Dissertation August 2005

8/14/2019 Dissertation August 2005

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CTC Dissertation: Candidate number: V42326

From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the universal in Catholic theology.

Heythrop College, University of London

MA in Contemporary Theology in the Catholic Tradition

DISSERTATION (Submitted August 2005)

From Patristic realism to postmodern retrieval: a critical overview of the role of the

universal in Catholic theology.

The mind of one who knows has been freed of concepts and is open to what is. Tao Te Ching: 27.

Abstract

Platonism (and Neo-Platonism) provided a working conceptual framework for thetheologians of the Patristic period (including the Cappadocian Fathers and StAugustine) who contributed in a decisive way to the shaping and development of keyChristian doctrines. Central to this Platonism was the eternal and immutable Form,the supra-sensible archetype of the real, represented by the idea or the universal inthe human intellect. The universal was regarded as a conceptual window onto theReal, including the transcendent reality of God, and this perspective came to governthe expression of Christian doctrine in many theological areas. Mainly as a result ofthe rediscovery of the metaphysical writings of Aristotle, this realist position wasrevised by theologians like Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham. While the denial of realismhad a formative influence on the theology of the Reformation (and, ultimately, thepostmodernism of our own era), the Catholic Church embraced a moderate realismin which the universal, abstracted from sense perception, continued to provide

access to definitive truth. In the course of the revival of Thomism in the nineteenthcentury, traditional Thomism continued to emphasise the centrality of the concept,whereas Transcendental Thomism, in relativising the concept in relation to thejudgement, became the catalyst for the theological pluralism that characterised theperiod after Vatican II. In recent times, Catholic theologians, including Lonergan,Schillebeeckx, Panikkar and Pieris, have sought to retrieve and redefine theuniversal as a dynamic symbol that can mediate theological meaning.


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and a particular table shares to some extent in tableness as such. Spatial

metaphors are brought into play to describe the relationship between the world of

sense and the world of ideas: the real world lies beyond appearances that present

themselves to the senses; phenomenal truths participate in ultimate truth. This

approach, developed by Plato with great ingenuity and imagination, resulted in a total

worldview that ascribed permanence, perfection and ultimacy to one realm of reality

and the opposite characteristics to another.

By the second century these Platonic assumptions, combined with ideas derived

from Stoicism (emphasising detachment, virtue and Logos as the transcendent

principle of rationality animating and sustaining the world) were inextricably woven

into the intellectual outlook of many Europeans. The early Christian Fathers who

reflected on faith and who attempted to present a coherent and compelling account

of it to their contemporaries were, in the main, Gentile Greeks and Romans. Their

thought patterns were Hellenistic, though these patterns were not so embedded in

their awareness as to preclude criticism of certain Greek ideas that were considered

to be inconsistent with Christian revelation. For example one problem with Platos

philosophical monotheism was that God, of necessity, belonged to the realm of

being and was thus completely immutable and impassible, characteristics that cannot

be easily squared with the doctrine of the Incarnation. However many of the early

Christian thinkers and theologians maintained a high opinion of Greek philosophy

and sought, not just to reconcile the revelations of Christianity with many of the core

assumptions of Greek thought, but to suggest that Plato and others had been given

an historic mission to prepare the theoretical foundations for important aspects of

Christianity.

In the course of the early centuries it became necessary for the Church to define as

accurately as possible its christological and Trinitarian beliefs. At the confessional

and liturgical level, the Church, of course, already knew what it believed about

Jesus. Had not Peter in his Pentecostal sermon proclaimed that God has made

[Jesus] both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified? (Acts 2:36); in the

early hymn in Philippians we read that God highly exalted Jesus and gave him thename that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should


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bend and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil 2:9-11).

However, while the lex orandihad consolidated itself in successive generations of

Christian life after the Apostolic period, consensus regarding the lex credendi, in the

absence of theological language making it possible to think of Jesus Christ as

God, 2 was not to be achieved without serious controversy. Ultimately, however, it

was by means of the Platonic universal that the Church was able to set down some

markers for a minimal orthodoxy, though the solutions proposed at the Councils of

Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) generated as many questions as answers.

The route to the eventual deployment of the Platonic universal by the Cappadocian

Fathers in connection with the definition of belief relating to the nature of Christ and

the Trinity is mapped out in some detail by Jaroslav Pelikan. 3 While the Church

employed a variety of metaphors to express and summarize the meaning of

salvation, Christians were generally united in the belief that salvation was the work of

no being less than the Lord of heaven and earth. 4 As we have already seen,

prevalent (Hellenistic) concepts of the Godhead as impassible rendered beliefs in a

God who suffers problematic; docetizing tendencies, even among orthodox believers,

were not uncommon. Efforts to provide a more biblical grounding for the divinity of

Christ resulted in adoptionist Christology, reliant upon key Old and New Testament

texts that lacked the theological and philosophical resources to affirm a more precise

ontological relationship between Jesus and the divine Logos. This conceptually fuzzy

adoptionism seems to have generated a monarchianism that stressed the identity of

Son with the Father without specifying the distinction between them with

precision. 5 Tertullian (160-c.220) himself admitted that the simple people who

are always the majority of the faithful ... shy at the economy, 6 the economyreferring to the distinction between Father and Son. Another pre- (Hellenistic)

philosophical attempt to express the sonship of Christ that finally slipped into

desuetude was the designation of the divine in Christ as an angel. The existence of a

primitive Jewish-Christian angel Christology with its implications for the role of the

Christ (that would include the inauguration of the new aeon of the kingdom) has been

cited by some scholars as a reason for an absence of christological controversy in

the Apostolic age.7


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However it was the Arian controversy of the fourth century, possibly the greatest

theological crisis of the Churchs (early) history, that became the trigger for the

adoption of overtly Platonic language for the defining of a new Trinitarianism that was

and has remained a primary standard of orthodoxy for the whole Church. According

to Pelikan 8 it was the exegesis of Proverbs 8:22-31 (The Lord created me first of all,

the first of his works, long ago. I was made in the very beginning ) in the light of a

particular set of theological a prioris that resulted in the Arian doctrine of Christ as

creature. One of the Arian a prioribeliefs to which Pelikan is referring was the

absolute oneness, the one-and-onlyness, () of God. In fact, Arius preferred the

stronger superlative , without beginning and utterly one, when

referring to the Godhead. No identification of Christ with the (semi)-divine Logos

should be allowed to compromise this arithmetical oneness of God 9 who, as

monad () was absolutely alone. An early attempt to settle the matter at the

Council of Nicea, done in peremptory style by the Emperor Constantine himself who

(probably at the instigation of his western advisor, the Spaniard Hosius) declared in

frustration that the term homoousios (same ousios/being) should be used to

capture the nature of the relationship between Christ and the Father, resulted only in

deeper schism and controversy. The Church had to wait for a later Council, that at

Constantinople (from May to July 381), before a relatively coherent formula, couched

in the language of the more advanced philosophers, 10 could be presented.

What the Church needed was a formula that would allow the believer to affirm both

identity and difference in the Godhead in a coherent way. The Cappadocian Fathers

(including Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus and his younger brother Gregory of

Nyssa) deftly steered a course between the Scyllas of either Sabellianism or tritheism

and the Charybdis of Arianism by placing Trinitarian theology within a Platonic

framework and by unpacking the Godhead in terms of the most general of the

Platonic universals, namely ousia. Gregory of Nyssa needed a distinction similar to

that between Platos Form of the Good a kind of master universal - and the (more

ordinary) Form in order to avoid the confusions attendant upon predicating an

undifferentiated ousia of the persons of the Trinity. Arguing from analogy he

maintained that, just as it was inaccurate to speak of three individual people as three


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humans since human was a term for a nature they had in common, so, in the case

of the Trinity, it was both inaccurate and dangerous to speak of three ousiaisince

believers had clearly (mistakenly) concluded from this that there were three distinct

divinities within the Godhead. In his words the divine, simple, and unchangeable

nature transcends any sort of diversity in order to be truly one. 11 The

hierarchically (and, according to Basil, ontologically12) inferior general universal, the

hypostasis, provides the conceptual means by which to differentiate the Persons.

Both universals were required: ousia to safeguard the unity of God and the

hypostasis to ground the necessary diversity within unity. Basil vehemently resisted

any false exaltation of divine ousia over the hypostases, rejecting any such inference

as irreligion. 13 While the Cappadocians general position shows great conceptual

refinement and intellectual rigour, it is not surprising, given the nature of the subject

matter, that subsequent attempts to popularise doctrine sometimes introduced

inconsistencies and apparent contradictions that undermine their own Platonic

consistency. Having differentiated ousia and hypostatsis,Basil draws an analogy

between these and the relationship between universal and particular which is less

than helpful:

Substance relates to hypostasis as universal relates to particular. Each of us shares in existence

through the common ousia and yet is a specific individual because of his own characteristics. So also

with God, ousia refers to that which is common, like goodness, deity or other attributes, while

hypostasis is seen in the special characteristics of fatherhood, sonship or sanctifying power.14

Even Gregory of Nazianzus occasionally abandons his characteristic precision and

uses figurative language and rhetorical appeals:

When I speak of God, you must be enlightened at the same time by one flash of light and by three.

There are three individualities orhypostases or, if your prefer,persons. (Why argue about names

when words amount to the same meaning?) There is one ousia ie. deity. For God is divided without

division, if I may put it like that, and united in division. The Godhead is one in three and the three are

one. The Godhead has its ousia in the three or, to be more precise, the Godhead is the three We

must neither heretically fuse God together into one nor chop God up into inequality 15


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Occasional lapses aside, the intellectual and conceptual rigour of the Cappadocians

should not be seen as an accidental feature of their thought. Rather their concern to

delineate ideas carefully and unpack them with the utmost precision is a direct

corollary of the Platonic epistemological and ontological underpinnings of their

theological position. Mental ideas were images of supra-sensible and eternal

universals or Forms. 16 The idea ousia is the of a (perfectly remembered)

eternal and ultimate reality (in this case the being of God). According to the Platonic

view there is a real (that is, not conventional or arbitrary) connectedness between the

content of the mind encapsulated in the universal and the eternal Form. Orthodoxy,

ex hypothesi, required the right mental contents/ideas, meticulously delineated and

scrupulously unfolded. From this perspective heterodoxy is essentially a (sinfully

incompetent) travesty of the real. Sabellianism is wrong in the same way that an

imperfect image fashioned by flawed artist is wrong: there is a mismatch between the

image-idea and the reality to which it is supposedly intrinsically related.

The central doctrines of Plato that helped to resource the early Christian intellectual

tradition were themselves developed by several thinkers associated with Platonism,

the most important of whom being Plotinus (204-270) whose form of Platonism

(subsequently known as Neoplatonism 17) was adopted by both the Cappadocians

and St Augustine (354-430). In the Enneads (an edited version of Plotinus work by

his pupil and successor, Porphyry (232-304)), Plotinus affirms many of the themes

common to the Platonic tradition including the belief in a higher level of reality than

visible and sensible things and the non-materiality of the highest form of reality.

According to Plotinus monistic version of Platonism, the being of all things emanated

from a single unitary source, the One, through the Intelligence that contains the

universals on which the physical world in modelled, and the Soul, that includes the

individual souls of creatures including humankind. This new Platonism was the route

to Christianity for one of the faiths most influential spokesmen, Augustine of Hippo, a

major figure in intellectual history whose influence on Christianity Eastern or

Western, ancient or mediaeval or modern, heretical or orthodox 18 is unmatched by

any other thinker.


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Augustines debt to Plato through the thought of Plotinus is a common theme in many

of Augustines commentators. The great Augustine scholar, Otto Scheel, maintained

that many of Augustines key doctrines were merely the consequence of his

Neoplatonism. 19 In his own early writings Augustine seems to identify the biblical

doctrine of God with what Plato and Plotinus have said about God. 20 Referring to a

work of Augustines concerning Christ the teacher, Pelikan remarks on the similarities

between Augustines epistemological ideas and Platos theory of knowledge:

It is appropriate to observe how consistently Platonic was Augustines early doctrine of knowledge

in the soul, which identified the work of Christ as the divine teacher with the idea of recollection (

), so that, we do not consult a speaker who utters sounds to the outside, but a truth that presides

within Christ, who is said to dwell in the inner man he it is who teaches. It would require only the

change of a few words and sentiments from Plato and his followers to become Christians.21

In Augustines theory of knowledge we encounter an original synthesis of Platos

doctrine of the Form of the Good and later Neoplatonist notions of God as the source

of intellectual illumination. In his analogy of the cave in the Republic VII, Plato makes

use of the sun to represent that by which the things of the world (that represent theForms or universals) are made intelligible. In his reworking of these ideas, Augustine

portrays God as the sun that illuminates the truths of the world. Moreover the

environment for these truths is no longer the supra-sensible world of the Forms but

the mind of God. Human knowing then becomes a sharing in (the contents of) the

mind of God. Understanding (which is the actualisation of knowledge) is the

successful seeing by the intellect of the eternal truths that are made visible to man by

the light of Gods presence. The universality and necessity of ideas or concepts

(including those central to the faith including human nature and the nature of the

Trinity) are grounded in divine ideas that are seen or intuited by the enlightened

human intellect. Perhaps by way of mitigating the intellectualism of this intuitionism,

Copleston suggests that Augustinian knowledge could be thought of as being derived

from experience and that the regulative influence of the divine ideas (which means

the influence of God) enables man to see the relation of created things to eternal

super-sensible realities and that Gods light enables the mind to discern the

elements of necessity 22 He does concede, however, that Augustines


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epistemology is anything but systematic and that a definitive interpretation is not

possible.

Mediaeval and later perspectives on the universal

In his discussion of Augustines metaphysics of being and theory of knowledge,

Gerald McCool remarks that Augustine never ceased to be a Platonist. 23 Certainly

in the socially and politically unstable period following the so-called Carolingian

renaissance of the ninth century, the problem of universals continued to be a major

preoccupation for Christian thinkers, as did the Neoplatonic solution proposed by

Augustine who remained a massive presence and influence well into the mediaeval

period. Interestingly a clear bifurcation in thinking about universals seems to have

developed in the period up to Aquinas (1224-74). On the one hand, according to the

position that became known as (Exaggerated) Realism, the Platonic doctrine of the

real existence of universals in a world outside the human mind is maintained. Well-

formed concepts provide windows onto these eternal verities and, as such, have a

decisive and definitive status for thought (and theology). This position reduced sense

knowledge to mere illusion. Representatives of this view included John Scotus

Eriugena (c. 815- c. 877), Remigius of Auxerre (841-908), William of Champeaux

(1070-1120) and to some extent Gilbert de la Porre (1076-1154). The contrary

position, known as nominalism, and represented by Roscelin (c. 1050-1120), John of

Salisbury (c. 1115-1180) and arguably Peter Abelard (1079-1142), held that the

universal is a mere name (nomen orflatus vocis) that is used to label groups of

things that share something in common. As such, universals are provisional and

expendable. Contemporary critics maintained that nominalism was destructive of allknowledge and reasoning and that it rendered philosophy and theology impossible.

In the thought of Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) we find a compelling synthesis

of elements drawn from Augustine, from realist and nominalist positions and, of

course, from the metaphysical and epistemological writings of Aristotle. Thomas

concurred fully with Augustines belief that the human mind was an expressed image

of the Trinity. McCool writes that in Thomass philosophical theology the mind andwill of mans autonomous human nature were ordered to the Triune God of Christian


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revelation as their unique, albeit supernatural, end. 24 However while Thomas

believed, with Augustine, that human beings were orientated to God by means of an

innate intellectual appetite for Being in its fullness (the Beatific Vision), he did not

share Augustines belief in a directintuitive grasp of truth. Following Aristotle, Thomas

developed a theory of knowledge that incorporated an indirectintellectual intuition of

an intelligible form in the sensible content of the image. The content of this intuition is

held in the mind as a universal concept and expressed outwardly as a term. Finally,

in the unity of the judgement, the mind is able to synthesise the subject of predication

with the universal concept. This moderate solution to the problem of universals

retains its links with realism by positing the real existence (intentionally in the mind

and physically in the thing) of the same entity in both the mind and in the object. Thus

Thomas succeeded in creating a new philosophy of knowledge in which the

synthesis of particular and universal is achieved by means of the judgement, no

longer following upon divine illumination as Augustine maintained, but resulting from

the ordinary operation of the human mind.

While Thomas was happy to embrace much of Aristotles epistemology, it would be

incorrect to suggest that the principal difference between Thomass Christian

philosophy and that of Augustine was Thomass obvious preference for Aristotle (in

his entirety) over Plato. Thomism should not be considered, according to McCool, a

Christianised version of Aristotles philosophy of being. 25McCool draws upon the

research of tienne Gilson 26 to suggest there is an unbridgeable diversity in the

definitions given to being in the philosophies of Aristotle and Thomas. For Aristotle

being meant subsisting essence, a generic notion that included both the pure

substantial form associated with the concept and the composite reality of the thingconsisting of substantial form and primary matter. For Thomas, however, being meant

existence which was conferred on substantial form. Unlike Aristotelian form, being

could not be grasped intellectually and known like a universal that is produced by

means of abstraction. Rather, being is known through thejudgement, that synthesis

of particular and universal that is ordered directly to Infinite Existence as its end. 27

This emphasis on the (active) judgement, away from the (static) concept, was to

have huge implications for Catholic theology in the period between the two VaticanCouncils and beyond (see below). However the more radical implications of


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Thomass metaphysics were mitigated to some extent by later readings that, with

hindsight, seem closer to Aristotle than to the insights and more original

developments offered by Aquinas.

The reasons that explain the overly Aristotelian reading of Thomas in the three or four

centuries after his death are diverse and, of necessity, conjectural. One of the

problems with Augustines theory of divine illumination was its inability to grant

proper autonomy to the contingent beings and agents of our finite world. 28 Through

Aristotle, Thomas was able to address the question of autonomy by developing an

epistemology (and a modified metaphysics) that acknowledged the human

contribution to the cognitional process and to the metaphysical affirmation of being.

As we shall see, there were both individual intellectual pressures and, in the course

of time, highly developed theological standpoints feeding into significant social-

political changes, that would question the kind of human autonomy that Thomas

sought to uphold. The human beings humanity, for example, was, for Thomas,

neither a super-sensible, quasi-Platonic, divinely constituted entity in the mind of God

nor a purely human, convenient name for an arbitrary set of characteristics. Rather it

was an empirically grounded reality, appropriated through normal human cognition,

but at the same time constitutionally directed towards (an affirmation of) God. Indeed

it may be the case that an exaggerated defence of human nature by some followers

of Thomas resulted, ironically, in a fragmenting of the concept of human nature that

actually facilitated a contrary apologetic that emphasised the infinite distance

between God and man. By the end of the middle ages nominalism, and not Thomass

moderate realism, had become the mainstream movement in scholastic theology.

Thomism had to await the spiritual and intellectual revival of the Order of Preachersin the middle to late fifteenth century before Thomass ideas were reintroduced into

Catholic theological circles. Following Ignatius lead, the Jesuits put Thomas at the

centre of theological education and new and scholarly editions of Thomas works

together with detailed commentaries were produced throughout the sixteenth century.

Recognising that Aristotle alone could not provide a suitable foundation for Catholic

philosophy, the greatest of Jesuit theologians, Francisco Surez (1548-1617),

developed a course in philosophy for use by the Jesuits based on what wasperceived to be Thomass adaptations of Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics.


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In his interpretation of Thomas, Surez allowed himself to be guided by majority

Jesuit opinions. This seems to have prevented Surez from following a number of

Thomass original positions, including his views on being an existence, referred to

above (page 10). In particular Surez seems to have relegated Thomass distinction

between essence and existence from real to conceptual. Contrary to the view of

some Dominican commentators, there was no act of existence that was really distinct

from the essence that limited it. This meant that Thomass dynamic metaphysics of

existence was, in McCools words, totally excised from Surezian philosophy. 29

Thomism, effectively, became the Christianised version of Aristotles philosophy of

being that Gilson responded to three centuries later in the Neo-Thomist revival of the

inter-Conciliar period.

Thomism and its principal variations from the thought of Thomas himself, through

his Dominican and Jesuit interpreters and up to the more recent (19th/20th century)

Neo-Thomist revival has been decisive for the shaping and development of

Catholic theology for over seven hundred years. Indeed Leo XIIIs ardent wish,

expressed in his EncyclicalAetrni Patris (1879), was that the philosophy of St

Thomas should always have a place of honour in the education of the Catholic clergy.

However another strain of thought, representing an alternative approach to the

question of the universal, has had equally important implications for Catholic

theology, both during the centuries of reform and counter-reformation and in our own

theologically pluralist period. In an article on the Death of Universals 30 Neal Magee

suggests that there are fruitful connections to be made between the thought of

William of Ockham, the rejection of the rule of reason and tradition associated with

the Reformation, the empiricism of the Enlightenment and the apparent rejection ofthe universal characteristic of contemporary postmodernism.

William of Ockham (c.1280-1349), a brilliant Franciscan theologian known among his

contemporaries as Doctor invincibilis et venerabilis inceptor, studied under John

Duns Scotus (an advocate of realism) at Merton College, Oxford. Ockham derived

his understanding of the omnipotence of God from Scotus. Scotus emphasised the

total transcendence of God and the utter contingency of creation, including humannature. In no sense, certainly not in the Augustinian outlined above, could human


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beings claim to have a stake in the mind of God or even in the real by means of

their involvement with universals. What human beings encounter are individual

substances and qualities and these are the fundamental realities of human

experience. The realist and the Thomist positions on the universal were supportive of

a doctrine of the analogy of being which, in turn, could be used to underpin a belief in

the human beings constitutional orientation towards God as their final end. Ockhams

commitment to thepotentia absoluta of God combined with his absolute incredulity

towards universals resulted in a theology that helped to shape both the reforming

perspective of Martin Luther and subsequent philosophies that have rejected the

possibility of absolute norms of truth and morality. The possibility of theologys

qualified self-authentication, so to speak, by means of reference to a rationality

founded upon universals that could connect human thinking to the real and,

ultimately, to the divine, is now denied. All theological speculation must be tested

against the only objective authority that God, in Gods providence, has provided,

namely the authority of the scriptures. Also consistent with Ockhams position is the

apparently extraordinary view that, from a human perspective, there can be no

absolute ethical norms. Magee observes that murder, adultery and theft couldhave

been arranged by God to be acceptable acts. 31 In complete freedom, however, God

chose not to make these acts acceptable, as is clear from scripture. This appears to

amount to a version of the divine command theory according to which ethical laws

are deemed to be good because God has chosen them and not because of any

inherent goodness they may have, even if this goodness is grounded on a rationality

that is rooted in divine reality. This systematic rejection of universals by Ockham is

one of the earlier philosophical sources of a more developed contemporary

postmodern rejection of absolutes. The nature of this denial will be relevant to thediscussion (below) of the retrieval of the universal for (Catholic) theology in the

postmodern era.

Ockham was an important link in a chain of philosophical and theological thought that

extended into empiricism, the Enlightenment and finally the post-industrial,

postmodern era. The implications of Ockhams anti-metaphysical nominalism and his

views of Gods absolute power would help to stimulate opposition to a number ofCatholic doctrines, opposition that (in the minds of the dominant Dominican and


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Jesuit theologians) only a rejuvenated, Aristotelian-Thomist, second scholasticism of

moderate realism had the resources to resist. Some examples of theological

positions that seemed vulnerable once the reality of the universal was questioned

were the nature of the Church, human nature, including the character of the humans

capacity to respond to Gods grace, and the sacraments. Against the perpetual visible

identification of the Church with one particular form, Ockham implied that the Church

was a contingent historical reality rather than one that was necessary and universal.

Central to Ockhams teaching on grace is the belief that the goodness of an act is not

inherent in the act but is ascribed to it by God. The definition of what is good lies in

the will of God; merit is based on acceptation, not acceptation on merit. There is no

created human nature (with its own, autonomous capacity for (the reception of)

grace) that can take the initiative in this respect. This (anti-universal) thinking was

applied by Ockham (and his mentor Scotus) to the sacraments. The sacraments

operate, not by any inherent reality or virtue but by an ascribed virtue or power. There

is no inherent power in water or words that has sacramental effect; instead efficacy

depends entirely on God. Inconsistently Ockham maintained that there is an inherent

value in the Eucharist after consecration.

Neo-Thomism and the relativisation of the concept

After the Council of Trent (1545-63), a revived (second) scholasticism was used to

underpin Catholic theological responses to a reform movement that was broadly anti-

Aristotelian, opposed to natural theology and its reference to an analogia entis, and

empiricist in the sense that direct, unmediated religious experience (authenticated by

reference to revelation) was decisive for faith. By the second half of the eighteenthcentury, however, this scholastic revival seems to have run its course. When the

Catholic Church began its slow recovery after the damaging anti-religious secularism

that swept through Europe at the end of the century, it turned, not to Aristotelian-

Thomism to meet the challenge of secular philosophy, but to contemporary forms of

post-Cartesianism and post-Kantianism. Later in the nineteenth century, however,

Pope Leo XIII, hailed by The Times as the greatest Pope to have governed the

Catholic Church since the French Revolution,32

was convinced that only a return toThomism would enable Catholics to engage philosophically and theologically with


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contemporary thought and allow them to make significant and lasting contributions to

European culture. The story of the rehabilitation of Thomism as a serious option for

modern theology, however, was to result in a theological pluralism that Leo, at the

time of his EncyclicalAeterni Patris (1879) could hardly have foreseen.

Pope Leo was convinced that a scholasticphilosophia perennis was the antidote to

the malaise that had afflicted both the Catholic and the secular thought of the

nineteenth century. As historians of thought, including Gilson, have pointed out,

however, the existence of a common scholastic/Thomistic synthesis is at best

chimerical and the unity of mediaeval philosophy was not so much a unity of

systematic content as a unity of spirit.33 In other words, if Leo wanted Thomism to

play a pivotal role in the integration of contemporary thought, it was germane to ask,

Which form of Thomism, in his estimation, was equipped to carry out this task? I have

already referred to the bifurcation of Thomism into a (more original) metaphysics of

existence and a later, Surezian, Aristotelian-Thomism that became normative for

Catholic education for several generations but which, in Gilsons opinion, was

compromised and inauthentic (see page 11). In the course of the Thomistic revival of

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, two (incompatible) forms of Thomism

presented themselves as coherent systems of thought both for theology and for

Catholic philosophers who wished to engage with contemporary thought. In his study

of an exchange of correspondence between the two figureheads representing these

options (namely Jacques Maritain (1884-1978) and Joseph Marchal (1878-1944)),

Ronald McCamy refers to two writers, Georges Van Riet and Robert Havanek SJ,

who, he feels, have set reliable guidelines 34 for distinguishing these two Thomistic

positions. At the heart of this distinction between Maritain and Marchal is a differentunderstanding and appreciation of the stages of cognition. In Van Riets words:

Certain authors direct their interest to the concept, others to the judgment; sometimes it is the one,

sometimes the other, of these elements which is considered as revealing the real.35

Fr Havanek subsequently 36 developed a nomenclature to make this distinction

explicit: he wrote of a philosophy of the concept that was opposed to a philosophyof the judgment. The philosophy of the concept, with its Aristotelian-Thomist


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pedigree up to the second scholasticism of Surez, is associated with the

conservative view; the philosophy of judgment, traceable in embryonic form to

Thomass metaphysics of existence and hinted at in the nineteenth century writings

of the ostensibly Surezian advocate Joseph Kleutgen, 37is the epistemological

mainstay of the more progressive pluralists. A brief delineation of these two

philosophies will enable us to see how different understandings of the role of the

universal gave rise to alternative theological positions that had very different

implications for the future of Catholic theology.

Two routes to the real broadly relatable to either some form of Platonic mysticism

whereby supra-sensible forms are recalled by the intellect, or to any form of direct

intuition or seeing of ideas or truths in the mind of God - are ruled out by the

concept-oriented approach. In the philosophy of the concept, reality in contacted

through the concept. All human minds, regardless of race, culture, historical or

intellectual conditioning, are constituted in exactly the same way. In the human

cognitional process the mind liberates the essential features of the object from the

limitations imposed on it by the conditions of matter. The universal idea embodied in

the concept succeeds in capturing, and stands in a relation ofunivocaladequation

with, the unchanging essential nature of the substance that is located in extramental

reality. One adequate conceptual representation of the substances essence is

sufficient. There is no requirement for, or possibility of, a plurality of conceptual

frameworks.

If the promotion of dialogue between Catholic thinkers and representatives of the

European philosophical traditions was consistent with the spirit ofAeterni Patris,then the Catholic theologians who developed what Harvanek referred to as a

philosophy of judgment could be said to be furthering the general aims of Pope

Leos Encyclical. Their detractors (including Maritain), however, believed that their

attempts to reach a rapprochementwith secular thought were being achieved at too

high a cost. Maritain regarded the Transcendental Thomism of Pirre Rousseleot

(1878-1915) and Joseph Marchal as a monstrous hybrid that would, if it were

allowed to inform Catholic theology, open the gates of pluralism and run counter tocenturies of Catholic thought. Certainly, the project that Marchal brought to fruition in


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his monumental Le point de dpart de la mtaphysique, essentially a synthesis of his

reading of Thomass metaphysics of existence and Kants (1724-1804)

transcendental reflection on human knowledge, was highly ambitious and strikingly at

odds with conventional Aristotelian Thomism. Kants Copernican Revolution

constituted a direct challenge to the notion that the necessity and universality of

knowledge was a function of its conformity with extramental reality. 38 Contrary to the

view of Aristotelian-Thomist moderate realism, the universality and necessity of

objects is, for Kant, guaranteed through the conformity of objects to the mind.

Objective reality is that which has been processed a prioriin conformity with the

categories of the understanding. Marchal was sympathetic to this Kantian turn to

the subject but believed that the Kantian position, once its implications had been

worked through, was fully compatible with a realism that affirmed that there was

something independent of the subject to which the subject could conform itself.

Indeed, Kant had himself unwittingly unpacked these implications in his laterCritique

of Practical Reason (1788) by suggesting that what is beyond reason, namely

noumenal reality and the postulates of morality (God, freedom, the after-life), is

reachable, not by means of speculative reason, but by the dynamism of practical

reason. As McCamy writes, Rather than ground objectivity in the conditioned

conceptuality of discursive reason, why not understand human intellect as an

appetitive drive to the absolute [my emphasis]. 39 The problem with Kant, from

Marchals point of view, was that the object was constituted by means of a static

union of empirical data. By including a dynamism of the mindas one of the a priori

conditions of the possibility for the speculative intellects knowledge of the object,

Kants unbridgeable gulf between the subject and the world and between the human

knower and God could be crossed. Once noumenalised by this intellectual eros forthe Absolute, the concepts of a conceptual scheme can be understood as relativised

cognitive constructs. Harvanek summarised the position in the following way:

[While] the concept is an important and valid form of knowledge in its own right, it nevertheless has

only an intermediate position in the scale of human cognition. The perfection of human cognition is

considered to be the knowledge of the existent It is the judgment that makes contact with reality, by

virtue of its dynamic character as a n assertion: a dicere. Reality is not contacted in the fullest sense


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by being received into a knowing subject, as in the process of abstraction, but by being encountered

in the dicere of the judgment.40

Maritains fear that Marchals Thomism - a marriage of Thomass affirmation of

being through the judgement and a modified Kantian turn to the subject dynamically

oriented to the Absolute - would, if it were embraced by Catholic theology, completely

undermine conventional Aristotelian-Thomism with its one-to-one correspondence

between concept and reality, was clearly well founded. Of course pluralism (in the

sense of the existence of more than one theological system), as Maritain would have

conceded, has existed within and without Catholic orthodoxy for many centuries. The

question for Maritain, however, was, Could different frameworks of systematic

theological thought exist at the same time without contradiction? Given the one-to-

one correspondence already mentioned, Maritain did not believe that they could.

However with Marchals shift in epistemological emphasis from concept to

judgement, co-existence becomes a real possibility. McCool has observed that only

the fittest Thomistic tradition [could have survived] to inherit a relevant role in the

evolutionary movement of contemporary Catholic thought. 41 Given that, outside

conventional Catholic Aristotelian-Thomism, conceptual frameworks were routinelyconsidered mutable and revisable, any real hope that conceptually orientated

scholasticism would provide the Church with the essential tool for dialogue seemed

unrealistically optimistic.

While the Marchalian project (explicitly identified by Harvanek as an instance of the

philosophy of judgment) was to have a powerful catalytic effect upon the direction of

Catholic thought up to and beyond the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), it isimportant to be mindful of two features that are integral to Marchals position. The

first is that, in spite of his shift of emphasis from concept to judgement, Marchal, like

Maritain and in line with the scholastic tradition generally, subscribed fully to

philosophical realism. Marchals sympathy for the Kantian transcendental turn did

not commit him to any form of critical idealism. Indeed, once Marchals Thomistic

correction of Kant was in place, Marchal was equipped to demonstrate that the

ultimate object of the human intellectual appetite to know (in his expanded, dynamicsense) was the absolute being of God. The second point is that the relativisation of


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the concept implied by Marchals Thomism is not the same as the ultimate

epistemological relativism that was associated with such anticonceptual views as

those of Henri Bergson (1859-1941). As McCamy points out, there is a difference

between the claim that there is no absolute relativism and absolutely no relativism.42 What is relative is the status of the concept, not so much in relation to the

judgement in the cognitive process, but in terms of its nature as a product of

particular historical and cultural circumstances.

An interesting illustration of the application of the Marchalian (philosophy of

judgment) approach to an item of fundamental Christian belief, namely the doctrine

concerning the divinity and humanity of Christ, can be found in the writings of Karl

Rahner (1904-1984). Using the available philosophical categories of the fifth century,

the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon (451), in their attempts to define the nature

of Christ, proposed that Christ shared in the being of God andin the being of

humankind:

Following the holy fathers, we confess with one voice that the one and only Son is perfect in

Godhead and perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, that he has a rational soul and a body. Heis of one being () with the Father as God, he is also of one being () with us as

human. He is like us in all things except sin 43

The paradoxical nature of the Chalcedonian definition is, to some extent, a function

of the language and the philosophy through which it is expressed. Rahner has

maintained that, in the absence of an adequate hermeneutical key, many ordinary

Christians have allowed themselves to become closet docetists on this doctrine.

44

Rahners solution involves the relativisation of the concept and reference to the

judgement that is characteristic of Marchals Transcendental Thomism. The concept

of human nature as something fixed and limited must be rightly understood. 45 Human

beings are essentially a dynamic and infinite openness, oriented and directed to the

fullness that is God. In this new framework, Christ can be understood as the

radicalisation of what is true about all humans. Human being is characterised by

transcendence and Christs humanity amounts to the total realisation of this

transcendence in the being of God. Another example of how Transcendental


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Thomism impacted on belief that had been shaped by philosophy of the concept

was Rahners contribution to the theological discussion about the nature of grace that

preoccupied Catholic theologians in the mid-twentieth century, up to the Second

Vatican Council. With its understanding of human nature as a fixed reality, the

Aristotelian-Surezian-Thomist tradition ruled out the possibility ofexperiencing

Gods grace since, according to this tradition, grace was something wholly extrinsic to

human nature. Following the transcendental method, Rahner characterised grace as

an a prioriformal object or horizon that conditions all human knowledge and freedom.

As such, grace is experienced unthematicallybut can be rendered thematicby an act

of reflexive appropriation. Grace becomes thematic for the Christian through faith but

every human being is constitutionally equipped to enjoy profoundly worthwhile

experiences that can shape ultimate life choices.

Postmodern retrieval and redefinition of the universal

If the Marchalian wave did sweep aside the advocates and popularisers of

Aristotelian-Thomism, 46 two of the most influential Catholic theologians of the

twentieth century, Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, emerged from the tradition of

Marchal, not to jettison realism or to advocate a theological pluralism that would

suffocate realism with a thousand qualifications, but to develop Marchals thought to

show that a philosophical and theological method, based on the finality of the human

mind, can continue to present a concept of invariant truth in a theology marked by

history and pluralism. In spite of this, a direct corollary of the Marchalian approach

(which, according to John Knasas, was the only current of Thomism that streamed

into Vatican II and emerged with any vibrancy 47) for Catholic theology was thelegitimisation of different conceptual frameworks associated with a range of

theologies that have enlarged and enriched themselves with concepts drawn from

existentialism, personalism, Marxism and other political ideologies, praxiology and

ecology. 48 The parallel between the evolution in the post-conciliar period of a variety

of theologies based on different conceptual frameworks and the gradual emergence

since World War II of that diverse social and cultural phenomenon, itself

characterised by a relativisation of concepts and a pluralism of perspectives, knownas postmodernism, may suggest that the symbiotic relationship between theology


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and dominant or prevailing intellectual perspectives (referred to at the beginning of

this essay) continues apace into the modern era. Of course, postmodernism is an

amorphous concept that cannot be pinned down in a precise way. To the extent that

parallels between theology and postmodernism can be drawn, however, while

theological pluralism has generally followed where postmodern trends have led,

when it comes to the universal, the creative initiative the attempt to provide a

significant universal for the postmodern period lies with theology. For example, a

massively influential Enlightenment epistemology and its assumption that the

criterion for certainty rests exclusively within human rational capabilities; the view that

one kind of language, namely that which refers to and makes assertions about

objects in the world, has to be normative for all other kinds of language; the centrality

and emphasis of the self and the individual found in modernity, often at the expense

of the other and the collectivity; postmodernisms critique of these and other features

of modernity have been embraced in different ways by theologians who have

concerned themselves with the dialogue with culture. However, the outright rejection

of abstract universals as the linchpins of totalising and repressive metanarratives,

has not been shared by all influential contemporary Catholic theologians. Indeed, as

the following brief references indicate, a careful reappraisal of the universal (freed

from unhelpful metaphysical pretensions) as a call to transcendence in which the

nature of the universal is one of open-ended mediation, has provided theology with a

useful tool for dialogue with a postmodernity that is no longer at ease with

essentialism, whatever form this may take.

The shift from the metaphysical universal (representing final truth) to the symbolic

universal 49 (designating a process in which the universal both participates and helpsto bring into being) is alluded to in the work of Bernard Lonergan, who regards the

human world as, essentially, a world mediated by meaning.50 In Method in Theology,51 Lonergan develops a distinction between transcendental notions and

transcendental concepts. He believes that transcendental notions are prior to

concepts and constitute the dynamism of our conscious intending:

[Transcendentals are] the radical intending that moves us from ignorance to knowledge. They are aprioribecause they go beyond what we know, to seek what we do not know yet. They are unrestricted


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because answers are never complete and so only give rise to further questions. They are

comprehensive because they intend the unknown whole or totality in which our answers reveal only

part.52

Transcendentals should not be equated with their objectifications. The function of the

transcendental (concept) is to mediate the transcendental notion and to orient us to

the horizon of our intending. Damien Casey explicitly associates Lonergans

transcendental concepts with universals in that they mediate and orient us towards

transcendence and transcendent value. 53 Casey describes this universal in dynamic

terms, as a projection from human intentionality towards the fullness of human

becoming. Our essence as human beings is mediated to us by means of theuniversal humanity which is the horizon of possibility of what it is possible for

women and men to become. It is the symbol through which the particular enters a

world of possibility 54

The philosopher Richard Kearney 55 has contributed to the contemporary theological

debate about the postmodern universal through his discussion of what he refers to as

thepersona considered as an icon of transcendence.56

In the course of anexploration of the theme of transfiguration in terms of a phenomenology of the

persona, Kearney presents thepersona as that which (in Lonerganian terms) has the

capacity to mediate the totality of the person, including the otherness of the other.

Kearney echoes Caseys belief that a defining characteristic of the postmodern

universal is that it is understood as an eschatologicalrather than a metaphysical

reality:57 thepersona vouchsafes the irreducible finality of [the human person] as

eschaton,

58

where eschaton signifies an end without end, an end that escapes andsurprises us, like a thief in the night. By introducing this new, dynamic category of

persona, Kearney is seeking to associate the unfathomable otherness and infinite

capacities of being human (mediated by the universal - or transcendental concept -

humanity) with the transfigurative possibilities of the fullness of life attested by

Christian revelation, in particular its canonical expression in the testimony of Mount

Tabor (Lk 9: 28-36). In this passage, Peters desire to set up tents is symptomatic of

the human desire to reduce radical alterity to a fetish of presence. For Kearney the

eschatologicalpersona is always transfiguring but always remains to be ultimately


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transfigured, at the end of time [that is] its temporality exceeds the limits of

ordinary time. 59

After many years of close association with Aristotelian-Thomist perspectives on the

nature of knowledge and being, Edward Schillebeeckx has concluded that it

necessary to move beyond positivistic outlines and pre-existing definitions in

philosophical terms (eg., in Aristotleian and Thomistic or Spinozan and Wolffian

terms). 60 With reference to the concept of human nature, Schillebeeckx proposes a

dynamic theology of anthropological constants 61 that point towards human

impulses and orientations. Again, reiterating the conviction of other postmodern

theologians, Schillebeeckx insists that we do not have a pre-existing definition of

humanity indeed for Christians it is not only a future, but an eschatological reality.62 In his sacramental theology, too, Schillebeeckxs language is reminiscent of

Lonergans when he reminds us that sacraments are anticipatory, mediating signs 63 that orient us towards the ultimate horizon in which the reign of God will be fully

realised. 64

Schillebeeckx, alongside other contemporary Catholic theologians who have

endorsed the postmodern critique of the totalising abstract universal, has argued for

a form of partisanship to counteract the usual tendency of universals to express the

interests of the powerful (including those of white, male, Western, Eurocentric, liberal

theologians). In other words, the unavoidable bias enshrined in the universal must be

directed towards the well being of the ones who have been, and who continue to be,

marginalized by the powerful. For this reason, Schillebeeckx believes that the

Christian universal needs to be non-discriminatory, transformative, inclusive andpolitically partisan. An authentic Catholic bias, driven by a preferential option for the

poor, is directed to the kind of non-persons that Jesus sought out in his own ministry;

an essential aspect of this bias is that it should aim for the transformation of the

world to a higher community; 65 the Catholic Christian universal must be incarnated

into practical, even partisan, political action detractors who deny the radical,

practical implications of the gospel are indulging a form of docetism that should be as

objectionable to the contemporary Church as its earlier expression was in the earlycenturies. Two other theologians, Raimon Panikkar (b. 1918) and Aloysius Pieris,


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have highlighted the provisional nature of the postmodern Christian universal by

questioning the quasi-absoluteness of the universality of human rights. While neither

theologian is suggesting that the issue of human rights should be regarded as

peripheral by the Church, 66 Pieris has observed that the Asian Churchs agenda is

more concerned with the recognition and empowerment of non-persons than with the

promulgation of human rightsper se. As Pieris writes, certain First World theologians

tend to universalise and absolutize their paradigm, unmindful of its contextual

particularity and ideological limitation. 67 Panikkar is not convinced that a particular,

Western, Enlightenment-style expression of such an important aspect of the

humanum should be so readily embraced, in its western (Christian) form, by the

Universal (ie Catholic) Church. As an alternative, he has proposed (at least for the

Church in Asia), that dharma68 the homeomorphic equivalent of Western human

rights should provide the (local, Asian) model for expressing an understanding of

human rights that is relevant for Asian Catholics and Asian society as a whole.

Concluding remarks

Despite the changing perspectives within Catholic theology, two theological constants

are discernible in the work of the majority of theologians. The first is (theological)

realism: this is construed in different ways in accordance with the available

conceptual framework(s), but a minimal characterisation would be that there is a

mind-independent, transcendent reality to which human beings are oriented but

which they cannot adequately conceptualise. The affirmation of the transcendent is

not the same as an affirmation of transcendence. Transcendence, as Heidegger has

pointed out, is an intrinsic feature of a being that, in the course of expressing itself,ex-ists or stands out dynamically against the facticity of its circumstances. There is

an aseity about transcendent reality: it maywhen conceptualised represent the

consummation of the boundless human appetite for meaning but it also stands over

and against humankind as the absolutely other, real beyond the shifting realities of

human experience and sufficient unto itself. The second truth is that human beings

have the capacity to affirm this absolutely other by means of concepts and that this

affirmation is the highest expression of authentic and autonomous humanity. Wehave seen that theologies that deny any intrinsic human capacity to affirm God have


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been associated with philosophy that has been opposed to conceptual realism

(nominalism, the work of William Ockham) and that has denied the possibility of an

analogia entis. The denial of the possibility of a transcendent reality, as a kind of

news from nowhere has, of course, been a feature of the secular postmodernism

that has jettisoned the universal as an otiose and repressive abstract entity. The

rehabilitation of a form of conceptual realism in post-conciliar theology has thrown up

a postmodern universal that has been shaped by a wide variety of philosophical

influences. This could prove to be a vital aid for contemporary theologians in their

ongoing dialogue with culture. It remains to be seen, however, whether the tensions

that are inherent in this universal (Does it promote discovery or invention? Is it

statically or dynamically constituted? and so on) can be resolved in a satisfactory

way.

9997 words


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1ENDNOTES

The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series offootnotes to Plato A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 1929.

2 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A history of the development of doctrine 1: The emergence of theCatholic Tradition (100-600), Chicago, 1971), p176.

3 Pelikan, Chapter 4, The Mystery of the Trinity, pp. 172 225.

4 p. 173

5 p. 177

6 Tertullian,Against Praxeas, 3.1. Corpus christianorum. Series Latina. Turnhout, Belgium, 1953, 2:1161

7 See Martin Werner, Die Entstehung des christlichen Dogmas problemgeschichtlich dargestellt, Bern 1941, p.311

8 p. 194

9

p. 19410 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, 31.15

11 Gregory of Nyssa, Quod non sint tres dii, dii.

12 It is in this sense that the Cappadocian solution may be termed Semi-Aryan. The hypostasis of the SecondPerson is distinct from/not identical with that of the Father.

13 Basil of Caesarea, Homilies, 24.4

14Letters: 214:4 Source: The Concise Book of Christian Thought, Tony Lane, Lion 1984.

15

Oration 39:1116 In this connection see Jacques Maritain,An Introduction to Philosophy, Sheed and Ward 1979, Ch. IV, Platoand Aristotle, p. 59ff; also The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Ed. Ted Honderich, OUP 1995, article on Ideasby Harold I. Brown: [An Ideas is] the image of a Platonic Form that occurs in a persons mind

17 This term was first used as recently as the mid 19th century when German scholars used it to distinguish theviews of later Platonists from those of Plato.

18 Pelikan, Op. cit, p. 292.

19 Scheel. Otto, Die Anschauung Augustins ber Christi Person und Werk, Tbingen, 1901

20 Augustine, Soliloquies 1.4.9 (Patrologia Latina, Paris, 1878-90)

21 Pelikan, p. 295 referring to Augustine, On the Teacher (De magistro), 38 (Corpus scriptorium ecclesiasticorumlatinorum. Vienna, 1866)

22 F. Copleston SJ,A Hisory of Philosophy Volume II: Augustine to Scotus, Burns and Oates 1964, pp. 66-67.

23 Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists, Marquette 2003, p. 141

24 Op. cit. p. 21

25 Op. cit. p. 142


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26 Two sources of information about the relevant research by Gilson are the biography by Laurence K. Shook,CSB., Etienne Gilson (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of mediaeval Studies, 1984) and Maurer, The legacy ofEtienne Gilson, in Victor B. Brezik [ed], One hundred years of Thomism (Houston: University of St Thomas,1981)

27 McCool, p. 22

28 see Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, pp. 144-47

29 Op. cit. p. 26

30 See Neal Magee, William of Ockham and the death of universals onwww.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01

31 Op. cit.

32 Quoted in the entry on Leo XIIIin the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation.

33 McCool, p. 140.

34

See Ronald McCamy, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis? A Maritainian Critique of Fr. Marchal, Peter Lang 1998, p.12.

35 Quoted by McCamy, p. 12 op. cit.

36 Robert Harvanek, Philosophical Pluralism in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol 11, New York: McGraw-Hill1967, pp 448-451.

37Catholic Thought in the Nineteenth Century, 3, referred to by McCamy, p. 17.

38 McCamy writes: Such necessary [transhistorical and transcultural] and immutable concelts, the cognitionalendowment of a common human nature, had een a unifying undergirding for Chrsitain doctrine: quod ubique,quod simper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. This was grounded in a realism in which the objectivity of the

knowing mind was defined as its conformity with a mind-independent reality. op. cit. p. 739 p. 8

40 Robert Harvanek, The Unity ofMetaphyscs, Thought28: 110 (September 1953), 402.

41Catholic theology in the nineteenth century, p. 3

42 Op. cit. p. 15

43 Quoted in Tony Lane, Op. cit. p. 50.

44 See the discussion in Karen Kilby, Karl Rahner, Fount 1997, Chapter 2, Christ and grace, pp15-29.

45 one can only say what man is by expressing what he is concerned with and what is concerned with him.But that is the boundless, the nameless. See Theological Investigations (Darton, Longman & Todd), IV, 108.

46 McCamy writes that the de facto ascendancy of the transcendental approaches of Karl Rahner and BernardLonergan become apparent vis--vis any Maritainian counterposition. Op. cit. p.31. One can, however, stillencounter appreciative references to Maritains Thomism and critique on contemporary thought. See, forexample, Rowan Williams recent Grace and necessity: Reflections on art and love, Continuum 2005.

47 John Knasas, The twentieth centuryThomistic revival, www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm 2.9
http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm%202.9http://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01http://www.secondspring.co.uk/archive/knasas.htm%202.9


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48 See Battista Mondins Legitimacy and limits of theological pluralism onwww.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMfor a fuller discussion.

49 See the paper by Damien Casey, Luce Irigaray and the advent of the divine from The metaphysical to thesymbolic to the eschatological, Pacifica, 12.1 (Feb. 1999) 27-54.

50 See Bernard Lonergan,A third collection: Papers by Bernard J. F. Lonergan SJ, Frederick E. Crowe (ed.), NewYork: Paulist Press, 1985, 179.

51 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990.

52 Ibid. 11

53 See Damien Casey, The postmodern universal: An incarnational viewonwww.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm p. 8/17

54 Ibid, p. 9/17

55 Professor of Philosophy at University College, Dublin and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Boston College.

56 See Transfiguring Godby Richard Kearney in The Blackwell companion to postmodern theology, ed. Graham

Ward, Blackwell 2001, Chapter 21.57 See Casey, The postmodern universal, p. 4-5/17.

58 Ibid. p. 372.

59 Ibid. p. 383.

60 See The Schillebeeckx Reader, ed. Robert J. Schreiter, T & T Clark 1986, Chapter 1, The Structures ofHuman Experience, p. 29.

61 These include: relationship to human corporeality, nature and the ecological environment; being with others;the connection with social and institutional structures; the conditioning of people and culture by time and space;

mutual relationship of theory and practice; the religious consciousness of man; the irreducible synthesis of thesesix dimensions. See Ch. 1. op. cit.

62 Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The experience of Jesus as Lord, (New York: Crossroad, 1980), 284.

63 Ibid. 836.

64 Casey, Op. cit. 11/17.

65 Ibid. p, 170 (quoted by Casey, p. 14/17)

66 On the contrary, the conciliar document, Dignitatis Humanae (1965), indicated that the Church should endorsesecular insights into human rights suchy as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. A useful referenceis John H. Miller, Vatican II: An interfaith appraisal(1966), The Declaration on human freedom by Rev. JohnCourtney Murray SJ, p. 566.

67 Aloysius Pieris, Human rights language and Liberation Theologyfrom Fire and Water: Basic issues in AsianBuddhism and Christianity(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 113. Quoted by Casey, op. cit. 13/17.

68 with its emphasis, not on the individual, but the whole concatenation of the Real. See Raimon Panikkar, Isthenotion of human rights a Western concept?from Invisible harmony: Essays on contemplation andresponsibility, Jarry James Cargas (ed.), Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1995), p. 113. Quoted by Casey, Op. cit.p.13/17
http://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htmhttp://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/PLURALISM.HTMhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm


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SHORTER PAPERS AND ARTICLES

Review of Ronald McCamys Out of a Kantian Chysalis? by Winfried Corduan forPhilosophiaChristion www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htm

Peter Hoenen, Thomistic influences onwww.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htm

The perfecting of philosophy in mediaeval times, (Author ?) onwww.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htm

Damien Casey, The postmodern universal: An incarnational view, onwww.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm
http://www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htmhttp://www.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htmhttp://www.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htmhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htmhttp://www.apologetique.org/en/reviews/McCamy_Out_of_Kantian.htmhttp://www.lonergan.org/Online_Books/Liddy/chapter_six_thomistic_influences.htmhttp://www.radicalacademy.com/adiphilperfecting3.htmhttp://www.dlibrary.acu.au/staffhome/dacasey/post-modern%20universal.htm


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Msgr Jeremiah J. McCarthy, Theological education in the postmodern era, onwww.wocati.org/mccarthy.html

Scott David Foutz, Deconstruction and physical philosophy, Quodlibet Journal: Volume 1Number 1, March April 1999, on www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.html

Neal Magee, William of Ockham and the death of universals, on www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htm

Stan Wallace, Discerning and defining the essentials of postmodernism onwww.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htm

Danile J. Adams, Toward a theological understanding of postmodernism, onwww.crosscurrents.org/adams.htm
http://www.wocati.org/mccarthy.htmlhttp://www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.htmlhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htmhttp://www.crosscurrents.org/adams.htmhttp://www.wocati.org/mccarthy.htmlhttp://www.quodlibet.net/foutz-deconstruction.htmlhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/ockam01.htmhttp://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9802/wallace.htmhttp://www.crosscurrents.org/adams.htm

Documents

Dissertation August 2005