; or by rejecting the underlying assumption that we can secure any substantial vision of God without an appeal to divine revelation and thus limiting our epistemological resources to that of natural theology and religious experience. I shall resist all of these temptations here. Wiles is correct to note that the Cappadocians and their predecessors were indeed committed to a doctrine of the Trinity long before they developed the proposal about divine action as I have pursued it in this chapter. Thus, given their practice of baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it would have been immediately bizarre for them to think of God in terms of a being composed of two Persons and one creature. This would have been utterly inept given the dominical commission in Matthew and given their intuitions about divine simplicity. What this observation makes clear is that it is a mistake to construe their epistemological commitments in terms of a modern concept of propositional revelation. As we have seen, they did indeed argue at length in terms of biblical exegesis, for this was the standard coin of the realm. However, it is anachronistic to read back into their vision of Scripture the standard shibboleth of conservative evangelicalism. As I have already drawn out, patristic visions of Scripture were more complex than this analysis allows. Moreover, biblical exegesis was not the only coin of the realm in which they purchased their theological conclusions. The relevant exegesis was laced with tacit philosophical assumptions that are by no means secured solely by an appeal to Scripture. So we must reject as inadequate Wiles’ account of the origins of the Cappadocians’ doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the correlative vision of God. What Wiles’ challenge does bring to light is that there is much more to the epistemological commitments of the Cappadocians than an appeal to propositional revelation. It suffices here to draw attention to the following considerations. First, that there was no agreement on how the doctrine of God was to be secured. This even applies in their appeal to scriptural considerations. So, were these alone sufficient to secure the divinity of the Holy Spirit or did appeal to Scripture need to be supplemented by appeal to tradition? If the (p. 77) latter is the case, did appeal to tradition mean appeal to a secret tradition passed down through the presbyters, as we find in Basil,54 or did this tradition need to be traced back through, say, “apostolic” sees like Rome? Furthermore, if we do appeal to tradition, is this appeal an independent epistemic norm, or is it merely a hermeneutical source that provides indispensable resources for interpreting Scripture? These are issues that go far beyond any appeal to propositional revelation. And even when the topic of revelation crops up, it is cast as much in terms of the revelation given in the Gospel rather than an appeal to divine revelation identified in some simple fashion with Scripture.55

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Consider a second observation. What role do we assign to the crucial place of perception of the divine and the development of properly functioning spiritual senses in their ruminations on the Holy Spirit? These are not incidental embellishments in the arguments of the Cappadocians. They crop up again and again and in part explain the harsh tones that seem so offensive to contemporary ears. They intuitively recognized that soteriological considerations had epistemological dimensions that required a call to humility and repentance. To be sure, their primary interest was not in epistemology, for they were first and foremost theologians and teachers of new converts and the church. However, there are various kinds of epistemological insights and suggestions that cry out for careful analysis given the better resources made available by more recent work in epistemology. Third, what are we to make of the remarkable suggestion of Gregory of Nazianzus that the doctrine of the Spirit is best seen as arising because of the indwelling of the Spirit in the life of the church after Pentecost? As he puts the matter, the change in the doctrine of God is reached by additions not subtraction. For the matter stands thus: The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son; and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit himself dwells among us, and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of himself. For it was not safe, when the Godhead of the Father was not acknowledged, plainly to proclaim the Son; nor when that of the Son was not yet perceived, to burden us further (if I may use so bold an expression) with the Holy Ghost; lest perhaps people might, like men loaded with food beyond their strength, and presenting eyes too weak to bear it to the sun’s light, risk the loss even of that which was within the reach of their powers; but by gradual additions, and, as David says, goings up, and advances and progress from glory to glory, the light of the Trinity might shine upon the more illuminated. For this reason it was, I think, that he gradually came to dwell in the disciples, measuring himself out to them according to their capacity to receive him, at the beginning of the gospel, after the Passion, after the (p.78) ascension, making perfect their powers, breathed upon them, and appearing in fiery tongues.56 This comment—so full of epistemic suggestions—is given as part of a sophisticated reply to those who object to the silence of Scripture on the Holy Spirit. It is easily missed not just by former conservative evangelicals like Wiles but by those contemporary analytic theologians who think that all they need in theology is a conservative doctrine of Scripture plus a precisionist vision of analytic philosophy. Wiles, in turning to religious experience as a warrant for his theological proposals, was in fact more in line with the tradition that he rejected than he realized. Page 16 of 21

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians Finally, it bears noting again that the Cappadocians urge great caution in moving from reflection on divine action to ontological reflection on the inner life of the Godhead. Gregory of Nazianzus devotes his introductory oration to this topic. So he worries that “our great mystery is in danger of being made a thing of little moment.”57 Not to everyone, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to everyone—the subject is not so cheap and low—and, I will add, not before every audience, nor at all times, nor on all points; but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits.58 There are intrinsic limits to what can be said and understood about God. It is difficult to conceive God, but to define him in words is an impossibility, as one of the Greek teachers of divinity taught, not unskillfully, as it appears to me; with the intention that he might be thought to have apprehended him; in that he says it is a hard thing to do; and yet we may escape being convicted of ignorance because of the impossibility of giving expression to the apprehension. But in my opinion it is impossible to express him, and yet more impossible to conceive him. For that which may be conceived may perhaps be made clear by language, if not fairly well, at any rate imperfectly, to anyone who is not quite deprived of his hearing, or slothful of understanding. But to comprehend the whole of so great a subject is quite impossible and impracticable, not merely to the utterly careless and ignorant, but even to those who are highly exalted, and who love God, and in like manner to every created nature; seeing that the darkness of this world and the thick covering of the flesh is an obstacle to the full understanding of the truth.59 As the theological orations make abundantly clear, this apophaticism is not some kind of cheap excuse for avoiding the hard questions that crop up in ontological reflection on God. Yet the theme is so important in the discussion (p.79) that any serious treatment of the epistemology in play must find an intelligible and coherent place for it. Equally, any serious treatment of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Gregory of Nazianzus and his colleagues must reckon with the recurring maxim that actions make manifest the identity and nature of the agents that perform them. Notes:

(1) Michael A. G. Haykin, The Spirit of God: The Exegesis of 1 and 2 Corinthians in the Pneumatomachian Controversy of the Fourth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians (2) Works on the Spirit: Athanasius the Great and Didymus the BlindAndrew Radde-Gallwitz, “The Holy Spirit as Agent, not Activity: Origen’s Argument with Modalism and its Afterlife in Didymus, Eunomius, and Gregory of Nazianzus,” Vigilae Christianae 65 (2011): 227–48. (3) St. Basil of Caesarea Against EunomiusTheodore C. Campbell, “The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Athanasius,” Scottish Journal of Theology 27 (1974): 408. (4) See the previous chapter. (5) Compare a similar designation reported by Didymus. “For they say that if the Holy Spirit is not created, then he is either a brother of God the Father or the uncle of the only-begotten Jesus Christ. Or he is either the son of Christ or the grandson of God the Father. Or he is himself the Son of God, and in that case the Lord Jesus Christ will not be only-begotten since he has a brother.” See “On the Holy Spirit,” 225–6. (6) Athanasius, “Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit,” in Works on the Spirit: Athanasius the Great and Didymus the Blind, 137. Emphasis as in the original. (7) In the case of Didymus, it is clear that he is “compelled to acquiesce in the oft-repeated exhortation to set forth our opinion on the Holy Spirit by means of proof-texts from the scriptures, lest those who hold contrary opinions deceive people through their lack of familiarity with so great a doctrine and instantly drag them away into the opinion of their enemies without careful reflection.” See “On the Holy Spirit,” 143–4. It is well known that Athanasius more often than not couches his argument in terms of the scope of Scripture as a whole. (8) Athanasius, “Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit,” (9) Ibid., (10) Ibid., (11) Ibid., (12) Ibid., (13) One could readily show how the same line of argument shows up in Didymus the Blind by tracking carefully the appeal to the actions of the Holy Spirit in his “On the Holy Spirit.” (14) An early run of Basil’s version of the argument from action to the identity of agency can be found in Book Three of his Against Eunomius. For a fine summary see DelCogliano and Radde-Gallwitz, “Introduction,” 54–5.

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians (15) For a technical review of the issues raised by Basil see David G. Robertson, “Basil of Caesarea on the Meaning of Prepositions and Conjunctions,” Classical Quarterly 53 (2003): 167–74. (16) St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 35. (17) Ibid. (18) Ibid., (19) Ibid., 43. Note here how Basil implicitly recognizes the importance of human action and response in his account of the relation between the Spirit and the believer. He makes this explicit shortly afterwards. “…the Spirit comes to us when we withdraw ourselves from evil passions, which have crept into the soul through its friendship with the flesh, alienating us from a close relationship with God.” See ibid., 44. He repeats this point elsewhere. See ibid., 93, 96. (20) Ibid., (21) Ibid., (22) Ibid., (23) Ibid., 76–7. Basil goes on to catalogue the action of the Holy Spirit in creation, in Christ, in the adoption of human agents when by the Spirit they address God as “Abba, Father,” in resurrecting the dead, in converting and giving new life to the sinner, in the guidance of Peter, and in interceding for believers. Basil makes clear that these actions are inappropriately predicated of angels or creatures. Equally, they should not be interpreted along the lines that the Holy Spirit is merely an instrument. To do so would involve grieving the Holy Spirit or committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. See ibid., 77–9. (24) Ibid., (25) Ibid., (26) Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Theological Orations,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954), 211. (27) ibid., (28) Gregory of Nyssa, “Address on Religious Instruction,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Hardy, 272. (29) Ibid., (30) ibid., Page 19 of 21

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians (31) “On the Holy Spirit, Against the Macedonians,” 3.http://www.newadvent.org/ fathers/2903.htm (32) Ibid., (33) Ibid., (34) Gregory of Nyssa, “An Answer to Ablabius: That We Should Not Think of Saying There Are Three Gods,” in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Hardy, 262. (35) Ibid. (36) Ibid., 266. For an exposition of Gregory of Nazianzus’ ontology of the Trinity, see Christopher A. Beeley, “Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory of Nazianzus,” Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007): 199–214. (37) Killian McDonnell OSB, “A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit?,” Theological Studies 46 (1985): 191–227 (201–2). (38) This comes out clearly in the fifth theological oration of Gregory of Nazianzus. “With the others, however, we will argue thus: The Holy Ghost must certainly be conceived of either as in the category of the self-existent or as in that of the things which are contemplated in another; of which classes those are skilled in such matters call the one substance and the other accident.” See his “The Fifth Theological Oration—On the Spirit,” 197. (39) McDonnell, “A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit?,” 211. (40) Ibid., (41) Ibid., (42) Ibid., (43) Ibid., (44) ibid., (45) Ibid., (46) ibid.,

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Divine Action and Pneumatology in the Cappadocians (47) Athanasius makes the interesting point that we should take up the topic of Christology first before we take up the topic of the Holy Spirit. This may well be because he himself construed this adage in epistemic terms. Athanasius, after quoting John 16:13–14, John 20:22, and Joel 3:1, says this. “Thus it is with good reason that we speak of the Son of God first, so that from our knowledge of the Son we may be able to have true knowledge of the Spirit.” See Athanasius, “Letters to Serapion,” 118. The temptation to read too much into this should be resisted, even though my own work here shows one obvious way in which this comment can be interpreted. (48) For a fine contemporary treatment of the challenges in coming to terms with the relevant metaphysical developments see Richard Cross, “On the Trinity,” in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, vol. 1: Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement, ed. Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 107–26. (49) Maurice Wiles, “Some Reflections on the Origins of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” in his Working Papers in Doctrine (London: SCM Press, 1976), 2–17. (50) Ibid., (51) Ibid., (52) Ibid., (53) Ibid., (54) See Basil, “On the Holy Spirit,” 108. (55) Gregory of Nyssa in his summary statement speaks of his argument being “our argument about the gospel revelation.” See “An Address on Religious Instruction,” 301. (56) Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Fifth Theological Oration—On The Spirit,” 209– 10. (57) Gregory of Nazianzus, “The First Theological Oration—Introductory,” 129. (58) Ibid. (59) Ibid.,Timaeus

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords This chapter engages the work of Augustine on divine grace and human freedom in salvation. It works through the types of divine action seen in Augustine’s writings on grace in the Pelagian controversy as well as his work on baptism with respect to the Donatists. The author also examines a precursor to Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, and his work on catechesis and divine action. He considers what these theologians had to say about divine action in grace, baptism, forgiveness, and in the experience of salvation. Considering Augustine’s theology of grace, the author notes the perennial problems in reconciling divine causation of grace with human freedom in salvation. Keywords:   Augustine, grace, freedom, Pelagianism, Cyril of Jerusalem, catechesis, divine action

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Few topics are more contested and persistent in the history of theology than those related to the relative place of divine and human action in salvation. The issue has been neatly captured in terms of the tension between grace and freedom. On the one hand, salvation is all of divine grace; it is God alone who saves us. On the other hand, it is human agents who are saved by God; the integrity of human agency in the process of salvation requires some place for human freedom and action. So God alone does not save us; in some sense and to some degree we save ourselves. If saved by God alone, we forfeit human freedom; if we preserve human freedom, we abandon divine grace. Athanasius certainly allows for genuine human choice and action in our response to the amazing things God has done in Christ. This same position shows up elsewhere in the patristic tradition and is commonly seen as championed in the Eastern wing of the ancient church right down to the present day. The debate came to a head initially in the provocative proposals of Pelagius, in all likelihood an Irish theologian who, like Herod, would not even be a footnote in history but for the trouble he caused. Augustine is the towering figure, and rightly so, for he is an intellectual genius of the first rank; Pelagius is but a pigmy Irish moralist as his interlocutor. For the West, Augustine effectively stole the show; to reject even a sanitized variation of his position is the third rail of theology; touch it and you will be electrocuted. Given the dexterity and depth of the late Augustine’s proposals, one can readily see why it is so difficult to get beyond him. One can also see why readers are likely to be skeptical about any offer to throw fresh light on the Augustine– Pelagius dispute, much less to solve it. Like a canny politician I shall keep expectations low at this point. Our first task is to change the angle of vision, and that in two ways. First, be it noted that once we cast the issue in terms of action and agency, in the ancient context we are not dealing with just two agents but four. There is the agency of God and the agency of the convert or believer, of course; but there is also the agency of the church and her agents and the agency of (p.81) the demonic.1 Second, it will help to stand back and get in place first a substantial account of the specific actions performed by the church, the believer, God, and the demonic. The temptation to jump immediately to the great and grand themes of grace, nature, will, desire, freedom, predestination, and the like, should be stoutly resisted. Before we get to the seminal proposals of the late Augustine and their evaluation, we need to take our time and see the full range of actions involved. Moreover, we may need to reframe the debate about grace and freedom in order to do justice to the diversity of agents and actions involved. So we have already a neat agenda to follow up ahead.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine One point of entry in a rich account of the actions involved can be found by looking at the catechetical arrangements in the church. One of the best sites to examine is that furnished by Cyril of Jerusalem in the middle of the fourth century. These antedate Augustine by a generation but that is a good reason for their choice for they allow us to see significant contrasts at key points with Augustine. It is also fitting to look at Cyril because through him we have reliable access to a representative set of catechetical practices.2 In the evangelization of the Roman Empire catechesis was a central practice in which new believers were initiated in the life of faith and the church. The spread of Christianity initially in Jewish circles did not require the lengthy period of formation that became conventional later; and understandably so, because the background lives of new believers outside the Jewish fold were less well-formed than those within it. Hence, after hearing the Gospel from ordinary lay folk or from itinerant evangelists, non-Jews interested in following up were invited to become catechumens or learners. They submitted themselves to a process that could last up to three or four years.3 The first actions to be noted then are those that involve the actions of the church, or more specifically her members, teachers, or evangelists. Given Paul’s aphorism that one cannot hear without a preacher we can begin with those speech acts that conveyed the content of the Gospel, or an (p.82) invitation to read a gospel, or the encouragement to make further inquiry. Without these human actions the journey to become a believer generally cannot get off the ground. These speech acts were followed up with all that is involved in developing the complex network of practices that constituted catechesis. Times and places for meeting had to be identified and relevant spatial arrangements put in place. Teachers had to be chosen, trained, and authorized. They in turn had to scrutinize and make appropriate selections among inquirers; they had to ensure that the relevant exorcisms were conducted; they had to work on what themes to develop and in what order. They had to answer hosts of questions, anticipate misunderstandings, and make suitable adjustments to their audiences. They had to make arrangements for baptism, make sure that there were women deacons to baptize the naked female converts, prepare the anointing oil, and implement the range of ritual acts that were common.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Looking at the list of actions performed by the catechumen, they fall into two main categories.4 Consider first, those that have to do with the human cultivation of proper dispositions and aspirations. Right at the beginning they have to make clear their good intentions and avoid the kind of motives visible in Simon the Sorcerer whose “…heart refused to let in the light of the Holy Spirit.”5 They are to surrender their hearts to God and flee the works of the devil.6 There must be no hidden insincerity but an appropriate disposition.7 They should avoid despair and a state of hopelessness and look forward in hope to salvation.8 They need to have a sober mind and watchful eyes.9 They must take heed of the smooth tongues of the Greeks and beware lest any deceive them.10 After baptism they are to hold fast to the creedal faith of the church.11 They should avoid asking questions not covered by Scripture, like inquiries into the divine nature and hypostasis.12 They should meditate on the expectations of future rewards as an encouragement to good works.13 One and all they are to guard themselves “…from future sins, to keep clean this garment, the body, and not lose heaven’s salvation through commission of some few acts of fornication, self-indulgence or any other sin.”14 They should set their minds on God’s power rather than on their feebleness.15 (p.83) Consider, second, such general admonitions as the following that touch on more specific human actions. Thus they are to strip off evil acts, like fornication, and exercise self-discipline, for if they do not they cannot expect to receive God’s grace.16 They should repent.17 They are to get their names inscribed on the church roll and pay careful attention to the way the church architecture has been set up as an aid to teaching the faith.18 They are to watch their tongues and show up for exorcism.19 They are to pray, engage in appropriate fasting, make the sign of the cross on a host of occasions, confess their transgressions publicly in church, approach baptism with careful attention, and dress properly.20 They are to believe the evangelic preaching, to read the Scriptures of the church, desist from reading other books privately, and receive the teaching of the church.21 Turn now to what God does. Aside from his great acts of creation and redemption, God has established “one holy Catholic Church.”22 “…since the Jews had fallen out of favour because of their conspiring against the Lord,…the Saviour has built a second holy Church, our Christian Church from out of the Gentiles…”23 Within the church God has provided the sacred Scriptures on the basis of which everything taught is to be demonstrated.24 In the church the Saviour comes in many characters. For those who need cheering, he proposes himself as a vine, while he stands as a door before those who should be entering. He stands before those who have prayers to pray as their mediating high priest. He is sheep again, to those with sins upon them, to be slain for their sins.25

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine This accommodation to the needs of the seeker stands as a model of sensitivity to those who minister in the church. “He [the Saviour] adapted himself when he came then, and taught by persuasion…”26 God grants the change of heart that saves.27 God through the Holy Spirit fashions minds into mansions of God, takes mere water and gives it saving power by the operation of the Holy Spirit, in baptismal regeneration grants “a new birth, not corporeal, but a spiritual rebirth of the soul,” and thereafter gives power to wrestle against the adverse powers of evil.28 In baptism the Holy Spirit descends and gives the baptized a new status as sons of God.29 Through baptism, God cures the former wounds of soul and body due to sin.30 After baptism the catechumens (p.84) are to learn about how they have received the sealing of fellowship with the Holy Spirit.31 So much then for divine action. Happily, what is said about the action of the demonic can be stated on a postcard. The devil “…is the prime author of sin and father of all lies.”32 He works by prompting but does not master by might those he does not persuade.33 “The soul possesses free will. The devil has the power to suggest evil, but he was not given the power to compel you against your will.”34 So the believer needs to shut the door and keep him at a distance. If this is not done the consequences can be disastrous. Do you not know that oftentimes a root has split a rock, when suffered to remain in it? Give no lodgment to the seed of evil, seeing that it will break up your faith. Pull the evil thing up by the roots before it can bloom, lest, through not putting yourself to trouble at the start, you presently have to take axes to it and busy yourself with fire. If you begin to have eye-trouble, see to it at once, lest, by the time you seek a doctor, you have lost your sight.35

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Cyril’s elaborate development of the practice of catechesis effectively gives us a picture of a grand cosmic and historical drama where human agents who have freedom are caught in hostile territory which has fortunately been invaded by God in Christ to redeem it. Leaving the exact identity of this God and the varied agency of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relatively underdeveloped, he makes clear that salvation involves the complex interaction of God, the demonic, the church, and the catechumen.36 Salvation is clearly dependent on a host of human actions that include forming the right intentions, struggling with evil, repenting of sin, and engaging in various good works. It is also dependent on the actions of the church, especially her bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Salvation is also utterly dependent on a host of divine actions which defeat the devil, works through the agency of the church as it teaches, baptizes, anoints with oil, and the like, and also operates at the deepest levels of human being and agency. He is very clear on the indispensability of human action when he insists that the reception of grace is conditional and that salvation can be lost through human failure to guard the gifts received. He is equally clear that God acts objectively through baptism (clearly an action of the church) to bring about regeneration and grants divine sonship through the indwelling action of the Holy Spirit. It may seem tedious and even off tune to spend so much time cataloguing a representative network of actions predicated of God, the demonic, the church, and the potential convert or believer. It may even seem perverse given the (p. 85) handy way we have captured the crucial issue that has so caught the attention of theologians across the centuries. At the outset we cast the issue neatly as the challenge of reconciling grace and freedom, allowing grace to stand for the action of God in the believer and freedom to stand for the action of the believer. There is legitimate motive in my way of proceeding. What we can see immediately is that the debate about divine and human action in salvation has been all too readily circumscribed and attenuated. Lurking within it is the additional challenge of sorting through the relation between divine action and the human actions of the church in the process of salvation.37 There may be good reason to keep these two sets of issues distinct; but as we shall see this is not a wise conclusion; in fact the two sets of issues are intimately interconnected.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine We can see this immediately when we turn to Augustine. In fact the first order of business is to look briefly at his dispute with the Donatists over baptism. There are many historical issues swirling around this dispute, but what matters here are the claims advanced by both sides on the proper conditions of baptism, a human-ecclesial act of great significance to both sides in the dispute. The Donatists advanced a simple thesis: those who had been baptized in churches whose episcopal leaders at some point had been complicit in betraying the church due to persecution had to be rebaptized in churches that had broken away and maintained a pure line of episcopal succession. Augustine and the churches he identified as Catholic rejected this position and freely recognized the validity of the baptism of schismatics like the Donatists. For the Donatists no divine action was performed in the baptisms of the compromising Catholic Church; hence the imperative of rebaptism. Augustine clearly rejected rebaptism. So what did God really do in the baptisms of the Donatists? At one level the debate was a debate about the moral conditions essential for the appropriate human agent in the performance of baptism. Donatists were rigorists who insisted on human purity on the part of the human administrator. This is the standard way of approaching the Donatist controversy. On this front Augustine’s theological victory was relatively easy to secure.38 The appeal to the authority of Cyprian was undermined by careful attention to his circumstances before the wider church had spoken, by Cyprian’s readiness to tolerate those who dissented, and by his death as a martyr. The Donatists themselves were hopelessly inconsistent because they accepted the baptisms of (p.86) exDonatists who had been baptized by churches that they took to be compromised. Furthermore, Donatists undermined faith in the practices of baptism in any church because no one but God could know of the moral standing of those who officiated. Most importantly Donatists sinned against charity by their selfrighteous pride and by their undermining the unity of the church in going into schism. We remain, however, on the outskirts of our quarry. We want to know what God is doing in the baptisms of the Donatists. Does this differ from what God is doing in the baptisms of the Catholics? And if God is doing anything, how does the divine action relate to the action of the human agents who administer baptism? At this point specific action predicates become crucial if we are to get clarity and make progress.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Both Augustine and the Donatists would likely agree on the answer to the last question I raised. The answer involves a case of double agency. God designates certain human agents to be precisely his agents through whom he performs various acts. Just as a president or prime minister may authorize a named agent to carry out certain acts in his name, so God authorizes various human agents to be his agents so that when they perform acts a, b, and c, God performs acts x, y, and z. The relevant acts of mediation at this point are designation, authorization, and empowerment. So God creates the church with relevant ways of appointing and authorizing various human agents to perform certain ceremonies. Thus they conduct valid baptisms, that is, undertake fitting preparatory instruction, use water (rather than, say, vodka, milk, or orange juice) in a certain way, and engage in relevant performative speech acts, like, “I baptize you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Thereby God performs certain specified acts through what they do. The Donatists agreed with Augustine on a complex narrative of the history of the church, episcopal succession, ordinations, and the like, which provided warrants and explanations for the double agency I have just enumerated. The difference, as we have seen, had to do with the rigorous moral conditions that had to be observed on the part of those who ordain the various offices in the church and administer baptism. The Donatists were sticklers for purity. As to what God then does in the life of the convert, they would also have agreed that a baptism rightly administered would involve at least three divine core actions. God brings about spiritual regeneration, gives remission of sins, and confers a new status of divine sonship. The Donatists were very clear that none of these divine actions were executed in baptism in the Catholic Church. One expects Augustine, given his rejection of rebaptism on return to the Catholic Church, to say that this is precisely what happens in the baptism of Donatists and that is the end of the matter. Yet this is not what he says. He holds that both baptisms under consideration involve acts of God; indeed God is the primary agent involved. However, while the baptism of the Donatists may be valid, it is not effective. It is not profitable when conducted outside the (p.87) Catholic Church. The baptism is administered and received by human agents who are in schism and therefore acting without love. Put differently, given that the Donatists share crucial elements that are of the essence of the church, a Donatist baptism has the power of generation. So the baptized receive new birth; however, they have no part in the inheritance of Christ. For the Church had herself given birth to Simon Magus through the sacrament of baptism; and yet it was declared to him that he had no part in the inheritance of Christ. Did he lack anything in respect of baptism, of the gospel, of the sacraments? But in that he wanted charity, he was born in vain; and perhaps it had been well for him that he had never been born at all.39 Page 8 of 23

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine What about God remitting the sins of the baptized? The answer involves clever equivocation. When he or she abandons the schismatics and their lack of love, then the sacrament will become operative on their repentance and their joining the Catholic Church and they will be forgiven by God. It is as if someone passes from darkness into light and then back to darkness; the experience of light penetrates and points him in the right direction but it has no lasting effect for they fall back into darkness. Given the acute intellectual abilities of Augustine, it is no surprise that in time this kind of equivocation was abandoned. We can put the problem in terms of divine action. His dilemma is this: God acts in Donatists’ baptism; baptism minimally involves God bringing about new birth and declaring remission of sin; yet in a Donatist baptism it is far from clear that God actually performs such actions. Put sharply, regeneration and pardon are success verbs; but in this instance there is really no success. One can try to cover such confusion for a while in terms of degrees of grace or by using therapeutic analogies that can be stretched across ecclesial actions and boundaries, but in the end the equivocation on what specific divine actions are involved will undermine such strategies. Considerations about divine action in baptism show up afresh in Augustine’s attempt to sort through the tension between grace and freedom that now needs to be taken up. Indeed coming to terms with what God does in the baptism of infants plays a role in that debate. However, that role is marginal compared to the weightier matters that crop up. We can begin by exposing the initial framing of the debate that erupted in his exchange with Pelagius. The issue before us is this: How should we accurately describe the relation between divine action and human action in personal conversion and subsequent pilgrimage? It is already agreed that God has acted decisively in (p.88) incarnation and atonement in Christ, that God has forgiven us our sins, that God indwells us by the Holy Spirit, and the like. It is equally agreed that human agents must repent, open themselves to God, come forward for instruction and baptism, read the Scriptures, and the like. How now do we narrate the story of these interrelated sets of actions aptly and accurately?

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Any narration will include an account of creation, subsequent human action, and divine response. Pelagius’ narration is designed to safeguard the goodness of God, human freedom, and even a genuine divine action in Christ and the church.40 His basic story is that God created human beings good; they were equipped with reason and understanding to rule the created order; they were given genuine freedom to do good or evil (in itself an additional good); by their own will they could do good or evil; when they did good, they were responsible for what they did so they could take credit for their goodness, they accrued merit, and they deserved to be rewarded; and when they did evil they were equally responsible for what they did and rightly felt ashamed and consciencestricken. The real possibility of achieving goodness on this schema was clearly instantiated in a raft of biblical heroes, like Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, and Job. Human nature is essentially good and even achieved such goodness without divine law. However, evil choices have been exercised and the consequences are real. Thus, as long as the exercise of the recently created human nature continued to thrive and the long practice of sinning had not shrouded human reason like a fog, nature was left without a law. Once it had been covered over with vices and corroded by the rust of ignorance, the Lord applied the law like a file to polish nature by repeated correction and restore its original luster. Doing good has become difficult for us because of the long custom of sinning, which begins to infect us even in our childhood. Over the years it gradually corrupts us, building an addiction and then holding us bound with what seems like the force of nature itself. All the years during which we were negligently reared and were trained in vices, during which we even labored at evil, during which the attractions of wickedness made innocence look foolish, all these years now rise up against us. They come against us and the old practice battles the new decision. After we have labored so long to learn wickedness, are we then surprised that sanctity is not mysteriously bestowed upon us while we remain idle and at ease without working to build good customs?41 (p.89) Once we realize what has gone wrong we are well on the way to putting things right. If we remember how successful those heroic ancestors were without the law “…we can believe all the more that we can do the same after the coming of Christ [him].”42 What has Christ done? “Christ’s grace has taught us and regenerated us as better persons. His blood has purged and cleansed us; his example purged and cleansed us.”43 Given such generous action on God’s part (teaching, regeneration, purging, and cleansing), we can now move forward to perfection through our devotion, disciplined customs and practices, scrupulous observance of the commands of God, exercising integrity of thought and action, remembering our heavenly birth, contemplating our rewards and merit, and repentance.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Three crucial problems haunt these proposals: they involve much too healthy an account of human nature, will, and action, a minimalist specification of divine action in salvation, and a subsequent doctrine of human desert and merit before God. Augustine’s spirited and dense riposte takes up all of these problems and repeats them with characteristic flair and intensity. He is prepared to let Pelagius set the terms of the debate as far as human nature is concerned, that is, he accepts a basic distinction between capacity, will, and performance. The crucial problem in Pelagius is that he allows for divine action in the arena of capacity, but not in the arenas of will and action. Pelagius sets down and distinguishes three elements which he says are involved in fulfilling divine commands: capacity, will, and action. By his capacity a person can be just; by his will he decides to be just; by his action he is just. The first of these, capacity, lies outside our power; we have it even against our own will. The other two, will and action, are ours he claims; he attributes them to us as deriving only from ourselves. He then asserts that the grace of God helps not the two which he regards as our own, but rather the other, which is capacity, which comes from God and is not in our power. Will and action, which are our own, are strong enough to turn from evil and do good without divine aid. The capacity we receive from God, however, is so weak, that it is always assisted by the help of grace.44 Over against this Augustine insists that divine grace operates across all three, that is, across capacity, will, and action. Moreover, the divine action represented by the language of grace is much more than simply the giving of law and teaching. God shows and reveals but he does not help. To be sure, Pelagius will allow for other actions like revelation, the opening of the eyes of the heart, the showing of things to come, pointing out satanic snares, and enlightening by the manifold and ineffable gift of heavenly grace, but these are only forms of showing and revealing.45 The same applies to such divine actions as inflaming our desires, rousing the sluggish will to a desire for God by a (p.90) revelation of wisdom, and urging us to all that is good. But these too are reducible to law and instruction.46 Over against this, Paul is very clear that “it is God who works in us both to will and accomplish.”47 Such divine action involves much more than teaching. It involves drawing human agents to the Father and the giving of grace to come to the Father.48 Given human weakness, “God not only makes us know what we should know but do what we know, not only believe what we should love but love what we believe.”49 Those who are predestined according to his purpose are given “at the same time both to know what to do and to do what they know.” When something is given (like justice), “it is not called ours but God’s, because it comes to us from God.”50

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Strictly speaking, it looks as if human actions have now been left behind. Our knowing and doing are divine actions not human actions; human action is simply displaced by divine action. However, closer inspection shows otherwise. The key is to see exactly what divine actions he identifies and they clearly leave room for human action. And the relevant action predicates are “helps,” “assists.”51 As Augustine puts the issue, what he is pursuing in the debate is “the question of the assistance of grace.”52 Human action is not at all displaced: “…the actualization of the capacity, the movement of the will, and the achievement of the operation are found together.”53 Speaking specifically of divine teaching, when God teaches through the grace of the Spirit rather than the letter of the law, the result of his teaching is not simply that he is aware of what he has learned by knowing but also that he seeks it by willing and accomplishes it by acting. This divine way of teaching assists not only the natural capacity for willing and working but also the actual willing and working itself.54 Equally interestingly, Augustine can readily endorse the language of cooperation he finds in Ambrose. “Certainly you realize that the power of the Lord everywhere cooperates with human efforts. No one can build without the Lord; no one can guard without the Lord; no one can begin anything without the Lord [Ps. 127:1].”55 For Augustine divine assistance then is spread right across human capacity, will, and action; yet it allows for genuine human action, action described in terms of human and divine cooperation. It now looks as if he has opened in (p.91) the door for human agents to claim credit for what they have done. They can be proud of what they have done, engage in appropriate boasting, claim proportionate reward, and speak of just merit. It matters little that divine assistance may be primary and preeminent in terms of the outcome; the human contribution may be minuscule compared to the divine contribution. Once one allows for any cooperation at all then we have a situation which is at the very least credit-pride-reward and merit-allowing for the human agent involved. The difference between Augustine and Pelagius is one merely of degree rather than of principle. Augustine may have denied that human agents should speak in any way, shape, or form about their credit, pride, reward, and merit; however, he has not at all ruled it out once he has opened the door to genuine human action and cooperation. Augustine is adamant that this does not follow from his position. In part this stems from the doctrine of justification that he finds in Paul and elsewhere. Justification is clearly by divine grace not human works, by divine promise not human endeavor, by divine foreknowledge and divine predestination not human choice, and by a divine righteousness not a human righteousness.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine It also stems from the way in which he envisages the human condition before and after the fall of Adam. Opening up this line of inquiry takes us right back to his account of divine and human action in the life of faith. Here is how it runs.56 The first human being was created upright and free of fault. Given freedom he took the wrong course and disobeyed God. God foreknew that this would happen and also knew that it was more appropriate to his sovereign goodness to deal with the ensuing evils rather than prevent their occurrence. If Adam by free choice had willed to remain in his initial upright and faultless condition he would have been unable to fall later and would have known this with certitude. Because he abandoned God through free choice, however, he experienced God’s just judgment. He was condemned along with his whole race, which was still contained within him and thus sinned with him. God’s grace now liberates some of this race and frees them from that condemnation which now holds them bound. Thus even if none were set free, no one could justly complain about God’s judgment. A large number are actually liberated, though they are only few in comparison with those who perish. Grace does this gratuitously, and it deserves gratitude. Thus no one should think it comes from his merits and is puffed up; but every mouth should be shut; and whoever boasts shall boast in the Lord [Rom. 3:19; 1 Cor. 1:31].57 (p.92) In blocking the possibility of pride and merit, Augustine provides additional insight into how we should understand the divine action instantiated in his concept of divine assistance. He does this by developing a series of contrasts between human agents before the fall and human agents after the fall. Divine assistance is needed before and after the fall if human beings are to do good; however, after the fall they need much more divine assistance. The obvious question which arises as we work though this contrast is this: Does Augustine manage to keep intact any genuine concept of human action? Put differently: Does the actual delivery of divine assistance become so comprehensive that he erodes his commitment to divine–human cooperation? Does the move to eliminate any notion of credit, pride, reward, and merit lead him to a vision of divine assistance that leaves no room for human action?

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine Let’s agree that given the fall and it historical effects, human agents are now in need of much greater grace than Adam needed before the fall. They live in a hostile environment; given their hereditary and personal guilt, they need absolution through the blood of Christ; and they face an incessant battle against evil within because of the strife and division within themselves. Before the fall, Adam faced no such challenges. He was created upright and there was no conflict between his will and his desires. Yet he still needed divine assistance if he was to do good; if he had chosen rightly, Adam would have been rewarded with the gift of perseverance. “If this person had not abandoned their assistance by free choice, he would always have been good. He deserted and was abandoned in turn.”58 Making the right choice was only a necessary but not a sufficient condition of doing good. What emerges in Augustine’s account of the assistance needed after the fall is that divine assistance looks very much like both the necessary and sufficient conditions of human action. Consider the following where this claim shows up in his remarks about divine grace. By the first grace, a person has justice if he wills it. The second grace can do more; it moves a person to will, indeed to will so strongly and to love so ardently that by the opposing will of the spirit he conquers the lusting will of the flesh. The first grace, which showed the power of free choice, was not insignificant: without this assistance the person could not persevere in good, although he could abandon the help if he so chose. The second grace is greater because a grace which restores a person’s lost liberty and enables him to obtain and remain in good if he so wills does not do enough unless it also causes him to will it.59 This grace of God not only makes us able to do what we will in receiving and steadfastly retaining good, but it actually makes us will to do what we can.60 (p.93) We must examine carefully and specify exactly the difference between these pairs: to be able not to sin and not to be able to sin; to be able not to die and not to be able to die; to be able not to abandon the good and not to be able to abandon the good. The first human being was able not to sin, not to die, not to desert the good…Thus the original freedom of will was to be able not to sin; the final freedom will be much greater—not to be able to sin. The original immortality was to be able not to die; the final power will be greater—not to be able to die. The original power of perseverance was to be able not to abandon the good; the final will be the blessedness of perseverance—not to be able to desert the good.61

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine The distinction between the two kinds of grace can be described in terms of two kinds of assistance where again it looks as if the divine action at stake provides both the necessary and sufficient conditions for human action related to salvation. The help without which something is not done is one thing; the help by which it is actually accomplished is another. Without food we cannot live, but the availability of food does not cause those who prefer to die to continue living. Thus the assistance of food is necessary for us to live, but does in itself effect our living. When happiness is given to someone who did not have it, however, he immediately becomes happy. It is not only a necessary help but one which actually accomplishes its purpose. Thus it is a help both by which something happens and without which it does not happen. If a person receives happiness, he immediately becomes happy; but if he never receives it, he never will be.62 Thus even for their perseverance in good, God wants the saints to boast in him rather than in their own strength. He not only gives them the help he gave Adam, which is necessary for them to persevere if they so choose; he also works the willing itself in them. Since they will not actually persevere unless they both can and will, in the abundance of his grace he gives them both the capacity and the will to persevere. Their wills are so inflamed by the Spirit that they are able to because they so will, and they so will because God causes them to will. Strength should be perfected in the weakness of this life to check the soaring of pride. If God left the decision to them in the midst of such weakness, so that he gave them only that help which is necessary for them to persevere if they choose and did not also cause the willing itself in them, then their will would fail by its own weakness in the face of such great and numerous temptations. They would be unable to (p.94) persevere because in their weakness they would fail of it; or their weak wills would not choose it so firmly that they would be able to do it.63

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine In these materials Augustine has abandoned the Pelagian analysis of human agency and action in terms of capacity, will, and action. He speaks, albeit cursorily, in terms of capacity and will. Given that the strong dose of divine assistance goes right across the board here, the ensuing human action is secured as taking place. However, this is a mere verbal point. Divine assistance goes all the way to the bottom whatever psychological or metaphysical account we give of human agency and action. And the outcome could not be clearer: the human agent is given such grace and divine assistance that he or she moves from a state where they are able not to sin to where they are not able to sin. Furthermore, it is true that Augustine in speaking of the grace of perseverance points us generally to a final state where human agents, say, in heaven, will not be able to sin; on earth they will at times sin and therefore need daily to ask God for forgiveness. Perseverance is a long-term achievement verb which can allow for temporal set-backs and sin; this analysis fits accurately with Augustine’s profoundly realistic account of human frailty and sin in this life. This would clearly suggest that the divine assistance given to the believer does not constitute the necessary and sufficient conditions for doing good all the time across the board. What this displays is that in the materials under review we can pursue a strong version of Augustine’s doctrine of divine grace and divine assistance. The stronger version will argue that he is committed to a vision in which grace is necessarily efficacious; where divine assistance is such that it is the necessary and sufficient condition for human actions; and where the logical outcome is a doctrine of double, unconditional predestination. This trajectory will involve working out a compatibilist account of the relation between divine determination and human freedom and an appropriate metaphysics of human agency to fit with this. Such a development would provide an easy way to dispose of any worries about human pride, reward, merit, or credit.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine The pressure points in Augustine’s account that offer resistance to this development show up at two crucial junctures. First, any doctrine of grace that deploys the concept of divine assistance cannot dispose of some role for (p.95) the human agent without lapsing into incoherence. “Giving assistance” necessarily involves two agents: the one who assists and the one assisted. This is surely why Augustine embraced Ambrose’s notion of divine–human cooperation in salvation. Assisting is a polymorphous notion; one assists another agent by performing other actions through which the assistance is mediated. So a teacher assists a student to prepare for an exam by teaching the relevant books, encouraging the fainthearted, scolding the recalcitrant with various warnings, and so on. Moreover, assistance can be a matter of degree. It can be more or less, dependent on the circumstances. And assistance can remain hidden so that the one assisted can be kept in the dark about the assistance given. There is a line, however, between assisting someone to do x and actually doing x. The teacher may help a student succeed in passing the exam by providing a wealth of assistance, but no one is going to confuse giving assistance with actually doing the exam. Augustine at times comes perilously close to crossing that line and thus giving occasion for the claim that divine assistance constitutes the necessary and sufficient conditions of human action. However, I doubt if Augustine himself really ever crossed that line. The extended usage of assistance as the crucial action predicate relevant to divine grace and the analogical reading essential to keeping it intact prevents him from doing so. Second, we can help Augustine from falling into this mistake and not really allowing for genuine human action in salvation by noting the danger that lurks in the language of causation as it crops up in discourse about divine grace. Christians, with Augustine, are very clear on a host of grounds that God is the cause of their salvation. It is God who saves; we do not save ourselves. Even to come to God depends on divine initiative and on the complex interrelated actions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from the beginnings of faith to the arrival in the world to come. Sophisticated doctrines of specific divine actions like justification and sanctification are but the tip of a vast network of divine activity. Hence the whole idea of boasting or taking credit makes no sense given these prior commitments. It is correct to say that God is the cause of our salvation; and it is correct to say that the whole idea of taking credit for our salvation is not just spiritual bad manners, it is theologically otiose.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine The danger that lurks in the neighborhood is that if God is indeed the author and cause of our salvation, there is no room for any reference to human action. The antidote to this is simple. We need to pay attention to the obvious distinction between causal claims that delineate the full necessary and sufficient conditions of a particular phenomenon and causal discourse that picks out by far the most significant causal condition of the phenomenon. Ordinary discourse conceals or blurs this distinction. So it is easy to begin with language in which God is rightly identified as the cause of our salvation in the sense of being by far the most important causal agent in salvation and read it to mean that divine action constitutes the full, necessary, and sufficient conditions of salvation. Augustine comes extremely close to doing precisely this in the (p.96) material I quoted above; however, there is plenty of space in his work to suggest that he would generally favor the alternative reading of causal discourse that our distinction makes explicit.64 Even those who are sympathetic to the appropriation of Augustine that I am recommending may still worry that we are leaving far too much room for human action in salvation. One ingenious suggestion is to limit the role of the human agent to the absolute minimum. This can be done by proposing that all human agents can really do is to give up resisting divine grace and passively allow God to administer the medicine that is essential across the board for salvation. Consider the analogy of a child resolutely refusing to eat its vegetables; without coercing the child the wise and patient mother simply waits until it wears itself out, happens to hold open its mouth, and thus provides the opportunity for the mother to pop a spoonful of vegetables into its mouth. In this instance there is no positive action on the part of the child; there is simply a passive condition that allows for appropriate positive action. The child effectively does nothing but sit still. This analogy dovetails nicely with Augustine’s vision of infant baptism, an issue that clearly had a role in his rejection of Pelagianism. In this instance the child is entirely passive, yet by the grace given in baptism it gains remission for the original gift it has received from its parents, is born again of the Spirit, and is subject to whatever other divine acts are carried out in baptism. One interesting component of Augustine’s vision of grace is clearly a form of reverseengineering from the practice of infant baptism. If what the church teaches about baptism is true; and if baptism as applied to infants involves the same divine actions as applies in the case of adults; then the relevant divine actions take place while the infant is in an entirely passive condition. Equally the Pelagian effort to make human action primary in salvation must be seriously flawed.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine What is important to observe immediately is that Augustine, in contrast to his response to the Donatist challenge on baptism, does not hesitate at this point to specify what God is doing in infant baptism. The divine action predicates are not left dangling in some vague talk about grace or assistance; they are spelled out in some detail, as they should be. The same strategy undermines the whole effort to reduce the role of human agents to that of mere passive reception. Specify the relevant action predicates for the human agents and light dawns. Analogies that focus on babies resisting their baby food are seriously misleading. Not only do they treat human agents as infants, they ignore the substantial network of human actions that are involved in Christian initiation and that I deliberately catalogued at the beginning of this (p.97) chapter. One only has to note that is the human agent who repents, shows up for instruction, reads the Scriptures, accepts the invitation to be baptized, and the like. God does not perform these actions. Not surprisingly it requires amazing philosophical dexterity if not sophistry to eliminate these or to undercut their significance.65 Notes:

(1) For present purposes, I shall treat the church and her agents as one category of agents. (2) I am very grateful to Karin Wende for her research on Cyril and for helping me see the significance of Cyril of Jerusalem for my work here. Augustine was himself intimately involved in catechetical work but he does not supply the rich account made available by Cyril of Jerusalem. See William Harmless, Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014). Augustine also supplies a pithy and realistic network of advice for catechists of his day. See his Catechizing the Uninstructed. In the case of Cyril, we also have a remarkable account of what went on through a letter to a circle of women written by Egeria, a Galician woman who went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land around 381–4. Egeria brings out the dramatic character of the whole experience in her narrative. See John Wilkinson, ed., Egeria’s Travels (Oxford: Aris and Phillips, 2006). (3) In the catechetical program of Cyril, folk went through four stages: becoming a hearer, prebaptismal instruction, the formal rites of the Saturday before Easter, and attending a series of lectures during Easter week. Note that not everybody was subject to the kind of catechetical program that became common in the fourth century; often there was not time for this kind of rigorous formation. (4) Catechetical LecturesWilliam Telfer, ed., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955). (5) Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 65. Page 19 of 23

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine (6) Ibid., (7) Ibid., (8) Ibid., (9) Ibid., (10) Ibid., (11) Ibid., (12) Ibid., 173. Compare the following admonition. “Therefore let us say about the Holy Spirit exactly what the Spirit says, and do not let us pry where scripture does not answer.” See ibid., 168. (13) Ibid., (14) Ibid., (15) Ibid., (16) Ibid., (17) Ibid., (18) Ibid., (19) Ibid., (20) Ibid., (21) Ibid., (22) Ibid., (23) Ibid. (24) Ibid., 108. Elsewhere Cyril notes: “For these articles of our faith are not composed out of human opinion, but are the principal points collected out of the whole of Scripture to complete a single doctrinal formulation of the faith.” See ibid., 124. (25) Ibid., (26) Ibid., 148. Similar points as regards flexibility with respect to the learner’s capacity can be found elsewhere. See ibid., 127, 129. (27) Ibid.,

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine (28) Ibid., (29) Ibid., (30) Ibid., (31) Ibid., (32) Ibid., (33) Ibid. (34) Ibid., (35) Ibid., (36) This is not at all to say that Cyril does not have substantial things to say on these topics, but it is important not to be distracted at this point. (37) I shall leave aside here the whole issue of the relation between divine and human action in exorcism, a matter of great practical significance in the life of the early church for centuries and which is now returning in certain circles and should not be dismissed by dogmatism, ignorance, and prejudice if we are to be critically mentored by the full range of ecclesial practices and theological reflection. (38) Practical success in outlawing Donatism was another matter; he was ruthless on this front, not hesitating to use the powers of state coercion. (39) On Baptism, Against the Donatists (Book I), chap. 10, from The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 4, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887), 418. Note that Augustine has his own moral conditions for the administration of baptism, namely, the presence of charity in the church and in the baptized. (40) It is tempting to read Pelagius as if he were a wise father exhorting a confused child tackling a difficult algebra problem. “Come on, Liam. You can do it. Put your mind to it and go over the proof one more time. You can do this if only you apply your will to it.” Or it is akin to a new arrival in the hard scrabble, heat infested work of West Texas in the mid-nineteenth century, saying to himself and his exhausted family: “We can do it! Let’s not give up! We can do it!” However, this sort of rhetorical reading, while not inaccurate, fails to capture the core of his vision. See his “Letter to Demetrius,” in Theological Anthropology, ed. J. Patout Burns (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 39–55. (41) Pelagius, “Letter to Demetrius,” 50. (42) Ibid. Page 21 of 23

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine (43) Ibid. (44) Augustine, “On the Grace of Christ,”Theological Anthropology (45) Ibid., (46) Ibid., (47) Ibid., (48) Here Augustine draws on John 6:44 and 6:65. (49) Ibid., (50) Ibid. (51) He repeats these action predicates again and again. (52) Ibid., (53) Ibid., (54) Ibid.,assistance (55) Ibid., (56) I follow here the position laid out in “On Rebuke and Grace,” in Theological Anthropology, ed. Burns. (57) Augustine, “On Rebuke and Grace,” 99. (58) Ibid., (59) Ibid., (60) Ibid., (61) Ibid., (62) Ibid. 103–4. Emphasis mine. Compare: “The first human being, then, had been created upright and had thereby received the ability not to sin, not to die, not to desert this good. The assistance which he received for perseverance did not actually accomplish his perseverance, though without it he would have been unable to persevere through free choice. The saints who are predestined now for the kingdom of God do not receive this kind of assistance. The actual persevering is given to them so that they are not only unable to persevere without this gift, but through it do not fail to persevere.” See ibid., 104. Emphasis mine.

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Divine and Human Action in Salvation in Augustine (63) Ibid., 108. Emphasis mine. The closing paragraph makes the same point equally powerfully. “Thus the weakness of the human will is assisted so that under the influence of divine grace it moves unfailingly and unconquerably. Although weak, it does not fail; nor is it overcome by opposition. Through the strength of God a sick and feeble will perseveres in a good which is still small, while the strong and healthy will of the first human being did not persevere in a much fuller good. Adam had the strength of free choice and he would have had the assistance necessary to persevere had he do chosen, but he did not have the assistance by which God would actually cause his willing. God set the strong one free and permitted him to do what he chose; he guards the weak so that by his gift the saints unfailingly choose the good and unfailingly refuse to abandon it.” See ibid. Emphasis mine. (64) J. R. Lucas, “Freedom and Grace,” in his Freedom and Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 1–15. (65) Readers will note that I have not here taken up the full contours of Augustine’s doctrine of the fall and original sin. Thus, I have not dealt with his literal reading of the Adam narrative, his account of how the human race is already present in Adam, his vision of concupiscence and its role in the transmission of original sin and guilt by sexual intercourse, his position on foreknowledge and predestination, and the like. Augustine’s work is wonderful precisely because in its boldness it raises important metaphysical questions about human agents, the possibility of trans-generational sin and guilt, and the search for relevant causal mechanisms that involve both moral and material interaction. However, it is important not to overload the discussion; the issues I have taken up in this chapter can be logically, and I would argue, theologically distinguished from the extraordinary legacy he has left us on a host of other issues.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter considers the species of divine action in Maximus the Confessor’s teaching on the two natural wills of Christ. Specifically, the author examines Maximus’ claim that the actions of the Son must be both of his divine nature and his human nature, and what this entails for the teaching of his two wills. The author brings Maximus’ theological concerns into dialogue with contemporary theology and philosophy, seeking to clarify what Maximus meant in his context. It is shown how Maximus is concerned to display as far as possible the ontological commitments that are required for the full embrace of the Chalcedonian Definition. The author then engages the “three-agent” problem that arises from Maximus’ theology, namely, properly referring to the logos, the divine nature, and the human nature. Keywords:   Maximus the Confessor, two wills, Christ, divine action, logos, human nature, Gethsemane

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Sometime in 655 Maximus, a monk and lay person who had been in exile in Rome for nine years, arrived under armed guard in Constantinople to stand trial on trumped up political charges.1 Around sunset on the day of their advent, Maximus and his two companions were taken off the ship naked and barefoot by two commissioners and ten palace guards. At seventy-five years of age, Maximus was now in the sunset of his life. Separated in different cells, the prisoners were brought to the palace a few days later where the senate and a great crowd were assembled. Standing in the midst of the officials, Maximus was aggressively cross-examined, found guilty, and sent into exile. Seven years later in 662, Maximus and his companions were subject to a second trial; this time the consequences were fatal: his right hand was amputated and his tongue was cut out and he was sent again into exile, this time to the fortress of Schemaris in Lazica,2 where he died later in the year on August 13. The show trials were a lavish affair that used all the powers of the state to make Maximus agree to the theological and political agenda of the emperor, Constans II. Yet Maximus would not yield an inch theologically. Dying isolated and opposed, he later won a massive posthumous victory at the Sixth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 680/1when his views were adopted canonically by the church. There were other notable dramatis personae in this dark tale: Pope Honoris I who may well have put a theological foot wrong and was declared a heretic for his misstep; Pope Martin I who stood shoulder to shoulder with Maximus and was also exiled for his stance and died as a result; Bishop Theodosius of (p.99) Caesarea in Bythnia who was convinced for a time by the arguments of Maximus but who wobbled under political pressure; and the regular ecclesiastical and political figures at court who were all too ready to buy off Maximus with various favors or threaten him with a host of nasty consequences depending on what he did. If this litany of woe looks like an effort to curry sympathy for the theological views of Maximus, then appearances are reality. Maximus needs all the sympathy he can get if we are to understand his complex and subtle stance. The current standing of Maximus within theology is sky-high. In part, this stems from the natural inclination of the Orthodox to champion one of their own; theological positions and arguments are often advanced by proxy rather than by direct articulation and defense. In part, this stems from the abiding recognition that Maximus both as a writer and a thinker stands out as possessing extraordinary depth and range of vision. For my part, I stand by his deepest intentions, that is, to preserve a full-blooded sense of the humanity of Christ and of the critical significance of this for divine action in Jesus Christ and in salvation. I approach him with a hermeneutic of generosity as a potential mentor rather than with a hermeneutic of suspicion.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor It is not difficult to identify the initial dilemma that stands at the heart of his vision of two wills in Christ. Let’s agree on the Chalcedonian commitment to Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity, who is of one nature with the Father and the Son, fully human and fully divine. What role should we assign to the human nature of Christ in the actions of Christ? For Maximus, the actions of the Son must without equivocation involve his human as well as his divine nature. What does the latter claim entail? In the doctrine of the Trinity there are three Persons in one nature; the oneness of nature means oneness of will in the Godhead, otherwise there would be three wills within the Trinity and this would mean tritheism. In this ontology, will belongs to nature; will is not predicated of the Persons. Carried over into Christology, then, if there is a human nature there must be a human will. Given that there is a divine nature, there must also be a divine will. The consequence follows: there are two wills in Christ. However, if there is a will, there must be an agent who exercises that will. So we are driven to conclude that there are at least two if not three agents in Christ: the human nature as an agent, the divine nature as an agent, and the logos who acts in concert with or by means of both his divine and human nature as a third agent. This is not a welcome conclusion. Let’s call this the three-agent problem in Christology. There is another problem lurking in the neighborhood. In the Trinity, one nature means one will;3 and one will means one action; if so, then it is not (p.100) possible to predicate unique actions to the various Persons of the Trinity. Yet we must take up the latter option, for neither the Father nor the Spirit dies voluntarily for the sins of the world. Thus, if we are to sustain this crucial claim, we must abandon the prior assumptions that one nature means one will and that one will means one action. We cannot evade this by saying all that all three Persons of the Trinity share one will in willing the salvation of the world; this is indeed true. We can even go further and claim that all three Persons are involved in all the actions related to the salvation of the world; there is no action of the Son, for example, that does not involve in one way or another the action of the Father and the Spirit; so the Father sends the Son through the action of the Spirit, say, in conception in the womb of Mary. Specification of the action predicates uncovers the equivocation or ambiguity lurking in discourse about one action. However, once we add in the specification of the actions performed, we also have to say that actions are predicated not just of the one nature of the Godhead but also of the Persons of the Godhead. Thus it looks as if we have to abandon the crucial lynchpin of Maximus that will and action are predicated of nature and not of Persons in the Trinity.4

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor The immediate response to these worries might well be to say that we are importing contemporary notions of will and agency into a debate which worked with altogether different concepts. The analytic theologian, it will be objected, has laid hasty and crude hands on the concepts of the ancients and thereby displayed her philistine ignorance. Certainly, in our world it is very hard to conceive of the exercise of will without an agent; to put the matter simply, there is no will without a willer; more broadly, will belongs to persons. Yet this is exactly what Maximus is at pains to deny. Moreover, in contemporary philosophy of action there is no consensus on the concepts of action and will; there is no agreed account of the necessary and sufficient conditions of actions and related concepts; in fact, the concept of action is radically open. We are in much the same boat as Maximus when it comes to our fundamental categories related to will and action. Maximus “…had to cut new ground not only concerning the tradition, but concerning his own earlier use of the (p.101) terms…”5 To switch metaphors, there are merely crumbs to be had from the philosophers’ table rather than meat and potatoes. So the way to address the dilemmas identified is to dig deeper into the debate and work out more carefully exactly what Maximus is actually claiming in his terms and within his universe of discourse. This is the first order of business. Beyond that we want to appreciate even minimally how Maximus’ views in Christology fit into his wider vision of divine action in creation and redemption and why he was so convinced that the very nature of salvation was at stake. The ultimate goal is not to resolve the dilemmas we encounter; however, in keeping with the intentions of Maximus I will seek to find a way to state what he is claiming without the stark cognitive dissonance his proposals initially provoke.6 It is very important to take the measure of Maximus’ convictions; for he too was in the business of thinking out the concepts that best captured the canonical faith of the church. Moreover, the reality he sought to depict, that is, the full humanity of Christ, had its own integrity; it is even more difficult to describe than the reality of our ordinary human agency and action; and accurate description matters in this domain just as it does in the case of our human actions within and without salvation.7 We can begin our exploration of Maximus from the bottom up, that is, from his treatment of the agony of Christ in Gethsemane.8 Matthew reports the following: “And going a little further, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what (p.102) I want but what you want.’”9 Put in terms of “will” we are faced with interpreting the phrase, “Let not what I will but your will prevail.”

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Is it a matter of resistance (συστολή) or courage (άνδρεία), of agreement (σύννευσις) or disagreement (διάστασις)? Certainly no one of a right mind will dispute that it is a matter of neither contention (άντίπτωσις) nor cowardice (δειλία) but of perfect harmony (συηφυία) and concurrence (σύννευσις). And if it is a matter of perfect harmony and concurrence, whom do you understand as the subject? The man who is just like us, or the man we consider in the role of Savior? If it is from the man who is just like us, then our teacher Gregory errs when he declares ‘…seeing as the human will does not always follow God but so often resists and contends with him.’ For if it follows God, it is not resisting, and if it is resisting him, it is not following. These two assertions nullify and exclude each other. If, however, you understand the subject of the phrase Let not what I will, but what you will prevail to be not the man just like us but the man we consider as Savior, then you have confessed the ultimate concurrence of his human will with the divine will, which is both his and the Father’s; and you have demonstrated that with the duality of his natures there are two wills (θελήσεις) and two operations (ένεργείαι) respective to the two natures, and that he admits no opposition between them, even though he maintains the difference between the two natures from which, in which, and which he is by nature.10 This very last phrase (“and which he is by nature”) sets Maximus free, at least initially, from the charge that he is implicitly committed to a third agent above and beyond the divine and human nature in Christ. No doubt this move brings its own metaphysical challenges, but these need not concern us here.11 It is clear that for Maximus there are not three wills or operations. In what follows, he cleanly identifies the divine will of Christ as the same will as that of the Father. So the corner in which he paints his monothelite opponent is simple: if there is only one will in Christ, then the will of “what I will” which is negated must be identified with the eternal divinity of the Only-Begotten. This has an obvious unwelcome consequence. “Since the Father and the Son share a common will, negation would be negation of what is willed by God, (p.103) namely, our salvation—and we know that this is what God wills by his very nature.” Hence God would be both willing and not willing our salvation, a proposition that make no sense. The Son as divine would be declining the cup; and the Father as divine would be requiring the cup; any notion of a common will evaporates. So the alternative is clear: the will of “what I will” must belong to the human nature and be a human will.12 Moreover, it is clear that the human will of the Savior is in harmony with the divine will shared by the Son and the Father; there is no opposition in the outcome:

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor the Logos assumed our nature and defied his human will in the assumption. It follows, then, that having become like us for our sake, he was calling on his God and Father in a human manner when he said, Let not what I will, but what you will prevail, inasmuch as, being God by nature, he also in his humanity has, as his human volition, the fulfillment of the will of the Father. This is why, considering both of the natures from which, in which, and of which his person was, he is acknowledged as able both to will and to effect our salvation. As God, he approved that salvation along with the Father and the Holy Spirit; as man, he became for the sake of that salvation obedient to his Father unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:8). He accomplished this great feat of the economy of salvation for our sake through the mystery of his incarnation.13 It would be elegant if the problem of the two wills in Christ could be dispatched as readily as this preliminary argument proposes. What is clear so far is that Maximus is committed to there being a human will operating in the life of Christ. In order to begin to figure out what this may mean let us take a step back and see in broad terms the alternative Maximus was rejecting.14 The central question posed in the debate is how to think of how Christ acted and willed. Both sides agree to the Chalcedonian Definition where it stated categorically that in the Son the church acknowledges two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, and inseparably.15 The Second Person of the Trinity is therefore fully human and fully divine. Given this, how should we (p.104) think of the role of the divine nature and the human nature in the actions of Christ? Initially the issue was identified in terms of a debate about energia (action, activity, or energy). Do we have one or two energia at work in the actions of the Son? In time the debate extended into a debate about two wills in the actions of Jesus. Do we have one or two wills active in Christ? In the end the same pattern of relations was applied in both cases; so the response figured out in relation to energia was applied in relation to will, even though, as we shall see, Maximus has much to say about the latter that goes beyond what he says about energia. Consider initially the full range of concepts that are involved. Pelikan’s review of the crucial concepts in play is both helpful and puzzling.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor In the course of the controversy over ‘one action’ in Christ, it became necessary to specify the meaning of the term more precisely and to distinguish between ‘action [èνéργεια],’ ‘activity [èνεργητικόν],’ which was defined as the ‘the nature from which the action proceeds,’ ‘act [èνéργημα],’ defined as the ‘the outcome of the action,’ and the ‘agent [èνεργών],’ defined as ‘the one who uses the action, the hypostasis.’ The confusing relation between these abstractions and Christological dogma is suggested by the last of these terms, which would seem to imply that action properly belonged to the hypostasis and that therefore the one hypostasis Jesus Christ had one action; in fact, however, the purpose of the distinction was to argue for two actions in Christ.16 In the contemporary ear it is very puzzling to hear the problem identified in terms of whether there were one or two actions in Christ. Surely Christ performs a host of actions. Yet Pelikan is especially helpful here because he draws attention to the complexity of the concepts in play. “Action” is clearly being used in a very special sense; this should alert us to the fact that virtually all of the concepts deployed have their distinctive sense. As Pelikan indicates, the attraction of both the monoergist and monothelite positions is that they start from the unity of Christ’s Person, and, given that unity argue, that any duality of activity and will would undermine the unity. So the prima facie case for one energia and one will is strong. Moreover, a duality of wills, aside from its immediate conceptual and ontological oddity, will introduce serious conflict into the mind of Christ; worse still, it will introduce corruption and sin into the very core of his being. One possible solution immediately comes to mind. There is a single subject of the actions, Jesus Christ; so there is a single energia and a single will. If we speak of two energia (p.105) and two wills then we have two subjects or two agents, and we are falling into Nestorianism. If we add the additional supposition that the human nature of Christ involves the assumption of a human body and human soul, then we are at risk of adding further subjects or agents and the central claim of Chalcedon on the unity of the Son as bearer of the actions of Christ is completely undone. Considerations along these lines were at the core of the alternatives that Maximus rejected; we have moved beyond a prima facie case to an ultima facie case.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Maximus in turn cut to the core of his alternative by refusing to predicate energia and will of the person or hypostasis of Christ. These should not be applied to Christ as subject of his actions, for he shared one will with the Father and the Spirit; they are to be predicated of the human nature of Christ. They are properties of the human nature of Christ. If this is not the case, then the claim that Christ assumed a fully human nature has been evacuated of content. If there is no human energia and no human will, then the crucial commitment to the full human nature of Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition has been abandoned. Without the relevant properties of energia and will, there is no human nature. We also have an epistemological problem on our hands. We cannot justify our claim that there is a human nature of Christ because the human nature is manifested through the properties; the human nature would not be knowable if there are no properties through which it was made manifest; so properties are essential in the order of knowing. Furthermore, if Christ has not assumed the full properties of human nature, then salvation is radically incomplete. The agreed axiom of Gregory of Nazianzus that “whatever has not been assumed has not been healed”17 has not been satisfied. Within this arena, if there is no genuine human will in Christ, then salvation, when appropriated by the human agent, fails to uphold the indispensability of genuine human response; there is insufficient room for human consent and human freedom. In the end it was considerations along these lines, especially on sustaining the full humanity of the Savior, which won the day in Egypt, in the West at the Lateran synod of 649, and eventually at the Council of Constantinople in 680/1. For those still interested in serious ontological reflection on the agency and action of Christ, considerations such as these must surely be front and center in their deliberations.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Yet the challenge of understanding just what Maximus is proposing remains in place. One way forward is to step back into some of the potential background material that may well have informed Maximus by drawing on the conceptuality deployed by his spiritual Father, Sophronius of Jerusalem.18 Sophronius spoke of the relationship between the subject and the energia as (p.106) follows. “He (Christ) was a ταμίας of his sufferings and deeds, and not only a ταμίας, but also a πρύταυις.”19 In introducing the concepts of tamias and prytanis Sophronius is here wrestling with how to think of Christ as an agent. The noun tamias had a complex history but in one relevant usage it means anybody or anything that contains or possesses an object. So hunters have power over their prey and can distribute them as they like; and God could be spoken of as a giver and tamias. In the time of Sophronius, “essentially it signified someone (rarely something) that distributes, provides, and supplies; it also refers to a person, who keeps stored, preserves, guards, and finally to a regulator, controller and ruler.”20 The term prytanis dovetailed with this in that as applied to the gods it often meant supremacy and domination; it sometimes meant somebody or something that had certain properties that were of greater magnitude than others. After a careful overview of the usage of these terms, Hovorun concludes: Analysis of the two words makes it possible to draw out what Sophronius meant when he defined subject as tamias and prytanis of the energiai. It was the ultimate source of the energiai, from where and by which they are distributed and provided, as well as directed and controlled, evaluated and judged. In addition the subject was master, superior, head, and simultaneously a guard. To some extent, it also meant a holder of the energiai.21 In acting and willing the subject-hypostasis is “…the seat of the natures and therefore of the energiai and wills.”22

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor We might think of this as proposing that the subject of any action operates through the properties of the natures that are essentially theirs. A dog’s actions are executed through the nature that a dog has essentially; a giraffe’s actions are carried out through the properties that belong to it as a giraffe; angelic actions are executed through the nature that is essentially angelic. Dogs act differently from giraffes and angels because they have a different nature from giraffes and angels. Thus Christ, if he possesses a human nature, executes his actions through the activity and properties of his human nature; so whatever we consider to be essential properties of human nature are fully operative when Christ acts. Given that Maximus predicated energia and will of the human nature, there cannot but be a second energia and a second will acting concurrently with the properties that constitute his divine nature. Energia and will are essential properties for him of the human nature and are seated in the subject, Christ, who performs this or that action. Without these properties he would cease to be human and one of the central achievements of Chalcedon would be forfeited. When we turn more specifically to the issue of what Maximus means by a will we enter even deeper waters. In part this is because any formal idea of will (p.107) in the ancient world is underdeveloped.23 So much so that some have argued that the Greeks had no such concept and saw human action as directly linked not to will but to intellect. Hence to know the good was to do the good; failure to do the good meant that one failed to know the good; there was no need to invoke the category of will. Scholars differ on who should get credit for isolating will as an essential element in human nature and action.24 So the formal articulation of the concept is shrouded in mystery. Maximus himself shifts across the years in his usage of the term will and was forced to use the concept because of the way it was used by monothelites to cast suspicion on the full humanity of Christ. Formally, his response mirrors that of his response to the monoergists. Will belongs to nature and not to person or hypostasis; so, if Christ is fully human, and being fully human involves in having a will, Christ has two wills rather than one. In language borrowed but revised from Pseudo-Dionysius, Christ is a theandric agent who does divine things in a human way and human things in a divine way. Or as Aaron Riches felicitously expresses the claim: “In Jesus, the human by nature works to will divinely what God by nature works humanly.”25

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor It is important to see at this point that Maximus in thinking of freedom, a topic that invariably gets linked with the concept of will, does not posit a common, contemporary way of unpacking what is at issue. Generally, when we think of freedom or free will, we envisage a situation where the agent has certain desires, emotions, memories, imaginings, beliefs, and the like and then, after deliberating, wills to do this or that. The full story psychologically and philosophically is thoroughly complex and subtle, but this basic pattern is enough for present purposes in getting an initial sense of what we mean by free will or by acting freely. For Maximus this way of thinking introduces a negative if not nasty element of instability into human existence; it means that human agents without grace are constantly subject to the prospect of willing wrongly so that there would never be a final and lasting rest in doing the good. When Maximus speaks of human freedom he means freedom to do what we are destined to do as created by God. Genuine freedom for him means, on the one hand, deliverance from the instability that accompanies deliberation, and, (p. 108) on the other, lasting attachment to the good so that we naturally do the good. Consider a mother who loves a child; genuine love for the child means that certain options, like, say, torturing her child for payment, are not even thinkable, much less the subject of deliberation and acts of will with respect to performing such an action. It would be totally against her nature to act in such a way; she naturally does what is good for her child and does not give it a second thought. Moreover, there is no question here of being coerced or forced; the action is, as we would say, voluntary.26 Clearly, this is a very subtle vision of freedom, for one can readily envisage a mother who both naturally does what is good for her child and rightly deliberates how best to carry this out.27 What is at stake is a concept of what it is to act according to one’s nature that is free and spontaneous. Thinking in this way about nature may help unpack what was at stake for Maximus. His analysis of Christ in Gethsemane reads the fear and agony of Christ as an entirely natural response given his human nature; knowing what was up ahead, it was entirely natural for him (and not sinful) to fear as he did. Yet he naturally submitted his will to the Father. In this respect he naturally did the good; so the agony should not be read as some sort of instability or vacillation on his part. Likewise, the saints in the world to come will have the kind of freedom that corresponds to their original nature and destiny as created by God in his image and likeness. This freedom was first both instantiated and inaugurated in Christ the Son, participating fully in the human condition, yet without sin; through our participation in the life of the Son through the Spirit human agents are granted the grace to become like the Son. To use his dramatic terminology, we are divinized; we become divine by grace; by the grace of God we become what Christ is by nature, that is, divine. Hence the adage of Irenaeus and Athanasius holds: God became man so that we might become divine.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor The following famous quotation captures the heart of what is at issue as far as willing as predicated of human nature is concerned. The ability to will (πεφυκέναι θέλειν) and the willing (θέλειν) are not the same, and the ability to speak (πεφυκέναι λαλέιν) and speaking (λαλέιν) are not the same either. For the ability to speak (λαλητικόν) exists always in man by nature, but man does not speak always, for the former belongs to essence and is held by the logos of nature, whereas the latter belongs to deliberate desire (βουλή) and modelled by the gnome of him who speaks; therefore the ever-existing ability to (p.109) speak belongs to nature, but the mode of speaking (πῷζ λαλέιν) belongs to hypostasis, and the same goes for the ability to will (πεφυκέναι θέλειν) and the willing (θέλειν). And since the ability to will and the willing are not the same (for, as I said, the former belongs to essence, whereas the latter to the deliberate desire of one who wills), the enfleshed Logos has as man the ability to will (πεφυκέναι θέλειν), which was moved and modelled by (or according to) his divine will (τῷ αὐτοῦ θεϊκῷ θελήματι κινούμενόν τε καὶ τυπούμενον). For his willing (θέλειν), as the great Gregory says, does in no way oppose God, because it is wholly deified.28 This distinction between the ability to will and actually willing and the location of the former in the nature and the latter in the person provides striking warrant for Maximus’ defense of the two wills doctrine. It is strengthened by a further subtle observation, namely, that the ability to will is not something we learn or are taught; therefore, it is something we possess by nature. Not only those who have examined the nature of things with their reason, and thus who have surpassed the multitude, but the usage of the uneducated has also affirmed that what is natural is not taught (ἀδίδακτα εἶναι τὰφυσικά). So if natural things be not acquired through teaching, then we have will without having acquired it or being taught it (ἀδίδακτον δὲ ἔχομεν τὸ θέλειν), for no one has ever had a will which was acquired by teaching. Consequently, man has the faculty of will by nature.29

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor It is clear that Maximus in working out his account of the activity of the nature of Christ is driven by the desire to display as far as is humanly possible the ontological commitments that are required for the full embrace of the Christology of Chalcedon when it insists that Christ is fully human as well as fully divine.30 However, as already indicated, this is not just an intellectual or dogmatic issue for him. His vision of who Christ is and what he has done for our salvation fits into a wider account of the whole sweep of God’s intentions and purposes of creation. We can capture the difference here by saying that Maximus is interested not only in who and what Christ is ontologically but also in how what Christ is and has done fits into the wider narrative of creation, salvation, and final redemption. Indeed for him these issues were inextricably connected. There is a deep interrelated vision where (p.110) the pattern of thinking in his Christology shows up in detail in his account of God’s actions in creation, providence, and judgment, in his account of the fall of Adam and in human salvation as participation in the very life of God, and in his account of the final consummation of all things in his eschatology. Christ fits into the whole sweep of a cosmic vision that stretches from one end of creation to the other. His Christology was a load-bearing doctrine.31 If it is removed, then a whole host of consequences follow in its trail. This surely accounts for the tenacity and readiness for martyrdom that marked his defense of his position. What was at stake was the whole structure of the Christian faith. A full analysis of this would require a comprehensive exposition of his theology, something beyond the scope of our agenda here. Thus it would require an analysis of his account of creation as mirroring the metaphysical principles that govern his vision of human nature, an exposition of his doctrine of the fall, an account of salvation as embracing not just atonement and forgiveness but also divinization, and a review of his proposals about the life to come. One element that has captured the imagination of his current admirers is the way his Christology becomes the centerpiece in understanding those remarkable biblical texts which speak of Christ as the one “…in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”32 Or, as it is noted in Ephesians, “With all wisdom and insight he (the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ) has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”33

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor There are elements in the comprehensive theology of Maximus that border on the surreal for the contemporary reader, most conspicuously in some of his exegetical exercises and in his doctrine of the fall and its consequences. Like many other theologians Maximus’ reading of the Genesis narrative represents a case of theological reverse engineering; one simply projects back into the narrative what must have been the case if Christ is who he is as Savior and if what he did in salvation represents the solution to the problem that has to be solved. One can commend the quest for systematic equilibrium and inner coherence but the results in the case of Maximus are not always persuasive. However, three considerations should temper our evaluation at this point. First, Maximus inhabits a philosophical and theological universe which was extremely sophisticated on its own terms and was second nature to him. Within that world he sought to articulate a faithful rendering of the Gospel and the faith of the church. Second, the cosmic and other questions that Maximus implicitly raises are natural ones given the claims advanced by Scripture as received in the tradition of the church. His theological ambitions are not just legitimate but ambitious in scope. Thus he is searching for a way to (p.111) relate his vision of Christ as the very heart of God’s plans and purposes to the cosmological,34 metaphysical, and epistemological proposals we entertain.35 Third, Maximus’ proposals raise the important question as to whether the incarnation would have happened whether or not the fall into sin had occurred. Was the incarnation planned from the outset by God or did it only happen because the fall happened? Was the fall simply an occasion which entered into, say, the timing and varied actions of the incarnate Son? Or was the fall one of the essential reasons in the mind of God for the event of the incarnation? I suspect that the answer in Maximus is ambiguous on this question, but it certainly begs to be asked. Even if we conclude that the only correct answer should be that of agnosticism, how we come to that conclusion will reveal deeper patterns of thinking that govern our theological thinking. It remains to come back around to the potential problem that haunts the position embraced by Maximus and the Sixth Ecumenical Council in its commitment to two wills in Christ. I identified that problem earlier as the three-agent problem. How do we avoid multiplying the number of agents identified in the action of Christ? Can we find a way to state Maximus’ position more felicitously so that the initial shock and cognitive dissonance is dispelled?

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor As we approach this challenge, I propose that we bear the following in mind. For one thing, Maximus’ fundamental theological intuitions and orientation are correct. His goal was to safeguard the full humanity of Christ and its correlative significance for soteriology.36 We should do so as well. However deep his own vision of sin,37 he was determined to sustain a firm commitment to genuine human action in salvation and to a sophisticated if underdeveloped concept of human freedom that goes beyond our standard treatments of freedom of the will. As Paul Verghese aptly notes, “…it is the independence and spontaneity of the human will in Christ that St. Maximus was determined to defend.”38 In (p.112) terms of the debate of his day, Maximus was right to reject the monoergist and monothelite alternatives. We can stand by this claim without adopting, say, his analysis of the fall or other questionable elements in his theology. Furthermore, as we note that the core of Maximus’ position was adopted by an ecumenical council (even though he was not named as a source), we should keep in mind that ecumenical councils generally operate on the basis of two important principles. First, there is a principle of sufficiency. As Hovorun observes, the participants at the councils “…confined themselves to arguments of necessity and sufficiency to prove their points and refute their opponents.”39 Second, there is a principle of minimalism, that is, the goal is to address the central question facing the church. In terms of a legal analogy, the participants avoid making declarations on ancillary issues that would allow a fishing expedition for additional problems on the part of those being challenged. Overall the aim in both cases is to secure the unity of the church without compromising the truth of the faith. We work at this point, of course, with a counsel of perfection that is by no means easy to execute but should evoke our sympathetic reading and reception.40 It is also worth reiterating that we are mistaken if we think that somehow today we have to hand the conceptual resources to fully capture much less resolve what is at stake when we explore how Christ acted and willed along the lines developed by Maximus. The person and action of Christ are utterly unique; there are no species of “Christs” that we can inspect and from which we can make secure generalizations. Equally importantly, we do not today have an agreed network of concepts related to persons, actions, agency, natures, and the like that we can independently deploy in a straightforward manner. We can certainly hope that we can achieve this coveted desideratum; but this remains at the moment entirely a matter of hope.41

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor The potential problem remains that of the three-agent problem in Christology. How do we avoid slipping into speaking of three distinct agents who will and act when we refer to the logos, the divine nature, and the human nature as all involved in the actions of Christ? Everyone who has thought seriously about this rightly wants to avoid such a disastrous consequence. How (p.113) do we predicate two wills of a single subject of action without positing three agents as the subjects of action?42 Maximus’ central strategy is to make a crucial and proper distinction between the ability to will and the act of willing. So there is one acting subject who acts in accordance with the properties of his human and divine nature. One can have the ability, capacity, or power to will without exercising that ability, capacity, or power. One of his analogies attempts to provide a way to think of what is at stake. Thus we can think of a red-hot piece of iron, say, a sword, which can at one and the same time cut and burn a piece of wood. Given the cutting capacity of the sword, the sword cuts the wood; given the burning capacity of the sword, the sword burns through the piece of wood. There is no need here to think of three agents but of one agent with two compatible capacities. Likewise, we can think of the one subject, the logos, acting in such a way that he operates with his divine and human capacities, both of which are essential to his identity as the logos. I find this a very helpful analogy; it works neatly to get hold of Christ acting with two energies. The challenge comes when we attempt to carry this over to resolve the problem of two wills. Let’s agree with Maximus that the ability to will is to be predicated of the human nature of Christ. If we equivocate at that point and introduce acts of willing, then, given further reflection on what it is to have a human nature we will posit not just two wills but two minds, two consciousnesses, two sets of emotions, two networks of appetites, two channels of memories, two series of purposes, two sets of intentions, and two successions of whatever else we consider to be materially constitutive of human nature. At a minimum, we are then faced with how to work out a theory of two minds and two consciousnesses present in the single subject of the logos.43 Aside from whether we can actually provide a satisfactory account of such an agent, we are saddled with the stark absurdity of trying to work out the psychology of a unique Person who is human and divine. Equally important, we run the immediate risk of two agents in Christ because any such theory will have to predicate mental human acts of Christ and this entails a full human agent who performs those mental acts rather than simply a human nature being assumed by the logos; add in the mental acts of the divine nature and we are saddled with the three-agent problem. The theory as a whole is hopelessly inflationary.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (p.114) The obvious and attractive alternative is to pull back resolutely from this kind of theorizing and stand firmly by the predication of human nature to Christ and simply affirm the following: all the actions of Christ are enacted in, with, and through the full agency of his human and divine natures. The attraction of the language of agency in this formulation as predicated of the human nature and the divine nature is that it exploits the open-textured character of the concept of agency. Christ’s actions require the operational energies and abilities of his divine and human nature. They involve the full assumption of genuinely human capacities so that the actions, as it were, are taken up and embody in a non-sinful way the fullness of his human nature. The challenges that accompany this suggestion are obvious. First, we worry that the use of agency as an open-textured concept masks an equivocation about the full operation of the human nature in the actions of Christ. Second, we worry that we are really only offered a thinly disguised instrumentalist account of Christ’s human nature that compromises the fullness of his assumption of a genuine human nature. Overall, the deep concern is that the position proposed is much too deflationary. One of the most thorough and illuminating attempts to tackle the challenge posed by the Christology of Maximus is developed by Bathrellos and one way to read him is to explore his work as a possible response to the dilemma I have just delineated. The following passage takes us to the heart of his thinking. In order to find a solution, attention must again be paid to the all-important distinction between nature (and natural will), on the one hand, and person, on the other. It is one thing to say that the human will of Christ is moved by the Logos, and quite another thing to say that it is moved by the divine will or by the divinity. To say that the human will of the Logos is moved by him is perfectly compatible with Maximus’ thought, for time and again, Maximus makes explicit that the willing subject in Christ, the willer who wills as God and as man, is the enfleshed Logos. Given that it is the willer who moves his will, and that the willer in Maximus’ Christology is identified with the enfleshed Logos, it is the enfleshed Logos who moves his human will as well as his divine will. However, this does not in any way contradict the self-determination of the human will; on the contrary it affirms it by enabling its actualization.44 The critical point lies in what to make of the claim that there is a selfdetermination of the human will; that there is an enabling of the actualization of the human will. The language of self-determination seems to imply a self who does the determining. Likewise, when there is an enabling of the actualization of a will then it looks as if there is one who is enabled. So we seem to be drifting once again towards the positing of a second agent when we speak of (p.115) the will of the human nature. Bathrellos wisely moves immediately to cut off this kind of inference. Page 17 of 25

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor How is this so? Let us consider for a moment what happens with human persons. We are endowed with a self-determining human will, a selfdetermining power of willing, by virtue of which we are able to will in a self-determining manner. It is we as willers who actualize our selfdetermining power of willing in certain things. The case with Christ is similar. The incarnate Logos possesses a self-determining human will in virtue of which he is able to will as man in a self-determining way, and thus to actualize the self-determining power of his human will. But to say that the person of the Logos moves his human will is not the same as saying that the divine nature or the divine will of the Logos move his human will. If we simply say that it is the divine will which moves the human will, no reference is made to the person of the Logos, who, as man, allows his human will to be moved by the divine will in a self-determining way, and thus the human will is relegated to a more or less passive instrument of the divine will which moves it. If we want to avoid this, the only option with which we are left is to make the human nature and will the subject of willing which allows the divine will to move it; this, however, would sound Nestorian, as has been stated repeatedly.45 Barthellos is on the cusp of something extremely important here. He rejects the idea that the divine will moves the human will; equally, he rejects the idea that the human will is a mere passive instrument. He affirms, however, that the logos moves his human will; presumably he also wants to say that the human will is not a mere passive instrument of the logos. What might he mean when he says that the human will is not a mere passive instrument? Is there here, even in the case of the moving by the divine logos, the active agency of the human will? And if this is the case are we not back with the problem of two agents all over again? And once we bring in the active rather than the passive agency of the divine nature, are we not right back with the three-agent problem? His way forward up and out of this dilemma is twofold. First, the power and capacity of the human nature is not just a static but a dynamic phenomenon; hence it involves self-movement; and when it is active it is not just self-moved but also divinely moved. As Maximus says, “…all things are from God and after God suffer being moved, because they are not self-movement or self-power.”46 So given the wider vision of divine action in all creatures, including the created human nature in Christ, there can be a movement by God that is compatible with the movement of the creature. Hence we should not infer from the language of movement or the language of enabling on the part of God, or, in this instance the logos, that there is a second subject in action; there is simply the movement inherent in having certain powers that are (p.116) essentially present in human nature and therefore in the human nature of Christ.47

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Second, he draws an analogy from what happens in the lives of the saints. In their case they have “…handed over their self-determinative powers willingly to God, and they will nothing but what God wills.”48 So these powers are not abolished; they are surrendered to God “…so that the desire to be moved by God and to be unable to move anywhere else but towards God, for they will to become gods by deification.”49 They consent to have all their capacities so moved by God that they are no longer able to do anything other than what God wills. The parallel with Christ is this: the divine logos consents that his human nature with all its self-determinate powers be so moved by the Father that he be unable to do anything other than what the Father wills. So in Gethsemane, “by obeying the Father, Christ did something similar to what the saints also do, by allowing themselves to be moved by God in imitation of Christ.”50 Consider the following scenario. Consider two friends or a married couple who so love each other that they readily put everything they have, including their capacities and powers, at the disposal of the other. Think of this in stages. A offers B the natural gift A has, say, to use his car whenever B needs it. As the relationship develops, A ups the offer to include offering B his skill and capacity to do B’s tax forms every year. So we begin with a gift external to A (his car) and move to a gift internal to A, that is, this or that particular capacity, ability, or power; these are offered voluntarily in love and friendship. Then generalize to all of A’s capacities and powers. Imagine a meta-decision on the part of A to offer all his or her energies and abilities to be used in the service and will of B. A now wills only what B wills; yet there is neither coercion nor necessity involved. The saints are those who have surrendered everything to God (including their capacity to will) to do the will of God, even to the point of death. In this instance, because of the intimate relation between the Creator and the human subject, what is only an ideal in the case of human relationships becomes a real possibility in the case of the divine–human relationship. This ideal is already instantiated in Christ who, as subject of all his actions, surrendered all his human capacities, including his very capacity to will, to the Father. Thus we can begin to think our way through to a concept of his person as a subject where he surrenders his capacities to will to be so moved that he is unable to do anything other than the will of the Father.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor Perhaps with the help of Barthellos, we have been able to begin to remove the worries that I mentioned earlier when I proposed the formula that all the (p. 117) actions of Christ are enacted in, with, and through the full agency of his human and divine natures, as a fitting restatement of the central insight of Maximus. Thus I have rejected an equivocal reading of the language of agency as predicated of the human nature of Christ; the agency is genuine; Christ truly does have human energies, capacities, powers, and abilities. Equally, I have rejected a merely instrumental interpretation of these capacities; they are dynamic self-moving features of his human nature. At the very least, I have not fallen into some kind of two-agent or three-agent description of the action and will of Christ. Notes:

(1) TyposPauline Allen and Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions: Documents from Exile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 23. (2) Lazica is a region in the eastern shore of the Black Sea in contemporary Georgia. (3) Maximus is clearly committed to such a position. “If one suggests that a ‘willer’ is implied in the notion of the will, then by the exact inversion of this principle of reasoning, a will is implied in the notion a ‘willer’. Thus, will you say that because of the one will of the superessential Godhead there is only one hypostasis, as did Sabellius, or that because there are three hypostases there are also three wills, and because of this, three natures as well, since the canons and definitions of the Fathers say that the distinction of wills implies a distinction of natures? So did Arius!” Quoted in Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 156. (4) Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine—The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 72. (5) Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 152.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (6) Speaking of the intellectual challenge posed by theologians like Maximus, Vladimir Solovyov captured the issue nicely in what follows. “If I, for example, never occupy myself with metaphysical questions about the powers and operations of divine and human nature, if I mark no distinctions between the natural will (thelesis) and that which is willed (gnome) then what spiritual harm would I suffer if the dogma of the Sixth Ecumenical Council about the two natural wills and operations in Christ remains for me, for the time being, mute talk?” See his “The Israel of the New Covenant,” in The Burning Bush: Writings on Jews and Judaism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016), 341. (7) Note the options here are not speculative metaphysics or ontology unrelated to the way things are, on the one hand, or the delineation of a grammar of the relevant concepts which equivocates on issues of ontology, on the other; there is a third way, namely, a serious ontological effort to depict reality borrowing or inventing the best concepts we can muster. This is what I think Maximus was doing intellectually; it is one reason why we should grapple with his work. (8) As Demetrios Bathrellos points out Maximus does not restrict his focus to the Gethsemane incident. “In order to prove that Christ had a human will, Maximus pointed to scriptural passages according to which Christ willed to go to Galilee, willed his disciples to be with him where he is, did not will to drink sour wine mingled with gall, did not want to walk in Judea, did not want anyone to know when he passed through Galilee, went to the region of Tyre and Sidon and entered a house and did not want anyone to know it, though he could not be hidden, wanted to pass by his disciples walking on the sea, and became obedient to the point of death. The refrain that follows almost all these citations is: ‘therefore he [Christ] possessed the faculty of will (he was θελετικός) according to his being man’.” See Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 138. (9) Matt. 26:39. Luke’s account is even more dramatic when one includes the material which may have been added later, found here in Matt. 26:43–4. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done. Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.” Luke 22:44. Compare John 12:27–30, Mark 14: 32–42, Heb. 5:7–10. (10) OpusculumOn the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings from St. Maximus the ConfessorPaul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilkin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 173.

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (11) It is tempting to say at this point in the light of the crucial identity named in the phrase “which he is by nature” that is distinctive to Maximus that the person of Christ subsists in the human and divine nature. Of course, we then want to know what subsists means. For a fine commentary on the issue see Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 108–10. (12) One standard alternative by monothelites was to say that the agony was imaginary so that it was a moral lesson or pattern to follow. See Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 146. (13) Maximus, Opusculum 6, 176. (14) Hovorun points out that “there were at least four forms of Christological doctrine that promoted emphatically a single energeia and will.” See Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 5. (15) The full definition runs as follows. “One and the same Son, the Self-same Perfect in Godhead, the Self-same Perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the Self-same of a rational soul and body; co-essential with the Father according to the Godhead, the Self-same co-essential with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the Self-same, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Theotokos as to the Manhood; One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning Him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the Symbol of the Fathers hath handed down to us.” (16) Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 64. (17) ibid., (18) Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 138–41. (19) Ibid., (20) Ibid., (21) Ibid., (22) Ibid.,

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (23) The standard work is that of A. Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). His central claims are by no means uncontested. See the review of Dihle by A. W. H. Adkins in Classical Philology 80 (1985): 364–70. (24) One candidate is Athanasius when, over against Arius, he insisted that the Son being begotten of the Father differs from being created by the Father in that the latter and not the former involves an act of divine will. Others have proposed Augustine as the crucial figure; while others propose Maximus. One wonders why Paul’s struggles in Romans 7 are not generally seen as implicitly involving a concept of will; he knows and wills what is the good but cannot do it. (25) Aaron Riches, “After Chalcedon: The Oneness of Christ and the Dyothelite Mediation of his Theandric Unity,” Modern Theology 24 (2008): 209. (26) Maximus deployed considerations like these to deal with the objection from opponents that if energia and will belonged to nature then this entailed necessity in the actions performed. See Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 158–9. (27) Such deliberation rests on ignorance so it requires further analysis before it can be predicated of God or of Christ as divine. In the case of the human agent the ignorance need not at all be culpable. Sorting out the place of deliberation in a good will that is naturally and fixedly turned to the good cries out for further attention but cannot be pursued here. (28) Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 144–5. (29) ibid., (30) The importance of ontological reflection in general and of Maximus’ contribution in particular is brought out especially well in a pair of important papers by Ivor J. Davidson. See his “Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology Reassessed,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 3 (2001): 129–53; and “‘Not My Will but Yours be Done’: The Ontological Dynamics of Incarnational Intention,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 178–204. At the conclusion of both these papers Davidson notes the crucial importance of the action of the Holy Spirit for a comprehensive account of what is at issue. (31) I am indebted for this illuminating metaphor to Heather Oglevie. (32) Col. 2:3. (33) Eph. 1:9. (34) David S. Yeago, “Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption: The Relevance of St. Maximus the Confessor,” Modern Theology 12 (1996): 163–93. Page 23 of 25

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (35) Bruce Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). (36) Thomas A. Watts is entirely correct when he says that Maximus’ concern with soteriology “…shows that those who object that this debate [about two wills and not one] is an irrelevant quarrel over words have not even begun to understand what the debate is about.” See Thomas A. Watts, “Two Wills of Christ? Contemporary Objections Considered in the Light of a Critical Examination of Maximus the Confessor’s Disputation with Pyrrhus,” Westminster Theological Journal 71 (2009): 478. (37) For an overview of his view of sin see John Boojamra, “Original Sin According to St. Maximus the Confessor,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 20 (1976): 19–30. While Boojamra emphasizes that Maximus rejects any notion of original guilt, he makes it clear that there are deep similarities between his position and that of Augustine. (38) Fr. Paul Verghese, “The Monothelite Controversy: A Historical Survey,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 13 (1968): 201. (39) Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom, 166. (40) We should perhaps add here a third principle, that is, a principle of apophatic caution, which resists the demand for excessive formal precision. For an important discussion related to this as it applies to the Council of Chalcedon, see Sarah Coakley, “What Does Chalcedon Solve and What Does it Not? Some Reflections on the Status and Meaning of the Chalcedonian ‘Definition’,” in Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall SJ, and Gerald O’Collins SJ, eds., The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 143–63. (41) I am saying much more here than that philosophical and theological work on agency and action is hard work, true as that is. I am insisting on the deep disagreements that litter the field. Moreover, there is no desire or effort here to inhibit further work or to avoid contested commitments. (42) Standard statements of the problem reiterate that the danger is that of Nestorianism, that is, we end up with two persons in Christ. Thus it reduces the problem to that of a two-person problem rather than that of a three-agent problem. It is more felicitous to see the issues in terms of a three-agent problem; but, of course, if we find a solution that avoids making the human nature an agent this can readily be applied to the parallel move to make the divine nature an agent and Nestorianism is immediately dissolved as a solution. (43) Thomas Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986). Page 24 of 25

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Agency and Action in Christ in Maximus the Confessor (44) Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 168. (45) Ibid., (46) Ibid. (47) One is tempted to deploy here the idea of God sustaining and not just creating the self-movement of the capacities of the human agent. (48) Ibid., (49) Ibid. (50) Ibid.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines the spiritual theology of Symeon the New Theologian. It examines Symeon’s thought on the role of human agents in providing forgiveness of sins in the life of the church, ordination in priesthood, divine equipping of the laity to speak on God’s behalf to those seeking salvation, and the deeper questions these questions raise about divine action in salvation. The questions about the mediation of divine forgiveness among the laity inevitably raise questions about the nature of the action of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, whether one can know that God is present in the personal life of the believer, and how these claims can be defended epistemologically. Keywords:   Symeon the New Theologian, asceticism, laity, forgiveness of sins, divine action, Holy Spirit, ecclesiology, eschatology

Consider at the outset the following remarkable observation by Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022):

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian The possibility of making our confession to a monk who has not received the order of priesthood, ever since the vesture and clothing which is the mark of repentance was given by God to his inheritance and they were called ‘monks’, this you will find to have been open to everyone, as it is written in the divinely inspired writings of the fathers. If you study them you will find that what I am saying is true. Before there were monks, bishops alone used to receive the authority to bind and loose, by right of succession, as coming from the apostles. But with the passing of time and with the bishops becoming good for nothing, this awesome function was extended to priests of blameless life and accounted worthy of divine grace. And when these were also were infected with disorder, priests and bishops becoming like the rest of the people, and many of them, as is also the case now, falling foul of spirits of deceit and idle chatter, and perishing, then this function was transferred, as I said to the elect people of Christ, I mean the monks. It was not withdrawn from the priests or bishops, but they deprived themselves of it. ‘For every priest is appointed as a mediator between God and men in things pertaining to God,’ as Paul says, ‘and he is bound to offer sacrifice, as for the people so also for himself.’1 From several angles this is a startling thesis.2 The questions it raises quickly multiply. How can we secure the relevant number of monks to hear confession? (p.119) When we do, how can we be sure that they are up to speed on sanctity and worthiness? Given doubt about their qualifications, how can we avoid doubt about whether God has forgiven us or not? Surely this is a species of Donatism, that is, the claim that clergy can only perform their God-given functions if they are morally pure, a doctrine long rejected by every branch of Christendom? Worse still, will not this kind of skeptical thinking in time become a species of Messalianisn, that is, the heresy that we should simply abandon the sacraments of the church altogether? Running through these worries beneath the surface are questions about divine action. What is the role of human agents in providing access to divine forgiveness in the life of the church? What does God do in ordinations to the priesthood? Does God appoint and equip certain laity to speak on his behalf to those seeking salvation? As we shall see, these questions lead into even deeper questions about divine action in salvation lurking in the neighborhood. What begins as an observation about the conditions of mediating divine forgiveness spills over into claims about the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, claims about whether one can know that God is actively present in the personal life of the believer, and, not surprisingly, claims about how these claims are to be defended epistemologically.3

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Taken in isolation it would be easy to dismiss the opening quotation as false and heretical; false, because it contradicts what is known to be true on other grounds; and heretical because it is simply a reiteration of the Donatist or Messalian heresies.4 In part because of the careful defense of the wider network of claims about divine action in which it is embedded the option of dismissal has been hard to sustain. The favored way to deal with all of this has been to bury the challenge or keep it at the margins of theology and out of sight. One can easily find ways to ignore the theology of Symeon the New Theologian or to reconceive his startling claims in terms of a necessary corrective rather than as a frontal attack on a competing network of claims about episcopal succession and ecclesial authority. By framing the debate as a debate about divine action, I intend to refigure the challenge in ways that will bring out its salience and strength. Before I unpack what is at issue in terms of (p.120) divine agency and divine action, it will help to sketch the historical scene to get an initial sense of the issues at stake. During his lifetime Symeon was a controversial figure who was at odds with the intellectual and ecclesiastical establishment of the period.5 His life and work have been for the most part buried in obscurity, resurfacing every three hundred years or so, only to be reburied again. As already noted, his positive theological teaching has been tainted with worries if not charges of heresy. He was a pugilist in his own way, tending to extremes of expression that can raise suspicions about his good judgment. It is natural in reading him to get the impression that he is spiritually full of himself, crossing the fine line between legitimate assurance and arrogant presumption. Even so, Symeon is full of selfdeprecation, and his brutal honesty tempers this temptation. Moreover, sorting through the complexity of his biography can be a daunting task given the alien hagiographical setting in which it is lodged and given the ambiguity of some of the details of his personal life. In addition, the conventional category in which his reception has been couched does not inspire strong expectations as far as his contribution to our project is concerned. He is invariably treated as a great figure in the history of mysticism, slotted in as an extraordinary paradigm whose primary claim to fame is that he introduced appeal to his own experience in the articulation and defense of his theology. This immediately puts him in an elite class, even though it runs against the fact that his proposals are presented as normative for all Christians, lay and clerical. He is also singled out as a fine example of protest against the dangers of intellectualism and rationalism in theology, making room for the heart in theology in a way that creates suspicion towards intellectual rigor. As a consequence, it is easy to dismiss him once and for all by nominating him as merely a pastoral rather than an academic theologian.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Yet Symeon refuses to lie down and be house-trained. His writings speak for themselves in terms of their profundity. While the title of “New Theologian” was in all probability used initially as a title of derision, it became in time a title of honor, linking him in a canon of theologians that was restricted in the East heretofore to John the Divine, the author of the fourth gospel, and Gregory of Nazianzus. The intermittent retrievals of his work across history make manifest his staying power. If anything, given the explosion of interest in the work of the Holy Spirit across the contemporary church, there is a real danger that (p.121) he will become an unhealthy mentor to those who disregard the wider horizon in which his thought is lodged. Consider further the setting of Symeon in the East in his day. Think of it like this. The big issues in Christian theology have been addressed and canonically resolved. Thus Symeon can take for granted the great doctrines of the church enshrined in the resolutions on the Trinity and on Christology. While the debate about the filioque clause on the procession of the Holy Spirit has already been initiated but not yet become a cause for ecclesial division between East and West, at this stage in the journey there is common agreement on the original wording of the Nicene Creed.6 The administration of the church is in relatively good working order. Intellectual life in terms of judicious scholarship was in relatively good shape; serious and rigorous theological work was valued at the highest levels of the church. More broadly, life in the empire knew a time of peace that was shaken but not broken by various coups d’état. Taken in the round, the fundamental theological and ecclesial horizon was one of relative stability, beauty, and order. While the Irish had just saved civilization and the West was beginning to clean up its act, the East was sitting pretty overall.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian The temptation in such a situation can be catalogued in terms of nominalism, legalism, external orthodoxy, liturgical decorum, bureaucratic institutionalism, and spiritual complacency. In Catholic categories Symeon is rightly nominated for a place of honor in the arena of mysticism, by which I mean a strand of the Christian tradition that makes much of spiritual experience, the spiritual senses, and conspicuous sanctity. In Protestant categories, if we can permit these, Symeon belongs in the world of pietism, awakenings, Methodism, revivalism, and even Pentecostalism. Both designations place him squarely in the arena of ascetic theology, that is, in that field of inquiry devoted to understanding the Christian life. What I hope to show is that a fresh look at his writings through the lens of divine agency and divine action can enable us to transcend these households of learning and spirituality. I shall begin by looking again at his startling claims on apostolic succession, briefly note what he has to say about divine and human action in salvation, and then look at his claims about perception of the divine that underlie his boldness and intellectual selfconfidence. This will pave the way for taking up the specific claims about divine action in ordination his work evokes. I shall end with some brief remarks on how he might be best identified and on what his work makes manifest about claims about divine action overall. The presenting issue as I have already hinted is a simple one. Symeon claimed that a spiritually discerning lay monk has the authority to “bind and loose,” that is, the authority to hear confession and thus provide absolution. For Protestants who have already abandoned the place of monks in (p.122) Christianity, the issue of absolution by a lay monk is not on their theological radar. For Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans the matter is much more serious. In the East the formula for absolution has generally been deprecative or precatory rather than performative. It runs as follows. My spiritual child, who has confessed to my humble person, I, humble and a sinner, have not power on earth to forgive sins, but God alone; but, through the divinely spoken word which came to the Apostles after the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, saying: ‘Whatsoever sins ye remit, they are remitted, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained’, we are emboldened to say; Whatsoever thou has said to humble person (sic), and whatsoever thou has failed to say, may God forgive thee in this world and in that which is to come.7 The Russian Church, influenced by Western Catholic texts of the seventeenth century, used for a time the performative formula.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian May our Lord and God Jesus Christ, through the Grace and bounties of his love towards mankind, forgive thee (name) my child, all thy transgressions. And I, unworthy priest, through the power given unto me by Him, do forgive and absolve thee from all sins (+). In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.8 On either option there is a clear set of proposals about divine action that govern the practice of confession. Drawing on a reading of John 20:21–23, the basic theory begins with the proposition that Christ, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, had empowered the first disciples to forgive sins.9 This gift was in turn handed down through the laying on of hands to the successors of the first disciples, that is, the bishops. They in turn, passed on this gift in ordination to the priests of the church.10 God acts both synchronically and diachronically in valid and efficacious ordinations. Symeon shared these assumptions. The crucial question posed by Symeon hinges on how we should interpret his claim that “It [the authority to bind and loose] was not withdrawn from the priests or bishops, but they deprived themselves of it.” On the surface this certainly appears to say that the priests and bishops no longer have the authority to bind and loose; they possessed it at one time but rather than God taking it away from them, they themselves by their dispositions and actions deprived themselves of the relevant authority. So the claim is a subtle (p.123) one. It runs parallel to a similar claim Symeon makes for baptism.11 In baptism God brings it about that one is born again, has become an adopted child of God, has been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and the like.12 However, because of neglect of the grace given and because of sin, the effects of the original divine action are no longer in play not because God withdrew them but because the baptized agents deprived themselves of the relevant effects of grace and now need to start all over again and become subject to the diverse actions of God in salvation. What is interesting in this is that nowhere does Symeon say that the bishops and priests he excoriates should quit their posts. The challenge, however, does not stem from this omission but from his claim that the authority to bind and loose has now passed to those who are not ordained, that is, to lay monks who have self-consciously entered into the life of salvation.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian We can pose this issue more formally in this fashion. On a standard traditional view, ordination operates both as a necessary and sufficient condition for bishops and priests to have the authority to bind and loose. Ordination bestows both the executive authority and the spiritual authority to act as agents of God in forgiving sins. Through human agency, in their performance of the relevant speech acts, God thereby forgives the penitent sinner. This is an obvious case of double agency; what the human agent does, God does. Think of an ambassador speaking as an agent of a President or a Prime Minister. However, this double agency only operates because of a chain of authorization and empowerment that goes back to Christ and the first apostles. The chain is a physical or manual one that involves the human action of laying on of hands; this supplies the executive authority to act. Equally, the chain is a spiritual one, for in the same act of laying on of hands the Holy Spirit empowers the recipient to mediate relevant divine grace as well. On this understanding, ordination is a necessary condition for binding and loosing; if it is missing then there is neither executive authority nor spiritual empowerment for this divine action to happen. It is also a sufficient condition, for ordination in and of itself provides the relevant executive authority and spiritual empowerment. What Symeon is proposing is that ordination is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of binding and loosing, for it can be carried out by a lay monk with the relevant spiritual gifts who is not ordained. It would be easy to dismiss Symeon as a Donatist at this point, that is, as someone who is claiming that unworthy, sinful bishops and priests cannot bind and loose precisely because they are leading sinful lives. This would mean that Symeon has added a second necessary condition for absolution, namely, the moral worthiness of the bishops and priests. Augustine’s long-standing (p.124) perceived victory against the Donatists on the re-baptism of Catholic Christians would be enough to undo Symeon’s status and arguments at this point. Certainly, there is no doubt about the searing indictment of bishops and priests (and indeed monks) that Symeon launches from time to time. Consider this witty sample of his rhetoric where he turns the tables on those who accuse him of heresy. He insists that those who deny his central claims that it is still possible to enter into the same spiritual condition as that of the apostles are peddling the worst of all heresies. You are ‘like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears’ (Ps. 58:5). It would appear to me that you ascribe salvation solely to your cloak, cowl, and scapular—in some cases to a very heavy and impressive beard—and so you put your trust in them to take pride in them.13

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian If one isolates this polemical, anti-clerical strand of argument there are grounds for dismissing him as a Donatist. However, Symeon takes the argument to a much deeper level than this suggests. What is at issue is not the moral worthiness of the ordained but a rich vision of how God works in salvation and how that salvation is mediated. Once this rich vision and its epistemological correlate has been summarized we can then pursue two more plausible interpretations of his proposals: a moderate one that sees Symeon as a prophet who provides a corrective to a narrowly objectivist mediation of divine action in salvation through a merely physical chain of transmission in ordination; and a more radical option that challenges this by providing a different theological account of how divine action operates in the church and in salvation. In his vision of salvation Symeon takes for granted a narrative of creation, freedom, fall, redemption, and consummation.14 Correlated with this narrative he accepts the standard vision of Christian doctrines enshrined in the Nicene Creed and the ensuing canonical reception and interpretation of those doctrines. He does nothing to challenge the received account of baptism and Eucharist as privileged sites of divine action and encounter. He is an Orthodox Christian even as he develops his own inimitable and spiritually acute appropriation of the tradition. He lodges his central proposals in a reading of Scripture; and he insists that he is operating in a tradition of spiritual and theological teaching and practice handed down intact from the great fathers of the church. (p.125) His personal appropriation of the heritage is dramatic.15 We can cast it as a series of stages marked by at least two interruptions. Initially he was baptized and, given his theology, saw this as mediating the relevant divine blessings. The first interruption involved a dramatic and unexpected experience of divine light at the age of twenty which came in the context of the intentional practices of confession and prayer under the guidance of his spiritual mentor, Symeon the Studite, a lay monk of Constantinople. The next phase began with an unexpected crash in which he abandoned the quest for salvation and threw himself into a life of dissolution and sin. After about eight years he came back to faith through the help of his mentor, experienced a second encounter with divine light, became a monk at the monastery of the Studion, and got ordained as a priest. Thereafter he quickly became the abbot of a dilapidated monastery in Constantinople, St. Mamas, and began his life-long career as a teacher and writer. After concerted efforts to bring him to heel for his orthodoxy failed, he was finally found guilty on charges related to his move to canonize his spiritual mentor and packed off into exile.16 Two years later the charges were effectively rescinded and he was declared innocent. He refused the compensation of episcopal advancement and settled into a quiet life of spiritual direction and writing in his small new monastery dedicated to Saint Marinas across the Bosporus from Constantinople.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian These personal elements are important for understanding his vision of salvation and the ensuing consequences for his views on ordination. As already noted, Symeon took for granted that in baptism God acted to mediate salvation. The challenge he faced was what to do given that once, if not twice, he had sinned away what had been given to him by God through the action of the church and through direct encounter with divine light. Given this searing problem it is tempting to say that the ordained representatives of the church failed him. The help he sought came not through bishops and priests but through a lay monk whose authenticity was ridiculed and rejected within the church of his day. Through wrestling with the teaching, practices, and experience that emerged under the spiritual direction of Symeon the Studite he worked out a fascinating vision of divine action in salvation in conversation with Scripture and the fathers of the church.17 We might say that Symeon was forced to think through the very nature of salvation and even of genuine (p.126) Christianity from the ground up.18 It is not that baptism had not worked; rather, having sinned away the divine benefits given in baptism, he has to start all over again from scratch. Assuming the background music of canonical doctrine and practice noted above we might think of his vision of salvation as involving the following elements. Having heard afresh the Gospel, the first step is to engage in intentional acts of repentance, confession, abstinence from evil, and turning to do all the good one can.19 We might refer to this phase as the intentional development of various spiritual and moral dispositions. We can call them internal devotional practices. These were in turn accompanied by outward acts in which one participated in the practices of the church as represented by the rounds of services, fasting, worship, and, for the monk, total obedience to one’s spiritual father or director. We can call these external ecclesial practices.20 While Symeon has a clear commitment to a vision of ancestral as opposed to original sin and its consequences, these inward and outward actions are entered into freely. He is utterly insistent on a robust commitment to human free will. Hence his catechetical lectures are laced with exhortation calling on his monks to repent, confess, examine themselves, avoid evil, do good, obey their spiritual father, engage meticulously in observing the canons of the church liturgically, read the Scriptures, take up the challenges of manual labor, and the like. Thus there is no salvation without intensive and extensive human action. Given the initial blindness, confusion, and disorientation, Symeon insists that even in the recommended practices one needs a spiritual mentor. On the one hand, this is important in breaking the addiction to self-will and providing exercises that brings about total submission to the divine will. On the other hand, the spiritual father furnishes pertinent information, advice, direction, counsel, and expertise in finding one’s way into the very life of the Holy Trinity.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Once one embarks on these practices, God in turn works in and through them to mediate salvation. This salvation consists eventually in the perfection of the human agent as represented by love for God and neighbor.21 The (p.127) downward spiral into sin and corruption is halted; there is a restoration of the original upward journey to the eschaton; the sinful human agent is systematically weaned away from addiction to wayward human passions; the inward life of desire is reoriented towards God. Expressed in terms of divine action the sinful human agent is born again, justified by grace alone, recreated, incorporated into the body of Christ, baptized in the Holy Spirit, illumined by divine light, and becomes a participant in the divine nature. Clearly Symeon presents here a picture of divine–human cooperation or synergy; both human and divine actions are essential to salvation; neither alone is sufficient. When He endowed us with free will, giving commandments to teach us instead of how we must oppose our adversaries, He left it to the free choice of each either to oppose and vanquish the enemy, or to relax and be miserably defeated by him. Nor does he leave us entirely to ourselves—for He knows the weakness of human nature—but rather is present Himself with us and, indeed, allies Himself with those who choose to struggle, and mysteriously imbues us with strength, and Himself, not we, accomplishes the victory over the adversary.22 However, while he speaks often of making ourselves worthy of divine grace, this should not be read in terms of the later Western debates about grace and freedom or about faith and works. There would be no salvation without the initiative and prevenient grace of God; God is clearly the primary agent in this operation, providing assistance all along the line; and there is absolutely no place for any kind of boasting or the claiming of merit. Even so, human agents must live a life of constant repentance, eschew even a smidgen of spiritual arrogance, weep constant tears of repentance, and do battle against the unceasing forces of personal, social, clerical, and demonic evil until their dying day. Pressing our analysis deeper, it is clear that Symeon is committed to a fascinating network of epistemic proposals that supervene on these theological claims about human and divine action. We can, of course, simply read him as a mystic and stick to the standard themes this evokes. However, this does not begin to do justice to his thinking. Briefly expressed, Symeon presses on to develop the following epistemological stance.23

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian First, the joint internal and external practices (accompanied by divine action) that he recommends are aptly seen as epistemic practices that bring (p.128) about the proper functioning of human agents in relation to gaining access to the truth about God, about themselves, and the information and wisdom given in Scripture. Thus Symeon speaks of the commandments as “medicines” and trials as “cautery” that lead to a change in his faculties. From the Spirit who renews him he obtains new eyes as well as new ears. From henceforth unlike an [ordinary] man, he does not see the objects of sense with physical vision; he sees them spiritually as one who has become superhuman, and sees them as images of things invisible, and their forms to him formless and shapeless. One might say that he no longer hears any human voice or voices, but only the voice of the Living Word whenever it speaks through a human voice. By its hearing the soul admits Him and no other, and permits Him to enter because he (sic) is well known and loved; it gladly welcomes Him when He has entered, even as the Lord said, ‘My sheep hear My voice’ (Jn. 10:27), but ‘they do not hear the voice of strangers’ (Jn. 10:5). As for other men, though he hears all their words he does not accept them but turns away from them and sends them away. Sometimes he does not even notice their presence or their knocking for admission, but even though he hears them he is one who is deaf and hears not. This is his attitude towards them!24 Second, the underlying epistemological vision is best initially identified as a form of virtue epistemology in which the central idea is that such epistemic desiderata as understanding, justification, and knowledge are secured through a vision in which human agents, as cognitive or truth-detecting organisms with spiritual senses, constitute the heartbeat of epistemology.25 We are dealing here with a version of externalism rather than any kind of internalism governed, say, by justification in terms of propositional evidence or universally available experience. Yet Symeon allows for an internalist component in which the human agent registers awareness of the knowledge gained; in vision one can know that one knows as well as knowing what one knows. Third, the knowledge gained through the relevant practices falls within the boundaries of divine revelation mediated through the Scriptures, experience of the saints, and teachings of the fathers as expressed in the great truths of the Christian doctrinal tradition. Divine revelation and its articulated content therefore serve as an over-rider system. If an experience or an interpretation (p. 129) of experience is incompatible with the great truths of the faith, then it should be rejected or reinterpreted.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Fourth, there is an irreducible dimension to this knowledge that cannot ever be fully captured in propositional terms. Hence there is an apophatic dimension grounded in testimonial warrant that stresses the impossibility of eliminating the element of mystery. In a review of the nature of faith, hope, and love, Symeon notes: In this hope you will see love borne aloft as on the throne of the cherubim, the love which is God. Once you have found and gazed upon this, from that time forward you will cease to busy yourself with matters which are invisible and to come, but you will instead silence others, and command them neither to meddle nor to inquire concerning things beyond. For by the very experience of the latter, you will have learned that they are all inexpressible in words, and the mind cannot comprehend them.26 Symeon’s favored way for developing these kinds of claims involves an appeal to perception of the divine. I quote at some length to give a sense of what he means. [T]he soul cannot live unless it is ineffably and without confusion united to God, who is truly the eternal (cf. 1 John 5: 20). Before this union in knowledge, vision, and perception it is dead, even though it is endowed with intellect and is by nature immortal. There is no knowledge without vision, nor vision without knowledge. This is what I want to say—there is vision, and in the vision there is knowledge and perception; but I say this about spiritual things, for in the physical realm there is perception even apart from vision. What do I mean? A blind man who hits his foot against a stone feels it, but a dead man does not. But in spiritual things, unless the mind comes to the contemplation of the things that are above thought, it does not perceive the mystical activity. He who has not arrived at contemplation in spiritual matters and claims that he perceives things that are above intellect, word, and thought is like him whose eyes are blinded and who has a sensation of good or bad things that he experiences, but does not know what is in his hands or at his feet, even if they are for him a matter of life and death. Since he is deprived of the faculty and perception of vision he in no way perceives the bad or the good things that come upon him. Thus he will often lift up his staff to ward off his enemy and possibly strike his friend instead, while his enemy stands before his eyes and laughs.27

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (p.130) Symeon deploys the analogy with perception to account for several features of the landscape he inhabited. Thus it explained why it was that opponents dismissed his claims about knowledge of God through experience as delusional. They could not perceive what he perceived because they were blind and because they refused to engage in the practices that made true knowledge of God possible. It also explained why those who engaged in such practices successfully had an assurance that they did not possess when they first set out on their journey.28 Furthermore, there was no getting below the prima facie foundational claim to have perceived God in the divine light that one experienced in and through the recommended practices. Those who teach about intellectual and divine realities are not able to supply clear proofs, strictly speaking, from examples, or to express their truth concretely. Nor are their pupils able to learn by mere words the meaning of that about which they speak. It is by practice and effort and labors that we must be anxious to grasp these things and attain to contemplation of them.29 There is in knowing God and knowing about God basic cognitive acts that arise from the relevant devotional and ecclesial practices that are not be grounded in something deeper, even though the knowledge gained can be confirmed by the testimony of the saints and fathers of the church from Paul forward. Furthermore, his take on spiritual perception explained why it was crucial to have expert help as one proceeded, for one needed guidance from someone initiated into knowledge of God given one’s initial blindness, confusion, and disorientation. Those already in the know and thus able to distinguish through the relevant faculties between veridicality and delusion provided the relevant training and advice needed to perceive God for oneself.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian In this short review we can see that there is much more to Symeon than his rich contribution to ascetic theology. Symeon develops at one and the same time a vision of Christian salvation through the action of the Triune God, a vision of how to make progress through the various stages of salvation, and a network of epistemological suggestions or proto-theory.30 While every step of the way on every front is contested in Christian theology, all this would be fine but for the fact that it has potential ecclesial consequences for confession and ordination that I highlighted at the outset. The potential consequence is this: given that someone, like his mentor, Symeon the Studite, is successfully tuned into the truth about God and participates in the life of the Spirit in a robust way, it becomes possible for that person to provide pertinent spiritual advice (p.131) and to bind and loose through person-relative divine revelation mediated directly through the working of the Holy Spirit. Access to the direct working of the Spirit provides the sufficient conditions for binding and loosing; there is no necessity for ordination to the episcopate or the priesthood. It was this move that got Symeon into trouble in his day; and it is this claim that creates the challenge that he poses. Note that this is not an arbitrary claim in the sense that anyone who is, say, ordained and morally and spiritually serious can do what Symeon proposes. The problem is not the Donatist one of moral failure within the ranks of the clergy. Symeon provides a constructive and positive account of who is in a position to provide absolution; put in terms of divine action he is insisting on an activity of the Spirit that he thinks is well grounded given his epistemology. The criteria involved are complex and cannot be settled by a simple appeal, say, either to moral turpitude or to episcopal ordination. However, a complex account of the relevant warrants clearly undercuts the claim that what is at stake is arbitrary and subjective. It is not the absence or presence of sanctity or the absence or presence of ordination that is at stake; it is the positive conditions of genuine perception of the divine and the direct action of the Holy Spirit mediated by a layperson. Once we articulate the issue in these terms we can see that although his claims are contested they are not arbitrary or subjective in any pejorative sense.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian There is no evading the challenge Symeon poses at this point by claiming, say, that he is confused. He may be wrong but he is not confused. Nor will it do to say that Symeon is a typical Eastern Orthodox theologian where paradoxes and dialectical polarities are the order of the day in theology as compared to the misplaced, rigorous rationalism of the West.31 Aside from a recipe for laziness and for transposing normative theology into historical theology, this kind of evasion should not be excused given the rigorous work we have encountered already in, say, the Cappadocians and Maximus the Confessor. I propose we take seriously for now the two alternatives already identified heretofore. We may argue for a moderate reading of Symeon and claim that he provides a prophetic corrective; or we may argue for a more radical reading and argue that Symeon undercuts conventional Catholic and Orthodox accounts of divine action in the church and in episcopal ordination.32 (p.132) A fine statement of the moderate interpretation has been supplied by Kallistos Ware. With characteristic felicity Ware notes that Symeon’s On Confession raises in a particular form an issue that recurs constantly in religious history, between priest and prophet, between hierarchy and the holy man, between the Church as ‘institution’ and the Church as ‘charismatic event’. The right of lay persons to bind and loose had been a matter for dispute in the Church long before this, in Africa during 251–2, when the confessors in the recent persecution claimed the authority to reconcile the lapsi, while Saint Cyprian maintained that this could be done only by the hierarchy.33 He further proposes that Symeon is making two claims. First, “persons not in priestly orders— or at any rate monks who are not ordained—have the right to bind and loose, provided they possess conscious experience of the Spirit.” Second, “ordained persons who lack this experience have no right to bind or loose.”34 Ware rightly initially suggests that Symeon stands in a long tradition in which lay monks of the kind described by Symeon may indeed bind and loose. Contrary to common opinion, this legitimacy was not simply a matter of spiritual direction or pastoral counseling. It was a categorical claim in its own right. So the first claim is effectively allowed to stand. As to the second claim, Ware suggests that this should be taken pastorally rather than juridically, morally rather than dogmatically. If taken straight, it is perilously close to Donatism; so it should be read as a prophetic warning that can and should be reformulated. “Although Symeon actually says, ‘You cannot bind and loose’, surely the true meaning is, ‘You should not take upon yourself this task unless called directly by the Spirit.’”35 On this reading, priests, say, could still bind and loose but they should not become priests unless called directly by the Spirit.36

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian There is much to support this sympathetic reading of Symeon. A lot of his work is an aggressive and passionate effort to correct, refresh, and restore the spiritual life of the monks and clergy of his day. Hence allowances must be made for hyperbole and prophetic rhetoric. At times he can become apocalyptic in his rhetoric.37 He nowhere suggests that worldly bishops and priests should stop granting absolution; on the contrary he advises priests to stick strictly to the canons of the church and on this front is a rigorist of the first (p.133) degree. He at times treats ordination as an indispensable condition for liturgical service.38 He remains a faithful priest himself within the life and order of the church despite his difficulties with those in the episcopate who initially found him guilty of liturgical impropriety related to the cultus he invented for his mentor, Symeon the Studite, after his death. He bows to the church discipline of his day, even as he stands by his own convictions. Moreover, allowances must be made for his own personal journey within which personal and conscious experience of the Holy Spirit was utterly pivotal to his life and ministry. His spirituality was hot and aggressive rather than cold and formal. However, dragging in Donatism is really a red herring for the issue in the first claim is not directly about absence of personal sanctity but about the active presence of the Holy Spirit. Ware acknowledges this when he rejects a pastoral reading of the first claim. Yet he seeks to evade the significance of this by casting Symeon’s corpus on lay absolution in a way that reworks it as a prophetic warning rather than “a systematic discussion of doctrine.”39 More broadly, Ware allows for a double chain of apostolic succession within Christianity. There are in a sense two forms of apostolic succession within the life of the Church. First, there is the visible succession of the hierarchy, the unbroken series of bishops in different cities, to which Saint Irenaeus appealed at the end of the second century. Alongside this, largely hidden, existing on the ‘charismatic’ rather than the official level, there is secondarily the apostolic succession of the spiritual fathers and mothers in each generation of the Church—the succession of the saints, stretching from the apostolic age to our own day, which Saint Symeon the New Theologian termed the ‘golden chain’. The first type has as its chief centres the great primatial and metropolitan sees such as Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Moscow, or Canterbury. The chief centres of the second vary from generation to another, and are usually certain remote hermitages in the desert or the forest: Nitria and Scetis in the late fourth century, Gaza in the early sixth, Sarov, Oprina and the Spruce Island, Alaska, in the nineteenth. Both types of succession are essential for the functioning of the Body of Christ, and it is through their interaction that the life of the Church on earth is accomplished.40

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian This is a felicitous way to keep the theology of Symeon within the boundaries of the Orthodox tradition. Ware is right to put “charismatic” in scare quotes in order to avoid making the official and institutional life of the church somehow non-charismatic. The institutional life of the church must also reflect the action of the Spirit, as the traditional line of argument that appeals to the (p.134) perceived lineage of Irenaeus insists. However, aside from queries about this lineage that I have flagged earlier, the crucial problem is that Symeon’s claim is a theological claim about the reality of the action of the Holy Spirit. It is not just a prophetic claim but a challenging dogmatic claim with very significant ecclesial implications that are immediately obvious and that motivate the effort to provide a different reading of his position. By keeping the whole discussion firmly inside the boundaries of the Orthodox tradition, Ware fails to note that Symeon has opened the door to a more inclusive vision of the action of God outside the boundaries of Orthodoxy. I venture a more radical reading of his proposal. The more radical claim has three components. First, Symeon’s fundamental horizon is eschatological and basic in the sense that he is articulating a vision of entry into the kingdom of God here and now through the work of the Holy Spirit, rather than providing an addendum to an ecclesiology that posits the primacy of the church as an institution whose episcopal leadership guarantees in an exclusive manner the fullness of divine salvation. To be sure, Symeon is loyal to the church, and, as noted, he stands squarely within its dogmatic tradition. However, it is clear that his primary concern is with entering into the kingdom of God as a proleptic foretaste of the world to come rather than simply entry into the church. This emphasis on the arrival of the kingdom of God runs through his work repeatedly.41 Moreover, Symeon identifies the membership of the church to a date prior to the coming of Christ and the commissioning of the apostles. The beginning of the church is traced right back to the first believers in the Old Testament.42 Second, Symeon’s commentary on the work of the Holy Spirit represents an effort to articulate the basic elements of the apostolic and Christian faith rather than simply a corrective to formalist claims about episcopal and priestly succession. On the one hand, he insists that the lay monks he is defending stand in the succession of the apostles.43 On the other hand, it is clear that he (p.135) couches his critique of the clergy in terms of their very identity as Christians rather than simply seeing them as malformed or wayward Christians.44

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Third, and most importantly, Symeon provides a way to make the work of the Holy Spirit the primary causal and authenticating mark of the action of the Triune God in the history of redemption. Thus he notes that it was the Holy Spirit who gave the first apostles their commission to forgive sins. He mentions Paul as an exemplar of what is at issue; it is clear that Paul received his commission directly from the risen Lord and not through the ordination of the other apostles.45 Likewise, the fundamental warrant for the authority and empowerment of lay monks stems not from their sanctity but from the direct action of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Symeon confines his application of this insight to the authority of lay monks, as we should expect in his context. However, he casts the debate about binding and loosing in terms of receiving the keys of the kingdom; and the keys are represented very firmly as the action of the Holy Spirit.46 This clearly raises the stakes as far as the debate about authority is concerned. To take this observation one step further, note that for Symeon much more is at stake than the mere forgiveness of sins. We might say that this is the least of all the benefits that come through the action of the Triune God. His indictment of the clergy of his day was not just that they had forfeited the authority to forgive sins but that in rejecting his claims about the full working of the Spirit in, say, baptism of the Spirit and personal assurance, they were depriving themselves and the rational sheep of Christ’s flock of critical elements of salvation. These were articulated in Scripture and taught by the (p.136) succession of teachers represented by Symeon the Studite; and the truth of these claims is brought home and grounded in contemporary perception of the divine in oneself and others. To reduce the issue to one of forgiveness misses the deeper elements in his theology. It was the loss of the core elements of salvation in the life of the church because of ignorant and passion-ridden clergy that set him on fire to provide not just a corrective but, on this more radical reading, an alternative. One way to think of his claim in terms of divine action is that when the clergy fail to make available the great treasures of salvation promised in conversion and personal faith, God will simply find lay folk to do the job. It is not enough to claim some kind of external guarantee of lineage or to lay claim to some physical action done by a bishop.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian We might express the import of this interpretation by insisting that the work of the Holy Spirit is free to mediate the full treasures of salvation outside episcopal succession. Put in other terms the life and work of the church operates as an effect of the work of the Spirit. It is not that the Holy Spirit operates only fully and even exclusively through the channels of the “institutional” church. Happily, there are hints of this crucial distinction in more recent ecumenical work where the emphasis has shifted to the task of sharing what the Holy Spirit has done in our communities so that the older forms of denial and agnosticism about the action of God are either rejected or ignored. There is a welcome move away from a hermeneutic of suspicion to one of generosity and genuine openness. Symeon goes so far as to claim that the rejection of the work of the Spirit as seen outside the lineage of the bishops is a form of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.47 The upshot of these observations can be stated robustly in this way. If what lay monks mediate is nothing less than entry into the kingdom of God rather than simply the post-apostolic church; if Symeon is articulating a vision of authentic and apostolic Christianity; if it is the action of the Holy Spirit as mediated even by laity that secures the central benefits of salvation; then these considerations taken together open the door for a more radical vision of Christianity than we conventionally find in those circles that make episcopal ordination a necessary and sufficient condition of ecclesial identity and fullness. The door is open but it is not clear that Symeon walks through it; others later most certainly do; and any treatment of the current demographics of the Christian tradition must reckon with the challenge they present. This is not the place to make any final assessment of how best we should think of the identity and status of Symeon. My own hunch is to see him as an extraordinarily important agent provocateur who belongs to the whole of Christendom but who cannot be easily assimilated to our later categories. (p.137) As far as being a mentor as it relates to divine agency and action I would sum up the heart of his legacy in this way. First, Symeon highlights the crucial place of the action of the Spirit in the Christian life and in the ministry of the church. In both arenas it is a challenge to specify how precisely our central action predicates function. In the end we will need to be able to speak of the long-term action of the Spirit undergirding the journey from birth to death; equally we need to wrestle with what God does more specifically in personal encounter and in the sacramental practices of the church.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian Second, the work of Symeon shows that in pursuing this agenda we cannot make the Holy Spirit a labor-saving device that evades the rigorous work of thinking through how we can best identify the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in our midst. Symeon rightly takes the debate all the way to the top in terms of his vision of sanctification and theosis and all the way to the bottom in terms of his epistemology of perception of the divine. This deepens the debates about salvation and the debates about authority; it does not short-circuit them. Posing the issues sharply in terms of both the generality and specificity of what God does through human agents in the church will hopefully bring greater clarity to the conversation and help move the discussion forward. The crucial issues he poses center on how we should best identify and articulate a vision of the work of the Holy Spirit in administering salvation.48 Within this we can then go on to develop a robust vision of divine action, say, in ordination, that will stand up to scrutiny. Notes:

(1) H. J. M. Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 49. (2) I leave aside here the debate about the authenticity of the letter which at one time was attributed to John of Damascus. Attributing the letter to John of Damascus shows all too clearly both the challenge presented by Symeon and the effort to defend the legitimacy of his ideas. On the authenticity of the letter see Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian, 14–17. There is a clear scholarly consensus that the letter is authentic. Other important sites where Symeon discusses issues raised most pointedly in his letter On Confession are to be found at the following: “Discourse XXXIII: On Participating of the Holy Spirit,” in Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses, trans. C. J. de Catanzaro (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980), 339–46, although the whole unit between “Discourse XXVIII: Discernment, Light, and Priesthood,” and “Discourse XXXIV: Symeon’s Apologia,” should be consulted to get the full force of his argument; “Eleventh Ethical Discourse,” in St. Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 2: On Virtue and the Christian Life, trans. Alexander Golitzin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 129–54. (3) Once initial objections are voiced, reasons have to be adduced to defend oneself, and then the debate shifts to providing warrants for the reasons deployed. (4) There is in fact a remarkable passage in another letter where Symeon makes the much less dramatic claim that lay monks are raised up by God to supplement the work of bishops and priests because of the dramatic increase in the numbers in the church. See Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian, 93. Page 20 of 25

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (5) I have found the following especially helpful in reviewing the life of Symeon: Niketas Stethatos, The Life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Alexander Golitzin, St. Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 3: Life, Times and Theology (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997); H. J. M. Turner, St. Symeon the New Theologian and Spiritual Fatherhood (Leiden: Brill, 1990); Archbishop Basil Krivocheine, St. Symeon the New Theologian: Life—Spirituality —Doctrine (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986); George A. Maloney SJ, The Mystic of Fire and Light: St. Symeon the New Theologian (Danville, NJ: Dimension Books,1975). (6) There was no common agreement on the doctrine of sin; Symeon is decidedly not an Augustinian in orientation. (7) Hieromonk Alexander Golitzin, The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikon’s Seminary Press, 1999), 78. (8) Ibid. (9) “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you’. When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” See John 20:21–23. (10) I leave aside here exegetical, historical, and theological debates that are well known and follow the logic in play. (11) Symeon’s views on baptism are complex but the main drift of his position is clear. (12) For a very substantial statement of the divine actions involved in baptism see Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian, 143. (13) St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Discourse XXIX: The Heresy of Pusillanimity,” in The Discourses, 315. (14) Symeon takes the narrative all the way back into divine foreknowledge and predestination but I cannot pursue his acute observations on this score here. I will note them in a later chapter on John Calvin. (15) Symeon in a remarkable departure from convention shares his own journey, albeit cast in terms of a person he identifies in the narrative as “George.” See “Discourse XXII: On Faith,” The Discourses, 243–53. (16) We might say that he was banished from Chicago to South Bend or from Dallas to Waco or from Dublin to Enniskillen.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (17) Symeon clearly gives priority to the teaching of Scripture but he also sees the fathers as divinely inspired; at times he insists his own teaching is divinely inspired. The boundaries of what counted as divinely inspired do not fit with later restrictions on what counts as divinely inspired and therefore canonical. The matter was tidied up especially by Aquinas. (18) His corpus as a whole bears witness to this observation in that he provides in his own idiom and style a robust account of Christian doctrine that reaches from predestination and creation right through to life in the world to come. It is accurate to treat Symeon first and foremost as an ascetic theologian but it is a mistake to limit him to this designation. The subtitles of some of his works as “The Ethical Discourses” are seriously misleading at this point. (19) “It is therefore necessary to abstain with all one’s powers from all evil actions. At the same time we must cleave to all good works and keep to the commandments with fervent desire and all eagerness, without despising any of them, whatever it may be, as being least (Matt. 5:19).” See St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, 286. (20) Symeon works through the practices in Discourses III to XII but he returns to them again and again. (21) It is no accident that the title of the Discourse I is “Of Charity.” This foregrounds everything Symeon has to say in The Discourses as a whole. I suspect that there is much more to the ordering of The Discourses as a whole than is generally recognized, but that would be a topic for another occasion. (22) St. Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 86. For strong statement on free will in Symeon see The Discourses, 69, 100, 268. (23) I take up a more detailed account of the epistemology of Symeon in a paper for the Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). (24) St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Discourse XIV: On Penitence and the Beginning of the Monastic Life,” The Discourses, 189–90. (25) Jason Baehr, The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).Book of StepsBreaking the Mind: New Studies in the Syriac “Book of Steps,”

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (26) St. Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things, 65–6. Symeon left a remarkable corpus of hymns whose genre and content amply correlate with apophaticism. See St. Symeon the New Theologian, Divine Eros: Hymns of Saint Symeon the New Theologian (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2010). (27) St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Discourse XIII: Of Christ’s Resurrection,” in The Discourses, 183. (28) Symeon in fact sometimes treats certainty of one’s forgiveness through the action of the Spirit in a complex manner, allowing for an absence of certainty on this score. See Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian, 83. (29) St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Discourse XIV: On Penitence and the Beginning of the Monastic Life,” in The Discourses, 191–2. (30) He also provides a fascinating vision of realized eschatology which I take up later. (31) This is essentially the line taken by Joost van Rossum in “Reflections on Byzantine Ecclesiology: Nicetas Stethatos’ ‘On the Hierarchy’,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 25 (1981), 83; and Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin) in “Hierarchy versus Anarchy? Dionysius Areopagita, Symeon the New Theologian, Nicetas Stethatos, and their Common Roots in Ascetical Tradition,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 175. (32) These do not exhaust the options but there are sufficient for my purposes here. (33) Bishop Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia, “Foreword: The Spiritual Father in Saint John Climacus and Saint Symeon the New Theologian,” in Irenee Hausherr, Spiritual Direction in the Early Christian East (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990), xxi. (34) Ibid. (35) Ibid., (36) It is not altogether easy to see exactly what Ware is saying here; I am offering a generous reading that coheres with the thrust of his position. (37) “Thus the whole world has been filled with error of this kind [lack of respect for spiritual teachers], and transgressing and rejecting a single commandment has overturn the whole church.” See Turner, ed., The Epistles of St. Symeon the New Theologian, 129.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (38) St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, 224. (39) Ibid. Ware concedes in the end that Symeon’s standpoint remains “a tenable view for an Orthodox to uphold.” See Bishop Kallistos [Ware] of Diokleia, “Foreword,” xxiii. I take this to be really a claim about what counts as an authentically Orthodox theological opinion rather than a theologically true proposition in and of itself. (40) Ibid., (41) See, for example, the repetition in “Discourse VI: The Example and Spirit of Symeon the Pious,” in The Discourses, 122. (42) “Thus is the body of Christ’s Church bound together in harmony by His saints from the beginning of the world. It is complete and entire from in the union of the sons of God, the first-born, whose names are inscribed in heaven.” See On the Mystical Life: Ethical Discourses, Vol. 1: The Church and the Last Things, 44. (43) “What is worse, most of us without fear buy the priesthood for money and seek to govern the Kings’ flock as shepherds, though we have never been sheep…Brethren, were the apostles at the beginning like this? Were the successors of the apostles such? Did our fathers and teacher [act] thus? Not only do they become traitors and sacrilegious in the matter of material possessions, when they have eyes for nothing else than their money bags. They even dare to lay hands on the riches of God when they are not ashamed to say, ‘It pertains to us to bind and to loose (Matt. 16:19, 18:18), and we have received this power from on high for the present life.’ What impudence, if I am not to say, what utter madness. From whom, tell me, and for what purpose have you received this power from above? Is it because you have left everything to follow Christ (Mk. 10:28)? Is it because you have despised earthly glory? Is it because you have become humble in spirit? Is it because you have sold all and given it to the poor (cf. Mt. 19:21; Mk. 10:21)? Is it because you have lost your life or become dead to the world, and have not found it in any ‘will of the flesh’ (Jn. 1:13)? Or is it because you too, like Christ’s disciples of old, have heard Him say as He breathed on you, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ (Jn. 20:22f).” See “Discourse XXVIII: Discernment, Light, and Priesthood,” in The Discourses, 301– 2.

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Divine Action in Symeon the New Theologian (44) “But this [the claim that God through grace imparts his own brightness] we have addressed to those who profess to know everything and speak of it, who think that they are something, though they are nothing (Gal. 6:3). By our discourse we have shown, as on a pillar, who are Christians and what is their nature, that those men may compare themselves to the model and find out how far short of those who are truly Christians.” See “Discourse XV: The Light of God,” in The Discourses, 196. (45) St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, 362. (46) “I will tell you again, the door is the Son, for, says He, ‘I am the door’ (Jn. 10:7, 9). The key of the door is the Holy Spirit, for He says, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’ (Jn. 20:22–23). The house is the Father, for ‘in My Father’s house are many mansions’ (Jn. 14:2). Pay careful attention, therefore, to the spiritual sense of the passage. Unless the key opens—as He says, ‘To him the porter opens’ (Jn. 10:3)—the door is not opened. But if the door is not opened, no one enters into the Father’s house, for Christ says, ‘No one comes to the Father, but by Me’ (Jn. 14:6).” See The Discourses, 341–2. The whole next section is a fascinating re-reading of how to understand the keys in terms of the working of the Spirit of the kind Symeon attributes to lay monks. (47) See St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses, 335. (48) In my judgment this will also involve a revisiting of the current consensus that rests virtually everything on a vision of divine action in baptism. By Symeon’s time it is clear that he has essentially eliminated the critical human actions that were constitutive of baptism as a rite of Christian initiation in the catechesis of the fourth century as we saw earlier in our review of the divine and human action posited by Cyril of Jerusalem. This is a painful observation to make but it cannot be evaded once we come to terms with the history we have inherited. Symeon essentially solves the challenge by starting over again from scratch with repentance and obedience. This at least is a start on the problem, but little more than a start.

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Blood, Bone, and Body

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Blood, Bone, and Body Divine Action in the Eucharist in Aquinas William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter, the author explores the sacramental theology of Thomas Aquinas and what it says about divine action. The author argues that the divine action of changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is to be taken seriously among theologians and philosophers today, along with the whole range of Christian thought on divine actions in creation, incarnation, and providence. Aquinas’ sacramental theology plays a key role in the development of his overall theological metaphysics. The author then argues that Aquinas’ sacramental causality is coherent, although he finds the metaphysics highly implausible. Keywords:   Eucharist, sacramental theology, divine action, words of institution, Thomas Aquinas, metaphysics, causality

Consider the following hymn of Thomas Aquinas. Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more, See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art. Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived; How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed; What God’s Son hath told us, take for truth I do; Page 1 of 24

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Blood, Bone, and Body Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true. On the cross thy Godhead made no sign to men; Here thy very manhood steals from human ken; Both are my confession, both are my belief, And I pray the prayer of the dying thief. I am not like Thomas, wounds I cannot see, But can plainly call thee Lord and God as he; This faith each day deeper be my holding of, Daily make me harder hope and dearer love. O thou our reminder of Christ crucified, Living Bread, the life of us for whom he died, Lend thus life to me then; feed and feast my mind, There be thou the sweetness man was meant to find. Jesu, whom I look at shrouded here below, I beseech thee send me what I long for so, Some day to gaze on thee face to face in light And be blest for ever with thy glory’s sight.1

(p.139) This extraordinary hymn of devotion is focused on the Eucharist; it is no exaggeration to speak of it as an expression worthy of the genius who penned it. While some students of Aquinas may be surprised at the amazing combination of piety and poetry, it stands out because it captures both the challenges and initial solutions that Aquinas’ commitment to divine action in the Eucharist evoked. It is a commonplace to note that Aquinas developed his doctrine of transubstantiation to explain what God does in the Eucharist. As we seek to explore what this means, it is important to note the amazing integration of piety, faith, and theology in play here. Consider the following features of the hymn: the heart-felt adoration and praise, the total trust in divine revelation, the identification with the dying thief, the pivotal triad of faith, hope, and love, the personal appropriation of atonement, the delicate combination of memorial and feasting in the Eucharist, and the anticipation of sight and blessing in the world to come. We encounter here a soul and mind intoxicated with a sense of divine presence in the Eucharist and saturated with humble eschatological expectancy. In terms of medieval theology, we are given a feast of monastic spirituality. Yet this hymn is also laced with theological and epistemological density. Take the theological content first. In the Eucharist we meet Jesus, not some archetype of the Christ or other evasive token of the spiritual. We encounter and feast on Godhead, God’s Son, the Lord, the Living Bread. In doing so human agents achieve their true destiny, they experience the sweetness of all they are meant to be. To speak in such terms is to give the service of the heart, to pray for mercy like the dying thief, to call Jesus Lord and God, to move onward and upward in deeper faith, hope, and love, and to beseech God for the grace of final glory.

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Blood, Bone, and Body Epistemologically, the appropriate mental acts are to take for truth, to believe, and to confess. Yet this is no ordinary believing, like believing that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that two plus two equals four. There are deeper doubts here as noted in the reference to Thomas. There is the challenge not just of selfdeception but of deception by the divine. Our senses are deceived by God (“Seeing, touching, tasting are in thee deceived”). This is a startling admission. It evokes an immediate response to begin relieving the dissonance: How says trusty hearing? That shall be believed; What God’s Son hath told us, take for truth I do; Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.

The potential deception of the senses is countered by trust in the word of God’s Son, by the truth given propositionally in special revelation. Then we move to the delivery of the nuclear strike: abandon high-octane divine revelation and truth itself is undermined. In God’s Son, “Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.” Just in case this may sound too high-flown, (p.140) Aquinas adds for good measure an argument from analogy to persuade those inside the Christian tradition. On the cross thy Godhead made no sign to men; Here thy very manhood steals from human ken; Both are my confession, both are my belief…

We face a similar dilemma, he proposes, in confessing Christ crucified as divine. Here too there are no signs; observing the human nature of the crucified “steals from ken,” which we might take to mean that our normal ways of knowing cease to operate. Speaking prosaically, the fundamental initial dilemma posed by divine action in the Eucharist can be stated straightforwardly. On the one hand, our senses tell us that we perceive bread and wine; on the other hand, we are told that this is not what it appears to be for it is Christ’s very own body and blood. The properties we perceive are those of bread and wine; these stand in contradiction to the properties we expect to find if we have the body and blood of Christ. “This is that,” but the “this” of the bread and wine does not cohere with the “that” of the body and blood. What God has done in the Eucharistic offering does not correspond with the prima facie reliable observation of our senses. However, this is not the primary concern of Aquinas; he is interested in first-order theology not the epistemology which undergirds it in this section of his writings. What he offers is a detailed account of how to unpack the underlying story of divine and human action.2 In the process he leaves virtually no stone unturned, so much so that his work stands more or less as the canonical teaching of the Catholic Church in our own day.

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Blood, Bone, and Body It is helpful to get some preliminary observations in place before we get to the meat of his claims about divine action.3 To begin, the Eucharist belongs primarily in the sphere of worship. So the theology of the Eucharist is (p.141) essentially a deep reflection on the practice of the church as expressed in its most fundamental act of worship. As a sacrament it is instituted by God and not by the church. Furthermore, the Eucharist is not just one sacrament among others; it has a privileged position within the seven sacraments of the church. While strictly speaking it is not necessary for salvation in that desire for receiving it is sufficient to this end, it has a threefold significance that clearly sets it apart in the life of the church. Thus it is commemorative of our Lord’s passion; it is the sacrament of union and thus is called “communion”; and it is called a “viaticum” because it provides the way of grace to enter heaven. It is to be administered only to those baptized, thus fitting aptly into the ordering of life in grace. As spiritual food it is a form of nourishment but the reception of food presupposes the existence of life, life which is made available in new birth in baptism. Baptism disposes one or prepares one for the food given in the Eucharist. As a sacrament the Eucharist satisfies the conditions that any sacrament must meet to be a sacrament. Thus it must have both a form and matter. The form is constituted by the original words of institution given by Christ, now reiterated by the priest.4 In this instance the form is different from other sacraments which operate by way of performative act, command, or entreaty. Furthermore, the exact wording, that is, the indicative tense, as applied to the bread and wine is appropriate because they denote what is done in the sacrament, namely, the changing of the bread into the body of Christ and the changing of the wine into the blood of Christ. It is more fitting to say that they are the body and blood than that they become the body and blood. They speak of efficacious conversion. The action mirrors while it does not exactly replicate the action of God in creation where non-existent things come into existence. The matter consists of bread and wine. The latter is secured by the command of Christ to take bread and wine, not, say, bread and cheese. The bread should be fermented. It should be wheaten bread, whether leavened or unleavened. The wine should be from the vine, rather than from pomegranates or mulberries; and it should not be wine that has degenerated into vinegar. Mixing water with the wine is not essential, though it is appropriate given the symbolism involved. Thus the water signifies the union of the people with Christ. Such water in turn needs to be natural and pure; and it is crucial that not too much be used, the rule being that there should be more wine than water if and when it is used.

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Blood, Bone, and Body The principal agent at work in the sacrament is Christ. However, the secondary agent is that of the priest who in ordination is given the power to consecrate the species of bread and wine. Aquinas can just as readily speak of the Holy Spirit as the agent, a move that is natural given his vision of the unity (p.142) of God in the Trinity. Even if that consecration is done with evil intention, say, to make a mockery of it or to poison someone, the effect is not nullified.5 What happens is not a matter of priestly power but of divine power, even though the priest has a unique role in the efficacious presence of that power. Indeed it is effected by God’s power alone.6 The priest, in other words, is not the chief agent but an instrumental agent. So a smith can make a knife using the power of a hammer; and Christ used his hand to heal a leper. When the priest utters the relevant words in their appropriate context,7 his consecration secures that they are spoken as if Christ is present here and now saying them.8 Given that Christ is present by his word and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the consecration is effective even when the priest is wicked. Wickedness does not undo the ministry given in ordination; his merits or lack of them is causally irrelevant to the actions performed through the power of Christ, whose words he utters. A wicked servant may act with evil intention; but the good intention of the master working through the agency of the servant secures that the relevant action is itself good. Given this instrumental agency the mass of a sinful priest is of no lesser value than that of a good priest, even though the private prayers of such a priest may not be as fruitful as those of a good priest. Only priests and their bishops serve this instrumental role in the action of Christ. In this there is a difference from baptism which may be administered by the laity. This power to act is in turn transmitted only by bishops and is reserved exclusively for them and the priests they ordain.9 Celebrating the Eucharist, moreover, does not exclude con-celebration with other priests so long as the rite of the church is observed. The priest must himself of necessity participate in the Eucharist, not simply as a matter of propriety, but because it is a sacrifice which he offers to God.10 The same argument is used to warrant the necessity of priests actually celebrating the Eucharist whenever it is lawful to do so. Aquinas allows for exceptions in the case, say, of weakness or sickness, but the default position is that priests who fail to celebrate mass are clearly not fulfilling their duties. Even in the case of leprosy, a priest can celebrate privately. Those who are without pastoral responsibilities ought to celebrate on the chief festivals and whenever the faithful communicate.

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Blood, Bone, and Body Aquinas is subtle when it comes to addressing the question of the Eucharists of heretics, schismatics, and those priests who are excommunicated. On the (p. 143) one hand, he holds the line on the power received in ordination, a power that is not withdrawn even in cases of excommunication, as is shown by the fact that when they return to the church they are not ordained again. So the effect of ordination given by God instrumentally through a bishop cannot be taken away by human action. This fits with the purpose of excommunication as medicinal; it does not nullify the priestly power originally given. On the other hand, it would be clearly all too trivial to think that heresy and schism would be of no consequence. Priests guilty of these sins now have their power improperly. They can bestow what God intends and effects but not rightly. For example, “…such as are ordained while separated from the Church, have neither the power rightly, nor do they use it rightly.”11 While they retain the power to consecrate and the causal effects brought about by such consecration are secure, they act wrongly and sin. “…so in consequence they do not receive the fruit of the sacrifice, which is spiritual sacrifice.”12 Initially, this would appear to refer to the consequences for the priest, but the context suggests otherwise. “…outside the Church there can be no spiritual sacrifice that is a true sacrifice; thus…the sinner receives Christ’s body sacramentally, but not spiritually.”13 Aquinas would appear to be hinting at some loss of efficacy in the Eucharist performed; yet exactly what this might be is far from clear. The weight falls clearly on the side of the efficacy of the divine action involved. The Eucharist remains valid; a host consecrated by an unworthy priest is to be adored, and, if reserved, consumed by a lawful priest. So the causal consequences affect only the attendant effect such as the effects of the prayers of the offending priest. The consequences also spill over into bad consequences for the receivers, as can be seen in the advice given to those who receive the Eucharist from unworthy priests. Given that such priests do not make a proper use of the sacrament and sin by using it, it is sinful to share in their sin. One should not receive communion from them or assist in their mass. However, this only holds after they have been suspended by ecclesiastical sentence, a sentence which may not exactly coincide with the divine sentence of suspension. Refusing communion is then not a matter of shunning God’s sacraments; aside from regarding ecclesiastical law, it is a matter of shunning the sin of unworthy ministers. Knowing exactly who is unworthy, as seen in cases of priests concealing their concubines from public perception, leaves plenty of room for the use of good judgment. Ecclesiastical censure clearly helps in such cases but it is never foolproof.

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Blood, Bone, and Body By this stage we have before us an account of the crucial agents that are constitutive of the Eucharist as developed by Aquinas. The primary agent is God; the instrumental agent is the bishop or priest. We also know the form (p.144) and matter of the Eucharist: the form is the words of institution and the matter is bread and wine. So the human actions are the provision of the right kind of wine and bread and the speech acts that reiterate the words of institution and thus consecrate these elements. We know, furthermore, that the action of God can be predicated both of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. So what exactly does God do in and through the speech acts of the priest as he consecrates the bread and the wine? It is a commonplace to record that Aquinas defines the relevant divine action as transubstantiation.14 Yet there is much more than meets the eye here not least in the causal theory that is deployed.15 Focus for a moment on the divine power involved. The change is “entirely supernatural, and effected by God’s power alone.”16 God’s power is such that the relevant change can be effected. God is infinite in act so his action can extend to the whole nature of created being. Therefore He can work not only formal conversion, so that diverse forms succeed each other in the same subject; but also the change of all being, so that, to wit, the whole substance of one thing be changed into the whole substance of another. And this is done by Divine power in this sacrament; for the whole substance of the bread is changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body, and the whole substance of the wine into the whole substance of Christ’s blood. Hence this is not a formal, but a substantial conversion; nor is it a kind of natural movement: but, with a name of its own, it can be called ‘transubstantiation.’17 God’s providence is also at work in that it is fitting that the accidents remain the same even as the substance is changed. Here we touch on the rationale or motive for the divine action involved.18 It would, first, be horrible (p.145) for men to eat human flesh, and to drink blood. And therefore Christ’s body and blood are set before us to be partaken of under the species of those things which are more commonly used by men, namely, bread and wine. Secondly, lest this sacrament might be derided by unbelievers, if we were to eat our Lord under his own species. Thirdly, that while we receive our Lord’s body and blood invisibly, this may rebound to the merit of faith.19

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Blood, Bone, and Body The action itself has features that relate to both creation and natural transmutation. Like creation, there is no common subject as to what exists before and after. The subject ceases to exist as substance; another subject with a different substance comes into existence. Like transmutation, there is a passing of one thing into another. Out of the bread and out of the wine there comes into existence the body and blood of Christ. Hence the precise predication of the specific action involved is a matter of similitude to other actions that can be conceived, namely, creation ex nihilo and transmutation. It is unique and singular; a basic act that cannot be defined in other more basic categories. Now let’s turn to the number of divine actions that can be distinguished in and through the act of consecration as performed by a priest. First, the water poured into the wine must be turned into wine. Thus this water does not turn immediately into the water that flowed from Christ’s side.20 Second, the wine then must be transformed into the blood of Christ. Third, the bread must be turned into the body of Christ. Let’s call these actions the bedrock actions that take place. Generally speaking, the last two are the main focus of popular exposition while the first is ignored or forgotten, in part because it is possible to have a valid Eucharist without using water. This is not, however, the end of the matter. Aquinas makes clear exactly when the relevant changes occur: it is in the very last instant of the consecration.21 Given what Aquinas called concomitance, the last two actions require us to add several other divine actions which we might say supervene on the initial acts of conversion. Thus the body of Christ involves the whole body of Christ, including muscles, nerves, and blood. This body also includes the blood of Christ, for it is not part of Christ’s body which is signified but all of it; and bodies are never without blood. Furthermore, as Christ was more than merely a body in his humanity, then the soul of Christ is also present. The full humanity of Christ is now present. Given that Christ was not merely human but also fully divine, the full divinity of Christ is also present on the altar. Furthermore, given that (p.146) Christ, including his body, is now also present in heaven, the body on the altar is the same body that exists in heaven; it is not a different body, but the same body.

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Blood, Bone, and Body All this follows from the principle of concomitance. Given the unity of what it is to be human, fully body and soul; given the unity of Christ’s person, fully human and divine; and given the narrative of Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the same body being identified throughout; it follows of necessity that Christ now is fully present when the bread and the wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The necessity here is not causal or logical but metaphysical.22 Given what it is for someone to be essentially human; given that Christ is essentially human and divine; and given a full list of Christ’s essential properties across time and eternity; it follows of necessity that his body and soul together with his full divinity be made present in the act of consecration. By similar metaphysical reasoning regarding wholes and parts, the whole of Christ in his body and blood is present both in the whole and in every part. A proper understanding of substance entails this inference.23 The exact term given for this transformation is that of transubstantiation. In this Aquinas follows a middle path between two extremes which had been tried and found wanting in the Western Catholic tradition.24 On the one hand, he rejects the notion of impanation, that is, the claim that Christ becomes incarnate in the bread.25 Such a view does not begin to fit either with the place given to the wine and the blood in the Eucharist; nor does it fit with the background doctrine of incarnation that is in place. On the other hand, he rejects the idea that Christ is present merely spiritually and in a purely hidden manner in the bread and the wine. For Aquinas this construal of what is happening does not fit with the exact words of Christ in the words of institution, with the proper interpretation of the words of John in his gospel,26 and with the received interpretation of the church down through the ages. Yet in a real sense the truth imparted remains hidden from the ordinary human eye. What is at issue is the crucial metaphysical distinction between the substance and accidents of material objects. The accidents remain the same, so (p.147) it looks as if all we have are bread and wine; but the substance is miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ and its concomitant realities. Aquinas works with a disjunction at this point. “Now a thing cannot be in any place, where it is not previously, except by change of place, or by the conversion of another thing into itself…”27 The first proposition of the disjunction has to be rejected because it would entail that the body of Christ would have moved from heaven, that it move through all intermediary spaces, and that the one movement of the same body terminate in one place rather than several different places. “And consequently it remains that Christ’s body cannot begin to be anew in this sacrament except by change of the substance of the bread into itself.”28 The term “transubstantiation” fits beautifully with this rendering of what is happening. It is surely no accident that this term becomes widely used and even canonical, once Aquinas’ thought is incorporated into the official teaching and practice of the church.

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Blood, Bone, and Body Note at this point the depth and sophistication of Aquinas’ account of the Eucharist. He is not content to reiterate the words of Scripture and the traditional teaching of the church. He is at pains to spell out in exquisite detail a full description of what is involved and then to follow through on the causal and metaphysical consequences of this description. We might say that his theological exploration is as comprehensive as possible. Using the philosophical tools at his disposal his aim is to explain what is happening. Given the complexity of what is at stake, it is natural to speak here of a unique sacramental causality at work. To speak of a mere human act would be hopelessly thin and emaciated. Even to speak of a divine miracle only touches the hem of the divine actions involved. For Aquinas there is something much more complex involved; there is a raft of divine actions carried out through the human acts of consecration; the multiple effects drive one to speak of a unique form of causality, aptly named as sacramental causality.29 This thick description of divine causality in turn underwrites not just the practice of the church as represented by those ordained to this sacred work but the dispositions and practices of the faithful in compulsory attendance and appropriate adoration. It is not accidental that this sacrament becomes the most important sacrament in the seven sacraments taken as a whole; nor is it accidental that this becomes the central act of worship of the church. Through divine action working instrumentally through human agency and material (p. 148) reality, Christ really does become present again and again in the practices of the church. There is a representation of the sacrifice for sin that Christ performed once for all on Calvary for the sins of the world. Moreover, given the presence of the blood in the body, consuming the transformed bread without the transformed wine is sufficient on the part of the recipient of the Eucharist.30 Any departure from this towards a mere spiritual presence is bound to appear as a massive loss to those who have grasped, however fitfully, what is really taking place here by divine appointment. Any move towards a doctrine of impanation is bound to appear vulgar and reductionistic. Once transubstantiation is asserted, then the next step is to delineate both the causal consequences and conditions for those who receive. Clearly, it is important initially that those who receive be baptized already, for baptism in part prepares the ground for the reception of the body and blood of Christ. They must also come to participation with appropriate dispositions as represented by confession, repentance, and a living faith in the teaching of the church. Failure to meet these requirements is not a casual affair, just as failure to respond to Christ when he was present in the incarnation was not a casual affair. The overarching horizon that is in place is that the Eucharist exists for the nourishment of spiritual life already received in baptism and other sacraments of the church. The grace bestowed in this sacrament is grace directed to this end.

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Blood, Bone, and Body The causal consequences are manifold. They involve the reception of Christ as the cause of the life of grace, remission of sins, unity with Christ and his members in the church, charity, and the imperfect but genuine attainment of the glory of the life to come. It remits some but not all of the punishment due to sin; and it partially preserves the recipient from future sin. All of these effects arise from the spiritual eating of the body and blood of Christ, in contrast to the merely corporeal eating of the body and blood of Christ. In making this distinction, Aquinas signals that there are appropriate conditions for the reception of the Eucharist that apply, for example, in the case of human agents as opposed, say, to a mouse or a dog which could derive no spiritual benefit from consuming the sacramental species. At its lowest level spiritual eating is represented by desire to receive the sacrament, a desire that should be exercised where possible on the part of the believer. In terms of reception the limiting cases are represented by full reverence and devotion as befits the presence of Christ at one end and mortal sin at the other end. The former would deliver the maximum effects of the sacrament; the latter would involve damnation. In between there can be various degrees of devotion and reverence. The greater the devotion, the greater the effects; a principle that explains why some punishment for sin can be remitted but not (p.149) all punishment. Here Aquinas is taking into account the reality of free will on the part of the recipient. In the case of mortal sin, the human agent is “lying to this sacrament” and consequently commits sacrilege.31 Bad as this may be, it is not the worst of all sins, a sin represented by unbelief. How good or bad the agent may be is in part a matter of good human judgment, even though in the end Aquinas is very careful to leave ultimate judgment in the hands of God. He clearly rules out the giving of the sacrament to those who are insane from birth, to those who are open, notorious sinners, and to those publicly denounced as evil by an ecclesiastical tribunal. He is, however, hard pressed to make a strict ruling for those who suffer from seminal loss during sleep or for husbands and wives who have engaged in intercourse.32 The same applies to cases where one has eaten ordinary food on the day in which one receives the Eucharist. Everything hangs at that point on sorting out the distinction between mortal and venial sins, a matter of some subtlety given the complex causes involved. Overall the sense he imparts is that one should follow one’s intuitions on what counts as decency; the default position is that one should abstain if there are any serious doubts on the part of the recipient. This stands in contrast to the action of the priest who should give the benefit of the doubt in the distribution of the elements where the right desire or disposition cannot be discerned with accuracy. Too much is at stake in the effects of the sacrament and its pivotal place in the life of grace for this to be a matter of erring on the side of internal or external purity.

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Blood, Bone, and Body It remains by way of exposition to visit Aquinas’ epistemological reflections as they relate to his vision of divine action in the Eucharist. As noted at the beginning, he is as clear about the solution as he is about the obvious problem that has to be addressed. Given his empiricism and his general account of the reliability of the senses he must deal with the gap between what is seen and what is actually the case. Walsh captures the point nicely. “The senses are the door to human knowing, and Aquinas wants to inject the sense-grounded realism of his epistemology into this theology of sacrament.”33 It looks as if the bread and wine remain bread and wine and thus are merely signs. However, sacraments as signs cause what they signify, a crucial principle that Aquinas applies to all seven sacraments. Sacramenta efficient quod significant.34 His reply to this is as brief as it is clear. (p.150) The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor by understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority. Hence, on Lk. 22:19: ‘This is My body which shall be delivered up for you’, Cyril says: ‘Doubt not whether this be true; but take rather the Saviour’s words with faith; for since He is the Truth, He lieth not.’35 The appeal here is to divine revelation, a source of the highest form of knowledge for Aquinas in that it constituted God’s own knowledge rather than human knowledge. Such an appeal does not rule out providing ancillary human considerations that either lend support to the original claim or provide help in persuading the skeptic in considering the claim. Thus accepting a realist as opposed to a symbolic vision of the Eucharist fits with the new dispensation ushered in by Christ. It is a wonderful expression of love, friendship, and hope. And it correlates nicely with the doctrine of the incarnation where Christ shows his Godhead invisibly. Taking up this topic later in his deliberations, Aquinas also notes that substances in themselves are not visible to the naked eye, even as they are visible to the eye of the intellect.36 The beatified intellect of human agents or angels, due to the participation in the divine essence, could indeed perceive the presence of Christ’s body and blood. The wayfarer, however, is not in such an optimal cognitive condition; hence the perception is a matter of faith alone; it is not a matter of the senses, or the understanding, or the imagination.37 The crucial issue overall is that Aquinas wants to ward off any idea that there is any kind of divine deception involved. Just as failing to provide a careful theological and metaphysical account of the causality is essential to ward off any idea that there is anything disorderly involved, so failing to provide an epistemological rejoinder to the skeptic would leave open the possibility of divine deception. Aquinas cuts off both these untoward consequences with characteristic elegance.

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Blood, Bone, and Body It might be thought that his efforts on both counts can readily be overturned. Take the appeal to divine revelation. It is not enough for Aquinas to appeal to the content of divine revelation tout court; one must also be able to defend the interpretation of the divine revelation deployed. So Calvin, for example, challenges this whole way of thinking by insisting that proper exegesis requires that the words of Christ be taken figuratively rather than (p.151) literally; and when taken figuratively, they do not rule out a special promise of Christ to be present spiritually in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Aquinas can respond in at least two ways to this, either separately or conjunctly. He can seek to argue that his reading is the better of the two merely on exegetical grounds. This would necessarily involve extended treatment of a host of texts and of hermeneutical theory. In addition, he can appeal to his additional hermeneutical thesis that it is the church which settles disputed exegetical questions about the meaning of texts that are central to the life of faith. Thus the whole debate would soon transfer into the wider discussion of the nature of divine revelation, together with its interpretation and its reception, which he takes up elsewhere in his theology. We are shunted off in the wider debate about the relation between revelation and reason, between theology and philosophy. The potential metaphysical worries that his position evokes tend to leave us stranded in exactly the same territory. Michael Dummett has sharply criticized Aquinas on the grounds that his use of the categories of Aristotle to make sense of divine action in the Eucharist involves a radical departure from the metaphysics of Aristotle on the relation between subjects and accidents.38 The core of his objection is that for Aristotle the accidents of a subject are necessarily related to its substance. Aquinas, however, severs this link when he allows for divine action to take the place of the substance of the bread and wine after they are changed into the body and blood of Christ. Like angels they persist without the prior form and substance which would be required on Aristotelian grounds. Metaphysically speaking this is simply nonsense.39

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Blood, Bone, and Body Aquinas is fully aware of this consequence. In fact, he is fully determined to maintain that the accidents of bread and wine which remain continue to undergo change; and they can effect change just as happens in the case where they inhere in their normal substances. Thus the species of bread and wine can change external objects; they can become putrefied and corrupted; they can change their color and other properties; they can generate ashes if burned or worms if putrefied; they can nourish the hungry and make recipients drunk; they can be broken into pieces; they can be crushed by teeth; they can be mingled with other liquids to the point where they cease to be species of bread and wine altogether. His solution to this involves a clear appeal to the unique act of God involved in the action of transubstantiation. God in effect takes one set of attributes that are found in the species of bread and wine, namely, the dimensional attributes of size, shape, and quantity, and then by (p.152) direct divine power joins to these accidents the other accidents like color or hardness, and then preserves these in being. Given the infinite power of God and given the reasons God has for performing this uniquely complex act, this is for Aquinas an entirely coherent and plausible way to think of what God is doing.40

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Blood, Bone, and Body Dummett’s mistake here is to think that Aquinas is engaged in the application of Aristotelian metaphysics to the causal questions thrown up by divine action in the Eucharist. It is a natural mistake for a distinguished philosopher to make, even a philosopher who by any standard is perceived as a staunchly conservative Roman Catholic. Aquinas is first and foremost a theologian seeking to explain what is involved in a complex causal account of divine action in the Eucharist.41 To this end he is happy to draw on the resources of Aristotle to get his explanation off the ground and to make headway in understanding what is at stake. He is not simply taking over Aristotle’s metaphysics and applying them to the problem in hand. This means he is not at all bound by the ontological constraints that show up in Aristotle. He is governed by a vision of divine power to act that would never have entered the head of Aristotle. He has a much richer ontology of divine agency and the powers attached to divine agency. He is also committed to a complex narrative of divine action that governs his proposals from start to finish. The action of God in every Eucharist is strictly unique; it can only be partially understood using the categories of Aristotle.42 However, the water of Aristotle can be (p.153) turned into wine by the infinite power of God through the revelation that God has given for the life of the church. Such revelation is a matter of faith, of faith alone, before it is a matter of human understanding and metaphysical exploration. God does something wondrous and unique in the Eucharist. His action (or raft of actions, depending on how wide we make the description) is effected by the infinity of God’s power and by the rationale for exercising that power in this instance. What has been done has been done; this means it must be possible. The task is then to find the appropriate synthesis of theology and philosophy that renders such faith as intelligible as is possible here on earth. The metaphysics of causality and modality are strictly subordinate to the specification of the divine action of transubstantiation. We are back to sorting out the relation between theology and philosophy, revelation and reason.

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Blood, Bone, and Body Dummett’s objection readily leads us to some wider considerations about Aquinas’ project that deserve attention. One immediate question can be framed in terms of the relationship and boundaries between theology and metaphysics. Read strictly as a metaphysical project Aquinas’ account of sacramental causality is surely developed to make sense of the very particular theological claims that he wants to advance about divine action in the Eucharist. They do no work outside that very specific arena of sacramental theology. They do not provide a general account of the fundamental categories that govern our understanding of the world as a whole. On the contrary, they borrow from those general categories in that they think of divine agency in terms of a divine agent with infinite power who performs complex specific actions for certain intentions and purposes. Aquinas’ causal story does no work outside their theological agenda. Read as an exercise in metaphysics, they are bound to appear ad hoc, invented on the spot to do a very specific job, that is, explain and defend a very particular rendering of Eucharistic doctrine. It is surely plausible to say that they belong wholly within theology. More recent, theologically oriented receptions of Aquinas may well welcome this way of thinking of his vision of sacramental causality. In the end it is really an attempt to think through a general picture of the structure of divine action once one tries to spell out as comprehensively as possible what God is doing. While its content is metaphysical, it provides next to nothing by way of formal content that will help in solving general metaphysical problems.

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Blood, Bone, and Body There are no easy, knock-down proofs when one evaluates this element in Aquinas’ position. Aquinas might well agree with this. While a surface reading of the material gives the impression that he is a rabid theistic rationalist hell-bent on naming every problem in a precise manner and then nailing down his answer with deductive certainty, this surely overlooks the actual character of his work. He is utterly committed to the primacy of divine revelation in his (p.154) epistemology; his arguments are in reality often cumulative in character rather than strictly deductive; and they require the non-formal use of good judgment a lot of the time. The effort to work out a careful synthesis of revelation and reason on display here is itself a bedrock judgment that cannot be secured by some kind of deductive proof precisely because what is at stake is the very use of reason itself within theology. Thus those who insist on the severe limitations of reason in theology would surely recoil at the tenor and content of his project because they hold to a much stronger commitment to mystery, not least when it comes to the heart of their Eucharistic theology. Those who set up a sharp disjunction between theology and philosophy are more likely to reject the whole enterprise and see the speculative fecundity of Aquinas’ position as confirmation of their judgment. On the side of Aquinas, those who see philosophy as the quest for truth and reckon metaphysics as a crucial branch of philosophy will admire the deep intention of Aquinas’ work even though they may reject his conclusions. They will readily take up Aquinas’ intentions by seeking to develop a much better philosophical account of how best to describe divine action in the Eucharist.43 Similar considerations mutatis mutandis apply to the epistemological proposals developed by Aquinas. The goal will be to pursue the relevant metaphysical and philosophical issues with flair and self-criticism, virtues that are clearly on display here in an exemplary if initially foreign fashion. It is this more general conclusion that strikes me as exactly right as a result of a close reading of Aquinas’ doctrine of the Eucharist. While Christian theologians have their own unique set of intellectual goals, they cannot avoid pursuing the kind of questions that Aquinas takes up. They might well begin, for example, by finding the detailed outcome of Aquinas’ arguments not just puzzling but theologically bizarre. My own sense is that in the end Aquinas really takes us into a world not of impanation but of multiple fresh reincarnations of the Son of God in the Eucharist. Just as the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary is replicated in the Eucharist so too is the incarnation replicated every time a priest consecrates the bread and the wine. This really only becomes visible once one spells out quite specifically the network of divine actions that supervene on the act of consecration.

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Blood, Bone, and Body There are all sorts of less high-octane quibbles that arise. Can we really believe that the muscles, nerves, bones, and toe-nails of Christ are present on the altar? Does not the principle of concomitance which is critical to the full description of the Eucharist beg the very question at issue, that is, does it not (p.155) already assume what we might call a high doctrine of the Eucharist ab initio? Does the parallel between the invisibility of the Godhead on the cross and the invisibility of Christ on the altar really hold? Are there not good reasons, as articulated, for example, by Athanasius, for thinking that the divinity of Christ is indeed visible in his actions across his life, while no such parallel holds in the case of the Eucharist? Does not the whole enterprise depend on a vision of divine action in the production of Scripture that does not hold water? Can Aquinas’ account of the powers of the priest granted through episcopal succession be sustained in the light of relevant historical investigation? Does Aquinas’ account of the Eucharist really match what we can discern of its practice in the early church? Does it not end up giving the Eucharist a place in the life of the church that undercuts the place of preaching in worship? More seriously, can it really accommodate the critical place of the manifold actions of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church, not least, in a more comprehensive account of ministry? These questions are deliberately framed as rhetorical questions because they represent alternative judgments and assumptions that devoted disciples of Aquinas will seek to understand and replace with his characteristic thoroughness and elegance. The intention of raising them is not to demean much less demonize what Aquinas has given us. They signal agreement with the larger enterprise that Aquinas pursues with such gusto and piety. Christian claims about divine action in the Eucharist are rich and complex. They prompt us to follow up on a host of exegetical, historical, and philosophical questions that naturally arise once we take them seriously. These questions in turn take on a life of their own. They lead us into a world with its own virtues and vices, its own temptations and pitfalls, its own joys and sorrows. For this reason theologians will sometimes want to stop the train and get off in order to go back to the originating station and either settle down in the neighborhood or pursue other forms of transportation. Aquinas would surely be ready to take the journey back with them and deal with their objections. Equally he would share the assumption that the originating station in whose service he works is that of theology. However, he will not allow us to settle down there and pretend that the questions he pursues are not worthy of attention. They are in their own way inescapable. The right disposition to take towards them is to let faith seek understanding. Understanding has its own unique resources to bring to the feast of the Eucharist, not least in the philosophical resources it may already have to hand, or discover, or even creatively develop.

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Blood, Bone, and Body It would, however, be a serious mistake to end on this note. Aquinas was a genius. It is easy to drift into the epistemological and metaphysical world that he inhabits, for it is an extraordinary construction in its own right. Even so in this instance, his unique account of how God upholds the accidents of a subject while changing its substance is tailor-made to take care of his questions about how the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. If we (p.156) treat this as the heart of what we have called his sacramental causality, then we can say three things about it. First, sacramental causality is surely coherent, given the coherence of the concept of God as infinitely powerful and as providentially active in the life of the church. I see no reason to object at this level to his proposal. If we conceive of our ordinary world of physical reality as constituted in part by subjects who have substances and their accidents, I see no reason to hold that sacramental causality is not possible in and of itself. God can, because of his power and providence, do this on a grand scale, as Aquinas and myriads of Christians have long believed. This is not the metaphysics of Aristotle; it is an innovation that builds on and goes beyond the metaphysics of Aristotle. Second, this concession does not secure the plausibility of the metaphysical innovation before us. Coherence is but one criterion of assessment at this point. For my part I find it thoroughly implausible. This is not a matter of secure propositional argument. It stems from my best intuitions about the claim and from a deep agnosticism that borders on skepticism about this kind of metaphysical reasoning as a whole. Third, this innovation is only necessary if the material theological claims it is invented to serve hold. Aquinas was driven to metaphysical innovation because he was deeply convinced that logically and epistemically prior to this invention the words of Christ in the words of institution were to be taken literally. Without this, there was no need to proceed further down the particular metaphysical road that he took. It was because he was sure that God had brought about a conversion of bread and wine into body and blood and repeated it under divinely determined conditions that he was driven to rework the metaphysics of Aristotle. It is this last point that is absolutely crucial as we take our leave of Aquinas. Consider sacramental causality in a different way. Think of it neither as a metaphysical thesis nor even as a general account of divine causality, both direct and instrumental, but as a network of particular, specific, nameable action predications that apply to God. General theories of causality and action can be deeply distracting at this point. They take us away from what Aquinas says God is actually doing in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

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Blood, Bone, and Body The crucial initial action is that God is changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. Grant this and a flood of ancillary divine actions are added in an instant. Let’s call this the Russian doll effect of sacramental causality. God changes any water used into wine. God changes the bread into the bones, sinews, and muscles of Christ. God changes the bread into a body which also contains the blood of Christ and thus suffices for consummation of both. When God changes the wine into the blood the body of Christ is also present. God changes the bread into the body that was born of Mary and ascended to heaven. The person of his Son joins himself in his divinity to the bread that is turned into his body and is present on the altar for adoration and consumption. God brings into being a church where he ordains in historic (p.157) succession bishops and priests to act as his instrumental agents in securing this change. God by inspiration brings it about that the words of institution are recorded if not infallibly then reliably. God by divine assistance enables the church to rightly interpret the words of institution and preserve the practices related to their proper use. When Christian believers come in proper faith to eat of the body and blood of Christ, God sanctifies and feeds their souls and prepares them for glory. God fills the body and blood of grace with divine grace and imparts it to his faithful and rational sheep. Sacramental causality is now being reconceived as a raft of specific, material divine actions that need to be seen in all their specificity and differentiation. It is these divine actions, beginning with God changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, which are the foundation of Aquinas’ thinking on divine action. Should these turn out to be implausible theologically then the whole edifice crumbles. It is astonishing that they have received so little attention in recent treatments of Aquinas on divine action in the Eucharist. The detailed action predicates are avoided like the plague. The philosopher may take them or leave them. Not so the theologian. Once we take leave of our generic and thin theories of action, once we get past general and often highly obscure theories of meaning and language, once we examine these action predicates with the seriousness they deserve, then theology will be able to make progress on its own most treasured possessions. In the end we are summoned to speak first and foremost of what God actually does in creation, providence, and salvation. Within this we must speak of divine action in the Eucharist and figure out what precise claims we want to secure. This is our first and most important vocation. Notes:

(1) Thomas Aquinas, “Adore te devote,” trans. Gerald Manley Hopkins, in St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Texts, trans. Thomas Gilby (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 364–5. (2) Concilium TridentiumAbbot Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus Press, 2003–4), 17. Page 20 of 24

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Blood, Bone, and Body (3) Gary Macy, The Theologies of the Eucharist in the Early Scholastic Period: A Study of the Salvific Function of the Sacrament According to the Theologians c. 1080–c.1220 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). (4) Raymond A. Adams SJ, “The Holy Spirit and the Real Presence,” Theological Studies 29 (1968): 37–51. (5) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 74, reply to objection 2. (6) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 4, sed contra. (7) Thus a priest cannot show up at the local wine shop and consecrate all the wine in the store. (8) Summa Theologica, III, q. 78, a. 5, sed contra. (9) For an account of the sense of excitement ordination can assume in the life of a priest see Anthony Kenny, A Path from Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 101–2. (10) This is an important theme that I cannot take up here. It is given prime billing in Abbot Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist. (11) Summa Theologica, III, q. 82, a. 4, sed contra. (12) Ibid. (13) Ibid. (14) For a recent treatment of the origins of the term see Joseph Goering, “The Invention of Transubstantiation,” Traditio 46 (1991): 147–70. Goering proposes tentatively that the term was first introduced at Paris around 1140, and that Robert Pullen was its inventor.

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Blood, Bone, and Body (15) It is easy to gloss over the details of what God does even when it is recognized that “The crucial test of any theology of sacraments is the understanding it offers of how sacraments are actions of God.” Thus Liam G. Walsh, OP, who makes this important point, is content to speak in very general terms of the “decisive affirmation of the divine reality in the sacraments.” Surely we want to know what action predicates are to be deployed to cash out the specific actions God is said to perform. General talk about divine action does minimal work in this regard. See the relevant section in his important essay, “Sacraments,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 355–8. Similar problems arise when much is made of the sacraments as instruments of grace. This is indeed true, but it can easily become an empty noun when no information is given about the relevant actions which deliver grace. I shall take up the specification given by Aquinas shortly. (16) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 3, sed contra. (17) Ibid.St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Texts (18) This is enough to undercut the charge made by Louis-Marie Chauvet that Aquinas is committed to a merely productionist account of the causality involved. In traditional terms, Aquinas is concerned with not just efficient causality but also formal and final causality. As Walsh puts it: “In crude terms, God never does anything without having an end in view and without generating a form for what it is to reach that end. Where there is divine energy there is, inseparably, divine design and divine desire.” See Walsh, “Sacraments,” 329–30, and 362 n.11. (19) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 4, sed contra. (20) Summa Theologica, III, q. 74, a. 8, sed contra. (21) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 3, sed contra. (22) We might say, following Saul Kripke, that this is an a posteriori necessity, comparable, say, to the claim that water is essentially H₂O. It is a necessary truth known in this case by divine revelation rather than by empirical or a priori reasoning. (23) A substance necessarily is present both in its whole and in its parts. Summa Theologica, III, q. 76, a. 4, reply to objection 3. (24) H. Chadwick, “Ego Berengarius,” Journal of Theological Studies NS 40 (1989): 414–45.

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Blood, Bone, and Body (25) Marilyn McCord Adams, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 262–5. (26) It would be difficult to overestimate the crucial place of John 6 in the outworking of Aquinas’ and the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the Eucharist. It would be fair to say that a Eucharistic reading of John 6 is the canonical interpretation of the church. (27) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 2, sed contra. (28) Ibid. (29) Here I am extending the comments that Aquinas makes on the way Christ’s body is present in the consecrated bread. “Christ’s body is not in this sacrament in the same way as a body is in a place, which by its dimensions is commensurate with the place; but in a special manner which is proper to this sacrament. Hence we say that Christ’s body is upon many altars, not as in different places, but ‘sacramentally’; and thereby do we understand that Christ is there only as a sign, although a sacrament is a kind of sign; but that Christ’s body is here after a fashion proper to this sacrament as stated above.” Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 1, reply to objection 3. (30) By the same logic of concomitance the body is present with the blood. Presumably, anyone who consumes the blood also consumes the body. (31) Summa Theologica, III, q. 80, a. 4, sed contra. (32) The issue in the neighborhood involves the standard worries about concupiscence and distraction in acts of sexual intercourse. (33) See Walsh, “Sacraments,” 336. (34) “The sacraments of the New Law are at the same time causes and signs; and on this account it is commonly said that they bring about what they signify. From this it also appears that they are sacraments in the most perfect sense of the word, because they are related to something sacred, not only under the aspect of sign, but also under the aspect of cause.” Summa Theologica, III, q. 62, a.1, ad 1. (35) Summa Theologica, III, q. 75, a. 1, sed contra. (36) Summa Theologica, III, q. 76, a. 7, sed contra.

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Blood, Bone, and Body (37) Anthony Kenny missed this point when he records that he did not have the metaphysical eye to see through to the new substance that is present in the Eucharist. “The doctrine of the real presence I was, as a loyal Catholic, prepared to believe, however mysterious it might be. But the metaphysics we were taught appeared to save the coherence of transubstantiation only at the cost of calling in question our knowledge of every ordinary material object. For all I could tell, my typewriter might be Benjamin Disraeli transubstantiated; since all I could see were mere accidents, and I lacked the metaphysical eye to see through to the real substance.” See Kenny, A Path from Rome, 72. (38) Michael Dummett, “The Intelligibility of Eucharistic Doctrine,” in The Rationality of Religious Belief: Essays in Honour of Basil Mitchell, ed. William J. Abraham and Steven W. Holtzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 247. (39) P. J. Fitzpatrick, In Breaking of Bread: The Eucharist and Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 53–74. (40) “The change which terminates in a substantial form is not effected by a substantial form directly, but by means of the active and passive qualities, which act in virtue of the substantial form. But by Divine power this instrumental energy is retained in the sacramental species, just as it was before: and consequently their action can be directed to a substantial form instrumentally, just in the same way as anything can act outside its species, not as by its own power, but by the power of the chief agent.” Summa Theologica, III, q. 77, a. 4, reply to objection 3. (41) His systematic appeals to Scripture and to patristic authors, especially to Augustine, make this abundantly clear. (42) Some Later Medieval Theories of the EucharistesseesseesseHerbert McCabe OP, “The Eucharist as Language,” Modern Theology 15 (1999): 133. (43) Alexander R. Pruss, “Omnipresence, Multilocation, Real Presence and Time Travel,” Journal of Analytic Theology 2 (2013): 60–73.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter, the author articulates and examines what Teresa of Avila claims about divine action and human action in the Christian life, or in her terms, the Christian soul. The author pays critical attention to her work The Interior Castle, which charts her journey in grace within the framework of the doctrinal and liturgical life of the church. He notes that there is little treatment of the standard action verbs latent in the tradition, like regeneration, justification, and baptism in the Spirit. This is due to the fact that she is relying not on theological inquiries for her work, but her own personal journey in the church with the help of confessors. Teresa thus expands the horizon of what God can do in the life of the church and in the individual believer. Keywords:   Teresa of Avila, betrothal, the soul, divine action, spirituality, prayer, pilgrim, spiritual desire

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Whichever way one looks at the life and work of Teresa of Avila she comes out with top honors. Philosophically, she provides a paradigm case for understanding and critically evaluating crucial aspects of the epistemology of mystical experience. Theologically, she belongs in the canon of doctors of the Western church that have contributed to mystical theology, that is, that domain of inquiry beyond ascetical theology in which one studies the states of the soul in mystical contemplation. More recently, as the mask of piety and iconography are scrubbed clean to reveal the thoroughly earthy side of her life and writing, she has been presented as a pivotal figure for the future of spirituality and even for the future of theology in a whole new era. Thus she has become something of a heroine to feminists in search of spiritual insight and an invaluable premodern theologian who can speak to some of the new questions thrown up by postmodernity. Our interest is at once more modest and radically different. The goal is to articulate and examine what she has to say about divine and human action in the Christian life, or, in her terms, in the Christian soul. In this respect she complements the study of Aquinas. This is not to say that Aquinas has nothing to say about divine action in grace in the soul. On the contrary, he wrestles with the problem of freedom and grace in his own inimitable and thorough manner. Remarkably, after his own surprising encounter with divine reality, he abandons his academic labors, noting that what he has written is so much straw compared to what he has seen. It is at this point where Teresa of Avila is nothing less than a godsend to the student of divine agency and divine action. She provides us with a mature classic that charts her journey in grace, yet does so entirely within the framework of the doctrinal and liturgical life of the church. In The Interior Castle1 we have access to an astonishing overview of her life with God written with remarkable felicity and detail. (p.159) Invaluable as the standard treatments of Teresa of Avila are, they run the risk of setting her in our traditional and our contemporary procrustean beds. Thus it is surely odd to distinguish and then separate mystical theology from ascetical theology; both are surely concerned with the inner workings of the Christian life and should be seen as a whole. Equally, we should surely exercise suspicion when Teresa is called all too readily to the bar of our contemporary interests and agendas. She has her own identity and agenda and should be allowed to speak for herself. It is, of course, pretentious to think that traditional and contemporary concerns will not show up in any treatment of her work. This study has made no bones about its own peculiar interests and motivation. The overall goal is to be mentored by the great traditions of theology in such a way as to heal us of our long love affair with very general talk about divine action. More specifically, the aim is to have ears and eyes for the very particular claims about divine action that are more natural in the discourse of earlier theologians. We want to listen to Teresa of Avila initially on her own terms, letting her tell her own account of the work of God in the soul. Page 2 of 23

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Just how difficult this project can be is nicely illustrated by both the more general introductory remarks that show up in treatments of Teresa and indeed in one of the best recent treatments of her life and writings. Thus it is not uncommon to clear one’s throat by admitting up front the “spooky” elements in her writings (like her divine locutions), and by noting the passing affinity with phenomena that come by way of half-baked reports from the Pentecostal and charismatic underworld. Given the general lack of careful study of such phenomena and the standing vulgar reduction of it to the fringes if not pathology of Christian history and experience, the goal would appear to be to warn the reader that the spook factor is indeed present in Teresa but, of course, it is merely secondary and marginal. The latter observation is indeed true, but the unseemly haste to dispose of this element in her writings tells us as much about the observer as it does about Teresa. Rowan Williams is much too sensitive and sophisticated a reader of Teresa to stoop to that kind of strategy, yet his treatment of this element of her claims about divine action puts on display the drive to retreat to a very general account of divine action of the kind that we need to displace. Hence it can serve as a point of entry for our own alternative analysis. In the end the goal is to spell out what divine and human actions are at stake in the Christian journey to union with God and what fresh insights emerge in healing us of the cramp imposed upon us by our modern and contemporary sensibilities. Williams’ treatment of divine locutions is provided in the course of a dense treatment of her autobiography. By locutions both he and Teresa mean verbal communications often accompanied by visions that were a regular feature of her life up to her death.2 We might think of these as divine speech acts that (p.160) take the form not of words heard by the ears but of sentences presented clearly and completely to the mind. These communications cannot be ignored; they are not composed by the intellect; they are not in any way under her control. Nor can Teresa think of them as products of a disoriented mind. Teresa grasps instantly what is being said to her but sorting out the import can take days. Most importantly, in Teresa’s own words the words spoken by the Lord “are both words and works.”3 They make the soul receptive to whatever purpose is being communicated.4 In hearing a word from God one is drawn but not coerced into a pleasurable and affectionate obedience to God. The immediate problem, of course, is the danger of illusion and self-deception, so Williams naturally rehearses the various arguments advanced by Teresa in defense of her own account of these locutions as genuine forms of person-relative special revelation.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila It is very clear that Williams does not find this defense convincing for he proceeds to provide an alternative interpretation of her experiences that systematically robs them of their particularity as divine speaking. He proposes that we see them as akin to “prophecy” as reported in modern charismatic contexts and even as complex verbal units “heard” in dreams and drug-induced states. The scare quotes around “prophecy” and “heard” clearly indicate we are on the cusp of a skeptical reading of Teresa’s claims to have been the recipient of a genuine word from God. They should in fact be read, he says, as forms of projection onto the divine. The warrants for this interpretation are initially psychological. Williams rejects any idea that he is writing off her experiences or saying that Teresa was deceived. Effectively, they give voice to her sense of assurance in following her divine mission. They take place at a time when this confidence in her own mission was being forged in the sense pervading her whole experience of being accepted and authorized by God. These communications are at their most regular in the years when she is most active in the Reform and in the struggles surrounding it. It makes perfect sense to say that her awareness of her own authority in these events was a matter of grace, the gift of a profound serenity in the love of God, while at the same time seeing her locutions as an unconscious crystallizing and projecting of this security…In short, it is possible to grant that these experiences are the fruit of a life lived in grace and that they are in some degree the creation of her own need, and therefore vulnerable and fallible.5 Williams adds a second warrant for this interpretation, one which takes us directly to an important comment on divine action. Teresa’s locutions also have an important social role in vindicating her sense of authority within the church of her day. (p.161) Teresa’s purpose…is to vindicate her sense of authority—her freedom both to reconstruct the corporate life of her Order and to discuss and instruct in matters of prayer. Both for herself and for her sympathetic but critical readers, theologically trained and wary of all claims to individual spiritual authority, she needs to show that her history is not one in which her own effort and aspiration are profoundly weak and confused, so that her present strength and purposefulness cannot be ascribed to wilful spiritual ambition. This has the distorting effect of driving a firm wedge between divine and created action, so that what God does must regularly be presented as overriding or interrupting what human beings do; and what is not controlled must be acknowledged (after due discernment of its compatibility with doctrine and scripture) as coming from God. Such assumptions make it difficult to disentangle her attempt to describe a pattern of divine working, applicable in some sense to all souls, from her struggles to describe and organize her own unusual experiences.6 Page 4 of 23

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila One has to ask: who is engaged in distortion here? Is it Teresa or is it Williams? The salient observation to make is that Williams reinterprets Teresa’s own account by moving away from the specific divine actions indicated by Teresa (like Teresa being told very clearly by God to take Gratian as her confessor) to a very general description that prefers to speak of a general sense of assurance and the fruit of a life lived in grace. Teresa would certainly agree with the latter description but it does not begin to do justice to the very particular divine actions that Teresa has discerned and sought to interpret. Moreover, the assurance is derived from such locutions; it is not an expression of such assurance. It is not the hidden, unconscious creation of her need; it is the meeting of a set of specific needs that crop up continually in her life. What motivates Williams’ account is obvious: he has brought to his reading of Teresa a concept of divine action that cannot really cope with direct divine speaking because it is constrained by the maxim that somehow divine action and human action cannot in the end be disentangled, or as he infelicitously puts it, wedged apart. One immediately suspects that Williams is bringing to the table at this point a vision of divine action in which somehow divine action and human action are like two sides of the same coin, or, more technically, that we have here a case of divine action working instrumentally through human action. We are being offered an interpretation along the lines of the classical distinction between primary and secondary causality.7 I shall return to this possibility later, even as I acknowledge that it is far from clear how we should interpret what Williams is offering at this point. If my suspicions are on the right track, however, we should note that they require us to set aside not just Teresa’s own interpretation of her experiences but the very particular way (p.162) in which she speaks of divine action in her own life. To put the issue tersely, the specific actions deployed by Teresa are traded in for very general claims about a pervasive sense of divine authorization and assurance, general talk of the fruit of grace, and general talk of a pattern of divine working or of divine action somehow working through every created action. Teresa’s rich account of what God is doing is set aside for a set of generalities that are not exactly empty of content but are vague and opaque by comparison. As we proceed it is important to get the big picture painted by Teresa.8 While ostensibly a book about prayer, The Interior Castle is really an effort to chart the journey of the human agent from sin to perfect love of God and neighbor. Thus prayer can mean quite specifically the various practices we often associate with prayer (invocation, thanksgiving, praise, petition, and the like) or it can mean more broadly friendship with God, including all the specific actions God does to deepen that friendship (raptures, visions, locutions, meeting human agents inwardly, betrothal, and the like). At times prayer looks as if it is conventional practices; at other times it takes the shape of various spiritual states. There is no consistency here; nor should this bother us.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila The master image deployed is that of a castle with seven sets of dwelling places. Even so, there are several other crucial images that are lodged within the narrative as a whole. Thus we have images of two cisterns of water, the image of the butterfly, and the image of engagement and marriage. These are critical for understanding crucial elements in her proposals. The pilgrim who completes the journey of faith envisaged moves from one dwelling to another, even though many may not complete the journey. Some may make significant progress and then regress to an earlier set of dwelling places. While human actions clearly matter, the overall emphasis is on the divine action involved. This is the case even in the early stages when divine action is not seen as supernatural in the sense that the latter involves more immediately what God does, as compared to what God does instrumentally through other agents, natural, institutional, and personal. Teresa manifests a very clear commitment to a network of specific divine actions that will be crucial in my account of her theology. We might think of the journey from the first to the seventh set of dwelling places very broadly as follows. The human agent begins in the first set of dwelling places when one moves from a more nominal and external commitment to the Christian faith to one where prayer becomes a real part of one’s life. One becomes aware of what one is doing in prayer, reflects on Whom one is addressing, and begins to take (p.163) stock of one’s life. We might say that the human agent starts to get serious about God and one’s relationship to God. As this develops, there is growth in self-knowledge marked by humility and a striving to go deeper. Such selfknowledge is imparted in part by striving to know God. “By gazing at His grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness; by looking at His purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering His humility, we shall see how far we are being humble.”9 Clearly, Teresa here is assuming that the human agent is immersed, however fitfully, in the doctrines and practices of the church of her day. She also assumes that the pilgrim will face opposition from the demonic as represented by the pull of worldly pleasure, vanities, honors, and the like. She pictures these struggles in terms of attacks from poisonous snakes, vipers, and reptiles. The antidote: set one’s “eyes on Christ, our Good, and on His saints.”10 Even with this, there may not be much understanding so that it is crucial that one stay the course and not turn back. The ultimate goal is not this or that experience but simply love of God and neighbor. Holding to this will eliminate false zeal, say, for religious observance, or for too much talk and gossip.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila The move into the second set of dwelling places involves three interrelated elements. First, one begins to hear God call and speak through words spoken by others, sermons, good books, illness and trials, or a truth that is grasped in the course of prayer. Second, the intellect is awakened to attend to the deliberations of reason, the teachings of the faith, and the deliverances of memory. The pilgrim begins to see that only in God is true life to be found. Third, all hell may break loose against one and put pressure on one to go back. This requires real determination to fight one’s way through by ignoring any desire for consolation and by cultivating the determination to want only what God wants. In this phase it is important to seek out folk who can help and to trust God to guide one in the way forward. In these efforts it is vital to understand the suffering God has endured for us in Christ, that we cannot on our end avoid struggle and suffering, and “that we must work to enjoy His glory.”11 We might describe the third set of dwelling places as one of treading water. It involves living an earnest life of religious and moral duty where one is hesitant to move ahead into the deeper elements of the Christian faith. The paradigm is represented in the gospels by the rich young ruler who, content with his religious achievements, will not move forward in sacrifice because he is too attached to his riches. Such a life is genuinely moved by fear of the Lord. Those in the third set of dwelling places have gotten through the initial difficulties. They long not to offend His Majesty, even guarding themselves against venial sins; they are fond of doing penance and setting aside periods for recollection; (p.164) they spend their time well, practicing works of charity towards their neighbors, and very balanced in their use of speech and dress and in the governing of their households—those who have them.12 Christians like this are like vassals or servants to a king; they have not gained entry into the inner chambers. They are susceptible to dryness in their spiritual lives and they may well believe that God owes them for their service to him. They want favors, gifts, and consolations. They are tempted to turn away when they are confronted with a more demanding call, say, to give away all their riches to the poor and follow Christ. They chafe when they lose their wealth, insisting that they really want it to help the poor. They become disturbed when they lose their social position in the world of honor. Rather than causing them to think more deeply about their spiritual condition and becoming more humble, they complain and become offended. It is humility that opens up the door to the next set of dwelling places, for humility is an essential feature of human abandonment to the divine will. Divine consolations can also help them move forward. What is clearly beneficial is that they study diligently how to become prompt in obedience. This can happily be aided by seeking help from someone who really knows the world and can become a model to imitate.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Up until this point, Teresa has very little to say about divine action. To be sure, there are clear background assumptions about creation and redemption; equally, she insists that God speaks through various human actions and events like sermons, good books, various trials, and the like. However, the focus is primarily on such human actions as prayer, reflection, struggling with evil, getting help from others, trusting in God, grasping the true goal of the spiritual life, cultivating humility, and so on. When we get to the fourth set of dwelling places Teresa takes off. God moves center stage even though there is still plenty of room for human action. As she tells us right at the beginning of her account of the fourth dwelling: “… supernatural experiences begin here.”13 Here there are no rules; everything depends on God for “…the Lord gives when He desires, when He desires, as He desires, and to whom he desires.”14 The generic name for what God gives here is that of spiritual delights over against consolations. She captures the distinction by means of an analogy, the analogy of the two water troughs. In one trough the water comes from far away and requires aqueducts to convey it to the user; thus it depends on human skill and ingenuity. With the other trough the source is immediately present and flows without the use of aqueducts or human skill. Thus the crucial marker of spiritual delights is that they come directly from God. Unlike the consolations they are not the byproduct of human practices (p.165) and actions. Moreover, it is not just that the delights arise immediately from God; God also expands the human agent’s capacities to receive what God gives. Teresa is sparse in the examples she gives at this point. The soul perceives a fragrance, let us say for now, as though there were in that interior depth a brazier giving off sweet-smelling perfumes. No light is seen, nor is the place seen where the brazier is; but the warmth and the fragrant fumes spread through the entire soul and even often enough, as I have said, the body shares in them. See now that you understand me; no heat is felt, nor is their scent of any perfume, for the experience is more delicate than experience of these things; but I use the examples only so as to explain them to you.15

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Teresa also describes what is at issue in terms of prayer, that is, in terms of the prayer of quiet, as contrasted with the prayer of recollection. In the prayer of recollection one sets aside distractions and collects oneself in the presence of God, waiting humbly before God in silence, doing what one can to stop the “rambling of the mind.”16 “…one should let the intellect go and surrender oneself into the arms of love, for His Majesty will teach the soul what it must do at this point.”17 This then prepares the way for the prayer of quiet where one lets the water from the second fountain flow freely into the soul. In terms of divine action, God gives the soul a quiet confidence that it can do all things in God, a greater desire to engage in penance or repentance, a greater ability to endure suffering, and a greater measure of distancing itself from worldly delights. The fifth set of dwelling places marks a crucial breakthrough for the pilgrim. On the human side the human agent undergoes a costly spiritual death. From the divine side there is a deep union of the divine with the human, albeit one that is short-lived. It is at this point that Teresa deploys the analogy of the butterfly. We begin with the narrative of a silkworm emerging from the worm that shows up on the mulberry bush. The silkworm then dies and “…a little white butterfly, which is very pretty, comes forth from the cocoon.”18 The themes of death and transformation are crucial here. The soul becomes dead to the world, and on the other side a pretty butterfly emerges. Teresa draws intentionally here not just on the image of death generically but on the time involved. “O greatness of God! How transformed the soul is when it comes to this prayer after having been placed within the greatness of God and so closely joined with Him for a little while—in my opinion the union never lasts for as much as half an hour.”19 However, the consequences of this very specific experience are dramatic. The soul doesn’t know how it could have merited so much good—from where this good may have come I mean, for it well knows that it doesn’t merit this (p.166) blessing. It sees within itself a desire to praise the Lord; it would want to dissolve itself and die a thousand deaths for Him. It soon begins to experience a desire to suffer great trials without its being able to do otherwise. There are the strongest desires for penance, for solitude, and that all might know God; and great pains come to it when it sees that He is offended.20

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila The interaction between human and divine action at this point is not easy to capture. On the one hand, the experience of union is initiated and brought about by God; it is like wax being impressed by a seal. “The wax doesn’t impress the seal upon itself; it is only disposed—I mean by being soft. And even in order to be disposed it doesn’t soften itself but remains still and gives its consent.”21 On the other hand, when we return to the analogy of the silkworm, it looks as if the silkworm has a role in its own demise. In this life, it is necessary to put the silkworm to death. In this putting to death Teresa insists that there is a round of intensive suffering, not least as one learns afresh to engage in love of the neighbor. Not fully satisfied with the analogies already in play, Teresa works up a further analogy to explain what happens in the fifth set of dwelling places, the analogy of the first meeting of a couple who are about to be engaged. The couple already know about each other. They have sorted through their likes and dislikes. The time has come for them to meet. The would-be spouse for his part is happy with what he has already heard and learned and grants the meeting. The divine spouse grants this mercy, He desired her to know Him more and more and they might meet together, as they say, and be united. We can say that union is like this, for it passes in a very short time. In it there no longer takes place the exchanging of gifts, but the soul sees secretly who this Spouse is that she is going to accept.22 Note again here the specificity of the divine action involved as seen in the relevant temporal reference. There is a particular meeting in which the divine Spouse, so to speak, shows up and then withdraws. Teresa draws on this analogy as one way to contrast the difference between the fifth and the sixth sets of dwelling places even though what happens in the fifth shades into the sixth. Where the fifth involves a significant meeting (or maybe several meetings) the sixth involves betrothal or engagement. While this analogy suggests another meeting where, say, avowals and commitments are publicly made, the emphasis in her long account of this set of dwelling places involves extended descriptions of the trials that show up on the human side and the diverse direct actions that occur from the divine side.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Her generic descriptions of the human side are nicely captured in this comment: “…the soul is now wounded with love for its Spouse and strives (p.167) for more opportunities to be alone, and in conformity with its state, to rid itself of everything that can be an obstacle to this solitude.”23 Thus great courage and persistence is needed in the face of a host of trials from a host of sources, including physical sickness. There may be trouble from inexperienced and ignorant confessors. Trials may also arise because of a terrible sense of divine forsakenness. These are all permitted by God to deepen self-knowledge and to increase the desire for God. “Our great God wants us to know our own misery and that He is king; and this is very important for what lies ahead.”24 Paradoxically this means that the wounds endured bring satisfaction; even though they cannot be avoided, one does not want to be deprived of them. Thus there is a first-order desire to avoid them, and a second order-desire not to be deprived of them. Just as one may have a first-order desire to avoid the painful effects of surgery, one may also have a second-order desire not to call off the surgery. One may even try to be grateful for the suffering involved. Clearly, Teresa is employing an implicit doctrine of providence at this point. In the midst of these human elements, there is a rich array of divine actions that go beyond the spiritual delights already experienced. These may come like a falling comet, or a thunderclap, or a spark leaping forth from a fire. Through these God awakens the soul and deepens the desire for further union. Paradoxically these particular favors are characteristically the cause of delightful pain; or they are like an unwelcome tempest. The recipient knows first-hand that they come from God; they are felt as clearly as a loud voice is heard. Hence as best one can they are received with gratitude. We might think of these as negative experiences given by God. On the more positive front, awakening and deepening desire for God may come with a wide range of divine locutions. “There are many kinds of locutions given to the soul. Some seem to come from outside oneself; others, from deep within the interior parts of the soul; others from the superior part; and some are so exterior that they come through the sense of hearing, for it seems there is a spoken word.”25 It is these kinds of claims that drove Williams to reach for a reductionist account of Teresa experiences, an account clearly at variance to her own avowals as to what is involved. Teresa at this point is fully aware of the dangers of deception. She provides a fascinating account for taking what appears to her to be the case (that God really is speaking to her) as veridical. It suffices here to record what she insists can take place in the sixth dwelling.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Locutions are but one item in the catalogue of divine favors she describes. She refers to these favors as raptures. Thus the soul is touched by some word it remembers or hears about God, and it is renewed like the phoenix. Alternatively, the soul may experience intellectual visions. This may take the form of (p.168) divine speaking deep within the soul, or a vision of a saint, of Christ, or of Mary. A contrasting vision that may be given is identified as an imaginative vision. This is paradigmatically represented by a Christophany in which one sees the humanity of the risen Lord of heaven and earth. In yet another class of visions Teresa speaks of receiving deep insight into the secrets of divine truth, say, about the intimate relation between God and the world, or about the depths of divine suffering due to human evil. Another special favor is represented by an experience described as a flight of the spirit. In this case one appears to enter another world where one sees an unearthly light, or experiences a compelling integrated intuition of diverse truths, or a multitude of angels. Yet another is described as being swept along by a huge wave of water. In yet another she describes feelings of the soul where there is jubilation and a strange prayer it doesn’t understand. One is tempted to interpret this as praying in tongues but this would be stretching the evidence of the text. Contrasted with this joyful favor, there is the opposite experience of being so wounded by what appears to be a fiery arrow that pierces the soul so deeply that one is afraid that one may die. This may last for hours and appears to some like a foretaste of hell. Yet the outcome is entirely positive, for the pain involved is seen as precious. It is as if the soul is prepared to be damned for the glory of God and thus represents a depth of commitment than which none greater can be conceived.26 The pain involved can only be relieved by a greater rapture in which the recipient is consoled with the assurance that it is permitted to live as long as God wants him or her to live. The effects are a threefold conviction: that the world cannot satisfy as expressed by contempt for the world, that only the Creator can console and satisfy, and that it is a terrible thing to offend God in sinning.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Teresa is far from organized in the articulation of what God gives the receptive pilgrim in this set of dwelling places. In part this stems from her own much repeated conceptual and intellectual limitations.27 It surely also stems from her conviction that these favors are entirely at the discretion of God. God gives the human agent such experiences as are tailor-made for their person-relative awakening and for their own journey into an increasing desire for deeper union with the divine. “The Lord leads each one as He sees necessary.”28 These positive favors in no way displace the need for continued (p.169) engagement with, say, the sacramental life of the church. Nor do they undercut the continued duty to pursue the life of virtue. Nor do they dispose of the need for appropriate counsel from wise confessors, especially from those whom God has gifted with discernment. Above all, they do not displace the reality of trials and suffering, the depth of which in at least one instance can be as unbearable, as the benefit of it is extraordinary and astonishing. While Teresa abandons any deployment of the analogy with betrothal, as she moves to the account of the seventh set of dwelling places, she picks up afresh the image of marriage. In fact this is the crucial image that captures what is at stake. The core idea is that God joins the soul to himself in a way analogous to marriage and does so in a manner where the recipient of this experience knows that it is God that is encountered. When the soul is brought into that dwelling place, the Most Blessed Trinity, all three Persons, through an intellectual vision is revealed to it through a certain representation of the truth. First, there comes an enkindling in the spirit in the manner of a cloud of magnificent splendor; and these Persons are distinct, and through an admirable knowledge the soul understands a most profound truth that all three Persons are one substance and one power and one knowledge and one God alone. It knows it in such a way that what we hold by faith, it understands we can say, through sight— although the sight is not with the bodily eyes nor with the eyes of the soul, because we are not dealing with an imaginative vision. Here all three Persons communicate themselves to it, speak to it, and explain those words of the Lord in the Gospel: that He and the Father and the Holy Spirit will come to dwell with the soul that loves Him and keeps His commandments.29 We might speak here of an extra-special epiphany.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Let’s say that the experience resembles that of a person who after being in a bright room with others finds himself, once the shutters are closed in darkness. The light by which he sees them is taken away. Until it returns he doesn’t see them, but not for that reason does he stop knowing they are present. It might be asked whether the soul can see them when it so desires and the light returns. To see them does not lie in their power, but depends on when our Lord desires that the window of the intellect be opened. Great is the mercy He shows in never departing from the soul and in desiring that it perceive Him so manifestly.30 The relevant feature to note here is that where in the sixth dwelling there may have been a Christophany, in this instance the experience of the Trinity is much more intense. More importantly, it signifies a lasting union comparable to a marriage as opposed to what happens in a period of betrothal. Like the person in the shuttered room, one knows that God is permanently present. “The soul always remains with its God at the Center.”31 (p.170) In the spiritual marriage the union is like what we have when rain falls from the sky into a river or fount; all is water, for the rain that fell from heaven cannot be divided or separated from the water of the river. Or it is like what we have when a little stream enters the sea, there is no room for separating the two. Or like the bright light entering a room through two different windows; although the streams of light are separate when entering the room, they become one.32

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila The consequences of this new relationship are manifold. Compared to earlier sets of dwelling places, the various raptures cease and there is no desire for consolations and spiritual delights. Equally, there is no more dryness, and the intellect is no longer restless but at peace. Now there is forgetfulness of self, no more fear of death, a readiness to suffer for God, an absolute trust in the goodness of God, detachment from the world, joy in persecution, love for one’s persecutors, and a genuine confidence in victory over evil. This change does not mean the end of moral and spiritual watchfulness; on the contrary, there is an increase in this disposition and a continuing fear of relying on one’s own efforts to do what is good. There is no absolute perfection, for venial sins recur even as mortal sins are overcome. There is also the continued need to strive to love, to wage war in the midst of trials, and, perhaps, to engage in heroic acts of penance. What emerges is greater stability and confidence along with a deep desire to love, manifest in part by a zeal to see folk come to and grow in faith coupled with great distress at the reality of sin. The overall goals are clear: the birth of good works and the imitation of Christ in taking up the cross in one’s daily life. In all of this there is to be no retreat from the use of one’s rational faculties; one looks to loving those next to one rather than building castles in the air. The question driving our analysis has been a simple one: what light does Teresa throw on the nature of divine action? Note immediately that there is no discussion of standard verbs of divine action that show up in treatments of divine action in the Christian life. Thus there is no mention of regeneration, justification, sanctification, baptism in the Spirit, the witness of the Spirit, and the like. This is surely a striking omission. It is readily explainable by the fact that these are likely assumed; in her horizon they are tied to the liturgical practices of the church in baptism and confirmation. However, such an omission is in fact a great virtue for it signals that Teresa’s agenda is different. She is not operating as a conventional theologian; she is desperately trying to make sense of her own spiritual journey as informed by what she can glean from standard texts and the help of confessors. She does not have sufficient access to Scripture to be engaged in extended exegetical exercises. She is operating as an informal phenomenologist whose powers of perception and articulation are stunning in the extreme.33 In the process she opens up a whole (p.171) new vista on the content and significance of divine action that are liable to be missed in traditional treatments. She expands our horizon on what God can and does do in the Christian life. On this front her lack of formal theological and epistemological training are a great boon for the readiness to discount the kind of claims she advances is all too often driven by prior philosophical commitments that simply cannot accommodate what she reports.34

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Consider afresh Williams’ treatment of the locutions which show up in the fifth dwelling place. These are, he proposes, really projections of her own assurance in following the will of God in the midst of a hostile ecclesiastical environment that is suspicious of the claims of women. Informing this judgment is a conviction that all divine action is mediated; it does not come directly from God. God does not perform basic acts, that is, acts that are not done through other acts. There is thus a bogus supernaturalism, it is implied, that is at work in Teresa; so we need to replace this with a more sophisticated vision of double agency in which God works in, with, and through other agencies. This account cannot begin to do justice to two features of Teresa’s account. First, it is phenomenologically inadequate. There is a directness in the encounters with God that this theory cannot naturally handle. Her carefully constructed analogy of the two water troughs amply captures her position. Second, it cannot deal with the specificity of the divine actions most powerfully represented by the kind of divine locutions Teresa experiences. These are so genuine and real to her that they bring with them an immediate assurance and effect that is not derived from second-order reflection on her experience. One suspects that there is another factor at work in Williams’ account, namely, an implicit commitment to skepticism about the truth of, say, claims to direct divine locutions and other immediate encounters with God. He is clearly not satisfied with her treatment of the problem of deception. What he either ignores or denies is that there is epistemic merit in the very robust way Teresa defends her position. Teresa herself deploys a cumulative argument to the best explanation. Thus she defends her initial experience of assurance by exploring three options: the locutions come from God, from her own imagination, or from the devil. She then proceeds to argue that the first of these is by far the most persuasive explanation of her experience. There are in fact other ways to articulate and defend Teresa, say, through the principle of initial credulity or the reliability of Christian mystical perceptual doxastic practices. (p.172) These need not detain us here.35 What is at issue is that Teresa’s claims undermine or at the very least call into question well-rehearsed dogmatic claims in the arena of epistemology. So the initial lesson to be gleaned from a close reading of Teresa is that she liberates us to pursue a whole range of divine action in the Christian life that will be shut down by the theologian because of dogmatic epistemic limitations.36 The motivation behind the rejection of Teresa’s claims is entirely laudatory; we want to provide the most sophisticated account of them we can muster. However, the irony is that it is Teresa, the amateur whose writings are so informal that they have neither paragraphs nor punctuation, who comes across in the end as the more epistemically sensitive and sophisticated.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila A similar problem shows up in some treatments of the place of human agency in response to prior divine action. Thus Raimundo Panikkar has this to say about her account of human agents. The aim and end of human life is Union with God, it is the transformation of our being and its divinization but the creature of itself is no-thing, or, as our saint repeats constantly a nonada, a not-nothingness, i.e. the creature is a pure negation of its ‘not-yet-being’. It exists because somehow it subsists outside nothingness by the creative power of God.37 The motivation here is legitimate but the effect, however deeply informed by venerable theological and philosophical pedigree, is intellectual sophistry and nonsense. It has overcooked what Teresa reports. To be sure, we can find material that will support this kind of discourse. We are given the impression at times in Teresa that we do nothing and God does everything; that we are nobodies before the awesome majesty of the living God. In part this stems from her appropriation of conventional views of grace where the human agent can effectively do nothing when it comes to the life of grace. However, two considerations show up the pseudo-sophistication Panikkar proposes. First, Teresa provides a host of human actions that are imperative in living the life of faith. Even in the sixth dwelling such actions are constitutive of faithful Christian existence. Second, Teresa has her own way of beginning to spell out her inchoate vision of human agency in terms of the intellect, imagination, the passions, freedom of action, the soul, the spirit, and so on. We can insist on (p. 173) the weight of this deeply human reality and its utter dependence on the ongoing creative activity of God in sustaining us in existence without resorting to the high-octane verbalism of misleading ontologies where the human agent is a not-nothingness. We have enough problems on our hands without adding this kind of nonsense.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila Teresa provides instances of divine action that call for a setting aside of much modern and contemporary intellectual sensibilities. Her work liberates us to pursue a whole range of specific divine actions that cannot be accommodated to much prevailing theological and philosophical orthodoxy. Thus she provides a challenge to theology in opening up fresh accounts of divine action in the Christian life. She brings to the table significant virtues that put her in a strong position to be a privileged mentor. Thus she in no way sets her face against standard catalogues of divine action in Christian initiation. She displays a stalwart commitment to the great doctrines of the faith. She in no way undercuts the use of reason in the Christian faith, providing ample warnings to those liable to be led astray in a host of ways. She has a carefully integrated account of suffering that mirrors the place of the cross of Christ in the life of the Christian disciple. She has a clear grasp of the goal; the goal is not this or that experience; it is nothing less than divine possession of the human agent resulting in radical transformation and service of the neighbor. To be sure, her account of divine action does not eradicate the role of superstition, of a patriarchal vision of gender relations, of contested theological doctrines like purgatory, or even of a prejudiced if not bigoted account of her Protestant enemies. However, we articulate what we take to be divine action within the fullness of our doxastic commitments; we remain immersed in our fallible conceptual and explanatory commitments. So this worry can be set aside.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila One relevant question to press in conclusion is whether we should receive her rich account of divine actions as reserved for the spiritually elite or as straightforwardly normative for the Christian life. The invention of a special category of mystical theology complete with its own jargon and themes tends to support the first option. I propose we take the second, albeit with the reservations Teresa herself emphasizes. Here is why. First, Teresa says directly at times that what she offers is not reserved for the spiritually elite. Speaking of the peace the soul receives in the seventh dwelling, she prays that God “grant that Christians will seek it.”38 Second, she excoriates those spiritual confessors and theologians who fail to understand the rich array of gifts that God wants to give us and consequently oppose what she proposes. Good theologians and confessors should know better. Third, she makes it clear that the failure to reach for what God intends for the Christian lies entirely on the human side of the divine–human relation. Human agents fail to move forward because they (p. 174) prefer the attractions of the world, give in to the wiles of the devil, fail to struggle with evil, become fearful and lack courage to move ahead, operate on lazy forms of reflection or uncritically on bad advice, and the like. The failure is on the human end not the divine end. Fourth, and finally, Teresa’s account is so intimately integrated into the quest for holiness as represented by the imitation of Christ, that it is not really possible to separate out her proposals from this normative vision of the divine project in redemption. No doubt this is one reason why she has been canonized as a doctor of theology in her own ecclesial tradition. Even so, we should proceed with appropriate caution, a caution itself clearly visible in her writings. Thus she repeats again and again that what God does is entirely up to God. Moreover, God operates not just with a design plan in which holiness is the ultimate goal; God in wisdom performs such actions in the life of the individual that are essential to furthering that plan. This undercuts any claim to have provided a blueprint for all to follow, even as it takes note of the general features of the journey for many, and even as it describes what is characteristic of divine intervention without at all being required as essential for all. Equally important, she nowhere insists that her work is the last word in ascetic theology; she clearly wants her work to be received critically. So it will need to be corrected and enriched by others who have wrestled as deeply as she has with the phenomenology and theology of Christian experience. It is obvious, for example, that Teresa describes features of Christian experience and examples of divine action that show up in Pentecostal and charismatic circles and in their forebears in the faith. Clearly, we are only beginning the cross-fertilizing conversation that is needed.39 Hopefully, the clearing of the philosophical and theological decks can be a spur to deeper reflection in the future. As noted earlier, Teresa herself provides some of the resources for this deck-clearing enterprise.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila This inter-confessional conversation will not be easy, especially for those reared on a hyper-diet of religious experiences. Consider this witty comment by Stanley Hauerwas. I was once asked by a colleague from the faculty of theology at the University of Notre Dame whether I had experienced the new birth that only comes from the Holy Spirit. My colleague was a member of the Catholic charismatic movement which had begun in the 1960s at Notre Dame…. I responded, no doubt insensitively, that she had to understand that I was raised an evangelical Methodist which meant by the time I was twelve I had enough ‘experience’ to last me a lifetime. I assured her that I did not want to have an experience of salvation—even one that allegedly was the work of the Spirit. I explained that I had not only (p.175) learned to distrust the staying power of such experiences, but I also thought that the need ‘to be born again’ undercut the significance of baptism. Generalized appeals to the Holy Spirit, I observed, could result in an attenuated understanding of the relation of the Holy Spirit and the church.40 Hauerwas does not entirely reject claims about the working of the Holy Spirit that show up in many reports of religious experience today. He cannot ignore the significance of what has happened in Pentecostal revivals. Moreover, while he is surely right to ask how an experience of “new birth” is to be related to baptism and also right to insist on a robust doctrine of the church, his claims on this front are hopelessly underdeveloped. He is much too keen to change the subject. He is also much too quick to shelter under the wings of his mentor, Karl Barth, and wax eloquent about the dangers of Liberal Protestantism that lie to hand. Hauerwas was named as “America’s Best Theologian” in 2001 by Time Magazine. If Teresa of Avila was alive today, one suspects that she might demand a recall election. At the very least, she would invite Hauerwas to have a second look at the full network of divine actions she recommends to serious disciples of Jesus Christ today. Notes:

(1) Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979). (2) The Book of Her LifeSt. Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1987), 53–365. (3) Rowan Williams, Teresa of Avila (New York: Bloomsbury, 1991), 94. (4) Williams refers to them as “performatives,” but this should not be confused with the technical use of performatives in speech act theory. (5) Williams, Teresa of Avila, 95.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila (6) Ibid., 96. Emphasis added. Williams begins his interpretation of Teresa’s locutions by noting that “…Teresa makes a sharp disunction (sic) between divine activity and planned or conscious human activity with nothing much in between.” Ibid., 94. (7) This is clearly hinted in the way human action is counted as created action. (8) The Interior CastleCathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 207–16. (9) Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 43. (10) Ibid., 44. (11) Ibid., 54. (12) Ibid., 57. (13) Ibid., 67. (14) Ibid., 68. (15) Ibid., 75. (16) Ibid., 81. (17) Ibid. (18) Ibid., 91. (19) Ibid., 93. (20) Ibid. (21) Ibid., 96. (22) Ibid., 104–5. (23) Ibid., 108. (24) Ibid., 114. (25) Ibid., 119. (26) Here is how Teresa expresses herself on this in The Book of Her Life. “Here I think it is advisable…to abandon oneself completely into the hands of God; if He wants to bring the soul to heaven, it goes, if to hell, it feels no grief since it goes with God; if its life comes to an end, this it desires; if it lives a thousand years, this too it desires.” See The Collected Works of St. Teresa, vol. 1, 152.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila (27) Teresa throughout her work displays an informal awareness of the apophatic character of the experiences she seeks to describe. (28) Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 155. She puts the issue simply elsewhere: “…God leads souls by many paths and ways.” See The Book of Her Life, 191. (29) Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 175. (30) Ibid., 176. (31) Ibid., 177. (32) Ibid., 179. (33) This may be one reason she proved so attractive to Thérèse of Lisieux, a brilliant student of Husserl, prior to her conversion. (34) Speaking of The Book of Her Life, Kieran Kavanaugh captures this point nicely as follows. “Unconcerned about notions, conceptualizations, systems of thought, or articulated outlines, she preferred to tell her story and teach her doctrine without any literary artifices or aids.” See his “Introduction,” in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, vol. 1, 41. In The Interior Castle Teresa does, of course, use literary artifice, but she eschews abstract philosophical or theological discourse. (35) Crossing the Threshold of Divine RevelationGeorge Mavrodes, Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). (36) Notice that many of the specific divine actions that occur in the sixth dwelling are seen as immediate and direct yet unlike miracles do not involve any violation of a law of nature. This important issue will have to be pursued elsewhere. It calls into question standard taxonomies of divine action that would divide them into natural and supernatural and then identify the latter with miracles. (37) Raimundo Panikkar, “Preface,” in The Interior Castle, xvi. (38) Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, 187. (39) Elaine A. Heath, Naked Faith: The Mystical Theology of Phoebe Palmer (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009). (40) Stanley Hauerwas, “How to be Caught by the Holy Spirit,” in Theological Theology: Essays in Honor of John Webster, ed. R. David Nelson, Darren Sarisky, and Justin Stratis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 109.

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Divine Action in the Christian Life in Teresa of Avila

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords In this chapter, the author surveys the major arguments John Calvin made for divine predestination and the host of action predicates Calvin attributes to God. He notes a crucial problem in Calvin’s theology, where all the actions predicated of human agents, like dispositions, capacities, and intentions, are also actions predetermined by God. The author examines Calvin’s understanding of divine causality and how it works relative to human action. In the author’s view, Calvin’s understanding of divine causation in predestination has severe consequences for the integrity of human freedom. The chapter is thus intended to remind theologians and philosophers that any account of divine agency must also take seriously the integrity of human willing and action. Keywords:   divine predestination, human freedom, divine action, salvation, John Calvin, sin

John Calvin’s account of divine action in predestination is bold in tone; it is economical in style; and it is perfectly clear in its content. Consider this stark summary of what is at issue.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin We call predestination God’s eternal decree, by which he compacted with himself what he will to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others. Therefore, as any man has been created to one or other of these ends, we speak of him as being predestined to life or to death.1 The very word “predestination” has a hard, metallic ring in our ears. It is likely to generate immediate offense or immediate awe. We are not too sure we want to know what it really means. The air is alive with a sense of threat and foreboding. Maybe, as was the case in Calvin’s day, this is a concept we should leave alone; we should walk carefully around it and then walk away from it. Our initial unease is compounded by the fact that “predestination” is not a noun with which we are readily familiar. As a verb, “predestine,” we do not naturally use it in our everyday discourse. Consider verbs like “speak,” “create,” “forgive”; for these we have to hand a range of everyday examples we can turn to for illumination. When these latter actions are ascribed to God we can immediately begin thinking of analogies that we can qualify to get our semantic bearings. In the case of “predestine” we are stranded with God as the subject; human agents are nowhere to be found. Somehow, it only belongs by right to the divine; and our initial intuitions as to what it might mean are not happy ones either in terms of content or of theological associations. At best we feel we are in the neighborhood of an awesome, transcendent agency that we are not sure we can trust. Perhaps this is due in part to the extraordinary impact of Calvin and his disciples. They constitute a forbidding host (p.177) who send many scurrying in the opposite direction. If there is a God, God should stay out of the business of predestination. Our first task is to hold our nerve and have a closer look. Calvin tells us that we are dealing with issues of life and death; not ordinary life and death, but eternal life and death. So he has our attention; or he ought to have our attention. What does this awkward word “predestination” really mean? We make immediate progress when we shift from the noun to the relevant verb. We come face to face with a very specific divine action. It is the use of the noun “decree” that gives us the initial clue. The verb that is in play is that of “decreeing.” So we are in the neighborhood of something that God has done that is analogous to a human agent, say, an emperor, making a decree. The decree is spoken of as “eternal”; so the decreeing is something so definitive that there is no question of altering it. The next verb suggests why this is the case. We are effectively dealing with a compact, a vow, an avowal, in which God speaks inwardly to the effect that God and God alone is the only relevant agent. No committee of theologians, or church council, or spiritual bigwig, has any say in what is decreed; it is entirely of God; and God is not going to go back on his own internal avowals.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Now we are beginning to get a grip on the relevant verbs that underlie predestination. In the Oxford English Dictionary “to predestine” is to “preordain,” or to “predetermine.” The entry for the second verb does not hesitate to articulate what is at stake in terms of divine action. Thus predetermination is “The action by which God is held to have immutably predetermined the course of events by an eternal decree or purpose, esp. in relation to the salvation or damnation of human beings…”2 Note the primary agent identified in the theological use of these verbs. It is God who has predestined, preordained, or predetermined the salvation or damnation of human beings. Furthermore, the subjects of the divine action involved are not merely groups of human agents; the subjects comprise every specific, particular human agent. It pertains to what will become of “each man.” In case we miss the exactitude of this proposal, Calvin leaves us in no doubt as to what he means. “… his [God’s] free election has been only half explained until we come to individual persons, to whom God not only offers salvation but so assigns it that the certainty of its effect is not in suspense or doubt.”3 And the intentional object of the divine action is quite simple: each human agent is predestined either to salvation or to damnation.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Ponder for a moment a short catalogue of interesting features of the divine action involved. First, predestination represents a pretemporal action, in the sense that it does not take place in time as conceived within the created order. It is an action that determines how crucial features of the created order itself (p. 178) will be determined by God. Whether we should see this action as outside time or in another temporal order we leave aside. We must say that it stands outside the created temporal order. Second, it is an action that involves a divine decision. There is a decree that God lays down for himself. However, it is a decision that does not specify a merely possible outcome; it is a decision that actually determines how things will happen. Yet it is not a performative action, as when we say “I name this ship ‘Ballinamallard’”; and the ship is thereby named “Ballinamallard.” The effects lie outside the action in the sense that they depend on further action yet to be performed. Third, it is an action that is complete in and of itself. It requires that we speak in the past tense. Something very definitive has been done that cannot be undone. Fourth, it is monomorphous rather than a polymorphous action. In polymorphous actions one does something, say, teaching, by doing other things, like, lecturing, setting exams, going over homework assignments, encouraging the timid, chastising the idle, and the like. In a monomorphous action the action is complete in itself; it is like a basic act where one does what one does without doing anything else, like raising an arm, or looking to the left, or thinking that the weather is miserable again. In the action of predestining the agent performs a singular action; God does one thing: God issues a decree. It is akin to a self-spoken decree or avowal. It is as if God says something like, “I hereby determine that this particular event will happen.” Fifth, it is akin to a policy decision made at a particular moment in time. However, it is not prima facie a policy decision for which a reason can be given; it is a decision made as a matter of divine fiat. It is decreed by God; and so it happens. There cannot be argument or debate about why the content of the decree is what it is. God could have decreed otherwise and that would be the end of the matter as far as our seeking out reasons is concerned.4

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Three further conceptual points are worth rehearsing. Divine predestination should be clearly distinguished from divine foreknowledge, from divine permission, and from divine election. Divine foreknowledge is not an action but a cognitive state. It simply means that God knows everything that will happen in the future; such knowledge is an enduring element in the mind of God. Furthermore, divine foreknowledge arises as a consequence of divine predestination. God knows the ultimate destiny of each human agent because God has decreed what that destiny will be.5 Consider an analogy. Professor Smartaleck knows what questions will be on the examination because Smartaleck has (p.179) already determined what will be on the test. This knowledge is a cognitive state that follows from the action; it is not itself an action. As to the distinction between divine ordination and divine permission, the difference in this case concerns the actual action performed. Thus when an agent permits an event or action to happen, this is quite different from predestining that event or action to happen. In the latter case the agent fully controls what is happening; in the former case the agent has only partial control of what happens. In the case of predestination, the outcome is solely due to the agent; in the case of permission, the outcome is dependent on both the action of the agent and the action of other agents. Finally, predestination to salvation and damnation is to be distinguished from election to this or that office, say, in the history of Israel or in the ministry in the church. Here the crucial difference is the intentional object involved. Election to office is directed to this or that function in the divine economy in history; predestination is directed very precisely to salvation or damnation. Thus Judas was elected to perform the office of an apostle; however, he was not elected to eternal life but to eternal damnation.6 Perhaps the most remarkable feature of divine predestination as developed materially by Calvin is that it pertains not just to the salvation of particular human agents but equally to the damnation of particular human agents. Here Calvin reaches back into the more radical elements of Augustine that had been modified or rejected in the debate by many later theologians in the West. Now when human understanding hears these things, its insolence is so irrepressible that it breaks forth into random and immoderate tumult as if at the blast of a battle trumpet.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Indeed, many, as if they wished to avert a reproach from God, accept election in such terms as to deny that anyone is condemned. But they do this very ignorantly and childishly, since election itself could not stand as set over reprobation. God is said to set apart those whom he adopts into salvation; it will be highly absurd to say that others acquire by chance or obtain by their own effort what election confers on a few. Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.7 We see here one of the worries that make Calvin’s view of predestination so troublesome; prima facie, it casts a reproach upon God. This possibility clearly runs against the deep motivation for his vision of predestination to salvation. It is not difficult to unravel why this is the case. Calvin is intoxicated by a vision of divine grace, mercy, freedom, and glory. He intends in his theology to be radically theocentric. His vision of positive predestination to salvation is a corollary of this deep commitment. The bridge between divine grace, mercy, freedom, and glory and his doctrine of predestination to salvation is to be (p. 180) found in his doctrine of justification. Calvin is convinced that nothing less than his doctrine of predestination to both salvation and damnation can safeguard his doctrine of justification by faith through grace rather than through works. It is this latter doctrine that safeguards his vision of divine grace, mercy, freedom, and glory. At this point one of the linchpins of Reformation theology comes into play. Here too his devotion to the later Augustine is visible. If Calvin allows any role for human action in gaining salvation, then the human agent is in a position to claim credit and merit; the human agent becomes a joint author with God of salvation. However, this claim is utterly incompatible with the claim that salvation is solely and exclusively a matter of grace. Salvation is from beginning to end a matter of divine mercy, generosity, and gifting.8 Allowing for any kind of categorical human freedom and any measure of human action cannot be tolerated in this schema. God and God alone is the agent in salvation; permitting any role for human action undermines this non-negotiable axiom. As a consequence attributing causation to God in salvation is to be taken in a strict and exclusive sense. Nothing less than this will keep in place the deep contours of his theocentric passion to uphold the grace, mercy, freedom, and glory of God.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin The immediate question that then arises is this: What about the action of God in reprobation? Is this also to be taken in a strict and exclusive sense? We expect the answer to be firmly in the affirmative. However, Calvin insists we step back and review the wider causal landscape, and for good reason. For if we answer in the affirmative then God becomes responsible for sin. Calvin’s initial attempt to avoid this conclusion is ingenious. He insists, contrary to what we expect, that it is the human agent who is responsible for damnation. Why? Because they have voluntarily entered into the life of sin and thus deserve the just punishment of God. Both the clear teaching of Scripture and their own conscience bear testimony to this truth. What we clearly need at this point is an account of human causation that will begin to explain how divine predetermination and human responsibility are compatible. The core idea is that the origins of human action lie within us, in our desires, beliefs, intentions, actions, and whatever other elements we want to locate within the causal activity of human agents. Thus at this point Calvin reaches for an intricate account of causation as it applies to human agency. In doing so he undercuts any idea that what is at stake is some sort of mechanical notion of causation, as if human agents are simply puppets being manipulated by God. This is not at all what is at stake, for human agents act voluntarily; they readily take up the life of sin; the causes of their actions lie within them; and this is enough to secure human responsibility for damnation. (p.181) If we want to express the thesis in terms of freedom, then free acts are not uncaused events; they are events whose causes lie within the agent. This consideration, it is thought, keeps intact our intuition that coerced actions, actions brought about, say, by external threats or manipulative pressure, are not free. Of course, it now looks as if Calvin has quietly dropped all talk of divine predestination in reprobation. It looks as if divine causation has disappeared, only to be replaced by human causation. This is not so. What we have, he proposes, is a case of double agency. Divine causation remains in place but it works in, with, and through the various causal factors that show up in the inner life of the human agent. Given the primacy of divine causation, divine reprobation remains in place; given the human agency, human responsibility remains in place. Divine causation, on this view, is fully compatible with voluntary human action.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin To be sure, we are now confronted with a further puzzle. Can Calvin sustain this ingenious effort to hold together both divine causation and human causation, both divine reprobation and human responsibility? At this point Calvin’s position is underdeveloped. However, he has prima facie fended off what initially looks like a devastating objection to his vision of divine predestination in reprobation. It will be up to his successors to spell out in appropriate detail how this compatibilist account of divine causation and human responsibility is to be articulated and defended.9 As a theologian he can leave it to philosophers to take up this research agenda and provide ancillary help to the theologian; they in turn can turn for help to secular accounts of the compatibility between determinism and human freedom. The threads of the latter proposal run all the way back to Aristotle. Calvin has other theological questions to resolve. An obvious one to take up is this: How is the decree of God either to salvation or damnation to be executed within the world of human creatures? How is the decree executed in the case of those elected to salvation? How is the decree executed in the case of those elected to damnation? In both cases he does not shy away from the most intimate connection between divine action and human response. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the human actions involved are brought about by divine action. In both cases we can think of God offering the call to salvation. This goes out to all regardless of their status as potentially saved or potentially damned. In the case of those predestined to salvation, God accompanies this external call with an internal call. They are consequently illumined by the Holy Spirit, effectively not just enabled but actually brought to repentance, given the gift of faith, adopted into the family of God, made regenerate by the Holy Spirit, (p.182) justified, sanctified, given the gift of repentance, and eventually brought to final glory in the resurrection in the life to come. Within this journey of faith, they are also given signs of assurance that they are indeed among the elect. In part this may be because they can discern the marks of the actions of God just enumerated; these are signs that God gives them. In part this assurance may come from a direct action of sealing brought about by the Holy Spirit in their hearts. We can see here how Calvin seamlessly integrates his vision of predestination to salvation with many of the classical divine actions that show up in accounts of divine action in Christian initiation and ongoing faithfulness.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin One may wonder what has happened to the human actions that also show up. Calvin’s account is relatively rich on this front. He speaks of such human actions as hearing, listening, attending to the word of God in Christ, embracing Christ, avoiding confusing or inappropriate questions, repenting, trusting in the promises of God, and the like. These would appear to signify not just an enduring human agent but the capacity to perform these actions in response to the prior actions of God already cited. However, human capacity is not enough. God must also bring it about that the agent actually exercises the capacities involved. Presumably, this will involve a direct action of God relative to the specific capacity at issue and its specific exercise.10 If God does not bring about the exercise of the relevant capacities, then human agents in themselves can take credit for what is done; they can be proud of their achievements. They will no longer be indebted to grace and the gratuitous mercy of God. Moreover, it would mean that God is a mere observer of the acts that constitute salvation rather than their author. Salvation, however, is of God alone; we cannot seek any cause of salvation outside God alone. Sinners by nature cannot in and of themselves exercise, say, faith or trust in the promises of God; they must not only be given a new nature through regeneration, they must also be brought to exercise the capacities of that nature through further divine action that bridges the gap between a capacity and the actual exercise of that capacity. If that is how the story goes in the case of salvation, what happens in the case of damnation? What actions does God perform in this arena in order to operationalize the decree to predestine certain specific individuals to damnation? Calvin does not hold back on the logical consequences of his position. God is actively and intimately involved in the damnation of the reprobate. To begin, when the universal call to salvation goes forth in the preaching of the (p.183) Gospel, God withholds the internal call that begins the process of salvation. Equally, God withholds the gifts of repentance and faith. Interestingly, God may for a time give the reprobate the outward signs that match the outward signs of divine grace in the saved. However, these are mere temporary believers who in time fall away.11 Primarily, what we have are deliberate actions of divine omission where those predestined to damnation are not given the capacities or extra divine actions that move one from capacity to the exercise of that capacity. However, Calvin does not stop there. He also insists that in some cases God actually hardens the hearts of the reprobate, makes them blind so that they cannot see, and renders their ears incapable of hearing the promises of God offered to all. Indeed, God may bring such states of affairs about in, with, and through the preaching of the Gospel. These acts are fullblooded intentional actions of God. Not surprisingly, Calvin does not hesitate to say that God hates the reprobate; he clearly has no place for the adage that we should love the sinner and hate the sin.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin The danger that lurks in the neighborhood here is that Calvin obliterates the distinction between human sin and intentional divine action. To be sure, he is at pains to reject this. Necessarily God is good, loving, worthy of human praise, just, full of mercy, generous, benevolent, and so on. In fact, God is the measure of these attributes; these constitute the rule of goodness and righteousness. Thus it makes no sense for human agents to call into question the justice or goodness of God. To posit some standard above God by means of which divine action is morally evaluated is to seek something higher than God, something intrinsically incoherent.12 For humans, much less sinful humans, to take on this role is equally nonsensical. God’s judgments are deep where ours are extremely narrow and inadequate by comparison. So whatever God does is right and is the standard of what is right; so human agents are in no position to challenge the morality of what God does. It is hard to think of more secure grounds from which to defend the character of God. Epistemically, whatever God does is good and right and proper. God’s will is the standard for moral evaluation.13 Even so, given his account of the relation between divine action and the human actions performed by the damned, Calvin has a deep challenge on his hands. Everything that happens, including human actions, happens as a matter of divine necessity. When Pharaoh turns against God, that turning is (p.184) the effect of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God. When unbelievers out of blindness refuse to see what God is doing in Christ, that blindness is the effect of God blinding their eyes. These are not mere passing comments; they are carefully weighed judgments on the part of Calvin. The difficulty is clearly expressed in the following. The fact that the reprobate do not obey God’s Word when it is made known to them will be justly charged against the malice and depravity of their hearts, provided it be added at the same time that they have been given this depravity because they have been raised up by the just but inscrutable judgment of God to show forth his glory in their condemnation.14 Consider in addition this remarkable passage on how to parse our understanding of the concept of the will of God. Calvin rightly says that we are sometimes driven to attribute what is human to God when we predicate some actions to God. So we have to be careful, for example, when we attribute various emotions to the divine as happens in the striking text which says “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…how often would I have gathered your…chicks, and you would not! [Matt 23:37].”15 But the semantic comment is a distraction. Here is a case where what God wills is not in reality carried out in the human actions involved. God wills that human agents come to him like chickens come to a mother hen; however, they do not do so, and so they do not carry out the will of God. So he has to find some way to keep his general account of the relation between divine decree and human action intact. Page 10 of 27

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin [A]lthough to our perception God’s will is manifold, he does will this and that in himself, but according to his diversely manifold wisdom, as Paul calls it [Eph. 3: 10], he strikes dumb our senses until it is given to us to recognize how wonderfully he wills what at the same moment seems to be against his will.16 We have clearly reached the bounds of sense at this juncture. We can go further when we observe what Calvin explicitly says about the fall of Adam. [W]hence does it happen that Adam’s fall irremediably involved so many peoples, together with their infant offspring, in eternal death unless because it so pleased God? Here their tongues, otherwise so loquacious, must become mute. The decree is dreadful, I confess. Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before he created him, and consequently foreknew because he so ordained by his decree. If anyone inveighs against God’s foreknowledge, he stumbles rashly and heedlessly. What reason is there to accuse the Heavenly Judge because he was not ignorant of what was to happen? If there is any just or manifest complaint, it applies to predestination. And it ought not to seem so (p.185) absurd for me to say God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with his own decision. For as it pertains to his wisdom to foreknow everything that is to happen, so it pertains to his might to rule and control everything by his hand.17 The claim is clear: God has meted out the fall of Adam and the subsequent ruin of the whole human race in accordance with his own decision. God is indeed the author of human sin. God decided that the fall of Adam would take place; it happened precisely because God decided it. This last proposition calls for a further observation. Can we or can we not explain why God acted as God did in this decision? Is there a rationale that would make sense of what God did in this instance and more generally in the decision to predestine, say, Mary to salvation and Brigid to damnation?

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin We can think of two options here. First, this decision has no rationale. God just did it and that is the end of the matter. This, of course, involves a concept of certain actions that many find totally unintelligible. I do not share this intuition.18 We can readily think of situations where a human agent when asked why they did x says: “I did it. There is no reason that explains it.” In fact the act is contrary to reason; it is strictly inexplicable. Any reason offered will be rejected. So Seamus decides one day to give away all his money to the poor. You ask him why. Was it because it would please his mother? Or because he wanted to relieve the needs of the poor? Or because he felt hypocritical as a socialist who had gained his wealth at the expense of others? Or because God had told him to do this? He sincerely answers no in every case. He insists that he just woke up one day and did it. That is the end of the matter. Now we may find such action bizarre. However, while it is inexplicable in terms of how we often explain human actions, it is certainly intelligible in a broadly logical sense. There is no obvious incoherence buried in the description. We could think of God’s decisions with respect to predestination along these lines.19 The other possibility is that God does indeed have reasons for decisions with respect to predestination but they are not available to us. Insofar as Calvin renders an explanation for predestination he provides a rationale that is couched in very general terms. Thus the doctrine of predestination to salvation is designed by God to provide comfort to sinners and the doctrine of predestination to damnation is intended to foster humility in the face of (p.186) divine judgment. These are not inconsequential types of explanation. Yet they are relatively vague and opaque. The general sense one gleans from his work is that we are simply in no position to understand the reasons God may have for his decrees. Thus we encounter a radical doctrine of divine hiddenness with respect to crucial actions related to salvation and damnation.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin I have concentrated to date on those issues where the nature of divine action and its relation to human action are most salient. Yet some of the more pastoral issues are worthy of brief mention. Thus Calvin is well aware of the agonizing thoughts and fears his doctrine of predestination naturally produces in the mind of the believer. Thus he vehemently discourages any effort to try and figure out whether one belongs in the list God has drawn up for damnation or the list drawn up for salvation. His advice is to focus on Christ. God has not published the list; so listen to the universal promises of the Gospel and wait and see what happens. To those who are tempted to believe that the doctrine of predestination undercuts zeal for an upright life he suggests that the whole point of the doctrine is to make us tremble at God’s judgments and esteem his mercy. To those tempted to think that the doctrine renders the admonitions and warnings of God meaningless he points out that Paul had no difficulty combining both by way of teaching. So too did Christ; and so did Augustine. If we are tempted to think that the doctrine suggests that God shows partiality and is therefore unjust, then it is clear that we have failed to understand the nature of mercy. A lender is perfectly at liberty to lend according to the good pleasure of his will without any obligation to lend to all and sundry. The restriction of divine grace to those destined for salvation shows us the reality of divine mercy and evokes gratitude; the failure to extend it to all displays God’s judgment and evokes humility. These references to Calvin’s pastoral concerns highlight a crucial feature of Calvin’s theology that deserves mention at this juncture. Observe where his vision of predestination is located in his theology as a whole. One would expect it to come up front before any treatment of creation; after all, it pertains to what God has decreed will happen in creation as far as the fate of each human agent is concerned. It is placed, however, in a unit on how the grace of Christ is received in personal salvation, sandwiched in between a section on prayer and a section on the resurrection of the dead. The crucial content pertains therefore to the doctrine of salvation. In an earlier edition it was followed by a section on the doctrine of providence; in the final definitive edition the doctrine of providence was moved up to follow the doctrine of creation. This was a natural move in that for Calvin the doctrine of providence is conceptually related to the doctrine of creation and thus logically fitted more neatly with that theme.20 (p.187) The location of predestination in a unit on the reception of grace makes clear that for Calvin his intellectual efforts are not merely some speculative effort to think in the abstract about divine planning logically prior to creation.21 Indeed he begins with the earthy observation that some folk show enormous interest in salvation and others could not care less.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin In actual fact, the covenant of life is not preached equally among all men, and those to whom it is preached, it does not gain the same acceptance or in equal degree. In this diversity the wonderful depth of God’s judgment is made known. For there is no doubt that this variety also serves the decision of God’s eternal election. If it is plain that it comes to pass by God’s bidding that salvation is freely offered to some while others are barred access to it, at once great and difficult questions spring up, explicable only when reverent minds regard as settled what they may suitably hold concerning election and predestination. A baffling question this seems to many.22 It looks as if Calvin is working from below, noticing certain empirical features of the effects of preaching, and then reaching for a theological explanation that would make sense of the relevant phenomena.23 If this were so, we would then have an argument to the best explanation. However, this is not at all what matters to him. Calvin does not begin with human experience and then look for a persuasive explanation; he begins with divine revelation and what it says about predestination and then finds that it can be partially confirmed by ordinary human observation. In keeping with his account of the authority of Scripture, his theological orientation is one that is exegetical and scriptural. This is crucial to how he proceeds. Moreover, Calvin’s concerns are not theoretical in the sense that he is looking for explanations; they are essentially catechetical and confessional. He is offering doctrinal help for new converts to Protestantism under pressure from church and state; and he is offering a confession of faith that will serve as an apologetic before the political powers that be.24 From the outset he is operating as a pastoral theologian who is convinced that theology proper is intimately related to the welfare of the souls under his care. Essential to this (p.188) enterprise is the careful articulation of the spiritual benefits that accrue from the teaching of sound doctrine. He cares deeply about human welfare, even as he knows that the doctrine of predestination can readily lead to disorientation, if not to moral and spiritual disaster. In this respect while he resembles some contemporary analytic theologians—indeed he is a hero and mentor to them—his work has a spiritual profundity that is not easy to emulate.25

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Calvin does show boundless theoretical energy in the role of Scripture in his deliberations about predestination. Here we can indeed say that he is attempting to arrive at the best explanation of the wide range of texts related to predestination. If this is the case then Calvin’s doctrine of predestination can be falsified by exegetical considerations.26 Not surprisingly, much of the debate is taken up with such issues. Both sides at this point tend to share Calvin’s vision of Scripture as authored or spoken by God. Thus they seek to organize the host of texts that speak of predestination and related topics into a coherent narrative of what God has done in creation and redemption. Calvin has a lovely way of summarizing the goal of theology that operates within this horizon. He notes that “…we forget to speak well when we cease to speak with God.”27 He does not mean by this that theology requires prayer (although he would have readily agreed with this proposition); he means that the task of theology is to align itself with what God has spoken in Scripture, say, by the mouth of Paul. The commitment to this vision shows up the confidence with which he presents his proposals. He is, as it were, effectively unpacking what God has told us. The besetting vice in the neighborhood of this project is that challenging his views, including his views on predestination, is the equivalent of challenging God. However, it is one thing to challenge what God may have revealed to us; it is another thing entirely to challenge what Calvin says God has revealed to us. My task here is not to rehearse the many challenges that have been leveled against Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. The task is to enter into it so that we can better escape the dogmatisms and prejudices of the current theological scene and become better equipped to do justice to both the range and particularities of divine action that show up in the Christian tradition. This (p. 189) does not prohibit the mention of critical failures on the part of Calvin; but it keeps the latter within a larger and more fruitful horizon. Let me enumerate the strengths of Calvin’s work and then conclude with some diagnostic suggestions. First, Calvin is bold in insisting that we tackle what is at stake in speaking of divine predestination. This is no mere sideshow in the Scriptures and tradition of the church across the centuries. What emerges in Calvin is a relentless theological effort to track the action of God in creation and redemption back into the mind of God in eternity. He is, of course, confident that this can be done because God has spoken to us in Scripture. We need not share the exact details of this account of Scripture to develop this kind of confidence. It will suffice to have to hand a robust account of the inspiration and wisdom of Scripture and allow that to have a primary role in our deliberations.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin More importantly, the intrinsic logic behind Calvin’s project is surely compelling. If God is an agent who has plans for our lives as lived out in creation and redemption, we surely want to track the lineaments of the divine decisions to the primordial decisions of God logically and temporally prior to creation. The language of divine decrees is one way to take up this project. To be sure, the material proposals that Calvin develops may evoke moral and theological repulsion; however, the project itself is entirely legitimate. If we do not pursue this to the end we have lost our nerve and we will have to be content with radically incomplete accounts of the full contours of divine action. Calvin was right to worry that the loss of a theocentric account of the divine project of creation as enshrined in the deep decisions that informed it would have consequences. It would readily lead to thin, generic platitudes about divine grace and love that cease to have intellectual backbone and substance. Worse still, the ensuing vacuum would be filled up with obsession with human projects and desires that were likely to be forms of self-deception decked out in utopian promises of salvation as engineered by human folly.28 Second, Calvin’s project on predestination is theological through and through. He wants to know what God has planned for creation and how that plan is made operationally effective in the world as we know it. At times he can be startling in the realism that grips him. Consider this astonishing passage that is next door to his treatment of predestination when he initially linked it to his doctrine of providence.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Human life is surrounded and practically besieged by human miseries. Without looking further afield, because our body is a receptacle of a thousand illnesses and even nourishes in itself the causes, wherever a person may go he carries a number of kinds of death with him in such a way that his life is practically enveloped in (p.190) death. For what else will we say when a person cannot be cold or sweat without danger? Moreover, wherever we turn, all that is around us is not only suspect but practically threatens us openly, as if it wanted to cause our death. Climb into a boat, there is only a step, so to speak a step, between death and us. Let us be on a horse, and he only needs to stumble with one foot to make us break our neck. Let us go through the streets; there are as many dangers over us as there are tiles on the roofs. Let us hold a sword or a let someone near us hold one, it takes nothing for us to be wounded by it. All the savage or rebellious beasts or animals difficult to control which we see, are armed against us. Let us close ourselves into a beautiful garden where there is only every pleasure, and a snake will sometimes be hidden there. The houses where we live, since they are constantly subject to burning: by day they threaten to impoverish us, by night to crush us. Whatever possession we may have, since they are subject to hail, freezing, drought, and other storms, they announce to us barrenness and, as a result, famine. I leave aside poisonings, ambushes, the violent things by which life is tried, partly at home, partly in fields, or abroad. Among such difficulties must a person not be more than wretched? That is, since while he lives he is only half alive, maintaining himself with great effort in languor and distress, just as if he saw a knife at his throat every hour.29 Calvin was well aware that this was a grim if not pathological vision of human existence. Yet he introduces this passage by noting that fixing our minds on God “…we can see a singular happiness for the faithful.” And he follows it up with a moving exhortation to entrust ourselves to God. [I]t is a wonderful comfort to understand that the Lord holds all things in His power, governs them by his will, and regulates them by his wisdom, in such a way that nothing can happen unless He has destined it.30 We may, of course, recoil from the way in which Calvin eventually spells out these affirmations as it applies to the details of predestination in salvation and damnation; but we cannot but admire the radical intention to see all things in the light of the decisions God has made for creation before the foundations of the world. This is a theological theology with a vengeance; we sorely need more of it.31

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Third, Calvin does not draw back from pursuing the philosophical implications of his commitments. While he readily rails against speculation, in practice he cannot avoid following through on his proposed insights, not least when he confronts the intellectual problems they naturally evoke. Thus he (p.191) tries valiantly to pursue how we should think of causation as applied to God and of human responsibility as applied to human agents. In this respect he does for divine action in predestination what Aquinas does for divine action in the Eucharist. Speaking philosophically, Aquinas is by far the more sophisticated thinker at this point. Yet Calvin is every bit as relentless in pursuing his theological agenda to its logical limits. Both are trying to protect a favored thesis derived from divine revelation and are prepared to pay the intellectual costs involved. For Aquinas it is the words of Christ in the institution of the Eucharist; for Calvin it is the doctrine of justification by grace and not by human works. In Calvin the philosophical suggestions, say, on divine causation and human responsibility are, as I have noted, underdeveloped. Yet once these suggestions are offered, there is no way to hang back. The train has left the station and will continue to its final destination. Even as one cannot but admire the dexterity and depth of Calvin’s program on predestination, one cannot but also worry that something has gone seriously wrong somewhere. Somewhere Calvin’s train has come off the rails. Perhaps, Calvin tried to take a sharp corner too fast so that the consequences are unavoidable. Aside from the deep worry that Calvin makes God responsible for human sin, there are of course well-worn objections that have been lodged against Calvin across the centuries. His vision of God is that of a God who loves only a portion of the human agents he has created. His doctrine of atonement as limited in effect to those elected to salvation undercuts the claim that atonement is universal in scope.32 His insistence on the perseverance of the saints does not fit naturally with the fact that many believers give up on God and turn back to their old ways. The details of these conventional objections are available in the standard textbooks of Calvinist’s critics. While I find many of them compelling, they are tangential to my concerns here. Let’s focus on issues related to divine agency and divine action.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin If we limit ourselves to these considerations, then we should begin by identifying where the wrong turning was made. Right from the outset Calvin makes it clear that predestination is intimately related to his doctrine of grace and human freedom. As I noted earlier, there are three, tightly interrelated themes that show up. These can be named as, first, his vision of divine grace, glory, mercy, and freedom. God operates entirely as a free agent, dispensing his grace and mercy to whom he will, with no other consideration than his own glory. The second is his conviction that divine grace in salvation excludes (p.192) any appeal to human works. Salvation is by grace, through faith conceived as an immediate gift from God, and most definitely not of works. These two are connected in that the latter bears witness to the former. Justification by faith makes manifest the divine grace, mercy, glory, and freedom. The third theme is the predestination of individuals to salvation and damnation. God decrees that one list of particular persons will be saved and decrees that another list of individual persons will be damned. On the one hand, his teaching on predestination safeguards his doctrine of grace in salvation; predestination tracks salvation and damnation entirely to God alone. On the other hand, predestination bears definitive witness to the grace, mercy, glory, and freedom of God; his doctrine of predestination exalts his vision of divine grace, mercy, glory, and freedom. The wrong turn here is to hold that divine grace in salvation rules out genuine human action in response to God. In this he makes the same mistake as Augustine.33 Calvin works at this point with a sharp disjunction: we can have either divine grace or human decision; we cannot have both. Opting for the former means that there is no real room for the latter. More broadly, even though he will speak of this or that human action, say, hearing the promises of God or repenting of one’s sins, the causes of these actions belong solely to God. This is clearly the case with respect to predestination to salvation. It is equally the case with respect to predestination to damnation. He will speak of the evil intentions of human agents and a host of sinful actions; however, these too, as foreknown by God, are brought about by God. The challenge before us is this: We need to rethink the meaning of causation as it relates to human and divine action. With this in place, we can unapologetically preserve the other elements in the trinity of themes just enumerated. Once we own a better account of the relation between grace and human freedom we will be able to retain both a robust doctrine of divine grace, mercy, glory, and freedom and a robust doctrine of predestination. Hopefully, we really can get the train of divine action from eternity to eternity back on the rails.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin One of the tragedies of the aftermath of Christian theology in the wake of Calvin is that the very meaning of the word “predestination” is tied to what Calvin wrote on the topic. The only concept of predestination that is generally allowed in popular theology is that furnished by Calvin. In academic theology, not least because of the influence of Karl Barth, the situation is more complicated. However, Barth’s position is far from easy to summarize; and it is far from unambiguous. Hence Calvin’s position tends to be the default position conceptually. This is astonishing given that there is in fact an obvious account of predestination, indeed of double predestination, that has long been around in the literature. (p.193) The heart of that alternative tradition is simply this: God has predestined that those who believe will be saved; those who do not believe will not be saved. Here predestination is conditional rather than unconditional in nature. Predestination is also double in nature in that it involves two and only two groups of people. Note also that the intentional objects are groups of human agents not lists of individual human agents. This vision safeguards something dear to the heart of Calvin, namely, the doctrine of justification by grace through faith rather than works. Thus God has predestined that those who come in simple faith to Jesus Christ will be saved. The corollary, on this view, also holds: those who refuse to come to Jesus Christ and insist on justification by their own works will not be saved. This view also preserves the grace, mercy, glory, and freedom of God, for God has freely decided to have mercy on whom he will have mercy. No human objections are going to undermine this crucial decision on God’s part. This is how God has decreed it, end of subject. My aim here is not to offer a full dress articulation and defense of this line of development in the debate about predestination. There are a host of issues that would need to be addressed if that was our goal. My point is that merely putting this option on the table will be met with skepticism if not ridicule.34 Any option along these lines will not just be judged to be a pale reflection of the alternative articulated by Calvin; it cannot be taken seriously as a set of claims about divine predestination precisely because the semantic standard is provided by Calvin and his followers. It is as if we can dispose of the questions posed by Scripture and opened up by Calvin merely by stipulation. Any alternative can never really get off the ground. So those rightly unhappy with Calvin’s views are tempted to give up and find other issues to address. Taking this line is a mistake. On the contrary, I reiterate that Calvin is to be commended for tackling the issue of predestination as it relates to divine agency by insisting that we take the discussion all the way back into the eternal decisions and counsels of God. Anything short of this reveals a failure of theological nerve.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin Consider an analogy. Suppose we come across a decision in parliament that had been initially canvassed by the Prime Minister at a cabinet meeting. We know how many votes won the day; we know how the civil servants of the time implemented the decision; and we know the effects of that decision, say, for old age pensioners. However, we then shut down the discussion. Not even the average journalist would be content with this. We also want to know about the background to the original decision as it was made by the Prime Minister. What was its place in his overarching vision for the country as a whole? What (p.194) does this decision tell us about the enduring character of the Prime Minister? Can we find a relevant set of reasons that are in play? If so, what are they? We need to dig deep into the mind of the Prime Minister. Debates about predestination take us deep into the mind of God. They have enormous implications for our understanding of the character of God. They also have deep implications for our understanding of ourselves as human agents. We cannot toss them aside as irrelevant or try to evade them by changing the subject. Calvin is in fact rightly famous for insisting that “the knowledge of God and that of ourselves are connected.”35 His immediate concerns are broadly theological in content. Without knowledge of ourselves there is no knowledge of God. “…our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God.”36 Once we reflect on our own unhappiness, ignorance, depravity, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and the feelings these evoke, we recognize that “…the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, full abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone.”37 Equally important, without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of ourselves. It is only as we look into the face of God that we can see ourselves for what we are, sinners before God. We do not know how to reckon spiritual goods without reckoning with the perfection of God; we tend to see ourselves as righteous rather than wicked; and divine wisdom will appear to us as foolishness. “Hence the dread and wonder with which Scripture commonly represents the saints as stricken and overcome whenever they felt the presence of God.”38 One way to capture a crucial element in the knowledge Calvin identifies here is to name it as knowledge of ourselves as creatures and as sinners. So the primary subject at issue is theological anthropology.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin However, we need to follow Calvin and go deeper. What emerges as we explore what God has done in predestination and related actions is the metaphysical question of how we are to think of God in the first place and how we should think of causation as predicated of God. Here the language of God as an agent is especially apt. God is construed as an enduring, transcendent, personal Agent with certain powers, emotions, capacities, dispositions, and the like. Furthermore, divine agency is marked by genuine freedom. On the basis of considerations entirely internal to God, Calvin proposes that God predestines certain future human agents to salvation and certain others to damnation. This decision on God’s part does not take into account any qualities we may predicate of human agents once they are created. Most especially, it does not appeal to any actions on the part of humans, even (p.195) actions internally known by God before the creation of the world. It is entirely a matter of divine freedom and glory; God simply makes this decision and the only consideration is, say, the divine glory. This is one way to read the freedom of God. The other way, noted above, is that God simply predestines certain chosen ones to salvation and other chosen ones to damnation. There is nothing below this utterly basic, primitive decision. God just decrees this to be the case; and it is done. One cannot give a rationale for this decree; there are no rational explanations. Calvin is, I suspect, ambivalent on the possible options available, but tends to hold to the first of these alternatives. Suppose now we extend his axiom that knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves are connected in the sense that our concept of ourselves as human agents informs our concept of God as agent and vice versa. One way to state the dilemma his vision of predestination presents is this. On the one hand, we need a robust concept of human agency to get a grip on our concept of divine agency. So we will need a vision of human agents as enduring substances with various powers, capacities, emotions, dispositions, and the like. We will also need a vision of human freedom. We will think of human agents as free in the sense that they could genuinely have done otherwise. We can then go on to ponder how to run our vision of the explanation of human actions. So we could see some actions as simply done straight off, without any rationale. Or we can see all actions as somehow related to the reasons that can be offered for their performance. In this paradigm we are not dealing with reasons as causes in the sense of predetermining conditions. We are thinking of reasons as considerations that explain why the agent did this or that, rather than as causes which determine that the agent do this or that. Much of what Calvin actually says about divine action can be mapped on this metaphysical map.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin On the other hand, Calvin’s material doctrine of predestination effectively eliminates any robust notion of human freedom. In this instance our knowledge of God undermines any substantive vision of human agency. Human agents are not able to do otherwise than God predetermines. God only foreknows what human agents will do because he has determined what they will do. Just as I know in advance how the books will be laid out on my shelf because I have predetermined how they will be laid out, God has predetermined how human agents will act and thereby knows what they will do. This clearly eliminates any serious notion of human freedom and of human agency and thus of precisely the analogy needed to secure our understanding of the agency of God. To be sure, Calvin wants to help himself to the second alternative with respect to freedom that I mentioned above. He is more than happy to explain human sin in terms of such internal factors as the dispositions, capacities, intentions, decisions, beliefs, reasons, and desires of the human agent. This, he thinks, may be enough to secure human responsibility and thus get God off the (p.196) hook for human sin. If the preceding dispositions, decisions, beliefs, reasons, and the like had been different then the outcome would have been otherwise. The agent would have done otherwise. However, the problem is that all of these factors are also predetermined by God. They arise indeed because these factors constitute relevant factors for explaining why humans voluntarily fall into sin. With this in hand it looks as if he has saved the day for human agency. However, these causal factors are themselves preordained by God. Below the surface the human agent may still be construed as an enduring substance with various powers, capacities, emotions, dispositions, and the like. However, what is missing is any robust concept of human freedom. What happens at this level is a matter of necessity rather than a matter of freedom. The agent could not have done otherwise. At this point we must stand firm. We can put this issue sharply in this fashion. When we encounter the good news of God in Jesus Christ, God indeed does much to enable us to respond positively to the stupendous promises offered us. However, there are some things God does not do. God does not do our hearing for us. God does not do our thinking for us. God does not do our praying for us. God does not do our pondering the promises of the Gospel for us. God does not make our decisions for us. God does not do our repenting for us. God does not consent on our behalf to follow Christ. God does not take up the cross that we have to bear in imitation of our great God and Savior. These are genuine human actions. They are not divine actions as somehow interpreted from some deeper perspective; they are straightforwardly our human actions. The Christian tradition in the West has rightly fastened on the critical role that God plays in creation and redemption. Regrettably, this has too often been at the expense of the place of genuine human action in response. Our formal accounts of divine agency and our material doctrines of divine action must take genuine human action seriously. Page 23 of 27

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin If we do not stand firm and insist that these are genuine actions then we have eliminated crucial elements from any Christian account of response to the Gospel. Furthermore, if we eliminate human action we have effectively eliminated human agency. One of the deep problems with Calvin’s vision of predestination is that this is precisely what has happened. He cannot allow for genuine human action and thus he eliminates human agency as a crucial category in Christian theology. There are, of course, additional considerations in play in his theology. Thus if Calvin were to allow for genuine human agency then, given his views on human corruption due to sin, there is little hope of salvation. If salvation in any way depends on human action, we are all lost because human agency is a hopelessly weak reed on which to lean. We are doomed to failure if it depends in even the slightest way on us. Salvation must be the action of God down to the minutest detail. Moreover, there is absolutely no possibility of assurance of salvation if everything from beginning to end does not depend upon God. However, if in the process of (p.197) exalting the role of God in predestination he eliminates human agency, there are in the end no agents who can either hope or have assurance. Hence these additional considerations in play in his vision of salvation are simply devoid of content. It is surely an extraordinary development when efforts to exalt the glory of God in salvation end up eliminating the very agents who are meant to receive salvation as a precious and everlasting gift. Notes:

(1) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, trans. Lewis Ford Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), 926. (2) Oxford English Dictionary, online edition. (3) Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, 930. (4) There is an ambivalence in Calvin that I shall pick up later. (5) only by reason of the fact that he decreed that they take placeCalvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, 954–6. (6) Ibid., 941. (7) Ibid., 947. (8) Calvin returns again and again to these themes in his discussion of predestination. (9) Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957).

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin (10) We have here an analogue to occasionalism. This is the doctrine that it is not enough that when, say, we encounter a table, we actually see a table immediately. We need a specific act of God in which on the occasion of encountering a table we not only have the capacity to see a table; rather the capacity to see is accompanied by an act of God that converts the capacity into actual sight. The event of encountering the table is the occasion for God to bring it about that we actually see the table. One wonders if occasionalism in metaphysics is essentially a transposition of a high-octane doctrine of grace to fit the ordinary actions of human agents, say, in perception. (11) This theme of temporary believers was taken up with gusto in certain strains of the Calvinist tradition in Scotland. Exegetically the issue is prompted by the material in the book of Hebrews that speaks of those who have tasted the power of the age to come but then fall away. See Hebrews 6:4–8. (12) Interestingly, Calvin does not say that this would be idolatry, a claim that would naturally occur to many theologians. (13) It is doubtful if Calvin adopts a semantic identity between God and goodness, as if goodness is to be defined in terms of the divine will. The philosophical waters can run deep at this point. (14) Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, 981. (15) Ibid., 986. (16) Ibid., 987. (17) Ibid., 955–6. (18) Alfred R. Mele, Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 79. (19) We get a hint of this when Calvin almost in an aside says that the doctrine of election to salvation is a mirror of the Father’s election to appoint the Son the head of the church. It is hard to see what rationale we could give for this divine action, although it will be tempting for theologians in the light of more recent work on action within the immanent Trinity to try their hand and see what they can offer. (20) There are in fact important connections between predestination and providence that I cannot pursue here. (21) Calvin has some scathing things to say about those who would come to the work in hand driven merely by curiosity. Such a disposition does not match the nature of the topic under review.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin (22) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, 921. (23) John Wesley, “Predestination Calmly Considered,” in John Wesley: A Representative Collection of his Writings, ed. Albert C. Outler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 427–71. (24) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. Lewis Ford Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 9–31. (25) Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), (26) For an important treatment of the critical verses in Romans 9 see Brian J. Abasciano, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:1–9: An Inter-textual and Textual Theological Exegesis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2006); Brian J. Abasciano, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:10–18: An Intertextual and Textual Theological Exegesis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2011); and Brian J. Abasciano, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9:19– 33, An Inter-textual and Textual Theological Exegesis (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). Abasciano’s work challenges the Calvinist understanding of this crucial unit of Paul on predestination. (27) Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2, 953. (28) Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the French Revolution to the Great War (New York: HarperCollins, 2005). (29) John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1541 French Edition, trans. Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 453–4. (30) Ibid. (31) “Theological Theology,” in John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 11–32. (32) R. T. Kendall raised a storm in Calvinist circles when he argued that in fact Calvin was committed to a universalist vision of atonement; it was really Theodore Beza who reworked Calvin’s position and this then became standard Calvinist orthodoxy. See R. T. Kendall, Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). For a spirited critique see Paul Helm, Calvin and the Calvinists (London: Banner of Truth, 1998). (33) See Chapter 5 on Augustine.

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Divine Action in Predestination in John Calvin (34) In my own Methodist tradition outside certain conservative circles it will be dismissed as a return to the Methodist scholasticism of the nineteenth century. One can only wish that those who think this way had even a minimal appreciation for the depth of Methodist dogmatic theology in the nineteenth century. (35) Institutes of the Christian ReligionCalvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, 35. (36) Ibid. (37) Ibid., 38. (38) Ibid., 38–9.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords Here the author interacts with the work of Luis de Molina and his views on divine concurrence. He argues that Molina’s work centers on the potential role of specific divine assistance in the performance of human actions in relation to salvation and predestination. He also argues Molina is motivated by explicitly theological concerns for the integrity of divine aseity, perfection, love, and mercy. He also claims that Molina’s efforts to sustain a genuine place for human action in salvation, providence, predestination, and reprobation have significant implications for understanding the nature of divine knowledge. The author suggests that Molina’s conception of divine concurrence through merit ought to be revised for contemporary concerns about the integrity of human action, along with patient attention to the language of causality with respect to salvation that one finds in the Augustinian–Pelagian debates. Keywords:   predestination, Luis de Molina, concurrence, divine providence, grace, freedom

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Towards the end of 1607 in the town of Villagarcia, a port on the northwest Atlantic coast of Spain, a very special bullfight was organized. What made it special was this: Luis de Molina (1535–1600), a Jesuit theologian, had escaped condemnation for a range of his views but most especially for his claims about human freedom and their apparent implications for a significant range of Christian doctrine. A bullfight was seen as an appropriate celebration of the action of Pope Paul V who had, in fact, merely called an end to the contentious debate between Molina and his Dominican opponents. His Jesuit brothers and friends took the pope’s decision to be a resounding victory; at some of the colleges, we are told, there were pageants and fireworks in abundance.1 Talk of victory was, to be sure, an exaggeration, although the strength of the political and intellectual opposition was such that the failure to condemn him was indeed something of a success in the circumstances. One way to interpret Molina’s wide-ranging work is to see it as offering a solution to the problem of grace and freedom. Drawing on arguments that are now readily recognized as clever and ingenious, he insisted that grace and freedom were entirely compatible with each other. One could wholeheartedly insist that salvation was by grace and also hold that human agents were genuinely free. Thus he was deeply embroiled in the de auxilius controversy that got a whole new lease of life in the period after the Council of Trent. The problem was framed in part as a debate about the divine assistance essential for salvation from sin. The problem can also be framed in two other distinct ways. First, it can be identified as the problem of morally good acts. Given the incapacity of human agents to do good due to their condition after the fall, how is it that they can do any good at all? Second, it can be identified as the problem of divine concurrence. Given that the gap between the human capacity to do good and the (p.199) actual exercise of that capacity is bridged by the divine action of concurrence, how should we understand the specific action of divine concurrence?

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina There were ways, of course, to interpret the divine assistance at stake in salvation that held that in giving divine grace God acted in such a way as to bring about the free actions of human agents. Put in terms of specific divine actions, God created the free actions of human agents. More robustly, God brought it about that the human agents freely consented to salvation. However, this was not what Molina meant when he insisted that grace and freedom were compatible with each other. He held to a much stronger notion of human freedom, one in which not even God could bring about the free actions of the human agent. If God creates free human action that would be tantamount to a form of divine determinism which raises suspicions about divine justice. Such a form of divine determinism would also lead to doctrines of predestination and providence that would eliminate human freedom, undercut human responsibility, and make nonsense of the numerous injunctions directed at human beings to perform a host of actions related to their spiritual welfare. In addition it would make nonsense of doctrines of merit and reward, a fact that ensures that the work of Molina will evoke a prior—if not visceral—suspicion of Molina in Protestant circles.2 In fact we can see in Molina the kind of grand systematic mind which seeks to find reflective equilibrium across the board in the work of a theologian. Thus he desires to do justice to Scripture, to the teachings of the fathers and councils, to the principles of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, to our personal experience as agents, to proper assessments of the nature of causation, and to anything else that might crop up in an uninterrupted, academic seminar in theology. Those theologians who make a virtue out of ad hoc work in theology should stay clear of his writings. Students with insomnia will find much medicine in his writings. Looking back it is fascinating that the work of Molina should have led to a bullfight, pageants, and fireworks. In their day they also led to fist-fights in the streets between rival bands of students ranged for and against his work. We can leave all that to the historians of the period. Our interest here is to visit his extraordinary deliberations on divine agency and divine action.3 It provides a fitting but contrasting follow-up to the previous chapter on Calvin on predestination. It also helps us see why even today theological debates about divine action in contrast to philosophical debates about divine action not only take their cue from the debate about freedom and grace but often fail to get beyond (p.200) the debate about freedom and grace. Put differently, one deep source of efforts to develop general theories of divine action is tied to historical efforts to grapple with the problem of freedom and grace. The methodological strategy is to take one divine action or cluster of actions (those related to salvation) and then generalize across the board to all divine action.4 The crucial action in play is that of divine concurrence.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina I have introduced Molina in terms of the debate about freedom and grace. It is not easy to determine exactly what we should take as the focus of his work. Contemporary students have latched on to his vision of middle knowledge, suggesting that his real concern was sorting out how to understand the depths of divine cognition. Certainly this is an important element in his work, even though other elements in his account of divine knowledge have suffered from neglect. Alfred J. Freddoso has suggested that the deep motivation for his work was to preserve a profound notion of particular providence, a suggestion that is very attractive but by no means fully assured.5 Given Molina’s wonderfully systematic mind, it is in fact very difficult to single out any particular theme as privileged; like Aquinas, he saw how a tight network of theological concepts hung together in such a way that they stood or fell together. Make a mistake on one of them and the others were immediately in jeopardy. However we enter the debate, we should heed the deep vision of God as an agent that shows up in his work. Like Calvin he does not hesitate to travel back into the mind of God before the creation of the world. There is here the same boldness and the same theological confidence in play. God makes the most intricate network of decisions in order to execute his plans for the creation, governance, and redemption of the world. This requires significant adjustments, Molina notes, in our analysis of divine cognition. For Molina, it is crucial not to sell God short in terms of his capacities to secure a range of knowledge essential to executing his plans for redemption. This is a daring exploration compared to the feeble efforts—if not total hostility—that one finds both in popular religion and in some currents of academic theology. On this front alone his work is a bracing call for a deep recovery of nerve in our thinking about divine agency and about the very particular actions that are performed in creation, predestination, salvation, and providence.6

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina (p.201) Molina shares with his Dominican opponents the conviction that God created the universe ex nihilo, sustains the universe in existence moment by moment, and concurs aptly with everything that happens within the universe, whether that be the action of physical, animate, or human agents. Hence God is involved in all their causal activity. It is rare to find reference to this crucial notion of concurrence in more recent works which generally prefer to speak of divine creation and sustaining of the universe. Speaking generally, Molina operates with a deep vision of divine involvement in everything that happens. The primary though remote source of all that happens is the divine will who has freely chosen to create all non-divine agents, sustain them in being, and concur appropriately with their causal effects. I add the qualifications, “aptly” and “appropriately,” to the divine action of concurrence because it is clear that God does not concur with the evil actions of human agents; yet concurrence plays a critical role in Molina’s account of divine action as it relates to human action that will need to be explored if we are to do justice to the depth and range of divine action in the world. I shall explore the difficulties in this notion before the end. As already noted, Molina is deeply troubled by material accounts of divine action which would claim that God brings about the free actions of human agents. Prima facie this is an exceptionally counter-intuitive claim. Rejecting it is, I suspect, one of the crucial desiderata, as Molina sees it, if we are to have a comprehensive account of God’s relation to human creatures. Truth be told, Western Christians have had enormous difficultly securing the genuine freedom of human agency. The resurgence of contemporary forms of Calvinism and Thomism serve as a sharp reminder of this tendency. The claim that God creates free human actions is testimony to the challenge involved; many of its proponents generally see no immediate problem even as they know that they have to shore up the obvious paradox involved with learned treatises on the meaning of creation.7

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Freedom for Molina involves several crucial features. First, human actions have a necessary causal relation to the agent who performs them. We might say that human actions involve some degree of self-determination. Whatever God does in relation to the exercise of human action, there is always room for a genuinely human contribution to what the agent does. We might also call this a freedom of spontaneity. Second, human actions generally involve a genuine choice between performing the relevant action or not performing the relevant action. We might say that freedom requires libertarian freedom, that is, the ability to choose between alternatives, or more precisely between performing action A or not performing action A. Molina calls this freedom of (p.202) contradiction. Third, freedom of action also involves freedom of contrariety, that is, the freedom not just to not-will the alternative action in question but the freedom to will the alternative action in question. So freedom means that one can dissent from the relevant action open to the agent and resist undertaking it.8 Fourth, free human actions are subject to praise and blame; they are presupposed in ascriptions of responsibility; and they are subject to divine judgment. Fifth, free human actions can be deserving of merit.9 Proponents of the Thomistic alternative did not reject the first condition, that of agent self-determination. They allowed for the possibility of human actions being voluntary, that is, actions arising from within the agent in terms of the agent’s desires, beliefs, dispositions, volitions, and the like.10 They insisted that God acted directly on or within the human agent in such a manner that the outcome of the human action was certain in contrast to where God acted merely with the human agent on the effects of the agent’s action, so that the outcome was not predetermined by God and not therefore certain. The outcome of such divine action on or within the human agent could not have been otherwise, unless God acted otherwise both in his decrees in eternity and in his specific efficacious assistance in bringing about the good actions that human agents perform. Yet somehow the divine action did not undermine the freedom of spontaneity or selfdetermination. Self-determination and divine determination were compatible; grace was compatible with freedom. Moreover, they were adamant about their commitment to a vision of human freedom that they saw as essential to authentic Christian teaching. They also readily accepted the last two features noted here, for they held that human action was subject to praise and blame, subject to divine judgment, open to assessment in terms of human responsibility, and potentially meritorious.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina So there was a limited but real measure of agreement on the nature of human action between Molina and his critics. There were other important areas of agreement, besides those mentioned above. Both were committed to a vision of divine action as involving efficient causation or what we would now call agent causation; both believed that God supplies a supernatural end for (p.203) human beings in the beatific vision and the supernatural means for attaining that end; both abhorred any idea that God is the author of evil; both rejected any doctrine of direct, intentional reprobation to eternal damnation; both agreed on the reality of the fall, original sin, and its effects. Both were committed to the claim that God was perfect in the range and depth of his knowledge, including knowledge of free human action; both believed in the reliability if not the infallibility of Scripture and readily turned to it for illustrative and epistemic purposes;11 both believed in predictive prophesy; both held to a robust doctrine of predestination and providence; both insisted that intimate divine action in prevenient and cooperative grace in the human soul was essential to salvation; both believed in a vision of divine eternity that was compatible with divine action in time; both lived faithfully within the contours of church life. In the light of this range of agreement it is easy to dismiss the differences that cropped up as trivial in comparison to the degree to which they were in agreement. Yet the differences ran extremely deep and evoked profound skepticism about the truthfulness and spiritual consequences of the opposing positions. Even though both sides knew they were tackling a set of problems that church tradition had deemed virtually impossible to resolve, they did not draw back and agree to disagree. How should we characterize the debate as it relates to divine action? Is the debate about divine action in general, that is, a debate, say, about the necessary and sufficient conditions of divine action? Or is it a debate about some particular action of God, albeit a recurring action, that should be restricted to say, divine action in salvation, predestination, and providence? I shall maintain three theses as we proceed. First, the debate as developed by Molina is not initially about the necessary and sufficient conditions of divine action; Molina does not directly address this issue at all. It is crucially a debate about the potential role of specific divine assistance in the performance of human action as it relates to salvation, providence, predestination, and reprobation. That action is designated as the divine action of concurrence. Second, the original home for Molina’s proposals is theological. He is motivated initially by debates about the role of God in salvation; but these are intimately related to his convictions about divine aseity, divine perfection, divine love, and divine mercy. Third, Molina’s efforts to sustain a genuine place for human action in salvation, providence, predestination, and reprobation have significant implications for understanding the nature of divine knowledge.12

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina (p.204) Whatever the final verdict on the truth or falsehood of his claims, they represent the work of a singular genius in the history of theology and philosophy. They provide salutary resources for a penetrating vision of God that seeks to be compatible with a deep vision of human agency. On the divine side they provide a breathtaking account of divine knowledge and intricate divine involvement in creation, history, and redemption; on the human side they embody an extended account and defense of a deep, multilayered vision of human freedom. Consider immediately Molina’s account of the conversions of Paul, Mary Magdalene, and the thief on the cross. Paul is an acutely difficult case for Molina because the human role in conversion appears to be minimal if not non-existent. His opponents knew this and readily insisted that these conversions…were all accomplished through God’s intrinsically efficacious concurrence or assistance; and they were predetermined from eternity to occur by means of such assistance; and the free choice of Paul, Magdalene, and the thief consented to predetermination of this sort. Therefore, predeterminations via intrinsically efficacious concurrence have to be countenanced, and at the same time it must be admitted that this concurrence is no way prejudicial to our freedom of choice.13

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Let’s fill in the background music here. What is initially assumed is a particular narrative of creation, freedom, fall, and original sin. The world our three converts occupy was created by God and is sustained in being by God. Their lives up till the point of their conversion were governed minutely by both general and particular providence. Their lives were also marked by bondage to sin, so much so that without prevenient and cooperating grace they could not turn an eyelid towards God.14 Hence when they encountered the Gospel they were totally incapable of turning to God. They simply did not have the capacity to turn to God, a capacity that was restored by grace. However, merely having the capacity to turn to God was not enough. There is a gap between a capacity and its operation or exercise. This exercise of a capacity by an agent was supplied by a further concurrent action of God that was efficacious in nature, that is, it ensured that they not only could turn to God but that they would turn to God once the concurrent grace was supplied. Furthermore, the decision to provide the relevant concurrent grace was entirely dependent on God. It was not evoked by divine foreknowledge of (p.205) any human action; and it was a decision made by God in eternity before the creation of time and the created order. God’s foreknowledge in this case was derived from God’s decree in eternity to give them efficacious concurrent assistance to move from the capacity to turn to God to the exercise of that capacity. Yet, our trio of converts consented to the concurrent grace supplied; and consent was enough to secure human freedom and choice. The latter, to be sure, looks like a throwaway line at the end, but it fitted with the vision of spontaneous action in play. The human action was voluntary; it was not coerced from without; the human agents were not mere puppets on a string, mere passive and senseless stocks and blocks; they internally consented to the reception of efficacious grace. This is an exceptionally attractive theological package; yet Molina is not happy with it. As far as this argument is concerned, it should be denied that the conversions in question were accomplished through an assistance on God’s part that was intrinsically efficacious in such a way that the faculties of choice of Paul, Magdalene, and the thief, having once been overtaken and stirred and moved by the most powerful assistance do not have the power not to consent despite such assistance. This denial is in keeping with what the Council of Trent decreed, without any exceptions, about the assistance of grace in the conversion of sinners. Thus, it was up to the free will of Paul, Magdalene, and the thief whether or not it was going to follow from that assistance that their faculties of choice would be moved to consent or to cooperate with that same assistance in order to bring about contrition and conversion, and thus whether or not that assistance was going to be efficacious by not consenting to it and by not cooperating with it if they should so choose.15 Page 9 of 24

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Molina is challenging here the concept of human freedom deployed by his critics. It is not enough to have freedom of spontaneity. There must also be freedom of contradiction and freedom of contrariety. To be sure, the three converts cited are unusual cases. Hence Paul was given not only inward assistance but even an external sign represented by the heavenly light and by his being thrown to the ground physically. Yet he still had the freedom to refrain from giving his consent. How much more so would this not be the case (p.206) for the regular conversions that occur in the church? There is a real sense in which “God has placed human beings in the hand of their own counsel, so that they might direct their actions as they will.”16 So Molina rejects the freedom of spontaneity as sufficient for human freedom. Molina also rejects the notion of efficacious grace. Efficacious grace means that God works in the human agent in such a way that it secures with certainty and infallibility the conversion of sinners like Paul. Molina holds that grace is a necessary condition of salvation but it is not a sufficient condition because salvation requires the genuinely free action of the sinner. He goes so far as to say that “…the cause of each person’s salvation is to be found…in that person’s intentions and actions…”17 Moreover the human agent must diligently work out his salvation, “…in restraining his drives, in overcoming temptation, and in doing those things that are required in order to obtain a greater degree of beatitude…”18 Of course, divine assistance and help are essential but so too is human action. Molina does not draw back from speaking of joint human and divine causation and joint human and divine dependency in what happens. God is not the total cause since the faculty of choice is part of the cause. God’s role in salvation does not rule out dependence “…on the free election of the created choice, an election by which it embraces this rather than that part of a contradiction.”19 One of the advantages of Molina’s position is that it is clear that the responsibility for sin rests not with God but with the sinner. “…for as far as their fault and defectiveness are concerned, sins are traced back to created free choice alone as to their cause.”20 Whatever assistance divine concurrent action supplies, God permits21 the human agent to withhold assent on his or her side; so even though the assistance is supplied, the outcome is not secured without consent; it requires joint action not merely efficacious divine action. Freddoso captures the issue with admirable clarity.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Molina’s view is that one and the same instance of divine concurrence (whether natural or supernatural) with respect to an agent S’s freely performing a morally good action A is by its nature capable of being efficacious and also capable of being inefficacious. More precisely, such concurrence is rendered efficacious or inefficacious extrinsically, by S’s own choice as to whether or not to perform A. Thus, this sort of divine aid is not intrinsically efficacious or intrinsically (p.207) inefficacious, but is compatible both with S’s freely performing A and with S’s freely refraining from performing A.22 Molina wants to maintain this crucial role for human agency not just because it is constitutive of his vision of human freedom, but also because he desires to safeguard against two possible theological implications that are lurking in the bosom of the alternative. Suppose divine concurrence is efficacious and that God permits human agents that do not receive efficacious grace to go their own way and sin to their heart’s content. Permission in this context means that willing to permit such a sin is nothing other than not willing…to confer those other aids by which sin would be prevented, and, likewise the permission itself is nothing other than not conferring in time the aids by which sin would be prevented. For one is said to permit that which is such that, even though he sees that it will otherwise occur and that he is able to prevent it, nonetheless he does not prevent it but instead allows it to happen.23 Clearly God is free to confer efficacious concurrent assistance such that it will guarantee the performance of good moral actions. To be sure, God does not command or incite or incline the human agent to sin; thus there is a sense in which God permits the agent to do what he desires, leaving them alone to follow their nature. However, permitting on this scenario means the failure to confer efficacious aids that would certainly and infallibly prevent sin and bring about good moral acts. Molina does not say or even suggest that God is to be seen here as the author of sin; that would be much too strong a claim to advance. His worries are much more subtle than this sort of vulgar charge. Yet they are entirely genuine. First, he worries about the possibility of divine injustice.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina [W]hat grievance will God have on Judgment Day against the wicked, since they are unable not to sin as long as God did not efficaciously incline and determine them to the good, but rather solely by His own free will decided from eternity not so to determine them? Most assuredly if this position is accepted, then our freedom of choice is altogether destroyed, and God’s justice with respect to the wicked vanishes, and a manifest cruelty and wickedness is discerned in God.24 Second, he worries about the divine plan of salvation for all. If there is no place for the hand of our own counsel, then we will have to think again about whether God really wills all human beings to be saved “…if they themselves do (p.208) not prevent it, or in what sense it is true and not fictitious that all human beings have been created by God for eternal life.”25 By this stage we are on the cusp of the complex concepts of divine predestination, reprobation, providence, and foreknowledge. So let’s turn to them. Molina does not for a moment shy away from these hoary topics. He is as committed as any Calvinist or Dominican to articulating what they mean; and more importantly, in reconciling them with his robust notion of human freedom. Molina does not spell out in formal terms his doctrine of predestination and providence. He proceeds in part IV of the Concordia more by way of adjusting the standard alternatives than by setting out his own theological wares. The standard view held that before creation and time God planned to give efficacious grace to some so that they would both come to faith and persevere in the faith precisely through the gift of efficacious concurrent divine action that went beyond creating and sustaining human agents in being. Thereby they became manifest as the elect. Equally, before creation and time God planned not to confer efficacious grace on others so that they chose to remain in their sin and thereby became the reprobate. These decisions were entirely a matter of divine decree that did not take into account any human action whatsoever. Moreover, God foreknew in virtue of these divine determinations the exact number of those who would be saved and those who would be damned. As to the doctrine of providence, the standard view proposed that God created the world ex nihilo and sustained it in existence by upholding the causal powers of the secondary agents he created, whether these be angelic, natural, or human. Beyond such sustaining action God governed the world in minute detail —down to the very hairs on our heads—so that everything that happens, except angelic and human evil actions, is overseen by divine wisdom. Evil angelic and human actions are permitted by God; however, evil is parasitic on the good and counts as a failure to achieve the good destiny that God has designed for them.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina In both cases, Molina was convinced that these standard accounts of predestination and providence were not truly compatible with the kind of human vision of human agents in play in the Christian tradition. In order to secure this agreed desideratum he developed a critical distinction that, if secure, is the work of genius. We can introduce it by one his favored quotations from Scripture. In the Gospel of Matthew we read: Then Jesus [he] began to reproach the city in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, (p.209) on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sidon, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.’26 What is striking here is that Jesus speaks of a hypothetical situation that never happened. He speaks of actions which would have happened in the past under certain circumstances but which did not happen. Moreover, he zeroes in on specific human action—repentance—that would have happened but did not happen. He insists that given the current deeds of power the inhabitants of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum would have performed the action of repentance. Furthermore, their failure to do so made them liable to severe divine judgment. In this case he takes the “would have repented” in a categorical rather than a conditional sense. Thus he rejects a reading that would have added the rider that if there had also been divine efficacious grace in operation then the human agents would have repented. Molina held that this is not the proper reading of the text. Molina insisted instead that this text be taken head on in terms of its obvious meaning. In addition he frames the episode in terms of divine knowledge. It is clear from Sacred Scripture that the supreme God has certain cognition of some future contingents that depend on human free choice, but that neither have existed nor ever will exist in reality and hence do not exist in eternity either; therefore it is not simply because future contingents exist outside their causes in eternity that God knows them with certainty.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina The consequence is obvious, while the antecedent is proved as follows: God knows that there would have been repentance in sackcloth and ashes among the Tyronians and Sidonians on the hypothesis that the wonders worked in Chorizain and Bethsaida should have been worked in Tyre and Sidon.27 What is important here is that Molina has an additional resource for tackling divine action in both predestination and providence. He can appeal to God’s knowledge of future contingent hypotheticals when making decisions about salvation and the governance of the universe. With respect to predestination, God can now provide every human agent with the concurrent divine assistance without which they cannot attain salvation because he knows what they would do in every circumstance in which they find themselves. If they refuse this assistance, then it is entirely their responsibility; and, most importantly, human freedom is not jeopardized. Human agents have an essential, causally effective role in the reception of salvation. It is genuinely the fault of the (p.210) human agent if he or she refuses to receive the relevant divine assistance. So reprobation does not carry with it the worries about divine injustice and about God’s desire for universal salvation. With respect to providence, God can foresee not just what will happen in terms of, say, the free actions of human agents, but also in terms of what they would do if presented with this or that circumstance and thus govern in minute detail the future of the universe. All the while, Molina can maintain his robust concept of human freedom. In order to round off this line of reasoning Molina expands the standard account of divine knowledge that was available in his day. Speaking technically, he introduces the idea that God has prevolitional knowledge of all true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. This is represented by God’s knowledge not just of what free human agents will do under certain circumstances but of what they would do under certain circumstances. He referred to this as middle knowledge because it stood midway between what was called God’s natural knowledge and his free knowledge. On the standard account, God before creation had both natural knowledge and free knowledge. Natural knowledge is the knowledge God has of his own essence. This includes knowledge of all metaphysically necessary truths and all possible truths. This is knowledge that is independent of the will of God. Free knowledge is that element in God’s knowledge that is dependent on God’s will, that is, dependent on God’s desires and what he will in fact do. So its content is postvolitional and contingent. It refers to propositions about what actually exists, or what has existed, or what will exist depending on God’s free choices. Middle knowledge is midway between these. Like natural knowledge, it is prevolitional, so God has no control over it; but, like free knowledge, it is also knowledge of contingent truths rather than knowledge of what is true by necessity. The crucial point for Molina is that God knows certainly and infallibly what free agents would do if placed in this or that circumstance. Page 14 of 24

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina God’s knowledge of these propositions is not grounded in any way. Indeed it is hard to see how such knowledge could be grounded for it does not involve knowledge of what did happen or will happen, for the states of affairs envisaged in counterfactuals of freedom may never have been nor ever will be actualized. This has long been thought to be the most decisive objection to his position.28 However, Molina rejects the assumptions behind this whether in terms of claims about the nature of truth or about the nature of knowledge. Such divine knowledge is basic knowledge; it is not grounded on other propositions; it is intuitive knowledge rather than inferential knowledge. If it is knowledge, the propositions involved must also be true, and our theories of truth must reckon with this paradigm case. The grounding objection (p.211) effectively limits the divine omniscience to ways of thinking about truth and accessing knowledge that apply to human agents but do not apply to God. God possesses supercomprehension.29 So Molina sees no contradiction in the proposition, “God knows what I would do by my freedom of choice.” On the contrary he thinks it is false to say, “God is ignorant of what I would do with my freedom of choice if placed in these circumstances rather than those circumstances.”30 It is clear by now that Molina should be read first and foremost as a theologian. His philosophical work is an effort to create space for a vision of divine action and human freedom that was deeply embedded in a wider theological framework. This fits with our interests in this volume where the aim is to take soundings in the tradition that can tutor us in our own constructive efforts to think and speak aptly about divine action. By way of initial review let me immediately dispatch a couple of canards that can readily come up in the conversation. First, it is clear that Molina thinks very naturally of God as an agent who is not simply a bigger and better version of human agents. His vision of divine knowledge is enough to scuttle such nonsense. It is certainly true that Molina implicitly relies on a vision of God as a concrete particular with certain attributes, capacities, dispositions, and powers. However, on this score he stands squarely in the tradition he inherited.31 He is not an outlier, much less an idolator.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Second, when Molina speaks of joint action and joint dependency between human and divine action as it relates to salvation, it is silly to look for some kind of way to carve up, say, by some kind of precise percentage or measurement, what God contributes and what human agents contribute. We cannot do this in the case of joint action and joint dependency as it applies to human agents; so it is inappropriate to think we should be able to do this in the case of God and human agents. What will be needed in the neighborhood of this request is to spell out in great detail what God actually does in salvation (p.212) (forgiveness, justification, sanctification, and the like) and what human agents do in relation to salvation (hearing the good news of the Gospel, repenting, showing up for baptism, struggling with evil, and the like). That kind of project is precisely what is needed in a full-scale doctrine of the Christian life. Third, it is clear that in his account of human action and freedom, there is a proper degree of autonomy attributed to the human agent. However, it is not just exaggerated but clearly false to claim that Molina is committed to some kind of Promethean concept of the human agent which somehow lies at the base of modern and postmodern notions of human autonomy. Molina’s wider convictions about divine creation, preservation, and concurrence completely undermine this claim. In any case, murky causal stories about the origins of modern notions of autonomy are just that; they are murky stories. If we are in a speculative mood we might argue that these Promethean notions of autonomy and human agent are a long-standing revolt against subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) doctrines of divine determinism that Molina sought to undermine. What makes Molina especially interesting for our project is that he allows us to look at the doctrine of concurrent divine action and see if we should keep it in our intellectual bank for further service. It is astonishing that this notion has dropped out so readily from theological consciousness in the modern period. Was that a salutary decision? Everything depends here on how we understand this action verb as predicated of God. How should we unpack “concur” as predicated of God?

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Consider an analogy. The dean and the faculty have agreed in advance that the faculty is free to think through a set of decisions about the curriculum. So they appoint the relevant committee, do their due deliberations, and report back to the faculty meeting at which the dean presides. Let’s agree that the dean concurs with their proposed decision and subsequent actions. What does concurrence mean in this example? First, it assumes a system of governance in which the dean has the right to review the decisions of the faculty. Second, concurrence means that the decisions and actions will now be implemented. Third, concurrence is more than mere agreement with the relevant decisions and actions. In fact, the dean may not even agree with the decisions of the faculty, but because he does not want to lose face with a certain department chair, he may hide his true judgments and go along with the decision.32 However, characteristically in cases of concurrence there is agreement with the relevant decisions. Fourth, concurrence means that the dean has veto power over the decision. Hence not-concurring is not just an empty gesture; it means that certain plans and actions agreed by the faculty may be (p.213) overturned by the dean. Note, fifth, that concurring is a polymorphous action. It can be done by acquiescing in the decision, by verbally agreeing with the decision in public, or by signing relevant documents related to the decision. Finally, note that concurrence does not mean finding a way to tilt the decisions and actions of the committee so that they will come out exactly the way the dean desires. The word for that kind of action is underhand manipulation. What is initially bizarre about the discourse about concurrence that shows up in Molina and his critics is that the connections with this kind of initial understanding of concurrence are nowhere in sight. Concurrence is brought into the debate in order to solve the problem of the gap between a capacity and the exercise of that capacity.33 No attention is given to the analogical domain in which the concept of concurrence is lodged. It is simply dropped from on high into the theological debate and expected to do its work without further analysis or review. This is one reason why it is initially so difficult to understand what is at stake. The logic of the concept is idling; it can be turned this way and that in an entirely arbitrary fashion. It is no wonder that it has quietly dropped out of our theological lexicon.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina For Molina’s critics the issue is especially acute. Following Aquinas, some speak of a physical premotion that God undertakes in the human agent in order that the human agent will certainly and infallibly bridge the gap between capacity and its exercise.34 In the end all that matters is that God by efficacious grace brings about what is divinely determined and already decided before the foundation of the world. Divine concurrence is simply a placeholder for this divine action. However, the relevant divine action has by this time been shorn of any specific content so that the connection to any ordinary notion of concurrence is entirely lost. It is a mere empty formula that will be shuffled off into the arena of mystery; or a virtue will be made of the whole operation by endlessly repeating that God can bring about the free actions of human agents. Worse still, it clearly entails precisely what concurrence does not normally mean, namely, divine action behind the scenes to determine the desired outcome. Happily, Molina clearly rules out this determinative causation in his use of the language of concurrence. He has much too robust a notion of human agency and human freedom to countenance this possibility. However, one still fears that he is also trapped in the same idling discourse. He never stops to think how the concept of concurrence works as analogically applied to God. (p.214) Clearly if we are going to rescue the notion it will require some significant semantic repair. The problem becomes even more acute when the notion of concurrence is removed from its initial content in the debate about grace and freedom and then applied across the board. This is exactly what happens in Molina. Every good act now carried out by any human agent anywhere must be completed by an act of divine concurrence. It is not enough that human agents be created by God and sustained in their capacities and powers by God; there has to be an additional concurrent action by God if any good act is to be performed.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina At this point one wonders what it means to have a capacity to act. If I have the capacity to do x, then saying that I need an extra divine input—a divine boostershot—to actually do x is surely redundant. It robs the very idea of capacity of its meaning. Of course, there are situations in which I may have the capacity to do x but I am restrained from doing x by external coercion. But this sort of condition does not apply in the current context. Moreover, a knife may have the capacity to cut, but the exercise of that capacity does not lie with the knife but with the one who uses the knife.35 In its original context, there was merit in insisting on divine assistance in bringing the sinner to salvation. In this context the agent lacks the initial capacity to turn to God. It makes perfect sense in these circumstances to speak of God giving all sorts of assistance by the inward working of the Holy Spirit in drawing, illuminating, inspiring the agent to come to faith, and so on. However, when generalized to, say, simply acts of kindness to my neighbor next door, the operation becomes something of a fantasy. It is plugged in because the problem of the gap between capacity and exercise has been generalized outside the original context in which it makes sense. Molina at one point shows remarkable sensitivity to the point I have just made. He considers the following short catalogue of human actions: willing to go to sleep, eating when one is able to do so without sinning and when both things are pleasurable, having sexual intercourse with one’s wife, willing to go for a walk or to play for the sake of reviving one’s spirits, and doing many other similar things.36 He then says: it would be ridiculous to deny this [that only a general concurrence is needed], since (1) God does not restrict himself or limit the innate freedom of secondary causes when what is going to be done is not evil but is instead good, and since (2) God’s concurrences should not be multiplied or increased without necessity, especially with respect to acts and effects that are purely natural.37 (p.215) Molina does not follow up on the significance of these examples for the meaning of concurrence; he has other fish to fry at this point. However, he is surely on to something important when he insists on a general concept of concurrence that does not involve the additional action booster-shot that comes with particular concurrence.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina Perhaps we might briefly capture what is at stake in this way. Given that God is intimately aware through the supreme form of knowledge he possesses of everything that happens and the modality in which events happen, then, unlike human agents, he has a panoramic and complete vision of everything that happens. In the case of salvation, God plays not just a general causal role in creating and sustaining human agents, he also gives special and essential assistance in the formation of faith and sanctity. We need not think of such assistance as applying to all the morally neutral or good acts carried out by human agents, much less to the operating powers of natural secondary causes that he sustains from one moment to the next. It was especially the reality of secondary causation as found in, say, natural agents that led theologians to develop the notion of a general as opposed to particular or special concurrence. My dog Sophie does not need an act of particular concurrence to eat her food. Nor do I need a particular act of concurrence to put on my left shoe in the morning. However, the crucial point to capture is that God is aware of all the causal relations in play; this is what omniscience means in this context; hence there is indeed a permission on the part of God for these relations to hold. God has a veto on every event that happens. Speaking of general concurrence is maybe one way to commit to this vision of the God–world relation.38 Let me make one other point before I close the books for now on Molina. There is no doubt but that Molina’s commitment to a doctrine of merit accrued with the help of grace will poison his position in the eyes of those committed to standard Reformation accounts of justification. The mere mention of merit will be enough to drive them into the hands of those Calvinists who are convinced that the only way to salvage the damage done is to return to a Thomistic-like doctrine of efficacious concurrent grace and take whatever consequences may follow for our doctrines of divine foreknowledge, predestination, reprobation, and providence. What this observation highlights afresh is the fact that the whole idea of divine concurrence arose as a solution to the problem of grace and freedom. It was invented to plug the gap between the capacity to turn to God and the actual exercise of that capacity in turning to God. This gap problem arose because of a prior commitment to a doctrine of original sin that took the effects of the primordial sin of Adam and Eve with precise and radical seriousness. Thus excising the claims about merit will require initially a revisiting of that doctrine if we are to make progress. (p.216) Equally, it will require a rethinking of the Augustinian–Pelagian dispute that I have already hinted can readily be resolved by closer attention to the language of causality as it shows up in debates about salvation.39 To put the issue sharply, work on both these fronts will enable us to cut loose from the language of merit that has unfortunately bedeviled not just Molina but much of the Western theological tradition right up to the present day. Notes:

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina (1) James Broderick SJ, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1961), 215. (2) Happily contemporary Protestants tend to ignore the element of merit in Molina’s work because of his usefulness in sorting out problems that crop up in both Protestantism and Catholicism and which remain unresolved to this day. More happily still, there are ways to excise this element from Molina’s work but these will not detain us in this chapter. (3) Molina also made significant contributions to moral theology and economics. (4) We saw this in the work of Kathryn Tanner in the penultimate chapter of our previous volume on divine agency and divine action. Molina succumbs to a similar methodological temptation as we shall see in due course. It is fitting that we end our first two volumes by looking at efforts to solve the problem of freedom and grace, one of the pivotal sites of debate about divine action. (5) See Alfred J. Freddoso, “Introduction,” to Louis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), trans. Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 2–5. A similar position is taken up by Thomas Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). (6) In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Doubleday, 1994) outside scriptural or patristic quotations, predestination is mentioned once in paragraph 600. (7) Brian Davies, “The Action of God,” in Mind, Method, and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny, ed. John Cottingham and Peter Hacker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 165–84. (8) The issue is put formally by Freddoso as follows. “An agent S has freedom of contradiction with respect to object A at time t if S is at t able to will A and to will not-A. But to have freedom of contrariety with respect to A at t, S must in addition be able to will not-A, that is, the contrary of A. So freedom of contrariety entails freedom of contradiction but not vice versa. What’s more, freedom of contrariety implies a power to resist the object in question positively (by willing its opposite), and not just a power to resist it negatively (by refraining from willing its opposite).” See Freddoso, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 225 n.19. (9) Molina does not discuss the notion of freedom as the freedom to sin, a claim that should not be restricted to the freedom to do evil. Clearly, this is a crucial idea of freedom that theologians will need to take very seriously. Philosophers will readily ignore it.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina (10) Mark K. Spencer, “Divine Causality and Created Freedom: A Thomistic Personalist View,” Nova et Vetera 14 (2016): 919–63. (11) I suspect that like most medieval theologians, Molina saw his work as much exegetical as it was philosophical. In this his work takes its cue from Anselm and Aquinas. (12) As the philosophical literature makes entirely clear, not least in the ready deployment of possible worlds metaphysical speculation, they also involve extensive forays into metaphysics. The use of possible worlds metaphysics is especially visible in the work of Flint. See Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account, chapter 2. (13) Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 261. (14) Freddoso captures the relevant distinction in this way. “Catholics believe that through Christ’s salvific act God beneficently confers supernatural grace on human beings. More pertinent, by His actual grace He (1) antecedently empowers and disposes us to elicit free acts that are supernaturally meritorious as well as morally good (prevenient actual grace) and (2) contemporaneously concurs with such acts (cooperating actual grace).” See “Introduction,” to Louis de Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 37. (15) On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia)Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 385. (16) Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 236. (17) Ibid., 182. (18) Ibid., 195. (19) Ibid., 187. (20) Ibid., 179. (21) Ibid., 170. (22) Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 199 (23) Ibid., 217. (24) Ibid., 139. (25) Ibid., 236. (26) Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 117. Page 22 of 24

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina (27) Ibid., 116. (28) Robert Adams, “An Anti-Molinist Argument,” in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 5: Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E. Tomberlin (Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, 1991), 343–53. (29) This useful term was coined by Alfred J. Freddoso. See Freddoso, “Introduction,” On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 51. Molina returns again and again to what we might call the perfection and transcendent character of divine knowledge. See On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 119, 140–1, 151, 156, 177, 189, 191, 206, 214, 218, 248. (30) Often our deepest decisions about propositions like these come down to intuitions rather than technical arguments. My own intuitions are clearly on the side of Molina. (31) esseid quod estEleonore Stump, The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016).On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia) (32) In a contrasting scenario, the dean may well supply all sorts of help and assistance to the committee; he may even be a constant source of encouragement and inspiration to the committee. (33) As was noted earlier, this problem might also be designated as the problem of moral goodness which arises because of standard Western doctrines of original sin. Debates about the depth of human depravity bring this especially forcefully to the fore. Human agents since the fall simply do not have the capacity to do any morally good actions. (34) The point about premotion is explicitly made by Molina in On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 201. (35) There is surely a crucial distinction to be maintained between secondary causality as it applies to natural objects, like knives, and human agents who have capacity for efficient causality in the Aristotelian sense. (36) Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge (Part IV of the Concordia), 220. (37) Ibid. (38) Notice that this offers nothing by way of solving the problem of evil; solving that problem is not on the agenda for Molina. (39) See Chapter 5 in this volume.

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Divine Concurrence and Human Freedom in Luis de Molina

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Epilogue

University Press Scholarship Online

Oxford Scholarship Online Divine Agency and Divine Action, Volume II: Soundings in the Christian Tradition William J. Abraham

Print publication date: 2017 Print ISBN-13: 9780198786511 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198786511.001.0001

Epilogue William J. Abraham

DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198786511.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords The author briefly examines why “special” divine action came under fire in the modern period, and suggests that the problems with the contemporary debate about divine action in analytic philosophy rest upon core mistakes made during the modern period resulting from a disconnection with the Christian tradition. He raises again the need to engage with the Christian tradition to see what dividends it might pay for the contemporary debate. After giving a retrospective of the contributions of each chapter in this volume, he calls for theologians to take up the project of the epistemology of theology while maintaining their theological boldness. Keywords:   epistemology of theology, divine action, divine agency, modern philosophy, systematic theology

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Epilogue In the debate about divine action one worry that tends to occupy our attention is the worry about divine intervention. If there is a God, then whatever God may do, it would be best all round if God did not intervene in nature, history, the life of the church, or our own personal lives. The language of intervention is, of course, pejorative. It gives the impression that God pokes his hand inappropriately into the wonderful causal chains that are so fascinating in their scope and reliability. As shows up in debates about miracles, God is held to have violated the laws of nature. The very language of intervention and violation makes us nervous. However, we can readily replace it to avoid the negative associations. What is at issue, we can say, is whether God ever works directly or immediately in nature, in history, and in our personal lives. What concerns us is whether God performs any basic acts, acts which are done straight off, without any mediation. Yet even this change will still worry us. Prima facie we would prefer to think that all God’s actions, aside from creation ex nihilo, are mediated acts in which God always works through the causal order already established. Thus we say that God works in, with, and through ordinary natural and human events. Or we insist that we need the idea of divine double agency to understand what God is doing. What from one vantage point may look like an entirely natural event or human action turns out from another vantage point to be divine action. There is, it is said, no competition between divine and human agency. Or we develop the notion of primary and secondary causality. God, the primary agent, always works through secondary causes to achieve his purposes. With one or more of these proposals in place we can then proceed to reinterpret all talk of direct divine intervention as a way of expressing our response to divine action; or, alternatively, as a way of getting others to take our response to divine action really seriously. The verbs that depict this or that specific action of God, those “special” acts of God, are really disguised forms of human response; or they are human action directed at changing the response of others. The surface grammar at this point, it is said, is misleading; we need to take a further step and articulate the deeper grammar that truly captures what is at issue.

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Epilogue (p.218) Clearly if we go down this road we would appear to be drastically altering the content of the Christian tradition as far as the range and diversity of divine action are concerned. Those drawn to radical discourse will speak of a revolution in our theological understanding. Those who prefer more prosaic language will simply say that we are not at all rejecting the Christian faith, we are rendering it more intelligible to ourselves, our critics, and our contemporary interlocutors. The former recognize that there may be intellectual bills to pay down the road; the latter insist that we can dispense with “special” divine actions without shedding any theological tears. To be sure, even as both sides differ on how to describe the change involved, they remain convinced that overall it is a good thing to rework our discourse about special divine action or divine intervention. They sincerely believe that they have an intellectual duty to do so. Moreover, exercising that duty is simply a task that has been central to the Christian tradition from the beginning. When I began this study it was my initial intention to carry the narrative all the way through to take into account the origins of this astonishing turn in the history of theology. I wanted to show how this agenda arose, how it began to grip the theological imagination and sensibility, and how it became something of a dogma in some theological circles. The only alternative seemed to be forms of orthodoxy and fundamentalism that everybody knew to be intellectually bankrupt. In the end I aborted this mission, not least in the interests of my readers. I also decided that another and more important agenda should govern this volume. However, before I reiterate that mission, it may be useful to provide a very brief survey of the pressures that led to this fascinating change in the history of Christian theology. I will also look briefly at standard ways of dealing with these pressures. The catalogue of objections range across a network of diverse disciplines and a brilliant galaxy of thinkers. One kind of worry was epistemological in nature. Claims about direct divine action, most especially as represented by miracles like the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, were much more suspect than, say, the death of Jesus. Perhaps, as David Hume famously argued, there could never be sufficient evidence to support them. In time this worry became bedrock in central forms of historical investigation, brilliantly represented by Ernst Troeltsch, who argued that no serious historian could allow for divine intervention in history. An ancillary argument developed in debates about the nature of scientific investigation. Claims about divine intervention were at odds with both the methods and the findings of science where one focused on entirely natural causes to explain how nature worked.

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Epilogue Another kind of worry was as much metaphysical as it was epistemological. Here the work of Immanuel Kant is pivotal. While the interpretation of Kant has undergone significant revision, the standard view is that he allowed in the end only immanent forms of causation to govern our understanding of the world. Thus claims about direct divine action were blocked by a priori (p.219) ontological commitments. To be sure, he sought to hold on to vestiges of particular divine actions, especially in his eschatology, but the damage was done. Even Hegel, who vehemently opposed the Kantian strictures on our knowledge of the “noumena” or ultimate reality, reworked the great narrative of divine action in creation and incarnation into a narrative that was entirely this-worldly in orientation. Once this was turned on its head by Karl Marx and Friedrich Feuerbach, a dramatic and full-scale secular vision of nature and history came into play. The Idealists, whom Marx ridiculed, continued on their merry way, but they showed no interest in resurrecting any commitment to the kind of particular divine actions that had been central to Christianity. One of the most scathing attacks on direct divine action in history was penned by the great English Idealist, F. H. Bradley.1 The opposition to divine action took an even more drastic turn in the hands of the Logical Positivists, most famously and brilliantly laid out by A. J. Ayer. The problem was no longer epistemological or ontological; all talk about God was strictly nonsensical for it could not be verified by sense experience. Thus there was no point in even raising questions about the truth or falsehood of theology. By this point the objection to divine action had become conceptual; it was strictly nonsense from an intellectual or explanatory point of view. What we now identify broadly as ontological naturalism was given a booster rocket. Even though the claims of positivism have long been abandoned, the naturalism continues to flourish in philosophical circles.

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Epilogue For theologians under pressure from the surrounding intellectual culture it was tempting to add their own theological objections to “special” divine action. Insisting on divine intervention was theologically suspect because it called into question the ingenuity of God. Surely an omnipotent all-knowing God, they said, did not need to create a world where he would have to intervene to fix things if they went wrong. Clearly God acted providentially in the world and in history; here God worked in, with, and through ordinary events. There was no need for extraordinary intervention in this case. Hence, the natural thing to do was to generalize from providential acts and propose that all divine action fitted this pattern. Put more summarily, it was best to think of God operating on a policy of non-intervention. God could achieve his purposes without having to intervene directly. This way of thinking about divine action exalted the character of God; intervention suggested the kind of improvisation that was unworthy of the divine. As far as the study of nature and history is concerned the best approach is that of methodological naturalism. The theologian will still have plenty to say about divine action once the task of cleansing the theological stables has been executed. (p.220) My brief narrative is, of course, merely one stream of thought that has coruscated through the river of theological and philosophical developments. It does not include the many other streams that sought to uphold the kind of claims about divine action that were taken for granted before the modern period. Nor does it identify the various schools of contemporary theology that want to keep alive a robust commitment to all sorts of particular divine actions today. I simply want to indicate some of the crucial developments that crop up beyond the work of Luis de Molina on divine concurrence that I took up in the last chapter. Why, then, did I abort the mission and take my soundings merely from theologians from Paul to Molina? I hinted at the change of mind in the last chapter of the companion volume to this one. What hit me was that the developments I have just reviewed have led many to develop the kind of mental cramp that leaves us profoundly uncomfortable with the faith we have inherited. I cannot speak for others at this point; but I can speak for myself and for the students I teach. To use the other metaphor that I deployed in the “Introduction,” we have been born into an intellectual bubble where our formation has cut us off from the deeper components of the Christian tradition.

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Epilogue Interestingly, the formation in the case of many of my students has been in forms of Christianity where the acute problem stems not so much from formal worries about divine intervention but from exposure to high-octane commitments to material claims about specific divine actions. The catalogue here is not very thick. They have developed worries about the inerrancy of Scripture because of doctrines of divine inspiration. They suffer massive cognitive dissonance from proposals about divine creation that do not tally with theories of evolution. They are scandalized by the immoral character of divine actions as manifest by the slaughter of innocent civilians and the sacrificial slaughter of animals in the Old Testament. They are caught off-guard by doctrines of atonement that work off notions of penal substitution that come across as grossly unjust. They find exclusive claims about salvation hopelessly unhelpful in relating to their Hindu or Muslim neighbors in the suburbs where they live. Many of their colleagues have already abandoned most of these theological claims. They come from churches whose clergy see themselves as progressive and intellectually beyond these kinds of worries. So when they are introduced to the kind of more generic worries noted above, many students are often at a loss as to what to do intellectually. There are various strategies in play to deal with the dissonance. One is to latch on to a truly great theologian of the past; Thomas Aquinas is the favorite at the moment; Karl Barth and Karl Rahner remain serious options. Another is to join an exciting theological movement and hope for the best; feminism in its many ethnic forms comes immediately to mind. Another is to turn to the Process tradition and trust that the metaphysical and ontological innovations available there will take care of (p.221) their concerns. Another strategy is to turn to cultural studies and find some way to integrate what they can of the Christian tradition with the research available in this arena. The earnest motivation behind this move is to articulate a theological vision that will be relevant today. Whether this approach means the end of truth in theology can be left aside for the moment. Yet another strategy is to call down fire on philosophy and on recent theology and insist that the crucial agenda is the divine liberation of the poor and the marginalized. Another solution is to head off to the local church and essentially forget about theology altogether. The task is to grow the church by reaching out to a younger generation as best one can. What is important to note here is that it is not enough to turn back the clock and merely reiterate claims about specific divine actions in the past. The problems we face are not simply formal in character; there are problems that crop up in the material claims we have inherited. Hence it is not enough merely to turn back the tide and argue that most criticisms of claims about divine intervention fail. It is not enough to offer defeaters for methodological and ontological naturalism; philosophers can now readily supply these in abundance. We need to enter into a critical engagement with the tradition and see where that takes us.

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Epilogue The obvious motivation for this critical agenda is that it takes us out of the intellectual bubble into which we are so readily initiated. Using my other analogy noted in the “Introduction,” we are in search of medicine that will cure us of our mental cramp. We need to lay aside our obsessions and prejudices and take a careful look at what has been proposed about divine action in earlier generations. What makes their work important for us is that they were convinced that a whole raft of diverse divine actions were constitutive of the Christian tradition. They were not handicapped by our forms of mental cramp. They did not live in our parochial intellectual bubble. These theologians were giants in their own day and generation; they are an apt choice to become our mentors. Note again that this is not some kind of uncritical agenda. On the contrary, it is a very demanding agenda. We need to explore the specific material claims that have been advanced in the past. What were the problems that preoccupied our forebears? How do they differ from our problems and why? What specific divine actions or class of divine actions caught their attention? How did they tackle the problems that kept them awake at night? Where did their work take them in terms of its implications? What epistemological strategies did they employ? What metaphysical proposals did they borrow or invent? In what ways were they surprisingly creative? Where did their work go off the rails? What crucial errors did they come up with and perpetuate? How should we appropriate their work for today? In the end we have to take each theologian and his or her proposals on its merits. Thus generalizations are more likely to inhibit us than enrich us. (p. 222) However, I want to conclude by making an extended comment on the past as it affects the future. At the outset we can see a clear pattern emerging across the soundings taken. Thus we begin with Paul who gives us an amazing array of first-order claims about divine action. The primary focus is on the specific actions God has performed for the salvation of the world. In pursuing this focus Paul for the most part assumed a vision of divine action in Scripture that he inherited from his Jewish heritage. Scripture clearly remained epistemically crucial in terms of a doctrine of divine authorship, a claim that became a serious challenge once it was agreed that there was not just a new covenant in Jesus Christ but a definitive and final revelation of God to the world. Irenaeus and Origen take up this challenge with remarkable skill.

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Epilogue In time theologians had to figure out the implications of the kind of claims that show up in Paul not just for Scripture but for their vision of God. Thus we see them wrestle with their vision of God as Triune; and within this they are pressed to think through how to think of divine incarnation as a non-negotiable intervention of God in history. Athanasius and the Cappadocians developed remarkable insights about divine action that are as fruitful now as they were then. Equally important, theologians had to sort out the role of divine and human action in salvation as it was mediated in the church and worked out in human response. The problem of grace and freedom became acute, as we see in the extraordinary work of Augustine in response to Pelagius. Equally, Maximus brought to bear subtle arguments in Christology to underwrite the potential victory of good over evil in the life of sanctification. Later, the problem that struck home was represented by the apparent failure of divine action in the ministry of the church as represented by wayward bishops and priests. The action of God in the church and the action of God more directly in the soul seemed to have come apart and needed to be addressed. Symeon the New Theologian took up this issue and in the process preserved crucial claims about divine action in the Christian life that have survived despite all sorts of efforts to bury them for good. Equally interesting, he developed extremely important epistemological moves that complement his work on the details of divine action in the Christian life. In Aquinas, as we see in his treatment of divine action in the Eucharist, the floodgates of metaphysics are opened. This is no mere repetition of Aristotle; Aristotle becomes the platform for his own metaphysical innovations, innovations that match his efforts on the epistemological front to provide warrants for what he wants to say about transubstantiation. His metaphysical efforts are driven not just by first-order claims about the bread and the wine in the Eucharist; they are predicated on a vision of divine revelation that is developed elsewhere in his writings. Epistemology and metaphysics, even though they are (p.223) subordinate to his vocation as a theologian of Scripture, are taken on board with extraordinary sophistication and intensity. This work is nicely complemented by the contribution of Teresa of Avila and John Calvin. The obvious danger with Aquinas is that lesser minds will marginalize the action of God directed at the goal of Christian perfection or conspicuous sanctity. Folk can get carried away with epistemology and metaphysics, just as in the generation of Symeon they got carried away with liturgical and ecclesiastical exactitude. Teresa offers the necessary corrective, drawing us back not just into the standard divine actions associated with the sacraments but into the full range of divine operations related to the Christian life as governed by the goal of love to God and neighbor. She maps the full stretch of divine action in the Christian life from the cradle to the grave. Page 8 of 11

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Epilogue Calvin takes the whole debate in another direction. He walks us back into the mind of God before creation. In his treatment of divine action in predestination, he works out with polemical and logical rigor the doctrine of grace that had been developed in an earlier generation by the late Augustine. He stakes out the consequences of this for salvation and damnation with relentless persistence, offering a radically different perspective on the Christian life developed by Teresa. Even so Calvin’s views set one’s theological teeth on edge. They call into question crucial elements in the Christian faith, not least the love of God for all his creatures. The have cast a long and troubling shadow in the history of Western theology. It is a sign of the superficiality of much contemporary theology that many in the younger generation are turning to him for help; they want more than pious talk about the love of God and schemes of liberation. Hence, it is equally no surprise that folk have turned to the remarkable work of Louis de Molina to provide a rich alternative to the Calvinist—and Dominican— tradition that share some of the content of Calvin’s theology. I find this a refreshing development. Yet it is astonishing to me how vitriolic the debate can become when abstruse theological and philosophical theories such as we find in Calvin and Molina are taken into the public arena. Happily, our secular masters and mistresses no longer allow theologians to kill one another, although I have often wished we could shoot one theologian per year in order to eliminate the nonsense that abounds in places. We see in all of this a development over time that begins with the specific claims about divine action articulated in the Gospel and then moves to their theological implications in the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, and Pneumatology. Some may want to get off the train before they arrive at this station. They prefer to stick to Jesus of Nazareth and stay clear of the theology developed in the patristic period. The latter seems so abstract and irrelevant. However, the deep doctrines that were eventually canonized were not mere abstractions. They were integrally related to the experience of God as named and described in a wealth of Christian teaching. So theology extended into a (p.224) whole range of material delineating divine action in the church and in Christian experience. Both receive extensive attention even as it was not always easy to provide an integrated account that kept the two poles—divine action in the church and divine action in personal experience—from pulling apart.

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Epilogue Some theologians have wanted to get off the train by quarantining the work of theologians like Symeon and Teresa and sticking to theology proper as represented by the theology of the great creeds. They outsource this work to special excursions in ascetic or mystical theology for those who want that kind of thing. However, perceptive observers can see this task of stipulation for what it really is; it is an act of academic evasion. Other theologians have wanted to get off the train whenever the loudspeaker announced that we had arrived at the topic of predestination. Thinking that Calvin is the only option available they lose their nerve. Yet surely the exploration of divine action back into the mind of God prior to creation is as important as the exploration of divine action in the Christian life from conversion to glory. Morally and theologically horrendous though his proposals may be, he is dealing with a dimension of divine agency that must be addressed somewhere in our theology. Happily, Molina helps us see what may have gone wrong even if we may be skeptical of his subtle and ingenious solutions. So far so good, we can say. However, what do we do when theologians venture forth into the fields of epistemology and metaphysics? Can we at last stop the train and get off? Not at all. For one thing epistemological and metaphysical claims are already peeping through even in Scripture. To be sure, they are not primary in Scripture; but they cannot be avoided as the commentaries on Scripture amply show. Moreover, claims about divine action raise questions that require epistemological and metaphysical reflection. Thus we are inescapably driven to take up the language of substance, essences, energies, agency, causation, human freedom, and the like. To be sure, reflections on these topics bring with them their own distractions. However, there are no problem-free situations in theology. It is best to stay on the train and see where the evidence leads us. Given that we live in a golden period of epistemological and metaphysical renewal, it would be a shame if we lost our nerve and pulled the emergency cord. The material covered here is not the last word in this arena; however, it is a pivotal first word if we are to get rid of the mental cramp I described earlier. Given the range and depth of issues to be covered, it is obvious that we need a division of labor. It is imperative, for example, that we tackle the epistemological issues in the new sub-discipline of the epistemology of theology.2 We could also demarcate a sub-discipline that would take up the complex issues that crop up in the metaphysical proposals borrowed or invented by (p.225) theologians. For the present it is enough for these matters to be taken up in an ad hoc fashion. Necessarily, theologians will draw on such inquiries in their endeavors. If they deny this or ignore this, they are likely to make all sorts of epistemological and metaphysical claims that turn out to be hopelessly naïve, underdeveloped, or dangerously mistaken.

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Epilogue Having issued this warning, it is crucial that theologians find their own voice and recover their nerve in advancing their own theological claims. Given my diagnostic remarks earlier, it will be obvious that I judge deep reengagement with the past on the themes of divine agency and divine action an important part of their work. In the end, however, theologians must take their life in their own hands. In fear and trembling before God, they should tell us what God has really done in creation and redemption. In other words, it is worth pondering how one might develop an accessible systematic theology that makes divine agency and divine action the heartbeat of its content. This is no easy assignment, for one cannot speak about divine action as if we were merely reading the evening weather forecast. We have to speak of the Living God, our ever-present judge and savior. Yet such a task beckons us as we take leave of the current exercise of fresh immersion in the complex heritage of Christian theology on divine agency and divine action. (p.226) Notes:

(1) F. H. Bradley, “The Presuppositions of Critical History,” in his Collected Essays, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), 1–53. (2) William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

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